The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► saving your pennies for a $10,000 Apple watch I am going bottom of the line

00:00:03 ◼   ► because you used you refurbished please I need to call them refurbished if I

00:00:15 ◼   ► could get one refurbished it probably would my philosophy is that particularly

00:00:20 ◼   ► with the with the early ones just to be

00:00:24 ◼   ► price conscious because you know I'm not you know I am not completely sold on the

00:00:31 ◼   ► benefits of it yet and I don't want to dump and and I think that the next you

00:00:37 ◼   ► know the ramp up is gonna get is steeper in the beginning I'm fascinated by it

00:00:44 ◼   ► because I I think it's so much fun I think it's a it's it's a very fun time

00:00:48 ◼   ► to be in our racket of talking about Apple and writing about Apple because

00:00:52 ◼   ► nobody has any idea what the hell is going on. And I love it. I

00:00:56 ◼   ► really do. I love that we're all just lost. And I'm not

00:00:59 ◼   ► pretending that I'm not lost. I'm completely lost. I don't

00:01:02 ◼   ► know. Like, why in total,

00:01:05 ◼   ► and you're lost because Why? Because Well, you just because I

00:01:08 ◼   ► sure of what it does yet.

00:01:10 ◼   ► Exactly. I'm at it in terms of like pricing aside, like, let's

00:01:15 ◼   ► just assume I'm just getting the aluminum base model because I'm

00:01:18 ◼   ► a skeptic. And, you know, and I feel like if I love it, maybe

00:01:22 ◼   ► I'll get a more expensive one next year or whatever.

00:01:24 ◼   ► Um, I still have no idea why I would want to wear.

00:01:26 ◼   ► I really don't, you know, I wear a watch for time.

00:01:29 ◼   ► You do wear a watch though.

00:01:30 ◼   ► Yes.

00:01:31 ◼   ► Yes.

00:01:32 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:01:33 ◼   ► Um, I have, I've wore a watch forever and the battery died on

00:01:38 ◼   ► my, like right before Christmas.

00:01:39 ◼   ► And I was like, well, screwed.

00:01:41 ◼   ► I'm not going to spend 15 bucks on a battery.

00:01:43 ◼   ► I'm going to wait until April.

00:01:44 ◼   ► So I have not been wearing one since a slightly before Christmas.

00:01:52 ◼   ► Does it drive you nuts? How quickly did you get used to it?

00:01:54 ◼   ► I'm still I still would rather I like to just look at my hand for the time.

00:01:57 ◼   ► I've worn a watch since I was, I don't know, 15, 14, 15,

00:02:03 ◼   ► sometime in like middle school. Yeah.

00:02:05 ◼   ► Did you ever have a pocket watch?

00:02:07 ◼   ► No, my grandfather did.

00:02:09 ◼   ► My grandmother had given me a pocket watch, so I so for a while I had a pocket watch.

00:02:14 ◼   ► Embarrassing facts about me.

00:02:19 ◼   ► They were very cool, though.

00:02:21 ◼   ► I don't know. Not the way I did it. No. There's no. I think Kottke had a piece

00:02:28 ◼   ► a couple years ago about how the, and I totally understand like all the people out there,

00:02:33 ◼   ► I'm sure that probably 70% of the people listening right now are all thinking the same thing, which

00:02:38 ◼   ► is I don't wear a watch because my phone's with me all the time and I can take it out and get the

00:02:44 ◼   ► time from the phone. Which is totally valid. It's just, and maybe if I was a kid today,

00:02:49 ◼   ► that's what I would do that I'd you know never develop it's just that I have the habit I've

00:02:53 ◼   ► you know 20 20 some years of wearing a watch every day I mean it's a hard habit to break

00:02:58 ◼   ► cocky had a piece I think I think it was cocky a couple years ago where uh he just you know

00:03:03 ◼   ► pointed out that using your smartphone as your watch is pretty much the exact same mechanism as

00:03:07 ◼   ► you know our grandfathers with their pocket watches it's in your pocket you take it out you

00:03:13 ◼   ► hit a flip a thing and you got the time and you put it back and I'm not you know it works

00:03:19 ◼   ► I just feel like it's a distraction with my kid around like the minute I get my phone

00:03:28 ◼   ► out it becomes like a I got oh let's you know what's going on on dad's phone what's what

00:03:36 ◼   ► games does dad have and what can I can I play with dad's phone and so it seems like a watch

00:03:42 ◼   ► is a little easier although I'm not sure like a smartwatch is gonna be much better I think

00:03:46 ◼   ► will be a whole different series of distractions.

00:03:50 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know. I never was impressed with the notifications using the Pebble, but

00:03:57 ◼   ► you know, maybe the fact that you can interact with them here will make a difference. I don't

00:04:02 ◼   ► know. That you could, in a pinch, you can dictate, you know, a reply using Siri. I'm still unsure.

00:04:08 ◼   ► Anyway, so there's two reasons that I feel like I'm totally lost. I still don't quite get what

00:04:12 ◼   ► what it is that I would like about this.

00:04:14 ◼   ► And number two is this whole addition model.

00:04:18 ◼   ► I totally think it's gonna cost thousands of dollars.

00:04:22 ◼   ► I totally don't understand how they'll sell a thing

00:04:25 ◼   ► for thousands of dollars that presumably is going to be

00:04:29 ◼   ► outdated in three years, technically.

00:04:33 ◼   ► I don't get it.

00:04:34 ◼   ► Like I totally think they're gonna do it.

00:04:35 ◼   ► I totally don't get how that works.

00:04:38 ◼   ► - Process is gonna work, yeah.

00:04:40 ◼   ► And your view of the price points,

00:04:42 ◼   ► remind me your view of the price points so we know that we know the the aluminum

00:04:45 ◼   ► one 350 you think the stainless one is gonna be a thousand is that right yeah

00:04:55 ◼   ► that's my ballpark and I've been thinking about it I think but I think it

00:04:58 ◼   ► could be something like like that it averages to a thousand because like

00:05:04 ◼   ► let's say like if you get the stainless with a with something other than the

00:05:08 ◼   ► metallic band maybe it's like $700 or $649 you know 650 bucks for the

00:05:15 ◼   ► stainless to start but if you get the one with the metal band or that mesh

00:05:20 ◼   ► metal band maybe it's like $1,100 and I know that there's a lot of people who

00:05:25 ◼   ► know nothing about watches are like well why in the world would the metal band

00:05:28 ◼   ► make it cost five hundred more dollars but if you look at the way watches are

00:05:31 ◼   ► priced that's that's actually pretty typical like the metal bands on a

00:05:35 ◼   ► premium watch are crazy expensive. Yeah, I don't. Some people I've talked to seem to think that the

00:05:42 ◼   ► stainless one will be like 500 bucks, but I don't think so either. That doesn't seem like that's,

00:05:48 ◼   ► you know, I only think that works if you're trying to upsell. And I don't think at this point they

00:05:53 ◼   ► will be. Yeah, I think that they, you know, they and it brings up another point with something that

00:05:58 ◼   ► almost I haven't seen anybody talk about is are there going to be storage tiers? Is there going

00:06:03 ◼   ► gonna be like an 8 16 32 gigabyte split I don't think so unless it corresponds

00:06:12 ◼   ► to the materials like if sport is 8 gigabytes and stainless is 16 and

00:06:19 ◼   ► addition is 32 mm-hmm but I don't I can't see how they would do aluminum at

00:06:25 ◼   ► 8 16 32 and keep adding 50 bucks or 100 bucks or something like that yeah it

00:06:32 ◼   ► seems too confused at that point it seems to way too confusing because

00:06:34 ◼   ► you've got all these you know it seems like all of the choice you have to make

00:06:38 ◼   ► is about what colors you want and what bands you want and then if you multiply

00:06:42 ◼   ► that by two or three with storage tiers it's you know it's in place to start

00:06:47 ◼   ► with though the apps are basically almost like shells for things that are

00:06:50 ◼   ► going on on the phone right the ad right add anyway yeah the only thing that I

00:06:57 ◼   ► could think you'd need storage for right now the third party I mean but they said

00:07:00 ◼   ► though, they've already announced that there will be a full quote full SDK

00:07:03 ◼   ► later in the year. So there will be some space that you'll need for apps, but it's

00:07:09 ◼   ► so even though right off the start with the initial SDK they're kind of

00:07:13 ◼   ► thin apps that just communicate over the air to your iPhone apps. Let's

00:07:20 ◼   ► presume that later in the year means that you know obviously this year so

00:07:24 ◼   ► you're gonna need to put apps on the thing. It has the photos app but

00:07:29 ◼   ► presume I would guess right that it's gonna be there you know if it's only one

00:07:34 ◼   ► and a half inches big they can shrink the photos before they sync them over to

00:07:37 ◼   ► your watch like I don't I don't think much point yeah I don't think that

00:07:42 ◼   ► you're gonna need a lot of storage for your photos and what else is there I

00:07:50 ◼   ► guess you use it right yeah right so it's just audio so you know I don't

00:07:56 ◼   ► don't think you need a lot of storage.

00:07:58 ◼   ► It would still be nicer if it was 16 instead of 8,

00:08:01 ◼   ► but I don't know.

00:08:03 ◼   ► But nobody's really talking about that.

00:08:07 ◼   ► I know.

00:08:07 ◼   ► I lived with a 4-gigabyte iPhone for two years.

00:08:12 ◼   ► And it was pretty tight at the end, but back then it worked.

00:08:18 ◼   ► So--

00:08:19 ◼   ► Yeah, especially if you didn't need a lot of music.

00:08:22 ◼   ► My tastes are simple.

00:08:23 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:08:25 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:08:26 ◼   ► Right now it's movies, it's video, and all the mega AAA iPhone games.

00:08:31 ◼   ► So the other thing that I wonder about is if there's a... I was leaning towards getting the

00:08:37 ◼   ► smaller one because I don't have a very big wrist, and I've traditionally gotten... Men's watches you

00:08:42 ◼   ► can often get in a smaller size. I don't buy ladies' watches, but you can get a men's watch

00:08:47 ◼   ► in a smaller size. And so I was leaning towards the smaller one, but the only thing that makes

00:08:51 ◼   ► makes me wonder is if there's going to be a big difference in battery life between the

00:08:56 ◼   ► two.

00:08:57 ◼   ► Yeah, and whether there'll be a price difference too. I mean, I've been priced it.

00:09:00 ◼   ► Yeah, I was assuming there would not be, but that's possible.

00:09:04 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know. And I guess in the addition model, there almost certainly would be, because

00:09:10 ◼   ► even though you're not really paying for the gold, like the gold is just a fraction of

00:09:15 ◼   ► the price, I think, it's still, I feel like once you're into premium materials, you kind

00:09:21 ◼   ► of have to size, you know, you have to pay by the price.

00:09:24 ◼   ► Right. And the other thing is, I've always, I mean, it just, the smartwatches still are

00:09:31 ◼   ► huge by and large. I mean, the ones that are out right now are gigantic. And it's the ones,

00:09:36 ◼   ► you know, the Android Wear ones are very large and the large one is not too much smaller

00:09:42 ◼   ► than most of those whereas the small one is fairly significantly smaller than those.

00:09:46 ◼   ► And I had a Motorola 360 on my wrist one time and it was way too big.

00:09:52 ◼   ► Uh yeah it's definitely pretty big. I although you have to you know I the first one I saw in real

00:09:59 ◼   ► life was uh uh I ran into Andy Anotko at the airport on the way out to the uh the iPhone

00:10:10 ◼   ► Apple watch event actually he he was flying through Philly he'd like Boston

00:10:14 ◼   ► to Philly to the SFO and we were on the same flight and it was like this is

00:10:19 ◼   ► weird that that guy looks just like Andy it's like oh my god it is it so you know

00:10:25 ◼   ► he's you know that's serious sized man it looked okay on his wrist totally

00:10:32 ◼   ► looked okay on his wrist it it looked goofy on me yeah it doesn't look good I

00:10:36 ◼   ► I mean, oh no, it's pretty big not much looks good on me, but that definitely did not look at me

00:10:40 ◼   ► Yeah, it's not a huge. It's not goofy. It's just it's big though. It was pretty good

00:10:47 ◼   ► Well, it's funny because you know that a millimeter is very small right a tenth of a centimeter is you know,

00:10:55 ◼   ► One millimeter is pretty you know, give or take

00:10:57 ◼   ► And so you see all the you know, watches are always sized in millimeters and it's you know

00:11:02 ◼   ► you see that this one's 39 and this one's 42 and you think wow that's probably about the same size

00:11:06 ◼   ► but like it's not true like a 39 is sort of like a

00:11:09 ◼   ► traditional men's wristwatch size by today's standards a little small and 42 is actually kind of a big watch

00:11:15 ◼   ► But like the really big ones like people are selling like 46 millimeter watches. Yeah. Yeah

00:11:20 ◼   ► No, probably I think part of the problem with that Motorola 360 is just that it's a cylinder

00:11:24 ◼   ► It doesn't the edges aren't graduated at all. And so it it just sits right up on top of your

00:11:31 ◼   ► wrist all the way around. Yeah. So it's not so much, it's not necessarily the diameter as it is,

00:11:38 ◼   ► that is design or lack thereof. Yeah. Now I think it's, they've totally, and I know that it,

00:11:46 ◼   ► looking at them on the web, it's, it's, you can't tell that it's so much smaller than the competing

00:11:53 ◼   ► smartwatches. But once they're out in the real world and people can compare them side by side,

00:11:57 ◼   ► I think the difference is pretty striking. And who knows what that means for battery life. I mean,

00:12:01 ◼   ► clearly it has some kind of you know some kind of hit on battery life because the you know bigger is

00:12:06 ◼   ► bigger bigger watch has a bigger battery and famously everybody is saying everybody who

00:12:11 ◼   ► knows anything about the you know the rumors of the watch you know everybody's saying the same

00:12:15 ◼   ► thing that you know battery life is a huge concern you know and they're obviously very cagey about it

00:12:20 ◼   ► in their what they've said publicly what do you do you think that the that them getting all these

00:12:27 ◼   ► people from Tesla is related to just battery in general or or I don't know

00:12:34 ◼   ► enough saving up for your up car I don't know I I don't know enough about battery

00:12:44 ◼   ► technology even though I should because in sixth grade my science fair project

00:12:49 ◼   ► was about batteries since then though I've fallen to dig it up you should go

00:12:55 ◼   ► go back and uh i have fallen way behind on my understanding like i have no idea whether somebody

00:13:01 ◼   ► who is an expert in this sort of big battery that you would need to move a sedan right for 300 miles

00:13:10 ◼   ► would have any kind of expertise that would be applicable to the sort of battery you want in a

00:13:18 ◼   ► you know seven millimeter thick phone it strikes me as kind of like a jobsy and thing to do to

00:13:22 ◼   ► to hire somebody who makes who makes a trunk sized battery and tell them okay now just put that in a

00:13:28 ◼   ► watch. I would I'm thinking probably it is probably you know somebody who's an expert on one can can

00:13:36 ◼   ► quickly get up to speed on the other. It might be it's as likely as anything you know who knows

00:13:42 ◼   ► I think that there's such a crazy boom or, you know, it's a seller's market in Silicon Valley,

00:13:55 ◼   ► if you're a talented engineer of any sort, it seems. You know, so I think, you know, who knows,

00:14:02 ◼   ► it may not even be that specific. It may just be, you know, there's a bunch of smart guys at Tesla,

00:14:06 ◼   ► let's try to steal them. We need more smart people. I don't know. But, you know,

00:14:12 ◼   ► I guess that the you know, that's the other thing

00:14:14 ◼   ► That broke at least since last I had a technical talk show is that the the journal I guess the Wall Street Journal was it

00:14:23 ◼   ► Who's more or less said flatly that Apple has what over a hundred people working on a car, right?

00:14:28 ◼   ► It seems like a lot of people first, you know still secret project

00:14:32 ◼   ► Yeah, I guess I don't know I have no idea

00:14:38 ◼   ► it takes to make a car. It makes even less sense to me than, not that I would, not that they

00:14:43 ◼   ► wouldn't, you know, like I think that the basic gist of, in broad, this is why the rumor I think

00:14:50 ◼   ► catches people's imagination because in a broad sense it feels basically like it could be true

00:14:55 ◼   ► because cars are a market where A, there's a lot of them so there's a lot of money to be made,

00:15:02 ◼   ► B, it's a market where design matters and has always mattered. Everybody accepts that design

00:15:08 ◼   ► matters in cars, right? There's not, it's not like with the computers where people, you know,

00:15:13 ◼   ► for years would say, you know, Apple just wastes money on design. Everybody just,

00:15:20 ◼   ► yet, you know, the same people who would say that would, you know, will spend, you know,

00:15:23 ◼   ► three days picking out their new car because they, you know, care about it. So design matters. And

00:15:29 ◼   ► three it feels like it's you know technology is about to revolutionize the industry you know

00:15:36 ◼   ► people are talking clearly there's the switch in energy from uh gas to electric and

00:15:42 ◼   ► there's the whole self-driving angle yeah as well as the just the interface interfaces that you

00:15:51 ◼   ► interact with inside the car yes yes exactly they're already involved in right right and it's

00:15:58 ◼   ► you know it all goes hand in hand where the cars are getting.

00:16:00 ◼   ► More computerized inside.

00:16:04 ◼   ► I mean it's they've been computerized for a while in terms of things like when the anti lock brakes

00:16:11 ◼   ► kick in and stuff like that, but I mean like the user enter you know what you deal with you know.

00:16:15 ◼   ► Yeah, have you shopped for a car recently?

00:16:17 ◼   ► No, I have not shopped for a car since December 2006. So last time I shopped for a car,

00:16:23 ◼   ► the iPhone wasn't even out yet.

00:16:25 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, some of that stuff is crazy.

00:16:30 ◼   ► And I was going from--

00:16:32 ◼   ► so I bought a new car in December,

00:16:34 ◼   ► and I was going from a '95 Integra.

00:16:39 ◼   ► So I was not prepared for that level of screen in your face

00:16:45 ◼   ► inside cars today.

00:16:48 ◼   ► And I had an idea of the kind of cars

00:16:51 ◼   ► that I had picked out certain cars to look at.

00:16:54 ◼   ► And my first reaction was just like, oh my god,

00:16:56 ◼   ► there's just-- I mean, there's--

00:16:58 ◼   ► not only is there one big screen,

00:16:59 ◼   ► there's two screens in this car.

00:17:02 ◼   ► And to do anything, you have to be tapping a touch interface

00:17:08 ◼   ► in order to increase the airflow in the car

00:17:11 ◼   ► and that kind of thing.

00:17:12 ◼   ► And I was just like, I don't--

00:17:15 ◼   ► A, I was not ready for that coming from an old car.

00:17:18 ◼   ► And B, I just don't think--

00:17:19 ◼   ► I mean, well, actually, there's like B and C. Because B,

00:17:23 ◼   ► I feel like driving I would rather have some touch in some tactile elements

00:17:28 ◼   ► and see the interfaces that they make for these things are so bad.

00:17:33 ◼   ► I didn't want you know I wanted to have as little commitment to that interface as possible.

00:17:38 ◼   ► So I ended up getting a car that had this really I mean had the smallest screen that I could get.

00:17:43 ◼   ► But you know basically in a certain classic car you kind of have to get that kind of screen with a crappy interface jammed into it.

00:17:50 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm worried about that, about getting a new car.

00:17:53 ◼   ► Because I feel like now it's no--

00:17:55 ◼   ► when we got ours in 2006, we had the option

00:17:57 ◼   ► to upgrade to a navigation system.

00:17:59 ◼   ► And I turned it down because I thought it looked so terrible.

00:18:03 ◼   ► And it wasn't the same.

00:18:04 ◼   ► It was like 700 extra bucks or something like that.

00:18:07 ◼   ► I turned it down, not because I didn't

00:18:09 ◼   ► think the navigation would be useful,

00:18:10 ◼   ► but just because I thought that without the navigation,

00:18:13 ◼   ► they just put like an old school radio thing

00:18:17 ◼   ► that takes up the space.

00:18:18 ◼   ► The screen isn't still there.

00:18:19 ◼   ► So everything, nothing in our car has a touch screen.

00:18:21 ◼   ► Everything is a dial that you twist and I like it.

00:18:24 ◼   ► - Right.

00:18:25 ◼   ► - And then my wife complained, Amy complained

00:18:27 ◼   ► for a couple of years because every once in a while

00:18:30 ◼   ► we'd go somewhere where we needed directions

00:18:32 ◼   ► and you know, we didn't have a navigation system.

00:18:35 ◼   ► - Before the phone, yeah.

00:18:35 ◼   ► - Right.

00:18:36 ◼   ► And then once the, you know, and then that wore off,

00:18:39 ◼   ► you know, I forget at what point the phone became

00:18:41 ◼   ► a decent navigation system, probably by like 2010, right?

00:18:46 ◼   ► - Something like that, that seems about right.

00:18:49 ◼   ► So, you know, I think in the long run it worked out as a good decision, but I don't know what

00:18:53 ◼   ► I'm going to do next.

00:18:55 ◼   ► But it is true because it's like, you know, guys like us who are lifelong Apple users,

00:18:59 ◼   ► like we expect our computers interfaces to be Apple quality.

00:19:05 ◼   ► And you know, even at their worst, like pick the worst eras, you know, like Mac OS 10 10.0

00:19:11 ◼   ► or something.

00:19:12 ◼   ► It still was better than, you know, it wasn't ugly and it wasn't confusing, you know.

00:19:16 ◼   ► Right.

00:19:17 ◼   ► And I mean, I had my car for 20 years.

00:19:20 ◼   ► I had that previous car for 20 years I drove that thing.

00:19:22 ◼   ► And I wanted to possibly have the option

00:19:27 ◼   ► to drive this almost as long.

00:19:29 ◼   ► And the idea of sticking with some of those systems

00:19:34 ◼   ► that I feel like they're going to be obsolete in a year

00:19:38 ◼   ► doesn't seem like--

00:19:41 ◼   ► Yeah, it doesn't seem--

00:19:42 ◼   ► --a good way to win that game.

00:19:43 ◼   ► No, it doesn't.

00:19:46 ◼   ► Let's take a break.

00:19:47 ◼   ► And I will thank our first sponsor. And it's a new sponsor

00:19:51 ◼   ► named automatic. If you heard of these guys speaking of cars.

00:19:56 ◼   ► I have heard of automatic. Yes, it's a great segue.

00:19:59 ◼   ► Automatic is a small connected car adapter, it plugs into your

00:20:05 ◼   ► cars diagnostic port. Now every car has one of these every

00:20:08 ◼   ► modern car. Actually, your old car didn't every car since 1996

00:20:13 ◼   ► has one of these ports. So it's good thing you get rid of that

00:20:15 ◼   ► piece of crap. Actually, I wasn't a piece. I love the old

00:20:18 ◼   ► actually, I love the accurate integral. But it was one year

00:20:21 ◼   ► too young. Well, anyway, your new car has one every car has

00:20:24 ◼   ► it, it's it's a diagnostic port. And when you take your car in

00:20:27 ◼   ► for service, it's what your mechanic plugs, you know, their

00:20:30 ◼   ► diagnostic stuff in. And has all sorts of information. Well, you

00:20:34 ◼   ► it's just so this automatic, it's just a little dingus, you

00:20:36 ◼   ► plug in and you keep it there. And then you pair to your phone,

00:20:39 ◼   ► and it connects your car to the internet. So what does it do?

00:20:44 ◼   ► you can use it with their free mobile app, right, you just pay for the dingus, and then

00:20:48 ◼   ► you get a free app. And if something like your check engine light comes on, right? That's

00:20:55 ◼   ► just a light that just means something is wrong. Take this to an expert. Well, if you've

00:21:00 ◼   ► got automatic, you could just fire up the app. And it'll tell you in plain English exactly

00:21:04 ◼   ► why the check English check engine light is on, you know, maybe it's something serious,

00:21:09 ◼   ► it's something silly. And if it's something silly, you can use

00:21:13 ◼   ► the app to clear the light. If it's a small problem right there

00:21:17 ◼   ► from your phone, you just say stop bugging me about that. Log

00:21:21 ◼   ► your trips and parking location so you never lose your car.

00:21:24 ◼   ► That's pretty awesome. So you go to the airport, you're parking a

00:21:27 ◼   ► parking garage or something like that. You don't have to like,

00:21:30 ◼   ► take a photo or write down what what your spot was. The

00:21:34 ◼   ► automatic does it for you automatically. Even with gas prices as low as they are right now,

00:21:41 ◼   ► your driving habits can be costing you hundreds of dollars per year. Automatic scores your

00:21:46 ◼   ► driving and coaches you to drive more effective, efficiently and safe. So they're fans of the

00:21:53 ◼   ► show. They remember back in the day, Merlin brought this up last week on the show back

00:21:56 ◼   ► in the day when I had my driver license taken away for driving 90 miles an hour on the freeway.

00:22:03 ◼   ► friends at automatic say if i had automatic it would have warned me that i was driving too fast

00:22:07 ◼   ► and i wouldn't have lost my license now their default is 70 miles per hour they give you a

00:22:11 ◼   ► little like a tingle or something like that when you hit 70 but you can customize the speed

00:22:16 ◼   ► so i'll tell i would turn that up to like 89.

00:22:19 ◼   ► well it's like i told dan back in the day i don't drive much but when i do drive i like to drive

00:22:26 ◼   ► drive real fucking fast. Automatic can give you a warning. And crash detection. If you

00:22:33 ◼   ► get this is a God forbid you get in a terrible car accident, you get in a car accident, automatic

00:22:38 ◼   ► can detect that and automatically call for help for free. A human will even stay on the

00:22:43 ◼   ► line with you until help arrives. Just call them right in. It they've got all sorts of

00:22:50 ◼   ► new stuff, crazy stuff, they've got integration with nests. So

00:22:52 ◼   ► if you've got nest at your house, you can get it set up so

00:22:57 ◼   ► that when your car gets close, your thermostat goes up or down

00:23:00 ◼   ► or whatever you want. You can connect it to things like that.

00:23:03 ◼   ► I can't get into it all here. You can connect it to Twitter to

00:23:06 ◼   ► Google Docs, connected home devices like those Philips hue

00:23:10 ◼   ► lights, all sorts of cool stuff. It's amazing. I think they use

00:23:15 ◼   ► the if this then that to do that you go to if this ifttt.com slash automatic and find

00:23:22 ◼   ► out more about the cool automatic things you can do. Here's what you do. So what does it

00:23:25 ◼   ► cost this probably cost like $10,000 right just like a gold edition Apple Watch. Nope,

00:23:32 ◼   ► 99 95 100 bucks. Well, then they're going to soak you on the subscription fees right?

00:23:38 ◼   ► Wrong.

00:23:39 ◼   ► There are no subscription fees.

00:23:41 ◼   ► What?

00:23:42 ◼   ► You just buy the thing for $99.95.

00:23:44 ◼   ► $100.

00:23:46 ◼   ► Stick it in your car's diagnostic port.

00:23:49 ◼   ► Get the free app and you're done.

00:23:51 ◼   ► That's it.

00:23:52 ◼   ► And let me tell you this.

00:23:53 ◼   ► That's the sucker price.

00:23:55 ◼   ► Listeners of this show, you get 20% off.

00:23:58 ◼   ► So you can get the thing for $80.

00:24:01 ◼   ► Go to automatic.com/talkshow.

00:24:02 ◼   ► Automatic.

00:24:03 ◼   ► They just spell it the regular way.

00:24:07 ◼   ► funny spellings for your Steve Jobs fans out there automatic.com/talkshow

00:24:15 ◼   ► buy the thing for 80 bucks 20% off and just stick it in your car and start having fun

00:24:20 ◼   ► so my thanks to them 80 bucks I can't believe that that's crazy

00:24:24 ◼   ► it honestly you know it's like in the marketing there's always or there's always those that that

00:24:31 ◼   ► branch of marketing that's and it's all over the web these days you know like this this one silly

00:24:36 ◼   ► trick will make your mustache grow thicker, you know?

00:24:41 ◼   ► You know, but it does seem to me like this diagnostic port--

00:24:44 ◼   ► I didn't know anything about this.

00:24:45 ◼   ► This seems like this diagnostic port on every car

00:24:47 ◼   ► is like a serious like they don't want you to know secret.

00:24:51 ◼   ► Yeah, right.

00:24:51 ◼   ► Right.

00:24:52 ◼   ► Like you can get all that information on your own,

00:24:54 ◼   ► but they want you to come into the dealer

00:24:57 ◼   ► and pay $600 for the privilege.

00:24:59 ◼   ► Right, because if the car knows why the check engine light came

00:25:03 ◼   ► on, they could easily--

00:25:04 ◼   ► Especially like we're and it ties right into what we're saying. We're modern cars all have real

00:25:09 ◼   ► Screens so they could put any text you want on it, right? Yeah

00:25:13 ◼   ► So, uh, you know buy this thing it's like you're a sucker if you don't have it

00:25:19 ◼   ► And you know what and it's 80 bucks

00:25:22 ◼   ► You know that your car dealer if your car dealer gave you this as an option. It would be like eight hundred dollars

00:25:26 ◼   ► It would be like an eight hundred dollar option to have a smart car

00:25:29 ◼   ► 80 bucks this is this is the most amazing thing

00:25:33 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:25:34 ◼   ► I don't know, do you think Apple's working on a car?

00:25:39 ◼   ► - I don't know.

00:25:40 ◼   ► I mean, it seems to me like one of those things,

00:25:42 ◼   ► maybe they're working on a lot of things

00:25:44 ◼   ► and maybe that's one of the things they're kind of going,

00:25:45 ◼   ► eh, you know.

00:25:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's sort of--

00:25:47 ◼   ► - We should try this and see what we think.

00:25:50 ◼   ► I mean, it's also just possible that the car

00:25:53 ◼   ► that they're driving around is just full of Apple CarPlay.

00:25:58 ◼   ► Stuff.

00:25:59 ◼   ► - Wouldn't it be great if it was,

00:26:02 ◼   ► like just Bob Mansfield's group.

00:26:04 ◼   ► And just like to blow off some steam there,

00:26:07 ◼   ► they like just bought an old--

00:26:08 ◼   ► - Screwing around.

00:26:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, they bought an old Chrysler minivan,

00:26:11 ◼   ► but they put it on the company's dime

00:26:13 ◼   ► so that if anybody looked up the license plate,

00:26:15 ◼   ► it would say it was registered to Apple, you know,

00:26:18 ◼   ► Apple Incorporated, right?

00:26:20 ◼   ► So it's like they paid for it out of petty cash.

00:26:22 ◼   ► 'Cause what they're saying, it's like a Chrysler minivan.

00:26:24 ◼   ► So it's probably like 15 grand.

00:26:25 ◼   ► And then they just went to like Home Depot

00:26:27 ◼   ► and just bought like a whole bunch of PVC piping

00:26:29 ◼   ► and made some crazy thing on top.

00:26:32 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:26:34 ◼   ► And then just let the rumors, let the rumors start.

00:26:39 ◼   ► Like it's nothing, it's just like something,

00:26:43 ◼   ► all that's being used for is some intern

00:26:45 ◼   ► going out to pick up sandwiches.

00:26:47 ◼   ► - And by the way, go out and pick up some lunch

00:26:50 ◼   ► and by the way, drive this car.

00:26:52 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:26:53 ◼   ► And drive real slow.

00:26:55 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:26:59 ◼   ► Don't go more than 10 miles an hour.

00:27:01 ◼   ► That's the type of shit that I would do.

00:27:06 ◼   ► That's see, that's why unlike Chris Breen,

00:27:09 ◼   ► I'm never getting hired by Apple.

00:27:11 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:27:13 ◼   ► All I would wanna do is waste money on shit like that.

00:27:15 ◼   ► Wouldn't that be a great job at Apple?

00:27:18 ◼   ► That actually would be something,

00:27:19 ◼   ► you and I could do this.

00:27:21 ◼   ► We would just start a team that would be meant

00:27:24 ◼   ► to just fill up the rumor blogs with--

00:27:26 ◼   ► - Deception? - Yeah.

00:27:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, oh yeah.

00:27:29 ◼   ► - Oh my God, we could have a lot of fun with that.

00:27:31 ◼   ► - That's right inside, that's right in my wheelhouse, man.

00:27:33 ◼   ► - Oh my God.

00:27:34 ◼   ► - I should call Schiller.

00:27:37 ◼   ► - We would just pick projects.

00:27:40 ◼   ► - Just pitch that, just pitch that to Schiller.

00:27:42 ◼   ► - Pick projects that are plausible enough

00:27:45 ◼   ► that you could get 9to5Mac and MacRumors

00:27:49 ◼   ► and Apple Insider to run with them,

00:27:51 ◼   ► but that are goofy enough that we would,

00:27:53 ◼   ► we would never stop laughing.

00:27:56 ◼   ► Oh man.

00:27:58 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:28:00 ◼   ► Because I have to say that the fact that the supposed car that's been caught on a road is a Chrysler minivan really makes me think that that might be going on right now.

00:28:13 ◼   ► And they're just laughing themselves silly.

00:28:17 ◼   ► silly because it just seems like something like like you would have started by saying well we'll

00:28:21 ◼   ► do it in a like a Prius like doesn't a Prius seem like the like the default car you'd start with you

00:28:27 ◼   ► know it's already electric it's yeah you know it's it's there they're all over the place in California

00:28:32 ◼   ► and then as somebody would have the idea no let's make it a minivan

00:28:36 ◼   ► that's the thing i found i even wrote this on the on the fireball site uh that with the wall street

00:28:45 ◼   ► Journal report that they've got 100 people working on a car that they said that it's a looks like a minivan

00:28:50 ◼   ► I find that very hard to believe

00:28:53 ◼   ► Like I don't find it hard to believe that they might have some kind of super early prototype that looks like a minivan

00:29:01 ◼   ► But that's not what they said. They're saying that they're working on a car. That looks like a minivan

00:29:06 ◼   ► You know, you know like they always say like this story is public knowledge

00:29:10 ◼   ► We get and we can get to the whole Johnny Ive New Yorker thing, but it's it came up there

00:29:14 ◼   ► I think it came up in the jobs book, came up all over the place where like the very early prototypes

00:29:19 ◼   ► for what became multi-touch was like projected on a desk and they had like cameras, I don't know,

00:29:27 ◼   ► it looked nothing like an iPad or a phone. It was big and it would like project on a wall.

00:29:33 ◼   ► Because the sensors weren't miniaturized yet. You know, I could see that the car, some kind of

00:29:42 ◼   ► car that they intend to ship in 10 years might look like that now because they need to fill up

00:29:46 ◼   ► the back with all kinds of crazy stuff that they'll worry about miniaturizing later but

00:29:50 ◼   ► I can't believe that they're working on a car that would actually look like a minivan.

00:29:53 ◼   ► No. Because they would, I mean they would work on their car would be whatever the most, I mean

00:30:01 ◼   ► their starter car would certainly be whatever the most purchased type of car is and that's not a

00:30:06 ◼   ► minivan no i mean it seems like it would be like a four-door sedan no and they couldn't bring

00:30:13 ◼   ► themselves to make something that wasn't beautiful right you're saying chrysler minivans aren't

00:30:19 ◼   ► beautiful making somebody a chrysler very sad right now it'd be funny if it like drove shiller

00:30:28 ◼   ► out of the company because it's like it just you know all right i'll stop wearing my good nice

00:30:32 ◼   ► watches and wear this apple watch but if you want me to stop driving the lotus or

00:30:38 ◼   ► Porsche and drive a minivan just because apple has one forget about it I'm out

00:30:43 ◼   ► taking my Porsche and my whatever else he drives down to the Cayman Islands

00:30:49 ◼   ► yeah he and yeah he drives good cars Johnny Johnny obviously has a few cars

00:30:55 ◼   ► yeah and but Williams drives okay an old Toyota can't hold the camera yeah I get

00:31:06 ◼   ► good for him I mean I think that's great I get the feeling that even at real Jeff

00:31:10 ◼   ► Williams is like like a two-thirds clone of Tim Cook like there's like a

00:31:15 ◼   ► two-thirds central you know what I mean because they used to say there was a

00:31:20 ◼   ► profile of Tim Cook of sometime in the last year or two where where he

00:31:24 ◼   ► apparently drove a very old car for a very long time.

00:31:26 ◼   ► - Oh, that's right.

00:31:27 ◼   ► I remember that.

00:31:28 ◼   ► - You know, it was like when they said about what a mystery,

00:31:31 ◼   ► you know, what our mystery was even to the people

00:31:33 ◼   ► who we worked with, you know, on a daily basis, you know.

00:31:36 ◼   ► - Mm-hmm.

00:31:38 ◼   ► Well, for those guys, it's all about efficiency.

00:31:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, it just feels like inefficiency.

00:31:43 ◼   ► - Working operations.

00:31:44 ◼   ► Yeah, working operations and you want everything

00:31:46 ◼   ► to run efficiently and if you get something

00:31:47 ◼   ► that's working, great.

00:31:49 ◼   ► Just keep riding it.

00:31:51 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:31:54 ◼   ► Not me. I would, you know, I would probably, if I had the, you know, Apple executive type

00:31:59 ◼   ► money, I would probably be more like Steve Jobs, though, where he had the one car, you

00:32:04 ◼   ► know, you know that he put a lot of thought into it, and he had one car and it was awesome.

00:32:08 ◼   ► But he was turning the lease over like every three weeks or something.

00:32:13 ◼   ► Yeah, supposedly. That's like he, that was that was supposedly how he got away with the

00:32:18 ◼   ► never having a license plate was that he never had one for more than it's like there's like

00:32:23 ◼   ► you got like 90 days before you have to have a license plate. And so like every three months,

00:32:28 ◼   ► somebody would have to drive his Mercedes to the dealer. And I'm sure they just had one waiting.

00:32:33 ◼   ► It's like a box of tissues, you know, they just pull another silver Mercedes SL50 with the,

00:32:42 ◼   ► you know, precise interior right out of the box. Boom. Then he's got it again.

00:32:50 ◼   ► Right? I couldn't see, I could never see being a car collector because I could see buying one

00:32:54 ◼   ► really nice car and then I would drive it everywhere. But I would want to put all my

00:32:57 ◼   ► effort into making that pick up front and picking the one that I love. If I had even two, I don't

00:33:06 ◼   ► know how I would make the decision on any given day. It would...

00:33:09 ◼   ► Which one to drive?

00:33:11 ◼   ► Right.

00:33:11 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:33:12 ◼   ► Like, I like not having to make decisions like that.

00:33:16 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:33:19 ◼   ► I feel that way now that I have two good cameras. I have one that's a Canon that's bigger and a

00:33:23 ◼   ► little, you know, still a little bit better and more flexible because it has multiple lenses. And

00:33:27 ◼   ► then I've got this Fuji X100S, which is delightful. And it's that retro, you know, sort of looks like

00:33:33 ◼   ► an old rangefinder. Beautiful camera, a lot lighter, really, you know. And unless I know

00:33:38 ◼   ► that I'm going to be walking around with it on my neck all day, I know I want the lighter one. But

00:33:41 ◼   ► there's a lot of like school events and stuff where it's like, I don't know which one to take.

00:33:44 ◼   ► And then I think, why did I buy a second camera? Now I'm sitting here, you know,

00:33:48 ◼   ► 10 minutes staring at two cameras. Well, I guess I mean for those guys, I guess it's just that's

00:33:56 ◼   ► the fun of it. Right? That's part of the fun is like, oh, man, I drove the wrong car today.

00:34:01 ◼   ► I guess I don't know. Maybe I guess too famously. Right. And I guess if they break down all the

00:34:08 ◼   ► time, because they're all finicky Italian sports cars, you know, also part of the fun, right?

00:34:17 ◼   ► You know what would be funny too, because I guess the assumption is, like, look at Apple Watch. So

00:34:22 ◼   ► there's variety, but there's just one shape, you know, two sizes. Imagine what the parking lot

00:34:30 ◼   ► at Apple's new headquarters will look like three years after the Apple car comes out,

00:34:35 ◼   ► when everybody's driving the same model car. I presume that they'll just bake in some kind of

00:34:45 ◼   ► app that tells you which silver apple car is yours.

00:34:49 ◼   ► [Laughter]

00:34:50 ◼   ► Where's my silver apple car?

00:34:52 ◼   ► [Laughter]

00:34:53 ◼   ► Oh, boy.

00:34:55 ◼   ► I look forward to that problem.

00:35:01 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:35:02 ◼   ► So the big problem—one of the big problems with cars, and Tesla famously is running into

00:35:06 ◼   ► it all over the country, is that there's this bizarre—well, it seems bizarre in hindsight.

00:35:12 ◼   ► bizarre laws, they're not even rules, they're laws about how cars are sold, that there's

00:35:18 ◼   ► this dealership model. And I forget the explanation. It makes sense historically and doesn't

00:35:26 ◼   ► make sense in the present day. But the reason why all cars are sold through these independent

00:35:31 ◼   ► dealers, that's like the law and Tesla doesn't want to get involved with that. They want

00:35:37 ◼   ► to sell directly and they have to go state by state and get stuff, make it legal.

00:35:44 ◼   ► Right.

00:35:45 ◼   ► Like New Jersey.

00:35:46 ◼   ► Yeah, like New Jersey, right?

00:35:48 ◼   ► They haven't, they just don't sell them in New Jersey.

00:35:51 ◼   ► New Jersey it seems like some Sopranos type guys have some of the action in the car dealerships

00:35:57 ◼   ► and they're sort of like, "Yeah, you ain't going to be selling your little electric cars

00:36:03 ◼   ► here."

00:36:04 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:36:06 ◼   ► The same guys who run the gas pumps.

00:36:11 ◼   ► - Yeah. (laughing)

00:36:14 ◼   ► Have we talked about that?

00:36:16 ◼   ► I feel like you and I have talked about this on the show.

00:36:17 ◼   ► This is the craziest thing. - Maybe, yeah.

00:36:19 ◼   ► - So for those of you out there who don't know,

00:36:21 ◼   ► I've never been to New Jersey,

00:36:22 ◼   ► and New Jersey is, all gasoline is pumped by a professional.

00:36:27 ◼   ► There is no-- - Or it goes the same way.

00:36:32 ◼   ► Or it goes the same way. - Right.

00:36:33 ◼   ► Is it really?

00:36:33 ◼   ► Are you West Coasters know what you're doing?

00:36:36 ◼   ► Or know what I'm talking about?

00:36:37 ◼   ► So I think most people around the country,

00:36:39 ◼   ► when you pull in a gas station and it says self-serve,

00:36:42 ◼   ► you're like, well why, you know, of course.

00:36:43 ◼   ► Well, guess what?

00:36:44 ◼   ► New Jersey has no self-serve.

00:36:46 ◼   ► There's no option.

00:36:47 ◼   ► It's legally, you have to have your gas

00:36:50 ◼   ► pumped by an attendant.

00:36:51 ◼   ► And I don't know, it was three or four years ago,

00:36:54 ◼   ► they got it as a state referendum.

00:36:56 ◼   ► And I thought, whoa, great, this is great.

00:36:59 ◼   ► 'Cause I go to New Jersey sometimes,

00:37:00 ◼   ► and I thought, this is great,

00:37:01 ◼   ► I'll finally be able to pump my own gas.

00:37:03 ◼   ► Nope.

00:37:05 ◼   ► It's law.

00:37:06 ◼   ► New Jersey is devoted overwhelmingly to keep the law on the books.

00:37:11 ◼   ► It's like Stockholm syndrome.

00:37:13 ◼   ► Like they're afraid to pump gas.

00:37:17 ◼   ► They see it as some kind of luxury.

00:37:19 ◼   ► I mean –

00:37:20 ◼   ► I know the guy – the last time I pulled up to a gas pump in New Jersey, which was last summer, the guy called me boss.

00:37:26 ◼   ► That was kind of nice.

00:37:29 ◼   ► Well, that's actually in the law as well.

00:37:31 ◼   ► They already have to say that?

00:37:32 ◼   ► say that okay well there's a you know you have choices they can call your boss they can call

00:37:36 ◼   ► your chief chief yeah i was trying to remember if it was boss or chief actually yeah and uh and

00:37:42 ◼   ► they can call you hoss i think you have to pay extra for hoss though yeah but they could

00:37:48 ◼   ► definitely call your chief they can call your boss extra it's an extra five cents a gallon

00:37:51 ◼   ► fill it up and go ahead and hoss that

00:38:01 ◼   ► Absolutely, Hoss. Yeah, that was a slogan actually. When I was a kid, it was a slogan

00:38:05 ◼   ► at HESS gas stations. Hoss it at HESS.

00:38:08 ◼   ► So yeah, yeah, I know those guys will be out of a

00:38:19 ◼   ► job if we're all driving Apple electric Apple cars.

00:38:23 ◼   ► So I don't know, I mean, anything that Apple does in this would have to,

00:38:29 ◼   ► you know, go through the same rigmarole that Tesla's going through. Who knows? I don't know.

00:38:39 ◼   ► I think it's, like you said, I think it's, you know, a maybe kind of sort of someday thing,

00:38:44 ◼   ► and they're just looking into it. Yeah, particularly if it looks like a Chrysler

00:38:46 ◼   ► minivan right now. I mean, it's obviously not. It's obviously not ready to go into the showroom

00:38:51 ◼   ► floor anytime soon. All right. The self-driving thing. I do think it's coming. I have no idea

00:38:57 ◼   ► when to think it's obviously not imminent. You know, it's it's uh, but it feels like

00:39:03 ◼   ► something that could be like, you know, we're not going to have to wait till we're old men. Like,

00:39:07 ◼   ► we'll we'll get to this in 10 or 15 years. Yeah, yeah, maybe it's yeah, because it's a you think

00:39:15 ◼   ► back 10 years, I think back 10 years and I think about like the laptop I was using.

00:39:19 ◼   ► It's pretty astounding. I've been thinking about that a lot lately. And I maybe it's always that

00:39:25 ◼   ► ten years is a you know gives you a lot of eye openers and technology probably

00:39:29 ◼   ► does but somehow while we're still on the other side of the iPhone being ten

00:39:34 ◼   ► years it really feels like right now like 2015 2016 it's a the what life was

00:39:41 ◼   ► like ten years ago was pretty pretty crazy yeah 2015 might be the big one to

00:39:45 ◼   ► me especially as an Apple nerd just because there's no iPhone yet we're max

00:39:51 ◼   ► we're still power PC

00:39:54 ◼   ► trying to think what else titanium I think I was having a titanium power book

00:40:01 ◼   ► back then yeah might have still been iBooks yeah yeah they still had the

00:40:07 ◼   ► plastic those first plastic iBooks were still being sold and the nicer plastic

00:40:13 ◼   ► ones the one that were available white and black were were MacBooks I believe

00:40:18 ◼   ► right Mac books and MacBook pros yes yeah those are those were all Intel

00:40:26 ◼   ► right and they were nicer I think yeah so I think I still have probably still

00:40:32 ◼   ► have that laptop here I've got them all I'm looking at it yeah I have a problem

00:40:40 ◼   ► it's not funny I have a problem yeah I can't wait till we all retire in the old

00:40:45 ◼   ► folks home and we're all just.

00:40:47 ◼   ► If we need all this extra closet space.

00:40:52 ◼   ► You gotta copy a tiger.

00:40:54 ◼   ► Syracuse has got a bunch of stuff too.

00:40:58 ◼   ► I don't have any.

00:40:59 ◼   ► You bet I gotta copy a tiger.

00:41:01 ◼   ► You know what though?

00:41:01 ◼   ► I don't have any old desktop Macs like I don't have like an old.

00:41:04 ◼   ► I got my G4.

00:41:08 ◼   ► You know like Mac classics frame Mac or anything like that.

00:41:13 ◼   ► Oh, no, I got one of those.

00:41:16 ◼   ► Actually, yeah, two.

00:41:17 ◼   ► I got two of those.

00:41:18 ◼   ► If I were going to buy one, my wife listens to this,

00:41:20 ◼   ► she's going to have a shit fit.

00:41:23 ◼   ► I would want to buy an SE30.

00:41:24 ◼   ► SE30 is the law.

00:41:26 ◼   ► Makes my heart race.

00:41:27 ◼   ► I have an SE.

00:41:29 ◼   ► It's not a 30, but I do have an SE.

00:41:32 ◼   ► Because that was my first Mac.

00:41:35 ◼   ► And it's basically the same machine,

00:41:38 ◼   ► which I bought for $2,000 in 1990 used.

00:41:43 ◼   ► And then years later, I still had all the floppies

00:41:47 ◼   ► and I had sold the machine a long time ago.

00:41:48 ◼   ► And it was like, I wanna try these floppies out again.

00:41:52 ◼   ► So I bought another one.

00:41:53 ◼   ► I bought basically the same thing off eBay for a buck.

00:41:56 ◼   ► - I've got my floppies somewhere.

00:41:58 ◼   ► I know I didn't throw them out.

00:41:59 ◼   ► I cannot believe that any of them would still work.

00:42:02 ◼   ► They used to fail when they were new.

00:42:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, I know that's a great, yeah.

00:42:06 ◼   ► Most of them so most of mine still work a lot of them do fail though.

00:42:09 ◼   ► They used to fail brand new.

00:42:11 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:42:12 ◼   ► Maybe.

00:42:13 ◼   ► It was just like the ones and zeros were just little pieces of dust stuck to the disk by

00:42:21 ◼   ► static electricity.

00:42:28 ◼   ► We're only one megabyte but we're more reliable than zip.

00:42:33 ◼   ► [Laughter]

00:42:36 ◼   ► Oh, man. I did remember that though. That reminds me though that the other thing in the

00:42:42 ◼   ► Wall Street Journal had a couple of reports this week and one was about the—I

00:42:45 ◼   ► think I wrote about it, I think it was such bullshit, this thing that Apple Watch,

00:42:52 ◼   ► you know, like at the last minute they took out all—it was supposed to be like a fitness

00:42:55 ◼   ► health device and then they—none of the sensors worked. So, they yanked them out and

00:43:01 ◼   ► had to redefine what it was for um it it but it did say that i don't know

00:43:07 ◼   ► i think it was so poorly sourced who knows even knows if the number

00:43:10 ◼   ► even came from anybody who knows what the hell they're talking about but that

00:43:12 ◼   ► the uh apple watch gold edition is expected

00:43:16 ◼   ► to sell for four thousand or more which would make it

00:43:19 ◼   ► the most expensive product they sell you know

00:43:23 ◼   ► i've ever sold or something like that compared to the wrong

00:43:26 ◼   ► to the current mac pro and i was thinking what you thought i thought

00:43:29 ◼   ► about the kid in college who had the Mac 2FX that was like a $10,000 computer at the time.

00:43:33 ◼   ► Jared

00:43:36 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:43:36 ◼   ► It's like, no, that is not, I remember when I like the cheap ones, like you said,

00:43:40 ◼   ► like an SE was $2,000. My Mac LC was like $2,500.

00:43:44 ◼   ► Jared

00:43:45 ◼   ► I mean, you know, and then you've got the 20th anniversary one, which I forget what that went

00:43:52 ◼   ► for, but that was over $10,000 at least, right?

00:43:56 ◼   ► My parents spent more on my computer, that $2,500 LC, than they spent on the college.

00:44:01 ◼   ► [Laughter]

00:44:06 ◼   ► It was crazy expensive. Everything was crazy expensive. I remember when I wrote that,

00:44:11 ◼   ► somebody on Twitter wrote that they had a 2ci at the time. Remember the Mac 2ci?

00:44:17 ◼   ► Was that the Road Apple one or was that…?

00:44:22 ◼   ► The Mac 2ci was, it was right down the middle of the road. It was the type of desktop you could,

00:44:30 ◼   ► I think it was you could, you could put it both ways on your desk, like a PlayStation,

00:44:33 ◼   ► you could have it standing up, you could turn it on its side and put like, it was perfectly sized

00:44:37 ◼   ► for the 13 inch display. I would hold it up as I think the greatest Mac Apple ever made, because

00:44:46 ◼   ► they it was in their lineup for like five years like like around 90 or 91 when it came out it was

00:44:53 ◼   ► a high-end machine like right below like the two fx like five six seven eight thousand dollars

00:44:58 ◼   ► something like that and they kept it for years you know and it would just drop down sort of like the

00:45:04 ◼   ► first you know like what they do with the phones now like the next year it just stayed and and sold

00:45:10 ◼   ► you know because it was still it was like such a good machine and so fast at the time it was a

00:45:15 ◼   ► great, great, great computer. One of my friends in college had one and loved it. Mac 2ci.

00:45:20 ◼   ► But anyway, someone on Twitter reminded me about how expensive RAM was back then. He

00:45:24 ◼   ► said he got a 2ci in the early '90s and spent $5,800 on RAM.

00:45:29 ◼   ► Oh my god.

00:45:31 ◼   ► People have no idea how expensive computers were in the '90s. And then guys like us would

00:45:36 ◼   ► just wonder, "Why isn't everybody into computers?"

00:45:39 ◼   ► What's the matter?

00:45:42 ◼   ► What's the matter? $5800 on RAM. Because of course like the default it was like a

00:45:49 ◼   ► $6,000 computer in 1991 and I bet the default config was like two

00:45:54 ◼   ► megabytes of RAM. Just terrible. Yeah. I think my LC had one megabyte of RAM.

00:46:04 ◼   ► Oh really? By default. Eventually. Yeah, I know. That sounds about right.

00:46:08 ◼   ► Yeah, at some point over the years I scrimped and saved and got it upgraded to 10.

00:46:13 ◼   ► Which was, I don't know, doesn't even make any sense. Maybe it had two. Maybe it had two to

00:46:19 ◼   ► start with. Maybe that was it. It had two soldered on the motherboard and I could put, you could add

00:46:23 ◼   ► two four megabyte chips and get it up to 10. I don't know. Somebody could look it up, but I'm not going to.

00:46:33 ◼   ► Let's take a break and then maybe we could talk about the the Johnny Ive yeah mini book in

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00:50:15 ◼   ► show so the New Yorker piece mm-hmm 17,000 words almost by Ian Ian Parker on

00:50:25 ◼   ► Johnny I've and and the the design team at Apple I'm almost through it I had no

00:50:36 ◼   ► idea it was funny I didn't know I didn't do like a word count at first I just I

00:50:40 ◼   ► woke up and there was a lot everybody was tweeting about it I thought oh this

00:50:43 ◼   ► just intriguing. Because it was very clear right from the opening that this was written with their,

00:50:51 ◼   ► you know, Apples and Johnny Ives participation, cooperation. Which in and of itself is maybe the

00:50:59 ◼   ► most interesting and intriguing thing about it. And it literally took me hours. I started thinking

00:51:07 ◼   ► like, "Have I gotten slow? Am I addled? Why is it taking me so long to read a magazine article?"

00:51:13 ◼   ► And then I counted the words and I was like, "Wait a minute, that's like a third of a book."

00:51:18 ◼   ► Because a book is like 60,000 words. Truly extraordinary.

00:51:25 ◼   ► You gotta wait to Act III to get to you.

00:51:27 ◼   ► Yeah, that was a surprise. I actually had no idea that was a total surprise. So like

00:51:32 ◼   ► two-thirds of the way through the article like 12,000 words into it yes that there was a mention

00:51:40 ◼   ► a quote from me and i have to say that was like a total i mean i'm used to people quoting me and

00:51:46 ◼   ► seeing my name but in the new yorker it was kind of a surprise slash shock slash thrill yeah yeah

00:51:53 ◼   ► i would think so i wouldn't know but i would think so oh you didn't they didn't quote you

00:51:58 ◼   ► Then I don't think I'm in this.

00:51:59 ◼   ► It's very strange.

00:52:01 ◼   ► Wait, I'm trying to find the URL here.

00:52:03 ◼   ► I probably should have loaded this up before starting the show.

00:52:10 ◼   ► It'll take a lot of load.

00:52:13 ◼   ► My dick's scaped down.

00:52:16 ◼   ► Here's where-- I was hoping that--

00:52:19 ◼   ► here's what it says.

00:52:21 ◼   ► This is actually an interesting point.

00:52:23 ◼   ► This is the type of thing I like to talk about on Talk Show.

00:52:24 ◼   ► So it's at a point where they're talking about Apple Watch.

00:52:28 ◼   ► and that they've hired uh Angela Arntz from Burberry and Paul De Neve. I'm not quite sure

00:52:34 ◼   ► how to pronounce his name. De Neve, former CEO of the Eve St. Laurent group. Patrick Pruno,

00:52:41 ◼   ► I hope I'm pronouncing his name correctly, from uh Tag Hauer. I hope I'm pronouncing Tag Hauer,

00:52:47 ◼   ► right? Hoyer, Tag Hoyer. All right, Tag Hoyer. Thank you, John. Yeah, I didn't know about the

00:52:53 ◼   ► second two. I mean, obviously I knew about the first one. No, I knew about him and, you know,

00:52:56 ◼   ► I think I knew about that from Ben Thompson because Ben is really, really knows his shit

00:53:01 ◼   ► about the luxury industry. Like LVMH is such an interesting company, right? They're like a huge

00:53:07 ◼   ► luxury conglomerate. The LV in LVMH is Louis Vuitton handbag suitcase luxury shoemaker. And MH

00:53:16 ◼   ► is the, I forget what the H is. Oh, H is Hennessy. Like the, what is that? Cognac?

00:53:23 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:53:24 ◼   ► one of the few few few boozes i'm not really that familiar with them m is moet m o e t the champagne

00:53:31 ◼   ► so it's handbags champagne expensive cognac and uh watches it's a very

00:53:40 ◼   ► it's an interesting conglomerate uh but yeah they hired a watch guy from there and he was a guy

00:53:48 ◼   ► his job at Tag Heuer was, he dealt with their like retail liaisons. Like he wasn't like a

00:53:56 ◼   ► watch designer. He wasn't from like the creating of the watches. He was one of the guys who

00:54:01 ◼   ► dealt with their, you know, like which jewelry stores are going to sell, you know, which watches

00:54:07 ◼   ► and stuff like that. And what are they, you know, negotiating that sort of stuff. So it's an

00:54:10 ◼   ► interesting hire because there's circling all the way back to the things we don't know about Apple

00:54:15 ◼   ► Apple Watch. If we're right that the high-end edition is going to be, let's say, $4,000,

00:54:23 ◼   ► $5,000, $10,000, something like that, how and where are you going to buy it? Because

00:54:27 ◼   ► the Apple stores, as they exist today, are not the sort of place where you go and spend

00:54:31 ◼   ► $10,000 on a watch. You don't buy them in a noisy, cacophonous room where, you know...

00:54:37 ◼   ► Right. You're not going to do that thing where you prepay and you come in and pick it up

00:54:40 ◼   ► and just walk out.

00:54:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, charge it to my vote.

00:54:44 ◼   ► I'll take this one, yoink.

00:54:45 ◼   ► You imagine if they were just up there like,

00:54:50 ◼   ► right next to the Apple cases, to the phone cases,

00:54:53 ◼   ► there's just a bunch of watches you just pick up.

00:54:55 ◼   ► - Sitting out there.

00:54:56 ◼   ► - Right.

00:54:57 ◼   ► - Well, that's it, yeah, and that's the thing.

00:54:58 ◼   ► I mean, they're redesigning the whole store experience,

00:55:01 ◼   ► right?

00:55:03 ◼   ► - Well, that's-- - I mean, that's the thing

00:55:03 ◼   ► that we don't, no one's really talked about that much

00:55:06 ◼   ► from what I've seen, and we would probably be talking

00:55:08 ◼   ► about it like crazy if there weren't

00:55:10 ◼   ► this other thing going on.

00:55:11 ◼   ► That is really the reason for that thing, but supposedly they're they're

00:55:15 ◼   ► Really gonna redo right one of the store looks one of the nuggets dropped in this article

00:55:21 ◼   ► Is that Johnny I've is working with Angela aren'ts on a I think it said complete redesign of the stores. Yeah, I think so

00:55:28 ◼   ► But that that does not seem like something that's gonna happen before April at least not nationwide or worldwide

00:55:34 ◼   ► Yeah, right and it's like that's not something that you can just do

00:55:37 ◼   ► in every store

00:55:40 ◼   ► overnight right so there's been you know speculation but a lot of apple stores like the one in philadelphia has an

00:55:45 ◼   ► Upstairs that you don't it's not part of the retail experience and they call it now. They call it a business center

00:55:51 ◼   ► and I know for a fact that like in the philly one they do things like

00:55:55 ◼   ► like if a company in philadelphia

00:56:00 ◼   ► Buys a bunch of apple stuff, you know, like switch like an office that's switching from pcs to max

00:56:05 ◼   ► You don't have to buy retail you can go there like marco's often talked about this on atp

00:56:10 ◼   ► you know, he does it and he's a one man company, but you start a business relationship with

00:56:15 ◼   ► them and you can get like developer pricing, you know, like discount pricing.

00:56:19 ◼   ► Well, they used to have and that used to be a whole separate arm.

00:56:22 ◼   ► Right.

00:56:23 ◼   ► And then they did a reorganization six years ago, seven years ago, something like that.

00:56:28 ◼   ► And they moved all that stuff under the retail.

00:56:33 ◼   ► So like in the Philly one, you go upstairs and they have like area where they could do

00:56:36 ◼   ► training, they can have everybody in your company, you can pay, you know, they'll or

00:56:39 ◼   ► I don't even know if you paid you know you you you buy like all these max and then you can have like a

00:56:43 ◼   ► Half a day of training and stuff like that

00:56:45 ◼   ► And they have you know

00:56:47 ◼   ► It's just like a meeting area because like the day whether when the Philly one opened I got like a press

00:56:51 ◼   ► invitation to just attend to take a look and they gave us like a

00:56:54 ◼   ► Behind-the-scenes tour and we went up there

00:56:56 ◼   ► It's just you know, like exactly what you would think if if there was a conference room in an Apple store

00:57:01 ◼   ► That's what it looks like

00:57:02 ◼   ► it's a table that looks like one of their tables, but it's big and there's nice chairs and

00:57:07 ◼   ► Apple style lighting and etc. But anyway, the stores that have that area clearly that could be repurposed as a quiet removed

00:57:15 ◼   ► Place where you spend $4,000 on a watch and try on you know multiple straps and stuff like that and see what you like, you know

00:57:24 ◼   ► But not all stores have that the ones in malls shopping malls don't have the luxury of having like a second floor

00:57:32 ◼   ► So maybe you know, it could be that maybe the the edition model won't be sold in every Apple store

00:57:37 ◼   ► It might only be sold in certain ones

00:57:39 ◼   ► It might also be the case. I don't I don't know if they would do it or not

00:57:43 ◼   ► But maybe they're maybe that's why they hired this tag horror guy. Maybe they'll sell them in jewelry stores

00:57:49 ◼   ► You know places that sell Rolexes and no meagres and you know, etc. I suppose that's possible

00:57:56 ◼   ► that seems

00:58:00 ◼   ► Odd yeah, but the whole idea because they're $4,000. Yeah, but then they're like they're they're removing the you know, they're they're giving that

00:58:07 ◼   ► Hands-on experience to somebody else right, but you know, it almost gets you

00:58:12 ◼   ► I mean, obviously they still they still do that kind of thing, you know, because they sell their phones and

00:58:15 ◼   ► carrier stores etc, but

00:58:18 ◼   ► That kind of

00:58:21 ◼   ► Personal touch seems like something they want to keep to themselves

00:58:24 ◼   ► Yeah, I guess you would think so, but I don't know. Yeah

00:58:29 ◼   ► Maybe but maybe where they also also, you know, it's sort of like the way that I think that that's where they want you to buy

00:58:35 ◼   ► Your iPhone, but they'll also sell it in the carrier stores and they'll sell them at Walmart and they'll sell them at Target

00:58:40 ◼   ► But the problem with those places though isn't as most of those people work on Commission, don't they?

00:58:44 ◼   ► It like Walmart or you mean no no, no it the jewelry stores I would presume so

00:58:50 ◼   ► Yeah, and I don't know that they're gonna want it. I don't know that seems like that's a whole another diff. That's a whole different

00:58:58 ◼   ► Like I said, I don't doing way of doing business that I would be surprised if I want to again

00:59:02 ◼   ► I don't know. I love it. Yeah, I really don't know. I feel like it could go either way

00:59:06 ◼   ► I feel like they could sell them only in select Apple stores. I feel like

00:59:10 ◼   ► They could sell them, you know in the watch stores. I don't know. Yeah. Anyway back to the article it says

00:59:17 ◼   ► In parts of the world already filled with smartphones that price may give the Apple watch the

00:59:24 ◼   ► graduation gift appeal that according to Brunner Brunner is

00:59:28 ◼   ► Industrial designer who used to be above Johnny I've I think at Apple when he started and right had since gone on to beat

00:59:35 ◼   ► Beats consciously sought with its high headphone pricing

00:59:39 ◼   ► But I've solid gold models innocently named Apple watch edition are expected to cost many thousands of dollars

00:59:46 ◼   ► John Gruber an influential Apple blogger has written that the price may be quote

00:59:52 ◼   ► shockingly high dot dot dot from the perspective of the tech industry but

00:59:56 ◼   ► perhaps disruptively low italics they even carried my italics over from the

01:00:02 ◼   ► perspective of the traditional watch and jewelry world I like that I got italics

01:00:06 ◼   ► into the New Yorker their writers - I don't know if they're allowed to use it

01:00:12 ◼   ► much no not the way I do so that's pretty cool from the perspective of the

01:00:18 ◼   ► traditional watch and jewelry world I wish that he had quoted my line that

01:00:21 ◼   ► it's that that when the price of the edition models is announced it's going to be the biggest

01:00:27 ◼   ► collective shit fit in the history of shit fits in the tech industry because i just feel like i still

01:00:33 ◼   ► feel confident that that's the line that will stand up stand the test of time as being present

01:00:37 ◼   ► about the apple watch yeah but this may i mean that quote makes a point that is um salient to

01:00:44 ◼   ► what um he's talking about right there right well here's here's why i've thought about this and i

01:00:50 ◼   ► you know, because it's my name and my quote. It's very interesting to me because clearly Ian Parker

01:00:56 ◼   ► had complete access to Johnny Ive and he talked to a bunch of other people at Apple. He talked to Tim

01:01:01 ◼   ► Cook, he talked to Bob Mansfield, talked to Jeff Williams. And it was months in the making. It

01:01:08 ◼   ► involved, I think it seems as though he traveled to England to talk to Johnny's father. You know,

01:01:16 ◼   ► just the sort of thing that like the new yorker is one of the few publications in the world that can

01:01:20 ◼   ► do this because it's expensive right it's expensive to do this kind of reporting um

01:01:25 ◼   ► he had access and he has all sorts of interesting quotes that you don't typically get from apple

01:01:30 ◼   ► executives surely he asked them about watch pricing and there's nothing in here he doesn't

01:01:38 ◼   ► say that he did but he must have right and they must have said no comment we're not going to talk

01:01:44 ◼   ► about pricing at the time. But maybe, like, did he come up, did he quote me because he, you know,

01:01:51 ◼   ► he reads me? Or off the record, did they, was it, you remember with Steve Jobs, we think John

01:01:59 ◼   ► Gruber's piece on this was insightful and not negative? Like, maybe they said off the record,

01:02:05 ◼   ► you can't quote us, but we thought John Gruber's piece--

01:02:07 ◼   ► But take a look at this one.

01:02:08 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:02:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:02:10 ◼   ► We thought his piece on the pricing was insightful and not negative.

01:02:14 ◼   ► I really wonder about that if that was something that they said, "We can't talk about this,

01:02:21 ◼   ► but you should look here." Yeah, that's certainly possible.

01:02:26 ◼   ► Right. To me, it's the stupidest sort of four levels of indirection confirmation,

01:02:36 ◼   ► But the fact that he had such access to Apple and even he points to the edition watches

01:02:45 ◼   ► being quote, "many thousands of dollars," is to me the surest thing.

01:02:51 ◼   ► It's more sure than even the sort of back of the envelope math I've been doing on

01:02:54 ◼   ► Daring Fireball with just the price of gold and how much gold is actually going to be

01:02:58 ◼   ► in the thing.

01:03:00 ◼   ► Even more convincing than that is that if Ian Parker, who's so juiced in, says, "Multite

01:03:05 ◼   ► many thousands of dollars. It must be. Yeah, I would bet on it, but I keep I then I just

01:03:13 ◼   ► keep cycling back to what all the naysayers say, which is come on, they can charge thousands

01:03:17 ◼   ► of dollars for a watch that's going to be outdated in a couple years.

01:03:21 ◼   ► Well that's the thing. It's the it's the outdatedness that kind of throws a wrench into it because

01:03:27 ◼   ► if it is the kind of thing that you're gonna have to replace in two years, then that price

01:03:32 ◼   ► becomes somewhat untenable.

01:03:36 ◼   ► Right. Well, but it's like you and I are—we keep going back to thinking like

01:03:41 ◼   ► logical human beings who have some semblance of rational control over our finances.

01:03:47 ◼   ► There's a lot of people who don't, right?

01:03:51 ◼   ► Which is strange for us.

01:03:53 ◼   ► Right. Right? Like, in a weird, perverted sense, if it does have a time,

01:04:00 ◼   ► you know, a, what's it, you know, a timestamp, you know, a shelf life. If it does have a shelf

01:04:07 ◼   ► life of just a few years, it almost makes it more of a luxury. It might be more ostentatious to buy

01:04:15 ◼   ► a $10,000 Apple Watch that's only going to be useful for three years than it would be to buy a

01:04:22 ◼   ► $50,000 Rolex that will live, you know, be you, you know, be a value long after you're dead.

01:04:29 ◼   ► Right? Like the $50,000 Rolex that becomes a family heirloom is still a $50,000 watch, but

01:04:35 ◼   ► a $10,000 watch that is going to be going in the desk drawer in three years is super obnoxious.

01:04:41 ◼   ► Right?

01:04:42 ◼   ► [Laughter]

01:04:45 ◼   ► That's what I had tweeted a few days ago, like a couple weeks ago, I guess, like Apple in 2010.

01:04:52 ◼   ► "Hey, check out this guy who made that 'I am rich' app."

01:04:56 ◼   ► [Laughter]

01:04:57 ◼   ► and then a then a pause and we should make a watch like that

01:05:00 ◼   ► oh my god like like what a jerk and then like wait a minute maybe there's something to that

01:05:11 ◼   ► and the laughter just suddenly just trails off uncomfortably start start buying gold

01:05:17 ◼   ► oh my god speaking of which i i hadn't thought about that guy in a while but

01:05:22 ◼   ► i hope he's making an iphone app or uh apple watch oh you know he is

01:05:26 ◼   ► is.

01:05:27 ◼   ► [laughter]

01:05:28 ◼   ► Well, and then the article mentions—

01:05:32 ◼   ► Oh, you have an edition as well.

01:05:34 ◼   ► Well, I have an edition.

01:05:35 ◼   ► And then you suddenly pull your sleeve back and you've got the "I am rich" app on

01:05:39 ◼   ► your watch.

01:05:40 ◼   ► Do you have one of these?

01:05:42 ◼   ► [laughter]

01:05:43 ◼   ► Do you have any Grey Poupon?

01:05:48 ◼   ► I'm trying to find the name.

01:05:50 ◼   ► I can't remember the name of that horrible company that makes the really expensive phones.

01:05:54 ◼   ► Oh, I know.

01:05:55 ◼   ► - Virtu, Virtu, yeah, and it mentions Virtu,

01:05:59 ◼   ► and quotes somebody as saying,

01:06:01 ◼   ► once again saying Bennett, Bennett,

01:06:08 ◼   ► as saying that, I think it was him,

01:06:10 ◼   ► that Johnny was very interested in that company.

01:06:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, and I don't think it was

01:06:17 ◼   ► because he liked their phones.

01:06:18 ◼   ► I think-- - No.

01:06:20 ◼   ► - I think the interest is that he enjoyed--

01:06:23 ◼   ► - That people were buying them.

01:06:24 ◼   ► - Right, and they're still, I really thought

01:06:27 ◼   ► that they were going away the dodo once the iPhone came out

01:06:31 ◼   ► because the whole idea was that in a world

01:06:33 ◼   ► full of crap phones, you could have the best phone

01:06:36 ◼   ► because yours was made with leather and premium materials

01:06:40 ◼   ► even though it was running the same $15 Symbian chips

01:06:45 ◼   ► in the interior as like a $30 Nokia phone.

01:06:48 ◼   ► I mean, it's true, I mean, they've since spawned,

01:06:52 ◼   ► Nokia doesn't even exist or it doesn't sell phones anymore. But when Virtu was created,

01:06:57 ◼   ► it was like they were to Nokia what Lexus is to Toyota or Acura is to Honda. They were like a

01:07:04 ◼   ► premium luxury subsidiary brand. But they just used the same, you know, like the way that an

01:07:10 ◼   ► Acura TL has the frame of a Honda Accord. It was, you know, like take the case apart and it was

01:07:19 ◼   ► exactly the same as certain, you know, each, each virtue phone corresponded to a corresponding

01:07:24 ◼   ► Nokia phone, and they just put it in premium products and sold it for like, five, $6,000.

01:07:29 ◼   ► Right. And they did have the other thing that I guess that virtue still has is they have

01:07:33 ◼   ► like this concierge service where you can, like, I guess what you do is they'll look

01:07:40 ◼   ► things up for you on the internet. Yeah. Because your phone can't do it. It really does seem

01:07:45 ◼   ► it sounds to me when I wrote about it that it really does, the whole idea of the concierge,

01:07:51 ◼   ► predates the idea of apps. It's sort of like, you remember how everything in the Flintstones had

01:07:58 ◼   ► like a biological component, you know, like there was always like a—

01:08:03 ◼   ► [Laughter]

01:08:03 ◼   ► Like, they put something—

01:08:07 ◼   ► It's just like, it's the—

01:08:08 ◼   ► They put it in the microwave—

01:08:10 ◼   ► It's the pelican.

01:08:11 ◼   ► the microwave was really like a turtle with a couple of matches who would create a fire,

01:08:16 ◼   ► you know, underneath the food. And yeah, you know, everything had like a thing. That's what

01:08:22 ◼   ► the Virtu Concierge service was. It's like, so like today, it's like if you and I were like,

01:08:26 ◼   ► "Hey, let's go get a steak," and we'd open OpenTable and it would be like, "Bloop, bloop,

01:08:31 ◼   ► table for two, 830 tonight, steak." Instead you'd press this button on your Virtu phone and talk to

01:08:36 ◼   ► somebody and be like, "I need a table for two at, you know, Morton Steakhouse, 830."

01:08:41 ◼   ► CB; And then they do it. That just sounds terrible.

01:08:48 ◼   ► AC; It really does. But anyway, I thought that once the iPhone came out--and clearly,

01:08:51 ◼   ► you were not getting the best phone in the world. The best phone in the world was $600,

01:08:57 ◼   ► that they would quickly go the way of the dodo. But they haven't. They're still around. They

01:09:01 ◼   ► outlasted Nokia. CB; Yeah. That quote was from Clive Grenier, who was a friend of

01:09:09 ◼   ► Ives who said that who is also said he's always been a bit bling yeah which is a little worrisome

01:09:21 ◼   ► because then you start to worry that maybe it was Steve Jobs who kind of kept the bling in check

01:09:26 ◼   ► yeah I guess I don't know let me look it up I have some notes from this article the lines that

01:09:36 ◼   ► really stuck out to me. Yeah, I mean anything any article that quotes Big Bogg Mansfield is

01:09:40 ◼   ► automatically... He was so comfortable, I thought, Mansfield, and this at least he comes across it,

01:09:47 ◼   ► whereas Jeff Williams, this is my favorite line in the whole article. I didn't want to go through

01:09:52 ◼   ► and just spoil it for people on Daring Fireball. I just want to be... I think it's so well written

01:09:57 ◼   ► to be truthful and insanely jealous that he had got this access and that he took advantage of it

01:10:03 ◼   ► and and you know came up with such a great article that to me is so accurate

01:10:09 ◼   ► where does it say here is it the pause yeah yeah it's such a great sentence

01:10:20 ◼   ► alright here's is Ian Parker writing I asked Jeff Williams the senior vice

01:10:26 ◼   ► president if the Apple watch seemed more purely Ives than previous company

01:10:31 ◼   ► products after a silence of 25 seconds during which Apple made $50,000 in profit he said yes

01:10:41 ◼   ► that is that is such a it's two sentences but it's the it's the best paragraph about apple yeah i've

01:10:50 ◼   ► i've ever read i think because clearly jeff williams i mean it's to my knowledge he's never

01:10:55 ◼   ► spoken to the press before. Clearly he is, he's been at Apple a very long time, you know,

01:11:03 ◼   ► since I think late 90s, and he's obviously not comfortable. And rather than, you know,

01:11:11 ◼   ► when Apple people, you know, he knows enough that if he's not gonna be comfortable rather

01:11:15 ◼   ► than Babylon, it'd be better to just sit there and take a 25-second pause before saying yes.

01:11:20 ◼   ► And that little aside during which Apple made $50,000 in profit, I think it's brilliant

01:11:29 ◼   ► because it—to me it's not snide. It's, to me—

01:11:34 ◼   ► No.

01:11:35 ◼   ► It's—

01:11:36 ◼   ► No, it's like filling the pause.

01:11:37 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. It fills the pause and it also just reminds you of why this is of interest,

01:11:44 ◼   ► why this company is of interest, why this company is worth this much attention. You

01:11:49 ◼   ► know it tells you the scale that they're operating at. Yeah.

01:11:54 ◼   ► You know it's it's just a nice little reminder of scale like to fill in for you know like the Jeopardy theme song.

01:12:01 ◼   ► Yeah. There's a there's a lot in the article.

01:12:06 ◼   ► Yes. That is pretentious. I mean that comes that can easily come across as pretentious.

01:12:12 ◼   ► Alright example. Oh well.

01:12:17 ◼   ► you know Ives

01:12:19 ◼   ► Comments about other people's cars while these driving around in this Bentley

01:12:25 ◼   ► Yeah, and what's his name our good friend and in the fact I mean, you know that simple fact that they're just they're crazy rich

01:12:33 ◼   ► I mean, you know that all these, you know, most of these guys are filthy rich and you know, he's got a he's got a plane

01:12:40 ◼   ► He was buying living room houses in England, you know that were built in the 1700s

01:12:46 ◼   ► 17th century. Well, our good friend Dan Lyons jumped on this. Did you see?

01:12:51 ◼   ► I did not. You did not see?

01:12:55 ◼   ► I'm done on-- no, I don't think he-- no. I mean, I try not to pay attention to him anymore.

01:13:01 ◼   ► Really? I thought that-- I thought he was done.

01:13:04 ◼   ► Where is he writing now? Is he-- he sounded valley wag, right?

01:13:08 ◼   ► Yeah, no, but I thought so because he wrote that his back was giving him problems and he

01:13:13 ◼   ► couldn't blog and he's writing a book and so like a month after he took over

01:13:18 ◼   ► valuate you got your whole thumb off and you still blog it's true I gotta tell

01:13:25 ◼   ► you if if you have I mean I feel I you know what I do not like the the man

01:13:29 ◼   ► professionally I don't but I don't wish injury on anybody and so I certainly

01:13:34 ◼   ► hope in all sincerity I do hope that that whatever's wrong with his back gets

01:13:38 ◼   ► better quickly I don't I don't wouldn't poke fun at that or any kind of medical

01:13:43 ◼   ► problem, but I do have to say as somebody who blogs professionally, I have to say if

01:13:50 ◼   ► you have to have a job where you get a bad back injury, this might be the job to have.

01:13:55 ◼   ► Like you could keep going.

01:13:58 ◼   ► I would say my finger injury where I couldn't type, I would have traded that for a back

01:14:06 ◼   ► injury any day of the week.

01:14:09 ◼   ► Yeah, I would think so.

01:14:11 ◼   ► Anyway though, he wrote a piece for Valleywag, Apple design boss John Ive.

01:14:17 ◼   ► This is just, I swear, I think Dan Lyons is losing it.

01:14:20 ◼   ► I mean, you call him Jonathan, you can call him Johnny.

01:14:23 ◼   ► Who calls him John?

01:14:24 ◼   ► Nobody.

01:14:25 ◼   ► And as far as I know, in the history of the world, nobody has ever called him John.

01:14:29 ◼   ► John Ive gets chauffeured to work in a Bentley.

01:14:34 ◼   ► This is crazy.

01:14:35 ◼   ► This is his lead.

01:14:36 ◼   ► I mean, this is seriously crazy stuff.

01:14:38 ◼   ► is surprisingly little to be learned about Sir Jonathan Ive in this 17,000 word piece

01:14:43 ◼   ► in the New Yorker except this, the fucker gets driven to work in a Bentley Mulsanne,

01:14:48 ◼   ► a car, quote, a car for a head of state as Ian Parker puts it. How can you say there is

01:14:54 ◼   ► surprisingly little to be learned about this? There's almost too much to cover. It's almost

01:15:01 ◼   ► crazy. And that the one thing he takes away--

01:15:03 ◼   ► Amazing unprecedented access.

01:15:05 ◼   ► that one detail is back to Dan lines that one detail says it all if you want to know who wields

01:15:10 ◼   ► the real power at Apple look no further the Molesand starting price is a tick over $300,000

01:15:16 ◼   ► and can go higher. Like if you get the special great propone refrigerator, I guess. But the

01:15:21 ◼   ► price is not the point. The point is the chauffeur. His name is Jean. There's no word in the article

01:15:26 ◼   ► about whether I've makes Jean wear a uniform and if so whether I've designed the uniform himself,

01:15:31 ◼   ► and if so if he selected his driver by making a few dozen candidates line up and pose to see which

01:15:37 ◼   ► one would look best in the uniform that I've designed and or which ones would agree to have

01:15:42 ◼   ► plastic surgery to make themselves look just so in that uniform and hat but you get the idea

01:15:48 ◼   ► john iv is off the fucking rails and the only person who could rein them in is no longer among

01:15:53 ◼   ► the living so it's like do you know how many people I know so many people who in the who work

01:16:00 ◼   ► in San Francisco who's part of their job get free Uber. It's like the most, it's like a super common

01:16:05 ◼   ► perk nowadays. It's because like driving sucks. So there's all it's like a super common perk as

01:16:12 ◼   ► your job hump to get free Uber and you just you know, which is not quite the same as having your

01:16:17 ◼   ► own personal chauffeur in a $300,000 car. But guess what? John Ive is a billionaire.

01:16:21 ◼   ► Like he owns, you said he bought Steve Jobs private jet. So if you own a private jet,

01:16:30 ◼   ► I think owning a $300,000 car is actually not crazy at all.

01:16:34 ◼   ► CB; Yeah, I mean, it makes sense. I mean, you know, the guy earned the money. It makes sense

01:16:39 ◼   ► for him to spend it the way he wants to spend it. That's not really my... I mean, I don't have

01:16:42 ◼   ► apparently whatever lion's problem is with it. But it's just the incongruence between

01:16:53 ◼   ► that and you know some of you know the wealth level of many of Apple's customers is a little

01:17:00 ◼   ► can be a little bit odd. All right now here's there's a kernel of truth and accuracy in in

01:17:05 ◼   ► in his article and the next thing he says you know how people say that no way would this have

01:17:10 ◼   ► happened if Steve were alive and running Apple usually those people are full of shit but this

01:17:14 ◼   ► is one case where it's true no way would Steve have allowed this article to happen well there

01:17:19 ◼   ► that sentence, I believe, is completely true. No way this article happens if Steve Jobs is still

01:17:24 ◼   ► running Apple. Although I'm not 100% sure whether that's because of Steve or whether that's because

01:17:30 ◼   ► of Katie, which we can cycle back to in a second. No way would he have allowed one of his employees

01:17:36 ◼   ► to be deified like this. For that matter, no way would John Ive have dared to ride around with a

01:17:41 ◼   ► chauffeur when Steve was alive, and no way would Steve have ever been so vulgar as to be driven

01:17:46 ◼   ► around by a chauffeur and a Bentley like a normal, or no, like a modern day pharaoh. Steve drove his

01:17:52 ◼   ► own Mercedes and parked in a handicapped space like a normal sociopath. Well, number one, Steve

01:17:58 ◼   ► Jobs— That's a funny line.

01:18:00 ◼   ► Steve Jobs lived in Palo Alto, so he had like a 15-minute drive to work. Johnny Ive lives in San

01:18:05 ◼   ► Francisco, which is a shitty drive. I've done it because I've stayed in San Francisco for Apple

01:18:10 ◼   ► events. It's well over an hour, and especially, you know, of course gets worse at, you know,

01:18:15 ◼   ► like the sort of hour where you go to work, because that's what everybody else is doing.

01:18:19 ◼   ► It's a terrible drive. I mean, like once or twice a year for me, it's no big deal.

01:18:25 ◼   ► It's something that I would do five or six days a week, it would make you crazy.

01:18:28 ◼   ► He's a billionaire. Like, one of the—two things that came out of that segment of it.

01:18:35 ◼   ► One is that Parker doesn't mention anything about it, and somebody brought this up on Twitter a

01:18:39 ◼   ► while ago but Apple I don't know what the legal things are but for some of

01:18:43 ◼   ► their executives they reveal in SEC filings what their stock grants are

01:18:48 ◼   ► right there was a thing with Angela aren't getting a huge one you know like

01:18:52 ◼   ► she got a was well more paid than Tim Cook last year because it was like a one

01:18:57 ◼   ► time you know here's a whole bunch of stock to tempt you to you know come from

01:19:01 ◼   ► Burberry to Apple but somebody pointed out that Johnny I've has never been

01:19:05 ◼   ► listed in there like nobody knows what Johnny I've makes nobody knows how much

01:19:09 ◼   ► Apple stock he has, it's like super secretive. But the article clearly, you know, Parker's

01:19:16 ◼   ► article clearly insinuates that at one point, Johnny Ive was thinking about leaving Apple,

01:19:22 ◼   ► he at least pondered it, like when he bought, like you said, the 11-bedroom mansion in England.

01:19:26 ◼   ► You know, it's in Apple's business. I mean, whatever his compensation is,

01:19:32 ◼   ► they're keeping it secret, and presumably it is immense.

01:19:36 ◼   ► and well right like he he might be so he might be the you know i would guess he's showing this

01:19:44 ◼   ► some signs that it might be immense right i'm guessing that it's you know on par probably

01:19:50 ◼   ► closest only to you know steve jobs's compensation over the last 15 years you know but it's billions

01:19:56 ◼   ► i would guess yeah you know which for a company i don't understand but i mean i can't understand

01:20:02 ◼   ► and how they, I mean, they have to file those things

01:20:04 ◼   ► with the SEC.

01:20:05 ◼   ► - I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.

01:20:08 ◼   ► Maybe I'm wrong, maybe they've filed it a long time ago,

01:20:10 ◼   ► I don't know, but there's a mission for listeners

01:20:12 ◼   ► of the talk show.

01:20:13 ◼   ► If anybody out there can figure out

01:20:15 ◼   ► what Johnny Ives' compensation from Apple is and has been,

01:20:19 ◼   ► let me know, but as far as I know, it's not,

01:20:21 ◼   ► and I don't know, I don't think they have to do it

01:20:23 ◼   ► for everybody.

01:20:24 ◼   ► There might be like certain legally defined positions,

01:20:28 ◼   ► like the chief operating officer and the CEO

01:20:31 ◼   ► who you have to file it for, but I don't think--

01:20:34 ◼   ► - That's possible.

01:20:35 ◼   ► - Why would it be required to reveal the salary of him

01:20:40 ◼   ► just because his title is senior vice president?

01:20:45 ◼   ► Right, I don't think it is.

01:20:46 ◼   ► There's nothing magical about

01:20:48 ◼   ► just being a senior vice president.

01:20:49 ◼   ► It's just a word, right?

01:20:53 ◼   ► They don't have to reveal the salaries

01:20:55 ◼   ► of individual engineers and designers.

01:20:58 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:20:59 ◼   ► - As far as I know, it's secret.

01:21:00 ◼   ► and I presume immense.

01:21:04 ◼   ► It just seems such a bizarre thing

01:21:05 ◼   ► for people to get hung up on.

01:21:07 ◼   ► Plus he was in a car accident a long time ago.

01:21:09 ◼   ► I forget, was that in the article?

01:21:11 ◼   ► But there was like a,

01:21:13 ◼   ► Johnny Ives was in a bad car wreck like a long time ago,

01:21:16 ◼   ► like driving a sports car across country.

01:21:19 ◼   ► Didn't it say this?

01:21:21 ◼   ► - Oh, yeah.

01:21:23 ◼   ► I don't remember that actually,

01:21:24 ◼   ► but I've been reading this for a while now,

01:21:27 ◼   ► so it's possible. - Yeah, maybe it's not

01:21:28 ◼   ► in this article.

01:21:29 ◼   ► It might not be in this article.

01:21:30 ◼   ► But anyway, you know, it just seems it's almost like the opposite where it seems like it's

01:21:34 ◼   ► in Apple's interest to, you know, get him a professional driver.

01:21:37 ◼   ► Not that he's a bad driver, but you know, he might like driving fast, right?

01:21:43 ◼   ► Like me, right?

01:21:46 ◼   ► You know what, he should get one of those automatic sticks.

01:21:50 ◼   ► Stick that here.

01:21:51 ◼   ► Yeah, there you go.

01:21:52 ◼   ► I don't know if you can afford it.

01:21:54 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:21:55 ◼   ► So if anybody knows Johnny Ive, they're very reasonably priced.

01:21:59 ◼   ► I'm sure he can afford.

01:22:00 ◼   ► anybody knows Johnny I've passed along the coupon code talk show so that he can save

01:22:05 ◼   ► 20 bucks on his automatic for his Bentley.

01:22:10 ◼   ► And get him a Squarespace too.

01:22:14 ◼   ► Now I was thinking about the whole this would article would not have happened if Steve Jobs

01:22:17 ◼   ► was around and I don't think there's any doubt that it wouldn't have and it's not just that

01:22:22 ◼   ► he would Jobs selfishly wouldn't want to let the attention be on anybody else. He wouldn't

01:22:26 ◼   ► have allowed an article like that about himself either. It just wasn't a good role. But I do

01:22:31 ◼   ► wonder how much of that was Jobs's own choice and how much of it came from Katie Cotton,

01:22:41 ◼   ► who was at Apple before, you know, she was at Apple the whole time while Jobs came back. I think

01:22:47 ◼   ► she was already there and, you know, she was one of the ones who Jobs kept and, you know, obviously

01:22:52 ◼   ► got very close to and followed her advice very closely.

01:22:56 ◼   ► But I wonder whether she drove that no media policy more than even Jobs did.

01:23:01 ◼   ► Because at least early in his career, Jobs maybe wasn't accessible, but he certainly

01:23:05 ◼   ► was occasionally accessible.

01:23:08 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:23:09 ◼   ► Don't know.

01:23:11 ◼   ► But that's, it seems like that's a pretty good, there's a good chance that that's what

01:23:16 ◼   ► the case is.

01:23:18 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:23:19 ◼   ► It's to me that the existence of this article is

01:23:22 ◼   ► Is the biggest sign that Apple is in a new open more open

01:23:30 ◼   ► attitude and that Apple PR under

01:23:33 ◼   ► Steve Dowling is

01:23:36 ◼   ► Significantly different than Apple PR under Katie cotton. Yeah

01:23:40 ◼   ► yeah, I mean one of the one of the things that's noted is

01:23:45 ◼   ► That I mean it seems like there are several people well

01:23:48 ◼   ► I mean, I guess this is true for most of them like like you said like Williams

01:23:51 ◼   ► but like the designers that they talked to you in the law and the

01:23:53 ◼   ► design lab

01:23:55 ◼   ► Neither of them had spoken to the press before no

01:23:58 ◼   ► No, it's like they've been been her medically sealed for

01:24:03 ◼   ► It's not a teeny their existence isn't secret because they show up as a team every couple years to pick up awards

01:24:10 ◼   ► You know in black tie type things and there's pictures and people know who some of them are

01:24:13 ◼   ► But yeah, none of them have ever spoken to the press before. And here they spoke fairly openly.

01:24:18 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:24:19 ◼   ► You know, they even talked about a specific instance of—what was it? There was a woman,

01:24:25 ◼   ► what was her name, who—she had wanted to use, what, an orange brown for the interior of the

01:24:33 ◼   ► box for the edition? And then even in hindsight now she agrees, "Oh, that was a terrible,

01:24:38 ◼   ► terrible idea."

01:24:42 ◼   ► So there's a plus that we know from the article, is that if you buy the edition, you'll get a cloth to clean it.

01:24:48 ◼   ► Well, there's an extra thousand dollars right there, right? Sure.

01:24:53 ◼   ► Akana, what's her name?

01:25:01 ◼   ► Just some brown. Yeah, Apple doesn't use a lot of brown.

01:25:11 ◼   ► Here's one that I thought was interesting. This is Johnny Ive's team. Team members work 12 hours a day

01:25:16 ◼   ► and can't discuss work with friends. Well, I knew they can't discuss their work, but 12 hours a day?

01:25:21 ◼   ► Man, that's crazy. Am I lazy?

01:25:25 ◼   ► Apparently.

01:25:29 ◼   ► I mean, that seems nuts. 12 hours a day all the time? I mean, you get to work at 9 and you don't

01:25:38 ◼   ► leave until 9pm? Oh man, that seems crazy. I mean, I don't know.

01:25:43 ◼   ► That's what I, when I worked in Japan, that's what I did.

01:25:46 ◼   ► Man, salaryman hours.

01:25:48 ◼   ► That's right.

01:25:49 ◼   ► And then it's what, then they followed by 12 hours of boozing, right?

01:25:56 ◼   ► So close.

01:25:58 ◼   ► Suntory time.

01:25:59 ◼   ► Some nights, not every night, but some nights.

01:26:02 ◼   ► Suntory time. Like, a bell rings at nine o'clock at night. Ding ding ding, suntory time.

01:26:07 ◼   ► All of a sudden the ties are loose.

01:26:10 ◼   ► And now we drink until we throw up on the train on the way home.

01:26:15 ◼   ► Each product has a lead designer, but almost everyone contributes to every project and

01:26:19 ◼   ► shares the credit.

01:26:20 ◼   ► Who had this or that idea?

01:26:22 ◼   ► The team.

01:26:25 ◼   ► Team meetings are held in the kitchen two or three times a week and I've encouraged

01:26:28 ◼   ► his candor.

01:26:30 ◼   ► We put the product, I know it's pronounced candor, we put the product out of everything

01:26:35 ◼   ► else he said.

01:26:36 ◼   ► we're talking about something that I've done that's ugly and ill-proportioned

01:26:39 ◼   ► because believe you me I can pull some beauties out of the old hat it's fine

01:26:43 ◼   ► and we all do and sometimes we do it repeatedly and we have these seasons of

01:26:49 ◼   ► doing it and then designer Akana says I had one last week which one he said the

01:26:54 ◼   ► packaging things she said that's true I've said laughing it was so bad she had

01:27:00 ◼   ► proposed that an ultra suede cloth inside the box for a gold version of the

01:27:05 ◼   ► Apple Watch should be an orangey brown. I've had objected with comic hyperbole,

01:27:09 ◼   ► comparing it to the carpeting in a dismal student apartment.

01:27:12 ◼   ► In the same amused spirit, Akana then asked, so you don't like it?

01:27:17 ◼   ► Oh man, what else?

01:27:24 ◼   ► Speaking of candor, there was an interesting anecdote or just sort of like a perspective from

01:27:29 ◼   ► I've about Steve Jobs about his brusqueness or however you want to term it was really

01:27:39 ◼   ► more about being trying to be open and direct rather than being cruel or hurtful and you

01:27:48 ◼   ► know and yeah sorry sorry if it does hurt your feelings but his whole you know I've

01:27:55 ◼   ► thought on what Jobs' intent was always to be, to make himself clear, as opposed to like,

01:28:06 ◼   ► really trying to like, stick a knife in somebody.

01:28:10 ◼   ► Yeah it wasn't about trying to hurt people's feelings.

01:28:12 ◼   ► He wasn't Chevy Chase.

01:28:15 ◼   ► And he often hurt, right?

01:28:16 ◼   ► He often hurt people's feelings, but...

01:28:20 ◼   ► It was simply because he didn't want to waste their time by not getting right to the heart

01:28:24 ◼   ► of...

01:28:25 ◼   ► And that's the other thing, it was like, he considered it unfair to them and a waste of

01:28:30 ◼   ► their time.

01:28:31 ◼   ► Right.

01:28:32 ◼   ► Yeah, I thought that was pretty interesting.

01:28:33 ◼   ► One of the other people who Parker clearly had significant access to was Steve Jobs's

01:28:40 ◼   ► wife, Laureen Powell Jobs.

01:28:43 ◼   ► And I think it backs up what everybody has said, that Johnny and Steve were more than

01:28:53 ◼   ► just colleagues.

01:28:54 ◼   ► really really close friends because she clearly knows him very well yeah

01:29:02 ◼   ► and he was he was there the day that he died yeah that's what they said yeah

01:29:06 ◼   ► even if Jobs had rescued this is following up on your thing about how

01:29:10 ◼   ► Jobs had you know sort of criticized the way Johnny Ives gave criticism by being

01:29:14 ◼   ► too gentle even if Jobs had rescued him from vagueness it was odd for I've to

01:29:18 ◼   ► bring this up now immediately after I'd learned how to reject a color without

01:29:23 ◼   ► causing injury here's a quote from Laureen Powell jobs I've seen Johnny

01:29:28 ◼   ► deeply frustrated but I've never seen him rant and rave

01:29:32 ◼   ► Laureen Powell job said and she added laughing that she would not have said

01:29:36 ◼   ► the same of her husband and it's hard to imagine I've using a disabled parking

01:29:44 ◼   ► spot as jobs often did long before he was unwell oh man what a great article

01:29:51 ◼   ► So much great stuff.

01:29:53 ◼   ► Let me see what else I've got in here on it.

01:29:55 ◼   ► - It's sort of direct this.

01:29:56 ◼   ► He also, he did say, you know,

01:29:57 ◼   ► about the Isaacson book.

01:30:01 ◼   ► - Oh.

01:30:02 ◼   ► - My regard couldn't be any lower.

01:30:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, that he read parts of it.

01:30:06 ◼   ► 'Cause I do think that's part of it, honestly.

01:30:09 ◼   ► And it's, you know, there were some people,

01:30:11 ◼   ► when I wrote my piece on the Isaacson book,

01:30:14 ◼   ► which was as scathing as I could get,

01:30:17 ◼   ► I got, you know, some of the,

01:30:18 ◼   ► you get every kind of feedback,

01:30:20 ◼   ► some of the feedback was of sounds like sour grapes to me and that's not the case at all right

01:30:26 ◼   ► it's like there's no chance there's zero zero point zero zero zero zero zero all the way out

01:30:32 ◼   ► zero chance that i was going to be selected to write steve jobs's authorized biography i'm not

01:30:36 ◼   ► a biographer right i mean i don't write i've never even written a book um you know what i've what i've

01:30:43 ◼   ► loved to have written a feature article about him gotten you know some kind of on the record you

01:30:48 ◼   ► know, spend a day with Steve Jobs, would have loved it. Would have been amazing. Would have been maybe

01:30:52 ◼   ► the highlight of my career. But I didn't trash the book because I didn't write it or because I was

01:30:58 ◼   ► jealous, you know. I trashed it because it was terrible, I thought, especially about his

01:31:02 ◼   ► professional life. And I couldn't be more effusively praiseful of this Ian Parker,

01:31:09 ◼   ► New Yorker story because I think he's totally nailed a part of Apple that has been largely

01:31:15 ◼   ► secret. Yeah.

01:31:17 ◼   ► Let's just take the third break before we'll go back to the article.

01:31:22 ◼   ► There was more to talk about, but let me talk about our third sponsor.

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01:34:27 ◼   ► - Good people.

01:34:28 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Yeah.

01:34:29 ◼   ► Here's a great phrase.

01:34:32 ◼   ► One of my notes is this, I think it's so astute.

01:34:35 ◼   ► It has nothing to do with Johnny Ives about Steve Jobs,

01:34:37 ◼   ► but he's talking about how Johnny doesn't speak in public,

01:34:39 ◼   ► doesn't have to speak in public, just isn't comfortable,

01:34:41 ◼   ► but he does the videos, appears in those videos.

01:34:45 ◼   ► Such videos used to punctuate Jobs' onstage message.

01:34:51 ◼   ► In the absence of Jobs, they carry the message.

01:34:54 ◼   ► Apple's current leaders aren't without

01:34:56 ◼   ► public speaking skills, but they can't match Jobs' charisma,

01:35:00 ◼   ► which was fortified by a hint of menace.

01:35:03 ◼   ► I love that phrase.

01:35:05 ◼   ► Like, there was.

01:35:06 ◼   ► That is sort of-- a hint of menace is absolutely part of Steve Jobs' on-stage charisma.

01:35:18 ◼   ► It's absolutely true.

01:35:20 ◼   ► And their performances can evoke the awkward informality, the dancing and lanyards of a

01:35:24 ◼   ► corporate retreat.

01:35:25 ◼   ► It's a little bit of a zinger there towards, I don't know, Schiller and Federighi, I guess.

01:35:34 ◼   ► Yeah, I guess.

01:35:35 ◼   ► Sort of the humor maybe, I don't know.

01:35:39 ◼   ► But I love that hint of menace about Jobs.

01:35:42 ◼   ► Such a great, such an astute turn of phrase to describe that.

01:35:46 ◼   ► There's a lot of talk about the digital, about the crown.

01:35:52 ◼   ► Oh, definitely.

01:35:54 ◼   ► And how they kind of came up with that.

01:35:58 ◼   ► And you brought this issue up the other day.

01:36:00 ◼   ► think like that. Most of the other smartwatches have not had

01:36:06 ◼   ► that they've all relied on touch input on the screen right.

01:36:11 ◼   ► Yes. Yeah. Yeah, which is something I hadn't really

01:36:15 ◼   ► noticed. Yeah. And and there's a bunch of them have a button at

01:36:21 ◼   ► the traditional crown position, but it's just a button. It's

01:36:25 ◼   ► like a thing you use to wake the phone or to you know,

01:36:27 ◼   ► activate something. It's not something you twist like the

01:36:29 ◼   ► Apple one you'll you'll be there's no there's no way to use the watch without

01:36:33 ◼   ► using spinning the crown repeatedly I'm telling you I've said this before I'll

01:36:37 ◼   ► say it again once these things come out and everybody can try one it's gonna be

01:36:41 ◼   ► there's gonna be like an entire week of people talking about how it feels to

01:36:44 ◼   ► turn that crown because it is it's what's the word lugubrious did you did

01:36:50 ◼   ► you see Dan's Dan Morin's piece on six colors about the color yeah I even link

01:36:55 ◼   ► to it inside the crown yeah I like that yeah that's a curious another like head

01:36:59 ◼   ► Scratcher we talked about it on our podcast is very very weird.

01:37:03 ◼   ► I mean when he pointed that I was like Oh my God what the heck is going on there?

01:37:07 ◼   ► Right? So if you buy so many shots,

01:37:09 ◼   ► so many shots,

01:37:09 ◼   ► show it with a color that matches the band.

01:37:12 ◼   ► I can confirm that the ones at the hands on all were like that.

01:37:16 ◼   ► So if you buy like the addition model with a red leather strap has a red matching red insert in the flat part of the digital crown.

01:37:27 ◼   ► and if you buy the edition with a white band, it has a white insert. But the thing that makes it so

01:37:34 ◼   ► confounding is that they also talk about how easy it is to take the bands on and off, which makes

01:37:39 ◼   ► you instantly think, oh, well, then it's, you know, they're going to make money.

01:37:42 ◼   ► Jared: It's not going to match anymore.

01:37:43 ◼   ► Pete: Right. You're going to, you know, buy, you know, people with money to burn are going to buy

01:37:47 ◼   ► multiple bands and, you know, what else is the point of making it so easy to swap them? But then

01:37:51 ◼   ► the digital insert won't match them, which seems curious. Like, why not just make it a neutral

01:37:57 ◼   ► color why not just keep it you know gold yeah and the the sport watch is neutral it's just the color

01:38:03 ◼   ► of the the body is it or is it in the same and the same with the with the stainless right yeah

01:38:09 ◼   ► stainless one yeah so it's just the addition yeah and it just seemed and it i don't know just seems

01:38:15 ◼   ► weird i don't know and there's people on twitter who are saying well maybe you pop those things

01:38:19 ◼   ► out too and you can pop them in but that seems like that seems finicky i don't know

01:38:26 ◼   ► Yeah, her name was jody akana j-o-d-y

01:38:29 ◼   ► Akana who is in her 30s and that she this is see this is the sort of detail that apple never would have revealed before

01:38:36 ◼   ► She's in johnny's dives group and she's unusual b for having a declared specialty color

01:38:43 ◼   ► Yeah crazy like all she does is pick colors

01:38:51 ◼   ► That's sort of like our future role where we're all we're going to do is pick fake apple rumor projects

01:38:58 ◼   ► We'll have a great lab, oh my god, it'll be so great

01:39:07 ◼   ► We'll have like we'll get one of those jet packs like connery used in thunderball

01:39:10 ◼   ► right

01:39:13 ◼   ► See if we can get people to say that we're working on it on it ours will be more

01:39:16 ◼   ► I'll just be more of a bar than a lab

01:39:21 ◼   ► It'll just be a bar. Let's face it.

01:39:23 ◼   ► [Laughter]

01:39:23 ◼   ► Yeah, right.

01:39:24 ◼   ► [Laughter]

01:39:28 ◼   ► Oh, we can't let this pass. And I've once sat next to J.J. Abrams at a boozy dinner party in New York

01:39:36 ◼   ► and made what Abrams recalled as, quote, "very specific suggestions about the design of

01:39:43 ◼   ► lightsabers." Abrams told me that Star Wars The Force Awakens would reflect those thoughts,

01:39:49 ◼   ► but he wouldn't say how. After the release of the film's first trailer, which featured a fiery new

01:39:54 ◼   ► lightsaber with a cross guard and a resemblance to a burning crucifix, I asked Ive about his

01:39:59 ◼   ► contribution. "It was just a conversation," he said, then explained that, although he'd said

01:40:05 ◼   ► nothing about cross guards, he had made a case for unevenness. I thought it would be interesting if

01:40:11 ◼   ► it were a little less precise and just a little bit more spitty. A redesigned weapon could be

01:40:17 ◼   ► more analog and more primitive and I think in that way somehow more ominous.

01:40:23 ◼   ► That's brilliant. Absolutely.

01:40:26 ◼   ► I mean it sounds like you know and I you know kind of it almost makes me I mean I don't like

01:40:31 ◼   ► wondering how self-serving it is but it sounds like everything that you like about that lightsaber

01:40:36 ◼   ► everything that at least most people seem to like about that lightsaber is what Johnny says.

01:40:40 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:40:40 ◼   ► Not the crosscard which most people don't seem to like.

01:40:45 ◼   ► Yeah I'm not bothered by it.

01:40:47 ◼   ► I'm not bothered by it either, but you know, all right, a lot of people are

01:40:50 ◼   ► Spitty dance a little bit more spitty and it would make it you know

01:40:57 ◼   ► Less digital more analog would make it more ominous is is so totally true and it's so precise, right?

01:41:03 ◼   ► Like clearly I think part of his gift is that he's able to communicate his feelings so well

01:41:10 ◼   ► You know spitty is such a great word for that. I know it's great. So great

01:41:16 ◼   ► Truly great. Another thing that came out of this was that the video that unveiled the watch that Johnny I've narrates that he directed it

01:41:24 ◼   ► Effectively, I mean, I'm sure not single-handedly but that it was you know

01:41:29 ◼   ► That he had it, you know huge, you know with Parker there that he spent a lot of time in that room editing the video

01:41:36 ◼   ► Mm-hmm. It was pretty good

01:41:39 ◼   ► Yeah

01:41:42 ◼   ► Just not something I would have expected that Johnny I've had a direct hand in

01:41:45 ◼   ► I mentioned on the article, the thing I took away from when I linked to it, the one thing

01:41:52 ◼   ► I did mention is that it does seem, the article does make it seem like Jonny Ive is spread

01:41:56 ◼   ► very thin.

01:41:57 ◼   ► Because he's obviously in charge of all Apple products.

01:42:00 ◼   ► One of the products they're coming out with, the Apple Watch, is their first major new

01:42:03 ◼   ► product in the post-jobs era.

01:42:07 ◼   ► And Jonny Ive is clearly feeling the pressure on that.

01:42:10 ◼   ► The article makes clear, I mean, you know, who would have thought otherwise?

01:42:13 ◼   ► worrisome if it were anything if he was like nonchalant about it but it's a lot

01:42:17 ◼   ► on his shoulders he's working with Angela aren'ts on a redesign of all the

01:42:23 ◼   ► Apple stores and he's like the point person leading the directing the

01:42:30 ◼   ► assembly of the new Apple headquarters I was gonna say construction but they even

01:42:34 ◼   ► make a point that the way that they're putting it together is more assembly

01:42:37 ◼   ► within construction.

01:42:38 ◼   ► So he's got a worldwide headquarters,

01:42:44 ◼   ► presumably their headquarters for the next 50 years.

01:42:48 ◼   ► A landmark building, he's got all the Apple stores,

01:42:52 ◼   ► he's got the watch and all the other products

01:42:54 ◼   ► that they have, seems, and he's taken over software design.

01:42:59 ◼   ► - But he works 12 hours, he works 12 hours a day, John.

01:43:01 ◼   ► - Well they don't say Johnny works 12 hours a day.

01:43:03 ◼   ► - I bet he works a lot more than that actually.

01:43:06 ◼   ► - It seems as though he must work more than 12 hours a day.

01:43:10 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:43:10 ◼   ► - Like I don't know that the whole team

01:43:13 ◼   ► needs to work 12 hours a day, but--

01:43:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, it just seems like all those executives

01:43:16 ◼   ► are just, I mean, they're basically,

01:43:18 ◼   ► yeah, I'm sure they take time off for their families,

01:43:19 ◼   ► but I mean, they're kind of on all the time.

01:43:23 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:43:25 ◼   ► No, I think they all have a lot on their plate,

01:43:26 ◼   ► and it does, you know, I have no doubt

01:43:29 ◼   ► that all of them are just naturally hardworking.

01:43:33 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:43:35 ◼   ► It makes a few passing remarks about how he's not always right.

01:43:40 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:43:41 ◼   ► And I don't-- I mean, it doesn't mention the newsstand icon

01:43:50 ◼   ► specifically, but things like that.

01:43:54 ◼   ► They did bring up--

01:43:55 ◼   ► Parker did bring up the hockey puck mouse,

01:43:58 ◼   ► which is something many people always go back to.

01:44:01 ◼   ► And I always have to mention--

01:44:02 ◼   ► I always have to mention that my wife loved that mouse.

01:44:07 ◼   ► Loved it, she used it years after her purple iMac

01:44:10 ◼   ► had bit the dust, she was still using

01:44:12 ◼   ► the purple hockey puck mouse

01:44:13 ◼   ► with whatever computer she had next.

01:44:15 ◼   ► So there are people who like that mouse.

01:44:18 ◼   ► I mean my wife has relatively small hands,

01:44:20 ◼   ► that might be why, I don't know.

01:44:21 ◼   ► - I thought I had never met one, but I guess I have.

01:44:24 ◼   ► - A hockey puck mouse like her?

01:44:26 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:44:26 ◼   ► I had a, I mean I got one of those plastic things

01:44:31 ◼   ► that you clipped on it just to make it feel like a regular mouse.

01:44:35 ◼   ► Why didn't you just buy a new mouse?

01:44:36 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:44:37 ◼   ► I was an idiot.

01:44:39 ◼   ► It was cheaper.

01:44:40 ◼   ► It was cheaper than buying a new mouse.

01:44:42 ◼   ► It was a couple of bucks or something.

01:44:44 ◼   ► It's like the mouse part worked fine.

01:44:46 ◼   ► It was just the fact that I could never tell--

01:44:48 ◼   ► just reaching out blindly and grabbing it,

01:44:50 ◼   ► you could never tell which way it was pointed.

01:44:52 ◼   ► You have to fiddle with it to get it

01:44:56 ◼   ► to be oriented the right way.

01:44:58 ◼   ► Here's Bob Mansfield.

01:44:59 ◼   ► This to me again, this is insight into the company that to me is unprecedented and it just drops out in the middle of random paragraph in the article Bob Mansfield then closely involved in the watch product project and number one did we know that before do we know that Bob Mansfield was

01:45:15 ◼   ► special project.

01:45:17 ◼   ► Well, no, I mean, no, I mean, I think you could you could guess that right.

01:45:20 ◼   ► I don't think it was ever stated explicitly anywhere said that I've roll was to be.

01:45:26 ◼   ► Quote himself and Steve.

01:45:29 ◼   ► end quote, combined.

01:45:31 ◼   ► Yet I've still had to make a case to Apple.

01:45:35 ◼   ► And that's another way I have to think

01:45:38 ◼   ► that Johnny Ive is spread thin.

01:45:40 ◼   ► In addition to just listing all the projects

01:45:42 ◼   ► he's working on, it's explicitly stated here

01:45:44 ◼   ► by Bob Mansfield that he sees his new role

01:45:47 ◼   ► as to be what used to be Steve and Johnny,

01:45:50 ◼   ► two geniuses, is one, right?

01:45:54 ◼   ► It's like if the Beatles got back together

01:45:58 ◼   ► and Paul had to be John and Paul, right?

01:46:00 ◼   ► I mean, it's more, but I'm not even making a joke.

01:46:03 ◼   ► I mean, wouldn't you feel, if you've personally felt

01:46:06 ◼   ► that it was your job to be Steve Jobs

01:46:10 ◼   ► in addition to everything you yourself had already done,

01:46:12 ◼   ► I mean, that's a burden.

01:46:15 ◼   ► I mean, that is a serious, serious weight on your psyche.

01:46:20 ◼   ► It wasn't, da-da-da-da-da, that he met a lot,

01:46:26 ◼   ► this is about whether or not they should do a watch,

01:46:28 ◼   ► in that Mansfield recalled, quote, "a lot of resistance.

01:46:31 ◼   ► It wasn't clear how the company would display

01:46:33 ◼   ► such things in stores.

01:46:35 ◼   ► There were also concerns about creating a divide

01:46:37 ◼   ► between wealthy and less wealthy customers.

01:46:39 ◼   ► As Mansfield said, Apple wants to build products

01:46:42 ◼   ► for everybody.

01:46:44 ◼   ► But I've won the argument, and in 2013,

01:46:46 ◼   ► the company announced the high-level appointments

01:46:48 ◼   ► of Angela Ahrendts, blah, blah, blah,

01:46:50 ◼   ► and the other luxury people."

01:46:52 ◼   ► You know, I don't think, I think that's sort of,

01:46:56 ◼   ► That's exactly what I, my vague second, third-hand understanding of the story behind the watches

01:47:03 ◼   ► and the story of Johnny Ives' role in the post-Jobs Apple.

01:47:06 ◼   ► But here's, you know, Bob Mansfield confirming it on the record in the New Yorker, you know,

01:47:10 ◼   ► that there will, you know, and exactly what everybody thinks.

01:47:13 ◼   ► Like, just, you know, Apple fans clucking on Twitter, you know, that isn't it weird

01:47:18 ◼   ► that Apple is making this product that is so crazy differentiated, you know, by a factor

01:47:23 ◼   ► of 10 in price between the 350 sport and the multi-thousand dollar thing and that there were

01:47:30 ◼   ► people in Apple who it would you know at high level within Apple like decision-making level

01:47:35 ◼   ► within Apple who obviously said the same things and had the same concerns and they're I don't

01:47:40 ◼   ► think they're wrong I think those are valid concerns I don't think they're wrong to do it but

01:47:44 ◼   ► it is something you should be concerned about yeah well it's something to keep an eye on you know and

01:47:49 ◼   ► And it's, in a sense, you know, and, you know,

01:47:53 ◼   ► it would have fallen on Johnny Ives' shoulders

01:47:57 ◼   ► no matter what the success, or if it's not a success,

01:48:01 ◼   ► of Apple Watch is gonna fall on his shoulders anyway.

01:48:03 ◼   ► But with this article, there's no ifs, ands, or buts

01:48:06 ◼   ► about it, right?

01:48:07 ◼   ► The article, I mean, almost expressly just says

01:48:10 ◼   ► the watch is Johnny Ives' thing.

01:48:13 ◼   ► - Well, the, certainly the luxury aspect of it.

01:48:18 ◼   ► Yeah, definitely. I've heard that too. That's like, that's just, I don't know, third hand,

01:48:23 ◼   ► fourth hand. But I have heard that very specifically, the gold thing

01:48:27 ◼   ► met a lot of resistance within Apple and that, like from all sorts of places, you know.

01:48:33 ◼   ► Because I even like the legal department had to get involved in, you know, you can't call it 18

01:48:40 ◼   ► karat gold unless it's truly 18 karat gold. And you know, it's all sorts, you know, there's,

01:48:45 ◼   ► It was a huge, huge thing within Apple, and it was Johnny who, you know, said, "Trust me," more or less.

01:48:51 ◼   ► You know who's not mentioned in here at all?

01:48:56 ◼   ► Who is not mentioned in here at all?

01:48:58 ◼   ► Scott Forstall.

01:48:59 ◼   ► No, not mentioned at all.

01:49:01 ◼   ► Yeah. I think obliquely mentioned a couple times.

01:49:06 ◼   ► Yeah, and I think-

01:49:08 ◼   ► There's a couple references to, like, and I think Mansfield makes some reference to how

01:49:14 ◼   ► He Johnny could get along with other people better than he could.

01:49:20 ◼   ► Yeah well know that he ran interference with Steve right isn't that what man's yeah yeah but he

01:49:26 ◼   ► but he also just said like people who are. You know. Kind of more brusque yeah here we go so.

01:49:43 ◼   ► Bob Mansfield, a former senior hardware engineer at Apple who is now semi-retired,

01:49:47 ◼   ► recently described the peak that some colleagues, that P-I-Q-U-E, that some colleagues

01:49:54 ◼   ► felt about Ive's privileged access. As he put it, "There's always going to be someone

01:50:01 ◼   ► vying for dad's attention." But Mansfield was grateful for Ive's cool handling of a CEO who was

01:50:08 ◼   ► not the easiest guy to please. Mansfield view was Johnny puts up with a lot, and as a result

01:50:14 ◼   ► of him doing it, people like me don't have to. You get the feeling that that would, with

01:50:22 ◼   ► forestall personality-wise. And again, you know, I think it was a personality more than anything

01:50:27 ◼   ► else. I don't think, you know, I think it was more than whether you think that Game Center should

01:50:32 ◼   ► have a felt background or, you know, a plain one. It's the personality. And I've, you know,

01:50:36 ◼   ► Wasn't it Mansfield who the word was that Mansfield was like, "I'm not taking a meeting

01:50:40 ◼   ► with this guy anymore." Like…

01:50:42 ◼   ► Jared: That's what I thought, yeah. Yeah.

01:50:44 ◼   ► Pete: Or like, he wouldn't take a meeting with him unless like, Jobs was ever…

01:50:47 ◼   ► Jared; Yeah, and I thought that was one of the reasons why he had basically announced

01:50:50 ◼   ► his retirement and then decided to come back and work on a more limited…

01:50:54 ◼   ► Pete; Or Cook, or like, yeah, he won't be in a room with Scott Forstall unless Cook was in a room

01:50:57 ◼   ► and Cook was like, "I can't, you know, I cannot have this," you know. I think Tim Cook might have

01:51:03 ◼   ► some stuff to do. He might be busy. Tim Cook might work 12 hours a day. Tim Cook might

01:51:10 ◼   ► work 12 hours a morning. There was a great quote from—

01:51:17 ◼   ► There's a guy who needs a watch.

01:51:19 ◼   ► There was a great quote here from Cook, which to me shows, I think it's one of the

01:51:25 ◼   ► loosest quotes I've ever heard from Tim Cook, because Tim Cook is, he's like a machine with

01:51:31 ◼   ► talking points. You know, I think he's always very honest. I really do. I think he's very

01:51:38 ◼   ► honest and very sincere. But it's so hard to see him in an interview and not see that

01:51:44 ◼   ► everything he said he's already anticipated. You know, the Charlie Rose interview is the

01:51:48 ◼   ► closest because it was the longest. But he says here in the New Yorker story, "Under

01:51:53 ◼   ► Cook, Apple has experimented with a softer, less neurotic image and has, among other things,

01:51:58 ◼   ► to improve its performance as a proxy employer of overseas factory workers. It's determined

01:52:03 ◼   ► to make the case, as Cook puts it, that the company's leaders shouldn't be thought of

01:52:09 ◼   ► as "greedy bastards looking for more money." But then in reference to the new campus, Parker

01:52:18 ◼   ► points out, "a private walled garden costing an estimated $5 billion may not catch this

01:52:24 ◼   ► smooth but I do think I think that's such a loose quote from Cook and I think

01:52:29 ◼   ► he've trolley means it but it's like you know I think in Tim Cook's world

01:52:33 ◼   ► bastards is a really that's a hard word yeah he drops a I think he drops an f-bomb

01:52:42 ◼   ► in there someplace to cook I thought so I don't think so really

01:52:48 ◼   ► now Tony Grinier says it no there's only F sir from okay and first you know I

01:52:57 ◼   ► guess not Johnny I've when he first met the first time he met Steve Jobs when he

01:53:01 ◼   ► visited the design studio and saw that they had cool stuff but that they hadn't

01:53:06 ◼   ► been able to ship it it told Johnny I've fuck you've not been very effective have

01:53:10 ◼   ► you. What a great article. Honest to God, everybody out there, if you have not read

01:53:19 ◼   ► this article yet, you are out of your minds because if you have enough interest in Apple

01:53:24 ◼   ► to listen to this podcast, this article is so right up your alley. I'm going to just

01:53:29 ◼   ► assume that everybody. Yeah.

01:53:34 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean the thing like one of the things is you could it can come across snooty or it can come

01:53:40 ◼   ► across classist or it can come across elitist or however you want to put it but the thing that

01:53:47 ◼   ► definitely shines through is simply how much he cares about design and how much he cares about

01:53:53 ◼   ► what he's doing there. Yeah and I think and you know I think the watch is a sign of that

01:54:02 ◼   ► that, and Cook has alluded to this,

01:54:05 ◼   ► I think Cook has alluded to it very broadly,

01:54:08 ◼   ► but that Apple is about, not about making computers.

01:54:13 ◼   ► It's about making good things

01:54:18 ◼   ► that make people's lives better.

01:54:19 ◼   ► And that could be anything in the long run.

01:54:23 ◼   ► Like, in terms of, and I think just like Tim Cook,

01:54:25 ◼   ► I think Johnny Ive, and I, you know,

01:54:28 ◼   ► as I've written about Steve Jobs, you know,

01:54:30 ◼   ► that his greatest creation was the company.

01:54:32 ◼   ► Apple itself, not one of the products.

01:54:35 ◼   ► That as an institution, you know, it's the future,

01:54:39 ◼   ► who knows what they'll be making, you know?

01:54:41 ◼   ► But that he cares very deeply about creating, you know,

01:54:45 ◼   ► a system and a pattern that they can get involved in,

01:54:50 ◼   ► you know, who knows what in the future.

01:54:52 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:54:54 ◼   ► And it contrasts with, is it,

01:54:57 ◼   ► I thought it was Brunner, yeah, Brunner.

01:55:01 ◼   ► Soon after the iPhone debuted, Brunner said,

01:55:03 ◼   ► "Ammunition," which is the company that he's working at,

01:55:05 ◼   ► was approached by a very large Korean company

01:55:09 ◼   ► to create a touchscreen competitor.

01:55:11 ◼   ► They wanted us to do it in six weeks, he laughed.

01:55:15 ◼   ► We were like, you don't realize this was years?

01:55:17 ◼   ► This was years of a lot of very good people.

01:55:20 ◼   ► - I wonder what company it was.

01:55:21 ◼   ► I guess it could-- - I really don't,

01:55:22 ◼   ► I really hard to say.

01:55:24 ◼   ► - I guess it could have been LG,

01:55:26 ◼   ► but it's pretty clearly Samsung.

01:55:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, they do talk about LG earlier, but yeah, it doesn't.

01:55:32 ◼   ► - We would like something like this,

01:55:35 ◼   ► and we would like it in six weeks.

01:55:38 ◼   ► - Let's just slap something together.

01:55:43 ◼   ► - All right, last thing.

01:55:44 ◼   ► I'll just look at Apple's,

01:55:45 ◼   ► I'm looking at Apple's executive bios.

01:55:47 ◼   ► So there's 14 SVPs or above.

01:55:50 ◼   ► They talked to Cook, and they talked to obviously Johnny,

01:55:56 ◼   ► and they talked to Jeff Williams.

01:55:59 ◼   ► there were and who knows maybe he talked to other people and they're just quotes didn't make it use

01:56:02 ◼   ► it but no eddie q no federigi no luka my street luka he's what is he cfo and there's no right he

01:56:09 ◼   ► talked to the cfo that works much yeah dan ricci gets mentioned riccio hardware engineering where

01:56:14 ◼   ► they're talking but it wasn't a quote it was just like a story about in it you know like an

01:56:18 ◼   ► engineering hassle and uh no bruce swole but why would you talk to a lawyer oh god bruce swole is

01:56:24 ◼   ► probably just sweating over this article.

01:56:26 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:56:27 ◼   ► God.

01:56:27 ◼   ► - You wanted nothing to do with it.

01:56:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, Bruce Wohl told me, go fuck yourself.

01:56:31 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:56:34 ◼   ► You better watch what you write.

01:56:35 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:56:37 ◼   ► And no shiller.

01:56:41 ◼   ► But I'm not surprised by any of that.

01:56:43 ◼   ► I am a little surprised by the talk to Jeff Williams.

01:56:46 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:56:49 ◼   ► - I'm not quite sure why operations would rate and,

01:56:51 ◼   ► you know,

01:56:54 ◼   ► marketing or software engineering when you know, but I don't know like who knows he maybe talked

01:56:59 ◼   ► to Federighi extensively and just I mean maybe he felt that he was getting I mean the the Williams

01:57:03 ◼   ► anecdotes are interesting just I mean because of the way he's reticent to talk and and then uh

01:57:11 ◼   ► you know maybe you talked to Schiller and he just felt like he was getting sprayed in the face with

01:57:16 ◼   ► the firehose of.

01:57:16 ◼   ► Marketing stuff, yeah, maybe could be.

01:57:19 ◼   ► Anyway, that feels like a show.

01:57:23 ◼   ► John moles I thank you.

01:57:25 ◼   ► Thank you. People can get all the moles they want.

01:57:29 ◼   ► But driving by my house, driving by his house,

01:57:32 ◼   ► look for his new car, don't key it up.

01:57:35 ◼   ► Please please do not keep my car.

01:57:38 ◼   ► And you got the at moles Twitter account and you've got

01:57:43 ◼   ► your very nice website dot net, very nice website dot net.

01:57:48 ◼   ► And now you're on about eight different podcasts.

01:57:51 ◼   ► - I am. - You got--

01:57:53 ◼   ► - And working on another one, actually.

01:57:54 ◼   ► - Oh, no shocker there.

01:57:56 ◼   ► Are you kidding me? - Yeah, right.

01:57:57 ◼   ► - Are you kidding me?

01:57:58 ◼   ► How do you do it?

01:58:00 ◼   ► I'm exhausted doing this one show a week.

01:58:02 ◼   ► Exha--

01:58:03 ◼   ► Did I have a--

01:58:04 ◼   ► - Well, this is two shows worth.

01:58:05 ◼   ► - Have I mentioned that I'm apparently

01:58:07 ◼   ► not a very hard worker?

01:58:09 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:58:11 ◼   ► You should see me.

01:58:14 ◼   ► I this should be like a video show you saying that you're going to do another podcast.

01:58:17 ◼   ► I've slumped I visibly slumped.

01:58:19 ◼   ► It was like the air got let out of me and I don't have to do the show.

01:58:22 ◼   ► So okay well so my other two podcasts my the trick turning this car around and the rebound

01:58:27 ◼   ► both of both of them are like less than an hour.

01:58:29 ◼   ► Okay so that's you know that's your talk show right there we go because this is approaching

01:58:34 ◼   ► two hours now and then the other one is just something that I'm doing for fun that will

01:58:37 ◼   ► never make any money so.

01:58:40 ◼   ► We'll never have advertisers. It's just like it's gonna be hanging out with if it ever comes to fruition. It's gonna be

01:58:45 ◼   ► Hanging out with a couple of dudes talking about comic book TV shows

01:58:49 ◼   ► Just for you, we'll have you on all right, that's great. I'm hanging up