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The Talk Show

104: ‘2014 Year in Review’ With Guest Rene Ritchie

 

00:00:00 ◼   ► So where to start I say we let's just talk about it Renee Richie. Let's talk year in review. Yes

00:00:04 ◼   ► Where better to start than January?

00:00:07 ◼   ► It was a quiet beginning of the year

00:00:10 ◼   ► It was so quiet that people were again pounding the doom drums that Apple wasn't doing anything anymore

00:00:14 ◼   ► Yeah, and maybe even before we get into details like January

00:00:18 ◼   ► Maybe just take that and and use it like to me like the year in review as a whole like with zoom out big level

00:00:26 ◼   ► What are we gonna look back on this year? I?

00:00:28 ◼   ► Would say that this was the year where?

00:00:31 ◼   ► that

00:00:33 ◼   ► That sense that that Apple can't do it anymore since got rubbed away slowly, but surely over the course of the year I

00:00:40 ◼   ► agree, I think it built up to I think it reached a crescendo because you know people kept making a big deal of Tim Cook saying

00:00:46 ◼   ► We'd be releasing new product character categories throughout the year and then as the months ticked on they seem to get more and more

00:00:52 ◼   ► personally angry with him

00:00:55 ◼   ► Yeah, I think so too and I think because it the the naysayers

00:00:59 ◼   ► Have been the down on cook overall. Anyway, like that's the root of their naysaying

00:01:06 ◼   ► Yeah, we go over the short term at least they wanted him fired. They said he was destroying Apple

00:01:12 ◼   ► They kept comparing him to Steve Jobs in a very negative way and looking back at a nine-site. It's absolutely ridiculous

00:01:18 ◼   ► Yeah, I was just thinking that

00:01:21 ◼   ► Before we started recording. I was thinking that I don't think anybody called for that in 2014

00:01:26 ◼   ► But at least in 2013 you can find several instances of

00:01:29 ◼   ► ostensibly serious

00:01:31 ◼   ► Business writers calling either for Tim Cook to be outright fired or at least calling for Apple's board to like

00:01:39 ◼   ► Rain him in and and have him rejigger the company

00:01:42 ◼   ► We did have haunted Empire. I think earlier this year which sort of showed that Apple was completely doomed without Steve Jobs

00:01:48 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it's I think that's sort of the publication of haunted Empire

00:01:53 ◼   ► Her first name her last name is Kane or yeah, you could you could Tori. Yeah, you could Tori Kane

00:02:01 ◼   ► not sure I

00:02:03 ◼   ► Would say that the publication of her book haunted Empire was sort of the I was gonna say high watermark

00:02:08 ◼   ► But I would say maybe the low low watermark of Apple nay saying yeah

00:02:13 ◼   ► When did that come in that was probably February?

00:02:17 ◼   ► Yeah, it must it was when I was with Jason snow, which means it had to be around Macworld time or something

00:02:22 ◼   ► Yeah, which was I think February. Yeah last year

00:02:25 ◼   ► Yeah, and I could not help but get the feeling when I read it that it was rushed into publication

00:02:33 ◼   ► because I kind of felt like at least if she didn't know at least her the

00:02:39 ◼   ► editorial team at her publisher

00:02:41 ◼   ► Sort of got the sense that that the time was kicking on that sort of doom and gloom

00:02:46 ◼   ► Which was interesting because you could probably make an argument for a haunted empire, but

00:02:52 ◼   ► they didn't even make an attempt to make it.

00:02:53 ◼   ► It was a bunch of pages strung together and nothing resembling a book.

00:02:57 ◼   ► Yeah, and a couple of anecdotes to string it together.

00:03:01 ◼   ► I do think, though, like if there is—I think it was a very bad book, and I think it's already

00:03:07 ◼   ► showing its age, and I think it's only going to look worse as the years go on.

00:03:12 ◼   ► But on the other hand, I'm kind of glad the book exists because it captures that sort

00:03:18 ◼   ► of like post Steve Jobs pre-Apple Watch negative Apple perspective.

00:03:28 ◼   ► Like in hindsight, you know what I mean?

00:03:30 ◼   ► It's like these years, they always blur together and four or five years from now, it's like

00:03:35 ◼   ► this whole, you know, period in between where the Apple Watch was announced and when we

00:03:40 ◼   ► we actually have it and we have generation two and three

00:03:43 ◼   ► by four or five years from now.

00:03:45 ◼   ► It'll just be a blink, we'll snap our fingers

00:03:49 ◼   ► and think about this interim period.

00:03:51 ◼   ► But I feel like her book sort of captures

00:03:53 ◼   ► that epitomizes that sort of negative viewpoint.

00:03:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think that's absolutely true.

00:03:58 ◼   ► We do tend to look back sort of the rose colored glasses,

00:04:00 ◼   ► the original iPhone, the original iPad,

00:04:02 ◼   ► they couldn't do anywhere nearly what they could do now,

00:04:04 ◼   ► but we still look at them with fondness.

00:04:06 ◼   ► We think of current software updates as being buggy,

00:04:08 ◼   ► But you look back at iOS, you know, two point something

00:04:11 ◼   ► when everyone was complaining it couldn't attach

00:04:13 ◼   ► to a 3G network and Apple was rushing out a fix.

00:04:15 ◼   ► We have this weird sort of affection, I think,

00:04:18 ◼   ► for the past.

00:04:18 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:04:19 ◼   ► So I do, I think that's 2014 in a nutshell,

00:04:24 ◼   ► is that the world at large and the conventional wisdom

00:04:28 ◼   ► about Apple and about Tim Cook's leadership

00:04:30 ◼   ► have caught up to reality, which is that the company was,

00:04:35 ◼   ► you know, Steve Jobs left the company in very good shape

00:04:38 ◼   ► and in very good hands

00:04:41 ◼   ► and it took about

00:04:42 ◼   ► two or three years it seems for the mainstream financial media to sort of

00:04:47 ◼   ► concede that point

00:04:48 ◼   ► i would say that almost a full three years right because he died in twenty

00:04:52 ◼   ► eleven

00:04:53 ◼   ► i would say it was a full three years

00:04:55 ◼   ► and tim cook i mean the company has never been worth more the stock prices

00:04:58 ◼   ► through the roof they've introduced not only the apple watch but apple pay

00:05:02 ◼   ► they have an A8X processor they have a 5k iMac

00:05:05 ◼   ► And you still look at Fortune contributor networks sometimes

00:05:08 ◼   ► and you just wanna know how they get published.

00:05:11 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:05:12 ◼   ► All right, you're in review, January.

00:05:14 ◼   ► Definitely a slow start, I think.

00:05:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, again, for some years,

00:05:20 ◼   ► one year we got the Verizon iPhone in January,

00:05:22 ◼   ► one year we got an education event,

00:05:24 ◼   ► previous years we had the introduction of the iPad,

00:05:26 ◼   ► we've had Macworld, the introduction of the iPhone.

00:05:28 ◼   ► So there was sort of, for a long period of time,

00:05:30 ◼   ► there were events that were, there was news in January.

00:05:33 ◼   ► And I think last year there was nothing until WBC

00:05:36 ◼   ► and this year I think it was almost identical to that.

00:05:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, I would say so.

00:05:42 ◼   ► I mean there's, you know,

00:05:45 ◼   ► now that Apple doesn't make announcements in January

00:05:48 ◼   ► or at least they haven't in recent years,

00:05:51 ◼   ► I mean who knows this year in theory

00:05:53 ◼   ► they might have a watch event,

00:05:55 ◼   ► but it's pretty much left to CES,

00:05:58 ◼   ► which Apple doesn't take part in,

00:06:02 ◼   ► for all of the industry news.

00:06:04 ◼   ► I don't recall anything from this year to 2014 CES

00:06:08 ◼   ► that ended up mattering a damn bit.

00:06:12 ◼   ► - No, I mean, I think this year will be different

00:06:14 ◼   ► just because of home kit and health kit and carplay.

00:06:16 ◼   ► But last year, CES was a graveyard.

00:06:19 ◼   ► It was just almost like matrix shelf after matrix shelf

00:06:22 ◼   ► of cases and nothing else.

00:06:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I don't think they knew

00:06:25 ◼   ► what they were going to, you know, going to,

00:06:28 ◼   ► the industry as a whole didn't even know

00:06:29 ◼   ► what they were trying to make.

00:06:31 ◼   ► Yeah, they were making their fitness bands.

00:06:33 ◼   ► And I remember one of the worst things I saw at CES

00:06:35 ◼   ► was an Android powered car system

00:06:37 ◼   ► and it was running gingerbread.

00:06:39 ◼   ► And the guy told us with a straight face

00:06:41 ◼   ► that you could leave it on for five days

00:06:42 ◼   ► but it would drain your car battery.

00:06:44 ◼   ► So you had to put it in standby mode.

00:06:46 ◼   ► But if you put it, sorry, but if you turned it off,

00:06:47 ◼   ► it would take like five minutes to boot again.

00:06:50 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:06:51 ◼   ► This was something that they actually had as a press event.

00:06:54 ◼   ► - Are you going to CES again this year?

00:06:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, absolutely.

00:06:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, what's it, Dan Fromer who was on the show last week

00:07:00 ◼   ► is going for the first time this year.

00:07:02 ◼   ► And like I said with him, I always talk about going,

00:07:06 ◼   ► but I've never gone.

00:07:07 ◼   ► - It's alternatively completely barren or incredibly busy

00:07:10 ◼   ► and you never know what's gonna happen year to year.

00:07:12 ◼   ► So I don't have high faith for it,

00:07:15 ◼   ► but I think this year will be different

00:07:16 ◼   ► 'cause we will have a watch event,

00:07:18 ◼   ► maybe we'll see another Apple television,

00:07:19 ◼   ► maybe a bigger iPad.

00:07:20 ◼   ► The spring sounds exciting this year,

00:07:22 ◼   ► but last year up until June,

00:07:24 ◼   ► it really was everyone just saying,

00:07:26 ◼   ► where's the new stuff from Apple?

00:07:27 ◼   ► Where's the new stuff?

00:07:27 ◼   ► Are they capable of innovating still?

00:07:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, why do we have to wait?

00:07:31 ◼   ► Why do we have to wait for them to be ready for something?

00:07:33 ◼   ► - Well, that's the thing that I don't understand is do,

00:07:35 ◼   ► would anybody have wanted a 2006 iPhone?

00:07:37 ◼   ► No, because it was not a product yet.

00:07:40 ◼   ► And the Apple Watch won't be a product

00:07:42 ◼   ► until early next year.

00:07:43 ◼   ► You don't want them to ship what they have right now.

00:07:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it, you know, to compare and contrast with,

00:07:50 ◼   ► I think the antithesis of Apple's, you know,

00:07:53 ◼   ► we'll let you know when we're ready to show you attitude,

00:07:55 ◼   ► it's Google, you know, who has been,

00:07:59 ◼   ► you know, Google Glass was clearly released ahead of its time.

00:08:03 ◼   ► I mean, it still isn't a retail consumer product, but the fact that they sold it at all to,

00:08:08 ◼   ► what did they call the people, explorers?

00:08:10 ◼   ► Yes.

00:08:11 ◼   ► You know, is the antithesis of Apple's strategy.

00:08:14 ◼   ► That would be the equivalent of if Apple had let WWDC explorers start wearing and using

00:08:21 ◼   ► an Apple Watch, you know, 18 months ago.

00:08:24 ◼   ► Running like Skankwatch software or something.

00:08:26 ◼   ► Right.

00:08:27 ◼   ► And you know the self-driving cars

00:08:29 ◼   ► So many things that Google does they show

00:08:33 ◼   ► Way early and in some sense I the the the I don't think it's productive and you know

00:08:41 ◼   ► Every time I bring it up some people mention that the cars in particular

00:08:45 ◼   ► It's impossible to do it without showing your hand because there's no way to road test them

00:08:50 ◼   ► You know, you have to road test them in public before you can release them and you know way to keep once

00:08:55 ◼   ► it's out in the road you can't keep it secret. So maybe the self-driving cars is a bit of

00:08:59 ◼   ► a bad example. But the other products they do, they release and I think ultimately it's

00:09:09 ◼   ► counterproductive because I think it saps away excitement from the real things you actually

00:09:15 ◼   ► have available to sell to people. But on the other hand, it absolutely works to satisfy

00:09:23 ◼   ► the desires of the tech press as an industry because you're giving them something to write

00:09:29 ◼   ► about.

00:09:30 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that's exactly it.

00:09:31 ◼   ► I think for the tech press, perception really is reality.

00:09:34 ◼   ► So if we see a demo of the Moto 240 or 360 or whatever it is, even though it's not real,

00:09:39 ◼   ► even though leaving a screen like that on, like what they showed in the video is a complete

00:09:43 ◼   ► science fiction fantasy, it sets expectations for that and it makes people think that Google's

00:09:47 ◼   ► really busy and that product is coming and they're innovating and they're doing all these

00:09:50 ◼   ► things.

00:09:51 ◼   ► if it comes out in some cases, you know, it's a complete turd, but everyone's already seen the video the excitements already happened

00:09:57 ◼   ► And then everything else from then on is it his appointment even things made by Apple or another company?

00:10:01 ◼   ► Yeah, it's I think moltz has said it best where he's you know

00:10:05 ◼   ► I think it's moltz but one of his lines is that you know Apple's current products continue to

00:10:12 ◼   ► Fail when compared to the upcoming products in future years from its competitors

00:10:18 ◼   ► It's like the iPhone 5c was a huge disappointment even though it was the third most popular phone in the world and the iPad sales

00:10:24 ◼   ► Are lagging even though they're any company in the world would be happy to have that in their product line

00:10:28 ◼   ► Yeah, or another example. I just noticed this week and it's funny. I haven't linked it up yet, but

00:10:33 ◼   ► The same day or within 24 hours

00:10:37 ◼   ► There was a New York Times story about the success of Apple pay and about a whole bunch of nude retailers who've signed up for it

00:10:47 ◼   ► Some big supermarket chains like Winn-dixie, which is real big in the south here in the US. I

00:10:52 ◼   ► Forget who else but some big big name retailers have signed up

00:10:56 ◼   ► and

00:10:59 ◼   ► Companies like Whole Foods who've been on board since it started who said that it's you know

00:11:03 ◼   ► It accounts for over 1% of their transactions and an enormous percent of you know

00:11:07 ◼   ► The digital transactions or what would you call it cardless transactions?

00:11:12 ◼   ► And at the same time there were like three or four stories that I saw all based on the same analyst report about what what?

00:11:20 ◼   ► What trouble Apple pay is in because they've woken up

00:11:24 ◼   ► The MCX partners and really gotten the MCX partners to really want to do a good job

00:11:30 ◼   ► And so now Apple pays in trouble because MCX is is still coming

00:11:35 ◼   ► It's reminds me that article. I think it was two weeks ago where someone said Apple pay

00:11:39 ◼   ► probably another one of the Forbes contributor networks, that Apple Pay was

00:11:43 ◼   ► a huge disappointment because it was only responsible for a very small amount of

00:11:47 ◼   ► transactions worldwide. Never mind America didn't have a much of equipment

00:11:50 ◼   ► for it and it was only available in America which is far behind in

00:11:54 ◼   ► terms of NFC. It's amazing what perspective they can bring to it when

00:11:57 ◼   ► they try hard enough to put it in a bad light. Right, that there's no other

00:12:01 ◼   ► digital, you know, pay with your phone transaction retail thing that's even

00:12:06 ◼   ► Close to as popular as Apple pay but somehow it's a failure because it's still only 1% of the market, you know

00:12:12 ◼   ► Two months in yeah in one car not even two months, right? It didn't even launch until November. Yeah, I think right

00:12:19 ◼   ► October I think came with iOS 8.1. All right. Well still that's a you know, right about two months. Yep, two months

00:12:26 ◼   ► And it's crazy to me too that

00:12:35 ◼   ► With the MCX that they don't mention the people who you know who want to promote it

00:12:40 ◼   ► Which I think I think it's not because they actually believe it. I think it's even though they're analysts rather than press

00:12:45 ◼   ► I think it's this this

00:12:47 ◼   ► Idea that you want to present everything as a neck-and-neck battle, right?

00:12:52 ◼   ► You know and so Apple pay is threatened by MCX because it's gonna be backed by Walmart and whoever else and they have you know

00:13:01 ◼   ► huge huge footprint in retail

00:13:04 ◼   ► But they just skip over the most obvious aspects of what has made Apple pay

00:13:10 ◼   ► successful

00:13:12 ◼   ► which is

00:13:14 ◼   ► exactly what Tim Cook said on stage when he introduced it, which is

00:13:18 ◼   ► You know, it's it's one of like my biggest recurring mantras about Apple is don't underestimate how often

00:13:25 ◼   ► They're not giving you any spin any bullshit

00:13:28 ◼   ► they're just telling you flat out in plain language exactly why they did what

00:13:33 ◼   ► they did and with Apple Bay Tim Cook's explanation was we think everybody else

00:13:38 ◼   ► who's tried this to date has failed because they haven't concentrated on the

00:13:41 ◼   ► user experience and made that their priority that's what we've done we've

00:13:46 ◼   ► made it as easy as possible to use as quick to use and as privacy protecting

00:13:52 ◼   ► as we can, all in the name of the user.

00:13:57 ◼   ► You know, and if that's all they did, well then who, you know, what retailer would hook up the equipment?

00:14:02 ◼   ► But the other things they did secondary to the user focus is use the established

00:14:07 ◼   ► infrastructure for NFC payments and make the banks

00:14:12 ◼   ► happy by taking a very minimal cut and by promising

00:14:17 ◼   ► significantly increase security which gets the banks on board because the

00:14:23 ◼   ► banks can do the math and I really do think it works out which is that Apple's

00:14:27 ◼   ► little 0.15% cut of the transactions is less than the cost of fraud per

00:14:34 ◼   ► transaction that the banks have been used to I think that's absolutely true

00:14:39 ◼   ► especially when you look at and the the privacy and the security too when you

00:14:42 ◼   ► look at all the data breaches at the targets or the Home Depots but I think

00:14:45 ◼   ► You nailed it when you said it,

00:14:46 ◼   ► it's aligned with my interests.

00:14:48 ◼   ► I've gone to Apple Pay terminals,

00:14:50 ◼   ► even the demo ones set up at Apple when we were at the event

00:14:52 ◼   ► and they read my Canadian NFC credit card.

00:14:54 ◼   ► That technology is not gonna just benefit Apple,

00:14:56 ◼   ► it's gonna benefit everybody

00:14:57 ◼   ► who uses any sort of NFC transaction.

00:15:01 ◼   ► And you compare that to current currency

00:15:02 ◼   ► or whatever it's called,

00:15:03 ◼   ► and that you have to give the retailer your bank account,

00:15:06 ◼   ► you have to have a QR code, you have to scan the QR code.

00:15:09 ◼   ► And it is such a horrible experience

00:15:11 ◼   ► and it's not done to the benefit of the consumer,

00:15:13 ◼   ► done to try to increase the amount of to save money on transactions they pay the credit

00:15:17 ◼   ► card companies never mind how long it's gonna how much money is gonna cost them in terms

00:15:21 ◼   ► of cashiers fees for the incredibly complicated error prone system that they're establishing

00:15:25 ◼   ► right you can't prove yet that Tim Cook's explanation for you know why they thought

00:15:31 ◼   ► Apple pay would be successful and why it seems to be successful today are true and that cut

00:15:37 ◼   ► you know that a user focused approach is is the way to get it done

00:15:42 ◼   ► and who knows maybe something like currency will also become popular

00:15:48 ◼   ► i don't i don't know i have my doubts about currency in particular but

00:15:52 ◼   ► you know it could be that something that's a lot more retailer friendly as

00:15:56 ◼   ► opposed to consumer friendly could work

00:15:58 ◼   ► but the evidence today suggests you know that what apple said was exactly right

00:16:04 ◼   ► it's also uh...

00:16:05 ◼   ► What benefits the retailer is interesting

00:16:08 ◼   ► because me getting through the checkout line

00:16:10 ◼   ► really quickly benefits the retailer.

00:16:12 ◼   ► And I believe it's my understanding that a lot of,

00:16:15 ◼   ► they signed multi-year agreements with currency

00:16:17 ◼   ► and with MCX when they started,

00:16:19 ◼   ► which was a silly thing to do, but they did it.

00:16:20 ◼   ► But I believe a lot of those expire pretty early on

00:16:22 ◼   ► this year and it'll be interesting, sorry, not this year,

00:16:24 ◼   ► but in 2015, and it'll be interesting to see how many

00:16:27 ◼   ► of those adopt Apple Pay as soon as they are

00:16:29 ◼   ► contractually allowed to.

00:16:30 ◼   ► - And the other thing that I keep thinking about

00:16:34 ◼   ► as a technical limitation is the way that there's one thing that Apple Pay has that

00:16:39 ◼   ► no other payment system that would work on the iPhone at least. I mean obviously like

00:16:44 ◼   ► what Google could enable on Android or Microsoft with Windows Phone is different but at least

00:16:49 ◼   ► if you want iPhone using customers, the one thing they have that nobody else can do is

00:16:55 ◼   ► the way that it works at the system level rather than the app level. Like and I just

00:17:00 ◼   ► can't emphasize enough for anybody out there who hasn't used Apple Pay yet because you

00:17:04 ◼   ► don't have an iPhone 6 or because you don't shop at one of the places that supports it

00:17:09 ◼   ► yet. But I just can't emphasize enough how instead of like feeling like a one step process,

00:17:18 ◼   ► it almost feels like a zero step process because you don't have to unlock your phone. You just

00:17:23 ◼   ► take the phone, even if it's not on, and just get it within an inch of the terminal, rest

00:17:29 ◼   ► your thumb on the reader and that's it.

00:17:32 ◼   ► - It's gonna sound like--

00:17:34 ◼   ► - Nobody else can do that.

00:17:35 ◼   ► Like if a current C app on the iPhone,

00:17:38 ◼   ► you would have to unlock your phone, open the app,

00:17:41 ◼   ► and go from there, which is, you know,

00:17:46 ◼   ► it doesn't sound like a lot,

00:17:48 ◼   ► but compared to Apple Pay, it is a lot.

00:17:50 ◼   ► - I get upset, most places here,

00:17:52 ◼   ► I can just tap my card and go,

00:17:53 ◼   ► and when it doesn't work, you feel like an animal

00:17:55 ◼   ► having to put it in and put in a pin code or swipe it.

00:17:58 ◼   ► I haven't had a swipe or sign something in over a year.

00:18:01 ◼   ► But it reminds me of something else

00:18:03 ◼   ► and it's a bit of a tangent, but I think it's the same thing.

00:18:06 ◼   ► It all goes back to Apple making like the A8 chipset

00:18:09 ◼   ► or the 8X chipset in that you take the cameras,

00:18:12 ◼   ► for instance, I take out my iPhone,

00:18:13 ◼   ► I can just take a picture and nine out of 10 times,

00:18:15 ◼   ► it's gonna be a really good everyday picture.

00:18:19 ◼   ► And that's because Apple makes

00:18:20 ◼   ► their own image signal processor.

00:18:22 ◼   ► When you look at Microsoft who buys off the shelf chips,

00:18:24 ◼   ► they have to put really big glass on the front

00:18:26 ◼   ► and collect as much light as they can

00:18:28 ◼   ► because they're using off the shelf chips.

00:18:30 ◼   ► There's no advantage to them there.

00:18:32 ◼   ► Google has no idea what hardware

00:18:33 ◼   ► or what software is running on their phones.

00:18:35 ◼   ► They try to suck it up to the server

00:18:36 ◼   ► and do all the auto awesome stuff.

00:18:37 ◼   ► But Apple is just making sure that

00:18:39 ◼   ► they have a good camera on it,

00:18:41 ◼   ► they'll process it and almost any shot you take

00:18:43 ◼   ► will be useful for a normal person.

00:18:45 ◼   ► And that's the same thing.

00:18:47 ◼   ► You can't get that advantage unless you own

00:18:48 ◼   ► the entire stack the way that they do.

00:18:50 ◼   ► And now they're moving that into payments

00:18:51 ◼   ► and they're moving that into other areas with the iPhone.

00:18:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, you can't underestimate the advantage.

00:18:57 ◼   ► And I think it totally gets written off

00:19:00 ◼   ► by these naysaying analysts,

00:19:03 ◼   ► what an advantage Apple has by controlling

00:19:05 ◼   ► that level of the stack.

00:19:07 ◼   ► - I used to think they were naysaying,

00:19:09 ◼   ► and I have a friend who was a sell-side analyst,

00:19:11 ◼   ► and he explained it to me,

00:19:11 ◼   ► and it's that the press reports analysts

00:19:13 ◼   ► as though they're giving comments to readers,

00:19:15 ◼   ► and their comments are not meant for their readers,

00:19:17 ◼   ► they're meant to manipulate the markets.

00:19:19 ◼   ► And what they say has very little to do

00:19:20 ◼   ► with what they believe.

00:19:21 ◼   ► It's entirely, they probably told their own clients

00:19:23 ◼   ► something different two days ago, or three days ago,

00:19:26 ◼   ► and now they want to produce results for them.

00:19:28 ◼   ► So it's so undependable, I don't know why it gets reported.

00:19:31 ◼   ► - Right, like an analyst who comes out with a report

00:19:34 ◼   ► that seems to be very pessimistic

00:19:35 ◼   ► about Apple Pay's long-term prospects,

00:19:38 ◼   ► might in fact, honestly, privately,

00:19:40 ◼   ► in terms of where he's putting money

00:19:42 ◼   ► and advising his clients to put money,

00:19:43 ◼   ► being very bullish on the future of Apple Pay.

00:19:46 ◼   ► - It's like that video with Crane from a couple years ago

00:19:48 ◼   ► where he says, "You want to make money?

00:19:49 ◼   ► You spread a rumor saying the iPhone is gonna be delayed.

00:19:52 ◼   ► You call up the news networks

00:19:53 ◼   ► and you tell them it's gonna be delayed.

00:19:54 ◼   ► Then all of a sudden Apple's down

00:19:55 ◼   ► you've shorted all the shares. I think that happens a lot. Yeah. What was that

00:19:58 ◼   ► guy's name? Jim Cramer. Yeah, Jim Cramer. That's it. Yeah, it's baffling, but and

00:20:04 ◼   ► again this stuff keeps getting reported as though it's factual accounting on

00:20:06 ◼   ► what Apple's doing. What else in the first half of the year? I think there was

00:20:14 ◼   ► was Angela, I think Angela Ahrens was in early on in the year. Yeah, I do think so.

00:20:20 ◼   ► When was she hired?

00:20:22 ◼   ► - She was definitely, February, March.

00:20:24 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:20:25 ◼   ► - That's a complete turnaround from John Browett

00:20:27 ◼   ► from the previous year.

00:20:27 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:20:28 ◼   ► - And I think that's super interesting

00:20:29 ◼   ► because Apple is really doing well in Apple stores,

00:20:32 ◼   ► but some people will say that it's a stale experience

00:20:35 ◼   ► that they haven't evolved it.

00:20:36 ◼   ► Even though it's working, it's hugely successful.

00:20:38 ◼   ► But they gave her not only Apple retail,

00:20:40 ◼   ► but Apple Online as well,

00:20:42 ◼   ► which used to operate almost as separate businesses.

00:20:44 ◼   ► And it's similar to giving Federiki control

00:20:46 ◼   ► over both OS X and iOS,

00:20:48 ◼   ► and that those sort of artificial walls are falling down

00:20:51 ◼   ► and it's providing better service for everybody involved.

00:20:54 ◼   ► - So Angela Arnnst, her hiring was announced a year ago

00:20:59 ◼   ► in October 2013, but she did not start until,

00:21:03 ◼   ► I believe February or March of 2014.

00:21:07 ◼   ► I've said this before, and it seems obvious,

00:21:10 ◼   ► but it's so clear to me that the reason why they hired her

00:21:13 ◼   ► and why she would take the job is because of the watch.

00:21:17 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:21:18 ◼   ► - Well, she was a CEO of Burberry.

00:21:20 ◼   ► That's a huge job and people didn't understand

00:21:21 ◼   ► why she'd become a senior vice president at Apple,

00:21:24 ◼   ► even though the senior vice president of retail

00:21:25 ◼   ► and now online as well is a huge job.

00:21:28 ◼   ► It's like being a CEO of another company,

00:21:31 ◼   ► but it's still, I think you're exactly right.

00:21:32 ◼   ► Apple dangled something in front of her

00:21:35 ◼   ► that was a challenge and people like that want a challenge.

00:21:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, totally.

00:21:39 ◼   ► And it does seem, it seems, you know,

00:21:42 ◼   ► it's not like, we haven't really seen the ARNSTs effect

00:21:45 ◼   ► on anything in retail yet,

00:21:48 ◼   ► but I don't think there's anybody who doesn't think

00:21:50 ◼   ► that that's coming.

00:21:51 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:21:52 ◼   ► - You know, I think that there's half of it,

00:21:55 ◼   ► I think is that changes like that take a lot of time

00:21:58 ◼   ► because it, or not a lot of time,

00:22:01 ◼   ► but a lot of time compared to our industry, right?

00:22:04 ◼   ► Because you can't do it digitally.

00:22:05 ◼   ► You can't just, you know, have a new store and, you know,

00:22:10 ◼   ► like they do with the online store,

00:22:12 ◼   ► put up a sticky note for 15 minutes.

00:22:14 ◼   ► And then when you come back, it's an all new store,

00:22:17 ◼   ► you know, this brick and mortar stuff takes physical, you know, actual time.

00:22:21 ◼   ► And, you know, to take a store down and put it back up is time when you're not

00:22:26 ◼   ► making sales, you know? So like in San Francisco,

00:22:29 ◼   ► I don't know if the new store is open yet,

00:22:31 ◼   ► but they're not putting the new store on the same spot as the old store.

00:22:34 ◼   ► They're putting it like on the other corner around, uh,

00:22:37 ◼   ► what's the name of that part? Union square. Yep. Um, you know,

00:22:42 ◼   ► and you can't do that everywhere where Apple has a retail store. You know,

00:22:46 ◼   ► most of the ones that are in shopping malls,

00:22:50 ◼   ► you could, I guess, get another spot in the mall,

00:22:53 ◼   ► but who knows if there's one, you know,

00:22:55 ◼   ► it all depends on availability

00:22:56 ◼   ► that's outside the control of Apple.

00:22:58 ◼   ► - And they're not like a carrier company

00:23:00 ◼   ► who's gonna just put a little kiosk out front

00:23:01 ◼   ► while the store is closed behind it.

00:23:03 ◼   ► - Right, exactly.

00:23:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think you're right.

00:23:08 ◼   ► I think as the watch starts to deploy into the stores

00:23:11 ◼   ► and as the other products start coming online for next year,

00:23:12 ◼   ► we're gonna see the stores sort of transform to,

00:23:15 ◼   ► I don't know if fashion is the right word.

00:23:17 ◼   ► I think Apple's doing something really interesting

00:23:19 ◼   ► where technology is meeting fashion,

00:23:20 ◼   ► but it's gonna be an Apple store

00:23:22 ◼   ► that has to be different than it was in the past.

00:23:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, let me see, anything else?

00:23:26 ◼   ► I don't really see much else.

00:23:28 ◼   ► - Beats, I think, was announced earlier on in the year

00:23:31 ◼   ► 'cause they had Dre on the stage for WVDC,

00:23:33 ◼   ► so it must have been.

00:23:33 ◼   ► - May 2014, Apple to acquire music,

00:23:37 ◼   ► Beats Music and Beats Electronics.

00:23:39 ◼   ► I don't know that that's major news,

00:23:44 ◼   ► But it's because it's not a huge it's a it's a much bigger transaction than apple has made

00:23:50 ◼   ► You know famously, you know, it's the biggest acquisition since they acquired next

00:23:55 ◼   ► Which of course, you know

00:23:57 ◼   ► Is the you know turned into like the backbone of the country of the company?

00:24:01 ◼   ► But uh, you know a 500 million dollar acquisition in 1997 was like was seriously a bet the company acquisition

00:24:11 ◼   ► Whereas a you know three billion or whatever it cost acquisition to get beats is pocket change

00:24:17 ◼   ► Absolutely. Yeah, 300 billion three billion dollars

00:24:20 ◼   ► You know, I mean you don't want to make a three billion dollar acquisition

00:24:24 ◼   ► That doesn't turn out well, but it certainly isn't gonna have any meaningful if it turns out to be a complete bust

00:24:30 ◼   ► It's not gonna hurt the company

00:24:31 ◼   ► I think more interesting than the beats acquisition was just the reactions to it from it was almost like everyone went through the the five

00:24:37 ◼   ► stages of grief with denial and anger and they just couldn't believe it and it

00:24:41 ◼   ► turns out it does make some sense there are you know selling headphones at Apple

00:24:45 ◼   ► stores makes a lot of sense and sort of a synergy between iTunes radio and Beats

00:24:49 ◼   ► music whatever it ends up being labeled makes a lot of sense yeah and I think I

00:24:55 ◼   ► don't know I still don't think overall it makes a ton of sense I'm still

00:24:59 ◼   ► waiting for the other shoe to drop on it but it's in some sense it does where

00:25:04 ◼   ► It's the only other iconic headphone company I can think of I mean it has nothing to do with you know, Marco Arment style

00:25:11 ◼   ► Quality analysis but rather you're out on the sidewalk and you see somebody walking while they're listening to their device and you know

00:25:21 ◼   ► Those white earbuds that Apple's been making ever since 2001 are truly iconic

00:25:26 ◼   ► I mean they even had for years an ad campaign that was kind of based on that right with the silhouettes dancing silhouettes

00:25:33 ◼   ► Who you know have white earbuds and a white why?

00:25:37 ◼   ► You know connector draped around their body

00:25:40 ◼   ► They own that right not that other companies had you know that they have a trademark on it and nobody can make white earbuds

00:25:46 ◼   ► But white earbuds people see them

00:25:48 ◼   ► They think that's somebody listening to an Apple device and beats is the only other company I can think of that has that sort of

00:25:54 ◼   ► Recognition yeah, they have that the other cache that the iPod commercials used to have ten years ago

00:26:00 ◼   ► But I think there's also an element to Eddie cues

00:26:02 ◼   ► Organization is just so big and there's gonna be a limit at some point to what he can do

00:26:06 ◼   ► I mean he's doing Apple pay now as well

00:26:08 ◼   ► He does the App Store and the iTunes store and he does all the contract negotiations

00:26:12 ◼   ► And if you could have Jimmy Iovine in there doing at least some of that it takes more stuff off of Eddie cues desk

00:26:18 ◼   ► Yeah something I've heard and it you know, I don't think this is surprising

00:26:22 ◼   ► That's probably what everybody was guessing anyway

00:26:24 ◼   ► but what I have heard recently was that at least inside Apple the beats acquisition is

00:26:30 ◼   ► Viewed as an Eddie thing that Eddie Eddie Eddie started it and he pushed for it Eddie drove it and not that that Tim

00:26:38 ◼   ► Cook wasn't engaged and I'm sure that at the negotiation level he was in fact deeply engaged

00:26:43 ◼   ► I mean, I don't think you know, Tim Cook has not like don't worry about the details sort of CEO

00:26:51 ◼   ► So not to diminish what Tim Cook's role in the negotiations might have been but in terms of

00:26:56 ◼   ► Advocating it and and you know

00:26:59 ◼   ► Pushing for it. It was in almost entirely an ediq thing

00:27:03 ◼   ► Because we didn't see anything about iTunes this year. We didn't see continuity for iTunes

00:27:08 ◼   ► For example, we didn't see a new iTunes music service iTunes radio still hasn't gone past the US and Australia

00:27:14 ◼   ► I think and iTunes is an aging platform. It's still based on web objects

00:27:18 ◼   ► is still based on their original software they use to manage you know the music store

00:27:22 ◼   ► and all of that at some point you know it's gonna be like a John Siracusa thing where

00:27:26 ◼   ► a thousand years from now this is gonna have to be fixed so what's the point between now

00:27:29 ◼   ► and then that it actually gets fixed and I don't know if beats has better software or

00:27:32 ◼   ► better solution but it could also be a catalyst to Apple finally fixing a lot of the infrastructure

00:27:38 ◼   ► things that they have to do with the iTunes store yeah I think you know above and beyond

00:27:43 ◼   ► whether it's based on web objects behind the scenes and and all of that I think it's ever

00:27:48 ◼   ► more clear that it's based on a model that just isn't relevant anymore. Which is, here's

00:27:56 ◼   ► a song you want and you give a retailer money for it and now you own a copy of it. That's

00:28:03 ◼   ► just not, that's just, that's done. I mean, I'm not done in the sense of they're not selling

00:28:09 ◼   ► any songs anymore, but that I can't see any way that that ever comes back.

00:28:16 ◼   ► Yes.

00:28:17 ◼   ► it's in permanent decline.

00:28:19 ◼   ► It's sort of like what standalone iPods are.

00:28:22 ◼   ► It's still a decent business,

00:28:26 ◼   ► but it's never going to increase quarter over quarter.

00:28:29 ◼   ► It's just gonna go into permanent decline.

00:28:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, and just like the iPod is being replaced

00:28:34 ◼   ► by the iPhone, in some cases, the iPad mini,

00:28:36 ◼   ► and now larger iPhones,

00:28:37 ◼   ► it makes sense for whatever iTunes was,

00:28:39 ◼   ► for Apple to get in early enough

00:28:41 ◼   ► to have whatever iTunes will end up being.

00:28:42 ◼   ► - Right, and it's, yeah, and in the same way

00:28:45 ◼   ► that it, you know, iPods sales decreasing doesn't mean that people are spending less

00:28:49 ◼   ► time with gadgets that play music. In the same way, music sales declining doesn't mean

00:28:55 ◼   ► people are spending less time listening to music. If anything, they're probably spending

00:29:00 ◼   ► more. You know, I wouldn't be surprised if you did a study and found out that people

00:29:03 ◼   ► listen to more music today or at least time spent listening to music than ever before.

00:29:09 ◼   ► It's just that the model is no longer buying and selling.

00:29:12 ◼   ► Yeah, it's not it's not what you had to buy it

00:29:15 ◼   ► It's not we had to wait in the radio people can get pretty much what they want when they want and that opens them up

00:29:18 ◼   ► To just consuming it almost non-stop if they want to

00:29:21 ◼   ► right

00:29:24 ◼   ► So, I don't know I'm still not sure what to make of that if is the beats thing an exception to the rule just

00:29:31 ◼   ► because it is it it combines two things that Apple wants to continue being a leader at which is

00:29:38 ◼   ► music listening hardware and

00:29:41 ◼   ► and digital distribution of legal music.

00:29:46 ◼   ► Is it just that Beats is like a rare,

00:29:49 ◼   ► perfect storm acquisition?

00:29:52 ◼   ► Or is it the sign of things to come

00:29:54 ◼   ► that Apple is going to loosen up

00:29:56 ◼   ► and become a company that does mid-level

00:30:01 ◼   ► or to high-level acquisitions with some frequency?

00:30:04 ◼   ► - I think, again, to your point about Apple

00:30:05 ◼   ► just saying what they really feel,

00:30:06 ◼   ► I think when Tim Cook says they're not religiously opposed

00:30:08 ◼   ► to big acquisitions,

00:30:10 ◼   ► I think he's absolutely sincere about that.

00:30:11 ◼   ► They'll do them when they make sense,

00:30:13 ◼   ► but it's gotta be something like Beats

00:30:14 ◼   ► where it gives them a hardware product.

00:30:16 ◼   ► They can sell the compliments and other hardware product,

00:30:18 ◼   ► a service they can roll out the compliments

00:30:20 ◼   ► and existing service,

00:30:21 ◼   ► and has executives that might be able to,

00:30:23 ◼   ► you know, a service, sorry,

00:30:24 ◼   ► executives and a culture that can integrate into Apple

00:30:27 ◼   ► and help them do the things that they wanna do.

00:30:29 ◼   ► - Right, and it doesn't really,

00:30:30 ◼   ► that's the thing that has me,

00:30:31 ◼   ► I'm still curious about it,

00:30:34 ◼   ► but it doesn't make me worried about it

00:30:36 ◼   ► the way that there's any number of other possible

00:30:40 ◼   ► three billion dollar-ish acquisitions

00:30:43 ◼   ► that Apple could have made that would raise my Spidey sense,

00:30:47 ◼   ► you know, in a way that Beats doesn't.

00:30:49 ◼   ► Because the biggest thing is that it doesn't fundamentally

00:30:52 ◼   ► change any of the areas of focus in Apple's attention.

00:30:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, like you said last week with Frommer,

00:30:58 ◼   ► it doesn't make them a conglomerate.

00:30:59 ◼   ► - Right, which is exactly what, you know,

00:31:02 ◼   ► to me is like the first canary I check in the coal mine

00:31:06 ◼   ► Is is Apple losing focus and becoming more of a conglomerate which I you know, we don't know

00:31:11 ◼   ► I mean, I don't say that I don't say that Apple becoming a

00:31:14 ◼   ► Multifocused conglomerate would be bad. We just have no idea and there's no history for Apple as

00:31:20 ◼   ► a you know

00:31:23 ◼   ► Whatever their revenue is, you know 50 or 200 billion dollar a year corporation

00:31:28 ◼   ► I mean, you know, they're an uncharted territory period there's you know, they're the most valuable company not just in tech but anywhere

00:31:34 ◼   ► But it would be so it wouldn't be you know them making seemingly

00:31:41 ◼   ► Unfocused acquisitions wouldn't make me sure that they were on the wrong track

00:31:47 ◼   ► But it would make me strongly suspect that they were on the wrong track

00:31:51 ◼   ► Yeah

00:31:51 ◼   ► And it's wonder how the analysts would treat it because it wouldn't be expected behavior

00:31:55 ◼   ► Google can compete with everybody they can compete with Amazon with Apple with

00:31:58 ◼   ► Microsoft with any tech company in the world and do it all at the same time and that's fine and interesting and wonderful

00:32:03 ◼   ► wonderful but you'd probably you probably hear howls all the way across the valley if

00:32:08 ◼   ► Apple started doing that yeah well and Google can compete with itself you know you know

00:32:13 ◼   ► Chromebooks versus Android tablets is a perfect example and I don't even say that that's a

00:32:19 ◼   ► mistake I think it kind of fits with Google's internal culture whereas if Apple had seemingly

00:32:27 ◼   ► confusing overlap between low-end Mac books and iPads, I would find that worrisome.

00:32:35 ◼   ► Yeah, agreed.

00:32:36 ◼   ► Like if Apple had a $399 MacBook, that to me would be very worrisome.

00:32:43 ◼   ► I still have in the back of my head this idea that Google bought Android because they were

00:32:46 ◼   ► panicked about mobile and then saw WebOS and smacked their head and thought that was a

00:32:50 ◼   ► way more Google product than buying Android, but then they were all in on Android and now

00:32:54 ◼   ► They're slowly gonna it's fun to get away to get chroma West to a point where that can be their version of web OS

00:32:59 ◼   ► That's an interesting. That's an interesting argument too because they ended up hiring

00:33:03 ◼   ► Matta Mattias Duarte. Yep

00:33:06 ◼   ► Take his name, right? Yeah, absolutely

00:33:09 ◼   ► Who was the you know lead designer behind web OS? Yeah

00:33:15 ◼   ► And they're slowly giving send our Patai control over the stack and he was you know

00:33:20 ◼   ► He's the web guy

00:33:21 ◼   ► He's Android always seemed like an odd product from Google because it's a web company and that was very native software

00:33:25 ◼   ► Yeah, and I really do think that that it took a long time for Google or for Android. I should say to

00:33:32 ◼   ► Not to not at the low end but at the sort of mid to high end to get any sort of foothold is that they

00:33:40 ◼   ► Were in such a deep hole design wise, you know

00:33:43 ◼   ► compared to the iPhone that any you know

00:33:46 ◼   ► even people who were inclined not to buy Apple stuff people who haven't ever bought Apple stuff and sort of want to you know,

00:33:54 ◼   ► It's a natural thing, you know people who've been sticking with the PC for years

00:33:57 ◼   ► and sort of having

00:34:00 ◼   ► Apple is for other people sort of mindset about the company

00:34:03 ◼   ► You know in 2011 even through 2012 you go into a store and compare the Android phones to

00:34:11 ◼   ► iPhone and it's you know, you don't even have to be a design critic

00:34:15 ◼   ► you just see that there's a serious difference in fit and finish in the software.

00:34:20 ◼   ► It was a very different priority.

00:34:22 ◼   ► Apple famously wanted to get the animation just absolutely nailed even in the first generation

00:34:27 ◼   ► iPhone, but they didn't need to have every single feature crammed in there where Android

00:34:31 ◼   ► was...

00:34:32 ◼   ► It wasn't designed to be a phone for everybody.

00:34:34 ◼   ► It was designed to be a phone that would protect Google's share of the web because they rightly

00:34:38 ◼   ► believe web was moving mobile.

00:34:40 ◼   ► Their priority wasn't that sort of interactivity.

00:34:42 ◼   ► They bought Android and they made it work.

00:34:46 ◼   ► But I remember even last year at CES, I was sitting there with the Nexus 4 or 5 trying

00:34:51 ◼   ► to use Gmail and just cursing out loud.

00:34:53 ◼   ► And Brian Klug from formerly of Anantech came over and quickly put it in developer mode

00:34:58 ◼   ► and the screen went bright red.

00:34:59 ◼   ► And he said that's because they're redrawing every cell four or five times trying to hope

00:35:02 ◼   ► that it would stick.

00:35:04 ◼   ► And their own graphics engineers couldn't get their own Gmail engineers to properly

00:35:09 ◼   ► code all of it.

00:35:10 ◼   ► That's why they've really locked things down now with material design and all the new things.

00:35:15 ◼   ► But it took them four or five years to fix the massive architectural problems that were

00:35:19 ◼   ► causing poor interaction.

00:35:21 ◼   ► Right.

00:35:22 ◼   ► And the difference with WebOS is that WebOS, right from the get-go, it had performance

00:35:25 ◼   ► problems because of the whole architecture of building it on top of like a WebKit rendering

00:35:31 ◼   ► engine.

00:35:32 ◼   ► combined with the state of mobile hardware in what was it 2009 when when

00:35:40 ◼   ► when the pre came out yeah but I you know in terms of an an elegant software

00:35:48 ◼   ► interface I mean I mean you could still it to this day I think you could argue

00:35:53 ◼   ► that the way that web OS handled notifications is the best design

00:35:56 ◼   ► anybody's come up with absolutely there synergies I mean it was almost the

00:36:01 ◼   ► fringe universe version of the iPhone if if John Rubenstein had won the keyboard

00:36:05 ◼   ► argument or if what's his name it won the the Linux argument or if the people

00:36:10 ◼   ► who wanted to use WebKit as the interface instead of creating UI kit had

00:36:13 ◼   ► won that argument that could have been an Apple product right Tony said Tony

00:36:17 ◼   ► Fidel yeah but instead they all ended up at palm making except for Fidel Rubenstein

00:36:21 ◼   ► and and the web the WebKit engineers ended up at palm making their version of

00:36:25 ◼   ► the iPhone yeah absolutely I I if you would have shown if you would have taken

00:36:30 ◼   ► of a palm pre back in time to you know 1998 1997 and shown it to my then self

00:36:38 ◼   ► and said what come you know this is a product from 2009 what company made it

00:36:42 ◼   ► you know scrub the logos off I would have guessed Apple yeah without question

00:36:46 ◼   ► especially if you just showed me the software and not the hardware the

00:36:50 ◼   ► hardware was a lot less appley but the software was extremely appley in my

00:36:56 ◼   ► opinion everything from the font choice to you know the roundness you know the

00:37:01 ◼   ► rounded corners of the screen the rounded corners of the cards on the

00:37:06 ◼   ► screen I think it was a very Apple DNA product software wise I've never seen

00:37:12 ◼   ► the p1 phone this fidel's group was working on but in I've always suspected

00:37:16 ◼   ► that if that had been the phone that had got the gone ahead of some reason p2

00:37:19 ◼   ► hadn't worked out and forest all's group hadn't been able to make the iPhone that

00:37:23 ◼   ► could have ended up being very similar to what the Pom Pre was. Yeah, and so it's interesting to think

00:37:27 ◼   ► hypothetically what would have happened if Google had purchased, had somehow obtained, webOS instead of Android and pushed for it because in

00:37:35 ◼   ► some sense the problems that webOS had were, I think,

00:37:39 ◼   ► not solvable by throwing money at them, but more easily solved by throwing money at it than Android.

00:37:46 ◼   ► Because with Android it was to me,

00:37:49 ◼   ► Fundamentally the fact that it was designed at the outset as a sort of blackberry

00:37:53 ◼   ► Style you know that it was going to you know a blackberry style mobile interface keyboard up down left right select

00:38:01 ◼   ► and

00:38:03 ◼   ► therefore had no

00:38:05 ◼   ► No, no at a foundation level aspect of a rich graphical interface with playful animations and high frame

00:38:13 ◼   ► Rates and stuff like that. I've told the story before but when I reviewed the g1 the very first Android phone that came out

00:38:18 ◼   ► I turned on the snake game and it said press up to start and I tried you know swiping up on the screen

00:38:23 ◼   ► Then I tried pressing the up arrow key

00:38:24 ◼   ► Then I tried pressing the up joypad and then I tried pressing up on whatever the other thing was on the other side

00:38:29 ◼   ► I tried eight different ways of signaling up and I couldn't get it to work

00:38:32 ◼   ► But there were eight different ways of signaling up right and that to me to find the very early years of Android

00:38:37 ◼   ► Might I remember too that it was the only way to select text was to use the up down left, right?

00:38:42 ◼   ► There was no way to touch on the screen to select text you had to

00:38:46 ◼   ► You know more or less use like arrow keys

00:38:48 ◼   ► And the original one you'd close the keyboard and there'd be the juke the Google search box just blinking at you wanting you to put

00:38:54 ◼   ► Text but there was no virtual keyboard so you couldn't input text

00:38:57 ◼   ► remember that

00:39:00 ◼   ► And that's one of the problems they were facing and and palm was a tiny team and they they coded circles around Google when it

00:39:06 ◼   ► came to phones in 2009

00:39:08 ◼   ► So anyway, that's an interesting what-if it's and to me it's of the last

00:39:15 ◼   ► of the post PC era, you know, from mid 2007 on,

00:39:20 ◼   ► the great tragedy of the whole thing is that

00:39:24 ◼   ► WebOS never, you know, didn't get a long enough time

00:39:27 ◼   ► to try to gain a foothold.

00:39:29 ◼   ► - Agreed.

00:39:30 ◼   ► - You know, I mean, I think it was a more elegant design

00:39:34 ◼   ► than Windows Phone.

00:39:36 ◼   ► And so just imagine if they had had somebody

00:39:39 ◼   ► with the wherewithal that Microsoft has shown

00:39:42 ◼   ► with Windows Phone to stick behind WebOS, you know?

00:39:46 ◼   ► And, you know, push the software forward,

00:39:49 ◼   ► break some of the performance bottlenecks,

00:39:52 ◼   ► but also just let Moore's Law help you out year after year.

00:39:56 ◼   ► You know, two, three years later,

00:39:58 ◼   ► WebOS I think would have been a lot more,

00:40:01 ◼   ► without even any software optimizations,

00:40:04 ◼   ► would have been a lot more tenable performance-wise.

00:40:08 ◼   ► - Absolutely, I mean, they had no secondary source of income.

00:40:10 ◼   ► Apple had Mac money originally,

00:40:11 ◼   ► Google had search money, even Samsung had appliance money.

00:40:14 ◼   ► Palm and now Blackberry, they have no additional sources

00:40:16 ◼   ► of income and so everything becomes,

00:40:18 ◼   ► everything becomes Bet the Company.

00:40:20 ◼   ► Every phone you put out becomes Bet the Company.

00:40:22 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:40:23 ◼   ► All right, let me take a break and thank our first sponsor

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00:43:10 ◼   ► So the first big Apple news of the year, 2014, really didn't come until WWDC.

00:43:14 ◼   ► >> Yeah. But what an event. >> Yeah. I think it was certainly -- it still

00:43:20 ◼   ► seems like -- it doesn't seem like as long ago as it is. It doesn't feel like six months

00:43:25 ◼   ► ago. No, it was amazing because I was sitting with you and Jason Snell and

00:43:30 ◼   ► John Siracusa and different people were just lighting up at different parts of

00:43:35 ◼   ► that event. It was just such a palpable reaction for them. Siracusa and Swift, right?

00:43:41 ◼   ► Well, he turned to Snell and he goes, "Am I dreaming? Because if I'm... you should tell me

00:43:44 ◼   ► because I might be in a fugue state. I don't know if this is real or not. Please

00:43:47 ◼   ► tell me that I'm actually listening to what I'm listening to." That was certainly

00:43:51 ◼   ► big news. You know, iOS 8 and Yosemite. It was the first time we got a look at Yosemite.

00:44:01 ◼   ► And I think, you know, certain, how should we say it? Not like a specific, you know,

00:44:11 ◼   ► like here's three lines of code, copy these exactly, this is how you do X, the recommended

00:44:17 ◼   ► But more in terms of like broad strokes philosophy

00:44:20 ◼   ► I think Apple started pushing a couple of new things not necessarily for the first time

00:44:25 ◼   ► But two examples I can think of was the heavy focus on

00:44:29 ◼   ► Dynamic user interface layout. Yeah

00:44:32 ◼   ► clearly

00:44:35 ◼   ► Preshadowing, you know pre, you know in in the run-up to the iPhone 6 and 6 plus

00:44:43 ◼   ► But I think in the long run more

00:44:45 ◼   ► Envisioning a world of iOS devices where there's a continuum of screen sizes, you know

00:44:53 ◼   ► And who knows maybe eventually something smaller than four inches

00:44:56 ◼   ► and

00:44:59 ◼   ► You know by all accounts maybe one of the things you know

00:45:02 ◼   ► That we'll be hearing about in 20 for early parts of 2015 would be a bigger screen some kind of iPad

00:45:08 ◼   ► that's bigger than 9.7 inches and

00:45:11 ◼   ► and not having to code a custom user interface for each size in that continuum.

00:45:19 ◼   ► It's a definite, it's a huge change from the way iOS development was until recently.

00:45:23 ◼   ► And it wasn't just about supporting the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.

00:45:28 ◼   ► >> The way I look at it, there was the integration theme, which we'll probably get to.

00:45:34 ◼   ► But the other big theme was this transition from pull to push,

00:45:37 ◼   ► where previously the interface was locked to the device.

00:45:40 ◼   ► and then slowly but surely with things like AirPlay and CarPlay and now WatchKit, the

00:45:46 ◼   ► interface is actually decoupled so you have the logic on one device and the interface

00:45:49 ◼   ► going somewhere else.

00:45:51 ◼   ► Or you have the logic for the app of the interface being able to be flexible between the 4-inch

00:45:55 ◼   ► screen size, 4.7, 6-inch.

00:45:57 ◼   ► Now that you have split view controllers on the iPhone 6 Plus, it's sort of like a mini

00:46:01 ◼   ► iPad.

00:46:02 ◼   ► So like you said, it can scale across those things, but it's all sort of one central part

00:46:07 ◼   ► of logic.

00:46:08 ◼   ► And then you add extensibility to it where previously you had to hunt around your iPhone

00:46:12 ◼   ► for anything.

00:46:13 ◼   ► You had to go between six different photo apps just to get the effects you wanted.

00:46:17 ◼   ► You had to leave to reply to a message.

00:46:19 ◼   ► You had to leave if you wanted to share to Tumblr.

00:46:21 ◼   ► You couldn't do that from where you were.

00:46:22 ◼   ► You had to go to the Tumblr app and do it.

00:46:24 ◼   ► And now all of that functionality has come to one place.

00:46:27 ◼   ► All of that is now independent.

00:46:28 ◼   ► You have these remote views.

00:46:30 ◼   ► And to me that's made, that sort of severing of that one unit into these more modular parts

00:46:34 ◼   ► has really made a huge difference not just in my workflow but where I think Apple could

00:46:38 ◼   ► take all these. I think it's the first big hint of much larger plans they have moving

00:46:42 ◼   ► forward with these devices.

00:46:44 ◼   ► Right and you mentioned both CarPlay which is that's how CarPlay works where CarPlay

00:46:48 ◼   ► is a dumb terminal effectively and you know take your iPhone out of Bluetooth range and

00:46:56 ◼   ► the only thing the screen is going to show you in your car is the stuff from the manufacturer.

00:47:01 ◼   ► You're not going to get any of the Apple play stuff or car play stuff.

00:47:05 ◼   ► No iOS at all.

00:47:09 ◼   ► It's only a it's really just effectively a projector.

00:47:12 ◼   ► Your iPhone is doing all of the computation.

00:47:14 ◼   ► Your iPhone is all of the storage.

00:47:16 ◼   ► Your iPhone is doing the networking for anything that's coming over cellular.

00:47:21 ◼   ► And the only thing that the screen in your car does is show you what the iPhone is showing

00:47:27 ◼   ► and report back to the phone where you're stabbing your fingers at it.

00:47:34 ◼   ► And the watch, you know, as we now know and as, you know, countless people have, you know,

00:47:40 ◼   ► the initial watch kit SDK shows, the first round of third party apps pretty much works

00:47:47 ◼   ► the same way.

00:47:48 ◼   ► You don't get to run any code.

00:47:49 ◼   ► There's no part of watch, this initial watch kit where your app runs code on the watch.

00:47:56 ◼   ► just a projected display of what your phone app, your iPhone app is showing it

00:48:02 ◼   ► and then the watch just reports back what you tapped on. I would like that

00:48:07 ◼   ► everywhere I mean I like the idea of CarPlay I bought the Toyota car before

00:48:11 ◼   ► they had any integration at all and my only option is to buy a new car if I

00:48:15 ◼   ► want anything but with CarPlay every time I upgrade iOS or upgrade my phone I

00:48:19 ◼   ► get a better experience I'd like that on my camera I'd like CameraPlay so that my

00:48:23 ◼   ► the Canon interface is replaced with iOS.

00:48:25 ◼   ► I don't wanna have Android appliances at home,

00:48:27 ◼   ► I wanna have them running iOS.

00:48:28 ◼   ► Just anytime there's a screen,

00:48:29 ◼   ► I would eventually like to be able to just put,

00:48:31 ◼   ► like project iOS right onto it.

00:48:34 ◼   ► - Ooh, doing that with a camera, like a Canon,

00:48:37 ◼   ► or like a serious, serious camera would be fascinating.

00:48:41 ◼   ► I mean, there is a move afoot in the camera world

00:48:44 ◼   ► to build in Wi-Fi, but it's,

00:48:47 ◼   ► and I don't have a camera that does it yet.

00:48:49 ◼   ► my Fuji X100S is a year off.

00:48:54 ◼   ► Like the brand new X100T,

00:48:56 ◼   ► which just came out a few weeks ago

00:48:58 ◼   ► and I linked to a review of it a couple of days ago,

00:49:01 ◼   ► now has WiFi, but it's clunky.

00:49:03 ◼   ► Like the only way to get it to work,

00:49:05 ◼   ► I haven't seen it,

00:49:05 ◼   ► but it's like you have to get a Fuji app from the app store

00:49:08 ◼   ► and then open the Fuji app on your phone

00:49:11 ◼   ► and then you can do something between your phone

00:49:14 ◼   ► and the camera.

00:49:17 ◼   ► Whereas having it be like CarPlay,

00:49:19 ◼   ► man, that would be fantastic.

00:49:21 ◼   ► - And it's great for Apple

00:49:21 ◼   ► because they're never gonna get into,

00:49:23 ◼   ► never is a long time,

00:49:24 ◼   ► but they're not gonna get into making appliances.

00:49:25 ◼   ► They're not gonna become a giant manufacturing conglomerate

00:49:27 ◼   ► like Samsung.

00:49:28 ◼   ► And they're not gonna license iOS

00:49:30 ◼   ► the way that Android is easily able to be put on any device.

00:49:33 ◼   ► But just projecting the interface,

00:49:34 ◼   ► it means they can still control it.

00:49:36 ◼   ► They in essence just take it over.

00:49:37 ◼   ► And the customer will have a great experience

00:49:39 ◼   ► and they don't have to relinquish any of the control

00:49:41 ◼   ► that they need for products.

00:49:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, it almost to me takes cameras

00:49:44 ◼   ► back to where they were pre-digital, right?

00:49:46 ◼   ► where when you load it, we had a 35 millimeter film camera.

00:49:50 ◼   ► The only things the camera did was let you take pictures.

00:49:54 ◼   ► You would look through a viewfinder and see,

00:49:57 ◼   ► and the camera would have things like a light set.

00:49:59 ◼   ► In the latter years, obviously in the early years,

00:50:01 ◼   ► you had to set all that stuff manually.

00:50:03 ◼   ► But by the latter years of the tail end of the film world,

00:50:08 ◼   ► it would do the exposure.

00:50:10 ◼   ► If you set things to auto, it would set the aperture,

00:50:13 ◼   ► set the exposure time.

00:50:15 ◼   ► And then, but it was all just about letting you take the next photo.

00:50:22 ◼   ► Then you'd push the button and the photo would be taken.

00:50:24 ◼   ► It would be stored on the film and that was it, right?

00:50:28 ◼   ► I would like a digital camera that worked like that.

00:50:30 ◼   ► Do whatever you can to help me get a perfect exposure and focus.

00:50:35 ◼   ► You know, set the focus distance, give me a recommended aperture, give me a recommended

00:50:39 ◼   ► exposure time or let me set any of those variables manually if I choose to.

00:50:44 ◼   ► And then when I hit click, it should just store the photo and then let me do everything

00:50:49 ◼   ► else over a wireless connection to my iPhone.

00:50:53 ◼   ► I would love that for a couple reasons.

00:50:55 ◼   ► One, if you don't have an iPhone, you would just get whatever the QNX CarPlay system is,

00:50:59 ◼   ► you know, whatever the standard software is on the phone.

00:51:02 ◼   ► But if you do have it, you get a better experience and that becomes the same reason you want

00:51:05 ◼   ► to get CarPlay.

00:51:06 ◼   ► You know, this stuff all works better if you happen to have an iPhone.

00:51:09 ◼   ► Yeah, boy, that would be great.

00:51:12 ◼   ► But I do totally think that the WWDC 2014 heralded that sort of future.

00:51:19 ◼   ► I think so too.

00:51:20 ◼   ► And I think we also see, for example, continuity is going to work on the watch because there's

00:51:24 ◼   ► going to be things on the watch.

00:51:25 ◼   ► The watch to me is a total convenience play.

00:51:27 ◼   ► It's for all those thousands of tiny interactions that you have with your phone every day that

00:51:32 ◼   ► don't take a lot of time but are super important, yet you still have to go to your bag or go

00:51:35 ◼   ► to your purse or go to your pocket.

00:51:38 ◼   ► And I can sort of shift those to my watch.

00:51:40 ◼   ► But if something ends up being more important than I thought it was, being able to just

00:51:43 ◼   ► send that right back to my phone and continue it on my phone, Sync is great.

00:51:47 ◼   ► But with Sync, I still have to unlock the phone, go find the app, go to the same place

00:51:51 ◼   ► where I was, scroll through it, try to find it.

00:51:53 ◼   ► But with continuity, I can be looking at something, press a button, and that exact same thing

00:51:57 ◼   ► is just there waiting for me again.

00:51:59 ◼   ► I think that's going to be much more interesting when the watch is in play.

00:52:02 ◼   ► >> Yeah.

00:52:03 ◼   ► And I think a lot of these things are sort of breaking -- it goes back to what I said

00:52:08 ◼   ► earlier about Apple Pay where it's at a from a user's perspective it's outside

00:52:14 ◼   ► the app centric world of using the phone itself it's it's much more about the

00:52:21 ◼   ► real physical world where your phone is just within the Bluetooth and/or Wi-Fi

00:52:28 ◼   ► you know wireless range of whatever terminal you're dealing with whether the

00:52:33 ◼   ► terminal is your watch whether it's your dashboard in your car and you just tap

00:52:38 ◼   ► on the watch and things get started you don't have to wake up your phone you

00:52:41 ◼   ► don't and you definitely don't have to find any particular app like a Fuji app

00:52:47 ◼   ► to get you know to get this to work you're just on your camera and hit a

00:52:51 ◼   ► button on your camera and you know the phone interface just wakes up and starts

00:52:55 ◼   ► you know can read those photos that are right on your phone now the phone

00:52:58 ◼   ► becomes like the Star Destroyer and the watch becomes the shuttlecraft that

00:53:01 ◼   ► moves you in between this big objects

00:53:04 ◼   ► that's pretty good I like that what else from WWDC I guess Yosemite we could yeah

00:53:14 ◼   ► you know and in the summer there wasn't really any news per se it was just you

00:53:19 ◼   ► know betas of iOS and Yosemite not a bad way to just roll into if we're gonna

00:53:25 ◼   ► talk 2014 in hindsight you I mean have to talk Yosemite yeah I mean Dave

00:53:30 ◼   ► Wiska stood an article on macworld right before hand where you're sort of speculating of what Yosemite would end up looking like and I

00:53:36 ◼   ► Think he was really really close. It's like Apple didn't just clone iOS 7 which was a long-running joke

00:53:41 ◼   ► They they sort of took the cues from it the translucency and and the other effects and they made something that was very Mac

00:53:48 ◼   ► And you know, they kept the shadows for example. Yeah our example when Dave and I were

00:53:52 ◼   ► Noodling ideas for Vesper Mac before we saw Yosemite and we thought well

00:53:59 ◼   ► what if they do totally just go all in iOS 7 look and feel and

00:54:03 ◼   ► We the only thing we could come up with was the the iCloud web apps. Yeah, which are

00:54:08 ◼   ► You know you use them with a mouse pointer, and you know I think typically I don't even think they run on an iPad

00:54:16 ◼   ► So I mean you're using it on a Mac

00:54:18 ◼   ► And they have some things like dialog boxes that you know you know it's like

00:54:23 ◼   ► You know how would you do an iOS 7 dialog box with a mouse pointer?

00:54:28 ◼   ► But overall, boy, we looked at that and we were like, "Boy, I hope that's not it."

00:54:34 ◼   ► And it wasn't.

00:54:37 ◼   ► It had to be enough because they did that back to the Mac event and they changed the names of the apps

00:54:41 ◼   ► and they brought over the same look and feel and they really made an effort to get all the people who had iOS devices,

00:54:47 ◼   ► not to make the Mac the same, but to make them comfortable, to make an easy sort of a halo effect transition.

00:54:52 ◼   ► And when you look at Yosemite and you look at continuity, it's just about adding value.

00:54:56 ◼   ► Again, if you have an iPhone or iPad,

00:54:58 ◼   ► you'll have a much better experience with a Mac.

00:55:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, absolutely.

00:55:02 ◼   ► I do think too, and it shows,

00:55:04 ◼   ► and part of it is our perspective

00:55:07 ◼   ► where we get to go to these press events

00:55:09 ◼   ► and talk to some of the people at Apple,

00:55:11 ◼   ► like in the product marketing group.

00:55:13 ◼   ► And there's a palpable sense.

00:55:16 ◼   ► I mean, there's some things that they just never come up.

00:55:19 ◼   ► I mean, nobody really spends a long time talking about the,

00:55:23 ◼   ► we don't even call them that anymore,

00:55:24 ◼   ► but like the iWorks apps, right?

00:55:26 ◼   ► Like pages and numbers and keynote.

00:55:29 ◼   ► They, you know, there hasn't been a lot of enthusiasm

00:55:32 ◼   ► about those apps in recent years.

00:55:35 ◼   ► I'm not saying there's none.

00:55:36 ◼   ► I'm just saying that it's, you know,

00:55:39 ◼   ► I think it shows in the real world

00:55:41 ◼   ► and, you know, in this current state of those apps.

00:55:44 ◼   ► And I think it shows in the enthusiasm

00:55:46 ◼   ► when you talk to people at Apple privately.

00:55:48 ◼   ► But whereas like the Mac overall and Yosemite overall,

00:55:51 ◼   ► like there were people, there's people at Apple

00:55:52 ◼   ► who just still love the Mac.

00:55:54 ◼   ► Like as a whole, it is not like the, you know,

00:55:58 ◼   ► forgotten first child, you know,

00:56:02 ◼   ► brushed aside in favor of the beloved, you know, iOS,

00:56:07 ◼   ► you know.

00:56:08 ◼   ► - I wonder if that has anything to do with the Mac,

00:56:11 ◼   ► like Yosemite being very firmly in Federighi's org,

00:56:13 ◼   ► but things like iWork and iTunes all being projects

00:56:16 ◼   ► that are run by, in Q's org, you know,

00:56:18 ◼   ► almost like a totally secondary

00:56:19 ◼   ► software development system.

00:56:21 ◼   ► - I do wonder about that.

00:56:23 ◼   ► And I don't know if it's because it's any way to

00:56:28 ◼   ► to slag at EQ, but almost that he's got so much on his plate

00:56:32 ◼   ► that how could it get any more of his attention,

00:56:35 ◼   ► you know, with how much that he's got on his plate.

00:56:38 ◼   ► - And you don't have the Federica,

00:56:40 ◼   ► like the one guy who's in charge of software engineering

00:56:42 ◼   ► isn't in charge of those bits of software engineering.

00:56:44 ◼   ► - But as a whole, I, you know, this year,

00:56:47 ◼   ► I think that the people I've spoken to at Apple

00:56:51 ◼   ► were more excited about Yosemite and what's new on the Mac than iOS 8. And you

00:56:55 ◼   ► know and a lot of it is hard to separate because so much of what's new about both

00:56:59 ◼   ► iOS 8 and Yosemite is the continuity stuff which ties them together and there

00:57:03 ◼   ► is no one without the other. That was one of the most impressive things to me

00:57:07 ◼   ► because the famously iOS and OS X used to be run separately and there was a big

00:57:12 ◼   ► rework but not only that it's it's it filtered down so instead of having

00:57:16 ◼   ► someone in charge of Yosemite and someone in charge of iOS the person who

00:57:19 ◼   ► was in charge of extensibility,

00:57:21 ◼   ► or at least the engineering program manager

00:57:24 ◼   ► was in charge of extensibility for iOS and OS X,

00:57:27 ◼   ► was in charge of continuity for iOS and iOS X.

00:57:30 ◼   ► And even when it would have been easier

00:57:31 ◼   ► to do them separately or do them in different ways,

00:57:33 ◼   ► they made sure that they were done in the same way,

00:57:35 ◼   ► so developers had just one way

00:57:36 ◼   ► to target them on both systems.

00:57:38 ◼   ► And that might be a subtle change,

00:57:39 ◼   ► but I think that's a really profound change

00:57:41 ◼   ► based on how Apple used to be run.

00:57:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it's a recurring theme

00:57:47 ◼   ► since he left the company, but you know with forestall and again, I overall I'm a big fan of forestall and I think

00:57:54 ◼   ► You know for Scott forestall is a huge reason that the iPhone was a hit product

00:58:01 ◼   ► I was as good as it was I think he is a huge reason that the App Store

00:58:05 ◼   ► Exists and that it's as popular as it is problems aside and we can get into that because there's been a lot of recent

00:58:12 ◼   ► you know problems with the App Store, but on the whole, you know, it's

00:58:17 ◼   ► you know a success and you know at a time when in

00:58:21 ◼   ► 2007 when the first iPhone came out and there wasn't any

00:58:24 ◼   ► Third-party software at all and there were questions about whether there ever would be and then even when it was announced

00:58:31 ◼   ► Well house how strict are they gonna keep this?

00:58:33 ◼   ► How much is it gonna be a handful of apps that Apple vets and how much is it gonna be?

00:58:38 ◼   ► You know, are they gonna allow tens of thousands hundreds thousands of apps?

00:58:42 ◼   ► I think all of that is thanks to forest all or at least by these partly thanks to forest all absolutely

00:58:48 ◼   ► But on the other hand, I don't think continuity happens

00:58:51 ◼   ► All in one fell swoop in 2014 if forest all is still running iOS as his own fiefdom because the way he ran it was

00:58:59 ◼   ► secretly

00:59:02 ◼   ► Even when it wasn't new, you know even you know, you know 20

00:59:06 ◼   ► 2012 I guess when he

00:59:09 ◼   ► Got pushed out. Mm-hmm

00:59:11 ◼   ► You know.

00:59:12 ◼   ► Yeah, I think he was a phenomenal partner for Steve Jobs.

00:59:15 ◼   ► I mean you hear stories about when he was at Apple, he knew which of the three studded

00:59:21 ◼   ► leather textures Steve would pick.

00:59:23 ◼   ► And when he wasn't there, the designers just kept hearing no and no and no over and over

00:59:27 ◼   ► again.

00:59:28 ◼   ► And he was just so good at working with Steve Jobs.

00:59:30 ◼   ► But then, you know, he faced an Apple without Steve Jobs.

00:59:32 ◼   ► And it's possible that he was the best person in the world to birth the iPhone but not the

00:59:36 ◼   ► best person to get it through the awkward teenage years.

00:59:39 ◼   ► We'll see that with the watch now because Kevin Lynch runs watch software at Apple.

00:59:42 ◼   ► It's not in Craig Federighi's org.

00:59:44 ◼   ► But that's sort of what you have to do when you're creating something new.

00:59:46 ◼   ► You have to give it that sort of independent space to come alive and then you integrate

00:59:50 ◼   ► it back again over time.

00:59:51 ◼   ► Right.

00:59:52 ◼   ► But even with Lynch and that's a good open question as to in terms of what to look for

00:59:57 ◼   ► in 2015.

00:59:59 ◼   ► How good is their initial watch software going to be?

01:00:05 ◼   ► it's fair or not, you know, how good the initial like when we get our first Apple watch 1.0

01:00:11 ◼   ► in quote early 2015. We're gonna we're all going to form pretty firm opinions of Kevin

01:00:20 ◼   ► Lynch as an Apple product manager, right off the bat. But Lynch was hired into an Apple

01:00:27 ◼   ► where, you know, he could be told point blank and I'm sure was this is how we work now we

01:00:33 ◼   ► collaborate you know and I think that's why you see you know that you know

01:00:36 ◼   ► Schiller's already wearing an Apple watch, Eddy Q's wearing an Apple watch,

01:00:40 ◼   ► Federighi is wearing an Apple watch, you know that they're not locked out of that

01:00:44 ◼   ► in the way that I think a lot of people were with the iPhone before it came out.

01:00:49 ◼   ► And the other thing that I mean I've heard really good things about Kevin

01:00:53 ◼   ► Lynch's work at Apple like he sounds like he's doing a great job but also

01:00:56 ◼   ► while the watch stuff is separate for example like I don't know this for a

01:01:01 ◼   ► Fact but it sounds to me like messages is not being like if you're working on watch messages

01:01:05 ◼   ► You're not allowed to talk to the guy working on iOS or Mac messages

01:01:08 ◼   ► It sounds like that's not the case that the messages group, you know spans across from that which is what you want

01:01:12 ◼   ► Because otherwise it's gonna create a broken experience

01:01:14 ◼   ► Yeah, I do. I think that's absolutely the case where where he you know, it might be separate from

01:01:20 ◼   ► Federighi's stuff but in a sense it's not because it's Federighi isn't trusted with it or he's not part of it

01:01:26 ◼   ► But that he's already got enough on this plate and they need this is such a big undertaking that it needs

01:01:31 ◼   ► Its own point person and team but they're not I think the difference is maybe maybe the word is fiefdom

01:01:37 ◼   ► You know that iOS was run by Scott for stall as his own fiefdom within the company and that's not the case with the watch

01:01:44 ◼   ► And I was talking to Brad Ellis about this last week

01:01:47 ◼   ► But you look at the design cues of the watch and you start to imagine

01:01:50 ◼   ► It's not just a copy of iOS 7 or a copy of Yosemite

01:01:53 ◼   ► It is it is being given the room to be its own thing sort of establish its own identity as well

01:01:57 ◼   ► Yeah, I almost get the sense that it if there's anything that holds up as an analogy

01:02:01 ◼   ► It's almost like the watch OS is to iOS what iOS?

01:02:06 ◼   ► Was to Mac OS yeah, you know that yes, we're not throwing everything out the kernel

01:02:13 ◼   ► It might be the exact same kernel. There's there it might be a UI kit

01:02:17 ◼   ► That's doing drawing it runs from port like the iPhone runs from port right

01:02:24 ◼   ► but that it's it's just about based, you know using the technology that makes sense to reuse but but

01:02:31 ◼   ► Stripping it down to a level that's appropriate for this new dramatically

01:02:37 ◼   ► Lesser form factor. Yeah, but the strategic

01:02:40 ◼   ► aspects of how the software runs

01:02:44 ◼   ► Couldn't be more different from the original iPhone where the original iPhone

01:02:51 ◼   ► only had this tangential relationship with your Mac, which was

01:02:55 ◼   ► connect a 30 pin connector and a USB cord to the two and

01:03:00 ◼   ► Hit them, you know sync and wait and

01:03:05 ◼   ► Have you know, I still think it's almost seems prehistoric. I can't believe it's only seven years ago

01:03:11 ◼   ► But that's the only way you've got calendar events on your phone or back to your Mac if you created the event on your phone

01:03:18 ◼   ► It's the only way you could sync calendar events, the only way you could sync contacts.

01:03:24 ◼   ► It's crazy that you only had to do all that tethered.

01:03:26 ◼   ► But then once you untethered, your phone was a completely, iPhone was a completely independent

01:03:32 ◼   ► device that had to do everything.

01:03:35 ◼   ► Any kind of computation was done on the CPU on the phone.

01:03:38 ◼   ► All of the drawing was done on the GPU on the phone.

01:03:41 ◼   ► And the watch, at least for third party software, is largely just a projected screen where it's

01:03:47 ◼   ► doing the least work possible. It's almost like the web app solution for the

01:03:53 ◼   ► original iPhone where when you no longer connected to the internet nothing can

01:03:56 ◼   ► update when you're not when your phone is no longer in vicinity nothing can

01:03:58 ◼   ► update. Right yeah absolutely. Let's take a break and we'll come back and talk

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01:07:40 ◼   ► slash the talk show do you still have any machines that are running Mavericks

01:07:47 ◼   ► Renee I don't I waited a year to upgrade from

01:07:50 ◼   ► Mountain Lion to Mavericks on my podcast machine and I think I lasted a month before putting a somebody on it. I

01:07:56 ◼   ► Still have the the air that I used to record these shows

01:08:02 ◼   ► Like I'm recording right now using my my old MacBook Air still runs the latest version of Mavericks and it's funny

01:08:10 ◼   ► how

01:08:13 ◼   ► It feels to me like it's years old. Yeah, like I can't I was just thinking before we started recording and thinking about the you know

01:08:19 ◼   ► You're all I was like, I wonder how long I how long how how to date am I and then I realized I'm really only like

01:08:23 ◼   ► Still only like two months how to date

01:08:26 ◼   ► But it looks ancient to my eyes just the wallpaper when you see the Mavericks wallpaper. It feels like a bygone era

01:08:32 ◼   ► Yeah, I think so. But it's there to me. It's the fonts, you know and the the heaviness of the buttons

01:08:40 ◼   ► It's yeah, it's it's a much heavier more dour experience and that's probably why I upgraded

01:08:45 ◼   ► I just I would look at it when I podcast and it would just look wrong to me

01:08:48 ◼   ► And it was a visuals. I think more than anything else that encouraged me to upgrade. Yeah, I think I over the holiday break

01:08:54 ◼   ► I'm gonna upgrade this machine to it. I can't think of a good reason to keep one around anymore either. There's nothing you know

01:09:01 ◼   ► It's really just out of laziness and the fact that I don't use this machine for much anymore

01:09:06 ◼   ► I just happens to be all set up with the you know

01:09:10 ◼   ► Software I used to record the shows and so it's sort of like and if it ain't broke don't

01:09:14 ◼   ► Fix it

01:09:16 ◼   ► Situation but it just staring at it just looks ugly and I got the retina 5k iMac after the event

01:09:23 ◼   ► I just couldn't on unsee it and you know that shipped with

01:09:26 ◼   ► a ship with

01:09:29 ◼   ► Yo, somebody yeah, and I was just all in yeah

01:09:33 ◼   ► I've also grown to be completely I don't I wouldn't quite say in love, but I'm completely accustomed to the

01:09:41 ◼   ► system version of Helvetica Noya as the system font

01:09:45 ◼   ► It's it looks so good on a retina

01:09:49 ◼   ► We were arguing the other day whether it you would prefer to have something like San Francisco or the mythical Apple songs

01:09:53 ◼   ► If they ever shipped it, but they they did a really great job of putting Helvetica Noya on on the Mac

01:09:59 ◼   ► Do you have any idea whether San Francisco is Apple sand? I've heard that it isn't

01:10:03 ◼   ► I don't know if that's true or not because I haven't heard it from a lot of people but I heard an offhand comment that it

01:10:07 ◼   ► Wasn't I wouldn't be surprised if it's not but I have no no idea

01:10:11 ◼   ► Like the little birdies that told me about Apple Sands and the little birdies that told me about San Francisco

01:10:15 ◼   ► Or they really tell me about it

01:10:18 ◼   ► They didn't know about it in advance, but uh, but that told me that internally they were calling it din vetica

01:10:22 ◼   ► But nobody's told me whether they're one in the same and I can't help but think that they're not the same

01:10:28 ◼   ► I mean

01:10:29 ◼   ► It's hard to interpret it because it's almost like reading smoke signals and it could just mean that this an optimized version

01:10:33 ◼   ► version of Apple songs for the watch and that's why they're considered different

01:10:35 ◼   ► but it struck me that they were different yeah the thing I've found

01:10:39 ◼   ► playing with the San Francisco is that it really only looks good very very

01:10:43 ◼   ► small yeah I mean and from my hands-on time you know months ago at the Apple

01:10:49 ◼   ► watch event I thought it looked fantastic up close like just really

01:10:53 ◼   ► really look good playing with it on my Mac now that we have the SDK it doesn't

01:10:59 ◼   ► really look good to me at the sizes that I use fonts on the Mac.

01:11:03 ◼   ► Yeah, it's not optimized.

01:11:04 ◼   ► Right.

01:11:05 ◼   ► And I tried the, I think I mentioned this a few shows ago, but I tried, there's like

01:11:09 ◼   ► a GitHub thing with hacked versions of San Francisco that have metadata set that make

01:11:15 ◼   ► it look like they tell the system it's the system font.

01:11:18 ◼   ► And if you put them, and I don't recommend anybody try this because it's hacking with

01:11:23 ◼   ► your system, you're on your own.

01:11:24 ◼   ► But more or less what you do is you put these hacked versions, and also it's like a copyright

01:11:28 ◼   ► violation and a direct violation of the terms of the SDK download that you're not allowed

01:11:35 ◼   ► to diddle with the San Francisco font and you're expressly not allowed to use it for

01:11:38 ◼   ► anything other than developing watch kit apps.

01:11:42 ◼   ► But what you could do is go to find this project on GitHub, download these versions of the

01:11:47 ◼   ► fonts, which are different from Apple's versions.

01:11:49 ◼   ► There's some kind of metadata that's set that tells the system, "Hey, this is the system

01:11:52 ◼   ► font."

01:11:53 ◼   ► them in at slash library or yeah slash library fonts slash library slash fonts

01:12:02 ◼   ► and you can't put them in your user font file not you you know users your name

01:12:09 ◼   ► library fonts because the system won't look there for system fonts the system

01:12:14 ◼   ► looks first in slash system library fonts and that's your Helvetica system

01:12:19 ◼   ► font is still there you're not replacing it you're not deleting it you're not

01:12:22 ◼   ► renaming it or not moving it. But then the system will look in slash library fonts and

01:12:27 ◼   ► if it finds another system font there, it will use that one instead. So you just put

01:12:30 ◼   ► these font files there, log out, log back in and Yosemite will draw as with the system

01:12:37 ◼   ► font it will use San Francisco. So I tried it just to see what it was like and it just

01:12:45 ◼   ► doesn't work. It's not that it doesn't work like it's broken and it's a technical failure.

01:12:52 ◼   ► Aesthetically, it's just kind of not right

01:12:55 ◼   ► Which is interesting because I didn't think I'd like Helvetica on the Mac as much as I did but then

01:12:59 ◼   ► After the Apple TV update which came much after you know much after WBC and now I'm seeing Helvetica on my Apple TV

01:13:06 ◼   ► That is much more every time I see it. I get a little reaction to it. Yeah

01:13:10 ◼   ► And it feels it's somehow crazy to me how Apple has made it a font that is available to everyone anywhere

01:13:17 ◼   ► Feel like they own it

01:13:20 ◼   ► Yeah, and it just when they use it. It's it's such an established font

01:13:24 ◼   ► It's such a classic and yet it feels so modern in the way that they're using it. Yeah

01:13:27 ◼   ► But I don't think at San Francisco to me. It's it's completely designed

01:13:32 ◼   ► I think for the watch and it's meant to be used at watch like sizes which are physically very very small

01:13:39 ◼   ► Yeah, like the biggest you're ever gonna see text on your Apple watch is a pretty small size

01:13:43 ◼   ► It's it's sort of in context

01:13:46 ◼   ► I know you've spoken with us on previous shows with the vibrancy and you know some people turn it off

01:13:50 ◼   ► But I've even gotten used to that

01:13:52 ◼   ► I've gotten used to seeing areas of red or black or or things and it it just I

01:13:56 ◼   ► Don't buy the argument that it brings a desktop through but it does sort of make the whole system seem more alive

01:14:02 ◼   ► Yeah, but I was no doubt that like Syracuse has mentioned several times

01:14:06 ◼   ► There's no doubt that that's gonna get toned down. Yeah next year and a year after you know that they start out with

01:14:11 ◼   ► taking an idea to the

01:14:14 ◼   ► Maximal level and then over the years dial it back to where it should be but there they you know

01:14:19 ◼   ► Apple is it as a company tends to err on the side of taking an idea too far than taking not taking it far enough

01:14:26 ◼   ► And it's also they're very for a giant company

01:14:29 ◼   ► They've they have a lot of respect for the singular designer vision like the person who designed

01:14:33 ◼   ► Somebody had a lot of ideas and those ideas not all of them made it through but a lot of them did in a lot

01:14:37 ◼   ► Of companies it would have fallen to design by committee very quickly. Yeah

01:14:41 ◼   ► So I think overall Yosemite has been a pretty pretty strong success

01:14:49 ◼   ► Yeah, I agree completely and for all the bugs that iOS 8 had and you know hit so many people

01:14:55 ◼   ► I think I think Yosemite has been pretty stable and and you know deserves applause right from the get-go for

01:15:02 ◼   ► for being pretty

01:15:04 ◼   ► Trouble-free if you were an early adopter

01:15:06 ◼   ► They had a couple Wi-Fi patch and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth seemed to be something that just affects some percentage of people every time

01:15:12 ◼   ► They had some security things even today. They patched it was yesterday. They're patching security now faster than they've ever done before

01:15:19 ◼   ► Yeah, it's it's really a new age in at least a delivery of Mac software

01:15:23 ◼   ► Yeah today as we record we're recording on December 23rd, and it might have rolled out

01:15:29 ◼   ► I think I rolled out last night at least on us time

01:15:32 ◼   ► But within the 24 hours that we're recording as we speak

01:15:35 ◼   ► There was a bug fix that Apple rolled out that for the first time ever they pushed to

01:15:41 ◼   ► At least me of 70, I don't know if Mavericks got the push

01:15:45 ◼   ► But if you're running Yosemite, I got the notification like when I logged in this morning

01:15:50 ◼   ► It just said a security update was applied. Yeah, and that's it. It's like, you know

01:15:55 ◼   ► And I you know, it's a lot of pressure for them because if they ever pushed one of those that did break things

01:16:01 ◼   ► it's there it's gonna be you know quite a scandal yeah I mean they're paying

01:16:08 ◼   ► close attention to that stuff now but it's sort of we complained that they

01:16:10 ◼   ► weren't being fast enough for security updates and a certain point they just

01:16:13 ◼   ► you know pick up the pace yeah and I'd you know the the thanks for that the

01:16:18 ◼   ► applause for that is never as loud as the criticism beforehand no no no it

01:16:24 ◼   ► does seem like they're getting faster I can't help but think that with the

01:16:27 ◼   ► Bluetooth and Wi-Fi that it must it must just be that the matrix of how many

01:16:34 ◼   ► different Wi-Fi chipsets there are in all the supported Macs that run Yosemite

01:16:39 ◼   ► multiplied by all the various chipsets in the Wi-Fi routers out in the real

01:16:45 ◼   ► world is just it it's just a testing nightmare like you know you know it's

01:16:53 ◼   ► almost we're almost lucky that it works at all because it just happens over

01:16:56 ◼   ► and over and over again. I just run all Apple stuff and I've never had a Wi-Fi

01:17:00 ◼   ► or Bluetooth problem but I imagine when you like you say if you have every

01:17:02 ◼   ► single vendor in there and every single variant you're gonna you're gonna hit

01:17:05 ◼   ► whatever bugs are in both those stacks fairly often. Yeah I have an Apple router

01:17:10 ◼   ► downstairs I think it's the latest whatever extreme I don't know what they

01:17:14 ◼   ► call it anymore but the one that's tall and have for years and I've never been

01:17:20 ◼   ► hit with those problems either because I'm surely you know every single

01:17:23 ◼   ► Standard Apple Wi-Fi chipset in a Mac does get tested against Apple's own routers

01:17:29 ◼   ► Yeah, I think they're first in line, right

01:17:32 ◼   ► And I think that max or I mean you see bugs with with iOS and Wi-Fi, too

01:17:39 ◼   ► But I do think it seems to hit the Mac more and I can't help

01:17:41 ◼   ► But think it's because the Mac hardware is not as unified as iOS hardware

01:17:45 ◼   ► I think iPad air 2 is the first iPad where we didn't see a bunch of people complaining about Wi-Fi

01:17:49 ◼   ► As soon as it launched

01:17:52 ◼   ► Yeah, I get the feeling that like supporting Wi-Fi at the driver level is you know sort of like supporting

01:17:58 ◼   ► I'm app when you're writing a mail client

01:18:00 ◼   ► Which it meaning that every single I map server has like a different interpretation of the I map spec at some level. Yeah

01:18:08 ◼   ► Like there's no way to just write a generic I map client every I map client that it gains any popularity because it hasn't you know

01:18:17 ◼   ► It's actually useful

01:18:19 ◼   ► Effectively as you know

01:18:21 ◼   ► you know, I'm

01:18:22 ◼   ► Server by server list of exceptions and and stuff like that which was the big complaint about mail and Mavericks especially with Gmail's

01:18:29 ◼   ► Eccentric to use the polite word. I'm app implementation and now with Yosemite. You don't hear that very much anymore either

01:18:35 ◼   ► No, you don't I think it's I think they've cleaned that up pretty well. Yeah

01:18:39 ◼   ► Where are we at in a calendar year? I think we're heading towards the iPhone 6 and 6 plus event. Yeah

01:18:47 ◼   ► Which was also the debut of the watch. Yeah

01:18:50 ◼   ► Big and bigger and then small right and Apple pay

01:18:55 ◼   ► Yeah, and in the demo area, I mean they had the iPhones laid out. They had the iPads

01:19:00 ◼   ► They had the Apple watch laid out and then they had a whole area where you could go and see

01:19:04 ◼   ► Apple pay both in the app and at a simulated

01:19:07 ◼   ► checkout station

01:19:10 ◼   ► Yeah, and I do think that's a good example of how

01:19:14 ◼   ► How difficult this you know and broads broke strokes how difficult Apple and you know anybody else who's in the industry?

01:19:22 ◼   ► But how it's not a month to month year to year game. It's a decade-long game because even with Apple pay

01:19:30 ◼   ► You know it's intertwined with the iPhone 6 because it's the iPhone 6 and 6 plus

01:19:36 ◼   ► They're the only phones that work with Apple pay at least at retail terminals

01:19:40 ◼   ► and

01:19:43 ◼   ► You know you had to have touch ID first so that was a year that goes back a year ago to the iPhone 5s

01:19:49 ◼   ► You had to have it and it had to work really well, so that starts a year ago now this year

01:19:56 ◼   ► you've got the two new phones that have NFC built in and

01:19:59 ◼   ► The rollout in the retail stores of the terminals you know that accept it

01:20:08 ◼   ► But you're still talking about a service that only works two months in for people who've bought a brand new

01:20:14 ◼   ► Top of the line iPhone within the last two months right like the real the real Apple play is

01:20:20 ◼   ► Two three years ago when 85% of active iPhone users are using something iPhone 6 or newer

01:20:27 ◼   ► It's it shows the patience that Apple has for some things and it shows how for example

01:20:32 ◼   ► NFC to a lot of their competitors was just a chipset like they would just throw it in there

01:20:36 ◼   ► They didn't really care what you did with it.

01:20:37 ◼   ► Different manufacturers would do different things.

01:20:40 ◼   ► Where Apple, there's no such thing as a chip set.

01:20:41 ◼   ► It's a feature set.

01:20:42 ◼   ► And they experimented with NFC.

01:20:44 ◼   ► There were prototypes with NFC for years

01:20:46 ◼   ► and they just never shipped it

01:20:46 ◼   ► 'cause they didn't have a feature set that needed it.

01:20:48 ◼   ► Not that it was a curiosity and might be a benefit,

01:20:51 ◼   ► but actually needed it as a core technology in the phone.

01:20:54 ◼   ► And when they did, they put NFC in and they shipped it.

01:20:56 ◼   ► And it took until iPhone 6 for that to happen.

01:20:59 ◼   ► But like you said, they had to have Passbook,

01:21:01 ◼   ► they had to have Touch ID,

01:21:02 ◼   ► they'd have all these things in place.

01:21:04 ◼   ► And then when it made sense as a product, it gets shipped.

01:21:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, I've heard about NFC for iPhone,

01:21:09 ◼   ► I think as far back as 2009,

01:21:12 ◼   ► which was the year that the 3GS came out.

01:21:15 ◼   ► And that, I'm trying to think when that was

01:21:17 ◼   ► that I heard that.

01:21:18 ◼   ► I mean, it wouldn't have been right before,

01:21:21 ◼   ► it would have been like seven or eight months before

01:21:24 ◼   ► that it was a maybe for the next iPhone.

01:21:27 ◼   ► And clearly, obviously it did not happen.

01:21:30 ◼   ► And I think ultimately, why not?

01:21:33 ◼   ► And then again, it was a recurring thing.

01:21:35 ◼   ► Like 2009, maybe 2010, definitely maybe

01:21:38 ◼   ► Apple is very, very interested in NFC.

01:21:40 ◼   ► So that would have been the iPhone 4, wasn't there.

01:21:45 ◼   ► And I think it was always,

01:21:46 ◼   ► is that there was no story behind it, right?

01:21:49 ◼   ► There's no, how is this actually gonna be useful

01:21:52 ◼   ► to people in the real world?

01:21:55 ◼   ► - Absolutely, I mean, they would prototype it.

01:21:57 ◼   ► Apple prototypes almost anything

01:21:59 ◼   ► that you can find a blog post about

01:22:00 ◼   ► that makes even the slightest logical sense.

01:22:02 ◼   ► Apple will have prototyped it.

01:22:04 ◼   ► Like when they say Macs make no sense for multi-touch,

01:22:06 ◼   ► it's not because they're just daydreaming

01:22:08 ◼   ► or saying it for the sake of saying it.

01:22:09 ◼   ► It's because they built it,

01:22:10 ◼   ► they spent a lot of time trying it

01:22:12 ◼   ► and they decided it wasn't an experience they wanna ship.

01:22:14 ◼   ► And in one day, maybe it will be.

01:22:16 ◼   ► And with NFC, it was in later stage prototypes

01:22:18 ◼   ► for different phones and they're trying things

01:22:20 ◼   ► and they're, like you said, no story, so it didn't ship.

01:22:22 ◼   ► And then as soon as they had a really compelling story,

01:22:24 ◼   ► which was Apple Pay, that's in every phone we have now.

01:22:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, so tying it in, the iPhone 6 announcement

01:22:31 ◼   ► with this week's news.

01:22:33 ◼   ► There's another rumor that came out of Asia,

01:22:36 ◼   ► some analyst that Apple is considering

01:22:39 ◼   ► a new four-inch iPhone for next year.

01:22:44 ◼   ► Do you see that?

01:22:46 ◼   ► - Yep.

01:22:47 ◼   ► - I think MacRumors had it.

01:22:47 ◼   ► I think the name the guy came up with it was totally stupid.

01:22:51 ◼   ► He called it the iPhone 6S Mini.

01:22:55 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:22:56 ◼   ► They just call it the 6S minus.

01:22:58 ◼   ► - I think the name would be,

01:22:59 ◼   ► - Clearly it would be the iPhone 6C, right?

01:23:01 ◼   ► - Yep.

01:23:02 ◼   ► - I think it almost certainly would be the iPhone 6C

01:23:05 ◼   ► and if not C, then Air maybe.

01:23:08 ◼   ► - It's gotta be 6S minus 6S and 6S Plus.

01:23:12 ◼   ► Use them, just ride that math analogy into the ground.

01:23:17 ◼   ► - Minus.

01:23:18 ◼   ► And they'd actually spell it out like M-I-N-U-S.

01:23:21 ◼   ► - I think, again, I'm almost, you know,

01:23:23 ◼   ► I can't say I'm positive,

01:23:24 ◼   ► but I think it's very likely

01:23:25 ◼   ► that Apple's prototyping four inch iPhones

01:23:26 ◼   ► 'cause they prototype tons of different sizes.

01:23:29 ◼   ► What was interesting to me is I heard you say that

01:23:30 ◼   ► on a previous show, it might've been two episodes ago

01:23:32 ◼   ► or three episodes ago.

01:23:33 ◼   ► And I was curious what Android people thought of that

01:23:36 ◼   ► 'cause their phones, I mean, their version of the HTC One Mini

01:23:39 ◼   ► was I think five inches or something.

01:23:42 ◼   ► And so I asked them, is there a demand

01:23:44 ◼   ► for four-inch Android phones?

01:23:45 ◼   ► I heard crickets.

01:23:46 ◼   ► People said, "No, 4.7 is the smallest we'd ever want."

01:23:50 ◼   ► And to me, that doesn't mean Apple should make one.

01:23:52 ◼   ► That means there's probably a segment of the market

01:23:54 ◼   ► is totally underserved by the volume vendors and that there is opportunity

01:23:58 ◼   ► for people who are distinguished or have very specific tastes and would enjoy

01:24:02 ◼   ► iOS at that size. Yeah, the thing that makes and this isn't based on this guy's

01:24:07 ◼   ► reporting this is just my I close my eyes and think about the way Apple

01:24:10 ◼   ► thinks and the way Apple has acted over the last seven years and I think it's

01:24:15 ◼   ► probably true but I also think that calling it the 6c whether they call it

01:24:20 ◼   ► that or not tells you exactly what it's going to be is I think it's going to be

01:24:23 ◼   ► an A8, you know, this year's A8 and a camera like this year's camera, it's, you know, going

01:24:35 ◼   ► to be effectively an iPhone 6 shrunk to 4 inches. Whereas the iPhone 6s and 6s plus,

01:24:42 ◼   ► if they call them that, will get the A9 and they'll get a better camera and other, you

01:24:48 ◼   ► whatever the 2015 technical improvements are.

01:24:52 ◼   ► So that you'll be able to buy a four-inch iPhone next year, and you'll have Touch ID,

01:24:58 ◼   ► and you'll have Apple Pay, and you'll have an A8, and you'll have a camera like the one

01:25:03 ◼   ► we have today.

01:25:04 ◼   ► But if you want the top of the line, if you want the newest, the latest, and greatest

01:25:07 ◼   ► camera, if you want the latest and greatest system on a chip, you're still going to have

01:25:12 ◼   ► to go 4.7 or 5.5.

01:25:16 ◼   ► It makes a lot of sense for the same reasons, because the iPhone 5C was always called the

01:25:21 ◼   ► cheap iPhone and Apple never makes cheap products, but they wanted to make a popular iPhone.

01:25:25 ◼   ► They wanted something that would sit on the shelves, not like a blockbuster movie, but

01:25:28 ◼   ► like a TV show that people could buy anytime.

01:25:31 ◼   ► But it also let them shove that down to the bottom of the line much faster.

01:25:34 ◼   ► They wouldn't have to leave an iPhone 5 there.

01:25:36 ◼   ► And the same logic makes sense for an iPhone 6C to be able to move that down the product

01:25:41 ◼   ► line faster and make Apple Pay more accessible to more people and to have it in more parts

01:25:45 ◼   ► of their product line up.

01:25:46 ◼   ► Yeah, and I think the other thing that they don't want is that third pricing tier that

01:25:52 ◼   ► starts it.

01:25:53 ◼   ► Because that's the other thing.

01:25:54 ◼   ► If you do want a new four inch phone next year, if I'm right, then it's going to be

01:25:59 ◼   ► the 2014 technical stuff, the A8 and the camera, etc.

01:26:03 ◼   ► The upside will be that you'll save money because I think it'll start at $99 on a contract

01:26:08 ◼   ► and if it's off contract, it'll be $100 less than the 6S.

01:26:12 ◼   ► Success. Yeah, you have 4.7 at the 199 mark the 4-inch just based on human behavior has to be cheaper

01:26:20 ◼   ► Yeah

01:26:20 ◼   ► The thing that I think they wanted to get away from is having that $99 tier and I'm speaking in the subsidized terms

01:26:27 ◼   ► But the $99 tier look virtually identical to the 199 tier. Yeah, right

01:26:35 ◼   ► That's what the six or the five see did is they you know, it had exactly the same

01:26:41 ◼   ► tech specs

01:26:43 ◼   ► Almost to a T as the iPhone 5 but it looked different and some people, you know, obviously some people thought it looked better

01:26:50 ◼   ► I know people who bought it because they wanted a colorful phone

01:26:53 ◼   ► But it's still even if that's the case then you know good for you. You saved a hundred bucks

01:26:57 ◼   ► but I don't think Apple liked it where up until the 5c was introduced the the

01:27:04 ◼   ► $99 option looked I'd or nearly identical, you know

01:27:08 ◼   ► There were obviously some certain tells that you could tell an iPhone 4 from 4s

01:27:13 ◼   ► you know the antenna bands were it's certainly different at slightly different points and

01:27:17 ◼   ► earlier that when they first started keeping the year old phone around the 3g and the 3gs you could tell them apart because the eye

01:27:25 ◼   ► The word iPhone on the back was written. Yes shiny letters instead of flat letters

01:27:30 ◼   ► Well people want to show they have the new one right as part of the esteem of having the new iPhone, right?

01:27:34 ◼   ► No, I totally think so, you know, and it's an Apple wants to enable that so that's why I think that you know

01:27:41 ◼   ► I don't know if I don't know if an iPhone

01:27:43 ◼   ► 6 C would be plastic like the 5c like I wouldn't be surprised if it's metal or

01:27:51 ◼   ► In rounded, you know with rounded corners like the 6s and 6 plus but just the size of it would tell you that it's you

01:27:58 ◼   ► Know the lesser model. Yeah, it was funny with the iPhone 5 even though Apple rebuilt it from the Adams on up

01:28:04 ◼   ► It was boring, but the minute they made it in gold, you know people first made fun of it

01:28:07 ◼   ► And then everyone complained they couldn't get one

01:28:09 ◼   ► Did you you know, yeah, it's still hard to get and

01:28:15 ◼   ► iPhones yeah, like there's there's still I didn't know that until I was listening to ATP and heard

01:28:21 ◼   ► Syracuse are talking about it

01:28:24 ◼   ► It's that yeah supply still hasn't caught up with demand

01:28:27 ◼   ► Milton has been trying to get them for weeks and I think he had to finally call in favors to try to get them shipped

01:28:33 ◼   ► to them.

01:28:34 ◼   ► That makes me laugh.

01:28:36 ◼   ► Well, it's hilarious because people who leave Apple have no idea how to get a, like how

01:28:39 ◼   ► normal people get their phones.

01:28:40 ◼   ► Like they just, they've never had to deal with carriers or with retail stores or, and

01:28:44 ◼   ► it sounds like some of them, you know, as much as I love them, they're just a little

01:28:46 ◼   ► inadequate and equipped to deal with the horrors of retail shopping.

01:28:50 ◼   ► Yeah, let me see here.

01:28:54 ◼   ► If I get a 6 and I get it in space gray, I get it on Verizon.

01:29:01 ◼   ► If I want, well it looks like I can get 128 gigs is available 3 to 5 business days.

01:29:13 ◼   ► I think the 6 Plus is still harder than the 6.

01:29:16 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:29:17 ◼   ► But they're starting to fall into more balance.

01:29:18 ◼   ► Which is crazy.

01:29:19 ◼   ► I mean as much as people complain about the iPhone, you still can't get them.

01:29:23 ◼   ► Get them that there's their come put their supply constraint for months after launch. Yeah

01:29:27 ◼   ► Just crazy

01:29:30 ◼   ► And I think that's you know, but I still think that's pretty interesting that they're at a point where they still don't catch up in

01:29:36 ◼   ► Supply demand until after the holiday. Yeah and year after year - it's not a diminishing thing

01:29:43 ◼   ► They're making more and more money off the iPhone. Yeah

01:29:46 ◼   ► What's left? I guess we have the last event of the year, which would be the iPad air

01:29:52 ◼   ► - yes and Yosemite L and the retina iMac. Yeah

01:29:56 ◼   ► Retina iMac is only one it really sticks out to me. I still I love the iPad air - I still think I think it's an

01:30:02 ◼   ► amazing device, but it's it's a refinement of the iPad air whereas the

01:30:07 ◼   ► The retina 5k Mac is to me like a new a new era the two things that are similar to me about those devices

01:30:15 ◼   ► Are that with the iPad air - Apple started making their own GPUs, you know, like an antech first thought it was a six core

01:30:22 ◼   ► imagination chip and they later realized that it was an eight core one which was

01:30:27 ◼   ► totally theoretical until Apple made it. It wasn't just a design they actually

01:30:31 ◼   ► took the architecture and built their own custom GPU and they've been doing

01:30:34 ◼   ► CPUs for a couple generations like they had Swift and they had Cyclone now they

01:30:37 ◼   ► have Cyclone 2 but now they're doing the entire chip almost is in-house at Apple

01:30:43 ◼   ► and then you look at the iMac and they made the timing controller for that

01:30:48 ◼   ► They made 5k possible in that computer when Intel has not yet shipped

01:30:51 ◼   ► Skylake or Thunderbolt 3 or anything so they are there again. They're making more and more of the internals of their machines

01:30:58 ◼   ► Yeah, and that's interesting to me that they've done it for the iMac because they've they've they've had this economy of scale with iOS

01:31:06 ◼   ► devices because even as they've expanded the lineups and they've gone out of two iPhone sizes and

01:31:12 ◼   ► you know, there's two iPad sizes and

01:31:16 ◼   ► There are cellular and non-cellular versions of the iPads, but for the most part it's still in terms of what's actually new this year

01:31:23 ◼   ► It's a very limited number of SKUs

01:31:27 ◼   ► Right and and they share a lot of stuff, you know that the iPhone 6 and 6 plus

01:31:32 ◼   ► Are really very very there's a slight difference in the camera where the the 6 plus camera has optical image stabilization

01:31:40 ◼   ► So that's a different part, but it's the same a8 CPU

01:31:44 ◼   ► And it's you know, just the stuff that has to be different. It's different, you know different display

01:31:49 ◼   ► Because it's a different size and it's different pixels

01:31:53 ◼   ► But that they've you know

01:31:57 ◼   ► They had this great economy of scale which lets them do these things like you're saying like build their own systems on a chip

01:32:02 ◼   ► And not share it with the rest of the you know, have these things that aren't available to anybody else in the industry

01:32:07 ◼   ► It's interesting to me that they've done it with the iMac too, which is clearly lower volume. I mean without question

01:32:14 ◼   ► I mean, I think all IMAX together are just dropping the bucket volume wise compared to iPad or

01:32:20 ◼   ► any iPhone or iPad model, but the retina one in particular existing only at the top of the

01:32:27 ◼   ► Product what do you call it the product the pyramid? Yeah the pyramid, right?

01:32:34 ◼   ► It's only the best option the good and better ones are still non retina because the retina display

01:32:41 ◼   ► You know, it's it's this weird combination where it's you know in one sense

01:32:45 ◼   ► It's remarkably inexpensive because famously like Dell has a 5k display didn't they come out with a 5k display

01:32:51 ◼   ► They yeah, they came out with a month or so ago, but it requires two

01:32:54 ◼   ► Displayport connections, but it costs as much it costs as much or more as the whole I'm yes, right

01:33:00 ◼   ► So Dell came out with a 5k display

01:33:02 ◼   ► We're just the display and forget about whether you need how you're gonna actually run it and that you need to display ports and all

01:33:07 ◼   ► That how are you gonna get graphics cards? How are you gonna get how's everything gonna work?

01:33:10 ◼   ► Just forget about it. Just the display itself costs as much as the whole iMac which includes a pretty killer computer. Yeah, and

01:33:18 ◼   ► The crazy thing is Apple if you asked me for you know, ten years ago, you know, Apple's not a chip fab

01:33:24 ◼   ► They're not an Intel. They're not a TMCH

01:33:25 ◼   ► They're not any one of these companies and they got to 64-bit first and now they're they're making chips that are just

01:33:30 ◼   ► Pushing the industry forward and they're not a peripheral maker

01:33:33 ◼   ► But they're with the original IPS iMac and now with the 5k iMac they're making displays

01:33:38 ◼   ► That's just pushing the industry forward and the the iPad air 2 is so overpowered that you could arguably say, you know guys relax

01:33:45 ◼   ► Stop but instead of that apples just saying run get as far ahead as fast as you can and just keep going just push

01:33:51 ◼   ► The state of this technology because it will filter down and we will figure out a way to make all this stuff super

01:33:55 ◼   ► Super important and to do things that nobody else can do. Yeah, and that's it's turning the

01:34:02 ◼   ► Industries model on its head where from the outset from the very beginning of personal computing

01:34:09 ◼   ► Through recently the model was that it's you know this commodity market where you buy

01:34:16 ◼   ► CPUs from Intel you buy graphics cards from Nvidia or you know whoever else

01:34:24 ◼   ► Radion I guess it you know, but there'd be graphics companies. There'd be memory makers, you know, there'd be

01:34:32 ◼   ► hard drive makers and you would just put all the you know if you wanted to make a computer you'd pick and choose you get the

01:34:38 ◼   ► Salad bar, right? I guess yeah, it's totally like a salad bar

01:34:41 ◼   ► But everybody else could get them too and you could make deals and depending on your volume

01:34:46 ◼   ► I'm sure you know Dell and HP as higher volume vendors would have some sort of leverage in priority

01:34:52 ◼   ► Versus you know a smaller

01:34:55 ◼   ► by market share PC maker, you know, but

01:34:59 ◼   ► It was that the what you were possible. What was possible to do though was

01:35:05 ◼   ► limited by these

01:35:07 ◼   ► Specialists, so if you wanted to drive a 5k display

01:35:11 ◼   ► You were limited unless you could get somebody out

01:35:16 ◼   ► You know that less the state-of-the-art in the graphics industry was a graphics card that could push that many

01:35:21 ◼   ► pixels and a connector

01:35:24 ◼   ► That could carry them

01:35:27 ◼   ► Whereas Apple has started turning things like that on its head and it doesn't matter if the industry can't do it yet the state-of-the-art in

01:35:34 ◼   ► the industry they just made their own and

01:35:36 ◼   ► Made it work. Yeah, and it's not available to anybody else

01:35:40 ◼   ► That's the in like you said like to do things that other people can't do

01:35:45 ◼   ► What goes back to your only Apple piece from WVDC?

01:35:49 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it's you know, probably the best piece I wrote this year

01:35:53 ◼   ► I think it's the only one that or at least the one that has the most staying value

01:35:57 ◼   ► Even lo these many months later. I think it's it's if anything I underplayed it

01:36:01 ◼   ► Yeah, and I think it's true and I think when we like next year we already mentioned

01:36:04 ◼   ► Maybe there's a bigger iPad but maybe there's software and services that go along with that and having two gigs and having

01:36:10 ◼   ► An octa core GPU makes a lot more sense, you know next year than it makes this year

01:36:14 ◼   ► But it allows people who buy the brand new iPad air this year to not feel left behind when the newer devices or newer software ships

01:36:21 ◼   ► Mm-hmm. I and I still can't I keep thinking about 64-bit for mobile and you know

01:36:26 ◼   ► Nobody else has it yet. I mean there's some chips that are possible of it out for Android

01:36:31 ◼   ► But it certainly is far from mainstream

01:36:33 ◼   ► Yeah

01:36:33 ◼   ► the Nexus 9 I think ship with it just because they they decided they had to have they couldn't wait any longer to

01:36:38 ◼   ► Get 64-bit out the door, but it's not in it's not arm. It's Intel right? It's the Nexus 9 I think is

01:36:44 ◼   ► X 84 it's 86. I think no, I think it's Qualcomm, but I'd have to double-check. I don't know what either way though

01:36:52 ◼   ► It certainly isn't like a mainstream thing

01:36:54 ◼   ► But to me it's 64-bit came out and people complained. Oh, there's no four gigabytes of memory

01:36:58 ◼   ► Apple's just wasting it but it turns out that the ARM v8

01:37:00 ◼   ► Instruction set was so much better and the security that they could use enabled all the touch ID stuff

01:37:06 ◼   ► There was just so many other things about building that chipset that 64-bit was almost a bonus for them the same way three cores on

01:37:12 ◼   ► The iPhone 6 is almost a bonus and eight cores on the eye on the iPad air - they're doing it because they can there's no

01:37:17 ◼   ► Reason not to so why shouldn't we do it?

01:37:20 ◼   ► Right. It just goes hand in hand with the new instruction set which is really where the performance wins come from

01:37:25 ◼   ► Not the mat not any sort of magical going from 32 to 64 on any hypothetical platform

01:37:31 ◼   ► Magically makes things better. It wasn't like that. It was a very very practical, you know arm

01:37:37 ◼   ► The new arm instruction set is way better. It gets rid of all sorts of legacy cruft

01:37:42 ◼   ► You know that dates back to the early days of arm when it was powering things like the Newton

01:37:48 ◼   ► and Palm pilots and stuff like that.

01:37:51 ◼   ► - And way more registers, it's just so many benefits.

01:37:54 ◼   ► - Right, and everything that the computer engineers

01:37:57 ◼   ► have learned since then about how to make efficient

01:38:00 ◼   ► instruction sets for computers

01:38:03 ◼   ► and what is it that a modern compiler wants to see

01:38:08 ◼   ► in an instruction set to generate efficient code?

01:38:11 ◼   ► And it was rewritten from scratch with all this cruft gone

01:38:17 ◼   ► and all sorts of new stuff to help modern compilers in there.

01:38:21 ◼   ► And here we are over a year later,

01:38:23 ◼   ► and Apple is still the only mainstream device that has it.

01:38:27 ◼   ► And we have Swift and we have Metal.

01:38:29 ◼   ► So when you put those technologies all together,

01:38:31 ◼   ► eventually the performance is gonna be way beyond

01:38:33 ◼   ► what just the hardware delivers.

01:38:35 ◼   ► Yeah, and I think that those two things,

01:38:37 ◼   ► Swift is obviously new for 2014, Metal is new for 2014.

01:38:44 ◼   ► And I think they get to the heart of like,

01:38:49 ◼   ► what is Apple going to be like as a big company

01:38:53 ◼   ► with big weapons to swing around?

01:38:57 ◼   ► And obviously, like I said,

01:39:00 ◼   ► the watch that the Canary Nicole found I'm looking for

01:39:02 ◼   ► is hubris, and obviously when a company gets bigger,

01:39:05 ◼   ► it tries to do more on its own.

01:39:07 ◼   ► I mean, Microsoft famously does everything on its own.

01:39:13 ◼   ► They're the only company that use back to you know, just little details like that. They use backslashes instead of slashes between directory paths

01:39:20 ◼   ► To you know having had their own

01:39:24 ◼   ► You know developer toolchain and their own programming language, you know for you know, but they did more than that though

01:39:32 ◼   ► I feel like when Microsoft was at its height, you know in the 90s, you know

01:39:37 ◼   ► it was the fact that they expanded into things like

01:39:42 ◼   ► ownership of slate.com the founding of msnbc you know that they wanted to own a cable news network

01:39:48 ◼   ► right why would microsoft want to get involved in cable news you know but

01:39:53 ◼   ► i feel like apple as they try to do more and more on their own it's only in the name of enabling

01:40:00 ◼   ► features that would be better for the products they're already making right like for enterprise

01:40:05 ◼   ► they didn't decide to create an enterprise company or buy an enterprise company they partnered with

01:40:08 ◼   ► IBM to let them do what they did well.

01:40:10 ◼   ► Right. Yeah, that's a great example of that they didn't create this new enterprise division

01:40:17 ◼   ► within Apple, which is outside their expertise and risks losing their focus.

01:40:23 ◼   ► If Tim Cook wants to make a big bet and do this, he doesn't have to spend anywhere near

01:40:29 ◼   ► as much attention on it as he would in this world where they're willing to say, "You know what?

01:40:35 ◼   ► We just want our devices to be used in the enterprise

01:40:38 ◼   ► We'll let IBM handle how to make the sales and how to write these you know these apps that are meant for that market

01:40:44 ◼   ► It's a perfect example

01:40:46 ◼   ► Yeah, much better than buying SAP or something that the imaginary people always want Apple to buy right and Swift

01:40:52 ◼   ► You know is an example where they're not they didn't create a new programming language to change computer science

01:40:58 ◼   ► It's not you know if anything that the critiques from people who are like

01:41:03 ◼   ► Programming language critics is that it's sort of a boring language. There's nothing outlandish about it. There's nothing novel about it

01:41:11 ◼   ► It's just a nice simple language, you know in term not not that there aren't clever things under the hood and like the fact that

01:41:20 ◼   ► You know

01:41:23 ◼   ► Most of the language it's designed is is defined in the runtime not in the language itself

01:41:29 ◼   ► The language itself is super super minimal

01:41:30 ◼   ► There's something you know artistic about that, but effectively it's just what kind of programming language

01:41:36 ◼   ► Would you write would you want to enable the sort of software that Apple wants to run?

01:41:42 ◼   ► That's it. It's just a very very practical language

01:41:45 ◼   ► You know and what would you get when you have a language that's

01:41:50 ◼   ► Led by the compiler guy Chris Ladner or a company that lets the compiler guy leave the language, right?

01:41:57 ◼   ► But it's sort of the opposite of the sort of hoity-toity

01:42:00 ◼   ► academic languages that you know with the new programming languages that I remember when I was young and in college in the 90s where it

01:42:07 ◼   ► Was all led it was you know that the the practical utility them was completely abstracted. It was all

01:42:14 ◼   ► Philosophical in terms of what was driving the decisions behind them

01:42:19 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a language designed to be used by Apple and and sooner rather than later

01:42:23 ◼   ► Yes, very much so and very much designed, you know as

01:42:27 ◼   ► Syracuse's pointed out on ATP

01:42:30 ◼   ► It's we've already one thing we've got that is not going to budge is we've already got these frameworks the cocoa frameworks and

01:42:37 ◼   ► In theory if they were going to start with all new frameworks, maybe they'd come up with a new language

01:42:41 ◼   ► But it's we've got these frameworks that are you know have these you know that are already designed and already have these these

01:42:48 ◼   ► You know design patterns what type of new language would we use that would best leverage them?

01:42:53 ◼   ► And that's one of the things that I really like about the way that Apple is running now is there

01:42:57 ◼   ► No, they don't have to restart everything again

01:42:59 ◼   ► They can do something like add

01:43:01 ◼   ► LLVM and add Swift and do these things that

01:43:04 ◼   ► Take them further without having to destroy or stop or paid an artificial break between what they had before

01:43:09 ◼   ► It's like they're swapping the parts behind the scenes and if you're not paying attention

01:43:12 ◼   ► You might not even see it, but it gives them tremendous benefit over time. Yeah and metal likewise

01:43:18 ◼   ► You know, it's it's it's the only it's the sort of thing you can only do when you have a big user base

01:43:25 ◼   ► I mean Microsoft famously has done that with the DirectX, you know, we're Mike, you know

01:43:30 ◼   ► And it's you know sustained to this day that their leadership in PC gaming, you know

01:43:35 ◼   ► If that there's probably no area of computing where they're stronger than PC gaming

01:43:40 ◼   ► And they're able to say here's you know, here's the graphics language

01:43:44 ◼   ► you're going to use and that's it and they can do that because they've got the

01:43:48 ◼   ► footprint

01:43:50 ◼   ► Apple couldn't do metal, you know

01:43:53 ◼   ► Ten years ago with the Mac

01:43:55 ◼   ► I mean, it's still not on the Mac

01:43:56 ◼   ► But they couldn't and I don't think they could have I don't think it would have really taken off in 2008 or 2009

01:44:01 ◼   ► They really needed that massive hundreds of millions of users base and this you know

01:44:08 ◼   ► This de facto

01:44:10 ◼   ► Position is like the leading handheld gaming market and now it's not like they're forcing it down developers throats there

01:44:18 ◼   ► You know, you don't have to use it

01:44:20 ◼   ► It's not like they're they've said like oh next year if you don't use if your game isn't using Swift

01:44:25 ◼   ► It won't be in the App Store

01:44:27 ◼   ► it's something developers want to use though because

01:44:29 ◼   ► It's it gives them better performance and lets them hit

01:44:35 ◼   ► You know a huge number of their users and it was something that they could announce at

01:44:39 ◼   ► WWDC while they were announcing that I forget the four or five biggest game engines in the world were all supporting it

01:44:44 ◼   ► so for most developers they

01:44:46 ◼   ► Quote-unquote get it for free because the engine that they're already using is just now getting the benefits of all of that, right?

01:44:50 ◼   ► all right, and it's definitely a

01:44:53 ◼   ► Yeah, I guess that it's in broad strokes

01:44:57 ◼   ► it's the sort of thing Apple could only do now that they're big and

01:45:00 ◼   ► the market leader and that wouldn't it just wasn't possible in the old days when they were

01:45:06 ◼   ► The little guy on the sides when the adobe's and Microsoft's could say no, we're not going to support your

01:45:11 ◼   ► Your rap city. Yeah, that's a you know, perfect example, right?

01:45:16 ◼   ► Although the rhapsody thing was a little bit more it's funny because they were a little bit more

01:45:21 ◼   ► Adamant back then where their initial proposal with adamant with rap city was you're going to rewrite your apps in cocoa

01:45:28 ◼   ► Or else you have to run in this little little ghetto

01:45:34 ◼   ► environment

01:45:35 ◼   ► Whereas, you know even with Swift like I said, they're not saying you have to use Swift

01:45:39 ◼   ► even though they could

01:45:42 ◼   ► Really? I mean, I think they could get away with it. But you know, they're not because I feel like there's a

01:45:48 ◼   ► Humility to them

01:45:51 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean absolutely and you get people like, you know, Brent Simmons now

01:45:54 ◼   ► We get to play around with it and blog about all their experiences with it and the benefits everybody

01:45:58 ◼   ► It's almost like a built-in

01:45:59 ◼   ► They don't do betas the way Google does but the way they're releasing it gives a lot of people a lot of time

01:46:03 ◼   ► To weigh in beyond the five and then hundred people at Apple who knew about it

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01:50:25 ◼   ► or if I do I don't remember so lack of Christmas Apple events yeah so that's it

01:50:32 ◼   ► though I think that what else is up for 2014 and review I think there's sort of

01:50:36 ◼   ► things that we could touch on just quickly one is the

01:50:38 ◼   ► Tim Cook beyond just running at Apple, but the the moves he's made towards the inclusivity and towards equal opportunity. Oh

01:50:45 ◼   ► liberties I

01:50:47 ◼   ► Can't believe I didn't think of that. I think that's it's absolutely been a big year for that

01:50:51 ◼   ► That his essay I think was just absolutely pitch-perfect

01:50:55 ◼   ► Just his own version of you know thoughts on and but it was so much more personal

01:51:02 ◼   ► Yeah, I think even if he hadn't written that and come out himself as gay this year

01:51:08 ◼   ► I think it would still be worth talking about the like you said inclusivity and

01:51:12 ◼   ► Etc that that he's led and that Apple is pushed this year

01:51:17 ◼   ► It's terrific and it reminds me of the story that I heard

01:51:20 ◼   ► You know what?

01:51:21 ◼   ► Scott forest all whether he really wanted to make Apple a more inclusive company and he believed that you in order to hire more

01:51:28 ◼   ► With more diversity you had to have more diversity in the hiring process. So when he would get they had terrific female engineer

01:51:34 ◼   ► I mean Vicki Murley famously but terrific female engineers on the Safari team, for example

01:51:38 ◼   ► And they would they would not only send them on the resumes

01:51:41 ◼   ► but they would send them out to you know on the job hunt to the to the colleges because they knew that they would come

01:51:46 ◼   ► back with a different perspective and

01:51:48 ◼   ► We we haven't seen tremendous spread of that effect

01:51:51 ◼   ► We haven't seen a huge swing in the amount of women or minorities and in jobs in Silicon Valley

01:51:56 ◼   ► But we have seen improvements and I think with Apple's report as disappointing as the results might be to many people

01:52:01 ◼   ► The exposure that it gets and the willingness for people to want to make it better. I think we're huge this year

01:52:06 ◼   ► Yeah, and I think it's again another one of those things where I think you can really just take Tim Cook at his word

01:52:14 ◼   ► Yeah, and it's no euphemism. It's not just you know, trying to say what people want to hear

01:52:20 ◼   ► I think he means it where a he thinks it's just right

01:52:23 ◼   ► it's just the right thing to do but be that that that fierce competitor in him you can tell when he says it that

01:52:29 ◼   ► It's there's there's obviously so much untapped talent

01:52:33 ◼   ► outside

01:52:36 ◼   ► The white male engineer, you know, yeah whites and Asians, you know that everybody else women people of color

01:52:43 ◼   ► men and women

01:52:46 ◼   ► It's the talent is out there and Apple is starved for talent and they want it

01:52:52 ◼   ► you know, so there's in addition to the the

01:52:55 ◼   ► Justice angle, you know that it's the way it should be that that people don't feel welcome in the industry

01:53:02 ◼   ► But it there's also just a purely

01:53:04 ◼   ► competitive aspect to it

01:53:07 ◼   ► It's it was that beautiful moment too with Tim Cook when they were at the shareholders meeting and the guy stood up and he said why

01:53:12 ◼   ► Are you waste basically said why are you wasting my money on?

01:53:15 ◼   ► Environmentalism and accessibility and Tim Cook said, you know that this stuff matters and if you don't think it matters

01:53:20 ◼   ► Just get the hell out of the stock, right? It was the guy brought up ROI

01:53:23 ◼   ► Yeah, an investment and you know and it was fascinating

01:53:27 ◼   ► You know that that cook got as angry as he did and said everything we do isn't about the bloody our ROI

01:53:34 ◼   ► Yeah, and it's funny that he said bloody because she says, you know clearly he's not British

01:53:38 ◼   ► She's he's the cool one right like we'd expect that from Steve Jobs

01:53:41 ◼   ► Steve Jobs was bombastic

01:53:42 ◼   ► But Tim Cook always looked like he would just sit there with laser beams in his eyes and that for him is hugely emotional

01:53:48 ◼   ► Right, it wouldn't be surprising if Tim Cook I mean if Steve Jobs had gotten angry at a Cheryl

01:53:54 ◼   ► Yeah, whereas Tim Cook is the guy you'd think no matter what any crackpot shareholder would say

01:53:58 ◼   ► He's not gonna get angry

01:53:59 ◼   ► But he did that clearly angered him and again like when I think was the Financial Times that named him their

01:54:05 ◼   ► CEO of the year there was somebody there was a couple yes so far

01:54:09 ◼   ► But the one that I linked to I remember that they led their their here's why with that anecdote and I think in hindsight

01:54:16 ◼   ► said it was the most telling anecdote of the year you know in terms of Tim Cook

01:54:21 ◼   ► being unscripted yes you know I think in terms of what was scripted and what it

01:54:25 ◼   ► was planned his you know his coming out essay in business week was probably it

01:54:30 ◼   ► but that moment at the shareholders meeting I think was the most telling

01:54:34 ◼   ► impromptu moment yeah and you know it really made me think it's strange to say

01:54:39 ◼   ► but it made me think a lot more of Tim Cook because you know it is hard to tell

01:54:42 ◼   ► he is so controlled in public and so on message and so on point and he's such

01:54:46 ◼   ► He's so gifted as a thinker and someone who controls logistics and all these things to see his remotional response sort of added

01:54:53 ◼   ► A whole new dimension to him as not just a CEO, but a person

01:54:56 ◼   ► yeah, I think absolutely and

01:54:59 ◼   ► You know, and I think that's it. It's also a to me a sign of the long-term thinking

01:55:06 ◼   ► That the Apple, you know under jobs, you know constantly, you know consistently since since the in the post next

01:55:15 ◼   ► Verification era, you know that they've been a long-term company that's looking at building a company that's going to be here for 50 or 100 years

01:55:22 ◼   ► You know that's going to outlive everybody who's at the company today, you know

01:55:27 ◼   ► And there's I really do think that that's what they're looking at that they're trying to build an institution that's going to still be here

01:55:33 ◼   ► when Tim Cook and Phil Schiller and Angela aren'ts are all long retired and you know

01:55:40 ◼   ► Frankly in the grave. Yeah, and how do you do that? Well, you don't do it by sweating the ROI on every single thing you do

01:55:47 ◼   ► Yeah, and it's you know, the other thing too it that and I think it's probably what burned him up is

01:55:54 ◼   ► It's not like Apple, you know has dipped into low profit margins and that they're still spending money

01:56:01 ◼   ► I think it was in particular with the

01:56:03 ◼   ► the the clean energy for the data centers and

01:56:08 ◼   ► Spending money on thing, you know worrying about things like their environmental impact on global warming or climate change, whatever you want to call it

01:56:15 ◼   ► Carbon footprint. Yeah, it definitely struck a chord with him. It was a good chord to been struck

01:56:21 ◼   ► And you know the whole, you know social

01:56:25 ◼   ► Equality angle is has clearly I don't think Steve Jobs was against it, but it's you know

01:56:34 ◼   ► Apple is clearly as a company is clearly more outspoken about it now than they were under him

01:56:39 ◼   ► Well jobs seem to believe that all that stuff was deeply personal charity charitable donations and support for causes was something that he believed that

01:56:45 ◼   ► Apple paying that people could let people spend their own money on but it wasn't at a corporate level where Tim Cook

01:56:50 ◼   ► You know, he took Apple on the gay pride parade. He's put Apple behind equal employment legislation

01:56:55 ◼   ► He's really believed that the power and and wealth of Apple can be used for more than just generating more power and wealth. Yeah

01:57:03 ◼   ► Yeah

01:57:04 ◼   ► Absolutely. All right, and what was your second thing? My second thing was I was gonna talk about the App Store stuff

01:57:08 ◼   ► But I feel like it's a bit of a downer at the end now

01:57:10 ◼   ► Maybe we did him in the wrong order

01:57:12 ◼   ► Well, we should still do it. Well, we'll let whiskers fix it. Okay

01:57:16 ◼   ► Right with the

01:57:22 ◼   ► Well the today view widgets right this that people you know

01:57:29 ◼   ► in short it was like Apple introduced these today view widgets and

01:57:33 ◼   ► At WWDC and then you know, I think they might have even literally said we can't wait to see what you guys do with them

01:57:39 ◼   ► yeah, and

01:57:40 ◼   ► Then they saw what people were doing with them and rejected a whole bunch of the most clever

01:57:46 ◼   ► versions of them

01:57:48 ◼   ► Who was it

01:57:51 ◼   ► Was it I think it was James Thompson's p-calc. Yeah, that was simultaneously being promoted

01:57:58 ◼   ► in the App Store with a banner for great new uses of TodayView widgets because he added

01:58:06 ◼   ► a calculator.

01:58:07 ◼   ► So without even opening the app right in TodayView, if you put the PCALC widget in, you could

01:58:11 ◼   ► just do your calculation right there.

01:58:14 ◼   ► It was being promoted as a great new widget at the same time that the review team had

01:58:19 ◼   ► contacted him and said, "You know what?

01:58:21 ◼   ► That's outside the bounds of what we intended to be enabled, so you're going to have to

01:58:24 ◼   ► submit a new build that takes that out."

01:58:27 ◼   ► On the outside it looks absolutely insane and I think it's worth explaining, not to

01:58:31 ◼   ► excuse it, but sort of to explain it.

01:58:33 ◼   ► So extensibility is this huge new feature and everyone is trying to ship iOS 8 and developers

01:58:38 ◼   ► are trying to get their apps approved and app review is the worst time of the year to

01:58:41 ◼   ► work in app review.

01:58:42 ◼   ► And they bring in as many people as they can and they try to get as many apps as possible

01:58:46 ◼   ► onto the store.

01:58:47 ◼   ► And as soon as an app is approved, and this is all under Phil Schiller's org, that moves

01:58:51 ◼   ► to Eddy Cue's org where they have app editorial and they need to program the entire app store

01:58:55 ◼   ► or promotion for all that stuff,

01:58:57 ◼   ► and all they see is approved.

01:58:58 ◼   ► They have no idea what might be going on behind the scenes.

01:59:00 ◼   ► It's flagged as approved, it's fine for editorial.

01:59:02 ◼   ► And then when things sort of slow down again,

01:59:04 ◼   ► people who are higher up in App Store review,

01:59:07 ◼   ► who have a lot of ideas about what they believe,

01:59:09 ◼   ► you know, and they sincerely believe

01:59:11 ◼   ► certain things about experience,

01:59:12 ◼   ► and whether a button will confuse an average user,

01:59:14 ◼   ► or whether someone is spending time in Notification Center,

01:59:17 ◼   ► and they're not supposed to,

01:59:18 ◼   ► it's supposed to be a quick conduit.

01:59:20 ◼   ► And they care a lot about these things,

01:59:21 ◼   ► and they'll flag it, and then it'll get removed,

01:59:24 ◼   ► and it won't make any sense,

01:59:25 ◼   ► Developers will appeal and it'll go to a higher level and it might end up on the executive review committee's desk

01:59:30 ◼   ► And they might say it's fine

01:59:31 ◼   ► You know stop worrying about it

01:59:33 ◼   ► And but it I think extensibility was so new that it created a disconnect between what was technically possible

01:59:38 ◼   ► And what people who had been in app review, you know me at a slightly higher level for many years

01:59:43 ◼   ► Thought should be the experience on the system

01:59:46 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that's a very good way to put it and I think maybe the transmit

01:59:53 ◼   ► It was transmitted right yeah, yeah that had the sharing to

01:59:58 ◼   ► Storage services like box.net and Dropbox and I cloud drive

02:00:06 ◼   ► You know that

02:00:09 ◼   ► Completely within the the they didn't they didn't use any non-private or non-public

02:00:15 ◼   ► Apis all public api's the sharing sheet itself the the what's it called move to?

02:00:22 ◼   ► whatever you want to call it send to send to

02:00:24 ◼   ► They don't have any control over it's part of that whole

02:00:29 ◼   ► Inner application communication that that enables so many of these continuity features and sharing

02:00:37 ◼   ► It's one sheet that can't line item veto certain services right because the system is drawing it which is

02:00:42 ◼   ► Why Apple is opening up seemingly opening up and letting you do these things that you couldn't do before?

02:00:48 ◼   ► and

02:00:50 ◼   ► Then they were told you can't you can't do this for iCloud Drive. You can't send anything you you can't send anything

02:00:57 ◼   ► That wasn't created in your your own app to iCloud Drive

02:01:00 ◼   ► Which meant like you said because you don't have line item veto on the services that are listed

02:01:05 ◼   ► That you had to take out the whole thing and now the app couldn't send to anybody

02:01:09 ◼   ► Including Dropbox or box or anybody who Apple doesn't care about

02:01:14 ◼   ► Whereas it almost seemed like it was exactly why they added the send to in the first place so that you could do things like that

02:01:21 ◼   ► It's again when you look at it from certain perspective and I'm not supporting this perspective

02:01:25 ◼   ► But I know it's almost thing like, you know

02:01:27 ◼   ► I understand is that they didn't they don't want the line item veto because they think that there can be disputes within companies that would

02:01:32 ◼   ► Cause one company to sort of remove a competitor or remove a service and that's not to the benefit of the user

02:01:37 ◼   ► But the original model on Mac it's the same like there was Apple made a calculator widget for OS 10

02:01:43 ◼   ► and they didn't make one for iOS for a variety of reasons,

02:01:45 ◼   ► but they thought it wasn't the right experience.

02:01:47 ◼   ► So they deliberately didn't make one.

02:01:49 ◼   ► Then, you know, James Thompson,

02:01:50 ◼   ► who's a phenomenal developer did make one.

02:01:52 ◼   ► For iCloud drive on the Mac,

02:01:53 ◼   ► you could put any arbitrary file there,

02:01:54 ◼   ► but on iOS, it was sort of understood

02:01:56 ◼   ► that you could only put files that you created or edited,

02:01:59 ◼   ► because that meant the user knew that they were in your app

02:02:01 ◼   ► and was working on them,

02:02:03 ◼   ► and they would understand it was in that space.

02:02:05 ◼   ► But then something like transit comes along,

02:02:06 ◼   ► which is the, you know, quote unquote,

02:02:08 ◼   ► Steve Jobs unforeseen thing.

02:02:09 ◼   ► And it's taken to the level where they can say,

02:02:11 ◼   ► This isn't what we intended for it to do,

02:02:14 ◼   ► but it's not taken to the level of thinking,

02:02:15 ◼   ► well, is it a good thing anyway?

02:02:17 ◼   ► Like, should we let it in anyway?

02:02:19 ◼   ► So it gets rejected, then it gets appealed,

02:02:21 ◼   ► then it gets overturned,

02:02:22 ◼   ► and it makes Apple look horrible in the press.

02:02:24 ◼   ► It stresses out the developers,

02:02:25 ◼   ► and it affects the features that customers believe

02:02:27 ◼   ► that they've paid for, and don't have paid for,

02:02:30 ◼   ► and it's just not a good outcome for anybody.

02:02:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, but I do, yeah.

02:02:33 ◼   ► And if you, like you said though,

02:02:34 ◼   ► I think if you wanna try to understand why,

02:02:36 ◼   ► it's that it's so new, and there's so many moving pieces.

02:02:40 ◼   ► And the thing that made-- if you understood everything that

02:02:45 ◼   ► was going on, the thing that made Transmits--

02:02:47 ◼   ► and again, Transmit wasn't yanked from the App Store.

02:02:49 ◼   ► They got a mostly friendly notification

02:02:53 ◼   ► that they were told, you need to submit a new build that

02:02:56 ◼   ► takes this out.

02:02:58 ◼   ► And they couldn't wait forever.

02:03:00 ◼   ► I'm sure that at some point, Apple would--

02:03:02 ◼   ► It's like two weeks usually, I think.

02:03:03 ◼   ► Yeah.

02:03:04 ◼   ► And it's more or less, take out those lines of code

02:03:06 ◼   ► that do this, test your new build, and submit it,

02:03:09 ◼   ► and we'll do this.

02:03:10 ◼   ► I don't think it's any surprise that it was the iOS version

02:03:15 ◼   ► that caused the problem.

02:03:17 ◼   ► Now, if you understood what was going on,

02:03:18 ◼   ► it didn't make any sense though,

02:03:19 ◼   ► because nothing you could do from the iOS version,

02:03:21 ◼   ► no file that you could put, move from transmit

02:03:26 ◼   ► to your iCloud drive.

02:03:28 ◼   ► You couldn't do the exact same thing on Yosemite.

02:03:31 ◼   ► You could do the exact same thing.

02:03:32 ◼   ► So there was nothing that they were,

02:03:35 ◼   ► whoever it was who thought they needed

02:03:38 ◼   ► to not be able to do this from their iOS app,

02:03:41 ◼   ► it was seemingly unaware that whatever it was

02:03:44 ◼   ► that you would do, whether it was a porno file

02:03:46 ◼   ► or a illegally downloaded movie or whatever it is

02:03:49 ◼   ► that they were worried about, was it copyright, whatever.

02:03:52 ◼   ► - Or just stealing files, you know, you load an app

02:03:54 ◼   ► and it starts taking your files and putting it

02:03:55 ◼   ► on someone's server somewhere.

02:03:56 ◼   ► - Yes.

02:03:57 ◼   ► It was all stuff that you could do right in a finder

02:04:02 ◼   ► in Yosemite, you can put whatever file you want

02:04:03 ◼   ► in your iCloud drive, you know, in the same way

02:04:06 ◼   ► that the finder doesn't keep you from moving,

02:04:07 ◼   ► You know a file from any folder anywhere to any other folder

02:04:11 ◼   ► But I think it's understandable because that you know it the review teams and it correct me if you're wrong

02:04:17 ◼   ► I think you might know more about their internal makeup, but the Iowa it's not like a review team

02:04:21 ◼   ► There's iOS reviewers and Mac. Yes, and the iOS reviewers are coming from a years-long

02:04:28 ◼   ► history of you know, what's restricted on iOS and

02:04:33 ◼   ► moving files that weren't created in app whatever your app is to anywhere else has always been

02:04:40 ◼   ► Forbidden and so it's you know, I could see how it even got high up

02:04:44 ◼   ► Not to the highest levels but pretty high up and they thought no this has to be against the rules

02:04:49 ◼   ► This isn't something that iOS does I wrote a piece about this and one of the things I just wanted to

02:04:53 ◼   ► To help people understand is that when you say like Apple rejected it Apple has these same discussions

02:04:59 ◼   ► Like if you listen to ATP or you listen to the talk show, that's the discussion that's happening inside Apple as well

02:05:03 ◼   ► and there's people advocating very strongly that these things should be allowed, and there's

02:05:07 ◼   ► people advocating saying, "This button here is going to confuse somebody.

02:05:10 ◼   ► They'll press it.

02:05:11 ◼   ► They'll suddenly be an app.

02:05:12 ◼   ► They won't know where they are."

02:05:13 ◼   ► And they're not modeling it for me or you or Marco or John or somebody.

02:05:16 ◼   ► They're marketing it for our parents and our non-sophisticated tech-using relatives.

02:05:22 ◼   ► There are some people who are deeply, deeply concerned that they have a very sensible,

02:05:26 ◼   ► understandable experience.

02:05:28 ◼   ► You could argue that widgets and extensibility in general is a pretty nerdy feature, and

02:05:32 ◼   ► anyone using it probably knows what they're doing.

02:05:34 ◼   ► And I think that's the argument that's winning out now.

02:05:37 ◼   ► But it really is these sorts of discussions.

02:05:39 ◼   ► And people want more rules sometimes on the App Store,

02:05:42 ◼   ► but Apple believes that the more,

02:05:43 ◼   ► my understanding is that Apple believes

02:05:45 ◼   ► that the more rules will actually chill innovation.

02:05:47 ◼   ► And they'd much rather see James Thompson,

02:05:49 ◼   ► as annoying as it is, make a calculator widget,

02:05:51 ◼   ► have it rejected, then have it approved,

02:05:53 ◼   ► then have him to see a rule and just never make it

02:05:55 ◼   ► or have to lobby for a change in the rule.

02:05:57 ◼   ► That might take years.

02:05:58 ◼   ► Because right now as ugly and as frustrating

02:06:00 ◼   ► as a process was we have PCalc, we have Transmit,

02:06:03 ◼   ► we have all these things now officially on the store

02:06:05 ◼   ► and we have these things officially clarified.

02:06:06 ◼   ► And it's only been like two months.

02:06:09 ◼   ► - That's a good point.

02:06:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, I would like to see,

02:06:11 ◼   ► and I wrote a thing about this,

02:06:12 ◼   ► but I think it would be great for everybody

02:06:14 ◼   ► if there was a public facing vice president of App Store.

02:06:17 ◼   ► There are really good directors of App Stores,

02:06:20 ◼   ► there's really good people in both Schiller and Q's org,

02:06:24 ◼   ► but they're split over all these different organizations

02:06:26 ◼   ► and much like software development

02:06:28 ◼   ► accelerated under Federighi and stores are accelerating under Angela Ahrens.

02:06:32 ◼   ► I think if there was somebody whose only job it was to make a fantastic

02:06:36 ◼   ► experience on the App Store, whether it's making review better, whether it's adding

02:06:40 ◼   ► sloppy search finally to the App Store, but to someone who all he had to do is

02:06:45 ◼   ► wake up every day and make developers and customers super happy, I think that

02:06:48 ◼   ► would improve the situation for everybody. What's the word, there's a word

02:06:53 ◼   ► like newspapers sometimes have them. Ombudsman's. Ombudsman. That's yeah I was

02:06:59 ◼   ► thinking the New York Times doesn't call them an ombudsman they call the the

02:07:03 ◼   ► public editor. Only and my understanding of why is that for decades they rejected

02:07:09 ◼   ► having an ombudsman and then when they finally added an ombudsman they didn't

02:07:13 ◼   ► want to say okay now we have an ombudsman they just call their ombudsman

02:07:16 ◼   ► the public editor. But the idea of the ombudsman is that at a newspaper for

02:07:21 ◼   ► example the ombudsman doesn't is independent and doesn't report to the

02:07:25 ◼   ► you know editor-in-chief of the newspaper and so a reader who has a

02:07:29 ◼   ► problem with let's say the and it's some sort of bias in the coverage of anything

02:07:33 ◼   ► can go to the ombudsman and the ombudsman can conduct like an independent review I

02:07:38 ◼   ► would love to see Apple have an App Store ombudsman yeah you know and and

02:07:46 ◼   ► And I think the way to do it would be to write a blog.

02:07:52 ◼   ► And have a blog--

02:07:53 ◼   ► so it's not like anybody could create an ombudsman issue.

02:07:59 ◼   ► The ombudsman would still get to choose what they wrote about,

02:08:02 ◼   ► but that they could look at something like pCalc

02:08:05 ◼   ► or Transmit.

02:08:06 ◼   ► And not just like when I write about it, or you write about it,

02:08:12 ◼   ► and kind of make a stink and hope somebody at Apple

02:08:15 ◼   ► reads our sites and does something about it.

02:08:17 ◼   ► But before going public with it,

02:08:19 ◼   ► the ombudsman could go inside and go to somebody

02:08:22 ◼   ► and do the research and maybe get it clarified

02:08:25 ◼   ► without the stink.

02:08:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, sort of deescalate it

02:08:28 ◼   ► before it hits the media and the executives.

02:08:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, but then the ombudsman, as somebody inside Apple,

02:08:36 ◼   ► could then write a post

02:08:37 ◼   ► that maybe explains what Apple is thinking.

02:08:40 ◼   ► And again, without making new rules

02:08:42 ◼   ► and creating an ever more complicated set of guidelines

02:08:46 ◼   ► for the App Store, at least sort of explain

02:08:49 ◼   ► in plain English, here's the sort of things

02:08:51 ◼   ► that are okay in a today view widget

02:08:53 ◼   ► and here's the sort of things that aren't.

02:08:56 ◼   ► - And I think that's a really good idea

02:08:57 ◼   ► because we're friends with a lot of people

02:09:00 ◼   ► who make productivity and creativity apps

02:09:01 ◼   ► and that's where this is a problem.

02:09:03 ◼   ► The people making Clash of Clans and Candy Crush

02:09:05 ◼   ► and all the people who are making the billions of dollars

02:09:07 ◼   ► on the App Store, there's no uncertainty for them,

02:09:09 ◼   ► there's no problem with app review for them.

02:09:11 ◼   ► they're all fine.

02:09:12 ◼   ► - Right, I'm sure it never occurred to the developer

02:09:15 ◼   ► to make a version of Crossy Road

02:09:18 ◼   ► that runs as a today to view widget.

02:09:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I mean, those are the easy problems,

02:09:22 ◼   ► it's the ones that are more shades of gray

02:09:25 ◼   ► that have these problems.

02:09:27 ◼   ► And the other argument that it's killing innovation,

02:09:29 ◼   ► I mean, I've had Android devices for four or five years,

02:09:31 ◼   ► they have a much easier review process than Apple does.

02:09:34 ◼   ► And I've not seen the groundbreaking platform making

02:09:38 ◼   ► sort of future apps arrive on Android any faster

02:09:41 ◼   ► because of that than iOS.

02:09:43 ◼   ► And it's easy to say maybe Android sucks,

02:09:44 ◼   ► and that's why it doesn't happen.

02:09:45 ◼   ► But it's also possible that Apple does add background tasks

02:09:48 ◼   ► and they do add extensibility,

02:09:50 ◼   ► and they do add the features that they need to add

02:09:53 ◼   ► to give developers sort of the tools

02:09:54 ◼   ► that they need to make these sorts of apps.

02:09:56 ◼   ► And it's possible that things like Workflow and Uber

02:09:59 ◼   ► get made regardless of what App Review does,

02:10:01 ◼   ► because those things, as cool as they are,

02:10:04 ◼   ► they don't come across anywhere near

02:10:06 ◼   ► the lines that Apple draws.

02:10:09 ◼   ► Well, on the other hand though, I do think, to take a devil's advocate position, we do

02:10:14 ◼   ► have far more, a far richer variety of outside the bounds of the stock factory OS productivity

02:10:24 ◼   ► software on Mac than we do iOS.

02:10:27 ◼   ► The difference is that iOS is starting with this foundation of we, Apple, are promising

02:10:34 ◼   ► you that nothing you install from the App Store is going to do something like run away

02:10:39 ◼   ► in the background or be hard to uninstall if you don't like it.

02:10:47 ◼   ► Whereas the risks you take on the Mac of allowing anything and everything that you can download

02:10:53 ◼   ► outside the App Store is that you have utilities that can be hard to uninstall.

02:10:58 ◼   ► I tried to uninstall BlackBerry Connect and it was a nightmare.

02:11:02 ◼   ► You know, it's always I think it's less of a problem than it used to be

02:11:05 ◼   ► But it's always been a problem and that you might add uncertainty and if you feel like, you know

02:11:10 ◼   ► Like a non technical user like we know that if the fans running on your computer and you don't think it should be you can

02:11:15 ◼   ► Go to activity monitor or up there to the battery menu and it'll tell you you know in recent versions

02:11:20 ◼   ► Who's you know, which app is using excessive power?

02:11:22 ◼   ► You know, but it's can be it can be confusing to a typical user

02:11:28 ◼   ► They don't know to do those things and what if it's some app that they've never heard of because it's you know

02:11:33 ◼   ► The helper app for another app. It's a faceless background app. That doesn't doesn't even show up in their doc

02:11:39 ◼   ► Well, then what do they do? You know iOS has this promise of

02:11:43 ◼   ► We're you're never gonna have to worry about those things and you know part of that promise it only happens if if

02:11:50 ◼   ► Everything goes through an App Store review process

02:11:53 ◼   ► Which is why to install the keyboard you got to download an app and even though that app does absolutely nothing

02:11:57 ◼   ► once you've downloaded it and if you delete it,

02:12:00 ◼   ► the keyboard goes away, it's still the same mechanism

02:12:02 ◼   ► to deliver all the new features that they're adding.

02:12:05 ◼   ► It's an interesting problem to solve.

02:12:06 ◼   ► And I think, you know, I use PCALC, the widget all the time.

02:12:10 ◼   ► I barely, sorry, James, I barely launch PCALC anymore

02:12:12 ◼   ► 'cause a widget is just enough almost all the time.

02:12:15 ◼   ► And I use drafts and I use transmit

02:12:17 ◼   ► and I love all these features

02:12:18 ◼   ► and I'm happy that Apple reversed the stuff.

02:12:20 ◼   ► I just think that it's worth breaking down the process

02:12:23 ◼   ► that happens because the more you understand it.

02:12:25 ◼   ► - Did drafts get everything back?

02:12:26 ◼   ► - Yes.

02:12:27 ◼   ► Well, I wasn't aware of that.

02:12:29 ◼   ► I knew that they had had some, you know, the same type of issues.

02:12:32 ◼   ► Yeah.

02:12:33 ◼   ► Well, that's good to know.

02:12:34 ◼   ► The only thing that was rejected outright was the app launcher, because Apple really

02:12:37 ◼   ► doesn't believe that other things should launch apps.

02:12:39 ◼   ► And the guy who tried...

02:12:40 ◼   ► There was a rule that says you couldn't have keyboards in widgets.

02:12:42 ◼   ► So the guy basically drew his own instead of invoking the built-in one, and that was

02:12:46 ◼   ► still rejected.

02:12:47 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it comes down to my...

02:12:48 ◼   ► I forgot I was arguing earlier where you have to err on one side or the other.

02:12:52 ◼   ► And that at least with iOS, Apple is going to continue to err on the side of being a

02:12:59 ◼   ► little too strict.

02:13:02 ◼   ► And you know, the side effect of that, like the benefit of that is that abusive software

02:13:11 ◼   ► isn't going to, is less likely to slip through.

02:13:15 ◼   ► The downside to it is, like you said, sometimes it's going to take some ugly airing of dirty

02:13:21 ◼   ► laundry, public airing of dirty laundry, to get it sufficiently looked at by a high enough

02:13:27 ◼   ► level person.

02:13:28 ◼   ► And I think, I don't want to call it a problem, but I think the sign of the change is that

02:13:32 ◼   ► Craig Federicchi, he skews more towards geeky than Scott Forrestal.

02:13:35 ◼   ► I mean, it was hard to get airdrop on the iPhone, and now we have extensibility and

02:13:41 ◼   ► continuity.

02:13:42 ◼   ► And App Store review hasn't changed the way software development has changed.

02:13:46 ◼   ► They're still very much the organization they were back in the Forrestal era, and there's

02:13:50 ◼   ► is gonna be some tension until that's worked out.

02:13:52 ◼   ► As we get geekier features, we're gonna,

02:13:55 ◼   ► the iPhone was not made for geeks.

02:13:56 ◼   ► It was made for mainstream people.

02:13:58 ◼   ► It was a smartphone that everybody could use,

02:14:00 ◼   ► but geeks loved it as well.

02:14:01 ◼   ► And now it's becoming a phone that works great for geeks

02:14:04 ◼   ► because of these features.

02:14:05 ◼   ► And I think app review is gonna have to evolve

02:14:07 ◼   ► the way software has.

02:14:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, totally agree.

02:14:10 ◼   ► All right, I think that catches up.

02:14:14 ◼   ► I think that's our year in review.

02:14:16 ◼   ► - Good year.

02:14:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, it was.

02:14:18 ◼   ► Excited about next year?

02:14:20 ◼   ► I can't wait everything from the Apple watch to the theoretically larger iPad to the new features. We'll see with it and an iOS 9

02:14:27 ◼   ► It's I think it's gonna be a great year. I guess I think one thing is for sure

02:14:32 ◼   ► I think one thing when we if we look back a year from now in 2015

02:14:36 ◼   ► I think the first half of 2015 is gonna be a lot more interesting than the first half of 2014

02:14:41 ◼   ► Yeah, it's gonna be harken back. I think to the first year

02:14:43 ◼   ► I wouldn't be surprised if the first year

02:14:45 ◼   ► Sorry

02:14:45 ◼   ► the first part of 2015 is very similar to the first part of 2010 and the iWatch is similar to the launch of the

02:14:50 ◼   ► original iPad yeah I do I cuz I you know just off the top of my head I expect

02:14:55 ◼   ► both a bigger iPad and the watch in the first half yeah maybe whether they come

02:14:59 ◼   ► at the same event or not I don't know but you know I think they're both coming

02:15:03 ◼   ► sort of before I just don't know if the Apple TV will come with them where if

02:15:07 ◼   ► that's still in the garage you know honestly no idea wouldn't be surprised

02:15:11 ◼   ► it would be huge if they did all three in the first half that'd be almost

02:15:15 ◼   ► unprecedented and it just as a not to try to you know err on the side of

02:15:22 ◼   ► getting too excited but it would kind of make sense in the context of Tim Cook's

02:15:26 ◼   ► previous you know maybe over promising of what they were going to deliver in

02:15:32 ◼   ► 2014 that some of these things you know maybe got bumped you know you know Apple

02:15:38 ◼   ► Apple Pay and Apple Watch count as the plural new product categories, but it does seem like

02:15:49 ◼   ► when he first started talking about that I expected a little bit more, like maybe one

02:15:53 ◼   ► more thing for 2014.

02:15:54 ◼   ► Yeah, well I think, I don't know if you heard the same thing I did, but the Apple TV sounded

02:15:57 ◼   ► like last spring and then it sounded like this fall and then it sounds like next spring

02:16:00 ◼   ► and it sounds like that's a bigger job than people thought it was originally going to

02:16:03 ◼   ► be.

02:16:04 ◼   ► Yeah, I definitely heard back in June in WWDC that it was

02:16:09 ◼   ► Maybe originally thought that it would come out before the end of 2014, but even back at June it was no way

02:16:16 ◼   ► Yeah, not even not even feasible for it to be a 2014 thing. I'm good

02:16:20 ◼   ► I'm happy if they I mean I liked it when Apple had products spread across the year

02:16:23 ◼   ► I find everything coming in fall just quite a lot to deal with

02:16:26 ◼   ► Yeah, well and the other thing too that I think made it impossible and it's not even to get in any details of it

02:16:31 ◼   ► But it's just the simple fact that if it doesn't ship by October it doesn't ship that yes that November and December don't count because they

02:16:38 ◼   ► Can they're just it too late for the holiday season absolutely that if it can't be announced in October

02:16:43 ◼   ► It doesn't get announced till 2015 and it doesn't get announced 2015

02:16:47 ◼   ► It's probably like more like February than January yeah

02:16:51 ◼   ► And we'd start to see signs already I mean if any of those products were like January February we'd start seeing things moving

02:16:55 ◼   ► Yeah, like November December January not that Apple doesn't get work done

02:17:00 ◼   ► But products don't get slated for release in those months

02:17:03 ◼   ► All right, Renee more people can find out more see your great work at I'm more of course. I'm more calm

02:17:09 ◼   ► What are your podcasts lists your podcast? I have debug with guy English

02:17:14 ◼   ► We talked to developers about developing stuff and then I have vector with guy English Dave whiskus and Georgia Dow

02:17:19 ◼   ► We talked about the intersection of technology and humanity and I do iterate with Mark Edwards and Seth Clifford, which is designer oriented stuff

02:17:25 ◼   ► Who do you think is gonna record more podcast episodes in 2015?

02:17:30 ◼   ► You or Jason snow. I it's it's neck and neck but I love that or maybe Mike Hurley

02:17:35 ◼   ► I mean it's becoming it's becoming a bit of a joke

02:17:38 ◼   ► They're all good shows you're prolific

02:17:43 ◼   ► I like here's why I like having you on this show because I feel like on your regular shows you

02:17:48 ◼   ► Defer to your guests and sometimes I forget that you're you're even there. I'm like word Renee go

02:17:54 ◼   ► I'd like to hear Renee pipe in you are so deferential

02:17:57 ◼   ► I like having you here and letting you go off because man you really know your shit. Thank you. I really appreciate that

02:18:02 ◼   ► all right

02:18:04 ◼   ► well, thanks to you and

02:18:06 ◼   ► Go check out Renee's shows and go read I'm on you John. All right, I'm hitting stop