The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► So, lots of stuff going on this week. I guess the big one, you know, I think if we look

00:00:04 ◼   ► back, if we did like a week by week highlight, you know, years from now, we'd look back

00:00:09 ◼   ► and the big news this week is Satya Nadella is being named the CEO at Microsoft.

00:00:14 ◼   ► Pete: Yup.

00:00:15 ◼   ► Pete: Yup.

00:00:16 ◼   ► Dave: And it's a little weird because it leaked a little bit early and I think in

00:00:22 ◼   ► hindsight, it's sort of a, like my initial take is why did it take him so long to name

00:00:28 ◼   ► the guy because it seemed pretty obvious.

00:00:30 ◼   ► Right. I totally agree with that. You know, there have been...how many different front-runners

00:00:37 ◼   ► have there been? At first it was Steven Elop, right?

00:00:40 ◼   ► Right.

00:00:41 ◼   ► Then it became the Ford CEO, Alan Mulally. Is that right?

00:00:47 ◼   ► Mulally?

00:00:48 ◼   ► Mulally? I'm not sure how to pronounce it.

00:00:49 ◼   ► I think it's Mulally.

00:00:51 ◼   ► And then, you know, there were some other names bandied about.

00:00:56 ◼   ► The Skype guy, Tony Bates.

00:01:00 ◼   ► But they were more, I guess they were more dark horses.

00:01:03 ◼   ► But Satya Nadella is one that was always mentioned, certainly, because he is one of the senior

00:01:08 ◼   ► executives there.

00:01:09 ◼   ► But it is, you know, it seems like everyone is saying that this is the absolute right

00:01:14 ◼   ► call, but why wasn't it the right call six months ago?

00:01:17 ◼   ► Yeah, and the only one that I could see that maybe they wanted to really push on was Malali

00:01:26 ◼   ► from Ford and he used to be at Boeing, which means he has Seattle area roots.

00:01:32 ◼   ► And you know, and while I first I thought, well, Ford, that's not really a technical

00:01:38 ◼   ► company, but you read up on Malali, he does have an engineering background.

00:01:42 ◼   ► He's not like a business school mind.

00:01:46 ◼   ► He's an engineering guy who worked up to become an executive.

00:01:49 ◼   ► So it's not outlandish.

00:01:51 ◼   ► And the story that was told on that was that, hey, and he's a little bit older.

00:01:56 ◼   ► He's already had a successful career.

00:01:57 ◼   ► He's very successful at Boeing, turned Ford around through a very difficult time for the

00:02:02 ◼   ► car industry.

00:02:03 ◼   ► He would just go to Microsoft for a couple of years and sort of take probably, and it

00:02:08 ◼   ► was even rumored, Nadella under his wing and sort of teach him the ropes of being a CEO.

00:02:14 ◼   ► Yeah, that sounds like a pretty good theory about that because that is the one main criticism,

00:02:20 ◼   ► I guess, that people have of Nadal is that he's never been a CEO at all. And so taking

00:02:24 ◼   ► over one of the largest companies in the world is certainly going to be a challenge and it

00:02:28 ◼   ► probably would have been beneficial to have a "coach" to help him along that. But he is

00:02:35 ◼   ► Bill Gates now to do that too.

00:02:38 ◼   ► Right. But my thought on the timing is though, when Mullally backed out and just said, pretty

00:02:44 ◼   ► much point blank. You know what? I'm staying at Ford. That's it. Then I don't understand

00:02:49 ◼   ► why it took months after that for this to be named.

00:02:52 ◼   ► Yeah, it seems like, who knows? I mean, reading into all the various stories that have come

00:02:57 ◼   ► out in these past few months, it definitely does sound like there was quite a bit of tension

00:03:03 ◼   ► on the board between, in particular, sort of between some of the candidates they were

00:03:08 ◼   ► talking to and the power dynamics of would Gates remain chairman and would Ballmer remain

00:03:13 ◼   ► on the board because that would be a very weird situation,

00:03:17 ◼   ► I would imagine, for someone, an outsider especially,

00:03:20 ◼   ► to come into that company with the two previous CEOs

00:03:24 ◼   ► on their board of directors.

00:03:26 ◼   ► Well, we didn't do it this way in the past type thing

00:03:31 ◼   ► coming up again and again and again, you can imagine.

00:03:34 ◼   ► It seems like there was definitely a board struggle

00:03:37 ◼   ► a little bit and they finally have sorted that out,

00:03:39 ◼   ► but I still don't know why that took six months.

00:03:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I feel like there was a story in the journal

00:03:46 ◼   ► a day or two after the announcement

00:03:48 ◼   ► that was purported to be the,

00:03:49 ◼   ► hey, here's what happened behind the scenes.

00:03:51 ◼   ► And there was a little bit of color,

00:03:53 ◼   ► but not really anything that explained why it took as long.

00:03:58 ◼   ► And I get, like the real story behind it did not come out.

00:04:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, I think I read that as well.

00:04:03 ◼   ► And there's other sort of things

00:04:06 ◼   ► that have yet to be seen on this.

00:04:07 ◼   ► So the one guy from, you know, the activist shareholder

00:04:12 ◼   ► is going to be taking a board seat soon,

00:04:14 ◼   ► from value click, I think that's what it was.

00:04:17 ◼   ► And so, you know, there was a lot of talk

00:04:20 ◼   ► of when that was going to happen,

00:04:21 ◼   ► like sort of Balmer had to concede

00:04:23 ◼   ► that he was going to allow this activist shareholder

00:04:26 ◼   ► to take the board seat.

00:04:27 ◼   ► And what does that mean for the dynamics of the board

00:04:29 ◼   ► now that Gates is no longer chairman?

00:04:32 ◼   ► And I don't, like no one's really talking

00:04:35 ◼   ► about that right now, but I don't know what that will mean.

00:04:37 ◼   ► because you would assume that the activist shareholder

00:04:39 ◼   ► wanted to take the board seat in order to shake things up.

00:04:42 ◼   ► Things have already been shaken up now.

00:04:44 ◼   ► So what is his role there?

00:04:48 ◼   ► And why does his company still want that position?

00:04:52 ◼   ► I would imagine it's to see how things go

00:04:54 ◼   ► for the first few months,

00:04:55 ◼   ► to see if Microsoft is actually willing now

00:04:58 ◼   ► with new leadership to change direction in any way.

00:05:02 ◼   ► And I don't know, what are your thoughts on that?

00:05:03 ◼   ► Do you think that they actually will

00:05:06 ◼   ► sort of changed from Balmer's last reorg stance?

00:05:11 ◼   ► - I don't know and I think everybody,

00:05:15 ◼   ► I don't think you have to be juiced into Microsoft

00:05:18 ◼   ► or be a keen observer.

00:05:19 ◼   ► Just common sense tells you that,

00:05:22 ◼   ► I think it was Guy English who was on the show

00:05:24 ◼   ► a couple months ago or weeks ago and we talked about,

00:05:26 ◼   ► it's just weird that they did the reorg,

00:05:30 ◼   ► then said Balmer's leaving.

00:05:32 ◼   ► - Yeah. - You know,

00:05:33 ◼   ► really seems like, hey, we want a new CEO and we want to reorg. It seems like the way

00:05:38 ◼   ► you do that is you put the new CEO in and let the new CEO run and structure and improve

00:05:45 ◼   ► of the reorg. And I guess naming an insider, a guy, you know, Nadella, who's been there,

00:05:52 ◼   ► it adds a little bit of continuity and, you know, maybe that it makes a little bit more

00:05:57 ◼   ► sense. But then that again raises to me the question of why they didn't just name him

00:06:00 ◼   ► earlier.

00:06:01 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that by sort of doing that reorg, that certainly seems to speak to the notion

00:06:10 ◼   ► that perhaps Balmer wasn't at all ready to go, even though he sort of made it seem like

00:06:16 ◼   ► it was his own call.

00:06:18 ◼   ► And ultimately it may have been, but he was certainly at least pushed in that direction,

00:06:23 ◼   ► I would imagine.

00:06:24 ◼   ► Because it does seem insane that he would orchestrate this entire change of the company,

00:06:29 ◼   ► Even if he thought someone, an insider, was going to take over underneath him.

00:06:33 ◼   ► It's still like, you know, it's someone else sort of setting the table for your dinner.

00:06:41 ◼   ► It's a weird thing.

00:06:42 ◼   ► And then what about the element of, remember all this Steven Elop stuff that leaked?

00:06:48 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:06:49 ◼   ► Talking about how different, you know, he's gonna cut everything up into little pieces

00:06:54 ◼   ► and sell off certain businesses.

00:06:57 ◼   ► Do we think that was from him or from one of his rivals camps because it obviously it ultimately I don't know if it torpedoed his

00:07:03 ◼   ► His candidacy, but it certainly ended up not helping it because he's not the CEO right now

00:07:08 ◼   ► Yeah, that's a good question either either it must be one or the other it must either be that he thought it helped and that

00:07:15 ◼   ► He must have also thought that he or knew you know like in private conversation that he had some support on the board

00:07:23 ◼   ► And that leaking it

00:07:26 ◼   ► would get

00:07:28 ◼   ► outsiders, you know like investors, you know, I mean and yeah like the like the people were just talking right the value act people who would

00:07:35 ◼   ► Definitely I think that that's their sort of stated goal who is sorted to get Microsoft to to cut itself up into little pieces

00:07:41 ◼   ► to to sort of throw

00:07:43 ◼   ► Pressure behind that and and make it you know

00:07:47 ◼   ► Put every put pressure on the ones who were maybe pushing against elop to go his way

00:07:51 ◼   ► Or you know and it is you know, and it's it sounds you know

00:07:55 ◼   ► You start you say this and it sounds a little silly and you start thinking maybe you know, come on

00:07:59 ◼   ► Everything's not like a movie but you know what they're in real life

00:08:02 ◼   ► There are politics and people do play dirty tricks

00:08:04 ◼   ► The other our idea would be that it was somebody else

00:08:07 ◼   ► Who seeded it to make him look bad like he can't keep his mouth shut and that yeah

00:08:12 ◼   ► It's a leak to the press sort of guy

00:08:14 ◼   ► Yeah, that's sort of you know again, who knows what's actually going on?

00:08:18 ◼   ► But that sounds fairly plausible because of the you saw what the reaction was to it when that happened

00:08:24 ◼   ► It's like, oh my god, this is insane.

00:08:28 ◼   ► Well, there were two camps, as there always are.

00:08:30 ◼   ► The people who think that Microsoft should be split up

00:08:33 ◼   ► are like, hell yeah, this is exactly what they need to do.

00:08:35 ◼   ► And then there's the people who are just

00:08:37 ◼   ► looking at the company overall and just having gone through

00:08:40 ◼   ► sort of this reorg and saying, oh my god,

00:08:42 ◼   ► this is going to throw things into further disarray.

00:08:45 ◼   ► This is pretty much the end of Microsoft

00:08:47 ◼   ► if they let this happen.

00:08:48 ◼   ► If I had to guess, though, I think

00:08:50 ◼   ► that it was Elop and his people who leaked it,

00:08:54 ◼   ► because if it weren't, he could've,

00:08:58 ◼   ► there are ways for him to, you know,

00:09:00 ◼   ► if he somehow tried, got thrown under the bus

00:09:03 ◼   ► by somebody else, there's ways that he could

00:09:05 ◼   ► spin it the other way, you know,

00:09:07 ◼   ► and if it wasn't his actual plan

00:09:09 ◼   ► to split the company up like that,

00:09:11 ◼   ► you know, he could've--

00:09:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, come out and just said so.

00:09:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, and said this, you know,

00:09:15 ◼   ► that didn't come from me, that's not my plan.

00:09:17 ◼   ► I don't-- - Yeah, what if it's,

00:09:20 ◼   ► what if it was a situation where he sorta knew

00:09:22 ◼   ► that he, at that point, somehow he knew

00:09:24 ◼   ► that he wasn't the front runner,

00:09:25 ◼   ► and he thought, let's just try something wild,

00:09:27 ◼   ► and sort of a John McCain kidding Sarah Palin in the race.

00:09:31 ◼   ► And it backfires like that.

00:09:33 ◼   ► - What's the old saying, never attribute to malice

00:09:37 ◼   ► what can be attributed to stupidity?

00:09:39 ◼   ► And I always thought that that made a lot of sense,

00:09:44 ◼   ► even with the whole thing where he was at Nokia,

00:09:51 ◼   ► And when he first went there from Microsoft,

00:09:53 ◼   ► and there were a lot of people who said,

00:09:54 ◼   ► "Wait, they've hired a guy from Microsoft,

00:09:56 ◼   ► "and then he comes in, and the first thing he says is,

00:09:58 ◼   ► "we should ditch all of our existing plans

00:10:01 ◼   ► "and go with Windows Phone."

00:10:03 ◼   ► And a lot of people said, "Is this, you know,

00:10:04 ◼   ► "is he like a double agent?

00:10:06 ◼   ► "Is he, you know--"

00:10:07 ◼   ► - The puppet government.

00:10:08 ◼   ► - Right, I mean, what if he's come in here

00:10:10 ◼   ► and purposefully trying to run the company into the ground

00:10:14 ◼   ► so that Microsoft can buy them?

00:10:15 ◼   ► And then he ran the company into the ground,

00:10:18 ◼   ► lost a lot of shareholder value.

00:10:20 ◼   ► and made tens of millions of dollars for himself when--

00:10:24 ◼   ► - Right, right, with a crazy contract

00:10:26 ◼   ► that was structured in a way that if the company

00:10:30 ◼   ► lost a lot of value and was sold,

00:10:33 ◼   ► or if the Mobile Handset Division was sold,

00:10:35 ◼   ► that he would profit.

00:10:36 ◼   ► - Right, it played out, you know,

00:10:40 ◼   ► the conspiracy theorists would have a field day

00:10:42 ◼   ► with that one, 'cause it played out perfectly

00:10:44 ◼   ► along those lines.

00:10:45 ◼   ► - Right, and so I don't know, I mean,

00:10:47 ◼   ► it actually, it makes sense both ways,

00:10:49 ◼   ► that he's actually not very good at his job, or he's devilishly good but devious.

00:10:58 ◼   ► Both explanations make sense.

00:11:00 ◼   ► I don't think either explanation makes him a good pick to be Microsoft's CEO, though.

00:11:05 ◼   ► I agree.

00:11:07 ◼   ► And there's another sort of interesting wrinkle to this one.

00:11:09 ◼   ► I was sort of reading through all these stories that I realized, which is that now not being

00:11:14 ◼   ► CEO, he is going to be when the deal, I think the deal is closing sometime this quarter

00:11:19 ◼   ► with Nokia, he will be the one put in charge of the devices business basically.

00:11:27 ◼   ► And that was with the previous re-org, if you remember there was this sort of big press

00:11:33 ◼   ► cycle around Julie Larson Green, who was previously an executive but not one of the senior executives

00:11:41 ◼   ► at the company, and she was being elevated to senior executive and put in charge of the

00:11:45 ◼   ► devices thing right before they announced the Nokia deal.

00:11:49 ◼   ► And I remember, I think there was, I don't remember who ran the profile, it may have

00:11:52 ◼   ► been The Verge, it may have been someone else, but they had a big profile on her and how

00:11:57 ◼   ► she's ascending to the top of the company and maybe she will one day be CEO.

00:12:02 ◼   ► And now all of a sudden with the Nokia deal, ELOP is now her boss, so she got demoted essentially.

00:12:10 ◼   ► And then thinking there was that, well, maybe it's only a temporary thing because maybe

00:12:15 ◼   ► when ELOP is anointed CEO, she will get her job back.

00:12:20 ◼   ► But it obviously didn't play out that way.

00:12:23 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:12:24 ◼   ► And is she still...

00:12:27 ◼   ► She's not in charge of Windows, though?

00:12:29 ◼   ► I would have to look what it is.

00:12:32 ◼   ► I do know that she was...

00:12:34 ◼   ► I know she was for a while.

00:12:35 ◼   ► She worked with Sinofsky.

00:12:37 ◼   ► Yeah, right.

00:12:39 ◼   ► Yeah, right because she took over when when he was out and sort of took over that thing

00:12:44 ◼   ► But yeah, I believe with the reorg. She was the one being put in charge of the division that

00:12:48 ◼   ► ELOP is now and will be in charge of once once they acquire Nokia. All right, I

00:12:54 ◼   ► Think one thing that springs to my mind and and it really shows I think I really do think

00:13:01 ◼   ► that

00:13:04 ◼   ► Just how how badly a job balmer did in certain ways and I do know I know that he you know under his

00:13:11 ◼   ► Leadership the company's revenues and profits have gone up up up

00:13:15 ◼   ► Yep, even over the last few years, and that's you know

00:13:18 ◼   ► So he's by no measure a complete failure, and and I think you know for years

00:13:24 ◼   ► It's not just after the fact, but all along

00:13:26 ◼   ► He's publicly stated that that's how he measures the success of the company right?

00:13:32 ◼   ► So in some measures, you know, Microsoft's board got exactly what they thought they were should have thought they were gonna get under balmer

00:13:39 ◼   ► but the one of the ways that I think that he really left them in the lurch was was with

00:13:44 ◼   ► How many other executives he effectively pushed out over the last five six years like synovsky like Ray Ozzie?

00:13:52 ◼   ► Robbie boss, yeah the to the Xbox guy Jay Allard Jay allard, right who you know a lot of people sort of

00:14:01 ◼   ► you know, even just a couple of years ago, I'm not even sure what he's up to anymore,

00:14:06 ◼   ► but even just a couple years ago, a lot of people considered him sort of appear to like a Tony

00:14:12 ◼   ► Fidele, like a rival, you know, like, right, you know, near the top, and then charge of consumer

00:14:18 ◼   ► devices and a keen eye for, you know, leading that sort of team. And all those people were gone,

00:14:24 ◼   ► and all those people and who know, you know, some of them, maybe they should have been gone. I don't

00:14:28 ◼   ► I always thought Ray Ozzie, for example, to me was a little bit, was not a practical person.

00:14:34 ◼   ► It always seemed to me when I listened to him talk that he, I was like, "What did he

00:14:39 ◼   ► really say?"

00:14:40 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:14:41 ◼   ► It never really made a lot of sense to me.

00:14:43 ◼   ► Well, and he, I mean, he had sort of the hardest role to step into, which was replacing the

00:14:47 ◼   ► Gates role, right?

00:14:48 ◼   ► Because he was supposed to be the chief software architect.

00:14:51 ◼   ► So I'm not going to say that all of them should have stayed or that it was possible.

00:14:55 ◼   ► But the fact is that none of them stayed.

00:14:57 ◼   ► All of them are gone.

00:14:58 ◼   ► And so in terms of continuity and picking somebody from the inside and having a smooth

00:15:05 ◼   ► transition, which, you know, and let's just face it, in some aspects the public relations

00:15:10 ◼   ► of a CEO transition are, the stakes are high but the optics are simple, right?

00:15:17 ◼   ► What you really want is a nice smooth handoff with a handshake and a smile and it all happens

00:15:22 ◼   ► in one announcement.

00:15:23 ◼   ► Right?

00:15:24 ◼   ► It's I'm stepping down and I'm happy to say the board has already approved that my protege

00:15:30 ◼   ► insert name here is

00:15:33 ◼   ► Replacing me the company's in great hands. We've worked together for the last so many years

00:15:38 ◼   ► He or she has led this part of the company it's great success

00:15:43 ◼   ► Couldn't be happier. It's a great day for the company

00:15:47 ◼   ► There you go

00:15:47 ◼   ► and that is which is exactly what Apple did under very different circumstances for the stepping down of the

00:15:53 ◼   ► of the CEO, right?

00:15:56 ◼   ► It was, but, you know,

00:15:59 ◼   ► Apple was clearly set up where,

00:16:03 ◼   ► in some alternate universe where, you know,

00:16:07 ◼   ► Jobs stayed a step ahead of the cancer,

00:16:12 ◼   ► but decided, you know,

00:16:15 ◼   ► took a look at what happened with the cancer

00:16:19 ◼   ► and took a look at what he'd done through, you know,

00:16:21 ◼   ► the release of the iPad and said, you know what?

00:16:24 ◼   ► I'm going to Hawaii.

00:16:25 ◼   ► Right, I'm gonna become chairman of the board

00:16:28 ◼   ► and I'm gonna come in for two or three weeks a year

00:16:30 ◼   ► and I'm going to Hawaii for the other 50, 49 weeks a year.

00:16:34 ◼   ► It would have been Tim Cook is, you know,

00:16:39 ◼   ► he's been COO for all this time, he's done a great job.

00:16:43 ◼   ► The company's in great hands, you know, Sayonara, right?

00:16:46 ◼   ► It would have been exact same transition,

00:16:48 ◼   ► just not without the tragedy.

00:16:52 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:16:53 ◼   ► - And Balmer really, and I can't help but feel

00:16:58 ◼   ► that political intrigue-wise that he did that on purpose.

00:17:03 ◼   ► That it was too, it's sort of a godfather,

00:17:06 ◼   ► like a mafia movie type scenario,

00:17:08 ◼   ► but with the set of Killing 'Em,

00:17:09 ◼   ► it's just squeezing people out of the company.

00:17:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, and there've long been those sort of rumors

00:17:14 ◼   ► that that is what Balmer was like,

00:17:17 ◼   ► not so even secretly doing, sort of just anyone who was rising to a level that seemed like

00:17:22 ◼   ► it could challenge him within the company was somehow immediately, you know, exited.

00:17:29 ◼   ► Right, 'cause so just take, for example, Sinofsky, who is a very smart guy, and when you read

00:17:33 ◼   ► like, you know, he's blogging now and stuff, his stuff is, to me, very cogent and makes

00:17:37 ◼   ► a lot of sense. You know, I think if he had still been at the company, clearly would have

00:17:43 ◼   ► been a if not the leading candidate and he wasn't there anymore and at once he's

00:17:49 ◼   ► not there anymore I feel like PR wise the board was kind of you know legally

00:17:56 ◼   ► speaking of course they could hire anybody you know they could hire you

00:17:59 ◼   ► know they could try to hire Tim Cook they could hire you know they could

00:18:03 ◼   ► certainly bring Sanofsky back but bringing Sanofsky back would be like a

00:18:06 ◼   ► slap in Balmer's face and it would make the company look bad yeah for sure like

00:18:10 ◼   ► Like their hands were tied in terms of if any of those people who left the company,

00:18:15 ◼   ► if the board actually thought these were good candidates to lead the company.

00:18:20 ◼   ► So what do you think happens now with Nadella as CEO?

00:18:23 ◼   ► Do you think that there will be more internal sort of shakeup and strife?

00:18:28 ◼   ► Do you think people will leave because they were either passed over?

00:18:31 ◼   ► Like we'll see what happens with Elop.

00:18:33 ◼   ► I assume that he can't.

00:18:35 ◼   ► He must have some sort of handcuffs that are a part of the Nokia deal where he has to come

00:18:40 ◼   ► over and actually stay within the company for a while. But there's others. There's Tony

00:18:45 ◼   ► Bates like we were talking about. There's several others who could have felt like they

00:18:50 ◼   ► were slighted in some way and are they going to feel weird now being managed by or being

00:18:56 ◼   ► overseen by what was their peer before?

00:18:58 ◼   ► Right. I don't know. I don't know enough about the company to have a sense of that. My guess

00:19:04 ◼   ► is no though it sounds to me and reading you know the blogs of people who are

00:19:10 ◼   ► more juiced into Microsoft and and you know no people who work there it seems

00:19:16 ◼   ► like he's a very pop seen as a popular choice from within the company yeah so

00:19:21 ◼   ► if there are executives who might leave if ELOP might try to get out now or

00:19:26 ◼   ► whatever I don't know but I think in terms of the rank and file though it's

00:19:29 ◼   ► it's seen as a good move yeah and I think that's sort of been the consensus

00:19:33 ◼   ► among everything you read, even sort of talking to Microsoft employees.

00:19:37 ◼   ► Now they seem pretty excited about this.

00:19:39 ◼   ► I do think though, I think there is still the lingering questions in the air as to once

00:19:45 ◼   ► this honeymoon period is over, what they are actually going to do.

00:19:49 ◼   ► Is it going to just be executing Balmer's strategy with Nadella, or are they going to

00:19:56 ◼   ► actually try to make some different choices with some of the products that just aren't

00:20:01 ◼   ► going anywhere?

00:20:02 ◼   ► And well, and the other big question I have is,

00:20:06 ◼   ► what is Bill Gates' actual role?

00:20:10 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:20:10 ◼   ► - And it was, you know, it's, I forget how they phrase it,

00:20:14 ◼   ► it was actually a very deft turn of phrase where he's,

00:20:17 ◼   ► not that he stepped down as chairman,

00:20:20 ◼   ► but he stepped up into a day-to-day role.

00:20:23 ◼   ► It's actually, you know, we laugh,

00:20:25 ◼   ► but it's actually a very good PR writer.

00:20:27 ◼   ► - The way it is put it, yeah, totally, totally.

00:20:29 ◼   ► Yep.

00:20:31 ◼   ► - You know, so--

00:20:31 ◼   ► He said he's going to be spending a third of his time on this, on Microsoft now, which

00:20:35 ◼   ► is significant considering before, obviously he was chairman, but I think he was not involved

00:20:43 ◼   ► in a very major way at all.

00:20:44 ◼   ► It's all his philanthropy.

00:20:46 ◼   ► So now he's willing to take on this more.

00:20:49 ◼   ► But what does that mean?

00:20:51 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:20:53 ◼   ► I think the easiest thing in the world that I think he could do that would be beneficial

00:20:58 ◼   ► to the company is just something as simple as being the yes/no man, the last word on

00:21:06 ◼   ► what they actually decide to go after in terms of new projects or what they actually ship.

00:21:12 ◼   ► It just seems like they are at this place now where they put everything out there.

00:21:18 ◼   ► Windows 8 is a good example of that in my mind because all of us looking at it from

00:21:23 ◼   ► the outside, not all of us, but a lot of us looking at it from the outside, I think saw

00:21:27 ◼   ► where this was going. I remember I was talking to developers who were beta testing Windows

00:21:33 ◼   ► 8 and trying to gauge their thoughts on it. And everyone was unanimous and saying, "This

00:21:40 ◼   ► is going to be a total nightmare for the company." And somehow the company didn't see that. And

00:21:46 ◼   ► they thought it'd be a great thing and they shipped it. I don't know if they just weren't

00:21:49 ◼   ► talking to people on the outside or what, but there should have been someone within

00:21:53 ◼   ► the company with the power to be able to say like look let's stop here I know it will look

00:21:58 ◼   ► really bad if we delay a major operating system but you know it might be worse if we ship

00:22:04 ◼   ► something that you know the community just totally rejects which is what happened.

00:22:09 ◼   ► I you know my take on it as I wrote last week is that I think that Windows 8 was designed

00:22:15 ◼   ► to fit a goal as opposed to being designed to be good in and of itself.

00:22:24 ◼   ► By which I mean that to me, Balmer never shook the view that the way things ought to be in

00:22:32 ◼   ► the world, the right way, the way the industry should be, should be that somewhere around

00:22:36 ◼   ► 95% of all computing devices should be running Windows.

00:22:41 ◼   ► And that was no, you know, iOS and Android combined in two very different ways.

00:22:49 ◼   ► But you know, hand in hand over the last six years changed that to the case where, you

00:22:56 ◼   ► know, Horace Dejue is the one who graphed this.

00:22:59 ◼   ► I think brilliantly that it's only like, if you count smartphones and tablets as computing

00:23:05 ◼   ► devices, which I think is very, very fair.

00:23:07 ◼   ► You're installing apps on them, you're browsing the web.

00:23:09 ◼   ► Yeah, you're doing all the same thing windows in our computers

00:23:12 ◼   ► There's more windows devices in use than ever before in the aggregate, but because there's so many other computing devices

00:23:19 ◼   ► It's an explosion of new devices that only you know in

00:23:22 ◼   ► 2007 90% of all computing devices were running windows 90 and in

00:23:27 ◼   ► 2013 at the end of the year it was like 38% or 35%

00:23:32 ◼   ► It's an enormous number, but now it's like the world is federated. It's you know there's yeah

00:23:39 ◼   ► There's three or four mega platforms for computing devices and Windows is just one of them and it's not even

00:23:46 ◼   ► A majority anymore and it never will be again

00:23:49 ◼   ► But I don't think bomber ever came to grips with that and accepted it and I think Windows 8's goal was look people want touch

00:23:55 ◼   ► screens will add a touchscreen thing to it and then everything in theory could be running Windows 8 and

00:24:01 ◼   ► Yep, that'll be good. And and that's and that's so crazy when you think about that

00:24:06 ◼   ► just when you're saying that right now,

00:24:08 ◼   ► it's just like, Microsoft obviously looked at the world,

00:24:12 ◼   ► they saw their dominant position,

00:24:14 ◼   ► and you have to assume that they were looking around them

00:24:17 ◼   ► seeing who could possibly compete with us,

00:24:21 ◼   ► and sort of looking at the competition,

00:24:22 ◼   ► it's like Apple is out there,

00:24:23 ◼   ► and they have a very small percentage

00:24:25 ◼   ► of market share with Macs.

00:24:27 ◼   ► And instead what happened is they were just totally blindsided

00:24:31 ◼   ► 'cause they didn't realize that the competition

00:24:33 ◼   ► wouldn't come in the form of an actual computer,

00:24:35 ◼   ► It would come in the form of a phone, and then later a tablet, and now Balmer saw that

00:24:41 ◼   ► six, seven years too late, and now is trying to squeeze windows, which doesn't even make

00:24:47 ◼   ► sense of course.

00:24:49 ◼   ► There are no more windows onto these devices in order to sort of unify and get the house

00:24:55 ◼   ► back in order, but you just can't do that.

00:24:57 ◼   ► Yeah, and I really don't think it matters that much.

00:25:02 ◼   ► And I got a lot of pushback on that.

00:25:03 ◼   ► Or I got mostly agreement, but I got some pushback

00:25:08 ◼   ► on my piece last week from people who truly do believe

00:25:13 ◼   ► that what they want is--

00:25:15 ◼   ► and admitting that Windows 8, as it is,

00:25:18 ◼   ► is not perfect and not good enough,

00:25:20 ◼   ► but that the goal is tenable to have one operating system

00:25:24 ◼   ► and have a device that is terrific for mouse

00:25:27 ◼   ► and keyboard or trackpad and keyboard,

00:25:29 ◼   ► or a mouse pointer on screen and pixel precise control

00:25:34 ◼   ► and touch and that you could do it

00:25:36 ◼   ► and then it would simplify things

00:25:37 ◼   ► because you've got all that,

00:25:39 ◼   ► you can have your cake and eat it too.

00:25:43 ◼   ► And I'm not gonna say they're wrong,

00:25:45 ◼   ► I can't prove that they're wrong.

00:25:46 ◼   ► All I can say is that everything I've seen to date

00:25:50 ◼   ► suggests that they're wrong.

00:25:52 ◼   ► - And you're thinking about it, of course,

00:25:55 ◼   ► like in a utopian world where everything is perfect,

00:25:59 ◼   ► would you rather have one device that can do everything

00:26:02 ◼   ► versus sort of two or three devices

00:26:04 ◼   ► that you have to have with you at all times?

00:26:05 ◼   ► Of course, I think everyone would want that.

00:26:08 ◼   ► But it's not that simple.

00:26:09 ◼   ► It's not that simple for both users,

00:26:10 ◼   ► but it's also not that simple for developers.

00:26:12 ◼   ► Could you imagine a developer trying to develop

00:26:14 ◼   ► a Windows 8 application for both a phone and a computer

00:26:19 ◼   ► that operates in the same way?

00:26:22 ◼   ► I mean, they would, first of all,

00:26:23 ◼   ► it can't operate in the same way.

00:26:25 ◼   ► And so they would take so much more developments into it.

00:26:28 ◼   ► And like, do you think a startup

00:26:30 ◼   ► is going to be able to do that?

00:26:31 ◼   ► You know, a company with like two people,

00:26:33 ◼   ► they're going to have to do all this work

00:26:35 ◼   ► to get something to work on this Windows unified platform.

00:26:38 ◼   ► It's just not realistic to think about it,

00:26:41 ◼   ► at least right now.

00:26:43 ◼   ► So I don't know, you know, who in their right mind

00:26:45 ◼   ► would actually argue that we can live

00:26:48 ◼   ► in that world right now.

00:26:49 ◼   ► It's just, we can't.

00:26:50 ◼   ► - And you know, to me, I've always said, you know,

00:26:56 ◼   ► question I've tried to you know my whole writing career is what is design what

00:27:01 ◼   ► does it mean and it's it's hard it's hard to really nail it down but the best

00:27:05 ◼   ► explanation I've ever come up with is design is making decisions to solve

00:27:10 ◼   ► problems it's the decision-making and I'll go back to when they unveiled the

00:27:16 ◼   ► surface strategy and they came out with two they have the surface that runs real

00:27:22 ◼   ► Windows and can have you know traditional Windows apps and it runs on

00:27:26 ◼   ► Intel chips the surface Pro it was right and then there's a surface RT which was

00:27:30 ◼   ► the more iPad style one which ran on ARM and was thinner and lighter but only ran

00:27:37 ◼   ► you know the metro apps right to me that's a failure of design it's both are

00:27:43 ◼   ► reasonable strategies but you can't ship both right you you know there there was

00:27:50 ◼   ► Just it's nowhere near as profound a difference. But I know for a fact that I'm sure you I think

00:27:57 ◼   ► we even talked about this but late in the game for the original iPad and and the original one

00:28:04 ◼   ► and for the first two years had an equal width bezel all the way around the screen. Easy to

00:28:09 ◼   ► forget now with the air and the new mini and they had version with the home button where it is and

00:28:17 ◼   ► And then they had another version where the home button was on the long side.

00:28:22 ◼   ► In other words, that is the default orientation of an iPad, horizontal or vertical, landscape

00:28:28 ◼   ► or portrait.

00:28:29 ◼   ► And they had both versions until very late in the game and only made that decision at

00:28:36 ◼   ► the end.

00:28:37 ◼   ► And in fact, if I'm not mistaken, I'm sure if I am that I'll get an email about it, but

00:28:41 ◼   ► But I'm pretty sure that the coordinate system of the iPad for developers, I don't even know

00:28:47 ◼   ► if it still is the same, but the coordinate system was such that the zero zero point made

00:28:52 ◼   ► it seem as though the home button should be on the long side, not the short side.

00:28:58 ◼   ► They didn't ship both of those.

00:28:59 ◼   ► Right?

00:29:00 ◼   ► They didn't say, "Hey, if you want an iPad, figure out which way you want to hold it,

00:29:05 ◼   ► and you know, most of the time, and buy the one with the home button as such."

00:29:10 ◼   ► They shipped one.

00:29:11 ◼   ► They had to decide.

00:29:13 ◼   ► And I know that that happened to be a contentious decision within the company and it really

00:29:18 ◼   ► was like a 51 to 49 type thing.

00:29:23 ◼   ► And surely, because of when it came out, the deciding vote came down to Steve Jobs.

00:29:30 ◼   ► But it was a lot of people on both sides of that.

00:29:33 ◼   ► But I don't think anybody, even the people who wanted it on the other location, nobody

00:29:38 ◼   ► would have endorsed the idea of shipping both.

00:29:41 ◼   ► Right.

00:29:42 ◼   ► You know, and I feel like that's what the Surface Pro versus Surface RT is, that there

00:29:45 ◼   ► were people within the company who wanted it one way and people who wanted it the other,

00:29:49 ◼   ► and so they said, "Okay, let's make everybody happy.

00:29:51 ◼   ► We'll ship both."

00:29:52 ◼   ► Yeah, and I wonder if sort of Balmer's thought on that was like, "Look, we're already behind

00:29:58 ◼   ► in this space.

00:29:59 ◼   ► Let's just get both out there and see which works, if any of them work, and maybe sort

00:30:05 ◼   ► let the masses decide what they want since we really can't afford to make one bet here.

00:30:11 ◼   ► But I can't imagine that is how that played out because of course they took a, what was it,

00:30:17 ◼   ► a $900 million write down on the RT that was very detrimental to that one quarter where it basically

00:30:24 ◼   ► sank and tanked their entire quarter. And that's not Ballmer's, as we just talked about, he's the

00:30:30 ◼   ► business guy. He always delivered his numbers and that was the one quarter he did really awful on.

00:30:34 ◼   ► A billion here and a billion there and you eventually do have a problem no matter how big you are.

00:30:39 ◼   ► Yeah, right.

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00:32:09 ◼   ► know you came from this show so my thanks to Squarespace go to

00:32:12 ◼   ► squarespace.com and remember the offer code bond as in James Bond they pick

00:32:18 ◼   ► they're doing like these cutesy codes where they pick things that are of

00:32:22 ◼   ► interest to the hosts of the show. That's good, it's easy to remember. Yeah, so go there

00:32:28 ◼   ► and my thanks to them. I think we're done with the Microsoft thing. Yeah, this, I

00:32:35 ◼   ► mean this is gonna be a story for the next, God knows how many years. I do

00:32:38 ◼   ► think, I guess the only other thing is the fact that that Nadella comes from

00:32:42 ◼   ► the server side. Servers, yep. And my colleague at Qbranch, Brent Simmons, has

00:32:48 ◼   ► written about it, that he's really happy about it because he's done a lot of

00:32:51 ◼   ► coding on on Azure you know as a back end for an iOS developer and his point

00:32:58 ◼   ► I thought was really really astute where the old Microsoft was always in their

00:33:03 ◼   ► own universe technically and you know and it worked out for them but you know

00:33:07 ◼   ► they wrote everything was theirs there was their own OS their own kernel you

00:33:12 ◼   ► know they're the only ones in in the world who've you know the whole world's

00:33:17 ◼   ► effectively gone Unix you know Mac OS X is Unix Linux is a clone of Unix

00:33:23 ◼   ► Android runs on as a Linux kernel and at the kernel level you know every the

00:33:28 ◼   ► whole world went Unix except you know even your TiVo runs a version of Linux

00:33:33 ◼   ► except Windows Windows is like the this alternate universe it's this you know

00:33:38 ◼   ► everything was their own their own programming languages their own API's

00:33:44 ◼   ► everything at a technical their own networking their own mail server you

00:33:47 ◼   ► know everybody else is using I map they have outlook you know it's all

00:33:51 ◼   ► proprietary that was the Microsoft way and it you know a little bit of

00:33:56 ◼   ► stubbornness strategically it was often about lock-in the Windows Server

00:34:01 ◼   ► division that Nadella Rand is very different you know they support you know

00:34:06 ◼   ► you can do things like you know really hip modern stuff like node JS I don't

00:34:12 ◼   ► How do people say that do they say the dot no dot JS?

00:34:14 ◼   ► either you know, yeah, it's

00:34:17 ◼   ► Yeah, and I wonder

00:34:21 ◼   ► So, you know you'd hope that that mentality sort of spreads to the other divisions now and they sort of Microsoft sort of opens up

00:34:28 ◼   ► I think you know and if they are going to do that Nadella is obviously the right person to make that happen

00:34:33 ◼   ► I think that he

00:34:34 ◼   ► Recognizes and is realistic about the world that that we live in in the world Microsoft exists in now and it can't be the siloed

00:34:41 ◼   ► behemoth anymore because that is the way forward of the company eventually finding hard times,

00:34:51 ◼   ► very hard times potentially.

00:34:54 ◼   ► We talked about the numbers are great now.

00:34:57 ◼   ► The numbers can be deceiving a lot of times.

00:35:00 ◼   ► The numbers were great for Nokia.

00:35:01 ◼   ► The numbers were great for RIM leading up to when all of a sudden they're not great.

00:35:07 ◼   ► You could argue that Microsoft certainly has a lot of the characteristics of those same

00:35:11 ◼   ► companies even win post in great numbers because there's a few things that can happen that

00:35:17 ◼   ► can make the this ship sort of start to sink really quickly and Nadella is given sort of

00:35:24 ◼   ► all the stuff that you're talking about and his willingness to realize the world that

00:35:30 ◼   ► we live in now.

00:35:31 ◼   ► I think that he is probably the best candidate to sort of try to wake Microsoft up.

00:35:36 ◼   ► Yeah, I think financial numbers are, and I don't think this is any kind of deep insight,

00:35:42 ◼   ► I think this is common sense, but it seems like an awful lot of people can be fooled by it. They're

00:35:46 ◼   ► a lagging indicator, not a leading indicator. So the iPhone didn't make a huge dent financially

00:35:55 ◼   ► for Apple for a couple of years. It happened pretty quickly, but certainly 2007, it was not

00:36:03 ◼   ► a significant financial thing. I mean the whole thing was they I think their goal for the first

00:36:07 ◼   ► year was to sell them 1 million phones. Yep. And you know a lot of people thought that was

00:36:12 ◼   ► a lot of people thought they weren't gonna do it or was it 10 million in the first year?

00:36:18 ◼   ► Maybe it was 10 million for the year. Maybe it was for the year but yeah he did state the

00:36:22 ◼   ► million thing he wanted to make sure to get that but then there was the the certain percentage

00:36:26 ◼   ► that they were trying to hit. One percent of the phone market they wanted. Right that's right.

00:36:32 ◼   ► it took a little bit.

00:36:33 ◼   ► And if you just looked at how many phones they were selling

00:36:36 ◼   ► when the first iPhone came out, it was not that huge.

00:36:40 ◼   ► And conversely, RIM had a great year in 2007 and 2008.

00:36:47 ◼   ► Nokia was still good.

00:36:48 ◼   ► I was, in the research on an article I'm writing,

00:36:52 ◼   ► maybe we'll talk about it later in the show,

00:36:53 ◼   ► the same subject, but just about that same subject,

00:36:57 ◼   ► leading numbers as a leading lagging indicator.

00:37:00 ◼   ► In October of 2007, here is a headline in the New York Times.

00:37:05 ◼   ► This is five or six months after the iPhone shipped.

00:37:09 ◼   ► Nokia profit soars as market share nears 40%.

00:37:14 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:37:16 ◼   ► Right?

00:37:16 ◼   ► You know, like numbers are not, I don't know.

00:37:21 ◼   ► I think that that's,

00:37:22 ◼   ► well it was you, right?

00:37:26 ◼   ► Who, when the Microsoft CFO stepped down

00:37:29 ◼   ► earlier this year, right?

00:37:31 ◼   ► And what did you write about that?

00:37:32 ◼   ► I thought that was, I just remember,

00:37:34 ◼   ► that really stuck out in my mind.

00:37:36 ◼   ► - I think I said, using the Game of Thrones analogy,

00:37:39 ◼   ► like who is best poised to know when winter is coming?

00:37:44 ◼   ► - Right. - The CFO.

00:37:46 ◼   ► - Right. - Who's second best to know?

00:37:47 ◼   ► The CEO.

00:37:48 ◼   ► And so both of those guys are gone within Microsoft.

00:37:52 ◼   ► - Right, that this, you know,

00:37:53 ◼   ► if there's anybody at Microsoft who maybe had a,

00:37:56 ◼   ► could smell something in the air that, you know,

00:37:59 ◼   ► not this quarter, not next quarter, but...

00:38:02 ◼   ► - Down the road.

00:38:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, let's start looking at,

00:38:04 ◼   ► talking about years rather than quarters,

00:38:07 ◼   ► and maybe look one or two years ahead

00:38:10 ◼   ► that trouble is brewing.

00:38:11 ◼   ► It very likely would have been the CFO,

00:38:15 ◼   ► and he got out of Dodge.

00:38:16 ◼   ► - He did, and by the way,

00:38:19 ◼   ► I think he said at the time,

00:38:21 ◼   ► in Microsoft's statement at the time,

00:38:22 ◼   ► was that he was taking some,

00:38:25 ◼   ► He has been in the ranks for 30, 40 years or whatever it was.

00:38:30 ◼   ► And he's finally ready to just take time

00:38:34 ◼   ► and be with his family indefinitely.

00:38:36 ◼   ► And I think four months later, he was in a new CFO job.

00:38:39 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:38:41 ◼   ► - Right, and that just gets back down

00:38:42 ◼   ► to those very simple PR optics

00:38:47 ◼   ► of executive shakeups at big companies.

00:38:50 ◼   ► You always say that.

00:38:51 ◼   ► You never wanna make it look like

00:38:54 ◼   ► there's any kind, you know, no matter how ugly it is,

00:38:57 ◼   ► you wanna downplay the ugliness.

00:38:59 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:39:00 ◼   ► - And it's true for all companies.

00:39:01 ◼   ► We're not just laughing at Microsoft.

00:39:02 ◼   ► I mean, it's the same way when

00:39:04 ◼   ► Forstall got pushed out at Apple.

00:39:08 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:39:09 ◼   ► - I mean, and they were a little bit,

00:39:10 ◼   ► a little bit honest about it

00:39:12 ◼   ► with the whole increased collaboration, you know,

00:39:15 ◼   ► which is exactly what you hear.

00:39:17 ◼   ► - They were indirectly honest.

00:39:19 ◼   ► They didn't say that Forstall was the problem,

00:39:22 ◼   ► but they indicated there was a problem

00:39:24 ◼   ► with everyone sort of being on the same page.

00:39:27 ◼   ► - Right.

00:39:28 ◼   ► You could read between the lines and it came out

00:39:30 ◼   ► that those of us who are left

00:39:33 ◼   ► are gonna get along a lot better now.

00:39:35 ◼   ► - Have you heard of anything about him recently, by the way?

00:39:39 ◼   ► - No, I have not.

00:39:40 ◼   ► Have you?

00:39:41 ◼   ► - I haven't either, no.

00:39:42 ◼   ► I would assume, the way that these deals

00:39:45 ◼   ► usually are structured is that someone

00:39:48 ◼   ► is being shown the door, but at the same time,

00:39:52 ◼   ► they have so much proprietary information

00:39:54 ◼   ► and knowledge about, especially with Apple,

00:39:56 ◼   ► with top secret things sort of being worked on,

00:39:58 ◼   ► that Apple certainly doesn't want

00:40:00 ◼   ► them going to a competitor and really doesn't want them out

00:40:03 ◼   ► on the marketplace at all.

00:40:05 ◼   ► And so they usually give them some sort

00:40:08 ◼   ► of exit package, which very well compensated for ensuring

00:40:12 ◼   ► that they stay with the company for something like a year,

00:40:15 ◼   ► sometimes more, sometimes less.

00:40:18 ◼   ► I think Tony Fidell may have had the same type of thing.

00:40:20 ◼   ► He's a special--

00:40:21 ◼   ► Fidell's was not as contentious, though.

00:40:23 ◼   ► No, definitely not. I think that that's 100% true. But he was, as Forstall I believe is

00:40:29 ◼   ► now, a special advisor to the CEO or whatever.

00:40:31 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know if he still is or not though. They never named it what his period was. I

00:40:38 ◼   ► have not heard what he's up to. I have heard from a pretty good little birdie that, yeah,

00:40:47 ◼   ► exactly what you're saying. But that he was offered what, and I'll never forget the words,

00:40:52 ◼   ► a truckload of money.

00:40:57 ◼   ► And you drive off in this truck full of cash and for X – now, the one thing my birdie

00:41:03 ◼   ► did not know is how long X is.

00:41:05 ◼   ► His guess was a year, but maybe it's longer.

00:41:07 ◼   ► And for the next –

00:41:08 ◼   ► I would guess it's a year.

00:41:09 ◼   ► For the next year, you do nothing.

00:41:11 ◼   ► You cannot work for anybody and you cannot speak to anybody and you don't tweet, you

00:41:18 ◼   ► don't have a Facebook.

00:41:19 ◼   ► you know, anybody, reporters call you, you don't answer the phone.

00:41:24 ◼   ► Not just talk about Apple, but anything, right?

00:41:27 ◼   ► So –

00:41:28 ◼   ► And I do think that that's what has happened, and the interesting thing now, of course,

00:41:31 ◼   ► is that it has been a year.

00:41:33 ◼   ► It's just over a year, right?

00:41:35 ◼   ► Right.

00:41:36 ◼   ► So it was last December.

00:41:37 ◼   ► Yeah, it was like December.

00:41:38 ◼   ► So it's, you know, I remember looking it up for the date, and I knew that it was after

00:41:43 ◼   ► all of the product announcements, you know.

00:41:46 ◼   ► Right.

00:41:47 ◼   ► It was the slow period.

00:41:48 ◼   ► Yeah, I forget if it was November or December, but it was somewhere around there and I've ever since then I've sort of like

00:41:55 ◼   ► Just you know double-check to make sure that he hasn't started, you know, maybe showing up at

00:42:03 ◼   ► Events and stuff like that, but so far I've heard nothing I heard from one reader who saw him somewhere

00:42:08 ◼   ► It wasn't you know, it was just like a yet. Yeah, right citing it's like he's not you know housebound. He's not under house arrest

00:42:18 ◼   ► But yeah, so I do think that we will see him surface at some point in the next few months

00:42:22 ◼   ► I do wonder you know, he's a relatively young guy

00:42:25 ◼   ► I think that he could definitely do a startup if he wanted to he would certainly have no problem getting any funding that he wanted

00:42:31 ◼   ► Yeah, he's like 40 41 something. I mean, he's right around my age very very

00:42:35 ◼   ► One of the weird what if one of the weird wildcards is to sort of tie this debate together

00:42:39 ◼   ► What if Microsoft tries to hire him, you know a lot of people that's like

00:42:44 ◼   ► Like a frequently asked question in my reader email is you know, well not now

00:42:48 ◼   ► But during the whole run-up was would that be possible?

00:42:52 ◼   ► I know I guess it's not impossible, but I always thought that it wasn't a good match for either company just because

00:42:58 ◼   ► They're so different right and in pretty much every way

00:43:02 ◼   ► Right, and I don't think that he would want to I would imagine that he would do something more a lot more like Tony

00:43:10 ◼   ► Fidel. Go get some funding and start something new that would be obviously

00:43:16 ◼   ► you know Nest became you know relatively big relatively quickly I mean it sold

00:43:21 ◼   ► for over three billion dollars I mean which is you know you're talking

00:43:26 ◼   ► billions not millions it's a pretty good deal but compared to Apple where Fidel

00:43:31 ◼   ► was before very very small right but you can't start something that big right you

00:43:35 ◼   ► can either start something new that's relatively small even if it has a lot of

00:43:39 ◼   ► investment and very big goals or you can step into an existing giant and I just don't see

00:43:45 ◼   ► Forstall stepping into an existing giant. I guess maybe the only one I could see and again I have

00:43:54 ◼   ► no idea of what he'll do or any insight into any real knowledge of what's going on but I wouldn't

00:44:00 ◼   ► be shocked if somehow Facebook convinced him to come there and to do some sort of skunkworks

00:44:06 ◼   ► project that he would be best suited for.

00:44:10 ◼   ► It's just like you feel,

00:44:11 ◼   ► when I see Facebook do sort of these deals a lot

00:44:15 ◼   ► where they hire sort of above what you think

00:44:17 ◼   ► their weight should be, right?

00:44:18 ◼   ► Where they convince these people to get in there

00:44:21 ◼   ► and sort of work on these projects

00:44:23 ◼   ► and just give them whatever resources they need.

00:44:26 ◼   ► And so that wouldn't actually shock me,

00:44:28 ◼   ► even though that would be sort of a shocking headline.

00:44:30 ◼   ► I wouldn't be so surprised by that.

00:44:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, I would see it more--

00:44:34 ◼   ► - It's a really only one.

00:44:36 ◼   ► - More as Facebook incubating an ambitious new division.

00:44:41 ◼   ► Not that he would step in and run anything

00:44:45 ◼   ► that Facebook already has.

00:44:48 ◼   ► Yeah, I could see that though.

00:44:49 ◼   ► I would see that as one existing company

00:44:51 ◼   ► that I could see him going to.

00:44:52 ◼   ► Couldn't see him going to Google.

00:44:54 ◼   ► Couldn't, Microsoft, I just don't see it.

00:44:56 ◼   ► I really don't.

00:44:57 ◼   ► It just seems like it's intriguing to think about it,

00:45:00 ◼   ► but I just don't see how it really matched,

00:45:01 ◼   ► would have matched up for either of them.

00:45:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I agree, I largely agree with that.

00:45:06 ◼   ► I think the only reason I bring it up now

00:45:08 ◼   ► is just because of the new leadership thing.

00:45:10 ◼   ► Like maybe he's able to be convinced

00:45:13 ◼   ► that things are really going to,

00:45:14 ◼   ► they really wanna change things.

00:45:16 ◼   ► And so this is how much we wanna change things.

00:45:19 ◼   ► We're bringing in a guy synonymous with sort of Apple

00:45:22 ◼   ► and one of Steve Jobs' lieutenant from the next days

00:45:25 ◼   ► to really show you how different we're thinking.

00:45:29 ◼   ► - Here's a question I've thought about.

00:45:31 ◼   ► And to me, I don't really mean it as a joke.

00:45:35 ◼   ► It actually makes me a little sad.

00:45:38 ◼   ► Do you think Scott Forstall upgraded his phone to iOS 7?

00:45:41 ◼   ► [LAUGHTER]

00:45:44 ◼   ► That's a very good question.

00:45:45 ◼   ► It is funny.

00:45:46 ◼   ► He still wouldn't have to yet, right?

00:45:50 ◼   ► You could still get away with running--

00:45:52 ◼   ► what was the last version of 6?

00:45:54 ◼   ► But he'd have to also be running an old iPhone 5.

00:45:58 ◼   ► You can't use an iPhone 5S.

00:46:00 ◼   ► And did he get a 5S?

00:46:02 ◼   ► And did he have to like buy it online?

00:46:04 ◼   ► - He seems like a green 5C guy, I don't know.

00:46:08 ◼   ► - But I know it is funny, it's funny, but it's not,

00:46:14 ◼   ► I've met Forrestal a few times, can't say I'm close to him,

00:46:17 ◼   ► but I've met him, he was always very nice to me.

00:46:21 ◼   ► And you know, I liked him, right?

00:46:26 ◼   ► - I would--

00:46:27 ◼   ► I would also say that clearly I'm a big fan of his work.

00:46:30 ◼   ► And whether it was the right move or not to squeeze him out

00:46:34 ◼   ► is almost beside the point.

00:46:36 ◼   ► I just feel bad that it didn't work out.

00:46:38 ◼   ► I do in a certain way.

00:46:39 ◼   ► And I can imagine it was his life's work.

00:46:42 ◼   ► I mean, the only thing he ever did was work at Next.

00:46:44 ◼   ► He went right from college to Next and worked his way up.

00:46:48 ◼   ► And it was a continuous thing for his entire adult life,

00:46:52 ◼   ► working from Next to Apple and the Mac OS X transition

00:46:57 ◼   ► to Mac OS X to the entire creation of iOS.

00:47:03 ◼   ► And I think very clearly they took iOS

00:47:07 ◼   ► in a different direction.

00:47:08 ◼   ► - And so yeah, he'd be using it every day

00:47:11 ◼   ► and staring at the cause of his sort of future.

00:47:14 ◼   ► - What else is he going to do?

00:47:15 ◼   ► He's not gonna switch to Android.

00:47:17 ◼   ► Surely he still is using an iPhone.

00:47:19 ◼   ► I think the only thing I can imagine.

00:47:22 ◼   ► My only real, like I don't think I've ever interacted

00:47:25 ◼   ► with Forsall, I don't think in all the time,

00:47:26 ◼   ► like in all the different Apple events,

00:47:27 ◼   ► I don't think I ever actually spoke with him,

00:47:29 ◼   ► but I have seen him of course a number of times,

00:47:31 ◼   ► and I actually saw him out and about once

00:47:33 ◼   ► at a concert of all places.

00:47:34 ◼   ► And I just remember my lasting sort of memory of that

00:47:39 ◼   ► is him just like being very adamant

00:47:43 ◼   ► about taking so many pictures using his iPhone.

00:47:46 ◼   ► And so that leads me to believe that even if he hates

00:47:49 ◼   ► He has to like the iPhone 5s just for the better camera

00:47:53 ◼   ► Yeah

00:47:53 ◼   ► And so he might be just using it solely for the camera and willing to forgo his sort of

00:47:59 ◼   ► Hatred if he has hatred of iOS 7 right and surely up until when the iPhone 5s came out

00:48:06 ◼   ► He'd never bought an iPhone in his life

00:48:08 ◼   ► I mean he'd been using the new ones, you know, as soon as they were, you know prototypes were in from the factory

00:48:19 ◼   ► You know and and presumably every single detail and pixel of the OS met with his approval or at least you know

00:48:25 ◼   ► He'd gotten his input into

00:48:27 ◼   ► and now you know

00:48:29 ◼   ► You know to me. It's like it's like a weird. It's just to imagine the scenario

00:48:34 ◼   ► What does he do go online and do it? I mean he's not a can't go to an Apple store

00:48:37 ◼   ► Right

00:48:40 ◼   ► So he's got to like I go online or maybe you know maybe as a an assistant or something

00:48:46 ◼   ► you know, as an assistant, and go buy it for him.

00:48:49 ◼   ► - This is like the end of Shawshanker's redemption,

00:48:51 ◼   ► or whatever, like this is, but it's more like,

00:48:54 ◼   ► what's the character, the old man who sort of

00:48:57 ◼   ► gets reintroduced into the world after all the years

00:48:59 ◼   ► in prison. - Right.

00:49:02 ◼   ► Right, and it's like-- - He doesn't know

00:49:03 ◼   ► how to do anything. - Right, and it's like,

00:49:05 ◼   ► yeah, you haven't seen a supermarket with OCR scanners,

00:49:09 ◼   ► right? (laughing)

00:49:10 ◼   ► Wasn't that the thing with George Bush,

00:49:12 ◼   ► the first George Bush president,

00:49:14 ◼   ► 'cause he'd been a vice president from like 1980

00:49:17 ◼   ► and then he was the president.

00:49:19 ◼   ► And then it came out when he was running

00:49:21 ◼   ► against Clinton in '93.

00:49:22 ◼   ► He'd never seen an OCR scanner in a supermarket.

00:49:25 ◼   ► Why make fun of him for that?

00:49:27 ◼   ► The guy hadn't done grocery shopping.

00:49:29 ◼   ► What, do you think that the vice president

00:49:32 ◼   ► does his own grocery shopping?

00:49:34 ◼   ► No.

00:49:34 ◼   ► So, but the last time he'd been in a supermarket

00:49:37 ◼   ► was like 1979.

00:49:38 ◼   ► I don't know, it just to me is something to imagine.

00:49:43 ◼   ► I don't know. I'm betting he does. I'm betting he's...

00:49:46 ◼   ► I would bet he does too. I think it would be hard. I think it also would be very hard

00:49:53 ◼   ► for someone like him to use old technology when he's been so bleeding edge the entire

00:49:57 ◼   ► time. It would be frustrating.

00:50:00 ◼   ► But he's in a unique situation where the what-ifs will never stop in terms of what he's got

00:50:08 ◼   ► his hand. But that's my guess. My guess is he has a 5s and runs iOS 7 and just seethes.

00:50:13 ◼   ► He might even run iOS 7.1 because it finally doesn't crash every five seconds.

00:50:20 ◼   ► Yeah, but that raises another question. Did he sign up for a developer account?

00:50:25 ◼   ► A developer account, yeah.

00:50:26 ◼   ► Because surely his old one doesn't work. He can't, you know, I'm pretty sure that,

00:50:31 ◼   ► you know, that his cut off from the Apple VPN, he can't just do that.

00:50:37 ◼   ► Yeah, do you think like he's been tinkering around with making some apps?

00:50:40 ◼   ► I wonder I don't know. I mean Annette it's absolutely the case

00:50:44 ◼   ► I don't think that he was spent his days as you know, a senior VP writing code

00:50:49 ◼   ► But I mean he you know, that's he worked his way up from that right? Yeah, right. I remember there was a

00:50:55 ◼   ► it was a

00:50:58 ◼   ► WWDC session a couple years ago and it's sort of an obscure one and I forget who was leading it

00:51:04 ◼   ► but I was sitting in the audience and it was

00:51:06 ◼   ► But, you know, the guy on stage was an old next hand, but he's, you know, still just

00:51:12 ◼   ► an engineer, like a senior engineer at Apple, and he's given a WWDC presentation.

00:51:16 ◼   ► He was talking about something in iOS that was, or maybe it was Mac OS X, but either

00:51:20 ◼   ► way, that had roots back to an old thing that he had done at Next in 1989.

00:51:27 ◼   ► And he said, "Here, let me show you what I did.

00:51:29 ◼   ► And, you know, here was the thing I wrote in 1989 while I was at Next.

00:51:33 ◼   ► And, you know, you could see the roots are here to today."

00:51:35 ◼   ► And he was like, "Here's the about box from the thing I wrote then."

00:51:39 ◼   ► And the credits were him and Scott Forstall.

00:51:41 ◼   ► And he was like, "I don't know what happened to the other guy."

00:51:45 ◼   ► And this was when Forstall was still the senior VP.

00:51:46 ◼   ► He wasn't making a joke at Forstall's expense last year, but it was a big belly laugh at

00:51:51 ◼   ► the audience.

00:51:55 ◼   ► He was listed second because he was an intern or something at the time.

00:51:59 ◼   ► But he was writing code.

00:52:01 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:52:02 ◼   ► Could be.

00:52:03 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:52:04 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:52:05 ◼   ► It would be interesting if he came out with something, if he came out, you know, de-cloaked

00:52:10 ◼   ► with some kind of startup that was iOS related.

00:52:14 ◼   ► Yeah, and so he's always been a software guy, so you'd assume he's not going to do sort

00:52:21 ◼   ► of the Tony Fidell type, you know, startup, so he would do more of a software type startup,

00:52:26 ◼   ► you would assume.

00:52:28 ◼   ► Maybe he would pair up with someone who has sort of hardware experience.

00:52:32 ◼   ► And certainly there are plenty of ex-Apple people now with the hardware experience that

00:52:36 ◼   ► he would know.

00:52:37 ◼   ► But if he were to do something by himself, it would presumably be something in software.

00:52:41 ◼   ► Right.

00:52:42 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know.

00:52:44 ◼   ► That's a good question.

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00:55:40 ◼   ► How about Facebook paper?

00:55:49 ◼   ► Yes.

00:55:52 ◼   ► I have not…

00:55:53 ◼   ► So you don't have Facebook.

00:55:54 ◼   ► Yes.

00:55:55 ◼   ► This is the dilemma.

00:55:56 ◼   ► Let me explain.

00:55:57 ◼   ► I've not written about this much on Daring Fireball.

00:55:59 ◼   ► I have never signed up for Facebook.

00:56:02 ◼   ► Still haven't.

00:56:04 ◼   ► Have never been tempted to until now because I'm tempted to sign up for Facebook.

00:56:10 ◼   ► just to use paper. And in fact, I've been thinking about this for longer than just

00:56:15 ◼   ► the last week because I actually got a briefing from Facebook in New York a

00:56:22 ◼   ► week or two before paper came out. Mike Mattis emailed me and

00:56:26 ◼   ► said, "Hey, I've finally got something to show. You wouldn't

00:56:30 ◼   ► want to come up and see I'm gonna be in New York." I was like, "Sure." And I was just

00:56:35 ◼   ► blown away. Absolutely positive. I haven't written about it because I don't know

00:56:38 ◼   ► how to contextualize it yet because I am so it why don't you just make it can

00:56:43 ◼   ► you make like just a dummy account not friend anyone just I don't know you know

00:56:47 ◼   ► and it's weird I guess that's what I should do I don't know I mean I've seen

00:56:50 ◼   ► it I most of my experience with the app is with Mike's account I just used Mike's

00:56:54 ◼   ► phone maybe he just has a beautiful family and that's why you like well you

00:56:59 ◼   ► know that's the pushback against it the pushback against paper that I've seen is

00:57:04 ◼   ► is that it's great if your friends are all

00:57:09 ◼   ► UI design artists who take really great photos.

00:57:14 ◼   ► And it isn't great if you're,

00:57:17 ◼   ► you'd like most people on Facebook

00:57:19 ◼   ► and your family takes really shitty photos

00:57:22 ◼   ► and posts the cat gifs and stuff like that.

00:57:27 ◼   ► - So, but your predicament raises an interesting question

00:57:32 ◼   ► which is that I wonder if Facebook is able to,

00:57:37 ◼   ► either for the first time,

00:57:38 ◼   ► obviously you know that you're certainly an oddity

00:57:41 ◼   ► in being in a developed country

00:57:44 ◼   ► and not having Facebook at this point,

00:57:46 ◼   ► but I wonder if they feel like it's also an opportunity

00:57:51 ◼   ► to not only bring in new, but reengage people

00:57:54 ◼   ► who are burnt out by Facebook,

00:57:56 ◼   ► which is many, many people.

00:57:57 ◼   ► Basically, you talk to anyone

00:58:00 ◼   ► within your own personal circles,

00:58:03 ◼   ► you'll have several people who say like,

00:58:05 ◼   ► yeah, Facebook is so lame now,

00:58:07 ◼   ► or Facebook is sort of, it's all just,

00:58:10 ◼   ► it's all for my parents,

00:58:11 ◼   ► or it's just sort of like old high school friends

00:58:16 ◼   ► that I never talk to anymore using it,

00:58:17 ◼   ► so it's really not that interesting to me anymore.

00:58:19 ◼   ► But paper is a complete reimagining

00:58:22 ◼   ► of what the experience should be like.

00:58:24 ◼   ► And there are definitely things that I like

00:58:27 ◼   ► and don't like about it.

00:58:28 ◼   ► Certainly it's beautifully designed,

00:58:31 ◼   ► and I think there's some great functionality in there.

00:58:33 ◼   ► But I don't really, I don't know.

00:58:35 ◼   ► I mean, we could dive into all the little things about it.

00:58:39 ◼   ► I'm a little concerned that a lot of what,

00:58:42 ◼   ► and you will know this better

00:58:43 ◼   ► having talked to Mike Mattis about it directly,

00:58:45 ◼   ► but I'm a little bit concerned

00:58:46 ◼   ► that it's a little bit too worried

00:58:49 ◼   ► about sort of addressing the Twitter question head on,

00:58:53 ◼   ► which is no one is using Facebook really

00:58:56 ◼   ► to talk about current events,

00:58:58 ◼   ► or at least the right people aren't using Facebook

00:59:01 ◼   ► that they want to get the word out there.

00:59:03 ◼   ► Like during the Super Bowl, you know,

00:59:04 ◼   ► like tweets are going crazy, everyone's talking about it.

00:59:07 ◼   ► Is anyone using Facebook?

00:59:08 ◼   ► Facebook tried to get people using it this year.

00:59:10 ◼   ► They reached out to a bunch of celebrities.

00:59:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, I saw that.

00:59:13 ◼   ► - That document leaked, you know,

00:59:14 ◼   ► talking about like what you should be using Facebook for

00:59:18 ◼   ► during the Super Bowl.

00:59:20 ◼   ► And so when I look at paper,

00:59:21 ◼   ► when I look beyond the obvious beauty on the surface,

00:59:25 ◼   ► I see sort of a desire to get back into sort of the real-time news conversation, which

00:59:32 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:59:33 ◼   ► I don't know if that's coming from the right place or not.

00:59:35 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:59:36 ◼   ► I think you're off on that and having talked to Mike about it.

00:59:40 ◼   ► I don't think that's what their goal is.

00:59:42 ◼   ► I think their goal is a little bit – it's almost obvious, which is that – and in fact,

00:59:51 ◼   ► It's a direct answer to the thing I just said a minute ago,

00:59:53 ◼   ► that the complaint is that people aren't cultivating

00:59:57 ◼   ► what they post to Facebook to make it beautiful.

01:00:00 ◼   ► And the paper's theory is, the paper team's theory is,

01:00:04 ◼   ► nobody's going to do that until we give them a beautiful way,

01:00:08 ◼   ► a beautiful interface to do it.

01:00:10 ◼   ► That it's the, if we build it, they will come theory.

01:00:13 ◼   ► That they have to build a beautiful interface to paper first

01:00:19 ◼   ► that encourages a sort of more,

01:00:23 ◼   ► I know that a lot of people are gonna laugh and say,

01:00:26 ◼   ► "Come on, Facebook and artistic expression."

01:00:28 ◼   ► It's not what it was for.

01:00:30 ◼   ► But that's a little bit highfaluting,

01:00:34 ◼   ► but it's more or less what they're thinking,

01:00:36 ◼   ► that if we give them this beautiful, serene interface,

01:00:39 ◼   ► that that's when people will start posting things

01:00:42 ◼   ► that actually fit better in paper

01:00:44 ◼   ► and are a little bit more,

01:00:47 ◼   ► not cultivated, but curated, I don't know

01:00:49 ◼   ► what you wanna say, but that people will generate content

01:00:53 ◼   ► that fits in paper and feels right in paper

01:00:57 ◼   ► only after paper is out and actually exists.

01:01:00 ◼   ► It has to be built first.

01:01:01 ◼   ► But I don't think it's about real-time stuff.

01:01:05 ◼   ► - Okay, that's interesting.

01:01:07 ◼   ► So I can understand how,

01:01:10 ◼   ► I can definitely understand that line of thinking.

01:01:12 ◼   ► I will say one other thing that I did here,

01:01:14 ◼   ► So this was being talked about when paper was released.

01:01:19 ◼   ► And I think a bunch of people tweeted about it.

01:01:21 ◼   ► I did, and others.

01:01:22 ◼   ► But I have since heard from a pretty good source on this

01:01:25 ◼   ► that it's also not out of left field

01:01:29 ◼   ► to think that this is how Facebook is experimenting

01:01:34 ◼   ► with new UI to see what would work for the actual product

01:01:38 ◼   ► itself.

01:01:40 ◼   ► I asked about that.

01:01:43 ◼   ► much of this response did you get that not a direct response and I you know so

01:01:47 ◼   ► I don't want to put words in the mics mouth or anybody so I didn't get but you

01:01:52 ◼   ► know I think reading between the line and I think just looking at the app it

01:01:56 ◼   ► is clear you know and it's exactly like what you wrote on Paris lemon that

01:02:01 ◼   ► there is no way that they could drop you know put out a facebook dot app version

01:02:08 ◼   ► that was this and just right right out of that no way they've got too many

01:02:12 ◼   ► users, right? And it's way too different. And it doesn't have the complete Facebook

01:02:17 ◼   ► experience. It doesn't have everything.

01:02:19 ◼   ► Yeah. Though it does have a lot. It has way more than I thought it would.

01:02:23 ◼   ► It is a very largely a... You know what it's a lot like? It's a lot like mobile email clients

01:02:31 ◼   ► where maybe your mobile email client doesn't do everything that you can do with email,

01:02:36 ◼   ► but it does most of it, right? That you can do most of what you do in email with the mail

01:02:41 ◼   ► client you're using on your phone, even if it doesn't do everything.

01:02:44 ◼   ► And you might have to use something at your desk to, I don't know, create, I don't think,

01:02:49 ◼   ► can you create new folders in mail or most mail apps on iPhone?

01:02:53 ◼   ► Maybe not, but you can certainly read all of your mail and reply to it and do a lot

01:02:57 ◼   ► of other stuff, flag them and stuff.

01:02:59 ◼   ► That Facebook Paper is largely an alternative to Facebook.app for your phone.

01:03:04 ◼   ► Oh, and I replaced Facebook.app with paper pretty much on day one because it is so much

01:03:12 ◼   ► better.

01:03:13 ◼   ► It's just a number of things are better about it.

01:03:15 ◼   ► I find the performance actually better, which is sort of surprising given how visual it

01:03:19 ◼   ► is.

01:03:20 ◼   ► But performance is better.

01:03:22 ◼   ► It obviously looks a lot better.

01:03:24 ◼   ► And it does, like you're saying, it performs the basic, sort of the high level functions

01:03:28 ◼   ► that you need.

01:03:29 ◼   ► The one thing it's missing, the one complaint that people do bring up who use Facebook is

01:03:34 ◼   ► that it's missing events. And the rumor, of course, is that Facebook is working on a separate

01:03:38 ◼   ► events app.

01:03:39 ◼   ► Yeah, that's what I think. Well, and I think it all, it fits, and I think, you know, I

01:03:46 ◼   ► certainly don't know Zuck. I don't know his mind. But the evidence that I've seen with

01:03:52 ◼   ► the acquisitions they've made, including Mattis's Push Pop Press a little over two years ago,

01:04:00 ◼   ► he bought Sofa. And also knowing, and you know this is something I can't name names,

01:04:06 ◼   ► but it's in the iOS and Mac developer community, they pretty much went to anybody who's done

01:04:14 ◼   ► like Apple design award level work and you know made AquaHire offers. There's an awful

01:04:22 ◼   ► lot of people who you think I wonder if they went to them, the answer is probably yes.

01:04:27 ◼   ► Yeah, which makes sense for them, obviously.

01:04:31 ◼   ► Right.

01:04:32 ◼   ► Like, what's the best talent in the world to do what they want to do?

01:04:34 ◼   ► It's right in front of them.

01:04:35 ◼   ► Right.

01:04:36 ◼   ► And I think the explanation is that for a while, Zuck had it in mind that Facebook was

01:04:41 ◼   ► a website and that the mobile version should be a mobile version of that website.

01:04:48 ◼   ► And the early versions of the Facebook app for iPhone were...

01:04:53 ◼   ► Who was the developer?

01:04:54 ◼   ► Was it Joe Hewitt?

01:04:55 ◼   ► It was Joe Hewitt.

01:04:56 ◼   ► Joe Hewitt and he did great work and he you know yeah he was you know do you do

01:05:01 ◼   ► you remember the HTML 5 version you know before there were native apps that was

01:05:06 ◼   ► like the first really impressive application that I saw again not a

01:05:10 ◼   ► native application right in the web browser built for the iPhone well so one

01:05:14 ◼   ► thing you can definitely say for Zuck and Facebook is as soon as the iPhone

01:05:17 ◼   ► came out they instantly saw we need to be on that and they did it you know

01:05:21 ◼   ► before there were even apps and then when there were apps but they their

01:05:25 ◼   ► Their initial app was a lot more like not native, you know, using web things, you know,

01:05:31 ◼   ► web views and stuff like that.

01:05:32 ◼   ► And I feel like a lot of, you know, as an indication that he is a very good CEO, I think

01:05:42 ◼   ► Zuck had a complete 180 and realized, you know what, native apps matter for mobile,

01:05:48 ◼   ► for performance, for latency, for just the way, you know, it just isn't going to work

01:05:53 ◼   ► be one level behind in abstraction with all the the little nagging things that

01:06:01 ◼   ► that that entails and it was like so what do we do let's hire some great

01:06:05 ◼   ► native app developers and designers and I think also part of that is that you on

01:06:15 ◼   ► on the phone on mobile in general it makes more sense to have

01:06:20 ◼   ► Not a ton of apps but more separate apps than one app that does everything

01:06:27 ◼   ► Especially for something the size of Facebook because Facebook can do so many things, you know, you do events you do chat you do

01:06:34 ◼   ► Status updates you do pictures like all these things. It's like it was getting it was getting almost ridiculous. That's like the side menu

01:06:42 ◼   ► That's in the previous one where it's like there's so there's so many different things that you can drill down into it's almost like

01:06:48 ◼   ► Ridiculous to try to hit some of them with a with a fingertip, right?

01:06:51 ◼   ► And you know take a look at Apple with iTunes right out on the Mac and Windows and there's you know

01:06:56 ◼   ► I think a large part of that is because they have to maintain parity on Mac and Windows

01:07:00 ◼   ► But it's a monolithic app and you know, it's almost at this point. It's almost infamous for being

01:07:06 ◼   ► Overloaded with responsibilities and

01:07:12 ◼   ► And iOS debuted and has sort of stayed with everything broken apart into separate apps.

01:07:18 ◼   ► There's a music player app and there's a store app for buying music and a podcast app for

01:07:27 ◼   ► podcasts.

01:07:28 ◼   ► And you can see, you know, like, you know, and a lot of people aren't happy with the

01:07:31 ◼   ► podcast app.

01:07:32 ◼   ► But just the fact that the way Apple sees it, it should be a separate app says a lot.

01:07:37 ◼   ► You know, that that's the way to develop for mobile.

01:07:40 ◼   ► and I think Facebook has that in mind too.

01:07:42 ◼   ► - And so did you talk to Madison at all about the fact

01:07:46 ◼   ► that it's obviously iPhone first and iPhone only right now

01:07:49 ◼   ► and it's not iPad.

01:07:50 ◼   ► - Right, and I think it's the obvious

01:07:55 ◼   ► that it took them this long to build the iPhone version

01:07:59 ◼   ► and it's ready to ship and so they shipped it

01:08:01 ◼   ► and they had no comment on whether there's going

01:08:05 ◼   ► to be an iPad version or there's going

01:08:07 ◼   ► to be an Android version.

01:08:08 ◼   ► And although I got the feeling,

01:08:11 ◼   ► I can't quote me on it, and it's not a quote,

01:08:15 ◼   ► but I did get the feeling though that his team,

01:08:17 ◼   ► at least at the moment, is an iOS team,

01:08:20 ◼   ► that they, you know, and it's relatively small.

01:08:23 ◼   ► - Right.

01:08:24 ◼   ► - You know, that if and when there is going to be

01:08:26 ◼   ► an Android version of paper, that it's, you know,

01:08:28 ◼   ► they'll need to expand to do it.

01:08:31 ◼   ► - Well, and I wonder if it would even be that team, right?

01:08:35 ◼   ► Like if Zuck really is sort of thinking about this

01:08:39 ◼   ► in the new way that you're suggesting,

01:08:42 ◼   ► sort of moving away from the Facebook is a website

01:08:45 ◼   ► and now it's whatever it needs to be

01:08:48 ◼   ► on whatever device you're using.

01:08:49 ◼   ► And so you could certainly make the argument

01:08:52 ◼   ► that maybe it should be different for Android

01:08:55 ◼   ► entirely than it is even right now for paper with iOS.

01:08:59 ◼   ► - I think that's-- - They have different

01:09:02 ◼   ► screen sizes.

01:09:03 ◼   ► And different metaphors and different capabilities.

01:09:07 ◼   ► iOS is much more--

01:09:10 ◼   ► everybody's always said this.

01:09:12 ◼   ► Things animate smoother.

01:09:15 ◼   ► It has these transitions, and it has--

01:09:19 ◼   ► when you want to do GPU-intensive things,

01:09:22 ◼   ► you have this tremendous advantage

01:09:24 ◼   ► of only having to target two or three GPUs.

01:09:31 ◼   ► I don't know what--

01:09:32 ◼   ► I don't know how far back Facebook paper works.

01:09:34 ◼   ► I don't know if they support like the 4S

01:09:36 ◼   ► or what the limit is.

01:09:37 ◼   ► But even so, there's only three,

01:09:39 ◼   ► even if they go back all the way to the 4S,

01:09:42 ◼   ► it's only three generations that they have to support.

01:09:44 ◼   ► And it's a very, very graphically intensive app.

01:09:48 ◼   ► - So I wonder if Facebook will be sort of

01:09:50 ◼   ► the first major service to go like total,

01:09:55 ◼   ► in a totally different direction

01:09:56 ◼   ► with their application for Android.

01:09:58 ◼   ► Just because like of what you're talking about

01:10:00 ◼   ► where Madison's team is, I would assume, all iOS right now.

01:10:04 ◼   ► And they would either have to hire and sort of train people

01:10:09 ◼   ► in terms of what they built for iOS.

01:10:12 ◼   ► Even though it wouldn't technically be a quote unquote port,

01:10:15 ◼   ► it would still sort of be a port, right?

01:10:17 ◼   ► It would be like--

01:10:18 ◼   ► - Right, if they were gonna call it paper.

01:10:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, so--

01:10:21 ◼   ► - And use the same interface and style.

01:10:24 ◼   ► I don't think that they're gonna do it.

01:10:25 ◼   ► I really wouldn't be surprised if there's never,

01:10:28 ◼   ► I don't know the answer, I really don't.

01:10:29 ◼   ► I mean, but my guess is I wouldn't be surprised

01:10:32 ◼   ► if there's never paper for Android.

01:10:34 ◼   ► But like you just said, if there's something else,

01:10:37 ◼   ► Facebook, something else for Android

01:10:40 ◼   ► that has a different interface

01:10:42 ◼   ► and then never exists for iOS.

01:10:44 ◼   ► - Which, by the way, they've done.

01:10:46 ◼   ► That's what Facebook Home was, right?

01:10:47 ◼   ► - Right.

01:10:48 ◼   ► - It was Android only.

01:10:49 ◼   ► - Right. - Yeah.

01:10:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, and you know what?

01:10:52 ◼   ► So maybe that's actually a good way of thinking

01:10:54 ◼   ► that they've already done that.

01:10:55 ◼   ► They've already done a thing for Android

01:10:57 ◼   ► that doesn't exist on iOS,

01:10:58 ◼   ► it's sort of embracing rather than trying to do this seeing them as two

01:11:05 ◼   ► versions of the same idea treat them as different two different things which i

01:11:09 ◼   ► think is actually closer to the truth you know yeah and don't do the way don't

01:11:15 ◼   ► see this the way that Windows and Mac OS 10 evolved where a company like Adobe

01:11:20 ◼   ► more or less had the exact same interface for you know Photoshop and

01:11:25 ◼   ► and InDesign and Illustrator on Windows and Mac,

01:11:29 ◼   ► where the only differences were the iOS,

01:11:32 ◼   ► the OS specific things like that menu bar is at the top

01:11:35 ◼   ► on the Mac and the menu is in the window on Windows.

01:11:39 ◼   ► But otherwise, they shipped at the same time,

01:11:42 ◼   ► they had the same features,

01:11:44 ◼   ► they were built from the same code base.

01:11:46 ◼   ► I don't think that's the way to do iOS

01:11:48 ◼   ► and Android development, I really don't.

01:11:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, I agree.

01:11:51 ◼   ► I think that too often we see these companies go into it,

01:11:55 ◼   ► well, we built the iOS version, it's doing great,

01:11:58 ◼   ► now let's make the Android version,

01:12:00 ◼   ► it's gonna be the same Instagram, it's the exact same.

01:12:02 ◼   ► - Right.

01:12:03 ◼   ► - Well, maybe Instagram's an example

01:12:04 ◼   ► where that makes sense, because it's--

01:12:06 ◼   ► - It does, yeah.

01:12:07 ◼   ► - It's so simple. - You can argue that.

01:12:09 ◼   ► But, when you, you should go into the mentality

01:12:13 ◼   ► with we wanna create the best application

01:12:15 ◼   ► for this specific device,

01:12:16 ◼   ► for these specific set of devices, this OS,

01:12:19 ◼   ► rather than the other way around.

01:12:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I, you know, Twitter maybe is an example

01:12:23 ◼   ► doing that wrong, where they're sort of developing

01:12:26 ◼   ► this single-minded, single Twitter interface

01:12:30 ◼   ► that's everywhere?

01:12:32 ◼   ► - Right.

01:12:32 ◼   ► - You know, I don't--

01:12:33 ◼   ► - Though, we'll see if that continues.

01:12:35 ◼   ► That was definitely the marching order for a long time,

01:12:40 ◼   ► and I think that a lot of that was driven by the need

01:12:43 ◼   ► for simplicity, cross-platform simplicity,

01:12:46 ◼   ► to get users to understand what they're doing.

01:12:49 ◼   ► When they look at one thing, you know, it's like,

01:12:51 ◼   ► oh, here's where the tweet button is.

01:12:53 ◼   ► so I know what to do.

01:12:54 ◼   ► But I wouldn't be surprised if that's changing too,

01:12:56 ◼   ► that mentality.

01:12:57 ◼   ► - So things with paper, the thing that fascinates me,

01:13:00 ◼   ► and there's two sides to it.

01:13:02 ◼   ► There's one, is it a good client for Facebook?

01:13:05 ◼   ► And that I don't know how to judge

01:13:07 ◼   ► because I'm not a Facebook user.

01:13:08 ◼   ► So I honestly don't know how to judge it.

01:13:10 ◼   ► But two, from a design perspective,

01:13:14 ◼   ► it is fascinating.

01:13:17 ◼   ► 'Cause it is almost like a reimagination

01:13:21 ◼   ► of what iOS should be.

01:13:24 ◼   ► It doesn't feel foreign, it doesn't feel like alien,

01:13:29 ◼   ► but it's definitely not standard.

01:13:32 ◼   ► And it is of a piece with Mike Mattes' previous works

01:13:37 ◼   ► and very specifically with the work they did

01:13:43 ◼   ► at Push Pop Press.

01:13:45 ◼   ► The only example of which we saw publicly

01:13:48 ◼   ► was the Al Gore book.

01:13:50 ◼   ► choice right which is worth but if you're an interface designer it's worth

01:13:55 ◼   ► buying that not to read even if you have no interest in the book itself it's

01:13:59 ◼   ► worth buying as an example of an alternative way to think about

01:14:04 ◼   ► touchscreen design is it still it's still available I think so I hope so I

01:14:08 ◼   ► don't know yeah I don't know but this you know and I I don't know how much you

01:14:17 ◼   ► know I do you never know I mean there is a team and it's madis is not the only

01:14:19 ◼   ► designer but I think the whole team is on board with the philosophy and the

01:14:25 ◼   ► philosophy is I think one way to put it is that it that Apple wasn't bold enough

01:14:34 ◼   ► with iOS right and you go back all the way to Steve Jobs's 2007 unveiling of

01:14:40 ◼   ► the original iPhone and and he spoke a you know at the highest level when he

01:14:47 ◼   ► was introducing it and sort of framing how we should think about this. That it was when

01:14:52 ◼   ► he snuck in the dig about a stylus, you know, that look, in 1984 we made this thing called

01:14:58 ◼   ► the Mac and you, you know, did all this stuff visually using a mouse to guide a pointer

01:15:04 ◼   ► on screen. What are we going to do for a pointer here? He goes, "Well, a stylus." And everybody

01:15:10 ◼   ► goes, "No, of course not. It's terrible." And everybody laughed. He goes, "A stylus

01:15:14 ◼   ► us a piece of junk, you're going to lose it. And nobody wants that. No, we're all born

01:15:19 ◼   ► with a pointer right here. And he stuck up his index finger, right. And that's the, you

01:15:23 ◼   ► know, the high level, that's the breakthrough of iOS that you just use your finger, and

01:15:28 ◼   ► you do things. So instead of having a scroll bar that you move to scroll the content, you

01:15:33 ◼   ► just touch the content and move it, and you scroll up, and there's not you don't have

01:15:37 ◼   ► a button, you know, like, and you think back, and we, you know, it's easy to sort of forget.

01:15:41 ◼   ► you see this evolution over the years of Mac and Windows

01:15:44 ◼   ► where we have either the wheel or the trackpad or something.

01:15:49 ◼   ► But think back to the original Mac and the original Windows

01:15:54 ◼   ► before there were even scroll wheels on mice.

01:15:56 ◼   ► And to scroll the content, you had to put the cursor

01:15:59 ◼   ► on the arrow in the scroll bar to click

01:16:02 ◼   ► or put it on the, what's it called, the thumb,

01:16:04 ◼   ► the elevator, whatever you wanna call it, and drag it.

01:16:08 ◼   ► And it was a complete level of abstraction

01:16:11 ◼   ► that you had to click the button, the arrow buttons,

01:16:13 ◼   ► to scroll it or click the actual--

01:16:15 ◼   ► click and drag the actual wheel to do it.

01:16:20 ◼   ► And iOS completely eliminated the entire thing,

01:16:22 ◼   ► where it's all just direct.

01:16:24 ◼   ► But in other areas, it's a lot of the standard iOS navigation.

01:16:30 ◼   ► Just think about two apps that I think are very, very--

01:16:36 ◼   ► almost canonical if you want to study

01:16:39 ◼   ► what it is to be an iOS app.

01:16:40 ◼   ► Mail and the Settings app.

01:16:44 ◼   ► Settings app is maybe the best example.

01:16:46 ◼   ► Settings is just pure iOS.

01:16:49 ◼   ► It's a lot of buttons.

01:16:51 ◼   ► And even like you go into a level,

01:16:52 ◼   ► and then how do you go back?

01:16:54 ◼   ► You go to the top left, and there's a button.

01:16:56 ◼   ► And then back button.

01:16:57 ◼   ► And it's a back button.

01:16:58 ◼   ► And you tap the back button as though you use your finger

01:17:01 ◼   ► to tap the button in the same way

01:17:03 ◼   ► that you'd use a mouse pointer to click a button.

01:17:08 ◼   ► And the maddest philosophy, and paper really exemplifies this,

01:17:12 ◼   ► is that you get rid of those buttons, too.

01:17:16 ◼   ► And you just open and close things.

01:17:19 ◼   ► You can tap on a thing to open it, and then to close it,

01:17:21 ◼   ► you just squeeze it.

01:17:22 ◼   ► And it gets smaller and goes back to the smaller state.

01:17:26 ◼   ► And it's not just the obvious sort of-- or what's

01:17:30 ◼   ► been around for a while, like pinch to zoom

01:17:32 ◼   ► and sort of pinch to close.

01:17:33 ◼   ► It is like as simple as sort of drag up and drag down.

01:17:37 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:17:37 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:17:38 ◼   ► So you don't even have to use two fingers.

01:17:41 ◼   ► That's my favorite thing about it,

01:17:43 ◼   ► where I'm looking at it right now.

01:17:44 ◼   ► And it's just like the sort of bar

01:17:47 ◼   ► along the bottom with the content

01:17:49 ◼   ► that you scroll through, it almost is--

01:17:51 ◼   ► in a way, it's like in the shape of your thumb.

01:17:53 ◼   ► It's like drawing your thumb towards it to place it on there.

01:17:58 ◼   ► And then once you do that, you just sort of move up,

01:18:01 ◼   ► and then you're right into it.

01:18:02 ◼   ► And you can read it the entire way when it's going up, right?

01:18:05 ◼   ► Because it's just scaling it right up.

01:18:07 ◼   ► then to get it away you just push it back down. It's very well done.

01:18:10 ◼   ► And it's very natural and it is really unlike the standard system in a profound way even though it's

01:18:19 ◼   ► so simple and part of it there's a humility towards it where it's not a lot of like whiz-bang

01:18:26 ◼   ► stuff that you could... I mean I know for example I know that Matus worked on when he was at Apple

01:18:32 ◼   ► years ago worked on Time Machine and Time Machine's interface is look at look

01:18:37 ◼   ► at this this is supposed to be like whoa right with the whole windows going into

01:18:43 ◼   ► 3d and they're an outer space and it's like it is a very ostentatious design

01:18:49 ◼   ► and it doesn't matter what you know aside whether you think it's a good

01:18:52 ◼   ► design for for a backup system or not it's ostentatious right the paper thing

01:18:57 ◼   ► is is very humble in my opinion because I think normal people they might think

01:19:01 ◼   ► hey this is nice but they're not going to be like wow it it's right you know

01:19:07 ◼   ► and I mean that as a very high compliment that it's it's not trying to

01:19:11 ◼   ► show off it's all and I think there's tons I know for a fact that there's tons

01:19:16 ◼   ► and tons of work to get these things because they're not built into the

01:19:20 ◼   ► system you don't get them for free from Coco Touch this these you know opening

01:19:27 ◼   ► and closing and smooth everything is super smooth it's all custom and it's

01:19:31 ◼   ► all super smooth. And the big problem with any kind of high level, like how are you going

01:19:39 ◼   ► to navigate this design, is that there's a very few number of gestures available and

01:19:45 ◼   ► you have to allocate them. You have to decide, you have to be very careful about it. So just

01:19:50 ◼   ► think back to the original Mac. And I think in hindsight, we can probably agree that a

01:19:55 ◼   ► a mistake that they made was that single click in the finder selects an item and double click

01:20:06 ◼   ► opens because double click is cognitively difficult for normal people.

01:20:14 ◼   ► And it's led to, the best example is people whose parents double click on links in web

01:20:22 ◼   ► browsers.

01:20:23 ◼   ► Right?

01:20:24 ◼   ► They somehow, they don't understand that some things you click on to open and some things

01:20:29 ◼   ► you double click to open.

01:20:30 ◼   ► And you kind of have to have a deeper understanding of how the computer is working as opposed

01:20:36 ◼   ► to how the interface is working to know that difference.

01:20:39 ◼   ► Which is why, you know, it makes way more sense the way that iOS and almost every modern

01:20:46 ◼   ► system works where you tap to open and you do like a long tap to select or something

01:20:52 ◼   ► else.

01:20:53 ◼   ► tap-dope and so you do you have so few things to do and and you don't want to

01:21:01 ◼   ► get into a thing where anything primary involves things like well you could put

01:21:07 ◼   ► two fingers on screen and drag up and down well normal people are never gonna

01:21:10 ◼   ► get that right pinching with two fingers they'll get because it's it is it feels

01:21:17 ◼   ► is real. But things like the iOS four finger swipe to switch apps, that's a power user

01:21:24 ◼   ► feature. That and it's absolutely fine that Apple made that. I think it's fine feature.

01:21:30 ◼   ► I use it especially on the iPad. I don't think I have it turned on on the phone, but on the

01:21:33 ◼   ► iPad I use it all the time. But I, you know, it's, I guarantee you 99.5% of all iPad users

01:21:41 ◼   ► have no idea that it exists and if you told them it exists they would forget it

01:21:45 ◼   ► by tomorrow so what Facebook had to solve with paper is what can you how

01:21:52 ◼   ► much can you do with one finger just dragging you've got left right and

01:21:57 ◼   ► you've got up down and that's it and so you go left right to navigate between

01:22:04 ◼   ► items in the stream and up to open down to close and it's even it's a little bit

01:22:14 ◼   ► more sort of interesting how they're doing it because there's also down like

01:22:20 ◼   ► it seems like one of the issues that they're having which I understand is

01:22:24 ◼   ► that people don't know at first how to create a post right because that's

01:22:28 ◼   ► another swipe down from the top and there's no real indication that that's

01:22:31 ◼   ► There is through in the walkthrough of course

01:22:33 ◼   ► But there's no indication when you're just looking at it that that's what you would do right and that they're trying to like create a new

01:22:39 ◼   ► Norm I guess for that yeah, and where it's instead of being the side sort of the hamburger bun to the side

01:22:45 ◼   ► It's now swiping down to get to it

01:22:47 ◼   ► Yeah

01:22:47 ◼   ► And maybe that's a spot where it's not quite fair of me to say that it doesn't feel foreign because it is

01:22:54 ◼   ► Because it's non-standard

01:22:58 ◼   ► But I guess what I see is that I when I look at paper

01:23:02 ◼   ► I see a way that the whole system could work that way right that in some alternate universe

01:23:08 ◼   ► Mike Mattes is that still at Apple and is in charge of iOS or

01:23:13 ◼   ► Is a lead developer and that iOS 7 works like this across the board and that there's you know, for example

01:23:20 ◼   ► There's no status bar all the time in Facebook paper

01:23:27 ◼   ► But it's there you just pull down at the top a little bit and then you can see it. Yep, and I

01:23:32 ◼   ► Know for a fact there's an eye that is you know, it's a stupid little thing, but I know from talking to other

01:23:38 ◼   ► Designers and people who think about things like this

01:23:41 ◼   ► There's an awful lot of people who think that that's the way iOS should work that the status bar is

01:23:45 ◼   ► Clutter and that you know, why not just give the whole screen and you know

01:23:49 ◼   ► Show the status when you need it and how do you do it? Just pull it down

01:23:54 ◼   ► Do you know what else I just realized like just playing around with it right now

01:23:57 ◼   ► I think they're one of the first ones that I can remember actually doing this

01:24:02 ◼   ► In a way, I think is correct

01:24:04 ◼   ► Which is that?

01:24:05 ◼   ► When you do so when you do you're on the main screen and you swipe down to get to sort of where you can post

01:24:10 ◼   ► Where your profile is that that back, you know the back of the sort of cards metaphor. Yeah

01:24:15 ◼   ► When that puts the main

01:24:18 ◼   ► Sort of card at the bottom so you can still get back there by tapping on it and then it just pops back up

01:24:24 ◼   ► right? So that's how you navigate back? Yes. But it is impossible to actually pull up the up menu

01:24:31 ◼   ► from there. You know how in so many apps now with iOS 7 they have the pull up menu where you know

01:24:37 ◼   ► where they have the flashlight and all those other things. Yeah. It is actually impossible to do that

01:24:42 ◼   ► at least as far as I can see right now to pull up that menu which is great because so many of

01:24:47 ◼   ► of these apps that are trying to be clever with sort of using

01:24:51 ◼   ► new UI forget that there is already a system-wide UI

01:24:57 ◼   ► to pull up that menu, right?

01:25:00 ◼   ► And somehow, I assume you can do this in--

01:25:04 ◼   ► you can make this a setting.

01:25:06 ◼   ► Paper has figured out, like, if we put this card at the bottom

01:25:12 ◼   ► and ask people to go back to it, a lot of times

01:25:14 ◼   ► they're going to end up pulling up the Settings menu,

01:25:17 ◼   ► and we don't want them to do that, so let's just disable that.

01:25:20 ◼   ► And so there's no way to do that, which is great.

01:25:22 ◼   ► Because I'm always afraid now whenever I'm touching something at the bottom of the screen

01:25:25 ◼   ► that I'm going to pull up that menu.

01:25:27 ◼   ► Yeah, I know exactly what you mean.

01:25:31 ◼   ► I think, and it's tricky too when the keyboard is visible, and it feels, I could be wrong,

01:25:38 ◼   ► it could just be that I've gotten better at it, but I'm running the iOS 7.1 betas on my

01:25:42 ◼   ► phone.

01:25:43 ◼   ► Yeah, me too.

01:25:45 ◼   ► And it feels as though they've, in the last beta or two,

01:25:48 ◼   ► they've gotten better at system-wide.

01:25:51 ◼   ► When you want to bring up the, what's it called,

01:25:54 ◼   ► the control center is the thing you're talking about.

01:25:57 ◼   ► You swipe from the bottom.

01:25:59 ◼   ► Previously, when the keyboard was up,

01:26:01 ◼   ► every time I tried it, I'd get a space.

01:26:04 ◼   ► It would just hit the key.

01:26:05 ◼   ► And they've gotten something.

01:26:07 ◼   ► They figured out some way of doing it now,

01:26:08 ◼   ► wherein the keyboard's visible.

01:26:10 ◼   ► You can bring that up.

01:26:11 ◼   ► It's a tricky thing.

01:26:12 ◼   ► And I agree that-- yeah, I know exactly what

01:26:13 ◼   ► you're talking about in paper.

01:26:14 ◼   ► You more or less push the whole regular interface down.

01:26:18 ◼   ► Regular interface meaning you're browsing through

01:26:22 ◼   ► the content in your feed.

01:26:23 ◼   ► You push that down to get a sort of meta interface

01:26:30 ◼   ► and it's like a transparent thing with your Facebook,

01:26:34 ◼   ► not your profile. - It is search.

01:26:35 ◼   ► It has your profile, it has create a post,

01:26:37 ◼   ► it has edit sections and settings.

01:26:39 ◼   ► - Right.

01:26:40 ◼   ► So another thing that they did that I think,

01:26:43 ◼   ► and it speaks to the thought that went into it.

01:26:45 ◼   ► It's like the Einstein quote,

01:26:48 ◼   ► everything should be as simple as possible,

01:26:50 ◼   ► but not more so.

01:26:52 ◼   ► And I've looked it up over the years

01:26:55 ◼   ► and maybe there's a lot of,

01:26:56 ◼   ► it could be one of those things

01:26:57 ◼   ► where he didn't even say it,

01:26:58 ◼   ► but that's the way I know the adage.

01:27:02 ◼   ► What does it mean as simple as possible, but not more so?

01:27:07 ◼   ► Well, it's a little cute,

01:27:09 ◼   ► but it more or less means don't take an idea too far.

01:27:12 ◼   ► And as an example, it's--

01:27:13 ◼   ► OK, so they've gotten rid of a lot of buttons

01:27:16 ◼   ► in the navigation.

01:27:17 ◼   ► That you don't go back, you just push it down and it closes.

01:27:21 ◼   ► But they don't have any kind of--

01:27:23 ◼   ► we're not going to have any buttons at all.

01:27:25 ◼   ► And we're going to figure out a way to do this with no buttons.

01:27:27 ◼   ► Where it makes sense to just have a button,

01:27:29 ◼   ► they have a button.

01:27:31 ◼   ► Like when you write a post, you just start typing.

01:27:33 ◼   ► And then there's a button that says post.

01:27:35 ◼   ► And it's super obvious.

01:27:37 ◼   ► There's no cutesy way of somehow posting

01:27:41 ◼   ► without actually having a post button.

01:27:44 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, I think that that's right.

01:27:48 ◼   ► They have the minimal amount of buttons

01:27:50 ◼   ► you would need to do what you want to do.

01:27:53 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:27:54 ◼   ► They have a super cool thing when you go into the settings.

01:27:58 ◼   ► And it uses-- once you're in the settings for Facebook Paper,

01:28:04 ◼   ► it is a very standard iOS metaphor,

01:28:07 ◼   ► where there's a list, and you tap an item,

01:28:09 ◼   ► and it goes left to right and navigation stack

01:28:14 ◼   ► goes the same way that you're familiar with.

01:28:16 ◼   ► And I think it's exactly right.

01:28:19 ◼   ► Instead of trying to get real clever

01:28:20 ◼   ► and do something original there, they do it.

01:28:22 ◼   ► But they do a really cool thing with the animation

01:28:25 ◼   ► at the top of the screen,

01:28:27 ◼   ► where there is actually a back button

01:28:29 ◼   ► when you're in the settings.

01:28:31 ◼   ► But if you swipe it, it's like the back button thing,

01:28:33 ◼   ► unlike iOS 7 standard navigation,

01:28:36 ◼   ► it doesn't just fade from one to another,

01:28:38 ◼   ► it like shoots as though a rubber band pushed it.

01:28:41 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:28:42 ◼   ► - Really, really, really.

01:28:44 ◼   ► And honestly, it's better than the iOS.

01:28:47 ◼   ► I wish that that was iOS 7 standard.

01:28:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, and everything sort of cascades in.

01:28:51 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:28:52 ◼   ► - As they're coming, yeah.

01:28:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

01:28:54 ◼   ► It's like a cascade animation, like almost like a wave.

01:28:58 ◼   ► I don't know how you would call it, but it's,

01:29:01 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:29:02 ◼   ► I'm making up a word here, but it's very physicky.

01:29:06 ◼   ► - Physics-y, physical, physical.

01:29:08 ◼   ► I guess it's just physical, but it's like physics.

01:29:11 ◼   ► And again, that's a little thing,

01:29:16 ◼   ► and that is not a standard animation from iOS.

01:29:20 ◼   ► That is something that they worked on themselves.

01:29:23 ◼   ► There's an awful lot of--

01:29:23 ◼   ► - So did you get a sense from him?

01:29:26 ◼   ► Did he talk at all?

01:29:27 ◼   ► Are they going to open source any of this stuff

01:29:29 ◼   ► for other sort of iOS developers to use, do you know?

01:29:33 ◼   ► - I didn't ask, I don't know.

01:29:35 ◼   ► I don't think so.

01:29:36 ◼   ► That'd be great, but yeah.

01:29:38 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't think so.

01:29:39 ◼   ► Although they did, you know, they have the tool, the meta layer on top of Quartz compositor

01:29:44 ◼   ► that they're using.

01:29:46 ◼   ► Quartz Composer?

01:29:47 ◼   ► That's right.

01:29:48 ◼   ► Or origami?

01:29:49 ◼   ► Is that what they're called?

01:29:50 ◼   ► Yeah, origami.

01:29:51 ◼   ► I forget if it's Quartz Compositor or Composer.

01:29:52 ◼   ► Whichever one it is, I always guess wrong.

01:29:53 ◼   ► So it's whatever.

01:29:54 ◼   ► Composer.

01:29:55 ◼   ► Quartz Composer.

01:29:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:29:57 ◼   ► I think the telling thing about that that's interesting as someone who works and tries

01:30:03 ◼   ► to think about design and stuff is that... and Matus has been using Quartz Composer for a long

01:30:11 ◼   ► time for his mock-ups and stuff. And I had spoken about this before, but like he showed me like with

01:30:17 ◼   ► PushPop Press before it came out and he was showing me the development version of it where

01:30:24 ◼   ► they had like in the beta versions or the in-house versions there was an extra layer of settings where

01:30:31 ◼   ► there were sliders for all the variables in the physics engine. And so instead of like a programmer

01:30:44 ◼   ► typing into Xcode that gravity for flinging down a picture to close it is at 0.78 and then you

01:30:55 ◼   ► compile and build and install a beta on your phone and you play around with it and then Mike would

01:31:00 ◼   ► say, "You know what? Try like 0.85 and then compile it and build it and give it to him."

01:31:06 ◼   ► He had sliders for all of those things and he could sit there and drag these little sliders

01:31:12 ◼   ► and adjust things and make pictures more or less really. And I got to play with it with

01:31:18 ◼   ► those settings enabled, make things like photos feel heavier or lighter. And it was very,

01:31:24 ◼   ► very, you know, it was very tactile where it really did feel like, "Whoa, that's heavier.

01:31:28 ◼   ► whoa, that's lighter.

01:31:30 ◼   ► And I think the idea is that you can't really design

01:31:35 ◼   ► with this modern sense of a physics-driven interaction

01:31:40 ◼   ► without actually having design tools

01:31:44 ◼   ► that are not just animated,

01:31:46 ◼   ► but that you can tweak all sorts of variables.

01:31:50 ◼   ► And I think that's where they're going with origami,

01:31:52 ◼   ► where you're not, you cannot,

01:31:53 ◼   ► you can't create things like this in Photoshop

01:31:56 ◼   ► and just have, here's the start frame, here's the end frame,

01:32:00 ◼   ► and in between it animates.

01:32:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it's 'cause you're forcing your brain

01:32:07 ◼   ► to shift between two different processes, right?

01:32:12 ◼   ► You're going from a very numbers-driven analytical process

01:32:17 ◼   ► by typing in .87.

01:32:20 ◼   ► It's like you're doing math versus designing.

01:32:24 ◼   ► I think it's the equivalent of like in sculpture

01:32:26 ◼   ► where you're working, you know,

01:32:28 ◼   ► it's like having clay in your hands

01:32:30 ◼   ► and being able to mold it with your hands

01:32:33 ◼   ► as opposed to defining, you know,

01:32:35 ◼   ► mathematically the shape of the sculpture.

01:32:37 ◼   ► - Right.

01:32:38 ◼   ► What do you think about the photo elements

01:32:42 ◼   ► where you're tilting to, you know, sort of look at,

01:32:45 ◼   ► the panoramic mode?

01:32:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, they call it, I don't know if this is public or not.

01:32:49 ◼   ► I know internally they call it Ken Turns,

01:32:52 ◼   ► the Ken Turns effect.

01:32:54 ◼   ► - That's good, that's funny.

01:32:55 ◼   ► - I think it's brilliant.

01:32:57 ◼   ► I think it is really, really,

01:32:59 ◼   ► I think it works.

01:33:02 ◼   ► It is so super effective, and I think, you know,

01:33:07 ◼   ► it's like, I always say, like, you know,

01:33:09 ◼   ► first is the original, the second is a rip-off,

01:33:13 ◼   ► and the third, it's a standard.

01:33:15 ◼   ► So somebody's gonna rip it off,

01:33:17 ◼   ► and then everybody's gonna say,

01:33:18 ◼   ► hey, they ripped off the Ken Turns effect

01:33:20 ◼   ► from Facebook Paper, and then two or three other apps

01:33:23 ◼   ► are gonna come out that use it,

01:33:24 ◼   ► and it's everybody's, you know,

01:33:26 ◼   ► well, we should always remember that they did it first,

01:33:28 ◼   ► but it's, I think it's gonna become a standard.

01:33:31 ◼   ► So the idea is, if you haven't,

01:33:32 ◼   ► if you're out there, you're listening,

01:33:33 ◼   ► and you haven't seen paper or used it,

01:33:35 ◼   ► if you open a photo, they open it

01:33:38 ◼   ► so that it always fills the screen.

01:33:41 ◼   ► And so if it's like a, and it's even most noticeable

01:33:44 ◼   ► if you think of a panoramic photo,

01:33:46 ◼   ► like if you take a panoramic photo with your iPhone,

01:33:48 ◼   ► where it's way wider than it is tall,

01:33:50 ◼   ► well, it opens at full height on your phone,

01:33:52 ◼   ► and then to see the rest of it,

01:33:54 ◼   ► you just hold your phone in front of you

01:33:56 ◼   ► and you can either twist it

01:33:58 ◼   ► or you can actually rotate your body

01:34:02 ◼   ► and the photo pans along as you move.

01:34:07 ◼   ► I think it's brilliant.

01:34:09 ◼   ► I think it works so well.

01:34:11 ◼   ► - And it's just like it basically turns the phone screen

01:34:15 ◼   ► is a window sort of into a picture,

01:34:18 ◼   ► making it more like real life.

01:34:20 ◼   ► - Yes, and it is, you know.

01:34:22 ◼   ► So we sit at our desks and we have things like 27-inch iMacs or 21-inch iMacs or cinema

01:34:33 ◼   ► displays or even on like a MacBook.

01:34:39 ◼   ► We have retina displays on MacBook Pros now with incredible pixel counts and compared

01:34:43 ◼   ► to a phone, a big screen.

01:34:46 ◼   ► I think this Ken Turns thing for how do you view something that you really do want big

01:34:51 ◼   ► like a photo, how do you view it on a little four inch screen? I think it's the best solution

01:34:57 ◼   ► anybody's come up with. I think it's brilliant. They told me, "Here's one thing."

01:35:02 ◼   ► So the name, they said that they started with the Ken Burns effect, where they would open

01:35:07 ◼   ► the photo at that size.

01:35:08 ◼   ► And then it just automatically moved?

01:35:10 ◼   ► Yeah. And they said the problem was that they realized was a lot of times the most interesting

01:35:19 ◼   ► part of the photo, maybe it was at the beginning, it's at the left edge, and then it already

01:35:23 ◼   ► pans past.

01:35:24 ◼   ► Right, and then you miss.

01:35:25 ◼   ► You want to go back, and you have to wait for the animation, or you have to swipe it.

01:35:29 ◼   ► That's interesting.

01:35:30 ◼   ► Right.

01:35:31 ◼   ► And then the main problem, so this is what this shows to me, which I think is pretty

01:35:35 ◼   ► genius, which is that normally, so even right now, if you open up a panoramic picture, if

01:35:42 ◼   ► you open it on your phone sort of in landscape mode or in horizontal mode, it will be so

01:35:49 ◼   ► small and so you'll want to zoom in, right? But to see then the rest of the photo, you

01:35:53 ◼   ► have to take your thumb and like sort of push. And so that's like putting your thumb in between

01:35:58 ◼   ► what you're trying to look at, whereas this totally removes it because you never have

01:36:02 ◼   ► to use your thumb.

01:36:03 ◼   ► Well, exactly. So you're not covering the photo with your fat ugly thumb. And this gets

01:36:09 ◼   ► back to what I said before, they've already assigned swiping left and right

01:36:13 ◼   ► to going to the next thing. That's right, to navigation, and it does that.

01:36:17 ◼   ► People, I'm assuming, right now are trying to do, you know, to get to the other part

01:36:21 ◼   ► of the photo just because that has previously been the norm, and now

01:36:25 ◼   ► they're just swiping to, you know, the next story and being like, "Oh, this is

01:36:28 ◼   ► different. How do I get that?" To me, it's just a genius, and it's, you know, it's so easy to

01:36:35 ◼   ► to overlook how much thought went into that, you know?

01:36:37 ◼   ► And again, it would be the wrong solution,

01:36:41 ◼   ► but it's, you know, the things that would be easier

01:36:43 ◼   ► to think of, you know, and that a simple little mind

01:36:46 ◼   ► like mine would think of would be, well,

01:36:47 ◼   ► put two fingers on the screen and swipe left, right

01:36:50 ◼   ► to pan the photo, and one finger is still just go next

01:36:54 ◼   ► or forward, but people don't think like that.

01:36:56 ◼   ► That two fingers on screen to go to do it is terrible.

01:36:59 ◼   ► You know, this, you know, using,

01:37:02 ◼   ► why don't we use the accelerometer and the gyroscope?

01:37:05 ◼   ► It's a really great idea.

01:37:08 ◼   ► I really can't.

01:37:09 ◼   ► - And they have other little things

01:37:12 ◼   ► like the autoplay of the videos.

01:37:14 ◼   ► Normally people hate that,

01:37:15 ◼   ► and I'm one of those people who hate that,

01:37:16 ◼   ► but it's like when you are in sort of full mode,

01:37:21 ◼   ► so it doesn't autoplay them when you're in

01:37:22 ◼   ► sort of the browsing mode where you can,

01:37:25 ◼   ► the stories are at the bottom of the screen

01:37:27 ◼   ► and you're swiping through them,

01:37:28 ◼   ► but once you bring it up to full screen,

01:37:30 ◼   ► it does autoplay it,

01:37:31 ◼   ► because it's like that's the content and you want to see it and you're just

01:37:34 ◼   ► removing sort of a barrier to entry to see that. Yep, yeah exactly.

01:37:38 ◼   ► Yeah. Really, really thoughtful stuff and you know I think you know rightly or

01:37:46 ◼   ► wrongly a lot of the discussion has been more about it as hey is this an

01:37:50 ◼   ► alternative way to look at Facebook but I think that you know interface wise it

01:37:53 ◼   ► is fascinating it is you know you could teach a whole course of interface design

01:37:58 ◼   ► and based on the novelties that they've come up with

01:38:01 ◼   ► in the app.

01:38:02 ◼   ► - So I guess the biggest complaint I would have

01:38:06 ◼   ► as someone who does occasionally use Facebook,

01:38:09 ◼   ► I mean I'm not, I certainly don't use it

01:38:10 ◼   ► as much as much of the world does,

01:38:12 ◼   ► but the difference between the regular sort of

01:38:17 ◼   ► standard Facebook app and even the website and this

01:38:20 ◼   ► is that for, it might not even be true,

01:38:23 ◼   ► but there's something about it to me

01:38:24 ◼   ► that makes it feel like there is much less content.

01:38:28 ◼   ► and so it's much more shallow.

01:38:30 ◼   ► And maybe that's on purpose,

01:38:31 ◼   ► maybe it's sort of making Facebook less overwhelming

01:38:33 ◼   ► because maybe it is too overwhelming now

01:38:35 ◼   ► because everyone has sort of a thousand friends on it,

01:38:37 ◼   ► even though you're probably not really friends

01:38:38 ◼   ► with a thousand people.

01:38:39 ◼   ► And so maybe they're doing some smart things

01:38:43 ◼   ► and maybe I just haven't played around with it enough

01:38:44 ◼   ► to know that they're serving up really what is the best

01:38:48 ◼   ► of the content that I should see.

01:38:50 ◼   ► But I do get the sense that there's just like

01:38:54 ◼   ► much less content.

01:38:55 ◼   ► And maybe it's because the cards are sort of at the bottom and they're sort of, you

01:38:59 ◼   ► know, you can get basically two and a little bit more into one sort of screen.

01:39:04 ◼   ► And so it takes quite a bit of swiping to get through to what you used to be able to

01:39:09 ◼   ► get through in less sort of swiping up and down when you're swiping through something.

01:39:12 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't think it's not a good interface.

01:39:15 ◼   ► More or less it's probably not a good interface for going through a ton of stuff.

01:39:19 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:39:20 ◼   ► Right?

01:39:21 ◼   ► Because you have to go left, right, and their minimum size is sort of a thumbnail.

01:39:25 ◼   ► So you can't just scroll through a ton of stuff.

01:39:28 ◼   ► It's not, I guess it's, you know, I don't know.

01:39:31 ◼   ► I think that that's, I don't think it's ever going to replace the regular Facebook interface.

01:39:36 ◼   ► I don't think it could, but I think it's an interesting alternative for some people and

01:39:40 ◼   ► maybe so that some people, people who are turned off by the existing regular Facebook

01:39:47 ◼   ► interface and what it promotes in terms of, you know, behavior and how many people you

01:39:54 ◼   ► friend and etc. It's a way for more people to want to use Facebook. I think

01:40:01 ◼   ► I'm probably gonna sign up but I don't think I really do and now it's almost

01:40:04 ◼   ► like I just I don't want to it's like I don't I think it's stupid for me to just

01:40:08 ◼   ► say I want to stick to this you know it I don't it's too arbitrary for me to say

01:40:14 ◼   ► you know what I want I'm not gonna sign up for it just because I want to be able

01:40:16 ◼   ► to always say I never signed up for Facebook right but I think my idea is

01:40:21 ◼   ► is I'll sign up. I still don't want to use Facebook anywhere else. The only way I'll

01:40:26 ◼   ► use Facebook is through paper. I've actually tried. You can't create an account using paper.

01:40:33 ◼   ► So I would have to go to the website. But then after I do that, I'm never going to use

01:40:41 ◼   ► anywhere else.

01:40:42 ◼   ► And will you start offing in with Facebook then? Will you use that aspect of it too?

01:40:47 ◼   ► I imagine that must be a pain for you with so many.

01:40:49 ◼   ► Because I don't know that there's anything I've ever wanted to use that only offers a Facebook off there

01:40:54 ◼   ► Yeah, I feel like that's less of an issue now like a year ago or two years ago. That was an issue

01:40:59 ◼   ► There would be like I remember I was you know, sort of

01:41:01 ◼   ► Looking at or sort of testing out many different apps that would have Facebook only and that was the number one complaint

01:41:08 ◼   ► Of course, right? Yeah, you know I do at least email - that doesn't seem to be an issue anymore. We actually

01:41:13 ◼   ► Did I mean it's it's not really it wasn't

01:41:19 ◼   ► scientific, but for Vesper and for the eventual syncing thing that we're working on, we thought

01:41:25 ◼   ► about should we have our own login system or should we use Twitter or should we use

01:41:29 ◼   ► Facebook or should we do both? And there's, you know, a lot of, it solves a lot of problems

01:41:33 ◼   ► to use an existing identity like that. But what we did is ask like real people, our wives

01:41:41 ◼   ► and friends and people who aren't developers and very, very quickly got a lot of, you know,

01:41:48 ◼   ► came very, very clear that normal people

01:41:50 ◼   ► don't like using that.

01:41:52 ◼   ► And it's because they don't trust that whatever app

01:41:55 ◼   ► they're authoring in is gonna post to their board

01:41:58 ◼   ► or to their Twitter.

01:42:00 ◼   ► And they just don't like it.

01:42:01 ◼   ► And they don't want Facebook or Twitter knowing

01:42:04 ◼   ► what other apps they use.

01:42:05 ◼   ► They just don't, you know, normal people,

01:42:08 ◼   ► not like nerds, not privacy experts,

01:42:12 ◼   ► just normal people have like a sense,

01:42:15 ◼   ► just a common sense like aversion to letting these big companies know everything they do.

01:42:22 ◼   ► Then they don't like it. They really don't. And that they also know intuitively that if

01:42:26 ◼   ► your ID is just your email address that nobody knows, you know, that are...

01:42:32 ◼   ► Right. The email provider doesn't care about that.

01:42:35 ◼   ► Right. That they're not seeing...

01:42:37 ◼   ► Or can't. I mean, they can't even really...

01:42:39 ◼   ► Right. It's just a...

01:42:40 ◼   ► There's no way that they could get access to that.

01:42:41 ◼   ► that your email address isn't really a system,

01:42:43 ◼   ► it's just a unique string,

01:42:45 ◼   ► just by the way that domain names work,

01:42:48 ◼   ► that there's one username at domain that can exist,

01:42:52 ◼   ► and it's just a unique identifier, not a unique identity.

01:42:56 ◼   ► And then it gets down to do it as an option,

01:43:03 ◼   ► and then it's a design question of,

01:43:05 ◼   ► well, how do you make people choose?

01:43:06 ◼   ► But I don't know, and it seems to me the trend,

01:43:09 ◼   ► And I've been looking at it, thinking about it for Vesper

01:43:12 ◼   ► for a while, it seems to me like more services going forward

01:43:16 ◼   ► are only offering things like Facebook and Twitter Auth

01:43:19 ◼   ► as an option, not as your right way.

01:43:22 ◼   ► - Well, and yeah, I guess the obvious upside is one button

01:43:28 ◼   ► and you're done, right, rather than typing in an email.

01:43:31 ◼   ► - Facebook is the first, or Facebook Paper is really

01:43:33 ◼   ► the first time that I've needed a Facebook account

01:43:36 ◼   ► to use a thing, and it's because it's actually,

01:43:38 ◼   ► you know, very specific to paper.

01:43:40 ◼   ► Let me do the third sponsor,

01:43:43 ◼   ► and there's another angle to Facebook paper

01:43:45 ◼   ► we can talk about, which is the sort of sections,

01:43:49 ◼   ► the content sections.

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01:44:04 ◼   ► You have to see it to believe it,

01:44:07 ◼   ► but it really is a very different visual effect

01:44:10 ◼   ► than a piece of paper behind glass in a frame.

01:44:13 ◼   ► It's a piece of glass with the paper printed on it.

01:44:15 ◼   ► It's almost like if you're old enough to remember

01:44:17 ◼   ► when people used to shoot slides.

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01:44:23 ◼   ► And there's a certain vibrancy to it,

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01:46:05 ◼   ► it's a great service so here's the other thing with facebook paper it's us only

01:46:09 ◼   ► not just iphone only it's us only and and the reason for that is because of the the content

01:46:14 ◼   ► sections they have where it's not just your regular facebook feed they have sections for

01:46:20 ◼   ► things like tech and sports and like world news I think. Yeah, planet, cities.

01:46:27 ◼   ► And they're not scraping those. It's not just like they're scraping RSS feeds and

01:46:35 ◼   ► showing whatever they want. They've got partnerships with content providers and

01:46:40 ◼   ► I more or less I think that's why it's US only for now because it's like you

01:46:47 ◼   ► You know, you go the—and I know a lot of people have compared Facebook paper to Flipboard,

01:46:52 ◼   ► but I don't really think that they're that direct a competitor.

01:46:55 ◼   ► I think it's because some of the animations are a little similar that people think that.

01:47:00 ◼   ► Yeah, and, I mean, that's sort of what I was getting at the very beginning where it

01:47:04 ◼   ► almost feels like this—this is the part to me that feels sort of like a response to

01:47:09 ◼   ► Twitter.

01:47:10 ◼   ► It's because Twitter is a place you go to get news right now, right?

01:47:12 ◼   ► It's like where a lot of people actually find links for the first time, find links

01:47:16 ◼   ► about news, breaking news happening. And Facebook now with this, with these sections are, as

01:47:22 ◼   ► you said, sort of making partnerships with the actual news organizations to make this

01:47:26 ◼   ► like an actual news reader.

01:47:28 ◼   ► Well I didn't think about that as a response to Twitter, but maybe you're right though

01:47:32 ◼   ► that it kind of is in terms of that you go to this app for news, but that you're not

01:47:36 ◼   ► expecting it to come from your followers.

01:47:41 ◼   ► Your friends.

01:47:42 ◼   ► Right.

01:47:43 ◼   ► Right.

01:47:44 ◼   ► It's about this sort of professional editorial cultivation.

01:47:46 ◼   ► cultivation. That's a good point because it's more along the lines of like Twitter if you only

01:47:51 ◼   ► followed the actual news sources, right, rather than your friends. So you follow the account of

01:47:57 ◼   ► New York Times and Washington Post and whoever else if you use Twitter that way, which some

01:48:02 ◼   ► people do I think use or at least have power users of course have separate sort of Twitter

01:48:07 ◼   ► screens set up with just sort of breaking news alerts on different items. Hmm, yeah. I don't know

01:48:15 ◼   ► You know and I do I that's something where I just don't know whether because I'm not a Facebook user

01:48:20 ◼   ► I don't know how much sense it makes to integrate these two things, you know

01:48:24 ◼   ► It's like I can't I feel like I can't judge it. Yay or nay

01:48:28 ◼   ► What do you think? Yeah, you say you're using it on your phone. Are you using the

01:48:33 ◼   ► So no, I that's that's interesting. I am using it and I as I said I have I have replaced its

01:48:42 ◼   ► I've replaced the Facebook app, the regular app, with paper.

01:48:46 ◼   ► And it's great for all the reasons we just have talked about and elaborated upon.

01:48:51 ◼   ► But I'm not really using the news sections.

01:48:54 ◼   ► I don't know why.

01:48:56 ◼   ► It does feel a little bit foreign to me because I am thinking about this as a Facebook replacement,

01:49:02 ◼   ► even though I know that's not the only mentality you're supposed to be going into this thinking

01:49:07 ◼   ► about and you are supposed to be focused on these different sections where you can read

01:49:11 ◼   ► about news, but I don't know. I just don't use it that way, and I'm never compelled to

01:49:16 ◼   ► sort of open up paper to be able to get to the latest Wall Street Journal story. And

01:49:23 ◼   ► I don't know if that's because I'm a heavy Twitter user and I feel like I will have already

01:49:27 ◼   ► seen it on Twitter. I guess maybe that's what it comes down to, the fact that I use Twitter

01:49:33 ◼   ► must be 10 to 20x more times a day than I use Facebook. And so I'm already getting my

01:49:40 ◼   ► news from Twitter. And so I'm just not in the right sort of mode to go into this paper

01:49:47 ◼   ► app to sort of read about things right now. I don't know. And maybe I'm different. Maybe

01:49:52 ◼   ► I'm one of 1.2 billion people who use Facebook.

01:49:55 ◼   ► You know, it might be an interesting way to just wrap up the show. And as a sort of...

01:50:01 ◼   ► I hadn't really thought about it before, but now you've got me thinking about Twitter versus

01:50:05 ◼   ► Facebook overall. They're not the same thing, but they're clearly rivals. Facebook clearly

01:50:18 ◼   ► has way more people.

01:50:19 ◼   ► It's like 1.2 something billion to about 200 and some million.

01:50:25 ◼   ► And somebody pointed out the other day, and I saw it on Twitter, that Facebook, last quarter,

01:50:32 ◼   ► grew by a, even though they're bigger, grew by a faster percentage than Twitter.

01:50:37 ◼   ► I saw that. I think that was Dustin Curtis who said that.

01:50:40 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:50:41 ◼   ► That's right.

01:50:42 ◼   ► But you can't watch TV without seeing hashtags on the screen, right?

01:50:51 ◼   ► Yes.

01:50:52 ◼   ► And the hashtags are clearly, I mean, you can use them in Instagram, and people do,

01:50:59 ◼   ► but clearly it's about tweets.

01:51:01 ◼   ► Yes, and you know there is no Facebook equivalent to that that that on you know just watching any

01:51:07 ◼   ► Stupid show or sports or the Super Bowl or anything?

01:51:12 ◼   ► There's hashtags on screen commercials have hashtags right and it's all in Twitter and so

01:51:17 ◼   ► Facebook has tried to do this you know they've they've in they've

01:51:21 ◼   ► Integrated hashtags as a feature now. You know sort of copying the notion

01:51:25 ◼   ► It still doesn't seem like it's taken off at all certainly not in the feeds of anyone that I'm friends with or that I follow

01:51:31 ◼   ► on Facebook. And I think that's what we were talking about earlier where Facebook was talking

01:51:38 ◼   ► to celebrities and influencers about using Facebook during the Super Bowl. And it's just,

01:51:43 ◼   ► I don't know. To me, it seems very unnatural. I don't think it's going to be used that way.

01:51:47 ◼   ► Facebook is what it is and Twitter is what it is. And it's especially hard to change something

01:51:53 ◼   ► that 1.2 billion people are already using for a reason. And if that reason is not to talk about

01:51:58 ◼   ► about the Super Bowl or at least not to sort of talk about

01:52:02 ◼   ► in real time with the same sort of speed

01:52:07 ◼   ► that people do on Twitter.

01:52:09 ◼   ► I don't know, I'm not so sure that that's like a great idea

01:52:11 ◼   ► for them to try to squeeze these things into this.

01:52:14 ◼   ► And for me, what this boils down to is both

01:52:17 ◼   ► of these companies are now public companies.

01:52:19 ◼   ► Twitter, of course, just went public a few months ago.

01:52:24 ◼   ► And so what this all boils down to,

01:52:27 ◼   ► especially with regard to television,

01:52:28 ◼   ► is trying to get advertisers on board

01:52:31 ◼   ► and trying to monetize this.

01:52:32 ◼   ► And so you can make the argument that while,

01:52:35 ◼   ► I think, so Twitter had their first earnings

01:52:37 ◼   ► and they beat the earnings estimates,

01:52:40 ◼   ► but their user numbers were sort of

01:52:42 ◼   ► the cause for concern there.

01:52:44 ◼   ► But that sort of also points to the fact

01:52:46 ◼   ► that I think Twitter actually has,

01:52:48 ◼   ► and you can make a case, will be easier to monetize

01:52:51 ◼   ► because it's sort of this zeitgeist

01:52:55 ◼   ► that people use during all of these major events,

01:52:57 ◼   ► like whether it's the Super Bowl,

01:52:59 ◼   ► whether it's now the Olympics,

01:53:01 ◼   ► and there's like a very direct sort of advertising

01:53:06 ◼   ► nut to crack.

01:53:07 ◼   ► I don't think that they have cracked it yet,

01:53:08 ◼   ► but I think that there is a way to do that,

01:53:09 ◼   ► much more so than with Facebook,

01:53:12 ◼   ► even though Facebook has so many more users.

01:53:13 ◼   ► - And I, it's just a strained, strained analogy,

01:53:17 ◼   ► and it's not gonna hold a lot of water,

01:53:18 ◼   ► but it's a little bit like iOS to Android,

01:53:21 ◼   ► where Android has more people,

01:53:23 ◼   ► but iOS is easier to monetize?

01:53:25 ◼   ► You know, that it's, that, you know.

01:53:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, that is, yeah, yep.

01:53:29 ◼   ► I think that that works in some ways.

01:53:30 ◼   ► - You know, and the other thing I see on TV,

01:53:32 ◼   ► I see it on sports.

01:53:33 ◼   ► Well, you know what, news too.

01:53:35 ◼   ► I don't watch, I watch very little TV news,

01:53:37 ◼   ► but I do watch sports.

01:53:39 ◼   ► And they'll, you know, it's ubiquitous almost

01:53:43 ◼   ► that, you know, the commentators,

01:53:45 ◼   ► they'll put their Twitter names up, right?

01:53:48 ◼   ► But I see it when I watch--

01:53:49 ◼   ► - Especially sports.

01:53:50 ◼   ► Sports is like the greatest example of that.

01:53:52 ◼   ► It's all over.

01:53:53 ◼   ► on SportsCenter. Every single person has their Twitter handle. There is no Facebook equivalent

01:53:57 ◼   ► of that.

01:53:58 ◼   ► Right. You know what? I was trying to think about how do I know this about TV news. I

01:54:04 ◼   ► know how I know it. I know because I watch The Daily Show and The Daily Show shows me

01:54:07 ◼   ► the clips I need to see of Fox and CNN and MSNBC. They do it too when they show you the

01:54:13 ◼   ► clips of whatever they're making fun of on The Daily Show and on these news channels.

01:54:19 ◼   ► Everybody gets introduced with their name and then underneath it, @ whatever their Twitter

01:54:24 ◼   ► handle is.

01:54:28 ◼   ► If I work at Twitter, if I'm Dick Costolo, I'm very happy about that.

01:54:33 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

01:54:34 ◼   ► Of course.

01:54:35 ◼   ► I mean, they are getting free advertising.

01:54:37 ◼   ► But it's not just advertising though.

01:54:43 ◼   ► It's like a way of entering the culture.

01:54:48 ◼   ► culture mindshare.

01:54:49 ◼   ► Right. It's culture mindshare. It's like being Coca-Cola. It's just huge. And that people

01:54:59 ◼   ► know this. You go there and you go on TV and it'll say...

01:55:04 ◼   ► And you see an @ sign and you know what that means.

01:55:07 ◼   ► Right. You go on and it just says @ParisLemon under your name on TV and people know that

01:55:13 ◼   ► if they want to see you on Twitter, they'll go to just search for that name on Twitter.

01:55:18 ◼   ► It's really--

01:55:19 ◼   ► - And that's interesting when you think about it

01:55:22 ◼   ► compared to Facebook where Facebook,

01:55:24 ◼   ► for a long time their strength

01:55:25 ◼   ► was this real names component, right?

01:55:27 ◼   ► Like everyone was going to be their actual selves

01:55:30 ◼   ► on this service.

01:55:31 ◼   ► The problem was like in the beginning,

01:55:34 ◼   ► I don't know if you even notice not being a Facebook user,

01:55:37 ◼   ► but they used to not even have like an actual slash username

01:55:41 ◼   ► set up at all. - No, I did know that.

01:55:44 ◼   ► - It was a string of numbers, like 16 numbers.

01:55:47 ◼   ► - Right. - It was sort of crazy.

01:55:49 ◼   ► Now they have, of course, vanity URLs,

01:55:51 ◼   ► but it's still, that hasn't translated though.

01:55:55 ◼   ► I actually have /ParisLemon on Facebook,

01:55:58 ◼   ► and you can get to me that way,

01:55:59 ◼   ► but what would I put on,