The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► We were at the Foo Fighters concert today.

00:00:02 ◼   ► That was fun. I didn't know who Foo Fighters were.

00:00:05 ◼   ► You really didn't?

00:00:06 ◼   ► I did. I was just like, "Who are these people?"

00:00:09 ◼   ► I'm so used to some of the Steve Jobs people, like Norah Jones and John Mayer.

00:00:16 ◼   ► It's like, "Who is this band?" I didn't know that.

00:00:19 ◼   ► It just tells you how old I am.

00:00:21 ◼   ► No, that was a big one for me.

00:00:23 ◼   ► I've come to a bunch of these where there's guys.

00:00:25 ◼   ► And I like John Mayer. How do you pronounce it? Mayer.

00:00:28 ◼   ► He's John Mayer. The CEO of Yahoo is Marissa Mayer.

00:00:31 ◼   ► Even though they spell it the same way.

00:00:33 ◼   ► I appreciate him. I do think he's like amazingly gifted guitarist.

00:00:39 ◼   ► Like, just amazing.

00:00:41 ◼   ► But I don't really love his music.

00:00:42 ◼   ► Foo Fighters is actually one of my favorite bands.

00:00:44 ◼   ► So I was really kinda like blown away.

00:00:46 ◼   ► So they just really wanted to make you happy.

00:00:48 ◼   ► Yeah. No, you know what? I think it was to make my wife jealous.

00:00:50 ◼   ► Because this was like the first time.

00:00:52 ◼   ► Like, she's not really into all this stuff.

00:00:54 ◼   ► Maybe she wants a new iPhone, but she doesn't really care.

00:00:56 ◼   ► really all that excited about Apple. And now today's the first time where she's like, I

00:01:01 ◼   ► think she was pretty jealous that I was there and she wasn't.

00:01:03 ◼   ► Wow. You know, a lot of people enjoyed it. I was just tweeting. That's all.

00:01:09 ◼   ► So I'm here today joined by Om Malik. What's your title? What is your title?

00:01:15 ◼   ► I'm just the founder of KGO. No title.

00:01:17 ◼   ► No title. You're just Om.

00:01:19 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:01:20 ◼   ► Om. And, you know, one of the things I wanted to talk to you about is you have—now, it

00:01:24 ◼   ► your name. Your name is Om. It's just spelled O-M, but that's your Twitter handle. Do you get a lot

00:01:29 ◼   ► of garbage just because it's only two characters?

00:01:31 ◼   ► Oh, you have no idea. I am big in Indonesia. It's just like I have no idea what it means in the

00:01:40 ◼   ► language they use there, but it's like a very common phrase and like my my ad replies are

00:01:47 ◼   ► pretty useless at this point.

00:01:48 ◼   ► Ah, right.

00:01:50 ◼   ► Because I forget who I know who has there's one guy I know who has one of the rare one character

00:01:55 ◼   ► Twitter names Kevin Chang

00:01:59 ◼   ► Yeah, because he's got at K right right right and his his replies feed is

00:02:06 ◼   ► It it makes your head brain almost blow up because it's just the most random gibberish

00:02:12 ◼   ► It looks like somebody like our cat was yeah standing on a keyboard. I should send you some of the screenshots

00:02:18 ◼   ► I'll have to look for it. Yeah, so um last week before we get to the Apple stuff that we were at the Apple event

00:02:24 ◼   ► We're recording live or not live really but together in the same room, which is unusual for the talk show

00:02:30 ◼   ► Usually I do this over Skype. We're here together in the beautiful

00:02:34 ◼   ► mule radio network

00:02:37 ◼   ► Studio here in San Francisco. It's pretty awesome. It is it's actually a very swank setup

00:02:43 ◼   ► But before we get to today's stuff

00:02:46 ◼   ► I want to talk about last week. Now last week, the three things that I thought I could think

00:02:50 ◼   ► of, there was Motorola had an announcement. And it's to me that sort of like in hindsight,

00:02:55 ◼   ► it's sort of like, who cares? Really? I mean, is this or any of those phones memorable?

00:02:59 ◼   ► I don't think so.

00:03:00 ◼   ► I don't even know why some why they bother at times, I think they should focus on one

00:03:06 ◼   ► or two things instead of trying to do too many things. All these companies just do so

00:03:12 ◼   ► much like for without any idea why they're doing it. What is their market? What's their

00:03:19 ◼   ► approach? It just is frustrating to see really smart people make bad decisions.

00:03:27 ◼   ► Next up speaking of bad decisions, Nokia. Same day. And that stuff broke last week while

00:03:35 ◼   ► I had John Moltz on the air and we kind of, oh no, no, it was the Amazon stuff that broke

00:03:38 ◼   ► while we were on the air.

00:03:39 ◼   ► But anyway, Nokia announced their stuff, two new phones,

00:03:42 ◼   ► and really, at first everybody had a thing like,

00:03:47 ◼   ► well, what's the shipping date and what's the price?

00:03:50 ◼   ► And then as the days went on, it kind of became clear

00:03:52 ◼   ► that they don't even know.

00:03:54 ◼   ► - I think the biggest sign for a company in distress

00:03:58 ◼   ► and a product which is not gonna work

00:04:00 ◼   ► is when they don't let you touch it, right?

00:04:03 ◼   ► Like, if you have a real product which is gonna ship,

00:04:07 ◼   ► can buy, you let people check it out, people use it. They won't let people do it, which tells me it is not happening anytime soon. And guess what? In announcing this, whatever little sales of Windows phones they were going to have, they've killed it.

00:04:24 ◼   ► Right. It really just seems bizarre. Like, as bad as it would be if you were Nokia and

00:04:31 ◼   ► your phone isn't ready yet, here on September 12, 2012, your phone is not ready yet, whether

00:04:38 ◼   ► it's the software or the hardware or whatever, but it's not quite ready. And you have to

00:04:41 ◼   ► sit here and watch Apple unveil the new iPhone 5 and start selling it two days from now and

00:04:48 ◼   ► shipping it nine days from now and watch all these sales rack up. And you've got to sit

00:04:52 ◼   ► there and wait until your thing is ready, I still would be better than what they did,

00:04:58 ◼   ► which is they made an announcement which did get a lot of attention, but I don't see—if

00:05:03 ◼   ► they're not going on sale until November, I don't see how that—it just seems like

00:05:07 ◼   ► a disaster. You called it a—I think you called it a shit show?

00:05:09 ◼   ► Yeah, pretty much. That's exactly what it is. I do think that Nokia, as a company whose

00:05:17 ◼   ► expertise. I've covered Nokia since maybe '96 and like very faithfully. I've always enjoyed their

00:05:25 ◼   ► products, love their phones. I used to be the only reporter out there talking about Nokia when the

00:05:31 ◼   ► razor was the shit, right? And I always felt as a company they knew how to make great products.

00:05:40 ◼   ► They knew they had a great logistics team. They knew how to put products together, get them out

00:05:46 ◼   ► to market in time built to scale.

00:05:49 ◼   ► I don't know what happened.

00:05:51 ◼   ► Ever since the new CEO came, Steven Elop,

00:05:54 ◼   ► the company lost the ability to do just that.

00:05:57 ◼   ► Forget building the new software.

00:05:59 ◼   ► I can understand having crisis of confidence

00:06:02 ◼   ► on your operating system and your product,

00:06:05 ◼   ► you know, roadmap, but how can you not be able

00:06:08 ◼   ► to ship the only thing you do?

00:06:10 ◼   ► You only make phones and you can't get them out on time.

00:06:13 ◼   ► I mean, somebody should be fired

00:06:15 ◼   ► and it should start at the CEO and then the board.

00:06:18 ◼   ► Like I just think the whole board has to go

00:06:21 ◼   ► because they're letting this nonsense go on

00:06:23 ◼   ► with an iconic brand of our time.

00:06:26 ◼   ► I love Nokia and to see it die the way it is dying,

00:06:30 ◼   ► it just is unreal.

00:06:31 ◼   ► The last time I saw a brand like this die, digital.

00:06:36 ◼   ► Remember them? - Yeah.

00:06:37 ◼   ► - What a great laptops they used to make.

00:06:40 ◼   ► Nobody bought them. - Right.

00:06:42 ◼   ► - It's the same thing with Lumia in my opinion.

00:06:44 ◼   ► And then they got caught faking up the photos and the videos from the device.

00:06:51 ◼   ► Now, it all kind of—it's not excusable, but it makes sense.

00:06:55 ◼   ► It's because the software wasn't ready.

00:06:57 ◼   ► You know, so they had to make these promotional videos before the software.

00:07:00 ◼   ► But the whole thing is that they've rushed this announcement to the degree that they

00:07:04 ◼   ► somehow convinced themselves that it was okay to shoot a demo video showing the image stabilization

00:07:11 ◼   ► of the video not using the actual phone itself, you know, because it's like that one bad decision

00:07:20 ◼   ► to, "Well, come hell or high water, we're going to announce it the first week of September,

00:07:25 ◼   ► whether it's ready or not," leads to all of these other problems as a direct result. Like,

00:07:30 ◼   ► once you start with that rotten decision, now you've got phones that you don't let the

00:07:35 ◼   ► the press handle at the event. You fake the camera stills and videos. You've got a ship

00:07:44 ◼   ► date that's two months out, maybe, if they're lucky.

00:07:50 ◼   ► So the way I think about it, Jon, I think it's they're working from position of weakness,

00:07:57 ◼   ► right? They're always playing catch up. So they never really will catch up. I think that's

00:08:02 ◼   ► That's the problem.

00:08:03 ◼   ► They have done everything possible to try and catch up with Apple and Android, and they

00:08:09 ◼   ► haven't been able to.

00:08:11 ◼   ► And that just is a problem.

00:08:12 ◼   ► Right?

00:08:13 ◼   ► Like, instead of trying to, like, they have a lot of great people at Nokia.

00:08:19 ◼   ► I still talk to many of their employees.

00:08:22 ◼   ► There's a lot of smart engineers in there, smart software people, smart UI people.

00:08:27 ◼   ► I love many of the people I know there.

00:08:30 ◼   ► Unfortunately, the company is unable to leapfrog its own shortcoming.

00:08:36 ◼   ► I think it just is now we've hit a point of just like it doesn't know how to go forward.

00:08:42 ◼   ► I think it just is stuck.

00:08:44 ◼   ► And like you said, it just comes down to simple execution that they no longer seem able to

00:08:49 ◼   ► ship a phone on time.

00:08:51 ◼   ► And say what you will about Samsung.

00:08:54 ◼   ► Samsung has come from a position where when the iPhone shipped five years ago was not

00:08:59 ◼   ► one of the leading phone makers, maybe by numbers, but they weren't really known for

00:09:03 ◼   ► smartphones, certainly. I think that somebody showed on Twitter the other day the picture

00:09:08 ◼   ► Steve Jobs showed of, here's what today, this is five years ago in 2007, here's what today's

00:09:14 ◼   ► leading smartphones look like, and they all look the same. And it was the Motorola, was

00:09:20 ◼   ► it the Q? I think it might have been the Q or the Blackjack, but it was a Motorola, a

00:09:25 ◼   ► Palm, a Blackberry, and a Nokia. Those were the four. And think about what's happened

00:09:32 ◼   ► to all four of those companies in the last five years. Palm's out of business. They're

00:09:36 ◼   ► gone. RIM is circling the toilet. Motorola got sold to Google and really saw its leadership

00:09:48 ◼   ► in handset numbers really diminish. They're really nowhere. They're not even the leading

00:09:54 ◼   ► Android handset maker. I don't even think it's even close. And then Nokia is the last

00:09:59 ◼   ► one. And boy, it really seems like, you know, the only reason that they're not as in bad

00:10:03 ◼   ► a position as the other three is that they were so far ahead. They had so much farther

00:10:08 ◼   ► to fall.

00:10:09 ◼   ► Dr. Asad Khattak So I think the the game of, you know, smartphones

00:10:14 ◼   ► is that of scale, right? Like Apple has scale, and Samsung has scale. Because they have scale,

00:10:21 ◼   ► can introduce interesting complex technologies into their devices, make them interesting,

00:10:28 ◼   ► and sell to the people and still make money.

00:10:31 ◼   ► Whereas smaller companies are always working on razor thin margins, which is really hard

00:10:37 ◼   ► for them because they're always, all these little guys are in a position of weakness,

00:10:41 ◼   ► right?

00:10:42 ◼   ► Like Samsung has scale because they own so much of the supply chain.

00:10:48 ◼   ► make the chips, the screens, the flash memory, the whole nine yards, right? So they can bring

00:10:55 ◼   ► scale there. And Apple has bought the future supplies for it. So they have scale. Whereas

00:11:02 ◼   ► all these other guys, they don't have scale. If they don't have scale, they don't have

00:11:05 ◼   ► margins. If you don't have margins, you're not going to be in the business. I mean, it

00:11:08 ◼   ► just is, you know, they're all on the long road to nowhere. That's the bottom line right

00:11:14 ◼   ► now.

00:11:15 ◼   ► Nokia was the one company that really should, maybe even should still today be in a position

00:11:20 ◼   ► to manage that sort of scale, because they've shipped, I think literally in their history,

00:11:25 ◼   ► billions of phones. I think that they've shipped over a billion phones, I mean of some sort

00:11:29 ◼   ► or you know, some kind of mobile phones. Maybe they're not smartphones, but they know how

00:11:33 ◼   ► to ship at scale.

00:11:34 ◼   ► People always thought of them as a phone company. They're actually a logistics company. They

00:11:39 ◼   ► had the best logistics amongst all mobile phone makers. That's why they went, but they

00:11:44 ◼   ► They got addicted to making those cheap feature phones so much that they forgot where the

00:11:50 ◼   ► money comes from.

00:11:51 ◼   ► They just looked at the raw numbers.

00:11:52 ◼   ► This is the classic spreadsheet jockeying which happens to companies.

00:11:59 ◼   ► I just feel bad.

00:12:00 ◼   ► There's just so many great people.

00:12:02 ◼   ► On the upside, all these great engineers are leaving Nokia and starting companies and thinking

00:12:07 ◼   ► innovative things.

00:12:09 ◼   ► So that might actually help out their home country a lot more in the future.

00:12:13 ◼   ► Right? Like maybe they're worth more just as the talent broken out.

00:12:17 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:12:18 ◼   ► Doing new things.

00:12:19 ◼   ► I think Finland has some of the best engineers.

00:12:21 ◼   ► So you could see some interesting innovation coming out of there.

00:12:26 ◼   ► I just heard from somebody who's making some kind of an electric racing car

00:12:31 ◼   ► and they're from, you know, Finland and they're going to come see me in a couple of weeks.

00:12:35 ◼   ► Pretty fun to see what they're doing.

00:12:38 ◼   ► I think, and you know, one of the things that's fun about getting together for an event like this

00:12:42 ◼   ► when I fly into town and I get to see a bunch of people I don't see on a regular basis face

00:12:46 ◼   ► to face is, you know, we just start geeking out and talking, you know, phone stuff or,

00:12:51 ◼   ► you know, whatever's on our minds. And I'll tell you what, I mean, everybody I talked

00:12:54 ◼   ► to today, I mean, it's almost unanimous. They'll say everybody feels bad about Nokia's future

00:13:00 ◼   ► and feels that they've really botched this year's new Lumias, that they, you know, the

00:13:06 ◼   ► timing is just off. They botched it. But everybody, it's almost unanimous, agrees that they're

00:13:11 ◼   ► the only company that is competing with Apple in terms of quality of fit and

00:13:15 ◼   ► finish for the devices. Before you even turn it on and talk about the

00:13:20 ◼   ► software, just the phone is off, it's in your hand, it's arguably, you know, as good

00:13:25 ◼   ► as any phone on the market. Always has to be. I still have all my Nokia

00:13:29 ◼   ► phones. I don't want to throw each one of them away. Like, I love... they did the...

00:13:33 ◼   ► they still work. Like, nothing has gone wrong. Yeah, you don't have one of them.

00:13:38 ◼   ► You gave me, you sent me an E72 a couple years ago and I never sent it back to you.

00:13:42 ◼   ► That's okay, you can have it.

00:13:44 ◼   ► Maybe we can send it to the cell phone museum or something.

00:13:48 ◼   ► And then the other big announcement last week was Amazon.

00:13:52 ◼   ► Now there's a company who I think, I really think that they have their act together.

00:13:55 ◼   ► And you wrote something nice on, I like the piece you wrote on your,

00:13:59 ◼   ► your om.co website, which is amazingly short URL.

00:14:05 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:14:05 ◼   ► It's kind of awesome.

00:14:07 ◼   ► But you said it was pretty short, but you more or less just said that you think Jeff, Jeff Bezos is the the heir apparent to Steve Jobs in the industry.

00:14:16 ◼   ► It was a little uncomfortable thing to write, right? You know, it was like I wasn't, you know, having been an Apple watcher for a long time. I felt a little queasy writing that because you know, there is one Steve Jobs, but I think there is only one Jeff Bezos. There's very few people like him, who are

00:14:37 ◼   ► were willing to be wrong in public.

00:14:41 ◼   ► Steve was willing to take chances,

00:14:44 ◼   ► and that's what made him Steve.

00:14:45 ◼   ► Like, yes, he was a perfectionist and all those things.

00:14:49 ◼   ► And Jeff is willing to take chances on things

00:14:52 ◼   ► which may look completely outrageous.

00:14:55 ◼   ► Like, you know, seven years ago,

00:14:58 ◼   ► Amazon Web Services and Amazon Cloud Services

00:15:01 ◼   ► didn't make much sense to a lot of people,

00:15:04 ◼   ► but it made sense to him and his team.

00:15:07 ◼   ► and look how they're changing the economics of startups.

00:15:10 ◼   ► And same thing is with Kindle.

00:15:11 ◼   ► When the Kindle came out, the idea was like,

00:15:14 ◼   ► who wants to read?

00:15:15 ◼   ► The e-readers were like so maligned at that time.

00:15:18 ◼   ► And they kept trying and trying till they got it right.

00:15:21 ◼   ► And I think this is what I like about them,

00:15:24 ◼   ► is that if they believe in something in the long term,

00:15:27 ◼   ► they actually try.

00:15:28 ◼   ► I wish they made more money like Apple,

00:15:30 ◼   ► but hey, that's another story for another day.

00:15:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, they've obviously got some kind of,

00:15:35 ◼   ► They've got a plan in that regard. I don't know what it is. I don't see it, but they've, you know, they're clear.

00:15:40 ◼   ► I guess the way I'll put it is that they're not making much in profit, but they don't seem to be trying to make much in profit.

00:15:49 ◼   ► It's not like they're trying and falling short. It seems like they're kind of shooting for this

00:15:53 ◼   ► growth and revenue growth and

00:15:56 ◼   ► kind of

00:15:58 ◼   ► just get enough profit to keep it in the black. That seems to be their goal, and that's what they're hitting.

00:16:04 ◼   ► It seems like a weird strategy to me, but it doesn't seem like they're failing.

00:16:09 ◼   ► >> Right. You know, I like what you wrote, which was like very,

00:16:12 ◼   ► which is actually pretty insightful that Jeff Bezos is special mostly because

00:16:22 ◼   ► he's not trying to be Steve Jobs. I think a lot of people forget that

00:16:27 ◼   ► being original is much harder than being a copycat.

00:16:30 ◼   ► Right, like you're never gonna be the next Bob Dylan if you're trying to make your voice sound like Bob Dylan.

00:16:35 ◼   ► Like, you've gotta make your voice sound as unique as Bob Dylan's.

00:16:40 ◼   ► You know, it's the only way. And so it's a weird way, like the only way to be like Steve Jobs is to not be like Steve Jobs.

00:16:47 ◼   ► But to have his sort of aspects of his personality.

00:16:52 ◼   ► Like, that you see these things that nobody else sees and you don't care if everybody thinks they're wrong.

00:16:57 ◼   ► If you think they're right, you're just going to pursue it doggedly until you get it done.

00:17:03 ◼   ► And I totally see that with Bezos.

00:17:05 ◼   ► I also, like, agree with what you said, where he's not afraid to be wrong.

00:17:09 ◼   ► And if he is, he's going to fix it, or try to fix it at least, and not just go into denial

00:17:17 ◼   ► and pretend he's not wrong.

00:17:18 ◼   ► So I thought, for example, with the Kindle fires last week, after having watched the

00:17:22 ◼   ► announcement event, I almost—he didn't say he was wrong, but I kind of think he did.

00:17:27 ◼   ► It seemed like maybe he took the criticism to heart that last year's Kindle Fire was

00:17:31 ◼   ► really rather poorly reviewed just as a gadget in terms of the interface and how laggy the

00:17:38 ◼   ► screen is. And so I feel like he really emphasized that a couple times in the event last week

00:17:45 ◼   ► where he said, "Last year we tried to be the best tablet at a certain price. This year

00:17:50 ◼   ► we're trying to be the best tablet at any price." And they put the work in and put in

00:17:55 ◼   ► a really nice IPS display with really nice at least retina-ish quality resolution. He

00:18:05 ◼   ► said, you know, they said in the event that the lagginess was not there, but I saw, you

00:18:10 ◼   ► know, it seems like the reviews are a little mixed from the people who had hands-on, but

00:18:13 ◼   ► at least they're trying.

00:18:14 ◼   ► Right. I mean, I played with it for about 20 hours. I had it for three days.

00:18:20 ◼   ► The new one?

00:18:21 ◼   ► The new one, the Kindle Fire. They sent me one.

00:18:23 ◼   ► Oh, I didn't know that.

00:18:24 ◼   ► I wrote a review as well.

00:18:26 ◼   ► I'm actually a pretty balanced review in my opinion.

00:18:31 ◼   ► Had I never used an iPad and had an iPad not existed,

00:18:35 ◼   ► it would actually be okay device to buy for me.

00:18:39 ◼   ► I'm not talking about other people.

00:18:40 ◼   ► I am so, I use iPad as my primary computer.

00:18:45 ◼   ► So I'm just a little bit biased in that sense.

00:18:49 ◼   ► However, there's a lot of challenges.

00:18:51 ◼   ► The Silk browser isn't up to the snuff.

00:18:54 ◼   ► There is a lag, and it's perceptible,

00:18:57 ◼   ► but the email client is pretty shoddy.

00:19:01 ◼   ► However, if you are an Amazon digital content buyer

00:19:05 ◼   ► like I am, man, that thing is pretty good.

00:19:09 ◼   ► The books are quick to access.

00:19:12 ◼   ► Amazon Cloud Player is pretty awesome.

00:19:15 ◼   ► The Amazon Prime is with videos is great.

00:19:18 ◼   ► All those things are great.

00:19:20 ◼   ► It's easy to hold in your hand.

00:19:23 ◼   ► The battery life is pretty decent.

00:19:25 ◼   ► The Wi-Fi is pretty decent.

00:19:27 ◼   ► However, I just feel that for all those purposes,

00:19:32 ◼   ► $200 is just too much.

00:19:33 ◼   ► I think they should be giving it away to people

00:19:37 ◼   ► who have Amazon Prime for free.

00:19:39 ◼   ► Right.

00:19:41 ◼   ► I wonder how strong--

00:19:42 ◼   ► they must have thought about that,

00:19:44 ◼   ► or at least offered it at a profound discount, too.

00:19:48 ◼   ► And I know that he said explicitly during the event

00:19:51 ◼   ► and even in an interview afterwards, Bezos, that they reject that razors and blade business

00:19:58 ◼   ► model where you lose money on selling the thing up front and then make it up by selling,

00:20:02 ◼   ► you know, the blades. And I mean, in the tech industry, that's the printing model, right?

00:20:07 ◼   ► You sell the printer at a ridiculously low cost, and then you make all of your money

00:20:11 ◼   ► by selling ridiculously overpriced ink and toner. I mean, HP even sells paper. I wonder

00:20:18 ◼   ► much paper HP sells, but by selling the stuff that you put in the printer. And he says that

00:20:25 ◼   ► they reject that, so that they've priced this thing so that—I get the feeling like what

00:20:28 ◼   ► he's saying is that in terms of like when you buy a Kindle Fire from Amazon, they make

00:20:34 ◼   ► about as much money on it as they do when they sell you anything on Amazon. A little

00:20:39 ◼   ► bit. A little bit of profit.

00:20:41 ◼   ► Right. Well, I thought, you know, it would make sense that if you buy a lot of books,

00:20:46 ◼   ► I do buy a lot of books from them and it would make sense for them to make me more addicted

00:20:53 ◼   ► to buying books on Kindle Fire by creating an even more addictive buying experience.

00:20:59 ◼   ► And I think if they tune their business model around that, this thing could actually be

00:21:05 ◼   ► pretty okay for them in my opinion.

00:21:07 ◼   ► I do like what they've done so far though.

00:21:09 ◼   ► I wouldn't dismiss it.

00:21:11 ◼   ► I have a lot of respect for that company.

00:21:14 ◼   ► They haven't copied Apple.

00:21:17 ◼   ► They haven't just followed the Android herd.

00:21:20 ◼   ► They've done their own thing.

00:21:21 ◼   ► And I think that has to be lauded.

00:21:24 ◼   ► You have to applaud people

00:21:26 ◼   ► who are trying to do something different.

00:21:28 ◼   ► And on top of that, they're actually putting a product out

00:21:32 ◼   ► in the market which you can actually buy

00:21:33 ◼   ► and not talk about it.

00:21:37 ◼   ► - And it's so funny that we have to praise them for that.

00:21:39 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:21:40 ◼   ► It's so frustrating.

00:21:43 ◼   ► Like for the longest time I've always wondered,

00:21:45 ◼   ► it's like why do you call your event a launch event

00:21:49 ◼   ► when the product is not in the market?

00:21:51 ◼   ► Like just say we are announcing this product, that's it.

00:21:54 ◼   ► End of story.

00:21:55 ◼   ► It's just, it's like, it's my pet peeve, you know.

00:21:58 ◼   ► It's been, and it's not since today,

00:22:00 ◼   ► like almost in 15 years, I've always wondered,

00:22:03 ◼   ► like okay, maybe my understanding of English language

00:22:07 ◼   ► is very literal, but that doesn't make any sense to me.

00:22:10 ◼   ► - Right, and it almost comes back to the literal meaning

00:22:12 ◼   ► of the verb launch, right?

00:22:15 ◼   ► Where if there's like a ship,

00:22:17 ◼   ► and you're gonna have that ceremony

00:22:18 ◼   ► where you break the champagne bottle against it,

00:22:20 ◼   ► and like people wanna see the boat go in the water.

00:22:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's like, you know, if it's sinking, it's okay.

00:22:25 ◼   ► - Or like a launch event for like NASA, you know?

00:22:27 ◼   ► It's like people want the rocket ship to go up in the air.

00:22:30 ◼   ► They don't wanna see just, well, you know,

00:22:32 ◼   ► it'll be ready in a couple of weeks.

00:22:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, I will let you know.

00:22:34 ◼   ► - Thanks for coming, though.

00:22:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know.

00:22:38 ◼   ► - All right, let me, well, you know,

00:22:40 ◼   ► one more thing on Amazon is the other thing

00:22:42 ◼   ► that strike me, and as the week has gone on, it really seems, and today's Apple event sort

00:22:47 ◼   ► of clarified it even further with the second half of the event today, is just how US-centric

00:22:53 ◼   ► Amazon's approach is, at least for now. Like, they really only sell the Kindles in the US,

00:23:02 ◼   ► especially the Kindle Fire, and the reason why, and this baffled me last year. I was

00:23:07 ◼   ► definitely lost. I just thought maybe they just didn't have their act together. But now

00:23:10 ◼   ► Now I see that it's not because they don't want to sell a Kindle Fire to anybody.

00:23:18 ◼   ► They only want to sell a Kindle Fire to someone who is likely to buy a lot of music and books

00:23:24 ◼   ► and TV shows.

00:23:25 ◼   ► And so if you live in a country where they don't have movies and TV shows, they won't

00:23:29 ◼   ► even sell you the device because they're not going to make money.

00:23:32 ◼   ► I do think they sell Kindle readers across the world.

00:23:35 ◼   ► Yeah, the reader, I guess they do.

00:23:37 ◼   ► I guess that's because the rights to books are so much less inter tangled with stupid

00:23:43 ◼   ► bullshit and laws as movies and music.

00:23:47 ◼   ► Music and movies are way more region controlled.

00:23:51 ◼   ► I mean, just think about the way DVDs work with the stupid, the region coding, so you

00:23:57 ◼   ► can't even play the same DVD in one country as another.

00:24:00 ◼   ► The one thing, you know, I will applaud Amazon for that they were not a gadget company three,

00:24:07 ◼   ► years ago, or maybe five years ago. Now they're a full on gadget company. And that's kind

00:24:12 ◼   ► of pretty telling how much they have some other cool stuff, you know, they're working

00:24:17 ◼   ► on down in Cupertino.

00:24:19 ◼   ► Yeah, and it's, they also a couple of years ago, were not really a digital content company

00:24:26 ◼   ► either. I mean, they really started as I mean, I I'm so old, I used to, I still think of

00:24:30 ◼   ► them as starting as a bookstore that all they sold was books. But just broaden that a little

00:24:35 ◼   ► bit, they started as an online retailer, warehouses full of physical goods and a website where

00:24:42 ◼   ► you could find them, buy them easily, and review them. And then, you know, two days

00:24:49 ◼   ► later there's a knock on your door and there's the thing.

00:24:56 ◼   ► But I'm curious how hard they're working on expanding the movies and TV shows and stuff

00:25:02 ◼   ► like that to more countries like Apple has? I would think that they must, but maybe it's

00:25:07 ◼   ► just a much harder problem than I'm thinking.

00:25:10 ◼   ► I think it's a pretty complex problem. They are in UK now, and they are in Europe. They're

00:25:17 ◼   ► making a headway there. They're competing with Netflix in Europe. But it's not that

00:25:22 ◼   ► easy. I mean, we like to think it's very easy. But the rights and all, it's a mess. And I

00:25:28 ◼   ► would give them full marks for trying.

00:25:30 ◼   ► And in a year, this is the great thing about Amazon.

00:25:35 ◼   ► Amazon of today is going to be very different

00:25:38 ◼   ► from the Amazon of a year ago,

00:25:40 ◼   ► and next year it'll be an entirely different thing.

00:25:43 ◼   ► I think that's one of the things

00:25:44 ◼   ► which I like about that company

00:25:46 ◼   ► is the ability to constantly change.

00:25:49 ◼   ► - Totally see that.

00:25:51 ◼   ► Well, I'm gonna take a break right here.

00:25:52 ◼   ► I'm gonna tell you about our first sponsor.

00:25:54 ◼   ► Our first sponsor, back from last week,

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00:26:17 ◼   ► sponsorship, many of you tried to go to their website, which is brand new, and you couldn't

00:26:21 ◼   ► get in. They got overwhelmed. That's part of the reason they're back on the talk show

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00:27:06 ◼   ► and that will let you in and you can check out their great menswear. And I personally

00:27:14 ◼   ► guarantee that if you go there, you find some clothes you like, you're going to look better

00:27:17 ◼   ► than you did before.

00:27:18 ◼   ► Are you wearing that outfit?

00:27:20 ◼   ► No I'm not right now. I couldn't get in.

00:27:22 ◼   ► Okay. I'm just joking. Maybe they should call Amazon. Yeah, maybe. But I am buying clothes

00:27:29 ◼   ► from there. I'm not wearing the shirt, though. They make clothes for like slightly larger

00:27:35 ◼   ► gentlemen? I don't know. I bet they have a wide range of sizes. Okay. You know, I'm just

00:27:42 ◼   ► worried about my size. Oh, you look great. Well, my shirts, I don't fit into those slim

00:27:48 ◼   ► card shirts like you do. No, I bet they have something. I bet you'd like it. You're a very

00:27:55 ◼   ► stylish man. I'll definitely check them out. You're a watch guy too. I am. I love watches.

00:28:01 ◼   ► You always have an interesting watch. Yeah. I like little life. You need to have a little

00:28:08 ◼   ► analog. We are too digital in our lives. Yeah, I wear an analog watch as well. I like artisanal

00:28:14 ◼   ► I like people who make things with hands and you know, the craftsmanship is is something we need to celebrate in our society

00:28:21 ◼   ► We just are like so mechanized and so mass-produced that we don't appreciate

00:28:26 ◼   ► Little things people do with their hand. I totally agree with that. I

00:28:32 ◼   ► Feel like it's like everything like I always feel like it's at the extremes that everything is most

00:28:39 ◼   ► Interesting at the biggest or at the smallest

00:28:42 ◼   ► You know the newest stuff the oldest stuff. That's where stuff is most interesting, and I feel like that's a good point

00:28:47 ◼   ► I kind of feel like the stuff like the iPhone where there's like 20 million of them on a ship

00:28:52 ◼   ► On an airplane coming out of China. That's interesting, but like a watch that was put together by hand

00:28:58 ◼   ► You know by a guy just putting all these putting this whole thing together piece by piece

00:29:04 ◼   ► That's fascinating too. I I go look for old vintage watches

00:29:09 ◼   ► I like I spent a lot of time looking for that. That's one like my one like I gave up smoking drinking

00:29:15 ◼   ► So I got to do something kind of have some kind of everybody needs advice like yeah, so antique watches is what I look for yeah

00:29:23 ◼   ► So let's let's get into today's Apple event and while we're talking about watches

00:29:29 ◼   ► Let's do it in in sort of the opposite order Apple did where I?

00:29:33 ◼   ► The one thing I came away thinking and I don't I can't ever recall an Apple event that was quite like this where it

00:29:39 ◼   ► really was two events. It was two very distinct events separated by like a

00:29:44 ◼   ► halftime where the first event was iPhone 5 with Phil Schiller and Scott

00:29:49 ◼   ► Forstall and then that was it. It actually almost felt like it was over.

00:29:53 ◼   ► Was there a moment? I thought maybe it was over. I really did when Tim Cook came

00:29:57 ◼   ► back out and then he says now we're going to talk about iPods and music and

00:30:03 ◼   ► Jaws comes out and EdiQ come out and it was like a second event. So let's do

00:30:08 ◼   ► that one first. Let's do the iPod and iTunes and the music stuff first. Because one of

00:30:15 ◼   ► the casualties of today's announcement of new iPods is that whole market of using an

00:30:22 ◼   ► iPod Nano as a wristwatch because they've gotten rid of that sort of watch size Nano.

00:30:30 ◼   ► I don't know that that was a very big market. I think if it was a big market, they wouldn't

00:30:34 ◼   ► have gotten rid of it. But it's one thing like a whole couple people filing out of the

00:30:40 ◼   ► hands-on area, like everybody sort of had, "Hey, wait a minute. This means all those

00:30:44 ◼   ► wristwatch things are dead."

00:30:46 ◼   ► >> Or I would say there's a premium on them now. I think in those terms. That's the thing

00:30:51 ◼   ► with watches is the older they get, the rarer they become, the more expensive they get.

00:30:56 ◼   ► So maybe you should run to the iTunes store and get a couple of those Nanos.

00:31:01 ◼   ► >> Did you ever try wearing a Nano as a watch?

00:31:03 ◼   ► there. It's too digital for me. Like I'm not like I have enough digital watches around

00:31:08 ◼   ► me that I don't need another one on my wrist.

00:31:10 ◼   ► I bought the one on Kickstarter. I think it was the TikTok. And I bought it knowing that

00:31:17 ◼   ► I wasn't gonna like it. I bought it because I wanted I thought it was a great idea. And

00:31:21 ◼   ► I just love the idea of a couple of guys making their own hardware. And, you know, I just

00:31:27 ◼   ► liked I just love that. Sometimes I back Kickstarter projects that I don't really want myself, but

00:31:31 ◼   ► I just want them to succeed. So that's why I did it. And I tried it and it's, you know,

00:31:36 ◼   ► it failed for the exact reasons that I thought it would is I can't stand having a watch where

00:31:42 ◼   ► the time isn't always displayed. You have to hit a button to wake it up. It's like that

00:31:45 ◼   ► defeats the whole point. If I was willing to do that, I would just take my phone out

00:31:49 ◼   ► of my pocket and hit a button, which is what everybody who doesn't wear a watch does to

00:31:52 ◼   ► find out what time it is.

00:31:53 ◼   ► I do the same thing on Kickstarter.

00:31:56 ◼   ► I just support a lot of projects.

00:31:59 ◼   ► You know, most like sometimes I look for electronic music

00:32:03 ◼   ► projects, gadgets, whatever.

00:32:05 ◼   ► It's just, I kind of feel it's the same thing I have

00:32:07 ◼   ► about artisanal stuff.

00:32:09 ◼   ► There is very few people who are very creative

00:32:11 ◼   ► in this world.

00:32:12 ◼   ► We have to support them.

00:32:14 ◼   ► And you know, that watch didn't do the trick for me.

00:32:18 ◼   ► I do know people bought them like in, by the loads

00:32:22 ◼   ► and I love the TikTok guys, they're pretty creative.

00:32:25 ◼   ► Bon Scott Wilson is the name, I think.

00:32:28 ◼   ► He's just such a great designer.

00:32:30 ◼   ► Like that product he did was just awesome.

00:32:33 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know.

00:32:35 ◼   ► I think maybe it can come back after a few years,

00:32:39 ◼   ► they can bring it back, the iPod Nano or something.

00:32:43 ◼   ► I don't know, there's a lot of talk about the wearable,

00:32:47 ◼   ► you know, wrist computing, and like,

00:32:49 ◼   ► I just wonder if we might see a comeback on iPod Nano.

00:32:54 ◼   ► I wonder.

00:32:55 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:32:55 ◼   ► See, I think that was the other problem.

00:32:57 ◼   ► The other fundamental problem with that whole idea

00:32:59 ◼   ► of wearing a Nano as a wristwatch

00:33:00 ◼   ► was that the Nano, because it wasn't designed for that,

00:33:04 ◼   ► didn't have any kind of wireless connectivity.

00:33:10 ◼   ► I feel like the whole idea falls short

00:33:14 ◼   ► if it doesn't have any actual digital information on it.

00:33:17 ◼   ► it had was time, really, and, you know, and songs that you had already loaded on it. Whereas,

00:33:23 ◼   ► and it's slipping my mind right now, but I've already backed them. There's a Kickstarter

00:33:27 ◼   ► project for this watch that's-

00:33:28 ◼   ► >> Pebble.

00:33:29 ◼   ► >> What?

00:33:30 ◼   ► >> It's called Pebble.

00:33:31 ◼   ► >> Pebble. That's it. Right. The Pebble watch, which uses like this, not quite E Ink, but

00:33:35 ◼   ► it's like E Ink, so it's low power and it can stay on all the time. But it uses Bluetooth

00:33:42 ◼   ► so that it can communicate to smartphone and stuff like that. Again, I don't know that

00:33:47 ◼   ► I'm going to really love that Pebble watch. I think it's too big. I kind of don't really

00:33:51 ◼   ► even like digital watches. I kind of like an analog watch. But I did—I've supported

00:33:56 ◼   ► them because I do want to see them thrive, and I love the idea of a small startup taking

00:34:00 ◼   ► a shot at a big problem like that. But I feel like they're on the right track in a way that

00:34:05 ◼   ► the Nano as a watch never could be because it actually has the Bluetooth and is communicating.

00:34:10 ◼   ► You know, you're getting data.

00:34:11 ◼   ► I think these days, if you're making devices and they don't have networking, or like they

00:34:16 ◼   ► don't have connectivity built into them,

00:34:19 ◼   ► they're pretty pointless.

00:34:20 ◼   ► Like I just feel pretty strongly about that.

00:34:23 ◼   ► I don't really, like one of the biggest,

00:34:27 ◼   ► one of the things I have is this Sony camera,

00:34:29 ◼   ► Sony NEX5, and it doesn't have built-in wifi,

00:34:33 ◼   ► and I have to use like, iFi and all those other hacks

00:34:37 ◼   ► to make it work, and it just is like,

00:34:40 ◼   ► it's just not a seamless experience.

00:34:42 ◼   ► I wish they had, and which is why I always end up

00:34:45 ◼   ► using my iPhone for taking pictures,

00:34:47 ◼   ► just because it's just so much more convenient.

00:34:50 ◼   ► You can just take pictures and boom, share them,

00:34:53 ◼   ► upload them, do whatever.

00:34:55 ◼   ► And I think that's the key difference.

00:34:57 ◼   ► - I sort of agree.

00:35:00 ◼   ► What'd you think of the new iPods today?

00:35:02 ◼   ► - So I love the new iPod touch they introduce.

00:35:07 ◼   ► My nephews and nieces are getting that,

00:35:13 ◼   ► instead of getting an iPhone.

00:35:14 ◼   ► I was considering sending them an iPhone,

00:35:17 ◼   ► but I think the iPod Touch is just a good option.

00:35:22 ◼   ► And I think it could have a pretty serious impact

00:35:27 ◼   ► on the at-home gaming business, the consoles.

00:35:34 ◼   ► I think it's very powerful.

00:35:36 ◼   ► It has AirPlay built into it.

00:35:38 ◼   ► It can have an impact.

00:35:39 ◼   ► Like, you know, if they could do,

00:35:42 ◼   ► if Apple could sell the iPod TV for cheaper,

00:35:47 ◼   ► like for $49, they could actually have

00:35:50 ◼   ► a serious console competitor.

00:35:53 ◼   ► I really like that.

00:35:55 ◼   ► The other, the iPod Nano, I don't know.

00:35:59 ◼   ► Like, I'm not, I never really cared for that product,

00:36:02 ◼   ► and this one too, I'm not all that impressed by.

00:36:06 ◼   ► - I think one of the things that's interesting is,

00:36:09 ◼   ► So one of the things I've seen already, you know, there wasn't really much of a surprise with the

00:36:14 ◼   ► iPhone 5. But now that we've seen it, and it's official, here's what it really is. And there's

00:36:18 ◼   ► sort of the backlash against it. The negative take that I've seen is it's, there's nothing new here.

00:36:24 ◼   ► It's just the same thing it was, but better. And I'd say, duh, that's, you know, when you have like

00:36:31 ◼   ► the most popular product in the history of the tech industry, you know, you probably don't want

00:36:36 ◼   ► to change it that much. But as much as the iPhone, I really do think you could argue, and I don't I

00:36:42 ◼   ► don't mean that I mean, this is a compliment, not as a complaint that it's the exact same idea as

00:36:46 ◼   ► the original iPhone from five years ago just improved year over year over year, one year at a

00:36:53 ◼   ► time, faster, better screen thinner, lighter. Compare that to the iPod nano where it really when

00:37:02 ◼   ► they showed the history of the device, it's like they really are all over the place, you

00:37:06 ◼   ► know, in form factor and dimensions and even in terms of like, just what is it meant for?

00:37:13 ◼   ► Like is it should it be able to play video and it didn't and then it did and then it

00:37:18 ◼   ► didn't and now it does again. It's like that's a pretty big feature that they just keep,

00:37:22 ◼   ► you know, that they're using the same name, but they're really inventing like all new

00:37:26 ◼   ► products for this thing every year or two.

00:37:29 ◼   ► Yeah, you're right about that. I was surprised by the use of color yellow.

00:37:35 ◼   ► It's like, what's with the yellow, man? Like, I mean, I don't want a yellow device. I'm sorry.

00:37:40 ◼   ► Yeah, I would never buy. I would have to say yellow would probably be the last one I would buy.

00:37:44 ◼   ► Like, you have to be a really special person to buy a yellow device.

00:37:48 ◼   ► I wonder, do they call it yellow? I'm not even sure. Do they call it yellow or do they call it gold?

00:37:52 ◼   ► Whatever. They might call it some ridiculous name, but it's still yellow.

00:37:56 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:37:57 ◼   ► - You know, so one thing which the observation I had

00:38:00 ◼   ► over the event today, especially from the iPod spectrum,

00:38:05 ◼   ► is that how much of the unification of design

00:38:09 ◼   ► and manufacturing process and materials

00:38:12 ◼   ► has happened across all Apple products,

00:38:14 ◼   ► very, very anodized aluminum, very simple,

00:38:18 ◼   ► you know, the lines are very laser cut, very straight.

00:38:23 ◼   ► Everything has that uniformity.

00:38:25 ◼   ► I think that's something very unique this time I saw,

00:38:29 ◼   ► which is pretty interesting.

00:38:31 ◼   ► I think the only thing which actually looks

00:38:32 ◼   ► out of place now is the iPad.

00:38:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, maybe, a little bit.

00:38:37 ◼   ► - The iPad One was actually more closer

00:38:40 ◼   ► to this design language than the new one.

00:38:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, and one thing with the iPhone and the iPod Touch,

00:38:49 ◼   ► for the first five years, up until today,

00:38:51 ◼   ► if you looked at them straight on,

00:38:53 ◼   ► Well then they did look a lot like the same thing, you know, it's the same exact sort of thing.

00:38:58 ◼   ► But then when you turn them around and look at the back, they looked totally different.

00:39:02 ◼   ► Although always from the beginning, where the iPod Touch always had this sort of classic iPod shiny metal back, like the fingerprint smudge material.

00:39:15 ◼   ► And the iPhone always had, is varied, you know, the original one was that bead-blasted aluminum or whatever,

00:39:23 ◼   ► and then there were the two years where they had the black plastic, and now it was glass with the iPhone 4 and 4S.

00:39:31 ◼   ► But now, they seem to be, like you said, there's a very... the colors are different, but there's a very similar material aesthetic.

00:39:41 ◼   ► You know, the same exact aluminum.

00:39:44 ◼   ► So somebody I spoke to, like not, you know, it's like not, I don't know enough to kind of write a blog post about it,

00:39:52 ◼   ► but apparently I'm told that Apple currently has some of the best materials engineers in the world working for it.

00:40:01 ◼   ► I would be surprised by that.

00:40:03 ◼   ► And that is why you can see this uniformity.

00:40:06 ◼   ► uniformity, so they've actually,

00:40:09 ◼   ► just as they spent a lot of money making their own chips,

00:40:12 ◼   ► they have spent a lot of time making their own

00:40:16 ◼   ► like material decisions, and you can see it.

00:40:18 ◼   ► And the Retina Display MacBook Pro is actually

00:40:24 ◼   ► like the epicenter of this design language,

00:40:27 ◼   ► of this product design language,

00:40:29 ◼   ► which is something very unique.

00:40:31 ◼   ► I haven't seen it in many other products,

00:40:34 ◼   ► Except maybe I've seen it like when you look at the high end cars, they do that.

00:40:39 ◼   ► They have very similar materials they use across the board.

00:40:43 ◼   ► Like companies, once they start using carbon fiber, it starts to become part of their whole

00:40:49 ◼   ► manufacturing process.

00:40:51 ◼   ► So that's one thing I noticed in this presentation today.

00:40:54 ◼   ► Yeah, did you catch the part in the design video for the iPhone 5 where they talked about

00:41:00 ◼   ► - You talk about the diamond cutter that cuts the,

00:41:03 ◼   ► they call it the chamfer, that slight edge,

00:41:07 ◼   ► slight diagonal edge that takes the sharpness

00:41:10 ◼   ► off the sides.

00:41:11 ◼   ► And when you look at that part of the phone,

00:41:17 ◼   ► it's really kind of stunning.

00:41:19 ◼   ► It's just this tiny little edge,

00:41:22 ◼   ► and it is so impossibly shiny.

00:41:25 ◼   ► It actually looks shinier than the glass.

00:41:28 ◼   ► - You know, it's amazing.

00:41:30 ◼   ► Like they have done such interesting work

00:41:33 ◼   ► on manufacturing production materials.

00:41:37 ◼   ► I wish I could talk to those guys.

00:41:40 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:41:40 ◼   ► - They just never let you talk to those guys.

00:41:43 ◼   ► They are just, like that is, in my opinion,

00:41:45 ◼   ► that is the real work Apple's doing.

00:41:48 ◼   ► You know, we get all caught up in the features

00:41:51 ◼   ► and how fast the processors is,

00:41:53 ◼   ► but I get totally excited about all these,

00:41:57 ◼   ► like, you know, manufacturing nerdiness a little bit.

00:42:01 ◼   ► It's like that. I think the iPad,

00:42:05 ◼   ► sorry, the iPod Nano is an interesting

00:42:09 ◼   ► product. I just am not something I'm going to

00:42:13 ◼   ► think about a lot. No, not me neither. I will say this though too, though.

00:42:17 ◼   ► Now that it has a slightly bigger screen, I know that the last year's model had

00:42:21 ◼   ► the iOS-style interface. But now

00:42:25 ◼   ► that it has a bigger screen and it has a home button, it really does feel like a tiny little

00:42:31 ◼   ► iPhone. And it's not running iOS, as far as anybody knows. I think it's the same embedded

00:42:37 ◼   ► OS as the old Nanos. But it so clearly shares the same physics algorithms as iOS. Like when

00:42:45 ◼   ► you're in the settings app and you scroll down and you get to the bottom, the bounce

00:42:50 ◼   ► is like it's the iPhone bounce. And when you stretch at the top of a scrolling list, it

00:42:55 ◼   ► stretches the exact same way that a list of, I mean, it could not feel more like iOS.

00:43:01 ◼   ► I mean, that's the experience they have to offer, like, across the board. Otherwise,

00:43:05 ◼   ► like, what's the point of having a design philosophy and design language when all your

00:43:11 ◼   ► products are not unified around that?

00:43:14 ◼   ► Do you think it would make sense in a year or two, if they could, to make a device like

00:43:18 ◼   ► that the iPod nano but that did run iOS so they could open up apps for it?

00:43:23 ◼   ► Yeah, I think they should do that and in fact connectivity should be part of it.

00:43:29 ◼   ► Like I just believe no apps, so this is the law, this is I've been talking about

00:43:35 ◼   ► this for a very long time. In order for a device to be successful it has to have

00:43:39 ◼   ► two elements. It has to have connectivity and it has to have usability. Usability

00:43:45 ◼   ► comes from services. In case of Apple, those services are apps. And connectivity is what

00:43:52 ◼   ► makes those services alive. And more services you have, the more you use your device, the

00:44:00 ◼   ► more you use it, the more you want it, the more you're likely to break it or buy an upgrade.

00:44:05 ◼   ► So that's the key thing. That's the philosophy they need to have. I'm pretty sure that's

00:44:10 ◼   ► the philosophy they have. We just don't know it.

00:44:12 ◼   ► I don't think that you would ever want to type on a device like that.

00:44:16 ◼   ► Like, I think it would have to be, like, not the iPhone's version of iOS running smaller.

00:44:22 ◼   ► It would have to be like a new branch, you know, in a way that there are iPad apps and

00:44:27 ◼   ► iPhone apps.

00:44:28 ◼   ► There would have to be, like, Nano apps.

00:44:29 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:44:30 ◼   ► For lack of a better word.

00:44:31 ◼   ► Well, I don't think you don't need many apps.

00:44:33 ◼   ► You just had iPad, sorry, iPod Nano with a network, with a Wi-Fi connection with Siri.

00:44:40 ◼   ► Right.

00:44:41 ◼   ► Siri played this song.

00:44:42 ◼   ► Yeah, voice as your input instead of a keyboard. I think games could be interesting on it,

00:44:48 ◼   ► but like information, status information, stuff like that. I think the form factor is

00:44:53 ◼   ► interesting, but as it stands, it's, you know, just...

00:44:56 ◼   ► I do think this is one bit I would say Apple is a little lagging as a company is that they

00:45:02 ◼   ► don't think of services as engagement, right? Like, sort of like, you know how the Facebook

00:45:10 ◼   ► people send you these stupid notifications all the time so you keep using Facebook, even

00:45:16 ◼   ► though you hate it, they have worked really hard on making us dopamine addicts. And Apple

00:45:22 ◼   ► needs to kind of work on something similar to keep people using those devices all the

00:45:26 ◼   ► time. I just, like that's my, at least that's how I think about it.

00:45:31 ◼   ► And the new iPod touch, it's so remarkably thin and light.

00:45:36 ◼   ► I mean, did you play with it?

00:45:39 ◼   ► - I did play with it for like two minutes.

00:45:41 ◼   ► Like there are too many people.

00:45:42 ◼   ► - I, there were, it was a lot less crowded

00:45:45 ◼   ► around the iPod touch than the iPhone,

00:45:46 ◼   ► so I spent more time with the iPod touch.

00:45:48 ◼   ► It's so impossibly thin.

00:45:53 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:45:54 ◼   ► - It really is.

00:45:55 ◼   ► And people were saying over and over again

00:45:56 ◼   ► that they kinda couldn't believe that it was,

00:45:57 ◼   ► this was the actual, this is what it really is.

00:45:59 ◼   ► It's almost hard to believe.

00:46:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, you can touch it.

00:46:03 ◼   ► You don't have to hide it behind a glass.

00:46:07 ◼   ► - And I'm a little surprised,

00:46:10 ◼   ► and I know that it leaked out before the event

00:46:12 ◼   ► and that there were some whispers over the last week.

00:46:14 ◼   ► Like 9to5Mac had it, and they always get it

00:46:17 ◼   ► from these SKUs that go into the Apple retail system,

00:46:20 ◼   ► and that when these SKUs for new iPods show up,

00:46:24 ◼   ► it's almost like a sure sign

00:46:26 ◼   ► that their new iPods are coming very soon.

00:46:29 ◼   ► But the reason I found it hard to believe, and I was a little skeptical all the way up

00:46:32 ◼   ► until they actually announced it, was that I still found it unusual to announce the iPod

00:46:37 ◼   ► Touch with the new 4-inch screen and radical, major new features at the same time as the

00:46:44 ◼   ► iPhone that it's based on.

00:46:49 ◼   ► I didn't even think there were going to be iPod Touch updates.

00:46:52 ◼   ► No, well, I wasn't sure.

00:46:54 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:46:55 ◼   ► And the reason why...

00:46:57 ◼   ► not that it makes the new iPhone 5 look bad, but it's like the iPod touch was always thinner

00:47:05 ◼   ► than the iPhone because it, you know, there's all sorts of antennas they don't need to include.

00:47:09 ◼   ► And I guess it probably needs a smaller battery because it doesn't have to power those antennas.

00:47:15 ◼   ► So I've always thought, boy, wouldn't it be, wouldn't it be, not even wouldn't, but won't,

00:47:19 ◼   ► because I know Apple moves towards thinner and lighter. Won't it be great when the iPhone

00:47:24 ◼   ► is that thin and light. And that's what the new iPhone 5 is. It's as thin and light as

00:47:29 ◼   ► the old iPod touches. And immediately they've already upped the bar with these new iPod

00:47:34 ◼   ► touches, which are way thinner and just--I almost hesitate to say too light, but if there

00:47:42 ◼   ► is such a thing as something that's too light, it's these things. They almost feel like they

00:47:46 ◼   ► wouldn't fall at the full rate of gravity.

00:47:48 ◼   ► - So iPhone 5.5 will be pretty thin.

00:47:52 ◼   ► Like it will be thin like this, like the current iPhone 5.

00:47:57 ◼   ► But it will have a lot of things which will be different.

00:48:00 ◼   ► And the number one thing which will be different

00:48:02 ◼   ► will be the battery.

00:48:04 ◼   ► I can tell you they are going to spend next 12 months

00:48:08 ◼   ► focusing on battery power.

00:48:09 ◼   ► They are, I know the Apple people have been talking

00:48:13 ◼   ► to a lot of the battery companies and technologies

00:48:16 ◼   ► and they've been doing a lot of research,

00:48:19 ◼   ► and they're not alone, a lot of companies are,

00:48:23 ◼   ► but that would be their main area of focus,

00:48:25 ◼   ► and the lessons they learn from the iPod Touch usage

00:48:29 ◼   ► are going to help them make the iPhone battery

00:48:33 ◼   ► act more smartly, because it's like software

00:48:38 ◼   ► and battery design, and they will need to figure that one out

00:48:41 ◼   ► and the reason I bring that up is that two years ago,

00:48:45 ◼   ► Apple's biggest weakness was its radios,

00:48:50 ◼   ► like wireless radios.

00:48:51 ◼   ► And then in two years, and what they launched today,

00:48:54 ◼   ► people have completely glossed over

00:48:57 ◼   ► like how difficult it is to support

00:49:00 ◼   ► so many different standards in such a thin device

00:49:04 ◼   ► using a very smart networking, radio networking technology,

00:49:09 ◼   ► that has happened in the last two years.

00:49:12 ◼   ► And I think they've worked systematically on it.

00:49:14 ◼   ► I think that's what I find impressive.

00:49:17 ◼   ► It is not something people glom onto,

00:49:21 ◼   ► but it's a very hard challenge.

00:49:22 ◼   ► And battery is the next hard challenge.

00:49:24 ◼   ► So yes, in two years you will have an iPhone

00:49:29 ◼   ► which will be like as thin as an iPod Touch,

00:49:32 ◼   ► and it will have the same battery power,

00:49:34 ◼   ► probably more than what we have today.

00:49:37 ◼   ► I do believe that their next big breakthrough

00:49:40 ◼   ► is gonna be on batteries.

00:49:42 ◼   ► - I wouldn't be surprised.

00:49:43 ◼   ► got to be, because it has to be, I know it is, it's the biggest thing inside the phone.

00:49:48 ◼   ► And so if they, you know, it's going to be the sticking point toward getting them smaller

00:49:53 ◼   ► and lighter. I mean, and that is one thing that when you put it in hand, and you know,

00:50:00 ◼   ► it's obviously, you hold it in your hand, it does feel taller than your iPhone, than

00:50:05 ◼   ► the old iPhones. And it definitely feels like the top of the screen is farther away. But

00:50:10 ◼   ► side to side, because it is the same size as the iPhone, it still feels like the iPhone 4 and 4S.

00:50:16 ◼   ► And to me, it's a much more comfortable size just holding it in one hand than the bigger Android

00:50:22 ◼   ► phones and like the big Windows phones. Like I really find those uncomfortable. Not uncomfortable,

00:50:29 ◼   ► but just not as comfortable to use. It just seems like they beg to be used, those bigger phones,

00:50:34 ◼   ► the way that Android phones have gone to four and a half inches or five inches even in some cases,

00:50:39 ◼   ► They beg to be used with two hands all the time, not one hand.

00:50:42 ◼   ► So I don't use too many Android phones, not because they're bad phones.

00:50:47 ◼   ► It's just as their keyboards just don't, are not very inviting.

00:50:53 ◼   ► That's like, that's my big thing is like, yeah, I have all those phones.

00:50:56 ◼   ► I like, you know, I like some of the work Google's done with this Nexus devices.

00:51:01 ◼   ► And they're pretty, you know, they're well made devices.

00:51:04 ◼   ► They're fast, they're powerful.

00:51:06 ◼   ► The OS is not iOS, but it's pretty good.

00:51:13 ◼   ► And a lot of people are writing applications for it.

00:51:17 ◼   ► But I just find little things are not there.

00:51:20 ◼   ► Like the email client is not very good, even though it's

00:51:23 ◼   ► Google built in.

00:51:24 ◼   ► Or the keyboards are not all that great.

00:51:29 ◼   ► But beyond that, I think the key thing on the new size iPhone 5 is actually going to

00:51:41 ◼   ► be our ability to deal with excess information on the screen.

00:51:47 ◼   ► I think people always forget.

00:51:50 ◼   ► More information you cram on the screen, it kind of is a shock to the system.

00:51:56 ◼   ► Which is why I think the bigger Android take a little time getting used to.

00:52:01 ◼   ► It's because there's just more stuff crammed onto the screen.

00:52:05 ◼   ► And I think the, it's, I'm looking forward to using my iPhone 5 whenever it comes to

00:52:12 ◼   ► market for me.

00:52:13 ◼   ► I'm still unconvinced whether it's, I still, I wonder whether it's not just a, look, marketing

00:52:22 ◼   ► wise, we kind of need to be at four inches because this is...we know people don't buy

00:52:28 ◼   ► on specs, but if everybody else is making four-inch phones, we kind of need a four-inch

00:52:33 ◼   ► phone, and that it's not really going to make that much of a difference. People are not

00:52:38 ◼   ► going to, when they upgrade, they're not going to say, "Wow, I really appreciate the extra

00:52:41 ◼   ► size here."

00:52:43 ◼   ► So if I was not writing about Apple and iPhone and devices, I probably would not rush out

00:52:51 ◼   ► and buy it just because it's got a four inch display.

00:52:54 ◼   ► - Right.

00:52:55 ◼   ► - It's just not like a decision making thing for me.

00:52:58 ◼   ► I was like, yeah, okay, whatever.

00:53:00 ◼   ► - Well anyway, I guess that brings us to the iPhone 5

00:53:02 ◼   ► since we've been talking about it.

00:53:04 ◼   ► And that was clearly the big announcement today.

00:53:06 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:53:07 ◼   ► So before we go to the iPhone, though,

00:53:10 ◼   ► I would say thank God for upgrading the iTunes.

00:53:14 ◼   ► Oh my God, that thing had become such a pig.

00:53:18 ◼   ► - It really did.

00:53:19 ◼   ► And you know what? It kind of reminds me of a little...

00:53:21 ◼   ► And I'd heard, I had not seen, nobody had shown me,

00:53:24 ◼   ► I had no little birdies had filled me in as to what the new iTunes looked like.

00:53:28 ◼   ► But I was told, I've been told by a couple of people that, yeah, this is like a serious,

00:53:32 ◼   ► this isn't like wink, wink, nudge, nudge. It's an update.

00:53:36 ◼   ► It's a real rethinking of what the iTunes app for Mac and Windows should look like.

00:53:41 ◼   ► And I, you know, I haven't used it yet, but I really, from what I saw,

00:53:47 ◼   ► boy, it really does seem appealing. It's very stylish. And I have to say, like, from a UI

00:53:52 ◼   ► perspective, it doesn't really seem like anything I've seen before. It seems like a new type

00:53:58 ◼   ► of app. Like, Apple has all these apps that have, you know, and third-party apps, too,

00:54:03 ◼   ► but the same layout as iTunes, old iTunes. Sidebar on the left in a column that's narrow,

00:54:11 ◼   ► and then you click something in that sidebar on the left, and it fills in the right with

00:54:16 ◼   ► what that is. And that's how mail works, that's how all sorts of other apps work. And it really

00:54:26 ◼   ► seems like that's also the best measure of how complicated iTunes got, is because that

00:54:32 ◼   ► source list got longer and longer and longer before you even got to the stuff that you

00:54:39 ◼   ► make, like playlists and stuff like that. But just in terms of how many items are in

00:54:43 ◼   ► there in a default installation of iTunes. It was this, that, the other thing.

00:54:46 ◼   ► It's all gone. And now it's just one big window. So it looked a little bit like

00:54:51 ◼   ► audio to me. Like I couldn't put my finger on it, but so I tweeted out, I

00:54:58 ◼   ► asked people, this looks a little familiar and like a lot of people

00:55:01 ◼   ► tweeted out saying it looks like audio and I went and checked and it does. And I

00:55:07 ◼   ► I just feel like, oh God, let me try this,

00:55:10 ◼   ► because I hate my current iTunes.

00:55:13 ◼   ► It's like just completely, utterly useless.

00:55:17 ◼   ► It's slow, and I can't access.

00:55:19 ◼   ► And you know, I just think the idea of playlists

00:55:23 ◼   ► as we know it needs to be reinvented completely.

00:55:27 ◼   ► - Well, but I, you know, hold your thought on that,

00:55:30 ◼   ► because one thing, unless I missed it,

00:55:33 ◼   ► the hands-on area did not have anywhere

00:55:34 ◼   ► where you could play with the new iTunes.

00:55:36 ◼   ► - No. - No.

00:55:36 ◼   ► So that's, and that does make me wonder about the timing of the announcements today.

00:55:41 ◼   ► Is that why, it seems unusual that, seems a little weird that they announced the new

00:55:45 ◼   ► iTunes but it's still.

00:55:47 ◼   ► October.

00:55:48 ◼   ► Yeah, or late October even?

00:55:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:55:50 ◼   ► Or did they say October?

00:55:51 ◼   ► I'd say sometime in October.

00:55:52 ◼   ► Well, it's, you know, it's well over a month away.

00:55:54 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:55:56 ◼   ► And they didn't have it in the hands-on area.

00:55:59 ◼   ► I saw that there's a new seed which was, came out.

00:56:03 ◼   ► Oh, so maybe they do?

00:56:04 ◼   ► I didn't, I've been offline all day.

00:56:06 ◼   ► I don't know. I haven't checked it. Like, I'll probably go home and try it.

00:56:09 ◼   ► But it really does seem like they've, in addition to just reducing visual clutter in the interface,

00:56:16 ◼   ► they've also really seemed to have done so with a specific goal in mind, which is to get you back

00:56:22 ◼   ► to just using the app to play music, and maybe secondarily watch movies. And not have it be this

00:56:31 ◼   ► app that was a device manager for gadgets. You know, these gadgets that you tether to your

00:56:38 ◼   ► computer and you do all this stuff to do that. It's sort of gotten away from that and it's back

00:56:42 ◼   ► to use this app to play music.

00:56:44 ◼   ► So one observation, I thought it would be very cool if Apple did visual playlist making

00:56:54 ◼   ► capability drag and drop because now we have such good touch on our laptops that you can

00:57:01 ◼   ► actually swipe and touch and create like visually create playlists versus creating like those

00:57:07 ◼   ► manual add to the playlist kind of nonsense.

00:57:10 ◼   ► So I am really looking forward to playing around with that whenever it comes out.

00:57:17 ◼   ► That's my, that's my, whew, that was on my wish list and I got it.

00:57:24 ◼   ► There's a, I forget what they call the new feature though, but it's the one that's like

00:57:28 ◼   ► add to your list now or something like that, play now.

00:57:32 ◼   ► It's like if you're in the middle of a playlist, but you're going through...

00:57:35 ◼   ► Up next.

00:57:36 ◼   ► Up next, that's it, that's it, up next.

00:57:38 ◼   ► That to me is, I've thought of that feature, but never really thought it through enough

00:57:44 ◼   ► to like actually like write about it or ask for it.

00:57:47 ◼   ► I just know I can remember many times being in that situation where I'm playing music,

00:57:51 ◼   ► I have a playlist that I don't want to stop playing, but I'm just digging around my iTunes

00:57:56 ◼   ► and I say, "Oh, I'd like to hear this song right now, or next at least."

00:58:01 ◼   ► But I don't want to stop the playlist, and I don't want to add it to the, you know, like

00:58:05 ◼   ► maybe it's a smart playlist and the smart playlist doesn't even have this, it's not,

00:58:09 ◼   ► I don't want to, I can't add it to the playlist.

00:58:14 ◼   ► Maybe that's where people also met with the Pandora-like service that Apple was going

00:58:19 ◼   ► to launch, which is like the same feature.

00:58:23 ◼   ► I would love to have Pandora features on my own library.

00:58:28 ◼   ► I mean, it's so hard to some-- the genius hasn't really

00:58:31 ◼   ► been genius for a long time.

00:58:34 ◼   ► I mean, that's how I feel.

00:58:35 ◼   ► They needed to improve that as well.

00:58:38 ◼   ► So maybe that comes out in the app as well,

00:58:40 ◼   ► the next version of iTunes.

00:58:42 ◼   ► And I'm curious what the-- I don't think they've shown it.

00:58:44 ◼   ► I'm looking at the website right now.

00:58:46 ◼   ► curious what the Windows version will look like. I don't care. Yeah, who cares? I

00:58:52 ◼   ► know a lot of people have been asking me, the readers have been asking me, what do

00:58:56 ◼   ► I think they're gonna do about Windows RT since Windows RT doesn't run the

00:59:00 ◼   ► desktop Windows apps? And I think the answer is that if you have a Windows RT

00:59:04 ◼   ► device you don't get iTunes. Because you're not going to use it. The whole

00:59:07 ◼   ► reason they have it for Windows is so that you can use a Windows PC to manage

00:59:12 ◼   ► your iPods and your iPhone not through iCloud. And I think that now they're getting to the

00:59:17 ◼   ► point with iCloud where they don't really care. If you have a PC, they would love for

00:59:21 ◼   ► you to buy an iPhone, but I don't think they care so much about you being able to tether

00:59:26 ◼   ► it to your PC. You go through iCloud. But they did say, though, it's coming out for

00:59:35 ◼   ► PC too.

00:59:36 ◼   ► - You know, I think the thing with the PC, iTunes,

00:59:40 ◼   ► was that I always felt actually it worked better

00:59:49 ◼   ► than the Mac one.

00:59:50 ◼   ► - Really?

00:59:51 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:59:51 ◼   ► - Huh.

00:59:52 ◼   ► - I just like, it just felt more robust and less--

00:59:56 ◼   ► - I've never even tried it.

00:59:57 ◼   ► - No, I tried it a few times.

00:59:58 ◼   ► - In 10 years, I don't think I've ever tried iTunes

01:00:00 ◼   ► on a PC.

01:00:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's like I have one PC which I kinda

01:00:04 ◼   ► our tings on. I also really thought that the demo of the mini player was really

01:00:09 ◼   ► fascinating because it seemed to me like I could leave my iTunes in that mini

01:00:12 ◼   ► player state almost all the time and you just type and I like that the live

01:00:17 ◼   ► search I like the way it looks the search results they didn't say it and it

01:00:23 ◼   ► is sort of a different visual treatment but it kind of reminds me of the iPad

01:00:27 ◼   ► interface with the popover for the results you know like you've just got

01:00:30 ◼   ► this little tiny thing you type in a field and then here's the results click

01:00:34 ◼   ► on it and you're playing it. So I missed that part. I was busy taking pictures and uploading

01:00:41 ◼   ► them. So the scuttlebutt though, and iTunes kind of plays into it, the scuttlebutt is

01:00:47 ◼   ► that it, that Apple didn't really decide, Apple has a lot of stuff to announce. As of

01:00:53 ◼   ► before today, they had a lot of stuff they wanted to announce in the next month or two.

01:00:58 ◼   ► And that they've been maybe thinking about two events. I mean, clearly the big thing

01:01:03 ◼   ► that everybody is expecting and that has not yet been announced is this iPad mini thing,

01:01:08 ◼   ► iPad Air, whatever you want to call it. And that they've more or less felt like they had

01:01:16 ◼   ► a lot of options as to how to do it. Should they announce the iPhone all by itself like

01:01:21 ◼   ► they did last year? Should they, obviously the way they did go, announce the iPhone with

01:01:26 ◼   ► the iPods and have a music event with the iPhone? Or should they have a music event

01:01:32 ◼   ► next month with the iPods and this new miniature iPad and call that the music event. And I

01:01:39 ◼   ► feel like, and from what I've heard, a couple people have heard is that the decision on

01:01:43 ◼   ► that didn't get made until relatively late. I mean, not last minute, obviously, just from

01:01:49 ◼   ► the polish and the precision of the event they made it. But, you know, relatively speaking,

01:01:57 ◼   ► much as, you know, whatever time it takes to put on an event of that level of polish,

01:02:03 ◼   ► that's when they made the decision. And I think it kind of fits with the fact that iTunes,

01:02:09 ◼   ► the app, is not ready yet. So I thought maybe, you know, it seems a little weird. And the

01:02:13 ◼   ► iPods aren't coming till next month either.

01:02:15 ◼   ► >> Yeah. You know, this is not -- the Apple is changing, clearly. So things are going

01:02:21 ◼   ► to be a little different. I'm pretty sure you have a better idea on what's going on

01:02:26 ◼   ► and how this works than I do.

01:02:29 ◼   ► What are your thoughts?

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01:04:41 ◼   ► So, the iPhone.

01:04:42 ◼   ► It starts with Shiller, I guess he said a little bit,

01:04:48 ◼   ► but then he more or less says,

01:04:49 ◼   ► "Here, let me show it to you."

01:04:51 ◼   ► gestures and this pedestal, I guess for lack of a better word, rises out of the floor and

01:04:58 ◼   ► starts spinning around. And like I was sitting next to Dan Morin from Macworld and I just

01:05:05 ◼   ► said, you know, where do you buy, where do they buy something like that? Because you

01:05:08 ◼   ► can't just go to the store and buy the pedestal that rises out of the floor. It almost was

01:05:13 ◼   ► like something out of like a James Bond movie, you know, like that's where his watch comes

01:05:17 ◼   ► out of. This crazy over-engineered pedestal that comes out of the floor and they've got

01:05:24 ◼   ► these little micro spotlights just to hit the phone.

01:05:30 ◼   ► That was pretty cool.

01:05:31 ◼   ► I thought so too. And I think people got it too because there was a lot of people laughing.

01:05:37 ◼   ► It was very well done. They did it to the nines. The way that it rotated was super smooth.

01:05:47 ◼   ► It was timed perfectly with the movie behind it, like where when the iPhone was exactly

01:05:52 ◼   ► sideways to the audience, the phone on the video behind it was sideways to the audience.

01:06:00 ◼   ► But it seems crazy because it only was up there for like a minute.

01:06:02 ◼   ► It was up for like a minute, it spun around twice, and then it went down.

01:06:05 ◼   ► So like somebody at Apple like had the job of like engineering this robot pedestal for

01:06:12 ◼   ► one minute in one event.

01:06:15 ◼   ► the luxury of having a couple of hundred billion dollars lying around.

01:06:19 ◼   ► I do think so. And then to fast forward all the way to the end of the event, when The

01:06:25 ◼   ► Foo Fighters came out, I had this thought, Tim Cook's up on stage and he's saying, you

01:06:30 ◼   ► know, we love to have an act. You know, music's the heart of the company and DNA of the company.

01:06:34 ◼   ► We always like to end with one of our favorite acts and we have one of those acts today.

01:06:38 ◼   ► And then they put a Foo Fighters album up. So I knew it was The Foo Fighters and everybody,

01:06:42 ◼   ► I started getting excited. But I thought, "Well, how are they going to come out?" And

01:06:45 ◼   ► I thought, "Well, you know, here's what I thought. I thought maybe it wouldn't be the

01:06:48 ◼   ► full band, there wouldn't be drums, maybe just the lead singer, Dave Grohl, would come

01:06:51 ◼   ► out with a guitar, and one or two of the other guys, maybe with guitars, they'd walk out

01:06:56 ◼   ► on stage, you know, but that wouldn't be the full electric setup because there was clearly

01:07:00 ◼   ► nowhere there where that could be." And like years ago, like I forget if it was a John

01:07:05 ◼   ► Mayer or one of those things, but it was in a Moscone event, though, which is a much bigger

01:07:10 ◼   ► huge stage. He came out like from the side like on a thing that rotated around

01:07:15 ◼   ► from the back or maybe that I forget who I was but but there was room for

01:07:20 ◼   ► something like that and here all of a sudden the screen goes up and this

01:07:24 ◼   ► platform comes out again so super smooth this moving platform that the band was

01:07:30 ◼   ► on and I asked at the the hands-on area and at somebody at Apple said that yeah

01:07:39 ◼   ► that was custom too. They built that just for the thing.

01:07:43 ◼   ► Well, that's pretty impressive. That was pretty impressive. I was

01:07:48 ◼   ► like taken aback for a minute. It's like, wow.

01:07:50 ◼   ► I think the way you put it, though, is good is that those

01:07:54 ◼   ► are the sort of little touches that you can do when you've got

01:07:56 ◼   ► $100 billion in cash.

01:07:59 ◼   ► So I enjoyed myself. It was just like for a few minutes, it felt

01:08:06 ◼   ► like, damn, these guys worked really hard to make this happen.

01:08:09 ◼   ► Yeah. And I think they do work really hard in presentations. It's not as... There's a lot of work which goes into it.

01:08:17 ◼   ► My two cents.

01:08:20 ◼   ► I do too. And I've been thinking about this, and I've been thinking about it in the context of Amazon last week, too, that I think that there's a really strong correlation between a company that's able to put together a cohesive, smart,

01:08:38 ◼   ► easy to understand presentation for a product and the fact that the product itself is actually

01:08:44 ◼   ► thoughtful and cohesive and well thought out. Like there is, you know, and it's, you know,

01:08:50 ◼   ► and I, sometimes I worry, I think, well maybe that's just because I'm so close to Apple

01:08:55 ◼   ► and Apple does both those things well, does good products and does good things. But I

01:08:59 ◼   ► thought Amazon's thing last week showed that it's, you know, it's true for other companies

01:09:03 ◼   ► too, where a really strong presentation from Bezos and a really easy to understand message

01:09:10 ◼   ► of why you would buy these Kindles and who they're for.

01:09:14 ◼   ► Right. And I think if you look around in the fashion world, you can say like there's like

01:09:20 ◼   ► if you go to a Tom Ford show, and the way the stores are the products are not that I

01:09:26 ◼   ► will ever fit into one of his outfits. But, but there is a cohesive thought process like

01:09:32 ◼   ► It starts from the very top and goes right the way to the bottom and it is across product

01:09:39 ◼   ► presentation experience.

01:09:43 ◼   ► People don't quite give the importance to the experience part of Apple or any company

01:09:49 ◼   ► like Apple.

01:09:51 ◼   ► You go to Herman Miller's products.

01:09:54 ◼   ► When you buy an Eames chair, it is an experience.

01:09:58 ◼   ► You don't just buy wood.

01:10:01 ◼   ► buying a certain kind of an experience. It doesn't matter whether it costs 20

01:10:05 ◼   ► bucks or $200,000. It is about creating that experience and that experience is

01:10:12 ◼   ► your inbuilt sensibility. You need to have it inside you to actually be able

01:10:17 ◼   ► to project it to the rest of the world. And I think that's what Amazon showed

01:10:22 ◼   ► last week. And I, you know, there's even like a rhyme and a reason to the

01:10:26 ◼   ► people who get trotted out. Now Amazon did it with one man. It was just Jeff

01:10:30 ◼   ► Bezos and he didn't call anybody else out and that's one way to do it and I think in

01:10:34 ◼   ► the past Apple has had events like that with Steve Jobs. Now they're not, I don't think

01:10:38 ◼   ► they're ever going to have an event like that again. I think now it's a team player, team

01:10:43 ◼   ► player type thing. But it's, it's almost like parentheticals or layers of a hierarchy where

01:10:48 ◼   ► at the top level there's the root level and that's Tim Cook. And then he says, okay, now

01:10:54 ◼   ► we're going to talk about new iPhone 5. Here's Phil Schiller. And so Phil then is like one

01:11:00 ◼   ► layer down in the hierarchy and his thing is the iPhone. And then in the middle of his

01:11:05 ◼   ► thing, to talk just about the software, then it goes to Scott Forstall. Then Forstall leaves,

01:11:12 ◼   ► Phil comes back out to close his parentheses, and then Phil leaves and Cook comes back out

01:11:18 ◼   ► and you're back at the root level. And then it starts all over again with the iPods and

01:11:21 ◼   ► iTunes with Eddy Cue and Joswiak and with Jeff Robin coming out to demo the new iTunes.

01:11:29 ◼   ► guys come out for a specific reason, and when they leave, the guy who introduced them comes

01:11:33 ◼   ► back out until you get back to Tim Cook at the end, and it's all over. Compare that to

01:11:37 ◼   ► Microsoft and at the Windows 8, again, to borrow your technical term, shit show, a couple

01:11:44 ◼   ► months ago, where it's like, there was no logic to it, but yet it was, it just seemed,

01:11:49 ◼   ► it was almost like the internal politics of the company laid, just exposed, where here's

01:11:55 ◼   ► the people who need to come out because they want to come out, but there didn't seem to

01:11:59 ◼   ► be any logic to it. Here's one guy showing the one tablet, and here's another guy who

01:12:02 ◼   ► comes out to show a keyboard, and then here's this other guy who comes out to show a different

01:12:06 ◼   ► type of keyboard. And then the tablet didn't work. And now here we are months later, and

01:12:16 ◼   ► it's not just that their presentation wasn't good. Now we're at a point now with Windows

01:12:21 ◼   ► 8 and Windows Phone 8 where is it going to ship on time? Are they going to have these

01:12:27 ◼   ► things ready for the Christmas season? It seems like it's a question.

01:12:34 ◼   ► You know, confusion is not just in your mind, it's everywhere.

01:12:37 ◼   ► Right. But I always look at those things and I always think it's me. And it's just like

01:12:41 ◼   ► when I was a kid, it goes back to when I was a kid, and if I ever read a book that was

01:12:45 ◼   ► like above my grade level, and I didn't get it, I just thought, "Well, I'm just not smart

01:12:50 ◼   ► enough," or "I'm not a good enough reader yet. This is beyond me." And I just always

01:12:54 ◼   ► would blame myself. Or like if I stayed up late and I got to watch a TV show with my

01:12:59 ◼   ► parents that was on late and it was like an adult show and I just didn't get it. I just

01:13:03 ◼   ► didn't understand what the heck was going on. Just always thought it was me and I still

01:13:07 ◼   ► feel that way. Like I watched that Microsoft event and I got like halfway through before

01:13:11 ◼   ► I started blaming them. Like halfway through I was like, you know, I'm just so unfamiliar

01:13:15 ◼   ► with Microsoft. I'm just so used to Apple. I don't get this. It just doesn't make any

01:13:19 ◼   ► sense to me. And then I got halfway through. I was like, you know what? This is just a

01:13:22 ◼   ► mess.

01:13:23 ◼   ► I had a great editor when I was at Forbes.com, David Chirvak.

01:13:29 ◼   ► He taught me the most important lesson of my life.

01:13:32 ◼   ► He said, "You're going to write about technology, you're going to write about companies, you're

01:13:37 ◼   ► going to write about money, but you always have to remember everything, companies, products,

01:13:44 ◼   ► they're all about people.

01:13:46 ◼   ► Companies are people.

01:13:47 ◼   ► You're not writing about an institution.

01:13:50 ◼   ► you're writing about people, you just don't know it.

01:13:53 ◼   ► You'd pay attention to the people

01:13:55 ◼   ► and their own internal politics

01:13:57 ◼   ► and their own internal confusion,

01:14:00 ◼   ► that's the company right there for you.

01:14:01 ◼   ► And that's exactly what, intuitively,

01:14:04 ◼   ► you're getting onto that, glomming onto that thing.

01:14:07 ◼   ► When you look at the Nokia people, right,

01:14:10 ◼   ► like five years ago, they didn't have

01:14:13 ◼   ► that level of confusion, except they had

01:14:15 ◼   ► a certain type of a CEO who was so metrics driven,

01:14:19 ◼   ► whose background was law, and the guy who was pulling,

01:14:24 ◼   ► who was the puppet master, was finance guy.

01:14:28 ◼   ► So they were only gonna do things which made sense to them,

01:14:31 ◼   ► and that sprinkled across--

01:14:32 ◼   ► - Things that made sense in a spreadsheet.

01:14:34 ◼   ► - Right, and that's exactly what it is.

01:14:36 ◼   ► It's like, companies are people.

01:14:39 ◼   ► People make things, companies don't make things.

01:14:41 ◼   ► It's like, how is that so difficult for people to understand?

01:14:46 ◼   ► The other thing about today's presentation,

01:14:48 ◼   ► which I've seen it every single time,

01:14:50 ◼   ► between various product groups,

01:14:52 ◼   ► you know, Phil Schiller, Foerstahl,

01:14:54 ◼   ► and all these people come and go,

01:14:56 ◼   ► there is that little video from Johnny Ive

01:15:00 ◼   ► and Bob Mansfield, tells you those are the guys

01:15:03 ◼   ► who are making it happen,

01:15:05 ◼   ► while these guys are making it happen.

01:15:07 ◼   ► So there is like a connective tissue

01:15:10 ◼   ► that is design, manufacturing,

01:15:12 ◼   ► and the internal hardware technology.

01:15:15 ◼   ► I think that's very important for the company.

01:15:17 ◼   ► Yeah, and I almost feel like you could feel the pride that they have in it. Like, every

01:15:24 ◼   ► once in a while they get caught up in some of these details, like the emphasis on the

01:15:27 ◼   ► sapphire lens on the thing, and it's like, all that anybody really cares about is does

01:15:33 ◼   ► the camera really take good pictures. But they're so, you know, and it looked awesome.

01:15:37 ◼   ► It's my favorite part of that, one of my favorite parts of that video of how they're making

01:15:40 ◼   ► it. I like that part with the laser cutter, and I like that part where they take the sapphire,

01:15:44 ◼   ► it up into a bunch of circles and then they have that like little suction cup

01:15:48 ◼   ► thing coming and picking them off and moving them down. So those two are

01:15:52 ◼   ► like my favorite like just watching them like this the stuff they do it just

01:15:58 ◼   ► amazing I'm like I'm always amazed at the engineering which goes into the I

01:16:02 ◼   ► like I was so obsessed with the retina display MacBook Pro not because it's a

01:16:09 ◼   ► great laptop I just was like look at that engineering like the very idea that

01:16:14 ◼   ► you're going to engineer the whole damn thing so that it looks a certain way and it works a certain way and it

01:16:20 ◼   ► Like nobody does that like, you know, that's that's the problem

01:16:24 ◼   ► I think did you catch the part in the video where they said that like, all right, here's one

01:16:30 ◼   ► iPhone 5 frame comes down in the pipe

01:16:33 ◼   ► let's take a snapshot of it and analyze exactly the dimensions that it got cut and

01:16:39 ◼   ► and you know that this one piece of aluminum is cut and then you go over and there's like here's the camera and they have like

01:16:46 ◼   ► 37 cameras that they've imaged and they pick the one that is the most ideal fit for this particular iPhone

01:16:53 ◼   ► Frame I mean that's crazy. I'm pretty sure they're all the same

01:16:58 ◼   ► I it almost defies belief, you know, but that you know, why not though if it's gonna do it

01:17:03 ◼   ► Why not? I guess there is some variant like they said they're measuring these things down to the micron

01:17:07 ◼   ► And so if there's like a micron or two difference in this one and that one and there's a micron or two difference in

01:17:15 ◼   ► This iPhone 5 frame and this iPhone 5 frame. Why not pick the one that's the

01:17:21 ◼   ► Down to the micron better fit right, but it is obsessive

01:17:25 ◼   ► I mean it really is and it shows that it shows in the result. It's nothing wrong with that

01:17:30 ◼   ► I think the the a lot of people don't know this the sapphire

01:17:34 ◼   ► Glass is what is on the cover on on these on these high-end watches, right?

01:17:39 ◼   ► And that's I think I was just like when I was watching that it's like wow

01:17:43 ◼   ► They really were paying attention like the scratches on on the lenses are a problem and they pick the right solution

01:17:51 ◼   ► I and I do think I think the comparison to like just to sort of bring the show full circle

01:17:55 ◼   ► But to go back to the high-end watches I do kind of feel like that's

01:18:00 ◼   ► The level of craftsmanship that they're bringing to this and we haven't really you and I haven't we should probably bring the show to

01:18:06 ◼   ► Him but we haven't really talked about the iPhone 5 itself. Yeah, we should talk about it

01:18:10 ◼   ► I mean, I want to know what do you think like literally I think like everybody else

01:18:15 ◼   ► I want to know what you think, you know, I I don't know. I guess my first impression is just that it's

01:18:21 ◼   ► Almost startlingly lighter weight

01:18:25 ◼   ► I mean, it really, you know, looking at the numbers in grams just doesn't seem to do justice

01:18:31 ◼   ► to when you put it in your hand and just sort of bounce it up and down, how different it

01:18:34 ◼   ► feels.

01:18:39 ◼   ► Other than that, you know, it's just a nicer, newer, faster iPhone.

01:18:43 ◼   ► And I don't mean that to say that I'm disappointed.

01:18:45 ◼   ► It's, you know, it's like what last year, you know, this is what they do, you know.

01:18:49 ◼   ► I love the internal work which has gone into it.

01:18:53 ◼   ► I love the radio engineering they've done, which is pretty amazing. Kudos to them. The

01:18:59 ◼   ► new chip, A6, is pretty—again, the kind of stuff nobody really cares about.

01:19:04 ◼   ► Yeah, but you know what they're going to care about is when everything is twice as

01:19:06 ◼   ► fast. And I was talking to Anand from AnandTech, and whenever I see him at these events, I

01:19:13 ◼   ► always check with him because he knows these components.

01:19:16 ◼   ► Like, inside out.

01:19:17 ◼   ► Inside out. And he said, yeah, if that's—the description of the chips they're using for

01:19:21 ◼   ► the A6 is, yeah, that should be twice as fast as the 4S, which is huge.

01:19:26 ◼   ► Pretty big deal. Like, such a tiny package.

01:19:28 ◼   ► I've mentioned this before, and it really, you know, it because I do a lot of web

01:19:33 ◼   ► surfing, I read a lot of websites on the phone. It's one of the main things I do. I

01:19:37 ◼   ► would buy an iPhone if the only app it had was Safari. I wouldn't be happy. I would

01:19:41 ◼   ► miss all the other stuff, but I could get by. And it's like, it's easy to forget,

01:19:46 ◼   ► because we're often waiting for the network if you have spotty connection or

01:19:50 ◼   ► whatever. But it's easy to forget just how much of the time it takes when you're

01:19:54 ◼   ► loading a web page is the phone rendering the HTML. Like, it's actually—because our

01:20:00 ◼   ► computers have gotten so fast at it that they don't take much time to render a page.

01:20:05 ◼   ► Whereas the phone still does. Like, when you load the newyorktimes.com, it takes time for

01:20:10 ◼   ► the phone to just render it, let alone the network. So 2x improvement in speed is huge.

01:20:17 ◼   ► I think I want to know what they do next, like what kind of engineering, internal engineering

01:20:23 ◼   ► they do next.

01:20:24 ◼   ► I'm still very obsessed about that.

01:20:26 ◼   ► I think, you know, let's, like before we go, I think we should, we should really take a

01:20:33 ◼   ► minute and applaud the radio engineering which has gone into it.

01:20:37 ◼   ► Like that's just multiple bands across multiple networks.

01:20:43 ◼   ► More Wi-Fi.

01:20:44 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:20:45 ◼   ► think that is yeoman's work.

01:20:47 ◼   ► And it's smaller.

01:20:48 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:20:49 ◼   ► And I think those are the people will get no credit,

01:20:53 ◼   ► or they're never on stage.

01:20:55 ◼   ► Nobody talks about them.

01:20:57 ◼   ► But those people who worked on the networking--

01:21:02 ◼   ► networking is the blood and nerves of any connected device.

01:21:09 ◼   ► And I think that is so important.

01:21:12 ◼   ► I was just blown away by the amount of stuff they've crammed into that little device.

01:21:17 ◼   ► Yeah, and I also wonder, now it supports Bluetooth 4.0, which is, I don't know much about, but

01:21:25 ◼   ► everybody tells me, everything I've seen about it, is that it's really going to be a big

01:21:29 ◼   ► deal because it's so low power.

01:21:32 ◼   ► And you can just leave it on.

01:21:33 ◼   ► You can just leave it on instead of worrying about turning it on, turning it off.

01:21:37 ◼   ► You leave it on, and then other Bluetooth 4.0 things can just push stuff to your phone

01:21:42 ◼   ► or whatever device has it because it's always on, and then you always have it, and you're

01:21:46 ◼   ► not using this sort of—and it's just so low power that you don't have to worry about

01:21:51 ◼   ► leaving it.

01:21:52 ◼   ► But they didn't have any demo.

01:21:53 ◼   ► They have Bluetooth 4.0, but they didn't have anything to demo with it.

01:21:57 ◼   ► So that's what makes me—they wouldn't have put it in if they don't have uses in mind.

01:22:03 ◼   ► I think music is number one, in my opinion.

01:22:05 ◼   ► I think you can have Jawbone, like Jambox.

01:22:10 ◼   ► Like I listen to it all the time,

01:22:13 ◼   ► like when I'm in the bathroom,

01:22:15 ◼   ► turn on my, pipe my music through Bluetooth and it's okay.

01:22:20 ◼   ► But it runs down the phone really fast.

01:22:23 ◼   ► It just is, I have an older phone.

01:22:25 ◼   ► But I think there is that.

01:22:28 ◼   ► There is also, you can do a lot of Bluetooth

01:22:31 ◼   ► to Bluetooth connectivity.

01:22:34 ◼   ► like you can do file transfers, which is important.

01:22:38 ◼   ► Like there's a lot of applications which are gonna come up.

01:22:41 ◼   ► It might actually be, you know,

01:22:44 ◼   ► Bluetooth might actually have its moment

01:22:46 ◼   ► under the sun right now.

01:22:48 ◼   ► It's a technology which is always delivered less

01:22:51 ◼   ► than it should have.

01:22:53 ◼   ► - The other thing that I would point out,

01:22:57 ◼   ► just as one big, like, yeah, in person,

01:23:00 ◼   ► it really, really stands out, is the display.

01:23:03 ◼   ► and that it, to me, instantly looks better than the iPhone 4 4s display in a couple of

01:23:09 ◼   ► regards. First, the integrating the touch sensors into the same layer as the display

01:23:19 ◼   ► absolutely noticeably puts the pixels closer to the surface. And that was the thing I really

01:23:25 ◼   ► focused on two years ago when the iPhone 4 came out, was how much closer to the surface

01:23:30 ◼   ► the pixels were than on the original iPhone and the 3G and the 3GS. I feel like this is

01:23:38 ◼   ► that big of a -- it's as big again a leap towards painting the pixels on the surface.

01:23:43 ◼   ► Like, it's as -- to me, as big a step forward as the retina display, the original one was,

01:23:49 ◼   ► to getting the pixels on the surface, this one is again. I sat there at the table in

01:23:55 ◼   ► the demo area and like held the phone sideways and I'm like it's pretty thin

01:24:00 ◼   ► it's really thin and now I look at my own personal iPhone 4s right here and I

01:24:05 ◼   ► see all this parallax between the the glass and the pixels underneath so let

01:24:10 ◼   ► me ask you a question what's your take on the connector I think that the could

01:24:15 ◼   ► the new connector is long overdue I can't believe that they lasted the old

01:24:19 ◼   ► one lasted as long as it did I think it's ugly and I think it was an Apple

01:24:23 ◼   ► like design and I think that it was a bunch of compromises to that made sense

01:24:29 ◼   ► in 2003 but the it's just it was just ugly I mean it had sharp edges it was

01:24:34 ◼   ► all exposed it makes the the hole in the phone is way too big it's always filled

01:24:40 ◼   ► with dust and it's like real gross in there it just looks weird yeah I just

01:24:44 ◼   ► always thought it was a weird-looking adapter so I think that it's just been

01:24:50 ◼   ► long overdue to be replaced. I mean, compared to the original, like the

01:24:53 ◼   ► original iPod shipped in 2001 with FireWire because it was Mac only and all

01:24:58 ◼   ► Macs had FireWire. FireWire was a really nice port. It was, it had like a shape

01:25:05 ◼   ► that you couldn't put it in wrong and you couldn't guess wrong and it went in

01:25:09 ◼   ► and made like a nice, it was a nice feel and now it was thick and you wouldn't, you

01:25:13 ◼   ► know, none of the modern iPods or iPhones could ever use a FireWire

01:25:16 ◼   ► connector. It's two or three times too thick. But it just was an i... To me, that's an

01:25:21 ◼   ► i-apple-like port firewire. And USB is just a little weirder looking. It's not

01:25:27 ◼   ► as nice. It's not bad. For the PC industry, it's actually a pretty good-looking port.

01:25:31 ◼   ► But I thought even just a USB plug is better looking aesthetically than the

01:25:38 ◼   ► i... than that 30-pin connector. So I'm really just surprised it took them this

01:25:42 ◼   ► long. And the new one, the Lightning port, to me is the epitomized. The epitomized is

01:25:48 ◼   ► what I expect from an Apple custom-designed port, meaning you can put it in upside down.

01:25:53 ◼   ► There is no upside down. You just put it in, and there's nothing sharp. The corners are

01:25:58 ◼   ► rounded off. And it just feels nice when it goes in. It doesn't feel like brittle. Like

01:26:04 ◼   ► it's—the other thing about the 30, the old 30-pin, it was always like metal on metal

01:26:07 ◼   ► when you're putting it in. Never liked it.

01:26:09 ◼   ► So is this like, is it a pre-approved, like a standard connector for other devices too?

01:26:16 ◼   ► No, I don't think so any more than the 30 pin. I think it's every bit as proprietary as the 30 pin connector.

01:26:22 ◼   ► Wasn't there like something like Europe, European Commission wanted them to conform to...

01:26:28 ◼   ► Yeah, I actually don't know how they're getting around that. I think that in Europe there's some kind of law that you have to use like a standard connector,

01:26:36 ◼   ► which more or less means you have to use either USB, micro-USB or mini-USB. I have no idea

01:26:43 ◼   ► how they're getting around that. Maybe by shipping a free adapter. I think maybe that's

01:26:46 ◼   ► the loophole, is that as long as you have an adapter, you comply with the law.

01:26:52 ◼   ► I don't know. I think I'm a little bummed out about all my accessories are going to

01:26:58 ◼   ► be pretty useless now. You have a lot of accessories? See, I don't have a lot of accessories.

01:27:02 ◼   ► I have a lot of stuff. It's just like, really? I mean, god, like, you know, so like, that

01:27:08 ◼   ► would prevent me from buying a new phone. It's just like, oh, I'll have to change this

01:27:13 ◼   ► and that and like, oh my god, I don't want to do that.

01:27:16 ◼   ► So you're not gonna buy it?

01:27:17 ◼   ► Well, I'm not gonna buy like, you know, like, I don't know.

01:27:22 ◼   ► I do think and I really do believe it. I don't think it's BS spin just to get you to buy

01:27:28 ◼   ► adapters and get on board with it. I really do think that they couldn't make that it was

01:27:32 ◼   ► limiting how thin they could make the devices. And maybe they could have made this new iPhone

01:27:40 ◼   ► 5 with the old dock connector, but I don't think there's any way that they could have

01:27:44 ◼   ► made the new iPods, any of them, the Nano or the Touch with the dock. It's just they're

01:27:50 ◼   ► too thin. The new iPod Touch is so thin, there's no way that they could have made it with the

01:27:56 ◼   ► old adapter. I think they could have easily gone the route of micro USB and it would have

01:28:02 ◼   ► have been okay. I mean, you didn't really have to do a lot of things there. I mean,

01:28:06 ◼   ► like, will people buy non-Apple accessories if it has micro-USB? Probably not.

01:28:13 ◼   ► Well, that is a good question. Would they lose something if they had gone with micro-USB?

01:28:19 ◼   ► I think this one might be stronger. I think one of the problems with micro-USB is it's

01:28:22 ◼   ► hard to make a dock. And I've heard from other people who've had phones, because I

01:28:27 ◼   ► speculated—I think it was actually on an old episode of the talk show where I said,

01:28:31 ◼   ► ranting about how ugly the 30-pin adapter is,

01:28:35 ◼   ► and maybe they should go with something like micro-USB.

01:28:38 ◼   ► And somebody said that if you have a phone

01:28:39 ◼   ► that has that port, and you have a dock for it,

01:28:42 ◼   ► it gets bent very easily.

01:28:44 ◼   ► - Okay, I'll give you that.

01:28:47 ◼   ► - So I don't know, but I can't vouch for that,

01:28:49 ◼   ► 'cause I don't have a dock with micro-USB.

01:28:52 ◼   ► - But that was it, that was my one quibble for now.

01:28:55 ◼   ► - Well, I think it was overdue,

01:28:56 ◼   ► and I feel like the longer they waited,

01:28:58 ◼   ► maybe, I still think it would've been better

01:28:59 ◼   ► if they could've moved sooner,

01:29:01 ◼   ► because then there'd be fewer... the longer they waited, the more peripherals that were out there,

01:29:05 ◼   ► the more cars there were with the car kit, you don't need this adapter.

01:29:09 ◼   ► And I don't know, I wonder how many of those adapters people will need,

01:29:16 ◼   ► because the other thing you might need, maybe you could just get by with the cable,

01:29:19 ◼   ► because all you, you know, the cable that comes with the phone has regular USB on one side

01:29:25 ◼   ► and the new port on the other, so for all of your power chargers and stuff like that,

01:29:30 ◼   ► As long as you're plugging in USB, you don't need an adapter.

01:29:33 ◼   ► Right.

01:29:34 ◼   ► You know, I have one observation on the iPhone from a business perspective.

01:29:39 ◼   ► I think from 3GS to-- we went from 2G to 3G, it was an obvious upgrade.

01:29:49 ◼   ► From 3GS to 4, it was an obvious upgrade.

01:29:53 ◼   ► 4S to a 5 is not really that clear an obvious upgrade.

01:29:59 ◼   ► I think Apple may have some work cut out for them.

01:30:02 ◼   ► Well, I've long thought, though, I really think that they design with the two-year contract

01:30:07 ◼   ► in mind, and I feel like they're not really shooting to have a phone.

01:30:11 ◼   ► I do.

01:30:12 ◼   ► I'm an idiot.

01:30:13 ◼   ► I'm a total idiot.

01:30:14 ◼   ► I'm going to buy a new one every year.

01:30:15 ◼   ► I've bought one every year so far.

01:30:16 ◼   ► But I'm not nowhere near a—I'm not even close to being a normal iPhone consumer.

01:30:21 ◼   ► I think for normal ones, they are very, very keenly looking at the two-year contract cycle

01:30:28 ◼   ► and getting people to, you know,

01:30:31 ◼   ► I don't think they expect people

01:30:34 ◼   ► with an iPhone 4S to upgrade.

01:30:35 ◼   ► Just like, I don't think they've ever expected people

01:30:38 ◼   ► with last year's phone to get the new one.

01:30:40 ◼   ► I really don't.

01:30:41 ◼   ► - Right.

01:30:42 ◼   ► Well, I think that would be,

01:30:44 ◼   ► still, I do think that would be something to watch for,

01:30:46 ◼   ► like over the next couple of months.

01:30:48 ◼   ► The most interesting news, in my opinion,

01:30:51 ◼   ► of the entire day, the free iPhone 4.

01:30:54 ◼   ► It looks like 4S.

01:30:57 ◼   ► - Right.

01:30:58 ◼   ► as all your friends have a, you know,

01:31:01 ◼   ► you will never feel like--

01:31:02 ◼   ► - Right.

01:31:03 ◼   ► - Like lesser person because you have an iPhone 4.

01:31:06 ◼   ► - Right, in terms of the iPhone as a status item.

01:31:08 ◼   ► - Guess what, who, it basically is the worst news possible

01:31:12 ◼   ► for Nokia, Windows 8 ecosystem,

01:31:16 ◼   ► and the Blackberry ecosystem.

01:31:20 ◼   ► I'm not so sure how it impacts the Android,

01:31:23 ◼   ► but the two weakest players should be really worried

01:31:26 ◼   ► about the free iPhone 4?

01:31:28 ◼   ► Yeah, and I still wonder how many of those they sell.

01:31:31 ◼   ► And I know that the best-selling model is the highest one.

01:31:34 ◼   ► And the best-selling model for the next 12 years

01:31:36 ◼   ► assuredly is going to be the iPhone 5,

01:31:39 ◼   ► even though it's more expensive.

01:31:40 ◼   ► But I do think that those free phones are-- I think

01:31:45 ◼   ► they're definitely important.

01:31:46 ◼   ► And I still think a lot of people-- it's a lot of times

01:31:49 ◼   ► people maybe even go into the store thinking

01:31:50 ◼   ► that's what they're going to get.

01:31:51 ◼   ► You know, I'm going to get that free iPhone 4.

01:31:53 ◼   ► And then they get talked into a $99 upgrade to the 4S.

01:31:57 ◼   ► Look at all these MVNOs we have out there.

01:32:00 ◼   ► Sprint has a bunch of them.

01:32:02 ◼   ► There is prepaid contracts.

01:32:05 ◼   ► I mean, iPhone 4 on prepaid contract for two years.

01:32:08 ◼   ► Well, and the other big thing with the iPhone 4 taking over

01:32:12 ◼   ► as the free one is that now they've

01:32:16 ◼   ► got it at Verizon and Sprint.

01:32:18 ◼   ► Because the 3GS was only GSM.

01:32:21 ◼   ► So in the US, it was only at AT&T. Now they've got one at all three of the major carriers.

01:32:27 ◼   ► And I think that's a huge factor.

01:32:29 ◼   ► So now you can go into a Verizon store and get a free iPhone.

01:32:32 ◼   ► I think that is probably the quiet earthquake that was unleashed in the market.

01:32:40 ◼   ► That would be fun to see what that does.

01:32:42 ◼   ► And I also think that it does, it tightens up, I mean, and 3GS served Apple very well.

01:32:48 ◼   ► I mean, it's, you know, it's the first iPhone that they did the thing where they keep it around year after year after year.

01:32:54 ◼   ► Who knows how many gazillions of them they had, but it really was long in the tooth.

01:33:00 ◼   ► Didn't have a retina display, and it didn't look like an iPhone. Like, I feel like this sort of,

01:33:04 ◼   ► this form factor, this

01:33:07 ◼   ► rectangles and sort of straight edges look,

01:33:10 ◼   ► sort of has become the iPhone brand. And now all iPhones that you can buy today have that same visual brand.

01:33:17 ◼   ► Like it doesn't need a logo on the front. There's no Apple logo on the front.

01:33:21 ◼   ► It doesn't say iPhone on the front because the phone itself is the representation of the brand.

01:33:26 ◼   ► Right. Yeah, it'll be fun to see how that does.

01:33:30 ◼   ► You know, there's a lot of second-tier carriers who would make a lot of money off that thing.

01:33:36 ◼   ► Just wait and see. Like, all these regional carriers, they will sell a ton of those.

01:33:42 ◼   ► I'm pretty excited to see the outcome of that move.

01:33:46 ◼   ► So the other the other change too, and you were praising their antenna design, you know across the board

01:33:52 ◼   ► But now they've gotten away from the external antenna design where now the X side the outside is still metal, but it's a

01:33:58 ◼   ► It's all just unibody. It's all just there for the frame

01:34:01 ◼   ► Which means there's no longer any kind of

01:34:06 ◼   ► Need for a bumper or a case for that and 10, you know the whole antenna gate

01:34:11 ◼   ► attenuation issue

01:34:13 ◼   ► So Apple isn't selling bumpers anymore

01:34:15 ◼   ► are the bumpers are maybe they're still selling them for the older ones but

01:34:19 ◼   ► there's no bumpers for this phone no this was I I have no idea what they're

01:34:24 ◼   ► selling for this one I'm gonna be waking up at like midnight on Friday and put in

01:34:31 ◼   ► my order in like everybody else so I have no clue till then you know the

01:34:37 ◼   ► The other thing which is interesting about this event was, I just still think that the

01:34:49 ◼   ► end-to-end unification of the production and the design language and manufacturing processes

01:34:56 ◼   ► is going to drive down the cost of doing business for this company.

01:35:01 ◼   ► I think that's the main thing.

01:35:03 ◼   ► I think it's the key part of their insane, compared to everybody else, profit margins,

01:35:08 ◼   ► is the way that they get these sort of... spend a ton of money to make the first one,

01:35:18 ◼   ► but then make so many of them that it gets cheap.

01:35:22 ◼   ► And another thing, one other... I keep thinking of other things from my notes here, but another

01:35:25 ◼   ► thing, this is the first time this year that the iPod Touch, the new iPod Touch, has the

01:35:31 ◼   ► exact same display as the new phone. So like the fourth generation iPod Touch had a retina

01:35:39 ◼   ► display and it had the exact same size and pixel density as the iPhone 4 and 4S. But

01:35:45 ◼   ► it wasn't the same display. Anybody who's ever looked at an iPod Touch and an iPhone

01:35:49 ◼   ► 4 or 4S side by side knows the colors are a little bit more washed out. Just isn't quite

01:35:53 ◼   ► as nice. I double checked with the PR at the hands-on area. What JAWS React said on stage

01:35:59 ◼   ► which was exactly true, it's the exact same display.

01:36:03 ◼   ► And it's surely more expensive,

01:36:05 ◼   ► and I think that's why the starting prices

01:36:07 ◼   ► on those new iPod Touches are higher,

01:36:09 ◼   ► that they don't have one of those at 199.

01:36:11 ◼   ► But there's gotta be a huge efficiency there

01:36:15 ◼   ► where they're only making one four-inch display.

01:36:19 ◼   ► And no matter how many millions of each device they sell,

01:36:23 ◼   ► it's one display, and they just keep cranking them out.

01:36:27 ◼   ► - And they have two chips, A5 and A6.

01:36:29 ◼   ► A6 at the top, and low end is all A5.

01:36:33 ◼   ► Like they're using up whatever is,

01:36:36 ◼   ► and like next year everything will be A6.

01:36:38 ◼   ► It's like exactly what Intel used to do, right?

01:36:43 ◼   ► Like charge a lot of money for the Pentium 3s

01:36:46 ◼   ► and Pentium 4s, and the Pentium Celeron

01:36:49 ◼   ► was selling cheaply.

01:36:51 ◼   ► - But then two years later you used that same technology

01:36:54 ◼   ► that was the high end.

01:36:56 ◼   ► - But to do something else.

01:36:57 ◼   ► - Now you're making it as the low end,

01:36:58 ◼   ► but you can make it, it's almost like you can make it

01:37:01 ◼   ► with your eyes closed.

01:37:02 ◼   ► - Right, they got Moore's Law working for them.

01:37:04 ◼   ► - Om, thank you for being here.

01:37:06 ◼   ► - John, honored to be on your podcast, it's a great show.

01:37:09 ◼   ► I listen to it every week and thrill of my life to be here.

01:37:14 ◼   ► - I wish I could do this every week

01:37:16 ◼   ► and have my guest here in person.

01:37:17 ◼   ► I feel like this was much more personable.

01:37:19 ◼   ► I hope it sounds like that when you're listening to the show.

01:37:23 ◼   ► It's way better than doing it over Skype.

01:37:26 ◼   ► - Absolutely, and see you in San Francisco relatively soon.

01:37:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think so.

01:37:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, take care. - I think so.

01:37:33 ◼   ► All right. - Thanks.