00:00:18 ◼ ► to be here. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It's all messed up now. Everything is backwards.
00:00:23 ◼ ► What a hardship it is to have too much vacation, to have my regular life feeling vacation.
00:00:40 ◼ ► I could make some sort of math joke about what the sum total of our vaccination status is.
00:00:47 ◼ ► It's killing me. It's killing me. Everybody I know is vaccinated. Everywhere I look, vaccinated,
00:00:59 ◼ ► I would go anywhere. All of my searches are like, "What distance for in your house are you
00:01:05 ◼ ► Doesn't matter. Exactly. My problem is I'm not eligible to be vaccinated until the 19th. But,
00:01:10 ◼ ► but you know, we have this technology where you can like, say, buy tickets to a concert that
00:01:15 ◼ ► happens next month. I don't know how we can do that. But it's impossible to make a reservation
00:01:21 ◼ ► to get vaccinated, you know, after April 19th, which is when I become eligible, right? Just let
00:01:29 ◼ ► For all of you out there who are maybe on the fence, I don't honestly, I don't expect a lot
00:01:35 ◼ ► of our audience is on the fence. But there are a lot of people out there who are. And I really want
00:01:41 ◼ ► to encourage everyone. I know it isn't available everywhere yet, not even close. And I know it
00:01:47 ◼ ► isn't available to all people in the places where it is available, you know, not even close.
00:01:51 ◼ ► I became eligible because in New York, they started allowing anybody over age 30. And I'm,
00:01:58 ◼ ► as you know, not 50, but well over age 30. And so I just wanted to, you know, make a plea to
00:02:08 ◼ ► our listeners, if and when you get the opportunity to get vaccinated, please do. Many of you out
00:02:15 ◼ ► there are probably on the same page and think, of course, I'm going to get it as soon as I possibly
00:02:19 ◼ ► can. Many people aren't though. And we don't get a lot of chances as a society to like really
00:02:26 ◼ ► step up and like, serve the world in some big way. You know, most of us, my age or your age,
00:02:37 ◼ ► have not been alive during a military draft. Certainly not, you know, the big world wars.
00:02:44 ◼ ► This is something that like, we, as a society, I think we are, we are really given a huge
00:02:51 ◼ ► opportunity and duty here to like, help the world out, help us get out of this pandemic,
00:02:56 ◼ ► help literally save people's lives by stopping this virus. And the way we do that is widespread
00:03:03 ◼ ► vaccination. And so for you to go get it as soon as you're able and eligible to, for those of you
00:03:10 ◼ ► who are able to, because that's an important thing here, not everyone's able to. So for those of you
00:03:15 ◼ ► who are able to get vaccinated safely with whatever health criteria you have, it's kind of up to us
00:03:27 ◼ ► whether it's health conditions or eligibility or whatever else, or if they're children,
00:03:30 ◼ ► which is a big thing right now, those of us who can get vaccinated, I think have a duty
00:03:35 ◼ ► to everyone else who can't to build up the herd immunity to finally stop this terrible thing. And
00:03:41 ◼ ► we were lucky. We were able to schedule it on the way we were coming back home from a trip. And
00:03:49 ◼ ► so therefore we had Adam with us. We had our kid with us. And so Tiff and I both got appointments
00:03:55 ◼ ► back to back and we brought him in with us and we were able to like show him like, look, this,
00:04:00 ◼ ► like we're making history here. And he understood. He understood very well. Like, you know, we
00:04:03 ◼ ► explained what was going on and why this was important. And we're like, look, this is like,
00:04:06 ◼ ► all these people here, they're all doing this, you know, for, to help out the world and, you know,
00:04:11 ◼ ► doing our duty for society. And it was amazingly run. It was super well done, like very big kudos
00:04:18 ◼ ► to the government and, you know, the state and whoever else was involved in making this happen,
00:04:22 ◼ ► because it was very well run. It was very easy. We were in and out in under 45 minutes. And most
00:04:28 ◼ ► of that time was walking through mostly empty lines. Like, you know, you go through the little
00:04:33 ◼ ► zigzag things that they set up, but like there's nobody in it. You just have to walk through it.
00:04:36 ◼ ► And you know, you walk through, you reach somebody at a booth, you enter their questions,
00:04:40 ◼ ► you show them your paper or whatever, and then they, they go down the hall, go to the next booth,
00:04:44 ◼ ► you know, and you go through two or three of those, you get shot. It doesn't hurt much. It's,
00:04:49 ◼ ► I would say that I got the Pfizer vaccine, so to Tiff, and, and I would say it hurt less than
00:04:55 ◼ ► an allergy shot. I've had many, many allergy shots in my life. So I, I've been stabbed a lot.
00:05:04 ◼ ► but that's it. You know, I know, I know the second one frequently gives people like fevers and stuff,
00:05:09 ◼ ► but that's, you know, I'm willing to do that because we need this. The world needs this.
00:05:17 ◼ ► the sooner this comes to an end, please, everyone out there, as soon as you're able to please
00:05:23 ◼ ► get the vaccine. If you are in any position to help other people get it, who might need help
00:05:28 ◼ ► or convincing, please do that as well. Parents, grandparents, you know, any, anybody who like might
00:05:33 ◼ ► need help getting an appointment, locking one in, like with the technology side of things,
00:05:36 ◼ ► please get this done. Please, everyone. This is so important. This is like one of the most important
00:05:42 ◼ ► things that anybody in my generation has ever been called to do. Please, everyone go out there and do
00:05:46 ◼ ► it. Yeah. And you're right about the tech nerd angle. Like I'm, I'm doing what I'm so used to
00:05:50 ◼ ► doing for so much stupider reasons, like trying to get a PlayStation five or trying to get a
00:05:55 ◼ ► DMI back in the day, having a million web browser windows open with a million tabs and furiously
00:06:00 ◼ ► reloading and using all my web developer skills to find out when a website is broken and how I can,
00:06:06 ◼ ► you know, edit the DOM to get through something that's preventing me from putting today's date
00:06:10 ◼ ► in the date picker. Cause they don't understand that you may, you know, like, Oh, it's just anyway,
00:06:14 ◼ ► use your technology skills to help other people. Cause just because someone wants to get vaccinated
00:06:20 ◼ ► doesn't mean they're going to be successful. Especially if your state is a giant cluster
00:06:24 ◼ ► like Massachusetts where everyone, I mean, they're all like this in the U S where it's like, Oh,
00:06:29 ◼ ► everyone just do your own thing. Community center, make your own website for letting people sign up
00:06:33 ◼ ► for vaccines. You know how to make a website, don't you? Uh, no, nevermind. You got to do anyway.
00:06:36 ◼ ► And CVS has their own website and Walmart has their own website and Massachusetts state has
00:06:40 ◼ ► its own websites for the mass vaccination sites. And it's all a free for all on every one of these
00:06:44 ◼ ► websites is terrible. So please use your technology skills to help the members of your family
00:06:49 ◼ ► navigate this, make appointments for them if you can. Right. Like if you know people who are
00:06:53 ◼ ► eligible before you just make the appointment for them and tell them I made your appointment
00:06:57 ◼ ► and I'm going to drive you to it and you're going. Yeah. You're like, cause you don't have to like,
00:07:01 ◼ ► they don't check ID to make the appointment on the website and you can always cancel it.
00:07:04 ◼ ► If they really can't make it, you can always cancel it. So like, yeah, that's a good idea. Just
00:07:08 ◼ ► get, get people to get yourself in there and get everyone else that you might be able to help or
00:07:13 ◼ ► influence who is able to do this. Because again, like there's a lot of people out there who are
00:07:17 ◼ ► not able to get this. We owe it to them with those of us who can to build the herd immunity
00:07:30 ◼ ► that the right answer, unless you have some health reason, like, like I know some people's doctors
00:07:34 ◼ ► are telling them for their particular needs to wait for like the Johnson and Johnson one,
00:07:38 ◼ ► because it works. You know, it's not the mRNA based one. It's a little bit gentler on some systems.
00:07:41 ◼ ► If your doctor says, get a particular one, fine. If you don't have such direction from anybody and
00:07:46 ◼ ► you don't have any particular reason, get the first one you can get. That's because the more
00:07:51 ◼ ► people getting the vaccine, it doesn't matter which one, just get the first one you can get.
00:08:00 ◼ ► but I recognize that this conversation probably is in a way uniquely American because everything
00:08:06 ◼ ► I've understood from those who are not in America is that vaccinations are extremely hard to come
00:08:11 ◼ ► by. Like they're hard to come by here. Don't get me wrong. Talk to John. They're extremely hard to
00:08:16 ◼ ► come by outside of America. And obviously there are other mechanisms by which one could defeat
00:08:22 ◼ ► this virus. Look at New Zealand, but for Americans in particular, I cannot echo what John and
00:08:28 ◼ ► particularly Marco have said enough. If you have the opportunity, which supposedly in the next week
00:08:33 ◼ ► or two, every adult American will have the opportunity. Please do everything in your power
00:08:39 ◼ ► to get whatever vaccine you're offered. Just like Marco said, as it so happens, I got my first
00:08:44 ◼ ► Moderna shot like a week and a half ago, two weeks ago. I had a sore arm for a day or two,
00:08:50 ◼ ► and then that was it. I'm expecting to be positively run over the day after I get my next
00:08:54 ◼ ► one. And you know what? If that's the price I have to pay in order to help my family stay safe and
00:08:59 ◼ ► others stay safe, then so be it. And you can bet your bottom before we get too many emails
00:09:03 ◼ ► that I'm going to still mask up. I'm going to still be afraid of the indoors. I'm still going
00:09:09 ◼ ► to be afraid of other people because I, like Marco said, I have children that can't get vaccinated.
00:09:14 ◼ ► Yet. And so for me, even though it makes me feel immeasurably better that I can go into a building,
00:09:22 ◼ ► if necessary, even like a doctor's office and not stress for two weeks following about what I just
00:09:28 ◼ ► did. It's still, you know, this doesn't end for those of us with small children. And so please do
00:09:34 ◼ ► your part wherever you are. Be that masking and distancing, be that vaccinating, whatever it is,
00:09:40 ◼ ► please do your part. And you know, I don't view myself as a anti-science kind of person,
00:09:45 ◼ ► but especially in the prior administration, I was very nervous about them just ramming approvals for
00:09:53 ◼ ► all this through and, you know, and not really taking a step to, or taking a minute to think
00:09:57 ◼ ► about like, is this a safe, does this work, et cetera. And there's been a couple of jokey videos
00:10:03 ◼ ► about how the vaccine works, particularly the mRNA based ones, which I think is not Johnson and
00:10:09 ◼ ► Johnson, but Johnson and Johnson uses a similar, but yet different approach. But the two mRNA based
00:10:16 ◼ ► ones, there's a very popular TikTok video about four cans that we'll put in the show notes. That's
00:10:21 ◼ ► like a literally a minute long and it's great. But for our audience, if you have not read reverse
00:10:27 ◼ ► engineering, the bioNTech/Pfizer SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, which we'll put in the show notes,
00:10:32 ◼ ► it is a deep dive in the actual, oh God, Aaron's going to be so mad at me as a former bio teacher.
00:10:37 ◼ ► What are ACT and G called? It's the things that are DNA are made of and MRI. Yeah, exactly. I'm
00:10:42 ◼ ► so sorry, Aaron. I'm so sorry. She doesn't listen to this. It's so good. This article is so good.
00:10:46 ◼ ► It is very long, but I cannot speak highly enough. Like once I read this, I felt like, okay, no, no,
00:10:54 ◼ ► no, this makes sense. I'm in sign me up. I'm ready. Just tell me where I'm ready. And if you
00:10:58 ◼ ► listen to this podcast, I think you can get through that. Put that. Absolutely. Absolutely.
00:11:03 ◼ ► I think if this podcast is not too long or nerdy for you, I'm pretty sure you can read blog post.
00:11:08 ◼ ► Strongly agree there. Strongly agree there. But, you know, I apologize for rubbing this in
00:11:14 ◼ ► Jon's face, but I know your, your day is coming soon. The amount of relief I felt even after the
00:11:20 ◼ ► first shot, like I don't know how to verbalize how incredibly relieving and how genuinely my
00:11:29 ◼ ► stress level and I mean, I'm extremely privileged. I'm a, I was born white and a dude, you know, I,
00:11:35 ◼ ► I haven't had a particularly hard life by any reasonable measure. And so perhaps I'm just a
00:11:40 ◼ ► big whiner cause I'm not used to having latent stress in my life 24 seven. But I tell you what,
00:11:44 ◼ ► for the last year, yeah, I've been pretty stressed. So to have, to have even just the first dose,
00:11:50 ◼ ► just in, in my arm just gave me immense amount of relief. And Jon, I say with no reservations that
00:11:57 ◼ ► I'm incredibly excited for you to get yours. I am incredibly excited that certainly the next time
00:12:03 ◼ ► the three of us see each other, I don't see any reason why we wouldn't be able to hug it out,
00:12:07 ◼ ► which will be very disappointing for Jon and mildly disappointing for Marco, but I will be
00:12:11 ◼ ► extremely happy for it. So, um, yes, please. I'm not against hugs. What is he trying to say? I'm
00:12:15 ◼ ► anti-hug. This is, this is libelous. Libels written, slanderous. Slanderous. There you go.
00:12:23 ◼ ► Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, it's wrong is what it is. But, uh, please, please do what you can to help
00:12:29 ◼ ► everyone out, especially those close to you. John, how are you going to replace your router
00:12:33 ◼ ► with a switch? I don't even remember you saying this. I must, I would have called you on this
00:12:36 ◼ ► had I realized that's what you said. So can you explain the foible here? Yeah. I want to talk
00:12:40 ◼ ► about my network stuff. I mean, it was implicit. If you, there was circumstantial evidence to
00:12:47 ◼ ► surmise this, but a lot of people were confused because I said, I'm getting rid of my airport
00:12:51 ◼ ► extreme, which I was using as my router. And then I talked about how I need to buy an unmanaged
00:12:55 ◼ ► switch because the router had like four plugs in the back of it. And where do I plug all that stuff
00:13:00 ◼ ► in? I don't have an ethernet ports. And people were like, well, how can you replace a router
00:13:03 ◼ ► with an unmanaged switch? Uh, the, the, the little bit that you needed to catch was that I do have
00:13:10 ◼ ► an Eero that I'm using and the Eero can act as a router, of course, right? I wasn't using it as
00:13:17 ◼ ► a router. I was just using it in bridge mode where it was just doing all the wifi. And then my
00:13:21 ◼ ► airport extreme was the router, but of course the Eero can do all of that. Uh, and does do all of
00:13:26 ◼ ► that by default out of the box. So when I got rid of my airport extreme and replaced it with an
00:13:31 ◼ ► unmanaged switch, I let my router, uh, my Eero be the router. And to that end, there's a whole big
00:13:37 ◼ ► thing that I go, I complained about a little mini tech podcast portion of, uh, I think it's in the
00:13:42 ◼ ► member, the members only version of rectives, uh, where everything went great in my network upgrade,
00:13:47 ◼ ► except my one smart outlet, a homekit smart outlet just is now invisible. So my network,
00:13:57 ◼ ► it was like, your thing is offline. I removed the device and now I can't add it. I thought the
00:14:02 ◼ ► hardware was dead. So I bought another one, Marco style. Um, Oh, it's my style to replace dead
00:14:08 ◼ ► hardware. Really? Like that's, that's on me. Well, I didn't know it was dead. All I knew is I
00:14:13 ◼ ► couldn't get it to work. I'm like, you know what? I'm not a home kid expert. Maybe the hardware is
00:14:18 ◼ ► dead. I have no way to know if the hardware is dead because I can't, I literally can't see it
00:14:22 ◼ ► or connected in any way. I can plug it into the wall and see if the lights turn on and no smoke
00:14:25 ◼ ► is coming out. But beyond that, maybe it's just dead. So I bought another identical one, exactly
00:14:30 ◼ ► the same problem. So I'm like, okay, so now I start now I'm actually engaged in support emails
00:14:34 ◼ ► with the various companies. And I leave that one as a kicker for the end. Cause I say, here's what
00:14:38 ◼ ► I did. I list the 800 things that I did for troubleshooting at the very end. They go, Oh yeah.
00:14:43 ◼ ► And I bought a brand new one and it does the same thing. Cause you know, they're going to say, Oh,
00:14:46 ◼ ► maybe your hardware is broken. It's not our fault. You're going to say it's not awful. I think your
00:14:50 ◼ ► smart outlet is dead. It's like, no, that was the problem. Anyway, I will give updates. Not if I
00:14:55 ◼ ► ever figure it out, but I also want to give updates on, um, what did I get from my unmanaged switch
00:15:01 ◼ ► again, context clues in the last episode. Uh, I had already ordered, I think I mentioned that
00:15:05 ◼ ► I had already ordered the unmanaged switch to replace it last episode. Uh, so everyone who
00:15:10 ◼ ► was sending me suggestions, thank you for the suggestions, but it was kind of too late cause
00:15:13 ◼ ► I had already ordered, uh, uh, the replacement. And so that came and I'm using it. Um, and it's
00:15:20 ◼ ► working out pretty good. Uh, the one I ordered, we'll put a link in the show notes is from trend
00:15:25 ◼ ► net, uh, which is a brand I had not used before. I love how you pronounce that as if it's the first
00:15:30 ◼ ► time you've ever seen this word. Meanwhile, like they've been making inexpensive networking gear
00:15:33 ◼ ► for a very long time, like over a decade. I think, well, I was trying to pronounce the all caps trend
00:15:39 ◼ ► part. It's like trend net. Have you heard of this company called net gear, TP link? Yeah. I mean,
00:15:47 ◼ ► I think it's weird that the trend is an all caps and net is lowercase. So anyway, it's an eight
00:15:52 ◼ ► port switch. It's got eight ports in the back of it. It's got the power connector on the back of
00:15:56 ◼ ► it. It's got lights in the front of it. The case is made of metal, which I mean, in the grand
00:16:00 ◼ ► scheme of things probably doesn't matter, but like, you know, maybe it helps with dissipation,
00:16:04 ◼ ► who knows? Uh, and it's black and it's rectangular, you know, and it has little rubber feet that go
00:16:11 ◼ ► on the bottom of it. Um, so there you go. That worked fine for me. The only thing I, I, uh,
00:16:16 ◼ ► the only mistake I made is this is, this is sitting in the same place as my airport extreme was
00:16:21 ◼ ► and the airport extreme in typical Apple fashion is this white monolith has one tiny pinprick light
00:16:27 ◼ ► that is green when it's working and orange when it's like trying to connect and it blinks during
00:16:32 ◼ ► the connection. But otherwise it's basically a constant pinprick of green light. I wanted lights
00:16:37 ◼ ► in the front of this thing so you can look at it and see, you know, which link is having problems
00:16:41 ◼ ► or is traffic flowing or whatever. But it didn't really think through the idea that there would be
00:16:46 ◼ ► eight lights on front of this blinking very quickly, almost all the time. And that was a
00:16:51 ◼ ► bit much to me, but it's nothing that a black piece of gaff tape couldn't solve. So I bought
00:16:58 ◼ ► this thing with lights in the front of it and I put a piece of black tape over the front. It's just
00:17:01 ◼ ► fine. Um, but anyway, I'm happy with it. That part worked out. My entire network converted with only
00:17:07 ◼ ► minimal downtime. I was actually pretty impressed with the Eero router software stuff cause I was,
00:17:13 ◼ ► I had everything all customized in the airport extreme and I basically exported that configuration
00:17:18 ◼ ► and then manually re-entered it in the Eero one and it took me a little while to find them, but all
00:17:21 ◼ ► the options were there. Every one of the devices that had reserved IPs, I gave them all the exactly
00:17:26 ◼ ► the same IPs. I put in all the Mac addresses and you know, like it was just completely seamless
00:17:32 ◼ ► except for the home kit disaster. Um, and I'm still working on that. So there's one device that
00:17:37 ◼ ► didn't make the conversion, but as far as the rest of the family is concerned, this is a non-event.
00:17:40 ◼ ► And I had many, many team meetings since then and have had no drops, but again, they happen like
00:17:45 ◼ ► once a month. So stay tuned on this same topic. I had briefly breezed by, uh, the Ubiquiti, uh,
00:17:51 ◼ ► flex mini switch that I've, I bought like the four pack because I had said that you had to manage
00:17:58 ◼ ► them under Ubiquiti network environment to have them work. And we've heard from a number of
00:18:03 ◼ ► listeners. Thank you. Uh, that apparently that's wrong. Apparently if you just plug in the Ubiquiti
00:18:08 ◼ ► flex mini switch, it will work unmanaged by default. So you don't have to actually be running
00:18:13 ◼ ► a Ubiquiti network to use it. So that's nice, but one, one caveat to that. So yes, it will work
00:18:18 ◼ ► unmanaged, but one person said, you know, if you look on your network with like, you know,
00:18:23 ◼ ► a network snoop or whatever, you will see the Ubiquiti flex mini switch mournfully calling out
00:18:28 ◼ ► doing a DNS resolution to try to find the Ubiquiti management thing every once in a while. So it's
00:18:35 ◼ ► not happy being an unmanaged switch. Like at the very least it will do a periodic DNS query and
00:18:40 ◼ ► attempt to connect to a host thing. That's not going to end up being there. So I, I mean,
00:18:46 ◼ ► I'm sure it works fine as an unmanaged switch, like no big deal, but I would prefer my unmanaged
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00:20:46 ◼ ► for yourself with hover. I also wanted to do some quick follow up on something I was corrected on
00:20:54 ◼ ► a couple of weeks ago, but I just kept forgetting to correct it here. Sorry. That when I was talking
00:21:00 ◼ ► about how, how good the home pod actually was when you're in the Apple ecosystem, I had mentioned the
00:21:05 ◼ ► integration with control center and how nice it is that like when you play something on a home pod,
00:21:10 ◼ ► other people in the house with iPhones and iPads can just access that device from their devices in
00:21:17 ◼ ► control center and can start controlling it and can, you know, open it up in their music app and
00:21:22 ◼ ► can enqueue things or change the controls or see what's playing and all that other stuff.
00:21:27 ◼ ► And I had mentioned that this was a feature of AirPlay 2. It's not. This is actually two
00:21:33 ◼ ► different Apple technologies that I'm conflating here. Handoff is what's happening here when you're
00:21:38 ◼ ► using a home pod. So if I, using the music app, if I go to the AirPlay menu and fire that over to
00:21:44 ◼ ► a home pod, it will actually use Handoff, not AirPlay 2, to transfer that session to the home
00:21:52 ◼ ► pod. And what that means is instead of my phone then streaming the music bit by bit to the home
00:21:57 ◼ ► pod for it to play, it's actually just telling the home pod, play music, play this track ID,
00:22:02 ◼ ► starting at this timestamp, go. And then after that point, my phone is not really involved.
00:22:07 ◼ ► It can like retake over the session. And this is, you know, this is the handoff feature that,
00:22:11 ◼ ► that, you know, Apple has whole APIs for this. They even usually tend to work most of the time.
00:22:16 ◼ ► They definitely never cause any, you know, Bluetooth mouse dropouts or anything like that.
00:22:19 ◼ ► And there definitely wasn't a bug in Catalina that made me have to disable it for all of Overcast.
00:22:24 ◼ ► But anyway, that this is Handoff and this only works with home pods, not other AirPlay 2 devices.
00:22:29 ◼ ► So this big benefit, I was saying AirPlay 2 is a great ecosystem to get into because of
00:22:34 ◼ ► things like this, this, that actual benefit where, where the home pod takes over the playback session
00:22:40 ◼ ► completely for itself. And then that phone is no longer involved or necessary for it to continue.
00:22:44 ◼ ► That only works when you are using the Apple music app with a home pod. If you stream with
00:22:52 ◼ ► the music app to any other AirPlay devices, AirPlay 1 or 2 that don't support that, like, you know,
00:22:57 ◼ ► my Sonos home theater gear and stuff like that, the phone that initiated it is still doing the
00:23:03 ◼ ► streaming. Other people can't control it. I think they can like play pause, but that's about it.
00:23:07 ◼ ► They can't like, you know, pick new tracks or rearrange things or change the play mode or seek
00:23:12 ◼ ► within the track you picked or anything like that. That's your phone doing that stream the whole time.
00:23:16 ◼ ► If you use AirPlay 2 from an app that the home pod does not natively support Handoff for,
00:23:22 ◼ ► like Overcast still work, work that same way as well, where they're doing the constant streaming.
00:23:26 ◼ ► If you do the music app to a non home pod AirPlay 2 speaker, then it does that same kind of streaming
00:23:34 ◼ ► as well. It's not doing Handoff. So Handoff is its own thing when you, when you're using the music app
00:23:39 ◼ ► with home pods and that provides that awesome control center integration for everyone in the
00:23:42 ◼ ► house. And you only get a very small subset of that power when you're using different apps or
00:23:49 ◼ ► non home pod AirPlay 2 speakers. So obvious. I don't know why we all didn't figure that out.
00:23:54 ◼ ► I find, I find this whole ecosystem very confusing. And the fact that you, you also were confused by
00:23:58 ◼ ► it makes me feel a little bit better. Yeah. Oh, also a one mother complicating factor is that
00:24:03 ◼ ► Handoff is kind of buggy and, and this works to varying degrees of success with different versions
00:24:11 ◼ ► of iOS, different versions of the home pod software, different home pods, and even just
00:24:17 ◼ ► like different times in the same network with the same version of everything. Um, you know,
00:24:22 ◼ ► if you get into a bad state where this happens with home kit stuff too, if you get into a bad
00:24:27 ◼ ► state where like sometimes your home networking or your home kit stuff or your Handoff stuff just
00:24:33 ◼ ► won't work until you like unplug your home pod and plug it back in like that happens sometimes with
00:24:37 ◼ ► this. And so actually if you want things to work the exact same way, every single time, you actually
00:24:43 ◼ ► don't want the music app with home pod to perform Handoff because it doesn't work all the time,
00:24:48 ◼ ► but it works most of the time. And when it does work, it's very nice. 80% of the time it works
00:24:53 ◼ ► every time. That's a reference, John. Uh, Zach wrote in to tell us about a reason why Apple may
00:25:01 ◼ ► have announced WWDC in March for a virtual event in June. And Zach writes the student challenge
00:25:07 ◼ ► students have until April 18th to submit a project. And then Apple has until June one to review and
00:25:11 ◼ ► grade them all student winners, get dev program memberships and thus access to the labs and thought
00:25:16 ◼ ► about that. This message made me think about the fact that my son could enter this now. I think
00:25:22 ◼ ► high school students, cause he's, he's taking, actually taking iOS development. You know,
00:25:27 ◼ ► he's taken a bunch of programming courses and done a little bit of dabbling wherever. Now he's taking
00:25:31 ◼ ► a straight up iOS development class in high school, which is pretty cool. Um, I'm not sure
00:25:36 ◼ ► he's particularly interested in it and or whatever, but it just, it just occurred to me that I, you
00:25:40 ◼ ► know, I now have a potential contestant for this. Come on down. But he's just, he's doing school
00:25:46 ◼ ► projects though. I guess he can't probably turn in your school project. He's got enough on his plate
00:25:49 ◼ ► to deal with. I don't think this should be his top priority, but cool. Indeed. Uh, an anonymous
00:25:55 ◼ ► Apple employee writes that Apple uses WebEx for all internal video conferencing. When all the
00:26:03 ◼ ► internal interviews are conducted this way. And as John said, it is the bottom of the barrel
00:26:10 ◼ ► The worst part about WebEx is it's like, you know, people complain like Chrome is such a
00:26:15 ◼ ► memory hog and you just shoot a memory hog, a battery hog, and you should use Safari because
00:26:18 ◼ ► it's nicer on your battery. WebEx is like Chrome times 10 is the most battery draining application
00:26:32 ◼ ► And then they make all their employees run WebEx. It's like, what's the point? You're just killing
00:26:35 ◼ ► all their batteries. Carlos Lopez Ferreira writes that Microsoft teams killing the network, many
00:26:40 ◼ ► small, perhaps UDP packets can more easily kill the router than fewer large packets. Typical big
00:26:45 ◼ ► downloads that John had mentioned. This is because the high volume of packet headers that the router
00:26:49 ◼ ► or network equipment has to process might this explain the behavior that John is observing on
00:26:52 ◼ ► the network. I would buy this. I don't know what your thoughts are, John, but it's a reason.
00:27:00 ◼ ► I've got this network and I do all this stuff with, you know, I use the network a lot. I use
00:27:04 ◼ ► my one gigabit, you know, upload and download fiber connection all the time. And then my router
00:27:10 ◼ ► only seems to have problems when I do teams. And if teams really is sending many small packets,
00:27:14 ◼ ► that could overwhelm things. So this, this is the working theory that I'm going with as I
00:27:20 ◼ ► blindly replaced the oldest piece of equipment on my network and then cross my fingers for a
00:27:24 ◼ ► month to see if the problem ever happens again. Surely a winning strategy. Simon writes that
00:27:29 ◼ ► they had to install teams, which they had never used before. And since that day that they lose
00:27:34 ◼ ► their internet connection only when in a team's call, at least once a day, it doesn't just hang
00:27:39 ◼ ► the team's call. It kills their laptops, wifi. They see the wifi icon and the menu bar doing it,
00:27:44 ◼ ► searching for internet dance. And if they ping something, they get nothing back. Usually it sorts
00:27:48 ◼ ► itself out in 30 seconds, but sometimes they have to renew their DHCP lease. They've never had this
00:27:54 ◼ ► issue when teams is closed. We're not in a call and they've never had the issue before installing
00:27:58 ◼ ► teams. Apparently they've been using the same ISP provided router for three years with no issues.
00:28:02 ◼ ► They have a Ubiquiti wireless AP, which has been rock solid for over a year now. Whoopsie doopsies.
00:28:07 ◼ ► This is one of many, many pieces of feedback we got from people saying I too use teams and my
00:28:14 ◼ ► internet goes out. Now it's difficult because lots of people are forced to use teams for obvious
00:28:19 ◼ ► reasons in these COVID times, right? And lots of people have their internet go out. And if you
00:28:23 ◼ ► spend all day on the internet using teams, it stands to reason that when your internet goes out,
00:28:27 ◼ ► there's a high chance that you're using teams. That said, the explanation that if teams actually
00:28:33 ◼ ► does send many small packets and people have routers that might get overwhelmed with it,
00:28:37 ◼ ► maybe there's something to it. But I think there is also the possibility that like I was saying,
00:28:42 ◼ ► maybe it just always seems like I'm using teams because the only time I really care with my
00:28:46 ◼ ► internet blips is when I'm in the middle of an important meeting or giving a presentation. But
00:28:53 ◼ ► lots and lots of people say, I use teams, it kills my connection. And lots of reports like Simon say,
00:28:58 ◼ ► when I'm not in teams, I never lose my internet connection. It's only when I'm in teams.
00:29:03 ◼ ► Lots of other people also had complaints of like, well, it does something weird to my laptop or
00:29:07 ◼ ► whatever. But to be clear, when I say I lose my internet connection, I know that because I would
00:29:11 ◼ ► see, speaking of that pinprick of green light on the airport extreme, when the airport extreme
00:29:16 ◼ ► loses its IP address, essentially, or like, you know, it's the thing that connects to my
00:29:20 ◼ ► Fios R&T and it's the thing that gets my IP address. If that router dies, reboots, does
00:29:27 ◼ ► anything bad, can't get an IP, everything in the house is offline because that is the internet
00:29:32 ◼ ► connection. So when teams starts flaking out, I just turn my head around and look behind me. And
00:29:37 ◼ ► instead of seeing a green pinprick of light, I see either no light or a blinking orange light,
00:29:42 ◼ ► I know that essentially my router is rebooting, right? Or has lost its IP address and is trying
00:29:47 ◼ ► to gain another one. Like, you know, so if it's just that your laptop loses Wi-Fi, but everyone
00:29:52 ◼ ► else is still online, you're not having the same problem as I was. This was like literally knocking
00:29:56 ◼ ► the whole house offline briefly and it would come back on. Was it crashing my router? Was it
00:30:00 ◼ ► rebooting the router? Did it just lose its IP? Or was it really just a brief Fios outage and nothing
00:30:05 ◼ ► in my house could have saved it? We'll find out in a month. Stay tuned to find out. More from Carlos
00:30:12 ◼ ► Lopez Pereira, this time on crypto mining. Thinking about crypto mining recently made me think of how
00:30:16 ◼ ► wasteful typical heating systems are. I live in Norway and I have to heat up my house about seven
00:30:21 ◼ ► to eight months of the year, not to mention water heating for showers, et cetera. That made me think
00:30:24 ◼ ► that we could produce heat in more intelligent, productive ways than just heating up resistors.
00:30:28 ◼ ► Heating up the house is a necessity. How can we make the electricity to heat conversion more
00:30:32 ◼ ► useful? And whether it's mining cryptocurrency, protein folding, or some other useful computation,
00:30:37 ◼ ► do you see any merit in this idea? If so, what would you choose to do to make heating smarter?
00:30:44 ◼ ► Yeah. So this is about crypto, which we'll get back to in a little bit to touch on. But the whole,
00:30:55 ◼ ► like using lots of energy, you think, well, I'm heating my house anyway. And if I can produce a
00:31:02 ◼ ► bunch of heat by using my computer, at least I'm doing something useful with that electricity. So
00:31:06 ◼ ► I've got to produce it anyway. I've got to heat my house. So what if, you know, let's say protein
00:31:11 ◼ ► folding may be a better example than cryptocurrency, but you know, anyway, two angles in this one,
00:31:18 ◼ ► the electricity that you are using as an individual with a computer doing either protein
00:31:23 ◼ ► folding or cryptocurrency is not really the problem we're addressing here. Like, especially
00:31:27 ◼ ► in terms of cryptocurrency, the real problem is like the giant, you know, shipping containers
00:31:31 ◼ ► filled with GPUs that have their own power source burning coal somewhere or whatever. Anyway,
00:31:37 ◼ ► like in the grand scheme of things, kind of like pollution, other things, individual action,
00:31:41 ◼ ► especially by individuals who are just living a normal life is not that big a deal. But the
00:31:45 ◼ ► second thing, and this is where I get to link to some fun videos, heating your house with
00:31:50 ◼ ► electricity is not really the best way to go. So it's not, you know, I know it's made to be the
00:31:55 ◼ ► only option you have, but in terms of efficiency, in terms of greenhouse gas emitted per BTU of heat
00:32:01 ◼ ► provided to a human inside a house, it's not like, oh, let's just do something useful with electricity.
00:32:06 ◼ ► The real answer is if you possibly can avoid it, do not use electricity to heat your home because
00:32:12 ◼ ► it doesn't have a particularly good carbon footprint unless you're getting a lot of electricity
00:32:15 ◼ ► from wind or solar, which maybe you are in which case, you know, fine. But in the U S that is more
00:32:21 ◼ ► rare. So to that end, I want to put some links into some technology connections videos. This is
00:32:27 ◼ ► a channel on YouTube that covers sort of like how everyday things work. It's very good. It is very,
00:32:31 ◼ ► very good. Yep. It's really good. And they did a bunch of episodes on heat pumps and heat pumps are
00:32:38 ◼ ► in particular, in the first heat pump video, there's a direct comparison again in the U S so,
00:32:43 ◼ ► you know, obviously your mileage may vary based on where you live and what's available to you. But in
00:32:47 ◼ ► the U S electric heat is generally much worse in terms of carbon emission per BTU than heat pumps.
00:32:54 ◼ ► And the videos explain why, and it's pretty cool. So I think you should check those out.
00:33:06 ◼ ► winter, but certainly compared to my two co-hosts, it's winter light. And the way my particular
00:33:13 ◼ ► furnaces work in my house is that they're heat pumps at reasonable temperatures. And then if it
00:33:18 ◼ ► gets cold enough, I have natural gas service via my city. And so if it gets that cold, then it'll
00:33:26 ◼ ► start burning natural gas. And let me tell you when it gets to that level, it heats up real quick
00:33:30 ◼ ► in here, which is delightful. So, uh, yeah, it's not just resistors getting warm, like, like was
00:33:35 ◼ ► implied. John, tell me about Emma NS running application, please. This was the API that I
00:33:41 ◼ ► was complaining about how all these bugs enlisted, all the radars last time, the quote unquote worst
00:33:45 ◼ ► API on the Mac. And I surmised that it's like, it's weird that it would be broken so much because
00:33:50 ◼ ► I just assumed it was some really old API that had been around forever, but apparently not
00:33:54 ◼ ► Daniel Jowkut, uh, reminded me that this API was actually added in snow leopard, which might seem
00:33:59 ◼ ► like ancient history to some people, but I was thinking it was back from the next days in the 90s.
00:34:03 ◼ ► So 10.6 is when NS running application was added to Mac OS. All right. And then we have good news
00:34:09 ◼ ► about this, don't we? Yeah, this is, uh, the bug that I was talking about where, uh, I had the one,
00:34:19 ◼ ► described in the show was like, it works pretty much all the time, but not all the time. And
00:34:28 ◼ ► you're always looking for that reproducible test case. So when I was reaching my peak of frustration
00:34:36 ◼ ► I found a reproducible test case just from my, you know, experimentation or whatever. And my test
00:34:41 ◼ ► case was a version of Microsoft outlook that I was running. Never responded like you do like activate
00:34:49 ◼ ► all windows and outlook and outlook would 100% of the time go hot. No, I'm bringing one window
00:34:53 ◼ ► to the front. And I was like, yes, like this application. Cause cause here's the thing it's
00:34:57 ◼ ► like, Oh, well that must be a bug in outlook. Again, I will say, like I said, the last time
00:35:02 ◼ ► the window server is part of the operating system. If the operating system offers an API,
00:35:07 ◼ ► that's part of the OS whose job it is to say, bring all the windows that belong to a particular
00:35:12 ◼ ► application to the front. I don't feel like the application should have any say in that happening
00:35:17 ◼ ► whatsoever because the operating system runs the window server and the operating system controls
00:35:23 ◼ ► the window layering. It can bring polls, windows, even those windows don't have any contents or the
00:35:28 ◼ ► application is stuck in an infinite loop and hasn't updated them. It doesn't matter the whole point
00:35:32 ◼ ► of a double buffered window manager is the window manager has buffers for all those windows or
00:35:36 ◼ ► whatever state they were in before. Like there it's the content is available. So if that API
00:35:41 ◼ ► fails to bring windows to the front, that's a problem in the OSS API, nevermind what brokenness
00:35:46 ◼ ► is an outlook is causing this. So I'm like, here's a reproducible bug, Apple. I made a sample project
00:35:52 ◼ ► with a little window that explains you need to be running outlook. You need to be doing this,
00:35:56 ◼ ► follow these steps, click this button. What should happen? All the outlook windows should come to the
00:36:00 ◼ ► front. What will happen? Just one window will come to the front, a hundred percent reducible
00:36:04 ◼ ► every single time. It literally never, ever, ever works. Right. And so we were talking about that
00:36:09 ◼ ► bug in a Slack and I looked at, occasionally I look at it, I'm like, yeah, they haven't done anything
00:36:13 ◼ ► to it. It's just totally, you know, no comments, no nothing. It already had a Sysdiagnosis hatch,
00:36:17 ◼ ► so they couldn't ask me for one. You know, and then, and I figured, you know what? I should
00:36:23 ◼ ► check that bug again, because someone said they had changed a bunch of stuff in Big Sur and lo
00:36:27 ◼ ► and behold, in the current version of Big Sur, this bug is a hundred percent fixed. Like it no
00:36:32 ◼ ► longer reproduces. You run my sample project, you click the button, all the windows and outlook come
00:36:36 ◼ ► to the front every time. And so I was like, yes, my bug is fixed or this particular bug is fixed.
00:36:41 ◼ ► But then I thought, wait a second. I don't know. Before when it wasn't working, right. I just got
00:36:49 ◼ ► through saying, this is something the OS is supposed to do. Like it controls the windows.
00:36:53 ◼ ► It can bring any window to the front anytime. It's the OS, it runs the windows server, right.
00:36:56 ◼ ► But it wasn't working before only for outlook. Like outlook was the only app that would like not
00:37:03 ◼ ► do it a hundred percent of the time. Right. Other apps would, you know, like finder occasionally
00:37:07 ◼ ► would freak out and safari would freak out. But most of the time everything worked. Outlook never
00:37:12 ◼ ► worked. So obviously there was something about outlook that was triggering this bug in the OS.
00:37:24 ◼ ► has changed a lot recently. In fact, there's this new outlook with this new look with a big switch
00:37:31 ◼ ► application. It's a new application that I hate. But anyway, right. I like the new version worse
00:37:36 ◼ ► than the old one. I'm sticking with the old version as long as I can. Anyway, outlook has changed
00:37:41 ◼ ► substantially. So now I'm like, okay, did apple actually fix this bug or did Microsoft just so
00:37:48 ◼ ► substantially change outlook that it no longer triggers the bug in the OS? So now I'm depressed
00:37:54 ◼ ► about it. So I'm excited that outlook works now. So no one who's running outlook will send me
00:37:59 ◼ ► complaints that, hey, I tried to use your thing and it didn't bring all the outlook windows to
00:38:06 ◼ ► And I was tempted to close the bug to say, well, so much for this bug. It doesn't reproduce. But
00:38:10 ◼ ► then I thought, you know what? I should just leave it there and let apple close it. But then they're
00:38:13 ◼ ► never going to close it. So I just closed it myself. Anyway, I'm of multiple minds about
00:38:18 ◼ ► what I should do about this bug report. Practically speaking, this a hundred percent reproduction that
00:38:23 ◼ ► I had for this bug no longer works. And we're back to the situation I was in before, where it's an
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00:40:21 ◼ ► I have to non-sarcastically congratulate our cryptocurrency enthusiasts listeners and our Tesla
00:40:32 ◼ ► enthusiasts listeners because I saw a startling lack of feedback about how wrong we were about
00:40:37 ◼ ► everything we said, which typically with those two groups doesn't necessarily relate to whether or not
00:40:42 ◼ ► we were actually wrong about anything we said. But everyone kept it to themselves and I'm very proud
00:40:48 ◼ ► of you all. Which by the way, quick aside, did you, did I put, I think I put in the neutral channel in
00:40:53 ◼ ► the relay slack, did you guys see that there's an entire GitHub repo with a like delivery checklist
00:40:59 ◼ ► for model 3 owners? So it's this entire list, I'll put in the show notes, it's this entire
00:41:05 ◼ ► humongous list of things you need to look at when you take delivery of your model 3 because more
00:41:10 ◼ ► likely than not at least one of these things will be wrong. Now to be fair, a lot of them are like
00:41:15 ◼ ► standard, you know, any new car sort of things, but oh my goodness, it was hilarious to see this.
00:41:20 ◼ ► But we also realized that we didn't exactly cover kind of cryptocurrency 101, which I think John,
00:41:28 ◼ ► you would like to do now. I like how in the intro to this tiny follow-up item, you managed to get
00:41:33 ◼ ► another dig in at Tesla users. Like really at a certain point you're bringing this on yourself.
00:41:37 ◼ ► I know, I know. Let me just say one more mean thing about Teslas. Yeah, this is not cryptocurrency 101,
00:41:43 ◼ ► this is cryptocurrency 000. And the reason I wanted to bring it up is A, I don't have much
00:41:50 ◼ ► deep knowledge of cryptocurrency and I don't think any of us do, and B, I don't really want to go
00:41:55 ◼ ► into it that deeply, but I felt like the last time we kind of talked about the issue with the
00:42:02 ◼ ► assumption that everyone listening knew at least a tiny bit of the basics to have the context. And
00:42:07 ◼ ► if you don't, I feel like it's our duty to explain one or two things about the basics, and that's
00:42:12 ◼ ► what I wanted to do. Marco mentioned thinking the sort of digital underpinnings of it are interesting,
00:42:18 ◼ ► and that I think is the one, probably the coolest thing about cryptocurrency and blockchain and all
00:42:28 ◼ ► quick version of that is crypto currency, you know, I'm probably using the wrong terms,
00:42:34 ◼ ► people say it's not cryptocurrency, it's the blockchain or whatever. Anyway, the problem
00:42:38 ◼ ► they're solving is, if you have, I mean, let's just use money because that's what they use in
00:42:42 ◼ ► the thing, if you have two parties and they want to, you know, exchange money or like complete a
00:42:48 ◼ ► transaction, right, you know, in some network, right, that involves exchanging, you know,
00:42:54 ◼ ► money, right? But no one trusts anyone else. And there is no party in the middle being the referee.
00:43:01 ◼ ► So there's no bank, there's no government, there's just two completely anonymous, totally
00:43:06 ◼ ► untrusted people on the internet. How can you possibly ever get any kind of exchange where
00:43:11 ◼ ► someone doesn't end up getting ripped off or like, someone doesn't end up like spending the same
00:43:15 ◼ ► dollar two times or like, how can you reliably do that? You don't, isn't that why banks and
00:43:20 ◼ ► governments exist to have a place who's sort of like the, you know, the referee, the party in the
00:43:27 ◼ ► middle that is going to make sure everything happens fairly or like the government with the
00:43:31 ◼ ► military that's going to come and, you know, drop a bomb on you if you don't do what you're supposed
00:43:36 ◼ ► to be anyway, like, with no enforcement, zero trust on the internet, right? And this is the
00:43:41 ◼ ► problem they're solving. Can we get a network of entities on the internet that are able to
00:43:47 ◼ ► complete transactions where nobody trusts anyone else? And, you know, and it's assumed that people
00:43:54 ◼ ► will attempt to do malicious things, they'll attempt to double spend their money, they will
00:43:58 ◼ ► attempt to receive money but not send the amount that they promised, they will attempt to break and
00:44:03 ◼ ► corrupt the system. How can we make a system that works in that environment? And that is part of
00:44:08 ◼ ► what the whole block train and distributed ledger thing does, where there's various consensus
00:44:12 ◼ ► protocols and ways that everyone is incentivized to make sure that the transactions are valid,
00:44:19 ◼ ► and they can't become validated until enough of the network agrees that they're legit. So that
00:44:24 ◼ ► one or two or a small number of bad actors can't cause things to go bad. My understanding is a lot
00:44:28 ◼ ► of these schemes, if one particular entity controls more than half the network, it kind of breaks down,
00:44:35 ◼ ► so you want to avoid that. But I think there are other systems that try to help with that. So that
00:44:40 ◼ ► is pretty cool and technically interesting, because if you think about that problem in the abstract,
00:44:43 ◼ ► it seems like it's impossible. Well, you can't do it. If you have just a bunch of people who are
00:44:47 ◼ ► liars and cheats, and, you know, again, theoretically, like actors in the computer science sense,
00:44:52 ◼ ► where it behooves them to lie about transactions and to cheat and to try to get more money or
00:44:57 ◼ ► whatever, how is anything ever going to work? Right? And that's the problem they're solving.
00:45:01 ◼ ► So I would encourage everybody, even if you don't care about Bitcoin or cryptocurrency,
00:45:03 ◼ ► to read up on the tech behind that, because that is a cool, in the abstract, cool kind of
00:45:08 ◼ ► information computer science problem. And then you can look into the implementations, it's like,
00:45:12 ◼ ► okay, theoretically, I understand how it works. And there are various different schemes to sort of
00:45:20 ◼ ► cryptocurrency. Pollution and everything is some of them use proof of work, which is you have to
00:45:26 ◼ ► solve a complicated problem that's easy for other parties on the network to check your answer, but
00:45:31 ◼ ► it's hard for you to get the answer in the first place. So there's an asymmetry there. And the
00:45:35 ◼ ► proof of work ones have the unfortunate side effect of, okay, well, you want me to do work? Well,
00:45:39 ◼ ► just buy 1000 GPUs and do tons of work and use tons of energy to do whatever. There's also proof
00:45:44 ◼ ► of stake, which is a different system for solving the same problem that doesn't have the exact same
00:45:50 ◼ ► downsides, right? And then on top of all this, there are things like Ethereum, where if you have
00:45:55 ◼ ► this sort of baseline distributed ledger type thing, you can use that to build other systems,
00:46:01 ◼ ► like a system of contracts that describe what parties agree to and have those contracts be
00:46:06 ◼ ► validated on the blockchain and agreed on by all parties and be verifiable and all sorts of stuff
00:46:10 ◼ ► like that. So the tech part of this actually is cool. It's just that the, I mean, you'll hear this
00:46:16 ◼ ► word a lot in the heat pump technology connections thing. The externalities are less than ideal,
00:46:22 ◼ ► let's say. Yeah, you get to do all these things, but at what cost to the entire planet and world?
00:46:27 ◼ ► And by the way, you know, what are these things actually good for other than speculating on the
00:46:38 ◼ ► I would encourage anyone who has any interest in this to read one or two or three of the Wikipedia
00:46:43 ◼ ► articles that we link, we will link in the show notes to get a feel for it and dig deeper on how
00:46:48 ◼ ► they solve the problems. But practically speaking, I would still encourage people, maybe not to
00:46:53 ◼ ► invest their life savings into Bitcoin just yet. That I agree with, but I actually slightly disagree
00:46:58 ◼ ► with reading up on this and maybe it's just because I'm a more visual learner or something,
00:47:02 ◼ ► but I'm going to call out one more time the video I mentioned last week by, oh shoot, I forget the
00:47:07 ◼ ► name of them, but it's three blue, one brown or something like that. And it is like a 20,
00:47:11 ◼ ► 25 minute video, but it was the first time that I had seen something or read something for that
00:47:15 ◼ ► matter, because I had tried reading on it plenty, that really helped me understand how you arrive at
00:47:21 ◼ ► the blockchain and Bitcoin. And it starts with, you know, like you were saying, John, let's say
00:47:27 ◼ ► you had two parties that you just wanted to agree on, you know, exchanging money or something like
00:47:33 ◼ ► that. And it walks you through, okay, how do you land on the blockchain? It's fascinating. And I
00:47:37 ◼ ► also wanted to call out since last episode, when I mentioned this before, Twitter user Elijah pointed
00:47:43 ◼ ► out to me, apparently these videos are just Python scripts that are, that generate all the animation
00:47:48 ◼ ► and there's a GitHub repo for the videos Python script, which blew my mind. So I will link that in
00:47:55 ◼ ► the show notes as well, which I thought was almost as interesting as video in the first place. But I
00:48:00 ◼ ► really, really enjoyed that video. I cannot recommend it enough because I had tried on and
00:48:04 ◼ ► off for years to understand what the crap this was all about. And it did not click until I saw
00:48:08 ◼ ► that video and it will be in the show notes yet again. And the people who made that video were
00:48:12 ◼ ► made from just a series of instructions. Oh my God, with, you know, DNA made up of those things
00:48:18 ◼ ► that in case you couldn't remember the name of before. Yep, that's right. That's right.
00:48:21 ◼ ► Oh goodness. No, I mean, I snark on Tesla a lot and they really do make good cars usually. I snark
00:48:30 ◼ ► on crypto more recently than before, but it is extraordinarily fascinating as an academic exercise,
00:48:38 ◼ ► even though I have tremendous concerns about its impact on the planet. So I couldn't agree with
00:48:44 ◼ ► you more, John, that in, as an academic exercise, it's very much worth looking into. And there's the
00:48:49 ◼ ► other angle that I didn't get into is the political angle. Obviously, like if you can, if you don't
00:48:52 ◼ ► have to have a government or a bank involved governments and banks through their role in
00:48:58 ◼ ► basically making the economy work by being the things that enforce the correctness and validity
00:49:06 ◼ ► of various financial transactions and agreeing on how much money you actually have and what even is
00:49:10 ◼ ► money and all that other stuff and the whole fiat currency thing, right? Any kind of system that can
00:49:15 ◼ ► in theory solve the same problem without requiring banks and governments has some advantages because
00:49:20 ◼ ► banks and governments historically have done some pretty bad things and have some, have their own
00:49:24 ◼ ► terrible externalities, right? And then the final thing I'll add is setting aside pollution and
00:49:30 ◼ ► energy use and setting aside governments and banks. There is on top of all of that, the basic
00:49:36 ◼ ► economic question of, is this a pyramid scheme? Like what are we even doing here exactly? Is
00:49:43 ◼ ► anyone buying anything with Bitcoin or is it just, again, great for people who need to be able to
00:49:49 ◼ ► perform transactions with untrusted parties? So now hopefully given all this rattling across two
00:49:54 ◼ ► episodes, the description of imagine if I don't in your car 24/7 would produce solve Sudoku's that
00:49:58 ◼ ► you could change for heroin. I hope that all finally makes some form of sense because again,
00:50:02 ◼ ► every part of that sentence hits on one of these things. Oh man, that is such a perfect tweet. That
00:50:08 ◼ ► is up there in my book as one of the most perfect tweets of all time. Oh yeah. All right. So there's
00:50:14 ◼ ► been some news in America recently about, for coming from the Supreme Court with regard to
00:50:20 ◼ ► Google and Oracle and whether or not Google copied the Java API and whether or not that's fair use
00:50:27 ◼ ► and so on. I'm not even sure even as chief summarizer in chief, the best way to summarize
00:50:34 ◼ ► this. I mean, I could take a stab at it unless one of you would prefer to, but I don't know.
00:50:38 ◼ ► There's a lot of moving parts here. I think I can do a reasonable summary. Like this is a really old
00:50:43 ◼ ► case. I'd forgotten that it existed in between the time that it went to the Supreme Court and has a
00:50:49 ◼ ► decision, but this is good news, right? The Supreme Court miraculously came to a decision A, not along
00:50:56 ◼ ► party lines, which in itself is miraculous because our court is also screwed up in that way, and B,
00:51:01 ◼ ► they came to the right decision. The court case was essentially around the Java API. So Oracle
00:51:09 ◼ ► bought Sun. Sun made Java. Oracle bought Sun. And then Oracle being giant evil corporations,
00:51:14 ◼ ► what do we have that we can sue somebody about? So Google had basically re-implemented the Java
00:51:20 ◼ ► API itself. Programmers probably understand this, but goodness knows that the judges and lawyers in
00:51:26 ◼ ► this court case clearly didn't. But if you're not a programmer, don't know what we're talking about
00:51:30 ◼ ► here. When we say the API, like the Java API, Java is a language, but there's always standard
00:51:36 ◼ ► libraries that come with it you use to do things. Some of them are complicated. Some of them are
00:51:39 ◼ ► simple, but the Java API has a bunch of functions you can call. Oh, this function adds two numbers
00:51:45 ◼ ► together. This function concatenates strings. This function opens a file. This function reads a file.
00:51:49 ◼ ► There has to be method calls. It's like a name and a bunch of arguments. It says you call this
00:51:54 ◼ ► thing with these arguments and you get a result. Like if you had an add function, the function
00:51:57 ◼ ► would be called add, and it takes two arguments, the two numbers you want to add. And what does it
00:52:00 ◼ ► return? The sum of those two numbers. That's obviously silly and simple, but it's a type of
00:52:04 ◼ ► example of the game. The thing, but Java SDK has tons of APIs and that's what makes it the library
00:52:11 ◼ ► for Java. Someone has to pick, hey, when you open a file, what does that API look like? Is it called
00:52:15 ◼ ► open file? Is it just called open? Is it called open buffer stream factory? Like maybe if it's C++.
00:52:19 ◼ ► But there is an API, right? And there's all these different functions and they take the certain set
00:52:26 ◼ ► of arguments to do the thing, right? Google wanted to essentially have, you know, its own development
00:52:34 ◼ ► system for Android phones and so on and so forth that use the Java API that had all the same
00:52:40 ◼ ► functions with all the same names, with all the same arguments, with all the same return values,
00:52:44 ◼ ► but they didn't want to use or license Java. They just said, well, we'll just look at what your API
00:52:49 ◼ ► is. We can see that from your documentation. Here's all the different function names. Here's
00:52:52 ◼ ► the argument takes, here's what they're supposed to do with the return. And then we'll just implement
00:52:55 ◼ ► them ourselves, right? They call it like a clean room implementation. We didn't look at how you
00:52:59 ◼ ► made this work. We just know there's a function called add that has two numbers and returns the
00:53:04 ◼ ► sum. So we will make that function signature and we'll write the part of the body part. And
00:53:09 ◼ ► obviously it's much more difficult for functions that are not just adding two numbers. But they
00:53:13 ◼ ► re-implemented it all from scratch. And Oracle said, you can't do that. You copied our API.
00:53:17 ◼ ► And they're like, well, we didn't, you know, we didn't look at your source code at all. Like
00:53:21 ◼ ► we just, we have an API that has the same functions that yours does, but we wrote it all
00:53:26 ◼ ► ourselves. Like there's not a single line of this that came from what you did. Like it's not,
00:53:30 ◼ ► we're not stealing anything from you. You just made an API and we implemented the same API to
00:53:37 ◼ ► make it convenient for our programmers to use an API they might be familiar with. And this is the
00:53:41 ◼ ► court case, right? And it would have been a terrible catastrophic decision if they'd say,
00:53:46 ◼ ► oh, you can't copy that API because all of a sudden, anybody who had any API with any kind
00:53:50 ◼ ► of function that did anything, you know, like say someone did the add function, right? It would be
00:53:53 ◼ ► like patents basically, or an existing terrible system we have. If you made a function called add
00:53:58 ◼ ► add, that took two arguments and returned the sum, and then someone else made it, had that function
00:54:03 ◼ ► in their code, you could sue them and say, ah, we made the add function. That's ours. You can't have
00:54:09 ◼ ► a function called add. You have to give it a different name and make it different. So yours
00:54:12 ◼ ► has to be called add two numbers or something, right? It can't just be called add. And it gets
00:54:16 ◼ ► absurd from there. Like the entire foundation of the way, you know, software works, the idea that,
00:54:25 ◼ ► does the same thing. But if I write the whole function myself, it's my work. I didn't copy
00:54:29 ◼ ► anything from you. So anyway, the Supreme Court came to the correct decision, which is, yeah,
00:54:34 ◼ ► they're allowed to do that, get a grip. They didn't steal anything from you. It's just,
00:54:39 ◼ ► they use this, they copied the same public API as you, but they wrote every single line of that
00:54:45 ◼ ► code themselves. So tough luck. I also think like, you know, you can think that what Google did
00:54:52 ◼ ► was slimy, but also agree that this is not a legal thing that they should be barred from doing.
00:55:00 ◼ ► And that's where I fall on it. Like Google, you know, they do slimy stuff all the time.
00:55:04 ◼ ► Their corporate ethics are not great. This was a slimy thing to do. But I also think they should
00:55:10 ◼ ► be allowed to do it. - Here's the thing. They needed a development platform for Android, right?
00:55:15 ◼ ► Rather than make their own from scratch, they said, why don't we just do a thing that we know
00:55:19 ◼ ► people like already? People use and know Java. Why don't we get on board that train? - But do they
00:55:24 ◼ ► like it? - Well, anyway, like I feel like that shows it's this kind of a sign of weakness and
00:55:28 ◼ ► they didn't feel like they could make their own API from scratch that would be attractive enough
00:55:32 ◼ ► to make people come over to a new unfamiliar thing. And they also didn't think they could,
00:55:36 ◼ ► you know, it's like, I can't, we're not going to make something so much better that people
00:55:48 ◼ ► it's unethical. And there is something to be said for like, it's a conservative move. Let's put it
00:55:52 ◼ ► that way. It's a safe move. Like we know people know Java already. Why don't we just do that?
00:55:57 ◼ ► And maybe people who, the people who do this, maybe they really like Java, right? To give an
00:56:01 ◼ ► example, I'll put these links in the show notes. We're all familiar with, well, maybe not all,
00:56:06 ◼ ► but anyway, Nextstep, the operating system that Next made that eventually got purchased by Apple.
00:56:13 ◼ ► Rhapsody and then Mac OS X and yada yada. It has an API called AppKit, a bunch of other frameworks
00:56:19 ◼ ► in there. And they've been around for years. They've been around since the 90s, since before
00:56:22 ◼ ► Apple bought them, right? And it's a cool new API, like from scratch, a thing that didn't exist
00:56:28 ◼ ► before with its own weird language Objective-C that was also made around the same time, right?
00:56:42 ◼ ► that costs way less than 10 grand and I want to use that cool new API? I want to use Objective-C,
00:56:46 ◼ ► and I think you could do that with a, you know, supported in GCC or whatever, open source compilers.
00:56:50 ◼ ► But I also want to use AppKit. Like, I want to make, I want to make an NS window and do,
00:57:00 ◼ ► they couldn't get AppKit because it came as part of Next, which is a proprietary thing,
00:57:04 ◼ ► and they didn't have the source code to all that. So they made GnuStep, which is a play on Nextstep,
00:57:09 ◼ ► which is an open source re-implementation of AppKit and a bunch of the other Nextstep APIs.
00:57:22 ◼ ► they didn't have the source code for it, but they said, that's a cool API. Can we make something that
00:57:25 ◼ ► has all the same functions with all the same arguments, but then we'll just write all the
00:57:28 ◼ ► code ourselves? And they did. Luckily, Next wasn't foolish or litigious enough to try to sue
00:57:35 ◼ ► the people, the volunteers that made the open source GnuStep implementation. They rightly
00:57:40 ◼ ► surmised this was not a particularly big threat to the success of Next. And even when Next was
00:57:45 ◼ ► bought by Apple, Apple didn't sue GnuStep out of existence, as far as I know. Tune in next week for
00:57:50 ◼ ► people to send me all the court cases where Apple crushed GnuStep under its heel. But anyway, I
00:57:56 ◼ ► think it was just another example that came to mind. If you know what AppKit and Cocoa are and
00:58:01 ◼ ► can imagine someone looking, basically looking at Apple's documentation and saying, that's pretty
00:58:04 ◼ ► cool. I would like to do that. And they just copy all those APIs, but write all the code themselves.
00:58:09 ◼ ► That's GnuStep. I don't know though, to go back to what Marco was saying, I tend to agree with him.
00:58:14 ◼ ► I feel like the not slimy thing for Google to do would be to pay Oracle whatever they needed to pay
00:58:21 ◼ ► in order to license the API. Like it's paying Oracle is always a little slimy. Yeah, also true.
00:58:30 ◼ ► And it's tough because I think I'm, as I'm listening to myself say this, I think I'm being
00:58:33 ◼ ► slightly hypocritical because I think the most honest thing for Google to do would be to arrange
00:58:40 ◼ ► some sort of agreement with Oracle, even if it's that, you know, that they're just going to use the
00:58:44 ◼ ► API. I think if you really look at the spirit of everything, Google arguably owed them something,
00:58:53 ◼ ► maybe not the absurd amount of money that Oracle would want, but they owed them something. And I
00:58:58 ◼ ► think the kind of screw you, I want to have my cake and eat it too approach is to do what they did,
00:59:03 ◼ ► which isn't necessarily wrong, but it's slimy, like Marco said. But all that being said, let me
00:59:09 ◼ ► disagree with myself slightly and say, I do think that the Supreme Court ruling was correct. Like,
00:59:13 ◼ ► I don't think an API really should be copyrightable or certainly they shouldn't be able to be sued for
00:59:20 ◼ ► copying the API because API is to my eyes, and I say, I want to use so many words that have double
00:59:28 ◼ ► meaning, but it's kind of like a framework in a sense. Like if you want to be something that looks
00:59:33 ◼ ► and smells like Java, then you need to be able to do these things. Or if you want to be something
00:59:36 ◼ ► that looks and smells like AppKit, you need to be able to do these other things. And I think the more
00:59:42 ◼ ► honest thing for Google to do would be to enter some sort of an agreement with Oracle, but I don't
00:59:47 ◼ ► think it's necessarily wrong what they did. It's just not the rightest thing they could do. And
00:59:54 ◼ ► certainly I think the rightest and least evil—remember that? Don't be evil—the least
00:59:58 ◼ ► evil thing they could have done was either to create something like Kotlin from the get-go,
01:00:02 ◼ ► which is a very swifty—or I think it predates Swift, strictly speaking—but it's a very swifty
01:00:07 ◼ ► version of their APIs and language and whatnot. You know, just start with Kotlin from the get-go
01:00:16 ◼ ► to some degree—I understand how they landed on "Let's just use Java APIs." I've never been a fan
01:00:21 ◼ ► of Java, and I find Java to be a very clunky language to work with, but I understand how they
01:00:26 ◼ ► got there. So, like, take another example. C#, by most metrics—especially early on—C# was just
01:00:33 ◼ ► Microsoft's version 2 of Java. Like, they looked at Java and said, "Hey, there's a bunch of good
01:00:36 ◼ ► ideas here, but let's do this in a less crummy and more proprietary way, and we'll make C#."
01:00:42 ◼ ► And even though it's spiritually very similar in execution and application, it's very, very
01:00:48 ◼ ► different. And that, to me, is a far less slimy approach. But it's exactly what you said earlier,
01:00:54 ◼ ► Jon, that they wanted anyone who knows Java to be able to just swoop in and continue where they left
01:00:59 ◼ ► off for all intents and purposes. And I understand how they landed on this course of action, but I
01:01:04 ◼ ► still find it to be slimy. Yeah, I don't think it's slimy. I just think it's weak. I think it shows
01:01:09 ◼ ► that they didn't believe they can make something better, so they did this. And I think it should
01:01:14 ◼ ► always be valid for people to do this. If someone sees SwiftUI—I think there already is a Linux
01:01:20 ◼ ► implementation of SwiftUI—and you think, "SwiftUI is a great API. I wish I had that API in Linux."
01:01:24 ◼ ► I think, by all means, write it, especially if it's open source type stuff, because no one expects a
01:01:29 ◼ ► band of volunteers to come up with a new thing as good as SwiftUI, maybe, on their own. But if you
01:01:36 ◼ ► want to reimplement SwiftUI, go for it. And Apple, I think wisely, would say, "That is not a threat
01:01:41 ◼ ► to us. It's not on our platform. They're writing for Linux. It is not going to take anything away
01:01:46 ◼ ► from us." And in fact, the more people that know SwiftUI, the better it is for the thing that we
01:01:51 ◼ ► wrote and controlled the evolution of, which is SwiftUI. So if Oracle was smart, if it was still
01:01:58 ◼ ► Sun, I think they would say, "The more people who know the Java SDK, the better." And if they're
01:02:01 ◼ ► copying us and we're leading, that's great. But anyway, I don't attach any ethical consideration
01:02:10 ◼ ► to it. It's merely a potential strategy misstep or a smart strategy if you know for a fact that
01:02:20 ◼ ► Yeah, and I think it's wise to remove ethics as the particular line you're trying to draw. Is this
01:02:27 ◼ ► ethical or not? To me, it's not a question of ethics. It's a question of doing this as kind of
01:02:32 ◼ ► distasteful, which is different. Lots of things are not exactly unethical, but many people would
01:02:39 ◼ ► find distasteful. A really good example, I think, on a different kind of scale, but for a similar
01:02:44 ◼ ► problem, is Microsoft famously does not want to license any kind of proprietary technologies
01:02:53 ◼ ► for Windows. And so they almost always, when something is popular out there in the world
01:02:59 ◼ ► that they might have to license to build support in, they will almost always make their own version
01:03:05 ◼ ► of something very similar that they can then offer for free. A great example of this is when MP3 was
01:03:10 ◼ ► all patent encumbered, they didn't want to build an MP3 encoder, so they built WMA, their own
01:03:15 ◼ ► similar format that they could do their own thing. A more common case that is still the case today
01:03:21 ◼ ► is certain fonts like Helvetica that they decided, you know what, Helvetica costs money to license.
01:03:29 ◼ ► So instead of licensing this font that's very popular and useful, we're going to make our own
01:03:33 ◼ ► clone of it called Arial. That's almost the same, but just different enough not to get sued.
01:03:38 ◼ ► By the way, I believe Google also did that. But anyway, it's a distasteful thing to do,
01:03:44 ◼ ► but they did it and it mostly was okay if you don't care about taste. And Microsoft doesn't
01:03:53 ◼ ► and Google doesn't. So it's okay in the sense that it is legally acceptable for them to have done
01:04:01 ◼ ► this and we don't think it should be made illegal, but it is distasteful and these companies should
01:04:07 ◼ ► be, you know, in John Parlin's given a thumbs down maybe for having done this this way.
01:04:18 ◼ ► although your font example is interesting, so Apple obviously licensed Helvetica, right? But Apple
01:04:24 ◼ ► also with the original Mac made a bunch of fonts because they couldn't or didn't want to license
01:04:31 ◼ ► the real ones and they gave them names that are similar. Like instead of Times New Roman,
01:04:35 ◼ ► they made a font called New York and instead of Helvetica, they made a font called Geneva.
01:04:39 ◼ ► Like you can do the mapping. It's there, right? But then they licensed Helvetica, right? But then
01:04:45 ◼ ► the modern Apple, what modern Apple did is they decided, you know what? We think in-house,
01:04:50 ◼ ► we can make a font that's better than Helvetica for our purposes. And they did, well, as far as
01:04:54 ◼ ► they're concerned, San Francisco. They made their own font with many different variants suited to
01:05:01 ◼ ► exactly what they need the font to do, which is work on watches, work on their Mac, work on the
01:05:06 ◼ ► phone or whatever. And they did San Francisco. And I think that shows kind of like, depending on what
01:05:11 ◼ ► position you're in, are you in the position to license the thing? Does licensing it help your
01:05:17 ◼ ► competitor in a way that you want? Can you do your own thing that's similar? Can you do your own
01:05:22 ◼ ► thing that is 100% compatible with the thing you don't own by just relatable in the API?
01:05:26 ◼ ► Or do you feel like you're in a position to actually do an original thing that's better, right?
01:05:30 ◼ ► Apple bought Nex, so arguably they didn't do the original thing that's better, although Steve Jobs
01:05:36 ◼ ► did Nex, right? But, you know, Apple's APIs are not like, even though Apple used Java back in the day,
01:05:43 ◼ ► because Java looked like it was going to be super popular, it was Java. So you could call, you know,
01:05:47 ◼ ► Next Step APIs from Java, right? It wasn't, you know, Swing or whatever. And when the time comes
01:05:55 ◼ ► for them to do something better, they think, actually, we can make a new original thing that
01:05:58 ◼ ► we think is even better. They come out with SwiftUI, right? They don't say we're going to copy WinFX or
01:06:03 ◼ ► whatever the hell the, you know, the Windows new APIs are. They don't copy the Java APIs, right?
01:06:10 ◼ ► They come up with something on their own. But you're not always in a position to do that. So I feel like
01:06:13 ◼ ► if something is out there, like the implementation, obviously you can't steal their code, right? But if
01:06:20 ◼ ► something is out there as a public API with publicly available documentation, and you think
01:06:23 ◼ ► you can just simply re-implement that from scratch, just looking at the API, go for it. Because that's
01:06:29 ◼ ► not easy, right? Like, just think of any operating system. Unix with all the system calls. I can give
01:06:33 ◼ ► you a list of all the Unix system calls. No, go write your own operating system. Say, you can't
01:06:37 ◼ ► do that. That's cheating. Shouldn't you make your own operating system? Everyone accepts everyone's
01:06:40 ◼ ► going to make a POSIX compatible operating system. And just because POSIX is this open thing that no
01:06:45 ◼ ► company owns, it's exactly the same thing. Oh, you have a call called fopen and you have printf
01:06:50 ◼ ► and you have sprintf? You're just such a copier. That's distasteful. It's like, no, it's fine.
01:06:54 ◼ ► Because you still have to write the implementations yourself or use Linux or whatever and have a bunch
01:06:59 ◼ ► of other people write it for you. But anyway, I think it's perfectly fine. But the best way to
01:07:03 ◼ ► think about this, legally speaking, is imagine if the opposite was true. Like I said, if the
01:07:09 ◼ ► opposite was true and it was illegal, absurd situations arrive immediately. That basically,
01:07:14 ◼ ► you could squat on all these sensible APIs for doing any kind of reasonable thing and no one can
01:07:18 ◼ ► ever use them. And then you could have court cases over, I have an ad API and they have one called
01:07:23 ◼ ► add two numbers, but the arguments are exactly the same as mine. So they're basically copying me.
01:07:28 ◼ ► It's like, oh God, look, sometimes when it comes time to make an API for opening a file, there's
01:07:34 ◼ ► only so many ways you can do that. And we don't want to have to avoid the 8 million other
01:07:38 ◼ ► implementations made previously. I mean, again, it's like patents, which is the stupidest system
01:07:43 ◼ ► we have in our country. See previous hypercritical episodes about. And as some people said in the
01:07:48 ◼ ► chat, sometimes we have more sane law about this. You can't copyright a chord progression,
01:07:53 ◼ ► but you can copyright a performance of a song, right? It gets sketchy after that music. I don't
01:07:58 ◼ ► bring up music too much fonts are similar. And then I think you can't copyright like the shape
01:08:03 ◼ ► of a font, but you can copyright the font itself. Anyway, laws should be made so that we don't end
01:08:08 ◼ ► up in absurd scenarios that discourage, uh, to discourage innovation and make it harder to do
01:08:13 ◼ ► stuff. And if this is a court decision had gone the other way, it would make everything harder
01:08:18 ◼ ► for everybody. So I'm glad it went this way. Yeah. In general, I have similar views on patents. I
01:08:26 ◼ ► don't think any patents should exist on anything. Um, yes, including the vaccines. I was just
01:08:30 ◼ ► talking about like everything. I don't think any patents should exist. Um, I think the system
01:08:35 ◼ ► causes more harm, uh, than, than it, uh, prevents. Uh, but you know, generally when looking at
01:08:41 ◼ ► technology, one of the biggest reasons the technology industry has been able to develop
01:08:47 ◼ ► so quickly and do such huge things. So, you know, in such a short amount of time in relative history
01:08:53 ◼ ► and, and keep moving and advance is that there isn't a lot of intellectual property protection,
01:09:00 ◼ ► restricting it. Um, you know, patents while, while they are a burden on our entire industry, um,
01:09:07 ◼ ► most developers don't use software patents. Most developers don't file them. Most developers don't
01:09:12 ◼ ► need to license them. Um, even if you believe in them, uh, and even if you consider them valid
01:09:20 ◼ ► unaddressed and unenforced most of the time. Thank God. Uh, and everything is fine. And, and you,
01:09:28 ◼ ► and you have people copying each other all the time. You have people, you know, you have,
01:09:33 ◼ ► you know, applications that, that, that compete in the same market space. They're copying each
01:09:37 ◼ ► other's features back and forth all the time. And it's fine. You have platforms copying each
01:09:44 ◼ ► windows and Mac copying each other, everything. Everyone's copying everyone all the time.
01:09:48 ◼ ► And it's fine. And that is a fundamental reason why the tech industry has been able to get as big
01:09:55 ◼ ► and great as it is and whatever problems you might have with how big it is now with, you know,
01:10:00 ◼ ► political stuff with certain big companies, whatever the reality is the entire business,
01:10:04 ◼ ► all of us rely on that relative unrestrictedness of most intellectual property in technology with
01:10:13 ◼ ► the exception of like trademark, which I think, I think of all the intellectual property categories,
01:10:18 ◼ ► I think trademark is probably the most defensible and the one that brings the fewest problems
01:10:23 ◼ ► compared to copyright and patent as an, as, as they are currently enforced. You know, the,
01:10:28 ◼ ► the reality is like the industry is better off for everyone, including themselves and all of us using
01:10:35 ◼ ► this stuff when there are fewer intellectual property restrictions, basically as few as
01:10:41 ◼ ► possible that, you know, besides really obvious stuff like direct copyright infringement or
01:10:46 ◼ ► direct trademark infringement, otherwise like almost nothing else being protected is a good
01:10:52 ◼ ► idea in technology. Yeah. And the proof is the lack of protections for this stuff has not
01:10:58 ◼ ► caused the technology industry to fail to thrive. Let's say I think the technology industry is doing
01:11:08 ◼ ► it's, it's like having an idea for a startup. It's the execution that matters. Feel free.
01:11:13 ◼ ► Anyone out there, if you would like to copy all of Apple's APIs and make your own implementation
01:11:18 ◼ ► of Mac OS X, go for it. It's harder than you think the APIs, even though, even though they'll say,
01:11:24 ◼ ► it's really hard to design a good API. There is the implementation is also really hard. You do not.
01:11:28 ◼ ► So Apple does not need legal protection to prevent you from copying Swift UI and their entire
01:11:34 ◼ ► operating system, right? Their moat is the fact that doing that is incredibly hard and they
01:11:38 ◼ ► already did it and you haven't. So go ahead, copy that. Apple does not need that legal protection.
01:11:52 ◼ ► It'd be like domain names, quite like someone would just, you know, creating copyright,
01:11:56 ◼ ► every conceivable function that does a thing, you know, all possible print functions, right?
01:12:00 ◼ ► Just, and they would just, it would be like patent trolls. Like they'd be just a holding company.
01:12:07 ◼ ► to perform these basic tasks. And they just wait for someone to use an API like that. So,
01:12:11 ◼ ► oh, you can't use that API. We own that one license it from us just like patents. Oh God,
01:12:17 ◼ ► patents are terrible. I don't want to go off on that. Anyway, we need to get to the next top.
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01:14:16 ◼ ► with Squarespace. Tim Cook did an interview with Kara Swisher sometime over the last day or two.
01:14:25 ◼ ► I don't know when this landed, but it is very interesting. I have thoughts. I'd like to point
01:14:34 ◼ ► you to our show notes where someone, I probably John, put in a link to the, put in the overcast
01:14:40 ◼ ► link to the podcast. There's also a transcript, which we will put in the show notes. I'd also
01:14:45 ◼ ► like to call out dithering. If you happen to be a subscriber, I believe it was today's or yesterday's
01:14:49 ◼ ► episode of the show. They kind of go through it a little bit and also upgrade this week was really
01:14:56 ◼ ► good and upgrade touched on a lot of the things that I heard in this interview. I should probably
01:15:05 ◼ ► summarize it. So there was a, it's a lot of talk about a lot of different things, including Apple's
01:15:12 ◼ ► gatekeeping and their, you know, Apple tax, if you will, on the app store, you know, the 30 or 15%.
01:15:18 ◼ ► They talk about AR and future products ish. They talk about Tim's future, which we'll get to in a
01:15:25 ◼ ► little bit. And there were several other things that were discussed. I, this was probably the best
01:15:32 ◼ ► interview of Tim Cook that I've heard. And I didn't come away from it feeling great. And I'm curious
01:15:41 ◼ ► what you guys thought. Marco, since I heard you snicker a second ago, why don't we start with you?
01:15:46 ◼ ► What did you, have you heard this and what did you think if you did? Yeah, I listened earlier tonight
01:15:50 ◼ ► and, and I do think the only other Tim Cook interview that I've really been able to get through
01:15:55 ◼ ► was the one he did for, I think it was outdoors magazine or outdoor magazine. That was also a
01:16:00 ◼ ► podcast. I think podcasts are a good format for Tim because first of all, smart speed, he, he really
01:16:07 ◼ ► needs it. So I'm able to pay attention a little bit more easily. And he also, you also are able
01:16:14 ◼ ► to pick up little bits of his personality here and there that he very carefully, you know, drips out.
01:16:21 ◼ ► If you see Tim like giving a TV interview, usually I don't even watch those cause they're,
01:16:26 ◼ ► they're so usually relatively low in value. You know, certainly like the, whatever he says during
01:16:31 ◼ ► the keynotes and presentations they do, like that's all so incredibly tightly scripted that he, again,
01:16:37 ◼ ► there's, there's not a lot of value to what he says there. It's hard to, it's hard to like see
01:16:41 ◼ ► through the cracks and actually see the personality and, and, and the, you know, the interesting parts
01:16:46 ◼ ► that aren't, that don't seem like PR statements. And so podcasting, I think it's, it's nice to be
01:16:50 ◼ ► able to get that sense from him a little bit. He's still extremely guarded and extremely careful with
01:16:55 ◼ ► every word he's saying, but you do get a little bit more of that personality and yes, smart speed
01:16:59 ◼ ► helps. So in general, I was pleased with the interview. I liked Kara Swisher's style. I don't
01:17:04 ◼ ► know if this was done in editing or if this is actually how it went, but she was very just kind
01:17:08 ◼ ► of like, you know, rapid fire questions. Maybe that was the smart speed, but it was, you know,
01:17:12 ◼ ► very much like, you know, she asked a lot of hard questions and Tim would answer some of them,
01:17:18 ◼ ► many of them maybe. And then she would just move right onto the next thing. Like he, it would be
01:17:22 ◼ ► like question one sentence answer, occasionally a followup question and then right into the next
01:17:26 ◼ ► thing. And it covered a very wide range of topics in a relatively short time. So that was actually,
01:17:32 ◼ ► you know, as just like a thing to listen to. And as, as an interview, I thought it was pretty good.
01:17:37 ◼ ► Kara Swisher's a good interviewer. She has interviewed a lot of CEOs, including, you know,
01:17:41 ◼ ► Steve Jobs, multiple occasions, Tim Cook before. And I think she knows what you can get out of
01:17:48 ◼ ► somebody like Tim Cook and what you can't. So it was very like the ratio of like, you know, meat on
01:17:54 ◼ ► this bone versus PR filler or fluff, I think was pretty good. As for the actual content of what
01:18:00 ◼ ► Tim said, obviously there's a number of areas that we'll talk about. One of them was the whole like
01:18:06 ◼ ► app tracking transparency thing. I think that was mostly fine. It's actually, it's worth listening
01:18:12 ◼ ► to dithering and stratechery because I like Ben's approach to the tracking debate. You know, Ben is
01:18:20 ◼ ► mostly on the side of that Apple's not super clear and often accurate about the terminology they use
01:18:28 ◼ ► and how they describe data brokering and tracking businesses and stuff like that. And like a lot of
01:18:32 ◼ ► times Apple will say something like, you know, these companies sell your data, which is like
01:18:35 ◼ ► technically untrue, or at least not the whole story or misleading or something like that.
01:18:41 ◼ ► So it's good to hear that point of view. I lean a little closer to the Apple point of view,
01:18:46 ◼ ► but that's in part because I'm not one of these companies that does all this tracking. I don't
01:18:51 ◼ ► have like an app install network where I'm trying to attribute, which means track purchases to,
01:18:58 ◼ ► you know, between ads and stuff like that. Like I'm not doing any of that stuff. My businesses
01:19:01 ◼ ► don't depend on any of that stuff. And I'm generally on Apple's side of like how things
01:19:06 ◼ ► should be in theory, you know, with this kind of stuff. So even with all that said, I found
01:19:19 ◼ ► when it got to the app store stuff, man, this is, and this applied to Steve Jobs as well,
01:19:29 ◼ ► but it certainly has not gone away with Tim Cook. Apple usually when they give statements or when
01:19:36 ◼ ► they're, when their executives give statements or interviews, whatever, usually they are
01:19:46 ◼ ► and that they believe they're doing the right thing. And, and usually you can take them at
01:19:50 ◼ ► their word and they're not trying to BS you, et cetera. And occasionally you get something like
01:19:55 ◼ ► this where they're doing something a little bit greedy or a little bit wrong, or, you know,
01:20:02 ◼ ► a little bit, you know, to something where the truth of the matter is not super PR friendly.
01:20:09 ◼ ► And so they start doing distortions and spin and they hammer on certain talking points that are,
01:20:15 ◼ ► that are kind of misleading or kind of, you know, dodgy or whatever. Modern Apple, that's the app
01:20:20 ◼ ► store. Like that's, that's the problem they have with this. When they talk about stuff like other
01:20:26 ◼ ► recent debates they've had with governments or the public, you know, things like, like,
01:20:30 ◼ ► as mentioned in the podcast, the San Bernardino shooting a phone unlocking thing. I think Apple
01:20:35 ◼ ► was on the right side of that, of like not building in the back door for law enforcement. Like that's,
01:20:40 ◼ ► I think that was the right move in retrospect. And I thought it back then, I think that move that has
01:20:44 ◼ ► held up as being the right move. And that was a big fight that Apple had in public, but they were
01:20:49 ◼ ► right. The app store stuff is mostly about money. They make a ton of money from being the app store
01:20:56 ◼ ► gatekeepers. And that's not great for PR that that's the reason for their app store, like
01:21:02 ◼ ► over controlling behavior. I think one of the best questions that, that Cara asked during the
01:21:07 ◼ ► interview was like, you know, they were on the, on the topic of the app store and Apple's cut. And
01:21:11 ◼ ► she said something on the lines of like, you know, cause Tim was saying like, Oh, well, you know, we,
01:21:20 ◼ ► that's complicated and kind of misleading. And she had asked like, well, what's, why not allow people
01:21:26 ◼ ► to basically accept in-app purchases directly in their apps through their own in-app purchase
01:21:31 ◼ ► systems or make alternative app stores, something like that. And Tim's answer was along the lines of,
01:21:36 ◼ ► well, then people, people need our app store to trust it. And if it wasn't, if it wasn't for our
01:21:41 ◼ ► app store, people wouldn't trust it to, they wouldn't input their payment information. They
01:21:49 ◼ ► literally the entire internet is filled with independent websites that take credit card
01:21:53 ◼ ► payments and have for many decades now. And it's been fine. Like it's people do it all the time.
01:22:00 ◼ ► And Tim is not an idiot. He knows the internet exists. He knows this is a BS argument and he's
01:22:07 ◼ ► giving it anyway. And it's not, this isn't just like, you know, solely a Tim Cook thing.
01:22:12 ◼ ► I guarantee you, if Steve jobs was still here, he would have made the exact same argument for
01:22:16 ◼ ► the exact same reason. That's the story they tell themselves, which is partially, but mostly not
01:22:22 ◼ ► true, but they make a ton of money from it. And it's so hard that, you know, the famous quote about,
01:22:27 ◼ ► you know, it's hard to get somebody to believe something if their job depends on them not
01:22:30 ◼ ► believing it. It's so hard for people in the position of like an Apple executive who have
01:22:38 ◼ ► told themselves this justification over and over and over again for years, we have to be the
01:22:43 ◼ ► gatekeepers here because it keeps people safe and they, then nobody would trust giving their credit
01:22:48 ◼ ► cards to apps. So therefore we have to do this. Well, that's, that's really not true and hasn't
01:22:54 ◼ ► been true for a long time if it was ever true. And, but, but they are, they've told themselves
01:23:00 ◼ ► that story so much for so long. And they, you know, it's like when you keep telling a lie over
01:23:05 ◼ ► and over again, eventually you kind of start to believe that it's the truth, or at least you
01:23:09 ◼ ► suppress the fact that it's a lie in your mind so much, even subconsciously that like, this is just,
01:23:15 ◼ ► you just say it over and over again. It's, it just becomes true to you. But this argument is so
01:23:20 ◼ ► flimsy. And when you hear it like out in the world, when you're not an Apple executive and you hear
01:23:25 ◼ ► these arguments, they sound completely ridiculous and, and almost, almost offensively so. And so
01:23:31 ◼ ► most of the rest of the interview, you know, well, I'm sure it's the other stuff, but to me,
01:23:34 ◼ ► it's just every time you get an Apple person talking about the app store cut and their,
01:23:44 ◼ ► It's so uncomfortable and it's so cringe-worthy and it's, and it is offensive because it's almost
01:23:53 ◼ ► don't hold a lot of water. And Tim even said, it's so funny. Tim even said at the beginning,
01:23:56 ◼ ► when asked about app tracking transparency and, uh, you know, Kara said something on the lines,
01:24:00 ◼ ► like, you know, what do you think of Facebook counterarguments that this is hurting small
01:24:03 ◼ ► businesses and everything? And Tim said, I think those arguments are flimsy. And you can say the
01:24:09 ◼ ► exact same thing about everything Tim said about app store control. The all of Apple's arguments
01:24:14 ◼ ► are really flimsy. It sounds good on, you know, if you don't think too much or if you don't know too
01:24:19 ◼ ► much about it, it sounds logical, but I'm so mad you said that. Cause that's exactly what I was
01:24:24 ◼ ► going to say. Cause it, you know, the thing of it is, is that it's, it's when you look at it on
01:24:29 ◼ ► the surface, you're like, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. And then you think about it for a half
01:24:32 ◼ ► second, you realize, no, the Apple's just pulling this like, Oh, we're so magnanimous card. Like,
01:24:36 ◼ ► look at us, look at all this innovation we created. There was some absolutely disgusting phrase used
01:24:40 ◼ ► for that, like this economic miracle or something like that. I might have that wrong, but it was
01:24:44 ◼ ► something along those lines. And, and, and, Oh, look at all this that we've done. Like,
01:24:53 ◼ ► so obnoxious the way they seem to think. Well, and the thing is like, some of that is true.
01:24:59 ◼ ► They have given a lot, they have created a lot of opportunities. They have created an amazing
01:25:03 ◼ ► ecosystem and lots of people make money from it. Like that's, that's true, but that doesn't answer
01:25:09 ◼ ► the argument of why they have to be the only game in town for payment processing. Like that's,
01:25:13 ◼ ► it's, that's a totally different argument. And, and it's, and even like, it's so funny that like,
01:25:18 ◼ ► even in the app store, there are tons of apps that take credit cards directly in the app. They just
01:25:26 ◼ ► aren't selling digital goods, but I can type my credit card into the Amazon app to buy stuff that
01:25:30 ◼ ► gets delivered to my house. I can type in a credit card into the, you know, Uber or Lyft apps to get
01:25:35 ◼ ► a car to come somewhere and pick me up and bring me somewhere. That's fine. I can type a credit
01:25:39 ◼ ► card into the, into the parking meter app when I park somewhere. And I have to like go to the
01:25:43 ◼ ► stupid park mobile app and enter the numbers and then PayPal fails and Apple pay fails. And you
01:25:47 ◼ ► got to type in a credit card. Like I can do that. And there's no trust issue there. And people buy
01:25:52 ◼ ► stuff online all the time, like from, from every other website. So it's a, it's a complete farce
01:25:57 ◼ ► of an argument. Like it makes no sense whatsoever that Apple has to, has to be the only game in town
01:26:04 ◼ ► for payment processing for digital goods in apps on their phone. That makes no sense whatsoever.
01:26:10 ◼ ► **Matt Stauffer** I feel like another reason Apple should hire me is I listen to these interviews
01:26:16 ◼ ► when he does these things. I feel like Tim, I can make the argument you're trying to make,
01:26:20 ◼ ► I think in a, in a more convincing way. Now I real, I think I know why he doesn't make it in
01:26:26 ◼ ► this way because the way I would make it would be more revealing of Apple strategy than Tim Cook's
01:26:34 ◼ ► Apple has ever particularly wanted to do. And also I think, bring up Steve Jobs again, I think I agree
01:26:40 ◼ ► that he would be making similar arguments and I agree that he would also totally be thinking about
01:26:43 ◼ ► the control and money behind the scenes. But I think also he would agree with this other angle
01:26:48 ◼ ► that I was just, they take and that's this. And you can disagree with it. Like it's, it's open,
01:26:52 ◼ ► it's open for debate whether you find this convincing, but I think it's a better argument,
01:26:56 ◼ ► which is by having one method to do digital purchases and you can get into a side argument
01:27:03 ◼ ► about why are physical distinct or whatever, but in general, like digital purposes purchases are the
01:27:08 ◼ ► new thing that didn't exist before the app store in this particular fashion, like in app purchases
01:27:12 ◼ ► and all sorts of like digital goods, right. In our store, people were always paying things through
01:27:16 ◼ ► credit cards, right. But you know, for these digital goods in our store, which are very easy
01:27:21 ◼ ► to basically, you know, rip people off with or whatever, because there's no actual physical
01:27:24 ◼ ► product moving around, it's just bits and taking people's money, witness the scam apps signing up
01:27:29 ◼ ► for weekly subscriptions, having a single way to deal with that type of thing, right, the bulk of
01:27:36 ◼ ► the purchases, all those in-app purchases, whatever, having it always go through Apple,
01:27:40 ◼ ► no exceptions, no ifs, ands, or buts for that type of thing, provides a simple to understand,
01:27:47 ◼ ► unified experience for customers that Apple thinks provides, differentiates its platform and makes
01:27:54 ◼ ► it more valuable to customers than it would be otherwise if they just did what other people do,
01:27:58 ◼ ► which is allow multiple payment methods. And that has more value to Apple as a company. Like,
01:28:04 ◼ ► in other words, why do we keep doing this? It's because we think Apple is a more valuable,
01:28:08 ◼ ► better company that is more differentiated from its rivals by this particular simplification,
01:28:20 ◼ ► and it is less flexible, but the simplicity is what provides the level of comfort to the customers
01:28:26 ◼ ► and overall, overall, net net that makes Apple a more valuable company, a more desirable company
01:28:32 ◼ ► for customers to interact with. It's the thing that makes Apple, Apple, right. But I think that
01:28:38 ◼ ► reveals too much, and Apple is basically describing here's why we're beating you at your own game,
01:28:44 ◼ ► because all these things that you think are detriments are computers that don't have a lot
01:28:48 ◼ ► of features and we seal in the batteries and all this other stuff that you think, and you get rid
01:28:52 ◼ ► of the floppy drive, and like, I mean, by now, all their competitors should know, and they're just
01:28:56 ◼ ► choosing not to do it, but like, that is the Apple MO. And it would be honest, I think there is a
01:29:03 ◼ ► section of Apple, like part of the reason they're doing this is exactly what I'm describing. And
01:29:09 ◼ ► even though it's, we feel like it has limits the options for customers, and it's certainly worse
01:29:13 ◼ ► for developers and all these other things, there is an argument to be made that even though it is
01:29:19 ◼ ► worse for all those parties, and even though it's actually kind of worse for customers in certain
01:29:22 ◼ ► ways, overall, it is still a win because it's what differentiates Apple, because if we didn't do that,
01:29:27 ◼ ► we'd be down in the mud fighting with Google and Microsoft at their own level. By making these
01:29:32 ◼ ► different choices, this is what makes Apple, Apple. Behind all that is also, let's look at the
01:29:37 ◼ ► server's revenue graph, right? Like, that is unavoidable. They're not going to say that, but
01:29:42 ◼ ► everybody knows it's true, including Kara Swisher, right? And I thought in this interview, she was
01:29:46 ◼ ► actually good with the quick, it wasn't a follow-up question, it was like a follow-up assertion,
01:29:54 ◼ ► we was talking about the tracking stuff, and they're like, oh, these companies are tracking
01:29:58 ◼ ► you and doing all these things and invading your privacy and stealing all your stuff or whatever,
01:30:02 ◼ ► and Kara would say, yeah, and they do that with the devices that you make running the OS that you,
01:30:07 ◼ ► you know, like with the app they got from your App Store, right? She would always just stick that in,
01:30:11 ◼ ► and statement of fact, like, oh, they, you know, and Apple could have come back, Tim could have
01:30:15 ◼ ► come back and said, yeah, that's why we're doing this thing, because it is on our platform, but
01:30:18 ◼ ► she's trying to say like, you are partially culpable for this, because you have been vending
01:30:22 ◼ ► these apps that do all these bad things, and yes, you're trying to make up for it now by
01:30:26 ◼ ► hurting your competitors who you won't admit are really your competitors, right? And there's that
01:30:30 ◼ ► whole other angle there, right? But I thought she was good at about sort of just reminding people,
01:30:36 ◼ ► just have a, wow, this is all happening on iPhones, and you are the iPhone person, so it's not like
01:30:40 ◼ ► you can just say this is all just a thing happening at arm's length from you, you are, you know,
01:30:45 ◼ ► you are part of this ecosystem, in fact, you run this whole ecosystem, and then later in the
01:30:48 ◼ ► interview we'll talk about how you run this ecosystem with an iron fist and don't allow
01:30:51 ◼ ► certain things to happen, so you surely share some of the blame for any bad effects that we're
01:30:56 ◼ ► experiencing now, even though you're also the one who's trying to fix them. But anyway, I think,
01:31:01 ◼ ► I wasn't bothered by the interview, I enjoyed it, I'm used to Tim Cook saying these things,
01:31:06 ◼ ► I wasn't particularly frustrated by the App Store section, just because this is what I expected him
01:31:10 ◼ ► to say, but I think there are actually stronger arguments than he was making, and I think mostly
01:31:16 ◼ ► the reason he didn't make them is because they are more revealing than he wanted to be, and I think
01:31:20 ◼ ► he thinks and Apple thinks as a collective corporate entity that they continue, they can
01:31:25 ◼ ► continue to make the case they've been making and essentially get away with it, because it is,
01:31:39 ◼ ► we are not the government, we are not Congress. Maybe the arguments they're making are sufficiently
01:31:48 ◼ ► and here's why it's a competitive advantage, which I totally buy and think is a huge factor,
01:31:53 ◼ ► and maybe they never have to really examine the fact that like, okay, but what is this really
01:31:57 ◼ ► about? We know you make a ton of money from this, right? Someone in the chat mentioned like how Steve
01:32:02 ◼ ► Jobs said in the beginning, like they're running the App Store at break even, I'm pretty sure that
01:32:07 ◼ ► was never true, I mean maybe I'm wrong, but like I said, oh, so much has changed since then, the App
01:32:12 ◼ ► Store is a huge store, so many, yes, obviously the App Store and digital purchases have become
01:32:16 ◼ ► way bigger than they were, but when Steve Jobs said we're running the App Store at break even,
01:32:25 ◼ ► like you're not trying to make a ton of money, I get what you're saying, but the way he said it,
01:32:29 ◼ ► it was like, all right, yeah, what you're trying, it's like, nobody, who believed that,
01:32:34 ◼ ► who believed they were running, you know, maybe the App Store was losing money, but he's just
01:32:38 ◼ ► saying that as a way to try to say, you know, look, we're doing it, like you just said, we're
01:32:43 ◼ ► out here killing ourselves for you developers, oh, I can't believe the developers are yelling
01:32:46 ◼ ► at us, we're making this great platform, we're running this App Store for you, like basically
01:32:51 ◼ ► the charity, I'm not buying it, right? I mean, maybe they ran the App Store at a loss for a
01:32:57 ◼ ► while, but we understand projections, like we understand that there is motivation to get people
01:33:00 ◼ ► into the App Store and get them to start selling things so you can start going on this upward
01:33:04 ◼ ► slope, or maybe it was probable from day one, I don't know, either way, claiming poverty or asking
01:33:10 ◼ ► to be better appreciated for what they've given everybody are probably not viable strategies,
01:33:15 ◼ ► but the safety argument, I think, has legs even without getting into the nuances that are
01:33:20 ◼ ► subscribed, because most people hear it, like Casey just said, and go, all right, that makes
01:33:24 ◼ ► some sense, and they're not listening to this podcast, and they don't care about the nuances,
01:33:27 ◼ ► so, you know, problem solved, so it could be that the Tim Cook strategy is actually the winning one.
01:33:33 ◼ ► Thinking back to our earlier conversation about how Marco and I seemed to think that what Google
01:33:37 ◼ ► did was a little slimy, and I feel like Apple's perspective on the App Store is slimy, like, yes,
01:33:43 ◼ ► I suppose as the gatekeeper, they could charge 30 or 15 percent to, you know, to be on the App Store,
01:33:51 ◼ ► and yes, they should earn some amount of money for innovating and creating the App Store in the first
01:33:55 ◼ ► place, and so on and so forth, but like, ah, it's just the way in which it came across is, it just,
01:34:02 ◼ ► it was so gross to me, like, it was so looking down from on high and saying, be thankful for what we
01:34:10 ◼ ► give you, you are welcome, what can I say, except you're welcome, and also 30 percent, and it's just,
01:34:18 ◼ ► it's just, it was so gross, and I just, I get that feeling, like, even, even when I, I speak to
01:34:25 ◼ ► friends at Apple about this, I get this feeling that it's inherent within Apple as a corporation
01:34:33 ◼ ► that they are owed for doing this. They, they are owed for bringing this into the world, and again,
01:34:41 ◼ ► to a degree, I think that is reasonable, but I don't know, at some point, I feel like, okay, like,
01:34:48 ◼ ► yes, you did innovate 10 years ago, what is it, 13 years ago, how long has the App Store been out,
01:34:53 ◼ ► it's like 2008 or something like that? Yep, so 13 years ago, you innovated, and I'm very happy for
01:34:59 ◼ ► you, I am, but things have changed since then, and like, oh, Tim says, oh, you know, the App
01:35:05 ◼ ► Store rules aren't set in concrete or something like that, and I'm like, well, let's change them
01:35:09 ◼ ► then, like, let's move on, like, you, you have extracted the rent you deserve. I think he was
01:35:13 ◼ ► good in that section, because he did make the point that the rules have changed, and he emphasized
01:35:17 ◼ ► the point that they have essentially changed over time, more or less, to be more favorable to people
01:35:22 ◼ ► other than Apple, which I think is true. I mean, the, obviously, the 30 to 15 really supports that
01:35:26 ◼ ► argument, like, a lot of, that's why I thought he did, for the most part, a pretty good job in this
01:35:31 ◼ ► interview, he, at various times, and I think this is what you're finding distasteful, and be to some
01:35:36 ◼ ► degree, is that he sounded like he was, he always sounds like he's on a witness stand, right? He
01:35:41 ◼ ► always sounds like a lawyer had coached him on exactly what to say, even when he's being
01:35:44 ◼ ► persuasive, or either that he's on a witness stand, or that he's talking in front of Congress,
01:35:49 ◼ ► you, you know he's coming with the talking points, and his talking points are, well, we do change the
01:35:54 ◼ ► App Store rules, and in fact, we pretty much only change them in one direction, and in fact, we
01:35:58 ◼ ► recently changed them to be way better for developers, so you telling us that we are ruled,
01:36:03 ◼ ► ruling with an iron fist, and not, you know, and making the rules that are bad for everybody,
01:36:07 ◼ ► like, we're not saying the rules are perfect, but we change them all the time, and we then,
01:36:11 ◼ ► basically, change them to get better, right? Those are all true and valid points, and reasonable
01:36:16 ◼ ► counter-arguments to the extreme arguments against, right? Well, but it's all just misdirection. Well,
01:36:21 ◼ ► okay, don't worry about that, but hey, have I told you about... But it's not, but it, it, it is true.
01:36:25 ◼ ► Here's the, here's the problem. So I just got through saying, where Tim Cook could have made
01:36:29 ◼ ► his case better, that having a single payment method actually is a benefit to both Apple and
01:36:34 ◼ ► the world at large, as in terms of differentiation and simplification, the basic Apple argument of why
01:36:39 ◼ ► is it better for you to have fewer things, right? Or fewer options, right? On the flip side of that,
01:36:44 ◼ ► I don't understand why everybody, including Kara Swisher, doesn't come back at him with the obvious
01:36:49 ◼ ► counter-argument to this whole, like, ecosystem thing that you're talking about. It's like, oh,
01:36:53 ◼ ► you know, this economic miracle that we've created in the App Store, and I think you're right,
01:36:57 ◼ ► there was something like that, right? The obvious comeback is like, everybody knows, Tim, everybody
01:37:02 ◼ ► knows how platform works, right? Pick a platform, right? Games, right? PlayStation. Yes, they make
01:37:08 ◼ ► the console and they sell it. But they need the games, right? It's, you can't have one without
01:37:14 ◼ ► the other. It's a clearly symbiotic relationship. Oh, we made the App Store, you should be thankful.
01:37:20 ◼ ► And the game, the app developers or the game developers console say, we made the software,
01:37:24 ◼ ► you should be thankful. You need both. It's so obvious. Everybody, and maybe they don't say it
01:37:29 ◼ ► because it's so obvious, but I think most people listening be like, oh, well, you know, Tim's right,
01:37:33 ◼ ► like they did make the App Store. The App Store is nothing without the apps. It's nothing, right?
01:37:37 ◼ ► You need the apps. That's how every platform works. You make the platform and you attract
01:37:42 ◼ ► the developers to it by making it a good deal for them. And Apple did that. But it's a partnership.
01:37:50 ◼ ► nobody who makes the world's most awesome game console, like, it's the best. It costs, you know,
01:37:57 ◼ ► a small amount of money and has a huge amount of power and it's better than everything else. But
01:38:01 ◼ ► if no one makes games for it, it's a brick. Nobody wants it. You need people to make games. And so,
01:38:07 ◼ ► you need to sell a lot of them or convince somebody that you are going to sell a lot of
01:38:14 ◼ ► we're making a game console. We're trying to make some games ourselves, which is going to cost a lot
01:38:18 ◼ ► of money, but we need other people to make games for it. And we haven't sold any of them yet. We've
01:38:22 ◼ ► sold zero. And in fact, we've never sold a game console, but we have to convince you, game developer,
01:38:27 ◼ ► to put your game on this console that we can't tell you how many we're going to sell, but we
01:38:31 ◼ ► think we might sell this many. What do you think? Right? And no platform is successful without
01:38:36 ◼ ► people that build on it. And so, every single time Apple or Tim Cook or whatever says this,
01:38:42 ◼ ► it should be some sort of immediate sort of rote cliche comeback. It's like, yes, but of course,
01:38:48 ◼ ► the platform is pointless without the apps that develop for it. So, you owe them maybe not equal
01:38:54 ◼ ► amount as they owe you, but it's not 99.1%. That everybody knows it's useless without the apps,
01:39:00 ◼ ► right? And in fact, every time someone makes a cool app for your platform, that adds value to
01:39:04 ◼ ► your platform, and their reward is that they get 70% of the money, you get 30 or 85, 15 or whatever,
01:39:17 ◼ ► make it because she knows and Tim knows and everybody, you know, like they know between
01:39:21 ◼ ► themselves that this is all right, all right. Like in some respects, I felt like when she got
01:39:25 ◼ ► a talking point, she was just like, you know, over it and wanted to go to the next one because she
01:39:31 ◼ ► knows it's a BS talking point and didn't want to get bogged down in it. But even when these people
01:39:36 ◼ ► go in front of Congress, I hope some congressional staffers like, you know, get them up to date and
01:39:40 ◼ ► say, if they come in and say it's an economic miracle, whatever, tell them how awesome it
01:39:43 ◼ ► would be if they had zero apps, right? How awesome would your store be if developers didn't write
01:39:49 ◼ ► applications for it, right? They're not just doing you a favor. You're not just doing them a favor by
01:39:54 ◼ ► allowing their apps to be on your store. Their apps make people buy your phones and the phones
01:39:59 ◼ ► you make bazillions of dollars with because they have, you know, great margins or whatever. So,
01:40:03 ◼ ► yeah. Yeah. Overall, I thought the interview was very good though. And I also wanted to briefly
01:40:16 ◼ ► and Ben talk about, and I feel like they'd done this before, talk about the questions that
01:40:22 ◼ ► Kara Swisher chose to ask because on the rare occasions that we get an audience with someone
01:40:27 ◼ ► at Apple, it's everyone's favorite thing to do is to yell at us about not asking the quote unquote
01:40:33 ◼ ► hard questions. And there was a really good discussion between John and Ben about how much
01:40:38 ◼ ► of a waste of time that often is. And then it becomes, I forget which one of them said it,
01:40:43 ◼ ► but then it becomes, you know, us grandstanding at, "Ooh, look at us, look at the three of us
01:40:47 ◼ ► and how fricking tough we are. We asked those hard questions." This question is more of a comment.
01:40:52 ◼ ► Exactly. No, it really is. It really is like that. And if you're one of those people who thinks,
01:40:59 ◼ ► "Oh, if the three of us, or if somebody else has an audience with the king, so to speak,
01:41:10 ◼ ► And it's just, that's oftentimes a waste of time because if there's anything we've learned from Tim
01:41:14 ◼ ► Cook particularly, and I actually think Schiller is also extremely good in this regard, you know,
01:41:19 ◼ ► neither of them is going to reveal anything unless they absolutely want to. So yes, like the three of
01:41:25 ◼ ► us or Kara Swisher could ask the quote unquote hard question, but there's really not a lot of
01:41:31 ◼ ► point to that because all you're going to do is waste time that you could be using to ask something
01:41:35 ◼ ► that you may actually get interesting content and interesting data out of. So I just wanted to point
01:41:41 ◼ ► that out as well. Yeah. I mean, it's not, it's not even the hard questions. Like don't ask a question
01:41:45 ◼ ► that you know, that they're not going to give a real answer for, right? You can ask the hard
01:41:48 ◼ ► question and very often they'll, they invite the hard question, ask me the difficult thing and let
01:41:52 ◼ ► them give their canned answer for it. But like, if, if you're looking to reveal information,
01:41:57 ◼ ► if you want to extract information, information that your audience hasn't heard before,
01:42:01 ◼ ► getting them to regurgitate an existing talking point is not the route to that, right? Like we,
01:42:07 ◼ ► we've all heard those talking points and some of the hardest questions have talking point,
01:42:13 ◼ ► you know, canned answers, right? A lot of the questions Kara asked were hard questions,
01:42:17 ◼ ► but then when Tim started the answer, you're like, oh, he's doing that one. The greatest
01:42:20 ◼ ► sense, right? You know, that if there's no new information, like you, what people want is to ask
01:42:25 ◼ ► the hard question and we get like a different answer or more insider for them to be more honest
01:42:30 ◼ ► about it. But if they're coming in with their, you know, and so in some respects, sometimes the,
01:42:39 ◼ ► because you know, every, the question about like app store and, you know, uh, whatever privacy and
01:42:45 ◼ ► ad tracking is, those are hard questions and, you know, or like he's coming in with answers to those.
01:42:50 ◼ ► He knows they're going to be asked, right. But maybe if you ask something obscure, they don't
01:42:54 ◼ ► have a canned answer for that. And maybe you get something interesting out of that. Right. Um,
01:42:58 ◼ ► anyway, like obviously Kara Swisher's interview is different than our podcast is different than
01:43:15 ◼ ► if what you're expecting is like a, uh, oh, I got to do it again, but Marco still hasn't seen it.
01:43:20 ◼ ► A few good men's style, you know, moment of reckoning. You are not going to get that on a
01:43:26 ◼ ► casual podcast. I'm sorry. You're just not, uh, yeah. And, and probably not even in court if, uh,
01:43:32 ◼ ► any past cases are judged. We've gone long on this topic, but just want to get in this one last bit.
01:43:38 ◼ ► Uh, it was one that got a lot of press cause it was, it was the one, Hey, it was a tidbit of new
01:43:43 ◼ ► information, information that hadn't been said before. And this is why it's getting all the
01:43:46 ◼ ► press. And this is why it's actually kind of a fun question that is not maybe something that he came
01:43:50 ◼ ► in with. Although knowing this, he probably knew all the questions at the time, but who knows?
01:43:53 ◼ ► Anyway, uh, I don't think he had a can answer this, but he clearly came in prepared to give
01:43:59 ◼ ► this answer, right? Maybe he's been prepared to give this answer for three months now. And no one
01:44:03 ◼ ► asked it. And maybe he just, you know, told Kara, you should ask me about this. Cause I got a cool
01:44:07 ◼ ► answer for you. Like that would be nice thing to do. Anyway. The question was, can you see yourself
01:44:11 ◼ ► still at apple 10 years from now or something similar to like that basically, uh, saying 10
01:44:15 ◼ ► years from now you think you'll still be at apple. Uh, and what Tim said is 10 years from now,
01:44:21 ◼ ► probably not, but I have no plans to leave now and I'm really enjoying it. And so on and so forth.
01:44:25 ◼ ► He basically did an infinite timeline argument with 10 years being the timeline. He said,
01:44:48 ◼ ► Hey billionaire, do you think you'll still be doing this backbreaking job when you're 70
01:44:57 ◼ ► no, 10 years. No, I'm out of here by 70 perfectly valid, reasonable, not unexpected answer,
01:45:04 ◼ ► but something he has never said before. And it is kind of like the first step in the seven year plan
01:45:10 ◼ ► to sort of, you know, lay the groundwork for a transition, right? He's a good CEO, you know,
01:45:15 ◼ ► like knows how these things work. Uh, if you have the time, it's good to set up these transitions
01:45:21 ◼ ► well ahead of time. So here is the first little, first little tiny step, which is to say,
01:45:26 ◼ ► just so you know, in case you were thinking, I'm going to live forever and be like the God emperor
01:45:29 ◼ ► of Apple. I'm not, I'm really rich. I'm not going to be working here when I'm 95. Uh, so let's put
01:45:37 ◼ ► a cap on it. So 10 years, surely I'm out of here, but I'm not going to tell you when it's just the
01:45:41 ◼ ► 10 years is so long from now and I'll be sold. I'm certainly out of here by then. So just keep
01:45:46 ◼ ► that in mind anyway. I'm not leaving today or tomorrow. Don't worry about it. Yeah. I mean,
01:45:53 ◼ ► before we blow past it, I also thought it was kind of interesting that he basically confirmed
01:45:58 ◼ ► it. The AR and car projects. Yeah. I mean, he's been, he's, he's been doing that for a long time
01:46:03 ◼ ► now. Every interview he's in, he doesn't shy away from the fact that Apple is very interested or
01:46:08 ◼ ► looking into that or like he never actually says we're going to make a thing, but he comes so close
01:46:14 ◼ ► to it for so many years now that it's been so like, unlike jobs who jobs was better at just
01:46:19 ◼ ► flat bald face, lying denial. Right. Just say, you know, we think AR is cool, but you know,
01:46:27 ◼ ► you know, is Apple doing anything about that? It's like, ah, you know, I don't, I don't think
01:46:30 ◼ ► that's, we don't talk about here, but Tim is like, Apple is deeply interested in this and we are very
01:46:35 ◼ ► interested in this area and we are looking into it deeply and he'll say every phrase that you can say
01:46:39 ◼ ► other than we're making a car. Right. Even when they said, are you making a car? You're making
01:46:43 ◼ ► driving stuff. It's like, he didn't say we're making a car. He didn't say we're making driving
01:46:47 ◼ ► stuff. What he said was boop soundboard can't answer. Number 12 Apple really lives at the
01:46:52 ◼ ► intersection of software, hardware and services. Right. But it's so obvious that it's like wink,
01:47:00 ◼ ► wink, nudge, nudge software, hardware and hardware and services. That's all true. And that's a canned
01:47:07 ◼ ► answer. But when you give that to your answer over, you're making a car or you're making
01:47:10 ◼ ► software, it's like hardware doesn't really answer anything. Cause what does that even mean? Are you
01:47:14 ◼ ► going to build it yourself? Are you integrating with hardware of a car made by somebody else?
01:47:19 ◼ ► So Tim Cook is still following the Apple playbook. We're not going to actually tell you anything.
01:47:22 ◼ ► But he is so not interested in hiding the fact that they've been working on AR. Honestly,
01:47:28 ◼ ► how can he hide it? There's been so many leaks and on AR, Apple, every WWDC has a new AR thing.
01:47:34 ◼ ► They just don't have the glasses. Right. But here's the new AR technology and you can use AR
01:47:38 ◼ ► on your phone. And did you know, like that's a canned answer. Did you know that you can use AR
01:47:42 ◼ ► with our iPads, with the LIDAR detector or LIDAR thing in it. And they're in our phones and look
01:47:47 ◼ ► at this is amazing AR. Are you going to make any goggles? Well, Apple really works at the
01:47:51 ◼ ► intersection of our phones. You know, there it is. We're all just waiting. And I think at this point,
01:47:57 ◼ ► Apple could never ship AR things and never ship anything with the car. And all his answers are
01:48:03 ◼ ► still valid because Apple has been shipping things in those areas for a long time. Will they, will a
01:48:09 ◼ ► product ever come of it? We think so eventually, but we also thought that air tags would arrive
01:48:20 ◼ ► Yeah. And if anything, I think his answers for, you know, regarding AR and the car basically
01:48:27 ◼ ► confirm what most rumors have been triangulating on for years, which is like, both of these are
01:48:33 ◼ ► projects that are being worked on heavily. The car is probably not anywhere near being a product
01:48:39 ◼ ► or even defining what the product might be. It's still very much seemingly in the like exploratory
01:48:45 ◼ ► or like early development or experimental kind of, kind of areas. The third attempt at early
01:48:50 ◼ ► development, maybe. Right. Yeah, yeah, possibly. And, and I think the AR project is very close.
01:48:55 ◼ ► Like I think you can, you can look at like, you know, the way Apple talks, the way Tim talks,
01:48:59 ◼ ► this basically confirms the AR product is real and very close. The car project is also real,
01:49:05 ◼ ► but not very close and not quite well defined or, you know, maybe not nailed down yet. And both of
01:49:10 ◼ ► them are very much definitely products. Although that being said, did Tim Cook make anybody less
01:49:15 ◼ ► excited about AR? Like then is it possible to be less excited about what he was talking about here?
01:49:23 ◼ ► Just think of everyone in the audience was watching a chart. You know what, if only there
01:49:28 ◼ ► was a way. He just wants to replace WebEx. Yeah. Even, even back, you know, in like a regular,
01:49:34 ◼ ► you know, regular room back when we get to back to normal, imagine if there's a way that we can be in
01:49:39 ◼ ► a meeting together and we can both be looking at the same chart. We've never come up with a way to
01:49:44 ◼ ► do this before. How amazing would that be? Like, I am so like, I got, is anybody on earth as excited
01:49:53 ◼ ► about AR as Tim Cook? No. And the thing with the AR with Tim Cook is like, like, you know what he
01:50:00 ◼ ► must be shown and maybe that's the way to get Tim Cook personally excited is to share a chart,
01:50:04 ◼ ► right? Because maybe that's an application that he can relate to. But so all the rumors of the AR
01:50:10 ◼ ► stuff is like whatever, whatever thing that is potentially in somewhat releasable state is
01:50:15 ◼ ► essentially like a VR, VR thing that looks a lot like a Oculus or, you know, what is the other big
01:50:20 ◼ ► one? VIVE. Yeah, there we go. I forgot all these brand names. Yeah. Anyway, then it's a big honking
01:50:27 ◼ ► thing. It's not a pair of dainty little glasses that are magically in future, right? No, you know,
01:50:31 ◼ ► obviously Apple is internally working on things to that, to that end, but they're nowhere near
01:50:37 ◼ ► release. Whereas Apple has had in-house, according to the rumors, many different prototypes and
01:50:41 ◼ ► iteration of things that you would recognize as VR AR goggles, like HoloLens or like, like the
01:50:47 ◼ ► Oculus things. But if you imagine those that you could actually look through instead of being
01:50:50 ◼ ► completely opaque or whatever. And in that context, it's still fascinating to me how Apple will try
01:50:56 ◼ ► to sell that as a product, because as we, as we known from years of these things existing,
01:51:01 ◼ ► especially the VR things, so far, it's not a mass market product. I mean, Sony made one for their
01:51:06 ◼ ► PlayStation, which is a mass market product. And even that accessory didn't set the world on fire
01:51:10 ◼ ► and there wasn't really any killer app that made everyone go out and get one, right? And then,
01:51:14 ◼ ► you know, hardcore gamers have them and it's, it's very sort of narrow interest. And it, I,
01:51:20 ◼ ► it'll be fascinating to see how, if Apple releases a product like that, which is what the rumors are,
01:51:25 ◼ ► how they will try to sell it. Will they say this is also for hardcore people and early adopters or
01:51:30 ◼ ► whatever, will they try to make it mass market? Because to get back to what Tim Cook was saying,
01:51:34 ◼ ► if you're trying, if you're going to pitch this as mass market, like everyone else did it,
01:51:38 ◼ ► but they didn't know how to do it right. So we finally made a good one. And this will be
01:51:43 ◼ ► more widely appealing. Telling people they can share a document is not the way to do it.
01:51:48 ◼ ► Right? Like, I mean, even with the Apple watch, you can make fun of digital touch all you want,
01:51:53 ◼ ► but whatever. But there was clearly a very mass market pitch about personal interaction and,
01:51:58 ◼ ► you know, like the power that, what this watch was going to do to you, Apple's most personal product.
01:52:03 ◼ ► And some of it panned out and some of it didn't, but you can see if someone showed you that pitch
01:52:07 ◼ ► beforehand, it's like, look, if you want to make this a mass market product, this is a mass market
01:52:11 ◼ ► pitch. Turns out that promise was not, you know, fulfilled. That's not how we ended up using your
01:52:17 ◼ ► watches, but the things that they are good for are equally mass market. Fitness, fitness is
01:52:22 ◼ ► essentially a mass market thing, right? It's not, it's not a narrow, you know, and health also mass
01:52:27 ◼ ► market and telling time mass market, very important, right? But sharing documents, no. So,
01:52:32 ◼ ► I guess maybe they haven't come up with the pitch for the AR product yet and all Tim Scott is the
01:52:39 ◼ ► thing that makes him excited. But I guess we'll find out either at WWDC this year or next.
01:52:45 ◼ ► One more quick thing. I know this is ridiculous to cover as a one more quick thing at the end
01:52:54 ◼ ► If Tim Cook does retire or step down for what I know any other reason in the next 10 years,
01:53:00 ◼ ► who do you think is the next CEO? Because like, yeah, that's why I put, that's why I put this
01:53:05 ◼ ► element in there. I thought we were going to talk about that, but I didn't think we had time,
01:53:10 ◼ ► I don't actually know that much about the, like the people, you know, at Apple and all their
01:53:14 ◼ ► inner workings and everything, but you know, I think obviously it's been very obvious that
01:53:19 ◼ ► Jeff Williams is kind of being groomed in the public eye, not necessarily as the next longterm
01:53:26 ◼ ► CEO, but at least as like a hot spare, you know, like if something, like if something happened to
01:53:31 ◼ ► Tim Cook and he suddenly couldn't be CEO anymore, I think it's obvious that Jeff Williams would be
01:53:36 ◼ ► the stand in, like at least interim CEO. But I don't think Jeff Williams is that much younger
01:53:43 ◼ ► than Tim. I think they're, they're of similar age. If Tim is saying, you know, by the time he's 70,
01:53:47 ◼ ► he probably won't be CEO anymore. Like by that time, I don't think Jeff Williams would be,
01:53:51 ◼ ► you know, super young at that point either. And once you go past Jeff Williams in the like
01:53:57 ◼ ► hierarchy, I don't know that there is an obvious next candidate up. Well, I mean, the thing I was
01:54:03 ◼ ► going to say about this was I think Jeff Williams, well, I think Tim Cook has shown that Apple can
01:54:09 ◼ ► function reasonably well with someone as a CEO who is not a visionary and not a product guy.
01:54:16 ◼ ► That was an open question when Jobs died, right? That could Apple function without someone who
01:54:21 ◼ ► does what he does? And Tim showed more or less, yes, you can. Like he, Tim doesn't have any of
01:54:28 ◼ ► those skills. And unlike let's say John Sculley, sorry, Mr. Sculley, doesn't try to have those
01:54:34 ◼ ► skills. He delegates those to varying degrees of success, depending on who he's delegating to.
01:54:40 ◼ ► So Jeff Williams, I think, could run Apple in a Tim Cook style successfully. Now you're right about
01:54:48 ◼ ► the age thing, but my instincts for super rich executives is that if you haven't been the CEO
01:54:55 ◼ ► of Apple, you at least want to be it for a few years, even if you're the same age as the guy
01:54:59 ◼ ► who's leaving, whereas Tim Cook is over it. Jeff Williams would be honored to be the CEO of Apple,
01:55:05 ◼ ► even if he was the same age as the outgoing guy for, let's say, five years, right? Just because
01:55:11 ◼ ► he hasn't been before. And Tim Cook has done it for a while, right? The danger of replacing Tim
01:55:15 ◼ ► Cook with somebody who is not willing to govern in a Tim Cook style, as in not being the product
01:55:23 ◼ ► visionary and delegating that to other people, is that you get someone in there who has bad ideas
01:55:28 ◼ ► and forces them on the whole company, right? Like that's the danger of the position at the top of
01:55:32 ◼ ► the org chart, is your badness becomes everybody's problem. Whereas if you delegate, if you're a good
01:55:39 ◼ ► manager, you can deal with your mistakes. "Oh, I delegated this to these people and they had
01:55:43 ◼ ► bad ideas, but I can shuffle those people because I'm results-oriented and I know how's the company
01:55:47 ◼ ► doing? Do people like our products? Are they selling well? What is public perception?" Tim
01:55:53 ◼ ► Cook, I think, is a little bit underrated. He's overrated, and if you look at the numbers, like,
01:56:00 ◼ ► "Oh, look at what Tim Cook's done with Apple since he came on. He's the best CEO ever." But
01:56:04 ◼ ► I think we underrate him a little bit, just because we don't care about that stuff and we only care
01:56:07 ◼ ► about the products. But his style is, it has benefits. In that when you do make mistakes,
01:56:15 ◼ ► you're not sort of wedded to them in the same way that if it was Tim Cook's idea that he was
01:56:19 ◼ ► wedded to because he thought he was the visionary for this product, it would be harder to dislodge
01:56:23 ◼ ► him if it turns out that was a bad strategy or whatever. We'll see. But anyway, I agree with
01:56:28 ◼ ► Marco that I don't know what the obvious sort of line of succession is. You can always hire from
01:56:33 ◼ ► the outside. It's not unheard of. It seems like a totally un-Apple thing to do, but stranger things
01:56:38 ◼ ► have happened. But I am heartened by the fact that Tim Cook has shown that you don't necessarily need
01:56:46 ◼ ► Steve Jobs to have a successful Apple, and that really opens up the field to people who can be
01:56:52 ◼ ► good at that job. Because if your demand is you must be Steve Jobs, it's a hard position to fill.
01:57:03 ◼ ► but you don't have to be the best best when you have such a successful company. Maybe you won't
01:57:07 ◼ ► be as efficient as Tim Cook was, but there's a lot of money raining down on Apple. I think
01:57:15 ◼ ► So what I'm saying is hire me. I'll do it. I don't think you would. I honestly think you wouldn't.
01:57:21 ◼ ► I think you'd hate it if you did. Oh, delegate. Everyone else handle it. I'll just do podcasts.
01:57:27 ◼ ► Yeah, totally. That'll be fine. That'll work. Talk to Kara Swisher. She'll ask me the hard
01:57:35 ◼ ► Hold on. I got to give you my wild card because it's going to really make you happy. So officially,
01:57:41 ◼ ► my official answer is absolutely Jeff Williams. No question. That's the next one. But my unofficial
01:57:46 ◼ ► answer is, and I can't believe I'm saying this out loud. What about Q? I was like the guy from
01:57:53 ◼ ► Star Trek. What? Oh, that's the thing. Like almost all the executives that we know their names like
01:58:00 ◼ ► that have been in presentation, everything. They're almost all at least in their fifties.
01:58:04 ◼ ► They're old and rich, but, but like I said, they're all, of course they're all the rich,
01:58:07 ◼ ► but they haven't been CEO before and they have any desire to be CEO. You take the job and you stay in
01:58:13 ◼ ► it for a while. Like, and I don't think any Q wants the job. So I don't think so. I'm not so sure.
01:58:17 ◼ ► So Eddie Q is 56 as we are recording right now and I don't, I, again, my official answer is Williams,
01:58:29 ◼ ► replaced him tomorrow if necessary. Right. Exactly. And would do and would do it, I think,
01:58:34 ◼ ► similar to how Tim does it, which is not a bad way. Yeah. Agreed. But I think about this and I
01:58:39 ◼ ► think that Q seems to have that he seems to have the ambition that I think it would take to do it,
01:58:48 ◼ ► I think. And beyond that, what's important to Apple these days? Like, yes, hardware's important
01:58:59 ◼ ► Johnny Suruji just like showing up as CEO. Maybe Suruji, maybe, but even then I feel like that's
01:59:04 ◼ ► a stretch, but what else is important to Apple these days? Services is really fricking important
01:59:17 ◼ ► in being the next CEO. I don't know that it would be a particularly good choice, but I see it. I can
01:59:22 ◼ ► see it happening. I'm looking at, you know, apple.com/leadership and I'm looking at eddy
01:59:26 ◼ ► Q stare me in the face saying, Oh yeah, I'm your man. Like I'm just looking at it. I'm telling you.
01:59:32 ◼ ► I feel like if anybody on this leadership page could hear this segment, I'm of two minds. One,
01:59:38 ◼ ► they'd be like, Oh, Casey knows our secrets. How did he find out? But more likely I think
01:59:42 ◼ ► they're all laughing hilariously at the idea of this happening. I hope so. I hope so. Yeah. No,
01:59:51 ◼ ► you know, if Jeff Williams is number two, I don't think Eddie's number three. I think Jager O'Brien
01:59:55 ◼ ► is number three. Why do you say that? So she is from operations. She has been recently promoted,
02:00:07 ◼ ► Tim's from operations, Jeff Williams, by the way, real time follow up Jeff Williams is three years
02:00:12 ◼ ► younger than Tim. So not a lot. So he's got, he's got five years to be CEO then. Yeah. And Jager
02:00:16 ◼ ► O'Brien is six years younger than Tim. So not, we're not doing, still not doing great here, but
02:00:20 ◼ ► you know, at least, and Eddie by the way is up there too. Eddie is four years younger than Tim.
02:00:25 ◼ ► So we're dealing with, you know, everyone's in their fifties are up. But I would say Jager O'Brien
02:00:32 ◼ ► is the number three, like after Jeff Williams in the line of current succession. People keep saying
02:00:38 ◼ ► like, you know, Federighi or Ternus, but like, these are, these are, those are like tech people.
02:00:43 ◼ ► I don't think they want to be CEO. And frankly, I don't think Eddy Q wants to be either. I think
02:00:47 ◼ ► the desire to be CEO is the number one factor because, because it's a hard job and you have to
02:00:54 ◼ ► want it. So just cross off every bear on this page who doesn't want it. Eddie, I think wants to go
02:00:59 ◼ ► have fun. He deserves to go have fun. He wants to go to sports games again and drive his Ferraris and
02:01:05 ◼ ► just generally have fun. And you don't have fun as CEO. It's a hard job. So you really got to want
02:01:11 ◼ ► it. Who on this page really, really wants it? Jeff Williams. I can believe he wants it. Jager
02:01:16 ◼ ► O'Brien. I can believe she wants it. Eddy Q. Can't believe it. C-Fed. No. I mean, well, actually,
02:01:21 ◼ ► I don't know. C-Fed. I can't, I can't imagine him because these people see what the job of CEO is
02:01:28 ◼ ► like and I can imagine them just being like, no, like that's not, that's not for me. Right. Because
02:01:32 ◼ ► like if you look at what the job actually is, like it's a lot of politics, it's a lot of diplomacy,
02:01:37 ◼ ► it's a lot of PR stuff. Like it's because like this is such a big company in such a big world.
02:01:42 ◼ ► Tim Cook has to deal with like world leaders. He's got to go on CNBC. Yeah, that's terrible.
02:01:48 ◼ ► No nerd wants that job. Like I guarantee you Fedor Riga's one of the job. Probably John Turnus. He's
02:01:53 ◼ ► also a nerd probably given his job. Like I guarantee you these people do not want that job. Eddy Q. I
02:01:59 ◼ ► think you're right. I think Eddy Q doesn't just want to retire and have fun. I think Eddy Q has
02:02:03 ◼ ► fun in his current job. Everything I've ever heard about him. He wants to keep it. Yeah. Yeah. Like
02:02:07 ◼ ► it seems like he actually is a pretty fun person and has a lot of fun even with his job of like,
02:02:13 ◼ ► you know, meeting with like people from the FBI and stuff. Like I think he actually has fun. He's
02:02:17 ◼ ► joking around with them right now. Can I give you a, can I give you a second wildcard since
02:02:22 ◼ ► now I'm going top four on this. What about Lisa Jackson? I don't think she wants that. I feel like,
02:02:28 ◼ ► and this is a very California California thing of me to say, but I feel like she has the right
02:02:31 ◼ ► energy for it. Like I feel like she has that kind of Tim coolness to her. The just very chill. Do
02:02:39 ◼ ► you think she wants to run a technology company though? I don't get that impression. I don't know
02:02:44 ◼ ► that I do. I very much not. I feel that way way more about Q than I do about Lisa Jackson, but
02:02:50 ◼ ► I could see Lisa Jackson wanting to do it. I could see Apple wanting her to do it because, you know,
02:02:56 ◼ ► after all of our, and I mean ours in the three of us and ours in the collective community,
02:03:00 ◼ ► all of our whining and moaning about, you know, diversity and how there's a complete lack of
02:03:06 ◼ ► diversity, especially above the fold here on this webpage I'm looking at. I could see how that would
02:03:12 ◼ ► check a few interesting and different check boxes than any CEO they've had before. And I don't know,
02:03:18 ◼ ► I think I could see she strikes me as the kind that can get difficult things done because certainly
02:03:25 ◼ ► doing all of this, doing, doing all the things that they do for, for environmental causes,
02:03:31 ◼ ► while I argue is the right thing to do, I can't say it's the easy thing to do, or certainly not
02:03:36 ◼ ► in many cases, the profitable thing to do. And I mean, as much as we laughed about her saying,
02:03:41 ◼ ► Hey, enjoy the fact that you're getting less crap for the same money. When, when they took the power
02:03:47 ◼ ► power supplies out of the iPhone boxes, she did a pretty admirable job of it all told, I thought she
02:03:52 ◼ ► sold it reasonably well. I don't know. I feel like I can see a world where Q is an ex CEO and I can
02:03:58 ◼ ► see a world where Lisa Jackson is the next CEO. Although I expect to see the world where Jeff
02:04:03 ◼ ► Williams is the next CEO. You have quite an imagination. I have to, I just look at, I mean,
02:04:10 ◼ ► what'd you make me think of when I was thinking as the, who was the retail person before? Who was
02:04:14 ◼ ► the Apple store person who left from Burberry? What was her name? Oh, Angela Ahrens. Yeah. Angela
02:04:20 ◼ ► Ahrens. She wanted to be CEO. So she, she like, and not the, not that she would have been in line
02:04:25 ◼ ► for that necessarily, but if you want to see somebody who has ambition to sort of climb the
02:04:30 ◼ ► corporate ladder and like that, you know, she was ambitious, right? Would they bring her back?
02:04:35 ◼ ► I don't, I wouldn't want her as Apple CEO. I'm just saying like, it's all about desire because
02:04:40 ◼ ► you see this, you see this all the time in companies. Like at a certain point, people don't
02:04:44 ◼ ► want to be promoted anymore, right? They, they, they see the jobs that their bosses do and they
02:04:48 ◼ ► do not want them right for whatever reason. And the CEO is the ultimate version of that.
02:04:53 ◼ ► I think we can look at like most of the people that we know from like, exactly. I think Eddy Q,
02:05:09 ◼ ► So you were offered CEO. I think Phil would take it. Here's why. Here's why I think Phil
02:05:13 ◼ ► would take it. Not because he relishes the job of doing the work of CEO, but just because he
02:05:17 ◼ ► thinks he would be good at it. And honestly, I think he would actually kind of be good at it,
02:05:20 ◼ ► right? In his way. Because it's a leadership position too. That's the other thing we're
02:05:25 ◼ ► talking about. It's not just going on CNBC. It's about leadership and Phil, I think, understands
02:05:30 ◼ ► the job style of inspirational leadership and can actually execute it fairly well. It's very
02:05:35 ◼ ► different than the Tim Cook style, but you know, if you think about Phil and how he operated in
02:05:40 ◼ ► all of his roles, he was very much in that mold and I thought he did a pretty good job of it.
02:05:44 ◼ ► And that type of role, you say, well, I hate the drudgery of CEO, which of course Steve Jobs did
02:05:48 ◼ ► well, but I like the leadership part. And Phil would be a good leader, right? In the same way
02:05:53 ◼ ► that I think Lisa Jackson would be a good leader, I just think she would want to lead a company
02:05:56 ◼ ► that's not Apple, right? You know, I don't think her ambition is to run Apple. I think her ambition
02:06:02 ◼ ► is to run a very different kind of company. If she was a CEO of Apple, I feel like she would change
02:06:12 ◼ ► board is not going to throw her in there if they know that she's going to shake things up that much.
02:06:18 ◼ ► Yeah, I don't know. Because I feel like the idea of Schiller being CEO, I think that would have
02:06:23 ◼ ► worked great back during the Steve Jobs era when the company was much smaller, when the world was
02:06:29 ◼ ► much smaller around them. And when he was younger and actually wanted to do it. Maybe now he's sort
02:06:33 ◼ ► of on his way out and you know. Oh sure, that aside, but I think like, you know, today's Apple,
02:06:39 ◼ ► you're basically like a world leader. You have to operate on such a political level and such a
02:06:45 ◼ ► operational level. I don't think it's an accident that the CEO today is a boring operations person
02:06:54 ◼ ► who doesn't show a lot of personality ever, but can manage a large scale operation and can
02:07:01 ◼ ► give statements to Congress when asked. Like product people or tech people tend to be not only
02:07:13 ◼ ► that. So I can imagine, I think Phil is a diehard product person through and through. I think he
02:07:18 ◼ ► always has been. I don't think a product person today can take over as CEO of Apple. I don't see
02:07:25 ◼ ► it. I would love it if that was the reality because I would love a product person to be CEO again,
02:07:30 ◼ ► at least if they made good decisions, as you said earlier. That's the hard part, isn't it? That's a
02:07:35 ◼ ► big if, yeah. But I think at today's scale, I just don't think that's realistic. Yeah, the danger,
02:07:41 ◼ ► again, looking at all these faces is you see this happening in big companies all the time.
02:07:44 ◼ ► Someone who you just described, like who is actually a tech person and probably is going
02:07:48 ◼ ► to hate the job of CEO, nevertheless really, really wants it because they don't realize what
02:07:54 ◼ ► it's going to be like. Like they just have sort of ambition blinders on and they're just like,
02:07:59 ◼ ► I want to be CEO because I think I would be great at it. And then they get in the job and they're
02:08:03 ◼ ► like, oh my God, this is terrible. I didn't think it would be like this. I envisioned, and you
02:08:09 ◼ ► wouldn't think that people who work a long time at high levels of companies would have illusions of
02:08:13 ◼ ► what it's like to be CEO, but especially in a company the size of Apple, it's hard to really
02:08:18 ◼ ► internalize what it's really going to be like. And sometimes people end up getting a CEO job.
02:08:23 ◼ ► I mean, even at Apple, there was a long line of CEOs that you probably don't know the names of
02:08:28 ◼ ► because you weren't following Apple back then who clearly got the job and then went, oh no.
02:08:39 ◼ ► And I don't enjoy it. But I can't leave now because you can't really-- once you get the job,
02:08:50 ◼ ► I don't think anyone on this page falls into that category. But I look and I wonder if some
02:08:56 ◼ ► technical person would be like, you know what? I think I could be CEO because I would do a much
02:09:00 ◼ ► better job than Tim Cook because he doesn't understand technology. And then they get in
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02:10:36 ◼ ► Uh, yes, please. I see something about your car and your quote-unquote current car. So I am very interested what's happening.
02:10:43 ◼ ► As I mentioned in previous episodes, where I had a flat tire and a minor impact on my car,
02:10:50 ◼ ► because it was parked and it was hit while parked. Current theory is that it might have been hit by a
02:10:57 ◼ ► truck with a plow on the front that was not currently plowing at the time because there was
02:11:01 ◼ ► no snow on the ground during this two-week interval. But this was a parking lot where a lot
02:11:05 ◼ ► of contractor trucks were always parked. And so it's possible one of them had a plow mounted on
02:11:09 ◼ ► the front because it does look a lot like it was hit by a plow. The scratches proved deep enough
02:11:13 ◼ ► that, um, the, uh, that, you know, for, for purposes of a leased car that is not actually mine yet,
02:11:20 ◼ ► or ever, maybe, um, I needed to get them fixed and it needed to go to an actual body shop and they
02:11:26 ◼ ► have to go through insurance and everything. This anecdote, just as a side note, this is the first
02:11:31 ◼ ► time as far as I know that I've ever filed an insurance claim. Huh. You've been very lucky.
02:11:36 ◼ ► Yeah. Anyway, and it was actually not that hard yet. Uh, I don't know if it's going to get hard.
02:11:42 ◼ ► We'll, we'll see. Please don't clip that sound out. Anyway, so I can't believe nobody. I was
02:11:48 ◼ ► waiting for Casey to come in. I was done found it. And then I kept flashing back to when I told
02:11:54 ◼ ► Marco that he gets me so hard, which was not at all what I meant, but it is what I said. Okay.
02:12:03 ◼ ► Uh, I know I should have, I was dumbfounded. Just disappointment all around here. That's what she
02:12:18 ◼ ► You had to start this over. You're never going to get a clean edit out of this. You've got to start
02:12:23 ◼ ► this all over. What kind of bodies were they Marco? Anyway, so they have to have my car for
02:12:27 ◼ ► like a couple of weeks to get, you know, get all the parts in and paint and they're going to be
02:12:31 ◼ ► repainting two panels and it's going to be a whole thing. Um, anyway, for coming back here,
02:12:35 ◼ ► we took Tiskar at the BMW I3. It's not really made to go super long distances, but this is the
02:12:42 ◼ ► longest I drove it for this trip. This included the vaccination trip and, and, and, you know,
02:12:46 ◼ ► driving to the beach and this whole thing and longterm parking. I even stopped at a fast charger
02:12:51 ◼ ► on the way to kind of top off because I don't know how it has to sit for like two weeks in the
02:12:56 ◼ ► parking lot. I don't know how much charge it's going to lose on the way. So, uh, so I wanted
02:13:00 ◼ ► to like get there with as much power as possible. Can I just interrupt very briefly? I would like to
02:13:05 ◼ ► offer my apologies to Tiff for having to deal with you complaining and moaning as I'm sure you did
02:13:12 ◼ ► about not having the access to the supercharger network, about all the things that make this a
02:13:17 ◼ ► considerably worse electric car than the, than the Tesla is. So Tiff, on behalf of me and perhaps only
02:13:24 ◼ ► me, I'm sorry for having to deal with all this because I can only imagine how difficult and,
02:13:31 ◼ ► So actually it's, it's a bit of a mixed bag. Um, Oh, I'll take it. I'll take it. Carplay makes
02:13:38 ◼ ► up for a lot, I guess. Yeah. And I'm going to get to that in a second, but the I3 like,
02:13:42 ◼ ► you know, from model S driver, it is certainly a step down in a few areas. You know, obviously it's
02:13:47 ◼ ► way less range, it's way less like speed and power and it's, it has fewer luxury features in most
02:13:53 ◼ ► ways, but I was actually really impressed by a few aspects of it. So first of all, I know from being
02:13:59 ◼ ► an electric car driver that the, the range estimate they give in miles, you can't really take that as
02:14:05 ◼ ► an absolute because it depends on a lot of factors. And I knew on this day, for instance, that we'd
02:14:10 ◼ ► probably be using the air conditioning. Uh, I knew that we'd be driving a lot on the highway, which
02:14:14 ◼ ► might be going faster than 55 miles an hour and therefore might be a little less efficient. Um,
02:14:20 ◼ ► and I knew, you know, I knew it would be a very heavily loaded car. And so I thought, you know,
02:14:25 ◼ ► maybe when it tells me that we have whatever it is like 138 miles, whatever it is, when it's full,
02:14:30 ◼ ► you know, we were going on a 55 mile journey. So I thought maybe it actually would need to be
02:14:36 ◼ ► charged in the middle before we could get home with it or whatever else. So I planned all the
02:14:40 ◼ ► stop. I planned the stop at it's actually kind of funny. The connector that it uses for fast charging
02:14:46 ◼ ► is not a common connector in the U S and if you search for fast charge stations with that
02:14:51 ◼ ► connector, it's, I forget what it's called, but there's almost none except like BMW dealers.
02:14:57 ◼ ► And so, and there was one BMW dealer on long Island that has one of these things in their
02:15:04 ◼ ► parking lot. So I thought, great, I'll show up. Uh, and so that's what we did. So we drove there
02:15:11 ◼ ► on the way first. I allocated like an extra hour so we could sit there and charge if we had to. So
02:15:15 ◼ ► again, I had no idea how much battery dream we would see after at that point, probably 45
02:15:19 ◼ ► miles of driving. Ostensibly that could be half the car's range or more depending on, you know,
02:15:25 ◼ ► how, how much it actually used. So I put the car in eco pro mode, which really lops off the
02:15:32 ◼ ► acceleration, but not only, not only was the range estimate accurate, it over promised or under
02:15:39 ◼ ► promised rather and over delivered. We drove something like 45 miles and had only lost like
02:15:44 ◼ ► 35 miles on the range indicator. So it was great and we actually needed very little charging. Like
02:15:51 ◼ ► it couldn't even take it at full speed anymore cause it was all we got there and it was at like
02:15:55 ◼ ► 70%. So I fast charged for like 15 minutes just cause we were there. And it was kind of funny too.
02:16:00 ◼ ► Like you could tell like the people at the BMW dealer, you could tell that they don't get a lot
02:16:05 ◼ ► of people doing this and that they really don't like it. We, we pulled up and it was, you know,
02:16:12 ◼ ► we spotted it from across the parking lot. It was just, you know, that's sort of like, you know,
02:16:15 ◼ ► booth thing with the big cable commander. It was like, Oh, that must be it. And we went over to it.
02:16:18 ◼ ► It was at a parking spot, but they had parked one of their cars, like one of their show cars. They
02:16:24 ◼ ► just parked it in that spot because clearly like no one uses this. And so I just pulled up next to
02:16:31 ◼ ► that spot and just ran the cable like out to the car and just kind of partially blocked a driveway,
02:16:40 ◼ ► and the whole time I'm looking around like, okay, you know, maybe, you know, go inside,
02:16:43 ◼ ► look at the new cars and walk around the showroom for a few minutes. What else am I going to do for
02:16:54 ◼ ► Zero salespeople came up to me or said anything to me or even looked at me. None. I got no
02:17:00 ◼ ► acknowledgement that I existed. I actually was curious to ask some questions to the salespeople
02:17:08 ◼ ► Anyway, eventually I left and charging experience was totally fine. It wasn't as nice as super
02:17:13 ◼ ► charging cause you, it was, it was one of those charge point network things. So you have to like
02:17:17 ◼ ► unlock it by first like logging into their app and putting in a payment method. But even that
02:17:24 ◼ ► was kind of nice once I figured it out because it supports the Apple wallet, like NFC type API.
02:17:30 ◼ ► So you just hold your phone up to the thing once you have an account and you just like double tap
02:17:35 ◼ ► it as if you're using a wallet card like on a, on an NFC reader and it just starts it up and you
02:17:39 ◼ ► do the same thing to stop it and that's it. So that whole thing worked pretty well. I can't remember
02:17:44 ◼ ► what I paid, but it was not much. Maybe like a dollar. It wasn't, wasn't a lot. So anyway,
02:18:02 ◼ ► Of course. Right. And this was, I think the most real world experience I've had with CarPlay
02:18:07 ◼ ► because I haven't had a car that has it. All the development I do on CarPlay for my app,
02:18:11 ◼ ► I do with a little test rig. But like on my desk, that's plugged into like a 12 volt adapter.
02:18:16 ◼ ► But I, I, I don't own a car with CarPlay and never have. And so, but Tiskar has it. So in this case,
02:18:23 ◼ ► I got to use it a lot, way more than I've ever used it before in any kind of real world environment.
02:18:33 ◼ ► it was not as nice as my Tesla, but it was not that much worse. In, in a few, in a few big areas,
02:18:40 ◼ ► the range proved to be very good. The power was okay. And I was actually kind of impressed how
02:18:47 ◼ ► much we were able to fit into it. It is not a big car at all. It's a, it's a very compact car,
02:18:52 ◼ ► but you can fit a surprising amount of cargo into it, which I did not expect because it looks like
02:18:57 ◼ ► when you look at the trunk, you're like, that's super tiny. But if with, with smart packing,
02:19:01 ◼ ► you can actually fit a lot in. I just want to point out that this is a reinforcing my notion
02:19:06 ◼ ► that Marco should definitely look at other electric car brands because in the grand scheme
02:19:10 ◼ ► of things, the i3 is not looked upon as a particularly good electric car. It's a very early,
02:19:15 ◼ ► very early effort from BMW that most people don't particularly like isn't even considered a real
02:19:21 ◼ ► competitor in the current crop of electric cars. And yet you are finding it as not that
02:19:27 ◼ ► bad, not as bad as you thought compared to what is basically the best electric car in its class.
02:19:33 ◼ ► And so if you think these things are that close, I can only imagine what you would think of anything
02:19:39 ◼ ► that is actually a legit competitor to your model S, which the i3 is not. So I encourage you to look
02:19:46 ◼ ► at like the weirdo, the Audi Taycan that's coming out, whatever, what is that one called? KZ? Oh,
02:19:51 ◼ ► I don't remember. I know what you're thinking of. I don't remember that. Anyway, that, that,
02:19:55 ◼ ► you know, if, if you are surprisingly impressed by the i3, I think you'd be blown away by a car that
02:20:01 ◼ ► is actually a competitor to yours. So anyway, continue. Well, and I will say like the i3 on
02:20:05 ◼ ► paper doesn't compete in practice. It's nicer than the paper suggests. Like it's like, if you look at
02:20:12 ◼ ► specs and value and things of that, it is outclassed by almost all the modern competitors,
02:20:17 ◼ ► but it's actually nicer than you would think based on its specs and class and everything. Anyway, so
02:20:23 ◼ ► CarPlay, I actually have very mixed opinions about CarPlay as implemented in the BMW iDrive system.
02:20:32 ◼ ► Circa 2017, like what year? Yeah, well, yeah, I think it's a 2019 model, but it's, it's not a
02:20:38 ◼ ► super recent update for this. It is wireless, which is great. It's wireless CarPlay, but,
02:20:42 ◼ ► I have two main issues with CarPlay as implemented today in BMWs. One is the like scroll wheel style
02:20:49 ◼ ► of interaction rather than a touch screen. That time has passed. I think you now need these to be
02:20:54 ◼ ► touch screens. You can operate CarPlay interfaces with wheels and buttons and stuff. You can. Oh,
02:21:01 ◼ ► it stinks though. But yeah, it's terrible. It's awful. It's clearly designed as a touch screen.
02:21:06 ◼ ► It's clearly designed to have like, you know, quick access to the little quick icons on the left for
02:21:09 ◼ ► things like quick app switching and Siri access and stuff like that. And, you know, going back
02:21:14 ◼ ► between the map and the music app maybe or whatever, that kind of thing, like CarPlay is clearly
02:21:19 ◼ ► touch first and that's clearly the right way to do it. This kind of thing should have a touch screen.
02:21:25 ◼ ► I know we went through a time in the automotive industry where nobody wanted to put in touch
02:21:31 ◼ ► screens. They wanted to have, you know, lots, everyone had their things. We had an entire
02:21:34 ◼ ► episode of neutral about this, if I'm not mistaken, where we were complaining and moaning about touch
02:21:38 ◼ ► screens in cars. Yeah. And you really, with CarPlay, you really need to be a touch screen.
02:21:42 ◼ ► It's very awkward to use with, with wheels and stuff like that. The other thing is the whole time
02:21:46 ◼ ► I kept hitting weird little friction points between the BMW system and CarPlay. Like which one of them
02:21:54 ◼ ► is running the show here? BMW thinks they are and Apple thinks they are. And the result is a really
02:22:00 ◼ ► weird mixed bag of interaction and modes and things like for instance, above the aforementioned wheel
02:22:08 ◼ ► to navigate stuff, there's like five or six buttons. It's like, it says like, you know,
02:22:11 ◼ ► media menu, map, stuff like that nav. And when you're in CarPlay, if you tap the map button,
02:22:23 ◼ ► If you tap the nav button right below it, it jumps you to the BMW one and kicks you out of CarPlay.
02:22:27 ◼ ► I don't know why. I'm not sure what the difference is. Honestly, somehow there's map and nav.
02:22:31 ◼ ► Also, so tapping the map button brings you to the map app in CarPlay. Great. But tapping the
02:22:39 ◼ ► media button does not bring you back to the music app. It brings you to the BMW media screen.
02:22:43 ◼ ► There's little inconsistencies, you know, like one of the, I think, critical ways to interact
02:22:50 ◼ ► with CarPlay is via Siri. How do you invoke Siri on the system? Well, there's a voice button
02:22:58 ◼ ► on the steering wheel. Tap that and you think Siri answers? Nope. BMW's voice system answers
02:23:04 ◼ ► instead and kicks you out of CarPlay. And there kept being these cases, the car popped up a message
02:23:11 ◼ ► about the range extender maintenance thing, doesn't matter, but it popped up this like,
02:23:16 ◼ ► basically modal dialogue box a few times throughout the drive. And one of them caused me to almost
02:23:20 ◼ ► miss a turn because it popped up this box from the BMW interface that kicked me out of CarPlay.
02:23:27 ◼ ► And then getting back into CarPlay, there is no one button to get back into it. You have to like
02:23:32 ◼ ► hit the media or home button or whatever, and then scroll over to the like CarPlay item in that list.
02:23:38 ◼ ► And then it goes right back into it. And so there was just all these issues that I just kept facing,
02:23:43 ◼ ► like what I would actually want here is the option for a car that is navigated only in CarPlay.
02:23:52 ◼ ► Well, you see that's where Apple excels in the union of software, hardware and services.
02:24:09 ◼ ► that was dumb enough to let CarPlay just fully take over. Like, if I have a CarPlay head unit, hell,
02:24:16 ◼ ► give me a double din in the dash and I'll put my own in. That's probably unrealistic to expect
02:24:22 ◼ ► these days. I think most modern cars don't let you easily swap in like a standard radio in there,
02:24:27 ◼ ► without like wrecking your entire dashboard. But what I actually want is at least an option
02:24:34 ◼ ► to just have CarPlay literally take over and to have all of the buttons in the car that are that,
02:24:40 ◼ ► you know, if there happens to be like a voice command button somewhere, or a map button or
02:24:45 ◼ ► a radio button, whatever, I want all of those buttons to map only to CarPlay and to never kick
02:24:50 ◼ ► me out of CarPlay unless I have to go look at like the tire pressure monitor or something,
02:24:54 ◼ ► some kind of like rarely used niche setting of the car. That's fine. But during routine driving,
02:25:05 ◼ ► I don't want to have to be kicked out of it every so often because I hit the wrong button and the
02:25:09 ◼ ► car is taking over saying, Oh, you wanted my crappy navigation system instead of your nice
02:25:13 ◼ ► one using Waze like, no, I like I just want CarPlay. Whenever the time comes that I have
02:25:19 ◼ ► to replace my car, I'm going to actually look at this as a pretty important criterion of like,
02:25:24 ◼ ► if I'm gonna get a car that supports CarPlay, I want that kind of takeover mode. And it has to be
02:25:29 ◼ ► a touchscreen. Well, so I think I understand how you've come to this conclusion. But I think you've
02:25:35 ◼ ► been wronged by BMW's implementation, most specifically that it doesn't have a touchscreen.
02:25:40 ◼ ► So with my Volkswagen, there's physical buttons on the outsides of the screen. And I forget exactly
02:25:46 ◼ ► what they're but there's like media, nav, app, which really means CarPlay. I forget what else
02:25:53 ◼ ► is there, shoot, but there's like six or seven of them, maybe six or eight around the screen or on
02:25:58 ◼ ► the left and right hand sides of the screen. And if I hit anything other than app, I will be dumped
02:26:03 ◼ ► back into the VW stuff. So if I hit media in there, I'm, you know, back to Volkswagen's onboard
02:26:11 ◼ ► media player. If I hit nav on there, I'm going to Volkswagen's navigation. And on the surface,
02:26:16 ◼ ► that sounds terrible. And on the surface, the BMW implementation where you said map brings you to
02:26:21 ◼ ► whatever your current map app is, sounds like it's better than what I'm just, you know, than the
02:26:26 ◼ ► Volkswagen way of doing it. But it's actually way more consistent, which I'd argue is better. And
02:26:35 ◼ ► like you're saying, I'm just staying in CarPlay. And I'm just tapping the damn screen if I want to
02:26:39 ◼ ► do something on CarPlay. And I don't have to futz with the iDrive stick, which at the time, you know,
02:26:45 ◼ ► when we were recording neutral, at the time, car touchscreens were really bad and they weren't in
02:26:50 ◼ ► places that were very conducive to hit. And they weren't making touch targets big enough. So I
02:26:55 ◼ ► stand by my opinion at the time that they were garbage. But now I think you're exactly right,
02:27:06 ◼ ► considerably easier. Similarly, in Aaron's car, there's not really any physical buttons around
02:27:12 ◼ ► the screen, but only the bottom third or so of the screen becomes CarPlay. And there's still Volkswagen
02:27:17 ◼ ► like UI and Chrome above it, or excuse me, Volvo UI and Chrome above it. And if you tap any of that
02:27:24 ◼ ► stuff, it'll kind of like, almost window shades CarPlay. But, you know, to get back to it, you
02:27:29 ◼ ► just tap the title bar down at the bottom and then there you are again. And I find that these
02:27:35 ◼ ► implementations, even though they don't lock you in CarPlay in the way you're talking about,
02:27:40 ◼ ► because it's consistent, and because you're never ever, ever really interacting with any physical
02:27:46 ◼ ► buttons, you're only locked on the touchscreen in a manner of speaking. I think it's pretty decent
02:27:52 ◼ ► that way. And I think you would like it that way. And I think that that's how these typically work.
02:27:56 ◼ ► Yeah, I think if I had a touchscreen and like that, that easy one button button somewhere to
02:28:11 ◼ ► but I've looked at like reviews of the various interiors and everything. They're all over the
02:28:14 ◼ ► place. And I think one combination that works really well is a touchscreen for CarPlay, which,
02:28:26 ◼ ► CarPlay itself needs touch. Right. So if you're going to use CarPlay, touch is the best way to do
02:28:33 ◼ ► that. If you're going to operate the interior of a car, maybe touch isn't the best way to do certain
02:28:38 ◼ ► things. But anyway, if you like CarPlay, definitely touch. But a central screen for CarPlay,
02:28:42 ◼ ► and then a lot of the newer cars have a surprising amount of functionality in the instrument cluster
02:28:49 ◼ ► on that screen, because that screen keeps getting bigger too. Like it's no longer just like, oh,
02:28:55 ◼ ► you look at like Mercedes, like basically the entire dashboard is a giant screen, right?
02:28:59 ◼ ► So CarPlay sort of gets its outpost on the touchscreen, right? And then when you do other
02:29:05 ◼ ► things with the car features, like turning on the seat heaters or whatever, it's not competing with
02:29:09 ◼ ► the CarPlay screen, right? That that information is elsewhere on one of the umpteen other screens,
02:29:14 ◼ ► whether it's the instrument cluster or the various other screens that are between there or whatever,
02:29:18 ◼ ► which lets you essentially do everything at once to not have them fighting with each other,
02:29:22 ◼ ► because they're both active at once. I think that solution works really well, because it sort of
02:29:27 ◼ ► separates the duties. Like, okay, Apple, you get this square and the car makers are doing it,
02:29:31 ◼ ► knowing that people are mostly going to use Android Auto or CarPlay or whatever, and dedicating a chunk
02:29:36 ◼ ► to it. It's like, okay, that's you. You get the touchscreen, you get this, you get to do those
02:29:40 ◼ ► things. But we, the car maker, there's a bunch of other crap that we want to have available and on
02:29:44 ◼ ► display all the time too. So, you know, it's kind of like the next step after what Casey was
02:29:48 ◼ ► describing, which is like minimizing CarPlay and then popping it back up, which is great because
02:29:59 ◼ ► I think that will eventually trickle down and probably become like the sort of most prominent
02:30:06 ◼ ► way to do it. Just carve out a space for Android Auto or CarPlay, right? And then the Apple way to