ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► I see you writing really heinously named C functions,

00:00:03 ◼   ► and so I know you're in your happy place.

00:00:06 ◼   ► - See, those names make perfect sense in the context

00:00:10 ◼   ► of the other accelerate framework functions.

00:00:12 ◼   ► Like, I've now, if you look at the names of the functions

00:00:16 ◼   ► in the accelerate framework, they are crazy.

00:00:19 ◼   ► They at first make no sense.

00:00:21 ◼   ► But they are named with a convention,

00:00:24 ◼   ► and I now understand that convention,

00:00:26 ◼   ► so I'm now able to guess function names

00:00:28 ◼   ► and even what the parameters are

00:00:31 ◼   ► based solely on their signature,

00:00:33 ◼   ► which is not obvious, 'cause it's like,

00:00:35 ◼   ► you know, const float a, float b, int c.

00:00:39 ◼   ► Like, it's very, very, like, you know,

00:00:41 ◼   ► it's single-letter names like that,

00:00:42 ◼   ► usually, you know, abc and n.

00:00:45 ◼   ► And I've used these so much now

00:00:48 ◼   ► that not only can I guess the names of the functions

00:00:51 ◼   ► most of the time and get it right,

00:00:52 ◼   ► but I can also guess the parameters most of the time

00:00:55 ◼   ► and get them right, too.

00:00:56 ◼   ► So I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

00:00:58 ◼   ► I might be using accelerate too much.

00:01:00 ◼   ► - Can we just talk about how hideous this,

00:01:03 ◼   ► I'm looking at your tweet, which if this makes the show,

00:01:06 ◼   ► we'll put in the show notes.

00:01:07 ◼   ► Line 41 reads as follows.

00:01:09 ◼   ► And I'm gonna read this whole friggin' thing,

00:01:10 ◼   ► 'cause it's awful.

00:01:12 ◼   ► Underscore, underscore, inline, underscore, underscore,

00:01:14 ◼   ► space, underscore, underscore,

00:01:15 ◼   ► attribute, underscore, underscore.

00:01:17 ◼   ► (jazzy music)

00:01:20 ◼   ► Int, space, capital N, close parenthesis.

00:01:23 ◼   ► How do you not vomit all over yourself reading this?

00:01:26 ◼   ► And this is where all the Objective-C people

00:01:27 ◼   ► are gonna come and bite me on Twitter

00:01:29 ◼   ► and be like, oh well, it's thrifty, so ugly.

00:01:31 ◼   ► How can you look at this and not vomit all over yourself?

00:01:34 ◼   ► It's hideous.

00:01:35 ◼   ► - It follows conventions.

00:01:37 ◼   ► - Oh, god.

00:01:38 ◼   ► - If you wanna make fun of me,

00:01:39 ◼   ► make fun of the actual content of these functions,

00:01:41 ◼   ► which also makes no sense.

00:01:43 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:01:44 ◼   ► - Why is the N capital in the argument?

00:01:47 ◼   ► - Because in the DSP functions, they always capitalize that.

00:01:51 ◼   ► I don't know why it's, well, actually,

00:01:53 ◼   ► they usually capitalize almost all their function arguments,

00:01:55 ◼   ► 'cause usually it's like A, B, C, N, like that kind of thing.

00:01:59 ◼   ► - But here, inputDB and outputDB

00:02:00 ◼   ► don't start with an initial capital.

00:02:02 ◼   ► - That's true.

00:02:03 ◼   ► I'm trying to match the convention reasonably well.

00:02:05 ◼   ► Now, if I matched it completely,

00:02:07 ◼   ► that would be const float capital A and float capital B.

00:02:11 ◼   ► But I decided to make my variable names a little bit nicer

00:02:14 ◼   ► since I don't write documentation.

00:02:16 ◼   ► - That's not true, I see two comments on this.

00:02:19 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:02:20 ◼   ► - Those are not documentation.

00:02:21 ◼   ► - That is the documentation.

00:02:22 ◼   ► - Also, truth is, as much as I'm making fun of,

00:02:26 ◼   ► really, the language in which this is written

00:02:28 ◼   ► by making fun of you,

00:02:30 ◼   ► as I've gotten older as a developer,

00:02:32 ◼   ► I have found that,

00:02:34 ◼   ► I don't know if mimicking is the word I'm looking for,

00:02:36 ◼   ► but kind of conforming to the code around you

00:02:39 ◼   ► is almost always a wise choice.

00:02:42 ◼   ► Because even if the style is not your style,

00:02:45 ◼   ► it's going to stick out as such a sore thumb

00:02:48 ◼   ► and actually be more of a stumbling block

00:02:50 ◼   ► when you try to figure out,

00:02:52 ◼   ► okay, all of this code looks identical

00:02:54 ◼   ► except this one other class over here,

00:02:57 ◼   ► these two other functions over here

00:02:59 ◼   ► that look nothing like anything else.

00:03:00 ◼   ► What the hell is happening?

00:03:02 ◼   ► So, as much as I'm poking fun at you,

00:03:03 ◼   ► you've actually made the correct choice here,

00:03:05 ◼   ► even though it is frickin' hideous.

00:03:07 ◼   ► - Right, and you can see, in this screenshot,

00:03:09 ◼   ► I call five vector functions,

00:03:12 ◼   ► three of which are the VDSB syntax,

00:03:14 ◼   ► and you can see, vfill, okay, it's vector fill, right?

00:03:18 ◼   ► Vsdiv is vector scalar divide.

00:03:20 ◼   ► Vsmul is vector scalar multiply,

00:03:22 ◼   ► which means that the first argument is a vector,

00:03:24 ◼   ► the second argument is a scalar,

00:03:26 ◼   ► the argument is where it goes, right?

00:03:27 ◼   ► And same thing, like, vv pow f is a different vector library,

00:03:32 ◼   ► the vv part, and it's dealing with vectors.

00:03:34 ◼   ► Pow f is a C function.

00:03:36 ◼   ► This is the vector version of the pow f function.

00:03:38 ◼   ► And pow is the power function,

00:03:40 ◼   ► and f is the floating point version

00:03:42 ◼   ► as opposed to the double version.

00:03:44 ◼   ► The names make sense when you are familiar

00:03:46 ◼   ► with their conventions.

00:03:47 ◼   ► Like, I always had to look at it.

00:03:49 ◼   ► Really, until this week, I had to look at the documentation

00:03:52 ◼   ► every single time I called any of these functions.

00:03:54 ◼   ► And it still proves hard to read sometimes,

00:03:59 ◼   ► but they are ridiculously fast and powerful,

00:04:01 ◼   ► so I really do enjoy them.

00:04:03 ◼   ► - Now, is it possible for you to write these

00:04:06 ◼   ► as kind of standalone, what is it,

00:04:09 ◼   ► like audio units or something like that,

00:04:11 ◼   ► such that they could be used in other apps?

00:04:13 ◼   ► - I don't know how to write audio units,

00:04:16 ◼   ► like in the Mac sense, where you can have plugins

00:04:18 ◼   ► for logic and stuff.

00:04:19 ◼   ► I looked into it a long time ago when I had a crazy idea

00:04:22 ◼   ► to make a logic plugin to record who was talking

00:04:26 ◼   ► at any given time in a podcast,

00:04:28 ◼   ► so I could embed that as metadata,

00:04:29 ◼   ► and then display in the app,

00:04:30 ◼   ► like somebody's pulsing Twitter head as they talked,

00:04:33 ◼   ► so you could tell who's talking.

00:04:34 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:04:35 ◼   ► Great feature idea, totally unimplemented in practice,

00:04:38 ◼   ► 'cause it requires editor support, basically,

00:04:40 ◼   ► and I don't control an editor.

00:04:42 ◼   ► This is one of the reasons I wanna write an editor.

00:04:43 ◼   ► So I did look into how to create an audio unit back then

00:04:47 ◼   ► to see like maybe I could write a logic plugin

00:04:50 ◼   ► that could do this and output it along with the files,

00:04:52 ◼   ► and the answer really ended up being no, I can't,

00:04:54 ◼   ► but what I discovered back then was that the documentation

00:04:59 ◼   ► for audio unit plugins or any kind of plugin on Mac OS

00:05:04 ◼   ► is pretty much nonexistent and/or very outdated,

00:05:08 ◼   ► and when I started playing with it,

00:05:10 ◼   ► I very quickly realized this is not an area

00:05:13 ◼   ► I should be playing in.

00:05:14 ◼   ► - If you'll permit me a small tangent,

00:05:16 ◼   ► we talked over the last couple of weeks

00:05:18 ◼   ► about my adventures with HomeKit and HomeBridge

00:05:20 ◼   ► and things like that, and we had talked a little bit

00:05:22 ◼   ► about how I would like to, and if someone started writing

00:05:25 ◼   ► a HomeBridge plugin, I think in this case

00:05:29 ◼   ► it would actually be called a platform in their parlance,

00:05:31 ◼   ► but anyway, a thing wherein I can control my thermostat

00:05:33 ◼   ► from HomeKit, because I don't think I would ever do it.

00:05:37 ◼   ► I just want to be able to.

00:05:38 ◼   ► It annoys me that I can't.

00:05:40 ◼   ► Well, I went looking through the HomeBridge documentation,

00:05:43 ◼   ► and oh boy, you think your documentation is bad.

00:05:47 ◼   ► At least this is only code that will ever be used by you,

00:05:50 ◼   ► hypothetically, until you sell Overcast,

00:05:52 ◼   ► but that joke's probably a little old now.

00:05:54 ◼   ► Anyway.

00:05:55 ◼   ► - Bad week to give that joke.

00:05:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, actually.

00:05:58 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:05:59 ◼   ► It's all come back around.

00:06:00 ◼   ► See, I'm smarter than I thought.

00:06:01 ◼   ► Woo hoo.

00:06:02 ◼   ► Anyway, your code is only for you.

00:06:04 ◼   ► You know how you work, et cetera,

00:06:06 ◼   ► but HomeBridge is by design a plugin-based architecture,

00:06:11 ◼   ► and about half their documentation is,

00:06:14 ◼   ► "Ah, just look through the code.

00:06:15 ◼   ► "You'll figure it out."

00:06:16 ◼   ► And oh my goodness, I have forgotten,

00:06:19 ◼   ► and I guess I've just gotten spoiled,

00:06:21 ◼   ► I have forgotten how disheartening and awful it is

00:06:25 ◼   ► when you're trying to use an API,

00:06:26 ◼   ► and the documentation is,

00:06:27 ◼   ► "Eh, just look through the code.

00:06:29 ◼   ► "You'll get it."

00:06:30 ◼   ► Like, it's truly maddening,

00:06:32 ◼   ► and I don't understand how HomeBridge specifically

00:06:34 ◼   ► has the unbelievable breadth of support that it has,

00:06:38 ◼   ► because I've looked at this a few times,

00:06:40 ◼   ► and it's made me wanna jump off my roof,

00:06:43 ◼   ► because there's nothing there.

00:06:44 ◼   ► It's seriously one of the,

00:06:46 ◼   ► there's a bunch of like,

00:06:48 ◼   ► and I don't know what the equivalent is in JavaScript,

00:06:50 ◼   ► because I'm not really the best JavaScript programmer,

00:06:53 ◼   ► but there's like structs and enums and things like that,

00:06:55 ◼   ► that you have to,

00:06:56 ◼   ► and protocols that you have to adhere to,

00:06:58 ◼   ► and implement, and so on and so forth,

00:07:00 ◼   ► and their documentation for all these is,

00:07:02 ◼   ► "Oh, here's a 3,000-line JavaScript file.

00:07:05 ◼   ► "You'll figure it out."

00:07:06 ◼   ► It's just terrible.

00:07:07 ◼   ► Like, I don't understand how people think that's okay,

00:07:09 ◼   ► and again, the 22-year-old developer in me

00:07:13 ◼   ► would totally just pew, pew, pew,

00:07:15 ◼   ► shoot from the hip, and who cares?

00:07:17 ◼   ► They'll figure it out

00:07:18 ◼   ► if they really wanna do it that badly,

00:07:19 ◼   ► but the old man developer in me is like,

00:07:21 ◼   ► "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

00:07:22 ◼   ► "If you're gonna make some sort of API,

00:07:24 ◼   ► "you need some frickin' documentation,

00:07:26 ◼   ► "and some documentation that doesn't require you

00:07:29 ◼   ► "to go spelunking through the code

00:07:30 ◼   ► "in order to figure all this out."

00:07:32 ◼   ► It's just infuriating.

00:07:34 ◼   ► So yeah, I don't blame you for kind of punting

00:07:36 ◼   ► on this audio unit thing.

00:07:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, this is also why I work alone.

00:07:40 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:07:42 ◼   ► - Just gonna let Casey get away with enum.

00:07:45 ◼   ► - That's how I pronounce it in my head.

00:07:46 ◼   ► - Ugh, ugh.

00:07:47 ◼   ► - It's not enum.

00:07:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's for enum-eration.

00:07:50 ◼   ► - It sure is enum.

00:07:51 ◼   ► - Oh, come on.

00:07:52 ◼   ► - No, it's because it's enum-eration.

00:07:54 ◼   ► - I understand what it's short for,

00:07:55 ◼   ► but I'm saying that, you say that word as enum.

00:07:58 ◼   ► - If you can say enum, I can say mauve.

00:08:00 ◼   ► - (laughing) Mauve, yeah, mauve is just you.

00:08:02 ◼   ► Enum, Casey has a posse, but it's a posse that's wrong.

00:08:07 ◼   ► It's totally enum.

00:08:08 ◼   ► - Nope.

00:08:09 ◼   ► - It is absolutely enum.

00:08:10 ◼   ► And also, since we're airing grievances,

00:08:12 ◼   ► who knew it was Festivus?

00:08:13 ◼   ► I would like to ask the ATP listeners

00:08:16 ◼   ► to come to my defense and explain to Mr. Syracuse

00:08:19 ◼   ► that P-I-C-T-S is not a thing.

00:08:22 ◼   ► Yes, it may have been a thing in 1983

00:08:24 ◼   ► when I was a year old, but it's not a thing.

00:08:26 ◼   ► If you're talking about pictures on the computer,

00:08:28 ◼   ► P-I-C-S, no T, no T is necessary.

00:08:31 ◼   ► Stop trying to make T happen.

00:08:33 ◼   ► - I was writing pics before you even on the internet, son.

00:08:36 ◼   ► P-I-C-T-S is a perfectly valid alternate spelling

00:08:39 ◼   ► of the thing we're both talking about.

00:08:40 ◼   ► - No, I'm with Casey on this.

00:08:42 ◼   ► It's pics.

00:08:42 ◼   ► It's not pics or it didn't happen.

00:08:44 ◼   ► It's pics.

00:08:45 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:08:46 ◼   ► - People abbreviated the word picture

00:08:48 ◼   ► long before that meme existed.

00:08:50 ◼   ► There was a thing called Usenet, youngins.

00:08:52 ◼   ► - I'm familiar with Usenet.

00:08:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, me too.

00:08:54 ◼   ► It's a wonderful highway full of trucks.

00:08:56 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:08:57 ◼   ► Anyway, pic is perfectly fine.

00:09:00 ◼   ► It's a perfectly fine variant.

00:09:01 ◼   ► - God, here it is, I think I'm old,

00:09:05 ◼   ► and then I talk to you, John,

00:09:06 ◼   ► and I'm reminded I am but a wee whippersnapper.

00:09:08 ◼   ► - I'm a little bit older, but it's a little bit that counts.

00:09:11 ◼   ► - Last we saw our heroes, which really isn't us,

00:09:18 ◼   ► if I recall correctly,

00:09:19 ◼   ► Facebook's enterprise cert was polled,

00:09:21 ◼   ► and Google had confessed

00:09:23 ◼   ► that they had been doing similar shenanigans,

00:09:26 ◼   ► but there had been no punishment at that time.

00:09:29 ◼   ► Since we recorded, Google got punished,

00:09:32 ◼   ► and I think they're back up now, is that correct?

00:09:35 ◼   ► They had their enterprise cert revoked,

00:09:36 ◼   ► and I think that they're restored.

00:09:39 ◼   ► - Everybody got everything back.

00:09:41 ◼   ► - Delightful.

00:09:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, basically they were punished for like,

00:09:43 ◼   ► just long enough for us to record our podcast.

00:09:45 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:09:46 ◼   ► - I think the kids call that a hot second, Marco.

00:09:48 ◼   ► - They call it picths.

00:09:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, they call them picths.

00:09:50 ◼   ► - A hot second-ts.

00:09:52 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:09:54 ◼   ► - So anyway, so Facebook did get a pretty severe wrist slap,

00:09:57 ◼   ► and then Google tried to avoid it by confessing,

00:10:00 ◼   ► and then they got a pretty severe wrist slap.

00:10:02 ◼   ► However, these wrist slaps only lasted

00:10:05 ◼   ► for a couple of working days.

00:10:06 ◼   ► It really wasn't that bad in the grand scheme of things.

00:10:07 ◼   ► On the one side, I kinda wanna be like,

00:10:09 ◼   ► man, they should've been out for like a week or two,

00:10:12 ◼   ► just to really show 'em who the boss is,

00:10:14 ◼   ► but on the other side of the coin,

00:10:15 ◼   ► like being immature like that is really not constructive,

00:10:18 ◼   ► and so this was probably the right way

00:10:20 ◼   ► to do it in my opinion, but I don't know.

00:10:21 ◼   ► Marco, what do you think about that?

00:10:23 ◼   ► - What Facebook did was pretty severe.

00:10:25 ◼   ► I was hoping for a more severe reaction from Apple

00:10:29 ◼   ► in the sense that, you know,

00:10:30 ◼   ► not pulling their apps from the App Store,

00:10:31 ◼   ► because that wouldn't be justified,

00:10:32 ◼   ► and that would hurt Apple.

00:10:34 ◼   ► I don't think Facebook should have

00:10:36 ◼   ► enterprise distribution anymore, period.

00:10:38 ◼   ► The fact that they got it back after like a day

00:10:41 ◼   ► is a little less of a punishment

00:10:44 ◼   ► than I think they deserved.

00:10:45 ◼   ► That being said, you could make the argument like,

00:10:47 ◼   ► yeah, Apple made their point.

00:10:48 ◼   ► I think Facebook got off pretty easy

00:10:49 ◼   ► considering what they did.

00:10:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think both parties are just highlighting

00:10:53 ◼   ► whatever everybody already knows,

00:10:54 ◼   ► is that this is a special relationship, as we used to say,

00:10:56 ◼   ► between the US and the UK, between the big companies.

00:11:01 ◼   ► - It's not the same.

00:11:02 ◼   ► The App Store is not the same for Facebook

00:11:03 ◼   ► as it is for you independent developers, just not.

00:11:05 ◼   ► Everyone knows that, everyone agrees to it.

00:11:08 ◼   ► Apple, if pressed and actually forced to answer a question,

00:11:10 ◼   ► would also admit it if you pressed them on like,

00:11:13 ◼   ► hey, I heard Netflix has been paying 15%

00:11:14 ◼   ► long before you extended that deal to everyone else.

00:11:16 ◼   ► Why is that?

00:11:17 ◼   ► And they would say, they wouldn't say this, but the truth is,

00:11:19 ◼   ► it's because Netflix is Netflix and you're not Netflix.

00:11:21 ◼   ► Like, it's the truth that's out there, and we see it.

00:11:23 ◼   ► Like, if you had some kind of rule violation

00:11:26 ◼   ► as egregious as that,

00:11:27 ◼   ► you wouldn't get your cert back in a day.

00:11:29 ◼   ► Like, you wouldn't even get an email response in a day.

00:11:31 ◼   ► Like, it would be, if you got it back at all,

00:11:34 ◼   ► if they could bother to pay attention to you,

00:11:37 ◼   ► it would be a long time,

00:11:38 ◼   ► and you'd have to do a lot of groveling

00:11:39 ◼   ► because you don't have any power in that relationship.

00:11:41 ◼   ► And like I said last week,

00:11:42 ◼   ► this is more or less how it should be

00:11:44 ◼   ► because we're not all the same.

00:11:45 ◼   ► And I think a system that did treat everybody

00:11:48 ◼   ► exactly the same would be bad for everybody

00:11:50 ◼   ► because, you know, it would just,

00:11:52 ◼   ► as we start World War III,

00:11:54 ◼   ► like, it doesn't matter if the big superpower

00:11:58 ◼   ► crushes a tiny individual,

00:11:59 ◼   ► but if two big superpowers get angry at each other,

00:12:01 ◼   ► we all die in the hail of missiles or whatever.

00:12:04 ◼   ► Anyway, that was last week's analogy.

00:12:07 ◼   ► We'll move on.

00:12:08 ◼   ► It's just, the world is the way it is,

00:12:10 ◼   ► we're just living in it.

00:12:12 ◼   ► - Apple has made some more comments on the FaceTime bug.

00:12:15 ◼   ► If you recall, you were able to snoop

00:12:18 ◼   ► on somebody's audio and/or video

00:12:20 ◼   ► if you did a series of steps quickly

00:12:22 ◼   ► and in just the right order.

00:12:23 ◼   ► And we, especially I, had gotten pretty fired up

00:12:26 ◼   ► about the fact that Apple didn't seem to take

00:12:28 ◼   ► the security report on this seriously

00:12:30 ◼   ► and eventually told the mom of the individual

00:12:33 ◼   ► who discovered it to create a developer account

00:12:36 ◼   ► and file a radar, which I still think is the biggest

00:12:38 ◼   ► screw you I've heard in a while.

00:12:41 ◼   ► But Apple has commented on this.

00:12:42 ◼   ► They say, quote, "We have fixed the group FaceTime

00:12:44 ◼   ► "security bug on Apple servers,

00:12:45 ◼   ► "and we will issue a software update

00:12:46 ◼   ► "to re-enable the feature for users next week,"

00:12:48 ◼   ► which, as we record, is this week.

00:12:50 ◼   ► "We thank the Thompson family," who reported it,

00:12:52 ◼   ► "for reporting the bug.

00:12:54 ◼   ► "We apologize for customers, blah, blah, blah.

00:12:56 ◼   ► "We want to assure customers that we're not idiots

00:12:58 ◼   ► "yada, yada, yada."

00:12:59 ◼   ► And then back to actual quoting.

00:13:01 ◼   ► "We are committed to improving the process

00:13:02 ◼   ► "by which we receive and escalate these reports

00:13:03 ◼   ► "in order to get them to the right people

00:13:05 ◼   ► "as fast as possible.

00:13:06 ◼   ► "We take the security of our products extremely seriously,

00:13:09 ◼   ► "and we are committed to continuing to earn the trust

00:13:11 ◼   ► "that Apple customers place in us."

00:13:15 ◼   ► Okay, so they're kind of admitting that something broke.

00:13:18 ◼   ► That's a step, right?

00:13:19 ◼   ► - Well, the statement we read last time was just like,

00:13:21 ◼   ► hey, there's a problem, blah, blah, blah.

00:13:22 ◼   ► This one has two important features that you just read.

00:13:25 ◼   ► One is acknowledgement of the family

00:13:27 ◼   ► that found and reported the bug,

00:13:28 ◼   ► which wasn't mentioned earlier.

00:13:30 ◼   ► It's like, why bring up the fact

00:13:33 ◼   ► that you missed this for a week

00:13:35 ◼   ► and that someone reported it?

00:13:36 ◼   ► They weren't even mentioned at all.

00:13:37 ◼   ► But since then, all the sort of media coverage of this

00:13:41 ◼   ► or whatever has made it the correct PR move

00:13:43 ◼   ► to acknowledge what everyone else is saying,

00:13:45 ◼   ► that hey, not only is this a bug,

00:13:47 ◼   ► we may or may not be super mad at you about the bug,

00:13:49 ◼   ► but the real problem is that you ignore these people

00:13:52 ◼   ► who are trying to do the right thing.

00:13:53 ◼   ► So the people get acknowledged,

00:13:55 ◼   ► and then they say not only here are the facts about the bug,

00:13:58 ◼   ► but also we are committed to improving,

00:14:01 ◼   ► is a way of saying we recognize

00:14:03 ◼   ► that there was a problem with the process

00:14:05 ◼   ► by which we receive and escalate these reports.

00:14:07 ◼   ► So good second PR statement on this issue from Apple.

00:14:12 ◼   ► And they also, apparently an executive went to meet

00:14:15 ◼   ► the kid who found the bug.

00:14:17 ◼   ► - I would love to know who that was.

00:14:19 ◼   ► - Does Eddie Q show up at your house?

00:14:20 ◼   ► - I'm just about to say that.

00:14:21 ◼   ► - If Eddie Q shows up on his way to work

00:14:23 ◼   ► with the shirt untucked, you know,

00:14:25 ◼   ► he'll be all right up to your house,

00:14:26 ◼   ► just screeches through a hall and say,

00:14:27 ◼   ► hey kid, heard you found a bug, good job.

00:14:29 ◼   ► Wanna go ride in the Ferrari?

00:14:30 ◼   ► And then young Casey comes out and says, yes, please.

00:14:33 ◼   ► - Why is it me?

00:14:35 ◼   ► - 'Cause you got to ride in your neighbor's Ferrari.

00:14:36 ◼   ► - Oh, okay, fair enough.

00:14:38 ◼   ► - You forgot that story that you told

00:14:39 ◼   ► twice in the spot, guys.

00:14:40 ◼   ► - Did I ever tell you about the story?

00:14:41 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:14:44 ◼   ► It's so weird though.

00:14:46 ◼   ► How is it that we all assumed it would be Eddie,

00:14:48 ◼   ► shirt undone, shirt untucked?

00:14:50 ◼   ► - 'Cause that would be the funniest.

00:14:51 ◼   ► He doesn't have anything else to do.

00:14:52 ◼   ► He's not busy, right?

00:14:53 ◼   ► (laughing)

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00:16:54 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:16:58 ◼   ► - So I've got this MacBook Air.

00:16:59 ◼   ► I think I talked about it when I first got it,

00:17:00 ◼   ► and it's replacing the MacBook Air

00:17:03 ◼   ► that my children destroyed,

00:17:04 ◼   ► one of my children more than the other.

00:17:07 ◼   ► - Not that you're angry.

00:17:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, the old one was a 2011, it had MagSafe,

00:17:10 ◼   ► and this is a laptop shared by two kids,

00:17:12 ◼   ► and they're constantly taking it from the charger

00:17:15 ◼   ► and just yanking it off and putting it back on,

00:17:16 ◼   ► and now we change to a USB-C only world,

00:17:19 ◼   ► but now they have to deal with the USB-C connector,

00:17:20 ◼   ► which for all its can't put it in the wrong way attributes,

00:17:25 ◼   ► still is much more problem prone, let's say,

00:17:29 ◼   ► for kids who don't care than MagSafe,

00:17:32 ◼   ► because you have to kind of pull it straight out.

00:17:34 ◼   ► You can't yank it sideways,

00:17:35 ◼   ► and it's just not the type of connector

00:17:37 ◼   ► that I want it to be plugged in and unplugged all the time.

00:17:39 ◼   ► So after I talked about the laptop

00:17:42 ◼   ► and the various things on the show,

00:17:43 ◼   ► I did get one of those like turn a USB-C port

00:17:47 ◼   ► into a MagSafe-like thing, connectors.

00:17:50 ◼   ► We'll put a link in the show notes to the one I have.

00:17:53 ◼   ► It's a typical Amazon product with a description

00:17:56 ◼   ► that is a mile long.

00:17:57 ◼   ► USB-C to USB-C magnetic charging power cable charger

00:18:00 ◼   ► adapter replacement for MagSafe and BrakeSafe

00:18:02 ◼   ► compatible with MacBook Air 2018,

00:18:03 ◼   ► new iPad Pro, Google Pixel, 3XL,

00:18:05 ◼   ► Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus, and more.

00:18:07 ◼   ► - Is that all?

00:18:08 ◼   ► - That is the name of this product.

00:18:10 ◼   ► That's just the name, that's not the description.

00:18:13 ◼   ► It's from Leonis Tech or something,

00:18:15 ◼   ► but you'll see lots of products that are like this.

00:18:18 ◼   ► Now, I've had this thing for, I don't know,

00:18:21 ◼   ► I got the 2018 MacBook Air, whatever that show was

00:18:23 ◼   ► a couple weeks ago, a month ago.

00:18:25 ◼   ► So I haven't had it for a long time.

00:18:27 ◼   ► So I can't vouch for the quality of this thing.

00:18:28 ◼   ► I can't say that it's not gonna burn down your house

00:18:30 ◼   ► if you buy it.

00:18:31 ◼   ► Maybe it's gonna flake out in a week.

00:18:35 ◼   ► I have no idea.

00:18:36 ◼   ► I do know that the little tiny nubbin

00:18:37 ◼   ► you put in the USB-C thing

00:18:40 ◼   ► seems like it's in there really good,

00:18:41 ◼   ► and I'm wondering how I'm ever gonna get it out

00:18:43 ◼   ► without somehow prying it out.

00:18:44 ◼   ► Carry carefully with some kind of tool

00:18:46 ◼   ► that's not gonna scratch my laptop.

00:18:48 ◼   ► But whatever, nothing ever goes in those ports

00:18:49 ◼   ► because we don't have anything that goes in those ports

00:18:51 ◼   ► because nobody has anything that goes in those ports

00:18:52 ◼   ► except for dongles.

00:18:53 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:18:55 ◼   ► So the only thing that ever,

00:18:57 ◼   ► I think it's fine to just sort of dedicate that part of this.

00:18:59 ◼   ► And we've been using it

00:19:00 ◼   ► and the other important attribute this connector has

00:19:02 ◼   ► is it's a right angle connector

00:19:04 ◼   ► because the place where the MacBook Air was,

00:19:06 ◼   ► like the cable goes to the back of the desk, right?

00:19:09 ◼   ► So it goes into the side of the laptop

00:19:10 ◼   ► from the back of the desk.

00:19:11 ◼   ► And I have a little thing that holds it

00:19:12 ◼   ► so it doesn't fall down.

00:19:13 ◼   ► Anyway, it's been working fine.

00:19:15 ◼   ► Like it provides the attributes of MagSafe

00:19:18 ◼   ► in exchange for this little nubbin

00:19:19 ◼   ► on the side of my computer.

00:19:21 ◼   ► I hope it continues to work fine,

00:19:24 ◼   ► but you know, the cable is a little bit stiff.

00:19:26 ◼   ► That's probably the worst thing I can say about it.

00:19:28 ◼   ► But otherwise it's working

00:19:29 ◼   ► and the kids are successfully able to plug and unplug it

00:19:33 ◼   ► without really breaking anything.

00:19:34 ◼   ► So I have put yet another bandaid on my computer

00:19:39 ◼   ► that already has a giant bandaid

00:19:40 ◼   ► underneath the entire keyboard.

00:19:42 ◼   ► - Wonderful.

00:19:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm curious to hear how that works out long term

00:19:45 ◼   ► because I also looked into if any of those

00:19:49 ◼   ► fake MagSafe USB-C adapter things were good.

00:19:52 ◼   ► And when I looked, which was admittedly about a year ago,

00:19:55 ◼   ► the conclusion I came to was that

00:19:58 ◼   ► this is one of those product categories

00:19:59 ◼   ► where everything is terrible.

00:20:01 ◼   ► So I just didn't get any of them.

00:20:02 ◼   ► But yeah, so if that works out, let us know.

00:20:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, if something's gonna be terrible about it,

00:20:06 ◼   ► like I knew out of the box,

00:20:08 ◼   ► the only thing I could say is the cable was a little stiff.

00:20:10 ◼   ► Like the kinks that are in the cable,

00:20:12 ◼   ► they don't straight, it's a braided cable or whatever,

00:20:14 ◼   ► but they didn't straighten out that well.

00:20:16 ◼   ► But the connection felt solid.

00:20:18 ◼   ► It never failed to power the computer or anything.

00:20:22 ◼   ► Like it just works exactly like you'd expect it to work.

00:20:25 ◼   ► Now long term, it could wear out or get crappy

00:20:27 ◼   ► or start arcing or do something terrible.

00:20:29 ◼   ► So I have no idea.

00:20:30 ◼   ► Because again, with these sort of brands

00:20:32 ◼   ► that I've never heard of

00:20:33 ◼   ► with these really long descriptions always,

00:20:35 ◼   ► you know, make me a little bit worried.

00:20:36 ◼   ► But it seems to be working fine.

00:20:38 ◼   ► So I'll definitely let you know if it catches fire.

00:20:41 ◼   ► - Please do.

00:20:42 ◼   ► Alright Marco, speaking of USB-C things,

00:20:45 ◼   ► tell us about your light-up charging cable.

00:20:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think I mentioned this a while ago

00:20:49 ◼   ► that I had just gotten it,

00:20:50 ◼   ► and I just wanted to say that I've been really enjoying it.

00:20:52 ◼   ► So I have solved my main issue

00:20:54 ◼   ► with the bad USB-C power brick transition,

00:20:59 ◼   ► which was that we lost the little LED on the cable

00:21:03 ◼   ► that told us whether our laptop was charging or charged

00:21:06 ◼   ► by lighting up orange or green.

00:21:08 ◼   ► And company MOSHI, M-O-S-H-I, makes one for about 30 bucks

00:21:13 ◼   ► that is a USB-C power cable, just C to C,

00:21:17 ◼   ► and on one end of it, it has an LED

00:21:19 ◼   ► that works exactly that way.

00:21:21 ◼   ► And it's not totally perfect for all devices

00:21:24 ◼   ► because I'm assuming that it distinguishes

00:21:26 ◼   ► charging versus charge based on just like

00:21:28 ◼   ► how much power is going through it, a little bit or a lot.

00:21:31 ◼   ► So like some devices, it can maybe show

00:21:34 ◼   ► the like charged green state

00:21:35 ◼   ► when it's actually still charging.

00:21:37 ◼   ► But for the most part, like for computers,

00:21:39 ◼   ► it works fine, for iPads, you know, for everything else,

00:21:41 ◼   ► like it works totally fine.

00:21:42 ◼   ► And definitely for every laptop I've tried it on.

00:21:44 ◼   ► And so it's wonderful.

00:21:45 ◼   ► So I now have light up charging cables back,

00:21:49 ◼   ► something that was standard on all Apple laptops

00:21:51 ◼   ► until a few years ago.

00:21:52 ◼   ► And it's still, it is exactly as useful as I remember it.

00:21:56 ◼   ► I'm very happy I went back to this.

00:21:58 ◼   ► So we'll put a link in the show notes

00:21:59 ◼   ► to these MOSHI cables.

00:22:01 ◼   ► - Since you seem to be augmenting

00:22:03 ◼   ► all of your naked robotic cores,

00:22:05 ◼   ► would you like to tell me about your screen protector

00:22:07 ◼   ► on your iPad?

00:22:08 ◼   ► - Sure, yeah, so when we last spoke,

00:22:11 ◼   ► I was trying the Paperlike screen protector.

00:22:14 ◼   ► And this was probably about a month ago now,

00:22:15 ◼   ► it's been a while.

00:22:16 ◼   ► And I said that I had one of the tempered glass

00:22:19 ◼   ► fancy ones on the way.

00:22:22 ◼   ► And I have since tried them both.

00:22:25 ◼   ► I have, I spent a lot of time

00:22:26 ◼   ► with the Paperlike screen protector.

00:22:28 ◼   ► I spent a little bit of time with the tempered glass one

00:22:32 ◼   ► from some fancy company that is Japanese

00:22:34 ◼   ► that everyone says makes the best ones,

00:22:36 ◼   ► I forget the name.

00:22:37 ◼   ► And I gotta say, I'm currently rocking

00:22:41 ◼   ► a naked robotic core iPad Pro.

00:22:43 ◼   ► And the funny thing is, in the meantime,

00:22:45 ◼   ► our friend Mike Hurley on the Connected podcast

00:22:48 ◼   ► has started using the Paperlike kind of because I did.

00:22:51 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:22:52 ◼   ► And he uses the Apple Pencil a lot more than I do.

00:22:55 ◼   ► And one of the benefits of it was that it provides

00:22:57 ◼   ► a much nicer texture when using the pencil.

00:23:01 ◼   ► And he sounds like he's similarly on the fence about it

00:23:04 ◼   ► because it does make the screen look worse,

00:23:06 ◼   ► but it makes it feel better.

00:23:08 ◼   ► I went back to just naked iPad after trying.

00:23:12 ◼   ► The tempered glass one I found actually even worse

00:23:15 ◼   ► than the Paperlike in pretty much every aspect.

00:23:19 ◼   ► It was harder to install correctly.

00:23:21 ◼   ► The resulting texture was not as nice.

00:23:25 ◼   ► It was much more harsh.

00:23:26 ◼   ► It felt more like sandpaper.

00:23:28 ◼   ► It was not a very nice texture, in my opinion.

00:23:30 ◼   ► It was not nice with the pencil or touch in that way.

00:23:33 ◼   ► It just wasn't very good.

00:23:34 ◼   ► I kept it on for like two days,

00:23:36 ◼   ► and I'm like, "All right, I'm done with this."

00:23:38 ◼   ► And I haven't yet put back the Paperlike

00:23:41 ◼   ► because to make a matte finish,

00:23:43 ◼   ► you basically have to make a whole bunch

00:23:44 ◼   ► of tiny bumps that diffuse light.

00:23:48 ◼   ► And so what it ends up looking like

00:23:50 ◼   ► is a kind of slightly blurry film over the entire screen.

00:23:54 ◼   ► And so the screen itself ends up looking worse.

00:23:57 ◼   ► One big issue I had with it was

00:23:59 ◼   ► when I would take it out of the house,

00:24:01 ◼   ► when sun hit it, the glare was way higher

00:24:04 ◼   ► on the matte screen than it was on the naked iPad screen.

00:24:08 ◼   ► And so it was actually harder to use in the sun also

00:24:10 ◼   ► 'cause of that glare.

00:24:11 ◼   ► I'd have to crank the brightness way up

00:24:13 ◼   ► to even have a chance.

00:24:14 ◼   ► And then of course I'm using way more battery,

00:24:17 ◼   ► and it still wasn't very legible in bright sun.

00:24:20 ◼   ► So I noticed how bad it looked more often

00:24:25 ◼   ► than I appreciated how good it felt.

00:24:27 ◼   ► And the transition back to going naked again was rough

00:24:32 ◼   ► because when you're used to your finger gliding smoothly

00:24:35 ◼   ► over that wonderful feeling matte texture,

00:24:38 ◼   ► and then you go back to glass that starts out

00:24:42 ◼   ► with no fingerprints on it so it has no greasy coating

00:24:44 ◼   ► to help you move faster,

00:24:45 ◼   ► it was actually unpleasant to use my iPad

00:24:49 ◼   ► for that first day.

00:24:50 ◼   ► The transition coming down from a screen protector

00:24:52 ◼   ► is really rough.

00:24:53 ◼   ► But after a couple days, I stopped noticing

00:24:56 ◼   ► and I went back to the old way

00:24:58 ◼   ► just using it the way everyone else does.

00:24:59 ◼   ► And while I'm not happy with how incredibly fingerprinty

00:25:04 ◼   ► it is now, I'm not happy with the status quo

00:25:07 ◼   ► of using it the normal way,

00:25:09 ◼   ► but I was more unhappy with the downsides

00:25:13 ◼   ► of the screen protector than I am with the downsides

00:25:16 ◼   ► of the regular screen.

00:25:18 ◼   ► So for now, even though I have an extra paper like

00:25:21 ◼   ► in the drawer that I can stick on at any time,

00:25:23 ◼   ► I think I'm just not gonna use it.

00:25:25 ◼   ► I think I'm going without it

00:25:26 ◼   ► because even though the stock screen setup

00:25:30 ◼   ► is totally flawed with how greasy and horrible it gets,

00:25:34 ◼   ► and even though the paper does feel better

00:25:36 ◼   ► and is better with the pencil,

00:25:38 ◼   ► those were not strong enough advantages

00:25:40 ◼   ► to make it worth its disadvantages for me.

00:25:43 ◼   ► - That makes sense.

00:25:44 ◼   ► Somewhat surprised that both of you stuck with it

00:25:47 ◼   ► even as long as you did,

00:25:48 ◼   ► but it can't hurt to try, so I'm glad you did.

00:25:51 ◼   ► - So what's the flaw in the screen?

00:25:53 ◼   ► How would you make the stock screen better?

00:25:56 ◼   ► - Before the Apple Pencil, before the iPad Pro,

00:26:01 ◼   ► the oleophobic coatings they would use on iPads and iPhones

00:26:04 ◼   ► would not get as visibly fingerprinty as these do.

00:26:09 ◼   ► Ever since the Pro came out with the pencil support,

00:26:11 ◼   ► they have changed the oleophobic coating,

00:26:13 ◼   ► and I assume it's because the pencil wasn't good

00:26:16 ◼   ► with the previous kind of coating.

00:26:18 ◼   ► Maybe it scratched the coating off,

00:26:19 ◼   ► or maybe the coating did weird things to the pencil,

00:26:22 ◼   ► who knows?

00:26:23 ◼   ► Whatever the case, the old coating was not suitable

00:26:25 ◼   ► to work with the Apple Pencil.

00:26:26 ◼   ► And so the new coating, it just doesn't seem as good

00:26:30 ◼   ► at repelling oils, and so it just gets really greasy

00:26:34 ◼   ► looking really fast, and it looks gross,

00:26:36 ◼   ► and it makes content on screen kinda hard to see sometimes.

00:26:39 ◼   ► Like, it's a different way to a screen protector.

00:26:42 ◼   ► Like, you gotta wipe it on your pants

00:26:44 ◼   ► to just be able to see all the stuff on screen.

00:26:48 ◼   ► - I can see the fingerprintiness

00:26:50 ◼   ► when the screen is not on on mine,

00:26:52 ◼   ► but when the screen's on,

00:26:53 ◼   ► I don't really notice it that much.

00:26:55 ◼   ► I don't know, do you actually know for a fact

00:26:57 ◼   ► that they changed the coating,

00:26:58 ◼   ► or are you just guessing

00:26:59 ◼   ► because the screens look so different?

00:27:00 ◼   ► - No, I know for a fact it has changed,

00:27:02 ◼   ► and it was pencil-related.

00:27:04 ◼   ► I mostly see it when I'm scrolling content.

00:27:07 ◼   ► So like, even if you're using it,

00:27:08 ◼   ► like, especially if you have a light background

00:27:11 ◼   ► being displayed, like a webpage, and you're scrolling,

00:27:13 ◼   ► you can see all the crap and grease that's staying still

00:27:17 ◼   ► on the screen as you're scrolling

00:27:18 ◼   ► the light content under it.

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00:29:11 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:29:14 ◼   ► - Angel Arendt is out at Apple,

00:29:17 ◼   ► which took me by quite a bit of surprise,

00:29:20 ◼   ► not to say that Apple is of the habit

00:29:22 ◼   ► of running executive departures by me or anything,

00:29:24 ◼   ► but I didn't hear any sort of rumblings

00:29:28 ◼   ► and didn't see any smoke to indicate that this was coming.

00:29:31 ◼   ► But Apple has said that Angel is leaving

00:29:35 ◼   ► and that Deirdre O'Brien,

00:29:37 ◼   ► who apparently was senior vice president of People,

00:29:41 ◼   ► which I take to mean HR,

00:29:42 ◼   ► is now going to suck up retail as well,

00:29:46 ◼   ► which seems like a bit of an odd pairing, but whatever.

00:29:49 ◼   ► But Angel was there for about five years.

00:29:51 ◼   ► I have some different things that I'd like to talk about,

00:29:55 ◼   ► but my initial reaction was that it was a bit of a bummer,

00:30:00 ◼   ► 'cause to me it seems like she's a very, very,

00:30:03 ◼   ► very smart woman who certainly has plenty of great experience

00:30:07 ◼   ► and seemed to be making some really interesting changes

00:30:11 ◼   ► to the Apple Store.

00:30:12 ◼   ► So my initial reaction was, well, oh, that stinks.

00:30:16 ◼   ► But then I thought, and we were in a couple of slacks

00:30:19 ◼   ► where this was discussed,

00:30:21 ◼   ► I was thinking about how I do or do not really like

00:30:25 ◼   ► going to the Apple Store,

00:30:26 ◼   ► and we've talked about this before on this show,

00:30:29 ◼   ► that for East Coasters going to the Apple Store,

00:30:31 ◼   ► it's kind of frustrating because there's no order to it

00:30:36 ◼   ► and no lines and no places where you can go

00:30:38 ◼   ► and find a cash register or anything like that.

00:30:41 ◼   ► So none of that necessarily was Angel's fault.

00:30:43 ◼   ► In fact, I think most of that predated her,

00:30:45 ◼   ► if not all of it, but I don't know.

00:30:47 ◼   ► It seems like it would be interesting

00:30:50 ◼   ► to be able to tweak the setup a little bit.

00:30:53 ◼   ► And like I said, I have some other thoughts about this,

00:30:55 ◼   ► but I wanted to give you guys a chance to have,

00:30:57 ◼   ► I don't know, like an opening statement, if you will.

00:30:59 ◼   ► So John, how do you feel about this?

00:31:01 ◼   ► - Anytime there's any big executive news like this,

00:31:05 ◼   ► there's always two obvious angles on the story.

00:31:09 ◼   ► One is to talk about the sort of palace drama

00:31:14 ◼   ► or court intrigue or whatever phrase

00:31:15 ◼   ► that I'm not pulling out of thin air

00:31:18 ◼   ► that applies to this of like,

00:31:19 ◼   ► why is this person leaving?

00:31:22 ◼   ► Were they fired?

00:31:24 ◼   ► Were they not performing well?

00:31:26 ◼   ► Why are they on their way out?

00:31:28 ◼   ► Whose power is ascendant?

00:31:31 ◼   ► What does it mean that the new person got the job?

00:31:33 ◼   ► Stuff like that.

00:31:34 ◼   ► Part of the reason we can have that discussion

00:31:36 ◼   ► is kind of like the Netflix and Facebook and Google

00:31:39 ◼   ► versus individual developer situation.

00:31:42 ◼   ► When you're a regular person and a regular employee

00:31:46 ◼   ► and you get fired, they just fire you.

00:31:48 ◼   ► But if you climb high enough on the org chart,

00:31:51 ◼   ► very, very rarely are you actually fired.

00:31:55 ◼   ► Even if they do want to fire you,

00:31:58 ◼   ► they let you leave in a way that makes it seem

00:32:02 ◼   ► like you weren't fired.

00:32:04 ◼   ► So that's why we can have these discussions like,

00:32:07 ◼   ► is this person actually leaving

00:32:08 ◼   ► to spend more time with their family?

00:32:10 ◼   ► Or is that just the phrase they use

00:32:13 ◼   ► when they want someone to leave,

00:32:14 ◼   ► but they're so important that they can't say,

00:32:16 ◼   ► yeah, we didn't like the job this person was doing,

00:32:17 ◼   ► so we fired them.

00:32:18 ◼   ► And it's easy to get caught up in that aspect of the thing,

00:32:23 ◼   ► like the personal drama or whatever.

00:32:25 ◼   ► Palace intrigue, maybe that's, I'm getting closer.

00:32:27 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:32:28 ◼   ► But the fact is we don't know any of that stuff.

00:32:30 ◼   ► We don't work for Apple.

00:32:31 ◼   ► We don't have any line on the executive.

00:32:33 ◼   ► Certainly Apple's not gonna talk about that type of stuff.

00:32:36 ◼   ► So we can speculate to some degree,

00:32:38 ◼   ► especially about whether someone was sent on their way

00:32:43 ◼   ► in some fashion or encouraged to leave,

00:32:45 ◼   ► because that does have some relevance

00:32:46 ◼   ► to the future of the company

00:32:48 ◼   ► and the direction of the company or whatever.

00:32:49 ◼   ► But the details, we can't really know.

00:32:51 ◼   ► Although I do find myself getting sidetracked in this thing

00:32:54 ◼   ► and thinking much more so than the individual developer

00:32:58 ◼   ► versus Facebook, Google, or Netflix situation,

00:33:00 ◼   ► how incredibly unfair it is

00:33:02 ◼   ► that the most important jobs with the most responsibility

00:33:06 ◼   ► and the most influence in the lives

00:33:08 ◼   ► of the most number of other people

00:33:10 ◼   ► get to have this graceful exit,

00:33:12 ◼   ► even if everybody hated them and they did a bad job.

00:33:15 ◼   ► So we can't fire them.

00:33:17 ◼   ► Well, then what?

00:33:17 ◼   ► They would have trouble getting another job.

00:33:19 ◼   ► And no matter what they do,

00:33:21 ◼   ► say they're sexually harassing somebody,

00:33:24 ◼   ► but say they're just terrible at their job.

00:33:27 ◼   ► Say they don't show up and they yell at people

00:33:29 ◼   ► and they make bad decisions all the time

00:33:31 ◼   ► and the company goes down the tubes.

00:33:32 ◼   ► It's like, well, but they're an executive.

00:33:34 ◼   ► So give them a multimillion dollar golden parachute

00:33:36 ◼   ► and say, we thank this person for their service

00:33:38 ◼   ► and they've done such a great job.

00:33:39 ◼   ► And that just rubs me the wrong way,

00:33:41 ◼   ► because it's like the exact opposite of the way it should be.

00:33:43 ◼   ► Like the person who has a manager who hates them

00:33:46 ◼   ► for some reason that no one else can discern,

00:33:49 ◼   ► but gets to fire them with cause,

00:33:50 ◼   ► everyone knows they were fired.

00:33:53 ◼   ► So when they get another job, it's like, oh yeah,

00:33:55 ◼   ► we'll totally tell them that we fired you from this job.

00:33:57 ◼   ► But the executive who has much more important job,

00:34:01 ◼   ► like they get all the perks,

00:34:03 ◼   ► but they don't get the downsides.

00:34:04 ◼   ► It's like, oh, and also,

00:34:06 ◼   ► no matter how bad you do in this job,

00:34:08 ◼   ► you will leave Rich and we won't even say that we fired you.

00:34:10 ◼   ► So I don't wanna go down that tangent.

00:34:14 ◼   ► I don't think that's what happened here or whatever,

00:34:15 ◼   ► but anytime I see that, it just strikes me

00:34:16 ◼   ► as the opposite of the way things should be

00:34:18 ◼   ► and it makes me very angry.

00:34:19 ◼   ► Unlike Facebook, Google and Netflix

00:34:22 ◼   ► getting better treatment in the App Store,

00:34:23 ◼   ► which seems like the way it probably should be

00:34:25 ◼   ► and is probably the best for everybody,

00:34:27 ◼   ► all things considered.

00:34:27 ◼   ► Anyway, I wanna put that aside for now

00:34:30 ◼   ► and just briefly say that the other angle on this

00:34:33 ◼   ► that is much more relevant to us,

00:34:35 ◼   ► who doesn't, we don't have any connections

00:34:38 ◼   ► to the higher-ups in Apple, is let's look at,

00:34:42 ◼   ► so Angela's leaving.

00:34:44 ◼   ► How do you pronounce her last name, Arents?

00:34:46 ◼   ► - I thought it was Arents, but I am not confident.

00:34:49 ◼   ► - She's leaving, I assume for exactly

00:34:51 ◼   ► for the stated reasons,

00:34:52 ◼   ► although we have some other theories about that

00:34:55 ◼   ► that we'll get to in a little bit.

00:34:57 ◼   ► But we can look back at her tenure and say,

00:34:59 ◼   ► I don't know what her metrics were inside Apple.

00:35:01 ◼   ► Was she tasked with increase this number to this,

00:35:03 ◼   ► increase that to that, or do like,

00:35:05 ◼   ► we don't know if she did a good job according to executives,

00:35:07 ◼   ► 'cause what constitutes a good job?

00:35:09 ◼   ► What's on her like a scorecard, another fun thing,

00:35:14 ◼   ► another fun business term for Mark or Lerna.

00:35:15 ◼   ► What's on her scorecard for the year?

00:35:17 ◼   ► I have no idea.

00:35:18 ◼   ► But I can say that as a person who goes to Apple stores,

00:35:22 ◼   ► we can all have an opinion about,

00:35:24 ◼   ► have Apple stores gotten better, worse, or the same

00:35:27 ◼   ► in her tenure?

00:35:28 ◼   ► What has she done that is externally visible

00:35:31 ◼   ► and felt by customers to the thing that she was responsible?

00:35:35 ◼   ► She was responsible for retail.

00:35:37 ◼   ► How is retail going?

00:35:38 ◼   ► And I think we all know most of her big initiatives,

00:35:43 ◼   ► 'cause she got a lot of keynote time.

00:35:44 ◼   ► Her initiatives got a lot of keynote time.

00:35:46 ◼   ► She did certain things to the Apple stores

00:35:49 ◼   ► that Apple told us about a lot.

00:35:51 ◼   ► The town square kind of concept,

00:35:54 ◼   ► the making the Apple store a meeting place,

00:35:56 ◼   ► the real ramping up of the classes and everything

00:35:58 ◼   ► that they give. - Today at Apple?

00:36:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, today at Apple, to some degree,

00:36:03 ◼   ► slightly redesigning the Apple stores, right?

00:36:06 ◼   ► That's what she did during her tenure.

00:36:08 ◼   ► And I think we can evaluate that and say,

00:36:11 ◼   ► do we like that, do we not like it, or is it neutral?

00:36:14 ◼   ► And not worry about at all whether Apple was, you know,

00:36:19 ◼   ► kicked her out or whatever.

00:36:20 ◼   ► 'Cause I feel like there's no scenario

00:36:23 ◼   ► in which Apple hated everything she did,

00:36:24 ◼   ► because they promoted it for like many years.

00:36:27 ◼   ► Like they weren't, like we hate all this stuff,

00:36:29 ◼   ► but we're gonna give you the number one slot

00:36:30 ◼   ► in every keynote for like two years

00:36:32 ◼   ► to talk about your initiatives.

00:36:33 ◼   ► They talked about it a lot.

00:36:34 ◼   ► I think the entire company was on board

00:36:37 ◼   ► with all of her initiatives.

00:36:39 ◼   ► But were they good for the Apple store?

00:36:40 ◼   ► That's my question.

00:36:42 ◼   ► - I don't know.

00:36:43 ◼   ► It's hard to say because it, to my eyes,

00:36:48 ◼   ► a lot of these changes have also been,

00:36:50 ◼   ► coincide in or commensurate with whatever word

00:36:53 ◼   ► I'm looking for that starts us at C,

00:36:55 ◼   ► with Apple becoming more and more and more

00:36:57 ◼   ► and more and more popular with regular people.

00:37:00 ◼   ► And so it's hard for me to separate the fact

00:37:03 ◼   ► that my local Apple store has gotten busier and busier

00:37:07 ◼   ► and less and less fun to be in.

00:37:09 ◼   ► Is that because of Angela or just because Apple in general

00:37:13 ◼   ► has many more users and to some degree, many more products?

00:37:17 ◼   ► And it's very, very difficult for me to separate the two,

00:37:20 ◼   ► but something that I've heard a lot of people say,

00:37:22 ◼   ► which seems odd to me that this is the time it's come up,

00:37:27 ◼   ► but a lot of people have been saying,

00:37:28 ◼   ► and I agree with them, that it seems like a couple

00:37:30 ◼   ► of years ago was the right time for Apple

00:37:32 ◼   ► to add a whole bunch more stores.

00:37:34 ◼   ► And they clearly haven't.

00:37:36 ◼   ► They've been redesigning a lot of stores.

00:37:39 ◼   ► Like my local store moved within the same mall

00:37:41 ◼   ► a few spots to become bigger.

00:37:43 ◼   ► And I've heard a lot of people say their local stores

00:37:44 ◼   ► have gotten bigger and prettier in many cases.

00:37:47 ◼   ► But it seems like there's definitely a pretty big appetite

00:37:51 ◼   ► for more stores.

00:37:52 ◼   ► I've heard people in large metropolitan areas say this.

00:37:55 ◼   ► I've heard people in more rural areas say this.

00:37:57 ◼   ► As I've lamented on this show numerous times,

00:38:00 ◼   ► Virginia is a reasonably large state,

00:38:02 ◼   ► certainly a heck of a lot bigger

00:38:04 ◼   ► than a hilariously small state like Massachusetts.

00:38:06 ◼   ► And for two thirds of Virginia,

00:38:10 ◼   ► the closest Apple store to these places,

00:38:13 ◼   ► which is four hours from the one near me,

00:38:16 ◼   ► is four hours away.

00:38:17 ◼   ► I totally gave away the punchline there.

00:38:18 ◼   ► That's okay.

00:38:19 ◼   ► Somehow Marco will edit that to make it sound good.

00:38:21 ◼   ► Not really.

00:38:22 ◼   ► - I don't think so.

00:38:23 ◼   ► - But anyway, yeah, no you can't.

00:38:23 ◼   ► - You're stuck with that one.

00:38:25 ◼   ► - That's right.

00:38:26 ◼   ► The point is though, a lot more stores would help a lot.

00:38:30 ◼   ► Now was that Angela's decision not to open more stores?

00:38:32 ◼   ► Maybe, maybe not.

00:38:34 ◼   ► Are all these stores a lot prettier now?

00:38:36 ◼   ► Yeah, I'd say so.

00:38:36 ◼   ► Do they have other things going on there?

00:38:38 ◼   ► Yeah, certainly.

00:38:39 ◼   ► Today at Apple is new.

00:38:41 ◼   ► Is going to the Genius Bar very much fun?

00:38:43 ◼   ► Eh, no.

00:38:44 ◼   ► Was it ever really fun?

00:38:45 ◼   ► No.

00:38:45 ◼   ► Does it seem less fun now than it was in years past?

00:38:48 ◼   ► Probably.

00:38:49 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:38:50 ◼   ► And I have, again, more thoughts on this,

00:38:52 ◼   ► but before I go down the rabbit hole,

00:38:53 ◼   ► Marco, what is your kind of hot take to start?

00:38:57 ◼   ► - I mean, just looking at Angela Ahrendts

00:39:00 ◼   ► and what she did and why she might be leaving,

00:39:04 ◼   ► it's hard to say.

00:39:06 ◼   ► Because again, we don't know what was her decision,

00:39:09 ◼   ► what was not her decision.

00:39:10 ◼   ► These things could have been decided above or below her.

00:39:13 ◼   ► But I do think it is worth discussing the state

00:39:16 ◼   ► of the Apple retail stores and the experience there.

00:39:20 ◼   ► The time that she has spent as the head of retail here

00:39:24 ◼   ► has been easily characterized in a few ways

00:39:27 ◼   ► of certain things changing.

00:39:28 ◼   ► So number one is the architecture

00:39:31 ◼   ► has seen dramatic improvements.

00:39:33 ◼   ► Like the ones that have been remodeled, they look stunning.

00:39:36 ◼   ► They look incredible until you go into them.

00:39:43 ◼   ► And this can be a metaphor for so many things.

00:39:48 ◼   ► They look great, but they don't work very well.

00:39:51 ◼   ► There was a great post by our friend Dr. Drang yesterday

00:39:57 ◼   ► about the Apple SVP changes and the retail,

00:40:00 ◼   ► and he likened the latest retail era

00:40:04 ◼   ► where things are looking great but not working very well

00:40:07 ◼   ► in a similar way to when Johnny Ive

00:40:09 ◼   ► took over software design in addition to hardware design.

00:40:13 ◼   ► Modern Apple software looks great,

00:40:16 ◼   ► but it doesn't work as well UI-wise as it used to.

00:40:21 ◼   ► And so I think we can summarize this

00:40:24 ◼   ► with something you said earlier, Casey.

00:40:26 ◼   ► I don't enjoy going to the Apple store.

00:40:27 ◼   ► And I would also question, do you know anyone

00:40:30 ◼   ► who enjoys going to the Apple store today?

00:40:33 ◼   ► - I think some people are excited to see the cool products.

00:40:38 ◼   ► Maybe they're not there to purchase,

00:40:39 ◼   ► but I think there is still,

00:40:40 ◼   ► because the stores do look nice

00:40:42 ◼   ► and because they have all the shiny products on tables,

00:40:44 ◼   ► if you can take yourself back to the less jaded time

00:40:46 ◼   ► when you're excited to see a shiny product

00:40:48 ◼   ► that you hadn't seen before,

00:40:49 ◼   ► going into a cool looking place to see the shiny product,

00:40:52 ◼   ► even when it's packed full of people,

00:40:54 ◼   ► or maybe even especially when it's packed full of people,

00:40:56 ◼   ► I'm thinking mostly of probably young people doing this,

00:40:58 ◼   ► I think there probably are people

00:40:59 ◼   ► who still find that an exciting experience.

00:41:02 ◼   ► And the architecture itself is a draw.

00:41:03 ◼   ► You see people taking pictures of themselves

00:41:05 ◼   ► by the fancy location-based Apple stores.

00:41:07 ◼   ► So I'm not to say that the overall argument

00:41:10 ◼   ► of the store is getting better or worse,

00:41:12 ◼   ► not taking a position on that quite yet,

00:41:13 ◼   ► but I do think there are people

00:41:15 ◼   ► who enjoy the Apple store way more than we do.

00:41:17 ◼   ► - Okay, so that's fair.

00:41:20 ◼   ► When I go to an Apple store, I'm going there for a purpose.

00:41:22 ◼   ► It's usually either to buy something,

00:41:24 ◼   ► which I already know what I want

00:41:25 ◼   ► and I just wanna go buy it,

00:41:27 ◼   ► or I need to get something serviced or something.

00:41:30 ◼   ► And when you go there with that purpose in mind,

00:41:33 ◼   ► it's really a pretty poor experience a lot of the time.

00:41:36 ◼   ► Not all the time, but a lot of the time.

00:41:38 ◼   ► It fundamentally comes down to overcrowding.

00:41:40 ◼   ► I think that that seems to be the main issue.

00:41:42 ◼   ► And Casey, I think you made a good point.

00:41:44 ◼   ► It does seem like they probably just need a lot more stores.

00:41:47 ◼   ► And who knows why they have an open bar?

00:41:49 ◼   ► I'm sure they have their reasons,

00:41:50 ◼   ► but I think they have a significant overcrowding issue

00:41:53 ◼   ► at many of their stores much of the time.

00:41:56 ◼   ► And you can see this for yourself

00:41:58 ◼   ► if you try to make a Genius Bar appointment

00:41:59 ◼   ► to get something serviced.

00:42:00 ◼   ► And you oftentimes can't get an appointment

00:42:03 ◼   ► for like a week at least.

00:42:05 ◼   ► There's clearly scaling problems here.

00:42:08 ◼   ► And this goes from every level,

00:42:10 ◼   ► from the Genius Bar,

00:42:11 ◼   ► or whatever the Genius Arbor is called now.

00:42:14 ◼   ► - Groove.

00:42:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:42:15 ◼   ► From that, which whatever that is,

00:42:17 ◼   ► that's a whole other thing,

00:42:18 ◼   ► whether that was a big mistake or not.

00:42:20 ◼   ► Or from that to like,

00:42:22 ◼   ► even just when you go into the store,

00:42:26 ◼   ► you're supposed to talk to the person up front,

00:42:27 ◼   ► which often isn't obvious,

00:42:28 ◼   ► 'cause the person up front is often talking

00:42:30 ◼   ► to somebody else already,

00:42:31 ◼   ► and you can just walk right past them

00:42:32 ◼   ► and not even realize they were there.

00:42:33 ◼   ► - 'Cause they have 900 doors

00:42:34 ◼   ► when the ones that were just

00:42:36 ◼   ► the entire front of the store opens up.

00:42:37 ◼   ► - Right, so you walk into any of the 900 doors,

00:42:39 ◼   ► you're supposed to go talk to the person up front,

00:42:41 ◼   ► but there's nothing saying that,

00:42:42 ◼   ► and it's often not obvious,

00:42:43 ◼   ► and the person often is busy doing other things.

00:42:45 ◼   ► What you're supposed to do is talk to that person,

00:42:47 ◼   ► and then they tell you,

00:42:49 ◼   ► "Oh, go stand over at that table and wait for Sarah."

00:42:54 ◼   ► And you're like, "Okay, I don't know who Sarah is.

00:42:56 ◼   ► "I hope this problem will be resolved some other way."

00:42:59 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:43:00 ◼   ► So you go over and you stand at whatever table

00:43:02 ◼   ► you think they were waving you over to,

00:43:04 ◼   ► but it was on the other side of the store,

00:43:05 ◼   ► and you could be off by one,

00:43:06 ◼   ► 'cause it's a pretty far distance to just go off a hand wave

00:43:10 ◼   ► so that you get waved over to the table,

00:43:12 ◼   ► you're waiting for Sarah,

00:43:13 ◼   ► and then you walk over there,

00:43:14 ◼   ► and you're like, "All right, looking around,

00:43:15 ◼   ► "there's like three people also hovering around

00:43:18 ◼   ► "who you think are also waiting.

00:43:19 ◼   ► "You're not really sure what order you all got there in."

00:43:23 ◼   ► And eventually somebody with the store-colored shirt

00:43:25 ◼   ► comes over who might be Sarah,

00:43:27 ◼   ► and they're talking to somebody for a long time,

00:43:30 ◼   ► and you're like, "I don't know.

00:43:31 ◼   ► "Do they know I'm here?

00:43:33 ◼   ► "Am I next?

00:43:34 ◼   ► "I don't even,"

00:43:35 ◼   ► like what the Apple store really needs

00:43:38 ◼   ► is an ancient innovation, lines.

00:43:42 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:43:43 ◼   ► This is a solved problem, lines.

00:43:46 ◼   ► And the funny thing is like what they are doing

00:43:48 ◼   ► with their freeform system here

00:43:51 ◼   ► is basically creating a bunch of virtual cues

00:43:53 ◼   ► around the store anyway.

00:43:55 ◼   ► They're just disorganized and confusing,

00:43:56 ◼   ► and they're trying to pretend like they don't exist.

00:43:58 ◼   ► But what they're actually creating

00:44:00 ◼   ► is a bunch of terrible lines

00:44:02 ◼   ► that are really hard to figure out.

00:44:03 ◼   ► - Well, these lines have a very important attribute,

00:44:06 ◼   ► which is done in Disney and other theme parks

00:44:08 ◼   ► in a slightly different way,

00:44:09 ◼   ► which is to intentionally not let you know

00:44:11 ◼   ► exactly how long you're gonna be waiting.

00:44:13 ◼   ► - Right. (laughs)

00:44:13 ◼   ► - By having the lines snake around

00:44:15 ◼   ► so you can never see its full extent.

00:44:18 ◼   ► So if you think about the Apple store,

00:44:19 ◼   ► and we get back to the crowding thing in a second,

00:44:21 ◼   ► but if you think about the Apple store,

00:44:22 ◼   ► if it was designed like a Target or a Walmart,

00:44:25 ◼   ► you'd have a whole bunch of registers

00:44:26 ◼   ► and a whole bunch of lines.

00:44:27 ◼   ► I mean, you've seen Target

00:44:28 ◼   ► where they double up the registers.

00:44:30 ◼   ► Not only do they do it parallel, but it goes deep

00:44:32 ◼   ► so that each line feeds two or three registers, right?

00:44:36 ◼   ► It should try to make the most efficient use of space.

00:44:39 ◼   ► And when the store is really slammed

00:44:41 ◼   ► and all those things are running,

00:44:42 ◼   ► the idea, as you're going around with your cart

00:44:45 ◼   ► and you go past the checkout section

00:44:47 ◼   ► and you see there's just massive humanity,

00:44:49 ◼   ► and you're like, oh, I better factor in

00:44:50 ◼   ► an extra 15 to 20 minutes to wait on all these lines, right?

00:44:54 ◼   ► It gives you the impression that it's gonna be a long wait.

00:44:58 ◼   ► Whereas when everyone gets dispersed like this,

00:45:01 ◼   ► the store is so crowded anyway,

00:45:02 ◼   ► and you can't tell which people are there

00:45:04 ◼   ► in a quote unquote line,

00:45:06 ◼   ► and which people are just there playing with the iPhones

00:45:08 ◼   ► or whatever, and so it's just like,

00:45:09 ◼   ► well, the store is crowded,

00:45:11 ◼   ► but how many of these people A, are even in line,

00:45:13 ◼   ► and B, are in front of me in line?

00:45:15 ◼   ► And it makes that question harder to answer.

00:45:17 ◼   ► Like, I think there are actually attributes of this system

00:45:21 ◼   ► that are positive as far as

00:45:24 ◼   ► the experience that Apple's trying to provide.

00:45:28 ◼   ► We can certainly all see the negatives of it,

00:45:30 ◼   ► but to flip it around the other way,

00:45:32 ◼   ► with the number of people that are there,

00:45:33 ◼   ► they'd have to dedicate a huge amount of the store to lines,

00:45:36 ◼   ► and the store would look like,

00:45:39 ◼   ► instead of looking like a store that's really crowded,

00:45:40 ◼   ► like a party, it would look like a place where if you go,

00:45:43 ◼   ► you know you're gonna have to wait a long time

00:45:44 ◼   ► to get what you want.

00:45:45 ◼   ► Whereas now when you see a crowded store,

00:45:47 ◼   ► you can guess that, but it's not entirely clear

00:45:51 ◼   ► what every person in the store is doing.

00:45:52 ◼   ► Like, I can see reasons for them sticking with this,

00:45:56 ◼   ► despite the fact that every time

00:45:57 ◼   ► we ever talk about the Apple store,

00:45:58 ◼   ► all we say is please make a line

00:45:59 ◼   ► 'cause we're all from the East Coast

00:46:00 ◼   ► and we just want to know what order we're in, right?

00:46:03 ◼   ► So I definitely think it is a problem,

00:46:04 ◼   ► but I've thought about the other side of it

00:46:08 ◼   ► to explain why they do what they do.

00:46:10 ◼   ► And I know I didn't wanna mention scorecards,

00:46:12 ◼   ► but Casey did bring up the let's open more stores.

00:46:16 ◼   ► Somewhere, I don't know if it's on someone's scorecard,

00:46:18 ◼   ► but somewhere inside Apple,

00:46:22 ◼   ► there is someone who is measuring dollar per square foot

00:46:25 ◼   ► 'cause they always brag about it,

00:46:27 ◼   ► or other people brag about it,

00:46:28 ◼   ► like the Apple retail store

00:46:29 ◼   ► makes the most money per square foot.

00:46:31 ◼   ► What they mean is given a store of this size,

00:46:33 ◼   ► how much money leaves customers and goes into the store?

00:46:37 ◼   ► If you open more stores and they become less crowded,

00:46:40 ◼   ► your dollar per square foot probably goes down

00:46:43 ◼   ► because you're not probably serving entirely new people.

00:46:45 ◼   ► What you are instead serving is people

00:46:47 ◼   ► who have to drive less far to go to a store,

00:46:50 ◼   ► or you'll split the people from one big store

00:46:52 ◼   ► and some will continue to go to the big store

00:46:53 ◼   ► and some will go to the other store

00:46:54 ◼   ► 'cause it's closer to the game.

00:46:55 ◼   ► Like, it's not, I feel like their dollar per square foot

00:46:58 ◼   ► would go down.

00:46:59 ◼   ► As far as I'm concerned, fine,

00:47:00 ◼   ► make your dollar per square foot go down

00:47:01 ◼   ► because the experience would be better

00:47:02 ◼   ► 'cause the store would be less crowded,

00:47:04 ◼   ► but maybe it's on somebody's yearly metrics

00:47:08 ◼   ► to make sure the dollar per square foot goes up

00:47:10 ◼   ► and opening new stores would make it go down.

00:47:12 ◼   ► So that's a nefarious or banal business reason

00:47:16 ◼   ► for them perhaps not opening new stores.

00:47:18 ◼   ► And it might just be that they're still trying

00:47:20 ◼   ► to be strategic and cautious

00:47:22 ◼   ► because the stores cost a lot of money

00:47:23 ◼   ► and they don't wanna open a big fancy one

00:47:24 ◼   ► and have to close it.

00:47:25 ◼   ► They could close like one or two Apple stores.

00:47:27 ◼   ► I think it was a big deal when they closed,

00:47:28 ◼   ► like the first Apple store that had ever opened up.

00:47:31 ◼   ► So I think not every place can support an Apple store,

00:47:36 ◼   ► and that's why they're all in these big cities

00:47:38 ◼   ► and they'll end up being filled with people.

00:47:41 ◼   ► But getting back to what Angela Ahrens did

00:47:43 ◼   ► to the Apple store,

00:47:44 ◼   ► in the end, I think her signature initiatives,

00:47:49 ◼   ► today at Apple, the classes and the idea of a town square

00:47:53 ◼   ► and a meeting place are fundamentally flawed.

00:47:57 ◼   ► Like there is no situation in which an Apple retail store

00:48:02 ◼   ► is going to become a town hall meeting place community thing

00:48:07 ◼   ► for so many reasons.

00:48:08 ◼   ► First of all, a community meeting place

00:48:11 ◼   ► can't be owned by a private corporation.

00:48:12 ◼   ► Like I know we all wanna be touchy feely and that's great,

00:48:15 ◼   ► but like that's not the definition of a public space.

00:48:18 ◼   ► A public space belongs to the public.

00:48:19 ◼   ► A public space is not owned by a giant corporation

00:48:22 ◼   ► that allows the public to come into it.

00:48:24 ◼   ► And there is a difference.

00:48:25 ◼   ► The one that's owned by the private corporation

00:48:27 ◼   ► can probably be nicer in some ways,

00:48:28 ◼   ► but everyone knows it's an Apple store,

00:48:31 ◼   ► it's not your store, whereas Central Park

00:48:33 ◼   ► does not belong to, God, please don't tell me

00:48:36 ◼   ► Central Park is owned by a bank now,

00:48:37 ◼   ► but I'm assuming Central Park is still not owned by a bank.

00:48:40 ◼   ► And everyone is in it knows it's their park.

00:48:42 ◼   ► And so it can function that role.

00:48:45 ◼   ► The second thing is if you wanna make like a building,

00:48:47 ◼   ► like all the Apple stores are some kind of building

00:48:50 ◼   ► where they become like a community center

00:48:53 ◼   ► and a meeting place and a gathering place,

00:48:55 ◼   ► you basically have to have food and drink.

00:48:57 ◼   ► Like Starbucks can do it, 'cause Starbucks

00:48:59 ◼   ► or bookstores that serve food and drink,

00:49:01 ◼   ► people can't come to your place and hang out

00:49:03 ◼   ► and meet with each other, I mean they can,

00:49:04 ◼   ► but they won't if there's no food.

00:49:06 ◼   ► - Starbucks I think is the best example.

00:49:08 ◼   ► It seems like what they really wanted

00:49:09 ◼   ► was to become another thing like Starbucks.

00:49:12 ◼   ► 'Cause Starbucks is a place where people go and meet,

00:49:16 ◼   ► but I think you're right, I think it basically

00:49:18 ◼   ► needs to be a coffee shop to do that.

00:49:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, like Barnes and Noble's a great example

00:49:21 ◼   ► where at a certain point Barnes and Noble

00:49:23 ◼   ► stopped being a bookstore that serves food

00:49:24 ◼   ► and started being a food store

00:49:25 ◼   ► that there's a bunch of books nearby.

00:49:27 ◼   ► Like they make all their money off of the food part

00:49:29 ◼   ► because nobody really buys books,

00:49:30 ◼   ► but you can get people to come and gather

00:49:32 ◼   ► and buy a coffee every hour or so

00:49:34 ◼   ► and sit there on their laptops and do their, right?

00:49:36 ◼   ► Like there's no way that Apple store

00:49:38 ◼   ► was ever gonna get to the point.

00:49:39 ◼   ► No matter how many classes you have,

00:49:41 ◼   ► no matter how many like will show you how to do cool things,

00:49:44 ◼   ► which those classes are probably great

00:49:45 ◼   ► and the people who go to them probably enjoy them greatly.

00:49:47 ◼   ► And I think they're an important part of Apple's thing,

00:49:49 ◼   ► but you're never gonna turn that from a place where I go

00:49:53 ◼   ► when I wanna take a class to a,

00:49:55 ◼   ► let's all come meet at the Apple store.

00:49:57 ◼   ► Like that's, it's a nice idea to have beautiful spaces

00:50:01 ◼   ► that you build and keep clean and nice

00:50:04 ◼   ► where people can come and use their cool products

00:50:06 ◼   ► that you make to do creative things together,

00:50:07 ◼   ► but it's not gonna happen.

00:50:09 ◼   ► Like you're not going to make this into

00:50:12 ◼   ► the dream of the town hall meeting place.

00:50:15 ◼   ► Like, and all these things seem increasingly desperate

00:50:17 ◼   ► to try to get people.

00:50:18 ◼   ► There's a reason for you to keep coming back

00:50:20 ◼   ► to the Apple store.

00:50:21 ◼   ► Just come to hang out.

00:50:21 ◼   ► We know you don't have to buy something every time you're here

00:50:23 ◼   ► in fact, we don't even have that many products.

00:50:25 ◼   ► You probably own all of them already anyway.

00:50:26 ◼   ► Just come and visit and maybe we'll talk about things.

00:50:29 ◼   ► We'll show you how to use stuff.

00:50:30 ◼   ► Like there are so many people there.

00:50:32 ◼   ► That's the other thing.

00:50:33 ◼   ► If it's going to be that type of meeting place,

00:50:35 ◼   ► it's like Times Square could be considered a meeting place,

00:50:38 ◼   ► but you're not gonna go there on New Year's Eve

00:50:39 ◼   ► 'cause you're like, oh, forget it.

00:50:40 ◼   ► I know it's gonna be a million people there.

00:50:42 ◼   ► Like it's not a good time to go.

00:50:43 ◼   ► And the law of crowded places,

00:50:45 ◼   ► like the idea of like, you know, the Yogi Berra,

00:50:47 ◼   ► no one goes there anymore, it's too crowded.

00:50:49 ◼   ► But like, if you take a survey of people and say,

00:50:52 ◼   ► how many people are, the bus is too crowded in this city?

00:50:54 ◼   ► They'll all say, yes, the buses are massively overcrowded.

00:50:56 ◼   ► But if you actually measure how many people are on the bus,

00:50:58 ◼   ► they'll be like, you know, 2% utilized.

00:50:59 ◼   ► It falls out of the natural thing.

00:51:02 ◼   ► Like when it is crowded, more people are there to see it.

00:51:05 ◼   ► When it is not crowded, fewer people are there to see it.

00:51:06 ◼   ► Therefore, most people will say it's crowded.

00:51:08 ◼   ► That's how crowding works, right?

00:51:10 ◼   ► So I bet there are plenty of times

00:51:11 ◼   ► where it's dead at the Apple store

00:51:12 ◼   ► when everybody else except for Casey and Marco are at work.

00:51:15 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:51:17 ◼   ► You can go and get help right away.

00:51:18 ◼   ► Maybe there's seven people.

00:51:19 ◼   ► I think we wandered past an Apple store.

00:51:21 ◼   ► I think when I got my iPhone 7,

00:51:22 ◼   ► we wandered past an Apple store

00:51:23 ◼   ► where there was like 10 people in Apple retail shirts

00:51:26 ◼   ► just twiddling their thumbs.

00:51:28 ◼   ► And we just walked in there and like,

00:51:29 ◼   ► hey, got any iPhone 7s?

00:51:30 ◼   ► And seven people scrambled like, oh, we'll get one.

00:51:32 ◼   ► It's like, there's nobody there.

00:51:34 ◼   ► They're just like instant service by, you know,

00:51:36 ◼   ► two people went in the back to look for it.

00:51:37 ◼   ► One person talked to me.

00:51:39 ◼   ► Like, you know, that's, it's a very different experience

00:51:42 ◼   ► when there are not a lot of people there,

00:51:44 ◼   ► but because people know that when I'm able to go there,

00:51:46 ◼   ► every time I go there, I see that it's crowded,

00:51:49 ◼   ► it's not a place where I wanna go.

00:51:50 ◼   ► I can't even get a coffee or a Danish.

00:51:52 ◼   ► So I think her signature initiatives,

00:51:56 ◼   ► while high-minded and interesting,

00:51:58 ◼   ► were never a good fit for the Apple store.

00:52:00 ◼   ► The only thing I can say is that maybe the classes

00:52:03 ◼   ► were a good idea,

00:52:04 ◼   ► but I don't think the physical infrastructure of the store

00:52:08 ◼   ► is equipped to bear them.

00:52:09 ◼   ► Even though the classes like take advantage

00:52:11 ◼   ► of those dead times,

00:52:11 ◼   ► like it's a way to fill those dead times.

00:52:13 ◼   ► Hey, when nobody's there, let's have classes

00:52:14 ◼   ► filled with retired people and Marco and Casey

00:52:17 ◼   ► to learn about their products.

00:52:18 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:52:19 ◼   ► Like, I see how it looks good on paper,

00:52:23 ◼   ► but it doesn't fundamentally change the experience

00:52:25 ◼   ► of the Apple store for most people for the better.

00:52:27 ◼   ► It makes a new class of people perhaps

00:52:29 ◼   ► have an attachment to the Apple store,

00:52:31 ◼   ► but I have to think that the vast majority of people

00:52:34 ◼   ► who go to the Apple store during those crowded times

00:52:37 ◼   ► are there to either look at the cool products,

00:52:39 ◼   ► buy a cool product, or get something done to a product

00:52:41 ◼   ► they've already bought.

00:52:42 ◼   ► And the classes are just sort of like a nice to have filler

00:52:45 ◼   ► to populate otherwise idle things.

00:52:48 ◼   ► But the town hall thing, or what is it, town square thing,

00:52:52 ◼   ► and the community thing, the community building,

00:52:54 ◼   ► this is just never gonna happen.

00:52:56 ◼   ► - I also wonder, like, you know,

00:52:58 ◼   ► part of I think why they brought on Angela Errant

00:53:01 ◼   ► in the first place was because when Apple was warming up

00:53:05 ◼   ► to the Apple Watch launch,

00:53:07 ◼   ► they fancied themselves a fashion brand,

00:53:11 ◼   ► and they really wanted to become a significant fashion brand

00:53:15 ◼   ► because they wanted the Apple Watch to be a fashion item.

00:53:19 ◼   ► And I think, and you know,

00:53:20 ◼   ► Angela Errant comes from the fashion world.

00:53:23 ◼   ► And so, you know, one of the reasons

00:53:25 ◼   ► that I think she might be leaving,

00:53:26 ◼   ► if she's leaving voluntarily, it might be because

00:53:28 ◼   ► she wants to get back to the fashion world

00:53:30 ◼   ► because Apple's kinda like,

00:53:32 ◼   ► I feel like whatever role Apple's gonna have

00:53:33 ◼   ► in the fashion world, they've had, and it's done.

00:53:36 ◼   ► And that I think also, you know,

00:53:40 ◼   ► whether it was her decision or not,

00:53:42 ◼   ► that I think might play a big role

00:53:43 ◼   ► in why she might be leaving now because, you know,

00:53:45 ◼   ► Apple did fancy themselves as a fashion company

00:53:48 ◼   ► with the Apple Watch, you know,

00:53:49 ◼   ► they made the gold one at first and everything.

00:53:51 ◼   ► And I think what they have found with the Apple Watch

00:53:55 ◼   ► is that it's way less of a fashion item,

00:53:57 ◼   ► and they are way less of a fashion company

00:54:00 ◼   ► than they thought.

00:54:01 ◼   ► And it's much more like their other products.

00:54:05 ◼   ► It's a nice electronic gadget that people use

00:54:08 ◼   ► in a wide variety of ways that is fashionable

00:54:13 ◼   ► in the way that new gadgets can be fashionable,

00:54:16 ◼   ► but is not a member of the world of high fashion.

00:54:19 ◼   ► And, you know, it's a different industry,

00:54:21 ◼   ► it's a different thing, it works differently,

00:54:23 ◼   ► it needs to be marketed differently,

00:54:24 ◼   ► it needs to be sold differently.

00:54:25 ◼   ► And they pulled away fairly quickly from that with the watch.

00:54:29 ◼   ► I think their fashion phase,

00:54:31 ◼   ► or their phase of fashion aspiration

00:54:35 ◼   ► is over.

00:54:36 ◼   ► And so Angela might not be as much of an ideal leader

00:54:41 ◼   ► for their retail operations as she was when they hired her,

00:54:44 ◼   ► when they really had huge aspirations

00:54:47 ◼   ► in the world of fashion.

00:54:49 ◼   ► - Ben Thompson had some similar thoughts,

00:54:50 ◼   ► but the only thing I think of is how much influence

00:54:52 ◼   ► do you think she actually has?

00:54:53 ◼   ► I mean, like in the end, the product teams make the products.

00:54:56 ◼   ► I know she can control how they're displayed

00:54:58 ◼   ► and how they're marketed and how you would best sell them

00:55:00 ◼   ► to people, but, you know, the timing definitely makes sense.

00:55:04 ◼   ► I know when she was hired, everyone was talking about her

00:55:06 ◼   ► and the Apple Watch and everything, but in terms of retail,

00:55:10 ◼   ► I'm trying to think of anything that the store did

00:55:13 ◼   ► that they wouldn't have done anyway

00:55:16 ◼   ► and that wasn't basically dependent

00:55:18 ◼   ► on the product itself being fashionable.

00:55:21 ◼   ► - Oh, well, I don't know, maybe I'm missing your point,

00:55:23 ◼   ► but if you recall, like when the watch was announced,

00:55:26 ◼   ► but I don't think it was out yet,

00:55:28 ◼   ► you could schedule like a watch try-on

00:55:30 ◼   ► and like try on the different stuff.

00:55:32 ◼   ► - Maybe, I remember that for the fancy watches

00:55:34 ◼   ► and stuff like that.

00:55:35 ◼   ► I mean, I'm not saying that this theory doesn't make sense.

00:55:37 ◼   ► It totally does.

00:55:38 ◼   ► Like when she was hired, no one was shocked

00:55:39 ◼   ► because we're like, oh, we know Apple's doing wearable stuff

00:55:41 ◼   ► and this makes perfect sense.

00:55:43 ◼   ► And, you know, and Marco's right, like they did figure out,

00:55:46 ◼   ► oh, the watches of fitness tracker,

00:55:47 ◼   ► like it's not so much a fashion thing,

00:55:49 ◼   ► but watches are still fashionable.

00:55:50 ◼   ► They still change all the straps all the time.

00:55:52 ◼   ► They still try to make them look pretty.

00:55:53 ◼   ► And I think the body of the fashion aspirations of Apple

00:55:58 ◼   ► are still carried by the products themselves

00:56:00 ◼   ► and to much less degree by the retail.

00:56:02 ◼   ► And someone in the chat pointed out,

00:56:04 ◼   ► if and when Apple ever comes out with AR glasses,

00:56:06 ◼   ► we're gonna be back into a new phase

00:56:07 ◼   ► where Apple has to figure out what is, I mean,

00:56:10 ◼   ► not that they're gonna become a fashion brand,

00:56:11 ◼   ► but the degree of difficulty keeps going up.

00:56:14 ◼   ► Like we've talked about this before the watch came out,

00:56:16 ◼   ► like getting a laptop, you know,

00:56:18 ◼   ► a computer that looks nice, well, whatever,

00:56:20 ◼   ► a phone that people carry, oh, that's much more personal.

00:56:22 ◼   ► Then you're gonna strap something on people's bodies.

00:56:24 ◼   ► Now they better not think it's ugly or embarrassing, right?

00:56:28 ◼   ► Once you put something on their face,

00:56:29 ◼   ► it's an even higher,

00:56:30 ◼   ► it's like probably the highest degree of difficulty.

00:56:32 ◼   ► It's like getting a face tattoo.

00:56:33 ◼   ► Like not only does it not have to not be ugly or embarrassing

00:56:37 ◼   ► but it's on people's faces.

00:56:39 ◼   ► So it's much harder to do that.

00:56:41 ◼   ► You really have to hide the electronics

00:56:43 ◼   ► and figure out a way to fit people's faces and whatever.

00:56:46 ◼   ► And this is all about a product that doesn't exist,

00:56:48 ◼   ► but if and when that happens,

00:56:50 ◼   ► they can use some of the lessons from the watch,

00:56:54 ◼   ► but I don't think they need a retail person.

00:56:56 ◼   ► I don't think they ever needed a retail person

00:56:58 ◼   ► with fashion expertise to pull that off.

00:57:01 ◼   ► So I think, you know,

00:57:03 ◼   ► if she's getting pushed out of Apple,

00:57:05 ◼   ► it's not because like their fashion time is over.

00:57:06 ◼   ► They're gonna need that expertise again

00:57:08 ◼   ► as much as they ever needed it,

00:57:10 ◼   ► but I don't think they're dead in the water without it.

00:57:13 ◼   ► So I think it did learn a lot from the watch

00:57:15 ◼   ► and all the come in, have a special try on thing,

00:57:18 ◼   ► or just the general idea of like how you treat customers

00:57:23 ◼   ► who have to try something on,

00:57:25 ◼   ► how you sell a product to them,

00:57:27 ◼   ► how you make sure that they can be sure

00:57:29 ◼   ► that they are getting the product that they want,

00:57:32 ◼   ► like that you can try on all the different straps,

00:57:34 ◼   ► how you help them,

00:57:34 ◼   ► how you make sure things don't disappear from those tables,

00:57:37 ◼   ► you know, how you make sure they don't feel rushed,

00:57:39 ◼   ► but guide them to the product that will make them happy,

00:57:42 ◼   ► yada, yada, yada.

00:57:43 ◼   ► Like it's an extension of what they already did,

00:57:44 ◼   ► but it's slightly different, I suppose.

00:57:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know what to make of it.

00:57:49 ◼   ► It is worth noting that there was a Vogue profile

00:57:51 ◼   ► that came out about a week ago,

00:57:53 ◼   ► which I thought was actually very interesting.

00:57:55 ◼   ► We'll put a link in the show notes.

00:57:56 ◼   ► And in that profile, it certainly didn't hint to me

00:58:00 ◼   ► that she was one foot out the door, but who knows?

00:58:04 ◼   ► Maybe she already was.

00:58:05 ◼   ► - She's not gonna hint to that.

00:58:06 ◼   ► There was another aspect of the story that I saw elsewhere

00:58:08 ◼   ► is that she has kids who are in college

00:58:10 ◼   ► or just out of college or whatever,

00:58:11 ◼   ► but they're in the UK,

00:58:14 ◼   ► and that's where she's going back to.

00:58:15 ◼   ► So she's been for many years,

00:58:17 ◼   ► I think it was like for five years,

00:58:18 ◼   ► she's been separated from her kids

00:58:20 ◼   ► because they went to college in the UK,

00:58:23 ◼   ► or university as they call it, or whatever.

00:58:25 ◼   ► Everyone knows what the hell they call it.

00:58:27 ◼   ► But she said she's going back over there.

00:58:29 ◼   ► So going to spend more time with your family,

00:58:33 ◼   ► and also, as I think Ben Thompson also pointed out,

00:58:36 ◼   ► all of her stock options are vesting now.

00:58:38 ◼   ► There are many legit boring reasons for her to decide,

00:58:42 ◼   ► well, it's been a good run, I'm ridiculously wealthy,

00:58:45 ◼   ► even more so now, and I wanna go hang out with my kids.

00:58:48 ◼   ► Going to spend time with your family

00:58:52 ◼   ► actually makes sense in this scenario.

00:58:54 ◼   ► And maybe she's also mission-fashioning

00:58:55 ◼   ► and missioning her friends,

00:58:57 ◼   ► and Apple has a high-pressure situation,

00:58:59 ◼   ► and so on and so forth.

00:58:59 ◼   ► So I don't think there is,

00:59:02 ◼   ► I don't have a read on it, again,

00:59:03 ◼   ► we don't know what goes on inside there,

00:59:04 ◼   ► but it doesn't seem to me that she was pushed out

00:59:09 ◼   ► for some terrible reason,

00:59:10 ◼   ► but it also doesn't seem to me

00:59:11 ◼   ► that her signature initiatives were a slam dunk for Apple.

00:59:15 ◼   ► A couple other things that she's done,

00:59:16 ◼   ► I was trying to go through all of the articles

00:59:19 ◼   ► I could to find what are people attributing

00:59:22 ◼   ► to her tenure as Apple retail.

00:59:26 ◼   ► One of the things was trying to make it

00:59:28 ◼   ► so there aren't lines outside the stores,

00:59:30 ◼   ► or the lines outside the stores aren't as big on launch days

00:59:32 ◼   ► by having a pre-order system and everything.

00:59:34 ◼   ► That was another thing that made me think

00:59:36 ◼   ► that Apple really doesn't like the idea of actual lines,

00:59:39 ◼   ► like actual queues of people,

00:59:41 ◼   ► anywhere related to their stores,

00:59:42 ◼   ► because that would happen outside the store before a launch,

00:59:44 ◼   ► even though they make a big deal of it,

00:59:45 ◼   ► it makes you not wanna go towards the store

00:59:47 ◼   ► when you see a line of people snaking out.

00:59:49 ◼   ► So reducing those by having pre-orders,

00:59:51 ◼   ► someone in the chat said that she did,

00:59:53 ◼   ► did or increased the in-store pickup of purchases online.

00:59:57 ◼   ► I think there's been a lot of positive initiatives

00:59:59 ◼   ► that she's done, but her signature ones,

01:00:02 ◼   ► or at least the ones that she promoted

01:00:04 ◼   ► that are the most innovative and non-obvious,

01:00:09 ◼   ► I just think were not a good fit for the Apple store.

01:00:11 ◼   ► So I'm not sad to see a different take

01:00:15 ◼   ► on how Apple retail might be improved,

01:00:18 ◼   ► because none of her initiatives

01:00:19 ◼   ► resonated with me personally,

01:00:21 ◼   ► and I don't think they were a good fit

01:00:22 ◼   ► with the store as it exists.

01:00:25 ◼   ► - The other thing I wanted to add

01:00:26 ◼   ► was that a anonymous retail employee reached out to me

01:00:29 ◼   ► and had some thoughts.

01:00:30 ◼   ► And one of the things that they said

01:00:32 ◼   ► was that everyone they knew in their store

01:00:34 ◼   ► and the surrounding stores,

01:00:36 ◼   ► except for people pretty high up the chain,

01:00:38 ◼   ► seemed to be happy that she was gone.

01:00:40 ◼   ► Now, this is just one individual,

01:00:43 ◼   ► take this for what you will,

01:00:45 ◼   ► this is one individual who reached out,

01:00:46 ◼   ► I am not aggregating anything,

01:00:48 ◼   ► but the same individual said,

01:00:51 ◼   ► "A silly example of what's been annoying

01:00:53 ◼   ► "is the dress code change over the last several years,

01:00:55 ◼   ► "which started as basically wear whatever the crap you want,

01:00:58 ◼   ► "just make sure there's an Apple shirt over it,

01:00:59 ◼   ► "to apparently they have some sort of quasi-uniform now."

01:01:04 ◼   ► I can't say that I've noticed this personally,

01:01:06 ◼   ► but I guess that a lot of the retail people

01:01:08 ◼   ► are wondering how long until they basically look like

01:01:10 ◼   ► Target employee clones, with the khakis

01:01:12 ◼   ► and the red shirts or what have you.

01:01:14 ◼   ► And then this individual had a lot of complaints

01:01:17 ◼   ► that to me seem to basically boil down to,

01:01:22 ◼   ► there was an increased focus on numbers within the store.

01:01:25 ◼   ► So silly examples like the retail employees

01:01:27 ◼   ► used to always get some sort of Christmas gift,

01:01:29 ◼   ► and I guess they haven't for at least a year,

01:01:31 ◼   ► if not a couple now.

01:01:32 ◼   ► This person said that there were considerably fewer

01:01:35 ◼   ► in-store repairs and that the geniuses in the store

01:01:39 ◼   ► basically just triage, and then almost everything

01:01:41 ◼   ► gets sent out to a repair depot to get fixed,

01:01:44 ◼   ► which obviously dramatically increases turnaround time,

01:01:48 ◼   ► and it makes being a genius, I would imagine,

01:01:49 ◼   ► a little bit less fun, 'cause all you're doing

01:01:51 ◼   ► is figuring out where you need to ship something.

01:01:55 ◼   ► And additionally, according to this individual,

01:01:58 ◼   ► that geniuses were not quite as empowered as they once were

01:02:00 ◼   ► to write off a deserving repair.

01:02:02 ◼   ► So let's say I've never had a problem with any of my devices

01:02:06 ◼   ► and I didn't put new RAM in my iMac,

01:02:09 ◼   ► but it keeps shutting down spontaneously,

01:02:11 ◼   ► and I come in within the first month of ownership.

01:02:15 ◼   ► In the past, they might be able to write something

01:02:16 ◼   ► like that off and just be like, okay, here,

01:02:18 ◼   ► here's a new iMac, because you've been a loyal customer,

01:02:21 ◼   ► you've never had a problem before,

01:02:22 ◼   ► you're probably not trying to fleece us,

01:02:24 ◼   ► here's a brand new iMac, and I guess,

01:02:26 ◼   ► according to this person, that's not as easy anymore.

01:02:29 ◼   ► And then finally, they said that the raises

01:02:31 ◼   ► have not been as good recently as they were in years past.

01:02:34 ◼   ► Again, who knows how much of that is Angela?

01:02:36 ◼   ► But it seems like, in summary,

01:02:39 ◼   ► there's just a stronger focus on retail,

01:02:43 ◼   ► which I guess in some ways is good,

01:02:44 ◼   ► but some of that focus is numbers-related,

01:02:46 ◼   ► which the retail employees, of course,

01:02:48 ◼   ► didn't seem to care for, and some of it is just

01:02:50 ◼   ► kind of the touchy-feely things like uniforms.

01:02:52 ◼   ► So take that for what you will.

01:02:54 ◼   ► Again, I'm not saying this is fact,

01:02:55 ◼   ► I'm just telling you one individual's perspective,

01:02:58 ◼   ► but it certainly, I found it interesting.

01:03:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, I've heard many of those same things

01:03:03 ◼   ► from other retail people that basically,

01:03:06 ◼   ► the last few years have been characterized by

01:03:09 ◼   ► a very much like, you know,

01:03:11 ◼   ► optimization of the numbers thing with retail,

01:03:13 ◼   ► which of course means a bunch of things

01:03:14 ◼   ► that make the retail employees basically less well-paid,

01:03:18 ◼   ► less happy, and more overworked.

01:03:22 ◼   ► - And I think it's, this is a trend that has started

01:03:25 ◼   ► from the day the Apple Store was created.

01:03:26 ◼   ► If you talk to anybody who's been at the Apple Store,

01:03:28 ◼   ► you know, in the past five years, 10 years,

01:03:30 ◼   ► however long it's, all the way back

01:03:31 ◼   ► to the beginning of the Apple Store,

01:03:33 ◼   ► when the Apple Store first came out,

01:03:34 ◼   ► it was super high-end, the people who were working

01:03:38 ◼   ► in the stores or paid a ton of money

01:03:39 ◼   ► were vastly overqualified for the jobs they were in,

01:03:42 ◼   ► it wasn't crowded, like everything was the opposite

01:03:45 ◼   ► of regular retail, right?

01:03:47 ◼   ► And over time, there's been a trend,

01:03:48 ◼   ► probably a little bit bumpy, but generally a trend

01:03:51 ◼   ► toward slowly, slowly, slowly getting more

01:03:54 ◼   ► like regular retail, probably out of necessity,

01:03:56 ◼   ► 'cause like, why are we spending all this money?

01:03:59 ◼   ► Can we pay people less?

01:04:00 ◼   ► Can we get less experienced people?

01:04:01 ◼   ► Do you need to know that much stuff to be a genius,

01:04:03 ◼   ► or can we just take anybody off the street

01:04:05 ◼   ► and train them to know the five things they need to know,

01:04:07 ◼   ► or 500, or whatever it is?

01:04:08 ◼   ► Like, can we pay the employees less?

01:04:10 ◼   ► Can we make them work harder?

01:04:11 ◼   ► Can we make them more uniform?

01:04:12 ◼   ► Like, you know, it's just a question of scale.

01:04:15 ◼   ► It's very difficult to, especially since the people

01:04:18 ◼   ► who are in charge of this are gonna be measured

01:04:20 ◼   ► on the same things, it's very difficult to continue

01:04:22 ◼   ► to be like, this is totally different

01:04:24 ◼   ► than every retail experience, and you get a job

01:04:26 ◼   ► at the Apple Store, and it's much better

01:04:28 ◼   ► than any other retail job, and we pay you tons of money,

01:04:32 ◼   ► and it's relaxing, and you are empowered to do things,

01:04:35 ◼   ► and you can wear what you want, and everything is nice,

01:04:39 ◼   ► and no one's in a hurry, and it's just,

01:04:41 ◼   ► that can't last forever, because people are gonna be,

01:04:45 ◼   ► somewhere, someone's gonna be looking at a spreadsheet

01:04:47 ◼   ► and saying, this is how much money our stores cost,

01:04:48 ◼   ► this is how much we bring in, is there a way

01:04:50 ◼   ► to change that ratio, to squeeze out some more dollars?

01:04:53 ◼   ► Okay, we can squeeze out some more dollars.

01:04:55 ◼   ► Do we really have to be hiring these people

01:04:57 ◼   ► so massively overqualified to be geniuses?

01:04:59 ◼   ► No, no, we can probably, like, institute a training program

01:05:01 ◼   ► and hire people with less experience to be geniuses

01:05:03 ◼   ► and then pay them less.

01:05:04 ◼   ► Good, we saved some money, what could we do next?

01:05:06 ◼   ► Like, it just goes on year after year.

01:05:07 ◼   ► So, like, Angela Arendt didn't make this happen.

01:05:11 ◼   ► She just came in at the tail end of a trend that continues,

01:05:13 ◼   ► and will almost certainly continue long after this, right?

01:05:17 ◼   ► And so, any time there's a change, you're hoping, like,

01:05:19 ◼   ► this new person's gonna change it.

01:05:21 ◼   ► Now we're not going to get these ridiculous hours.

01:05:23 ◼   ► Now we're gonna have more discretion at the Genius Bar.

01:05:25 ◼   ► Now we're all gonna get better raises,

01:05:27 ◼   ► and then when it doesn't happen, you're like,

01:05:28 ◼   ► she just made it worse, but she's just continuing a trend

01:05:31 ◼   ► that has been going on and on, and it's very difficult

01:05:33 ◼   ► to fight back against that unless you have

01:05:34 ◼   ► massive support at the front end.

01:05:35 ◼   ► Like, Tim Cook probably thinks, oh, the stores are beautiful

01:05:39 ◼   ► and every time I go, the employees are there smiling,

01:05:42 ◼   ► and, you know, there's probably some net promoter score

01:05:45 ◼   ► for employees, like, what do you think,

01:05:46 ◼   ► how do you like working at the Apple store?

01:05:48 ◼   ► And it's like, well, if they leave, we can find more people

01:05:49 ◼   ► because in the end, Apple retail probably is still better

01:05:52 ◼   ► than most retail jobs.

01:05:53 ◼   ► Like, I'm not saying Apple is now, like, Best Buy, right?

01:05:56 ◼   ► Or Walmart or Target or whatever.

01:05:57 ◼   ► It is still probably better from the employee's perspective.

01:06:00 ◼   ► Like, I bet the number of Apple store employees

01:06:02 ◼   ► who have to get food stamps is much lower

01:06:04 ◼   ► than in, say, Walmart, right?

01:06:06 ◼   ► So they're still probably the best retail experience

01:06:09 ◼   ► and probably the best retail employment,

01:06:11 ◼   ► but not quite as good as they were.

01:06:12 ◼   ► And I don't know how to balance this because I understand,

01:06:16 ◼   ► like, if your job is ahead of retail,

01:06:18 ◼   ► is to figure out where can we spend less money

01:06:21 ◼   ► and get the same product and, you know,

01:06:23 ◼   ► where are we wasting money and all that other stuff,

01:06:25 ◼   ► but that's generally what Apple has to fight against

01:06:29 ◼   ► as a corporation, to fight all those instincts,

01:06:33 ◼   ► to, you know, in some ways, hire the right people

01:06:36 ◼   ► who will hold their ground, who will remind everybody,

01:06:40 ◼   ► hey, we're supposed to be better than Walmart.

01:06:42 ◼   ► Our products are supposed to be better than Dell.

01:06:44 ◼   ► Like, all those things that we talk about,

01:06:46 ◼   ► the reason we hold Apple to a higher standard,

01:06:48 ◼   ► I think Angela probably did that in the areas

01:06:50 ◼   ► that she cared about and maybe other areas continued

01:06:53 ◼   ► on the trend.

01:06:54 ◼   ► Like, maybe she got to do those things

01:06:55 ◼   ► because she was good at optimizing the other things

01:06:57 ◼   ► and, you know, repeat for all the other people

01:07:00 ◼   ► who've been involved in retail.

01:07:01 ◼   ► One other thing I forgot to mention that accredited her

01:07:03 ◼   ► was, we mentioned it before, of like buying online

01:07:06 ◼   ► and picking up the store, the merging of online

01:07:08 ◼   ► and physical retail, which was an important optimization

01:07:11 ◼   ► 'cause it was so silly that they were separate

01:07:13 ◼   ► and now it's nice that, like, when you buy something

01:07:15 ◼   ► from Apple, all options are on the table, right?

01:07:18 ◼   ► You can buy it online and pick it up in a store

01:07:20 ◼   ► or you can get a repair.

01:07:21 ◼   ► You can do a repair online or over the phone

01:07:23 ◼   ► but then drop your thing off at the store to get it done.

01:07:25 ◼   ► I did notice when my wife got her watch fixed

01:07:27 ◼   ► that they wanted to ship it out and I'm like,

01:07:29 ◼   ► I guess they don't want to do anything in the store anymore.

01:07:31 ◼   ► Like, everything was, no matter how,

01:07:33 ◼   ► I think everything we've gotten repaired recently,

01:07:35 ◼   ► except for the $30 battery replacements,

01:07:37 ◼   ► has been a ship out type thing.

01:07:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's increasing, like, how many things

01:07:40 ◼   ► are ship out things.

01:07:41 ◼   ► Watch, I think watch stuff has always been ship out.

01:07:43 ◼   ► - 'Cause you can't open it inside.

01:07:45 ◼   ► I'm surprised they tried to repair it all

01:07:47 ◼   ► and didn't replace it.

01:07:48 ◼   ► And that makes sense from, again,

01:07:49 ◼   ► from a numbers perspective.

01:07:50 ◼   ► Like, it probably is less expensive

01:07:51 ◼   ► and the repairs are probably better

01:07:53 ◼   ► because the people aren't rushed and, you know,

01:07:55 ◼   ► there's more room and like a nice clean factory type

01:07:57 ◼   ► environment or whatever, but the turnaround time

01:07:59 ◼   ► is not as good for the customer.

01:08:01 ◼   ► So there's trade off.

01:08:03 ◼   ► We didn't talk about the new person who got the job.

01:08:05 ◼   ► Not that we know much about her, but it's worth mentioning.

01:08:08 ◼   ► That's more of the tea leaf reading.

01:08:11 ◼   ► The new person who got the job is the head of HR

01:08:13 ◼   ► who is not the former head of HR.

01:08:15 ◼   ► It's the head of HR who now also is the head of retail.

01:08:19 ◼   ► But the title is like senior vice president of HR

01:08:22 ◼   ► plus retail or something like that with an actual plus sign.

01:08:24 ◼   ► It's people, not HR.

01:08:27 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't, I've, I had not been paying attention

01:08:30 ◼   ► to Deidre O'Brien much because I don't usually care about HR.

01:08:34 ◼   ► I don't really know anything about her.

01:08:35 ◼   ► I guess we'll find out.

01:08:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, if you don't work for Apple,

01:08:38 ◼   ► you probably don't know who their head of HR

01:08:40 ◼   ► or sorry, head of people is,

01:08:41 ◼   ► but she's been there for 30 years.

01:08:42 ◼   ► So she is a long time person.

01:08:44 ◼   ► She was there when their first retail ever, it's gone.

01:08:46 ◼   ► I don't doubt that she has the knowledge

01:08:48 ◼   ► and experience to do this.

01:08:49 ◼   ► But the question a lot of people are asking is like,

01:08:52 ◼   ► so she's got two really big important,

01:08:55 ◼   ► I mean, I guess the important jobs.

01:08:56 ◼   ► No, I guess they both involve people,

01:08:57 ◼   ► but like, is this just somebody holding,

01:08:59 ◼   ► keeping the seat warm while they look elsewhere

01:09:01 ◼   ► to hire some outside executive?

01:09:04 ◼   ► I feel like their track record of hiring outside executives

01:09:07 ◼   ► is hit or miss for retail.

01:09:09 ◼   ► Like even who's the original guy who is credited

01:09:12 ◼   ► with all the wonderful things

01:09:13 ◼   ► and they went off to try to save JC Penney,

01:09:15 ◼   ► but it didn't work.

01:09:16 ◼   ► Ron Johnson.

01:09:17 ◼   ► - There you go.

01:09:18 ◼   ► Yep, there you go.

01:09:18 ◼   ► - I heard a really good, I wish,

01:09:20 ◼   ► God, I wish I could remember this,

01:09:21 ◼   ► a really good podcast interview with Ron.

01:09:23 ◼   ► I think it was without fail on Gimlet,

01:09:25 ◼   ► which we may talk about later.

01:09:26 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:09:27 ◼   ► - I heard Ron Johnson talk about his tenure.

01:09:28 ◼   ► And I mean, he seems like, you know,

01:09:31 ◼   ► a nice guy and everything,

01:09:32 ◼   ► but hearing him talk about his tenure,

01:09:33 ◼   ► I realized how much he was held aloft by Steve Jobs.

01:09:38 ◼   ► Like in other words, not saying anybody could,

01:09:40 ◼   ► any kind of anybody could have done that job,

01:09:41 ◼   ► but he was given a lot of rope and helped a lot

01:09:45 ◼   ► by Steve Jobs' decision-making and taste.

01:09:48 ◼   ► The things could have gone disastrously worse

01:09:50 ◼   ► if he wasn't in just the right environment, right?

01:09:53 ◼   ► Like, I don't want to take credit away from him to say,

01:09:55 ◼   ► oh, he didn't do anything.

01:09:56 ◼   ► 'Cause obviously, you know,

01:09:57 ◼   ► he was important and did a good job.

01:10:00 ◼   ► But in his own retelling of his history at Apple,

01:10:03 ◼   ► other people, especially Steve Jobs,

01:10:05 ◼   ► featured very heavily,

01:10:06 ◼   ► despite the fact that at a certain point,

01:10:08 ◼   ► Steve Jobs was like,

01:10:09 ◼   ► look, I can't be involved with this anymore.

01:10:10 ◼   ► You just do something and figure it out, right?

01:10:12 ◼   ► So he deserves a lot of credit,

01:10:13 ◼   ► but also maybe less glorification

01:10:18 ◼   ► that he's not gonna hear and receive.

01:10:20 ◼   ► You know, Apple retail wouldn't be what it was

01:10:22 ◼   ► without Ron Johnson.

01:10:23 ◼   ► I think Jobs could have hired a large group of people

01:10:26 ◼   ► and shepherded them towards the same end result,

01:10:30 ◼   ► with a few exceptions where he really held his ground,

01:10:32 ◼   ► which is an example of what Apple wants.

01:10:33 ◼   ► So the Broward person they hired,

01:10:36 ◼   ► they said, "That didn't work out."

01:10:37 ◼   ► And that was a quick departure.

01:10:38 ◼   ► And it's like, okay, well, when something doesn't work,

01:10:40 ◼   ► it doesn't work, fine.

01:10:41 ◼   ► And Larry seems to be working fine

01:10:43 ◼   ► as far as everyone's concerned.

01:10:44 ◼   ► I still can't get away from the nagging notion

01:10:47 ◼   ► that despite the entire corporation and Tim Cook

01:10:50 ◼   ► buying into her vision,

01:10:51 ◼   ► that it still was a mismatch

01:10:54 ◼   ► and wasn't resonating with people.

01:10:56 ◼   ► Like, they wanted it to work out better than it did.

01:10:58 ◼   ► Like, in the same way that the poor iPhone sales

01:11:01 ◼   ► have the increasingly desperate calls to action

01:11:04 ◼   ► on the Apple homepage,

01:11:05 ◼   ► every time they told me more about how, you know,

01:11:07 ◼   ► today at Apple and the town square stores,

01:11:10 ◼   ► which the chat room wants me to point out,

01:11:11 ◼   ► were not all the stores that were just doing that

01:11:12 ◼   ► in certain locations and metropolitan centers.

01:11:14 ◼   ► But anyway, that vision of what the Apple store

01:11:16 ◼   ► could and should be,

01:11:18 ◼   ► I don't think it is what the Apple stores are

01:11:20 ◼   ► and will ever be.

01:11:21 ◼   ► And so that I feel like is a fundamental failure.

01:11:25 ◼   ► So maybe Apple is disillusioned with what she was doing,

01:11:28 ◼   ► or maybe they are still 100% on board

01:11:30 ◼   ► and she just left to spend more time with her kids

01:11:32 ◼   ► and do something different.

01:11:34 ◼   ► But either way, this new person with two jobs,

01:11:37 ◼   ► they feel like that's too much responsibility for one person.

01:11:40 ◼   ► So that person is either keeping the seat warm

01:11:42 ◼   ► or they need to be taken off of their HR job or something

01:11:46 ◼   ► because you can't, like,

01:11:48 ◼   ► being in charge of all the employees at Apple

01:11:51 ◼   ► and also being in charge of all retail at Apple,

01:11:54 ◼   ► that seems like too much.

01:11:56 ◼   ► What, is she the new CEO?

01:11:57 ◼   ► Maybe she's promoted to CEO in Tim Cook and Rick and Dyer,

01:11:59 ◼   ► but I think they need a new head of retail

01:12:02 ◼   ► because despite the fact that they all involve

01:12:05 ◼   ► a lot of people and she probably has the skills to do both,

01:12:07 ◼   ► I don't think they're enough hours in a day.

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