ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► We have some follow up?

00:00:01 ◼   ► Okay, guess not, I'm waiting for John to jump in there, I guess we're done.

00:00:07 ◼   ► Alright, moving on.

00:00:08 ◼   ► Is it okay for me to take a drink of water before the show starts?

00:00:11 ◼   ► I thought I had time, you just jump right in.

00:00:13 ◼   ► No, I'm a professional, John, I'm Johnny on the Spot.

00:00:18 ◼   ► We got an email from someone who works at an Apple store who prefers to remain anonymous

00:00:22 ◼   ► as those people tend to do on the subject of Apple's messages program and the iMessage

00:00:28 ◼   ► service, and I will quote this little part from the email, "People who stop by the Apple

00:00:32 ◼   ► store with problems are obviously not representative of iPhone users in general, but iMessage is

00:00:37 ◼   ► probably the top problem among the folks who do stop by.

00:00:41 ◼   ► Problems with iMessage are probably the top frustration with Apple's products and services

00:00:44 ◼   ► among the specialists in our store."

00:00:46 ◼   ► "We got a number of people writing in saying it's always been fine for me, you know, but

00:00:50 ◼   ► I think there's been enough reports of it being not fine for many people, and something

00:00:55 ◼   ► like that, that's a really good data point."

00:00:56 ◼   ► Yeah, because obviously they only see the people with problems, but they see everybody's

00:01:01 ◼   ► problems.

00:01:02 ◼   ► They are in the best position to decide what is the most common problem amongst all users

00:01:06 ◼   ► of Apple products, period.

00:01:07 ◼   ► He's not just iPhone users or whatever, just across all of Apple's products and services.

00:01:11 ◼   ► He also says, "In contrast to the common podcast, blog, fodder, other iCloud problems,

00:01:16 ◼   ► other than those stemming from obvious gross user error, are relatively rare."

00:01:20 ◼   ► So he's saying that problems that are directly attributable to iCloud are not as big a deal

00:01:25 ◼   ► as they're made out, but iMessage is the number one frustration from people who come in to

00:01:29 ◼   ► see them.

00:01:30 ◼   ► I mean, just as a user of iCloud, I use it kind of gently. I use, basically, Calendar

00:01:36 ◼   ► and Contact Sync, and not a lot of other features that it offers. You know, the documents in

00:01:41 ◼   ► the cloud I don't really use, and stuff like that. And by using it lightly like that, I

00:01:46 ◼   ► rarely see any problems. And I think that's probably how most people use it. You know,

00:01:51 ◼   ► you mostly hear complaints about iCloud being weird and buggy and potentially awful is from

00:01:56 ◼   ► developers who are trying to develop against the sync APIs, which as we discussed before

00:02:00 ◼   ► have a lot of issues and possibly some pretty fatal designs.

00:02:04 ◼   ► And so the developer point of view of iCloud is very different from what the public are

00:02:11 ◼   ► seeing.

00:02:12 ◼   ► Yeah, and I wonder, for people who are not fiddling around with stuff, if they have undemanding

00:02:17 ◼   ► use and they have like maybe three contacts and they don't modify them that much, then

00:02:21 ◼   ► maybe they don't notice a big deal.

00:02:22 ◼   ► But like if you have tons of stuff and want it to work just so, and want to play with

00:02:26 ◼   ► all those little iCloud syncing switches and everything, and then something doesn't work

00:02:30 ◼   ► and it gets hosed and goes off into the weeds, I don't know if those people ever bother going

00:02:33 ◼   ► to an Apple store.

00:02:34 ◼   ► Because those are the type of people who are going to try to figure it out themselves.

00:02:37 ◼   ► And I think in a lot of cases when iCloud doesn't work, people just don't notice.

00:02:41 ◼   ► Or like you said, they blame the application and they don't blame the phone or whatever.

00:02:46 ◼   ► But the number of people who go into the Apple Store with software problems, that I guess

00:02:51 ◼   ► is a different class of people, because I would never go into the Apple Store with a

00:02:55 ◼   ► software problem, I think, as long as I could actually determine it was a software problem.

00:02:59 ◼   ► Because what are they going to do for me?

00:03:00 ◼   ► They're just going to poke the same buttons that I can poke.

00:03:01 ◼   ► It's people who don't know how to fix this stuff, you know.

00:03:05 ◼   ► Or if you want to say, maybe it is a hardware problem, they'll take it into the back room

00:03:07 ◼   ► and hook it up to whatever machine they have that'll run some diagnostic.

00:03:10 ◼   ► But yeah, that was an interesting data point.

00:03:13 ◼   ► else also. What percentage of iPhone users do you think don't have any other Apple

00:03:21 ◼   ► products and therefore don't really see the syncing issues necessarily?

00:03:26 ◼   ► Yeah, that could be the case too. I think only Apple knows this number, how many iPhone

00:03:33 ◼   ► users also have a Mac, but I would love to know those.

00:03:36 ◼   ► Yeah, I would assume it's getting smaller and smaller as PCs are doing less and less

00:03:40 ◼   ► well in the marketplace and Macs are doing better and better. I'm sure that that's getting

00:03:44 ◼   ► to be smaller and smaller, but to use an anecdotal piece of evidence, you know, the first Apple

00:03:47 ◼   ► device that I believe my dad got was either an iPad or an iPhone. I want to say it was

00:03:53 ◼   ► an iPhone. And now, fast forward two or three years later, and pretty much my entire immediate

00:03:58 ◼   ► family as in Aaron and I, as well as immediate family as in my parents and brothers, they're

00:04:03 ◼   ► almost exclusively Mac now.

00:04:05 ◼   ► Yeah, but you just got to look at the sales numbers, though. How many iPhones has Apple

00:04:09 ◼   ► sold in the past three years versus how many Macs have they sold. And I know sales are

00:04:12 ◼   ► not the same as installed base, but the number of iPhones just massively dwarfs the number

00:04:16 ◼   ► of Macs in existence by this point. I'm thinking of like, you know, like the all the old Macs

00:04:20 ◼   ► that are sitting around and how long do you keep counting like some ancient Mac with the

00:04:26 ◼   ► PowerPC and it is still hanging around or whatever. But there's just so many more iPhones

00:04:29 ◼   ► and iOS devices than Macs that you have to say most people who have iOS devices do not

00:04:35 ◼   ► have Macs.

00:04:36 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, I would say if I had to take a guess at what percentage of iPhone owners

00:04:41 ◼   ► that was their only Apple device, I would say it's probably like 50 percent or maybe

00:04:46 ◼   ► even more.

00:04:47 ◼   ► I think it's like if you want to know the percentage, if you look at all people who

00:04:51 ◼   ► buy iPhones and say what percentage of those have a Mac, I bet it's very similar to the

00:04:55 ◼   ► percentage of the general population that has a Mac at this point.

00:04:59 ◼   ► Because the iPhone is a mass market general purpose product.

00:05:04 ◼   ► I don't think people see any real connection to the Mac, but they just like it would never occur to them that if you've got

00:05:08 ◼   ► An iPhone that there was any connection to the Mac that you had to have a Mac that you should have a Mac anything and

00:05:13 ◼   ► Honestly, it's true. There's nothing there's nothing you're gonna get out of having a Mac really

00:05:16 ◼   ► I guess maybe a desktop version of the notes application, so why don't you build a gaming PC? Yeah, all right?

00:05:22 ◼   ► Don't make my friggin iPod shuffle stink better. I

00:05:26 ◼   ► Hate that thanks so much

00:05:27 ◼   ► I mean most people don't even sync their phones to their computers

00:05:30 ◼   ► which is why Apple had to push for so long to get all this stuff over iCloud and backups

00:05:35 ◼   ► and sync and wireless and iTunes match and all that other stuff. Keep in mind, it wasn't

00:05:39 ◼   ► that long ago. It's easy to forget, but it was only iOS 5 that brought most of that stuff

00:05:45 ◼   ► that made you stop having to sync with iTunes to get a lot of these features. That was not

00:05:50 ◼   ► that long ago.

00:05:51 ◼   ► Do you remember the jailbreak app that would allow you to do Wi-Fi sync? And it was such

00:05:56 ◼   ► a big deal. This was roundabouts of iOS 4 or 5. And it was such a big deal because you

00:06:00 ◼   ► could sync over Wi-Fi and people were like, "Oh my God, Apple, you have to do this immediately!"

00:06:05 ◼   ► They were like expecting a point release of iTunes the next day to enable Wi-Fi sync.

00:06:09 ◼   ► And I don't recall exactly when it actually showed up in iOS. But I remember that being

00:06:13 ◼   ► such a big deal. And that was the brief window of time. It was around the brief window of

00:06:16 ◼   ► time when I had actually had a jailbroken iPhone. And so I had thought about, I think

00:06:21 ◼   ► at this point, re-jailbreaking just for that. And it was so silly. But yeah, it really wasn't

00:06:25 ◼   ► that long ago. You're exactly right. And then they implemented a Wi-Fi sync and nobody

00:06:29 ◼   ► uses it. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, actually I'm curious. What do you guys do for sync

00:06:33 ◼   ► and backup? I always connect with a cable. Yeah, typically I do as well. I think I have

00:06:37 ◼   ► Wi-Fi sync enabled, but I believe I'm backing up my iPhone to my computer and my iPad to

00:06:46 ◼   ► iCloud. But I actually have a gripe about this, which is branching away from follow-up,

00:06:52 ◼   ► since I'm talking I'm just going to continue.

00:06:54 ◼   ► I think that because of SMS logs, which I'm a pack rat and I don't delete barely any of

00:07:01 ◼   ► my SMS logs, and I probably should go and cull all of them, but I think it's because

00:07:07 ◼   ► I have four years of SMS logs or something like that.

00:07:10 ◼   ► My iCloud account, which I just have the free one which is I believe five gigs, it is full

00:07:16 ◼   ► the moment I start backing my iPhone up to it.

00:07:20 ◼   ► I've looked at the usage in settings and this has I haven't looked in a while so

00:07:24 ◼   ► I'm a little fuzzy on the details but there was nothing that jumped out and

00:07:27 ◼   ► said oh I'm you know there's no app or anything that said oh I'm using 34 gigs

00:07:31 ◼   ► or anything like that and the only thing I can guess because I believe I turned

00:07:34 ◼   ► off the the app backups to iCloud for just about everything and it still was

00:07:40 ◼   ► whining about not having enough space and the only thing I can think of is

00:07:43 ◼   ► I've got a gazillion SMS's and perhaps more importantly MMS's that that have

00:07:49 ◼   ► been around since 2008 when I got my 3GS that I think are trying to go to iCloud and failing

00:07:55 ◼   ► miserably. And that's kind of a bummer. And as everyone in the chat is saying, yes,

00:08:00 ◼   ► I am the king of sending animated GIFs to people, which is certainly not helping. So

00:08:04 ◼   ► that's probably a self-created issue.

00:08:06 ◼   ► When you first started saying it was SMS, I was thinking, yeah, that's like filling

00:08:09 ◼   ► up a terabyte with Word documents. But now that you say, you know, yeah, that you get

00:08:14 ◼   ► a lot of MMS and do a lot of image sending and receiving, that actually makes a lot of

00:08:17 ◼   ► sense because where is that stored? What is that categorized as? And yeah, that really

00:08:23 ◼   ► could be the problem. Plus your billions of emoji and especially, imagine if Apple stores

00:08:30 ◼   ► your emoji as images, oh, you'd be screwed.

00:08:33 ◼   ► Oh, I'd be so doomed.

00:08:34 ◼   ► It actually stores high DPI images of the text bubbles.

00:08:38 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:08:39 ◼   ► But you know what I'm saying, and it's frustrating. So maybe I'm abnormal in that

00:08:44 ◼   ► I don't go through and call text messages and maybe most people are paranoid or whatever.

00:08:51 ◼   ► But for me, by me not taking action, in other words by me not going through and deleting

00:08:58 ◼   ► old text messages and picture messages, I have put myself in a position where iCloud

00:09:05 ◼   ► backup effectively doesn't work for me unless I pay for it.

00:09:08 ◼   ► And that's not necessarily a bad thing and it pretty much is my fault, but it's interesting

00:09:12 ◼   ► to me that when I do something that you would assume an average user would do, which is

00:09:16 ◼   ► just let SMSs and MMSs fly by and just let them go into the ether.

00:09:22 ◼   ► By doing that, I've set myself up in a position where I can't use iCloud, or not effectively

00:09:27 ◼   ► anyway.

00:09:29 ◼   ► Does anybody pay for extra storage on iCloud?

00:09:31 ◼   ► I would if I wanted to use it.

00:09:33 ◼   ► If it was better than local backup in more of a way, like if it was as fast, if it kept

00:09:38 ◼   ► all my passwords and encrypted it.

00:09:41 ◼   ► There's still things that iCloud backup does slightly differently.

00:09:43 ◼   ► I've thought about paying for it many times and just go, "Well, yeah."

00:09:45 ◼   ► And the reason I use a cable to do my backups is not because I'm against Wi-Fi syncing or

00:09:49 ◼   ► anything, it's just because my battery almost always needs to be charged by the time I end

00:09:53 ◼   ► up back at the computer.

00:09:54 ◼   ► I'm plugging it in anyway to charge it.

00:09:56 ◼   ► Why not also do the backup then, right?

00:09:58 ◼   ► And I don't particularly like it.

00:10:02 ◼   ► Maybe I'll go wireless eventually, but for now I'll keep doing it the old-fashioned way.

00:10:07 ◼   ► And I believe iMike pays for iCloud backup, and I think he is the only person on the planet.

00:10:12 ◼   ► Yeah, and his setup, according to his statement on the prompt, sounds pretty weird in general.

00:10:19 ◼   ► Is either very uncommon, or every other non-geek in the world is just like him and we just

00:10:24 ◼   ► don't see it?

00:10:25 ◼   ► I think what happens is people get the free iCloud and then they run out of space on it

00:10:29 ◼   ► because it's not hard to blow through that space.

00:10:32 ◼   ► And then they go to the Apple store because they can't figure out why their phone isn't

00:10:34 ◼   ► and it's giving them some message about being out of room or something or keeps asking them.

00:10:39 ◼   ► They don't understand what it's saying to them, and eventually someone explains to them.

00:10:42 ◼   ► It's telling you that if you want to keep using your phone like you've been using it,

00:10:45 ◼   ► you have to pay some amount of money.

00:10:46 ◼   ► They hate that, and they complain about it, but it's better than learning a new way to

00:10:50 ◼   ► do things.

00:10:51 ◼   ► So, I wonder if a lot of people just end up not disliking Apple and having a bad feeling

00:10:56 ◼   ► about Apple, and that happens, which is why I said so many times that they need to figure

00:10:59 ◼   ► that out.

00:11:00 ◼   ► that little taste is just setting them up for bad feelings later. But for most people, it's easier

00:11:06 ◼   ► than changing the way they do things. It's like, "Well, I just want to keep doing whatever it is I

00:11:09 ◼   ► was doing, make this go away." Or maybe they could just like, or I guess the other alternative is

00:11:14 ◼   ► they could just turn off iCloud backup. I'm not sure how many people take that alternative. I

00:11:18 ◼   ► don't need backups. Nothing will ever happen to my phone. Oh goodness. All right. So talk to me

00:11:24 ◼   ► about a squished Mac Mini. This is from Zed Mata on Twitter, and he offers

00:11:29 ◼   ► a theory about why the Mac Mini got squished. I said in the last show that I didn't like

00:11:33 ◼   ► that it got squished. I liked it better when it was taller and skinnier. And his theory

00:11:38 ◼   ► is, or her theory, is that it's because now it fits in a 1U rack. Which I kind of buy.

00:11:44 ◼   ► Like before they used to rack them vertically when they were fatter. The fat Mini, they

00:11:48 ◼   ► just turned them on their sides, and I guess they would take up 2U at that point.

00:11:51 ◼   ► Oh, more than that. I think four or five, probably.

00:11:54 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't remember what it was like. But anyway, the Mini is not really a rack-mountable

00:12:02 ◼   ► machine. People have rack-mounted it because it's small and it will fit, and squishing

00:12:05 ◼   ► it down to one U maybe was a nod to the people racking them. But if you're going to make

00:12:11 ◼   ► something good for racking, you wouldn't make something like the Mini. It would be made

00:12:16 ◼   ► differently. Put it that way. At the very least, it would have little flanges or something

00:12:20 ◼   ► you could actually put in a mounting thing.

00:12:23 ◼   ► So the Mini still looks to me like something

00:12:25 ◼   ► that's meant to be on a desk somewhere.

00:12:27 ◼   ► Yeah, I would agree.

00:12:28 ◼   ► And if they wanted to rack mount a Mac,

00:12:30 ◼   ► don't you think they would have some serve or server,

00:12:34 ◼   ► and it would run OS 10, but you would maybe abbreviate it

00:12:37 ◼   ► as like X or something?

00:12:39 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:12:40 ◼   ► One more piece of follow up.

00:12:41 ◼   ► This is from an anonymous industry source.

00:12:44 ◼   ► That's how closely I'm going to get to identifying this person.

00:12:48 ◼   ► talking about the Dolby CS demo, which I found out after the end of the show that neither

00:12:52 ◼   ► one of you knew what the hell I was talking about last week.

00:12:54 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:12:55 ◼   ► At CES, Dolby showed this experimental, like, this is not a product, but let's just show

00:12:59 ◼   ► you what this would look like, this experimental crazy television setup thing that was demonstrating

00:13:04 ◼   ► what I was talking about, you know, in terms of better pixels, a much larger range between

00:13:09 ◼   ► the darkest and the brightest spot on a television. If you think about when you go outside in the

00:13:13 ◼   ► real world, what is the difference in brightness between a place that's under direct sunlight

00:13:18 ◼   ► at noon and a place that's shaded under an umbrella?

00:13:22 ◼   ► Or if you're looking up at the sky and the sun is in the corner of your eye, what is

00:13:26 ◼   ► the difference in brightness between that and the dark thing in the corner?

00:13:29 ◼   ► It's huge.

00:13:30 ◼   ► It's a gigantic dynamic range.

00:13:31 ◼   ► I don't know what his number was, but it's way more than it is on a TV.

00:13:34 ◼   ► TV has bright areas and dark areas, but they're much closer together.

00:13:38 ◼   ► Some of that is, practically speaking, you're going to have to limit.

00:13:42 ◼   ► If your television had the same dynamic range as real life and a show panned the camera

00:13:47 ◼   ► up to a sunny sky and you stared at the TV, you would go blind.

00:13:50 ◼   ► So that's bad if you had televisions emitting the full electromagnetic spectrum of the sun

00:13:55 ◼   ► at the same brightness, A, that would take a lot of power, and B, it would not be good

00:13:59 ◼   ► for your vision.

00:14:00 ◼   ► But that's not what we're talking about.

00:14:01 ◼   ► We're saying there's a heavy medium between the current incredibly small dynamic range

00:14:05 ◼   ► of televisions today and the outdoors.

00:14:09 ◼   ► And so this demo was like, here's what we can do with current technology if we just

00:14:13 ◼   ► make this crazy experimental set, and it looks strikingly different than a regular television.

00:14:18 ◼   ► Regular television starts to look like a completely low contrast pool of mud compared to this

00:14:22 ◼   ► greater dynamic range.

00:14:25 ◼   ► And so this industry that they're in is the video entertainment industry.

00:14:30 ◼   ► And the source says, "High dynamic range has two big wins.

00:14:34 ◼   ► It looks stunning and is, in my opinion, the most interesting feature added to cinema recently.

00:14:38 ◼   ► adds more to the experience than stereo 3D, high frame rate, or 4K.

00:14:43 ◼   ► Also since most studio and other content creators are already producing 16 bit per channel images

00:14:47 ◼   ► with over range values, it's almost free.

00:14:50 ◼   ► There's some stuff that has to be done in post and color grading, but there's no re-rendering

00:14:52 ◼   ► as there is with 3D and 4K.

00:14:55 ◼   ► I've seen Adobe Tech and it's great for the home, but I'm not sure how they're going to

00:14:58 ◼   ► get this into theaters, which is where the money is for the studios.

00:15:01 ◼   ► So the thing about the source is a good point, because saying that most of the content is

00:15:05 ◼   ► is already created with color values that

00:15:08 ◼   ► are outside the range that can be displayed

00:15:09 ◼   ► by any current output device.

00:15:12 ◼   ► So all of their content is shot with 16 bits of value

00:15:16 ◼   ► per component and scaled down to 8 bits or less

00:15:19 ◼   ► or whatever the current output devices that we

00:15:21 ◼   ► have in our home.

00:15:21 ◼   ► So they don't have to reshoot the footage.

00:15:23 ◼   ► They don't have to re-render to do anything like that.

00:15:24 ◼   ► They already have source material

00:15:26 ◼   ► that is outside the range that can be displayed.

00:15:27 ◼   ► So if someone could make a commercial set that

00:15:30 ◼   ► could display a larger dynamic range, a lot of the content

00:15:33 ◼   ► that we already know of that's been created

00:15:34 ◼   ► in the past few years already has,

00:15:37 ◼   ► the source material is already sufficient

00:15:38 ◼   ► to show that extra dynamic range.

00:15:40 ◼   ► But again, Dolby was not demonstrating a product

00:15:43 ◼   ► that you could buy, it was just kind of a,

00:15:46 ◼   ► wouldn't it be cool if kind of tech demo.

00:15:48 ◼   ► So I really hope that that's where people concentrate,

00:15:51 ◼   ► especially after 4K comes and goes and does its thing.

00:15:55 ◼   ► The next thing they should be looking at is,

00:15:57 ◼   ► I mean, they should be looking at it now,

00:15:58 ◼   ► but it seems like 4K is what they're gonna do

00:16:00 ◼   ► because it's easier, but higher dynamic range,

00:16:02 ◼   ► I'm much more excited about.

00:16:03 ◼   ► So I'll watch for that in 10 years.

00:16:06 ◼   ► - Sounds good.

00:16:08 ◼   ► Hey Marco, you wanna talk about a friend of ours?

00:16:09 ◼   ► - I would love to.

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00:17:39 ◼   ► Interestingly enough, this week my wife

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00:18:31 ◼   ► Once again, go to squarespace.com, use offer code "marco" for 10% off.

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00:18:38 ◼   ► Some pretty big stuff has happened over the last couple of days.

00:18:41 ◼   ► We're recording on Wednesday the 15th.

00:18:44 ◼   ► And on the one hand, I don't know if there's really that much more to say about it.

00:18:49 ◼   ► But on the other hand, I know the three of us well enough to know there's probably

00:18:51 ◼   ► some stuff to say.

00:18:53 ◼   ► So are you tearing the thermostats off your wall, Marco?

00:18:57 ◼   ► Everyone keeps asking me this. Yeah, so the story in case you've been living under a rock

00:19:01 ◼   ► and somehow listen to podcasts are that Google has bought Nest, or is about to buy Nest,

00:19:08 ◼   ► pending regulatory approval I believe, but Google is probably going to buy Nest for three

00:19:13 ◼   ► point something billion dollars, 3.2, whatever it was, a little over three billion dollars.

00:19:18 ◼   ► And so I have Nest thermosets in my house. They're okay. My favorite feature of them

00:19:23 ◼   ► is the remote control iPhone app. I turned off all the learning stuff because it kind

00:19:26 ◼   ► just fought with me all the time. But imagine that, something that wanted to control didn't

00:19:31 ◼   ► get along with me because I wanted to control. So, big surprise, right? So, no I'm not ripping

00:19:38 ◼   ► them off the wall yet because first of all one of the reasons I got them is because nothing

00:19:41 ◼   ► else really does the remote control aspect while also looking reasonably nice in the

00:19:46 ◼   ► rooms. So that's one problem. One of the problems though is that, this is still a very new thing

00:19:54 ◼   ► So I'm not going to rip the thermostats out of the wall out of some spite or speculation

00:19:59 ◼   ► of what Google/Nest might do in the future.

00:20:03 ◼   ► That being said, I wrote a post about it so I'm not going to go too far into it, but I

00:20:06 ◼   ► don't think it's wise for anybody to assume that these things are going to magically remain

00:20:10 ◼   ► completely separate.

00:20:11 ◼   ► Obviously, if they're going to remain completely separate, why would Google spend a lot of

00:20:16 ◼   ► money on it?

00:20:17 ◼   ► That's probably not what happened.

00:20:18 ◼   ► And I think you can look at what Google, how Google does acquisitions on this scale. When

00:20:25 ◼   ► Google bought YouTube for 1.6 billion forever ago, back when, I mean, at the time, nowadays,

00:20:31 ◼   ► acquisitions for a billion dollars are almost commonplace, but back then they weren't, and,

00:20:36 ◼   ► at least in the tech business. And so, you know, when they bought YouTube, it was very

00:20:42 ◼   ► clear, like, video is a big thing on the internet. And I think history has supported that since

00:20:49 ◼   ► then, that that was a very wise decision. If they didn't buy it, Yahoo or Microsoft

00:20:54 ◼   ► were probably going to buy it, and it's a very good thing Google got it for them, because

00:20:58 ◼   ► video is very, very important and represents tons of traffic and activity on the internet.

00:21:02 ◼   ► So they kind of had to do that. When Facebook bought Instagram, that was also

00:21:08 ◼   ► over a billion, wasn't it? Or was it exactly, it was exactly one billion, right?

00:21:12 ◼   ► Something like that. I believe it was around a billion, yeah. So,

00:21:15 ◼   ► Facebook bought Instagram because they were threatened and freaked out. Because

00:21:19 ◼   ► Facebook's primary, like, most used application is photo sharing. And there was this huge world

00:21:26 ◼   ► of photo sharing happening on this social network that was dominating mobile. So, it was competing

00:21:32 ◼   ► with the thing Facebook uses the most on mobile, where Facebook was still pretty weak and was,

00:21:37 ◼   ► did not have a strong foothold. So this was a major threat to Facebook. That's why Zuck

00:21:42 ◼   ► rushed the deal through and regardless of it being right before their IPO and possibly

00:21:47 ◼   ► having problems with that, he pushed it through because he's a smart guy. He knew this was

00:21:51 ◼   ► a threat.

00:21:53 ◼   ► So going back to Google, they recently, more recently than YouTube at least, they bought

00:21:56 ◼   ► Motorola Mobility for, was it 12 billion?

00:21:59 ◼   ► I don't even remember.

00:22:01 ◼   ► I think Google wishes it didn't remember too.

00:22:04 ◼   ► Yeah, I think you're right. So Google buys motor mobility for something like 12 billion,

00:22:10 ◼   ► and it seemed like the reason they bought it was because they were threatened and freaked

00:22:13 ◼   ► out. Again, just like buying YouTube, they were threatened and freaked out. Facebook

00:22:19 ◼   ► buying Instagram, they were threatened and freaked out. So Google buying Motorola, they

00:22:25 ◼   ► were threatened and freaked out because all this patent stuff was going on around Android

00:22:29 ◼   ► and Android is very important to them and the Android market was kind of becoming the

00:22:33 ◼   ► Samsung market and it was kind of nice to prop somebody else up a little bit, just for

00:22:37 ◼   ► diversity's sake and competition. But it was mostly about patents, I think. I think

00:22:43 ◼   ► the industry bears that out so far. But looking at that, it didn't turn out so well. It

00:22:48 ◼   ► seems like it was a sloppy move. It seems like it was maybe not thought through, maybe

00:22:54 ◼   ► not enough diligence done on what the value of these patents actually might be. Whatever

00:22:58 ◼   ► the reason, it seemed like it was kind of a rash decision at the time that caught a

00:23:02 ◼   ► a lot of people by surprise and so far has proven not to have really been worth it.

00:23:08 ◼   ► So this brings us to Nest. What the heck do they want with Nest? There is a good post

00:23:13 ◼   ► on our friend Ben Thompson's site, Stratechery. Am I saying that right, finally?

00:23:17 ◼   ► I think it's Stratechery.

00:23:18 ◼   ► It's a long E. It's got the little thing on the E.

00:23:20 ◼   ► Every time.

00:23:21 ◼   ► I pronounce it in my head, Stratechery, but I believe it's Stratechery.

00:23:25 ◼   ► Okay, I think you're right. So anyway, Ben Thompson at Strategery wrote this nice piece,

00:23:32 ◼   ► I think yesterday I'll link to it in the show notes, about this might be Google's new business

00:23:37 ◼   ► model they're getting into, that all of their previous business models have been focused

00:23:41 ◼   ► on advertising and the number of people using the internet continuing to grow tremendously,

00:23:49 ◼   ► but that apparently we're starting to reach limits of the world population and economic

00:23:53 ◼   ► realities such that the number of people using the internet, the growth peak of that is going

00:23:59 ◼   ► to end in a couple of years. That growth is going to start slowing down significantly.

00:24:04 ◼   ► So if Google's relying on more and more people just using the internet and looking at their

00:24:09 ◼   ► ads every day for all their future business, it's almost saturated. It's not going to start

00:24:16 ◼   ► shrinking. It's not going to stop all growth, but the growth is going to slow down a lot.

00:24:22 ◼   ► So his theory is that getting into devices, getting into hardware, might be their next

00:24:28 ◼   ► new business model arm because advertising might be saturated for them or close to it.

00:24:35 ◼   ► I don't know because...

00:24:38 ◼   ► So let's look at what they bought here.

00:24:41 ◼   ► They bought a company that is not very old, sells products to a good volume, but not like...

00:24:49 ◼   ► not talking like an Apple or Samsung kind of volume of products that they're shipping

00:24:53 ◼   ► here or manufacturing. So like, they're not buying a huge supply chain. They're buying

00:24:58 ◼   ► some good retail connections, certainly, but not something, you know, not the kind of retail

00:25:03 ◼   ► connections that like a phone or computer OEM would have, for instance.

00:25:08 ◼   ► So I think one of the biggest things is that they're buying what appears to be a pretty

00:25:12 ◼   ► good staff. Having Tony Fadell on the team is probably going to be a pretty big win,

00:25:18 ◼   ► but they're saying they're keeping Nest separate and he's gonna keep running the Nest part

00:25:22 ◼   ► of it. So, I don't know. It kind of feels like that's a lot of money to have spent on

00:25:29 ◼   ► a company that I'm not entirely sure how Google is really going to get that amount of value

00:25:35 ◼   ► out of this company. What do you think?

00:25:39 ◼   ► So could it be an AquaHire?

00:25:41 ◼   ► It's way too expensive for that.

00:25:43 ◼   ► For three billion? How many employees do you think Nest has?

00:25:47 ◼   ► I mean, probably a couple hundred. I don't know. I'm just guessing.

00:25:49 ◼   ► A couple hundred? That's way high.

00:25:52 ◼   ► Yeah, I would say it's between 50 and 100 would be my guess based on no facts.

00:25:57 ◼   ► You're thinking like programmers. No. Companies have way more staff than programmers tend

00:26:04 ◼   ► to estimate, myself included, because once you leave the engineering department and you

00:26:08 ◼   ► get into retail sales, support, manufacturing, all that stuff, it's massively people intensive.

00:26:14 ◼   ► They probably have a couple hundred, I'm guessing.

00:26:16 ◼   ► Do Nest even do – I thought you had to order Nest Online. Are they in retail stores?

00:26:20 ◼   ► Yeah, they're in Best Buy. They had a big, long deal with Best Buy.

00:26:23 ◼   ► And they're in the Apple store, aren't they?

00:26:25 ◼   ► Yep.

00:26:26 ◼   ► Like, whatever it is, $3.2 billion is a lot of money for a product that, I guess, is a

00:26:31 ◼   ► luxury product that I don't think sells in any kind of – both of their products are

00:26:35 ◼   ► luxury products. Because if you just want a smoke detector or a thermostat, you can

00:26:38 ◼   ► get them way cheaper, right? And your house already has a thermostat. Only, you know,

00:26:42 ◼   ► people with expendable income or tech nerds want to replace something. You want to get

00:26:46 ◼   ► smoke detector people are just going to go to Walmart and get the cheapest smoke detector

00:26:49 ◼   ► they can to be up to code or they'll just let the take the battery out and never put

00:26:52 ◼   ► it back in.

00:26:53 ◼   ► Like, these are luxury items.

00:26:55 ◼   ► They have to be low volume.

00:26:56 ◼   ► There's not a lot of employees.

00:26:57 ◼   ► There's not a lot of intellectual property there, I would imagine.

00:27:01 ◼   ► You're getting a superstar Tony Fidele, Mr. iPod, but like that's one person.

00:27:05 ◼   ► You're not paying 3.2 billion for him.

00:27:08 ◼   ► I think the penetration of internet, you know, the growth peak thing is a real thing, but

00:27:14 ◼   ► I'm not sure that's particularly related to the Nest acquisition.

00:27:18 ◼   ► I think the easiest explanation for the Nest acquisition is the obvious one, which is Google

00:27:23 ◼   ► loves information.

00:27:26 ◼   ► It's not so much like they love advertising or that they love information.

00:27:30 ◼   ► And some people think it's because they're evil and they want to spy on everything, but

00:27:34 ◼   ► I see it a lot from their perspective as a sort of nerd perspective.

00:27:38 ◼   ► Think of the cool things you could do if we had more information.

00:27:40 ◼   ► What if we had pictures of every street in the United States?

00:27:43 ◼   ► What if we did the inside of buildings like that?

00:27:46 ◼   ► You could go right from the street into the inside of buildings and walk around.

00:27:49 ◼   ► If they could have live cameras on every street in the United States, they would do that instead

00:27:52 ◼   ► of having old pictures, you know, and the satellite footage and stuff like that.

00:27:57 ◼   ► What if we could tell where location is?

00:27:59 ◼   ► GPS and the phones is a great tool.

00:28:00 ◼   ► We can tell you're on your way home from work and what your traffic is like and when you're

00:28:04 ◼   ► going to be there and all that other stuff that you can do.

00:28:06 ◼   ► What if we had sensors in your home?

00:28:07 ◼   ► They could tell what temperature it is, whether you're home or not, the temperature outside.

00:28:12 ◼   ► You can do cool things with information.

00:28:14 ◼   ► What they have is basically a massively distributed computing infrastructure for information.

00:28:20 ◼   ► What is their motto?

00:28:22 ◼   ► Like to organize the world's information?

00:28:25 ◼   ► The temperature of your house is part of that world's information.

00:28:27 ◼   ► Which is of course what freaks people out about it.

00:28:30 ◼   ► But think of what Nest does.

00:28:33 ◼   ► Nest makes things that gather information from inside people's homes.

00:28:36 ◼   ► I agree with everything you just said, that they can derive value out of that, out of

00:28:43 ◼   ► the data, the connections, the installed base of being in people's houses.

00:28:48 ◼   ► But I can't see them getting $3 billion worth of value out of that from this company.

00:28:52 ◼   ► Well, this company figured out a way to sell people sensors that go in their homes that

00:28:56 ◼   ► are connected to the network.

00:28:57 ◼   ► And thus far, Google has been bad at that.

00:28:59 ◼   ► I'm sure Google would love to have more sensors in people's homes that are connected to the

00:29:03 ◼   ► network.

00:29:04 ◼   ► Nest is like, well, we don't sell a lot of them, and we just sell it to early adopters

00:29:08 ◼   ► for now, but we found a way to sell it.

00:29:10 ◼   ► They have enough style and cache to be interesting to nerdy people.

00:29:13 ◼   ► Marco bought one, right?

00:29:15 ◼   ► That was right in their meeting.

00:29:16 ◼   ► They said, hey, Marco bought one.

00:29:17 ◼   ► I bought four.

00:29:18 ◼   ► There you go.

00:29:19 ◼   ► That's what they should, right in their slide, and they're, you know, Google, you should

00:29:21 ◼   ► acquire us.

00:29:22 ◼   ► Next slide, Marco bought four.

00:29:23 ◼   ► That's it.

00:29:24 ◼   ► 3.2 billion.

00:29:25 ◼   ► Like, you know, baby steps, right?

00:29:28 ◼   ► If this is part of a big initiative, I don't think it's because Google wants to start selling,

00:29:33 ◼   ► you know, iPods or consumer hardware.

00:29:35 ◼   ► They want to sell things that feed information back

00:29:38 ◼   ► into this giant thing that is Google.

00:29:41 ◼   ► Yes, and I think you're right.

00:29:42 ◼   ► But we're also not considering that it's

00:29:45 ◼   ► more than just Tony Fadell.

00:29:47 ◼   ► It's also, as per some people who probably don't know,

00:29:51 ◼   ► like the chat-- and I'm not talking about them--

00:29:53 ◼   ► but the chat has been quoting, oh, 100 or 100

00:29:56 ◼   ► plus ex-Apple employees.

00:29:58 ◼   ► And do you think that 3 billion--

00:30:01 ◼   ► or that 100 Apple employees that are presumably very good,

00:30:05 ◼   ► plus Tony Fidell is worth $3 billion?

00:30:07 ◼   ► I don't think so, but maybe there's more talent there

00:30:11 ◼   ► than we realize.

00:30:13 ◼   ► You have to retain that talent, though.

00:30:15 ◼   ► Depending on who gets what stock options

00:30:17 ◼   ► and what your golden handcuffs are

00:30:19 ◼   ► and how long you have to stay at the company

00:30:20 ◼   ► to get your whatever you're going to get,

00:30:23 ◼   ► it is a good way to get good employees,

00:30:25 ◼   ► but the best employees are always restless.

00:30:30 ◼   ► they get the startup they make the cool thing they get acquired by the big

00:30:33 ◼   ► company they say the big company was years and they repeat that process

00:30:36 ◼   ► because they just want to move on to new things and don't want to be

00:30:39 ◼   ► a cog in the big machine

00:30:41 ◼   ► but i mean i don't like

00:30:43 ◼   ► of all the companies they could've acquired

00:30:45 ◼   ► nest is not so outlandish the price seems outlandish to me even with the

00:30:49 ◼   ► the supposedly two hundred five hundred plays it still still seems like heck of

00:30:53 ◼   ► a lot of money but uh...

00:30:55 ◼   ► you know they're but they're buying based on what they think the future

00:30:57 ◼   ► value to google is us that's the way the sales work

00:30:59 ◼   ► It's not how much Nest is worth, it's how much Nest is worth to Google.

00:31:02 ◼   ► And I think Nest, for example, how much would Nest be worth to Apple?

00:31:06 ◼   ► Is it worth 3.2 billion to get those 100 employees back?

00:31:09 ◼   ► Maybe, maybe not.

00:31:11 ◼   ► Are Nest's products worth that much?

00:31:12 ◼   ► I think that Apple would turn its nose up to the product and say, "If we wanted to design

00:31:16 ◼   ► a thermostat, we could have done just as good a job, if not better."

00:31:20 ◼   ► And same thing for the smoke detector.

00:31:21 ◼   ► But Google cannot say that.

00:31:22 ◼   ► Google would say, "If we tried to design a thermostat, it would be shaped like a sphere

00:31:24 ◼   ► and no one would buy it and it would never ship."

00:31:26 ◼   ► I think it was Ben Thompson who said this in one of his articles, or correct me if I'm

00:31:33 ◼   ► wrong, that Tim Coco always says, "Keep the company simple. We do a few things well."

00:31:40 ◼   ► Apple would never buy it because they—Apple doesn't buy companies that have existing

00:31:44 ◼   ► products in the marketplace that they have to keep supporting. They don't do that.

00:31:48 ◼   ► That's not their style.

00:31:48 ◼   ► Well, they do. They buy Logic and then stop making it for anything except for the Mac,

00:31:52 ◼   ► right?

00:31:53 ◼   ► I always want them to buy Intel and say, "And we're not selling chips to anyone else anymore.

00:31:57 ◼   ► Sorry, guys."

00:31:58 ◼   ► That would be amazing.

00:31:59 ◼   ► It would have been amazing like four years ago.

00:32:01 ◼   ► AMD would just take all that business like guess, but that would make everyone hate Apple.

00:32:07 ◼   ► That would also like...

00:32:09 ◼   ► If Apple really cared about personal computer market share, it would buy Intel and stop

00:32:13 ◼   ► selling their chips to anyone else.

00:32:15 ◼   ► Honestly, what that would hurt the most would be the server world.

00:32:18 ◼   ► Because on PCs, who cares?

00:32:20 ◼   ► People will use whatever the heck is cheap and they don't care.

00:32:22 ◼   ► And the PC market is dying anyway.

00:32:24 ◼   ► But in the server world, Intel has a massive lead over everybody else, and that would suck.

00:32:29 ◼   ► I will never do that because Intel would be super expensive and Apple shareholders would

00:32:33 ◼   ► punish it severely for buying a super expensive company and then cutting off almost all of

00:32:37 ◼   ► its income.

00:32:38 ◼   ► Well, I have to imagine, too, the Department of Justice would possibly have a problem with

00:32:42 ◼   ► that move.

00:32:43 ◼   ► I don't know if they would, because Intel is the big dog in the chip space, but there's

00:32:48 ◼   ► There's a bunch of people who fab ARM chips, and there's AMD sitting over there going,

00:32:52 ◼   ► "Hey, we sell chips that go on servers too."

00:32:55 ◼   ► That nobody wants.

00:32:56 ◼   ► Yeah, well, because Intel ones are always slightly better.

00:32:58 ◼   ► Oh, it's more than slightly.

00:32:59 ◼   ► That's the problem.

00:33:00 ◼   ► Well, it's not night and day.

00:33:02 ◼   ► Like they're in the fight.

00:33:03 ◼   ► There's not, I mean, hey, what are all the game consoles?

00:33:05 ◼   ► AMD got that contract.

00:33:07 ◼   ► Yeah, well, because that was about price.

00:33:09 ◼   ► In servers, it's about performance per watt.

00:33:11 ◼   ► I know.

00:33:12 ◼   ► I've always wondered why Intel didn't compete harder for the game, because surely Intel

00:33:16 ◼   ► could have gotten the game console thing if it wanted it, but it was like, "We don't

00:33:19 ◼   ► want that, but let AMD have it."

00:33:21 ◼   ► Well, it's probably because, correct me if I'm wrong, aren't all of these game console

00:33:25 ◼   ► CPUs not x86?

00:33:26 ◼   ► No, they're x86.

00:33:27 ◼   ► It's AMD, x86 strips.

00:33:28 ◼   ► Oh.

00:33:29 ◼   ► I mean, AMD has particular assets that make it good because it can put, you know, it has

00:33:35 ◼   ► the—I forget what their interconnect buses used to be, hypertransport, whatever it is.

00:33:39 ◼   ► Like, AMD is good at making, you know, integrated single-chip solutions, which is what the game

00:33:44 ◼   ► consoles needed, so they... I think they were better tailored to that, and the margins have

00:33:49 ◼   ► to be way, way low on the game consoles, so why would Intel bend over backward to make

00:33:54 ◼   ► its custom tailored single chip solution for game consoles, and their reward is super low

00:33:59 ◼   ► margins? I mean, just compared to the margins they're getting on the CPUs that they're selling

00:34:03 ◼   ► less and less of, but they sell into the server space, those margins are much nicer, so...

00:34:07 ◼   ► I don't know, Intel has a problem in terms of what their future business is going to

00:34:11 ◼   ► to be like, but they didn't go for the game consoles. Maybe it would have been good for

00:34:15 ◼   ► them to give them an outing. But anyway, they started reacting to something in the chat

00:34:19 ◼   ► room that was saying, "What would be the equivalent purchase for Apple?" You know, "Google buys

00:34:23 ◼   ► Nest, what does Apple buy?"

00:34:25 ◼   ► >> Oh, beats me.

00:34:27 ◼   ► >> I wish a few years ago they would have bought Twitter, because I think that would

00:34:30 ◼   ► have given them not only a massive foothold in a very important area called social networks,

00:34:36 ◼   ► that you might have heard something about in the last few years, but it also would have

00:34:39 ◼   ► given them a massive staff that knows how to run major web services.

00:34:43 ◼   ► Yeah, I think they tried, right? Well, I mean, they might have tried years ago, but it's

00:34:47 ◼   ► not their style to buy large established companies that are not directly related to what they're

00:34:52 ◼   ► doing. I wouldn't see them really doing something like this. That's the problem, is like, there

00:34:58 ◼   ► is no Apple equivalent to this because they wouldn't do something like this in all likelihood.

00:35:03 ◼   ► But Apple likes to have their cake and eat it too. They need other companies' help, but

00:35:08 ◼   ► They want the other companies to assume all the risk.

00:35:11 ◼   ► And they want a bunch of other companies to compete for the honor of assuming all of their

00:35:14 ◼   ► risk for them.

00:35:15 ◼   ► So they will pay billions of dollars for some company to buy equipment to build their stuff.

00:35:19 ◼   ► But it's like, after you finish making all those widgets for us, the next widget might

00:35:24 ◼   ► go to a different factory and we say goodbye to you.

00:35:26 ◼   ► You're not our problem anymore.

00:35:27 ◼   ► We don't have to worry about your employees.

00:35:28 ◼   ► We don't have to worry about how you're going to make money in the future.

00:35:31 ◼   ► It's like totally, they're in a power position.

00:35:34 ◼   ► They say, "We have lucrative contracts to build things.

00:35:36 ◼   ► wants our contracts, why would we ever buy a chip manufacturer with a fab or whatever.

00:35:42 ◼   ► I mean, the fab is the one thing that's different than the other stuff, because there are only

00:35:46 ◼   ► few fabs in the world. Fabs are so insanely expensive, and Intel has the best one. And

00:35:51 ◼   ► Apple seems to be saying, "We can make our own chips. We can give them little names with

00:35:53 ◼   ► A's and letters, just like Audi." And they're cool, and we design them, and we pay someone

00:36:00 ◼   ► else a fab, but whatever. But they fancy themselves like, "We control our own destiny because we

00:36:05 ◼   ► We have an ARM license and we pay someone to fab them and now we're not beholden to

00:36:10 ◼   ► Intel for our chips, which is true, you know, you don't have to worry about paying Intel

00:36:13 ◼   ► for these big margins, but you're now at the mercy of three possible fabs, one of which

00:36:19 ◼   ► is Intel and ARM, which I assume will continue licensing its things far and wide, or we don't

00:36:25 ◼   ► need ARM, we'll just make our own architecture, it would be fine.

00:36:28 ◼   ► But those fabs, like, I guess it would be collusion if they all got together and said

00:36:32 ◼   ► said, "We're going to crank up the prices for Apple," but they're not really in control

00:36:36 ◼   ► of their own destiny.

00:36:37 ◼   ► I mean, for crying out loud, Samsung is fabbing so much of their stuff still.

00:36:41 ◼   ► That should tell them something.

00:36:42 ◼   ► So I would actually encourage Apple to consider buying Intel sometime in the future when they're

00:36:47 ◼   ► weaker and smaller.

00:36:48 ◼   ► Intel, that is.

00:36:50 ◼   ► And you don't think they would want Dropbox?

00:36:53 ◼   ► I don't think they would.

00:36:55 ◼   ► But I'm thinking, what are Apple's big weaknesses at the moment?

00:37:00 ◼   ► And I think relying on other fabs is a great example.

00:37:03 ◼   ► And as we've whined about ad nauseam on this show and just about every other podcast that

00:37:08 ◼   ► covers Apple, cloud services are an issue.

00:37:12 ◼   ► And who is really, really good at cloud services?

00:37:15 ◼   ► Twitter has gotten there.

00:37:16 ◼   ► Instagram is, but too late.

00:37:19 ◼   ► Tumblr is, but too late.

00:37:21 ◼   ► So what's left?

00:37:23 ◼   ► And since Steve flirted with the idea of Dropbox, if memory serves...

00:37:28 ◼   ► No, they wanted to buy Dropbox, totally.

00:37:32 ◼   ► If any of those stories are to be believed in, I didn't see Apple people categorically

00:37:36 ◼   ► denying them or anything like that, they wanted to buy Dropbox.

00:37:38 ◼   ► I mean, it's the same thing with the Twitter thing.

00:37:40 ◼   ► I don't think we have any concrete evidence that they wanted to buy Twitter, but it's

00:37:42 ◼   ► assumed.

00:37:43 ◼   ► I didn't read the Twitter book, so maybe that's in there.

00:37:46 ◼   ► And Dropbox, as soon as Steve Jobs visits your company and tells you your product is

00:37:50 ◼   ► crap, that means Apple wants to buy you.

00:37:51 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

00:37:52 ◼   ► Well, and people always talk about that incident with Dropbox, and "Oh, Apple should have

00:37:56 ◼   ► bought them, and I wish Apple bought Dropbox."

00:37:58 ◼   ► Trust me, you don't wish for that if you like Dropbox at all.

00:38:01 ◼   ► Because if Apple bought Dropbox, it probably

00:38:03 ◼   ► would have been for the talent, and maybe

00:38:07 ◼   ► some of the algorithms or sync techniques, maybe,

00:38:10 ◼   ► but mostly for the talent.

00:38:12 ◼   ► And they probably would have shut down the product

00:38:14 ◼   ► or ruined it.

00:38:15 ◼   ► Oh, agreed.

00:38:15 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:38:16 ◼   ► And not having a FAB is not a weakness of Apple.

00:38:18 ◼   ► Again, I think Apple's in a strength position.

00:38:20 ◼   ► Like, we don't need to assume all this risk of having

00:38:22 ◼   ► these big expensive things.

00:38:23 ◼   ► Other people will assume all the risk,

00:38:25 ◼   ► and we'll get all the benefit as long

00:38:26 ◼   ► as we manage these relationships.

00:38:28 ◼   ► But it's a minor difficulty of the uncomfortable situation of relying so heavily on one of

00:38:34 ◼   ► your biggest competitors that just, it's like, well, that just kind of happened.

00:38:38 ◼   ► But by the same token, like, that's billions of dollars changing hands.

00:38:41 ◼   ► And it's, it's kind of weird that you're paying Samsung, but on the other hand, Samsung is

00:38:44 ◼   ► not going to be saying, we refuse your billions of dollars.

00:38:47 ◼   ► Like no, they're going to keep taking your billion dollars as long as you can.

00:38:49 ◼   ► So Apple is trying to transition away, but it's not like, oh no, we're in a weak position

00:38:54 ◼   ► because at any moment, Samsung can refuse our billions of dollars to fab our chips.

00:38:57 ◼   ► Samsung's going to keep taking that money as long as you keep offering it.

00:39:00 ◼   ► It's just that I keep looking at Intel because that is a strategic advantage.

00:39:05 ◼   ► Intel is sitting there off to the side with an architecture that nobody wants for mobile,

00:39:09 ◼   ► but the best fabs in the world. And I'm not sure what their plan is, but if I was at any of these

00:39:13 ◼   ► companies, Samsung, Google, Apple, it'd be like, "You know, we could have an easy 10, 15, perhaps

00:39:19 ◼   ► larger percent advantage over all of our competitors if we could just fab at a smaller

00:39:25 ◼   ► process size than they could, sooner than they could.

00:39:29 ◼   ► And that would, and it's not something they can, you know, if you get Intel's fabs, what

00:39:34 ◼   ► is your competitor's recourse?

00:39:35 ◼   ► They can't like, catch up to you.

00:39:37 ◼   ► They can't like, whip TSMC harder, say, "Work harder!

00:39:42 ◼   ► They're at 14 nanometers, come on!

00:39:44 ◼   ► You guys gotta do better!"

00:39:46 ◼   ► I think that's what the Taiwan semiconductor's been doing for its entire life, is trying

00:39:50 ◼   ► to get better.

00:39:51 ◼   ► And they are getting better, but for now, Intel has the lead, so I keep looking at them.

00:39:55 ◼   ► Well, and a few people pointed out when we last brought this up and when a bunch of people,

00:40:00 ◼   ► including our friend Ben Thompson, were talking about this, one of the problems is that supposedly

00:40:05 ◼   ► people who are smarter than me at this stuff figured out that Intel actually doesn't have

00:40:09 ◼   ► anywhere near the capacity to fab things for Apple. To fab things for iOS, rather, specifically.

00:40:15 ◼   ► Well, that's a soft lie. Did you just see that story that Intel closed a brand new fab

00:40:19 ◼   ► in Arizona before even opening it, before even starting to fab chips on it?

00:40:24 ◼   ► I missed that.

00:40:25 ◼   ► There's a multi-billion dollar fab.

00:40:26 ◼   ► They built the building and everything.

00:40:28 ◼   ► They just didn't buy the fab, the super expensive fab equipment.

00:40:31 ◼   ► It's like two-thirds of the cost of the entire center.

00:40:33 ◼   ► But instead of buying that equipment and installing it, they're just saying, "Just leave that

00:40:36 ◼   ► aside for now," because they were going to fab their 14-nanometer stuff there.

00:40:39 ◼   ► Instead, they said they were going to fab their 14-nanometer stuff in their existing

00:40:42 ◼   ► fabs.

00:40:43 ◼   ► And the reason it's speculated they're doing that is because they don't have enough customers

00:40:47 ◼   ► to warrant opening an entire new fab.

00:40:49 ◼   ► So it's like, if you buy it, they will build.

00:40:53 ◼   ► I don't know, I'm mangling that thing.

00:40:54 ◼   ► But basically, if Apple suddenly said,

00:40:57 ◼   ► "Hey Intel, we want you to fab all of our stuff,"

00:41:00 ◼   ► suddenly they would say, "Great, well,

00:41:01 ◼   ► we have all this excess capacity

00:41:03 ◼   ► that we're currently not using.

00:41:04 ◼   ► We'll buy that fabbing equipment,

00:41:05 ◼   ► we'll install it in that building,

00:41:06 ◼   ► we'll start building more."

00:41:08 ◼   ► That's a problem Intel is happy to have.

00:41:10 ◼   ► But right now it looks like they have the opposite problem,

00:41:12 ◼   ► that they were building with the expectation

00:41:14 ◼   ► that the growth would continue on the current trend,

00:41:16 ◼   ► but the dip in the PC market

00:41:18 ◼   ► like the prominence of mobile is making it so well. Many, many years ago, we set out

00:41:23 ◼   ► to build this giant fab in Arizona, and it looks like we're not even going to need

00:41:26 ◼   ► it. So just keep it on pause there, and maybe we'll need it later. I think Intel would

00:41:30 ◼   ► love to fulfill Apple's needs by greatly increasing its capacity.

00:41:36 ◼   ► Do you think Intel will eat crow anytime soon? Do you think it will stop being so proud and

00:41:40 ◼   ► allow themselves to have Apple bully them into a deal? Because you know Apple, to your

00:41:45 ◼   ► point earlier won't go into a deal unless it's extremely lucrative for Apple as well,

00:41:49 ◼   ► or perhaps maybe if it totally screws Samsung.

00:41:53 ◼   ► So do you think that Apple would get—I don't know if "desperate" is the right word—but

00:41:57 ◼   ► punchy enough to give Samsung the middle finger, and simultaneously Intel will get desperate

00:42:03 ◼   ► enough to take on Apple?

00:42:06 ◼   ► I think that's—the only thing you could scare Apple with would be like, "Well, Apple,

00:42:11 ◼   ► I know we've been going back and forth and we keep saying you've got to take x86 and

00:42:14 ◼   ► keep saying just fab our A8 chip as is on ARM and we can never come to agreement, but

00:42:18 ◼   ► you know Samsung is over here and they're talking to us and they want us to get – like

00:42:23 ◼   ► the only way you can try to make them jealous is like, look, if you don't do it, Samsung

00:42:25 ◼   ► is going to. You know Samsung is stupid and makes dumb deals and they'll get our fabs

00:42:31 ◼   ► and you won't.

00:42:32 ◼   ► Oh, they're not stupid. They're shameless. There's a big difference. They are quite

00:42:36 ◼   ► smart.

00:42:37 ◼   ► It's true.

00:42:38 ◼   ► You know, I don't see that – I think we're at an impasse until someone's power position

00:42:42 ◼   ► changes drastically until Intel gets way weaker, until Apple gets way stronger, until Samsung

00:42:47 ◼   ► gets way stronger.

00:42:48 ◼   ► In the current scenario, I think in any negotiation between these three companies, between any

00:42:54 ◼   ► pairs of these three companies, we're kind of at the status quo.

00:42:58 ◼   ► There's no reason that Intel should bend over backwards and say, "Apple's deal is now."

00:43:01 ◼   ► And there's no reason that Apple should bend over backwards and say, "Oh, Intel, we need

00:43:04 ◼   ► you so badly," because they don't.

00:43:06 ◼   ► Nobody needs anybody that badly to make a dumb deal at this point.

00:43:09 ◼   ► So nothing happens, right?

00:43:10 ◼   ► But just look how long it took to get Intel into Macs.

00:43:14 ◼   ► And for a long time, the writing was on the wall that Apple was in the weak position,

00:43:19 ◼   ► Apple desperately needed a CPU solution, and Intel was willing to offer it.

00:43:22 ◼   ► And even that took forever to come to pass.

00:43:24 ◼   ► So I think we're far from that kind of power imbalance here.

00:43:28 ◼   ► That's fair.

00:43:30 ◼   ► Anything else about Nest stuff?

00:43:32 ◼   ► What do you guys think about the privacy paranoia stuff?

00:43:37 ◼   ► Well, before we get to that, let's do the second thing we like this week. It is our

00:43:41 ◼   ► friends at Transporter. So Transporter, we've talked about Transporter a lot before to review

00:43:47 ◼   ► and then I have some new stuff, but to review, Transporter is this cool product which is

00:43:52 ◼   ► basically, it works in software like Dropbox, but it's a hardware external drive enclosure

00:44:00 ◼   ► that you own and control. So you buy this enclosure or their new product called Transporter

00:44:05 ◼   ► sync which just has a USB port and you plug in any external hard drive that you already

00:44:10 ◼   ► have. So you buy this enclosure or this adapter for your existing enclosure and your hard

00:44:17 ◼   ► drive becomes a cloud storage drive. And it's private and it's secure, everything's encrypted

00:44:22 ◼   ► back and forth over the internet, so you can have this thing in your house and you can

00:44:27 ◼   ► have another one in somebody else's house or your office and you can have certain folders

00:44:31 ◼   ► or the whole things sync to each other. You can install software on your computer or on

00:44:35 ◼   ► on any of your computers, or even on your iPhone or Android devices, and, iOS Android

00:44:40 ◼   ► devices, excuse me, and you can access everything over the internet from that hard drive that's

00:44:46 ◼   ► sitting in your house. And all these folders, all these files are not stored on the cloud,

00:44:52 ◼   ► they are stored only on that drive, or whatever computers you're syncing to it, so everything

00:44:58 ◼   ► is private, it's secure, it's easier for certain regulatory compliances, it's easier for personal

00:45:04 ◼   ► privacy and for, you know, if your principles or standards are such that you don't want

00:45:08 ◼   ► to store your stuff on cloud drives, if you're worried about security or the NSA, it's really

00:45:13 ◼   ► this very nice product for this kind of hard to explain thing, but trust me, it's awesome.

00:45:19 ◼   ► Just think of it like Dropbox, where you own the hard drive that everything's stored on.

00:45:24 ◼   ► And they have this awesome software, you install it, it's called connected desktop. They have

00:45:29 ◼   ► a new feature in version 2.4,

00:45:33 ◼   ► now you can select to automatically sync

00:45:36 ◼   ► your special user folders on Mac OS X. You can say, like,

00:45:39 ◼   ► sync the desktop documents, downloads, movies, pictures, music, like, you know, all

00:45:43 ◼   ► these special

00:45:45 ◼   ► media or destination folders. You can have those

00:45:47 ◼   ► sync with folders on your transport automatically and sync between any

00:45:51 ◼   ► computers you have connected to the transporter.

00:45:53 ◼   ► So think about the possible uses of that. I mean, that's incredible.

00:45:56 ◼   ► You can have all your photos synced

00:45:58 ◼   ► from your photos directory, no special directories, not in this Dropbox folder or anything, not

00:46:03 ◼   ► on a network share, you can have everything synced locally, that's really powerful.

00:46:07 ◼   ► You can also upload photos directly from your iOS device to your transporter with their

00:46:11 ◼   ► iPhone and iPad apps.

00:46:14 ◼   ► Really great stuff going on there, they're really, they're doing a lot of improvements

00:46:17 ◼   ► to the software, they're adding new capabilities all the time to these things, and best of

00:46:20 ◼   ► all, their prices were already pretty good, and now they've cut their prices for the transporters

00:46:26 ◼   ► hard drives in them by $50. So now, the 2 terabyte transporter model is just $349. A

00:46:33 ◼   ► 1 terabyte transporter is just $249. 500 gigs, just $199. And you can get the transporter

00:46:40 ◼   ► sync, it's like a little disk almost. And that's the one you can plug in your own hard

00:46:46 ◼   ► drive. And that's just $99. So it's a really, really good deal here. And there's no monthly

00:46:52 ◼   ► fees. You know, any kind of cloud service you're going to pay monthly fees. With Transporter,

00:46:57 ◼   ► you own the drive. You just buy it up front and then that's it. There is no monthly fee

00:47:01 ◼   ► to access things, even the syncing procedure that happens over the internet. There's no

00:47:05 ◼   ► fee for that. It's just yours. You just own it. So, really great. Go to filetransporter.com/atp.

00:47:13 ◼   ► You can watch the sandwich video, which we love. We love our friend Adam's sandwich,

00:47:17 ◼   ► so you can go watch the sandwich video

00:47:20 ◼   ► at filetransporter.com/ATP.

00:47:23 ◼   ► And besides those already low prices

00:47:26 ◼   ► that I just told you about,

00:47:26 ◼   ► you can save another 10% off

00:47:29 ◼   ► by buying transporters at the company store.

00:47:31 ◼   ► Go to filetransportersstore.com.

00:47:33 ◼   ► Use discount code ATP, and you can save another 10%.

00:47:36 ◼   ► So thanks a lot to File Transporter

00:47:38 ◼   ► for sponsoring our show once again.

00:47:40 ◼   ► - So John, you had just asked about privacy.

00:47:43 ◼   ► Do you care to restate the question, sir?

00:47:46 ◼   ► Yeah, well, it's mostly DeMarco because he's the most anti-Google amongst us.

00:47:51 ◼   ► A lot of people are freaking out over privacy concerns that not only are their Nest devices

00:47:56 ◼   ► going to start spying on them, but now Nest, previously the company that they loved and

00:48:02 ◼   ► trusted is going to start making new products that come pre-installed with Google's evil

00:48:07 ◼   ► and they'll spy on you and steal your skull and do whatever they do.

00:48:11 ◼   ► So you said you're not going to get rid of your Nest things, but how do you feel about

00:48:14 ◼   ► like previously if we asked you how do you feel about the company nasty bug

00:48:18 ◼   ► yeah they're right whatever and now it's like oh no Google has them there now

00:48:21 ◼   ► they're evil I would certainly hesitate before ever buying another one that's

00:48:27 ◼   ► that's for sure but I think you know I'm not gonna I'm not gonna rip the curtains

00:48:31 ◼   ► off the wall I mean my I don't hate Google I'm a I'm kind of just a maybe a

00:48:37 ◼   ► skeptic or maybe a cynic but certainly a skeptic and and by that I mean you know

00:48:42 ◼   ► I don't mean that I look at everything and try to find the worst possible interpretation.

00:48:47 ◼   ► I just try, I look at things and I try to cut through the corporate speak and the, you

00:48:52 ◼   ► know, "Hey, we're all friends here," kind of, you know, patronization.

00:48:56 ◼   ► Patronization?

00:48:57 ◼   ► Patronization?

00:48:58 ◼   ► Anyway.

00:48:59 ◼   ► Either way.

00:49:00 ◼   ► Try to cut through all that and because corporate communication is just infected with bloat

00:49:06 ◼   ► and euphemism and just diversions.

00:49:11 ◼   ► All this crap to candy-coat bad news

00:49:15 ◼   ► or to hide things that they don't really want you

00:49:18 ◼   ► to think about or that are inconvenient for you

00:49:22 ◼   ► to think about.

00:49:23 ◼   ► And we used to think that the tech industry

00:49:26 ◼   ► was different and real, and now the tech industry

00:49:29 ◼   ► is big enough that that's not the case.

00:49:30 ◼   ► The tech industry has just as much corporate crap

00:49:32 ◼   ► in all of its communication as everybody else does.

00:49:34 ◼   ► So I try to cut through all that and look at things realistically because history has

00:49:39 ◼   ► proven that all of these nice candy-coated statements from the big tech companies, there's

00:49:45 ◼   ► usually a real truth there that's less pretty if you think about it.

00:49:52 ◼   ► And again, history has proven that that is usually the case.

00:49:55 ◼   ► Once you see what companies say versus what happens and what happens next and what happens

00:49:59 ◼   ► two years later, I think I'm not being unreasonable with a lot of this stuff.

00:50:04 ◼   ► So, and I'm not saying I'm always right

00:50:06 ◼   ► that everyone's always, you know, turns evil or anything,

00:50:08 ◼   ► but I think history has shown that there's good reason

00:50:12 ◼   ► to be skeptical of what companies tell you,

00:50:14 ◼   ► and there's good reason to try to cut through

00:50:16 ◼   ► some of this crap that tries to candy-coat and spin things.

00:50:18 ◼   ► So, I look at what they're doing here, and I say,

00:50:22 ◼   ► well, you know, obviously they say now

00:50:25 ◼   ► that you don't have to worry.

00:50:27 ◼   ► We're keeping these companies as separate units,

00:50:30 ◼   ► and Nest data will only be used

00:50:32 ◼   ► improve Nest products and services. But obviously that doesn't really mean anything because

00:50:37 ◼   ► they can always change that, because privacy policies can always be changed. So they can

00:50:40 ◼   ► always change that. And the definition of what exactly a Nest product and service is

00:50:45 ◼   ► can be so broad once they're owned by Google, then it doesn't really matter.

00:50:50 ◼   ► So if you're concerned about Nest data being used by Google, then that's a valid concern.

00:50:58 ◼   ► and I don't think you can trust anything that they say

00:51:00 ◼   ► to the contrary that you shouldn't be concerned about that.

00:51:03 ◼   ► I think if you don't want Google knowing stuff

00:51:06 ◼   ► that your nest can find out or can infer,

00:51:11 ◼   ► then that's a valid concern and their statements

00:51:17 ◼   ► have not done anything to really alleviate that

00:51:19 ◼   ► to any critical eye.

00:51:21 ◼   ► That being said, me personally,

00:51:22 ◼   ► I don't care that strongly about it.

00:51:26 ◼   ► If I cared so strongly, I would block Google in my hosts file

00:51:30 ◼   ► and just not ever use any of their services

00:51:33 ◼   ► and block all of their embeds everywhere

00:51:35 ◼   ► and just be fine with that.

00:51:38 ◼   ► I don't care that strongly about it.

00:51:41 ◼   ► I try to keep a somewhat healthy distance from Google,

00:51:44 ◼   ► but I still use their stuff when it's the best tool

00:51:46 ◼   ► for the job for what I'm doing.

00:51:48 ◼   ► And so I still use search.

00:51:49 ◼   ► I still use maps and probably some other stuff

00:51:53 ◼   ► I'm not even aware of.

00:51:54 ◼   ► I still use analytics on my site, even though I hate it.

00:51:57 ◼   ► I still use it.

00:51:59 ◼   ► And so I don't care that strongly about it.

00:52:02 ◼   ► And I think caring so strongly to try to avoid one company--

00:52:07 ◼   ► like bending over backwards to avoid one company

00:52:10 ◼   ► is usually just hurting yourself.

00:52:13 ◼   ► And it's like when people have a bad experience flying

00:52:16 ◼   ► somewhere.

00:52:17 ◼   ► And then they're like, oh, I'm never going to fly Delta

00:52:19 ◼   ► or whatever again.

00:52:20 ◼   ► They're out of airlines at five years.

00:52:22 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:52:23 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:52:24 ◼   ► all suck. Exactly. And so that's how this stuff is. Like every tech giant, Apple included,

00:52:29 ◼   ► does stuff that I don't like and that offends me. And so you just kind of have to look at

00:52:34 ◼   ► pragmatism and say, "Well, okay, you know, I could go full Stalman or I could be useful."

00:52:42 ◼   ► And it's, you know, I choose to have things be a little bit easier. And everybody makes

00:52:46 ◼   ► the same trade-off. That's why all these ad-supported, creepy services are able to exist and thrive

00:52:51 ◼   ► so well because everybody's making that same trade-off. People say, "I don't want to pay

00:52:54 ◼   ► for email hosting." Fine, I'll go to Gmail. It's good enough or it's the best in their

00:52:59 ◼   ► opinion and that's fine with them. So, you know, everyone has a line where they draw

00:53:04 ◼   ► to say like, "Well, I will tolerate, you know, X amount of ad/creepiness/cost to me. I will

00:53:12 ◼   ► tolerate that in exchange for the service or product that I want to use." And, you know,

00:53:19 ◼   ► I'm not saying that you should necessarily move that line and where you draw it.

00:53:24 ◼   ► I just think it's worth knowing what you're getting into and looking at things critically.

00:53:30 ◼   ► I think I'm probably the biggest Google fan amongst us.

00:53:33 ◼   ► I use more of their products.

00:53:34 ◼   ► I use Gmail as my mail.

00:53:37 ◼   ► I use their calendar.

00:53:38 ◼   ► I use Analytics.

00:53:39 ◼   ► I use their search.

00:53:42 ◼   ► How I even use Google+ sometimes.

00:53:43 ◼   ► I have, of course, YouTube and everything.

00:53:47 ◼   ► I think where a lot of the commentary on Google Nest and Google privacy concerns from you,

00:53:54 ◼   ► Marco, but also from other people, goes wrong is not so much in what's going to happen,

00:54:01 ◼   ► but why.

00:54:02 ◼   ► So the thing about, you know, so obviously Nest and Google stuff is going to be integrated

00:54:06 ◼   ► and, you know, they're going to share data and anything Nest does by definition is to

00:54:13 ◼   ► improve Nest products.

00:54:14 ◼   ► So that's a meaningless statement and blah, blah, blah.

00:54:16 ◼   ► So Google Nest are going to be connected.

00:54:18 ◼   ► Google is going to connect up all that information too, all the way through all of its other

00:54:21 ◼   ► products because that's what Google does.

00:54:23 ◼   ► And I think a lot of those things could be cool, could enhance Google's products, could

00:54:28 ◼   ► enhance Nest.

00:54:29 ◼   ► It will make Nest better.

00:54:30 ◼   ► It will make your Android phone better.

00:54:31 ◼   ► It will make Google Search better.

00:54:33 ◼   ► It will make Maps better.

00:54:34 ◼   ► It will make driving directions better.

00:54:37 ◼   ► There's a lot of synergy, as they say in the business, between this because more sensors

00:54:43 ◼   ► and more data makes more intelligent decisions, and that's all good. And I think that's mostly

00:54:49 ◼   ► how Google sees it, because the people who work there are thinking sci-fi, like what can we do

00:54:54 ◼   ► if we had all this information? People always wanted sensors and stuff in the home and smart

00:54:59 ◼   ► homes and all this other crap, and Google sees a way to make that happen. So we know that's going

00:55:04 ◼   ► to happen, right? And the next thing is like, okay, well, once that happens, this is all happening

00:55:11 ◼   ► kind of within one company, you know, Google, even though it's Google Nest or whatever,

00:55:16 ◼   ► this is all happening, like, there's some centralization of power. Google was already

00:55:19 ◼   ► so powerful because it had search and everything, and now just more and more information is

00:55:22 ◼   ► accumulating into Google, which is why people get pissed off at Google+ integrating with

00:55:26 ◼   ► YouTube comments and everything. It's like, they want to think of it as silos, even though

00:55:30 ◼   ► it's totally not behind the scenes, and once it becomes clear to them this is all going

00:55:33 ◼   ► to one place, they think, "Oh my god, this one company knows so much about me. If I think,

00:55:37 ◼   ► what does Google know about me?" They know everything about me. You know, you're worried

00:55:40 ◼   ► about like the NSA having metadata on your phone calls and everything. If you use all

00:55:44 ◼   ► of Google services, they have way more information than the NSA. Now obviously that's different

00:55:48 ◼   ► because the NSA is taking it unwillingly and they're the government and I'm not saying

00:55:51 ◼   ► this is your equivalent, but I'm just saying there's a lot of information about you and

00:55:54 ◼   ► Google.

00:55:55 ◼   ► And here's where I think it goes wrong. The danger of Google having all this information

00:56:01 ◼   ► is not that Google is going to do terrible things with it. The danger of Google having

00:56:05 ◼   ► all this information is that Google will do something stupid or people will hack them

00:56:10 ◼   ► Although get them I mean just look at the target thing of getting all information all this credit card information on target

00:56:14 ◼   ► whatever any giant pool of

00:56:15 ◼   ► information about people as a target and the more centralized that pool is in the more valuable the information is and the more of it

00:56:21 ◼   ► There is the more it's a target, and I don't think Google is going to

00:56:25 ◼   ► Get all this information and be evil with it although depending on your definition of evil that that may have already happened

00:56:31 ◼   ► I think what the danger is all this information is gathering into this big funnel into Google and

00:56:37 ◼   ► Google will allow that information to leak out into the world accidentally people will get it from them. It will leak out

00:56:42 ◼   ► unintentionally

00:56:43 ◼   ► Because that's the nature of the thing like if you if you we've been putting credit cards into these giant databases for years

00:56:48 ◼   ► And we just kept doing that and kept doing that until finally

00:56:51 ◼   ► You know there's like a little chink in the dam and some credit cards get stolen or whatever eventually

00:56:54 ◼   ► It's going to be look every credit card every issue has now been stolen like that's good

00:56:58 ◼   ► That's that's gonna happen eventually because you this information is in too many places

00:57:01 ◼   ► It's all over the place, and I think where people go wrong with their criticism

00:57:06 ◼   ► like, "Google is mean and evil, and they're doing this because they're evil." No, it's

00:57:09 ◼   ► incompetence that's going to happen. What's going to happen is they're doing it because

00:57:12 ◼   ► they are well-intentioned and they want to make cool products, and then that information

00:57:16 ◼   ► will get out because it's impossible not for it not to get out, and then we're all

00:57:20 ◼   ► screwed.

00:57:21 ◼   ► Yeah, you know, I think the thing that people find alarming is that Google is getting demonstrably

00:57:30 ◼   ► better over time at figuring you out and getting a more complete picture of who you are and

00:57:37 ◼   ► what you do. For example, at work, I was sitting there, this was two or three months ago, and

00:57:45 ◼   ► somebody started like kind of spazzing out at their computer and they were kind of muttering

00:57:48 ◼   ► to themselves, "Whoa, whoa, what? Huh?" And then the same almost exact same thing

00:57:53 ◼   ► happened just a week or two ago. And what was going on was when that person, one of

00:57:58 ◼   ► co-workers went to Google.com, it had like, I didn't see it myself, but it had like confetti

00:58:05 ◼   ► or something and it said, "Happy birthday, John Smith," because it knew that that day

00:58:11 ◼   ► was that person's birthday because they were signed into Gmail or whatever the case may

00:58:15 ◼   ► be.

00:58:16 ◼   ► And so on the Google homepage, it said, "Hey, happy birthday, John," and that they found

00:58:20 ◼   ► to be very creepy, not necessarily because wishing you a happy birthday is bad, but it

00:58:26 ◼   ► It was taking information that, yes, they willingly provided to Google, but to maybe

00:58:31 ◼   ► Gmail for example, and using it on Google.com.

00:58:35 ◼   ► And just like you said, Jon, it's not really siloed, but it sort of feels siloed to a normal

00:58:42 ◼   ► person and to myself included.

00:58:44 ◼   ► I use Gmail and I use Google Calendar.

00:58:46 ◼   ► I don't know if I go so far as to say I use these services begrudgingly, but I'm giving

00:58:52 ◼   ► it harder and harder side-eye with each passing year.

00:58:55 ◼   ► And I think that, again, the real problem is that Google is getting a more complete

00:58:59 ◼   ► picture of who we are.

00:59:01 ◼   ► And to think that they're getting a more complete picture of who we are, even at home,

00:59:07 ◼   ► when we are most unreserved, is creepy.

00:59:10 ◼   ► Now to argue with myself for a moment, a friend of the show, Stephen Hackett, had a couple

00:59:15 ◼   ► of really good tweets earlier today that I'm going to read real quick.

00:59:21 ◼   ► He said, "Maybe we should keep our pants on.

00:59:22 ◼   ► I don't particularly care for Google's policies, but fearing your thermostat spying on you

00:59:26 ◼   ► is nuts."

00:59:27 ◼   ► Then he went on to say, "I'm more upset about what seemed to be a cool, innovative

00:59:32 ◼   ► company leaving the market, and I left Gmail months ago."

00:59:36 ◼   ► And I think that that was a nice way of saying, "We all need to relax, and this may not

00:59:41 ◼   ► be so bad."

00:59:42 ◼   ► And I think that's both right and wrong.

00:59:43 ◼   ► I don't think it's going to be bad soon.

00:59:46 ◼   ► It may not be bad at all.

00:59:48 ◼   ► But the thing that creeps me out is when I was in college, I was just graduating from

00:59:54 ◼   ► Virginia Tech in 2004, and this was right around the time that Gmail came out.

00:59:59 ◼   ► I remember coveting a Gmail invite like nobody's business.

01:00:04 ◼   ► Oh my goodness.

01:00:05 ◼   ► They were for sale on eBay for like $100.

01:00:07 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:00:08 ◼   ► And so I wanted one so, so badly.

01:00:11 ◼   ► And so I eventually had a friend at school that got one and he gave me an invite and

01:00:19 ◼   ► oh my god I was so excited because Google doesn't do evil.

01:00:22 ◼   ► It says it in their friggin' motto, "They don't do evil."

01:00:25 ◼   ► And I was so excited to have a Gmail invite I could get away, well I knew I was going

01:00:29 ◼   ► to have to leave my Virginia Tech email address and I didn't want to have to go back to like

01:00:33 ◼   ► Hotmail from when I was 10.

01:00:35 ◼   ► And so, oh man, I was so excited to be on Gmail.

01:00:39 ◼   ► fast forward from 2004 to 2014, a decade later,

01:00:43 ◼   ► and every time Google does something,

01:00:45 ◼   ► I end up giving it harder and harder side-eye.

01:00:48 ◼   ► And I look at it again and be like, hmm, that--

01:00:51 ◼   ► - I think you're doing the same thing, though,

01:00:53 ◼   ► that got your friend who was freaked out

01:00:54 ◼   ► about the birthday thing,

01:00:55 ◼   ► and you are both misattributing your discomfort to Google.

01:00:59 ◼   ► Google does not have, your personal information

01:01:02 ◼   ► does not have any value to Google in the way that you mean.

01:01:05 ◼   ► Like, now they know that you're cheating on your wife

01:01:08 ◼   ► they have this information, they're going to attack you with it.

01:01:11 ◼   ► That information is useless to Google unless they can sell you like, you know, what is

01:01:16 ◼   ► that, ashleymadison.com or whatever that website is that you, you know, like, it's, they, there

01:01:20 ◼   ► is no, there is no person there salaciously trolling through the details of your information.

01:01:26 ◼   ► But the discomfort you feel is founded and it's founded in not that Google is going to

01:01:30 ◼   ► do evil things with your thing, is that once Google has that information, everybody else

01:01:35 ◼   ► who would want that information knows exactly where to get it.

01:01:38 ◼   ► They go to Google.

01:01:39 ◼   ► If you want to find out what's going on in someone's life, well, guess what?

01:01:42 ◼   ► I know where there's enough information.

01:01:44 ◼   ► Think of a politician who uses Google services.

01:01:47 ◼   ► I bet their competitor in a close race would love to get every bit of information Google

01:01:51 ◼   ► has about them.

01:01:52 ◼   ► Google's not going to use that information.

01:01:53 ◼   ► It is not in Google's best interest, probably, to sway the outcome of political races or

01:02:00 ◼   ► any—maybe politics is a bad choice because it actually probably would be in Google's

01:02:03 ◼   ► interest.

01:02:04 ◼   ► like more mundane things like I know you know that you didn't go to school today

01:02:08 ◼   ► because I tracked where your GPS was on your Android phone because your check-ins

01:02:12 ◼   ► and I'm going to tell your parents that you didn't go to school. Google is not

01:02:14 ◼   ► going to do that. It is really dumb to do evil things with that information but

01:02:18 ◼   ► once Google has that information, once that information is in one place

01:02:22 ◼   ► everybody else who wants to do bad things to you, the mundane you know your

01:02:27 ◼   ► random jerky guy down the block or a bunch of hackers who want to get it and

01:02:31 ◼   ► sell it to people who want to use it or whatever. That's the problem. So when people, when you're

01:02:35 ◼   ► giving Google your hard side eye, it's not that you shouldn't be afraid that Google is

01:02:40 ◼   ► going to do evil stuff, because that would be incredibly stupid for Google to do evil

01:02:43 ◼   ► stuff to you. It would not be in their interest. But you do know that they have this information,

01:02:49 ◼   ► and you do know that there's someone out there who could want it, and now they know where

01:02:52 ◼   ► to get it.

01:02:53 ◼   ► Yeah, and I think you're right, but it's not necessarily about Google doing evil. It's

01:02:58 ◼   ► It's about mundane things that you think should fly under everyone's radar don't anymore.

01:03:06 ◼   ► And let me give you a concrete example.

01:03:08 ◼   ► A friend of mine at work, my buddy George, he said to me, "Oh, you know, I was looking

01:03:12 ◼   ► up how much it would be to pay off the rest of the loan on my car."

01:03:17 ◼   ► And he said, "I did this on Saturday," or something like that.

01:03:20 ◼   ► "Well, get this, Casey," he says, "Come Monday, I got a call from my dealer that I

01:03:26 ◼   ► bought the car from saying, "Hey man, did you ever think about coming in and upgrading

01:03:30 ◼   ► your car?"

01:03:32 ◼   ► And there was something else he had said to me, and I don't recall what it was, but it

01:03:35 ◼   ► was a couple, like maybe he got an email from someone else that wanted to get him into a

01:03:40 ◼   ► new BMW.

01:03:42 ◼   ► He has a BMW now.

01:03:43 ◼   ► And so it was very creepy that him doing nothing but looking at how much it would cost to finish

01:03:50 ◼   ► his loan presumably, I mean we don't know this for sure, but presumably led to some

01:03:57 ◼   ► dealer calling him and saying, "Hey, do you want to get into a new BMW? I bet we can

01:04:02 ◼   ► make that happen." And so the point I'm driving at is this was a very mundane thing

01:04:07 ◼   ► that he didn't think would make any difference and suddenly he's now getting heckled from

01:04:11 ◼   ► a dealer because of it. And I think Google having a more complete picture of who each

01:04:16 ◼   ► one of us is could lead to things like that.

01:04:19 ◼   ► Another example is, Tyty in the chat earlier said, and I read the same article but I forget

01:04:24 ◼   ► the details, that Target had started emailing some woman's, some young lady's dad because

01:04:32 ◼   ► they like shared a credit card or something like that, information like, "Hey, we think

01:04:37 ◼   ► you might like the following things."

01:04:39 ◼   ► And the things were all things for new moms.

01:04:41 ◼   ► So Target had deduced, based on the purchases that the young woman made, that she was probably

01:04:47 ◼   ► pregnant and would probably need the following things.

01:04:50 ◼   ► And so her dad found out that his daughter was—that the daughter was pregnant by way

01:04:55 ◼   ► of Target saying, "Hey, we think you might want the following."

01:04:58 ◼   ► And that's just weird.

01:04:59 ◼   ► But that's like—that was old world tech.

01:05:01 ◼   ► We've been tracking up purchases on credit cards for decades and, you know, that you

01:05:05 ◼   ► don't need too much information to do that.

01:05:06 ◼   ► Sure.

01:05:07 ◼   ► But what I'm thinking about is where—how do you make this system work?

01:05:09 ◼   ► Because in some respects, it's inevitable that there's going to be more information

01:05:12 ◼   ► about all of us out there and it's going to be more interconnected.

01:05:13 ◼   ► And that's just the bottom line.

01:05:15 ◼   ► Like there's no turning back on that.

01:05:16 ◼   ► Because the usefulness of it is too great.

01:05:17 ◼   ► It outweighs the same thing with credit cards.

01:05:20 ◼   ► When you pay for everything with cash, nobody knew what you bought.

01:05:22 ◼   ► But credit cards are way too convenient.

01:05:23 ◼   ► We were willing to live with the fact that the credit card company knows everything we

01:05:25 ◼   ► buy.

01:05:26 ◼   ► We made that decision decades ago.

01:05:28 ◼   ► Everyone's okay with it.

01:05:29 ◼   ► The fallout of it is sometimes Target sends you a thing for baby toys and your dad finds

01:05:33 ◼   ► out you're pregnant.

01:05:34 ◼   ► I think that's the tradeoff we've made, right?

01:05:37 ◼   ► But as the volume of information goes up,

01:05:38 ◼   ► I think our laws need to keep up with it.

01:05:40 ◼   ► And I think what we're missing here in these laws--

01:05:42 ◼   ► and again, setting aside the NSA for now,

01:05:44 ◼   ► because that's extra legal.

01:05:46 ◼   ► They are the law, like Judge Dredd.

01:05:48 ◼   ► [LAUGHTER]

01:05:51 ◼   ► What we're missing here is, I think

01:05:53 ◼   ► there's no turning back the tide.

01:05:55 ◼   ► There's no going full Stahlman and saying

01:05:57 ◼   ► you can't collect this information or whatever

01:05:59 ◼   ► or trying to do some sort of informational antitrust

01:06:05 ◼   ► monopoly thing.

01:06:05 ◼   ► like, oh, no one company can have X amount of information

01:06:08 ◼   ► about you.

01:06:08 ◼   ► I don't even think that's going to work.

01:06:10 ◼   ► What you have to do is say, look,

01:06:11 ◼   ► we know you're going to collect all the information,

01:06:13 ◼   ► but it's illegal to do X, Y, and Z with that information.

01:06:16 ◼   ► How about it's illegal to look at that information?

01:06:19 ◼   ► It would have to be privately encrypted.

01:06:20 ◼   ► It's illegal for you to sell that information.

01:06:22 ◼   ► But right now, once Google has that information of yours,

01:06:25 ◼   ► there are very few limits on what they can do with it.

01:06:28 ◼   ► And it should be like, you can collect all this information,

01:06:32 ◼   ► but understand that you're collecting it for my benefit.

01:06:34 ◼   ► I can know how long my commute's going to take.

01:06:36 ◼   ► So my phone can tell me that my wife is running late and just went to the store.

01:06:40 ◼   ► But certainly you can't give that information to anyone else.

01:06:44 ◼   ► And if we find out someone in your company is looking at that information, it's a felony,

01:06:49 ◼   ► and they go to jail, there is a gap in the law because the laws don't expect any one

01:06:54 ◼   ► company to know that much about one person.

01:06:56 ◼   ► And right now the law's like, "Hey, you totally clicked agree.

01:06:59 ◼   ► You totally signed up.

01:07:00 ◼   ► You gave them that information.

01:07:01 ◼   ► Google owns that information.

01:07:02 ◼   ► You don't own that information.

01:07:03 ◼   ► That's not part of your life.

01:07:04 ◼   ► And that's the gap that we have that needs to be addressed.

01:07:07 ◼   ► Because there's no way you're going

01:07:08 ◼   ► to stop them from collecting it.

01:07:09 ◼   ► And I think we all want them to collect it.

01:07:11 ◼   ► We just want to know that that information is being collected

01:07:13 ◼   ► on our behalf, and there are strict limits on what they

01:07:15 ◼   ► can do with that information.

01:07:17 ◼   ► And if you violate those limits, bad thing

01:07:19 ◼   ► happens to individuals, to companies.

01:07:22 ◼   ► I don't know what chances that we'll ever get laws like that.

01:07:24 ◼   ► But I think that's what needs to happen,

01:07:27 ◼   ► because the other things are just not going to happen.

01:07:29 ◼   ► We're not going to stop them from collecting it.

01:07:31 ◼   ► Yeah, that makes sense.

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01:08:16 ◼   ► or whether it's bucketed by different amounts.

01:08:19 ◼   ► If you have different usage this month than last month,

01:08:23 ◼   ► no problem, they'll automatically bill you

01:08:25 ◼   ► for whatever you used, whatever bin you fit into,

01:08:27 ◼   ► whatever the cheapest bin is that you fit into,

01:08:29 ◼   ► they'll bill you for that.

01:08:31 ◼   ► Very smart, no BS, very simple, it's a great deal.

01:08:35 ◼   ► You can even see how much you're gonna save with Ting

01:08:38 ◼   ► by going to ATP.Ting.com

01:08:40 ◼   ► and checking out their savings calculator.

01:08:43 ◼   ► You can enter in your last few bills from your carrier,

01:08:45 ◼   ► you can even have them scrape your Verizon account

01:08:47 ◼   ► if you wanna give them your Verizon credentials.

01:08:49 ◼   ► It's great.

01:08:50 ◼   ► And they'll even,

01:08:51 ◼   ► let's say you have an early termination fee.

01:08:53 ◼   ► So you're like, well, I don't wanna break my contract,

01:08:55 ◼   ► I'll have to pay this fee.

01:08:56 ◼   ► Well, to help make that easier for you,

01:08:58 ◼   ► Ting will even give you 25% of it,

01:09:00 ◼   ► to $75 in Ting credit if you have to pay a fee like that.

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01:09:32 ◼   ► Plus, of course, all the online support options you can wish for in case you don't like calling people

01:09:36 ◼   ► in this ad about calling people.

01:09:38 ◼   ► So, you can add as many devices to your account as you'd like.

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01:09:45 ◼   ► It's actually really nice if you have to manage a fleet of devices, for instance.

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01:09:58 ◼   ► Let's say you wanted to just lower your monthly bill

01:10:00 ◼   ► and you use enough data or minutes in such a way

01:10:04 ◼   ► that you're kind of getting ripped off

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01:10:08 ◼   ► Great for all that.

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01:10:28 ◼   ► Tons of options.

01:10:29 ◼   ► Great provider here.

01:10:30 ◼   ► Go to ATP.Ting.com.

01:10:32 ◼   ► Thanks a lot to Ting for sponsoring the show.

01:10:34 ◼   ► I was thinking about laws that protect privacy of information held by private companies,

01:10:40 ◼   ► and the thing that should have occurred to me because it's related to my work is HIPAA,

01:10:43 ◼   ► which is the existing law for protecting your health information.

01:10:47 ◼   ► And that's a case where the information was sensitive enough that there was the political

01:10:53 ◼   ► capital to make laws to address this because they're like, "Okay, well, your doctors have

01:10:57 ◼   ► this information about your health," and most people feel that that's so sensitive that

01:11:01 ◼   ► like, "Okay, I'm giving you this information about my health, but you just can't give it

01:11:05 ◼   ► to anyone you want.

01:11:06 ◼   ► You don't own the information about my health.

01:11:07 ◼   ► You can't tell my boss that I have some incurable disease or even my wife for that matter.

01:11:14 ◼   ► That information is private."

01:11:15 ◼   ► And so there are laws saying what people who deal with health information can and can't

01:11:19 ◼   ► do with it.

01:11:20 ◼   ► Now, those laws I think are still too lax.

01:11:22 ◼   ► I say this working for a healthcare company, in terms of like what the punishments are.

01:11:27 ◼   ► Because if you, first of all, people who sort of work with healthcare information, if they

01:11:33 ◼   ► have a business-related reason to see it, it's okay for them to see it as part of their

01:11:38 ◼   ► work, working on information systems to deal with it.

01:11:40 ◼   ► Otherwise, how could they deal with it, right?

01:11:44 ◼   ► But if you see information that you're not supposed to, or there technically isn't a

01:11:47 ◼   ► work-related reason, the penalties to the company and the individual are probably not

01:11:51 ◼   ► as severe as they should be, especially at the company level, like where they do fines

01:11:55 ◼   ► and the fine values were set sometime when the law was made and it's like, that's like,

01:11:58 ◼   ► you know, seven hours of revenue for our company. Who cares? It's not a big deal. Like, you

01:12:02 ◼   ► don't want it to be like the cost of doing business. So, any kind of law that's protecting

01:12:06 ◼   ► information like this? Does Google have a healthcare information? Well, I think they

01:12:09 ◼   ► probably had some healthcare initiative like every other company has at some point. But

01:12:12 ◼   ► for the most part, no, they don't have...

01:12:15 ◼   ► HOFFMAN, Wasn't that part of the island plan, that all your health information would be

01:12:20 ◼   ► open source or something?

01:12:21 ◼   ► Yeah, every company has done something involving healthcare, fictional, unreal.

01:12:29 ◼   ► But if you look at a certain point, I think the accumulation of information that Google

01:12:33 ◼   ► has about you will be more of a privacy concern than information protected by HIPAA.

01:12:40 ◼   ► Especially for most people who maybe don't have that much health, but Google would know

01:12:45 ◼   ► where you are every second of the day, what you're doing, what your comings and goings

01:12:49 ◼   ► what your searches are, what every email to and from you said, what your text messages said,

01:12:53 ◼   ► they will know. Put it this way, getting back to the evil political opponent, if you were given

01:13:01 ◼   ► two choices, you can have complete access to your political opponent's healthcare records,

01:13:04 ◼   ► or you can have complete access to everything Google knows about them.

01:13:07 ◼   ► If you were a betting man, you would say, "I'll take the Google information, please."

01:13:11 ◼   ► Because unless there's some health information, like he has a terminal disease or something,

01:13:15 ◼   ► that's your only real chance. Don't elect him, he's going to die soon.

01:13:18 ◼   ► But the Google information, boy, especially if it's ongoing, give me the Google information

01:13:24 ◼   ► feed on my opponent.

01:13:25 ◼   ► That's super valuable.

01:13:26 ◼   ► So the laws the government of Google can do with the information we give them should already

01:13:31 ◼   ► be stronger than HIPAA.

01:13:33 ◼   ► And HIPAA, I think, could be stronger still.

01:13:35 ◼   ► So we're far from that, but what else is new?

01:13:38 ◼   ► Welcome to America.

01:13:39 ◼   ► [laughter]

01:13:40 ◼   ► One thing that gives me hope is here.

01:13:43 ◼   ► I'm going to put this link in the notes.

01:13:47 ◼   ► It's an article on The Verge by Nielai Patel, who hates me, but I like him.

01:13:51 ◼   ► And it's about—he posted a couple of days ago, yesterday, about, you know, called "Why

01:13:56 ◼   ► Is Everyone Disappointed by Google Buying Nest?"

01:13:58 ◼   ► And at the end, he says, "Google—" like, people are becoming skeptical of Google's

01:14:02 ◼   ► motives and becoming a little afraid of here, afraid of an unchecked Google.

01:14:08 ◼   ► What's the date on this, Lake?

01:14:09 ◼   ► Because I'm pretty sure we all had this conversation, like, three years ago.

01:14:13 ◼   ► About, "Hey, people are becoming—I swear.

01:14:16 ◼   ► on an actual podcast, maybe exactly three years ago, I remember being on a podcast where

01:14:22 ◼   ► we were talking about this, the tide had turned. Maybe it was Google thinking of buying Twitter

01:14:28 ◼   ► or something, and that was the talking point. It's like, "Hey, remember when we used to

01:14:31 ◼   ► be excited when Google would buy somebody, and nowadays, or excited when our favorite

01:14:36 ◼   ► startup got bought, and nowadays when Google buys somebody, we're like, 'Aw, well, that's

01:14:41 ◼   ► the end of that, and now they're going to be evil.'" This, I think, you could keep rerunning

01:14:46 ◼   ► this story every year every time they buy something?

01:14:49 ◼   ► Well, I think I've felt a shift in this myself, just anecdotally, because I've been

01:14:56 ◼   ► skeptical of Google and expressing fear of an unchecked Google, I think a few years longer

01:15:03 ◼   ► than most people have in the tech writing world. And I kind of felt like I was being

01:15:10 ◼   ► like my own crazy paranoid self out in the middle of the woods.

01:15:14 ◼   ► You are.

01:15:15 ◼   ► That's true, but it felt like I was the only one who felt this way, who wasn't that excited

01:15:21 ◼   ► whenever Google would roll out some new feature that would crush a whole industry.

01:15:26 ◼   ► I was never all in on Google.

01:15:31 ◼   ► Maybe it was the Déjà Nous.

01:15:32 ◼   ► I think maybe that was the thing I'm thinking.

01:15:34 ◼   ► Remember when they bought Déjà Nous?

01:15:35 ◼   ► No.

01:15:36 ◼   ► Do you remember what Déjà Nous was?

01:15:37 ◼   ► Nope.

01:15:38 ◼   ► That's what I'm saying.

01:15:39 ◼   ► It's way back in time.

01:15:40 ◼   ► Déjà Nous was the thing that had all the Usenet posts.

01:15:41 ◼   ► Oh, and that's how they got it all?

01:15:43 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:15:44 ◼   ► That became Google Groups.

01:15:46 ◼   ► And Deja News was like, oh, Deja News is great.

01:15:47 ◼   ► You can find stuff in-- because Usenet was terrible to use

01:15:50 ◼   ► the native way.

01:15:51 ◼   ► And so you would use Deja News.

01:15:53 ◼   ► And they Google bought them.

01:15:54 ◼   ► And everyone was like, oh, that's too bad.

01:15:55 ◼   ► And I don't know what date that is.

01:15:57 ◼   ► Someone in the chat room could look it up.

01:15:58 ◼   ► But that was a long time ago.

01:15:59 ◼   ► And that was, I think, the first time that conversation came up

01:16:02 ◼   ► of, we all love Google.

01:16:04 ◼   ► We all love Deja News.

01:16:05 ◼   ► Why aren't we happy when Google buys Deja News?

01:16:08 ◼   ► Well, Google Groups is why, I guess.

01:16:11 ◼   ► What gives me hope is that this is no longer an isolated

01:16:14 ◼   ► opinion. This is no longer a minority opinion. And it was. Even back then, it was. Even a

01:16:19 ◼   ► year ago, it was. Now, though, people are starting to get a little bit creeped out by

01:16:24 ◼   ► Google, and I think that's the best for everybody, including Google, that people are finally

01:16:29 ◼   ► getting a little bit skeptical, a little bit like, "You know, maybe we should put a little

01:16:34 ◼   ► more critical thought into this before we go celebrate and throw all of our data in

01:16:38 ◼   ► here." And that's very good.

01:16:40 ◼   ► Well, it's spreading wider, right? Like, the nerds have always been concerned, and by the

01:16:44 ◼   ► The chat room says it was 2001 when Google bought DejaNos.

01:16:46 ◼   ► But now it's spreading wider.

01:16:47 ◼   ► I guess The Verge is still a tech nerd site.

01:16:49 ◼   ► But I don't guess I can read enough of The New York Times

01:16:53 ◼   ► and stuff to know.

01:16:54 ◼   ► Is it coming up at that point?

01:16:56 ◼   ► But I think now if you asked the average person,

01:17:00 ◼   ► how do you feel about Google acquiring a company,

01:17:02 ◼   ► they're going to say, I don't know what Nest is.

01:17:04 ◼   ► Explain it to me.

01:17:05 ◼   ► If they think about it for a little while,

01:17:07 ◼   ► it will probably occur to them, Google's getting

01:17:09 ◼   ► a lot of information about us.

01:17:10 ◼   ► And I think it's just been slowly ramping up.

01:17:13 ◼   ► Once we get that mainstream kind of acceptance, but you can take a microphone to anyone on

01:17:16 ◼   ► the street and say, "Hey, Google is thinking of buying X. What do you think about that?"

01:17:20 ◼   ► And they groan, then that's it.

01:17:22 ◼   ► They will have made complete penetration.

01:17:24 ◼   ► So I think it's escalating.

01:17:27 ◼   ► And I guess you measure it in our nerdosphere by the number and volume in terms of loudness

01:17:36 ◼   ► of posts whenever Google buys somebody.

01:17:39 ◼   ► And so maybe like this time, there's even more articles and they're even more strident

01:17:43 ◼   ► and angry about it. But I'm not quite sure it's crossed over to USA Today yet. Maybe

01:17:48 ◼   ► USA Today will run a story about this, but will the tone of the USA Today story be, "Look

01:17:54 ◼   ► at all this extra information Google is getting about you, and isn't it unsafe that one company

01:17:58 ◼   ► has all that information?" And again, I cringe every time it's like, "Because Google is going

01:18:02 ◼   ► to do evil things with it. Google is going to do stuff that makes them money with it."

01:18:05 ◼   ► And maybe that's selling it to advertisers and stuff like that, and maybe you consider

01:18:08 ◼   ► that evil. But Google is not going to tell your wife that you're cheating on her. It's

01:18:11 ◼   ► not in Google's interest to do that. Not on purpose anyway, they'll do it accidentally,

01:18:14 ◼   ► but not on purpose. But once Google has that information, it is extremely dangerous that

01:18:20 ◼   ► anybody has that information, especially a company like Google that doesn't care anything

01:18:23 ◼   ► about you or your life. They're just like, "Well, we'll protect it as best we can, but

01:18:27 ◼   ► if you're stupid and someone gets it through your error, or we're stupid and someone gets

01:18:30 ◼   ► it through our error, or we're really smart and someone just breaks in, or we have a bad

01:18:33 ◼   ► employee or, you know, whatever else happens." It's dangerous, and hey, there's no real punishment

01:18:38 ◼   ► for us other than you stopping using our services, but what are you going to do? Use Bing? Use

01:18:42 ◼   ► Hotmail?

01:18:43 ◼   ► [laughter]

01:18:44 ◼   ► Pete: Does that mean we're done?

01:18:48 ◼   ► John: I think so. Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Squarespace, Ting, and

01:18:53 ◼   ► Transporter, and we will see you next week.

01:18:55 ◼   ► [Music]

01:18:56 ◼   ► Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin, 'cause it was accidental.

01:19:05 ◼   ► Accidental.

01:19:06 ◼   ► Oh it was accidental.

01:19:08 ◼   ► John didn't do any research.

01:19:11 ◼   ► Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.

01:19:14 ◼   ► Cause it was accidental.

01:19:16 ◼   ► It was accidental.

01:19:19 ◼   ► And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.

01:19:24 ◼   ► And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them.

01:19:29 ◼   ► C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S, so that's Casey Liss M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:19:38 ◼   ► A-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-M-E-N-

01:19:38 ◼   ► Anti-Marco Armin S-I-R-A-C

01:19:43 ◼   ► USA, Syracuse It's accidental

01:19:48 ◼   ► They didn't mean to Accidental

01:19:53 ◼   ► Tech podcast so long

01:19:58 ◼   ► What are you going to do? It's a two party system.

01:20:02 ◼   ► Go ahead, throw your vote away!

01:20:05 ◼   ► What the hell is that from?

01:20:07 ◼   ► I actually know this one for the first time ever!

01:20:10 ◼   ► Hey, Marco watches TV!

01:20:12 ◼   ► Marco watches it!

01:20:13 ◼   ► Well, I watched TV, you know, twelve years ago when that episode of The Simpsons Halloween

01:20:16 ◼   ► special aired.

01:20:17 ◼   ► There you go.

01:20:18 ◼   ► Look at that, he knows exactly what it is.

01:20:19 ◼   ► Wow, look at you.

01:20:20 ◼   ► Casey wasn't born yet, but that's okay.

01:20:22 ◼   ► Yeah, that's alright.

01:20:23 ◼   ► I'm older than Marco, for Christ's sakes.

01:20:25 ◼   ► I know, but it was convenient for...

01:20:28 ◼   ► You're not mentally and psychologically older.

01:20:31 ◼   ► Marco is aged.

01:20:32 ◼   ► He's aged by...

01:20:33 ◼   ► Is he got too close to the ring for too long?

01:20:36 ◼   ► I was spending all the time in the room with David Karp

01:20:39 ◼   ► No, that should be reverse aging is David David's like six years old. That's how do you think?

01:20:44 ◼   ► He's just it's like Dorian Gray just sucks the life right out of you

01:20:47 ◼   ► No, actually it's having a kid that does it. Yeah, that's that's more likely

01:20:52 ◼   ► I mean they I mean geez David is like a ball of constant energy and enthusiasm. It's

01:20:59 ◼   ► Where did all that energy come from?

01:21:00 ◼   ► You have to brush it all off to prevent it from seeping into you too much.

01:21:04 ◼   ► Oh my goodness.

01:21:06 ◼   ► Oh man, that's funny.

01:21:09 ◼   ► Yeah, we didn't get to talk about net neutrality back in the old days.

01:21:12 ◼   ► The iPad Pro, it's been in there forever.

01:21:14 ◼   ► We'll get to it next year.

01:21:15 ◼   ► And someday we will get to software methodologies.

01:21:17 ◼   ► Oh, I didn't get the AV receiver stuff though.

01:21:19 ◼   ► It would have been good if I had prepared for it all, which I didn't.

01:21:21 ◼   ► We keep getting questions on Twitter from people saying, "Hey, when was the methodologies

01:21:26 ◼   ► episode?

01:21:27 ◼   ► I think I missed it."

01:21:28 ◼   ► I got another one for you. When are we going to get to the fireworks factory?

01:21:33 ◼   ► The what?

01:21:34 ◼   ► No, Marco doesn't get that one. All right. Let's notice we'll get it.

01:21:40 ◼   ► Somebody will get it.

01:21:41 ◼   ► Whatever. Do you want to do titles?

01:21:44 ◼   ► I haven't seen anything better than Marco bought four. I think that's my top choice.

01:21:47 ◼   ► I can come around to that.

01:21:49 ◼   ► Did you see – speaking of Marco buying four, did you see the flat LED light bulbs?

01:21:54 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, the Philips ones?

01:21:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:21:57 ◼   ► As soon as I can buy one, I'll order one just to try it out.

01:22:00 ◼   ► But it's getting to the point now where there's tons of pretty decent LED bulbs that are roughly

01:22:06 ◼   ► 60 watts equivalent in brightness for roughly $12.

01:22:10 ◼   ► Why do they keep doing only 60s?

01:22:12 ◼   ► I would start buying them maybe if they did hundreds equivalent.

01:22:14 ◼   ► Well, I did find a good hundred equivalent, but it's still like $55.

01:22:18 ◼   ► So I bought one of them.

01:22:20 ◼   ► And it's awesome.

01:22:21 ◼   ► I put it in the one pole lamp next to my desk that I was keeping a CFL in all these

01:22:27 ◼   ► these all these years. I think I think I know why they're all, well there's probably some

01:22:31 ◼   ► technical reason for the low wattage, but you know in terms of marketing and selling

01:22:36 ◼   ► them I think the low wattage because people who have enough money to buy LED light bulbs

01:22:39 ◼   ► also have houses with many fixtures. And a lot of a lot of fixtures will use like like

01:22:45 ◼   ► one to three 60 watt bulbs. Well I bet I'm saying like if you have a lot of fixtures

01:22:49 ◼   ► you don't put a hundred watt equivalent bulb in in 17 fixtures right whereas my house which

01:22:54 ◼   ► which is ancient and decrepit, has very few fixtures.

01:22:57 ◼   ► So I need those fixtures to be super duper bright.

01:22:59 ◼   ► So I will be willing to buy the highest output

01:23:02 ◼   ► bulb you can put in there.

01:23:04 ◼   ► And I would love it if that didn't actually

01:23:06 ◼   ► consume 100 plus watts of electricity

01:23:09 ◼   ► and transferring most of it to heat

01:23:12 ◼   ► and putting out a little bit of light too.

01:23:14 ◼   ► Well, also, I think one of the reasons--

01:23:16 ◼   ► I mean, first of all, I think the technical reason for it

01:23:18 ◼   ► is substantial.

01:23:19 ◼   ► And that is, I believe, mostly heat related.

01:23:23 ◼   ► because yes, LEDs produce way less heat than incandescents, but they're also a lot less

01:23:28 ◼   ► tolerant of heat themselves.

01:23:30 ◼   ► No, it's that heat is concentrated in a smaller area.

01:23:33 ◼   ► You know, I've heard that said.

01:23:35 ◼   ► I don't think that's the problem.

01:23:36 ◼   ► I think the problem is just that LEDs themselves are not that tolerant of operating in extremely

01:23:42 ◼   ► high temperatures for a very long time.

01:23:44 ◼   ► Well, that's probably true too, because they'll melt or whatever.

01:23:46 ◼   ► But the Philips bulb that I was talking about, the flat one, the innovation on it is they

01:23:50 ◼   ► spread the things out so it dissipates heat better.

01:23:53 ◼   ► It's the same amount of heat output, but it's spread out.

01:23:56 ◼   ► It's like, instead, and they don't have to put a big giant metal heat sink on it.

01:24:00 ◼   ► It's kind of like the air-cooled equivalent.

01:24:02 ◼   ► They spread everything out in a big fan shape on this flat plane.

01:24:05 ◼   ► Apparently that helps cooling, and it's way cheaper to do that than it is to put a big

01:24:10 ◼   ► expensive metal heat sink on the thing.

01:24:13 ◼   ► As of January 2014, it is, I'm pretty sure it's now illegal to sell or manufacture

01:24:18 ◼   ► hundred watt bulbs in the US, which is why there's all of a sudden a few more hundred

01:24:23 ◼   ► watt equivalent LEDs on the market.

01:24:25 ◼   ► Yeah, there's plenty of hundred watt equivalent CFLs, so.

01:24:30 ◼   ► Yeah, but CFLs are so awful.

01:24:32 ◼   ► Yeah, my house is filled with them.

01:24:34 ◼   ► And they're awful, right?

01:24:35 ◼   ► I'm not as sensitive to light color as you are, apparently, because they don't bother

01:24:39 ◼   ► me nearly as much as they seem to bother you, and the flickering or whatever that seems

01:24:43 ◼   ► to bother people doesn't, either I don't see it or it doesn't bother me, and they take

01:24:47 ◼   ► less energy than incandescent. So I replaced all of my—because they're so cheap. The

01:24:51 ◼   ► CFLs are so cheap compared to LEDs. So I don't think we have any incandescents left in the

01:24:55 ◼   ► house. It's all CFL.

01:24:56 ◼   ► A part of me wishes that I had more nice things. Like, there's a slim part of me that wants

01:25:03 ◼   ► a big fancy TV like John has, or has fancy light bulbs in the house. But about 99% of

01:25:11 ◼   ► me is so freaking happy that I don't care. I'm so glad I don't care. Because you

01:25:17 ◼   ► know what I do when I need a light bulb? I go to Home Depot or Lowe's and I buy whatever

01:25:20 ◼   ► the first light bulb I find that fits is. It's so nice. I don't have to worry about

01:25:25 ◼   ► anything. It's great. You should try it.

01:25:27 ◼   ► I think with this audience of me and Jon, there's no chance of me and Jon caring less

01:25:34 ◼   ► about things.

01:25:35 ◼   ► I know.

01:25:36 ◼   ► Yeah, like the light bulb—I don't notice the light quality difference as much, but

01:25:38 ◼   ► stupid ballast or whatever the thing that drives the CFLs, some of them buzz, and that

01:25:45 ◼   ► I cannot stand.

01:25:47 ◼   ► And it's not like they buzz like every one of these models buzz, you just get unlucky,

01:25:50 ◼   ► you get a buzzing one, and then you just gotta either return it or get a different one.

01:25:54 ◼   ► My problem with CFLs was always that it was a lot like desktop Linux and Android, where

01:25:59 ◼   ► everyone always says, "Oh, now they're good.

01:26:02 ◼   ► All those problems you've had before with CFLs, now we've fixed them."

01:26:05 ◼   ► And then I go buy new ones and they're bad still.

01:26:07 ◼   ► Like, it's—no, like—and you never know what you're buying, whether the ones you're

01:26:11 ◼   ► buying are actually good or not, and it's—oh, CFLs—I have spent so much money on so many

01:26:17 ◼   ► CFLs in so many different apartments and houses over the last five years or ten years, and

01:26:22 ◼   ► almost all of it I regret.

01:26:24 ◼   ► How is that unlike LEDs?

01:26:25 ◼   ► Because you keep doing the same thing with those.

01:26:27 ◼   ► You keep buying them and seeing they're crappy, except for, like, the one that you

01:26:30 ◼   ► like, but then the next round comes and all the new ones are better than the one that

01:26:32 ◼   ► you liked.

01:26:34 ◼   ► Most of the ones that I've bought are still in full-time use in my house, because most

01:26:39 ◼   ► of the ones I've bought have actually been really good.

01:26:41 ◼   ► Trust me, there's a huge difference in satisfaction between CFLs and LEDs.

01:26:50 ◼   ► CFLs were mediocre when they were new, and then as they aged, their colors would shift

01:26:56 ◼   ► and get even worse and take longer to warm up to full brightness, and it was just a disaster.

01:27:02 ◼   ► time somebody say, "Oh, this CFL is good, so I'd go try that one and it wouldn't be."

01:27:06 ◼   ► And ugh, disaster. Plus all the mercury and the complexity, yeah. It's not a good scene.

01:27:15 ◼   ► This is exciting. This is what people tune in for. It's not the car talk, it's this.

01:27:18 ◼   ► I'm the one who does the lightbulb posts on your blog. What are you talking about? This

01:27:21 ◼   ► is what you live for.

01:27:22 ◼   ► No, it's exciting to me. People love those posts. I get so much feedback on those posts,

01:27:27 ◼   ► way more than I expect.

01:27:28 ◼   ► I'd rather have you buy them and find out which ones are good than me buy them and find

01:27:31 ◼   ► which ones are good. When the day comes that I actually, you'll tell me when they get down

01:27:35 ◼   ► to the price where it makes sense for me to buy them, and then I'll look at your post

01:27:39 ◼   ► and buy whichever one you say is good. If they have more than 60-watt equivalent.

01:27:42 ◼   ► Yeah, I would say if you, for all the things in your house that use 40 or 60 watts, you

01:27:48 ◼   ► can do that now. Yeah, well how much are they, though?

01:27:51 ◼   ► They're like $10 to $15 each. I guess maybe the next time the kitchen ones

01:27:55 ◼   ► go. That's the problem with these CFLs, they last forever. I have all these CFLs and stuff.

01:28:00 ◼   ► the ones in the kitchen go bad, I got new ones. Well, that'll be five years from now.

01:28:04 ◼   ► Yeah, well, yeah, but the problem is like CFLs, like I said earlier, they age poorly.

01:28:09 ◼   ► You know, they usually, almost always the colors will shift or the ballots will start

01:28:12 ◼   ► bugging out or something. They don't, and that's not the problem I have with them,

01:28:16 ◼   ► is you buy them thinking, "Oh, they're going to last for, you know, five, ten years,"

01:28:19 ◼   ► like they're claiming, and they might work for that long, but you might not want them

01:28:25 ◼   ► in that long, you know? Yeah, the only one that I have to die frequently

01:28:29 ◼   ► is the one in the room that I'm in now, which I think lasts like a year and a half on average.

01:28:34 ◼   ► You know, I would like to say that I also enjoy reading the LED posts on your site,

01:28:40 ◼   ► so this way I know what lightbulb I'm never going to bother buying.

01:28:43 ◼   ► Exactly. It's good to know. Valuable information.

01:28:45 ◼   ► Oh, goodness. Anything else going on?

01:28:49 ◼   ► I think that's it. Do you have anything else besides software methodologies?

01:28:53 ◼   ► Yeah, but nobody wants to hear about that, apparently. Ahem, Marco.

01:28:56 ◼   ► It's not my fault that news keeps happening.

01:28:59 ◼   ► We'll get there.

01:29:00 ◼   ► Well, I guess we're out of time.

01:29:00 ◼   ► [BLANK_AUDIO]