00:00:38 ◼ ► I'm informed a holiday in America for people who do not work for themselves and pay attention
00:00:45 ◼ ► to the calendar, but I've been informed by my school-going son and my working wife that
00:01:14 ◼ ► we could often be preempted by holiday programming, but we rarely are, unless one of us is going
00:01:21 ◼ ► somewhere for a long holiday weekend or something. We generally are just gonna blow right past the
00:01:57 ◼ ► Like, podcasts have done this for a long time. So that's part of it, is there's sort of a convention.
00:02:21 ◼ ► It's boring. But we did create in The Incomparable CMS, there is now a field called boring title.
00:02:30 ◼ ► And I still will fill it in. And it shows up in the RSS feed, and it shows up in a bunch of other places.
00:02:35 ◼ ► So after the clever title, below it as a footnote, it says what we actually talked about.
00:02:49 ◼ ► And if you only make it about one or two of them, you're not being fair to the episode,
00:02:56 ◼ ► Yeah, this goes back to Twit, I think. Like so many things, not just in technology podcasting,
00:03:03 ◼ ► in podcasting, go back to Twit. And they would pick out a title based on something said.
00:03:10 ◼ ► And then for Five by Five, they started with an audience submission-based and voting system,
00:03:58 ◼ ► comes up with titles for things all the time. So I just say to him, what do you want to call it?
00:04:11 ◼ ► It's better when we record live because people just suggest lots of things that we say.
00:04:20 ◼ ► The reason I added the boring title field in The Incomparable is I appreciate that people want to,
00:04:25 ◼ ► we have an index, so you can find it anyway, but the people want to know, wait a second,
00:04:38 ◼ ► But yeah, when we really are doing something very particular, a very special kind of thing,
00:04:42 ◼ ► like a draft or an interview, we're sure to mention it. And then otherwise we just kind of let it go.
00:04:47 ◼ ► Because the alternative would be like what I do for the Six Colors podcast is it's the date.
00:04:52 ◼ ► That's it, right? Like that's the alternative is you could just give it a date or something
00:04:58 ◼ ► or just the episode number. And that would be super boring. But so if you don't want to label
00:05:05 ◼ ► it as something very specific and you don't want to be super boring, what are you left with?
00:05:09 ◼ ► And I thought that it's a smart convention to just sort of have it be something fun and interesting
00:05:14 ◼ ► and maybe makes you curious about what the episode's going to discuss or as you're listening,
00:05:33 ◼ ► Maybe we should adopt a friend's style, you know, be like the one with App Store guidelines.
00:05:59 ◼ ► If you'd like to send in a suggestion to help us open a show, just send out a tweet with
00:06:04 ◼ ► the hashtag Snow Talk or you can use question mark Snow Talk in the Relay FM members discord.
00:06:09 ◼ ► I would like to remind our listeners about our St. Jude campaign. It is September. We are fully in
00:06:15 ◼ ► September now and September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. For the third consecutive year,
00:06:20 ◼ ► Relay FM is supporting the life-saving mission of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital that
00:06:31 ◼ ► children around the world develop cancer every single year and nearly half of them are never
00:06:40 ◼ ► but in many developing countries, this statistic is reversed with fewer than one out of five
00:06:44 ◼ ► children diagnosed with cancer that will live. Today, the most significant predictor of whether
00:06:49 ◼ ► a child will survive cancer is where they live, which is why in March 2018, St. Jude became the
00:07:00 ◼ ► The goal of this initiative is to raise the survival rate of six common childhood cancers
00:07:05 ◼ ► to 60% by 2030. This September, you can help Relay FM surpass over $1 million raised for the
00:07:13 ◼ ► kids of St. Jude during our third annual Relay FM for St. Jude fundraising campaign. Right now,
00:07:20 ◼ ► we are at $184,934.88 as we are recording this, so we are just over $11,000 away from meeting
00:07:32 ◼ ► $1 million raised over the last three years, which is an absolutely incredible, astounding,
00:07:49 ◼ ► any donor making a single gift of $100 or more will receive an exclusive Relay FM sticker or
00:08:00 ◼ ► please send us a note and we can have that amount routed through to the campaign. Just email steven@relay.fm.
00:08:11 ◼ ► next Friday, September 17th from 12 to 8 p.m. Eastern Time, that is US Eastern Time at twitch.tv/relayfm.
00:08:22 ◼ ► We are having an increasing amount of meetings and calls and getting everything put together.
00:08:28 ◼ ► Starting this Sunday, I'm going to be breaking down Mega Studio and rebuilding it in its podcast-a-thon
00:08:33 ◼ ► glory. So tune in and help us support St. Jude. Donate today at stjude.org/relay. Let's cure
00:08:40 ◼ ► childhood cancer together. And I will be on that podcast-a-thon with a game show. We actually have
00:08:49 ◼ ► so many people who wanted to be involved, so many Relay hosts that we're recording two game shows.
00:08:53 ◼ ► I'm not quite sure. One will probably go in the podcast-a-thon and one will probably be posted as
00:08:59 ◼ ► a bonus somewhere else. Not quite sure about that, but we recorded the first one this weekend and it
00:09:03 ◼ ► went pretty well, I thought. So I'm looking forward to editing that together and getting it in a
00:09:22 ◼ ► I think it's fair to assume that there is going to be an iPhone event next Tuesday as we record this.
00:09:30 ◼ ► I think the most likely scenario is that on the tomorrow, as we record this, tomorrow or Wednesday
00:09:38 ◼ ► people are going to get emails saying, "Hey, you're cordially invited to watch a video stream."
00:09:52 ◼ ► And we always like to do a draft. And so during COVID times, we've basically been put in this
00:10:06 ◼ ► So if that is the case, if invites go out this week and the iPhone event is going to be on the
00:10:12 ◼ ► 14th of September, which is the expectation, we'll be releasing a bonus episode with a draft
00:10:18 ◼ ► probably on Friday of this week, so the 10th. If that doesn't happen this week, it will happen the
00:10:23 ◼ ► week after probably. Unless of course Apple give a two-week notice, but that's unlikely.
00:10:28 ◼ ► Wouldn't that be nice? So basically what we're saying now is if you hear that Apple is doing
00:10:32 ◼ ► an event next week and you're wondering about the Upgrade draft, just check your podcast player
00:10:38 ◼ ► starting sort of later on Friday or through the weekend or even Monday morning and you will get
00:10:44 ◼ ► that draft episode. And then assuming that they're doing the event on Tuesday, we will be back on
00:10:48 ◼ ► Tuesday after the event to talk about what Apple announced. Well, a little scheduling, a little
00:10:54 ◼ ► housekeeping for podcasts, you know, just there'll be a bonus episode because we don't get two weeks
00:10:58 ◼ ► notice anymore. It will be live streamed as usually we would do with the draft, we'll be
00:11:03 ◼ ► live streaming that and of course we'll be live streaming with the post event coverage. You can
00:11:09 ◼ ► always listen live at relay.fm/live and the chat usually occurs in the relay.fm members Discord,
00:11:15 ◼ ► which you can get access to. If you sign up for Upgrade Plus, go to getupgradeplus.com,
00:11:19 ◼ ► you get access to the Discord along with tons of other benefits including longer ad-free episodes
00:11:24 ◼ ► of Upgrade every single week. It's true, we talk about all sorts of wacky stuff in our bonus content.
00:11:30 ◼ ► Last week I think we did a really good job of our call-in episode. I was really happy with how it
00:11:36 ◼ ► came together and you wrote a really good article on Six Colors about all of the many, many tools
00:11:43 ◼ ► that we use to put it together. Most of which are by Rogue Amoeba. Yeah, I heard from several people
00:11:50 ◼ ► and I've had this question before about like how did you put that together and so I detailed it in
00:11:55 ◼ ► that post. There's just, there's a lot in there because we are, I mean the short version of it is
00:12:02 ◼ ► I have to use Farrago which is their soundboard app. I use Loopback to create a virtual audio
00:12:10 ◼ ► input that is both my microphone and the output from the Farrago app and I have to set Zoom
00:12:16 ◼ ► to use that as my microphone so that you can hear the sound effects or in this case the clips
00:12:21 ◼ ► as well as my voice. And then I use Audio Hijack which we use normally to record the show but I
00:12:28 ◼ ► have a special block of Audio Hijack recording setup thingies that records my audio on one track
00:12:35 ◼ ► and the sound effects on another track so that instead, and in fact this is what happened after
00:12:40 ◼ ► the show, you're like oh, oh no your file doesn't have the sound effects and I'm gonna have to drop
00:12:45 ◼ ► in all three, you know, two dozen questions by hand and they said no. There's also, look in there,
00:12:51 ◼ ► there's another track that's just the sound effects which is great because then you put that in
00:12:55 ◼ ► and they're all synced up and so we, you know, it's a whole thing we had to do in order to get to it
00:13:01 ◼ ► and if you've ever wondered what one of Myke's Logic projects looks like for Upgrade, there's
00:13:05 ◼ ► a screenshot of it in there too because you were very kind enough to send me a screenshot of your
00:13:10 ◼ ► Logic project. That I was actually benefited from my new weird and wonderful system for this so
00:13:17 ◼ ► I now, since I started recording at my studio, I have this worry that I'm gonna record the show,
00:13:27 ◼ ► I'm gonna go home and then there's an error in the show. Right. And then what am I gonna do, right?
00:13:33 ◼ ► What am I gonna come back and then fix it? Like, you know, I don't live within walking distance,
00:13:38 ◼ ► it's a trip to get here as a commute. So I have created since a new system where all of my
00:13:45 ◼ ► recordings get saved directly to Dropbox. Everything is in Dropbox 100% including like,
00:13:52 ◼ ► what I'm recording right now is being saved by Audio Hijack into a Dropbox folder so it's
00:13:58 ◼ ► constantly uploading. Everything just stays in Dropbox so when you asked me that question,
00:14:13 ◼ ► That's very nice. And the other thing I detailed in here just for people who are curious, the way
00:14:18 ◼ ► we did the call-in show was with a Dropbox file request which is a feature that they added a few
00:14:24 ◼ ► years ago and I love it so much. It's such a great feature, I think it's kind of unheralded but the
00:14:28 ◼ ► idea is you can take a Dropbox folder basically and make it a file request and or maybe it's the
00:14:36 ◼ ► reverse, you make a file request, it makes a folder in your Dropbox and it gives you a URL that you
00:14:40 ◼ ► can give to people and when they go to that link, they get a little box that says, "drag your file
00:14:48 ◼ ► in here or click to choose it" and it uploads the file and puts it in that folder in your Dropbox.
00:14:55 ◼ ► And I use this for all of my podcast file transfer now. It's really instead of having to deal with
00:15:02 ◼ ► inviting somebody to a shared folder or something like that, you just give them this link and they
00:15:06 ◼ ► upload the file and so we used that for the questions. - Or like hoping someone will upload
00:15:12 ◼ ► their audio and then remember to send you the link when they're done or anything like that.
00:15:16 ◼ ► - Right, right. This is the most efficient way by far to do that and it's a feature that I really
00:15:22 ◼ ► love and it's one of the features really keeping me on Dropbox is this feature I would not, I don't
00:15:28 ◼ ► want to give it up so I'm not going to. - Yeah and what was really great about it because it just
00:15:32 ◼ ► creates a folder in your Dropbox account, Jason could invite me to that folder so I also got all
00:15:37 ◼ ► the clips. - That's right and then so we were doing a real Dropbox kind of workflow there where you
00:15:41 ◼ ► were editing the clips and then I kind of de-noised and de-echoed a couple of the clips and then I put
00:15:48 ◼ ► them in for Argo and it was all just kind of happening in Dropbox. That was a lot of fun. So
00:15:53 ◼ ► that's the behind the scenes of how that worked. I wish it was simpler to do something like playing
00:15:58 ◼ ► audio on a podcast. It's not but we've kind of got a system now so that's good. - One of the apps
00:16:02 ◼ ► that I used that's in the post made by Rogan Beaver is an app called Fission, F-I-S-S-I-O-N,
00:16:07 ◼ ► like nuclear fission. It is a very lightweight MP3 editor. It does a couple of interesting things.
00:16:15 ◼ ► It does but you can do a bunch of MP3 editing without needing to re-encode which is surprisingly
00:16:21 ◼ ► rare as a feature. - That's the biggest feature I would say is that everything else when if you
00:16:26 ◼ ► have an edit you need to make to an MP3 you've got to like go back to the original or if you
00:16:30 ◼ ► don't have the original you have to convert it into a lossless file and then edit it and then
00:16:35 ◼ ► save it back out so you're double encoding it and it's no good. Fission just edits the MP3. It never
00:16:41 ◼ ► converts it into another format. - So you're not going to change the quality of the audio or
00:16:45 ◼ ► anything and it's an app that I use for very like just very quick lightweight editing tasks like for
00:16:50 ◼ ► what I was doing with the clips it's just like cutting the ends off them or you know like cutting
00:16:54 ◼ ► out maybe a gap or two. Well, Rogan Beaver just announced that this application which was their
00:17:03 ◼ ► last app available in the Mac App Store will no longer be available in the Mac App Store. I'd like
00:17:08 ◼ ► to read a quote from Rogan Beaver. Despite a decade of feedback from countless developers and users
00:17:14 ◼ ► Apple has made scant few changes and the store remains beset with issues. When you couple the
00:17:20 ◼ ► many shortcomings and issues of Apple's restrictive policies that preclude most of our software from
00:17:25 ◼ ► appearing there the Mac App Store is clearly a poor fit for us. With the removal of Fission we
00:17:31 ◼ ► no longer have any products within the Mac App Store. - Yep, it's you know it's like Apple was
00:17:39 ◼ ► making an effort to get some people in the Mac App Store but it didn't really seem to change the
00:17:46 ◼ ► trajectory. When the Mac App Store started I think all of us thought it was going to follow
00:17:52 ◼ ► the trajectory of the iOS App Store and it was going to be a big deal and it was going to drive
00:17:58 ◼ ► Mac software sales and it was going to be a great place for Mac developers to go and it's turned out
00:18:03 ◼ ► to not be that and in fact after the last few years maybe even the last few months but definitely
00:18:14 ◼ ► the last few years I'm starting to think that the lesson the Mac App Store has taught us
00:18:19 ◼ ► is that the only reason anybody puts up with the iOS App Store is because there's no alternative
00:18:27 ◼ ► and when there's an alternative nobody puts up with the app store right like that you could
00:18:32 ◼ ► interpret the reaction the Mac App Store has gotten to be an indictment of the fact that
00:18:39 ◼ ► the iOS App Store is only successful because it's the only game in town. - They should do what
00:18:45 ◼ ► Microsoft's doing I think with Windows 11 just everything can be in the App Store doesn't and
00:18:50 ◼ ► you can use your own payment processors it's just this is the place you go to get apps. - Well they
00:18:55 ◼ ► basically turned it into a catalog of Windows software instead of a curated hosted by the vendor
00:19:03 ◼ ► store they turned it into a catalog. - They're still doing curation though like they Microsoft is doing
00:19:09 ◼ ► curation there will be a curated part but the idea is just like no matter who you are like what type
00:19:15 ◼ ► of app you make I mean it's eventually going to be Android apps as well you can just put it on the
00:19:20 ◼ ► on the Windows App Store I think it's called the Microsoft Store I don't remember what it's called
00:19:25 ◼ ► it's one of those names but it's just available and you can just go there and get it you know like
00:19:29 ◼ ► like Adobe's putting all their apps in it but they're going to continue using their own payment
00:19:33 ◼ ► processors I think that's the right way to go just this is the one place for software but Apple's not
00:19:40 ◼ ► going to do that. - Nope. - This is slightly follow-up but also a topic Apple have delayed their CSAM
00:19:48 ◼ ► detection tools this is a quote from Apple like a press quote last month we announced plans for
00:19:54 ◼ ► features intended to help protect children from predators who use communication tools to recruit
00:19:59 ◼ ► and exploit them and limit the spread of child sexual abuse material based on feedback from
00:20:05 ◼ ► customers advocacy groups researchers and others we have decided to take additional time over the
00:20:10 ◼ ► coming months to collect input and make improvements before releasing these critical important child
00:20:16 ◼ ► safety features did you see this coming? - Well it's hard it's always hard to say exactly what Apple
00:20:23 ◼ ► is going to do with issues like this and whether they're going to just kind of grit their teeth
00:20:28 ◼ ► or whether they're going to delay it and not tell anybody or whether they're going to actually delay
00:20:32 ◼ ► it but so I was a little surprised but at the same time this was the thing they should have done
00:20:38 ◼ ► so I'm glad that they did it because this rollout was a disaster like it was a disaster on all
00:20:46 ◼ ► fronts it was a disaster because they got their messaging wrong they conflated features that they
00:20:51 ◼ ► shouldn't have conflated and that led to confusion and they had to do the many FAQ files and continue
00:20:56 ◼ ► furnishing various executives up the chain to explain how it worked and then they have all
00:21:02 ◼ ► these groups who are experts in this field saying the neural hash thing has a lot of problems and
00:21:08 ◼ ► and we are skeptical that you can actually use it in this way and you know users being upset about
00:21:14 ◼ ► the idea of Apple having software on their device that looks at their looks at their images even
00:21:20 ◼ ► though it Apple was like no but it's in the pipeline it's in the pipeline right because
00:21:24 ◼ ► there's a disconnect between what Apple as we talked about a few weeks ago what Apple views
00:21:28 ◼ ► this feature as being and what it what it is or at least how many other people view this feature so
00:21:34 ◼ ► I think it's really smart of them to basically say not yet we're listening we know this is a problem
00:21:49 ◼ ► wait and collect input and make improvements right so that's good because all they've been doing is
00:21:59 ◼ ► damage control since they announced this thing it is an indictment of the fact that they could
00:22:06 ◼ ► have done this in a different way and been instead of just surprising everybody with this feature
00:22:10 ◼ ► that did not need to be a surprise they could have announced that they had they were working on this
00:22:15 ◼ ► and they could have worked with people in the field both on the technical side and in the in
00:22:21 ◼ ► in the CSAM you know field in general to get more ahead of this but instead they took so many people
00:22:27 ◼ ► by surprise which seems totally unnecessary so you know it's a good thing that they're unwinding it
00:22:33 ◼ ► but why did they get in this position to begin with it wasn't like a cool product right like
00:22:38 ◼ ► wow so cool so thank you for keeping it secret you know surprise like you know they as you say
00:22:45 ◼ ► they should have engaged with people on it or they should have positioned this as a thing that they
00:22:50 ◼ ► were looking for feedback on and like I've seen some people saying like oh they you know they
00:22:55 ◼ ► they were looking for feedback no they weren't apple considered this done yeah it was done when
00:23:01 ◼ ► they showed it off they were not uh they were not expecting feedback they were expecting like we
00:23:06 ◼ ► talked about before they they were expecting look how smart we are yeah they were expecting praise
00:23:12 ◼ ► for how they did this amazing technology that that totally uh it eliminates the idea of scanning on
00:23:21 ◼ ► the server and therefore is a huge user privacy win that still stops the bad guys and everybody
00:23:27 ◼ ► lets praise apple and uh it was a swing and a miss right like that's not what happened at all
00:23:33 ◼ ► they're having a similar bit of pushback right now I've seen to the um id card thing that they're
00:23:40 ◼ ► starting to roll out I've been seeing some people uh I've seen neil i patel has been having some
00:23:45 ◼ ► great I've been seeing him talk about it on twitter a bunch you know just saying like the
00:23:49 ◼ ► idea of putting your id card uh on your device seems like a concerning thing to many people so
00:23:59 ◼ ► I'm a little more skeptical of this one of the backlash to it because first off apple announced
00:24:03 ◼ ► this in june and it's like people are bored and they're trying to gin up something now that it's
00:24:09 ◼ ► september um because I think it comes from a potentially deliberate misunderstanding of how
00:24:17 ◼ ► this feature works because my understanding is that the id card feature is an nfc feature it's
00:24:23 ◼ ► a tap to present feature and that there's nothing on the phone itself that is that you have to hand
00:24:30 ◼ ► your phone over and you don't have to unlock your phone like this feature seems to have been built
00:24:35 ◼ ► to address all of the criticism that's coming two and a half months later after the announcement
00:24:42 ◼ ► about the feature and so you know you got to look at the details and I understand the idea of like
00:24:48 ◼ ► building a feature where you have to unlock your phone and hand it to the cops it's like well
00:24:52 ◼ ► that's terrible you shouldn't do that but this feature doesn't appear to be that this feature
00:25:02 ◼ ► of information to prove your identity and through a tap and so in the end you know the the cop that
00:25:10 ◼ ► pulls you over isn't going to have an nfc reader so you're just going to need to show them your
00:25:14 ◼ ► your drive your actual driver's license but you may be able to tap to do this at the airport
00:25:18 ◼ ► that's sort of what they're going for here so I thought it was interesting because a lot of
00:25:21 ◼ ► the criticism I saw about the id feature seemed to be stuff that is actually not what's happening
00:25:27 ◼ ► but again it's similar in the sense that maybe apple didn't do as good a job as they needed to do
00:25:32 ◼ ► to to address potential issues and I don't remember if there was a WWDC session about this or not that
00:25:42 ◼ ► would also be on them that if they if they didn't detail all the ways that they've anticipated all
00:25:47 ◼ ► of these issues then that's a that's a mistake I saw a piece that speculated about whose fault this
00:25:53 ◼ ► is I forget who wrote the piece I don't know if it was Mark Gurman or somebody else but it was it was
00:25:59 ◼ ► speculating or maybe it was Ben Thompson it was it was basically is this a communication failure
00:26:04 ◼ ► or is this a because they've got a new head of communications at apple or is this a you know
00:26:10 ◼ ► technical failure policy failure something like that and I think it's absolutely a communication
00:26:17 ◼ ► failure it may also be those other things but the way this stuff has been communicated especially
00:26:22 ◼ ► the CSAM thing but you could potentially even say it about the driver's license thing I think is
00:26:28 ◼ ► like they could have done a vastly better job if they had somebody in there who was saying this is
00:26:35 ◼ ► not this is how this is going to be perceived and I don't think being a head of communications and
00:26:40 ◼ ► they have a new one I don't think the job of the head of communications is to be a nice conduit for
00:26:50 ◼ ► whatever the people on the inside of apple want to send out through the tube to the people outside of
00:26:55 ◼ ► apple like that's not the job of a head of communications the job of the head of communications
00:26:59 ◼ ► is to say you need to understand how this is going to be perceived we need to do this rollout in a
00:27:05 ◼ ► very specific way so that we anticipate what's going to happen and prevent it from happening and
00:27:13 ◼ ► they aren't doing that like the CSAM thing that's a communications failure it may also be a technical
00:27:18 ◼ ► failure is it the fault of the new head of communications I don't know because I don't know
00:27:22 ◼ ► if the head of new head of communications was like waving their arms and saying no no no no no
00:27:26 ◼ ► don't do it like this and they were told no we're doing it like this or whether they were like yeah
00:27:30 ◼ ► sure great we'll roll this out nobody will care because that is that would show if that's the case
00:27:36 ◼ ► a fundamental misunderstanding of how apple announcements are regarded by the world so I
00:27:42 ◼ ► don't know I'm a little more skeptical about the id thing because I feel like that's a little bit
00:27:47 ◼ ► of just trying to make while while you know while we're getting on apple for stuff that they
00:27:52 ◼ ► announced in june let's get let's get on them for this whereas it may not be that big a deal but
00:27:57 ◼ ► uh but still regardless this is an issue yeah I don't get lost in the weeds on that that was a
00:28:04 ◼ ► aside from me I I put a link in the show notes to what neil i betel said people can read it and
00:28:09 ◼ ► make their own uh mind up about it but getting back to the CSAM thing itself I'm happy they're
00:28:15 ◼ ► doing this like if they do genuinely believe that they can make the system better honestly I think
00:28:25 ◼ ► that they're gonna go away and try and find a better way to communicate it I think that's
00:28:29 ◼ ► what they're gonna do here yeah I think they want to lock down the technical issues right because
00:28:36 ◼ ► it's unclear to me like there's somebody who wrote a paper about neural hash neural hashing of photos
00:28:45 ◼ ► and stuff who said that they they felt like apple's system was ignoring all of the things that they
00:28:53 ◼ ► wrote about about how the system didn't work and there's a real question about like what's the
00:28:58 ◼ ► truth about the people who say technically this is problematic and when apple says it's fine and is
00:29:04 ◼ ► it because the people who technically say it's problematic don't understand fully what apple is
00:29:09 ◼ ► doing here or is it because it is problematic and apple didn't anticipate it and wasn't paying
00:29:15 ◼ ► attention to the researchers on the outside who are writing about this stuff and so that that's
00:29:19 ◼ ► part of it too it's not just about re-communicating this and rolling it out in a different way
00:29:24 ◼ ► but it's also about you know engaging with these experts and trying to you know even if they
00:29:30 ◼ ► disagree like understanding what their argument is and being able to counter it and ideally you
00:29:36 ◼ ► get them on your side and say oh well now we've seen what apple is doing and they made a couple
00:29:39 ◼ ► of changes and we actually think that this is a good approach that's the ideal end goal is to kind
00:29:44 ◼ ► of co-opt your critics and have them say well now that we've seen it we actually like it i will say
00:29:49 ◼ ► again you could have probably brought them in there's no reason you couldn't have done this
00:29:54 ◼ ► before you announced it or as you announced it in general before you gave out specifics but we're
00:30:00 ◼ ► here we are where we are now so we'll see but i think it's more than just a communication challenge
00:30:06 ◼ ► because they do have some technical criticisms of how they did it in terms of false positives
00:30:11 ◼ ► and things like that i do wonder with this feature if it's one of those situations that like the lid
00:30:17 ◼ ► has been lifted so there's kind of it like you know like the jar's been opened now you can't you
00:30:23 ◼ ► can't put it back in because is it always going to be considered like no matter what way they talk
00:30:28 ◼ ► about it like this is the thing that apple's using to spy on us right has it gotten away from them
00:30:34 ◼ ► in a way that they wouldn't be able to control even if it comes back comes back later with like
00:30:40 ◼ ► hey look at all these great things that we did instead what do you think i i don't know
00:30:45 ◼ ► we've talked about this so much like this is a this is a misstep they're resetting they have
00:30:52 ◼ ► the opportunity to they have the opportunity to run and hide if they want to right this could be
00:30:57 ◼ ► one of those things that just disappears and when it comes back later it's a totally different
00:31:01 ◼ ► solution um and then and the way they'll they'll spin it is well we listened right but i don't know
00:31:09 ◼ ► what they're gonna do and i don't know where they're gonna go with this because honestly
00:31:12 ◼ ► because the root of this also seems baffling right when when it was announced where our response was
00:31:17 ◼ ► like why now like is this in anticipation of some other move that they're gonna make or some
00:31:23 ◼ ► regulation that's gonna come in and so i i don't entirely understand other than speculation about
00:31:29 ◼ ► it the root of this whole thing so now they've pulled it back where do we go from here i don't
00:31:36 ◼ ► know yeah i have no idea but they they messed it up yeah oh yeah this is a this is a complete
00:31:53 ◼ ► this is not an iphone like the rollout of this just it didn't need to be this way like for them
00:32:04 ◼ ► to i think it shows you that they're still within apple a lot of these super secretive we're going
00:32:09 ◼ ► to go our own way we're not going to look at what anybody else is doing you know this attitude that
00:32:15 ◼ ► they've got and in this case like for completely unnecessary reasons and it bit them so are they
00:32:23 ◼ ► going to make changes because of that i don't know it would seem like you probably should but i do
00:32:28 ◼ ► think it goes back to probably a level of hubris about like they're just so proud of how clever
00:32:35 ◼ ► their solution to this problem is that they want to spring it on the world and then they got laid
00:32:41 ◼ ► low because it wasn't maybe as clever as they thought this episode of upgrade is brought to you
00:32:46 ◼ ► by our good friends at memberful the easiest way to sell memberships to your audience used by the
00:32:51 ◼ ► biggest creators on the web you can generate sustainable recurring income while diversifying
00:32:56 ◼ ► a revenue stream maybe your business's financial situation has changed over the past couple of years
00:33:01 ◼ ► and now you want a proven solution that's quick to launch so you can stabilize your business and
00:33:05 ◼ ► allow yourself to grow memberful handles all the hard stuff so you can focus on what you do best
00:33:11 ◼ ► while earning revenue quickly it leaves you in full control and ownership of everything that
00:33:15 ◼ ► relates to your audience brand and membership member for us everything that you need to run
00:33:20 ◼ ► a membership program of your own it includes an optimized checkout apple pay easy member management
00:33:25 ◼ ► dashboard analytics free trials gift subscriptions and so much more and seamlessly integrates with
00:33:30 ◼ ► the tools that you already use including lots of fully managed integrations with many popular
00:33:36 ◼ ► services like wordpress mail chimp discord and loads more and basically what that means is you
00:33:41 ◼ ► can integral these integrations and it very easily allows for these services to detect if a member is
00:33:47 ◼ ► active or not so we'll use mobile for relay fm and our member for uh and discord talk to each other
00:33:54 ◼ ► so if somebody signs up for a membership they can get invited to our discord and if they stop
00:33:59 ◼ ► becoming a member there's a bot that will remove them from the discord it's really simple easy for
00:34:03 ◼ ► us and it means we can add in this additional benefit without tons of overhead and for us that's
00:34:08 ◼ ► one of the greatest things about before in general we get to have tons of great features that we can
00:34:13 ◼ ► offer to people that want to support what we do here at relay fm without needing to add lots and
00:34:18 ◼ ► lots of administrative costs for us to manage it get started for free at memberful.com/upgrade
00:34:24 ◼ ► with no credit card required that's memberful.com/upgrade go there right now and check it out
00:34:31 ◼ ► see what it could do for your business our thanks to memberful for their support of this show and
00:34:36 ◼ ► relay fm so there's been a bunch of app store related changes uh that i want to go through well
00:34:44 ◼ ► there was one big one everyone knows what we're talking about it's the okay to change from in japan
00:34:49 ◼ ► we're going to talk about that in a little bit because there's some other stuff that we need to
00:34:53 ◼ ► get through before so i wanted to give just a quick recap of the thing from last week just so
00:34:58 ◼ ► we can set the stage for the many changes to the app store that's being demanded by many governments
00:35:04 ◼ ► and in and institutions around the world so last week's thing the thing we spoke about on the last
00:35:10 ◼ ► episode is the u.s developers thing this was the class action lawsuit that basically changed nothing
00:35:17 ◼ ► apple made a bunch of clarifications and confirmations like hey you're allowed to email
00:35:21 ◼ ► your own customers if you want and offer developers cash to prevent them from suing apple in the future
00:35:27 ◼ ► right so that was that thing yeah then five days later the government of south korea passed a law
00:35:34 ◼ ► that is intended to force apple and google to allow for third-party payment options in third-party apps
00:35:42 ◼ ► for in-app purchases so once you've downloaded an app from the app store if you want to pay for
00:35:47 ◼ ► something inside of that application you should be able to use any payment service either google or
00:35:53 ◼ ► apples or you can use your own right like think fortnight right like what fortnight did that whole
00:35:59 ◼ ► thing one of the reasons we're here right because of everything that epic did companies that do not
00:36:05 ◼ ► comply with this rule will be fined up to three percent of their south korea revenue so everything
00:36:11 ◼ ► a company the company makes in that country in a year they can be fined three percent of that total
00:36:16 ◼ ► this is a quote from apple about this ruling the telecommunications business act will put users who
00:36:23 ◼ ► purchase digital goods from other sources at risk of fraud undermine their privacy protections make
00:36:28 ◼ ► it difficult to manage their purchases and features like ask to buy and parental controls will become
00:36:34 ◼ ► less effective we believe user trust in apps or purchases will decrease as a result of this
00:36:39 ◼ ► legislation from this quote doesn't seem like they're going to fight it right like i was
00:36:45 ◼ ► expecting apple's quote to be like you know like ah you know as they will do sometimes that they
00:36:50 ◼ ► will say that they will try and push back on something but it doesn't sound like that's the
00:36:55 ◼ ► case maybe they know they don't have the opportunity to do it i don't know yeah i i mean it does show
00:37:01 ◼ ► you that like if a if a law gets passed they're gonna they can complain all they want but they
00:37:05 ◼ ► have to follow it right they want to continue doing business in that country right it's right
00:37:10 ◼ ► and then there's limitations and they can push back and they can negotiate but i guess what i
00:37:14 ◼ ► would say is i don't i think this is not as big a deal um it's also interesting that this is a law
00:37:20 ◼ ► that targeted google primarily yeah okay um and so it's probably a pro samsung kind of thing anyway
00:37:28 ◼ ► it hits apple however i'm not convinced about the implications of this being enormous mostly because
00:37:36 ◼ ► it's just in korea and while the ball may continue rolling like i can see ways you know how so russia
00:37:43 ◼ ► said you got to pre-install apps and apple didn't pre-install apps apple brought up a thing during
00:37:48 ◼ ► the launch process that says here are russian apps would you like to download them and then you can
00:37:53 ◼ ► just not and and russia's regulators apparently decided that was good enough right like that's
00:37:58 ◼ ► that's all they were looking at so i which i think it's kind of impressive that apple convinced them
00:38:03 ◼ ► to be okay with that and not be like no they have to download they have to preload so what does
00:38:08 ◼ ► apple do in korea i think it's going to be some more of this kind of very careful artful
00:38:15 ◼ ► implementation that makes it makes them within the law without it being something that's easy
00:38:22 ◼ ► on developers so like for example i don't think this law says anything about what like apple
00:38:31 ◼ ► could say hey developers there's a new law in korea if you want to implement your own outside
00:38:38 ◼ ► of apple in-app purchases for korea here's what you need to do you need to turn off your app in
00:38:43 ◼ ► korea and make a new app separate that implements the in-app you know your your out of app purchasing
00:38:50 ◼ ► system and submit that for only korea and then we'll approve it and it'll be limited to korea
00:38:56 ◼ ► and you also have to i mean it's unclear it's like you also have to have in-app purchases as an
00:39:00 ◼ ► option because it you know the law doesn't say we can't require that but you also can offer out of
00:39:06 ◼ ► app purchases but only in the korean version of your app which you need to keep separate right
00:39:10 ◼ ► now that's jerky and makes the job much harder for developers but apple's not limited like apple
00:39:18 ◼ ► my understanding is apple can do that right they can make it as painful as possible for you to take
00:39:23 ◼ ► advantage of this law in korea and the net result what i'm saying is the net result is probably
00:39:30 ◼ ► going to be that most app developers unless they've got an enormous amount of in-app purchase revenue
00:39:34 ◼ ► in korea are just not going to bother and they're going to keep it the way it is and keep their app
00:39:39 ◼ ► in the korean store and those who want to go through this apple's not going to make it easy
00:39:42 ◼ ► for them apple's going to do the letter of the law and nothing more that's my guess unless apple
00:39:47 ◼ ► thinks that this is going to keep happening um but even then if another country passed a law like
00:39:53 ◼ ► this apple would say okay everybody hey developers now that app that you've got in korea you can also
00:39:59 ◼ ► make it available in this other country because it's the law there or maybe not maybe they would
00:40:03 ◼ ► say hey app developers make another version of your app that's just for this country because
00:40:08 ◼ ► again they don't need to go along with this and i and their attitude seems to be very much that
00:40:12 ◼ ► they're not going to so i'm not convinced this is going to be a huge deal right because it's in korea
00:40:17 ◼ ► it's this one very particular law and i feel like apple has enough uh weight to put on their app
00:40:23 ◼ ► store processes that it will be an unpleasant thing that you have to do in order to get your
00:40:30 ◼ ► own payment system in that's my theory so i agree with you but here's the question i'll pose right
00:40:37 ◼ ► my understanding and especially has come from the u.s thing is that most of apple's money from
00:40:44 ◼ ► in-app purchases is generated by a small amount of companies yeah because there are a small amount of
00:40:51 ◼ ► companies that make the most money yeah i would assume that all of those companies would be the
00:40:57 ◼ ► exact companies to put effort in to do this thing yep and so i don't know how much app store revenue
00:41:05 ◼ ► is generated by south korea i'm sure it's a chunk i don't know how big a portion but they could start
00:41:11 ◼ ► to feel it from there and my expectation would be if apple are going to have some level of
00:41:18 ◼ ► infrastructure in place to make this the case for south korea or you know a rule or whatever right
00:41:25 ◼ ► they're going to put something into effect to make this possible for people sure to to comply
00:41:36 ◼ ► well that's possible but i would say i don't think apple has to build anything here this is
00:41:48 ◼ ► it is possible that they'll be like oh well look apple's complying in korea so we can do it here
00:41:55 ◼ ► and they'll just do what they did in korea and that's probably true and they probably will do
00:41:59 ◼ ► that so if other countries want to do this like we potentially have a template for what it would
00:42:04 ◼ ► look like i guess what i'm saying is apple's not going to make it easy on anybody i predict like
00:42:10 ◼ ► that that they're going to make it they're going to drag their feet they're going to make they're
00:42:15 ◼ ► going to follow the letter of the law but nothing more than that because that seems to be their
00:42:19 ◼ ► approach to all of this stuff so uh it's possible that they won't you know maybe they'll be bigger
00:42:23 ◼ ► than that and be like okay well you can make it so that if your locale is korea but my guess if i
00:42:30 ◼ ► were i mean honestly if i were employed to do this at apple i would be like no separate korean app
00:42:34 ◼ ► walled off we want to we don't want to see any of that code that could potentially be used anywhere
00:42:40 ◼ ► else in the world separate approval separate approval you've got to flag it that you're doing
00:42:45 ◼ ► it for korea and then we'll go through our process and then we'll approve it but yes i mean if you're
00:42:50 ◼ ► making millions and millions and millions of dollars equivalent in korea um then of course
00:42:57 ◼ ► you're going to do this right if you if you can claw that money back i just feel like what apple
00:43:01 ◼ ► will try to do is make it that everybody who makes a little bit of money in korea with in-app
00:43:05 ◼ ► purchase is going to be like nah it's not worth it it's not worth going through it and i feel like
00:43:11 ◼ ► the apple will make it so that it's not worth it for most developers to to even follow this approach
00:43:16 ◼ ► so again because there are so many of these things going on this rule this law is just for in-app
00:43:23 ◼ ► purchase doesn't have any requirement for other purchases so if you are a paid upfront app you
00:43:29 ◼ ► use apple and google's payment systems if you're a paid upfront app that uses in-app purchase you pay
00:43:35 ◼ ► on google or apple's system but then the in-app purchase can then be from a third party same if
00:43:41 ◼ ► you're free right in some ways ideologically i think i agree with this ruling like it's also not
00:43:49 ◼ ► asking for third-party absolutes or anything like there's always something that i get stuck on which
00:43:53 ◼ ► is like after the initial purchase after apple was delivered the application you know why should they
00:44:00 ◼ ► have the rights to any purchase that between what is now the customer of this company you know like
00:44:09 ◼ ► why do they continue to keep getting a cut if they're not providing anything for these developers
00:44:19 ◼ ► stuff is coming down from the servers of epic or whoever right why do apple keep why do apple have
00:44:27 ◼ ► the right to continue taking 30 of every in-app purchase well i mean what you're really doing is
00:44:33 ◼ ► saying why does apple have the right to take money out of transactions on the iphone because
00:44:39 ◼ ► the truth is the business model today is largely your app is free and then you pay inside the app
00:44:46 ◼ ► so if you make in-app purchases free it is going to potentially take a huge amount of revenue away
00:44:55 ◼ ► from apple now so then the question is like what is what is apple what rights does apple have to
00:45:02 ◼ ► skim all transactions that occur in its universe and you know apple would tell you that they
00:45:09 ◼ ► created all this value with the iphone i would argue that the iphone's value was also created
00:45:12 ◼ ► by the app developers that without an app store the iphone isn't a success uh certainly not the
00:45:18 ◼ ► success it's been that apple takes 30 percent or now sometimes 15 of what developers have made for
00:45:23 ◼ ► the last decade plus but imagine a world where developers took 30 of iphone revenue for the last
00:45:30 ◼ ► decade plus right it's it's more and they don't get that so even though that they're a huge
00:45:36 ◼ ► participant in this and it comes back like what we were talking before it comes back to the fact
00:45:41 ◼ ► that apple has an attitude and i think it comes from the corporate culture and i think it is based
00:45:45 ◼ ► in steve jobs and the post almost going out of business apple which is take every dollar off the
00:45:51 ◼ ► table and developers are lucky that we um tolerate them and that apple creates all value and
00:46:00 ◼ ► developers are um and then this was steve jobs's attitude about third-party developers way back
00:46:05 ◼ ► before the app store which is developers are kind of parasites living off the goodness of apple i've
00:46:09 ◼ ► said this before it's absolutely with steve jobs's attitude is everybody who's involved in the apple
00:46:14 ◼ ► ecosystem that isn't apple is just taking money away from apple that belongs to apple because
00:46:20 ◼ ► apple really created everything that is good and that everything that remains it's just like you
00:46:25 ◼ ► get some scraps what you you should be happy that we're giving you you know your percentage here
00:46:29 ◼ ► because we could take even more because really it's all about us and that attitude still exists
00:46:33 ◼ ► within apple and the only reason they're changing it at all seems to be because uh they're feeling
00:46:38 ◼ ► the pressure so you know why why does apple charge rent like i i think apple's in-app purchases system
00:46:45 ◼ ► is really good and that apple should compete with with alternatives based on when they say look the
00:46:55 ◼ ► reason we do it the way we do it is because we want to keep our customers safe and they said this
00:46:59 ◼ ► in another thing that we're going to be talking about in a minute they said this they said
00:47:03 ◼ ► like people like the safety that they feel in the app store and and and working with apple well
00:47:08 ◼ ► that's true but there's also no alternative like you could compete on that you could compete as
00:47:14 ◼ ► apple and say our way is easier our way is safer you've got your credit card at apple apple charges
00:47:19 ◼ ► your credit card apple doesn't leak your information to other people this is why you should
00:47:23 ◼ ► use apple system and they could also very easily unless a law bars it and i doubt a law ever would
00:47:29 ◼ ► say if they open it up to third parties you also need to offer apple's method so choose you can use
00:47:37 ◼ ► apple's method or your method but you let them choose and then they're competing on features
00:47:42 ◼ ► they're competing on trust in apple they're competing on ease of the transaction not having
00:47:48 ◼ ► to go re-enter your cards somewhere because it's already stored at apple and developers are going
00:47:52 ◼ ► to like that too so you know that's that's my feeling is that apple ought to compete based on
00:47:58 ◼ ► the quality of their service and not on uh just taking rent essentially on every transaction that
00:48:05 ◼ ► exists because although the the counter argument is always going to be oh yeah but apple did create
00:48:11 ◼ ► this ecosystem apple does work on you know they build the apis and they build these phones and
00:48:15 ◼ ► all of that and so why should they not get a cut my counter argument would be that the developers
00:48:21 ◼ ► who created all the apps on the platform are also a participant in the success of the iphone and
00:48:26 ◼ ► apple isn't sharing any of its iphone revenue with them right and so for me this seems like uh that
00:48:35 ◼ ► apple is double dipping essentially they they are they are acting as if they're the only creators of
00:48:40 ◼ ► value in the in the ecosystem and they're not and so why not and and that they're obviously not
00:48:49 ◼ ► i think they can so yeah i i am not a fan of apple mandatorily taking plus it degrades the user
00:48:57 ◼ ► experience right leaving aside the fact that uh we're going to be talking about reader apps in a
00:49:02 ◼ ► little bit and like that is a a terrible user experience too so so yeah if if i have to choose
00:49:08 ◼ ► i'm going to say i don't think that apple should have to mandatorily take a percentage of sales
00:49:14 ◼ ► inside apps i think they should have to offer their system and compete on merit john grubber
00:49:20 ◼ ► wrote a uh a blog post about this and he was talking about kind of cutting into some of the
00:49:26 ◼ ► stuff that they were saying around privacy and you know like they're talking about like parental
00:49:31 ◼ ► controls that kind of stuff and he mentioned and something that i agree with apple could just
00:49:38 ◼ ► create a bunch of apis and tools for payment processes to work with inside their own systems
00:49:44 ◼ ► if they wanted to yeah this is this is one of those false equivalencies where where they're
00:49:49 ◼ ► like oh but if we did that there would be no security it's like or you could build security
00:49:55 ◼ ► but that makes their argument less dramatic right you could build in uh all of the same apis for
00:50:03 ◼ ► monitoring transactions and for parental controls and say you have to implement these for your
00:50:08 ◼ ► payment system right they could totally do that unless the law bars it but it doesn't seem like
00:50:12 ◼ ► it does it would be part of like being on the platform it's like yeah you can keep your money
00:50:16 ◼ ► but you have to tell us you know you have to check and see if a parental control is on this
00:50:20 ◼ ► because we're not going to let people who are you know kids are not allowed to drain their parents
00:50:25 ◼ ► credit card they have we have a system for that and you have to hook into it but they would have
00:50:29 ◼ ► to do the work but they could do the work they could absolutely do the work so that was south
00:50:34 ◼ ► korea and we were like oh man more going on oh little did we know that it was more coming
00:50:39 ◼ ► yes but before we do that let's thank our second sponsor of this week's episode natty gabby
00:50:46 ◼ ► how often do you notice the price of something increasing it can happen all the time with gas
00:50:51 ◼ ► groceries close more the prices they kind of like steadily creep up if you're looking to cut costs
00:50:57 ◼ ► and find ways to save you could start with your auto insurance and that's where gabby comes in
00:51:01 ◼ ► shopping for auto insurance can be laborious the good news is gabby does the work for you
00:51:06 ◼ ► it uses your current policy to compare your current average with 40 of the top insurance
00:51:17 ◼ ► platform with fast verifiable quotes not ballpark guesses and because gabby uses your current
00:51:22 ◼ ► coverage they only show you policies that are the same or better than your current coverage
00:51:27 ◼ ► with many of them at a lower price and the best part is gabby is free to use and they don't sell
00:51:32 ◼ ► your info so you're not going to get annoying spam jason i know that you went through the process can
00:51:37 ◼ ► you tell our listeners just how easy gabby make it to do this comparison yeah it was super easy
00:51:42 ◼ ► i was able to log in and basically put in my insurance information and some personal information
00:51:47 ◼ ► about like what i was insuring and they do a meta search engine they basically say like here's what
00:51:52 ◼ ► you've got and here's what the different things that are on offer and so yeah if you if your
00:51:58 ◼ ► insurance has been creeping up or whatever and and they're boiling that frog it's a parable they don't
00:52:02 ◼ ► really boil the frog um you end up with a uh an idea of like how does your thing compare has it
00:52:09 ◼ ► gone up too much and it is it was it a good deal five years ago and it isn't a good deal now it
00:52:14 ◼ ► will show you it's like it's just a meta search engine it's very clever um and in my case i was
00:52:19 ◼ ► fortunate my my insurance because i've got all of my insurance in one place they actually gave me
00:52:26 ◼ ► peace of mind because what gabby said was you're actually doing pretty good so i didn't need to
00:52:30 ◼ ► change my insurance but i got to see like and and that actually felt good right like now i know where
00:52:35 ◼ ► my rate is compared to all the other comparable rates and that was uh that was pretty awesome
00:52:40 ◼ ► people who switch with gabby save on average eighty dollars a month versus their current policy
00:52:45 ◼ ► so it's no surprise that they've been featured in tech crunch forbes in usa today start saving on
00:52:50 ◼ ► your auto insurance today go to gabby.com upgrade to start saving today it's totally free that's
00:52:56 ◼ ► g-a-b-i dot com slash upgrade one last time go there now gabby.com upgrade our thanks to gabby
00:53:03 ◼ ► for their support of this show and relay fm so apple announced via press release that they have
00:53:09 ◼ ► come to an agreement with the japan fair trade commission to end an investigation about the app
00:53:14 ◼ ► store i've got some quotes that i want to read and maybe we can from this press release maybe we can
00:53:20 ◼ ► stop and talk about them as we go through the update will allow developers of reader apps to
00:53:26 ◼ ► include an in-app link to their website for users to set up or manage an account one do you want to
00:53:32 ◼ ► stop already or can i continue single well i think it's an important point and we'll get we can get
00:53:39 ◼ ► to in more detail later but the and a lot of the people who are saying wow this is a big change
00:53:43 ◼ ► i think maybe missed this which is it is a link so this basically solves the netflix opening or
00:53:52 ◼ ► spotify or whatever opening screen where it says log in and you're like well how do i get an account
00:53:57 ◼ ► and there's a you can put a link the dumbest rule ever of all time where they're like well you can
00:54:02 ◼ ► link but not to anything that suggests anything about payment and all that and they're basically
00:54:06 ◼ ► dropping that and saying yes you can get one you get one link for setup and managing an account one
00:54:13 ◼ ► single link yeah well single comes later at this point they said and it's confusing that they say
00:54:20 ◼ ► it in different ways but and and link right it's a it's a singular we're already at a singular here
00:54:30 ◼ ► hooray this was a relief because like let's not continue to make this increasingly more
00:54:35 ◼ ► complicated right let's not let's not make a japan rule you can have a link in japan you can have a
00:54:40 ◼ ► purchase in korea you can have a installed apps in russia but that's it and you can send emails if
00:54:46 ◼ ► you're in america you know yep uh reader apps provide previously purchased content or content
00:54:54 ◼ ► subscriptions for digital magazines newspapers books audio music and video yes because developers
00:55:00 ◼ ► of reader apps do not offer in-app digital goods and services for purchase apple agreed with the
00:55:06 ◼ ► jftc to let developers of these apps share a single link to their website to help users set
00:55:11 ◼ ► up and manage their account i have like 20 problems with this sentence uh-huh like they would like to
00:55:20 ◼ ► offer in-app digital goods and services for purchase but you won't let they would developers
00:55:25 ◼ ► of reader apps do offer in-app digital goods but you have to purchase them outside and then they
00:55:30 ◼ ► appear in these applications right and that's where we get the share a single link to their
00:55:36 ◼ ► website to help users set up a manager account so the setup is the important part right because it
00:55:42 ◼ ► can get a bit confusing if earlier on it's like um they're talking about like you know to for men
00:55:47 ◼ ► all that kind of stuff and it gets a bit confusing but basically the way i read this is that you know
00:55:53 ◼ ► you could open the spotify app and then have a link where you could then go and sign up for
00:55:58 ◼ ► spotify then come back and log in right and and right now you could you could currently do it
00:56:05 ◼ ► but what it would do is it would put you on a page that that um you link to that doesn't it cannot
00:56:12 ◼ ► not only can it not mention that you can put in your credit card at spotify.com and sign up that
00:56:16 ◼ ► way and never pay apple it couldn't link to any page that links to any page at all following all
00:56:27 ◼ ► links that mentions your ability to purchase spotify outside of the app store that was the
00:56:34 ◼ ► rule so this rule is you can just link to somewhere it's fine and and so it is big in the sense that
00:56:42 ◼ ► if you're i don't know who this person is but if you're somebody who's like oh spotify that sounds
00:56:47 ◼ ► great i'll download the app i open the app and it says log in and you're like oh no they've outfoxed
00:56:52 ◼ ► me i'm totally confused what do i do i guess i won't use spotify because i don't have an account
00:56:57 ◼ ► and i don't know what i would do well what you do is you go to spotify.com but now there'll be a
00:57:02 ◼ ► link there that says go to spotify.com to sign up for this account and you'll go there and then they
00:57:09 ◼ ► can also put that link when you're logged in and say manage my account on spotify.com and you click
00:57:15 ◼ ► there and or tap there and it will take you to spotify.com and of course both of those links will
00:57:21 ◼ ► allow you to pay put in your credit card and pay as part of the login process so on that level it
00:57:28 ◼ ► is kind of big because it's allowing developers to put us an onboarding workflow in the app again
00:57:36 ◼ ► that allows them to lead a user through setting up a username and password and putting in a credit
00:57:41 ◼ ► card on the web and then going back to the app logging in and they're paying and they're not
00:57:48 ◼ ► paying apple so that's the that's the big change what it doesn't do and you mentioned it these are
00:57:53 ◼ ► reader apps they so kindle is a good example right and and the problem here is that these apps have
00:58:01 ◼ ► overhead they're they're they're reselling things they're they're the middleman and then apple wants
00:58:07 ◼ ► to also be the middleman and apple's 30 takes out all of the profit of the middleman from that or
00:58:16 ◼ ► almost all right and so nobody does it and what this what this specifically says is you know you
00:58:25 ◼ ► still can't do that the one link is there the one link rule is there specifically so that amazon
00:58:32 ◼ ► can't put up a kindle store in their app and when you tap on a book it opens a web page with that
00:58:38 ◼ ► book which you then buy and then it goes back to the kindle app and it downloads it apple's not
00:58:42 ◼ ► allowing anything like that to happen so for subscriptions uh and for sign up for for user
00:58:50 ◼ ► information but that's it before the change goes into effect in early 2022 apple will update its
00:58:58 ◼ ► guidelines and review process to make sure users of reader apps continue to have a safe experience
00:59:03 ◼ ► on the app store again like this is where a lot of the questions start right like what can be at
00:59:10 ◼ ► the end of the link apple going to start reviewing web pages now right like will there be only certain
00:59:17 ◼ ► language you can use i'm sure what i'm sure will they will developers have to create specific types
00:59:23 ◼ ► of pages for uh apple ios customers going to we'll find out apple will also help developers of reader
00:59:32 ◼ ► apps protect users when they link them to an external website to make purchases uh-huh what
00:59:38 ◼ ► does that mean yeah and make purchases i guess that means essentially signing up and putting
00:59:44 ◼ ► in your credit card somewhere my guess is that this is going to be app review like you said are
00:59:52 ◼ ► they going to approve websites i think the answer is yes i think apple is going to want to see the
00:59:56 ◼ ► link and they're going to want to see it in action and that they're going to want and the question is
01:00:01 ◼ ► what are their standards there but they're going to want to approve that link and say yes this is
01:00:06 ◼ ► acceptable use of our one link policy um which is weird right because what are the standards by
01:00:13 ◼ ► which they judge that link what are the rules that you could break on that link i don't know
01:00:18 ◼ ► i've already thought of a few for you okay lamb you you can get a job rejecting things at apple
01:00:24 ◼ ► i guess very exciting go ahead the wording of the link the prominence of the link okay where it
01:00:32 ◼ ► takes you yes what's on the web page the wording of the web page how or if it references apple
01:00:41 ◼ ► how or if it references prices and pricing differences yep that might be it um i'll throw
01:00:50 ◼ ► in a few that they could do okay privacy policy of the website yes payment processor used by the
01:00:58 ◼ ► website just throwing it out there right like this apple could use this as a system to whitelist
01:01:05 ◼ ► very specific companies and payment processors and say we don't think that that this payment
01:01:12 ◼ ► processor is secure not saying they will do that but they could absolutely do that and privacy
01:01:16 ◼ ► policy i think is an interesting one right where there would be like the website needs to we need
01:01:20 ◼ ► to protect our users so if this website has a permissive privacy policy and it's leaking a
01:01:25 ◼ ► bunch of information i'm sorry you need to change your policy or we're not going to let you link to
01:01:29 ◼ ► your own website it could happen like i can imagine there's going to be a bunch of applications as
01:01:35 ◼ ► well like large companies that are currently offering in-app purchase that stop now right
01:01:41 ◼ ► i think about like youtube like you can buy a youtube premium with in-app purchase i actually
01:01:47 ◼ ► think they charge more money if you do but you know yeah this is all like that right this is this is
01:01:54 ◼ ► essentially not solving the problem of per item digital purchases in an app this is solving the
01:02:01 ◼ ► problem of reader apps that have subscriptions because they had to pretend that there was no way
01:02:06 ◼ ► unless you did an in-app purchase which nobody really wants to do and it's not that great
01:02:10 ◼ ► like it it's a difficult business model for for if you're netflix or hulu or anybody else to do
01:02:16 ◼ ► it that way or even youtube like it's it's hard um because a lot of your content your margins are
01:02:24 ◼ ► but pretending that there's no way to get to your account is not a great experience so like that's
01:02:33 ◼ ► that's the that's the win here is being able to say not buy a kindle book in an app but to be able
01:02:39 ◼ ► for even for the kindle app to say you know my my amazon account like not allowed until now just to
01:02:48 ◼ ► tap and go out there so it's you know i don't consider this a big win at all i i know that
01:02:54 ◼ ► there are a lot of analysts out there who are sort of like wow this is a huge step on apple's part
01:02:58 ◼ ► this is like the bare minimum that apple should have done many years ago to say wow the user
01:03:05 ◼ ► experience where there's just a login screen and no explanation of how you get an account if you
01:03:09 ◼ ► don't have one because apple wants to get an in-app purchase in this app and otherwise people
01:03:15 ◼ ► are just going to have to wait and figure it out well that's that they should have done that ages
01:03:20 ◼ ► ago so it's the bare minimum when what they should be doing in my opinion is allowing reader apps to
01:03:27 ◼ ► do what those those video apps do because they did change this for one class right you if you
01:03:33 ◼ ► go to amazon prime video that app you can like rent movies in it from amazon and it works so
01:03:39 ◼ ► they they lowered the bar for that one particular class but they haven't done the same here i don't
01:03:45 ◼ ► know so it seems like it seems like a very limited win for for people here well then you know you
01:03:51 ◼ ► mentioned about reader apps i think first we have to get rid of that term because it's an incredibly
01:03:57 ◼ ► arbitrary set of applications that apple have decided they want to give this access to because
01:04:03 ◼ ► there's absolutely zero reason that it could not include gaming subscription services when not
01:04:08 ◼ ► even allowed on the app store right well that that's one of the i think ironies of this is that
01:04:13 ◼ ► reader app has been so distorted because i always viewed a reader app as an app in which you're
01:04:21 ◼ ► reading media that included potentially a for purchase option and they've diluted it to mean
01:04:31 ◼ ► like media consumption apps but not games which is like yeah to your point how is a subscription to a
01:04:40 ◼ ► game streaming service appreciably different than a subscription to netflix like i can tell you
01:04:45 ◼ ► reader apps means strategically beneficial classes of application to sure is what it means because
01:04:52 ◼ ► they put whatever apps they need in there to help them right like spotify has given them trouble now
01:04:58 ◼ ► music's a reader app we want netflix on the apple tv we want amazon prime on the apple tv these are
01:05:04 ◼ ► now reader apps it's just whatever they need it to be right and games uh is not because they want
01:05:11 ◼ ► to not have game streaming services on their platform and they make a lot of money from game
01:05:15 ◼ ► in-app purchases and stuff like that so it's strategically beneficial for them not to have
01:05:20 ◼ ► games classed as a reader app like without the like i just feel like that any type of application
01:05:28 ◼ ► that offers a subscription service that is cross-platform should be allowed to take advantage
01:05:35 ◼ ► of this so this goes to like spotify it goes to microsoft right if they want to do xcloud it goes
01:05:43 ◼ ► to an app like todoist which is a multi-platform tool but is a subscription app that they you can
01:05:51 ◼ ► pay them in many different ways i pay for my todoist subscription on the web they offer an
01:05:56 ◼ ► app purchase but i signed up on the web and i pay there because it's cheaper it used to be and that
01:06:02 ◼ ► was how i signed up for it like i don't you know without the iphone spotify would suffer just the
01:06:09 ◼ ► same as any other like as todoist would suffer like it's i think it's way too complicated for
01:06:14 ◼ ► anybody to try and say like oh this certain application needs this type of system where
01:06:22 ◼ ► others don't i just don't think it's fair to categorize apps in this certain way i just think
01:06:27 ◼ ► if a developer wants to create a cross-platform outside of app store system they should be included
01:06:32 ◼ ► in the ability to add this link if they want to i don't know why there has to be this very specific
01:06:39 ◼ ► type of application that gets classed as reader and that means they get benefits to others don't
01:06:46 ◼ ► yeah plus the they're not a perfect match because some of them are like kindle although there is a
01:06:53 ◼ ► subscription kindle unlimited but basically like something where it's you're buying a book and it's
01:06:59 ◼ ► a or a comic book and it's a one-time purchase of something a la carte is very different than
01:07:05 ◼ ► being a subscriber and being on for for everything like that you just get it you sign up and get it
01:07:12 ◼ ► and yet they've just defined it this way and and apple's attitude toward these categories that
01:07:17 ◼ ► apple defines is very much like so much of apple's responses in this space which is like
01:07:22 ◼ ► look i don't make the rules again reader apps are reader apps right we all agree on that it's like
01:07:27 ◼ ► well no you defined what the reader apps are and you define what those video apps are where you
01:07:31 ◼ ► actually are letting people rent movies or buy movies from amazon using their amazon account
01:07:36 ◼ ► and their amazon credit card you're already doing that for digital goods there may have been a time
01:07:42 ◼ ► where reader apps could have been classed as like types of applications where they are catalogs of
01:07:48 ◼ ► content that the business model cannot work because of licensing fees right if they have to
01:07:56 ◼ ► pay the 30 but the problem is now all of these companies make original content too so that
01:08:02 ◼ ► doesn't work either right like you can't say that for spotify now because they want you to listen to
01:08:07 ◼ ► the podcasts that they own you can't say it for like amazon and audible because they make their
01:08:12 ◼ ► own podcast as well netflix make all their own tv shows right like so they control and own everything
01:08:18 ◼ ► so they are you know it doesn't work like that anymore this is we will make a rule that allows
01:08:22 ◼ ► certain kinds of apps that we decide do this but not anything else that's that's really literally
01:08:28 ◼ ► what it is right it is we have decided and the japan fair trade commission has agreed that for
01:08:37 ◼ ► certain classes of apps we will do this very limited thing and that will get them off our back
01:08:43 ◼ ► and make us look like we're listening to regulators well i just think it should be that the rules
01:08:48 ◼ ► should be pretty simple hey if you want to offer your own payment service and do of all of the mess
01:08:53 ◼ ► that that takes you can put the link in simple as and but we recommend that you use ours for these
01:09:00 ◼ ► 20 great reasons yep i think it's pretty clear that wagons are circling around apple like i know
01:09:05 ◼ ► that this has been a thing where like it's been expected this is going to happen you know like
01:09:10 ◼ ► there's been uh you know they everybody's set in front of congress and all that kind of stuff
01:09:13 ◼ ► and we've been talking about it before then that you know like in the community that we're a part
01:09:18 ◼ ► of people have been very aware of these kinds of issues for a long time because smaller companies
01:09:22 ◼ ► and that kind of stuff but i am wondering now more than ever why not just make larger changes rather
01:09:30 ◼ ► than dealing with these like two-bit cases in every single country right like going through
01:09:37 ◼ ► every court in every government across the world and having this consistent headline after headline
01:09:44 ◼ ► of apple giving in or apple like having to change this rule or is this fair like i just saw india's
01:09:51 ◼ ► open to case now and they want similar similar to what south korea has asked for so they are
01:09:56 ◼ ► actually your next example india is your next example after south korea of like the 30 thing
01:10:02 ◼ ► for in-app purchases right and i just think like why like i don't know why we got we should never
01:10:08 ◼ ► have gotten this far and now why are they playing every small game so we have discussed for a while
01:10:18 ◼ ► now like the the risk apple has which is in having its business model broken because the momentum
01:10:28 ◼ ► gathers and the business model gets broken at this point i feel like there is not like they're not
01:10:37 ◼ ► so proactive and so afraid of that that they're willing to just roll out a bunch of changes
01:10:42 ◼ ► and say we've listened and we hear you and we're going to do this and maybe their calculation there
01:10:48 ◼ ► is that if they do it it's just going to result in a oh we got them on the run now boys let's
01:10:53 ◼ ► let's get them for other stuff right like make it worse i'm not sure i believe that but i think that
01:10:59 ◼ ► that could be an argument there i feel like though there we have one of two paths ahead of us here in
01:11:04 ◼ ► terms of what apple's going to do one of them is that apple is doing all of this small potato stuff
01:11:09 ◼ ► because apple is readying whether it's planning on rolling it out or it's an in case of emergency
01:11:17 ◼ ► break glass kind of situation apple is readying their offer of app store reform and they're not
01:11:33 ◼ ► they ready that or a slightly different version of that is apple has decided that their best strategy
01:11:43 ◼ ► is to essentially buy off every regulator with a negotiated minimal change and that they feel the
01:11:55 ◼ ► net result is going to be less than the emergency break glass version that they're better off and so
01:12:04 ◼ ► far i gotta say so far i think they're if they're all like the tone of these i think they're kind of
01:12:11 ◼ ► right these settlements the lawsuit settlement that they did which was basically a win for them
01:12:15 ◼ ► the settlement in japan uh even even the korean law we'll see how it gets implemented and and all
01:12:22 ◼ ► that but like there's something to be said for the attitude that they're better off moving
01:12:29 ◼ ► incrementally in individual cases that they won't have to make as big a change as they want okay
01:12:38 ◼ ► fair enough they can they can move like 75 of the way rather than 100 you know by the time it's what
01:12:45 ◼ ► i'm saying is their attitude seems to be that rather than going to a hundred percent of what
01:12:52 ◼ ► they're willing to give and say we heard everybody and we're reforming and here's the new way and
01:12:57 ◼ ► isn't it going to be great apple's attitude very much seems to be we will scratch and claw if it
01:13:04 ◼ ► means that we only have to give up 75 of that instead of 100 because and and if it's uh you
01:13:10 ◼ ► know a new settlement announced on a on a friday afternoon um every week for a year to incrementally
01:13:18 ◼ ► change app store practices like that that my concern with that strategy is that they are taking
01:13:26 ◼ ► a real risk by doing this that they're gonna end up what's the over under on that 100 that's their
01:13:33 ◼ ► opening offer right like are they gonna end up at 75 are they gonna end up 125 yeah they're gonna
01:13:39 ◼ ► lose one like a big one scratching and clawing of this lead to them ending up in a worse position
01:13:45 ◼ ► than if they had just made a bunch of app store reforms and put them out there but i just you know
01:13:52 ◼ ► again i don't think they're capable of it i don't think they're capable of saying we're gonna change
01:13:57 ◼ ► uh and we're gonna leave money on the table because we've heard you and this is the right
01:14:02 ◼ ► thing to do i just don't think that they've got that they're not wired up that way they don't have
01:14:07 ◼ ► that bone in their body and so instead they're playing this other game which might benefit them
01:14:13 ◼ ► or it might hurt them which is why i think it's kind of dumb and that they might be better off
01:14:17 ◼ ► playing you know trying to throw their souls on the mercy of public opinion and say okay we've
01:14:26 ◼ ► seems like instead we are um in for a year of a grind of weird country-specific app store rules and
01:14:37 ◼ ► various settlements that in just incrementally adjust app store policies instead of them just
01:14:43 ◼ ► saying you know what we're the richest company in the world and we make billions of dollars and even
01:14:48 ◼ ► if we lose a little bit to our developers who make our platform what it is that's okay because we make
01:14:53 ◼ ► a lot of money and we want everybody to be happy and we want the platform to be successful and
01:15:00 ◼ ► they could do that and probably skate away probably skate away from scrutiny but they don't
01:15:08 ◼ ► want to it's bottom line is that they they don't seem to want to do that everything is a you gotta
01:15:15 ◼ ► you gotta grind to get any little thing out of apple this episode is brought to you by our
01:15:21 ◼ ► friends over at pingdom if you have a website what does it serve whether it's driving people
01:15:30 ◼ ► of a contact form when these critical transactions fail you lose out in business not to mention a bad
01:15:35 ◼ ► experience for your users but as a solution transaction monitoring from pingdom starting
01:15:40 ◼ ► at just ten dollars a month transaction monitoring runs checks 24 hours a day seven days a week and
01:15:45 ◼ ► it's going to alert you when you can't check out forms or login pages fail before they affect your
01:15:50 ◼ ► customers or business pingdom will notify you the moment there's a failure over sms email or via
01:15:56 ◼ ► your favorite apps like slack ops genie and pager duty depending on what's being monitored or the
01:16:01 ◼ ► severity of the outage you can customize who's alerted and how they get that notification
01:16:06 ◼ ► so don't let your users discover a problem with your website you want to be the first to know and
01:16:11 ◼ ► it's so easy to get started just go to pingdom.com/relayfm for a 30-day free trial with no credit
01:16:16 ◼ ► card required then when you're ready to buy use the code upgrade at checkout and you'll get a huge
01:16:21 ◼ ► 30 percent of your first invoice our thanks to pingdom from solar winds for their support of this
01:16:25 ◼ ► show and relay fm let's do some hashtag ask upgrade questions so i have the first the first one
01:16:33 ◼ ► actually uh i think this is going to introduce an interesting i don't know maybe uh unknown to you
01:16:48 ◼ ► it's new you would say it's nougat nougat machine asks nougat machine nougat machine asks as apple's
01:16:58 ◼ ► size political importance and controversies continue to increase doesn't it feel like the
01:17:05 ◼ ► pace of the news is increasingly relentless as well is it difficult to decide how much time to
01:17:11 ◼ ► spend on a show or what to spend it on with so many options yeah yeah yes yes i yes absolutely
01:17:21 ◼ ► it is hard i would also say and you know i i think you probably agree with me but i would like to
01:17:27 ◼ ► hear what you have to say too um i feel like we got into this to be enthusiastic and interested
01:17:39 ◼ ► in what like and talk about products talk about hardware talk about software talk about the
01:17:46 ◼ ► experience of using these devices that matter to us talk about uh ways to use them better
01:17:53 ◼ ► and accessories and like all of that kind of nitty-gritty stuff we did not sign up to do
01:18:10 ◼ ► but it's so what i'm saying is when we spend an hour talking about that stuff one of two
01:18:18 ◼ ► things is true either we felt the responsibility to do it because it was such a big deal or it's
01:18:24 ◼ ► because there isn't something else to talk about that we would rather talk about and it's a little
01:18:30 ◼ ► from column a and a little from column b today but that's my feeling is yes the pace is relentless
01:18:36 ◼ ► it has picked up and i would really much rather talk about the the devices and how we use them
01:18:45 ◼ ► and how they matter to us than about policy and regulation but as apple has become this enormous
01:18:52 ◼ ► force and scrutiny has been focused on it that's what we end up talking about sometimes yeah i
01:18:57 ◼ ► think an easier way to put it is as apple has changed so have we along with them you know in
01:19:03 ◼ ► the same way that like we talk about streaming media services because apple's streaming media
01:19:08 ◼ ► company now too and has their own content and like you know so as apple has become an increasingly
01:19:15 ◼ ► political force or a force that draws political ire the show has changed along with it i think
01:19:23 ◼ ► i maybe take a little bit more enjoyment from these conversations than you do just because i
01:19:27 ◼ ► have always been and continue to be just interested in the ways that big companies do business with
01:19:33 ◼ ► each other and outside you know like i think i like i describe it as i enjoy the machinations
01:19:39 ◼ ► of large companies right so i just like when uh you know when big company a and big company b go
01:19:44 ◼ ► to war and the war of words between them i find that to be interesting to like pick apart what
01:19:49 ◼ ► they're saying and why they're saying it that's what i like about upstream really mostly is like
01:19:56 ◼ ► how these big companies are interacting and not you know but i do have share the same like i was
01:20:05 ◼ ► thinking as we were talking i cannot wait for next week because we might get to talk about an iphone
01:20:10 ◼ ► instead because that's ultimately what i want to talk about more but i also won't if i believe that
01:20:18 ◼ ► i have something to say about this stuff i want to say it you know because same with like if i
01:20:24 ◼ ► didn't have or you didn't have anything to say about that last topic we probably wouldn't have
01:20:28 ◼ ► spent any time on it or just a little you know sure like we maybe would have just said like hey
01:20:34 ◼ ► this thing happened this week and we're going to move on if i had nothing to say but i have
01:20:38 ◼ ► something to say so i want to say it but i do agree with nugam machine in the way of saying
01:20:44 ◼ ► that like it is becoming at certain points difficult to decide what exactly we're going
01:20:49 ◼ ► to talk about on the show because there's so much like there are a bunch of rumors like rumors are
01:20:55 ◼ ► relentless and like how do we decide which rumors to talk about can be a whole thing not just the
01:21:00 ◼ ► the political stuff yeah i mean we haven't talked about the um like the if i'm gonna buy an apple
01:21:07 ◼ ► watch but we got time for that yeah but i mean i'm totally gonna buy buy an apple watch and that's
01:21:11 ◼ ► fun that's fun conversation but also we talk about new products uh those rumors happen so far in
01:21:16 ◼ ► advance that sometimes those are also just kind of floating out there and and are we restating
01:21:20 ◼ ► ourselves whereas this was something that's new and i think for people who use apple products
01:21:25 ◼ ► you know it's really ultimately this show should be about things that affect the lives of its
01:21:32 ◼ ► listeners and so although there is a sort of a layer in between you and this which is the
01:21:37 ◼ ► developer like how apps behave and what changes in that and how apple changes its policies which
01:21:45 ◼ ► impacts how your apps work it does matter so it is worth talking about and it is also i think
01:21:50 ◼ ► this whole story has been troubling because we've been dealing with sort of what is apple's mindset
01:21:57 ◼ ► here and is this going to you know are they because in the end none of us get well okay
01:22:04 ◼ ► there's probably some apple employees out there right most of us don't get paid by apple doing
01:22:08 ◼ ► well that's not quite how it works right um what we do care about though is is apple's business
01:22:14 ◼ ► model going to change is it going to be broken is the app store going to get really weird and why
01:22:19 ◼ ► and how do we come to that point and whatever happens next at least we have talked it through
01:22:24 ◼ ► and we won't be surprised it's a little bit like when we were talking about uh in the early days
01:22:28 ◼ ► of upstream about like all the changes that were happening in the entertainment industry
01:22:33 ◼ ► uh like when news breaks now about new things that netflix is doing or the tv companies are doing or
01:22:40 ◼ ► anything like that i feel like all of us upgrade listeners and you and me uh are less surprised
01:22:47 ◼ ► about any of that because we've been thinking about it and talking about it so there is value
01:22:50 ◼ ► in it it's just that i guess what i what i wanted to say to nougat machine is i am always going to
01:22:57 ◼ ► be more like what i did there i always am going to be more enthusiastic about the stuff that's
01:23:02 ◼ ► about like the devices that we're holding and the software that runs on them and stuff like that
01:23:07 ◼ ► than i am about regulation um but i also we we can't not talk about it thank you to nougat machine
01:23:16 ◼ ► for no no uget machine can you imagine if it was no uget mac ein that's the that's the person's name
01:23:30 ◼ ► mock mark ein ein mark in e anyway hunter asks hunter hunter asks apples rollout of their csm
01:23:43 ◼ ► announcements have widely been panned as poor pr strategy even by those that support the policies
01:23:49 ◼ ► what does this say about apple's new pr chief hey when you started talking about that later i was
01:23:55 ◼ ► like we're gonna move on because it's coming up later on in the show uh so apple did hire a new
01:24:00 ◼ ► pr chief after having no pr chief for a very long time i think it was over a year at least
01:24:07 ◼ ► steve dowling left and left the apple left the role vacant and then they hired stella low to
01:24:14 ◼ ► replace uh steve delving this is a number of months ago i think it's fair to say the last few
01:24:22 ◼ ► months seem to have shown some differences in pr strategies from apple i don't know if they're like
01:24:28 ◼ ► bad or good but different like the c sam thing didn't go well uh and then there was like you
01:24:34 ◼ ► know a lot of people were talking about especially with the um us developers thing interesting like
01:24:40 ◼ ► timelines given on the announcement which was actually a pretty shrewd move because it initially
01:24:47 ◼ ► came out as like look how great this is because that's what apple told the press uh that it was
01:24:53 ◼ ► super great um but when you started digging into it it kind of wasn't that great because no no
01:24:59 ◼ ► concessions were actually made even though it was made to look like concessions were made so i mean
01:25:07 ◼ ► i don't know i think the c sam thing is was very clearly uh pr blunder i don't know if stella low
01:25:16 ◼ ► was involved in that at all i don't know you know maybe it started before i had no idea this is the
01:25:21 ◼ ► problem with the black box of apple right is that and i said this earlier but just to restate it
01:25:26 ◼ ► i don't know if this is stella lowe's problem if it's the people who work for stella low who
01:25:42 ◼ ► you know tim or somebody else who basically is saying you will communicate this i don't know so
01:25:49 ◼ ► it's very hard to place blame but i will say the communications have been poor the c sam thing was
01:25:55 ◼ ► botched it was not you know things should not have been announced the way they were they shouldn't
01:26:00 ◼ ► have conflated those features that are totally different from one another they like they rolled
01:26:04 ◼ ► them all together like ah it's we're going to tell a story about all this stuff it just led to
01:26:07 ◼ ► more confusion they then had to do lots of damage control and then they pulled it pulled it out
01:26:12 ◼ ► uh not great some of this other stuff has been you know it's like you said it's it's been tough
01:26:19 ◼ ► i'll also say that stella lowe's bio mentions that she's also in charge of employee communication
01:26:24 ◼ ► so i have to say what does that mean and does that mean things like tim cook's memo where he said
01:26:31 ◼ ► great news everybody wants to come back and work in the office three days a week was that part of
01:26:36 ◼ ► her job because that also just engendered a lot of anger among at least some apple employees
01:26:42 ◼ ► so is that and we don't know we don't know it's possible that that that was her mistake too or
01:26:48 ◼ ► it's possible that her hands are tied like i this is the difficulty with any of this is you can't
01:26:53 ◼ ► point to somebody and say i know they're doing a bad job because they may be stuck in a very bad
01:26:58 ◼ ► or even unwinnable situation i will mention stella lowe's background is uh cisco dell and emc all of
01:27:08 ◼ ► which are essentially enterprise tech companies and i again i don't know anything about her
01:27:17 ◼ ► background beyond that and i don't know anything about her skill set and they obviously thought
01:27:21 ◼ ► that she was a great hire i will say no amount of work at cisco dell and emc will prepare you for
01:27:29 ◼ ► what the issues are at apple like i know they're both they're all tech companies apple is not like
01:27:35 ◼ ► those companies at all it was very surprising to me that they did not promote from within
01:27:42 ◼ ► like i feel like surely head of pr at apple you should really know how apple works well what
01:27:51 ◼ ► happened is they had two very senior people in pr when katie cotton retired and they picked one
01:27:57 ◼ ► and so the other left and so then they're left with just steve dowling and his lieutenants and i
01:28:08 ◼ ► but again we don't know we're just speculating on the outside so i don't know if it's stella
01:28:13 ◼ ► lowe's fault or not but i will say um their rollout was poor and either either stella lowe
01:28:22 ◼ ► should be held to account for the bad rollout or stella lowe should be using it as an example of
01:28:26 ◼ ► why they need to let her handle it right like one of those has to be true right like either you guys
01:28:32 ◼ ► told me to do it this way and it was a disaster and we need to not do this anymore or it was why
01:28:36 ◼ ► did you allow this to happen this way but something did not work right there so i don't know it is it's
01:28:43 ◼ ► a pr blunder regardless and i know you know i just i think you can't even argue that it was a pr
01:28:49 ◼ ► blunder because the way it was rolled out and the way they had to do all of these uh damage control
01:28:54 ◼ ► things afterwards like you don't do damage control and then throw out a lot of executive interviews
01:29:00 ◼ ► and then withdraw the feature if it wasn't a botched rollout and i do think that if they
01:29:07 ◼ ► had understood how it was going to be interpreted they could have done it differently that said what
01:29:13 ◼ ► i mentioned earlier still goes which is part of the fault here is that they seem to have not
01:29:18 ◼ ► engaged in some of the experts in this field in advance you know and you know when you have
01:29:25 ◼ ► the people who wrote maybe the only published paper on neural hashing come out two days after
01:29:30 ◼ ► the announcement and say they completely missed all of the flaws we found with this and so why
01:29:37 ◼ ► did they do this you should probably talk to them right like this is not a secret product this is
01:29:42 ◼ ► not an iphone then the fault lies with like i guess the security team or whatever it is like
01:29:47 ◼ ► not like the security security team and whoever enables that and that's a cultural thing and that
01:29:53 ◼ ► means it goes up to tim really like they they need to deal with this stuff so i can't call for
01:29:58 ◼ ► the firing of somebody because i don't really know who's at fault but somebody blew it here and maybe
01:30:02 ◼ ► many somebodies and maybe it's a fault of the corporate culture or as somebody on twitter said
01:30:06 ◼ ► to said i don't even know it was to me said the other week um boy there's an apple university
01:30:12 ◼ ► class and all of this isn't there like yeah there should be this should be a what went wrong and why
01:30:16 ◼ ► do we do it this way and how do we fix it because they they messed this up badly and zach asks this
01:30:22 ◼ ► is follow up from our call-in show what pen should i look into if i want something nicer but not a
01:30:27 ◼ ► fountain pen so this was let me take this one to you getting in there all right yeah go on what
01:30:33 ◼ ► you got i i don't i i have nothing okay so i'm gonna give two two things here one is pen addict
01:30:41 ◼ ► dot com slash top dash five dash pens i'll put a link in the show notes my co-host at the pen addict
01:30:48 ◼ ► brad dowdy put together a top five pens list for a vast array of categories so depending on what
01:30:56 ◼ ► you're looking for there's a pen in there but if i was going to make like here is a blanket
01:31:01 ◼ ► recommendation for you it would be the mark one from studio neat that would be my if you wanna if
01:31:08 ◼ ► you want to to up your pen game you will get two things here you will get what is undoubtedly my
01:31:15 ◼ ► favorite refill my favorite rollable refill ever made which is called the schmidt p8 126
01:31:21 ◼ ► that's the refill that they use i think i may have helped introduce this refill to studio neat and
01:31:27 ◼ ► they love it so much they wanted to build an entire pen around it because they thought it was
01:31:31 ◼ ► super great because it is super great and but the pen body that they that they pair it with is
01:31:36 ◼ ► absolutely fantastic and includes one of the most satisfying clicking mechanisms which are called
01:31:41 ◼ ► knocks in the pen vernacular one of the most satisfying clicking mechanisms that i've ever used
01:31:57 ◼ ► very good very good i have two of those they do black and white it's very nice and if you
01:32:07 ◼ ► um are in your local like stationary store i would say uh i bought a bunch of the zebra sarasa
01:32:18 ◼ ► clip which is you can often just find in a little bag or even in a little just in a little barrel
01:32:25 ◼ ► one at a time at your stationary store uh it's a you know gel pen it's really good as a plastic
01:32:32 ◼ ► you know it's not a fancy pen it's just a good pen that's what i used to use before i got these fancy
01:32:38 ◼ ► ones zebra sarasa makes it way onto one of brad's top five lists yes it is a very good pen that you
01:32:43 ◼ ► chosen for yourself there yeah well i mean i talk to pen people about it of course that's actually
01:32:48 ◼ ► a really good pen so you have that that's because because i was buying you know clicky plastic pens
01:32:52 ◼ ► and i thought well if i'm gonna buy a clicky plastic pen i want a good one in case you don't
01:32:59 ◼ ► notice about me i host a weekly podcast about pens and stationary materials it's called the pen addict
01:33:05 ◼ ► the pen addict celebrates its 10th year next year can you believe that good pretty good we're
01:33:13 ◼ ► actually just out of pure chance our 500th episode is going to align with our 10-year anniversary to
01:33:21 ◼ ► today well that's you know it's in the ballpark right that's 50 shows a year well we took a break
01:33:27 ◼ ► for a while this is one of the things there was there was a multiple month break uh in the pen
01:33:32 ◼ ► addicts history but uh yeah long time that we've been doing that show for a long long time and i
01:33:38 ◼ ► also do host a podcast with the guys over at studio neat as well called thoroughly considered
01:33:42 ◼ ► um but i absolutely adore that pen and think that you should buy it for yourself if you'd like to
01:33:49 ◼ ► send in a topic question for us to focus on to send out a tweet with the hashtag ask upgrade or
01:33:56 ◼ ► use question mark ask upgrade in the relay fm members discord which you can get access to if
01:34:00 ◼ ► you sign up for upgrade plus thank you so much if you have go to get upgrade plus dot com uh we are
01:34:06 ◼ ► now as i'm recording at 185 474.88 so we are uh just about ten thousand dollars away from crossing
01:34:19 ◼ ► our one million dollar goal of raised over three years for the wonderful saint jude children's
01:34:25 ◼ ► research hospital go to saint jude.org slash relay and you can donate today don't forget if there is
01:34:31 ◼ ► an apple event announced uh we will be uh having an extra draft episode of upgrade which might
01:34:40 ◼ ► actually mean right now in this very serious episode we are ending the summer of fun this
01:34:49 ◼ ► could be the end of the summer of fun right now it depends this could be the end of the summer of fun
01:34:58 ◼ ► it's difficult now we don't know when to end it because we don't get enough notice but this could
01:35:03 ◼ ► be the last time today that you hear the summer of fun theme song well it'll it'll i think in its
01:35:08 ◼ ► entirety right we do a little transition i knew i knew what you were we do a little transition but
01:35:14 ◼ ► yeah it's been a it's been a fun summer we had some fun we've had a lot of fun i think we've had
01:35:18 ◼ ► a lot of fun this summer great guests the guests with with you and the guests with me great theme
01:35:23 ◼ ► episodes yep i think it's been a great summer of fun but you know the summer comes to an end when
01:35:30 ◼ ► the iphones unfortunately arrive although the heat started increasing here in london this week which
01:35:34 ◼ ► is very peculiar the temperature starts going up again that that's the irony of of the bay area
01:35:39 ◼ ► weather is that our best weather is in september and october so yeah but this might be the end of
01:35:45 ◼ ► the summer of fun all right well you know it'll be back it'll be back always is and we got the
01:35:51 ◼ ► holiday maybe sooner than usual who knows you never know you never know with us you never know
01:35:56 ◼ ► with us thank you so much to pingdom gabby and member for for the support of this episode you