00:00:08 ◼ ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 309. Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace, Pingdom, and DoorDash.
00:00:28 ◼ ► But considering it's so action-packed, I'm sure that there will be many listeners who will have lots of strong opinions about this episode.
00:00:35 ◼ ► So our #SnellTalk question from Marlies, who submitted this in the Relay FM members Discord, ties into this perfectly.
00:00:46 ◼ ► Hmm, well, I think, yes, any good podcast that engenders some connection and then you end up talking back to it from time to time.
00:00:54 ◼ ► Yes, I do that. I just did that the other day. I joke about how I agree with almost everything that Marco says on ATP,
00:01:03 ◼ ► but Marco was talking about Big Sur the other day while I was listening and I was in the shower because I listened to podcasts in the shower.
00:01:12 ◼ ► And if you'd been standing outside the shower door, you would have heard me say, "No, no, wrong!" So yes, I do that. I absolutely do that.
00:01:29 ◼ ► Yeah. Well, I do a lot of laughing and all of that, but I occasionally do like, you know, "Oh, oh, Elliot," to, you know, the flophouse or something like that.
00:01:38 ◼ ► But occasionally there'll be something like that where I don't want to single out Marco.
00:01:42 ◼ ► I also said that Jon was wrong on that episode, but I'm, you know, that's fine. It's their podcast.
00:01:47 ◼ ► I'm not going to swoop in with some follow-out about how I disagree with some of the things they said. That's fine.
00:01:54 ◼ ► We'll get to it. We'll get to it. We'll talk about Big Sur at some point. But yes, I absolutely do talk back to the podcast.
00:02:00 ◼ ► I don't try to tell a story or something because they're not there. They can't hear me.
00:02:03 ◼ ► I will say also a privilege of being a Relay FM host is that I also just send messages to hosts as I'm listening to their podcast in the Relay FM Slack.
00:02:14 ◼ ► As a, I'll pull back the curtain for a little bit to our listeners. I think nobody does this to me more than Jon Siracusa.
00:02:32 ◼ ► He is both the creator of the concept of follow-up and the creator of lots of follow-up.
00:02:58 ◼ ► Now there are ramifications for the rest of the iMac line, but the majority of the news is focused around a 27-inch iMac.
00:03:06 ◼ ► You had a story go up today, so you were clued in on the information as it was coming out from Apple's press team.
00:03:14 ◼ ► Nothing like getting briefing about a product you don't know anything about and then having to write a story about it in less than an hour.
00:03:24 ◼ ► So I'm going to run through some of the features of this 27-inch iMac and we can kind of stop and talk about them as we want to.
00:03:34 ◼ ► It answers the question of, well, one, I think everybody knew there was going to be some kind of iMac update, right?
00:03:47 ◼ ► But I think, you know, Tim Cook said at the end of WWDC, we have Intel products coming still this year.
00:03:53 ◼ ► The iMac was the obvious candidate because it feels like it's been waiting on an update and it's a popular machine.
00:04:15 ◼ ► That means that it's like what we're used to and also means that it's been around a very long time.
00:04:19 ◼ ► And I think for the last couple of revisions, we've expected that we thought, you know, are they going to make that change to the iMac?
00:04:28 ◼ ► So I'm just going to push that chip forward again and think maybe they are saving it for an Apple Silicon iMac.
00:05:12 ◼ ► But the 27 inches where they kind of made this investment and they've they've upgraded a bunch of the tech inside.
00:05:26 ◼ ► Yeah, well, we can talk about the iMac Pro comparison in a bit when we talk about some of the specs.
00:05:34 ◼ ► But this machine received more of an internal spec update than I think I would have expected at this point before visual design change.
00:05:52 ◼ ► I mean, except for the 21 and a half inch iMac, which is untouched, but like almost the last Mac to get the T2.
00:06:05 ◼ ► The fact is, people are going to buy these and they're going to be fine and they're going to work for years.
00:06:09 ◼ ► And they're going to be I mean, there is a little bit of fallacy among people who are very tech savvy that, oh, I don't want to buy an iMac.
00:06:20 ◼ ► It's like, well, yeah, but if you need an iMac now, it's not like this thing breaks in six months, right?
00:06:26 ◼ ► And for a lot of people, this would actually be the best time to buy before there's uncertainty.
00:06:32 ◼ ► I have a close friend who said, oh, this is the time for me to buy because my iMac is getting a little a little ratty.
00:06:40 ◼ ► And I think that his feeling is I'd rather go now with this stable Intel architecture and then spend the next five years watching everybody else deal with it.
00:06:57 ◼ ► It's not valid if you want to be on the cutting edge, but so many people are not interested in being on the cutting edge.
00:07:14 ◼ ► It's got a new version of a Radeon Pro, AMD Radeon Pro GPU, which has more larger VRAM option.
00:07:27 ◼ ► Last year, the eight core high end iMac was basically it at iMac Pro levels with some caveats, right?
00:07:38 ◼ ► Like the cooling isn't as good, which means that there might be more throttling and it didn't have the T2.
00:07:44 ◼ ► And as far as we can tell, the cooling in these is the cooling in the old iMac, which means it's thermal.
00:07:51 ◼ ► Thermal capabilities are not the same as in the iMac Pro, which we designed the thermal system.
00:08:01 ◼ ► But it is interesting that alongside this announcement of the up to 10 core iMac, Apple took the eight core iMac Pro, which is my iMac Pro.
00:08:13 ◼ ► And they actually took the 10 core iMac Pro and slid it down to the entry price of the iMac Pro.
00:08:23 ◼ ► I think Apple is comfortable with there being a little bit of overlap between the high end iMac and the low end iMac Pro, but not that much overlap.
00:08:36 ◼ ► It's like understanding that the iMac Pro is losing some of its competitive edge here and is like reshifting a little bit,
00:08:43 ◼ ► because now this new iMac, the 27 inch has features the iMac Pro doesn't have, which could be considered great for people that use it.
00:08:53 ◼ ► I want to talk about the one that I'm the most interested in, which is the nano texture display option coming to a Mac device.
00:09:03 ◼ ► So it is a $500 add on, which is when I found out they were adding the nano texture, I thought would be much more than $500.
00:09:12 ◼ ► It's not cheap, but that is I would have expected it to be like $1,000 because that's how much more the pro display is, right?
00:09:25 ◼ ► This is a thing that I had hoped we would see that Apple would learn this technology and would understand it completely and would end up bringing it to other devices.
00:09:39 ◼ ► So I am actually really pleased to see that because I could imagine a future computer that I may want, I would want to add this onto.
00:09:49 ◼ ► So like for example, in my studio, I have large overhead lights like those I don't know if they're like the tube ones you get in offices.
00:10:03 ◼ ► And on my Dell display that I have my Mac Mini hooked up to, it gets quite a bit of glare.
00:10:09 ◼ ► So I will say this makes me even more hopeful that an Apple display that may come out in the future, which I'm still hoping will happen, would include an option for nano texture on that, right?
00:10:22 ◼ ► So yeah, I'm just genuinely like really pleased to see that Apple has found a way to extend this new technology out to somewhere else.
00:10:39 ◼ ► Yes. The question is what they would charge you for it because it is a $500 option for nano texture display on the iMac.
00:11:03 ◼ ► Like I literally can't move my monitor from this or my iMac from this place because there's too much glare in every other direction.
00:11:10 ◼ ► And maybe that is a thing that, you know, with a nano texture display iMac, you could be like, oh, now I can put it over here.
00:11:19 ◼ ► So yeah, it's fascinating to see that rolled out here and who knows where else it might go.
00:11:34 ◼ ► And what it gets is not just the webcam hardware, but because there's a T2 now, the T2 does all of the image signal processing,
00:11:48 ◼ ► It's not a 4K webcam or anything, but it's going to be a better webcam experience, not just because the hardware is better,
00:11:53 ◼ ► but because the T2 is doing all the controlling in terms of face detection and adjusting the camera settings.
00:12:20 ◼ ► And did we mention the 16-inch MacBook Pro professional microphone system is in here too?
00:12:42 ◼ ► And what we found is that it can sound good, but it also can sound not great depending on where it is.
00:12:50 ◼ ► it's probably not going to be pressed up against a comforter or in weird places that you might put a laptop.
00:13:00 ◼ ► Just sitting out on a desk and it may be optimized for that and may actually sound better.
00:13:18 ◼ ► And I'd imagine that over time that will go on all Macs, but this is the second Mac to really get that.
00:14:05 ◼ ► And on the 21.5, you can, for the same price, order a one terabyte fusion drive instead.
00:14:43 ◼ ► And then on the highest-end iMac, you can actually go all the way up to eight terabytes.
00:15:23 ◼ ► JEAN-MICHEL LAMBERT, Ph.D. It is. It needs to go. There are rumors that Apple is working on kind of
00:16:30 ◼ ► "Keep that plate spinning. Update it to the latest Intel processors. Look, it's really fast."
00:17:05 ◼ ► and whatever processor they put in there, I think there's no doubt they've got a processor ready to
00:17:30 ◼ ► And that's why. I mean, it's there because it's cheap. That's it. It's there because it's cheap.
00:17:40 ◼ ► -Do you think that this will be the last Intel Mac of any kind that gets a significant update?
00:17:50 ◼ ► -I... Okay. So, without getting into details, because Apple gives us these briefings on
00:17:59 ◼ ► background, and that means not for attribution and no direct quotes and all that, what I'll say is,
00:18:06 ◼ ► I get the distinct impression that Tim Cook's statement, they're letting it ride, right?
00:18:17 ◼ ► "We still have Intel machines in the pipeline." So, I'm gonna say there probably are more Intel
00:18:25 ◼ ► updates in the pipeline. I don't know if there will be any substantial Intel updates in the pipeline.
00:18:34 ◼ ► I'm skeptical of that. It wouldn't surprise me if, I mean, what I just said about keeping some
00:18:41 ◼ ► of the high-end plates spinning while dealing with the ones you want to target as your first Apple
00:18:49 ◼ ► Silicon Macs means that, like, what if they announce a 13-inch MacBook Pro or a 14-inch
00:18:55 ◼ ► MacBook Pro with Apple Silicon, which is a rumor for this fall. Maybe when they do that, they say,
00:19:02 ◼ ► "Oh, and the 16-inch got new Intel processors." And, like, that's it. Like, they literally,
00:19:08 ◼ ► like, "We're not doing that today. Those got a little bit, those got a refresh or a configuration
00:19:14 ◼ ► change, but we're not doing that yet. We're doing this now." That, I think, may happen.
00:19:21 ◼ ► And who knows, there might be a Mac Mini, Intel Mac Mini bump, where they're like, "Look, we're not
00:19:25 ◼ ► gonna do this now. We're just gonna rev the Mac Mini." Like, I think it's a priority thing. Like,
00:19:32 ◼ ► you can see Apple's prioritization because they can't ship everything at once. So if the Mac Mini
00:19:37 ◼ ► gets an Intel bump now, that's Apple saying, "It's not getting Apple Silicon for a while."
00:19:42 ◼ ► If it doesn't, then perhaps it's toward the front of the Apple Silicon train. So we'll see. But
00:19:48 ◼ ► my gut feeling, based on the fact that they seem to be letting Tim Cook's statement just
00:19:55 ◼ ► be there and letting it ride, is a suggestion to me that there are probably some more Intel Macs.
00:20:02 ◼ ► This is probably not the last Intel Mac, but it sure feels like it's probably the last notable
00:20:09 ◼ ► Intel Mac update. Could, might not be, but I think there's probably not a lot left in the pipeline
00:20:16 ◼ ► for them. - I would agree with you that I, if I was gonna assume, if I was gonna put my money
00:20:24 ◼ ► on it, I would say that this is probably the last update for an Intel machine that is notable,
00:20:32 ◼ ► is significant. It has more than just, "We're keeping this one alive for a while." Right?
00:20:39 ◼ ► Because that's kind of what they've done with the 21 in a way. Like, they've made some changes that
00:20:43 ◼ ► make it make a little bit more sense in the product line, but that's not notable in any way. I would
00:20:48 ◼ ► say that this, the last time that they did the iMac update, this one is much bigger than that.
00:20:55 ◼ ► The last iMac update was mostly, "We'll put a new chip in it," that kind of thing. I can imagine
00:21:00 ◼ ► doing that for a while, but this adds some actual new features that didn't exist in the iMac line
00:21:07 ◼ ► before, so it really feels like this is a big one. Yeah, 'cause I could imagine, right? Especially
00:21:12 ◼ ► the Mac Pro, I don't know about the iMac Pro, but especially the Mac Pro, I can imagine that one is
00:21:17 ◼ ► going to be one of the very last to move to Apple Silicon. I'm probably not alone in my thinking
00:21:22 ◼ ► there. So they'll have some new stuff that they'll be putting into the Mac Pro line over time,
00:21:27 ◼ ► but we're not going to see a brand new Mac Pro, I would imagine, for quite a while, but they'll
00:21:32 ◼ ► keep bumping some things. You can now put this processor in, this graphics card in, that kind of
00:21:41 ◼ ► saying, "We're not ready yet, but we'll give this a new... Oh, are there some new Xeons or whatever?
00:21:47 ◼ ► We'll put those in there if there are." I think they're keeping their options open there too,
00:21:52 ◼ ► but who knows? I think it would be really weird for them to say, "Oh, we've completely redesigned
00:21:59 ◼ ► the MacBook Pro 13-inch, and it's running on Intel processors." I don't know. So yeah, it feels like
00:22:10 ◼ ► if we're not at the end, I think we're pretty close to the end now. I think I would be surprised
00:22:17 ◼ ► if there was a new Mac running Intel processors that was a more substantial update than what we
00:22:25 ◼ ► just saw. I cannot stay in one place about my thinking as to whether the iMac Pro will continue.
00:22:33 ◼ ► So the future of the iMac Pro is a really good question. So for those who don't remember,
00:22:46 ◼ ► Trashcan Mac Pro. They were literally going to say, "No more Mac Pro. We're just going to do
00:22:50 ◼ ► an iMac Pro. That's going to suffice, and that is going to be our new Pro Mac going forward."
00:22:56 ◼ ► And then they changed their strategy, and they had that meeting, and they said, "We are going
00:23:00 ◼ ► to do a Mac Pro." But the iMac Pro was already kind of designed, and they put it out, and it
00:23:04 ◼ ► was out way before the Mac Pro was. And I bought one, and I love it. I think it feels like the time
00:23:13 ◼ ► for them to have updated it has passed now, given that they're going to Apple Silicon. So now what
00:23:19 ◼ ► it feels like to me is they have a plan for the iMac on Apple Silicon. And my guess is that the
00:23:27 ◼ ► iMac Pro won't exist anymore, or if it does exist, it's going to exist but really just be a powerful
00:23:35 ◼ ► iMac. That's my guess. - It's just the top of the line configuration of whatever the iMac will become.
00:23:42 ◼ ► - Imagine, yeah, using the same base design as whatever the 27-inch iMac becomes, which again,
00:23:47 ◼ ► may be a little while, right? Depending on how they handle the smaller one. If that one is their
00:23:52 ◼ ► target for a redesign for Apple Silicon, maybe these iMacs hang around. But when they do bring
00:23:57 ◼ ► the 27-inch iMac over to Apple Silicon, you know, offering a high-end processor configuration is
00:24:06 ◼ ► something they could do. If they want to keep the idea of an iMac Pro around, they could offer that,
00:24:12 ◼ ► and they could even have that be the different colored case, like, "Oh, darker aluminum space
00:24:19 ◼ ► gray for the high-end," right? And that's sort of a, how do they, do they value that? Do they
00:24:24 ◼ ► think there's value in having that? But yeah, the truth is, it's like the Spinal Tap thing of,
00:24:30 ◼ ► you know, why do you make it 11? Why don't you just make 10 louder? It's a little bit like that.
00:24:34 ◼ ► It's like, why make an iMac Pro? Why not just make the iMac faster at the high-end? If it's a brand
00:24:39 ◼ ► new architecture, is there anything in here that needs to be different architecturally for the iMac
00:24:44 ◼ ► Pro? And my guess is that they're going to build the new iMac for Apple Silicon whenever it comes.
00:24:49 ◼ ► With the idea of having a good thermal envelope to grow the processors over time without completely
00:24:57 ◼ ► redesigning the cooling system, right? At which point, you know, they would do that once. Why do
00:25:03 ◼ ► that twice? They would do that once. There's got to be only one iMac design. So I think,
00:25:06 ◼ ► I think it means that essentially the iMac Pro is probably dead. Even if they keep it around,
00:25:16 ◼ ► rather than like a completely new design. I'm a little disappointed that the iMac Pro design
00:25:22 ◼ ► doesn't seem to have ever gone in any iMac and seems like it maybe never will, but maybe they'll
00:25:28 ◼ ► take lessons. Well, I mean, it's SSD only and it's got the whole giant cooling system that is
00:25:35 ◼ ► way more capable than what's in the iMac. But I don't know. Maybe the next iMac actually benefits
00:25:41 ◼ ► from that technology. Maybe it'll benefit. And again, I would come back to the fact that the
00:25:46 ◼ ► iMac Pro was a conception from the before time in terms of how Apple thinks of the Mac. So it's
00:25:53 ◼ ► possible the iMac Pro was designed thinking that not only would there not be a Mac Pro,
00:25:57 ◼ ► but that there would not be Apple Silicon, right? From a period where they were just going to get
00:26:01 ◼ ► along to go along, put the Mac in maintenance mode, essentially legacy mode, where it was there,
00:26:10 ◼ ► they'd stick it in the iMac Pro and call it a day, but really that was not the future. And then they
00:26:15 ◼ ► changed their path. And so it's designed under all sorts of assumptions that Apple has probably cast
00:26:21 ◼ ► off like four or five years ago, and it's still kicking around. Yeah, for all we know, they're
00:26:25 ◼ ► going to take a wash on the R&D of the iMac Pro because that future didn't pan out. The future of
00:26:32 ◼ ► our professional Macintosh is this one. Yeah. And so we may never see if it's possible,
00:26:40 ◼ ► like all that work that we're talking about, that incredible cooling that the iMac Pro has,
00:26:44 ◼ ► that literally may never make it to another computer, right? Like you might just live in
00:26:48 ◼ ► this one because Apple Silicon chips will take a different type of system. Yeah, I think, I mean,
00:26:53 ◼ ► SSD only is the future, right? And so what they did in pulling all of the space out of the iMac,
00:27:01 ◼ ► you know, that's great, but they're going to design a new iMac and they may decide, well,
00:27:05 ◼ ► I want it to be smaller and lighter. And so I'm not going to use that hard drive space for cooling.
00:27:10 ◼ ► I'm going to remove it from the computer, right? So it may be a very different kind of computer,
00:27:15 ◼ ► but that's, it's okay. I think, I think Apple knows how many people who have high-end Pro tasks
00:27:22 ◼ ► use iMacs and not just the iMac Pro, but other high-end iMacs. I think they're aware of that.
00:27:28 ◼ ► And I think that they're aware of their needs and will continue to have a computer available
00:27:34 ◼ ► that serves those needs, whether they brand it as an iMac Pro and load it up with options that are
00:27:47 ◼ ► I think is an open question. It's sort of like, it's their choice about if they think that there's
00:27:52 ◼ ► value in branding one of their iMacs as the Pro iMac in order to get people to buy it and spend
00:27:57 ◼ ► more money. That's a marketing decision more than a technical decision, I think, honestly.
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00:29:47 ◼ ► for their support of this show and Relay FM. >> Breaking news, Myke. Breaking news. We have
00:29:54 ◼ ► more breaking news to report. This is the summer of breaking news episode, apparently. Huge,
00:30:01 ◼ ► huge Apple executive story. Phil Schiller, Apple's longtime senior vice president of worldwide
00:30:09 ◼ ► marketing is getting a new title and a familiar face is becoming the senior vice president
00:30:33 ◼ ► >> There have been. I don't know. It's almost like, did they just let him choose his job title?
00:30:39 ◼ ► Anyway, Apple fellow, he's still going to be in charge of the app store, which is very interesting.
00:30:44 ◼ ► If you remember, he had that reassigned to him from Eddy Cue and has made a lot of positive
00:30:53 ◼ ► you like to know them? >> Let me finish this. He's also in charge of events. He's also in charge of
00:30:57 ◼ ► Apple's events. These two things which are probably near and dear to his heart, he's still in charge
00:31:01 ◼ ► of now. Before we tell you the rest of the story, Myke Hurley has got a list of other Apple fellows.
00:31:05 ◼ ► >> I have. I've just found it. Believe it or not, I'm not kidding, this news was announced as we
00:31:10 ◼ ► were recording like half an hour ago. It's already been updated to include Phil Schiller. This is on
00:31:15 ◼ ► an apple.fandom.com Wiki. The list of fellows include Al Alcorn, Alan Kay, Bill Atkinson,
00:31:24 ◼ ► Don Norman, Gary Starkweather, Gershiran Sidhu, Guy Kawasaki, Phil Schiller, Rod Holt, Rich Page,
00:31:41 ◼ ► service to the computer industry or to Apple. It's an interesting choice to put him in that slot.
00:31:46 ◼ ► There's a statement about it where he says he will keep working at Apple as long as they will have me.
00:31:52 ◼ ► I bleed six colors, he says, but I want to make some time in the years ahead for my family,
00:32:05 ◼ ► Look, my gut feeling in reading this, and again, it's only been a half an hour and who knows what
00:32:10 ◼ ► will come out about it, is that Phil Schiller's been at Apple a long time. He's made a lot of
00:32:18 ◼ ► And he loves Apple. So this sounds to me like Phil Schiller saying, "Look, I could retire,
00:32:25 ◼ ► but I don't want to do that. But I don't want to work the way I've been working." And they're like,
00:32:29 ◼ ► "Okay." Tim probably is like, "Okay, how about this?" Or maybe he said, "I'll keep the app store
00:32:38 ◼ ► and events, but let's let someone else do all the other marketing stuff. I want a smaller job."
00:32:44 ◼ ► Now, maybe there's a whole other story here, but that's my gut read on this at the beginning is
00:32:53 ◼ ► And they can retire. And some of the reasons they're there is because they love Apple and
00:32:57 ◼ ► they love what they do. It's really true that when he says he bleeds six colors, Phil's been there a
00:33:02 ◼ ► long time. He really does care about this stuff. But at the same time, you're looking at the fact
00:33:08 ◼ ► that you turn 60 and you're working at a very intense company at a very intense job. It would be,
00:33:14 ◼ ► it seems entirely reasonable that a human being in that position would go to their boss, in this
00:33:21 ◼ ► case Tim Cook, and say, "Tim, I just want to cut back. This is too intense for me. I'm turning 60.
00:33:27 ◼ ► There are other people who can do the rest of this job. I don't want to go, but I don't want to keep
00:33:33 ◼ ► doing it at the level that I'm doing it." I think that's not unreasonable at all. So I'm going to,
00:33:41 ◼ ► from the app store. That's a huge thing that he took the reins of and has made substantive
00:33:46 ◼ ► changes to, and it sounds like he gets to still be in charge of that part, which either that's him
00:33:51 ◼ ► saying, "I don't want somebody else to mess up the work I did in this area," or it's somebody like
00:33:57 ◼ ► Tim Cook saying, "I can't lose you from the app store because you really got a good grip on that,
00:34:03 ◼ ► and I want you to keep on that." Events is his thing, and he's been behind those all along.
00:34:10 ◼ ► Tim Cook Yeah, this press release says that he was responsible, like ultimately, for the online
00:34:17 ◼ ► Yeah, so whether it's Phil saying, "These are my favorites," or it's Tim saying, "I can't lose you
00:34:23 ◼ ► on these things," or whether it's them saying, "We've got a new executive who can be in charge
00:34:28 ◼ ► of product marketing, but what we can't do is load all of this other stuff on him too. It's too much,
00:34:45 ◼ ► Chris Smith Well, sure. I think there's a logical thing there, like how long does he do this job?
00:34:50 ◼ ► And the fact is, he says, "As long as they'll have me," maybe if this all is going well,
00:34:55 ◼ ► he's around another 10 years doing just this stuff, or five years, or however long he wants
00:35:01 ◼ ► to be before he truly, really retires. And maybe, and again, this is not one of these like, "Oh,
00:35:06 ◼ ► it's all a sham. He's actually out of there." I think there are a lot of scenarios where what
00:35:10 ◼ ► it really is as an organization is, "I'm going to take a step back, and we're going to let other
00:35:14 ◼ ► people take a step forward, and we're going to train people up." Maybe he feels like there's
00:35:17 ◼ ► nobody who can take the job of running the App Store or running events yet, but as he steps away,
00:35:23 ◼ ► those people fill those spots, and he trains them up. And when he truly wants to retire,
00:35:27 ◼ ► or become just an Apple fellow where he has no responsibilities, he just walks around the campus
00:35:31 ◼ ► wearing the white robe. I made that up, by the way. There's no white robe. Maybe there is, but
00:35:35 ◼ ► I don't know. I just, I like that idea that there's been like a ceremony and he's been inducted.
00:35:42 ◼ ► You know, he'll have, those people will have come along. And then, because that happens sometimes,
00:35:47 ◼ ► right? Where you get these people who are super high powered, and they've been there a long time,
00:35:49 ◼ ► and they know what they're doing. And then you say, "Well, what happens when you leave?" And the
00:35:54 ◼ ► answer is there's no one. Like, we'll scramble. And one of the things you do, I think if you're
00:35:59 ◼ ► responsible, especially if you're 60 and you want to step back, is you say, "Can we, you know,
00:36:05 ◼ ► move to," everything's a transition, right? It's not like a transitional job. Everybody,
00:36:10 ◼ ► you know, has their time and then they leave. So, even Phil Schiller. So, this is a good opportunity
00:36:17 ◼ ► for him to take, you know, this part off of his plate, but also presumably to develop other people
00:36:25 ◼ ► so that when he leaves, leaves, that those people, that there are people who can step into those jobs.
00:36:30 ◼ ► We haven't even talked about Greg Joswiak, who has been, who is an Apple lifer. He has been there so
00:36:34 ◼ ► long. I think he can't, I think he left at one point and he came back, but like Greg Joswiak,
00:36:39 ◼ ► he was like a PowerBook product marketing manager of the original PowerBooks, I think. Like, he's
00:36:45 ◼ ► been there a long time and he, and we've seen him on stage a lot more lately, although he's always
00:36:50 ◼ ► been kind of around and on stage occasionally. And he is the new Phil in the sense of being the
00:37:02 ◼ ► presumably all now report to Joswiak. And I have known him at least a little bit for a long time
00:37:11 ◼ ► because I've been covering Apple a long time and he's been at Apple a long time. And I really like
00:37:16 ◼ ► him. I mean, I think his personality comes across. He's very disciplined as a speaker on stage and
00:37:21 ◼ ► things like that, but I think he's a good guy and I'm looking forward to seeing what he does with
00:37:27 ◼ ► product marketing, but it's a big moment. Also, another thing I wanted to throw out there, which
00:37:33 ◼ ► is like Johnny Ive, I have to wonder if this is one of those announcements that is following the
00:37:41 ◼ ► actual disengagement. Like, if that makes sense, that maybe Jos has kind of been doing this job
00:37:59 ◼ ► - Yeah, yeah, I think so. Jos is definitely, I was gonna say in the last two or three years,
00:38:04 ◼ ► we've seen way more of Jos than we used to. And we have seen less of Phil and it's funny too,
00:38:17 ◼ ► so I go to an event and on the live stream, I'm like, "Oh, there's no Phil. What's up with Phil?"
00:38:21 ◼ ► And it's like, "Phil's there. I talked to Phil afterward. Phil's there." It's just, I think that
00:38:28 ◼ ► maybe that was part of the conscious kind of getting other people involved and Phil doesn't
00:38:32 ◼ ► have to be on stage for everything. Even though he's in charge of the event and in charge of the
00:38:38 ◼ ► product marketing, it doesn't mean he has to be on stage. Now that goes hand in hand with a general
00:38:42 ◼ ► trend Apple has had since Steve Jobs died of getting away from the single or very limited set
00:38:51 ◼ ► of presenters and trying to show lots of people. Because Steve Jobs, especially in the early days
00:38:56 ◼ ► when he came back, Steve Jobs and Katie Cotton, who was the head of communications during this
00:39:01 ◼ ► period, it was very much like Steve is our spokesman. Steve, and he's got his sidekicks,
00:39:06 ◼ ► like Phil Schiller, but the message is Steve and the message is Apple, and Apple is a monolithic
00:39:11 ◼ ► force and you don't even know who all those people are that Steve is thanking at the end for not
00:39:16 ◼ ► seeing their families because they were working on this product. Like you don't know who they are.
00:39:19 ◼ ► And the Tim Cook Apple, for lots of good reasons, is about showing the faces of all the people who
00:39:25 ◼ ► work at Apple and getting to know those people and having it be this cast of people and saying,
00:39:34 ◼ ► And so it's a natural part of that process too for Phil Schiller to step back. And I'll point out,
00:39:39 ◼ ► he's the guy in charge of events, so he was probably driving that process. So I think it's
00:39:46 ◼ ► not just that Phil is seen less often because he was stepping away, but also sort of by design
00:39:52 ◼ ► that he wanted some different people in there. But it's still a big deal and we'll have to watch it
00:39:56 ◼ ► and see if things change. But the fact that Phil Schiller is still around and still in charge of
00:40:02 ◼ ► things, that's the big one, I think, in terms of the headline here is that he's got this title of
00:40:07 ◼ ► Apple Fellow, which seems super amorphous. - This is different to Johnny. Johnny just left.
00:40:11 ◼ ► - Johnny just left and it's different to Woz, who gets a paycheck but doesn't do anything.
00:40:15 ◼ ► Sorry, Woz. But he's still in charge of App Store and events. That's the part of this that I find
00:40:21 ◼ ► fascinating. It's like, "Well, Phil has ascended into Apple fellowhood, but he's also in charge
00:40:28 ◼ ► of the App Store and events still." So he's left, but he hasn't left at all. Whereas Johnny Ive was
00:40:49 ◼ ► - Like I said, I feel like the things he's in charge of, presumably, one of the things he's
00:40:54 ◼ ► doing is identifying the people who can replace him to do those things. And it could be, "Well,
00:41:00 ◼ ► Jaws will take this over later." Or it could be, "It's not really a product marketing job in the
00:41:04 ◼ ► same way. Phil did it because it was Phil." Because that's the other truth here, is that there are
00:41:09 ◼ ► titles and then there are what the people do. And if you've been in an organization long enough,
00:41:14 ◼ ► sometimes you will accumulate roles that are not your job as it's defined, but you're the person
00:41:21 ◼ ► who knows. I mean, this happened to me all the time, where I was like, "It's not my job to do
00:41:25 ◼ ► this, but I'm the person who does that because I'm the one of all of us that was the best fit,"
00:41:30 ◼ ► or whatever. And it's like, "Okay, well, why is that your job?" I'm like, "I don't know, it's my job."
00:41:34 ◼ ► I think Phil Schiller has done that over the years. And I think this is a good example of that,
00:41:44 ◼ ► but they're Phil jobs. And so ideally, yeah, he would be looking at people within the organization
00:41:51 ◼ ► to take over those jobs down the road. And that's the job, honestly, that's the job of any
00:41:57 ◼ ► responsible manager, right? You should always be cultivating your replacement. That's being a good
00:42:02 ◼ ► manager is you want your people to continue to grow and either replace you as you go on to do
00:42:08 ◼ ► your next thing, or ultimately, if they hit a brick wall, you give them the opportunity to go
00:42:13 ◼ ► somewhere else and do this thing. And that's part of being a manager and letting your people progress.
00:42:17 ◼ ► So I would hope that he's doing that. big day, wild day. We spoke a lot about Max, we spoke a lot
00:42:23 ◼ ► about people instrumental in Max. But I'm really trying to segue into 20 Max for 2020. Hey, Jason,
00:42:30 ◼ ► you're probably gonna have to save me at some point. I have a project, everybody that I've been
00:42:34 ◼ ► working on all year. And it's finally out, which is 20 Max for 2020. It's a multimedia extravaganza.
00:42:53 ◼ ► counting down from 20 to one. So counting down from the 20th most notable to the number one
00:43:06 ◼ ► of the world. But here it is. And as I was doing this, and I wrote, I think the first 10 essays,
00:43:17 ◼ ► because you're a podcast guy. That's Yeah, so I and then I thought, I'm gonna regret it if there's
00:43:22 ◼ ► not a video component, so people can see these things. And so it's all of those now. So they're
00:43:27 ◼ ► in addition to writing an essay, 20 essays, I'm going to make 20 videos and 20 podcast episodes
00:43:40 ◼ ► Steven Hackett on 512 pixels. And the podcast is going to be on relay FM. And the essays are on
00:43:49 ◼ ► six colors. And then as a bonus for six colors members and upgrade supporters at relay FM.
00:43:54 ◼ ► Those those people will have access to an early feed of the podcast, the get you'll get the
00:44:01 ◼ ► episodes on Monday instead of Friday. The public podcast feed is on Friday. So everybody gets to
00:44:13 ◼ ► Yep. We're talking upgrade plus about how you can get it because it's like a separate feed,
00:44:17 ◼ ► which you can grab. We'll talk about that and upgrade plus. But what made you I know the numbers
00:44:23 ◼ ► are good, right? 2020, you know, but what made you want to put this together? Now? You know,
00:44:29 ◼ ► like you could have done 19 Max for 2019. If you wanted to, honestly, I was thinking of the 20
00:44:36 ◼ ► was a again. This is before everything went bad. The 20 was a an opportunity for a list of 20 of
00:44:43 ◼ ► something. And I've wanted to do an extended project. My friend Simon Jerry, who works at
00:44:50 ◼ ► IDG. He used to be the editor in chief of Macworld. UK. He was my counterpart for many, many years.
00:44:55 ◼ ► He wrote a column every month. His column in Macworld. UK every month was something called
00:45:00 ◼ ► Apple A to Zed, which was every month he would discuss like everything related to Apple that
00:45:07 ◼ ► starts with a certain letter, and he went through the whole alphabet. I thought was that was a
00:45:11 ◼ ► really clever project, and I told him he should turn it into like an e book or something, and
00:45:16 ◼ ► that never happened. But I thought that was cool. And then there's a sports writer I love named Joe
00:45:22 ◼ ► Pazdansky, who did a series that recently finished that was called the Baseball 100, where he wrote
00:45:27 ◼ ► an essay about the top 100 basically most notable, I would say, because people argued about it,
00:45:33 ◼ ► baseball players of all time. And that was a fun idea. And I thought, well, maybe that's my
00:45:39 ◼ ► and I wanted to give myself a project for 2020. I wanted to have, you know, we have our we have our
00:45:44 ◼ ► jobs that we do, but a lot of it is kind of amorphous. It's like six colors, especially.
00:45:48 ◼ ► It's just like I write about whatever is going on. And I thought it would be nice to have
00:45:58 ◼ ► And I put all that together, and I thought, well, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to play
00:46:03 ◼ ► on the fact that I've got I don't write a lot about like history, even though I've been covering Apple
00:46:09 ◼ ► a long time. I don't do that. It's not my I'm not I'm not your nostalgia blogger, right? Like,
00:46:14 ◼ ► that's not my goal. Steven is what you're saying. But the difference is, I guess, between Steven
00:46:20 ◼ ► and you is Steven researches it, but you were there for most of it. Right, right, right. Yeah,
00:46:29 ◼ ► yeah. So I decided to leverage the fact that I've been around a long time and have some of these
00:46:33 ◼ ► stories that have kind of there is an amnesia before Mac OS 10. Basically, there's a real Mac
00:46:39 ◼ ► amnesia. So some of these stories are predate that. And, yeah, so that was what I thought is
00:46:46 ◼ ► that even though I'm not going to be your nostalgia blogger all the time for this, why not tap into
00:46:51 ◼ ► that and do a little sort of celebratory kind of project. And that was that was the origin of it.
00:46:57 ◼ ► I really wasn't trying to burn Steven like but but that is what he does, right? Like he writes
00:47:03 ◼ ► articles about products all the time. That's what 512 is about, right? Like old computers about old
00:47:09 ◼ ► old old stuff. Yeah. Like the thing that makes 512 different is he is he talks a lot of Mac history
00:47:15 ◼ ► as well as Mac present. I guess what I'd say is, as somebody who's 16 years older than Steven,
00:47:21 ◼ ► I feel like the writing about old things is a bigger trap for me than it is for him. Because
00:47:30 ◼ ► for him, it's like I'm burrowing down into the layers and discovering what's down in the
00:47:36 ◼ ► archaeological dig of the Mac. And like I'm in the archaeological dig. So it's a little harder for me
00:47:44 ◼ ► to do that. This is going to sound like this might take a long way around to give you this compliment,
00:47:48 ◼ ► but please just stick with me for a moment. A conversation that I have quite frequently
00:47:54 ◼ ► with friends of mine about you is that you are not stuck in the past. Right? You are, as you said,
00:48:04 ◼ ► you are 16 years older than Jason, which means that you're... No, that's me. You're Jason and Steven.
00:48:09 ◼ ► I'm exactly my age. So there's a couple more years of difference between us or one. I don't
00:48:14 ◼ ► even know how old Steven is. I don't know how old I am most of the time. But you are very...
00:48:20 ◼ ► Like you're just as modern as anybody, right? Like you are not... Because I don't ever think of you
00:48:26 ◼ ► as being older than me in any way, and nor do I think of you as like the old-timer Mac guy.
00:48:43 ◼ ► of you do not get stuck in the past. You do move forward and you stick with the times. You're not
00:49:18 ◼ ► I think, the ability to do this now because it doesn't "date" you because this is just a
00:49:27 ◼ ► special thing that you're doing. So basically what I'm saying is you are not like, I don't
00:49:33 ◼ ► ever think of you, I don't think anybody does, as like this ancient Mac archaeologist, as you would
00:49:40 ◼ ► say, or part of the fossil or whatever. So it gives you the ability to do it because this isn't
00:49:45 ◼ ► your thing, but you do have the knowledge so it should be shared. Yeah, there are those moments
00:49:50 ◼ ► where somebody like Steven especially is like, "oh, there was this video about Steve Jobs and
00:49:56 ◼ ► the coffin, that's a great video," and I'm like, "yeah, I was in the front row." I was like,
00:50:00 ◼ ► I was like 10 feet away from that. It's like, "oh, but that's ancient history!" Yes, it is
00:50:12 ◼ ► historical moment and you're just sitting there, you know, baby Jason's in the fourth row or
00:50:17 ◼ ► whatever, you know. So you have this knowledge and it's worth sharing because as well, like,
00:50:27 ◼ ► later episodes of 20 Macs in 2020, but it's not just you, right? The great part about it is
00:50:34 ◼ ► interviews with many people who were around them, people you used to work with. So the great thing
00:50:40 ◼ ► is like it is a, for the podcast especially, I think like a really great oral history of
00:50:48 ◼ ► these Macs in their time from people that use them, not just a case of like, "oh, I looked it
00:50:55 ◼ ► up on Wikipedia and like let me tell you about it." Like there are stats, there are things to
00:50:59 ◼ ► hear about which are interesting, but I always find it more interesting to hear from people who
00:51:05 ◼ ► have the actual context of being around them. Like, you know, like when you look at the history,
00:51:10 ◼ ► I'm sure like the 20 Macs of 2020 will touch on computers that were released at a time when Apple
00:51:17 ◼ ► nearly went bankrupt. And as of this week, Apple is the most valuable company in the world. So like
00:51:25 ◼ ► people that have only been around like me for 15 years caring about this stuff, I can't accurately
00:51:33 ◼ ► give the context of what it was like for to be a Mac user 22 years ago. And so I think that that's
00:51:40 ◼ ► the thing that I like about this project is it's giving more people as well as yourself who were
00:51:45 ◼ ► around then to share those stories because it gives additional context to these to the history
00:51:51 ◼ ► of these computers. So it's cool. Well, I neglected to mention that. So the podcast is a scripted
00:51:58 ◼ ► podcast with me talking to, I'm telling a story and I'm also weaving in the stories of a bunch
00:52:09 ◼ ► of people I know. And so like some old timers like Adam Angst and Andy Anadko are in there,
00:52:14 ◼ ► but also like Stephen Hackett's in there and John Gruber's in there. And there are a bunch of people
00:52:19 ◼ ► coming up who you haven't heard from yet who are in and I'm gathering more. And so it's a different,
00:52:25 ◼ ► it's a very different feel. The essay is just me. The podcast is the voices. It's me telling a story
00:52:30 ◼ ► and also the voices of other people who have other things that are their priority. And I let them
00:52:34 ◼ ► say that part. And then the video is actually a little more like a podcast in that it's me and
00:52:40 ◼ ► Stephen Hackett just talking about it and then showing you like pictures of the old Macs.
00:52:47 ◼ ► - Well, this is one of the reasons that it's a collab as the kids say is 'cause he's got so
00:52:52 ◼ ► many of these, not all of them, by the way, he doesn't have all of them, but he has so many of
00:52:55 ◼ ► them that I said, if you can help me out with the pictures and the video of these things and we'll
00:53:02 ◼ ► talk and we'll make it like a collaboration and we'll put it on 512 pixels. And he was up to that.
00:53:07 ◼ ► So that's helpful because I don't have most of these, although I have a few more than I used to
00:53:20 ◼ ► Stephen doesn't have it and I'm like, well, I need one to shoot for this project. So I have bought a
00:53:26 ◼ ► couple of computers specifically to take pictures of them and video of them for this project.
00:53:32 ◼ ► So that's a little tidbit, but anyway, so you'll get something different out of the video,
00:53:38 ◼ ► which is me and Stephen talking about old Max and you can see them, then out of the podcast,
00:53:43 ◼ ► which has lots of different voices, including mine and then the essay, which is mine. So pick
00:53:51 ◼ ► - Well, you talk about me wanting to be current. This is an example where the old way of thinking
00:53:56 ◼ ► was I shall write 20 essays, one a week and that'll be it. And I thought, that's wrong.
00:54:01 ◼ ► I shouldn't, I should do more than that. And that's why I have made a vast amount of work
00:54:07 ◼ ► for myself. So see you in mid-December, everybody. - I think this is a great project. I love that you
00:54:14 ◼ ► have gone to the lengths that you have, because it feels to me like even more of an event because of
00:54:20 ◼ ► it. Like, you know, there are things where you, when you can see the amount of work someone has
00:54:24 ◼ ► put into something, it elevates what you think of it in your mind, right? So like the fact that I
00:54:30 ◼ ► know I can read an article, listen to a podcast and watch a YouTube video and the three of them
00:54:36 ◼ ► do have differences in content, like that is, that seems amazing to me. That's like a big thing. So
00:54:44 ◼ ► I congratulate you for doing this project. I urge people to go and consume it. I will also say,
00:54:52 ◼ ► I'm super happy because I'm not a big article guy and love that there's a podcast version so I can
00:54:58 ◼ ► consume in my preferred medium, which would be to listen, especially for me, considering it's lots
00:55:04 ◼ ► of different people. I like to hear them. You know, that's just my preference, but that's the
00:55:08 ◼ ► great thing about having so many different forms of media available is you've given this project
00:55:13 ◼ ► to people in whatever way they want to consume it. So you can find all this stuff at Six Colors,
00:55:18 ◼ ► or you've want to listen to the podcast version, it's relay.fm/20max. Or if you're an upgrade plus
00:55:24 ◼ ► subscriber or a Six Colors member, you get that feed available to you so you can get them in
00:55:29 ◼ ► advance. This is a great project. I'm very happy that you're doing it. And I will be here to cheer
00:55:35 ◼ ► you on over the next 20 weeks, Jason, because I have no doubt that by week like 17, it's going to
00:55:43 ◼ ► be tough. - Yep. I am ahead. I will say I am ahead. I have, I'm starting this project. I've
00:55:52 ◼ ► launched this project with stuff in the can. So I am ahead, which gives me some slack time.
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00:57:59 ◼ ► no the Congressional Antitrust hearing where Congress brought in a bunch of tech CEOs. So we
00:58:08 ◼ ► had Zuckerberg, Pichai, Bezos and Cook ask them a bunch of questions. There were also some statements
00:58:17 ◼ ► beforehand that were enlightening the questions themselves like, you know, pick your poison on
00:58:23 ◼ ► that one. We are not going to talk about the antitrust hearing itself. There's a lot of great
00:58:31 ◼ ► content out there that will do it way better than we will. I would recommend people listen to the
00:58:36 ◼ ► most recent episode of the talk show with Nilay Patel from The Verge along with Jon Gruber.
00:58:43 ◼ ► It's an excellent episode of the talk show because you get both sides. You get the tech angle and
00:58:49 ◼ ► Nilay is very well versed in the legal side too. So I really recommend that episode to people to go
00:58:55 ◼ ► and check out if they want to kind of get a good breakdown for what this hearing was like. The
00:59:00 ◼ ► thing that I wanted to talk about with Hugh Jason is there were a bunch of emails that came out
00:59:06 ◼ ► afterwards as kind of like the evidence that was collected as part of this investigation.
00:59:12 ◼ ► And there were two main parts to this that I wanted to touch on that tie up some things that
00:59:19 ◼ ► we've been talking about on this show for a while. And they actually include both Apple and Amazon
00:59:24 ◼ ► in both instances. One of them is why you can't buy Kindle books in the iOS app. So this one goes
00:59:32 ◼ ► back a long, long way. So this one is actually referring to emails that Steve Jobs was in the
00:59:40 ◼ ► thread of back in 2010 because I've forgotten this until I read this. You used to be able to do it,
00:59:48 ◼ ► right? You could buy Kindle books in the Kindle iOS app way back at the beginning and it would
00:59:55 ◼ ► just be processed through your Amazon account. And then Apple started introducing more functionality
01:00:01 ◼ ► to the app store, including in-app purchases, a thing. But, you know, it was still like an opt-in
01:00:07 ◼ ► thing. You know, the old rules of the app store are very different to where they are now. You know,
01:00:11 ◼ ► like, for example, when it began, there were no free apps at all, right? Like every app was paid.
01:00:15 ◼ ► It's like stuff changed over time. And basically what this breaks down to from looking at the email
01:00:21 ◼ ► chain between, uh, like Phil Schiller previously mentioned was in this chain, Jobs is in this
01:00:26 ◼ ► chain, EdiQ is in this chain. Basically, Amazon made an ad which showed customers switching to
01:00:33 ◼ ► and from their iPhone to get their books on the Kindle app. And they were switching to Kindles
01:00:43 ◼ ► you know, basically the iPhone was just another tool in that chain. And also by this point,
01:00:49 ◼ ► there were more users of iOS, like on iOS, the Kindle app, than Kindle devices from Amazon.
01:01:03 ◼ ► Amazon is making money from the iPhone more than they're making from their own hardware.
01:01:09 ◼ ► So they started looking at what we have today, which was basically they either use our in-app
01:01:16 ◼ ► purchase model or they don't do it at all. And there were a couple of interesting quotes that
01:01:21 ◼ ► I just wanted to pull out. One is from EdiQ, which is saying, this is going to be a huge decision for
01:01:26 ◼ ► us, which is very apt. And it goes on to describe a little more by basically saying like, if we do
01:01:34 ◼ ► this, we are making massive changes to the App Store for everyone. But they did it. And what,
01:01:42 ◼ ► and this is a quote from Steve Jobs in that email chain. iBooks is going to be the only bookstore on
01:01:47 ◼ ► iOS devices. We need to hold our heads high. One can read books bought elsewhere, just not buy,
01:01:53 ◼ ► rent or subscribe from iOS without paying us. While we acknowledge it is prohibitive for many
01:01:59 ◼ ► things. So there's a couple of interesting stuff here and there's funny stuff here. The funny stuff
01:02:03 ◼ ► to me is that like, that did not pan out. iBooks is not like the destination, right? Like I'm sure
01:02:10 ◼ ► a books, the books app is used by many people, but I think if people think about eBooks, they think
01:02:16 ◼ ► about Kindle books, right? Like that is pretty much where that's landed at this point. The books app
01:02:22 ◼ ► exists. You can go there if you want to, but it's definitely not as Apple imagined. And then the
01:02:28 ◼ ► other thing I just find it so interesting that we are still dealing with the ramifications of this
01:02:33 ◼ ► today, right? With people choosing whether to use the in-app purchase model or not for their
01:02:40 ◼ ► devices, for subscriptions, you know, this, all of this decision went out into all of that, right?
01:02:45 ◼ ► So talking about like, Hey, a few weeks ago or Netflix now, right? Like that, that you, you cannot
01:02:52 ◼ ► sign up there. All of that came from this one decision, which was that because there was an
01:02:56 ◼ ► ad that Amazon made, which showed it was easy to switch away from the iPhone. Yeah. Yeah. I,
01:03:03 ◼ ► not my favorite trait of Apple, this stuff. This is the, uh, I think that Steve Jobs email from 2011
01:03:12 ◼ ► is just so clear. It's, um, this is pretty simple. I books is going to be the only bookstore on iOS
01:03:18 ◼ ► devices. We need to hold our heads high. One can read books, bought elsewhere, just not buy,
01:03:23 ◼ ► rent, subscribe from iOS without paying us, which we acknowledge is prohibitive for many things.
01:03:28 ◼ ► This is Apple saying we want our money. And if that means you can't sell it on our platform,
01:03:42 ◼ ► they beat us cause they recorded it last week. They had a, I thought a really good discussion,
01:03:46 ◼ ► um, especially what Marco said about like the advantages and disadvantages and the criticism
01:03:51 ◼ ► Apple gets for aspects of its, uh, platform on iOS and all the convenience that comes from, uh,
01:04:01 ◼ ► Apple's payment platform. Like for me, similarly, I would say my big criticism, I mean, I don't love
01:04:10 ◼ ► the fact that Apple is making developers jump through who have outside stores jump through
01:04:16 ◼ ► hoops, uh, or makes customers who use apps from companies like Amazon to jump through hoops. Like
01:04:23 ◼ ► what I do, if I want to buy a comic on Comisology or a book on, uh, on Amazon on the Kindle bookstore,
01:04:29 ◼ ► I have to open up a web browser, right? Like I can't, I have to use Safari. I can't use the
01:04:33 ◼ ► Amazon app. I can't use the Comixology app. I have to go to a web browser. It's stupid.
01:04:41 ◼ ► It is a worse user experience. Yeah. I think it's a, so I think it's a bad policy. And I think,
01:04:45 ◼ ► um, I think what Marco said is essentially all they have to do to fix this is let, well,
01:04:59 ◼ ► Apple should let apps link out to the place you need to go in a Safari window in Safari, right?
01:05:07 ◼ ► Like not a, not, not a secret hidden web view that is tricking the user, but Apple could define it
01:05:14 ◼ ► that way. And it would be a better, better customer experience. Um, I feel like you should
01:05:20 ◼ ► just be able to buy books and comics inside the Kindle and Comixology apps. Like, I feel like
01:05:25 ◼ ► it's stupid that Apple doesn't let them do that. Um, but the thing that puts it, puts it over the
01:05:31 ◼ ► edge into offensive to me is that this is a strategy to get people to buy books from Apple
01:05:57 ◼ ► If it weren't for the fact that it's the only place that you can sort of tap a couple of times
01:06:03 ◼ ► and buy a book on Apple's platforms, as opposed to Kindle, which is a decidedly worse experience
01:06:10 ◼ ► because you can't buy books. Um, and that that's the part that's always offended me the most about
01:06:15 ◼ ► it is that Apple's taking it. It's not just that it's guidelines lead to consumer hostile behavior.
01:06:21 ◼ ► It's also that it's got a horse in the race. It's it's it built a bookstore to, to eat Amazon's lunch
01:06:29 ◼ ► and crack down on Amazon so that it would win, which it didn't do. I mean, that feels like a
01:06:35 ◼ ► textbook definition of anti-competitive right? Yeah. Like I think so competition and decided
01:06:42 ◼ ► they would, they would fix that. Now, when we say that, I mean, we're not lawyers and we're not
01:06:46 ◼ ► talking about the law. We're not talking about what's legal or not. I'm saying what feels wrong.
01:06:50 ◼ ► This is, this is Apple using its power as a maker of computer operating systems to build a new
01:06:59 ◼ ► business that mirrors a business that someone else has. The only reason for it to exist is to scoop
01:07:06 ◼ ► up more money because it's got the platform power. That's what the iBook store is. And, you know,
01:07:11 ◼ ► apology, I know a lot of people who listen to this show, a lot of people who read my writing,
01:07:15 ◼ ► they use the bookstore and iBooks and, or books now. And that's fine. I don't really nice app.
01:07:22 ◼ ► Like it's, it's fine. It's nice, you know, but, but I feel like it's irrelevant because it's only
01:07:29 ◼ ► available for people who are in entirely in the Apple ecosystem. If you ever want to be somewhere
01:07:34 ◼ ► else, good luck to you. I'm not saying that it's bad. I'm saying that the Genesis of it
01:07:44 ◼ ► And everybody else is not going to be able to have a good experience because we own the store.
01:07:49 ◼ ► And I just, it's, it's bad and it's, and it's counter, you know, this is one of those classic
01:07:55 ◼ ► Apple things where it's like, Oh, well, we really care about is that people love our stuff.
01:08:08 ◼ ► you've, you've had so many apps on our platform and all that money you keep, and we've gotten
01:08:13 ◼ ► nothing of it. And the implication there is you built a business on our greatness and we got,
01:08:18 ◼ ► we didn't see anything of it, but what they don't say is the way to flip that, which is
01:08:23 ◼ ► how good would the iPhone be if it didn't have any third party apps? The answer is it would have
01:08:29 ◼ ► been a flop and died. So the value goes both ways. Apple makes an enormous amount of money
01:08:35 ◼ ► on phone hardware, enormous amounts of money, and its platform is more valuable. Its product is
01:08:45 ◼ ► better because it's got those apps on it. It works both ways, but when it serves Apple to make it
01:08:52 ◼ ► seem like everybody else is just trying to make money on Apple's back and Apple should see a cut
01:08:58 ◼ ► of it. That's where it seems really distasteful to me. And I wrote about this on six colors briefly,
01:09:03 ◼ ► but let me tell you, this is absolutely from Steve Jobs. This is a cultural artifact inside Apple
01:09:10 ◼ ► that comes from Steve Jobs's attitude toward all third parties. And that means, that means
01:09:16 ◼ ► journalism. It also means developers where they are participating in Apple's greatness. And they're
01:09:23 ◼ ► lucky that Apple lets them participate at all, but never forget that it's Apple that creates all the
01:09:29 ◼ ► value and Apple should get its share. And that was very much a Steve Jobs attitude from the beginning.
01:09:34 ◼ ► I can tell you as somebody who worked at the company that did Macworld Magazine and that
01:09:38 ◼ ► did Macworld Expo, that Steve Jobs felt absolutely, he was infuriated by the idea that some company
01:09:45 ◼ ► built a business on a product with the word Mac in it. And that we had whole people with jobs and
01:09:52 ◼ ► businesses about Apple's stuff and Apple didn't get a piece of it. He hated it. He hated it.
01:10:00 ◼ ► Because that was his attitude was, this is my greatness and you're a parasite on my greatness.
01:10:05 ◼ ► And you see it today. This is, I think, one of the ugliest parts of Steve Jobs's legacy. And you see
01:10:12 ◼ ► it in cases like this. So, I mean, these emails just brought it all back to me. It was like,
01:10:16 ◼ ► yep, look, it's Steve Jobs saying all those things. And, you know, a lot of these policies
01:10:20 ◼ ► still exist today. And it's like, there's no, they're not defensible from a user standpoint.
01:10:26 ◼ ► They're not. They're just because the user experience is worse. It's worse. And the fact
01:10:32 ◼ ► that they've got a competitor, well, why don't you just buy your books on our bookstore?
01:10:36 ◼ ► Well, anyway, it's very frustrating. And of course none of this came up in the hearing,
01:10:42 ◼ ► but thank you to whoever subpoenaed these records. - Yeah. I mean, and this stuff is not for the
01:10:48 ◼ ► hearing. It's like for the investigation, which will produce the report. And the hope is that
01:10:53 ◼ ► the report will be better for what it's supposed to do than the hearing was for real, it was
01:10:58 ◼ ► supposed to do. - What is clear and has been clear for a long time, and after beating up Apple about
01:11:03 ◼ ► iBooks, I will say the iBooks ruling against Apple, where Apple was found to be colluding
01:11:10 ◼ ► with publishers, that was a very clear signaling point that the US law to protect consumers from
01:11:20 ◼ ► companies having too much power and engaging in anti-competitive behavior is broken. Because,
01:11:25 ◼ ► as we all know, the net result of Apple and the publishers being found guilty is that Amazon got
01:11:32 ◼ ► stronger, right? It was the opposite of what those laws are supposed to protect. So one of the
01:11:39 ◼ ► arguments is Apple isn't doing anything illegal. I think what I would say is some of the stuff that
01:11:43 ◼ ► smells bad, the result is what we think of as antitrust is not what they thought antitrust was
01:11:51 ◼ ► a hundred years ago. And this is why if I were Apple, I would be treading lightly, and they're
01:12:00 ◼ ► not, they're still not doing it. I would be treading lightly because all that needs to happen
01:12:07 ◼ ► is for the US government to have the will to pass some laws that redefine what anti-competitive
01:12:18 ◼ ► and make their products worse. And some of it is probably avoidable by Apple behaving a little bit
01:12:25 ◼ ► differently. And if I have a fundamental frustration with today's Apple and their attitude toward this,
01:12:30 ◼ ► a lot of times their excuse is, "Well, look, we're just enforcing the rules." It's like,
01:12:35 ◼ ► "I don't make the rules. Oh, wait, I do make the rules. But no, no, I'm just enforcing the rules."
01:12:40 ◼ ► It's like, well, it's their rules. You could change them to be fairer, but you've chosen not to.
01:12:49 ◼ ► One other thing that is interesting for this show specifically is the Apple-Amazon deal that
01:12:58 ◼ ► occurred a couple of years ago that did two major things. One was to bring Amazon Prime to Apple TV
01:13:06 ◼ ► and for Apple to bring their products to sell on Amazon. So I've put a link in the show notes to
01:13:15 ◼ ► a couple of tweets from Mark Gurman. So the former is basically the terms of the deal for Prime
01:13:24 ◼ ► now, the Prime TV service. And it is effectively what we expected. They got a 15% flat cut on all
01:13:32 ◼ ► users who signed up in app. No waiting period. They don't have to wait for a year before it converts.
01:13:40 ◼ ► They got straight. Anyone that signs up, they get 15%. So this proves two things. It proves one,
01:13:46 ◼ ► that this happened, and two, that there is a clear policy for cutting that 30% where it feels
01:13:52 ◼ ► necessary, which I think I've said on this show many times in a number of places, which I think
01:13:57 ◼ ► is the policy I would have if I were Apple, but I wouldn't pretend that I didn't have it.
01:14:02 ◼ ► Netflix, Amazon, any of these companies, they have millions of users. They are bringing value
01:14:11 ◼ ► to Apple as much as Apple is bringing value to them. It is business that you would negotiate.
01:14:18 ◼ ► But this idea that all developers are treated the same and they all pay the same, it's not true.
01:14:26 ◼ ► that impression, which they are. So the terms of the deal were that they would only pay 15%,
01:14:32 ◼ ► but Amazon had to support all of the tvOS features. Then there was a second slide which
01:14:37 ◼ ► showed, and this is wild. This one is bananas that this got put into this overall package, right?
01:14:45 ◼ ► There is a forecasting sheet for revenue of Apple products sold through Amazon for a year.
01:14:55 ◼ ► Now, the thing is, my expectation on this is it is multiple years old. This is probably a two-year-old
01:15:03 ◼ ► slide, so don't try to draw too many conclusions from it. But even then, you see some really
01:15:10 ◼ ► interesting stuff. So a couple of years ago, we basically found out that Apple TV revenue is
01:15:16 ◼ ► minuscule compared to the rest of the product line. So they had a $26 million total revenue
01:15:22 ◼ ► expectation for Apple TV. Apple Care is $66 million, so very small. But again, this is sold
01:15:29 ◼ ► through Amazon. You can't extrapolate this out to Apple as a whole, but it's still a slice.
01:15:42 ◼ ► And Beats at that time was selling more than "accessories" which you'd assume included AirPods.
01:15:49 ◼ ► But again, this is before the AirPods cultural explosion, I think. So there's just some
01:15:54 ◼ ► interesting stuff in there to see, right? They expected in a year to do a billion dollars of
01:16:05 ◼ ► interesting to see, considering we don't get these numbers anymore. We're going to talk about Apple's
01:16:08 ◼ ► revenue, their Q3 results in a minute. We don't get these kinds of breakdowns anymore, right,
01:16:14 ◼ ► Jason? They don't show us this now. No, they don't. No, it's, look, Apple sells a lot of
01:16:19 ◼ ► products and Amazon sells a lot of Apple products now that they have this deal. Yeah, it's fun when
01:16:27 ◼ ► we get little disclosures that go outside of what we usually get. But are we surprised that Apple
01:16:31 ◼ ► and Amazon, I mean, we know they made a deal. Like we know they made a deal and that this was part
01:16:36 ◼ ► of it. And I don't know. I think that there are aspects of this that Apple gets criticized for
01:16:45 ◼ ► and aspects that they don't get criticized for that they should. And that's just, it's just kind
01:16:49 ◼ ► of a funny situation. I just, you know, ultimately I want Apple's behavior to generate a better user
01:16:56 ◼ ► experience because Apple talks a lot about caring about its users, but some of the decisions it
01:17:00 ◼ ► makes, which are business friendly, are consumer hostile. And that's what bothers me is that they
01:17:07 ◼ ► don't get to hide behind loving the consumer experience and then throw the consumer experience
01:17:12 ◼ ► away when they can make a little more money. Because that's a bad path to walk down. That is
01:17:16 ◼ ► a path that leads Apple to a very bad place where it's not Apple anymore. This episode is brought
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01:19:17 ◼ ► So let's talk about Apple's quarterly results for financial Q3. Surprise! All of it's up.
01:19:26 ◼ ► Unexpected, right? Everything. We're not expecting that. Everything. All of it. All right,
01:19:33 ◼ ► so let me give you a very quick breakdown. Record third quarter for revenue at $59.7 billion. This
01:19:40 ◼ ► is Apple's largest Q3 of all time. They have an 11% year over year increase. Mac was up 22%
01:19:48 ◼ ► year over year. iPad up 31%. iPhone up 2%. Services up 15%. Wearables up 17%. You wrote a great article
01:19:58 ◼ ► breaking this down as you do over at Macworld and you said Apple made more money on iPads in the
01:20:03 ◼ ► last quarter than any non-holiday quarter in six years and in any quarter since the 2018 holiday
01:20:10 ◼ ► season, Mac sales were only slightly lower than during last year's holiday and back to school
01:20:16 ◼ ► quarters, which are generally by far the two best quarters for Mac sales. So we knew that the Mac
01:20:29 ◼ ► Right. There was a tell there. It's the pandemic, right? Their thought was that there were a lot of
01:20:35 ◼ ► people who were at home, either for work or for school and needed to upgrade their equipment to
01:20:39 ◼ ► be better equipped to work or learn from home and that that was driving Mac and iPad sales. And you
01:20:45 ◼ ► can see why he said that because here it is. This is like the best Mac quarter in a while and the
01:20:51 ◼ ► best iPad quarter in a long while. But the big surprise though is that everything else followed.
01:20:59 ◼ ► You know, like iPhone sales being up 2% year over year would not have expected that. Like it's a lot
01:21:07 ◼ ► of really wild stuff going on here. Like, you know, you could say there are good keyboards and
01:21:15 ◼ ► new products in the Mac and iPad line, but I don't think it's just that that's not the reason, right?
01:21:22 ◼ ► Like the reason is like they had great products to sell, but they also had a vast demand for people
01:21:28 ◼ ► that needed those, which is why I'm sure we saw the biggest growth year over year in the Mac and
01:21:34 ◼ ► the iPad, you know, like it was smaller in the other lines. And there was a question during the
01:21:40 ◼ ► earnings call and I wonder what you think about this. Could this burst damage the remaining
01:21:47 ◼ ► quarters of 2020, do you think? Yeah. So they asked Tim Cook this question, like, is the idea
01:21:51 ◼ ► here that you're pulling sales that you would have had in back to school, back to school quarter or
01:21:55 ◼ ► the holiday quarter, are you pulling those forward? And that then, you know, it's great that you've
01:22:00 ◼ ► got them now, but should we expect the sales to go back down in the next couple of quarters below
01:22:06 ◼ ► where they would normally be because you, these, this is a bunch of stuff that got brought forward.
01:22:11 ◼ ► And Tim Cook's response was interesting because, you know, obviously back to school buying is going
01:22:17 ◼ ► on now. He said no for back to school. And he said, as for the holidays, we only predict one
01:22:23 ◼ ► quarter ahead. So we're not going to talk about it. My gut feeling is that they're going to have
01:22:27 ◼ ► a week holiday quarter. That's my gut feeling is that you've got all the economic conditions in the
01:22:32 ◼ ► world with COVID-19. And, and it's normally, it will still be a good quarter probably because it
01:22:38 ◼ ► is always Apple's best quarter, but given the economic headwinds, I used the analyst term there,
01:22:44 ◼ ► and given the fact that people have bought stuff, bought hardware early for the pandemic,
01:22:53 ◼ ► it's hard not to see this, especially given the way the pandemic is going in the United States,
01:22:59 ◼ ► which is not well. It's hard to imagine the holiday quarter being great for them. So my guess is that
01:23:08 ◼ ► they're going to take it on the chin a little bit in the holiday quarter and that it's not a
01:23:12 ◼ ► fundamental part of Apple's business, but really some combination of a depression of sales because
01:23:18 ◼ ► of economic issues and because of some of this stuff getting pulled forward. I don't need to buy
01:23:23 ◼ ► a new home computer for Christmas. I bought it for the pandemic. Did they give any guidance for the
01:23:29 ◼ ► next quarter? Nope, no guidance. Again, they said, we don't know. Things are weird. The world is
01:23:34 ◼ ► strange. We're not going to give you any guidance. We don't know what's going to happen. One thing
01:23:39 ◼ ► that could help the holiday quarter is it's very possible that all iPhones sold will be sold during
01:23:45 ◼ ► the holiday quarter. There'll be no fourth quarter, which is the actual calendar third quarter,
01:23:53 ◼ ► iPhone sales for new iPhones, right? Because they announced that the new iPhones would be, quote,
01:23:58 ◼ ► a couple of weeks late, which means October. Yeah, they were very quick to specify that they shipped
01:24:04 ◼ ► in late September and this time will ship a few weeks later. Why they didn't, I think, is in case
01:24:12 ◼ ► something really bad happens and it ships in early November, they can say, "Well, we said a few weeks."
01:24:17 ◼ ► But it feels very strongly like October is what they actually mean here. There's also the question
01:24:24 ◼ ► of if there are four new models, are they all going to ship at the same time or would that get
01:24:29 ◼ ► spread out? That may be where November comes in, right? Well, these will be out in early October,
01:24:34 ◼ ► but these are not going to ship until November and that would fall into the few weeks later kind of
01:24:39 ◼ ► zone. But it's definitely not happening in September, so it's in October, November, December,
01:24:43 ◼ ► fourth calendar quarter, holiday quarter, first fiscal 2021 quarter for Apple. But the holiday
01:24:50 ◼ ► quarter is going to get all the iPhone sales. Because if you think about it, those first
01:24:55 ◼ ► week, those first two weeks, that's when I would expect the majority of what would happen in the
01:24:59 ◼ ► quarter is happening, right? People will buy it, maybe not the majority, but it's a big spike.
01:25:04 ◼ ► That might help them in that quarter, but it's not going to change the amount sold, right? It's
01:25:10 ◼ ► just like when is it reported, right? And as you say, we could end up with phones coming out all
01:25:18 ◼ ► throughout the end of the year because they'll ship these things when they're ready, but who
01:25:23 ◼ ► knows when they're all going to be ready. Maybe Apple doesn't even know yet completely. And as
01:25:27 ◼ ► you say, we may get mid-October going out into November for these four products to start shipping.
01:25:34 ◼ ► You know, it's just unprecedented. The iPhone 10 shipped in October when the 8 was announced
01:25:42 ◼ ► in September. I think I've got my times right there. I will ask you if they're going to ship
01:25:55 ◼ ► No, I think the event will probably be in September because they announce and then they
01:26:00 ◼ ► don't ship right away. It's possible that they could move it. It's usually like a week later,
01:26:06 ◼ ► so it's possible that it could be late September or early October for an event. They could also
01:26:12 ◼ ► just do it in early September as they always do and say, "And they'll be available in October,"
01:26:18 ◼ ► and just walk away. So I don't think it precludes them from doing the event at the usual time, but
01:26:24 ◼ ► you know, we live in this strange year now where perhaps that'll all just get pushed back.
01:26:29 ◼ ► My gut feeling is that it won't, but they could if they wanted to. I guess we'll have to ask
01:26:36 ◼ ► Apple Fellow and head of events, Phil Schiller, what he thinks about it, but he's not talking
01:26:40 ◼ ► because he keeps secrets. The couple of other things that came out from the earnings call,
01:26:49 ◼ ► which is interesting to me, Apple TV+ production has not restarted yet because of restrictions in
01:26:56 ◼ ► LA. I'm intrigued to see what they're going to do here, but that's that. And also, Apple is not
01:27:03 ◼ ► going to be asking employees to return on math to the campus until early 2021 at the very soonest,
01:27:10 ◼ ► which again, not a big surprise there really. Yep, but it's a surprising quarter overall,
01:27:17 ◼ ► like wild to see them up those levels. I mean, they hit a bunch of goals and services and stuff
01:27:22 ◼ ► like that. They were really kind of sheepish. They're like, "We know the world is terrible,
01:27:26 ◼ ► but we made a lot of money." Yeah. It's like, "I don't know." Yep. So we can't avoid it,
01:27:31 ◼ ► but it definitely did happen. All right, so that is it, I think, for a bumper episode of Upgrade
01:27:39 ◼ ► Huge. It was even a bigger episode than we thought than when we started. Yeah, it kept getting bigger.
01:27:45 ◼ ► Apple also released Beta 4 of iOS today and denied that they were going to buy TikTok. So it's been a
01:27:51 ◼ ► really busy day. It's been a rollercoaster ride. Glad we waited until Tuesday, huh? Exactly,
01:27:56 ◼ ► which means we're going to skip Ask Upgrade for this week. But if you have questions...
01:27:59 ◼ ► Oh, that was the retraction of the lasers. If you have questions you would like us to answer on next
01:28:04 ◼ ► week's show, send out a tweet with the hashtag #AskUpgrade or use the question mark #AskUpgrade
01:28:10 ◼ ► command in the Relay FM members Discord which you get access to if you support this show and
01:28:16 ◼ ► support Upgrade Plus. You go to getupgradeplus.com and sign up. It's $5 a month or $50 a year. You get
01:28:23 ◼ ► extra content and now you will also get early access to 20 max for 2020. So thank you so much
01:28:30 ◼ ► if you do that. You also get upgrade without any ads. I would like to thank our sponsors for this
01:28:35 ◼ ► episode, DoorDash, Squarespace and Pingdom. If you want to find Jason online go to sixcolors.com and