00:00:41 ◼ ► We got so much follow-up and questions that it felt like we needed to come back around to it,
00:01:02 ◼ ► Preston says, "I was at a bookstore the other day and was surprised to see that a great many magazines still exist.
00:01:34 ◼ ► There's a certain number that you send out, and then the ones that don't get sold basically get recycled,
00:01:43 ◼ ► And so, back in the day, we would only sell, I don't even remember the number, 10% of the ones we put out on newsstands.
00:02:00 ◼ ► Yeah, deeply inefficient, especially not so much in Europe, where you have a newsstand culture, or at least have had one.
00:02:08 ◼ ► In the US, the geography, it's so spread out that you end up with sort of like you're shipping magazines to a truck stop in Wyoming, right?
00:02:31 ◼ ► So the subscriptions drop, and it makes it very difficult for the magazines to survive, regardless of what is on the newsstand.
00:02:38 ◼ ► I haven't looked at a newsstand in a while, that's part of the problem, but the way that it seems to have gone is that a lot of stuff that used to be a successful print magazine...
00:02:53 ◼ ► There are still tabloids and gossip magazines and things like that that I see at the checkout line, that they still exist.
00:03:06 ◼ ► There are a lot of stupid phrases in the magazine industry, and one of them was "book-a-zines."
00:03:19 ◼ ► It does not have a real expiration date, or at least it can sit on newsstands for months.
00:03:29 ◼ ► So, in my checkout line, there's things like "If somebody famous dies, there is a Time magazine or People magazine commemorative for the life of whoever."
00:04:04 ◼ ► I feel like I see a lot of these like "20 tips for your Mac!" rather than like "Macworld."
00:04:12 ◼ ► The computer magazines now are mostly how-to things that can sit out there for three or six months.
00:04:20 ◼ ► They're also priced--like if you wonder where computer books went, because a lot of them just kind of went away.
00:04:33 ◼ ► But what you're doing is you're taking a bunch of how-to content, probably sourced from the web and then dressed up with photos and stuff,
00:04:39 ◼ ► and you put it in a thing for $15, $20, whatever it is, and then you put it out there for six months and then you replace it for another one.
00:04:47 ◼ ► So the economics change. There's more money. It's out there longer. You don't have to print as many of them.
00:04:58 ◼ ► But it's just not what it was. That's the bottom line. It's not what it was, but there's still--
00:05:04 ◼ ► This is the thing. We talked about, with the Disney conversation, about linear TV and ESPN revenue and things like that.
00:05:12 ◼ ► And it's like, they're not shutting off your cable company tomorrow. That's not going to happen.
00:05:26 ◼ ► And as they're dying or shrinking anyway-- We could say shrinking instead of dying if we wanted to--
00:05:32 ◼ ► What happens is the people who are trying to find a way to eke out a profit in that shrinking market,
00:05:46 ◼ ► And then over time, either it will find a new place where it can live, or as its audience that's used to it ages out,
00:05:59 ◼ ► Magazines are like this. Linear TV is going to be like this, where cable and satellite--
00:06:04 ◼ ► First off, cable and satellite are going to become internet sources. They're already becoming that.
00:06:09 ◼ ► But there will still be TV packages you can get, because there are going to be people, even like my age,
00:06:14 ◼ ► who grew up with cable TV, who will be not willing to cut the cord and happy to just keep paying for the cable bundle.
00:06:21 ◼ ► And those people will get older and older and older, and there will be fewer and fewer and fewer of them
00:06:25 ◼ ► as they get-- either they die or they get pushed out to finally cut the cable because they see value in it.
00:06:35 ◼ ► In fact, our conversations about sports rights, one of the things that's happening in some markets
00:06:41 ◼ ► is that they're putting sports that used to be all on cable on broadcast TV in local markets in the US.
00:06:48 ◼ ► And part of the idea there is it's a wider addressable market. It's anybody, whether they've got cable or satellite or an antenna.
00:06:58 ◼ ► And they don't get money for people having access to that channel, but they get a big audience and they can sell ads into it.
00:07:05 ◼ ► So you may see things like that, where it's like, "Oh, we thought local channels were irrelevant."
00:07:09 ◼ ► It turns out that local channels are actually super relevant for local sports rights because of the changes to the regional sports network system.
00:07:19 ◼ ► Radio used to be, before television, was like a medium for drama and comedy and all these sorts of scripted entertainment things.
00:07:26 ◼ ► And TV came along and killed radio, right? Except we still have radio. It's just that what's on radio has changed dramatically.
00:07:32 ◼ ► It's a lot less profitable than it used to be. And they found some things they could do like sports talk and news headlines.
00:07:39 ◼ ► And that has been enough to keep AM radio alive, even though it's not as successful as it used to be.
00:07:52 ◼ ► So magazines are going through that now where there are some value to be gained out of them existing, but mostly they're not what they used to be at all.
00:08:01 ◼ ► They've been completely... You could even say they're using the newsstand channel to put other kinds of products in it,
00:08:09 ◼ ► because it's an existing channel, that are easier to make and stay out there longer and are more profitable because they have a higher label price.
00:08:19 ◼ ► That happens a lot in media transitions, I think, where you've got an existing infrastructure built up.
00:08:24 ◼ ► So you're like, "Okay, well, we can't do this anymore, but could we do something else?"
00:08:29 ◼ ► Sometimes I think that if they weren't trying to cut our staff so much, that that would have been a way forward for IDG for Mac world and PC world.
00:08:38 ◼ ► Instead of killing print entirely, it would have been, and I'm sure some people advocate it for this,
00:08:44 ◼ ► the idea that you'd use that biped, basically your place on a newsstand and put in something that was more...
00:08:53 ◼ ► We did some of those, like total OS X and all of that. There might have been a way forward for a print product, but it wouldn't have been a monthly magazine.
00:09:02 ◼ ► You were saying about the shrinking dynamic businesses. I think something that's key in those as well is when it's hard to imagine a future,
00:09:16 ◼ ► We're like, "Cable TV, very good business right now." Still, but we all know it won't be in the future.
00:09:23 ◼ ► Yeah, exactly. When we talk about Disney, this came up, but it's come up in a bunch of different contexts,
00:09:37 ◼ ► One of them is investors who want growth. They are investing in your stock and they want your company to grow and they want their stock to go up because that's their investment.
00:09:53 ◼ ► The other approach, and you see this a lot from some private capital, private equity companies.
00:10:02 ◼ ► They're looking for profit and extracting profit from products. That's what has happened in the newspaper industry in the US,
00:10:09 ◼ ► is private equity buys them out and lays off lots of people and cuts all the costs and really reduces the product.
00:10:17 ◼ ► But their goal is not to have a good product. Their goal is just to extract as much value out of this declining asset as possible before there's nothing but a husk left.
00:10:26 ◼ ► That's really unfortunate if you're somebody who works there or a society that relies on that sort of thing.
00:10:40 ◼ ► It doesn't have a lot of growth potential left, but it's got money in it. There's money in it to be managed on the way down.
00:10:52 ◼ ► The last place that I think you want to be is in a dying industry. I felt that way at IDG.
00:11:01 ◼ ► You're watching as it gets smaller and smaller and smaller. It takes a very particular mindset to say,
00:11:07 ◼ ► "Well, yeah, this is a dying industry and it keeps getting smaller, but you know what? There's still money to be made here, so let's make it."
00:11:18 ◼ ► Thank you to Preston for writing in. I thought that we'd have a good conversation about this topic.
00:11:23 ◼ ► I felt like it was chiseling into a part of Jason that we get every now and again, but try not to push too much on the magazine.
00:11:29 ◼ ► Well, so as not to make him sad. If you would like to send in a question of your own to help us open a future episode of the show,
00:11:41 ◼ ► I'm going to do my footnote here about magazines, which is I got my job in magazines because I needed a job that paid me.
00:11:48 ◼ ► When I was in college, I was publishing things on the internet before there was even a web. I was trying. I was like, "The internet, it's going to be..."
00:12:03 ◼ ► In those days, print media was where you got the jobs, basically. I learned a lot about the magazine business.
00:12:14 ◼ ► There were things about it that I really appreciated, especially the leisurely pace of a monthly magazine.
00:12:20 ◼ ► Wow, let me tell you. There were deadlines all the time because you were producing the magazine over the course of the month.
00:12:27 ◼ ► There was something to be said for some news breaking and you being like, "Okay, we'll cover that in our next issue, which will be in three weeks."
00:12:35 ◼ ► But that said, I entered the magazine business knowing that the internet was the future of publishing.
00:12:42 ◼ ► While I got to grind through a declining business for several years, which was not fun, it was not a surprise to me.
00:12:51 ◼ ► It didn't really hit me emotionally because my entire career I knew that the magazine business was not going to make it and that the internet was going to beat it.
00:13:02 ◼ ► We have some very exciting news. Upgradients, we are asking you to assemble on July 27, 2024 in London.
00:13:15 ◼ ► As Relay FM will be celebrating its 10th anniversary with the biggest live show we have ever put on.
00:13:21 ◼ ► Live in London at the Hackney Empire. Tickets are on sale right now. You can go to relay.fm/london.
00:13:29 ◼ ► This is going to be our first live show ever outside of the USA and we are coming to my hometown to celebrate our 10th anniversary next July.
00:13:38 ◼ ► So we're giving you tons of notice. If you're in the UK, you should come. If you're in Europe, you should come.
00:13:42 ◼ ► If you're in America, why not plan that trip to England that you've always wanted to have.
00:13:47 ◼ ► I've been hearing from so many because we've had these tickets on sale to Relay FM members for a few days.
00:13:51 ◼ ► So by the way, if you are interested, please go fast because we sold I think twice the amount of tickets to members as I was expecting we would.
00:14:04 ◼ ► If you have seen or you were there for our fifth anniversary live show, we did a family feud style game.
00:14:11 ◼ ► We're going to be doing that again with a selection of hosts. For this show, there won't be video and we are aiming to have an audio recording of the show.
00:14:19 ◼ ► But we are putting this show on for the people that can be at the Hackney Empire along with us. 1,200 people can fit into that theater.
00:14:45 ◼ ► If you're willing to announce that you will be in town, then we can announce that Jason Snell will be on stage.
00:14:54 ◼ ► Oh, so if I'm willing to announce that I'm absolutely going to this event and will be hosting Relay FM.
00:15:02 ◼ ► Because there's going to be a fight for it not to be me to host. So I want to be the host for this show.
00:15:19 ◼ ► All of that is TBD. So all we're saying right now is I will be there and Steven will be there and a selection of Relay FM hosts.
00:15:32 ◼ ► You've been pre-selected. I'm happy to let you know, Jason Snell. You've been pre-selected.
00:15:37 ◼ ► But there are a lot of logistics for people to work out. So we're not ready to announce exactly who's going to be there yet.
00:15:47 ◼ ► But we have a bunch of people in the UK already who I know it will be easier for them to attend.
00:15:52 ◼ ► Much easier. I have tentative yeses. We have tentative yeses from a selection of hosts who need to be travelling in.
00:15:59 ◼ ► So all of that will be TBD. But you will be able to experience a really fun time for some of your favourite Relay FM hosts playing some awesome games.
00:16:06 ◼ ► It's going to be an incredibly fun time and we're going to be celebrating a decade of this podcast network.
00:16:12 ◼ ► So if you want to come and join us in... I mean, straight up as well, the most beautiful venue we've ever been in.
00:16:24 ◼ ► The reason we're there is I went to an event there a couple of months ago and I was like, "This is the one."
00:16:29 ◼ ► Because we've wanted to do this for a long time. We've been thinking about it for a long time to do our 10th anniversary show in the UK.
00:16:40 ◼ ► And a lot of show, a lot of theatres, it wasn't thousands and thousands of seats, right? Which would have been harder.
00:16:47 ◼ ► So it felt achievable. We were very nervous, but now I'm feeling, considering how many tickets we've sold so far, I'm feeling pretty confident.
00:16:55 ◼ ► But we're giving people loads of notice. That was the whole idea of this, basically a year in advance.
00:17:00 ◼ ► So if you're interested, go to relay.fm/london, pick yourself up a ticket and we'll see you next July.
00:17:05 ◼ ► So now, if you're the game show host... First off, I'm going to have to give you some tips because I feel like I am the...
00:17:19 ◼ ► However, if I can't be the game show host in that context, I hope you'll find something else for me to do, like coin flipping challenge or something like that. I don't know.
00:17:32 ◼ ► But for the fifth anniversary show, you were the host and I was in charge of the scoreboard.
00:17:42 ◼ ► If you wanted to be in charge of the scoreboard, then I would love you to be in charge of the scoreboard.
00:18:09 ◼ ► Yes. I don't know. We can call this person Chip if you like because they listed themselves as anonymous.
00:18:34 ◼ ► I am just in my mind choosing to believe it's the same person, but I have no way of knowing that because they just left the field as blank and anonymous.
00:18:43 ◼ ► On last week's show, Jason posits that the Apple Silicon Pro chips are binned Macs chips.
00:18:56 ◼ ► In fact, there have always been separate designs for each of the M, the Pro, the Macs, and then the Ultra, which is just two Macs chips.
00:19:05 ◼ ► The design of the Pro can be overlaid exactly on top of two-thirds of the Macs with the lower section of the GPU sliced off.
00:19:19 ◼ ► Certain other blocks may also be excluded from the Pro design based on the feature set.
00:19:29 ◼ ► A separate physical design team takes the single logic design and lays out transistors to fit together like Legos.
00:19:37 ◼ ► In most cases, those same Lego blocks are reused across variants, but sometimes size constraints mean certain blocks need to be reshaped.
00:19:49 ◼ ► So what's interesting about this, and I appreciate this feedback, this is great, is it's...
00:19:56 ◼ ► Germin's report still suggests a change in approach from the M1 and M2, but it sounds like the right way to phrase it would be that previously they seemed to have a design where the Pro was overlaid on the Macs and there was a lower section of GPU sliced off.
00:20:17 ◼ ► What seems to be the case here is that some CPU cores are also omittable because the CPU cores used to be the same between the Pro and Macs chips.
00:20:36 ◼ ► So it may be the case, unless they're worried about yield to the point where they're putting the same number of CPU cores on both the Pro and the Macs and then just deactivating them for the Pro, but using the same design because they're worried about the yields.
00:20:55 ◼ ► Or the CPU, some of the CPU cores are sort of like down in the design and omittable because the CPUs used to be the same.
00:21:13 ◼ ► So there's a design change going on here, but it's not a change from like they were binned and now they're not because according to Chip, which is what I'm calling this anonymous person, according to Chip, that would all be in the design and not in the...
00:21:37 ◼ ► Maybe they'll go like the electric car route and let you like pay an in-app purchase to unlock the other cores.
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00:23:25 ◼ ► I have had some other things that have been shipped to me in various ways where I've been like, "Ah, they really chaped out here. This is like a little tiny chicken breast."
00:23:34 ◼ ► Or it's kind of a fatty chicken thigh or something like that. And the Factor stuff, honestly, it feels immaculate.
00:23:40 ◼ ► Like I get a chicken breast and it's not just an okay passable chicken breast. It's like a really good, good size, good quality, tastes good, and that goes for their veggies and other stuff too.
00:23:51 ◼ ► I've seen it all now doing podcast ads and I just want to say that's the thing that impressed me is that they seem to have a very strong commitment to quality with their ingredients.
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00:24:35 ◼ ► So this past week was the 25th anniversary of the iMac, the iMac G3, and The Verge put together what they referred to on The Verge cast as a package, which was an interesting term to me that I'd not heard before, but feels like a publishing.
00:25:09 ◼ ► So they put together a package of art called Celebrating the iMac and the impact that it made on personal computing.
00:25:14 ◼ ► And you contributed to this. I believe it was the only person outside of The Verge who wrote a piece and they had a bunch of different pieces written.
00:25:36 ◼ ► Yeah, I was talking. So The Verge guys were there. So they came over to the table where I was working and I stood up and I was talking to them.
00:25:41 ◼ ► And it was Nielle and Dan and David from The Verge. I think there might have been somebody else there. I don't remember.
00:25:48 ◼ ► And I like those guys. I wrote something for them right after Macworld exited print and I left.
00:25:56 ◼ ► I've written a couple of pieces for them over the years. Obviously they think of me as a person they can go to who remembers things that happened deep in the past of Apple.
00:26:04 ◼ ► Which I am that person. It's not my specialty, but I am that person. Yeah, I like those guys.
00:26:10 ◼ ► So Dan who has very similar. He was doing a keyboard thing and he was talking about struggling with E Ink, Android E readers and stuff.
00:26:24 ◼ ► Dan is a listener of this show because I've heard him talk about his Dungleton show in the past. So hi Dan.
00:26:29 ◼ ► So hi Dan. Dan said, "Hey, iMac anniversary in August. Would you like to write something for that?"
00:26:38 ◼ ► And I said, "Great." And it was like, you know, that was back in June. So speaking of magazine deadlines being told, here's an article that I would like you to write in two months.
00:26:47 ◼ ► I've got to say that's also pretty like, that's good. I've seen from some of my friends in this world before where an anniversary rolls around and we go, "Whoa, there's an anniversary."
00:27:02 ◼ ► It says tomorrow. Or like, "Ah, I checked the Apple hardware calendar and next week is the anniversary." No, they knew two months in advance.
00:27:09 ◼ ► Technically you could have known this 25 years in advance, right? But certainly you could have. And it shows that they do some planning and they're looking at things that are coming up and trying to do this.
00:27:20 ◼ ► And that's how you get a whole package together. Funny story is that one of the things that I wasn't supposed to talk about is the impact it had on other design because they were going to have a piece about like all of the other translucent blue-green plastic products that came out there.
00:27:35 ◼ ► And I submitted a draft of my article about a week before it was due and said, "Here's where I am right now." I sort of reached a stopping point. It was like a Friday afternoon.
00:27:46 ◼ ► And I said, you know, it was supposed to be about 2,000 words. It's only about 1,200 words. I'm just wondering if there are things that you missed and if you like this direction.
00:27:54 ◼ ► I just wanted to give, since I had reached a stopping point, I was like, "Let's let him say, you know, this is not what I wanted or I want something else."
00:28:01 ◼ ► And instead he came back and said, "Oh yeah, that story we were going to do about the design fell through so you can talk about that now."
00:28:07 ◼ ► And I was like, "Yes, I can talk about the George Foreman grill now." And honestly, with that and a couple other things, I actually got to the word count of 2,000.
00:28:15 ◼ ► So in the end, it all kind of worked out and it was great. I definitely am aware of writing for that very large audience. That is a different audience from mine.
00:28:26 ◼ ► But it was fun to revisit that era and think about what it was like to be in that era and where it took Apple after that.
00:28:36 ◼ ► Yeah, I was happy that even then it still felt like Jason. You still had you came through in the article.
00:28:44 ◼ ► Yeah, there's some first person in there. I had some first person stuff in there. I tried to do it. I made a Princess Bride reference.
00:28:51 ◼ ► I did some stuff and they left it all in, which is great because I also working with an organization like The Verge, I'm like, "I don't know."
00:29:00 ◼ ► They could rewrite it and move things around and all of that and it pretty much came through. So that was nice to see too.
00:29:07 ◼ ► I assume, I mean, obviously this information, you had a lot of this information, you lived a lot of this, but I would assume that some of the 20 max research probably helped.
00:29:16 ◼ ► Or at least had some of this stuff a little bit fresher in your mind than maybe it was otherwise.
00:29:21 ◼ ► Maybe. I mean, honestly, I did go back and listen to the podcast I did about it. But mostly this was just me thinking about that era.
00:29:33 ◼ ► But you're right, I did go through this process three years ago, two and a half years ago as well.
00:29:39 ◼ ► And so it was definitely fresh in my mind. So some of those thoughts that I had in that piece were thoughts that I had already had.
00:29:46 ◼ ► If not during 20 max or 2020, then during the 20th anniversary of the iMac or something.
00:29:53 ◼ ► But honestly, the more time you get, your perspective changes and also there are those moments where you have an observation and you think,
00:30:02 ◼ ► I don't know if I made this observation before, but I'm going to make it now. And the one that really stuck out to me was that I was thinking about how,
00:30:12 ◼ ► I don't think I mentioned anywhere just how wild it was that the iMac shipped with OS 9. OS 10 didn't exist yet.
00:30:20 ◼ ► They had brought Next into Apple and Steve had taken over and they were working on OS 10.
00:30:27 ◼ ► But like OS 10 wasn't out. It wasn't, it was just a glimmer in Steve Jobs and Avi Tavenian's eyes at that point. Right.
00:30:36 ◼ ► But if you look at the iMac's design with its blue green color and the fact that the plastic on it has this,
00:30:45 ◼ ► the white plastic has this kind of vertical like ribbed texture on it. It's literally the Aqua texture from OS 10.
00:30:54 ◼ ► The iMac was, and it was just a moment that I don't think I had written about before, which was just the iMac was so popular that Apple based the interface of its next generation operating system on what an iMac looked like.
00:31:09 ◼ ► There were three things that I wanted to talk about today that were, I felt, they felt new to me or like different to me than the things that I've heard you or others talk about about the iMac before.
00:31:19 ◼ ► And that was one of them where like it maybe is one of those things where like, you know, kind of internalized to me having seen that because, you know, I used iMac G3s with OS 10 on them.
00:31:38 ◼ ► I don't think I ever used an iMac with nine on it. I think I only used iMacs with OS 10 on them.
00:31:51 ◼ ► I guess, you know, over a few years, if those were lingering around, they probably got updated to OS 10. Sure.
00:32:03 ◼ ► And I did a work experience placement where I was at this like computer lab in East London.
00:32:40 ◼ ► And keep in mind that OS 10 went into beta, but like didn't even ship, you know, a usable version until 2000.
00:32:54 ◼ ► But there is so true that like in my mind, I guess I'd kind of just internalize the idea of like, this is what Apple stuff looks like.
00:33:07 ◼ ► Like the hardware and the software just all looks like this, you know, you could even say like,
00:33:11 ◼ ► what some of the plastic look like and the pinstriping is like, it wasn't massively dissimilar from each other.
00:33:19 ◼ ► And so it's just like an interesting thought that like, yeah, they obviously you wouldn't,
00:33:32 ◼ ► It was literally Apple saying, what do people think of us? What should a computer look like?
00:34:04 ◼ ► That is where that was set down and the reaction to it was so strong that they wrote it, right?
00:34:23 ◼ ► The weird tripod display, yeah. It had like a little tripod base and it was just this big, yeah.
00:34:28 ◼ ► Was it the one where like kind of like the front of it kind of stuck out a little bit like over the edges?
00:34:33 ◼ ► Like maybe it might have been a later one, but I might be thinking of the cinema display.
00:34:41 ◼ ► It was like, oh man, look at this thing. Look at all the stuff it does and how it looks.
00:34:48 ◼ ► Another thing you mentioned, and they spoke about this specifically on the Vergecast, it's like a thing that was surprising to them too.
00:34:56 ◼ ► "After Windows became dominant, the Mac's greatest liability was simply its incompatibility.
00:35:01 ◼ ► But the rise of online services and the internet in the mid 1990s gave Apple a unique opportunity.
00:35:15 ◼ ► Because that was, yeah, the thinking about it this time, like you have to talk about the perfect timing that Apple had with this.
00:35:27 ◼ ► They had one shot. They had this diskless workstation project that was going on that got appropriated and turned into the iMac.
00:35:37 ◼ ► But the iMac alone, it played on all of Steve Jobs' things about it's an appliance, it's a computer for the rest of us, it's a standalone item that you just plopped down on a table.
00:35:57 ◼ ► It was an era of beige computers attached to beige monitors, CRT monitors, with a bunch of beige accessories hanging off of it. Like that is what that era was.
00:36:07 ◼ ► But I think the thing that went over the top with the iMac was it was an era where you could buy an iMac to get on the internet, right?
00:36:24 ◼ ► That was a thing that was happening in that era. And so Jobs was savvy enough to name the product for that, right?
00:36:31 ◼ ► iMac, the i stands for internet. And to do that No Step 3 ad with Jeff Goldblum, which the whole idea there is, here's how you get on the internet, you plug in an iMac and then plug it into the phone line and you're on the internet. That's it.
00:36:46 ◼ ► And as an incompatible operating system with Windows riding high, like didn't matter what computer you use for your email, didn't matter what computer you use for the web.
00:36:58 ◼ ► And it gave the Mac a little more oxygen. And on the Vergecast, what they talked about, and I think they're absolutely right about that, is the internet didn't just enable like the Mac to succeed.
00:37:12 ◼ ► Like the internet and the web was an injection of standards into a world of computing that was entirely proprietary and basically owned by Microsoft.
00:37:26 ◼ ► And over the years, that has led to an incredible diversity in devices using the internet. Because it's not just Windows PCs, right? It's Macs, but it's also Android phones and iPhones and iPads, right?
00:37:47 ◼ ► But in that era, everything was just a Windows PC. It was completely locked down. But the internet was like a little wedge. Like you could be on the internet and anything could be on the internet.
00:37:59 ◼ ► And anybody could do it. And Microsoft tried really hard to break the internet and had everything be like Internet Explorer with a plugin that only ran on Intel processors on Windows.
00:38:11 ◼ ► So you couldn't go to that website if you were on anything but a modern Windows PC. And fortunately, they failed. They couldn't push that one across and keep completely dominant.
00:38:24 ◼ ► And as a result, lots of things opened up. Because any device, as weird or incompatible as it wanted to be, if it got on the internet and it looked at web pages, you could make it work.
00:38:36 ◼ ► And that's what allowed the iPhone to work as well. But it started with the Mac because the Mac was so incompatible. You could run Office on it and Microsoft became committed again to keeping it on the Mac.
00:38:48 ◼ ► But the real story there is it was a cool, fun solution to get it on the internet. And it didn't really matter if it didn't use the same software as your computer at work or something.
00:39:00 ◼ ► It was like, "I'm interested in the internet. Is there an appliance I can buy to get on the internet?" And that was Apple's answer. It was like, "Yes, the iMac." Isn't it cute?
00:39:08 ◼ ► You put it in your house, you aren't embarrassed by it. You don't have to put it in a back room somewhere where this beige monstrosity lives.
00:39:15 ◼ ► And you just plug in a couple of things and it works. You don't have to worry about the rest of it. It was incredibly smart, but it was also a very particular moment in time where they had that opportunity.
00:39:26 ◼ ► And it was almost like the product embodied what the internet was as well. Interesting and new and fun. And a thing you want to go out and see what it's all about and it's exciting.
00:39:40 ◼ ► And the iMac did that, where they became synonymous in that way. Not only was it so easy, it also embodied what it was to be online then. And then did the weird thing of then the iMac probably ended up going on to change the way the internet looked, I suppose, as well as everything else around it.
00:40:03 ◼ ► And while Steve Jobs' vision was a computer for the rest of us, sort of like an iMac in every home, one benefit of this approach was in education.
00:40:17 ◼ ► Because these were pretty good education systems. Because again, there weren't monitors to come unplugged and accessories to come unplugged.
00:40:24 ◼ ► They were pretty much just these, they're like tanks. They're these big 40-pound blobs that sit on a desk. There is a handle. You can lug it around if you need to. You can take it off the cart and put it in the classroom or whatever.
00:40:36 ◼ ► But you plug a couple of things in and you're done. And it will just sit there and be the computer in the classroom or in the computer lab or whatever.
00:40:45 ◼ ► And that got Apple into a bunch of schools and classrooms and got people their first taste of using a Mac, which was a trick that Apple pulled with the Apple II back in the day.
00:40:59 ◼ ► They gave an Apple II to every school in California, was one of their promotions, and made a whole generation of kids who used the Apple II as the first computer.
00:41:07 ◼ ► So this was sort of repeating that, where the iMac was pretty good in some of those settings, even if it wasn't necessarily for everybody. It had some advantages and then Apple pushed those advantages.
00:41:19 ◼ ► The third point that I wanted to bring up was you said, "Upon its release, the iMac became so well known that it may have even eclipsed the Apple brand for a little while."
00:41:29 ◼ ► Yeah, I went back and forth on "may have even" because I think you could argue that it did, but the Apple brand was strong even though Apple was not particularly well liked and seen as sort of a dying failure.
00:41:43 ◼ ► People still recognized it, right? But I think the iMac started the rehab of Apple and Apple's branding.
00:41:51 ◼ ► And then the Apple stores also contributed that, and the iPod is I think the one that did the most rehab of the Apple brand.
00:41:59 ◼ ► Because for a lot of people, the iPod was the first Apple product that they bought ever. And they're like, "Oh, this Apple stuff, I like it."
00:42:06 ◼ ► And the brand spoke to them in a way that a non-compatible computer was probably never going to do.
00:42:12 ◼ ► But if you look at the naming of the iMac's successors, I think that is the thing that says iMac is the brand that has the resonance, so let's just repeat it with iPod and iCal and iSync.
00:42:31 ◼ ► And it goes on and on, like all of those iLabels that Apple finally did turn away from, but the reason those were slapped on those products is because the "i" followed by a thing was synonymous with Apple.
00:42:46 ◼ ► And for a time, that was the brand recognition, was i-something, and that Apple was along for the ride.
00:42:54 ◼ ► And it's hard to imagine it now when Apple really is one of the top brands in the world, but there was a time when the little "i" was the branding for Apple, not the Apple logo.
00:43:05 ◼ ► And the Apple logo never went away. It's very prominent on all of these designs from the Jobs' return.
00:43:11 ◼ ► Jobs really liked it, and he got rid of the rainbow, but he kept that logo and he wanted that logo to be prominent.
00:43:16 ◼ ► But when you're selling and naming products, now it's Apple Watch. Back then, it was all "put an eye on it" because then people know that it's us.
00:43:26 ◼ ► To go back to what you were talking about a minute ago, I had a thought about the Apple branding.
00:43:32 ◼ ► Even Apple's logo was influenced by the iMac G3 for a while, because it had that kind of blue-ish color and it had the shine, as if it was 3D plastic.
00:43:43 ◼ ► Even when, as far as they changed the logo of the company to look like what it looked like on the top of that computer and the Apple products that they made around that time.
00:43:52 ◼ ► Yeah, it became monochromatic, and that allowed them to do, sort of like on the Pro products, it could be monochromatic, white or black.
00:44:02 ◼ ► But yeah, that was part of the rebranding, was really saying the Apple logo is going to be a single thing.
00:44:09 ◼ ► And then, yeah, for a long time it really was the aqua blue embossed, plasticky shape look.
00:44:18 ◼ ► And that was part of the Aqua era, and that Aqua era was influenced by the design of that original iMac.
00:44:28 ◼ ► First one is, do you think the iPhone had as big an impact on the industrial design of products around it as the iMac did?
00:44:48 ◼ ► So in that case, yes. But what it didn't do is make a, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but I, you know, the equivalent of a George Foreman grill based on iPhone design, I'm not sure, I'm not sure really exists.
00:45:16 ◼ ► And if you look at the computer industry, like that's not what a computer looks like even now, really.
00:45:22 ◼ ► And laptops took over and laptops ended up being like, I would say that the MacBook Air is the Mac that had maybe the biggest impact on its category in terms of industrial design.
00:45:33 ◼ ► But the iPhone certainly like before the iPhone, every phone looked one way. And after the iPhone very rapidly, every phone looked like an iPhone.
00:45:40 ◼ ► Yes. But I think it's interesting, right. That like it made a huge impact on products of its type, but not on the world visually.
00:45:53 ◼ ► And part of that is the minimalism of Johnny Ive. Right. Like they wanted it to be minimal. They didn't want it to shout.
00:45:59 ◼ ► This is something that I didn't get into very much in my article on The Verge, but like that I've been thinking about, which is as impactful as the iMac was in so many different ways, the G3 iMac.
00:46:13 ◼ ► And the biggest example is in its own category because you can make the argument, I make it in the article that what is a laptop, but an all-in-one computer.
00:46:24 ◼ ► And so in that way, Jobs saying like all in one is a thing. Yes, that's true. But you know, was the iMac a laptop? No, it was 40 pounds. It was a 40 pound CRT.
00:46:33 ◼ ► However, I think the iMac, so the iMac did not lead to a future where everybody was using little bubbly desktop computers that weighed 40 pounds.
00:46:42 ◼ ► In fact, after a nice run, they replaced it with flat panel iMacs. That was the end. The G3 iMac is the only one that looked like that.
00:46:51 ◼ ► And they replaced it other than the iMac, which we don't want to talk about. That was a G4 iMac, essentially that nobody, anyway, Stephen Hackett asked him about the iMac.
00:47:00 ◼ ► But so it didn't, it didn't even point the future for the computer industry. And if we look at its design, Apple very quickly backed away from it.
00:47:13 ◼ ► So first thing is they put it in their pro product with the Power Mac G3. And I did this, this was research I did do for 20 Macs for 2020.
00:47:21 ◼ ► You know, there were letters in Mac Week about from professional Mac users saying, I'm embarrassed by this computer because it's blue and looks like a toy.
00:47:31 ◼ ► And I want a serious computer. I'm going to hide this under my desk. Like that was the response. And you can roll your eyes at that.
00:47:37 ◼ ► But the fact is the G4 Power Mac was gray and it got paler and paler as time went on. And then, and the truth is, so like you look at the iBook, the iBook was very colorful, but the next generation iBook looked just rectangular and was white.
00:47:56 ◼ ► It lost all that color and it lost all that flair. And I think part of that is Johnny Ive kind of like reacting to the success of the iMac and like recoiling from it a little bit.
00:48:07 ◼ ► Like, okay, we went too far. And also just sort of entering his minimalist phase where he's like, everything's going to be monochromatic and we're going to work more with metal and get away from plastic because metal is more premium.
00:48:17 ◼ ► And he had great success with that. But as a result, I look at like the iMac styling and think it wasn't until more than 20 years later where Apple, well, and I'll get to the, on the computer side where Apple was like, yes, multicolored computers.
00:48:36 ◼ ► That sounds fun. And did the M1 iMac. The only place where Apple like leaned into that same sort of approach was with the iPods, right? Where the iPods got the multicolor thing in anodized aluminum eventually is where they ended up.
00:48:53 ◼ ► So they did get there in one case, but like I wouldn't call it influential. It's like, I feel like it's more like a footnote of the primary design decision that Johnny Ive kind of led the way on, which was we're going to be pretty monochromatic.
00:49:13 ◼ ► And ultimately the goal is for everything to be metallic. And that is, you know, with a few outliers, like that's still the case. Now we see a little bit more fun on the M1 iMac and on the lower end iPhones, but you know, the lesson that they really seem to learn.
00:49:27 ◼ ► And sometimes I think that this is the greatest impact that the Power Mac G3 had is I think Apple just codified a lesson after the Power Mac G3 came out, which was pro systems shouldn't stand out.
00:49:42 ◼ ► They just shouldn't stand out. And since then they don't like literally since the Power Mac G3, the pro systems don't stand out. They are all boring colors or not colors.
00:49:54 ◼ ► And I think that is a lesson we could argue about whether they actually needed to keep that lesson learned, but it certainly was feedback they got from their customers back in the day was this blue computer is not what we want.
00:50:06 ◼ ► And so they made a version of it that was gray. How would you like it in gray? Yes, please keep it in gray from now on. So, so there are places where I think the influence was not as substantial.
00:50:18 ◼ ► It didn't rewrite what a computer was. And it didn't even like make it like all computers come in bright colors. Now that also didn't happen.
00:50:26 ◼ ► It was that part was was more brief and maybe so successful and so copied that Johnny I've recoiled when he saw the George Foreman grill and he's like, we got to get out of this.
00:50:43 ◼ ► My other question is, so you mentioned the MacBook Air earlier and maybe that's the answer, but I'm not sure. Do you think Apple could ever introduce another computer that would have the impact on the scale that the iMac G3 did?
00:51:00 ◼ ► It depends on what the impact is. Like Apple, that computer without it, Apple doesn't stay in business. So on that level, the impact is never to be matched. If we say a computer, like I guess the iPhone had that impact, obviously, and even more of an impact totally transformed Apple's business in the world.
00:51:20 ◼ ► Is it a computer? You could say it was, but if you mean like a computer computer, like a Mac. I don't have an answer. Like, you know, like Adam in the, in the discord has said vision pros. Like maybe that's on the table. Like I don't, I don't know how to necessarily ask it. Like, do I mean a Mac? Maybe. But is that the most important computer? Like, I don't know.
00:51:42 ◼ ► I, my, my guess is that the, the iMac's impact is important. I'll put it this way. The iMac's impact was important for what it meant for Apple. Apple needed a successful product. A lot of what Apple did afterward came from the iMac success and was inspired by the iMac and the iMac success.
00:52:03 ◼ ► The iPod is the, is the product that did the Apple brand rehab. Like I said earlier, where people bought Apple products for the first time and were like, Oh, I like this. And then that led to the iPod halo effect where people were buying Macs because they realized, Oh, they like the iPod and maybe they want a Mac to go with it.
00:52:22 ◼ ► And that, that combined with the retail stores really was this thing that, that made Apple relevant to a lot of people where it was irrelevant before. And then that sets the stage for the iPhone, which was the, you know, basically world changing product.
00:52:36 ◼ ► There, the smartphone, but the smartphone was codified by the iPhone and, and the smartphone has changed the world in so many different ways. And, and so that is if there's a single product that has had an impact on the world more than the iPhone, I, you know, that from Apple, I'm not sure.
00:52:55 ◼ ► Obviously the original Mac did just in, in popularizing the graphical interface that led to windows, but like I would argue the iPhone, like the computer industry was leading to the iPhone essentially that, that, um, and I know I've said this before, but like the idea that we always viewed as the history of the personal computer industry.
00:53:11 ◼ ► And now I have a hard time not looking at it as all that stuff was just leading up to smartphones. Like really where we, where we were trying to go is where we ended up going with the smartphone and that all the rest of that was kind of prologue to that moment.
00:53:26 ◼ ► So could vision pro do it? I mean, maybe, but I would, I would probably not bet on, on anything other than the iPhone. I will say what we mentioned earlier, which is Mac book air defined what a laptop should be for more than a decade.
00:53:50 ◼ ► Yeah. And they became ultra books and now they're just, that's what laptops are like. Right. I mean, there are experiments out there, but like what is a, what is a laptop? I think you just pull out a Mac book air and say, it's kind of like this, right?
00:54:02 ◼ ► Like this is what a laptop today and for the last 15 years has been more or less. Yeah.
00:54:07 ◼ ► Cause that was there. Like the MacBook air was Apple's response to the netbook, like to the netbook craze, right? Everyone was like Apple must make a netbook.
00:54:14 ◼ ► And netbooks were just cheaper, smaller, less powerful computers. Like honestly kind of just like laptops for the Chromebooks, essentially what a Chromebook is now. Right.
00:54:24 ◼ ► Like it was like what, what it was supposed to do and what it was aimed at. Um, and then everyone thought that Apple would do that. Apple instead released the Mac book air and everyone was like, oh, this is just better.
00:54:34 ◼ ► And then laptops went in that direction and then netbooks went away and then Chromebooks came around and different market, but same kind of purpose.
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00:56:46 ◼ ► So we got a ton of questions and follow up about our conversation about Disney on last week's episode.
00:56:53 ◼ ► So considering we didn't do ask upgrade last week, we're going to kind of do a double ask upgrade now all Disney and then regular ask upgrade sound good.
00:57:02 ◼ ► Okay. All right. Wow. Sure. Let's do it. So Mark wrote in and said, do you think that Bob Iger's comments about the WGA and SAG afro act SAG after I've never said that out loud before SAG after SAG after that's difficult for me after after it's like a Brit.
00:57:30 ◼ ► Do you think that the actors and writers strikes and make things difficult for studios?
00:57:36 ◼ ► I'm going to start this again, Jason. Right. And this time I'm going to take I'm going to take all the letters out. All right. So here we go.
00:57:42 ◼ ► Do you think Bob Iger's comments about the writers and actor strikes and making things difficult for studios had anything to do with the their effect on the valuation of Disney in regard to someone buying them?
00:57:55 ◼ ► Does it make Disney less attractive to someone like Apple, especially to Apple with its own union problems?
00:58:03 ◼ ► I mean, I don't think so. Like I, I, I was actually kind of perplexed by this question like strikes happen. It's part of doing business in the entertainment industry.
00:58:16 ◼ ► Apple has its own issues with with labor and it's in its stores. Like I don't think it would be a decision. Like I don't think this is why Apple makes a decision about a giant purchase like this is like, oh, but they've got unions. It's like, yeah, it happens.
00:58:33 ◼ ► So two things. One, I was going to say on this, like, I don't think it makes them less attractive to Apple because Apple already have their own anti-union stance it seems with the retail stores. So like, you know, if the idea about like strikes and it's not going to be a problem for them and as like, they're not going to care about it. And as David points out in the chat, they're, they're already part of this anyway. Apple's part of the AMTPT PTP.
00:58:57 ◼ ► It's just a larger portion. It's a larger portion of their business. They're part of the, you know, the producers who are being struck. Yes. That, that is very true. So I just don't think it's a, it's, that's the cost of doing business in the entertainment industry and Apple's already in it. So yeah.
00:59:16 ◼ ► And also as well, like, I don't know about the valuation stuff because as well, a lot of these companies are saving money right now, which Wall Street kind of like, right? Like, so.
00:59:25 ◼ ► Jonathan asked, I wondered what you thought about ESPN getting involved with betting with ESPN bet, namely how it could affect any decision Apple might make about whether they will not buy Disney as a whole or would want to get involved with or spinoff ESPN or ESPN bet.
00:59:42 ◼ ► So as a background, ESPN bet is a new, because Bob Iger wanted some money, a new licensing agreement that they have with a, for ESPN branded sportsbooks. So another company is operating them, but they, in exchange, they will be, ESPN will be promoting the ESPN bet branding.
01:00:01 ◼ ► Um, I heard from a bunch of people who said, I just can't see Apple being involved in gambling in any way. And I'm sorry, I feel like this is the mixture of what do, what ideals do we want our big companies that we're interested in to follow?
01:00:18 ◼ ► And what do they actually do? I'll first say Disney cares a lot about their identity too, and they made this deal.
01:00:26 ◼ ► So what does that say about Apple? And I would also say this is such a big deal that if Apple thinks the right thing to do is buy Disney, a licensing deal for ESPN with a sportsbook is not going to change things one way or another.
01:00:44 ◼ ► Also, I'll point out that on the MLB network produced pregame shows for Apple's, uh, baseball on Friday nights, they had a betting sponsor. They had a whole segment. I think they have a whole segment about like betting stuff involving baseball.
01:01:04 ◼ ► So, you know, Apple has already done some of that stuff, whether it was produced by somebody else, but the fact is it was on their air. And so I just think I got a lot of these that are sort of like, ah, but what about this?
01:01:20 ◼ ► This will obviously be the thing that means that Apple can't buy Disney. It's like, look, if Apple wants to buy Disney, these things are footnotes. They could pay to make it go away. They could just grin and bear it.
01:01:34 ◼ ► I don't think it's going to make any difference. And I would just, again, I'm not trying to say, yay, isn't it great? Because I'm not a big fan of betting in general, sports betting in particular. It just doesn't interest me at all. And I am not a fan. I'm not a fan of it.
01:01:50 ◼ ► But I don't think that it's going to have an impact one way or another. It's all over the place. It's everywhere. And Apple's going to be involved in sports if they want to be. They seem to want to be. And so it's going to keep coming up.
01:02:06 ◼ ► And I just don't think I believe that we can say, well, we know Apple. Apple will say no to this. It's like, I don't know. Do we know Apple that well that they would say no to something like that?
01:02:21 ◼ ► They put it on their MLB broadcast. It's clearly not a hard no. So if they're really wanting to buy Disney and part of the Disney sports business is ESPN and its relationship with a sports book, I just can't imagine it being an issue or a deal breaker.
01:02:40 ◼ ► It might come up, but I think we're overthinking it, honestly. And I think that we're also maybe giving big profit-seeking companies a little too much credit because again, Iger at one point said he wasn't really comfortable with the betting relationships being a part of Disney.
01:03:00 ◼ ► Look, if Apple today hated gambling so much, then they wouldn't have allowed gambling apps on the App Store. There was a time when there weren't no gambling apps.
01:03:10 ◼ ► But I actually had a question for this. I was trying to do some digging. I don't think that apps like Fanjul use in-app purchase.
01:03:26 ◼ ► But there was a time, I'm sure I remember this, like gambling apps were not allowed. And they allowed gambling apps at some point. And that's my memory is failing.
01:03:36 ◼ ► But nevertheless, if Apple hated gambling so much, then they would just block gambling apps. They just wouldn't exist.
01:03:42 ◼ ► Where there are types of applications that you just cannot put in the App Store, gambling is not one of them.
01:03:49 ◼ ► Again, I want to show, Joe Rosenstiel in our Discord just said, "Kudos to Apple that Apple fans think they're very classy."
01:03:56 ◼ ► I want to say, because a lot of this has to do with your view of what Apple is. And this is why I said last week, you might want to reconsider what Apple is today.
01:04:06 ◼ ► Because Apple is a very different company. And I know we've got a question about that, I think, coming up.
01:04:10 ◼ ► Apple is a very different company. But saying what Apple would or wouldn't do, I don't know.
01:04:16 ◼ ► Apple's done a lot of stuff that I would have said that they wouldn't do. Because they're changing and they're growing.
01:04:20 ◼ ► And they've got a lot of motivators in terms of money and investors wanting them to make more money.
01:04:25 ◼ ► And the fact is, although Apple goes their own way in a lot of ways, it's still going to go in places, I think, that people who've been paying attention to Apple and have an idea of what Apple is in their mind,
01:04:37 ◼ ► it's going to go to some places that they aren't expecting. And so a lot of this sort of like, "I can't believe Apple would do this because this business X doesn't fit with Apple."
01:04:48 ◼ ► It's like, well, an Apple that buys Disney is fundamentally an even more changed Apple than it was before.
01:04:54 ◼ ► And those businesses that we would think like, "Well, Apple's certainly not going to ever create the Disney Vacation Club."
01:05:03 ◼ ► Well, no, I can't imagine that. But as a part of Disney's suite of kind of customer experience things that's in a division that's designed for that, that's still probably branded as Disney,
01:05:13 ◼ ► probably, maybe they would stay in that business. Some stuff isn't going to fit. But like, you can pick out these little examples like the cruise ships.
01:05:22 ◼ ► Because we got a lot of feedback about the cruise ships, which are essentially theme parks on the water.
01:05:27 ◼ ► And that's why Disney does their own cruise ships is they were unhappy with their licensees. And they thought, "We need to do this ourselves. Sounds very Apple to me."
01:05:37 ◼ ► And they're like, "Oh, Apple and cruise ships. Well, that'll never happen." I was like, "I don't know, right?" Like, if it makes sense, and they're a business that's growing and they're going into different areas,
01:05:44 ◼ ► they might not have chosen to do an Apple Cruise Line, right? But if they're buying a Disney business where the cruise line is part of this virtuous cycle that's been created involving Disney and its intellectual property
01:05:54 ◼ ► and the revenues it generates in various customer experiences, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. My point is, if they buy them, they're a very different company or a changed company already.
01:06:04 ◼ ► I don't think you would say, "Oh, but they won't do that." I think that there is a level of... I don't want to insult anybody here. So let me see if I can phrase this right.
01:06:15 ◼ ► I think that there is a level of belief about what Apple will and won't do that's all about sort of like discarding the unfamiliar. I'll put it that way. Discarding the unfamiliar.
01:06:25 ◼ ► So you're like, "Well, if Apple buys Disney, they really just want the streaming service and the intellectual property, and they'll drop the rest of the stuff like hot rocks.
01:06:32 ◼ ► They'll sell it off and they'll get rid of it." Because it doesn't fit with your vision of what Apple is. But what I'm saying is, Apple's vision of what it is itself has changed dramatically,
01:06:42 ◼ ► and it can continue to change. And if they made a Disney acquisition, they would do it with the idea that it would change their business. It would not be the same Apple as it was before.
01:06:53 ◼ ► Fundamentally, if they spend that much money on Disney, they would be a very different business. But if the executives like what business they would become, and they think it's an improvement, maybe they do that deal.
01:07:04 ◼ ► I don't think there are very many things that would be deal breakers. The real deal breaker is analyzing the value of buying Disney's streaming service and its intellectual property and the other stuff that you find value in,
01:07:16 ◼ ► and creating a new business inside of Apple that benefits Apple and that Apple's cash and its cash flow can make more successful. Those are the decisions, and that would be the deal breaker.
01:07:28 ◼ ► If they look at it and say, "No, it doesn't really work for us at this price, but otherwise a lot of this little stuff, it's just going to come out in the wash."
01:07:37 ◼ ► And don't say that business doesn't make sense for Apple, because the Apple of today is probably not the Apple you're thinking of, and certainly an Apple that bought Disney would be in all sorts of businesses that you would not expect Apple to be in,
01:07:53 ◼ ► Andrew says, "Regarding the theme parks, I've been seeing folks suggest that Disney could do what they've done with Tokyo Disney Resort since it opened in 1983.
01:08:03 ◼ ► Let the theme park be run by an outside company which licenses all of the Disney properties and Imagineering projects. What do you think of this as an option?"
01:08:11 ◼ ► Look, I'm going to leave it to the experts on Disney's theme parks. I will say that based on what I know, I don't see why theme parks couldn't be part of the core business. It's a very successful business.
01:08:23 ◼ ► It's a creative business. It's a technology business in a lot of ways. It's a customer experience business. Apple and Disney are very good at that.
01:08:30 ◼ ► I would say if they had a good reason to license and have an outside company run it, and I don't know the reason that Tokyo Disney does it that way, then they could do it.
01:08:43 ◼ ► But I do not believe that you look at a Disney acquisition by Apple and say, "Well, the first thing they've got to do is how to extricate themselves from their parks business."
01:08:52 ◼ ► I think that that kind of attitude is born out of what I was just talking about. My personal image of what Apple is as a business can't be reconciled with the idea that they would own theme parks.
01:09:04 ◼ ► It's like, "Well, yeah, but they would own Disney and they'd be Disney theme parks." As I said last week in one of my favorite moments where I was like, "Oh, you know what? Disney Imagineering is at the corner of the humanities and technology."
01:09:20 ◼ ► It's already there. As you and I both agreed last time, separating your customers from their money in the most efficient way possible is very Disney and very Apple.
01:09:31 ◼ ► I don't know. I can't say no about theme parks. I guess they could if it works, but that's more like an executive doing a business analysis of whether it makes more sense to have it on the ledger or to have a licensing arrangement.
01:09:44 ◼ ► I don't know. I feel like if you're going to have a product like that, you'd want to control it and you'd want to control the creative aspect of it. That goes for Disney and Apple.
01:09:54 ◼ ► Also, I think that whole thing about because they have these similar relationships with Disneyland Paris and Disneyland in Shanghai, I think there kind of wasn't a choice.
01:10:06 ◼ ► Yeah, that may be. Depending on the way that it's operated, there are some places where in that country you need to operate it in a certain way and so you have a local operator, but you basically have the control.
01:10:16 ◼ ► Again, that would be a legal reason, but I don't think of it as sort of a get the cooties away from Apple by having some other third party.
01:10:25 ◼ ► Because if you own Disney's intellectual property, how is how that manifests in theme parks not core to your intellectual property? It's a huge part of it. It has been for more than 50 years and will continue to be.
01:10:38 ◼ ► I think it's part of the flywheel for Disney and that I have a hard time seeing anybody who owns Disney's intellectual property giving it up and never say never.
01:10:50 ◼ ► But it would be a very different. Again, this is me saying again, if Apple were to choose to buy Disney, one of the things they would be choosing to do is to change their business and transform what Apple does and add a whole portion of the business that they weren't doing before.
01:11:04 ◼ ► I don't see it being a "Hey, nice streaming service. We'll take that and let's dump the rest." I don't see it as being that simple.
01:11:12 ◼ ► Also, we talk about this a lot. I'm not sure it's the best move for Apple to do this. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that a lot of the arguments why Apple wouldn't do it don't ring true for me.
01:11:26 ◼ ► An anonymous person wrote in, but we got a bunch of people asking us some flavor of this question.
01:11:42 ◼ ► With Disney, you're buying a lot of baggage of different businesses of mixed potential, but with Nintendo there is a lot of opportunity to grow their market based on integrated hardware, software, services, and IP. Do you mind if I take this one?
01:12:20 ◼ ► I'm not sure if it's the best move for Apple to do. I'm not sure it's the best move for Apple to do. I'm not sure if it's the best move for Apple to do. I'm not sure if it's the best move for Apple to do.
01:12:44 ◼ ► I'm not sure if it's the best move for Apple to do. I'm not sure if it's the best move for Apple to do. I'm not sure if it's the best move for Apple to do. I'm not sure if it's the best move for Apple to do.
01:13:04 ◼ ► I'm not sure if it's the best move for Apple to do. I'm not sure if it's the best move for Apple to do. I'm not sure if it's the best move for Apple to do. I'm not sure if it's the best move for Apple to do.
01:13:20 ◼ ► First off, shout out to Nintendo. I was actually just thinking about this the other day. It was my son's birthday because my son's birthday is also Riele's birthday, by the way. Six years ago, on his birthday, we got him a Nintendo Switch.
01:13:38 ◼ ► He had a birthday party on Friday. A couple of his friends came over and they played a bunch of party games on his Nintendo Switch hooked up to our TV in the living room. And he plays on it all the time to this day.
01:13:50 ◼ ► I mean, he does a lot of PlayStation gaming and all that, but the Switch is still an active part of his gaming life. Six years later!
01:13:59 ◼ ► I don't know. I'm amazed by the longevity and success of the Switch. It blows me away. And since I am able to put a specific tag on it, that was six years ago.
01:14:10 ◼ ► Apple buying Nintendo? I mean, I can't believe we're there either. I would say Apple's got lots of money. And if they felt like it made sense and that it would be a good thing for the whole, I'm sure they would have a conversation about it.
01:14:26 ◼ ► I'm not sure for the reasons you listed. It actually makes sense, like strategically. Also, one of the reasons that we're talking about Disney is, as mentioned in that Hollywood Reporter article, the idea that we may be in a period now where, because of the move to streaming,
01:14:43 ◼ ► the entertainment industry is now sort of an ancillary portion of a technology industry that includes streaming. And if that's the case, then the entertainment businesses, which are harder to run and harder to be successful with on their own,
01:14:58 ◼ ► may end up all being sold out to tech companies that can use them as, because they have more value as part of an integrated whole than as a standalone company. That's the argument, right?
01:15:09 ◼ ► The argument is Disney's really struggled with Disney Plus because they've had to put a lot of money in it. And now they are losing money and they have some debt and there are all of these issues going on there.
01:15:18 ◼ ► Whereas Apple can spend lots of money and lose money in Apple TV Plus because they're viewing it as part of the big picture of their ecosystem.
01:15:26 ◼ ► And if that's the case, then there's pressure put on Disney to sell because their value is greater inside another organization instead of as a standalone, if that's true. If that's true, it's a question.
01:15:54 ◼ ► I think Apple would, you either leave them alone, in which case, why? Other than to protect them from somebody else selling them or buying them. Or you ruin them.
01:16:04 ◼ ► Apple and Disney is a better fit than Apple and Nintendo, just like what the companies are, what's special about the companies and what is likely to be affected.
01:16:14 ◼ ► And this question, my favorite question, I don't know if this is a serious question or not, but I love that it finds a way, like love finds a way, you know, as does the Mac Pro.
01:16:26 ◼ ► Chris asks, in a world where Apple owns Disney, along with all of its computer-based creative production and special effects work, does the Mac Pro get renewed attention?
01:16:36 ◼ ► Incredible. I don't know if this is like a performance art from Chris or not, but like…
01:16:51 ◼ ► It's incredible. This is like just the last month of my life, you know? Like this is like Apple, Disney, Mac Pro, like all smushed into one. Just great work from Chris. No, is the answer. Nothing's gonna change it.
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01:19:31 ◼ ► The new standby feature in iOS 17 extends the utility of iPhones as displays of ambient information when not in use as a portable device.
01:19:40 ◼ ► But this feature is severely hampered on pre-iPhone 14 devices that do not offer an always-on display,
01:19:52 ◼ ► Similar to how Apple relented and shipped Stage Manager on pre-M1 iPads Pro, should Apple support always-on standby on iPhones 13 and earlier?
01:20:07 ◼ ► Always-on display is a different feature. The display is meant to remain on for a long period of time.
01:20:23 ◼ ► It's the life of the screen, it's burn-in, it's other issues with the screen and the power usage of it.
01:20:43 ◼ ► I don't even know what they would have to do engineering-wise to enable it on other devices and try to prevent the devices from having bad,
01:20:55 ◼ ► This is a feature conceived of for devices with an always-on display. That's the whole point of it.
01:21:01 ◼ ► I would say this is even more extreme than that Stage Manager example, where it's like the hardware very clearly is not intended to be used in this way, except for the always-on display.
01:21:13 ◼ ► Yeah, I feel like as well, the Stage Manager thing, I'm still not sure that they made the right decision there, but they did it and such is life.
01:21:22 ◼ ► But the thing about the standby is it's also one of its main use cases in the way that Apple is positioning it.
01:21:36 ◼ ► Well, on the old iPhones, wouldn't it be too bright? There would be an ambient amount of light that would come from the display, right?
01:21:43 ◼ ► Yeah, they would have to step it down the backlight all the way down as far as they could and they would shift it in red.
01:21:51 ◼ ► There are ways you could do it, but again, I think the big reason, the number one reason is that it's potentially going to ruin your display.
01:22:01 ◼ ► And they're not going to create some weird sort of like, "How do you design those widgets so that they shift?"
01:22:05 ◼ ► They take up a lot of the screen, but you don't want them to burn in, so then you're moving them around and all that.
01:22:21 ◼ ► I remember that being a thing when the always-on display was introduced, that when the OLED displays in general,
01:22:29 ◼ ► But this is all part of what it takes to have an always-on display and that's what it's built for.
01:22:39 ◼ ► And also, look, I know people aren't going to like this, but I'm just going to be the one to say it.
01:22:46 ◼ ► I think they made a bad precedent in relenting to this idea of going back on a decision that they made
01:22:52 ◼ ► to put a feature on previous hardware, because now this question is asked about everything.
01:22:57 ◼ ► I don't want to be too mean about it, but the answer is, if you want this feature, get an iPhone with an always-on display.
01:23:03 ◼ ► Trade in your old iPhone for a new iPhone that supports this feature if you want this feature.
01:23:18 ◼ ► I understand if you want this feature and you find it annoying, but that means that next year is the time for you to upgrade.
01:23:26 ◼ ► I think it's actually surprising to me that standby exists on phones without always-on display.
01:23:55 ◼ ► But there is an always-on component to it that is limited to the always-on display and that's why it's there.
01:24:05 ◼ ► So if this is a feature you want so much, the answer is to trade in your old phone for a new phone, get that credit, put it toward the new phone, and then you'll get this feature.
01:24:24 ◼ ► Richard writes in to say, "Jason mentioned current Apple being quite different from the Apple of a decade ago."
01:24:32 ◼ ► And this is on the Six Colors podcast, I think, that you mentioned this. I think I cut that out.
01:24:39 ◼ ► Okay. "And that the long-held assumptions about the firm's behavior may not always apply.
01:24:48 ◼ ► Is it as simple as the January 2016 earnings call where Luca Maestri first explicitly mentioned the services strategy or another milestone like reaching a $1 trillion market cap?"
01:25:01 ◼ ► Well, the idea that Apple is changing rapidly, you know, depends on why you're marking eras.
01:25:10 ◼ ► It would be fairly straightforward to just say there's the Tim Cook era and then there's the Steve Jobs era and that Apple has transformed in the Tim Cook era.
01:25:19 ◼ ► Yeah, I think Tim Cook's had two eras. I think, I say Steve Jobs probably did too, but that was like pre-leaving and coming back.
01:25:31 ◼ ► Sometimes there are long eras, but yes, I think a key point, and Richard mentioned it, is that earnings call where they said, "We have a strategy to grow services.
01:25:41 ◼ ► We're going to grow it by," you know, I forget what it even was, "We're going to double it in two years," and they doubled it in less than that.
01:25:47 ◼ ► It was a dramatic marker of like, "We're going to increase our services growth," and they blew past it and they've continued to grow that business.
01:25:56 ◼ ► So, you know, I think it's hard to say where that dividing line is right now because we don't know where they're going.
01:26:05 ◼ ► And I think it becomes clearer in hindsight once you've seen the fullness of where they're going of like, "Oh, that really kind of, you could kind of draw the line here."
01:26:18 ◼ ► The launch of Apple TV+ would not be a terrible place to do it or the Apple One bundle.
01:26:26 ◼ ► I think you could probably draw the line in there somewhere where the idea was they're very serious about services as a part of their business.
01:26:34 ◼ ► So it could be that January 2016 earnings call or you could wait a little bit and say like this is, as they started to roll out those services, what that looks like.
01:26:42 ◼ ► But I think if we split the Tim Cook era in two, there would be something that would be based on sort of the services aspect of it and their kind of like enormous growth that has happened.
01:27:01 ◼ ► Do you draw that line at like the iPhone 6 because it was like that was an iPhone growth started to shrink after that?
01:27:09 ◼ ► iPhone 6 nine years ago because the iPhone 6 came out simultaneously with me leaving Heidi G, starting Relay with Steven, like all that happened nine years ago.
01:27:25 ◼ ► It actually started the kicking the iPhone revenue up into the stratosphere because they had the larger phones.
01:27:29 ◼ ► So there are lots of places we could draw the line, I think, but somewhere or you could use market cap if you wanted to or you could use a revenue number, but like somewhere in the last five years, eight years, something like that where you could say they're just of a different size than they used to be.
01:27:54 ◼ ► Like, you know, they were a product company, but now they're a services company as well as a product company.
01:28:02 ◼ ► And this is services stuff, you know, it's like, oh, they've been all antitrust around the world, right?
01:28:10 ◼ ► But there's still like, you know, it's not like they've left the product behind, but you've got to like, got to expect that there are product decisions based on services too, you know, like would spatial audio exist without services?
01:28:32 ◼ ► David asks, do you think Apple script is going to stick around on the Mac or should I be looking at shortcuts only?
01:28:39 ◼ ► So David, last week I wrote an article on six colors about using folder actions to trigger an event using shortcuts where I was using folder actions to do an Apple script folder actions, a feature.
01:28:57 ◼ ► I looked it up, a feature introduced in like 2002, 2003 that kicks off on a watch folder, an event that happens and then it runs an Apple script and my Apple script runs shortcut.
01:29:10 ◼ ► I use this as an example to say there's lots of stuff hanging around in Mac OS that is, it's a little, this takes us back to the beginning of the show.
01:29:22 ◼ ► Things that are in decline, they're going away, but they, they kick around longer than you'd expect.
01:29:33 ◼ ► It would be so dramatic and it would break so much if Apple script died on Mac OS and they haven't announced that Apple script will die on Mac OS.
01:29:49 ◼ ► I have, because of how badly it would break things and I still rely on Apple script to do stuff, even inside shortcuts to this day.
01:29:58 ◼ ► So unless Apple script forms a barrier in some way and like we're in the, we're in the 64 bit applications, Apple silicon world and Apple script and folder actions and automator are all still here.
01:30:12 ◼ ► So my guess is going to be that Apple script, well, and also most apps that ship now don't support Apple script, right?
01:30:34 ◼ ► So I think I personally wouldn't invest a lot of time in building things in Apple script, unless I absolutely have to.
01:30:49 ◼ ► I use Apple script as necessary as a bridge or to do something that I otherwise can't do.
01:30:54 ◼ ► I don't think it's going to go away anytime soon just because it would have already and it's useful to keep it around.
01:31:09 ◼ ► So, you know, maybe they'll make a change to automation, but I feel like shortcut stuff is basically on top of Apple script.
01:31:17 ◼ ► It's it doesn't it it's it's doing its own thing and it's not going to break Apple script and automator.
01:31:22 ◼ ► So my guess is that they will continue to sit around there as old tech that's not really expanded upon and will continue to do that for the foreseeable future.
01:31:34 ◼ ► But like I wouldn't I wouldn't starting today and this is actually starting when shortcuts was added to the Mac.
01:31:41 ◼ ► In fact, folder actions that piece I wrote about folder actions, that was one of the fundamental things in it was it feels dumb to write an Apple script
01:32:04 ◼ ► I can use it everywhere in shortcuts and the Apple script just says run that shortcut and done.
01:32:17 ◼ ► But also if you have to go to Apple script to do it, shell scripting is also out there and that's definitely not going to go away.
01:32:33 ◼ ► I try to build in shortcuts if I can, even though I don't think Apple script is going to get shut down.
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