PodSearch

The Talk Show

386: ‘Gate Number Two’, With John Moltz

 

00:00:00 ◼   ► Well, John, it's as I like to call it, iPhone gate season. Yeah, we haven't had a good one in a while.

00:00:06 ◼   ► What was the best iPhone gate? It might have been... Oh, antenna. Oh, antenna gate. Antennagate. Yeah,

00:00:11 ◼   ► I forgot. That's the king. That's the king of all gates. Yeah. Yeah, because they, I mean, they

00:00:16 ◼   ► literally had us fly out. That was... When the PR response is, "Can you come to California by

00:00:23 ◼   ► tomorrow morning?" Yes, it's a bad gate. Was it that fast? Was it... Yeah, and it rapidly,

00:00:33 ◼   ► as I recall, and I don't... Well, it's a podcast, so I guess I can be quoted. Yeah, really.

00:00:40 ◼   ► As I recall, it was like around Wednesday, and somebody at Apple PR called me and sort of gave

00:00:49 ◼   ► me their preliminary... Well, let's just say spin. We've looked into this. There's an issue with the

00:00:56 ◼   ► attenuation when your skin and blah, blah, blah. And they were like, "We might be having a thing.

00:01:01 ◼   ► Keep your schedule open. We'll let you know." And then it was like by Thursday, and I think the

00:01:06 ◼   ► press conference was a Friday morning, and they were like, "I think we're gonna have an event

00:01:10 ◼   ► tomorrow morning." And I was like, "Oh." And I looked for flights. As I recall even, it wasn't

00:01:17 ◼   ► even a middle row seat. It was sort of a... I got an exit or a aisle seat, and next 90 minutes later,

00:01:24 ◼   ► I'm at the airport flying out to California. But it was worth it. It was the most extraordinary

00:01:28 ◼   ► press event I've ever been at. Also, it was the one where I got... I think it was the first time...

00:01:34 ◼   ► Well, they don't really take questions and answers anymore. And if you'll recall, at the end of it,

00:01:40 ◼   ► it was Jobs and... Oh, I want to say Phil Schiller and Tim Cook.

00:01:48 ◼   ► They can be Phil Schiller for sure, but...

00:01:50 ◼   ► But maybe Big Bob was out there too. It might have been all four. What was Bob's last name?

00:01:56 ◼   ► It's Mansfield.

00:01:57 ◼   ► Bob Mansfield. I think it might have been... And Tim Cook maybe was the guy who wasn't there. Maybe

00:02:01 ◼   ► it was Bob Mansfield and Jobs and Schiller, but maybe Cook. But what I remember was it was in the...

00:02:09 ◼   ► I say the old town hall, but they know they still use that. They just don't really use it for outside

00:02:14 ◼   ► media. I know there were Apple employees who watched the iPhone event there, because there's

00:02:19 ◼   ► still tons of Apple employees who work at Infinite Loop. I mean, it's still... The old campus is still

00:02:25 ◼   ► completely full because they've increased their headcount. They talked about the attenuation.

00:02:30 ◼   ► They showed their video of people squeezing other phones and watching the bars go down.

00:02:38 ◼   ► And they announced that they were going to give away their bumpers for free with everybody who

00:02:44 ◼   ► bought an iPhone 4, just in case you needed it. And I... I'm looking at the... There's a YouTube

00:02:49 ◼   ► video of it. And I'm trying to see if it shows who else is there. It's mostly just Jobs on stage.

00:02:56 ◼   ► Yeah. And then at the end was the Q&A, and I think they had some stools out.

00:03:00 ◼   ► Yeah. And I don't think this video has that part of it.

00:03:03 ◼   ► No. Well, maybe not.

00:03:05 ◼   ► It's a half an hour. I mean, it's Jobs talking for like a half an hour about this problem.

00:03:08 ◼   ► Yeah. Yeah. And... But they... When they asked questions, I raised my hand. And...

00:03:13 ◼   ► Because I was thinking like, "Well, does this thing with the free bumpers mean they're implying

00:03:17 ◼   ► you're supposed to use a bumper?" And so I asked, "Do any of you guys use a case or a bumper with

00:03:22 ◼   ► your iPhones?" And they all had them in their pockets and took them out, and they were all

00:03:27 ◼   ► uncased. And it was a nice little laugh in the audience. And they were like, "No, we don't...

00:03:32 ◼   ► You don't need to use a case. We don't use cases. These are our personal iPhones."

00:03:35 ◼   ► And then they stopped taking questions for 20 years.

00:03:38 ◼   ► I don't know why...

00:03:43 ◼   ► And I think the pandemic helped them, right? I mean...

00:03:45 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:03:45 ◼   ► Not that it was happening before that anyway, but the fact that they switched to videos,

00:03:49 ◼   ► now they just have a captive audience. It's not...

00:03:53 ◼   ► Yeah. But that was a good one. But that's a weird one too. Because the other thing too, and I always...

00:03:59 ◼   ► But that one at least, there was a real problem, right?

00:04:00 ◼   ► Yes. It really was a problem where if you did hold the iPhone 4 the wrong way,

00:04:05 ◼   ► you could lose the signal. So if you were at four bars, you'd be fine because you'd go down to two

00:04:12 ◼   ► bars. But if you were already at one or two bars, you might lose your signal completely.

00:04:16 ◼   ► And I remember trying that. I remember testing it in my hand and going, "Yeah, I can see it happen."

00:04:22 ◼   ► Yeah. Well, but the thing that's so funny about it is some people remember it as being a real

00:04:26 ◼   ► issue that it was like a dud iPhone or whatever. But the iPhone 4 was the longest selling new iPhone

00:04:35 ◼   ► ever because it was the last one that shipped in June. And the iPhone 4S was the first one that

00:04:43 ◼   ► shifted to the September timeframe. So it was the new iPhone for longer than 12 months. It was,

00:04:51 ◼   ► I don't know, more like 15, 16 months.

00:04:53 ◼   ► Yeah. And it took a while. I remember it taking a while to get mine too. I don't remember exactly

00:04:58 ◼   ► how long. I think it was at least a month though. I mean, I ordered it fairly early on and just could

00:05:04 ◼   ► not get one for weeks.

00:05:06 ◼   ► And I think it was also, was it also the phone that the white one took over a year to come out?

00:05:12 ◼   ► Oh yeah, I think so. Right. They didn't have the white one initially. Yeah.

00:05:15 ◼   ► Right. Because the white 3GSs were no big deal, right? Or in 3G.

00:05:19 ◼   ► Plastic.

00:05:20 ◼   ► Right. But the white iPhone 4 was actually the bigger scandal. Again, the weirder thing,

00:05:25 ◼   ► there should have been the bigger scandal, just didn't get the publicity. But anyway,

00:05:29 ◼   ► that was a big enough deal that Steve Jobs had to call short of vacation to Hawaii.

00:05:34 ◼   ► That was really something. Ben Gate, I guess, was second. That was the iPhone 6. And again,

00:05:41 ◼   ► a somewhat legitimate issue, right? That if you supplied sufficient force, you could bend

00:05:49 ◼   ► an iPhone, a reasonable strength human being could bend an iPhone 6. And if you keep it in a very

00:05:57 ◼   ► tight butt pants pocket, you might sit on it and bend it. That was a big one. Anyway, this year's

00:06:05 ◼   ► is so far at least is Heat Gate, iPhone 15 overheating gate. Have you been following along?

00:06:14 ◼   ► I've been following it. I don't have an iPhone 15 of any flavor. I'm still loving my 13 mini,

00:06:20 ◼   ► so I'm not there yet. Well, we can just record that snippet of the show. And then next year,

00:06:27 ◼   ► you'll still say, "I'm still enjoying my 13 mini." And then two years from now, you'll be on the show,

00:06:32 ◼   ► you're still enjoying your 13 mini. Well, when I bought it, I was like, "I might have this for

00:06:36 ◼   ► four years again." Because I had the original SE for four years because they didn't come out with

00:06:41 ◼   ► the mini for a long time. So I think it's going to happen again. See, this is where the media misses

00:06:47 ◼   ► the real scandal. The real scandal is doing away with the mini form factor. That's my thing,

00:06:52 ◼   ► but nobody listens to it. Certainly nobody at Apple anyway. I wish, and I wrote this in my

00:06:59 ◼   ► review, I think that my hypothetical ideal iPhone, if I could just go into the lab and

00:07:05 ◼   ► Lego kit up my own custom iPhone, would be the mini size with the pro specs. And now that,

00:07:13 ◼   ► especially now that they're made of titanium, which I really enjoy with the pro finish. And if

00:07:18 ◼   ► that means for space reasons, they could only put two cameras in and it would be the regular camera

00:07:24 ◼   ► and the ultra wide. And I would not even have a 3X camera, let alone a 5X. So be it. That would be

00:07:31 ◼   ► my ideal iPhone. Alas, that iPhone does not exist. But anyway, I've been using iPhone 15's

00:07:39 ◼   ► review units and now my own personal one I started using last weekend, which is a regular size iPhone

00:07:46 ◼   ► 15 Pro. I've seen no overheating issues at all. If anything, in my personal experience,

00:07:56 ◼   ► it's been less than some years. And the one thing, this happens all the time. Apple's has a support

00:08:03 ◼   ► document about it. Whenever the press, see, I've read like three articles so far where Apple's

00:08:08 ◼   ► statement reiterates this fact. When you set up a new iPhone or like, I guess like restore, even if

00:08:14 ◼   ► you just have an old one and do a complete restore, like the first two days, it does a

00:08:18 ◼   ► lot of stuff in the background, like cameras or photos, library syncing. I guess it does a lot of

00:08:24 ◼   ► the on device processing. So the upside of Apple's approach to machine learning is they do all of

00:08:32 ◼   ► this stuff on device, which is more private or completely private, assuming there's no bugs where

00:08:39 ◼   ► the stuff leaks to the cloud or something like that. But it's a more private way of doing it.

00:08:44 ◼   ► It's distributed computationally around the world. You're not at the mercy of their servers. But the

00:08:51 ◼   ► downside of it is at some point, your phone needs to do the on device processing. So a new phone,

00:08:57 ◼   ► where it's looking at the library and doing I don't know, new facial analysis, looking at your

00:09:02 ◼   ► photos for family and now pets and everything, all of that. But we've known this for years that

00:09:08 ◼   ► after you set up a new iPhone or restore one, the first two days, it might get warm or might have

00:09:14 ◼   ► definitely might have lower battery life than you normally get the other 360 days of the year.

00:09:21 ◼   ► Until the new iPhones come out again. So I think that's a factor. But I would say personally,

00:09:26 ◼   ► I experienced even less of that this year. That sort of, Hey, it's I just set up this phone

00:09:31 ◼   ► yesterday. Really feels warm. No, I didn't feel it. Yeah. Well, there's a lot of, I guess that

00:09:38 ◼   ► Resident Evil game is coming out soon. And so people are like, well, they're touting this as a

00:09:43 ◼   ► major gaming device. Then is that going to be an issue when you're trying to play?

00:09:50 ◼   ► Right. Premium games on this unit, right? Which I don't know. I have to admit my personally testing

00:09:58 ◼   ► repertoire does not involve AAA games. But, but they, if that's the case, but the other thing that

00:10:07 ◼   ► strikes me about this is there's a lot of news coverage about it. And in fact, Apple PR is in

00:10:12 ◼   ► fact, emailing people. There's a story at Forbes. I forget. I think his name's Dan Phelan already

00:10:18 ◼   ► wrote it, but there's a statement Apple has put out about the overheating that they're they,

00:10:25 ◼   ► and they've found some sort of bug in Iowa 17. They've identified at least three popular apps,

00:10:31 ◼   ► including Instagram, which I've heard of it's Instagram, Uber and asphalt nine are the three

00:10:40 ◼   ► apps that they've thrown under the, maybe fairly thrown under the bus. But there's also,

00:10:46 ◼   ► I saw a YouTube from a guy. I forget his name. Let me see here. I'll put it in the show notes,

00:10:53 ◼   ► but as a guy, it's so confusing sometimes with the YouTubers, because his name is iPhone dough,

00:11:01 ◼   ► iPhone D O. I don't know what his real name is. Oh, that's what's so confusing when these

00:11:06 ◼   ► YouTubers who go by handle. But anyway, he just launches, he's got this video where he's got one

00:11:12 ◼   ► of those thermometers that you just point at a device and it somehow reads the temp surface

00:11:17 ◼   ► temperature. All he does is open the Instagram app and it goes from 80 degrees Fahrenheit on the back

00:11:23 ◼   ► to up to like 90 very quickly. And he, you can see it just start draining his battery like 1%

00:11:30 ◼   ► a minute. Just, and it's just open on his profile page. He's not like scrolling through Instagram,

00:11:36 ◼   ► loading new things. He just opened his profile page and left it there. So God only knows what

00:11:42 ◼   ► the Instagram app is doing there. You can imagine how Uber would also be one of the apps where

00:11:47 ◼   ► it does a lot of stuff in the background. So I guess a bug is possible. But the other thing

00:11:53 ◼   ► that this video shows is he iPhone dough, iPhone do maybe like Mr. Do remember Mr. Do

00:12:01 ◼   ► the video game? Mr. Do is like Dig Dug. You dig a hole and shoot a ball around. You need to get your

00:12:08 ◼   ► early 80s arcade memory back in order. I spent much of the early 80s in an arcade,

00:12:12 ◼   ► but probably a few years earlier than you did. Well, you'd remember Mr. Do. Trust me,

00:12:17 ◼   ► I'll put it in the show notes and it'll be like, Oh, I remember that stupid game.

00:12:20 ◼   ► But he shows it. He runs it. He does the same test on his iPhone 14 Pro and with Instagram,

00:12:28 ◼   ► same version of the Instagram app, just opened to his profile and boom, the temperature goes up 10,

00:12:34 ◼   ► 15 degrees. Once you get to a hundred degrees Fahrenheit, that is pretty warm, not dangerous,

00:12:39 ◼   ► but uncomfortably warm sort of, but that's an iPhone 14 Pro. So it's not like an iPhone

00:12:45 ◼   ► 15 Pro specific issue, whatever is going on. Hmm. Do you think that happens though? Like people

00:12:51 ◼   ► start noticing things when a new device comes out, they're like, Oh my God, why is this so

00:12:55 ◼   ► like this? And sometimes it's, well, it was always like that. You just noticed it cause you get a new

00:12:59 ◼   ► phone. Right? Well, but I, and I just can't help, but think that there is a natural tendency in the

00:13:06 ◼   ► media to iPhone 15s are great and there's nothing wrong with them is not a very good headline,

00:13:14 ◼   ► right? iPhone 15 pros signature, new material, and the foundation of all of the first ad campaigns

00:13:22 ◼   ► make the phones overheat is there. There you go. Now you've got, yeah. A man bites dog instead of

00:13:29 ◼   ► dog bites man. Yeah. But I haven't seen anybody actually prove it. And I think honestly, again,

00:13:38 ◼   ► not to blame it on one person, but sort of actually am going to blame it on Ming Chi Kuo,

00:13:45 ◼   ► like Ming Chi Kuo obviously has a tremendous reputation and he posted a thing on his medium

00:13:54 ◼   ► blog, very short post, but it's here. I can actually just read the whole thing.

00:13:59 ◼   ► It's short enough where he says the iPhone 15 pro series overheating issues are unrelated to TSMC

00:14:08 ◼   ► advanced three nanometer mode. And he's the whole posted my survey indicates that the iPhone 15 pro

00:14:14 ◼   ► series over overheating issues are unrelated to TSM C's advanced three nanometer mode. The primary

00:14:20 ◼   ► cause is more likely the compromises made in the thermal system designed to achieve a lighter

00:14:26 ◼   ► weight, such as the reduced heat dissipation area and the use of a titanium frame, which negatively

00:14:31 ◼   ► impacts thermal efficiency. It's expected that Apple will address this through software updates,

00:14:37 ◼   ► but improvements may be limited unless Apple lowers processor performance. If Apple does not

00:14:44 ◼   ► properly address the issue, it could negatively impact shipments over the product life of the

00:14:48 ◼   ► iPhone 15 pro series. End of post. That's the whole thing. There's a lot to unpack there,

00:14:53 ◼   ► but if you're of the opinion that Ming Chi Kuo's word is gold, then you read this and you say,

00:15:01 ◼   ► Oh my God, this guy who's like the top Apple analyst says that the titanium use of titanium

00:15:06 ◼   ► is making these things overheat. This is obviously not something that they can address in a tweak to

00:15:13 ◼   ► the supply chain. It is what it is for the next year. Everybody knows the next iPhone's not coming

00:15:18 ◼   ► out till next year. And he's saying the only way they may be able to address it is to slow down

00:15:23 ◼   ► everybody's iPhone. Oh my God, this is terrible. And then the last sentence, this may affect

00:15:28 ◼   ► shipments. And then, so if you're a user, you're like, Oh, I shouldn't buy this phone because

00:15:32 ◼   ► they're going to slow it down because it's using a material that heats it up. And at the end,

00:15:38 ◼   ► if you're an investor or whatever in Apple stock, you're thinking this is, this means the iPhone

00:15:44 ◼   ► 15 pro is going to sell like. This seems like it was written specifically to absolve TSMC. And I'm

00:15:52 ◼   ► not trying to say that in a way that TSMC's processes is to blame here at all. I bet, I bet

00:15:58 ◼   ► it's probably not, but it seems like it's written with the specific goal of saying

00:16:02 ◼   ► of addressing any concerns that people might have that it's TSMC's fault.

00:16:07 ◼   ► Right. Exactly. It does. And might make sense given that his undisputed expertise is in leaks

00:16:16 ◼   ► from the supply chain. Right. I mean, there's no, I don't see how anybody could dispute that he's

00:16:21 ◼   ► the best at that. Right. Yeah. Germin seems to have sources in Cupertino who tell him things,

00:16:27 ◼   ► actual Apple people with apple.com addresses, tell him things. Ming-Chi Quo's,

00:16:35 ◼   ► given both where he lives and what he's reported over the years, his sources clearly come from

00:16:43 ◼   ► suppliers. And it seems like this is one from TSMC like, Hey, not us. Right. You want to tell

00:16:49 ◼   ► people this isn't our fault, right? What I can say talking with people at Apple is that the

00:16:55 ◼   ► Apple is adamant that the frame of the iPhone 15 pro with the aluminum inside,

00:17:03 ◼   ► I forget the chemical process. They called it that bonds it to the titanium. It's sort of like

00:17:10 ◼   ► welding, but without like the cool laser part of welding, but it is, it's effectively like you heat

00:17:18 ◼   ► up the two pieces of metal to a certain temperature. And then when they're pressed together,

00:17:23 ◼   ► they, the molecules bond so that the aluminum part inside is bonded to the titanium part outside.

00:17:30 ◼   ► But the bottom line is that these phones dissipate heat better than any of the stainless

00:17:36 ◼   ► steel iPhones that they've ever made, which would start with the iPhone 10, right? So the iPhone 10,

00:17:42 ◼   ► the 10 S the 11 pro 12 pro 13 pro 14 pro are the ones that use stainless steel and that this phone

00:17:51 ◼   ► and Justin, just the frame design alone dissipates heat better than any of those steel phones do. So

00:17:57 ◼   ► if there's a problem with heat with this, it's not related to the titanium. I believe the people I've

00:18:02 ◼   ► talked to multiple people. I believe that I don't think. And if you read Ming Chi Kuo's thing,

00:18:08 ◼   ► it doesn't say that he talked to anybody who blamed the titanium. He just says it's more likely,

00:18:14 ◼   ► but it's definitely not, but there it is Ming Chi Kuo said it and it's out there.

00:18:18 ◼   ► And then this part about it's expected that Apple will address this through software updates,

00:18:24 ◼   ► but improvements may be limited unless they lower processor performance. The statement Apple gave

00:18:29 ◼   ► to the guy at Forbes today, obviously was without mentioning Ming Chi Kuo was obviously responding

00:18:36 ◼   ► though to it because they told him specifically that while they have a, but they've identified

00:18:42 ◼   ► a bug in iOS 17, the fix does not involve lowering performance, lowering performance,

00:18:49 ◼   ► which would have again would be a scandal. I mean, that would be a, that's the sort of

00:18:53 ◼   ► nightmare scenario for, well, I mean, obviously not quite up there with iPhones catching fire,

00:19:00 ◼   ► I guess, but having to lower the performance would be a disaster PR wise, which would be,

00:19:07 ◼   ► I mean, I'm laughing, but it would be, it'd be a bad year for Apple. But if like the initial reviews

00:19:12 ◼   ► from last week had these geek bench scores, and then after iOS 17.1 comes out, they're down 20%

00:19:19 ◼   ► would be not so good. And at the same, I mean, and their feather in their cap is the performance

00:19:27 ◼   ► per watt, right? So if they're burning, making things hotter to get performance,

00:19:33 ◼   ► then that's a scandal in and of itself. Right. So I think what we're actually seeing is a bit

00:19:39 ◼   ► of hypochondria from users from the first few days of upgrading a phone. Like, Hey, it does feel warm.

00:19:46 ◼   ► What's going on. I've read all this stuff, some sort of bug in iOS 17, which happens and some

00:19:52 ◼   ► misbehaving third-party apps like Instagram and Uber in this asphalt game. I on that last point,

00:19:59 ◼   ► though, I do wonder, is it because Instagram and Uber are so super popular? I mean, that's got to

00:20:07 ◼   ► play one factor into it right there. Those are obviously, I don't know how many people play

00:20:11 ◼   ► asphalt nine, but I know that Instagram and Uber, that one, I had not heard of the other two,

00:20:16 ◼   ► obviously. Yeah. Well, I just know the asphalt nine, cause for years it's been one of their go

00:20:22 ◼   ► to games as like proof of how powerful the graphics are. It's just, it's exactly what you think. It's

00:20:29 ◼   ► some kind of crazy racing game, but is the Instagram and Uber thing about their popularity

00:20:35 ◼   ► multiplied by the bug? Like how many far less popular apps are doing the exact same sort of bad

00:20:44 ◼   ► programming things. And they're just not getting the publicity cause they're not popular. Yeah. Or

00:20:49 ◼   ► is this just a, I could also see this as some sort of it it's it's a real mystery. I think to just

00:20:59 ◼   ► about everybody outside the app store hierarchy, how much of a special, how much special dispensation

00:21:07 ◼   ► the big apps get from app store review? Like, is this the sort of thing that if like you and I made

00:21:13 ◼   ► an app together and did the same thing that Instagram is doing, we'd get rejected from app

00:21:18 ◼   ► review and they'd be like, Hey, when you go to this profile screen, you peg the CPU at a hundred

00:21:22 ◼   ► percent nonstop. So rejected, but Instagram was on like a special path and goes through. I mean,

00:21:29 ◼   ► Uber famously got caught with code in their app years ago, where if it detected that it was within

00:21:39 ◼   ► five miles of Apple in Cupertino, it behaved one way. And when it was further away from infinite

00:21:48 ◼   ► loop, it behaved another way because when it was in Cupertino, it was, and I think it was like an

00:21:54 ◼   ► efficiency thing. I will make a note here to try to find a story about that. I would imagine that

00:22:00 ◼   ► if it, again, if it was like me and you who made an app and we got caught special casing, the geo

00:22:06 ◼   ► location of where we thought the app store reviewers were, our app might not make it back

00:22:12 ◼   ► in this store ever. Right. Whereas Uber is obviously still there. They're sort of too big

00:22:18 ◼   ► to kick out of the app store permanently. Are they still playing shenanigans with background APIs?

00:22:23 ◼   ► I mean, they do make those decisions occasionally. I mean, famously with Epic, right?

00:22:28 ◼   ► Right. Right. You really have to push the boundaries.

00:22:32 ◼   ► Yeah. So I don't know what the explanation is there. I would, the Instagram one really,

00:22:38 ◼   ► who knows what's going on, what they're doing on the profile page, but it seems like a non-issue.

00:22:44 ◼   ► It's just engineering wise. It's just a question of how bad the publicity is going to continue to

00:22:52 ◼   ► be as people look, I don't know, try to make hay out of it, but I don't see it as a real issue.

00:23:00 ◼   ► I would seem, it seems to me like currently the it's sort of being out shown by the problems with

00:23:06 ◼   ► the case with the fine woven, which that's the gate number two. Yeah. Right. The fine woven gate.

00:23:14 ◼   ► This one, it seems more legit, right? Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, yeah. I mean,

00:23:20 ◼   ► it does seem like maybe there's a bit of a problem with the heating, but not huge and not something

00:23:23 ◼   ► that should seriously impact the sales of the phone, but I wouldn't recommend anybody to find

00:23:29 ◼   ► woven case. So I've got them from Apple and I don't typically use a case, but I, Amy and I were

00:23:36 ◼   ► just down in Florida for the week, our little, a little mid, mid September vacation, just the two

00:23:42 ◼   ► of us. And I, in photography mode, kept my phone in the fine woven case all week and it looks as

00:23:51 ◼   ► good as new. And I wasn't babying it. I mean, I don't know. I mean, it's, some of this is clearly

00:23:57 ◼   ► subjective, like Ben Thompson, my pal Ben from dithering. He hates the way the case feels. He

00:24:02 ◼   ► just, he got one and just the material just repulses him and I can see it. I can see how

00:24:09 ◼   ► it's polarizing touch wise. It's a very opinionated feel. I don't, I can't say I love it the more I

00:24:15 ◼   ► use it, but I don't hate it either. And it's sort of feels utilitarian to me. I do question

00:24:23 ◼   ► the durability over a year. I don't know. I thought that at the beginning, I just like,

00:24:27 ◼   ► won't that, won't this fray or pill? I don't know. So there's this subjective thing where

00:24:32 ◼   ► even if it proves to be about as durable as you could hope a $59 case would be,

00:24:37 ◼   ► which should be pretty durable. Some people just don't like it. Right. So that's one thing.

00:24:42 ◼   ► The second thing would be that it does seem to not be durable, like the fingernail thing. And that

00:24:49 ◼   ► the stores chance Miller at nine to five Mac sort of had a pretty strident column saying, yeah,

00:24:55 ◼   ► I got to give him credit for it. I mean, it's like, he's, he's not leaving us wondering what

00:25:02 ◼   ► he really thinks about the fine moving. I thought it was, I, this is a opening paragraph on one of

00:25:06 ◼   ► them was pretty funny. And it was just like, like, this is a terrible case. Do not buy it.

00:25:11 ◼   ► You can probably stop reading here, but I'll explain why.

00:25:16 ◼   ► And Apple should like re recall them and give everybody their money back. And yeah, it's pretty,

00:25:21 ◼   ► pretty strong, but he had pictures from Apple stores where the ones are, I have it right here.

00:25:27 ◼   ► Here's the opening of his column. I will put this in the show notes. This is

00:25:30 ◼   ► Apple weaved itself into a fine mess with the awful iPhone 15 fine woven case. Apple's new

00:25:39 ◼   ► fine woven cases for iPhone 15 are a huge swing and miss. They suck. Apple should remove them

00:25:44 ◼   ► from sale and refund everyone who's already bought one. You can pretty much stop reading the story at

00:25:50 ◼   ► this point, but I'll offer a few pieces of supporting evidence for my claims. So I kudos

00:25:55 ◼   ► to chance Miller for letting it fly. Here's my question though. So there's pictures. Have you

00:26:00 ◼   ► ever been to the case section of an Apple store? Sure. Yeah. I mean, I think, I don't know. I don't

00:26:06 ◼   ► know why I always, whenever I'm in there, I just go look at everything. I mean, most of the cases

00:26:10 ◼   ► are in cases. Most of the cases are in boxes, right? So you can't mess with them.

00:26:15 ◼   ► But like for each one, they put one on the front. It's like a special custom shelving they've built

00:26:21 ◼   ► where the ones you buy are behind it. And the one in front is sort of mounted on a dummy iPhone so

00:26:28 ◼   ► that you can see the actual color and touch it if you want, but it's not connected to an iPhone, but

00:26:34 ◼   ► apparently all over the place. Apple's having to replace those ones at the front of each

00:26:41 ◼   ► shelf because people are running their fingernails over them. And then those fingernail

00:26:48 ◼   ► marks don't come off. But is that new with fine woven and we're noticing it because people are

00:26:55 ◼   ► looking for it and taking pictures or did this happen with the leather ones too? Like, cause

00:26:59 ◼   ► I've had Apple sends me with the review kit, like samples of the cases. Like this year they sent me,

00:27:07 ◼   ► I had all four phones and they sent Silicon cases, Silicon, the rubber case. They sent me the rubber

00:27:15 ◼   ► cases for the non-pro phones and the fine woven cases for the two sizes of pro phones. The rubber

00:27:21 ◼   ► ones obviously are fingernail proof unless you have really sharp fingernails, but I've had

00:27:27 ◼   ► leather cases from Apple over the years too. And they're just sitting on shelves around my office

00:27:33 ◼   ► and I ran my fingernails over them and they take leather is not great for fingernails. I mean, it

00:27:39 ◼   ► does sort of, right. That's a good question. It's like, are people just doing stuff that they're not

00:27:44 ◼   ► normally doing to previous cases? And I would imagine that they, you put a leather case out in a

00:27:51 ◼   ► high traffic Apple store, you know, like year ago, two years ago, whenever it go back to when

00:27:56 ◼   ► any of the years when they were selling leather cases, I would imagine they got replaced throughout

00:28:01 ◼   ► the week that, that you can't just put them out there for people to touch and have them stay

00:28:06 ◼   ► looking brand new, but is fine woven worse. It seems like maybe.

00:28:11 ◼   ► [Joey] Seem that way for sure. And when you are replacing leather with something that you're

00:28:20 ◼   ► touting as equivalent, people are going to want to know if that's really true.

00:28:25 ◼   ► And particularly with when they're paying $59 for them.

00:28:28 ◼   ► Yeah. Right. Which is a lot for a case. I mean,

00:28:32 ◼   ► And I don't buy, by and large, I do not buy Apple's cases when I buy a case for my iPhone,

00:28:37 ◼   ► for sure. Just because they are so expensive and it seems like I can get something that's

00:28:42 ◼   ► pretty decent. I, but I don't use a case anyway. So it's, yeah, I have a case for my iPhone,

00:28:48 ◼   ► but it's like only when I think I like if I'm going to go hiking or somewhere,

00:28:52 ◼   ► if I'm going to be someplace where there's a lot of cement, then I might put it on, but I never,

00:28:56 ◼   ► but I almost never do. Yeah. Well, sweaty hands is my scenario. So like going to the beach or

00:29:02 ◼   ► somewhere hot and somewhere where I expect to photograph. I liked the thing I've always liked

00:29:06 ◼   ► about Apple's metal cases and, or not metal, but leather cases. But I said metal because I'm

00:29:12 ◼   ► thinking of the buttons. The buttons on their leather cases have always been the nicest buttons

00:29:17 ◼   ► on any case I've ever seen. And I've always felt it frustrating that they don't use the same buttons

00:29:23 ◼   ► on their silicone rubber cases, which I think would make them nicer, but maybe some people don't

00:29:29 ◼   ► like metal buttons. And I've always thought it was an upsell like, okay, well, you can buy a rubber

00:29:34 ◼   ► case for $49, but the buttons are rubber too. Or you can go to our upscale leather cases and get

00:29:42 ◼   ► these nice fancy metal buttons in addition to the leather. I don't know how much of that is that

00:29:47 ◼   ► some people just want the whole case to be rubber, including the buttons and how much of it is about

00:29:52 ◼   ► segmenting the $49 cases from 59. But. Well, I wonder if there's, yeah, I mean,

00:29:59 ◼   ► you're buying a rubber case. You might have certain use cases where like, maybe you're

00:30:02 ◼   ► taking in water all the time or something, or like maybe you would like to read in the bath or

00:30:06 ◼   ► whatever it is, and you don't want metal involved in any of that. Just, I don't know if that metal

00:30:11 ◼   ► would rust at all, but maybe there's an expectation that based on how you want to use the case that

00:30:16 ◼   ► you don't want metal. Right. Or that stuff would get in the crevice between the metal and what used

00:30:22 ◼   ► to be leather and now is sort of a plastic around the side of the fine woven case. But that would be

00:30:27 ◼   ► a solution would be to put the metal buttons on the other cases. B, this has to be an absolute

00:30:35 ◼   ► bonanza for third party case makers, which is always, I was talking to a friend of the show,

00:30:42 ◼   ► Paul Kifasis about it, but I was just speculating, like what a high pressure business that must be

00:30:47 ◼   ► in to be in the iPhone case business, because there's such a rush to have your cases available

00:30:55 ◼   ► when the new iPhones become available. Right. Because that's when people buy their case

00:31:00 ◼   ► is they buy the case when they buy the phone. I mean, obviously if your case falls apart or you

00:31:06 ◼   ► get bored with it or you don't like it and you decide to buy one six months or a year later,

00:31:11 ◼   ► or maybe, you know, like a normal person, instead of upgrading your phone every year,

00:31:15 ◼   ► you buy a new case every year and keep your phone for three years or something like that.

00:31:19 ◼   ► But an awful lot of people buy the case when they buy the phone and an awful lot of iPhone buyers

00:31:27 ◼   ► or enthusiasts buy the new iPhone in September on a pre-order and try to get it in September

00:31:35 ◼   ► immediately. Probably a lot of the people who listen to shows like this one are exactly that

00:31:40 ◼   ► sort of person. And so the pressure in the case industry to have your cases available on day one

00:31:46 ◼   ► is enormous. But how do you make a case for a phone that's not out yet from a company that

00:31:53 ◼   ► doesn't reveal the specs or size or anything like that? Well, they do send out dummy models, right?

00:31:58 ◼   ► I mean, they send, you have to get into some sort of program. Yeah. I mean, well, that's what they

00:32:03 ◼   ► get. They come from somewhere anyway. I don't know. I don't know. I thought they came from

00:32:06 ◼   ► Apple. I thought Apple worked with certain companies and send them. This is just like

00:32:12 ◼   ► the outline of the body. I don't know though. I don't think they do. And, and well, then I

00:32:18 ◼   ► think they get them from the supply chain. Yeah. I think that it all comes from the supply chain.

00:32:22 ◼   ► I don't think Apple even unofficially, I mean, if they do, it's obviously under an NDA and I've

00:32:29 ◼   ► never seen a leak all the time though. I mean, you can see them throughout the summer, like,

00:32:34 ◼   ► here's the first, this is what the body of the new iPhone is going to look like. And I was assuming

00:32:40 ◼   ► like companies like OtterBox or something would get something for, obviously doesn't have any of

00:32:45 ◼   ► the specs or anything like that. Anything or the colors or it's like, here's just like a 3d

00:32:52 ◼   ► print of what the body is. Yeah. But here's the story. It's the one that Paul sent me. It was from

00:32:57 ◼   ► the verge. It's that the iPhone 15 pro case market is a minefield right now as reported by Dan Seifert.

00:33:04 ◼   ► But the quote is what do you do if you wanted to have an iPhone 15 pro case available on day one,

00:33:11 ◼   ► did you bet on the action button or did you head your bet and make it a cutout? Like it could still

00:33:17 ◼   ► be a ringer switch, but because it's a cutout, you can push the button. And some of the cases

00:33:23 ◼   ► that are already out have a cutout. And some of them made their bet that it was going to be an

00:33:28 ◼   ► action button and just put a button like they do for the volume buttons. What's the quote here?

00:33:35 ◼   ► So peak design in a Reddit post said, we actually do not have the literal 3d details from Apple.

00:33:43 ◼   ► And so we are reliant on industry rumors to inform the design. In the case of the new action button,

00:33:49 ◼   ► there were rumors in both the switch and the button direction. And we also did not have much

00:33:54 ◼   ► information on how a potential button would be used because of these conflicting rumors. We opted

00:34:00 ◼   ► for the safer route and designed a cutout that would give good access to the button feature or

00:34:05 ◼   ► a switch, depending on which rumor ended up being the actual truth. What a high pressure situation.

00:34:11 ◼   ► And if you bet on the button, like some of the third party cases did, and it had been just an

00:34:17 ◼   ► old fashioned ringer switch still, you'd have all these cases. You'd have to throw the cases out. I

00:34:22 ◼   ► mean, you really would. They'd be worthless. So what a high pressure situation. That's a business

00:34:27 ◼   ► I wouldn't want to be in. Just about, well, like every business. But I guess that's the thing about

00:34:38 ◼   ► the fine woven thing. Obviously, this is a bonanza for the third party cases, especially the ones that

00:34:43 ◼   ► make leather for people who do prefer leather. And even if you were open minded about the fine woven

00:34:50 ◼   ► as a replacement for leather, which is obviously how Apple's pitching it, and you go to the store

00:34:56 ◼   ► and feel it, or you bought one and you're like, Nope, not for me. Boy, it's a good time to be

00:35:00 ◼   ► making leather iPhone cases. I can't even I get tons and tons of PR from case makers all the time

00:35:06 ◼   ► every year. But this year it's off the rails in terms of how much of it is specifically about

00:35:11 ◼   ► leather. Did you ever there was a apparently there was a some pixel case that people liked that was

00:35:18 ◼   ► made fabric. Yeah, yeah. Because it came up recently and people were saying,

00:35:23 ◼   ► this, you know, they stopped making it, I guess. But yeah, they were like, Oh, man,

00:35:27 ◼   ► that was a good case. And they shouldn't have stopped making that. The last time I bought an

00:35:30 ◼   ► Android phone was the pixel for I still have it. But I don't know what I did with my case for it.

00:35:36 ◼   ► But I think that was the one I had the case for. Okay, yeah. So I'm looking at these. There's a

00:35:40 ◼   ► here's a nine to five Google article about it, and they're much more fabric key looking and have

00:35:46 ◼   ► different patterns and stuff like that. They look nice. I mean, but they don't look terribly appley.

00:35:53 ◼   ► No, they don't look like the kind of thing that Apple would ship.

00:35:56 ◼   ► No. And if everybody's praising the one that I have somewhere in my office for the for the

00:36:02 ◼   ► pixel for it's it is a very unapologetically fabric fabric. Yeah, it is like a twill suit.

00:36:11 ◼   ► Yeah, that's what these are. Yeah. Like, you wouldn't be super textured,

00:36:16 ◼   ► like a very rigid texture. Like, I don't know how else to say it. Like a twill suit or something.

00:36:22 ◼   ► Yeah. A fabric that you would never make like sure it's more like the screen on like a home

00:36:26 ◼   ► pot or something. Yeah, yeah, something like that. Or you could imagine it being the material for

00:36:31 ◼   ► like a speaker cover or something like that. But not something that you would make like a shirt out

00:36:36 ◼   ► of something that would touch your skin. It would be like a jacket or something that would go over a

00:36:40 ◼   ► shirt. So I don't know. Is this a scandal? I don't know. It's not like, you know, it's an accessory.

00:36:47 ◼   ► So it's not I don't think it's like a big it's not like it's, I mean, it tennegate was,

00:36:52 ◼   ► it was an actual flaw with the phone. But what you know, they were right. It was a

00:36:56 ◼   ► flaw with many phones. So it wasn't as good deal as everybody made it out to be. But it was certainly

00:37:01 ◼   ► a deal of some kind. This is like, this doesn't really impact you can get another case. So it

00:37:07 ◼   ► doesn't. It's also just funny that people are so wound up about like the case taking damage.

00:37:13 ◼   ► I think it's I think it is an issue simply because it's a $59 case. But the case is designed to take

00:37:18 ◼   ► the damage. That's the whole point of the case is to take the damage that the phone doesn't take.

00:37:22 ◼   ► And I can think about your original iPhone before anybody really made cases for them. And how much

00:37:29 ◼   ► I think we have our sleeves and stuff like that. But there weren't a lot of

00:37:32 ◼   ► cases as I recall for like the very first iPhone. It was not much of a business back then. And

00:37:38 ◼   ► people would regularly post years later pictures of how like banged up their iPhones were. And

00:37:45 ◼   ► there's a certain charm to that. I think I mean, we don't nobody likes that anymore. Everybody

00:37:49 ◼   ► wants their iPhone to be in pristine condition. Well, there was the picture in the coffee table

00:37:55 ◼   ► book of one of the designers on the iPhone team. They're like much used two year old original iPhone

00:38:03 ◼   ► was like incredibly beaten up. And I thought it looked beautiful. I thought it was. I know,

00:38:08 ◼   ► I think like you said, I think there's a certain charm to that. But we I think because we turn them

00:38:15 ◼   ► over so fast, it doesn't resonate with people anymore. Yeah, I don't know. But we need gates.

00:38:23 ◼   ► Are there any other gates this year for the iPhone or are we caught up? Well, there was the there's

00:38:28 ◼   ► a thing with the lip, right? There's a small Oh, right, right. Apparently a lot of people with so

00:38:32 ◼   ► well, not a lot. I wouldn't say a lot of people. Some people were complaining about the titanium

00:38:37 ◼   ► lip being higher than the glass. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. And so if you could feel a little bit

00:38:44 ◼   ► of an edge there if you ran your finger up past the top of the screen. Yeah. And that one I saw

00:38:52 ◼   ► some pictures that some people took and it sounds like it's only like the depth of an index card.

00:39:00 ◼   ► It's not a lot but on something with such tight tolerance is something like the even just the

00:39:06 ◼   ► width of a piece of paper is actually significant. It really is. So I don't downplay it. I'd be upset

00:39:13 ◼   ► if I bought a $1,100 iPhone 15 Pro Max and add it sounds like it also is only affecting the pro maxes

00:39:21 ◼   ► and not the pros which might it might be because there's a little more flex because it's a bigger

00:39:28 ◼   ► slab. That sounds like a legit issue. It does not seem widespread. I can say the only pro max I have

00:39:37 ◼   ► in hand is my review unit but it does not exhibit a problem. I can't catch my fingernail on it but

00:39:44 ◼   ► using just my thumb does it feel like there's like even less than a width of a piece of paper?

00:39:52 ◼   ► Something that you can't catch your fingernail on but can I feel something or am I imagining it?

00:39:57 ◼   ► Maybe just a little sort of. Certainly nothing I would have brought up in my review. My regular size

00:40:04 ◼   ► 15 Pro review unit and my personal one that I bought neither of them have any kind of gap or

00:40:12 ◼   ► something like that. I don't know. I hopefully Apple for people who have this they should just

00:40:16 ◼   ► take the phone back and I don't know study them or something but yeah I know it sounds super

00:40:22 ◼   ► nitpicky but that's the Apple you know yeah when you're Apple that's the game you're playing.

00:40:27 ◼   ► Yeah and again when you're paying $1,100, $1,200 whatever it is you're paying yeah that's a lot of

00:40:33 ◼   ► money. Yeah it was Evans Hanke in fact whose iPhone just looked it up here it's Evans Hanke who

00:40:38 ◼   ► would who I guess just left Apple last year but it was her iPhone original aluminum iPhone that

00:40:45 ◼   ► was pictured in the designed by Apple in California coffee table book. Arguably the most beautiful

00:40:51 ◼   ► iPhone I've ever seen Evans Hanke's personal iPhone. All right let me take a break here

00:40:56 ◼   ► and thank our presenting and sole sponsor of the day our good friends at Squarespace

00:41:03 ◼   ► you guys have heard of Squarespace it is the all-in-one platform where you can build design

00:41:10 ◼   ► host update everything you want to do with a website right there at Squarespace and you go

00:41:16 ◼   ► to squarespace.com/talk show and get 10% off your first order just by being a listener of the show.

00:41:26 ◼   ► So you can go to squarespace.com/talk show just remember that URL save 10% off your first purchase

00:41:34 ◼   ► of any website or even just a domain name using that code talk show. Let me tell you about some

00:41:38 ◼   ► of the stuff they've got the new thing is their fluid engine now Squarespace has always had a

00:41:45 ◼   ► drag and drop interface where you design tweak update your website right there in the browser

00:41:50 ◼   ► and what you see as the person who owns the Squarespace website is exactly what people see

00:41:56 ◼   ► when they visit your site except the people who visit don't get to edit it and move stuff around

00:42:00 ◼   ► it's always been wizzy wig you don't need code fluid engine though is Squarespace's next generation

00:42:06 ◼   ► website design system and the old stuff was easy but the new fluid engine is even easier and it

00:42:13 ◼   ► starts with a best in class template picker and the biggest improvement over the previous generation

00:42:20 ◼   ► one is that everything drag and drop works just as well on mobile as on desktop so you can sit

00:42:26 ◼   ► there and design your whole website update your website do it all from your phone and you're

00:42:30 ◼   ► missing nothing that you can't do on the desktop version of Squarespace it is a terrific upgrade to

00:42:36 ◼   ► something that was already best of class the online store you can sell your products in an

00:42:42 ◼   ► online store at your Squarespace website everything whether it's physical goods digital goods or even

00:42:47 ◼   ► service products like selling your time as a consultant or or something like that do it all

00:42:53 ◼   ► right there at Squarespace and for the store the checkout process the store built into every

00:43:00 ◼   ► Squarespace site if you want it couldn't be better credit cards you can take them PayPal

00:43:05 ◼   ► Apple Pay integration everything like that and you can even get the option to use things like the buy

00:43:11 ◼   ► now and pay later services like afterpay clear pay you can hook those up to your checkout process if

00:43:17 ◼   ► you want everything is built in terrific analytic interface everything you'd want so where do you

00:43:23 ◼   ► go to find out more i'll repeat the url squarespace.com/talkshow get you a free trial 30 days

00:43:30 ◼   ► no limits no watermarks while you're setting it up you can be set up in hours and have 30 days free

00:43:36 ◼   ► where your website is just there and out there no watermarks no limits and then when your demo

00:43:42 ◼   ► period's up when you're ready to launch just go back to squarespace.com/talkshow and use that

00:43:47 ◼   ► code talk show save 10 percent my thanks to Squarespace for sponsoring the show what else

00:43:53 ◼   ► was on the agenda here so we got to the third gate which was lip gate i don't know what is that what

00:43:59 ◼   ► we would call it we can call it whatever we want to all right hold on we're the ones making up the

00:44:04 ◼   ► gate names then absolutely so we got the oh there is one more gate john we've got one more it's USB-C

00:44:12 ◼   ► gate which is people discovering there's a Mac rumor story that some people are discovering

00:44:19 ◼   ► that when they connect their their new phones i think any of them right because they all have USB-C

00:44:25 ◼   ► so any of the iPhone 15 models to their car via a cable that CarPlay doesn't work it just it charges

00:44:33 ◼   ► the phone and the phone sees that it's connected but you don't actually get CarPlay and the best

00:44:41 ◼   ► guess that anybody seems to have about what's going on is welcome to the world of USB-C cables

00:44:48 ◼   ► because basically if you switch it out if you switch the cable for a different cable

00:44:54 ◼   ► and from a different brand it suddenly starts working for people so the right and the specific

00:45:00 ◼   ► form of cable that seems to be the most problematic is USB-C-A on the plug end and USB-C

00:45:11 ◼   ► on the goes into your phone end right which is a well for most cars i think would probably be

00:45:17 ◼   ► what you need yes because most cars even i guess newer cars now are coming out with USB-C built in

00:45:25 ◼   ► right but i think they still have USB i i don't know at least the last time i rented a car when

00:45:30 ◼   ► we took the kid to college last month still had it was like a year-old rental a moth how do you

00:45:36 ◼   ► pronounce the word behemoth behemoth to pack full of suitcases and stuff it had i don't know 18 USB

00:45:43 ◼   ► plugs strewn about the cabin USB-A and USB-C which i guess is the way to go if it's a big

00:45:51 ◼   ► yeah i mean mine's got two no mine has actually just one USB-A plug and then the cigarette lighter

00:45:58 ◼   ► so yeah yeah i'm i'm currently i just got a carplay head unit recently so and i don't i mean

00:46:05 ◼   ► it's wireless so it doesn't have that problem of course but uh i guess most people's old

00:46:11 ◼   ► lightning cables the traditional lightning cable is USB-A to lightning right that's the bigger

00:46:16 ◼   ► plug on the plug end and that's the one that gave nobody any problems for years and years and that's

00:46:22 ◼   ► a weird USB-C cable uh because it it has like all of the limits of USB-A for charging and data

00:46:32 ◼   ► speeds but it has a USB-C plug on the other end because that's what you need to go into your phone

00:46:39 ◼   ► i don't think apple makes such a cable unless i'm wrong and they certainly isn't what they ship with

00:46:44 ◼   ► the phones it's USB-C on both ends for the phones yeah they they did they made a USB-C to lightning

00:46:51 ◼   ► but i don't write in a to right and so people are buying those from third parties and third party

00:46:59 ◼   ► USB cables have always sort of been a you get what you pay for i mean i would my advice would be get

00:47:05 ◼   ► it from a name brand even though it costs 15 or 20 bucks like mono price is super cheap mono price

00:47:13 ◼   ► anchor not the two dollar cables you can get on amazon right but i guess the last of the gates

00:47:20 ◼   ► though combines the two things the USB-C cables with going back to the fine woven case i forgot

00:47:25 ◼   ► to mention the issues with the cutout on the port on the case yeah and again this seems like it's

00:47:32 ◼   ► all apple's fault we're and i again i don't know like was this an issue with the leather cases

00:47:37 ◼   ► but like with the fine woven cases you put the phone in the case and then you look at the port

00:47:43 ◼   ► and you could see that the cutout isn't quite centered around the USB-C port because you could

00:47:48 ◼   ► see like one of the little tiny screws next to the USB-C port through the cutout in the case on

00:47:54 ◼   ► the one side but on the other because it's like two like a millimeter off you don't see it and

00:48:00 ◼   ► that means that if your if your USB-C cable has a large enough plastic rim around the actual part

00:48:10 ◼   ► that goes in the metal part that actually inserts the penis i don't know you could say the male end

00:48:17 ◼   ► the male end it won't fit through the cutout in the fine woven case there's another way of saying

00:48:23 ◼   ► it too and i can't which is more more modern and probably what we should be using but i can't

00:48:28 ◼   ► remember where it is right now i tried it with some of my USB-C cables i have like some of my

00:48:34 ◼   ► longer ones i have like a six foot cable from nomad i think which is like a i forget what i

00:48:41 ◼   ► paid for but it's a really nice braided thick cable that cable which is sort of a rugged cable

00:48:47 ◼   ► doesn't even come close to fitting through the fine woven cutout it's obvious that it wouldn't

00:48:52 ◼   ► my other third-party cables mostly fit but some people are having problems where they've got a

00:48:58 ◼   ► bunch of USB-C cables and if the apple ones have particularly thin plastic yeah cups apples always

00:49:05 ◼   ► yeah apples always seem to think that you need to have very small cables i mean the ports on my

00:49:11 ◼   ► macbook air i feel are often a little too close together as if the assumption is well you're only

00:49:17 ◼   ► going to be plugging in the USB-C cable that probably that we provide you right as opposed

00:49:22 ◼   ► to anything from anybody else or anything that's using a dongle or some sort of novelty flash drive

00:49:30 ◼   ► or some i've got a few of those that people have given me for like christmas and stuff like that

00:49:34 ◼   ► when's a captain kirk like that will not fit in this thing if i have something else plugged in

00:49:39 ◼   ► yeah i think finally we can say we've wrapped the gate portion of the episode unless any kind of

00:49:47 ◼   ► breaking scandal happens in the next probably something happened while we were been recording

00:49:52 ◼   ► here on a saturday morning uh the other news i thought that was the most eye-opening of the week

00:49:59 ◼   ► was a report in the information that no details at all but that johnny i've and presumably not

00:50:07 ◼   ► johnny i personally but would be loved from his design firm is in talks with open ai to

00:50:15 ◼   ► help them design some sort of ai hardware device yeah it's hard to it's hard for me anyway to

00:50:22 ◼   ► imagine what this device would be like yeah just like more maybe like homepod sort of alexa type

00:50:31 ◼   ► of thing where you talk to it and get answers i don't get sometimes the wrong answers well and

00:50:37 ◼   ► that brings up the only other thing i can compare to would be humane the much publicized startup

00:50:45 ◼   ► that's whose product is largely a mystery but is sort of becoming less and less of a mystery this

00:50:51 ◼   ► year some sort of badge like a star trek communicator badge that you wear on your chest

00:50:58 ◼   ► and has some like a camera and we saw at the ted conference like a laser projector to project things

00:51:06 ◼   ► onto your palm in front of your hand and which they've when they first started when they first

00:51:13 ◼   ► announced their existence at humane and they've hired a bunch of x apple people are working there

00:51:19 ◼   ► i guess both hardware and software engineers in the last year they've sort of rebuilt it as an ai

00:51:25 ◼   ► first product that it's some sort of you wear this thing on your chest and it observes the world

00:51:31 ◼   ► around you and i guess you can talk to it they actually were in the news this week too where

00:51:36 ◼   ► naomi campbell was wearing one at what is this fashion week paris fashion week so we've got more

00:51:42 ◼   ► of a look but not doing anything with it no it's like you just get to see what it looks like yeah

00:51:48 ◼   ► and speaking of the original iphone that looks to me like like the top of an original iphone the way

00:51:53 ◼   ► it doesn't it yeah a little bit like the large bezel on the top and then a screen below oh you

00:51:59 ◼   ► can't tell what the heck it is yeah because it's not doing well yeah i can't tell because when

00:52:04 ◼   ► imran chaudhary the co-founder wore his at ted it was sort of tucked in a pocket like still sort of

00:52:12 ◼   ► semi-hidden like the actual hardware it's like you got to see him use the laser but i i don't know

00:52:19 ◼   ► so that's the other idea though would be is open ai thinking about some kind of wearable type thing

00:52:27 ◼   ► like this would that be the ai thing i i don't know i yeah the whole thing you seem like i'm

00:52:34 ◼   ► not sure about these use cases i mean it seems like so far what i have gleaned from this

00:52:40 ◼   ► technology from ai stuff is that it's best like the every time i talk to somebody who uses it

00:52:45 ◼   ► frequently they seem to indicate like if you're doing code it's really great because it gets you

00:52:50 ◼   ► all kinds of examples and like for so it works well for things that seem extremely concrete

00:52:55 ◼   ► but then at the same time there was a thing that i saw the other day where people were asking it

00:53:01 ◼   ► some i guess somehow this got to be the top answer on quora for this question which the question was

00:53:07 ◼   ► can you melt an egg and chat gpt said yeah sure you can melt an egg if you heat it high enough

00:53:15 ◼   ► it's like no you can't melt an egg it's gonna cook and then google search took that answer because

00:53:23 ◼   ► it was the top answer on quora as the right answer and so if you typed into google can you melt an

00:53:29 ◼   ► egg it would say yes um i think it's been fixed by now but it's it just seems like oh man just

00:53:37 ◼   ► we have a little ways to go still before i think that people want to be wearing these things around

00:53:41 ◼   ► like should i be going left or right there was i think it was on mastodon somebody and i forget

00:53:47 ◼   ► which service it was it might have been google barred or it might have been open but somebody

00:53:51 ◼   ► this week asked me is this true because they asked the bot where the name daring fireball came from

00:53:57 ◼   ► and i forget they made up both the answer was yes that john gruber started this website in 2002

00:54:07 ◼   ► and i forget where it said daring came from but it said fireball came from the fact that i'm a

00:54:12 ◼   ► fan of fireball cinnamon whiskey that sounds like something i wrote years ago yeah yeah

00:54:19 ◼   ► took that answer that a top answer from crazy apple rumors is that actually might there might

00:54:27 ◼   ► be a kernel of truth there because but there's no true kernel of truth to that being an actual

00:54:33 ◼   ► answer like the fact that of all whiskeys fireball whiskey is the one with the word fireball in it is

00:54:40 ◼   ► the bane of my existence i wish that fireball whiskey were a alcoholic beverage i could

00:54:46 ◼   ► recommend or at least give a so-so yeah sure yeah but i would have to say that cinnamon infused

00:54:54 ◼   ► whiskey is i i don't know i maybe i should say it's on you you should have named it daring pappy

00:55:00 ◼   ► van winkle yeah daring pappy yeah pappy fireball but no that is absolutely not true but uh but is

00:55:09 ◼   ► a perfect sort of answer from these things i i don't know i mean and we all do know it's an

00:55:16 ◼   ► interesting moment zoom out beyond what the encapsulation in a device would be but we all know

00:55:24 ◼   ► something is going to give here right computers have always going to go in this direction like

00:55:30 ◼   ► it's inevitable that we're going to make computers that we can just talk to the way we talk to each

00:55:35 ◼   ► other because it's the way we evolve to communicate with each other you know and i say this as a

00:55:41 ◼   ► writer first podcast or second but in my view of what i do but i think people who like my podcast

00:55:52 ◼   ► like it for different reasons than they like my writing right i i certainly feel that way about

00:55:58 ◼   ► podcasts i listen to from people who i don't i've never met but you get a certain familiarity with

00:56:05 ◼   ► the voices that you listen to and you sort of get to know them and it's it is it's just the way

00:56:11 ◼   ► humans have evolved we evolved to talk to each other so of course we're going to build computers

00:56:15 ◼   ► that we can just talk to and that will talk to us and we know that the old ones siri and alexa

00:56:23 ◼   ► and the google assistant and what's the samsung one bixby oh poor bixby we know that they're not

00:56:29 ◼   ► good enough right forget about how we would stack rank them when which one's better than the others

00:56:35 ◼   ► and which one's better for which things none of them are good enough not even close right they're

00:56:40 ◼   ► useful for certain things i love using my home pods to set the scenes in our house with the shades

00:56:46 ◼   ► and the lights and stuff like that and there are certainly many things that are good for just

00:56:52 ◼   ► talking to the dingus and giving it a command but in terms of actually having an intelligent

00:56:56 ◼   ► conversation it's not even it's not even spooky right yeah there was the story it's sort of like

00:57:04 ◼   ► to me the story was the cusp of the whole modern open ai chat gpt era of these ai bots were like

00:57:14 ◼   ► two two years ago i think it was during covet i'm pretty sure it was either summer 2020 or 2021

00:57:20 ◼   ► there was an engineer at google who wound up getting fired because he was making a stink

00:57:26 ◼   ► because he thought that what i guess they now call bard was actually sentient he thought that

00:57:33 ◼   ► he was convinced through his interaction with it that we've created a sentient consciousness

00:57:39 ◼   ► and what we're this is morally reprehensible because we've trapped it in our servers or

00:57:46 ◼   ► whatever nobody i obviously none of these things are sentient right this engineer you can see how

00:57:53 ◼   ► you you know in in in a chat situation talking with these things that they're certainly far

00:57:58 ◼   ► closer and they can pass the famous touring test right the touring test was if you're having a

00:58:05 ◼   ► text-based conversation with somebody on the other end can you tell that it's a human or a robot and

00:58:12 ◼   ► if you can't tell then it passes the touring test well these chat gpt things you can have

00:58:17 ◼   ► conversations with them where you can't be sure whether it's a human on the other end and even

00:58:21 ◼   ► with can you melt an egg i don't know are you just an idiot maybe you're an idiot right right

00:58:26 ◼   ► i think so like maybe the touring test gives too much credit to human beings right i've had some

00:58:30 ◼   ► conversations with people who were just like what are you talking about right there's a lot of people

00:58:35 ◼   ► really in the last like six years there's a lot yes exactly there's a lot of people whose connection

00:58:42 ◼   ► to reality is not even tenuous it's so so who knows but but you nobody has ever lost their mind

00:58:50 ◼   ► thinking siri was sentient right i mean it's but it's not well you can't have a conversation with

00:58:56 ◼   ► siri at all like you can't you did because siri doesn't retain things from one session to the next

00:59:02 ◼   ► right or one minute to the next but it doesn't even try to right it's not trying and falling

00:59:08 ◼   ► short it's just not the way you're supposed to interact with it yeah yeah i mean to your point

00:59:12 ◼   ► when you jump point about like wanting this i remember like this was like a few years before

00:59:17 ◼   ► covet i had a bad just like a bad case of the flu and i was upstairs in in bed by myself and like and

00:59:23 ◼   ► karen and hank were trying to stay away from me because i had a bad case of the flu and i was just

00:59:27 ◼   ► like sitting there with like nothing to do and like feeling miserable and so i just like i started

00:59:31 ◼   ► asking siri questions and at that moment it was like at least i was feeling i was talking to

00:59:36 ◼   ► somebody and though i knew i wasn't but it would have been great if i had been able to you know

00:59:43 ◼   ► if i had been able to have a conversation of some kind and have yeah siri remember the thing that i

00:59:48 ◼   ► just asked like three seconds ago but i what would an open ai hardware device look like again is it a

00:59:56 ◼   ► wearable and if so i don't see it i just don't see this humane thing taking off i would love to be

01:00:02 ◼   ► surprised right and i i'm still the fact that they have so many ex-apple people at both at the

01:00:09 ◼   ► engineering and design level and at the leadership level makes me at least curious right like if i

01:00:16 ◼   ► had never heard of any of the people who work there i'd have i'd be like what was the name of

01:00:20 ◼   ► that company again remember the thing i wouldn't even remember the name of the company so but is

01:00:25 ◼   ► that what they're talking about with open ai i don't well i think the problem the problem with

01:00:30 ◼   ► the humane thing is like you don't know what it is yet no i mean they've teased it an awful lot

01:00:35 ◼   ► and not really shown it do much of anything right i saw somebody speculate as it's and this seems

01:00:43 ◼   ► like oh yeah i could see that but you know how like you you were even saying that these open ai

01:00:48 ◼   ► things you you can write code and it's not just like a line at a time you can ask for an entire

01:00:54 ◼   ► program accomplish some sort of thing i'm not quite sure how complex they can get like if you just say

01:01:01 ◼   ► write me in python programming language a game that plays

01:01:07 ◼   ► undefeatable tic-tac-toe i don't know i mean but that's that might be i mean that seems like that's

01:01:13 ◼   ► possible yeah sure yeah because i i i can't express in code the algorithm to play unbeatable tic-tac-toe

01:01:21 ◼   ► but i know how to play unbeatable tic-tac-toe right i mean it's in some in somewhere on the

01:01:25 ◼   ► internet is right the code for that because i mean i recently re-watched war games and

01:01:31 ◼   ► oh that's a solvable problem that's something that someone could code that for sure so

01:01:36 ◼   ► maybe that's the first thing that we should be getting the thing to do every single time

01:01:44 ◼   ► played 20 000 games of tic-tac-toe do you watch do you happen to watch only murders in the building

01:01:51 ◼   ► yeah we are not caught up but we watch the first two seasons then i will not say it but

01:01:56 ◼   ► there's a ferris bueller joke that you will appreciate okay good but everybody out there

01:02:01 ◼   ► who hasn't listened either they have listened and they're laughing or they're going to watch it and

01:02:06 ◼   ► they're gonna be like oh my god that's what grouper was talking about that one time talking to molt

01:02:09 ◼   ► on the talk show um i guess any other idea we have right there's the wearable idea humane has

01:02:17 ◼   ► and then there's the thing you plug into the wall and it's a speaker type thing and that's the home

01:02:23 ◼   ► pod google assistant but would it make sense for open ai to make their own thing like that i mean

01:02:30 ◼   ► where does everything else come from what advantage do you have by having let's just

01:02:36 ◼   ► concede the point that open ai's ai is much better and more conversational than siri and google

01:02:42 ◼   ► assistant and alexa but what advantage do you have by having open ai answer your voice than that and

01:02:50 ◼   ► don't they have to do all these other things like have a connection to spotify and or apple music and

01:02:56 ◼   ► i really doubt an open ai love from device is going to get apple music i don't know or maybe

01:03:02 ◼   ► they would i don't know i guess it became popular enough why wouldn't it right and apple does work

01:03:08 ◼   ► with alexa now so that you can play apple music on it i i don't know but you'd have to do that

01:03:14 ◼   ► the other idea i saw somebody throw out there is because these things can write code on their own

01:03:19 ◼   ► they could make a phone and and here it break up the iphone android duopoly with this new this is

01:03:28 ◼   ► as big a breakthrough as the iphone was to the blackberries that came before it in the first

01:03:36 ◼   ► decade of the century and it would be an ai phone and instead of apps written by developers the ai

01:03:42 ◼   ► would make its own apps for you on the fly and it's like yeah that's that i could that's pretty

01:03:50 ◼   ► futuristic i would that does not sound at all like yeah that's that that someday that that might be

01:03:56 ◼   ► possible but i don't i think the thing the examples that i know of so far where it works

01:04:01 ◼   ► really well are like more like coding snippets that you need to put into something else it's

01:04:07 ◼   ► not doing an entire operating system it's so and it's certainly not doing complicated things like

01:04:13 ◼   ► connecting to cell services i mean qualcomm was a it was a little snippy i think about like

01:04:20 ◼   ► apple's chances of being able to replace their modems in the iphones and saying uh turns out

01:04:28 ◼   ► this is really complicated and much more complicated than making a processor for

01:04:32 ◼   ► is it really but okay well so says the company whose processors are consistently three to four

01:04:40 ◼   ► years behind in performance compared to apples but that qualcomm's gonna qualcomm i mean basically i

01:04:48 ◼   ► mean i wrote about it and a couple people ding me for it they're like yeah but apple's modem really

01:04:52 ◼   ► isn't up to snuff and they probably did want it out by now and it's like yeah but they're they

01:04:56 ◼   ► still can buy the best modem it's it's just a weird corporate attitude that qualcomm it's also

01:05:02 ◼   ► not something yeah it's not something that apple has been working on for as long as they've been

01:05:07 ◼   ► working on the a series and m series chips right it seems like qualcomm's attitude is either a

01:05:15 ◼   ► apple is going to eventually succeed and just build their own 5g modems within the next two

01:05:23 ◼   ► or three years and qualcomm's gonna lose the iphone as or apple as a customer for these modems

01:05:29 ◼   ► and so why not why not stick the knife in them while they're still buying the qualcomm modems

01:05:35 ◼   ► or apple's never going to succeed the thrust of that article that they sort of ceded to the wall

01:05:42 ◼   ► street journal that this is such a tricky hard problem and the only engineers in the world who

01:05:47 ◼   ► can deal with it are the ones who were already at qualcomm and apple is going to be dependent on us

01:05:52 ◼   ► forever and we don't like them so even though they're our customer and might be forever we

01:05:58 ◼   ► still want to embarrass them in the press because we're qualcomm that's the part that i find very

01:06:02 ◼   ► odd that if there's any hope that they're going to keep apple as a customer this would not be the

01:06:08 ◼   ► way to do it but you know it does make for entertaining punditry i don't know but that

01:06:14 ◼   ► comes back to the humane thing too where they haven't tried to explain how it stays connected

01:06:19 ◼   ► and they've made this message at humane that it's about basically we all spend too much time

01:06:24 ◼   ► staring at our phones and using our phones so why not wear this other thing that frees you from your

01:06:29 ◼   ► phone but how is it connected to the internet all day is it go through your phone is it tethered

01:06:33 ◼   ► and if it's not i don't understand how a little tiny device on your chest is has the battery to

01:06:40 ◼   ► stay connected all day there's so many problems and then it just comes back to you with this

01:06:44 ◼   ► johnny i've open ai collaboration it what what would the point of them making their own phone

01:06:50 ◼   ► be versus the fact that i have the open ai app on my phone today right and if i want to do anything

01:06:57 ◼   ► with it i just open the app and talk to it and you can now with the action button you could even set

01:07:02 ◼   ► it to activate open ai if that's how much you use a open ai you can you now could buy a phone an

01:07:09 ◼   ► iphone and have a button on the side that opens the app but what what do you get versus that i

01:07:14 ◼   ► don't know yeah and you have to do so many other things to make a phone you have to have a top

01:07:19 ◼   ► tier camera system i mean there's a reason apple spent so much time talking about it i did a whole

01:07:25 ◼   ► episode of panzerino last week talking mostly just not just about the iphone 15s but the the camera

01:07:30 ◼   ► system in particular so i don't know i mean at the same time like there are other people working on

01:07:36 ◼   ► stuff like this other than chat gpt or open ai and the lesson i think of apple's history and

01:07:43 ◼   ► particularly apple's history since jobs came back is that there is a definite advantage to making

01:07:48 ◼   ► your own hardware as well as your own software so it's like if they're at this point they're just

01:07:52 ◼   ► making and i think they're having trouble like getting people to pay for it so maybe their idea

01:07:57 ◼   ► is like well we need to make a whole thing and i don't think that's a bad idea but it's not easy

01:08:02 ◼   ► to do and you know so maybe it's a good idea to start sooner rather than later uh i i can't

01:08:10 ◼   ► remember the full list of companies we know that love from has been working with since johnny i've

01:08:16 ◼   ► left apple and i've and we do know that a lot if not all of the love from people the other designers

01:08:23 ◼   ► who work there either largely x apple or entirely x apple there's a lot of former apple people who

01:08:28 ◼   ► work there now but it's i know there was some company they made like a sixty thousand dollar

01:08:33 ◼   ► turntable for record playing i think they have i think there's something they're doing with ferrari

01:08:40 ◼   ► it's very niche stuff i mean i don't know which is more

01:08:44 ◼   ► rarefied people who buy ferraris or people who buy sixty thousand dollar

01:08:50 ◼   ► turntables i mean it's probably quite a bit of overlap but they've conspicuously not done

01:08:58 ◼   ► anything mass market yet i can't help but wonder eventually i would think they would want to

01:09:04 ◼   ► everything i know of johnny i've part of what he wants to do is sort of democratize good design

01:09:11 ◼   ► i think he considers it a remarkable accomplishment that apple's the the products he's best known for

01:09:17 ◼   ► from his long time at apple are mass market products for everyone right the ipod and

01:09:24 ◼   ► anybody can buy a macbook air the iphone is almost everybody you see either uses an iphone or uses a

01:09:32 ◼   ► phone that looks like an iphone right it is a truly humanity changing device i could imagine

01:09:38 ◼   ► he'd want to do something like that again but now that he's not at apple i can't help but think that

01:09:44 ◼   ► the psychology there not to put him on the couch so to say but would he want to make something that

01:09:51 ◼   ► is directly competing with the sort of things apple makes right i mean the stakes would be

01:09:57 ◼   ► incredibly high right like if he collaborated with open ai on some sort of whatever it would be

01:10:04 ◼   ► whatever it would be would obviously be competitive with apple's products right because we're talking

01:10:09 ◼   ► about a computer you talk to you know yeah i don't know i'm not disputing that that they've had the

01:10:15 ◼   ► talks and yeah i mean at this point it's probably pretty preliminary i would imagine yeah the other

01:10:21 ◼   ► thing and i've brought this up before the end game to me for this open for ai type bots or our actual

01:10:28 ◼   ► robots right like that's the form factor i want i want c3po right i don't i mean i want like a

01:10:39 ◼   ► robot in my house who i can tell me to go get me another beverage or go answer the door kill you

01:10:45 ◼   ► right wouldn't that be great like you get food delivered and you don't even have to answer the

01:10:50 ◼   ► door sure your droid would go down there and answer the door and bring the food for you

01:10:54 ◼   ► we laugh because it doesn't seem like something that's going to happen this decade i guess but

01:11:00 ◼   ► it's going to happen right i mean but i don't see how that's what love from an open ai or

01:11:07 ◼   ► are talking about i i wouldn't think so i just don't know what the form factor would be i i don't

01:11:12 ◼   ► know maybe i lack imagination but it really does run into ultimately the problem that the phone as

01:11:20 ◼   ► personified by the iphone and but this the modern conception of the smartphone is sort of an

01:11:28 ◼   ► inflection point for personal computing where everything that comes after that's interesting

01:11:34 ◼   ► is sort of a peripheral to the phone right even apple watch which i kind of feel is a little

01:11:39 ◼   ► hamstrung by that because i think in theory there's no reason that by now 10 years in

01:11:45 ◼   ► apple watch shouldn't be a fully independent computer like the way when you set up an ipad

01:11:50 ◼   ► you don't have to pair it with your iphone and now it's permanently paired and when you upgrade your

01:11:55 ◼   ► phone you've got to unpair your ipad the way you have to do your watch i don't know why the watch

01:12:01 ◼   ► can't just be more of an independent device that you sign into your ich cloud account and everything

01:12:07 ◼   ► goes through ich cloud i'm uh it but but that aside things like airpods they're peripherals

01:12:13 ◼   ► to your phone and it's just really hard for me to imagine i know marco says it on atp all the time

01:12:20 ◼   ► but every time anybody's ever bet against the phone they lose right and i eventually that will

01:12:26 ◼   ► be over but i don't even know if that's over in your in my lifetime certainly not my career's

01:12:32 ◼   ► i think 20 25 years from now will will the phone still be our central device i think that's

01:12:39 ◼   ► very possible i think they will be a lot thinner i think they could the cameras will continue to

01:12:45 ◼   ► improve dramatically but but you need a thing that connects to the internet you need a thing with a

01:12:51 ◼   ► screen so you can read you need a camera yeah all of these things are very difficult i don't see how

01:12:57 ◼   ► anything replaces it other than and i think you you've said before i leave i mean there's a lot

01:13:02 ◼   ► of people who keep saying oh gosh boy people would really like to spend less time on their phones they

01:13:07 ◼   ► wouldn't really actually they love spending time on their phones and that's why they're doing it

01:13:13 ◼   ► and you have to make something you can't just like give them an out you have to make something that's

01:13:18 ◼   ► more compelling than the phone in order to get them to stop looking at the phone right exactly

01:13:24 ◼   ► it's and i know that there are people that if you have to stay on top of your work email it's an

01:13:30 ◼   ► annoyance when you're getting them over the weekend and it's like i am dealing with email over the

01:13:35 ◼   ► weekend and but that's your works problem not your phone's problem that's your relationship with your

01:13:40 ◼   ► company's problem right but for the most part i've written about it with humane in particular where i

01:13:46 ◼   ► kind of feel like they're solving a problem people don't see that they have people love their phones

01:13:51 ◼   ► and they spend time on their phones because they enjoyed the time they spend on their phone more

01:13:56 ◼   ► than they would be if they weren't on the phone so trying to build a device so that they don't

01:14:01 ◼   ► have to use their phone is you know you don't have to spend so much time with that device that you

01:14:06 ◼   ► find so fun right i mean yeah i mean yeah there's definitely good sides and bad sides to it i mean i

01:14:15 ◼   ► think there's been a if it's the same as social media i mean there's good sides and bad you connect

01:14:21 ◼   ► with people you can contact friends that way and those are all great yeah sure you have to read

01:14:27 ◼   ► stuff from your racist uncle or whatever but you're still doing it because it's something

01:14:31 ◼   ► you're getting something out of it right so i don't know but it's certainly something to keep

01:14:36 ◼   ► an eye on i mean i get eventually like i said eventually i expect something mass market from

01:14:40 ◼   ► love from whether it'll be a computing device i don't know i just don't i just don't feel like

01:14:45 ◼   ► this is it i don't know like the way you said with the ming chi quo thing sort of seemed like the

01:14:50 ◼   ► point of it was to say this isn't tsc tm tsmc's fault and i kind of feel like this story i would

01:14:58 ◼   ► guess leaked from the open ai side and not the love from side because i just think love from has

01:15:03 ◼   ► that apple dna of we keep our mouths shut and it kind of feels like the point of it is to say oh

01:15:09 ◼   ► don't worry if there's bard and these other large language model things that do chat gpt style stuff

01:15:17 ◼   ► we've got other ideas that justify the enormous ipo we'd like to have in the next year yeah yeah

01:15:24 ◼   ► it's a way it's a way to maintain interest and right well and keep the fire hose of money right

01:15:32 ◼   ► and right and to maintain optimism right that oh these guys are geniuses and and the future

01:15:37 ◼   ► the future is theirs uh yeah i i don't think that's true actually but we shall see anything else other

01:15:44 ◼   ► than that i think i've i've wrapped up the week in and stuff i wanted to talk about

01:15:48 ◼   ► who was there was there one other thing oh uh we could talk osoka star wars

01:15:57 ◼   ► oh yeah or did you want to talk about uh linda yakarino's phone uh yeah julia borstein uh of

01:16:05 ◼   ► cs csmbc conducted what i an extraordinary interview at the code conference that's the

01:16:11 ◼   ► conference that used to be co-hosted by walt mosberg and kara swisher kara was still there

01:16:16 ◼   ► i saw she interviewed yoel uh roth who was yeah well right before and right before right before

01:16:23 ◼   ► yakarino yo yeah uh did you watch the interview i have an aversion to cringe so i did not watch it

01:16:32 ◼   ► all right so i did read i read the article about it i i watched it i was extremely thankful for

01:16:40 ◼   ► youtube's ability to do a 1.5 speed thing because i it not because i didn't want to spend the whole

01:16:47 ◼   ► but because it reduced my flop sweat time yeah i and i have to give borstein credit it wasn't

01:16:53 ◼   ► super contentious like on stage interviews are tough and i do them at wwdc every year

01:17:00 ◼   ► and they're not contentious most of the time it's largely no i don't know frederigge doesn't have

01:17:09 ◼   ► any kind of disaster on his hands like yakarino does at twitter right there's there there are no

01:17:15 ◼   ► nazis in in iowa 17 beta right they're more comfortable talking points whether we agree

01:17:23 ◼   ► or disagree but on stage is i in my opinion tough because it's human nature to be extremely

01:17:30 ◼   ► self-conscious because there's an audience of hundreds i guess at the code conference in front

01:17:35 ◼   ► of you you don't get to cut and do over it's one take straight through if it goes in an unpredictable

01:17:42 ◼   ► way you've got to shift gears on the fly and this interview with linda yakarino definitely

01:17:47 ◼   ► went in weird ways i swear to god this is the honest it's like a 37 minute video but at the

01:17:56 ◼   ► beginning she says i understand we have 45 minutes so they said that she had 45 minutes for the

01:18:03 ◼   ► interview but at some point about 20 minutes in linda yakarino starts looking at her watch

01:18:08 ◼   ► i swear to god and saying you know i've got to go which i've just never seen yeah i have never seen

01:18:17 ◼   ► in all my days i remember do you remember this i think it was 1988 when old man bush was running

01:18:24 ◼   ► against dukakis but maybe it was 92 against bill clinton but one of the years when george bush the

01:18:30 ◼   ► elder was running for president either 88 or 92 there was a mini scandal where during the one of

01:18:37 ◼   ► the presidential debates he looked at his watch i don't i just remember as a kid thinking why is it

01:18:43 ◼   ► a scandal would not i would want to know how much time was left but it was like right it somehow was

01:18:48 ◼   ► the the scandal was that george bush was bored during a presidential debate and looking at his

01:18:54 ◼   ► watch and it's like i don't know he might have glanced at it it didn't even seem conspicuous to

01:18:59 ◼   ► me but then it was like a thing like where the next debate he didn't even wear a watch and they're

01:19:03 ◼   ► like now he's not even wearing a watch and it's like but it's something to talk about it is a

01:19:08 ◼   ► thing i i know it when i'm on stage at wwdc you know we usually set up a clock somehow like an

01:19:14 ◼   ► alarm clock or something with big red or like i think one year we set up a an ipad with one of the

01:19:21 ◼   ► numerous count up apps with big font that i could see somewhere where it doesn't look like i'm

01:19:28 ◼   ► checking the clock but i can check out as the person leading the conversation of course you

01:19:33 ◼   ► should be able to know how much time has passed because you want to keep things moving you have

01:19:37 ◼   ► a certain amount of time and you need to get in what you want to get in like but craig and jaws

01:19:41 ◼   ► don't need to i mean they're there answering questions and it's their job to figure out what

01:19:47 ◼   ► the time is if craig is sitting there checking his watch every 30 seconds he's either got like

01:19:54 ◼   ► a new app that he loves or he's nervous about something uh but no she linda yakarino was pointing

01:20:02 ◼   ► to her watch saying she had somewhere to go which is just really i just you couldn't make it up it

01:20:08 ◼   ► was like an s this is this didn't happen right before wwdc because i think it would be super

01:20:13 ◼   ► funny if craig had done that as a joke and yakarino's background coming from nbc universal

01:20:21 ◼   ► is on the advertising side and coming from nbc universal we're talking from traditional tv

01:20:27 ◼   ► the big brand advertising right the fortune 500 brands big consumer brands that's her background

01:20:36 ◼   ► professionally that it makes sense why a normal person who owned twitter would hire such a person

01:20:43 ◼   ► to either give her a title like chief financial or i don't know what the title would be but chief

01:20:51 ◼   ► advertising officer or senior vice president of advertising or to name such a person the ceo to

01:20:57 ◼   ► make the ceo you know in a way that apple went to an operations person for their next ceo because

01:21:03 ◼   ► operations is that it really is that important to apple and i could see how advertising is that

01:21:08 ◼   ► important i think that's sort of the background a lot of ceos of television networks have had

01:21:14 ◼   ► their eyes are on the money and the money comes from ads and that's therefore the main business

01:21:19 ◼   ► she mentioned i don't think that this is scandalous but she at several points in the interview she

01:21:25 ◼   ► talked about twitter's customers and it was very clear that in her parlance their customers are

01:21:31 ◼   ► the advertisers not the users but that's true right i mean there is the twitter blue service

01:21:36 ◼   ► but everybody knows i mean it's not keeping the lights on i i as far as we know the only thing

01:21:43 ◼   ► keeping the lights on is them not even paying the bills and not somehow not getting shut off but

01:21:49 ◼   ► yeah not a good interview but i guess and i guess the point that was really uncomfortable was

01:21:53 ◼   ► elon musk shooting his mouth off last week that he's he wants to take twitter paid only or x

01:22:01 ◼   ► whatever you want to call it these days but so that instead of just having an optional paid tier

01:22:08 ◼   ► it would be paid for everybody and i guess you could pay a little and be a regular user and pay

01:22:12 ◼   ► a lot and be a deluxe user but everybody would have to pay which and that why would you do that

01:22:20 ◼   ► and his answer was it's the only way to deal with the bots him and his bots this obviously is not

01:22:26 ◼   ► linda yacurino's idea i mean coming from free over the air tv and when she sort of didn't even like

01:22:32 ◼   ► she wouldn't even answer the question right now she wouldn't and she wouldn't even admit that he

01:22:37 ◼   ► had said that was what was going to happen right right how she was not prepared for that question

01:22:43 ◼   ► i don't know because it wasn't like elon spouted it off be like yeah top of the list yeah he it

01:22:50 ◼   ► wasn't something he tweeted 30 minutes before she came on stage it was days earlier it was obviously

01:22:57 ◼   ► the biggest issue pertaining to her job that i could imagine and she was just unprepared right

01:23:03 ◼   ► she wouldn't even acknowledge that he said it let alone say well we're thinking about it he's

01:23:08 ◼   ► thinking he's pushing that direction i'm not sure that's the way we're gonna go but you know

01:23:12 ◼   ► everything's on the table in the new frontier of the wonderful world of x i don't know yeah she

01:23:18 ◼   ► would also you know she wouldn't address many issues she would because she'd sidestep it by

01:23:23 ◼   ► saying well those were problems with twitter we're talking about x today yeah it's like okay come on

01:23:28 ◼   ► really it's like i wrote on daring fire it's just an untenable situation she's been hired to pretend

01:23:34 ◼   ► to be running a company that she's obviously not running and yeah it's doing things that she

01:23:39 ◼   ► obviously doesn't want to do like proposing to turn it into a completely paid service i hope

01:23:46 ◼   ► or show up for interviews right i mean i don't know i honestly think it would be the best thing

01:23:53 ◼   ► that could happen for the world if they just go paid only right that would be fantastic because

01:23:57 ◼   ► it would sort of complete their demise it as the top of utter shutdown yeah and everybody who does

01:24:07 ◼   ► pay i'm sure will be very happy with the other people and what they're saying on twitter right

01:24:12 ◼   ► just one kind of person would be on there yeah uh

01:24:17 ◼   ► otherwise though i don't know i it's yeah it's it's a you can't make up that company it's really

01:24:25 ◼   ► pretty interesting what did i see i saw a video with elon musk too i saw this yesterday where he

01:24:31 ◼   ► was down in texas somewhere and apparently he shot a whole video i don't even know what it was about

01:24:35 ◼   ► but apparently he's wearing a cowboy hat but he's wearing it backwards and doesn't know it and none

01:24:41 ◼   ► of the other people who are there there's a bunch i don't know what they're doing down there in texas

01:24:44 ◼   ► but nobody else seems to have the guts to say hey boss you got your hat on backwards maybe all the

01:24:51 ◼   ► kids are wearing them that way these days there's some kind of take on the all hat no yeah no cattle

01:25:00 ◼   ► so we had that what else did you say didn't you say there was something else

01:25:05 ◼   ► well her phone like she at one point she showed her oh screen of her phone and uh yes yes

01:25:12 ◼   ► people were trying to determine what apps she had but we we could definitely determine that twitter

01:25:17 ◼   ► was not one of the apps on her home screen i i feel bad for her on that because she obviously

01:25:24 ◼   ► has the twitter app somewhere but it does seem unusual that it wasn't on her first home screen

01:25:29 ◼   ► or yeah you know yeah i mean i would say i would say like as a as a practice you should have the

01:25:35 ◼   ► app of the company that you're running on your own screen uh and the other thing that seemed curious

01:25:42 ◼   ► but i did see a few other people say that they have it there too but she has the settings app

01:25:47 ◼   ► in her dock down at the bottom of the iphone so it's funny i yeah somebody else said that was

01:25:52 ◼   ► strange and i thought oh i had that and then i went looked and i don't have it but i was certainly

01:25:57 ◼   ► willing to accept that was an acceptable place to put it for sure yeah i you know i don't know

01:26:02 ◼   ► the change wi-fi networks a lot or what i mean i guess you can do it from control center but maybe

01:26:07 ◼   ► right but you know but i get i don't know it's whatever she's doing with it where she has it in

01:26:12 ◼   ► the dock she should probably spend five minutes learning how to customize control center because

01:26:18 ◼   ► it's probably i mean that's it seems like that's the whole reason control center exists is for

01:26:24 ◼   ► things like turning turning wi-fi on and off yeah or i think that's easy for us to say but

01:26:30 ◼   ► i don't think that's a big deal i mean i don't think it's a deal at all really

01:26:35 ◼   ► yeah who would expect the ceo of a major tech company to know how to use their phone i mean

01:26:41 ◼   ► i don't know uh i don't know what she might i mean she might have uh you know might be a home phone

01:26:50 ◼   ► work phone person yeah or day phone night phone like a night phone could be

01:26:55 ◼   ► show phone real phone yeah the apps didn't seem particularly well organized either

01:27:04 ◼   ► i but you know again who's to judge i don't know but it was but it was curious because it was her

01:27:10 ◼   ► flex it was something to do with the context of saying that she uses facebook that she's not only

01:27:16 ◼   ► using x and it's like here's the proof she's got instagram and facebook on her home screen

01:27:21 ◼   ► but it really is like an own goal that everybody was like yeah but your own app isn't there

01:27:28 ◼   ► now we think the opposite anyway thank you john i will thank once again our good friends at

01:27:36 ◼   ► squarespace for being our exclusive sponsor for this episode and of course uh you've got numerous

01:27:42 ◼   ► podcasts that you can promote you've also got your weekly column at six colors colors yeah yeah and

01:27:47 ◼   ► i do have the rebound with licks friedman and dan moran and then biff with our good friend guy

01:27:52 ◼   ► english and dan moran as well and my good friend tim and so it has been both of whom have been on

01:27:57 ◼   ► talk show uh last but not least let me instead of doing a whole segment i mean let me ask you this

01:28:04 ◼   ► thumbs up or thumbs down on asoka i for me it's thumbs up it's not the best of the shows for sure

01:28:10 ◼   ► but i feel like for me it's better it's certainly better than boba fett and it's better for me it's

01:28:16 ◼   ► better than konobi too i think they kind of promoted it as like oh no you don't need to

01:28:21 ◼   ► see anything else but i think if you have not seen rebels you're not going to enjoy it very much and i

01:28:26 ◼   ► was a big fan of rebels so yeah so it's you know it's got a lot of payoff if you've watched that

01:28:31 ◼   ► show if you haven't watched that show you could probably i don't know you can either take your

01:28:37 ◼   ► chances or give it a miss yeah i'm a big fan and i think i think it was a underappreciated aspect

01:28:43 ◼   ► of their tremendous success but the ebert cisco and ebert thumbs up thumbs down that's it no yeah

01:28:51 ◼   ► no four star bullshit and and no no one to ten scale or one to 100 scale they'd review three

01:28:59 ◼   ► movies a show and everyone they each had to give a thumbs up or thumbs down too and then the best you

01:29:04 ◼   ► could do is both of them agree that's two thumbs up i guess i would still give asoka a thumbs up

01:29:11 ◼   ► but it i really wish that i could give it that hey hand weight i think it's gotten better too i mean

01:29:16 ◼   ► i think it's the first two episodes were probably the worst maybe yeah and then it got i mean it was

01:29:22 ◼   ► i think it was quite good for a little while and then the last one last two maybe haven't been

01:29:26 ◼   ► quite as good but i still think they're better than the way it started so yeah i mean i'm hopeful

01:29:31 ◼   ► that they'll pull it together because the last show i watched on disney plus was not so good

01:29:37 ◼   ► but i'm with you i thought that the book of boba was terrible that that was not a good show and

01:29:44 ◼   ► the marvel one um secret invasion was just awful yeah sadly which my son and i watched that one

01:29:52 ◼   ► over i guess it was summer but we were both like we got to the end of it and we're like what was

01:29:57 ◼   ► the point of that yeah yeah it seemed like they wanted to do i mean it is the kind of thing that

01:30:02 ◼   ► should be sort of universe well i mean you're not the universe but the your universe is like

01:30:09 ◼   ► it should have involved all of the heroes yeah that's the way you make it much more interesting

01:30:13 ◼   ► is that like you don't know which ones of these are real and which ones of these are scrolls

01:30:18 ◼   ► and they obviously couldn't afford to do that and so it was much reduced in scale compared to the

01:30:23 ◼   ► way it was done in the comic books and you know i mean there are reasons for that i mean it makes

01:30:28 ◼   ► some sense because you can't spend a bazillion dollars on every single thing that you're making

01:30:32 ◼   ► and have chris evans and all of them and whatnot but it just doesn't maybe it's a story that you

01:30:38 ◼   ► shouldn't be trying if it's if you can't do it the way it should be done all right well that's a wrap

01:30:46 ◼   ► okay may the force be with you john may the force be with you