632: The Uncertainty Is Gone
27 Mar 2025New Siri leadership, WWDC’s announcement, the EU’s new demands, and a dropped axe that could’ve been much worse.
Episode Description:
- Pre-show: Marco’s BMW sitrep
- 🗣️ New ATP Member Special: ATP Insider: Our Websites
- Follow-up:
- Vision Pro corner
- Spatial Gallery has an update!
- Volume control (via Jonathan Gulbrandsen)
- Siri delays (via Stephen Klinck)
- Gurman on the smart home hub
- Apple sued over false Apple Intelligence advertising
- Siri shake-up
- Threads lets you default to following… for real this time
- iPhone 16e
- Camera arrangement justifications
- MKBHD doesn’t care for it
- Teardown from REWA
- Teardown from iFixIt
- 17e already appearing in supply chain?
- iPhone 17 Pro: 12GB RAM?
- Vision Pro corner
- WWDC 2025 Announced
- EU requires major changes in iOS 19 & iOS 20
- AI continues to eat the world
- Post-show: Casey has to pay to play
- Members-only ATP Overtime: Solid-state cooling revisited
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Chapters
- Car check-in
- Special: Making our websites
- Quick Vision Pro corner
- Letters to LLMs
- HomeScreen delay
- False-advertising lawsuit
- Mike Rockwell taking over Siri
- John’s nightmare is over again
- Sponsor: DeleteMe (ATP to 64000)
- iPhone rumors
- WWDC announced
- EU demands more
- Ending theme
- A glancing blow
Car check-in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, we didn’t talk about who has a pre-show. Did you guys all hear the secret plan? Oh crap, someone else
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is here listening. I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco joke. I would try to make a good joke about it. I can’t make a good joke about it. It’s just sad.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, we have to wait for maybe like 25 more years so one of the Twitch generation
⏹️ ▶️ John of people gets in a position to do something
⏹️ ▶️ John terrible with national security and then they can like live stream on Twitch their important secure meetings.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or Twitch equivalent, whatever the Twitch equivalent is at that time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Did you see that, uh, allegedly as of earlier today, there’s going to be a 25% tariff
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on imported cars and surely that’s going to go exactly as they think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John it will. Will there or won’t there be, who knows?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m so, so going to be in love with John deciding that he can’t have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a Honda because it’s too damned expensive now. Holy
⏹️ ▶️ John crap. I just bought a new car and I’ll buy another one for like another six to 10 years.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. How old, what year is your car? I don’t even remember now.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh gosh, you’re due
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m not, it’s fine. Everything’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey many miles are on it?
⏹️ ▶️ John Uh, not a lot. I think it’s like 40 K. Wow.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What do you think comes first car or Mac pro?
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I’ll get a new Mac before a new car for sure. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will it be a Mac pro?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Who knows? Hmm. Uh, that is, that is tough to say, but I’m just,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m very impatiently waiting for the day that John actually realizes that there
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are other car manufacturers in the world that also make decent cars. Unfortunately, they will all be way too expensive
⏹️ ▶️ Casey now, but that’s okay. And yes, I’m aware that some, if not many, Hondas are made in the US,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it ruins my whole joke. So leave me alone. Including all of mine, I think. Is that true? Well, what’s your VIN? I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know. You don’t have them written down somewhere,
⏹️ ▶️ John man? Come on. I do, I was just actually just looking at it for, I was filling out the mileage for insurance stuff. Let me see.
⏹️ ▶️ John not written on here? All right, I’ve got that here. All right, Folly Work, I’ll do Casey’s.
⏹️ ▶️ John go. actual paperwork here from the insurance company.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is excellent foley work. This is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John great. All right, what
⏹️ ▶️ John am I looking for in the bins? I don’t know how
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The first number, if it’s a number, then it’s American. It’s not quite that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John simple, but-
⏹️ ▶️ John All three are Americans.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, that’s right. I forgot you held the red Honda. That’s right. I completely forgot about that. Fair enough.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, then I guess you can still buy Hondas forevermore. Hooray.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll buy whatever car I think is best for me.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, there’s never going to be a car that you think is best for you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John that doesn’t have an H on the front.
⏹️ ▶️ John Give me a couple hundred grand that I have to spend on a car and I’ll show you there’s definitely cars that
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey are not Honda. Sure.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Honestly, John, if you fell upon a couple hundred grand tomorrow.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John And had to spend it on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey worry, I could do it. Even if you had to spend it on a car, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John chance. Don’t worry, I could do it and it would not be a Honda, I can tell you that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, I really don’t think you would do it. You may not buy a Honda, but you wouldn’t do something like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a Ferrari that you’ve always wanted. You would get an expensive Honda or you would get an Acura. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what you would do. You would get a frigging Acura.
⏹️ ▶️ John No, I’m not a fan of Acura. Not a fan of Acura at all. I like Hondas better than Acura. It’s the same
⏹️ ▶️ John car. No, they take a Honda and they ruin it.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Okay, citation needed.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t like how they look. I don’t like the changes to the interior. I don’t think they’re much nicer than
⏹️ ▶️ John Hondas. I would definitely be looking at like Audi, Mercedes, BMW, Porsche.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’d probably be leaning towards Porsche
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not gonna go for something like a Ferrari because it’s just too, be too afraid to drive it. But it all depends
⏹️ ▶️ John on how big of a check you give me, again, that I have to spend on cars. Because if you don’t tell me how to spend it on cars, I’ll just like invest it or something.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Did I tell you, I think I said this privately to you guys. I didn’t say this on the show. I made
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the mistake of looking at how, what the pricing is like on used Porsche Taycans,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey whatever you, however you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John pronounce it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And they are kind of almost affordable, which is a piece of information I did not need
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John to know. Yeah, but
⏹️ ▶️ John the problem is they just did like a generational revision of it and the new ones are just like so much better. I know they
⏹️ ▶️ John look exactly the same, you’re like, what did they even change? But like the battery and electric and stuff is just so much better
⏹️ ▶️ John on the new ones. So yeah, the first generation is like, do you really want one of these? Because the new one is kind of the
⏹️ ▶️ John same but better in every way. So I think you could get a good deal on a first generation.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I gotta say, for whatever, so now that we’re talking, you know, cars and EVs, A few people have been asking me for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like an update on the BMW iX after, I mean, what’s it been six, seven months? Still ugly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Yes, it is still ugly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So far, it’s really good. Like I am extremely happy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with this vehicle. And this is, I mean, let’s see, in my family, I’ve had two
⏹️ ▶️ Marco models, S, the Rivian, and Tiff has the i3.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is my 5th EV and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is by far the best all-arounder. Low drama, high
⏹️ ▶️ Marco functionality, high performance, and even just the EV drivetrain itself, BMW’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco EV drivetrain is seriously good. One of the best things about it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it performs exactly the same way, it responds exactly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the same way, regardless of temperature or charge level. So that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco means for instance, is it fully charged? Does it regen break? Yes. Just the same
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way it always does. In the cold. Are there any problems whatsoever? No, it’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It has no noticeable phantom drain. Like there’s just, there are so many things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about this EV drivetrain that are just low maintenance. And it’s, it isn’t just because the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco IX is new TIFFs I3, which is, I think like a 2019 or 2018 model, it’s exactly the same.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like it’s exactly as good in like the drivetrain. And that’s like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a whole generation earlier at least. BMW’s EV drivetrain is incredibly mature.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I am so happy with this car and the way it functions. Like I haven’t had to reboot the car. I don’t know how yet
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it doesn’t matter because it hasn’t come up. The only bugs I have found are that sometimes it takes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Bluetooth a little bit too long to like reconnect to CarPlay. like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when I get into the car and you know I might have to drive up the block before CarPlay connects.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I don’t need that like that could be Apple’s fault and I also run iOS betas on my phone a lot of times
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so like and Bluetooth for whatever reason they mess with Bluetooth and the betas all the time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that could be the phone’s fault. I don’t know if that’s BMW’s fault but also CarPlay like I have CarPlay
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the whole rest of the time which is a pretty big feature and it’s a very good implementation.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s pretty freaking nice isn’t it?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yup, it also has the iPhone car key functionality. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco while my car has physical keys, I never use them. I just walk near it and my phone is the key
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it unlocks. Rivian does the same thing, but I have found that the BMW version
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is more reliable. Overall, so far my iX is great. Yes, it is a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stupid looking shape. It is also a very practical shape. It’s a very comfortable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco car. It’s a very quiet ride. It’s a very luxurious interior. This is the first EV
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have driven that feels like its price, and that is so low drama,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t have to worry about things like, how do I reboot it? Because I never have to. I just get to use it like a car.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What’s the MSRP on that? Like 80-ish, give
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or take a little bit? Yeah, something like that. Well, I think it might be a little higher. And I didn’t even get, there was like a super
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fast version. I didn’t get the super fast version. I got the regular version. It’s insanely fast. Like I don’t need it to be faster.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But it’s a great vehicle. If any of you out there are finding yourself in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a position where maybe you have a Tesla and are looking to replace it with something that’s not a Tesla, go look at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco BMW. Their EVs are awesome. Like I’ve seen like the people up the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco street replace a Model 3 with the new i4. It’s a great looking car.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the specs on that are pretty great. I still love my iX. It’s a fantastic car. If
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you want a little more space, they have a whole bunch of other things that include the letter I somewhere in them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Seriously, check it out. I love, and the service situation is so much better. Like there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a dealership up there, if I ever need service, which I haven’t yet, but if I ever do, it’s just up the street.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And you can get appointments in two seconds and there’s no drama. It’s nice kind of being out of the beta car game.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And while I did enjoy my Teslas and my Rivian, they always felt
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like betas. And there were downsides to that. You did have to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reboot your car on a semi-regular basis in both cases in some form or another to fix some kind of bug.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s really nice not having to do that and just being with like, oh, now I’m with the adults again.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I can just use my car like a car and not worry about it. And again, the BMW EV drivetrain
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is so mature and so low drama. It just works. It works all the time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s no problems with it. It works the same way all the time. And so far, nobody has designed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a way it might defrost control from where it always is.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Nice. You know, it’s funny that a company that has been building cars for nearly 100
⏹️ ▶️ Casey years, something like that. I don’t even know. Imagine that a car, a company has been building cars for nearly a hundred years
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can apply some of the learnings, if you will, from that, some of the lessons learned from that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to a different kind of, let me check my notes. Car. Um, no, I, I don’t know. I,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t want to slag on Rivian because I really enjoyed the handful of times I’ve driven one.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think they’re a well-meaning company. Mostly. I still think they’re petulance about car
⏹️ ▶️ Casey plays ridiculous, but They’re a well-meaning company that’s just trying to survive and do something new. And so I’m not really slagging
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on Rivian so much. But yeah, if you’re still driving a Tesla now, yikes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, look, I understand, like not everybody can afford to replace their car all the time. Like I get,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I get, but like these days I would, I would suggest if you,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you are in the position of choosing what you drive and you’re looking at a Tesla, I would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco suggest maybe look around first because the market, the market is much bigger than it used to be.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And there’s a lot more entrance now, and some of them are pretty mature and I think our better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco overall experiences of ownership.
Special: Making our websites
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, we have an announcement to make. We have a new ATP member special.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So we have, this was John’s idea, ATP Insider, our websites. John
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tell us about this. I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t think it was my idea. I think this was another listener idea and I’ve got, we had an
⏹️ ▶️ John editing overlap. I wanted this to be called ATP Insider, making our websites, but,
⏹️ ▶️ John and I did change the title of that and save it, but I got it, I got it sniped by overlapping save. So
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco there you go. There you go. I can’t really
⏹️ ▶️ John fix that in the CMS, but I did not. Anyway, now it’s too late because it’s part of the slug in the URL, so I’m just leaving
⏹️ ▶️ John it. All right, anyway, this is about our websites. We all have websites, because we are people of a
⏹️ ▶️ John certain age and people of a certain age who are tech nerds tend to have websites. Why do we have websites? What are our
⏹️ ▶️ John websites? How many websites have we had? And finally, how do we make
⏹️ ▶️ John our websites? And it is Byzantine. I guess that’s the best word for it. So
⏹️ ▶️ John as I say in the show, It’s not a show where we recommend how you should make your website, but if you want
⏹️ ▶️ John to know how we make our websites, uh, this will tell you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Indeed. Uh, I loved by the way that a listener whose name is not in front of me, and I apologize,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey uh, sent in feedback saying that John’s website did not actually,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey uh, meet the validator or, you know, the fact that there were validation errors in your website, which John gave me
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a ton of stick about on the episode. And then apparently within 15 minutes, John, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you have corrected the error, and I assume the offending parties have been silent.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, you know what the problem was? I can tell you what it, I don’t know if you looked at it, I guess you couldn’t, because by the time you looked at it, it was fixed. But
⏹️ ▶️ John the problem was, so like I validate all my articles before they go up, right? But what does the front page of a website look like?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s a bunch of articles.
⏹️ ▶️ John Exactly. So you get bit by the thing where it’s like, well, what if you have the same ID in
⏹️ ▶️ John two articles? Now you have two IDs on the same quote unquote page. That was the problem. Been there. Yeah, anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John that was easy enough to fix.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Anyway, you can go to atp.fm slash join if you want to listen to this episode and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or start funding John’s, you know, a couple hundred thousand dollar car project. So you can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey go there, check it out. Now, John, if you do join as an, I almost said ABC,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as an ATP member, what perks do you get other than this one and only one member special?
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, we’re doing a pitch for a membership now at the top of the show?
⏹️ ▶️ John know what you get with membership, sure. Well, you get the show without any ads in it, which is nice.
⏹️ ▶️ John you get all of our member specials, going back in time for everything that we’ve ever done.
⏹️ ▶️ John them, John? No way, all of them? That’s right, all of them. If you have the power of downloading, you can just download all
⏹️ ▶️ John of them and then cancel your membership.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco No, you can’t. No, don’t tell people that. I mean, it’s true, but don’t tell
⏹️ ▶️ John your computer people. They know they can do it. You also get ATP Overtime. In every single episode, we
⏹️ ▶️ John do a whole other topic at the end of the show called ATP Overtime, and lots of good stuff is in there. Again,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can go back and listen to all the overtimes because we have chapter markers for every single one of them. But yeah, going forward, get all
⏹️ ▶️ John that stuff as well. And I’m missing something. I think there’s some more stuff you get, but I don’t know. Bootleg. Oh, the
⏹️ ▶️ John bootleg. That’s right. If you want to hear the unedited feed with all our mistakes in it, and all of Casey’s unedited cursing and everything
⏹️ ▶️ John else, sometimes the bootleg is significantly longer than the show and we go off on a really big tangent. So that’s there if you want it.
⏹️ ▶️ John And also this is this will be relevant in maybe a month or so we’ll see you get
⏹️ ▶️ John a discount on all of our time limited merch sales and we will have a pre WWDC merch sale coming up at some point
⏹️ ▶️ John in the future. And if you’re a member, you’ll get a discount on that sale.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Excellent. hp.fm join.
Quick Vision Pro corner
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s do some follow-up as seems to be the tradition, which is entirely my fault. Let’s do Vision Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Corner. It will be quick as always. First of all, in the beta, there is the new Spatial
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Gallery app, which we talked about, I think, two or three episodes ago now. I wanted to point out that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as of the 20th of March, which is almost a week ago as we record this, there are now seven
⏹️ ▶️ Casey new items in Spatial Gallery. And the original batch, I should remind you, was on the the third of March,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which was about two and a half weeks ago. So there is some motion here, which I’m happy about.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was hoping for, you know, daily or every other day or something like that, but I’ll still take, you know, every couple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of weeks, it’s better than nothing. Then we got a lot of follow-up. I guess Jonathan Goldbranson was the first
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one to mention this about, hey, Marco was whining and I think justifiably about,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, you can’t change the volume of the Vision Pro easily, which I agree with. And I think I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey another thing you said was you can’t change the volume of the Vision Pro with a physical knob. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I knew at the time that that was technically inaccurate,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I didn’t say anything because I find the way I’m about to describe to change volume to be too fiddly for my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey taste. Now maybe my eye tracking just isn’t as good as other people’s eye tracking, but what you can do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is if you have the Vision Pro on and the digital crown is on the upper right-hand
⏹️ ▶️ Casey side of the Vision Pro, if you twist that a little bit, by default, it will adjust how much immersion you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey within. So if you think about it, when you put the thing on, it’s initially full pass-through, and as you spin the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dial at the top, then I guess, is it a digital crown on this one? I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco think it is.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey As you spin the digital crown, then you will get more and more immersed from the center of your view
⏹️ ▶️ Casey outwards. And so you could say, for example, have, you know, 30, 40, 50,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe 90 degrees of immersion, on the edges, on the periphery of your vision to the degree that you have periphery
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the Vision Pro, then it’s actually passed through. Well, as that’s happening,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there’s two little circles that are overlaid on your screen, and one of them is like a landscape
⏹️ ▶️ Casey indicator, and one of them is a volume indicator. And if you pitch your eyes over to the right, and so now
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’re looking at the volume indicator, then the digital crown becomes a volume knob. This is all true.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey There’s nothing factually incorrect about that. But in my experience, I find that that is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not exceedingly reliable. And I don’t recall if I said this on the show last week. I think I did. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when you do the look at your hand, the back of your hand dance, so you look at the back of your hand, and then you flip
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your hand over. So now instead of looking at the back of your hand, you’re looking at the palm of your hand. Then you get like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey quick access to a couple of things. And if at that point you pinch and slide laterally, that to me is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco easiest way.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco That’s ridiculous. Aaron Powell
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It is. This is your point. This is why I agreed with you then and I agree with you now, that that is to my eyes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the easiest way to adjust the volume and to your point, it’s not terribly easy.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I completely agree with you that it’s too convoluted, but we didn’t explicitly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey state on the show that you can do it with the digital crown. So yes, as Jonathan Goldbrunson
⏹️ ▶️ Casey points out, the Vision Pro has a physical volume knob. When you scroll the digital crown, you either look at the mountain icon and then it changes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey environment percentage or look at the volume icon and the digital crown controls the volume. That is something that I’m pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Casey darn sure Marco knew. I certainly knew, but it’s such trash that I didn’t even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bring it up. I actually didn’t know about it. So thank you for pointing this out.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is ridiculous how hard this is to discover
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like everything else about all these weird gestures. But hey, maybe if I use the Vision Pro more, or maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would have known that, so oh well.
Letters to LLMs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Stephen Klink writes, John’s analysis of the Siri LLM delay was spot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on and reminded me of an issue you covered in a past episode. Apple is used to solving problems by throwing more programming hours
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at them, but LLM-based Siri requires a different approach, one where engineers are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey essentially writing pleading letters to the model. Quote, do not hallucinate. Do not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey make up factual information. Only output valid JSON and nothing else. Quote. Instead of debugging in the traditional
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sense, they’re left waging a letter-writing campaign into the LLM, hoping it compiles.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Good luck to Apple in fixing that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Hoping it complies. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey this was a topic that we
⏹️ ▶️ John covered. And actually we did do some follow up on that later, saying there are better ways to make sure you get valid
⏹️ ▶️ John JSON instead of pleading with it. But yeah, that’s prompt engineering. And to be clear, I don’t think that necessarily
⏹️ ▶️ John the people who are responsible for making Apple’s LLM-based stuff perform better are just spending their entire time
⏹️ ▶️ John prompt engineering by setting up different sets of strings to feed the thing, that’s definitely not going to fix
⏹️ ▶️ John the problem. Maybe that will help a little bit in one direction or another. No, what they have to do is say, okay,
⏹️ ▶️ John can we have a different model, a better model, multiple smaller models, some specialized
⏹️ ▶️ John models, a retrained larger model, should we use a server, should we lose it locally, all those things
⏹️ ▶️ John take a large amount of time. And that’s one of the the reasons why Apple is late on this.
HomeScreen delay
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mark Gurman writes, with regard to the smart home hub, Apple is still
⏹️ ▶️ Casey developing a device codenamed J490 with an iPad-like screen and home control
⏹️ ▶️ Casey features. At one point, the company had hoped to announce this product in March, but because the device, to an extent, relies
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the delayed Siri capabilities, it has been postponed as well. I don’t know if
⏹️ ▶️ John they should have postponed the entire HomePod line until Siri got better.
⏹️ ▶️ John It was like, this is some, you know, some consequences of them missing on Siri.
⏹️ ▶️ John Siri, it’s not just that the Siri they advertise doesn’t arrive in time. It’s also that any product that we’re kind of
⏹️ ▶️ John expected to have the better Siri is now just sitting there waiting and going, well, I guess we can’t launch this
⏹️ ▶️ John with that because presumably the products like this were developed with the in progress, better Siri, and you
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t really launch without the in progress, better Siri, and they’re not going to launch it on the smart home hub. So, uh, there
⏹️ ▶️ John is a cascading effect to being late on this.
False-advertising lawsuit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, Apple has been as everyone foretold sued for false advertising
⏹️ ▶️ Casey over Apple intelligence Reading from axios Apple has been hit with a federal lawsuit claiming the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey company’s promotion of now delayed Apple intelligence features constituted false advertising and unfair competition
⏹️ ▶️ Casey quote Apple’s advertisements saturated the internet television and other airwaves to cultivate a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey clear and reasonable consumer expectation that these Transformative features would be available upon the iPhones release
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the suit reads needs. Quoting again, this drove unprecedented excitement
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the market, even for Apple, as the company knew it would. And as part of Apple’s ongoing effort to convince customers,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey excuse me, consumers to upgrade at a premium price and to distinguish itself from competitors
⏹️ ▶️ Casey deemed to be winning the AI arms race.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I wish them luck in the suit. I’m not sure how well they do. I’m not sure how easy these kinds of suits are to
⏹️ ▶️ John win, but we knew there would be one. And so here it is. And And that’s just, I mean, easy,
⏹️ ▶️ John as we said last week, easy to predict. If there is a possibility of a class action lawsuit against Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ John someone’s going to try it. And I think there is a good case to be made here. I’m not sure the description that was just
⏹️ ▶️ John read from presumably from the people who are suing Apple makes that case well, but maybe they’ll do better in court.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Look, Apple brought this on themselves. I think they deserve this. A lot, a lot of the suits filed against them, I think are BS.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I don’t think this is one.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, keyboards weren’t either. I mean, anytime we end up getting checks or stuff, it’s usually because there is a good founding
⏹️ ▶️ John for the class action lawsuit. And the whole class action system in this country is not particularly great,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it is better than not having any recourse at all if they ship a mildly defective product
⏹️ ▶️ John for years and years and then stumbled all about it.
Mike Rockwell taking over Siri
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple’s Vision Pro chief Mike Rockwell was about to take over Siri.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So this is news from a few days ago reading from Bloomberg Apple Vision Pro chief Mike
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Rockwell will take over Siri which is being removed from AI chief John G and Andrea
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Rockwell will report to software chief Craig Federici Rockwell is currently the vice president in charge
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of Vision Products Group or VPG the division that developed Apple’s headset As part of the changes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey he’ll be leaving that team though the vision Pro software groups will follow him to Federico software engineering
⏹️ ▶️ Casey group The hardware team will remain under remain under John Ternus and report to Paul Meade a hardware
⏹️ ▶️ Casey engineering executives executive who worked on the vision Pro Gene Andrea
⏹️ ▶️ Casey will remain at the company even with Rockwell taking over Siri JG’s other responsibilities include
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oversight of research testing and technologies related to AI the company also has a team reporting to JG
⏹️ ▶️ Casey JG investigating robotics Last year, the company tapped Rockwell deputy Kim
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Vorath to help advise the Siri team. She’s known for bringing order and execution to troubled development programs.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey In January, she was officially moved over to the AI group as a top lieutenant to JG to oversee
⏹️ ▶️ Casey AI program management. She’s now moving to Federighi’s division. Inside Apple, Rockwell hasn’t been shy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about critiquing and criticizing Siri, according to people familiar with the matter. For years, he’s pitched
⏹️ ▶️ Casey senior vice presidents on ideas for overhauling the voice assistant to make it more personalized. He has also been advising
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the AI group in recent weeks even before the management changes JG long considered Rockwell a potential
⏹️ ▶️ Casey successor Not a successor anymore, huh?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yep. So this is a pretty big leadership reshuffle here And it seems like
⏹️ ▶️ John more thing things that used to not be under Federighi are now going to be under Federighi Which for the
⏹️ ▶️ John in the case of things like the vision Pro software like I’m kind of surprised that wasn’t already like it makes sense
⏹️ ▶️ John like Apple does this thing where they have a new product It’s just kind of like off on its own little island. And then if
⏹️ ▶️ John it if it is allowed to live, it slowly gets folded back in. So it seems like that’s happening there.
⏹️ ▶️ John But yeah, the series stuff is I can’t tell. Like when I first saw the story is like, is this like,
⏹️ ▶️ John gee, Andrea, like save the embarrassment of getting booted out and it is shift
⏹️ ▶️ John into a different role. But really, he’s on his way out the door. Or is this like actually he’s much better at dealing with
⏹️ ▶️ John research, development and people who want to publish pictures. And that’s what he should have been in charge of all along. and we need a product person involved
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I don’t know. The vibe I get based on pretty much no facts whatsoever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is that he really is a research person, not a product person. But I can’t cite
⏹️ ▶️ Casey any particular reason that I feel that way. It’s just kind of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John way the wind is blowing.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s things that we’ve heard, and the fact that they haven’t really been good at shipping products under his leadership. Here’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the thing about my outsider’s perspective on his tenure at Apple so far.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is true of every company, but it that seems especially true in Apple, to succeed,
⏹️ ▶️ John you need to be able to get things done within the context of the organization as it exists when
⏹️ ▶️ John you arrive. So if you arrive at Apple, you’re not gonna change the whole company unless you’re like the
⏹️ ▶️ John CEO and even then, good luck. But especially if you’re high level executive
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, you can have some influence on your corner of the world, but what does it take to get things done
⏹️ ▶️ John within Apple? Because it doesn’t work departmentally in general, with the exception of, like I just said, and the Vision
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro they all spin off into their own little world. In general, you’re gonna need to work with
⏹️ ▶️ John a whole bunch of other people at Apple to make anything happen. And it seems like DeAndre has not
⏹️ ▶️ John found a way to succeed in that organization at getting things done. I don’t think he didn’t want
⏹️ ▶️ John to make a better productized series, but there’s like, I’m sure within Apple’s culture, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a specific way that the people who get things done operate in order to be one of those people who has a product
⏹️ ▶️ John that gets announced in a keynote that goes out to customers that is successful. In any company, figuring out how to do
⏹️ ▶️ John that. Okay, how do I work in this company? How do I actually get products out the door in this company?
⏹️ ▶️ John What do I have to do? Who do I have to talk to? Who do I have to cooperate with? Who do I have to work with? How do I make sure I have budget and resources
⏹️ ▶️ John and all of that? And that’s a difficult task. And it’s not saying that like, DeAndre is like, oh, he’s a
⏹️ ▶️ John bad manager or whatever because he couldn’t do this because every company is different. Maybe he was successful
⏹️ ▶️ John at doing this in another company but then you come into Apple and you can’t figure out how to get this machine
⏹️ ▶️ John to work. But when you tap like existing executives who’ve proven
⏹️ ▶️ John they know how to get that done, like Rockwell for all the problems of the Vision Pro was a product that shipped, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And presumably it shipped like, the question is, did he ship a product
⏹️ ▶️ John that was what he expected to ship or what he was supposed to ship? And that is separate from, is what they shipped
⏹️ ▶️ John an actual good product or whatever. And it seems like him and Kim Vorath and Federighi
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, people who, who know how to get things done within Apple and know how to execute on a plan
⏹️ ▶️ John and succeed in that plan. Whereas G Andrea seems like. I’m sure part of his
⏹️ ▶️ John purview was, uh, launch a better Siri and he has thus far not been able to do that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. I mean, and there’s, there’s all sorts of potential reasons, complexity, why that might be, why that might be the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco case. I mean, I know that the way things are, the way divisions are structured
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in Apple matters a lot. You know, Apple has a lot of secrecy. They have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of walls up within the company. They have a lot of, from what we’ve heard, they have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of kind of turf battles and things. So this shakeup probably matters a lot.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is a big deal and a small deal. And as for the people, you know, who knows? It’s always hard to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know like who within the company is responsible for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco successes and failures. Obviously, the higher up you go, the more it becomes people’s responsibility.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco My impression of the people involved here is very limited because, you know, we don’t really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hear. We don’t know that much about John G. Andreea. We don’t know that much about Mike Rockwell.
⏹️ ▶️ John But we have seen both of them speak. We’ve seen all those people speak in short stints
⏹️ ▶️ John at WWDC stuff like on the talk show live or like last year, G. Andreea was on stage
⏹️ ▶️ John and in the Steve Jobs Theater talking like we do actually, this is in the rare case we do see these people and
⏹️ ▶️ John it just so happens we’ve seen pretty much all these people speak you know in a in a PR
⏹️ ▶️ John capacity about their technology and obviously Craig we’ve known for years and years so but that’s just
⏹️ ▶️ John their public face we don’t know what goes inside it goes on inside the company.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Sure and and I would care you know again with the disclaimer that like we don’t know that much about these people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco directly um I have had I’ve had opportunities to, you know, in various
⏹️ ▶️ Marco press contexts, I’ve had opportunities to be around John G.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Andrea and Mike Rockwell in limited bursts. And my impression
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of both of them is that they’re both, you know, very, very smart. What struck
⏹️ ▶️ Marco me about Mike Rockwell, and again, this is based on a very small amount of exposure, he
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is broadly very smart. He knows a lot about a lot.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very good thing for this role I think to you know to be the person heading up Siri that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a very very very good thing he also again based on very limited exposure
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still he also seems like he had a bit of a different attitude
⏹️ ▶️ Marco compared to the other VP people he was a lot more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no BS seeming he seems like the kind of person especially having heard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the rumor mill and stuff that apparently he He was not a huge fan of the Siri
⏹️ ▶️ Marco experience when he was working on the Vision Pro. I think that’s a very good sign here.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And when you look at the failings of the Vision Pro, the stuff that I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was most likely Rockwell’s responsibility and where he had the least interference
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from other divisions, that stuff seems like it all works really rock solidly. like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the actual pass-through, the actual latency, the actual like the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know the the placement of objects in space and how how like all that AR stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the fundamentals of that like you know we talked about before all the ridiculous technical
⏹️ ▶️ Marco challenges that are involved in the vision Pro just displaying an empty home screen basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know having having everything work to that level there were a huge
⏹️ ▶️ Marco number of challenges to get it to that point and And when I look at the Vision Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as a product, you know, obviously there’s, I think there’s a huge amount of that is a failure, but I think most of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the failures come down to ecosystem and industrial
⏹️ ▶️ Marco design choices that probably were not his responsibility or his responsibility
⏹️ ▶️ Marco alone. And when you look at the technical side of how the Vision Pro behaves
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on those technical levels, it’s rock solid. It’s really good at those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things. and those things were really hard technical challenges. So when you take somebody with the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco attitude I think he has, who is broadly intelligent about lots of things the way I think he is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who also seems to dislike Siri the way it is now, I’m very excited about this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think this is gonna be great. I think he’s gonna, especially again, when we heard about Kim Verath and her reputation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about being a fixer and being really good, like this combination of these two,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think that’s gonna be great. And as for the move under Federighi’s organization,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is a very good question to wonder like, why wasn’t the Siri division already
⏹️ ▶️ Marco part of, you know, under that?
⏹️ ▶️ John I think that might’ve been part of getting Giandrea to come to the company was the, you won’t be under Craig, you’ll report directly to the CEO,
⏹️ ▶️ John yada, yada. Cause they poached him from Google.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John true. They hired
⏹️ ▶️ John him away from Google. So that, that could have been a thing. But again, it’s just like, do you have what it takes to get products
⏹️ ▶️ John done and shipped within Apple? And I think that Rockwell has shown that he can make that happen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know how much she knows about AI, but he’s a really sharp person. I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he can learn it. Like whatever he doesn’t know about AI, I think he’ll be fine.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I mean, Jandre is still there, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John for now, that was the question. Like, is he on his way out the door or is he just going to have a more limited role?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think he got promoted to the roof. Like, I think he’s hanging out there, like, you know, with Johnny
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Ive being in his advisory role. You know, like, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thought that’s done. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Ive was done done. I’m just talking out of my butt, yeah. That’s probably the case, but still.
⏹️ ▶️ John Hey, you just had to say that about Phil. Phil’s still there, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Phil’s still on the roof. He’s still, he’s testifying in court cases. I mean, he’s still hanging out up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there. He has, you know, he built a little shade shelter. He’s like, you know, serving drinks. I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ John doing. Do you remember we saw Rockwell was on a talk show a year or two ago? Do you remember that, Talk Show Live?
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah. So it was like, he’s not a complete, that was the most longest and most free-form conversation. I think he might’ve been one of the
⏹️ ▶️ John rotating guests on that one where they like brought in a couple other people, but yeah. I feel like of all the people
⏹️ ▶️ John involved in any Apple drama, we actually have some in-person impression of these people.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and that’s why I think this change is going to be very good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now, I still think Apple has missed AI in the way that Microsoft
⏹️ ▶️ Marco missed mobile. They’re already very late and it will hurt them greatly. And I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is not a small miss, this is a big miss, and it is a huge
⏹️ ▶️ Marco problem that will take them, I think, a long time to catch up, if they ever do, and they might
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not. So he’s not starting from a position of strength here. Like, when you look at the timelines,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was saying last week how it takes Tim Cook’s Apple a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco long time to course correct when something is not right, to the point where we were questioning, what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is their feedback mechanism? Are they getting bad information? What’s going on? Because it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco does seem like Apple does eventually course correct on most of their major shortcomings,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it takes them a very long time to do so compared to when you look at most of their companies and in the business.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like Apple fixes problems very slowly. It took them until now
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to realize that Siri was not good enough and turn things around. That’s concerning
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on a number of levels, but at least they are doing it now.
⏹️ ▶️ John That was what JG’s hire was supposed to be about, to turn around Siri.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But remember, there was a report in the information about a year or two ago, talking about how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there was an effort internally to rebuild Syria from scratch, and apparently it lost a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco turf war at some point,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so they kept going back to, we can keep fixing the old one, just like the butterfly keyboard,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we can keep fixing it, we got it this time, we swear. If this is what we’re seeing is basically another
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cycle of that level of like restart
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or refactoring, it’s gonna take two more years before we see anything out of this project, at least.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that part is concerning in the sense that like, did it take them this long to finally realize that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco old Siri was not gonna be patchable to the modern world because it didn’t even work in the world it was in?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know. They seem very slow to address that kind of large failure.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco However, if they were going to address that kind of large failure, this is how it would look.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I’m optimistic. Again, I’m pretty confident
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about Mike Rockwell’s general abilities to solve exactly this kind of problem. So I think this could
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be really good. We’ll see, but I think if it ends up being really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good for the product, I think we have to contextualize what that means because they’re so far behind. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what does being really good look like? I think A, it’s gonna be a long time out before we see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any effort, any outcome from this, probably a year or two at least.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And B, we have to see how much Apple prioritizes this. They have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not done well in the area of Siri and related tasks or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco AI and its related tasks. They have not done well in that area so far. And it is not because they lack
⏹️ ▶️ Marco resources, they have all the resources in the world. It’s because they don’t prioritize them well or don’t utilize them well or there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some kind of bottleneck somewhere in their structures or their workflows or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They can do these things. They’ve been able to do these things for years. There’s no reason why Google
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or OpenAI or like Amazon or all these other companies, there’s no reason why all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those companies were doing things that Apple couldn’t do over the last three to five
⏹️ ▶️ Marco years. Like no, Apple could have been doing all the same things. They just didn’t. They just failed to see
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what was going on and failed to get into it or failed to do it in the right way. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what this is going to look like over time depends a lot on how much Apple realizes they messed up and how much they realize
⏹️ ▶️ Marco change has to happen. I get the feeling Mike Rockwell is not the kind of guy to BS around about that. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think he knows because he seems like he was held back by Siri in his previous product,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Vision Pro. And I think he probably hates it as much as we do, which is a good sign. I do think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this also then raises the question of what the heck happened to the Vision Pro. What happens to it now?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, that’s a good question. I mean, it seems like it’s already on cruise control anyway, for the most part. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, we certainly haven’t heard very many rumblings about new hardware and I feel
⏹️ ▶️ John like all the existing rumors, the cheaper one, then the better one, those are still
⏹️ ▶️ John in process. Then there’s a, the vision of us 3.0 is supposed to be a big change. Like I feel like that is that.
⏹️ ▶️ John That train is continuing along and I don’t think it needs someone driving it the way
⏹️ ▶️ John the initial one needed someone driving it just to get it out the door. Um, I, again, is it on
⏹️ ▶️ John the right course? I don’t know, is that $1,500 one and then the more expensive one? Are those the right products to be making?
⏹️ ▶️ John What about all the various glasses projects, some of which have been canceled? That’s still an open question, but I see nothing that
⏹️ ▶️ John indicates that the Vision Pro is just not going to continue the way it’s currently continuing, which is extremely slowly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, probably. But I don’t know. Like, I think having having the Vision Pro
⏹️ ▶️ Marco chief be reassigned and having kind of nobody maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco assigned to his previous role.
⏹️ ▶️ John Paul Meade is taking over and also Vision OS goes under Craig, which is more or less like it graduating
⏹️ ▶️ John to be in with the rest of the family, you know? Yeah, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco To me, this is very good news for all of Apple’s products, except the Vision Pro where it’s questionable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and probably not good.
⏹️ ▶️ John It is neutral, I feel like for Vision Pro. It’s not going to benefit it, but I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ John it should hurt it that much given the plan. It’s not going to hurt Apple’s rumored existing plans.
⏹️ ▶️ John What we know of Apple’s plans seem like they will continue fine with this change and not be hampered by it. Are Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ John existing plans the right thing to do for Vision Pro? That is a good question, but I don’t think this change, certainly
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not, we’re not hearing the story of like, you know what Vision Pro needs all know leadership because we were going in the wrong direction.
⏹️ ▶️ John That we don’t hear happening.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I do echo your optimism though, Marco, that I think this is on the whole and potentially
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for literally everything, a good thing. You know, if Siri really does
⏹️ ▶️ Casey get better, and yes, I mean, it may not get better for a year or two, but if it does get better, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wonderful. Because how many years have all of us, and I don’t just mean the three of us, I mean all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of us, how many years have we been whining about how bad Siri is? And I would love
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for it to be better. And if Siri’s better, it makes pretty much every one of Apple’s products better.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And you know, I agree with you as well, John, that being neutral for the Vision Pro, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that seems to be mostly cruising along anyway, with no real urgency, which, for better and for worse…
⏹️ ▶️ John MANN, JR.: Again, maybe the wrong move, but that’s just the way it’s been going, so no change there.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey LAMPLEY, JR.: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. But the key is, I think this is a good sign. And I don’t think,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we didn’t talk as much about it because we don’t know her really at all, but, you know, Kim Verath really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is supposed to be really frickin’ good. And so, if she and Rockwell,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey who, from what, you know, Marco was saying, you know, is kind of a, don’t take any names, kick
⏹️ ▶️ Casey butt kind of person, but it sounds like the both of them are, that could be a really great way to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey write this ship. So I’m excited.
John’s nightmare is over again
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The good news hasn’t stopped there though. John, your long national nightmare is really, for really, for real this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey time, I swear, over.
⏹️ ▶️ John There is one more story in The Verge that looks exactly like the story they ran before, which is, hey, threads now lets you
⏹️ ▶️ John choose your default feed. No, for everybody, really, this time, and as far as I can tell, I think that
⏹️ ▶️ John is actually true. The places where I got it and then lost it, now I’ve got it back again and it hasn’t gone
⏹️ ▶️ John away. So yeah, I don’t know what the timeline is in this, but maybe like 120 days or whatever since
⏹️ ▶️ John it was announced as being available in a limited capacity. That’s too long for rollout threads. I don’t know what you’re doing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, just wanted to follow up on that. If you want to choose
⏹️ ▶️ John your threads view to default to the one that shows your timeline of people you follow, you can
⏹️ ▶️ John do that through a slightly Byzantine thing of long pressing on the following tab and then doing edit
⏹️ ▶️ John feeds or something and then grabbing the little gripper thing and dragging the feed you want to be the default to
⏹️ ▶️ John the top. Not obvious at all, which I think is part of the rollout of this feature is like, can we make
⏹️ ▶️ John it so obscure that most people can’t figure it out? And they’ve apparently felt safe doing that
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco because they want you to default to the
⏹️ ▶️ John algorithmic feed so they can feed your engagement muscles or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I don’t want that. And so now I can change my settings.
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iPhone rumors
⏹️ ▶️ Casey OK, so we have some iPhone 16E or 16E follow-up that we’ve been
⏹️ ▶️ Casey meaning to get to for the last few weeks. And we just have had other more pressing things that have bumped
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this off the list. This almost became an overtime topic, because if you recall, that’s kind of what overtime is for. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think we can plow through it real quick. John, can you put on your micromachines man’s voice
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and take care of this for us, please?
⏹️ ▶️ John Actually, the first item is for the rumored phones that are, this should have been down in the
⏹️ ▶️ John 17th section, but I think we can put it up here as well. Some people wrote in for reasons why they might not
⏹️ ▶️ John rearrange the cameras on the new phones that are coming out, like basically leaving the three
⏹️ ▶️ John cameras like they are on the pro phones, leaving them in the same place, despite the fact that they’re extending the
⏹️ ▶️ John island to be huge on top of everything. And one of the reasons was third-party lens attachments
⏹️ ▶️ John systems. If someone makes an attachment thing, you may have to make an all new one for the phone. I’m not sure I buy that
⏹️ ▶️ John one. Apple doesn’t care if they break your stuff from phone to phone, they’ll just break it. Yeah. But you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John hey, maybe there is some influence in there of like not changing it too radically to help them out. But
⏹️ ▶️ John the slightly better reason is to minimize view changes when you’re changing lenses. This is kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of runs counter to the spatial video because for spatial video, we’re like, wouldn’t it be great if like lenses were farther away from each other?
⏹️ ▶️ John It would be better for spatial video, but it would probably be worse for when you change from like the 1X to the
⏹️ ▶️ John 2X to the 4X to the, like they want zoom to be smooth. And yeah, they do this now, like the, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, smoothly blending between the different views of the cameras to make it look like it’s just one camera.
⏹️ ▶️ John But obviously it’s not. The farther away you make the lenses from each other, the harder it is to do that,
⏹️ ▶️ John because when you switch to the camera that’s on the other side of the phone, it necessarily has a different angle on the
⏹️ ▶️ John thing that you’re viewing. And so that transition could be more jarring. Maybe, maybe that’s the way it is.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, you see a lot of cameras with, a lot of phones with cameras on the back that are not in a triangle
⏹️ ▶️ John arrangement. There are like three top to bottom, like a stoplight across the back of the phone.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it seems like Apple doesn’t wanna do that. Anyway, back to the 16E. Sorry for the slightly rearranged
⏹️ ▶️ John topic. When the iPhone 16E came out, MKBHD put out a video.
⏹️ ▶️ John He is not a fan of the phone. He introduced the video with this little fictional skit
⏹️ ▶️ John of, as he described, world’s most honest salesman versus the buyer trying to get recommended
⏹️ ▶️ John the iPhone 16E. So as a customer, he plays both parts. He’s both the salesman and the customer, a customer coming
⏹️ ▶️ John in and saying, I want a phone, but I want X and Y and Z. And basically he’s trying to say, what would a customer
⏹️ ▶️ John have to say for an honest salesman to say, you know what, the phone for you is the iPhone 16E.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the list of things that you would have to say to make that true are absurd, but mostly
⏹️ ▶️ John only because MKBHD considers one of your options to be
⏹️ ▶️ John a refurbished iPhone 15 Pro. Because go watch the video, especially, it’s just the intro part,
⏹️ ▶️ John like, you know, how specific would you have to be? Why would you ever buy a 16E and not one of the
⏹️ ▶️ John many other phones that are offered? 15 Pro is basically better than the 16E
⏹️ ▶️ John in every way, including price, but here’s the thing. You might not be able to get a refurbished 15
⏹️ ▶️ John Pro. How many are available? Are they available in your area at all? How long will they be available?
⏹️ ▶️ John So I think it’s kind of unfair to compare a refurb 15 Pro versus a new 16E.
⏹️ ▶️ John That said, it’s kind of on Apple for saying, okay, well, if the 15 Pro really is better than 16E,
⏹️ ▶️ John why didn’t you just keep selling the 15 Pro at a lower price? And that’s not a thing that Apple does. They don’t really keep selling
⏹️ ▶️ John the Pro phones year after year. Anyway, this video, we’ll put it in the show notes, does
⏹️ ▶️ John make a pretty compelling case that the 16E is not really
⏹️ ▶️ John a price performance champion. It’s missing a bunch of weird features, as we said
⏹️ ▶️ John when we talked about it, but it does look really nice from the back.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It does indeed. All right, and then do we wanna
⏹️ ▶️ Casey talk about teardowns?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, these are a little bit old at this point, but they opened up the 16E to see what it’s looking like inside there.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the battery is about 12% bigger compared to the 16. If you look at the inside
⏹️ ▶️ John of the phone, you’ll see that the battery is bigger, mostly, the dimension you notice
⏹️ ▶️ John is mostly how tall it is because there is just one camera up there and the place where the
⏹️ ▶️ John other camera was, especially the camera below it, that’s all filled with battery now. Thickness
⏹️ ▶️ John wise, like, oh, they made the battery thicker and not having MagSafe help with that, that doesn’t seem to be
⏹️ ▶️ John an issue at all. In fact, if you look at like one of these, it’s not X-ray, but like some kind of like
⏹️ ▶️ John thing that lets you see the internal components of the phone, you can see a faint ring of where the MagSafe
⏹️ ▶️ John magnets would have been. I don’t know if that means that’s actually, there’s actually a channel carved for them, or there’s just like-
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That could just be like the Qi coil, right? Cause it still has wireless charging, it’s just a magnet.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maybe. I assume that’s just the Qi coil.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know, it’s difficult to tell. It’s not like you open it up and there’s a place where the magnets go, but the point is the magnets are not actually
⏹️ ▶️ John that thick. And so if you’re thinking that the 16E has a bigger battery because it has extra thickness to put the battery
⏹️ ▶️ John in, that’s, if that is true, it is dwarfed by the actual
⏹️ ▶️ John like square centimeters of additional battery you get by not having those other cameras. A single
⏹️ ▶️ John camera on the 16A is not just a cost savings, it gives you more room for battery. And it’s a
⏹️ ▶️ John stark contrast if you look like the 15 or any other, even just the 15 with just the two cameras. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ John just so much more room for battery when you just have one camera. Hopefully someday we’ll get to a point where we can just have one really
⏹️ ▶️ John good camera on the back of the phone instead of, you know, three or four or five of them, but that way seems
⏹️ ▶️ John a long way off. And also, if you want to look at the teardown, you can see what the C1 looks like. And it’s actually
⏹️ ▶️ John pretty big. So this is a pretty significant chip. Someday, some portions
⏹️ ▶️ John of this may move into the SoC, but if you look at the size of the C1 chip right now, you can
⏹️ ▶️ John see that some portion of it is probably still gonna be external because it’s pretty darn big.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 17E, there’s a post on 9to5Mac that reads,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fixed focus digital, one of the first sources of the iPhone 16E name ahead of Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey announcement, recently posted this on Weibo. E model is likely available in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or likely to be available in the next generation. At present, a new project code has been seen, which is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey suspected to be the 17 E
⏹️ ▶️ John barest of slim rumors. But as we discussed in the past shows, does the fact that this is called
⏹️ ▶️ John the 16 E and not the S E whatever mean that there’ll be a 17 eight
⏹️ ▶️ John people want there to be a, and they see a model out there that with a code name and they’re going to say,
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe this will be the 17 E because what else would it be? Like if, If the rumor is for a phone that is
⏹️ ▶️ John clearly not the plain 17 or the 17 Pro, there’s another model out there
⏹️ ▶️ John with another code name and it’s not the slim, like maybe it’s the 17E. I think that
⏹️ ▶️ John would be a wise thing for Apple to do to revise the cheap iPhone every year,
⏹️ ▶️ John especially since I think they made a lot of bad choices with the 16E and 17E will give them another shot, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I think it’s really, it’s interesting to think about, like, you know, the SE line was always
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, here’s a bunch of old parts on the outside inside a new chip
⏹️ ▶️ Marco upgraded every two to three years basically. I think what we’ve seen so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco far with most of the way Apple addresses the lower price market is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just keeping around old guts or old models. And in this case, they’re not doing that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like in this case, like they really may, I mean, they’re still doing like last year’s phone as a cheaper option
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from the flagships. But in this case, they really did make like a cheap phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from scratch that does not really have a lot in common with an older model that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they just picked from. Like in this case, they didn’t need to worry about like maintaining the home button, maintaining
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Face ID or Touch ID. Like, you know, like they went all in with the modern stuff, but they made a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco custom phone that was explicitly targeting inexpensive,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, stuff here, but it’s not like any of the others. It isn’t like just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a three or four year old model.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then adopted the new better, like easier to access, better service case that
⏹️ ▶️ John they innovated in like the 14 or whatever. So unlike the other ones where they did like, oh, it’s like the old case, but with new guts in
⏹️ ▶️ John it. One of the weaknesses of that is like everything that you’ve improved about the case, you don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John get that in the cheap phone. It’s like, oh, the cheap phone always gets a crappy old case. But this case is like a hybrid of
⏹️ ▶️ John all the best ideas we had about how to make this more easily repairable and easy to manufacture and so on and so forth,
⏹️ ▶️ John with a bunch of stuff removed to save cost and a mixture of some different parts that we’re trying to like, it
⏹️ ▶️ John gives them a platform to try to make a phone that is modern, like
⏹️ ▶️ John that doesn’t like throw away all the stuff that they’ve learned over the past several years, but also is cheaper
⏹️ ▶️ John because it is essentially decontented. I just think they did the decontenting a little bit wrong this time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Sure, but look at how this will play out then in the future. So, and first of all, I think, you know, a way to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco look at this, people were rumoring it and kind of framing it as this is the replacement
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the iPhone SE. And I think that’s not quite right. I think what really happened is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they discontinued the iPhone SE and introduced a new line. And I know that’s, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco could say, oh, that’s just naming, that’s marketing, whatever. But when you look at the roles they filled, the iPhone SE was filling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two roles. It was fulfilling the less price role,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but also people who wanted to hold on to the old style of phone for whatever reason.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maybe they hated face ID, maybe they didn’t want to change from the home button, whatever it is. It was serving both of those roles.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The new one throws away the latter and is only serving the price role. So what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think will happen now, if these rumors are correct that there’s going to be a 17e,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which will probably be fairly soon, after the 17 is launched, maybe it’ll be another one of these like springtime
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things. And if you if you think about them keeping this one around,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they have right now. So where will we be a year from now? I think it’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be we’ll have the 17 and then we’ll have the 16 for you know 100 bucks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco less the 17 e for this price 600 bucks and then the 16
⏹️ ▶️ Marco e kept around for 100 bucks less at 500 bucks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s where we are headed where I bet this I bet the E line sticks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco around the same way the other lines do where you keep last year’s model
⏹️ ▶️ Marco around for a hundred bucks less and maybe in certain like more price sensitive markets
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like India or other places maybe you also keep the N minus two year around
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because that’s what they do with like what you know right now we’re on the 16 phones they sell the iPhone 15
⏹️ ▶️ Marco directly from Apple in some markets they would still still sell the minus two. I don’t know if they, are they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still doing this? Where like, is the 14 still for sale in some
⏹️ ▶️ John We were just talking about how the M2 MacBook Air is still for sale in some markets, not in the US, but somewhere it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, I mean, the M1 MacBook Air is still for sale in Walmart in the
⏹️ ▶️ John US. Oh yeah, the M1 is the Walmart thing, but setting the Walmart thing aside, the fact that they’re basically stopped selling the
⏹️ ▶️ John M2 MacBook Air, except in certain places.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, so I can see this playing out similarly, where, you know, they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco won’t sell the iPhone 14 right now from Apple, but I bet they’re still selling it in certain markets,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I bet the E line will work the same way where Apple in the US and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco certain other high-profile markets will sell 17E and 16E for a hundred bucks less next
⏹️ ▶️ Marco year. But then in some markets, the year after that, they’ll still be selling the 16E as the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hundred bucks less than that even when we have an 18E and a 17E from Apple. And I think that would be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a fairly smart thing to do because when you look at the 16E, Like as much as you hate the compromises
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they make, they did make compromises that keep the price down. And that’s what they need.
⏹️ ▶️ John that much. It did get a lot more expensive than the SE. If I had to vote, I would say do not continue
⏹️ ▶️ John selling the 16e, replace it with the 17e, but we’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco see what they do. We’ll see. You want to make a $1 bet?
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not predicting, I’m prescribing. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco saying Apple should not do this.
⏹️ ▶️ John I agree that it definitely seems like something that Tim Cook would do. Absolutely. I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they should not do it. But they probably will. see. All
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, then finally the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max, reading from MacRumors,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey according to the latest note from Jeff Poo of GFHK Tech Research, both the 17
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Pro and Pro Max will feature 12 gigs of RAM.
⏹️ ▶️ John I love it, love it. Keep adding more RAM. You got to run those bigger local models that don’t do anything useful yet,
⏹️ ▶️ John but someday they might. So keep adding RAM to our phones.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Excellent. All right.
WWDC announced
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Breaking-ish news. I believe it was yesterday as we record. WWDC 2025 has
⏹️ ▶️ Casey been announced. It is June 9 through June 13. It
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is going to have a one day thing at Apple Park like it has since almost, if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not every year since the pandemic. And that’s basically the story so far.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, the real story is they’re laser like precision at exactly nailing the weeks that both
⏹️ ▶️ John of my children graduate from high school. Thanks a lot for that, Apple. When my son graduated from high school,
⏹️ ▶️ John you put WWDC at the same week. Now my daughter is graduating from high school. Boom.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is not great for me. Even though her graduation is slightly later in the week, her prom
⏹️ ▶️ John is on Tuesday, WWDC is on Monday. The odds of me going to this, even if I
⏹️ ▶️ John am invited, are not looking great. There are discussions happening amongst the family, but time-wise,
⏹️ ▶️ John it may not make sense. I am disappointed, but that’s just me personally. Bad luck.
⏹️ ▶️ John The real story, though, is we got to look at the graphic for the WDC
⏹️ ▶️ John announcement and what is featured in the graphic besides the weird conjoined
⏹️ ▶️ John double W’s and a rainbow tinted DC frosted
⏹️ ▶️ John glass kind of 25. We do this every year. There have been years where there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John been like a bunch of remember they did like one of the San Jose years, they did a bunch of geometric shapes
⏹️ ▶️ John poking out of like a field, like cylinders and squares and stuff. was like, is this a sign of what the new UI is gonna look like?
⏹️ ▶️ John It was not. It was not a sign of the new UI at all. It was just a cool looking graphic. But this year with all the
⏹️ ▶️ John rumors and the various rumor battles about saying that Jon Prosser’s video showing
⏹️ ▶️ John the Vision Pro-like OS for iOS 19 is not really what it looks like. Gurman’s saying it actually looks a little bit different. And
⏹️ ▶️ John then Apple puts this out with a frosted glass look for the 25 that looks so good you could lick it, but it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John also not exactly the same as Vision Pro, but it’s also not exactly the same as the Invites
⏹️ ▶️ John app, but it’s also not the same as the mock-up of the phone app.
⏹️ ▶️ John Who knows, is Apple just teasing us or are we going to be seeing a bunch of frosted
⏹️ ▶️ John glass UI in iOS 19 and Mac OS 16 and iPad OS 19 and Vision OS 3?
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, we’ll see. We’ll see what we get. I still do
⏹️ ▶️ John believe that they are going to launch a big redesign across all their OSes. I assume it’s happening this
⏹️ ▶️ John year, although I wouldn’t guarantee that. But yeah, if there was no rumors of like
⏹️ ▶️ John a OS spanning redesign, we wouldn’t be reading that into this. We’d just be like, oh, look, it’s nice. It’s frosted glass
⏹️ ▶️ John because we wouldn’t be thinking, hey, what’s the new look going to be for all of Apple’s major OSes? But we are thinking that now. So
⏹️ ▶️ John everything we see is like, is this it? Especially since it aligns somewhat with
⏹️ ▶️ John the rumors and a little bit with the invites app and a little bit with the phone things. I do have
⏹️ ▶️ John to say I like this frosted glass. I don’t know if I would like a UI made out of it, but I think it looks nice
⏹️ ▶️ John for the letters 25 in the logo.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, I think I said this last week that when I use the Vision Pro, it feels like the future not only
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because of the hardware, but also because of the software. And so part of that is the look and feel.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And if we can get a look and feel that feels like that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on iOS, iPadOS, macOS, etc., I think that could be really fun. That being said, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey again, I think I’m regurgitating what happened, what was discussed last week, A lot of what feels
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so, or a lot of the affordances that feel so fun and new on vision pro relate heavily
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to depth. And there is at least on Mac iOS, for example, there is some modicum of death
⏹️ ▶️ Casey depth, but nothing like a world that is 3d. Right. And so, uh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know how much it would make sense, but I mean, look at the invites app on iOS, like that has
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very strong, the very strong feeling of the Vision Pro while still
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not really having too much depth. And I think that’s a good thing. I may have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey come across as a bad thing, but it’s actually a good thing. I think it looks nice. There’s a lot of translucency. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a touch of depth there. And it just generally feels very Vision Pro-y. You
⏹️ ▶️ Casey see also the Sports app, which is very similar, if I’m not mistaken. I haven’t looked at the Sports app in a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey couple of months. Yeah, you know, it’s a lot of—I don’t even know how to put my finger on it. I don’t know the vocabulary
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for it. But it just has a very similar feel to Vision OS,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where Vision OS is much heavier on depth and very heavy on translucency. This is fairly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey heavy on translucency, but not as heavy on depth. But it looks good. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hopeful. I have tentatively booked lodging,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which unfortunately is getting ever more expensive, and flights. I am hopeful
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that, you know, the three of us will get a press pass, and I’m hopeful that all three of us can make it out there and see what happens.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But we’ll see. If I don’t end up with a press pass, I probably won’t bother making the trip,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I presume, Marco, you feel the same way. This is also laser-focused on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ruining or improving your birthday, depending on how you look at it, every single year. So this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is over Marco’s birthday week, as always. Marco
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Paret, Ph.D.: Uh-huh. Well, no, not as always. As sometimes. My birthday is June 11th.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco WBC was before my birthday. I don’t know if I’m gonna go this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco year. I think there’s a combination of, you know, we’ll see how busy I am with the restaurant. Frankly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think I’m gonna be too busy with the restaurant to go. I think I can go just fine. But I, first of all, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want to ruin my birthday by flying through it. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’d rather be with my family and celebrate my birthday in my favorite restaurant,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco family day. But also,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know how much I need to be there. As I was discussing on Under the Radar
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a couple episodes ago, my relationship with Apple, I think, is evolving in my own mind. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m realizing that it’s, basically, they care a lot less about me than I care about them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s not really healthy for me. There’s some question of whether us going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is kind of carrying water for them in a way that they might not do for us.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco As press, I mean. As developers, if you’re a developer and you wanna go and have fun at the events,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go and have fun at the events. It is really fun. It is really cool to see Apple Park. It’s really cool to be there. It’s a cool
⏹️ ▶️ Marco experience. I think from a press side, I’m needing a little bit of distance. As I mentioned
⏹️ ▶️ Marco before, I still love Apple’s products and a lot of what they do as a company.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I still love computers and they still make the best computers. and I still love writing software, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I can write my best software using their tools and their platform. And I love Overcast, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Overcast is an iOS app and always will be an iOS app, and will always probably only be an iOS
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app. So I’m not leaving the ecosystem,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I do think I wanna create a little bit more distance between me and them,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because certainly they have done their best to create that distance from their end, And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the idea of going out there and clapping for Tim Cook right now is not something that really appeals to me. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you know, applauding, you know, the, this very corporate performance, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t know. I think I’ve done a lot of it and I could use some distance from it. So I think I’m going to take this year
⏹️ ▶️ Marco off probably, but we’ll see.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel like it’s always a fun time when I go. And some of that is because I know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, a lot of my friends that I don’t have an excuse to see many other times during including the two of you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, oftentimes we’ll all end up there together. But I will echo what Marco said. If you have the ability
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to get to California slash get to the United States, which I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John know is troubling
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of people at the moment, um, if you have the ability to get there safely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and, you know, experience the event, it is neat to experience. Um, again, I would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey love to be able to be there to cover it from a press perspective, but I don’t disagree with what you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey saying, Marco. I mean, I think if it’s healthier for you for you to not go. I think that makes perfect sense. And John, obviously,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as much as I would never want to see you uncomfortable, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can only imagine how uncomfortable a red-eye home would be after a very long day.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not even that. It’s just that if anything goes wrong with flights, which is a thing that’s known to happen,
⏹️ ▶️ John I could end up missing my daughter’s senior prom. That’s not a thing I want to do. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I certainly, John, if I was in that position, I wouldn’t do it. To me, that’s not worth it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think I agree. Even though I know this is the only chance I ever get to see you ever during the year because you refuse
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to leave your House ever ever ever ever other
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John than there’s always next
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey year Someday
⏹️ ▶️ John Kids are gone. Maybe we’ll all get together.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ll believe when I see it. But anyway
⏹️ ▶️ John children So get yours to grow up fast.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah Uh, but nevertheless, uh, you know, I I am enthusiastic about the idea of going
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because my situation affords it I am american and I for now feel like I can travel travel domestically.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay, so So if I am offered a pass, I will probably go. But if not,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know. We’ll see what happens. But yeah, if you have the ability, like I said, I definitely encourage it. And you can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sign up to get a free pass as a developer on their website. you can check that
EU demands more
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. There’s been a lot of news from the EU. It’s funny because a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of what they’ve been saying recently is like, ah, it’s fine. You know, the browser choice screen recently,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they were like, yeah, you’re fine, whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John You’re fine because Apple made changes in response to things they complained about, to be clear.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey True. But the way the prior EU administration, you know, for whatever this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey group is, seemed to be hell bent on sticking it to Apple no matter what. And for better and for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey worse, It seems like now, in a lot of ways, this administration is not as concerned with that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I think they’re equally concerned. They’re just more chill about saying mean things in public about them. There is the rumor
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco actually a big, giant
⏹️ ▶️ John fine is coming down the line for them and for MEDA. I don’t know if the MEDA one has already actually landed, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I think there will be findings that are not in Apple’s favors, and there will be fines that are issued, and that is going
⏹️ ▶️ John to happen without the previous head of this effort saying mean things about
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple all the time. So I think Apple cares less about the mean things said about them and much more about the potential for very
⏹️ ▶️ John large fines. So stay tuned.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, so the European Commission has said, and I’m reading from Mac rumors now,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they’ve announced a long list of changes that Apple is legally required to implement in future iOS 19 and iOS 20
⏹️ ▶️ Casey updates. The announcement clarifies interoperability requirements that Apple is required to adhere to in the EU
⏹️ ▶️ Casey under the Digital Markets Act, which has been fully enforced since March 2024. The changes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey will further open up the iPhone and its technologies to competing companies and devices. Some examples.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Third-party smartwatches must be able to display and interact with iOS notifications by the end
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of 2025, which likely means iOS 19.2 or earlier. Apple must make its
⏹️ ▶️ Casey automatic audio switching feature available to third-party headphones by June 1, 2026, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey likely means iOS 19.4 or earlier. This is the feature that allows most AirPods
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and select beats to automatically switch connections between Apple devices, such as Mac and iPhone. This is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Marco’s favorite thing in the whole wide world.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This all sounds like a bunch of BS from the EU. Like, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I fall mostly on like the Gruber POV on this one of like, this is pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ridiculous, largely.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, we got two more items, so you’ll hear a few more of them and we’ll discuss.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple must make changes to iOS to allow for third parties to offer equivalent airdrop alternatives
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by June 1, 2026. Apple must make changes to iOS that allow for third parties to offer equivalent
⏹️ ▶️ Casey airplay alternatives by iOS 20 or the end of 2026. iOS 20 is expected to be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey released to the general public in September of 2026. The European Commission says, as always,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey these decisions fully respect Apple’s rights of defense and remain subject to independent independent
⏹️ ▶️ Casey judicial scrutiny.
⏹️ ▶️ John Now, if you heard of that big list, you’re like, all right, well, this is just like giving years and you know, the Mac rumors
⏹️ ▶️ John are saying it wouldn’t mean this iOS version of this iOS version, right? But we will link to
⏹️ ▶️ John a page on the EU’s website about the Digital Markets Act. And you will see
⏹️ ▶️ John on their own web pages, they have like a bulleted list of all the things that they’re talking about. And
⏹️ ▶️ John they have requirements for them. And they say, you need to do this and iOS 19, you need
⏹️ ▶️ John to do this, but in time for iOS 20, they do stuff like in iOS 20.
⏹️ ▶️ John And in any case, by the end of 2026, so they’re hedging their bets by saying, well, we’re not just going to say iOS 20 because then Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John never rolls out iOS 20 and they just go to decimal points or something and just never get to 20. So there are
⏹️ ▶️ John year boundaries on them. But it is quite an interesting phenomenon to
⏹️ ▶️ John see a regulatory body putting in the names of in the Apple world. We’ve been so
⏹️ ▶️ John trained to say iOS 20. That’s not a thing that even exists. What are you talking about? There is no
⏹️ ▶️ John iOS 20. There is no iOS 19. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Those aren’t real products, but
⏹️ ▶️ John the EU is like, no, we all know the next iOS will be the current iOS with the number and current by one. And so we’re going to put in our
⏹️ ▶️ John requirements, you got to do this on iOS 19, which is probably pretty
⏹️ ▶️ John wrong headed. I mean, that’s why they’re putting year dates on these things to say end of 2025, end of 2026, regardless of
⏹️ ▶️ John what OS is really releases by the end of this year, you need to do x by the end of this year, you need to do y. But this
⏹️ ▶️ John is just this type of requirements and timelines are a thing that no
⏹️ ▶️ John project manager would ever put out. I’m going to lay out your next two years of features for all your
⏹️ ▶️ John OS’s with with deadlines on them. Go like even the people inside
⏹️ ▶️ John the company, you know, everything in the company is going to be doing and all the resources involved and all the like
⏹️ ▶️ John they couldn’t make a plan this far out this many years out with this specificity and this kind of accuracy.
⏹️ ▶️ John And yet here’s a regulatory body saying, I’ve just decided a bunch of your most important
⏹️ ▶️ John features for your next two years of OS releases with year deadlines. Uh, now go.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean this to me, I mean look, listeners know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I am happy to criticize Apple for their long-term poor
⏹️ ▶️ Marco strategy of inviting regulation by blatantly anti-competitive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco behavior. They have brought this on themselves a hundred percent and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that goes right to Tim Cook’s feet. By doing that, Apple was basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco overplaying its hand and inviting a hammer to come down on them. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think the EU is now making a very similar strategic error on their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco end. I think the EU is overplaying their hand
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and inviting a lot of challenges and friction
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and pushback. They even say, like, at the end there, they say about, like, you know, judicial
⏹️ ▶️ Marco interpretation, Like I think they are inviting Apple to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco break the law, sue them, and possibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even also involve some international trade war style
⏹️ ▶️ Marco diplomacy. There’s going to be a lot of pushback against this from Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, before we even get to the pushback though, let’s just imagine this hypothetical. Say Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John desperately wants to do everything on this list. Not because the EU told them to, but because Apple wants to do it.
⏹️ ▶️ John They think it’s important for the company, for Apple to do all these things. I still think Apple couldn’t do it.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know what I mean? Like say they wanted to do it. It’s the thing they want the most. Forget about AI. They don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John care about it. They want to do the things on this list according to these timelines. I’m not sure they could.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s an ambitious list of pretty big changes that involve
⏹️ ▶️ John third party interfaces to their major OSes that do really important things that have never been
⏹️ ▶️ John opened up to third parties. Let’s say Apple wanted to do this and put all of its effort in like
⏹️ ▶️ John that. That’s the that is the first and most important overreach before we get to the fact that Apple doesn’t want to do this and
⏹️ ▶️ John is going to fight them and so on and so forth. I don’t think it’s plausible given the feature sets and timelines.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, yeah, but I mean, there’s there’s a lot of problems with this. I mean, there’s but I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think what it ultimately comes down to is The problem of a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco company like Apple inviting regulation by blatant anti-competitive behavior
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that you get governments and regulators
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doing things like this, that just from a technical or realistic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco product perspective are just bad ideas or are impractical or impossible.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco See also whenever there’s a threat to end-to-end encryption and people want to build in back doors only for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the good guys. And you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John know this isn’t as bad
⏹️ ▶️ John as that these are all these are all plausible things It’s just the timelines that are associated with them
⏹️ ▶️ John are not necessarily
⏹️ ▶️ Marco plus it isn’t as bad as that however It’s you run the same risk like when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when technology When the tech business gets looked at by the government
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Typically the people in the government who are looking at it Don’t have the expertise that they really need
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to make detailed regulations like that that are that run into problems like oh Oh, that’s technically impossible.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or that’s a really bad idea for other reasons, or that would have all the different effects that you don’t understand.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So for Apple to have been so anti-competitive for so long,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is the kind of risk they were running that like, yeah, the EU is not happy to just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go after the app store. Now they’re going after vertical integration of all kinds. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s, that’s significant and that could be very damaging. And it is Apple’s fault that they started
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on this path because it was Apple’s behavior that invited it. However, this is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a bad regulation now. Like, there were parts of the original DMA I think that were pretty rough.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This, you know, extended version of it that the directors
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cut, I guess. This should have been deleted scenes. Like, this is pretty rough.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But this version of it is the EU, you know, going even further
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with bad ideas that are, I think they come from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a good-hearted place. I see what they’re going for. This
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is not a good idea and this is not a good way to go about it. And Apple will probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco retaliate hard enough
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, maybe involving, you know, US to EU diplomacy as well. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think the result of this will be, they will have, like the EU will get so much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of a challenge on this that I think the other parts of the DMA, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the alternative app stores and payment processing rules, are at risk of being challenged
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and overturned into oblivion because of this part. The EU has now pushed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco too far. They are inviting way more pushback, and that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco puts at risk the other parts that we actually would probably want to keep. So the EU is making a big error
⏹️ ▶️ John I think Apple’s about to get fined for not complying with the other parts. I think that’s what’s going to happen.
⏹️ ▶️ John So, you know, the other things that they’re supposedly doing with the alternative app stores, alternative payment things, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the rumor is that the EU is about to levy huge fines. Because they said, we’ve set up these requirements. You said
⏹️ ▶️ John you did them. We disagreed. We fought about it. And we studied it. In the end, we’ve decided, nope, you didn’t actually do it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Here’s your fine. That’s not going to help any of the negotiations. Say, oh, by the way, we are fining
⏹️ ▶️ John you for X billion dollars. But also, let’s just talk about these things. I disagree that
⏹️ ▶️ John these are bad ideas. I think most of these ideas are good, but you can’t just ask
⏹️ ▶️ John for all of them all at once and put timelines on all of them and expect you’re gonna get anything. Like that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not a winning formula. Like Apple opening up its platform to third-party competition. That’s the whole point. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s not enough competition in this market. Only Apple can make a watch that works with the iPhone. The EU thinks it’s not fair.
⏹️ ▶️ John Not because no one can ever make a phone platform that only works with its own watch. Sure, feel free. But once you reach a
⏹️ ▶️ John certain size and become a quote unquote gatekeeper, Like this is the determination that the EU has made. Every time Gruber writes about
⏹️ ▶️ John this, this idea cannot penetrate into a place in his mind where he will agree
⏹️ ▶️ John with it. But he’ll say like, what do you say? They’re gonna making a bunch of rules that Apple has to follow, but
⏹️ ▶️ John its competitors don’t. Yes, that’s exactly what they’re doing. The whole point is
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco there are rules
⏹️ ▶️ John that Apple has to follow and other people don’t. And it’s like, it’s always brought out as like the hypocrisy
⏹️ ▶️ John of this. Like that is literally the basis of their decisions. There are gatekeepers and
⏹️ ▶️ John those people. And those companies have different rules because of whatever. Now you can disagree and say, okay,
⏹️ ▶️ John well I don’t agree that they should be classified as gatekeeper, I don’t agree that, whatever. But the whole point is, that’s the premise
⏹️ ▶️ John of these regulations. It’s not like, can you believe they made rules that only Apple and Google and
⏹️ ▶️ John Meta have to follow? Yeah, I can believe it because we’ve known from day one, they’re like, we think these companies require special
⏹️ ▶️ John regulations that other people don’t. So you could be on board with that or not. But anyway, like the opening up
⏹️ ▶️ John of things that only Apple has been allowed to do to third parties, I’m generally in support
⏹️ ▶️ John of that, but as we all know, every time Apple has done that, it is difficult,
⏹️ ▶️ John time consuming, and this is when Apple wants to do it. When Apple decides,
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ve had this internally for years, and now we’re gonna open up to third parties. It is always painful
⏹️ ▶️ John and difficult. Things like this are, which is why you have to be judicious about them. You can’t say like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know what? Every single thing on the iOS platform needs to be open to third parties. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not technically sensible. All right, so let’s come up with a short list and let’s prioritize
⏹️ ▶️ John them. A prioritized list wouldn’t be this long, first of all, and it would be sorted and not unordered. And second
⏹️ ▶️ John of all, you can’t just put out your wishlist and say, and here’s when we want all of them.
⏹️ ▶️ John That is not going to happen. Like again, if Apple wanted to do it, they couldn’t,
⏹️ ▶️ John and they don’t want to do it, believe
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco me, right? They really don’t.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s no way. So regulation, like that’s the problem with regulations. If
⏹️ ▶️ John you let it go so far that you have a totally closed ecosystem, you’ve got to open it up slowly. Like what they were doing before
⏹️ ▶️ John is like, look, the app store, that’s a business thing. This thing we can see Apple’s kind of, uh,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, chose to do a huge amount of implementation work to make it as difficult as possible, which is why they’re about
⏹️ ▶️ John to be sued for billions of dollars, whatever. Right. But like, you can see that changing in the timelines they had for the DMA
⏹️ ▶️ John seemed to be reasonable-ish. They were reasonable enough that Apple had enough time to make all these frameworks and all this stuff that makes
⏹️ ▶️ John it so much harder for third parties to do everything right. But, but this, this is just, this is just a laundry. Like you
⏹️ ▶️ John can imagine this on like a whiteboard. Like again, if Apple wanted to do this, like a top 100 day of like, this is our 10
⏹️ ▶️ John year plan for our platforms because we think we need to open it up and we’re going to open it. But like, you can’t just
⏹️ ▶️ John ask for it all at once and put it on to your timeline. So I don’t know how that’s going to work out, because like
⏹️ ▶️ John the judicial scrutiny and blah, blah, blah, it’s all happening within the EU. Like there’s no guarantee any of that
⏹️ ▶️ John will go Apple’s way. So let’s say they decide, you know what, this is what we’re going to do. And Apple challenged
⏹️ ▶️ John it. But upon review, we’ve said, you know what, actually, we’re right. and you’re wrong, Apple, this is what you have to do.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can make laws asking for Apple to make a rocket go to the moon. Doesn’t mean it’s gonna happen. So what
⏹️ ▶️ John happens when this becomes, if this becomes the law of the land and these deadlines start rolling around?
⏹️ ▶️ John Of course, Apple’s gonna be like, well, we haven’t had time to do it and it’s blah, blah, blah. But in this case, I know it’s hard to believe them,
⏹️ ▶️ John they won’t be lying. Like you can’t, this is too much work in too little time. It’s like, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John they have all the money in the world. Like you can’t make new engineers pop out. Like you can’t hire them fast
⏹️ ▶️ John enough to do this. Right. And again, this would be assuming that they really wanted to, which they absolutely don’t. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I think I like Marco. I think the EU’s heart is in the right place, but I think they have overreached this,
⏹️ ▶️ John not because they’re like doing something that’s not in their power, but because they’re asking for
⏹️ ▶️ John essentially the impossible timeline wise, the impossible. It is technically possible to do all of
⏹️ ▶️ John this, but it’s going to take time. And it’s best not to rush Apple, because if
⏹️ ▶️ John they rush it, You get lousy miracles as they say Casey anybody nothing.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a princess bride man, it’s a really good movie. Maybe we should do that for movie club I haven’t seen that
⏹️ ▶️ John in 30 years and Marco hasn’t seen it at all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I did see it 30 years ago But you know what the problem with that movie is that I saw it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco With my high school friends who had all seen it a thousand times before I did and so the whole
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time they were all like repeating the lines or like saying them with the characters and laughing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and like that’s a terrible way to experience a movie for the first time when you are the one person in the room who hasn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seen it. Everyone else has seen it a thousand times and you’re hearing your friends badly imitate the lines instead of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hearing the actors deliver them. Like that’s,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sorry guys, that was a bad way to experience that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John movie. Anyway, it was a good
⏹️ ▶️ John movie and there’s a line about don’t rush a miracle man, you get pretty miracles. Yeah, so don’t rush it, like you can’t,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can’t hurry love. Casey, anybody? You
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just have to wait.
⏹️ ▶️ John Hey, not a movie, he gets it, it’s music.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I don’t know how this is going to resolve itself. Like if I were the EU,
⏹️ ▶️ John I would pick like the one or two most important ones of these and put extremely generous timelines on them.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because honestly, like the app store was kind of the big one in terms of competitiveness on the platform and the thing
⏹️ ▶️ John they control. And every other aspect of this, like take your time, do it right,
⏹️ ▶️ John let them, you know, like, first of all, get Apple to comply with the one thing you did already do, which they still haven’t done. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John he was seemingly about to declare that the previous regulations they had after years of trying
⏹️ ▶️ John out, Apple has not complied with them. So maybe don’t get ahead of yourself by taking
⏹️ ▶️ John a bunch of new ones out. And then yeah, don’t make it just like a giant wishlist of like, we wish all this would happen
⏹️ ▶️ John and we wish it would all happen within one or two years. Oh, that’s great, but I don’t see that happening. So this
⏹️ ▶️ John is just, it’s like a slow motion train wreck. We see it coming. We’d like, this is not gonna end well for
⏹️ ▶️ John anybody. And as Marco said, it’s Apple’s fault for inviting all this regulation.
⏹️ ▶️ John And from my perspective, it’s the EU’s fault for asking for unrealistic things.
⏹️ ▶️ John Not because they are the wrong things to ask for or because they can’t be done, but because you will find more success
⏹️ ▶️ John if you have some alignment between your desires and what is practically possible. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think the EU cares that much what’s practically
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re gonna care when there’s no compliance. We put in these regulations and you didn’t do it. And Apple’s gonna say, well, we couldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John do it because there wasn’t enough time that you’s going to be like, Oh, that’s not true. You’ve got all this money. And it’s like, yeah, I’m, I’m here
⏹️ ▶️ John to defend Apple to say, even if Apple wanted to do this, I don’t think they could.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But again, I don’t think the EU views that as a bug. I think that’s a feature. So then they get paid
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re not just trying to extort Apple. That’s not there. That’s not,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that is what it, that is kind of the implication of what I was saying. That’s not what I was trying to say. My point is just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I don’t think that you gives a crap whether or not Apple can make this happen in those timelines.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it’s more like what Marco said. They’re just not equipped to know
⏹️ ▶️ John what is and isn’t possible. They don’t have the technical knowledge base
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey and understanding.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, that is very true. Right? And so they think this all seems reasonable for the biggest company in the world.
⏹️ ▶️ John Not understanding that it’s not like that these things themselves are, you know, okay, it’s technically
⏹️ ▶️ John impossible, they can’t do it. It’s that opening up any major component, even when Apple really wants
⏹️ ▶️ John to do it, is difficult because you’re going from a thing that you were just using internally, you could change however you wanted,
⏹️ ▶️ John to an API that you have to support forever. And like I said, when Apple wants to do that, they have difficulty,
⏹️ ▶️ John like third-party keyboards. We didn’t think they would ever do it. How buggy were third-party keyboards
⏹️ ▶️ John for like the first two years? That’s a thing they wanted to do that no one forced them to do, that is
⏹️ ▶️ John very small compared to like allowing airdrop alternatives or like allowing other watches
⏹️ ▶️ John to go. Like it is so narrowly focused, third party software keyboards.
⏹️ ▶️ John They, Apple, the large, very successful company had difficulty rolling that
⏹️ ▶️ John out in a way that wasn’t a bug fest. And some would argue today that there are still problems with that system. And that is so much smaller
⏹️ ▶️ John than everything that’s being asked about here. And you know, some of these things touch on things that are
⏹️ ▶️ John equally or even more sensitive to security in terms of like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John wireless communications and communications with third party devices and
⏹️ ▶️ John background execution, and like there’s all sorts of things here that to open them up
⏹️ ▶️ John to third parties at all in a way that is not filled with bugs and damaging to
⏹️ ▶️ John users and to everybody involved is difficult. And let’s
⏹️ ▶️ John be, you know, another thing that you might not realize is this is not Apple’s strength. Apple is
⏹️ ▶️ John good at certain things. Opening up formerly private APIs to third-party access has
⏹️ ▶️ John historically not been a thing that Apple is particularly good at again, even when they want to do it. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not the use fault. I get it. But like they, if you just erased all the dates on these
⏹️ ▶️ John and had it as like a staggered timeline, this is going to be the next decades worth of work or whatever Apple would hate
⏹️ ▶️ John it just as much. But at least I’d feel like, all right, there’s a chance that a
⏹️ ▶️ John that an Apple that is acting in good faith could comply with this. And I look at this and
⏹️ ▶️ John I think an Apple acting could good faith is set up for failure and believe me, Apple will not be acting in good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Not even close. And again, and I think this part too, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can look at all, like, again, I think the EU’s strategy here is wrong because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they are risking the win on the App Store payment stuff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do a lot of other stuff that I think is much more challengeable. And they’re coming from a weaker position on
⏹️ ▶️ John it. I don’t think they’ve got that win yet. They’re risking what win? They don’t have that win yet. They’re about to fine them for
⏹️ ▶️ John not getting that win. Well, they have partial
⏹️ ▶️ Marco compliance on those.
⏹️ ▶️ John Something did happen, but it’s unsatisfying to most involved.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, but I think what’s going to happen is they’re going to get a much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco larger pushback with this, and we are going to lose the payment thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I don’t see how we could lose it if it’s still the law of the land. I mean, as we talked about with the UK thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John which, by the way, is still totally up in the air, and we have no idea what’s going on because secret courts or whatever, but anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John um, it’s just, it’s just, it seems like it’s running headlong to Apple pulls out of the EU because
⏹️ ▶️ John if the EU insists that these are the laws that Apple does not comply with them, either because they
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t, or they at least claim they can’t, then we’re at an impasse there. Apple’s not going to endure
⏹️ ▶️ John like fines equal to some huge percentage of its global revenue or whatever. And so
⏹️ ▶️ John how does this resolve this resolves by Apple? No longer you’re selling products in the EU. Like that’s the doomsday scenario for everyone involved.
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple doesn’t want that, the EU shouldn’t want that, and yet both of them seem to be headed directly for that
⏹️ ▶️ John through their actions during this conflict.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I agree with that very much, but I think what I keep coming back to is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think the EU’s request, the timeline, yeah, the timeline is a bit absurd, and I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think Marco’s probably right that that probably comes from ignorance because every politician is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ignorant about this stuff, American ones, European ones, it doesn’t matter, Um, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I, I feel like the EU today
⏹️ ▶️ Casey feels like they’re there. They’re in the driver’s seat. And what is Apple really going to do?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey They’re never going to pull out of the EU. I actually think they would, but from the EU’s perspective, they’re never going to pull out
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the EU and we’re fighting for our citizens, which is what that organization is literally
⏹️ ▶️ Casey supposed to do. They’re fighting for their citizens. And I mean, I don’t, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know that these are the exact things that exact things that I would hang my hat on personally, but I don’t think they’re unreasonable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey requests. And I feel like they’re from the EU’s perspective,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they’re doing everything they’re supposed to do. And I kind of agree with them. Um, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, what is, is Apple really going to pull out of the EU? Well, I don’t know. I mean, I think they might, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is that, is that a bad thing from the, from these politicians perspective? Look, we chased the,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the big, scary shark out of our waters. And that’s a win for us, isn’t it?
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I mean, they’re constituents, though. Like, if you look at this list, you can squint and see, there was some European
⏹️ ▶️ John constituent that said, we are not able to integrate with Apple’s phone platform because they don’t allow third parties to
⏹️ ▶️ John do X. Every single one of these looks like they’re, you can just probably pick a bunch of companies
⏹️ ▶️ John and say, these companies wanted to do this but couldn’t. That’s what they all look like. And that’s as they should, because that’s exactly what
⏹️ ▶️ John people are complaining about. These platforms control too much about our technical lives.
⏹️ ▶️ John And we would like to make innovative things, but we can’t because the platform owner says no.
⏹️ ▶️ John So let’s just go down the list. You wanna make a watch, but you can’t do it because Apple’s watch is gonna do stuff you just can’t.
⏹️ ▶️ John You wanna do something with payments, but you can’t because Apple controls the NFC chip. You wanna make AirPods that
⏹️ ▶️ John are, you know, earphones that work like the AirPods do, but you can’t because Apple like, it just goes on and on. Now,
⏹️ ▶️ John are these all European companies? I don’t know, but either way, that’s the constituency. So what you were saying, Casey, is like, okay,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, we chased this big scary company out of Europe, isn’t that great? And the companies that were complaining
⏹️ ▶️ John that they couldn’t make a watch for the phone or ear pods for the phone, we say, no, that’s not what we wanted. We wanna be able
⏹️ ▶️ John to make ear pods for the phone
⏹️ ▶️ John sell them to all the people who have money who buy iPhones. So I think, I mean, certainly the citizens
⏹️ ▶️ John of the EU probably don’t want Apple to pull out. And I think all the companies that are lobbying the
⏹️ ▶️ John European commission to say, we can’t integrate with Apple’s platforms because of unfair practices. They don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John want Apple to leave either because Apple is the place where they think they can make money on that platform. They just want it to be opened
⏹️ ▶️ John up. So I really do think that the European commission’s goal is and should
⏹️ ▶️ John be to try to make the platform more open for companies to be able to
⏹️ ▶️ John sell into it and make it make an ecosystem that benefits more than just Apple. And so I really think it is
⏹️ ▶️ John a failure mode for, for everybody involved if it just, it turns out like, no, we can’t come
⏹️ ▶️ John to agreement. You refuse to do it with you. We, we, we give you fines and you refuse to pay them
⏹️ ▶️ John or you pay the fines, but they’re not big enough. So we keep ramping them up. Like it just comes, It’s a
⏹️ ▶️ John rising crescendo of corporate argument until eventually it just blows up and everybody
⏹️ ▶️ John leaves. And that’s a failure on the EC side. They should be trying to avoid
⏹️ ▶️ John that. And I look at this list, and I think you are headed directly for that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, they’re playing the world’s most expensive game of chicken. I mean, that’s really what they’re doing. And do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they know they’re doing that? That’s the question.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or do they think what they’re asking for is reasonable?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think the European Commission 100% believes that what they’re asking for is reasonable.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I think that the loudest members
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of their constituents would agree. But I also agree with what you said a few minutes ago, John,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that the rank and file European Union citizen probably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey does not care that much. And this is where all the European nerds are going to write me and be like, oh, you’re totally
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wrong. I totally care. And I live in the EU. You’re a nerd. I’m talking about regular people. I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey regular people do give two craps that they have to use an Apple watch with an Apple iPhone. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really don’t think that regular people do. They don’t give a crap here. They don’t give a crap there. They don’t give a crap
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I mean, that’s, that’s when someone makes a closed market where there’s no room for competition, of course, people aren’t going to
⏹️ ▶️ John miss what they’ve never known was possible. Like that’s kind of like, but, but yeah, like in general, people
⏹️ ▶️ John still want to be able to buy Apple products. Like, that’s what it comes down to. Like, it would be weird if you couldn’t get an iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John the European citizens would see that as a bad thing. I think, you know, like you were saying, like the
⏹️ ▶️ John company that wants to make, I keep saying AirPods, what the hell is the generic name for them earbuds,
⏹️ ▶️ John the company that wants to make earbuds to compete with the AirPods, but they basically can’t because Apple keeps
⏹️ ▶️ John all the private API’s that allow that cool switching to happen or whatever, that company really
⏹️ ▶️ John wants this to open up. And if that does open up and citizens get access
⏹️ ▶️ John to less expensive earbuds or earbuds that have different features in apples, and then you take it away
⏹️ ▶️ John from they’d be mad. But right now they just don’t know what they’re missing. So gauging consumer consent is just like
⏹️ ▶️ John consumers may be vaguely aware and they think this is probably the right thing to do, but they’d be mad if the, if the products went away,
⏹️ ▶️ John but the companies are like, we, we want this to be opened up. We think we should be able
⏹️ ▶️ John to like, basically more than just Apple should be benefiting from this ecosystem. We think
⏹️ ▶️ John we, more companies can benefit from this if the platform was more open.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that’s what that’s what the ECU I feel like is trying to do.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. And then a little bit more EU stuff because apparently we haven’t ticked off the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey citizens of the EU enough yet. Reading from Mac Rumors, the European Commission’s decisions wrap us,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m sorry, this is Apple’s response to the new EU interoperability rules.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The European Commission’s decisions wrap us in red tape, slowing down Apple’s ability to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey innovate for users in Europe and forcing us to away our new features for free to companies who don’t have to play by
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the same rules. It’s bad for our products and for our European users. We will continue
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to work with the European Commission to help them understand our concerns on behalf of our users.” I think what this is saying
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in a roundabout way is that the European Commission really is opposed to vertical integration.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I don’t think that’s not necessarily an unreasonable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey read of the situation. And I’m not here right this second to argue whether or not vertical
⏹️ ▶️ Casey integration is good or bad, but that is kind of what the EC is
⏹️ ▶️ John easy. It’s not against the vertical integration. They’re against vertical integration at a, at the scale
⏹️ ▶️ John where it forecloses the potential for healthy competition in a market. There’s always that qualifier.
⏹️ ▶️ John Again, if you want to, if you want to make a vertically integrated platform or it’s like everything all works together
⏹️ ▶️ John with all your products and the only work with your products, that’s fine until you become a dominant player
⏹️ ▶️ John in the market, according to the use definition, which again, I have quibbles with their definition of what constitutes
⏹️ ▶️ John that, but I think the duopoly in the mobile phone space is it’s not the same as a monopoly, as we’ve discussed
⏹️ ▶️ John at length in the past years. But look, it’s Android and Apple, and that’s not enough. And
⏹️ ▶️ John so that’s what they’re foreclosing. And is Apple coming? I might I might have been a Blaine Gruber for something
⏹️ ▶️ John in Apple’s own statements, you know, to give away our new features for companies that don’t have to play by the same rules. Yes, those
⏹️ ▶️ John companies don’t have to play by the same rules. They will. Apple will argue the premise further because Apple disagrees with the premise. They
⏹️ ▶️ John said, we shouldn’t be a subject to different rules and other people. We’re not, we’re not any different from
⏹️ ▶️ John them. And it’s like, Oh, you’re one of only two mobile phone platforms in the whole world that matters, but okay. I,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, that’s your argument, but, uh, I think they’re arguing at another level here. So yes, Apple doesn’t want to do this.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re being wrapped in red tape. They’re angry about it. They will fight it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then finally, the EU confirms that Apple can indeed make a portless iPhone without
⏹️ ▶️ Casey USB-C, reading from a 9-5 Mac. European Commission Press Officer Federico Miccoli
⏹️ ▶️ Casey writes, since such radio equipment cannot be recharged via wired charging, it does not need to incorporate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the harmonized or wired charging solution.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I don’t know why people are debating that. I think it was because like the there was rumors that the iPhone slim or iPhone air was
⏹️ ▶️ John originally conceived as a portless phone. They’re like, oh, but they felt like they couldn’t do that because of the EC. That
⏹️ ▶️ John never made any sense to me. And I’m glad to see the EC say no,
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t have a port, like it’s fine, right? You If you wanna make a portless phone, go for it. You don’t have to,
⏹️ ▶️ John the EU doesn’t say you must put a USB-C port in every single device in the world. They’re saying if you do have a port
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s for charging, it better be, and it’s on a phone, it better be USB-C. So I don’t know if there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John any foundation to those rumors other than like, Apple was gonna do X, but instead did Y. Is that
⏹️ ▶️ John true? Is that not the rumors of a portless phone have been around forever? Probably Apple will get into around to
⏹️ ▶️ John it eventually, but not this generation. Anyway, the EC says, that’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. All right, thank you to our sponsor this week, Delete.me, and thanks to our members who
⏹️ ▶️ Marco support us directly. You can join us at atp.fm slash join. One of the many perks of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco membership is ATP Overtime. So in addition to the special we talked about earlier, overtime
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is our weekly bonus topic. So every week, every episode, there is usually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco between 15 and 30 minutes of the show that if you’re not a member, you’re not hearing because we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are talking about bonus topics. So that’s called overtime. This week on Overtime, our bonus topic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is going to be revisiting some developments in solid state cooling.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is what it sounds like. It’s solid state fan alternatives that can move air
⏹️ ▶️ Marco without being fans. So hear that and more in Overtime and to join atv.fm
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slash join. Thank you so much and we’ll talk to you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey accidental, oh it was accidental
⏹️ ▶️ John John didn’t do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental And you can find the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco notes at atp.fm And if you’re into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mastodon, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, Auntie
⏹️ ▶️ John S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John accidental, they didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean to Accidental, check podcast so long
A glancing blow
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Okay, so a year and a half ago, when I don’t even know what it was, when I released CallSheet, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey been a little while now, we spent a lot of time in the show talking about pricing. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was a little bit cagey about it, if I recall correctly, but that was because I didn’t want to call
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a whole lot of attention to it. But in the end of the day, the reality of the situation was that the Movie Database,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is at themoviedb.org, they offered their API
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for free. And then if you were a commercial user, you needed to let
⏹️ ▶️ Casey them know and work out some sort of deal. And I started using
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it for free, you know, before the app was released. And then when I was about to release it, I said to them, Hey, what’s the story? You know, I want to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey make this real. Can I get it or can I have a key or whatever? And they basically said, don’t worry about it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, okay. So I didn’t worry about it. And up until
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this week, the API was free for me to use. But having seen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what happened with Reddit and with Twitter and several other sites over
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the years, I knew that that wasn’t going to be the case forever. And because of that, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey part, but really a large part of the reason why I decided to make CallSheet a subscription app.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You get 20 searches for free. After that, you have to pay me. And I stood by that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I thought it was the right answer at the time. I certainly thought it was the right answer up until I got an email from
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the movie database saying, hey, we’ve just launched our official super-de-duper commercial API.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, you’re going to have to pay now. And so, now, as of earlier this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey week, happy birthday to me. It was really last week, I guess. Happy birthday to me. It was my birthday week. And the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey movie database said, it will be $150 a month for you to continue to use
⏹️ ▶️ Casey our API. And my first reaction to that was, holy God, are you serious?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Because when I think of adding a new bill to my household at $150 a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey month, that’s a lot of freaking money. But it didn’t take me long to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey change my perspective and think of it not as a bill to the household, but really a bill
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the business, which is what it actually is. And so it is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not an insignificant amount of money, but it is, thankfully, and I’m very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thankful for it, quite a bit less than I think it could have been. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ultimately, and I think Marco might have said, maybe it was John when we were talking about this privately in Slack,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it was at least once a week, sometimes several times a week that I would wake up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wondering, is this the day that I get the email I just ended up getting? Is this the day that they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey say, oh, you need to pay us now and it’s $3,000 a week or something like that? And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thankfully, that day came, but it was not $3,000 a week. It was $150 a month.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so the way the Movie Database API
⏹️ ▶️ Casey system works is that for non-commercial use, you can use it for free. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey guess maybe not in unlimited fashion, but there’s no stated limits as far as I’m aware.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And then there’s the commercial level, which is what I’m at now, which again is $150 a month.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If you’re using the Movie Database in a commercial manner, do less than $1 million in revenue per
⏹️ ▶️ Casey year and have less than 2 million users. I am saddened to report that I both make less than a million
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dollars in revenue per year and have fewer than two million users of CallSheet. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you never know. You never know what will happen.
⏹️ ▶️ John How would you know how many users you have? Is that available somewhere?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have it through my very basic analytics, but I think it is available
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on App Store Connect. I almost never look
⏹️ ▶️ John at it. How would App Store Connect even quantify that? Apple IDs, I guess? Discounting Apple accounts? Sorry.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They have a concept of opt-in versus opt-out stats,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I don’t know if your total number of users is requiring opt-in or not. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco any of their stats, that’s like when you go through the iOS setup process and it’s like share information with developers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or don’t share. Many of the Apps WorkConnect stats, for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people who don’t select share with developers, they’re just not included. And so it’s hard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to, like a lot of the stats are not that useful because you don’t know what percentage
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of people opted in versus
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John opted out. Yeah, because
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple doesn’t tell you that really. And the thing is, even if everybody opted in, mapping from
⏹️ ▶️ John users to Apple accounts is not one-to-one. And I’m not even sure which direction it would go in, because you could
⏹️ ▶️ John have seven people using the same application on the same Mac signed into a single
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple ID. For example, my wife uses apps that were downloaded using my Apple ID for the App
⏹️ ▶️ John Store, but she’s a separate person than me. Or you could have the reverse, where there’s like
⏹️ ▶️ John one person with seven Apple IDs. So I think it may actually be difficult to comply with that particular
⏹️ ▶️ John thing. But at any rate, if you can’t audit it, neither can TMDB. And I think
⏹️ ▶️ John if you ended up having more than two million users, that’s a problem you would love to have.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes, I would. And then finally, they have an enterprise level with the pricing of contact sales.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If your business does more than $1 million in revenue per year or has more than 2 million users, Enterprise is right
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for you. Contact sales for more information and pricing options for this plan.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that third plan is what you should have been staying up at night worrying about because like, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know the other shoe was gonna drop at some point. Like you’re not gonna have free API forever and ever unless the company
⏹️ ▶️ John goes out of business or something. So eventually they’re gonna have to find a way to monetize this and you hope what they don’t do is okay, now
⏹️ ▶️ John you can use it for free and for non-commercial use. Otherwise contact us because it’s time for an enterprise license and they
⏹️ ▶️ John started $50,000 a month. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you never want to see contact us. Like as an independent person, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco never want it. That’s always bad news for you.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, because companies can decide, look, it’s not worth our time to do business with small fish. We
⏹️ ▶️ John just want to do business with people who can afford to pay us $100,000 every month or something. And that is a
⏹️ ▶️ John reasonable business plan. And your problem was uncertainty. Your problem was not so much like, oh, they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John going to charge me too much money. The problem is I don’t know how much they’re going to, just hanging over your head, like, what is it going to be?
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, they’re going to come for the money eventually. And I hope what they decide is that their business plan
⏹️ ▶️ John includes me. And when I saw your, you know, you were posting a Slack and this happened, I was like, oh, this is great. This
⏹️ ▶️ John is the best thing that could have happened to you because the uncertainty is gone because now you’re not wondering what they’re gonna charge
⏹️ ▶️ John you, they can tell you. And their business plan shows they do want customers like you. That this is
⏹️ ▶️ John in your price range for an app of your size. And yes, it’s worse than paying $0,
⏹️ ▶️ John but the uncertainty, like they’re just knowing that this is now just a cost that’s part of your business. Assuming they don’t raise
⏹️ ▶️ John the rates 400% per year or something, if they instead just raise them slowly over time, now
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, now you can actually run your business with knowledge and say, here are my costs, you know, here, here are my expenses,
⏹️ ▶️ John here’s my income, and make decisions based on that, as opposed to just wondering, like, this just as part of the
⏹️ ▶️ John spreadsheet, but just an empty spot that is just faded cloud that could be negative $100,000 per month, or you know, negative 150.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I think you had a good result here. No, I definitely did.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, you were you were waiting to see the other shoe drop someday. And they were just like this axe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco hanging over your entire app that’s like, if this axe falls the wrong way, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dead. This app is dead. So now the axe fell in a really low damage,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco normal, affordable way. So now I think if I were in your shoes, I would be breathing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a sigh of relief. Like, oh, okay, this I can do. And look, they can always, in the future, they can always change their plans
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they want to. You know, there’s no guarantee they’re going to keep it this way forever, but they’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably keep it like this. This is probably what you’re going to have for the lifetime of the app and it’ll be fine.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. Again, unless they go out of business, which would be worse. Like you wouldn’t want them to keep going with free thing and never figuring out a business
⏹️ ▶️ John plan and then just going out of business because your app doesn’t work without their API.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. Yeah. No, you’re exactly right. And that’s the thing is that, like I said, my initial reaction was, are you kidding me?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And $150 a month, that’s an incredible amount of money. But that’s because I was thinking of it in terms of like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, my cell phone bill or something like that. I
⏹️ ▶️ John like how much you pay for Netflix. I wouldn’t pay $150 a month for Netflix.
⏹️ ▶️ John business expense, it is reasonable.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that’s the thing is it took me, you know, a half an hour to an hour to really adjust my thinking on this and,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, take a different lens to it, if you will, and realize ultimately it’s not money
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I am in love with the idea of spending, but if it keeps the site operating so it doesn’t, you know, fold,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as you’ve said, and if it keeps them interested in having me around,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey then this is, in the end of the day, a win. It’s a win-win. just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at the first reaction was, whop! And then after that, I realized, no, this is actually pretty good
⏹️ ▶️ John hope they’re not paying attention to Apple and they come for you and ask for a share of your revenue. The Oracle
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right. But no, I’m tentatively very excited about this. And then, you know, in the email
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that that was sent, the email that was sent to me, you know, I think the team there was like five people or something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like that. And in the email was sent by, I think the founder, if I’m not mistaken. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the first email I wrote back was, are you freaking kidding me? But I didn’t send it. And then the actual email I sent was,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know what, in the end of the day, I’m happy to do what I can to support the movie database. And their API is very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey good. There’s a few things that I don’t love about it, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s well designed. It works
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really well. It’s really, really fast. I can’t imagine it’s super expensive for them to run.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I certainly hope not. So this is, you know, all of us are working together, kind of holding
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hands and working together to keep all of our independent and individual businesses alive.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I think that’s really the most you can hope for. So.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Well, and the thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is like, you know, it doesn’t really matter how much their API costs them to run. What matters is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their business costs them something to run and you are getting a lot of value
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from their business. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, what you’re paying for with 150 bucks a month, you’re not paying for like the additional
⏹️ ▶️ Marco web request traffic. Like you’re not paying for the resources used by your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco API usage. You are paying for the value of their service. That’s what you’re paying for.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And given that your entire business depends on that service, I think that’s a very good price
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. You could clip that segment out that Marco just said and try to insert it into our future conversations about copyright
⏹️ ▶️ John and open AI. Yeah. And LLM scraping the entire web and my earlier
⏹️ ▶️ John comments that their products are absolutely worthless without all the data they scrape. But once the data gets above a certain volume, apparently
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s free. Anyway, different conversation. It’s very easy.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, yeah. But yeah, so that’s, that’s why the app is subscription. That’s why I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey didn’t want to do well, I mean, we could get into this argument, which I’m not interested to be honest. But this is why I didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey want to do a lifetime purchase. Because, you know, what if my costs go up forever? What if a ton of people
⏹️ ▶️ Casey did a lifetime purchase, you know, that those are all things I didn’t particularly want to mess with. And honestly, the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey people who want lifetime purchase, they wouldn’t have been happy with the amount I would have charged anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So ultimately, I’m feeling pretty happy about the way I priced the app. Maybe,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey actually, if anything, it might’ve been too low, but that’s neither here nor there. But my point is that I am happy that I made it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a subscription app, and I’m happy that I stuck with that. And ultimately, I’m happy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that this axe, as you said, Marco, that was hanging over my head, it has fallen and it’s not fallen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on my neck. So that’s the very good news.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You just lost maybe your pinky toe or something.