105: Do You Want to Sell Sugar Phones for the Rest of Your Life?

20 Feb 2015

A car show we accidentally created while trying to do a tech podcast.

Episode Description:

Follow-up:
- Where does Apple use iCloud Core Data Sync?
  - Trailers App?
  - Keyboard Shortcuts?
- React in the objc.io interview with Andy Matuschak
Apple making a car?
Post-show:
- What shape would an Apple car take?
- Arguments about what cars are pretty

Transcript start

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Marco, you’re totally right. Marco, you’re totally right. Marco, you’re totally right.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Where does Apple use Core Data, John?

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I don’t know. There’s question marks after all those bullet points in the thing. Someone,

⏹️ ▶️ ^{John, Marco} a bunch

⏹️ ▶️ ^John of

⏹️ ▶️ ^{John, Marco} people

⏹️ ▶️ ^John emailed us and told us, and I couldn’t find those emails. So I think this is

⏹️ ▶️ ^John a follow-up from last week when I think Marco was saying that he didn’t know where Apple

⏹️ ▶️ ^John used Core Data, and this was in response

⏹️ ▶️ ^{John, Marco} to that.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Core Data Sync, in particular, the iCloud Core Data Sync that was such a disaster.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Yes, not just plain old core data. And this is in response to the idea that Apple,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John which API is this Apple dog food? And by the way, we just had someone email us and say, what does dog food mean? I

⏹️ ▶️ ^John sent him the Wikipedia link. But it just means using your own stuff. Like if you’re making an API in this specific

⏹️ ▶️ ^John case and you don’t use that API yourself, chances are it won’t be that great because you won’t know the pain of using it. You just be like,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John we made this API for you. Go use it. But we don’t know what it’s like because we don’t have to use it. Anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the suggestions that I think people sent us for Apple applications that use Core Data iCloud syncing

⏹️ ▶️ ^John are the Trailers app on iOS and syncing for keyboard shortcuts between Mac and iOS.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Was that the only ones we got sent?

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey That’s the only ones I saw, yes.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Yeah. And what’s funny… So the Trailers app… You know, fine. How

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco much data is that actually syncing between devices? And yeah, that’s… Okay, fine.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Keyboard shortcuts sync. I’ve actually heard many people complaining that shortcuts are not syncing

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco properly. So if that is using core data iCloud syncing, that

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco is really not a good recommendation for it.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Yeah, I mean, if it’s if it’s just too obscure apps to that kind of, you know, these exceptions that prove the rule that this is not something that

⏹️ ▶️ ^John underlies like their major apps, unlike, for example, Cloud Kit, which they’re building major applications, like photos and

⏹️ ▶️ ^John everything on top of where it’s like, if that doesn’t work, people are going to notice whereas if the trailers app or even keyboard

⏹️ ▶️ ^John shortcut sync doesn’t work, maybe some Some would be annoyed, but it’s not like it’s destroying their family photos.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Yeah. When I was, when was it? It was when iOS 8

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey was in beta, I believe. And I don’t even think that I had

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey upgraded any of my devices to the beta at this point. But my keyboard

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey shortcut sync was completely borked until I had everything on

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey iOS 8 and Yosemite. And it was infuriating, because I know if you’ve if you notice this about me gentlemen

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey but I tend to use emoji occasionally and I have shortcuts for most of my frequently used emoji

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey and I felt absolutely crippled without them. It was a dark dark time.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey I’m so sorry. Me too. Anyway all right so we

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey talked in episode 102 we talked in episode 102 about

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey an interview with Andy Matusak that was in Objective CIO And Hendrik

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey wrote in and said, man, we should really talk about it. So I guess we didn’t really give it enough airtime. And I think one

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey of, one of you guys, I guess, John had written a few things that we should probably

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey also bring up from that interview.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John It’s just one thing. And maybe we did talk about, I vaguely remember talking about the thing, but I don’t remember this paragraph

⏹️ ▶️ ^John with the highlighted bit. He’s talking about react. Uh, but then Andy used to work for Apple.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Uh, so he talks about what it was like when he was Apple at Apple. He was there. He says, one of the complaints I have about

⏹️ ▶️ ^John my time at Apple is that because the culture doesn’t value learning, nobody reads, nobody knows what’s going

⏹️ ▶️ ^John on in the broader community. People didn’t know about react at all. And this is

⏹️ ▶️ ^John a talk discussing react and that reading that doesn’t make me feel good because then it’s like

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the bad ideas I have about any big company. The idea that Apple’s filled with all these super smart

⏹️ ▶️ ^John people making amazing products, but they’re that they’re that it’s sort of insular, that they’re not

⏹️ ▶️ ^John like they’re interested in what they’re doing, but not so much interested in what’s going on elsewhere. I don’t know. Like, this is just one person’s,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John uh, complaint about, you know, obviously one person doesn’t work in the whole company. They work in a small part of the company. And there’s,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John there’s obviously evidence that of places where this is not the case. I would hold up swift as an example.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John It’s clear that the design of swift is heavily influenced by other languages, all of which are, you know, being

⏹️ ▶️ ^John developed outside of Apple. So it’s obviously not as completely, you know, inward

⏹️ ▶️ ^John looking and insular as a, complaint makes it sound, but the idea that that could exist at all inside

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Apple is kind of disappointing to me.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Yeah, and you know, this is a fairly credible and relevant statement because, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Andy Matuszak was on UIKit in, I don’t know exactly what capacity, but I think a pretty

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco high one. So he was like right where the discussion of React would be most relevant

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco in UIKit. Like, that’s exactly where this is important. He was there and and he is,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco as far as I’m aware, pretty well respected. So I wouldn’t take this comment lightly.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco In fact, when I first read this, I was really surprised

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco that it didn’t get more attention because to me it’s kind of a bombshell to say

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco that because the culture doesn’t value learning, nobody reads, nobody knows

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco what’s going on in the broader community. Those are big statements to make, especially from somebody like this who I don’t think He goes

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco around like throwing around phrases like that lightly. But they’re

⏹️ ▶️ ^John also made by somebody who left. Right. And the person left probably because they weren’t getting enough of like, you know, there

⏹️ ▶️ ^John was new, interesting, novel things happening outside of Apple. And Apple, in some respects, has to be more conservative

⏹️ ▶️ ^John because, you know, they’re it’s a big they’ve got a big operation going on there. They can’t just be chasing after

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the newest shiny thing in all sorts of directions. And as we’ve discussed on past shows, it seems like

⏹️ ▶️ ^John The, the technical resources at Apple are fairly overextended in terms of like, it’s very hard

⏹️ ▶️ ^John work. There are tight deadlines, they’re expected to do amazing things and put in long hours.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John That doesn’t leave that much time left to be sort of reading blogs about interesting new technology that may or may not

⏹️ ▶️ ^John influence and really like, it ends up if it’s a personal interest you read about it, but like how relevant is it because it’s

⏹️ ▶️ ^John like, what did you just come in one day? Oh, I have an idea guys. Let’s let’s forget about a UI kit thing. Let’s do something that

⏹️ ▶️ ^John incorporates some of the ideas that I’ve seen elsewhere by reading these programming blogs and looking at other frameworks.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John They don’t go, great, that’s great. Let’s let’s all replace UIKit. Let’s go do that. Right.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John That’s not something that happens. So if you’re just doing it on your own, like the people who are super interested in that,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I would imagine leave Apple because you’re not going to get to do that stuff at Apple. Very few people are going to get to

⏹️ ▶️ ^John make that kind of radical decision and have it take place. And again, Swift is the example of it actually

⏹️ ▶️ ^John taking place because a very important person had, uh, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John an idea influenced by lots of other languages and managed to get done. And even that was a fairly

⏹️ ▶️ ^John large effort over a long period of time. And that’s a, a situation that’s probably not going to repeat

⏹️ ▶️ ^John itself. Like, uh, say Andy really loved react and the ideas inherent in it. What could he do with those ideas at Apple

⏹️ ▶️ ^John other than, you know, leave Apple and pursue something elsewhere where he can, uh, use, use

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the, the stuff that he learned.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey One of the things that’s really tough about consulting is that

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey if I do some sort of self-directed learning outside of work, because goodness knows

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey I’m not going to have the time at work unless I’m quote unquote on the bench and not

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey billing a client and not earning money and generally a waste of space. Wait, did they actually use that phrase

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey on the bench? I do. I think it’s a common phrase. It’s certainly something I’ve always said, which is funny because

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey I’m not much of an athlete and it comes from sports, but whatever. I don’t know, maybe that’s bothersome to

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey most. To me, that’s not as bad as circle back and keep me in the loop and all the other godawful

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey corporatisms. Parking lot. Parking lot, exactly. But anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey so if I do some self-directed learning, let’s say, I don’t know, maybe I learn a little bit about Node for whatever reason.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey The likelihood that I’m going to be able to bring that back to the office in a direct way

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey is virtually non-existent. Now there’s a lot of ways in which I can

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey bring it back to the office in an indirect way. For example, a more robust knowledge of JavaScript

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey is going to serve me well when I’m writing JavaScript for a web browser. But

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey the likelihood that I’m ever going to be asked to do a Node project for work

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey is virtually non-existent. And that’s a bummer and that sucks. And it’s not that we don’t learn at work,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey but it’s hard when what you’re learning is is so far removed

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey from what you’re doing day to day. And I could make, and I think John was making, a pretty solid argument that

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey React, while yes, it’s all a UI, but the mechanisms are so far removed from what

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Apple does in UIKit. How do you really apply that if you’re a UIKit engineer?

⏹️ ▶️ ^John And all it does is kind of sow discontent and agitation. Like, boy, if you’re really

⏹️ ▶️ ^John turned on by these exciting developments that are happening elsewhere, and then you go back to work and realize,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I can’t forget about it direct application of the knowledge. Like, do I get to write node? But I can’t even incorporate

⏹️ ▶️ ^John these ideas into my work to the degree that I think I should be able to. Some ideas are small. I’m

⏹️ ▶️ ^John like, yes, I can apply them to what I’m actually doing in this new UIKit framework. But some ideas are large. And it’s like,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John this idea only makes sense at the scale of how is the API designed?

⏹️ ▶️ ^John What is the model of UI interaction? And the model of React is just so much different than the model of UIKit. It’s such

⏹️ ▶️ ^John a such a big idea that, you know, it’s like structure, not like details.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John That how do you apply that if you’re not going to say, I’m going to make some whole new, you know, you are a paradigm

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and then that’s just not something you get to do.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Yeah. All right. Do we want to do a quick word

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey from a friend and then we can talk about some car related stuff?

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Our first sponsor this week is our friends once again at Cards Against Humanity.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Now, last time they sponsored us, they sent John a toaster to review, instead

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco of doing a typical ad read. I actually have no ad copy for them, they didn’t give me any. So,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco this week they have sent John another toaster. John, what did you think of your

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco current toaster?

⏹️ ▶️ ^John All right, no no context for this one if you want to know why the hell I’m talking about toasters listen to the last episode

⏹️ ▶️ ^John This toaster is the Panasonic NBG 110p great names

⏹️ ▶️ ^John When I haven’t listened to my old hypercritical toaster episode in a long time so but my

⏹️ ▶️ ^John recollection is that Part something that I talked about on the show was the idea that I had

⏹️ ▶️ ^John seen toasters that seem to use different technology to

⏹️ ▶️ ^John heat the food and I was like boy this is great I bet these are gonna heat up faster and heat more evenly and pretty

⏹️ ▶️ ^John soon all toasters will be like this and but when I went to go buy toasters I looked around

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I didn’t see any high-tech toasters like maybe I was just imagining it that was just a fad in the 80s or 90s I just

⏹️ ▶️ ^John forgot about it but all the toasters are back to the same old you know designs that I’d seen in the

⏹️ ▶️ ^John past well this Panasonic toaster is very close to those sort of futuristic you know

⏹️ ▶️ ^John advanced toasters that I was thinking of that I thought all toasters would be like it has a heating element on the bottom that looks

⏹️ ▶️ ^John sort of normal, but it’s got a heating element to heating elements on the top, one of which is near infrared and

⏹️ ▶️ ^John one of which is far infrared. One of them, someone in the chat room tell me which

⏹️ ▶️ ^John is which I’m assuming it’s the near gives off lots of visible light. So it’s almost like the toaster has a big

⏹️ ▶️ ^John light inside it. But that’s actually part of the heating element. Anyway, bottom line is, this thing makes toast

⏹️ ▶️ ^John really fast. It was like a minute and 30 seconds faster than my big expensive

⏹️ ▶️ ^John toaster. Wow. And that’s like double the speed, right? And it was fairly even. There’s only one element

⏹️ ▶️ ^John on the bottom and two elements on the top. So if you put four slices of toast in there, it’s not quite as good as having

⏹️ ▶️ ^John two elements heating them. But wow, is it definitely fast.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Is that faster than a slot toaster at making toast? Because that’s one of the advantages that the slot toaster people usually

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco cite is that slot toasters apparently make toast faster.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t have one to time it against. I just timed it against my other toaster. But

⏹️ ▶️ ^John in other respects, this toaster is weird. Like, as you expect from a toaster made by Panasonic, which is not sort

⏹️ ▶️ ^John of a kitchen appliance brand, at least not in this country, it’s very vertical and upright.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John The controls are below the door instead of to the side. So it’s like saving horizontal counter space. The cord

⏹️ ▶️ ^John comes out of the front right corner of the toaster. I don’t understand this design. Maybe it’s meant to

⏹️ ▶️ ^John be tucked into something, but I don’t think you’re supposed to put, you know, have walls close to it.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John It’s very confusing. Um, and like it’s got a power button on it. Have you ever seen

⏹️ ▶️ ^John a toaster with a power button? Not like a power button to turn on to toast food, but a power button as in

⏹️ ▶️ ^John now the toaster is on. Now you can use the controls that are on the toaster like it, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ ^{John, Casey} it is on and off.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John And so you need either you either need to remember to turn it off or maybe you don’t remember to turn it on.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I don’t know. It was like, does it have parasitic power loss? If you don’t turn the power off, it’s very strange. And the controls in the front,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John this is big on having presets where it’s like instead of it does have controls for temperature and controls

⏹️ ▶️ ^John for time, all of which are digital and the temperature settings are like five or six little different settings that you can

⏹️ ▶️ ^John set and you don’t have to do each time. But it also has buttons for various types of food.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John And if I had to guess what these you know, what kind of buttons you would have on a toaster, there

⏹️ ▶️ ^John are six of them. I would not have guessed. The first one is toast. Fine, I guess that one. Second one is waffle.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Frozen waffle. Yeah, eggos. The third button is a roll and it also says

⏹️ ▶️ ^John reheat. So I guess you’re reheating rolls. The fourth one is frozen pizza. Fifth one

⏹️ ▶️ ^John is quick reheat and it shows a chicken leg and the last one is hash brown and it shows frozen

⏹️ ▶️ ^John bread, waffle roll, pizza, chicken, hash brown.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Like I don’t these buttons confuse me. I feel like if they were just gone and you just had to use the normal

⏹️ ▶️ ^John controls that would be better. But anyway, this is a very interesting toaster. I think this was the sweet home pick for

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the best toaster. It toast bread really fast. It’s kind of small. You can’t fit four

⏹️ ▶️ ^John full size pieces of bread into it. The tray does slide out when you open the door. It has a lot of things to recommend

⏹️ ▶️ ^John that it’s not bad, but it’s it’s pretty darn weird.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco It seems like it might be. Do you think it would be a fair pick if you had, like you do, concerns

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco about counter space usage?

⏹️ ▶️ ^John It’s very high, though, and like the thing is, I’ll give up. Like, it’s just about like half an

⏹️ ▶️ ^John inch or an inch too narrow. to put to put two slices of bread side by side. And it’s frustrating, you know, like if you try

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to put it says a four slice toaster, but you got to have some pretty darn small bread. You can not get four full. Like

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and it’s frustrating when you get something that’s like just a little bit like because you can fit them in there if you kind of wedge

⏹️ ▶️ ^John it and smush them together and that that just doesn’t feel comfortable. So I wouldn’t

⏹️ ▶️ ^John sacrifice. I would I would give up that extra inch of counter space easily just be able to fit four slices of toast in it. But

⏹️ ▶️ ^John can’t argue with speed super fast.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco The bread slice count that a toaster advertises that can toast at once is kind of like the number

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco of people that tents advertise They can sleep Sleeps for hobbits

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco like you basically always have to like add to yeah John, how do you think this toaster

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco ranks among the other now to that you have?

⏹️ ▶️ ^John It’s tough because it has a lot of things to recommend it over the previous toaster But the previous toaster is just so much

⏹️ ▶️ ^John more normal like it’s slower lower, but I think the previous one did a better job at four slices

⏹️ ▶️ ^John of bread. It actually fit four slices. It seemed to eat them more evenly. The controls

⏹️ ▶️ ^John were definitely more conventional. I would probably pick this weird, crazy, fancy toaster over the previous one just because

⏹️ ▶️ ^John at least it has some headline advantages. The other one is like just does everything okay.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I think I would. I don’t know. It’s tough choice. I think I would probably just keep wedging

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the bread in there and just be happy that it toasts really fast as opposed to the other one, which is just kind of like,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John you know, the dials and all that business. This one doesn’t have the dial problem. You set the you only have like six settings to set it. But

⏹️ ▶️ ^John once you find out which of those six settings works best for your bread, you don’t have to change it. You just hit the power button, hit toast.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I think I’d go with the fancy one, although I would I would have complaints about it all the time. You

⏹️ ▶️ ^John know, unlike my fancy toaster, which the only complaint I have about it is the stupid spring in the door, which apparently is only on

⏹️ ▶️ ^John my particular unit.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Nice. All right. Well, thanks a lot to Cards Against Humanity for sponsoring our show. Once

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco again, check them out, Cards Against Humanity. All right. That was… I love this.

⏹️ ▶️ ^{Marco, Casey} I love this series. This is so

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey good. I hope it never stops.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Can all of our sponsors do

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey stuff like this? I hope so. All right. So a long time ago in a galaxy

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey far, far away… That’s a Star Wars reference, John. We started a car-themed podcast called Neutral.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey At first, everyone was like,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey yay, Marco and John are back, and there’s that other guy.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey And then after a few episodes, they were like, yay, why are they still talking?

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey But all of a sudden, like a phoenix, except not really at all.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Neutral is kind of coming back from the dead because here it is on our Apple themed

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey technology show. There is humongous talk

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey these days that Apple might make a car. I don’t know about you two, but I’m feeling pretty

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey darn smug right now. How about you guys?

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Oh, I’m scared that they’re actually going to do it. I really don’t think they should.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco I mean, I’m not knowing anything about whether any of these rumors are credible. Uh, I mean, there’s

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco to me, there’s so many reasons why this might be a terrible idea.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Well, let’s look at the sourcing here. Let’s see where, you know, I have put a bunch of links in there where who is saying that

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Apple is doing anything having to do with cars. Uh, well, nine to five Mac. Right. So a nine

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to five Mac says something. They talk about who they hired. Hired the head of Mercedes Benz R and D. I think he did like the

⏹️ ▶️ ^John interactive, like the, you know, the screen type stuff inside Mercedes Benz and their R&D

⏹️ ▶️ ^John thing. It’s like, all right, whatever. Like, I mean, we know they have CarPlay. That’s not like a secret.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John And you hired a guy who does the CarPlay ish stuff for Mercedes Benz. Fine. It’s a nine to five Mac.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John It’s probably credible. This probably happened, but it doesn’t make us freak out too much.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey But then the Wall Street Journal weighs in on the whole

⏹️ ▶️ ^John issue. Yeah, then the Wall Street Journal posted this big thing that is pretty unequivocal, like the Wall Street Journal

⏹️ ▶️ ^John is not a rumor site. And their their record, the track record for Apple is

⏹️ ▶️ ^John pretty good. They tend to get a lot of these sort of what we assume are controlled leaks and stuff. But this was like

⏹️ ▶️ ^John it was the title Apple gears up to challenge Tesla and electric cars. And it’s a big long article and it’s talking

⏹️ ▶️ ^John all about that, you know, that that they’re secretly working. Hundreds of employees are secretly working

⏹️ ▶️ ^John creating an Apple branded electric car. And that, you know, lots of important people are on the

⏹️ ▶️ ^John project. And it was started a year ago. And they’ve got engineers from Ford working

⏹️ ▶️ ^John on it. And the person who was making it was given permission to create a thousand person team and

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to post employees for different parts of the company, all the same things that Apple kind of, you know, like when the iPhone was made

⏹️ ▶️ ^John with Forrestal going around and snagging all the good engineers from other parts of the company saying, Do you want to come work on

⏹️ ▶️ ^John our secret project or whatever?

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco An Apple spokesman declined to comment.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Yeah. So, you know, we’re not saying this is 100% slam dunk, but suddenly you start

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to notice like I had not been taking any of this Apple make a car stuff seriously at all because there are just

⏹️ ▶️ ^John so many reasons like Marco said for Apple to hire all these car related people like they have CarPlay like

⏹️ ▶️ ^John that explains almost any car hire. I don’t know

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco about that I mean CarPlay is really a very small move in the grand scheme

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco of things like it’s it’s not a big initiative as far as we can tell so far from what we see in

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco the outside and I should clarify so I did my app is CarPlay compatible

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco but but none of what I’m saying is informed by any inside knowledge of that. I don’t have any inside knowledge of that.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco So, you know, CarPlay is a very small project that, as far as

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco I can tell, is having a very slow start. It’s used by very

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco few cars, it’s used by very few people, it’s used by very few apps, and among the cars

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco and people and apps that are used with CarPlay, it usually gets mixed reviews.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco And I don’t know if it’s the fault of the the head units or the controls or the software. I have no idea, but

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco it seems like a pretty, pretty tiny hobby project. So I don’t think they would be hiring

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco allegedly hundreds of people making the giant secret research lab just to make like the next

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco version of CarPlay. That, I don’t think that’s plausible.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John That’s the information we can’t confirm. We can confirm things more or less of like who was hired to work at Apple. And

⏹️ ▶️ ^John those are the confirmed facts of this case that, you know, that you can actually check

⏹️ ▶️ ^John on And like, you know, they hired the guy from R&D, Mercedes Benz

⏹️ ▶️ ^John R&D. Maybe they hired some guy from Ford. You can figure that out as well, right? But you can’t confirm

⏹️ ▶️ ^John hundreds of people being moved from Division A to Division B. You know what I mean? Like, that’s all just kind of rumors and stuff.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John So what I’m saying is like all of the news about a particular executive or a particular hire of an

⏹️ ▶️ ^John important. If we hear about Apple hiring somebody, they’re probably an important person. And those are in the ones and twos.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John And CarPlay totally explains any of those hires, right? What it can’t explain, like you said, is if

⏹️ ▶️ ^John they really are, have hundreds or thousands of people off in some off-site location working on a big project,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John that doesn’t seem like car play in its current form. But it could be many other things, like helping

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to design the entire interior and interface of a car that they don’t happen

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to make. That would be a significant undertaking that would require lots of people partnering with a specific car

⏹️ ▶️ ^John maker. By the way, mixed in with all this are the stories from earlier,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John months ago, of like Tesla’s hiring away all the Apple employees and

⏹️ ▶️ ^John going in both directions. You know, Tesla’s hiring away Apple employees, which kind of makes

⏹️ ▶️ ^John sense to me when I read those stories. It’s like, well, yeah, who wouldn’t want to go work for Tesla? And it’s kind of a shame

⏹️ ▶️ ^John because what immediately popped into my mind is Elon Musk walking through a garden with

⏹️ ▶️ ^John some Apple engineer and saying, do you want to sell sugar phones for the rest of your life or do you want to come with me and change the world?

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Casey, that’s a reference, by the way. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John because the shoe is on the other foot now. It’s like, well, what’s more exciting, revolutionizing

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the world of cars with electric cars or doing what Apple’s doing? And maybe it’s

⏹️ ▶️ ^John closer, maybe it’s a toss up. It’s certainly not Apple versus Pepsi. But

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I can imagine it not being very difficult for Tesla to hire away Apple employees who are car nuts,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John because you don’t get to work on cars at Apple, right? Or do you?

⏹️ ▶️ ^John And then the other rumor is that Apple tried to buy Tesla. You know, lots of people, again,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John fairly unsubstantiated. Some people predicting that Apple will buy Tesla. Some people predicting they already did try them.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John But every time you read something like that, it’s like, yeah, yeah, it’s easy to write that story. But there are so many things that we

⏹️ ▶️ ^John have had retroactively confirmed about Apple trying to buy companies that refused them or

⏹️ ▶️ ^John considered buying companies and didn’t like it. Or like trying to buy

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Dropbox and not really buying Dropbox. and their dalliance with palm way back in the day.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John People can remember that. Like, these are not, the best thing about all these stories is they are

⏹️ ▶️ ^John not entirely unplausible.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John These rumors, they don’t, I don’t think any of us 100% believe any of these because the evidence is not that it’s supported,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John but all of us get to the point where we’re willing to entertain the thought, right?

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco One of the reasons why I never thought Apple would make a TV set, which I’ve talked about a few times here before,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco is that the TV set business is just kind of a messy business.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco It’s a very, very big commodity business, supply chain business, but

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco not in a way that leads to a lot of profit, usually, unlike the phone business and their computer business.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco And it’s also not an item that is frequently updated and upgraded.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Typically, people buy TVs like every decade or whatever. It’s not like a every couple of years kind of thing like a

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco phone or computer. And there’s not a lot of ways an Apple TV,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco as from whatever we know today TV world to be, there’s not really a lot of

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco ways an Apple TV could really meaningfully differentiate itself from what the current

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco little Apple TV puck box for a hundred bucks does or what another one could

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco do. it seems like getting into the TV set business

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco is not only unnecessary, because they can get all the value they need out of just making a box, but also

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco probably not wise, because it’s just it’s kind of just like it’s kind of a messy business. Well,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco talking about a messy business, how about the car business? I mean, the car business is not only

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco extraordinarily expensive to get started and to run. And of course, you know, Apple has the cash. If they wanted

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco to to build a car factory and design cars, they could. Whether

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco they should and whether they would is a very different story, but certainly they have the money.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco They could afford to set this up, even though it is extremely expensive. The big problem I see with

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco it, though, is that, like the television business, the car business is

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco just really kind of messy. Apple doesn’t really get into a lot of those messy businesses that

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco often. Cellphones are pretty messy. Well, they were never a cell

⏹️ ▶️ ^John phone carrier, for instance. I know. They tried to be, though. That was their first instinct, to

⏹️ ▶️ ^John say, carriers suck. Can we do a phone without involving carriers? And they pursued that,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John right? And they just determined, no, you can’t be. We need the carriers, right?

⏹️ ▶️ ^John It’s the type of, I know it’s not a business that they like to be in, but

⏹️ ▶️ ^John there are businesses that have been messy until Apple entered them and sort of clarified the thing. And

⏹️ ▶️ ^John when I look at this whole situation here, I think to myself, who

⏹️ ▶️ ^John is the apple of the car business? Either one of you two?

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey I would argue BMW, but I am hugely biased.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco BMW? Are you crazy? I mean, I would say there isn’t one. I mean,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco just as car analogies are often used and frequently misused in tech discussions

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco and debates, I think in this massive car analogy, there is

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco no equivalent. is no fair point.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I think there’s 100% there is an apple of the car business and it’s Tesla. The reason it’s Tesla is not

⏹️ ▶️ ^John so much for anything like, oh, because they have a big tablet on the dashboard. They’re the apple of the car business. No, they’re the apple of

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the car business, because it’s time for Johnny. I have to come out. They reimagined what the car could be,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and they

⏹️ ▶️ ^{John, Marco} took out all the crap in

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the car. Like they’re even getting rid of hydraulic brakes. It’s like there’s nothing. Go see a Tesla Model

⏹️ ▶️ ^John S. There’s no car there. There is no car inside that car. Like you look around it and like there’s a big

⏹️ ▶️ ^John cavernous thing a trunk in the back and it has seats that go in it. And what’s in the front? There’s a big cavernous thing where you put it. It’s like, where the

⏹️ ▶️ ^John hell is the car? And in the interior, there’s no, it’s like, and there’s the massive simplification

⏹️ ▶️ ^John of the car. Like, they’re talking about how many parts a car has. A lot of these things are like, you know, there’s 10,000 components required

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to make a car or whatever. Like, the number of parts in a Tesla compared to the number of parts

⏹️ ▶️ ^John on an internal combustion engine alone, let alone the entire car surrounding it, is just night and day. And so

⏹️ ▶️ ^John that’s the type of simplification, not that Tesla invented the electric car. Like obviously, you know, this is another reason

⏹️ ▶️ ^John why I think they like Apple, but that type of simplification of like, we’re not just going to make a

⏹️ ▶️ ^John car, we’re going to make something that is simpler and better

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and, you know, has fewer parts and less things that can go wrong and different characteristics

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and things. And people are going to tell us you can’t because of, you know, range problems or, you know, like

⏹️ ▶️ ^John that it’s not, it doesn’t make nice noises like an internal combustion engine or those other things, but we’re going

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to do it anyway. And the other part that’s like Apple is, you know, Apple didn’t invent the mp3 player, the mobile phone or anything else.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Tesla did not have the electric car. Many people have made electric cars before them. And most of them had not

⏹️ ▶️ ^John been that great, like from the GM EV one way back in the day with his lead acid batteries, all

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the way up through all the different models that are and the hybrids and the things that have gone in between and Tesla is,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John you know, takes the Apple approach of sort of leading from the top, doing whatever it takes to make

⏹️ ▶️ ^John a good electric car, which turned out to cost like 100 grand, right. You know, it’s it’s the first electric car

⏹️ ▶️ ^John that people actually say is a good car And that’s totally an Apple type of thing to do and the whole way

⏹️ ▶️ ^John that it’s made is such a difference from you know Dealing with all the internal combustion and everything,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John right? so That makes me think that it’s not impossible for

⏹️ ▶️ ^John a company to do an Apple like thing to cars Tesla shows Of course how difficult it is because you have to

⏹️ ▶️ ^John deal with you know dealer Organizations making so you can’t sell your car in your states and all the crazy government and regulations, and

⏹️ ▶️ ^John it’s not guaranteed that even with all the government subsidies that Tesla’s going to come out on top and blah, blah, blah, blah,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John blah. But I 100% think Tesla is the Apple of cars. And that’s kind of

⏹️ ▶️ ^John bad for Apple making a car, because if there’s already an Apple of cars, what the hell is Apple going to do if they can’t buy Tesla?

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey No, no, no. Here’s the thing. I know you’re wrong that Tesla is the Apple of cars.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey And the reason you’re wrong is because a software update actually made the Tesla faster.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Ooh. Apple used to do that all the time back in the old days. Just

⏹️ ▶️ ^{John, Casey} kidding. OS X used to get

⏹️ ▶️ ^John faster with every release on the same hardware. Those were the days. Well, it did that by starting off being

⏹️ ▶️ ^John super slow and crappy. Tesla didn’t start off with it. They just shaved a couple seconds

⏹️ ▶️ ^John here and there.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey I’m

⏹️ ▶️ ^John just

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey being

⏹️ ▶️ ^John silly. Oh, and we forgot the other rumor involved with the car thing that we talked about at a previous show is like, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John minivan spotted with weird stuff on the roof and reportedly Apple self-driving cars. And we talked about that. And

⏹️ ▶️ ^John so that is very easily explained by Apple doing something like Street View, which we think they need. Is Apple

⏹️ ▶️ ^John interested in self-driving cars? That’s totally an Apple-style simplification. You don’t even

⏹️ ▶️ ^John need to drive the car, but I think Apple is not as interested in Google as Google is in that kind of

⏹️ ▶️ ^John basic research at this point.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco For whatever it’s worth, the Wall Street Journal article said specifically that a person familiar with the project said that

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco self-driving cars are not part of Apple’s current plan. That’s for the best.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco well do you think Apple does with really complicated academic AI kind of problems?

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Like that’s that’s not really their strong point.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John And honestly I think at this point the Apple’s ability to make a car

⏹️ ▶️ ^John no matter how many people they hire now how many hundred engineers they put on it like look how long it took Tesla to make

⏹️ ▶️ ^John its first car with the help of essentially buying Lotuses and strapping its batteries and engines like

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Apple has a leg up on them and that they have a a whole jillion dollars and that that helps you along

⏹️ ▶️ ^John significantly, but. It takes a long time to build expertise, and even if you

⏹️ ▶️ ^John can buy expertise, it takes a long time to buy expertise and get it all working together like

⏹️ ▶️ ^John again, I think they could do it, but it would be a long road. And if Apple decided that it wants

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to make a car because it believes cars can be simplified and can be made better or whatever, the obvious move is

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to buy Tesla because they’ve already done so much of that work and their philosophy

⏹️ ▶️ ^John of simplification and reimagining the car as something

⏹️ ▶️ ^John both better and less complex than it was before. It’s totally in line

⏹️ ▶️ ^John with the type of stuff that Apple does. It’s just that Apple doesn’t really know anything about cars at this point.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey So has there been a time in the past when Apple has taken a product that was

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey basically fully formed and bought the company and made it their own? I think like, what was it? Sound

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey jam became iTunes. Is that right? That’s

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco worked out well.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey That’s sort of kind of what I’m talking about.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John But if they bought Tesla, don’t you imagine they would keep the Tesla brand like they wouldn’t make it the Apple car?

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Actually, I guess so that in beats is probably the obvious answer to my question.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Right. I mean, they were they didn’t even want to change the brand of the headphone maker. I would imagine they would keep the Tesla

⏹️ ▶️ ^John brand.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Yeah, I don’t know. There’s so many things about this just make me really skeptical that

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco that these reports are getting the right big picture. Like, you know, you can pick up bits and pieces

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco of information here and there. And you can say, oh, well, they hired this person who has a car background. And it seems like

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco they’re making a big lab and, you know, all this stuff. You can put together the bits and pieces. But

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco I really don’t know if the conclusion is, well, of course, they’re building a car. Because there’s so many

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco reasons why that is not an Apple-like business to enter. And, you know, not to

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco say Apple can’t change and enter new businesses. That’s how progress is made. But But this just

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco doesn’t seem like the right business to enter. I mean,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco you mess this up, people die. Like, it’s very serious. It’s very cumbersome

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco of a business to enter, to be in at all. It is extremely

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco hyper-competitive.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Well, I would not call it hyper-competitive. I would call it, there are large barriers

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to entry, which is kind of the opposite of hyper-competitive. Like, the fact that GM is still in business shows

⏹️ ▶️ ^John that. But

⏹️ ▶️ ^{John, Marco} that

⏹️ ▶️ ^John how competitive can it really be where you go out of business? The government puts you back into business and your cars

⏹️ ▶️ ^John aren’t really that great. And your cars do tend to kill people sometimes. But like it’ll all work out in the end. Like, yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John it’s it. There are high barriers to entry. But like the argument I see in a lot of places is

⏹️ ▶️ ^John like even from the GM executive, you know, that the car business like you

⏹️ ▶️ ^John kind of the TV business, the car business is not like a high profit business, it’s low margin, it’s difficult. And

⏹️ ▶️ ^John like I always see people saying that whether it’s about TVs or about cars, like, well, then why the hell you even in this business, you just describe your

⏹️ ▶️ ^John own business as pretty darn crappy, right? But you could describe the PC market the same way. Oh, it’s low

⏹️ ▶️ ^John margin. It’s a race to the bottom. It’s crappy. Somehow Apple, then just to make money there and the

⏹️ ▶️ ^John phone market in similar ways. Apple’s big thing, kind of like Tesla at this point is we find

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the most profitable part of the market, which is usually near the top and we make a lot of money in that part. And maybe we expand down

⏹️ ▶️ ^John as we’re able to, but I don’t think it’s impossible for Apple

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to make margins on its theoretical car that would make GM cry because

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the Apple is better at, you know, because first of all, Apple’s car is going to be way simpler than an internal combustion engine car.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Apple already has the some of the expertise and contacts to do the battery stuff. And, you

⏹️ ▶️ ^John know, like they already

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco buy a lot of lithium

⏹️ ▶️ ^John batteries. Yeah. Like there is definite synergies there. But like I don’t entirely

⏹️ ▶️ ^John buy the story either, but like almost every argument I’ve seen against it. And even the TV for that matter, like Apple knows where

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to get LCDs from. Apple can stick something inside it. Like, is it a low margin business? Apple’s TV wouldn’t be low margin.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John You know what I mean? Like if Apple makes a TV, it will not be like, oh, we make two dollars in every TV. If Apple makes a car,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John it will not be a low margin car. I don’t even I don’t know what the margins on the Model S are, especially with all the government subsidies

⏹️ ▶️ ^John being factored in. But if Apple was making the Model S, they could make it for less money just because,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John you know, you got to have money to make money. You got to have the deals. You got to have the contracts, you know, that Apple

⏹️ ▶️ ^John could make the Tesla for less money than Tesla is making it. So immediately the car has

⏹️ ▶️ ^John a higher margins than it has there. So all those arguments again, don’t make as aren’t as compelling to me

⏹️ ▶️ ^John as the idea of like that Apple doesn’t want to make cars because like why doesn’t Apple

⏹️ ▶️ ^John make boats? Why don’t they make airplanes? Why don’t they sell real estate like they’re you know,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John they’re a company that uses technology to make people’s lives better. But a certain point when you go into like cars or

⏹️ ▶️ ^John constructing buildings or opening medical clinics around

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the country. These are all things that Apple could do, but it starts to drift off of the path

⏹️ ▶️ ^John of what I picture as a business that Apple want to get into

⏹️ ▶️ ^John just because it involves technology. Everything involves technology at this point. So I’m I have this one Wall Street Journal

⏹️ ▶️ ^John story made me take it seriously, but it is not convinced me that it’s happening.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Right, because I think what a few people have said is that they worry about

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Apple’s focus. If this is true, and if they do it, making a car, should we be worried about

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco the focus? And I think one way to look at this is… You’ve heard… I’m pretty sure

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Steve used to say this. I know Tim always says this, which is that Apple tends to only…

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Or ideally, the ideal Apple. Maybe not the actual Apple, but the ideal Apple

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco is a company that only enters markets where they think they can make a really meaningful difference.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John But that doesn’t help you in here, does it? Because don’t you think they would say we can totally make a meaningful difference by changing the way

⏹️ ▶️ ^John everybody drives? Like, this is totally a meaningful difference.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Well, but from the product side, we already have electric cars.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I know, but they’ve never really been done right. And Tesla is being choked to death by

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the rest of the automotive industry. I kind of think of Tesla that way. It’s like a fledgling

⏹️ ▶️ ^John little bird. We all want it to fly, but it’s constantly getting beaten down. And it’s

⏹️ ▶️ ^John amazing that it has done as well as it can, you know, with government help and everything. But like, wouldn’t it wouldn’t

⏹️ ▶️ ^John we all feel terrible if Tesla just didn’t make it? Yeah, that would be unfortunate. Like it was like we know

⏹️ ▶️ ^John that they’ve made a good car. Like the Model S is a good car. I don’t care. I mean, yes, it’s 100 grand. It better be a good car. But it

⏹️ ▶️ ^John is a good car. It’s like the first good electric car, like the roaster didn’t even apply that. And it has limitations and so on and so

⏹️ ▶️ ^John forth. It’s like, wow, someone finally did it. You know, it’s it’s nice to drive. It’s attractive.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John It’s got all the advantages you expect from an electric car. It’s really fun. Like, they did

⏹️ ▶️ ^John it, right? And now you just keep, you know, well, they can make a cheaper one. They can make a $30,000 model, they make

⏹️ ▶️ ^John an SUV. Like you want them to just spool up and eventually become a real car company. And if they failed, if they kind of like,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John oh, we didn’t quite make it, we’re filing for bankruptcy or whatever, everyone would be disappointed. So I think that shows

⏹️ ▶️ ^John that we want someone to come in and make a significant difference in the industry.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Whether that has to involve Apple at all, I don’t know. I mean, and if we don’t want to like, if Mark

⏹️ ▶️ ^John keeps groaning, because you have a car, but like, you don’t think they’re going to be pulling people off UI

⏹️ ▶️ ^John kit to work on the car. You know, maybe kind of for the interface, but. Of course they will. But not to the degree that

⏹️ ▶️ ^John like people got pulled off OS X to work on UI kit. Like there are no automotive engineers at Apple who are going to get pulled

⏹️ ▶️ ^John off their current project to work on the car. Like automotive engineers are, you know, that’s a different skill set. A mechanical engineering,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John you know, maybe the manufacturing people will be some crossover. But I feel like it wouldn’t be as big

⏹️ ▶️ ^John of a focus diversion as many other things that Apple does do. So I’m not groaning

⏹️ ▶️ ^John quite as much about losing focus on, you know, because I assume they would just hire new people. Or

⏹️ ▶️ ^John like I said, they would just buy Tesla. They come with a bunch of people who already know how to make cars.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco What I was really getting at with the make a meaningful difference thing,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco think about it from the buyer’s perspective. Like if you are buying an Apple car, or let’s say

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco right now, let’s say you’re buying a Tesla because that’s the closest thing we have to what we think this might you know the kind of thing

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco we think this would be you probably probably if you look at what’s in the market today it would probably be closest to a Tesla

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco than any other vehicle maybe a leaf but you know probably probably close to a Tesla so

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco if you think about that as a driver I mean none of us drive electric cars

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco so we don’t really maybe this is not the right you know maybe we’re not the right people to be

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco speculating on this part but is there that much of a difference when you’re driving

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco the car when you’re owning the car, whether it’s electric or gas so much so that an Apple car

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco could be like radically different to own and operate and drive than any other car

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco like I don’t I don’t think the differences are that

⏹️ ▶️ ^John big. I think they are like, I don’t other than the battery, which is still a concern,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John but Tesla has a built in way to replace and everything like that. The maintenance, the maintenance concerns

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and costs and the number of things that can go wrong. Like there’s just less stuff in the damn car. It’s electric motors

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and like once the brakes are electric too, yeah you got to replace brake pads, but like there’s no fluids, there’s no

⏹️ ▶️ ^John like you know, the hydraulic system, it’s just there’s no oil, there’s no gasket system,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John it’s just like so much stuff that you have to deal with with car maintenance goes away.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John And so I, you know, I just think that is, that’s a different experience of driving a car.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Well but, but what can Apple bring to that that Tesla and Nissan and everybody else can’t?

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Yeah, I mean, that’s why I think we should just buy Tesla. Like, but

⏹️ ▶️ ^{John, Marco} that’s

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the problem. But you know, so what can Apple bring to it that the other companies can’t? Well, what they can bring to it is

⏹️ ▶️ ^John assured future for Tesla if they buy it. Right. Because if you

⏹️ ▶️ ^John were worried about Tesla, if they’re not going to make it, if they can’t make, you know, 100,000 dollar cars are fine, but they can’t

⏹️ ▶️ ^John feel the $30,000 model. They’re never going to be a player in the industry because you just have to come down to price a little bit if you’re

⏹️ ▶️ ^John going to sell any significant number of cars. And if Tesla can’t get that done

⏹️ ▶️ ^John on its own, Apple can make sure that that happens. Yeah, that’s a pretty weak argument, though.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I don’t know. And obviously, they would make the UI and the interface inside it much better than it is now, hopefully.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I mean, there are areas for simplification in the interior of a car that you would hope. I mean, maybe

⏹️ ▶️ ^John not today’s Apple. We’ve all lost faith in their ability to make decent interfaces. But the Apple of old, you would

⏹️ ▶️ ^John imagine, could simplify the interior of the car in the same way the iPad simplified the music player and the

⏹️ ▶️ ^John iPhone simplified the phone interface. And again, maybe because the Tesla already did that with putting a big iPad

⏹️ ▶️ ^John in the dashboard. But I don’t know. Like, I don’t think Apple would be bringing as much

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to this as they brought to. Obviously, as they brought to phones or anything like that. But

⏹️ ▶️ ^John is that the question they’re asking themselves? Like, you know, Tesla looks like they’ve already done a lot of the work, so we shouldn’t

⏹️ ▶️ ^John even bother. Maybe.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey I don’t know. I keep coming back to what’s in it for Apple, And I think we’ve been

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey dancing around that question, you know, this entire discussion and what is it that that

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey doing a car would, would serve for Apple? Now, maybe it would keep

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey your engineers entertained. We’ve talked on and off about how the worst reason.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Well, I’m not saying it’s a good reason, but it’s your engineers would kill themselves and keep your designers entertained,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey maybe whatever the case may be. I mean, we’ve talked about talent retention here and there over the years. And, um, you

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey know, that would theoretically retain talent, but of course, I’m also assuming that every nerd is also a car nut, and that

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey could not be further from the truth. The only other thing I can think of is,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey what if there’s some sort of technology that Apple has invented or figured out how to leverage

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey in such a way that it lends itself to a vehicle rather than

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey to a piece of electronics? What I’m thinking of is, you know, the click wheel made the iPod,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey in many ways made the iPod the iPod.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Phil Schiller came up with that though.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Click steering. Yeah, exactly.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John It’s different. So give me what’s an example of technology hypothetical that you can imagine

⏹️ ▶️ ^John this being the case for.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey So to finish my thought just very quickly, you know, multi-touch, yeah, it wasn’t new, but it was leveraged differently.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey And there are a couple of other examples that I can’t think of off the top of my head. But what if they had some

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey crazy new battery technology? And the reason it’s not in iOS devices right now

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey or MacBooks right now is because it’s just too freaking big. You know, maybe these batteries are

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey hugely, hugely, hugely efficient. They can charge in 12 seconds, but,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey but unfortunately they’re just freaking massive. And so the only thing that this is

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey really good for is an electric vehicle. Granted, this is all hugely hypothetical,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey but in that case, maybe they would have something to contribute. And that seems

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey to me to be the kind of thing that, that would make Apple say, well,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey you you know, maybe we should give this a shot some sort of either different and interesting application of an existing

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey technology or even better some sort of brand new technology that

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey for whatever reason they just can’t shoehorn into a iPad or an iPhone or a MacBook

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Air MacBook Pro or whatever

⏹️ ▶️ ^John you’re thinking of mr. Fusion, aren’t you? That are a flux capacitor Yeah, yeah the chat room had that one Yeah

⏹️ ▶️ ^John but that’s that is perhaps the least Apple like thing that that that we could possibly think of.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Like Google tries to do basic research, and even they don’t do this type of thing. There is no secret battery

⏹️ ▶️ ^John breakthrough technology that Apple has that only works with big batteries. Like if anyone’s gonna come up with that, it’s gonna be

⏹️ ▶️ ^John a university, theoretical physicists. First

⏹️ ▶️ ^John what’s gonna happen is the basic research is gonna say that something is potentially possible, and then a bunch of people are gonna try

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to do it, and the first person to pull it off is probably not gonna be, like Apple just doesn’t do that kind of basic research.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John That’s just not I mean, and I don’t think that’s going to change about the company. This is not the way they work. Like

⏹️ ▶️ ^John what does this say? Google outspends them in basic R and D, but like, I don’t know, some, some big multiple and Google is not

⏹️ ▶️ ^John compared to like, you know, the real basic research going on in, you know, fields of science and

⏹️ ▶️ ^John engineering. Google self driving cars are, you know, not

⏹️ ▶️ ^John a drop in the bucket compared to people who are trying to spending like just years and years of working on whatever carbon nanotube battery

⏹️ ▶️ ^John technology types of that stuff’s going to come. And when it’s, you know, Apple always grabs the

⏹️ ▶️ ^John stuff that’s just at the edge of what’s possible and they apply their engineering and manufacturing expertise to bring it to

⏹️ ▶️ ^John existence but I don’t think that Apple has anything like that for batteries. Like for something

⏹️ ▶️ ^John else, maybe they have a really good idea about the interface of a car but there are a

⏹️ ▶️ ^John lot of limitations on the interface of a car because people are kind of used to what it is and there’s government regulations saying

⏹️ ▶️ ^John how it has to be.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco I also don’t think I want Apple making the interface to my car because there

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco is, I mean many of the same reasons you know we discussed early on a neutral which nobody listened to we

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco discussed our feelings on touch screens versus knobs and buttons versus a combination

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco of the two and I think where we all came down is we actually don’t

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco like the Tesla approach of everything’s on the touch screen like I I like

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco knobs and buttons for all the controls that are necessary in my car for basic operations things like

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco the ventilation controls and you know I like it anything that’s on the center console that’s not like

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco the navigation screen I want knobs and buttons for any of the navigation screen like I don’t want to touch screen

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco because of the ones I’ve seen and used have been terrible I want like like the wheel that the iDrive

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco wheel have been the BMWs have is great there the Audi has a somewhat similar one Toyota

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco and Lexus have a really weird terrible pointing stick system that’s just awful and I’ve seen

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco many others hideous systems from other brands but you know for the most part I want knobs and

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco buttons because what you need in a car for both safety

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco especially number one safety and also for just reduced annoyance you need that

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco button to work every time you need to respond within the same amount of time every

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco time you don’t because what you don’t need to be doing in a car what you shouldn’t be doing in a car

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco is having to check up on the state of what you think you just did to make sure it took

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco or to to reissue a command of a car misinterpreted. And if you look at Apple’s

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco current software designs and systems and styles and just the standards by which

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco they hold themselves in reality, what we get from them in practice, it’s not that solid.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco You know, there are parts of it that are, like the kernel is pretty good these days, but you know the UIs,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco you know, all the stuff sitting on top, the services and everything, these are not like…

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco this requires a very different degree of of reliability than what

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco consumer software for computers and tablets and phones really requires. Cars, like the things

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco in cars, need to work every time. And if they miss just a little bit,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco if it’s just a little bit buggy or a little bit slow or a little bit inconsistent, it’s really annoying

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco and potentially very unsafe. And so I don’t think I would want Apple making that kind of software in

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco my car, at least as we know them today. And maybe they can do that in the future, but I’d be very worried if they did it today.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Don’t you think the Apple Watch is reassuring in this regard, though, because what mostly you’re talking about is like what they did

⏹️ ▶️ ^John with the phone as they made it all screen because they realized that the buttons were limiting and really the number

⏹️ ▶️ ^John of interesting things you can do with the phone when it’s just all screen just expand greatly. It becomes a general purpose computing device,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John whereas on the watch they made a slightly different decision. Yeah, it’s all screen because they expect similar type of things.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John But the little digital crown thing and the button on the side acknowledge that in this

⏹️ ▶️ ^John application, it’s not just about, oh, I can make this general purpose computing device because it’s so darn small.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John So other aspects like quick access and reliable, reliable use of you know, like, why

⏹️ ▶️ ^John don’t I just make people pinch in the screen? Well, it’s a different context here. They’re not afraid to make it you know, the highlight

⏹️ ▶️ ^John feature of their watch user interface to be a knob. Essentially, I would imagine if Apple

⏹️ ▶️ ^John had a take on a car like what you’re what you’re envisioning is like, boy, if Apple made a car, it would look like just a big giant iPad

⏹️ ▶️ ^John in the middle of the dash. That’s essentially what Tesla did. I would hope that if Apple did a car, they would recognize that this context

⏹️ ▶️ ^John is also different than the mobile phone context and that what’s appropriate on a mobile phone, making

⏹️ ▶️ ^John it just a giant screen, would also not be appropriate here. So it would

⏹️ ▶️ ^John have, not that it would have a digital crown, but that they would have knobs and buttons and stuff on it. And it would not be

⏹️ ▶️ ^John entirely screen. I expect a big screen to be featured heavily, but I would not be surprised if an Apple-designed car interior

⏹️ ▶️ ^John had more knobs and buttons than a Tesla one does.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey All right, so let’s put this in the parking lot. I couldn’t even say it with

⏹️ ▶️ ^{Casey, Marco} a straight face.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey I tried so hard to get it out with a straight face. Let’s put this aside for a second and let’s talk about something else that’s

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⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey So let’s assume for the sake of conversation that carplay doesn’t exist. It basically doesn’t.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Hey, oh, God, the two of us are

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco harsh today. No, I’m just it hasn’t gone very far. Maybe it will in the future. But right now it

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco really has not gone very far.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Yeah, and that’s a fair point. So if we take it that car play either doesn’t exist or barely

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey exists, wouldn’t it make the most sense that all of these hires and all of this

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey activity is probably about making what we call car play

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey today? I mean, that just seems the most obvious to me. The thought of actually constructing an automobile

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey seems kind of crazy to me.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Yeah, partnering, like if Apple is interested in cars, partnering with a car manufacturer

⏹️ ▶️ ^John just to do what we talked about back in neutrals, like these car makers all want to do it themselves. They want

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to be like, oh, we have our internal design group. It does all our, you know, Ford interiors with a new my

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Ford touch, whatever, you know, like they want to do it themselves as a point of pride, but they’re terrible at it because they

⏹️ ▶️ ^John don’t have much experience. Cars used to not be about software. And then seemingly overnight, night car, because

⏹️ ▶️ ^John came about software. First, the engines were about software, but that was like, oh, it’s not visible. It’s not user interface, you know, so all

⏹️ ▶️ ^John of a sudden our engines all have 20 in them, they seem to make that transition okay. But when it came

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to make, you know, human computer interfaces inside the cars, they have not done well

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and they haven’t been able to attract that expertise. So we’re always looking like if you could just bring someone in from the outside, like let

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Apple do your interior, but no car maker wants to let some, you know, computer company come in and design that they want,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John you know, it’s like, like BMW or whatever. It’s like, it’s a point of pride. We make the interiors and they just keep trying and

⏹️ ▶️ ^John they refine them and they get better at them. But I imagine if your Apple and

⏹️ ▶️ ^John all the people at Apple, including the big fancy executives who make the decisions, drive super expensive

⏹️ ▶️ ^John cars and kind of like how all the executives had super expensive cell phones, but still thought they were all crap.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I bet a lot of those executives with similar tastes drive to work in their hundred $200,000 cars and

⏹️ ▶️ ^John say, boy, the interior and interface of this car is terrible. And like, this is the best car you could buy. Like I’m

⏹️ ▶️ ^John not because it’s a cheap car. Like, I’m rich, I have a lot of money, I still have to use a crappy cell phone

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and deal with my crappy TV set and drive a car that I love everything about

⏹️ ▶️ ^John except for the user interface in the interior, right? And so the channeling that frustration

⏹️ ▶️ ^John would be like, you know, can’t we can’t we work with BMW,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Mercedes, Porsche, Honda, how anybody will anybody let us like work with them at the level we want to work with them

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and say, we own the interior user interface of your car, you do the engine, you do the car, you do the

⏹️ ▶️ ^John structure, you do the suspension, you do everything else, but we own how you turn the windshield wipers on how you adjust the radio,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John how you call someone on a cell phone from your car, like, let us do all that for you. And so far,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John no car if Apple has made those overtures, no car manufacturer has taken them up on the deal. And again, I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ ^John blame them. Because if I was a carmaker, I’d be like, f you, but you’re basically doing is cutting

⏹️ ▶️ ^John us out the knees and saying you’re half a carmaker. Now, we’re the important you know, please, Apple, come in and become

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the most valuable differentiator of our car line, relegating us to a mere manufacturer of

⏹️ ▶️ ^John a drivetrain and body. Nobody wants to do that, right? But I can imagine Apple wanting

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to do that. And maybe that’s plan A. And plan B is, well, can’t we just buy Tesla? And plan C

⏹️ ▶️ ^John is, we’ll just make our own damn car. And that’s a hell of an extrapolation of the order

⏹️ ▶️ ^John of events. And I don’t know what kind of gaps there are between plan A, B, and C. But plan A sounds plausible, that Apple would

⏹️ ▶️ ^John want to be more involved in the interior of a car. And carplay is like

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the weakest, most piddling little attempt to get Apple anything inside a car.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Yeah, that’s exactly what I was driving at. And I come back to maybe,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey you know, when we started this conversation, one of you, I think John had asked, well, who is the Apple of

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey cars? And maybe the better question is who’s the AT&T,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey who is the most beleaguered? Who is the most desperate? Who is the most willing

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey to let Apple just saunter in? I think he means singular. Actually, you’re right. I’m sorry. That’s very true. I

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey do mean singular. So who is the most desperate and most willing to let Apple

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey just waltz in and kind of take over the show? And I don’t know who that

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey is today.

⏹️ ▶️ ^{John, Casey} Alfa

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Romeo. No, wait,

⏹️ ▶️ ^{John, Casey} let’s try again.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Everyone’s already owned by somebody else.

⏹️ ▶️ ^{John, Casey} Like any good brand,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John like Tata or Fiat already bought them. So who’s

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey left? But you see my point, right? I mean, it’s just who is most willing to do that? I think Saab

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey before they disappear, because Saab is dead now, right?

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Yeah, GM bought them, right? And then

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey and then spun them off, I thought, or just let them die. One or the other. But

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Saab is gone.

⏹️ ▶️ ^{John, Casey} So I don’t Saturn, you

⏹️ ▶️ ^{John, Marco} know? No, they’re gone, too.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco What kind of what kind of shape is Nissan

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey in? I thought they were doing well. Mitsubishi was hurting last I heard.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Yeah, Mitsubishi. But like but they don’t they don’t offer a good car. That’s for Apple to put stuff

⏹️ ▶️ ^John inside. Like I don’t you know, like the car is a much more important part of of the entire

⏹️ ▶️ ^John product than the cell network was for the iPhone, arguably, even when they pick like the bad cell

⏹️ ▶️ ^John network, right? And also the phone always had sort of like if we do well, obviously we’ll expand

⏹️ ▶️ ^John outward. Like we won’t be AT&T or singular only forever for successful. Whereas if you’re successful with a car, what do you

⏹️ ▶️ ^John think? Every car companies can be like, Oh yeah, totally. Apple come in and do our like, it’s not, I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ ^John see a path forward for that. It’s like you just either you do something like CarPlay, where you try to get buy

⏹️ ▶️ ^John in from and this car play could still work like you’re not owning the interior but every

⏹️ ▶️ ^John interior has a place where you can put your crap and some limited integration of course android’s trying to do the same thing

⏹️ ▶️ ^John like i think the the prospects for carplay are similar for the prospects

⏹️ ▶️ ^John of you buy your tv from someone else and let us control some part of the interface

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and in practice that kind of sort of works like that’s the puck device category like well we don’t

⏹️ ▶️ ^John make make your TV. We don’t control the interface. Those menus you bring up to adjust the picture controls. We don’t control

⏹️ ▶️ ^John any of that. We don’t control your remote, but you can attach this box to one of your inputs and use

⏹️ ▶️ ^John our own little remote. And then we sort of take over your TV for a small period of time. And it’s not great, but it works.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John And other people try to do it. So that’s car play. That’s the Android car thing or whatever. But that’s not going to get us

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to like that’s not going to resolve our dissatisfaction in the same way that doesn’t something make us all love our TVs

⏹️ ▶️ ^John because we have seven pucks attached them.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Well, and also, it’s not a great metaphor because TVs were just made to be taken

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco over. Whereas if you want to properly integrate into a car system and take over the UI,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco you need to be integrated into a lot more. It’s a lot more complicated than just like, Oh, there’s a giant screen,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco take it over. Most cars have multiple displays and gauges

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco and different control surfaces all over the place and all sorts of different things you got to hook into if you really wanted to take

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco it over and you know over time it’s only going to get more complicated like look at what our fancy cars have

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco we have the heads up displays we have cameras and in the mirror to look at stuff on the road you got sensors

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco all around the car you got the meant navigation screen you got media controls you got navigation itself

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco you have all these like the mobile office BS all these different things like and the

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco number of systems in cars that are that are going to be integrated into everyday models

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco is going to keep going up over time as these things get cheaper. So

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco the model of what CarPlay is doing now is always

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco going to be very limited, and is really, if anything, going to keep being relegated to a

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco smaller and smaller proportion of the car’s overall smarts and

⏹️ ▶️ ^John displays. But like television, the car interior is under attack from usurpers from

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the outside, right? Like Automatic is an example. Like a previous sponsor of the podcast lets you

⏹️ ▶️ ^John shove a thing into a standard port on your car and give it a bunch of features that it should have had. And already, if car manufacturers

⏹️ ▶️ ^John knew what the hell they were doing, but they don’t. So use this. When we all used to have GPSes stuck inside our cars, when

⏹️ ▶️ ^John it wasn’t on our phones and it wasn’t built into the cars, that was an attack from the outside. Hey, if car

⏹️ ▶️ ^John makers knew what the hell they were doing, every car would have GPS built in. But they don’t. So buy this Garmin thing and suck your cup into your dashboard,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John right? Everyone connecting iPods to their stereo systems long before car makers got a clue.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John There is a constant assault from outside world of the faster moving technology sector

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to do things that sometimes it’s just kind of like taking advantage of your car hardware.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Sometimes it’s entirely separate system like the GPS, but sometimes like automatic, it’s like, you know, help you find

⏹️ ▶️ ^John your car in the parking lot. Why can’t you do that already? Because car makers have no idea what they’re doing. Buy this thing and we’ll help you do

⏹️ ▶️ ^John it, right? And I don’t know, it’s not like they’re gonna win. Like they’re gonna overwhelm it from the outside because

⏹️ ▶️ ^John they can’t. And Marco, you’re totally right. Like attaching a bunch of these things like it’s worse than attaching

⏹️ ▶️ ^John pucks to RT because like, the experience should be entirely integrated, it should know how fast your car is going, where

⏹️ ▶️ ^John you’re probably going to how much pressure is in the tires, what the current g force being pulled is, whether it’s okay

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to interrupt you with a call because it knows how you’re like, total integration like that’s you know, you ask what could

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Apple add to the car experience? If you know this is maybe the idealized

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Apple, they could add an interface that takes into account all those things in in a way no carmaker has,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and do it all without relying on a bunch of other stuff that you stick inside the car.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Yeah, I think you guys are both right. The only thing that makes me doubt

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey you is, what if they were to work with a

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey car manufacturer that already has a bus? Like, I think Volkswagen,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey for example, and I’m not talking buses in what the Brits would call a coach. I’m saying a service

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey bus. And so as an example, I think that Volkswagen has some

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey hilariously named and mildly inappropriate service bus that all

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey of their different components talk to. And I think BMW does the same thing, actually. And presumably,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey most modern car manufacturers do. So maybe this isn’t really narrowing it down at all. But

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey my friend Brian, who had a Volkswagen R32, I remember that he

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey had done something. I don’t recall the specifics. But he had done something with the

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Volkswagen CAN bus, as I believe what it’s called. Thank you, Matt Donders, in the chat. Where he had like

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey added a gauge or something like that. Whatever he did, he did something that was possible

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey because basically all of the cars’ different computers were talking to each other on one common bus.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey And so if that were the case in say a Volkswagen or a BMW or something like that, then maybe they

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey could do something more than just the fairly rudimentary car play implementation

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey they have now. add gauges, not not to say the gauges are really the be all end all, but just as a simple

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey example. You know, something like that is possible without presumably too much work if they can just get themselves

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey on to the canvas. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco but as soon as anyone does that, as soon as Apple plays into that, they’re going to just lock it down. You know, because

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco like, because as john said, like, the car manufacturers kind of don’t want

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco someone else to come take over their systems and plug into their systems like they want to control the whole thing for lots

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco of good reasons, like for themselves, for their businesses, for safety. Like there’s so many reasons

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco why they’re not gonna let anyone else just plug into their bus and drive all over it.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Well, Microsoft did that with Ford, right? Weren’t they the, like the Ford, MyTouch interior thing,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John like Microsoft partnered with them?

⏹️ ▶️ ^{John, Marco} Yeah, but

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco that was like two desperate companies. I mean,

⏹️ ▶️ ^{Marco, John} right. Well,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the whole idea is like that it’s almost as if it was to Ford’s advantage

⏹️ ▶️ ^John for that interface to not be too good. Because like I said, if the reason people are buying your car is

⏹️ ▶️ ^John just because everybody knows it’s the car with the awesome Apple interface. And you got to check it. If that becomes the value

⏹️ ▶️ ^John proposition of your car, if it is the differentiator, you don’t, like people are buying your

⏹️ ▶️ ^John car not because of something you did. You are giving some portion of value and attractiveness

⏹️ ▶️ ^John inherent in your product. And you’re giving the most important portion of that to Apple. Like it’s kind of like

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the cell network. We want the iPhone in our network. It turns out that people don’t care what network

⏹️ ▶️ ^John it is. They’ll get AT&T if it means they get to have the iPhone. iPhone becomes the most important thing.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John It’s not like, oh, this is going to make people love AT&T. No, it’s going to make people love the iPhone. That is

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the differentiator. And that’s where the value is. And they just want you to be a dumb pipe. And now you’re sad.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Well, but that’s exactly what Ford did with the MyFord Sync or whatever it was, which was Microsoft

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey behind the scenes. And they made it clear that it was Microsoft. That was a selling point. Right.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John But it wasn’t that good. And no one was buying a Ford because of the, like,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John if all of a sudden people bought Fords because everyone knew that Fords are the cars with the great interfaces. They

⏹️ ▶️ ^John never had that reputation. That was never the value proposition of a Ford. And if it had become

⏹️ ▶️ ^John one, if it’d be like, I wasn’t going to buy it for it, but now everybody tells me, the same reason,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I’m not into Apple, but everyone tells me an iPhone is an awesome cell phone, so I’m interested and I’m going to check it out.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey I guess. But I mean, to take it on its flip side, I feel like I’ve heard many

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey times that say, Cadillac’s navigation interface is just atrociously bad. And we talked

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey a long time, especially Marco, about how awful the Lexus interface is. So yeah, maybe you don’t want it to be

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey a selling point, but you certainly don’t want it to be a liability either.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Yeah, well, you’re kind of right that it was Microsoft desperation. But Ford is actually one of the American car companies that is

⏹️ ▶️ ^John not constantly making terrible cars and being bailed out by the government. And if

⏹️ ▶️ ^{John, Marco} you

⏹️ ▶️ ^John had to pick what is the best American car maker, I think Ford

⏹️ ▶️ ^John is a pretty strong case to be major Ford in terms of both financial health of the company and the quality of the vehicles

⏹️ ▶️ ^John they put out. There’s spot exceptions. You can find exceptional cars in all

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the other makers as well. But Ford overall was not the most desperate

⏹️ ▶️ ^John of all companies.

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⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey All right. Anything else on cars?

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Yeah, one more thing, I think. We have more than one more thing. Go ahead. Well, one more

⏹️ ▶️ ^John major thing to bring this back down to earth now that we’re at 2%– Followed by three weeks of follow-up. Too busy speculating about this.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Let’s all now assume that Apple is not going to make a car. But let’s assume that these rumors

⏹️ ▶️ ^John about some large project at Apple involving cars in some way

⏹️ ▶️ ^John that is not Street View and that is not merely an extension of existing car play exists. Because if this

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Wall Street Journal article, Say it gets a bunch of things wrong, and it guesses wrong about what these people are doing. But there really

⏹️ ▶️ ^John is a large number of people. Apple’s gearing up. And like Marco said, it seems

⏹️ ▶️ ^John crazy that these people would all be working on CarPlay. So if they’re not making a car, and if it’s not about Street

⏹️ ▶️ ^John View, and if it’s not CarPlay, but it is car-related, what the hell is it?

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco I mean, honestly, I think a Street View-style project from those little minivans that we’ve already seen

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco pictures of that, I don’t know if we definitely know that they’re from Apple. I think that’s kind of vague as to what the connection

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco is, but assume they are. I think that would be enough to

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco have a big staff and a big lab. That might be the reason. That might be all

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco this is, because, quote, all this is, is actually, to do a Street View kind

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco of thing is a huge project. But why would that be in a big

⏹️ ▶️ ^John building?

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Well, it’s a lot of data, a lot of software to write, a lot of data to manage, and people to manage,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco and a fleet of vehicles to manage. a big job. Like there’s a reason why

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco why only Google has that feature right now. Like I don’t did anybody else ever do a street view? Like people in the flyover

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco works are not nearly as good. I don’t think anyone else did street view except them right? Not

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to my knowledge. So the rumor is like a thousand person team like if they were doing street view which I probably think they are

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I would imagine this effort to be more distributed like necessarily more distributed. It’s not as if all the cars

⏹️ ▶️ ^John are leaving from California and coming back to California. Well it is Apple. It’s like all the AOL

⏹️ ▶️ ^John traffic going to Virginia. I don’t know. It doesn’t seem to,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I believe the Street View thing 100%. And I suppose that could take maybe 100 people,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John but not 1,000. And I’m not sure I would hire anyone from a car company to lead that, because

⏹️ ▶️ ^John that’s more of a, I would hire someone from a mapping company or someone who they

⏹️ ▶️ ^John already have acquisitions from the keyhole or whatever company that gave them their map data.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John It doesn’t fit with this rumor. I guess it depends

⏹️ ▶️ ^John on how much of the Wall Street Journal article you think they got correct. And I’m willing to believe that they got everything correct except for

⏹️ ▶️ ^John what these people are doing. I’m willing to believe that the number of people is right, that their

⏹️ ▶️ ^John general location is right, that the people who are leading them are correctly identified.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John But they just are guessing wrong about what these people are doing because they’re not actually making a car. They’re doing something.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John And I’m not sure what that something is.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco I mean the reality is like if you if you take these little collection of facts assume

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco they’re true I think making a car is the most likely conclusion to draw

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco from that it’s not what I want them to be doing it’s not what I think they should be doing as from from

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco what I know today I mean this could also you know if you if you said to people in 2004

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco shall make a phone you hear from a lot of people who would say yes and a lot of people who would say well maybe they

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco should just really focus on the computers You know so it we don’t know I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco know by saying I don’t think they should really do this Maybe they will blow us away.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco I don’t think it’s very likely just because it’s like I don’t know I think they can make a car that is designed

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco very well but I think about like You know if if you look at like

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco TVs and and why again? I know I said a lot of this earlier But if you look at why they don’t make a TV I think

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco one of the reasons they don’t make a TV is that TVs really have have very little interface

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco like the TV itself like the box is the plug into it have an interface the TV itself has

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco very little interface really you’re basically making tiny adjustment sometimes

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco just in the volume maybe and then picking inputs like that’s basically what you’re doing everything

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco else now you know you’re plugging a box and do it do things there so like TVs like Apple could not

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco bring a whole lot to that because most of what a TV does is a dumb screen that you turn on and off and pick

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco inputs from.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John But they would own the whole screen. It’s like, what can they bring to the phone? It’s basically just a big screen. They own everything on the screen.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John It defines the experience.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Well, but they already have that with the box. Anyway, so compare that to the car,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco to actual car usage. Like, this is kind of what I was getting at earlier when I was saying like, how

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco much can Apple bring to this? Like, as you’re using your car, what

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco parts of what you’re doing in your car, when you’re actually owning and driving a car,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco What parts of that process and that experience are you heavily interacting with something

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco where interface quality is that important? I think one of the reasons why cars have such mediocre

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco interfaces so often is because it doesn’t really matter that much. Because for the most part,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco you’re barely ever looking at the controls, I hope, and you’re not doing that much. There’s like 12

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco buttons, like you’re not doing a massive amount of things. You’re not running freeform

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco software for plenty of good reasons that probably won’t change. There’s not that much

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco going on there. And many of these advances probably shouldn’t happen for

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco safety reasons. So I really doubt what value

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Apple could realistically bring to this that would make it worth all this trouble, all this hassle, all

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco the risk, all the expense, all the loss of focus. I don’t know like what problem

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco are we really desperate for an apple car to solve and

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco and because look all of us agree that cars often have you know pretty

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco pretty mediocre interfaces but all of us still drive these cars with pretty mediocre interfaces

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco we all chose to buy the ones we bought for different reasons really like what so not

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco only do I do I not think Apple could make a huge difference here but I’m also skeptical as to whether

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco they would succeed much in the market because like people buy cars for so many different reasons

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco beyond the things Apple’s good at.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Well I mean Apple’s good at fashion too and people buy cars for those reasons but I think your view of what Apple can bring to this

⏹️ ▶️ ^John is too narrow like it’s not just about the user interface like I said bringing the things that Tesla is essentially already brought to it

⏹️ ▶️ ^John only bringing it to more people. The ownership and use experience of an electric car is I

⏹️ ▶️ ^John think significantly different from an internal combustion engine car and it also different from a hybrid and

⏹️ ▶️ ^John all the parts of the car that don’t necessarily have to do with driving, getting in and out of it that like the

⏹️ ▶️ ^John ownership experience, the maintenance experience, like what the car looks like, how big it can be where it can

⏹️ ▶️ ^John fit like all this, the places you can innovate with an electric car, where you can innovate with internal combustion

⏹️ ▶️ ^John engines, because you have different constraints. And Tesla is doing that now. And that, that is the that’s why I call them the apple of

⏹️ ▶️ ^John cars like that is what they’re bringing into it. And yes, also, hopefully making the interior have nicer interface and having

⏹️ ▶️ ^John integration with your iPhone and having all this other you know, like all the things you would expect them to do. But I

⏹️ ▶️ ^John think it’s the sort of total ownership experience that that Apple

⏹️ ▶️ ^John would be bringing to it. But like, I think we keep going back to what Apple is making with the car. And you said,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John if this rumor is true, most likely the most likely thing like if you think they’re right about everything

⏹️ ▶️ ^John is that they’re making a car, I have to think that like 1000 persons seems too small.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John And I would think that they would have to be something in this article about them hiring away automotive engineers from carmakers like

⏹️ ▶️ ^John poaching people from different parts of the organization. Like if I just look at these facts, what it looks like they’re

⏹️ ▶️ ^John doing. If I say every fact in this Wall Street Journal article is correct, is they’re working on something having to do

⏹️ ▶️ ^John with interfaces inside cars. It does not look to me like they’re making a car because this I mean, you

⏹️ ▶️ ^John know, again, if everything is article is true, I would think you should be hiring way, way, way, way,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John way more mechanical engineers, automotive engineers and stuff like that, and

⏹️ ▶️ ^John be much less concerned about like poaching people from the rest of the organization to do software and

⏹️ ▶️ ^John just hiring. It just seems like, again, unless you’re buying Tesla, which already comes with those people,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John this rumor, the most likely thing, if everything was true in this article, it’s like, oh,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John they’re doing something much more significant having to do with the interior of cars. That’s what it looks like to me.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I’m bored by that, too, though.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Speaking of boring, what if it’s something even more boring than anything we’ve discussed? What if they’re just

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey using their, their knowledge of system on a chip and building a,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey a, an ECU, or what if they’re building a custom ECU to work with their custom head unit to,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey to vertically integrate or whatever the businessy term is, um, all the electronics and

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey software in a car, but it could be any car, it could be GM’s could be Ford’s

⏹️ ▶️ ^{Casey, Marco} or it could

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey be Bentley, who cares? I mean, it’s a very boring answer, which is why I don’t think it’s really Apple style, but

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey it’s a possibility. I mean, they’ve gotten pretty good at chip design.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Yeah, but like, who’s, again, who’s going to buy that? Like, I don’t think they want to be a parts vendor for car makers.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Like, that’s a loser business. And like, anything where you think an Apple will vend

⏹️ ▶️ ^John this product or service or technology to all the car makers, that is kind of the same reason they can’t

⏹️ ▶️ ^John seem to make a TV. It’s like, and Apple will let this technology work with every cable company

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and all the TV. Like, the industry does not want that. Industry does not want Apple to come in and,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John you know, sort of do what they did. Remember, they did the music industry and it’s like, Oh, well, Apple’s not going to do

⏹️ ▶️ ^John that to my industry, right? And they basically did to the cell phone industry to like, it was all about they did the music

⏹️ ▶️ ^John industry. It’s like, damn, now Apple has way more power than we ever wanted them to. How do we get ourselves into the situation?

⏹️ ▶️ ^John And then it was like the video companies, you know, TV movies, like we’re not gonna let Apple do

⏹️ ▶️ ^John what they did to the music companies. And they were super resistant and helped competitors or whatever. It’s like, like, ha, we learned our lesson.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John The people who didn’t learn that lesson for the cell phone companies. They weren’t paying enough attention. They’re like, yeah, you see what

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Apple did to the record companies? Yeah, and now the movie studios are all scared of them. Ha ha. Like, they weren’t even thinking about themselves.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John And Apple came and did the same thing to them, essentially. It’s like, how did this happen? And the car makers,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I would hope, wouldn’t let that type of, if only because of pride and stubbornness, which seems

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to be very strong in the car business because there are so few car companies and because so many of them have long storied

⏹️ ▶️ ^John traditions having to do with families and everything that they do. They do not want an outsider

⏹️ ▶️ ^John coming in. And like, first of all, everybody’s got it’s not a differentiator. So screw that. And,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and second of all, they don’t want anybody coming in and telling them their business. But

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I don’t know, like, it seems to me that Apple, if again, if these rumors are true, wants

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to do something having to do with cars, and I think they seem to be starting in the interior and growing slowly.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John And so unless they buy Tesla, which they totally should, because it would be great. I don’t see them making a car.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week Cards Against Humanity, Fracture, and Squarespace

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco and we will see you next week.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Now the show is over they didn’t even mean to begin cuz

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey it was accidental accidental

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey John didn’t do any research Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him cuz

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey it It was

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco accidental, it was

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey accidental And you can find the show

⏹️ ▶️ ^John notes at atp.fm And if you’re into

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Twitter, you

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco 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 We didn’t

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco even mention that oh it’s shaped like a minivan.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Oh

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco God, can you imagine that has it has to be maybe like maybe it’s a compact hatchback

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco of some sort But even that’s kind of they just mean it’s

⏹️ ▶️ ^John shaped like like Where this rumor come from? well and electric cars you can have things like

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the leaf that look sort of Small or they even like the smart cars that have small internal combustion

⏹️ ▶️ ^John like you can end up with a car that is What for lack of a better term dorky looking

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and it’s all just about like oh, it’s a little commuter car it’s just for transportation purposes and like

⏹️ ▶️ ^John But that’s less interesting to me as well. But then I can imagine someone who doesn’t know anything about cars seeing that and saying, oh, it’s like a minivan.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Or hell, seeing the Tesla Model X and seeing it’s kind of like a minivan. Like anything that doesn’t look like

⏹️ ▶️ ^John a Ford Crown Victoria from their childhood, it looks like a minivan to them.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey But wouldn’t you default to SUV rather than minivan if you didn’t know any better and didn’t know anything

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey about cars?

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I would imagine it has a snub-nosed front, like someone saying it looks like a minivan, that there’s not a lot

⏹️ ▶️ ^John of front overhang because you don’t have an engine there You can get better passenger packaging like the smart cars. Look,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John you know what I mean? Like and then if you make that a little bit larger and puff it up, if it doesn’t have like a nose, it doesn’t have

⏹️ ▶️ ^John a hood. Then it looks like a minivan.

⏹️ ▶️ ^{John, Casey} Or crossover.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John You know, I don’t know that that that’s of all the doomsday scenarios, them

⏹️ ▶️ ^John making some little electric commuter car like a leaf or like it was just so uninteresting because

⏹️ ▶️ ^John that is and I just. I mean, we all read that big Johnny Ive interview, right? I haven’t

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I haven’t finished it yet. That’s so good. No homework. It was homework.

⏹️ ▶️ ^{John, Marco} I did. I

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco did like

⏹️ ▶️ ^{Marco, John} half

⏹️ ▶️ ^John of it so far. Give me a break Yeah, everyone was raving about that article But if you have read the was a Leander

⏹️ ▶️ ^John cany’s Johnny I have book a lot of that article read like a book report On the Johnny I have book which

⏹️ ▶️ ^John is not to say it’s a bad thing because it’s great Like if you haven’t read the book, there’s a lot of good information And of course he had actual

⏹️ ▶️ ^John interviews and access and that’s the good part of the article But a lot of it I felt like I was wading through information that I already knew from the book

⏹️ ▶️ ^John That’s not a slam in the article. It’s just that why I found it difficult to get through But anyway, at one point, Johnny,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I have looks out of the window. His Bentley at the Toyota Echo next to him and complains that the styling is terrible. So

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I don’t think it’s beyond the the

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the realm of possibility that Apple would be interested in designing a car

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and that it would be a dorky car like this is a dorky car done right. You know what I mean? Like

⏹️ ▶️ ^John small, you know, commuter car for people who don’t need to go long distances and owning

⏹️ ▶️ ^John this is so much better for people who never even wanted to own a car, owning this is so much unlike owning a car that it will

⏹️ ▶️ ^John be great for you. And you’d be like, oh, they would never do that. Eddie Cue’s on the board of Ferrari. And Johnny

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Ive has Aston Martins. And they like great, cool cars. But Johnny Ive was looking

⏹️ ▶️ ^John disdainfully at the Echo, not because I think he thinks this hard Echo, like the idea of a small economical car is terrible,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John but just because he thought it wasn’t designed right. And in his mind, he’s like, I could do a little car that’s much better than

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco that. And he was also picking on somebody who’s already down. I mean, Toyota has not made anything attractive At

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco least the 90s if not earlier

⏹️ ▶️ ^John yeah, but as soon as the super got all puffy it was all down

⏹️ ▶️ ^{John, Casey} Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John although some of the early Lexus’s weren’t that bad like the memory of the original Lexus sc coop That

⏹️ ▶️ ^John was interesting design. Don’t you think really

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey the the Lexus sc you talk about the convertible hardtop?

⏹️ ▶️ ^John No, the original sc you guys maybe don’t remember. I’ll get

⏹️ ▶️ ^{John, Marco} you

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco looking it up hold on

⏹️ ▶️ ^John that

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco you like that

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Like super old no you got to go back in time like what when did Lexus? when Lexus came out

⏹️ ▶️ ^John as a company.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco They have one that’s like, they have a picture here of a 93 and a 92. Try the SC300, SC400.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John It

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco looks kind of like an Integra and a Miata had a baby, and this is like kind of what came out.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I mean, but compare it like, this is comparatively much tighter,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John like as in the skin is stretched much tighter over this car than it was. I think this is like, the innovative thing about this doesn’t

⏹️ ▶️ ^John look like it at the time, looking back, but like, wow, look how smooth and curved the front and back

⏹️ ▶️ ^John are. Like this is before cars all became water balloons. But I remember reading a story

⏹️ ▶️ ^John about this that one of the design inspirations for the styling of

⏹️ ▶️ ^John this car was literally taking a water balloon and squeezing it and seeing, squeezing with your hand and seeing

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the different shapes that it sort of bulges into. But compare this to like current

⏹️ ▶️ ^John actual water balloon cars. And this looks like sporty and svelte and just,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco eh. I’m not sure I agree with you on how good this is.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Yeah, I’m with Marco. This is not a very attractive car at all.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John It’s a little bit dated, but at the time it came out, it was very refined and stylish. And

⏹️ ▶️ ^John it was a distinctive, it didn’t look like a Mercedes or a BMW, unlike, for example, the LS 400,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John which was like the poor man’s Mercedes, literally only 10 times more reliable and quieter.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John But it was like this in the original GS, actually had some distinctive styling

⏹️ ▶️ ^John cues where you could say this is like, and the current line of Lexus is also distinctive styling cues. all ugly.

⏹️ ▶️ ^{John, Casey} Our styling is a

⏹️ ▶️ ^John big giant ugly bowtie mouth.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Yeah, them and Acura.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco I would really say like, like this, the last couple years have really not been kind

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco to most car design. We’ve had some really, really bad cars being made recently.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I really like the new Accord and I like the new 5 Series. Two of our, it happened to be two of our cars, but I think the styling

⏹️ ▶️ ^John of those cars took a definite turn for the better because the previous generation Accord was butt ugly and the previous generation 5

⏹️ ▶️ ^John was not good.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Yeah, I agree with those actually. But you can look around the industry and you can see a lot of things

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco that seem to keep getting worse. Like for example, everything Acura makes.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Yep. Every Acura, every Lexus, some BMWs if I can say. I really don’t like

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco the new M3 styling as we talked about with the skin flaps. I don’t like that at all. I

⏹️ ▶️ ^John don’t know, like Acura I think is a little bit of an upswing because they had a really serious,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Unfortunate beak error and there I think they’re trying to come out of that like the MDX

⏹️ ▶️ ^John was like the low point It’s just or maybe the ZDX whatever that other thing like

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I think they’re starting to come out of it I think when they merged that merge their high-end sedans back together

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Into whatever it is the RLX now that the TSX and the RL became the single car the RLX that

⏹️ ▶️ ^John is a Rationalization and the styling of that car is not entirely hideous and really the RL wasn’t

⏹️ ▶️ ^John entirely hideous either But yeah, they’re off in a weird direction. I think that they’re trying to come back we’re like

⏹️ ▶️ ^John BMW went off in a weird direction too, and they’re trying to gather it back, but I think

⏹️ ▶️ ^John you know like you said the new the new 3 series starts to go off in a weird direction again like the 5 is

⏹️ ▶️ ^John 5 was the maybe the peak comeback period and we’ll see what the next 5 looks like to see if they gets better or worse

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco God the maxima is terrible these days. Sorry. Yeah, just don’t even

⏹️ ▶️ ^John look at the maximum anymore. Just don’t look

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco oh my god I heard it was getting better because it had some dark times, but it just keep getting worse

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco I missed

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey I missed the 40s see

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco yeah I mean the one I had the 96 Maxima was it wasn’t it wasn’t incredibly attractive But it was

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco it was at least neutral ding this is the new one. Oh boy Jeez,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco what are they doing? What is wrong with Nissan?

⏹️ ▶️ ^{Marco, John} Oh?

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco What a shame the Maxima was so good it lost its way so severely

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Yep. Nissan had some interesting things like the when the Altima did the wrap around tail lights like

⏹️ ▶️ ^John that was going a little bit too far, but at least it was interesting. And I think the Maxima like

⏹️ ▶️ ^John one or two generations ago also had some interesting features. It was still kind of puffy, but

⏹️ ▶️ ^John they were kind of in the right direction. And then they just lost it for the car generation.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Oh, man, I miss neutral.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Wow, the Altima is pretty rough these days too. Boy, what are they

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey thinking? The car market is not that welcoming as of late.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey I mean, what is there really that’s compelling these days?

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Well, I think the move to electric is interesting. It’s still pretty limited and

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco expensive, but I think that’s like, it’s similar to the move to SSDs

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco and computers. That’s clearly the way forward eventually.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Obviously, it’s going to move a lot more slowly, I think, than the SST transition, but, uh, because it turns out gas

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco engines are good enough for so many things and way better at

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco certain other things that, like, yeah, it’s gonna, it’s gonna be a long time before gas engines

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco are even the minority. But I think, I think the electric cars are going to be where

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco we are looking for excitement. And when, you know, maybe that’s why Apple wants to be a part of it, if they do, who

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco knows, but you know, clearly from people who have driven them or from people who own them,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco there are a lot of compelling differences to them. There’s still

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco a lot of downsides, but you know, we’ll get there.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I just looked at the 2015 Maxima. I was thinking of the 2014 one. The 2015 one, holy cow! Do they

⏹️ ▶️ ^John make it even worse?

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco I’m speechless. I haven’t felt

⏹️ ▶️ ^John this way since the last time I first saw the rear end of

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the C7 Corvette. Like, that’s the last time I felt this way. Let me see what happened.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco just

⏹️ ▶️ ^John put it in the chat room. What is that?

⏹️ ▶️ ^{Marco, John} Oh, maybe it’s a concept. All right. Maybe that’s like,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John maybe it’s a concept. I just did search for Nissan Maxima 2015. If this This

⏹️ ▶️ ^John is a concept I feel a little bit better, but like,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco yeah, this is this is not a shipping car. But if

⏹️ ▶️ ^John it was, that would be a big mistake. That is not an attractive vehicle.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco At least it would be different. I mean, this would like you could you could at least describe this one as polarizing,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco whereas like the regular Max, but you can just describe as mediocre to bad. You know that this

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco polarizing somebody will love this. You know, people with bad taste probably, but somebody will love

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco this. Whereas the current maximum, nobody can love

⏹️ ▶️ ^John it. That’s what I was thinking of the current one where like that design with a little the little corner cut out of the

⏹️ ▶️ ^John headlights the first time they did that was interesting but now it’s it’s just now the car is puffy and gross again.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco It just looks like a mistake. It just looks it looks like somebody like somebody just

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco screwed up while dragging out this design in 3d modeling software.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Everybody Google for Honda Accord 2014 to cleanse your palate.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Oh god listen to this guy. Oh wait wait wait the Maxima was at the end of the

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey really sappy Super Bowl commercial from this year. The one where the dad’s a race car driver and

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey he like picks his son up from school or something like that at

⏹️ ▶️ ^{Casey, Marco} the very end.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Is this the one where they kill children to advertise

⏹️ ▶️ ^{Marco, Casey} insurance? No.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey No, I said sappy, not stupid. Anyway, the dad like picks up his kid

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey after he’s missed his entire childhood, but he picks him up in a new Maxima, so all’s forgiven. I put the link

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey in the chat, about one minute and 16 seconds, give or take a little bit.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Wait, this, I’m looking at the 2014 Honda Accord to cleanse my palate, and you’re right, I did clean it out because it just looks completely

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco forgettable. Don’t look at the hybrid! Don’t look at the hybrid! I’m not. I’m looking at the

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco LX sedan on automotive.com. It’s just, ooh, it’s just like, it’s just incredibly

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco bland. It’s even in that light silver color that all incredibly bland cars in the last decade have been.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John It is not bland. It is distinctive. It is non-bloaty. It is attractive.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John It has nice wheels. I agree that it’s non-bloaty. Like, the sheet metal is stuck to the

⏹️ ▶️ ^John car.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Yes, I yeah, I will. I will give you that point. And it is a car shaped

⏹️ ▶️ ^John car. Yes. Wow. It’s not shaped like a snail

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco or a poop. Our standards are pretty low here. This is this is this

⏹️ ▶️ ^{Marco, John} is what

⏹️ ▶️ ^John you look at the friggin Maxima. What is that shaped like? Not a car.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco I guess. Yeah, that that is the epitome of water balloon design.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey I actually do not think the accord is very good looking, to be honest with you.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco You know, it really needs that spoiler lip on the back to keep the wheels on the ground. It’s really fast.

⏹️ ▶️ ^{Marco, John} It

⏹️ ▶️ ^John does. You know, like for downforce for that,

⏹️ ▶️ ^{John, Marco} I think it is very attractive.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John The rear end is not great, but it’s better than past the courts. But I really like the front of it. And even

⏹️ ▶️ ^John like I say, oh, isn’t there just a little bit too much chrome on the front? Like just look at all the other Hondas that are trying to use

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the same design language and how gross they are. And this is the one car that got this design language

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to be attractive. I think

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey this looks no different to me than what’s the big Toyota. The Camry.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John This is so different. Go actually look at a camera, a Camry. Now you’ll Google Camry. You will see there’s a huge difference.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Never, never mind. If you see them in person, it’s not even close. like rectilinear headlights.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco All right. So I’m looking at a Camry now

⏹️ ▶️ ^{Marco, Casey} and it looks

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey the exact same. It does not.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Are you crazy? I would say the Accord looks better. Way better. I would say the difference is pretty small. Thank you. I would

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey agree

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco with

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey that, Marco.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John No way. Look at the giant fish mouth and the friggin. Oh,

⏹️ ▶️ ^{John, Casey} I’m not going to be Avalon. But like

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the Camry, like it’s just the Camry has nothing going for it. It has no it has no distinction

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to its design. It is just a series of little details tacked on to a squishy shape.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Well, I would say the same thing is true of the Accord. it just looks a little bit less squishy. Like there’s not a lot going on here. Like there’s

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco it is a very like like if you think about like what what would be the dictionary definition of a car? I would

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco have a picture of this next to it. If you if you if you like you ever see those pictures where they average every human

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco face and then it feels like the most average face. Now

⏹️ ▶️ ^John this but this would not be the average. This is different average together like the Camry and the Maxima.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John And like you do not get the Accord. It is not the average. It may have been the average of a bunch of cars

⏹️ ▶️ ^John from like a decade ago, but it is off the beaten path of car makers now. I think this car

⏹️ ▶️ ^John is attractive and classy, I would say. Classy, it does not embarrass itself in the way

⏹️ ▶️ ^John that the other cars do. Because it

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco just disappears. It just blends right into whatever.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I don’t think it just disappears. I think being classy in this way doesn’t disappear in the same way

⏹️ ▶️ ^John that Casey’s beloved 5 Series. Like, whoa, this is boring. It just kind of blends in with the background. It just looks like a car.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John The only thing that distinguishes is it’s got little kidneys in the front, but otherwise it’s just a car-shaped car. Remember when all the BMWs were

⏹️ ▶️ ^John all like the same shape, just came in different sizes. Not that different from now, honestly. Well, it is now, because

⏹️ ▶️ ^John they all have these bulges and ripples and flanges all over them. And they all have different ripples and flanges. But

⏹️ ▶️ ^John when they all look the same, the complaint was, it’s too boring. It doesn’t have the

⏹️ ▶️ ^John excitement of, if I’m going to spend this much money on a car, I want it to look more exciting. I just don’t

⏹️ ▶️ ^John want it to look like the same car in three sizes and super boring. But I think

⏹️ ▶️ ^John that’s a having restraint and being sort of a classy car that

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the places where it decides to emphasize its attractiveness is in the small details, but the overall shape

⏹️ ▶️ ^John is very just simple and non-showy. I think it’s a perfectly valid way to go.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I think I screwed it up with the back because the taillights aren’t particularly nice looking, but the overall shape of

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the car, I think, is very pleasing.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey See, your definition of classy, to me, what you’re describing is the E39 M5. When I think

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey of boring and unremarkable, I think of pretty much any accord that’s ever been ever.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Another good example is the front air dam, like the big plastic front bumper thing, whatever you’re going to call that.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John So many car makers, including I think most BMWs these days, just go nuts with that

⏹️ ▶️ ^John thing and mess it up.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey Well, the thing with BMWs, you’re right, is that, and I’ve talked about this a million times, the non-M Sport

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey front air dam on a regular BMW is like a little slit, and it looks awful. It

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey looks terrible. Most of the reason I insisted on getting myself an M Sport 335 was

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey not because of anything else. Like, it doesn’t really go any faster. It doesn’t handle any better because I have an

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey xDrive. It was strictly for that air dam, because it actually looks good.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John But I think most of the things try to make everything like it has giant jet intakes and big scoops and

⏹️ ▶️ ^John flanges and things poking out of it. And that’s why I think that the M Sport ones look worse than the other ones,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John or at least more gaudy. And just look at the big front piece of plastic on this

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Accord. It is restrained. It does not call attention to itself. It

⏹️ ▶️ ^John completes the shape of the car with maybe a little bit of smarty pretensions of

⏹️ ▶️ ^John like sticking out at the bottom rim a little bit and with a little tiny chrome accent, but it does not,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I mean, and then just compare it to that same part on an M3, current generation M3, which just like screams

⏹️ ▶️ ^John at you that I’m a transformer.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Well, but you’re just, you’re making our point, which is like the Accord looks like, it looks

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco average and forgettable. It is like it doesn’t jump out at you. None of the design just

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco jumps out and says, look at me. I’m a huge design flaw. It just the whole car

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco just looks like an average, completely forgettable car.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Well, average car doesn’t have those wheels. And I would say an average car doesn’t have the LED highlights in the

⏹️ ▶️ ^John headlights. And the looking restrained, I think, does make it stand out. Again,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John compared to the Avalon, which looks like a giant cheese grater fish grill flying through the air with a chrome nose on it.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John That is what the average car

⏹️ ▶️ ^{John, Marco} looks

⏹️ ▶️ ^John like go look at you know Like it’s not this this is the average car like

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the the Ultima is the average car that Maxima is the average car the Camry Is the average car they do not

⏹️ ▶️ ^John look like compare the thing I just pasted in the chat room with the Accord And so like well, you know it calls attention

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to itself, but in a bad way And if you averaged a bunch of cars together I think you would get something look way more like the Avalon than like vehicle.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Oh my god. The Avalon is ridiculous

⏹️ ▶️ ^John What is that? That’s the current that’s like And again,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco look at the Camry with the little chrome. Like, this is uglier than the Maxima concept.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Exactly. Like, that’s what the average car looks like now. And look at the look at the front bumper thing. Well, go look at the Camry.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Yeah, you’re right.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey That front air dam is the kind of front air dam that I like. The big gaping hole

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey taken way too far, entirely too far.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John On top of it is an ugly, ugly chrome nose, and it’s got misshapen headlights hanging off the corners

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and the fog lights are all misshapen.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey We agree about this. What is this?

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco I’m just blown away by this car, by the Avalon.

⏹️ ▶️ ^{Marco, John} Oh my

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco god. Like, I rented an Avalon a couple years ago on a trip, and it was a pretty

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco reasonable car. It was huge and totally marshmallow-y, like you couldn’t feel or do anything,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco but it was overall a respectable choice. It looked average, it was black, it was

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco low-key, it was pretty fast, given what it was, and it was comfortable.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco It was fine. It was a perfectly fine choice this my

⏹️ ▶️ ^John god I mean go look at the go look now go look at the camera I just pasted it oh that is that

⏹️ ▶️ ^{John, Marco} is go look at the

⏹️ ▶️ ^John front piece of plastic on this camera and look at the shape of the

⏹️ ▶️ ^{John, Marco} headlights and look at how

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the shape of the headlights just have no conviction like and keep the accord open in other windows

⏹️ ▶️ ^John you can keep looking back from one to the other look at the friggin front of that camera Oh Cameron accord they basically look

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the same are you kidding me

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco look at that I didn’t wait I didn’t say they basically look the same I did

⏹️ ▶️ ^John now that you see them both in front of you do you understand how the accord is very different and if you average all these cars

⏹️ ▶️ ^John together they would not look like that and again throwing that throw in the Ultima throw in

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco you know this this Camry looks like it’s been an accident it doesn’t it like it

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco like the the way that has it there’s like half fog lights like on the side and then the whole front

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco the whole front grill is like weirdly shaped and black it looks like it was it was in an accident and

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco it’s been half repaired and they haven’t like painted the new parts

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I mean, look at the hood cut lines, even. Look at the shape of the headlights. Look at the hood cut lines.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Look at the lack of confidence in the chrome that’s going across the thing through the logo.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John It just, it’s nothing. And I think the only other car company,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John boring car company, that has cars that have the styling that is not embarrassing and hideous is Mazda. And

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the Mazda 6, again, does not look like other cars. It’s interesting.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John It has a family resemblance, and it has some interesting styling elements, but it has sort of the courage of its convictions.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco It says conviction right in the marketing title. Conviction, creativity, courage. This is what changes

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco the game. It’s the first word on the page.

⏹️ ▶️ ^{Marco, Casey} Yeah, see,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey so Aaron has a 2007 Mazda 6, which I think is a very pretty car for the time.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey It has- Less conviction

⏹️ ▶️ ^{Casey, John} there. It has

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey the kind of large front air dam that I like. Then the generation after hers, which started in like 2008, 2009,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey it was one or two generations actually that were just terrible. But I agree with you that

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey the brand new Mazda 6, maybe it’s a year or two old now, is also very pretty. And I also really,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey really like it. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and I don’t like the styling as much as the Accord, but you can’t say that it looks like. I think they’ve

⏹️ ▶️ ^John made it worse. The one I just pasted actually looks worse than the original generation. But it has kind of shoulders and hips,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and its headlights have a purposeful, distinct shape. Same thing with its hood cut lines. Everything

⏹️ ▶️ ^John about it is not. Like, I hate cars where it looks like they molded the car out of clay, and then someone

⏹️ ▶️ ^John else came later and cut out where the hood would be. Like even the current BMW

⏹️ ▶️ ^John 3s with like the hood corners that end kind of over on the right and left edges by the headlights, like

⏹️ ▶️ ^John it looks like you made a car shape and it was a good car shape, but where you cut out for the hood

⏹️ ▶️ ^John makes your car less attractive. Like it’s not integrated into the shape. It’s just like you took a laser and went, okay, now

⏹️ ▶️ ^John that’s where the hood opens. Hmm. Speaking of hoods, did you watch that i8 video that someone sent

⏹️ ▶️ ^John us?

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey No, I watched two seconds of it. I didn’t have a chance.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John You should, because first of all, I’ll make Marco never buy this car, which may be good, because we think he shouldn’t buy

⏹️ ▶️ ^John this car. So we’ll stop him from

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco buying the car. So far, I think I shouldn’t buy this car. So you don’t need to do any convincing there.

⏹️ ▶️ ^{Marco, John} All right. But you watch.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I wish we still have that. I think someone emailed it to us.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco No, I mean, I’ve never been interested in the i8 because it is not a four-door sedan.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Ultimately, I really just want a four-door sedan. And I’m very happy with the

⏹️ ▶️ ^John one I have. Some of the chat rooms said the BMW i8 screams Tesla anxiety. Tesla is,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John with the exception of perhaps of the stupid door handles, is a actual real regular car.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Like, you can use it every day, nothing about it is weird, you can open and close all the doors simply because the I8 has those

⏹️ ▶️ ^John weird doors as well. You can open and close all the different trunk hatches, you can get in and get out of it, it has seats, it has,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John you know, everything about it is just, it’s a car. You can drive it, whereas the I8 is like, it’s kind of

⏹️ ▶️ ^John a work of art, kind of, kind of a statement about something.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John It also kind of works as a car if you’re careful.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Alright, so let’s take on the big guns now. I don’t think the Tesla Model

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco S is that attractive. It’s not.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John The front of the Tesla Model S is ugly, like the grill thing speaking of mouths, but the overall shape is pretty decent.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco I would say that the Model S looks extremely blobby. It

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco looks like all the personality has been sanded off. I don’t like the light design, I don’t like the front

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco or the back design, or the side design. And I’ve seen a number of them in person,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco and I don’t think they use very high quality paint. I’ve never seen… The black doesn’t look very good.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco The silver just kind of looks boring. You can look at certain cars…

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco I always get blacks. You can look at certain cars and you can see certain blacks are better looking than others.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco And Tesla, I think, has a pretty crappy one. It doesn’t look like its price

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco at all. And for a car that is so interesting and revolutionary,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco I think it should look a little more like that, and it doesn’t.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John That’s Tesla’s weak spot. The interior is the same as well. The materials of the interior, the comfort, although supposedly on the new models

⏹️ ▶️ ^John there’s an option for much better seats, but like, the interior of the car does not look like a car of that price. The materials,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the comfort, the thickness of the padding on the seats, like it just, and like you said, the outside of it,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John you know, the paint quality, the detailing, it seems like a lower class than it should be. I

⏹️ ▶️ ^John think the overall shape is actually pretty good and actually kind of interesting and muscular, but like the front and rear

⏹️ ▶️ ^John end treatments do not do justice to the overall shape, which I think the overall shape is not bad. Like if you blanked

⏹️ ▶️ ^John over all the headlights and taillights and got rid of that ugly mouth grill on the front and just look like the

⏹️ ▶️ ^John shape of the car, it, it looks in that regard, I think it does look like an expensive car

⏹️ ▶️ ^John in the shape because most cars, but again, maybe the exception of like the Mazda six don’t

⏹️ ▶️ ^John look sort of that, that muscular and purposeful, especially a car with as much interior room as the

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Model S has. It doesn’t look like a big, giant crossover SUV thing that’s lowered

⏹️ ▶️ ^John down. But, I mean, consider what came before it. The Tesla Roadster was just flat out ugly.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John It was not an attractive looking car at all. The shape of it was awkward and weird and everything about

⏹️ ▶️ ^John it

⏹️ ▶️ ^{John, Casey} was… I

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey don’t think that’s true. I thought it was a decent looking car. I mean, granted, it was basically just a Lotus,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Casey but I didn’t think it was a bad looking car. The

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Lotus looks way better on that same frame than the But the Model S has something to recommend

⏹️ ▶️ ^John it and it sort of defines a Tesla look I don’t particularly think the Tesla look is that attractive But I do like the overall shape

⏹️ ▶️ ^John of the car and I do think the shape looks a little bit expensive But yeah, the detailing you can get a yacht floor.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco What in the Model S? Yeah, there’s an option for a yacht floor

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Yeah, I think they are cranking up the

⏹️ ▶️ ^{John, Marco} options like what was it?

⏹️ ▶️ ^John What is a yacht floor? Hey Vandy in a super duper fame was telling me about the new model of Tesla’s because he got to drive

⏹️ ▶️ ^John one You know like the dealership gave him one when his was in for service So we got to drive one of the new fast ones and everything. And it’s

⏹️ ▶️ ^John telling you about the new options. I think they realize where their weaknesses are. Like if people spend that much money on the car, they want the interior

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to feel better than a $30,000, $35,000 BMW with cloth seats. They don’t

⏹️ ▶️ ^John even make those anymore, but they used to, right?

⏹️ ▶️ ^{John, Marco} Right.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco No, they still do in Europe, just not in the US. No, I mean, the problem Tesla’s always

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco had is they’ve always compared themselves in justifying their high price. They’ve always

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco said, well, if you compare us to a Mercedes S class, which is what we’re comparable to, blah, blah, blah. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco not even a

⏹️ ▶️ ^John contest

⏹️ ▶️ ^{Marco, John} there.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Right. If you compare the interior quality to a 7 Series and S class. Or the amenities. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco or the amenities. The Lexus, the high-end Lexuses. If you compare

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco it to any of the very high-end large sedans, it doesn’t quite match up. At least

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco it hasn’t in the past. I haven’t seen one of these new ones yet.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John The Tesla will take that S class off the line any day, though. So you

⏹️ ▶️ ^John can kind of start selling it as like, In the same way that you don’t expect like, you know, an Audi

⏹️ ▶️ ^John RS or a Porsche GT3, you know, the interior is going to be like stripped down

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and bare. And like that’s part of the aesthetic of the car. Like you’re not in. So like in some ways, Tesla kind of

⏹️ ▶️ ^John unintentionally has that going for it. It’s like we don’t intentionally make it stripped down. Although I always thought in the in the first model,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John like the interior was like the padding was so thin on the seats and everything, just because they wanted to save weight. And like those big, luxurious,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John cushy seats like you have in your car, Margo, they weigh a lot. And so if you’re trying to cut down on weight, you’re going

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to give it a little bit cheaper seats. And that’s why I think like the new seats are an option. And I wonder how much more they weigh than the

⏹️ ▶️ ^John other stuff. But if you know, if you’re going to go with that thing, at least you have performance

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to back it up. I mean, it still weighs a ton and still not going to change direction that well. But like it does,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John it does have that super flat cornering attitude that feels weird. And, you know, it’s super fast

⏹️ ▶️ ^John and quiet and actually a fun electric car to drive, by all accounts. I got

⏹️ ▶️ ^John to drive

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco one. I’m tired of guessing how much fun it is.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I think you will find it to be super heavy and corner strangely flat and be really fast in a straight line.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco That’s that’s very likely. And I’m going to hate the lack of knobs and buttons. I

⏹️ ▶️ ^John have not driven one, but I have been driven in one. And even just being a passenger, I was just immediately

⏹️ ▶️ ^John apparent. Like, it’s not like I went in expecting to feel this. I didn’t really know. Didn’t think about it, whatever.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John How flat it is in cornering, like strangely so startling without having, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John stiff suspension where you feel every bump because it’s just the center of gravity, like this humongous weight is on

⏹️ ▶️ ^John the bottom of the car. And then did I feel that the car felt heavy? I can’t

⏹️ ▶️ ^John tell that as a passenger, but I just know it is heavy because it is.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco Wonder how many people are actually gonna listen to this.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I gotta cut all this neutral out because people can’t take it.

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco The whole show was neutral.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John This is mostly staying

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco in,

⏹️ ▶️ ^John I

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco think.

⏹️ ▶️ ^John Yeah, Apple car, it’s not our fault. They forced

⏹️ ▶️ ^Marco our hand. Yeah, we had to do this. it was an accidental car podcast.

catatp.fm Unofficial Accidental Tech Podcast transcripts (generated by computer, so expect errors).

105: Do You Want to Sell Sugar Phones for the Rest of Your Life?

Transcript start

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