425: Hey Billionaire
08 Apr 2021Oracle v. Google, Tim Cook’s interview, the next Apple CEO, and BMW vs. CarPlay.
Episode Description:
- Pre-show: ⅔ of ATP is on the vaccination train! Toot toot! 🚂💉
- Follow-up:
- How is John replacing a router with a switch?
- Ubiquiti Flex Mini
- Handoff vs. AirPlay 2
- Zach’s point about WWDC announcement date
- Yep, Apple uses Webex
- Microsoft Teams
- Perhaps it’s too many UDP packets?
- Heating your house via cryptomining?
NSRunningApplicationwas added in Snow LeopardFB7603765is fixed!! 🎉- Tesla Model 3 Delivery Checklist
- Cryptocurrency 000 101
- Supreme Court: Oracle vs. Google
- Tim Cook Interview with Kara Swisher
- Overcast link
- Dithering (see the 7 April episode)
- Upgrade #346: Float It Like a Hologram
- Outside Online Interview
- Tim Cook’s ∞ Timeline
- Apple Leadership
- oh no
- Post-show Neutral: Marco’s injured Tesla
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Chapters
- Get vaccinated!
- Networking follow-up
- Sponsor: Hover
- Handoff vs. AirPlay 2
- WWDC student challenge
- WebEx and Teams follow-up
- Crypto-mining follow-up
- NSRunningApplication follow-up
- Sponsor: ExpressVPN
- Cryptocurrency 000
- Oracle v. Google decision
- Sponsor: Squarespace (code ATP)
- Tim Cook interview on Sway
- Ending theme
- Marco’s i3/CarPlay review
Get vaccinated!
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Matt Stauffer Sorry. Jason Lansing There’s a green tea,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I-O, wrong pipe exception.
⏹️ ▶️ John Matt Stauffer The vacation when he goes back to the, no, I get it. Okay, Easter. All right.
⏹️ ▶️ John confusing. What even is vacation?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John Hennessy When your life is a vacation, John, you can’t even tell anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Matt Stauffer I mean, honestly, it does feel more like vacation to be here. John Hennessy
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s what I’m saying. It’s all messed up now. Jason Lansing Everything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is backwards. Matt Stauffer What a hardship it is to have too much vacation. I have my regular life feeling vacation.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I’m really doing something wrong over here. I am half
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Two-thirds of this podcast, Marco, are half vaccinated. And if I was better at math, I could make
⏹️ ▶️ Casey some sort of math joke about what the sum total of our vaccination status is. But I’m terrible at mental
⏹️ ▶️ Casey math. John, what the hell’s the hold up, man?
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s killing me. It’s killing me. Everybody I know is vaccinated. Everywhere I look, vaccinated, vaccinated.
⏹️ ▶️ John I want to get vaccinated so bad. You have no idea.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Would you drive three hours each way to do it like I did?
⏹️ ▶️ John I would go anywhere. All of my searches are like, what distance from your house do you want us to look? Like whole state, anywhere.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Infinity. Doesn’t matter. Exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ John My problem is I’m not eligible to be vaccinated until the 19th. But, but, you know, we have this technology
⏹️ ▶️ John where you can like say buy tickets to a concert that happens next month. I don’t know how we can do that,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s impossible to make a reservation to get vaccinated, you know, after
⏹️ ▶️ John April 19th, which is when I become eligible. right? Just let me make the appointment now. Anyway, I’m dying to get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco For all of you out there who are maybe on the fence, I don’t honestly, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco expect a lot of our audience is on the fence, but there are a lot of people out there who are. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I really want to encourage everyone. I know it isn’t available everywhere yet, not even close.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I know it isn’t available to all people in the places where it is available, you know, not even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco close. I became eligible because in New York, they started allowing anybody
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over age 30, and I’m, as you know, not 50, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John well over age 30.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so I just wanted to, you know, make a plea to our listeners, if and when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you get the opportunity to get vaccinated, please do. Many of you out there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are probably on the same page and think, of course, I’m gonna get it as soon as I possibly can. Many people aren’t though
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we don’t get a lot of chances as a society to like really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco step up and like serve the world in some big way. You know most of us
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my age or your age, most of us in the audience and certainly all three of our hosts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have not been alive during a military draft. Certainly not you know the big world wars
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and this is something that like we as a society I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we are really given a huge opportunity and duty here to like help the world
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out, help us get out of this pandemic, help literally save people’s lives by
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stopping this virus. And the way we do that is widespread vaccination.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so for you to go get it as soon as you’re able and eligible to, for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those of you who are able to, because that’s an important thing here, not everyone’s able to.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So for those of you who are able to get vaccinated safely with whatever health criteria you have,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s kind of up to us to all get vaccinated so that the people who can’t get vaccinated
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for whatever reason, whether it’s health conditions or eligibility or whatever else, or if they’re children, which is a big thing right
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now, those of us who can get vaccinated, I think, have a duty to everyone else
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who can’t to build up the herd immunity to finally stop this terrible thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And we were lucky, we were able to schedule it on the way we were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco coming back home from a trip. And so therefore we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had Adam with us, we had our kid with us. And so Tiff and I both got appointments back to back and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we brought him in with us and we were able to show him, like, look, we’re making history here. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he understood, he understood very well. Like, we explained what was going on and why this was important. And we’re like, look, this is like all these people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here, they’re all doing this to help out the world and doing our duty for society.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it was amazingly run, it was super well done, like very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco big kudos to the government and the state and whoever else was involved in making this happen because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was very well run, it was very easy. We were in and out in under 45 minutes and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most of that time was walking through mostly empty lines. Like you go through the little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco zigzag things that they set up but there’s nobody in it. You just have to walk through it. You walk through, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reach somebody at a booth, you answer their questions, you show them your paper or whatever, and then they go, all right, go down the hall,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco go to the next booth, you know, and you go through two or three of those, you get shot, it doesn’t hurt much.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would say that I got the Pfizer vaccine, Zotatif, and I would say it hurt
⏹️ ▶️ Marco less than an allergy shot. I’ve had many, many allergy shots in my life, so I’ve been stabbed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot. This hurt less than an allergy shot, it was very, very fast. And I had a sore arm
⏹️ ▶️ Marco today, but that’s it, you know? I know the second one frequently gives people like fevers and stuff, but that’s, you know, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco willing to do that because we need this. The world needs this. We all need this. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the sooner you get vaccinated, if you’re able to, the sooner this comes to an end,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco please everyone out there, as soon as you’re able to, please get the vaccine. If you are in any position
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to help other people get it, who might need help or convincing, please do that as well. Parents,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco grandparents, you know, anybody who like might need help getting an appointment, locking one in, like with the technology side
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of things, Please get this done, please everyone. This is so important. This is like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of the most important things that anybody in my generation has ever been called to do. Please everyone, go out there and do it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and you’re right about the tech nerd angle. Like I’m doing what I’m so used to doing for so much stupider
⏹️ ▶️ John reasons, like trying to get a PlayStation 5 or trying to get a WC back in the day. Having a
⏹️ ▶️ John million web browsers windows open with a million tabs and furiously reloading and using all my web developer
⏹️ ▶️ John skills to find out when a website is broken and how I can edit the DOM to get through
⏹️ ▶️ John something that’s preventing me from putting today’s date in the date picker, because they don’t understand that you may,
⏹️ ▶️ John like, just anyway. Use your technology skills to help other people,
⏹️ ▶️ John because just because someone wants to get vaccinated doesn’t mean they’re going to be successful, especially if your state
⏹️ ▶️ John is a giant cluster like Massachusetts, where everyone, I mean, they’re all like this in the US, where
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like, oh, everyone just do your own thing. Community center, make your own website for letting people sign up for vaccines.
⏹️ ▶️ John You know how to make a website, don’t you? No, nevermind. You got to do anyway. And CVS has their own website. And Walmart has
⏹️ ▶️ John their own website. And Massachusetts state has its own websites for the mass vaccination sites. And it’s all a free for all. And
⏹️ ▶️ John every one of these websites is terrible. So please, use your technology skills to help the members of your family
⏹️ ▶️ John navigate this. Make appointments for them if you can, right? Like, if you know people who are eligible before
⏹️ ▶️ John you, just make the appointment for them and tell them, I made your appointment. And I’m going to drive you to it. And you’re going.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. Yeah, because you don’t have to. Like, they don’t check ID to make the appointment on the website. And you can always cancel it if they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really you can’t make it, you can always cancel it. So like, yeah, that’s a good idea. Just get people, get yourself
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in there and get everyone else that you might be able to help or influence who
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is able to do this. Because again, like there’s a lot of people out there who are not able to get this. We owe it to them,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco those of us who can, to build the herd immunity so that they aren’t in danger.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so we aren’t in danger either. I mean, it doesn’t really matter which one you get. They’re all effective enough
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the right answer, unless you have some health reason, like I know some people’s doctors are telling them for their particular needs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to wait for like the Johnson & Johnson one, because it works. You know, it’s not the mRNA-based one. It’s a little bit gentler
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on some systems. If your doctor says get a particular one, fine. If you don’t have such direction
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from anybody and you don’t have any particular reason, get the first one you can get. That’s because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the more people getting the vaccine, doesn’t matter which one, just get the first one you can get.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, I probably don’t even accept or realize how American the three of us are, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I recognize that this conversation probably is, in a way uniquely American, because everything
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve understood from those who are not in America is that vaccinations are extremely hard
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to come by. Like, they’re hard to come by here, don’t get me wrong. Talk to John. But they’re extremely hard to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey come by outside of America. And obviously, there are other mechanisms by
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which one could defeat this virus. Look at New Zealand. But for Americans in particular,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I cannot echo what John, and particularly Marco, have said enough. If you have the opportunity,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which supposedly in the next week or two, every adult American will have the opportunity.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Please do everything in your power to get whatever vaccine you’re offered, just like Marco said.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey As it so happens, I got my first Moderna shot like a week and a half ago, two weeks ago.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I had a sore arm for a day or two, and then that was it. I am expecting to be positively run over
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the day after I get my next one. And you know what? If that’s the price I have to pay in order to help
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my family stay safe and others stay safe, then so be it. and you can bet your bottom before we get too many emails
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I’m gonna still mask up. I’m going to still be afraid of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the indoors. I’m still gonna be afraid of other people because I, like Marco said, I have children that can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey get vaccinated yet. And so for me, even though it makes me feel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey immeasurably better that I can go into a building if necessary, even like a doctor’s office and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not stress for two weeks following about what I just did. It’s still,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, this doesn’t end for those of us with small children. And so please do your part wherever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you are, be that masking and distancing, be that vaccinating, whatever it is, please
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do your part. And, you know, I don’t view myself as a anti-science kind of person,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but especially in the prior administration, I was very nervous about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey them just ramming approvals for all this through and, you know, and not really taking a step to,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or taking a minute to think about like, Is this safe, does this work, et cetera? And there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey been a couple of jokey videos about how the vaccine works, particularly the mRNA-based
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ones, which I think is not Johnson & Johnson, but Johnson & Johnson uses a similar but yet different
⏹️ ▶️ Casey approach. But the two mRNA-based ones, there’s a very popular
⏹️ ▶️ Casey TikTok video about four cans that we’ll put in the show notes that’s like literally a minute long and it’s great. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so good. But for our audience, if you have not read reverse engineering, the BioNTech
⏹️ ▶️ Casey slash Pfizer SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, which we’ll put in the show notes. It is a deep dive
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the actual, oh God, Erin’s gonna be so mad at me as a former bio teacher. What are A, C, T, and G called?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s the things that DNA are made of, and MRI, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, exactly, I’m so sorry, Erin, I’m so sorry. She doesn’t listen to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s so good, this article is so good.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It is very long, but I cannot speak highly enough. Once I read this,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I felt like, okay, no, no, no, this makes sense, I’m in. Sign me up, I’m ready. Just tell me where I’m ready.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And if you listen to this podcast, I think you can get through that blog post.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco absolutely. I think if this podcast is not too long or nerdy for you, I’m pretty sure you can read the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Strongly agree there. Strongly agree there. But I apologize for rubbing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this in John’s face, but I know your day is coming soon. The amount of relief I felt, even after
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the first shot, like I don’t know how to verbalize how
⏹️ ▶️ Casey incredibly relieving and how genuinely my stress
⏹️ ▶️ Casey level, and I’m extremely privileged, I was born white and a dude,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I haven’t had a particularly hard life by any reasonable measure, and so perhaps I’m just a big
⏹️ ▶️ Casey whiner because I’m not used to having latent stress in my life 24 seven, but I tell you what, for the last year,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve been pretty stressed. So to have even just the first dose
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in my arm just gave me immense amount of relief. And John, I say
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with no reservations that I’m incredibly excited for you to get yours. I am incredibly excited
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that certainly the next time the three of us see each other, I don’t see any reason why we wouldn’t be able to hug
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it out, which will be very disappointing for John and mildly disappointing for Marco, but I will be extremely happy for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John yes, please. I’m not against hugs. What is he trying to say?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I’m anti-hug. This is
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey is it? Livewell’s
⏹️ ▶️ John written slanderous.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Slanderous, there you go, yeah, yeah. I’ll try. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what it is. Yeah, but please, please do what you can to help everyone out, especially
⏹️ ▶️ Casey those close to you.
Networking follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John how are you gonna replace your router with a switch? I don’t even remember you saying this I must I would have called you on this had I realized
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s what you said. So can you explain the foible here?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I was talking about my network stuff I I mean it was implicit
⏹️ ▶️ John if you there was circumstantial evidence to surmise this but a lot of people were confused because I said I’m getting
⏹️ ▶️ John rid of my airport extreme which I was using as my router and then I talked about how I need to buy an unmanaged
⏹️ ▶️ John switch To because the router had like four plugs in the back of it and where do I plug all that stuff in? and I don’t have
⏹️ ▶️ John any ethernet ports. And people are like, well, how can you replace a router with an unmanaged switch?
⏹️ ▶️ John The little bit that you needed to catch was that I do have an Eero that I’m using.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the Eero can act as a router, of course, right? I wasn’t using it as a router. I was
⏹️ ▶️ John just using it in bridge mode where it was just doing all the wifi and then my Airport Extreme was the router.
⏹️ ▶️ John But of course, the Eero can do all of that and does do all of that by default out of the box. So
⏹️ ▶️ John when I got rid of my Airport Extreme and replaced it with an unmanaged switch, I let my router,
⏹️ ▶️ John my Eero be the router. And to that end, there’s a whole big thing that I go, I complain about,
⏹️ ▶️ John a little mini tech podcast portion of, I think it’s in the member, the members only version of RecDiffs,
⏹️ ▶️ John where everything went great in my network upgrade, except my one smart
⏹️ ▶️ John outlet, HomeKit smart outlet, just is now invisible
⏹️ ▶️ John network. I can’t, it was like, your thing is offline. I removed the device and now I can’t add
⏹️ ▶️ John it. I thought the hardware was dead. So I bought another one, Marco style.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, it’s my style to replace dead hardware, really? Like that’s, that’s on me.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I didn’t know it was dead. All I knew is I couldn’t get it to work. I’m like, you know what? I’m not a HomeKit expert.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe the hardware is dead. I have no way to know if the hardware is dead because I can’t, I literally can’t see
⏹️ ▶️ John it or connect it in any way. I can plug it into the wall and see the lights turn on and no smoke is coming out. but beyond that,
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe it’s just dead. So I bought another identical one, exactly the same problem. So I’m like, okay,
⏹️ ▶️ John so now I’m actually engaged in support emails with the various companies. And I leave that one as a kicker for the
⏹️ ▶️ John end because I say, here’s what I did. I list the 800 things that I did for troubleshooting. And at the very end, I go, oh yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John and I bought a brand new one and it does the same thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John you just know they’re gonna say, oh, maybe your hardware is broken. It’s not our fault. You’re always gonna say, it’s not our fault. I think your smart
⏹️ ▶️ John outlet is dead. It’s like, no, that’s not what the problem is. Anyway, I will give updates
⏹️ ▶️ John on that if I ever figure it out. But I also want to give updates on what did I get from my unmanaged switch?
⏹️ ▶️ John Again, context clues in the last episode, I had already ordered, I think I mentioned that I had
⏹️ ▶️ John already ordered the unmanaged switch to replace it last episode. So everyone who was sending me suggestions,
⏹️ ▶️ John thank you for the suggestions, but it was kind of too late because I had already ordered the replacement.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so that came and I’m using it and it’s working out pretty good. The one I ordered, we’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John put a link in the show notes, is from TrendNet, which is a brand I had not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco used before. I love how you pronounce that as if it’s the first time you’ve ever seen this word. Meanwhile, they’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco been making inexpensive networking gear for a very long time, like over a decade, I think. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John I was trying to pronounce the all caps trend part. It’s like, TrendNet. Have you heard of this company called
⏹️ ▶️ John Netgear? Yeah, TP-Link?
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I think it’s weird that the trend is in all caps and net is lowercase. So anyway, it’s an
⏹️ ▶️ John eight port switch. It’s got eight ports in the back of it. It’s got the power connector on the back of it. It’s got lights in the front
⏹️ ▶️ John of it. The case is made of metal, which I mean, in the grand scheme of things, probably doesn’t matter, but like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, maybe it helps with heat dissipation, who knows? And it’s black and it’s rectangular,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, and it has little rubber feet that go on the bottom of it. So there you go, that
⏹️ ▶️ John worked fine for me. The only thing I, the only mistake I made is this is, this is
⏹️ ▶️ John sitting in the same place as my AirPort Extreme was. And the Airport Extreme, in typical Apple fashion,
⏹️ ▶️ John is this white monolith. It has one tiny pinprick light that is green when it’s working
⏹️ ▶️ John and orange when it’s trying to connect and it blinks during the connection. But otherwise, it’s basically a
⏹️ ▶️ John constant pinprick of green light. I wanted lights in the front of this thing so you can look at it and see
⏹️ ▶️ John which link is having problems or is traffic flowing or whatever, but I didn’t really think through the
⏹️ ▶️ John idea that there would be eight lights in front of this blinking very quickly almost all the time.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that was a bit much to me, but it’s nothing that a black piece of gaff tape couldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John solve. So I bought this thing with lights in the front of it and put a piece of black tape over the bar.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s just fine. But anyway, I’m happy with it. That part worked out. My entire network
⏹️ ▶️ John converted with only minimal downtime. I was actually pretty impressed with the Eero router
⏹️ ▶️ John software stuff because I was I had everything all customized in the airport extreme and I basically exported
⏹️ ▶️ John that configuration and then manually re-entered it in the era one. And it took me a little while to find them, but all the options were there.
⏹️ ▶️ John Every one of the devices that had reserved IPs, I gave them all the exactly the same IPs. I put in all the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John addresses and, you know, like it was just completely seamless, except for the HomeKit
⏹️ ▶️ John disaster. And I’m still working on that. So there is one device that didn’t make the conversion,
⏹️ ▶️ John but as far as the rest of the family is concerned, this is a non-event. And I had many, many team meetings since then
⏹️ ▶️ John and have had no drops, but again, they happen like once a month, so stay tuned.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco On this same topic, I had briefly breezed by the Ubiquiti Flex Mini Switch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I bought like the four pack of, because I had said that you had to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco manage them under a Ubiquiti network environment to have them work. And we’ve heard from a number
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of listeners, thank you, that apparently that’s wrong. Apparently if you just plug in the Ubiquiti
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Flex Mini Switch, it will work unmanaged by default. So you don’t have to actually be running
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a Ubiquiti network to use it, so that’s nice.
⏹️ ▶️ John But one caveat to that, so yes, it will work unmanaged. But
⏹️ ▶️ John one person said, if you look on your network with a network snooper or whatever, you will see the
⏹️ ▶️ John Flex Mini switch mournfully calling out, doing a DNS resolution to try to find
⏹️ ▶️ John the Ubiquiti management thing every once in a while. So it’s not happy being an
⏹️ ▶️ John unmanaged switch. Like at the very least, it will do a periodic DNS query and attempt to connect to a host
⏹️ ▶️ John thing that’s not going to end up being there. So I mean, I’m sure it works fine as an
⏹️ ▶️ John unmanaged switch, like no big deal, but I would prefer my unmanaged switches to actually
⏹️ ▶️ John be completely dumb. and they’re also probably cheaper.
Sponsor: Hover
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Handoff vs. AirPlay 2
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I also wanted to do some quick follow up on something I was corrected on a couple of weeks ago but I just kept forgetting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to correct it here, sorry. That when I was talking about how good the HomePod actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was when you’re in the Apple ecosystem I had mentioned the integration with Control Center and how nice it is that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like when you play something on a HomePod other people in the house with iPhones and iPads
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can just access that device from their devices in Control Center
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and can start controlling it and can you know open it up in their music app and can enqueue things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or change the controls or see what’s playing and all that other stuff. And I had mentioned that this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was a feature of AirPlay 2. It’s not. This is actually two different Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco technologies that I’m conflating here. Hand-off is what’s happening here when you’re using a HomePod.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So if I, using the music app, if I go to the airplane menu and fire that over to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my to a HomePod, it will actually use handoff, not AirPlay 2,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to transfer that session to the HomePod. And what that means is instead of my phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then streaming the music bit by bit to the HomePod for it to play, it’s actually just telling the HomePod
⏹️ ▶️ Marco play music, play this track ID, starting at this time stamp, go. And then after
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that point my phone is not really involved. It can like retake over the And this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the handoff feature that Apple has whole APIs for this. They even usually tend to work
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most of the time. They definitely never cause any Bluetooth mouse dropouts or anything like that. And there definitely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wasn’t a bug in Catalina that made me have to disable it for all of Overcast. But anyway, this is handoff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And this only works with HomePods, not other AirPlay 2 devices. So, this big benefit—I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was saying AirPlay 2 is a great ecosystem to get into because of things like this. That
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actual benefit where the HomePod takes over the playback session completely for itself,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then that phone is no longer involved or necessary for it to continue, that only works when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you are using the Apple Music app with a HomePod. If you stream
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the Music app to any other AirPlay devices, AirPlay 1 or 2, that don’t support that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like my Sonos home theater gear and stuff like that, the phone that initiated it is still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doing the streaming. Other people can’t control it. I think they can like play pause, but that’s about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. They can’t like, you know, pick new tracks or rearrange things or change the play mode or seek within the track you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco picked or anything like that. That’s your phone doing that stream the whole time. If you use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco AirPlay 2 from an app that the HomePod does not natively support handoff for, like Overcast,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco still work that same way as well, where they’re doing the constant streaming. If you do the music app
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to a non-HomePod AirPlay 2 speaker, then it does that same
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of streaming as well. It’s not doing handoff. So, Handoff is its own thing when you’re using
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the music app with HomePods, and that provides that awesome control center integration for everyone in the house. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you only get a very small subset of that power when you’re using different apps
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or non-HomePod AirPlay 2 speakers.
⏹️ ▶️ John So obvious, I don’t know why we all didn’t figure that out. I
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco find this whole ecosystem
⏹️ ▶️ John very confusing, and the fact that you also were confused by it makes me feel a little bit better.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, oh, also, one other complicating factor is that Handoff is kind of buggy.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And this works to varying degrees of success with different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco versions of iOS, different versions of the HomePod software, different HomePods,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and even just like different times in the same network with the same version of everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, if you get into a bad state where, this happens with HomeKit stuff too, if you get into a bad state
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where like, sometimes your Home networking, or your HomeKit stuff, or your handoff
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff just won’t work until you like unplug your HomePod and plug it back in. Like that happens sometimes with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this. And so actually, if you want things to work the exact same way every single time,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you actually don’t want the music app with HomePod to perform handoff. Because it doesn’t work all the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time. But it works most of the time. And when it does work, it’s very nice.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 80% of the time, it works every time. Yeah. That’s a reference, John.
WWDC student challenge
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Zach wrote in to tell us about a reason why Apple may have announced
⏹️ ▶️ Casey WWDC in March for a virtual event in June. And Zach writes, the student challenge.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Students have until April 18th to submit a project and then Apple has until June 1 to review and grade them all. Student
⏹️ ▶️ Casey winners get dev program memberships and thus access to the labs. I hadn’t thought about that.
⏹️ ▶️ John This message made me think about the fact that my son could enter this now,
⏹️ ▶️ John High school students, because he’s actually taking an iOS development. He’s taken a bunch of programming courses
⏹️ ▶️ John and done a little bit of dabbling, but now he’s taking a straight up iOS development class in high school, which is pretty
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I’m not sure
⏹️ ▶️ John he’s particularly interested in it or whatever, but it just occurred to me that I now have a potential
⏹️ ▶️ John contestant for this.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Come on down.
⏹️ ▶️ John But he’s doing school projects, though. I guess he can’t probably turn in your school project. He’s got enough on his plate to deal with.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think this should be his top priority, but it’s cool.
WebEx and Teams follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey An anonymous Apple employee writes that Apple uses WebEx for all internal video conferencing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey When all the stores were shut down over the summer, all communication was done via WebEx. Even now, internal interviews are conducted this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey way. And as John said, it is the bottom of the barrel, and myself and other coworkers would have vastly preferred
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anything else. The
⏹️ ▶️ John worst part about WebEx is it’s like, you know how people complain like Chrome is such a memory hog and you should
⏹️ ▶️ John use, not a memory hog, a battery hog and you should use Safari because it’s nicer on your battery? WebEx is like Chrome
⏹️ ▶️ John times 10. It is the most battery draining application you could possibly run on an Apple laptop. So Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John does all this thing, they make their OS and their browser and everything, all their apps very sensitive to energy,
⏹️ ▶️ John and then they make all their employees run WebEx. It’s like, what’s the point? You’re just killing all their batteries.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Carlos Lopez Ferreira writes that Microsoft Teams killing the network, many small, perhaps UDP packets
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can more easily kill the router than fewer large packets, typical big downloads that John had mentioned. This is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because the high volume of packet headers that the router or network equipment has to process, might this explain the behavior that John is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey observing on the network? I would buy this. I don’t know what your thoughts are, John, but it stands to reason.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, this is the most plausible theory that I heard, was I was saying like, oh, I’ve got this network and I do all this stuff with, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, I use the network a lot. I use my one gigabit, you know, upload
⏹️ ▶️ John and download fiber connection all the time. And my router only seems to have problems when I do Teams. And if Teams
⏹️ ▶️ John really is sending many small packets, that could overwhelm things. So
⏹️ ▶️ John this is the working theory that I’m going with as I blindly replace the oldest piece of equipment on my network
⏹️ ▶️ John and then cross my fingers for a month to see if the problem ever happens again.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Surely a winning strategy. Simon writes that they had to install Teams, which they had never used
⏹️ ▶️ Casey before. And since that day that they lose their internet connection only when in a Teams
⏹️ ▶️ Casey call at least once a day. It doesn’t just hang the Teams call, it kills their laptop’s wifi.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey They see the wifi icon in the menu bar doing it’s searching for internet dance. and if they ping something, they get nothing back.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Usually it sorts itself out within 30 seconds, but sometimes they have to renew their DHCP lease.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey They’ve never had this issue when Teams is closed, when not in a call, and they’ve never had the issue before installing Teams.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apparently they’ve been using the same ISP provided router for three years with no issues. They have a Ubiquiti wireless AP,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which has been rock solid for over a year now. Whoopsie-dupsies.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is one of many, many pieces of feedback that we got from people saying, I too
⏹️ ▶️ John use Teams and my internet goes out. Now it’s difficult because lots of people are forced to use
⏹️ ▶️ John Teams for obvious reasons in these COVID times, right? And lots of people have their internet go out. And
⏹️ ▶️ John if you spend all day on the internet using Teams, it stands to reason that when your internet goes out, there’s a high chance that you’re using Teams.
⏹️ ▶️ John That said, the explanation that if Teams actually does send many small
⏹️ ▶️ John packets and people have routers that might get overwhelmed with it, maybe there’s something to it, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I think there is also the possibility that like I was saying like it just always maybe it just always seems like I’m using teams
⏹️ ▶️ John because the only time I really care with my Internet blips is when I’m you know in the middle of a
⏹️ ▶️ John you know an important meeting or giving a presentation but Lots and lots of people say I
⏹️ ▶️ John use teams It kills my connection and lots of reports like Simon say when I’m not in teams. I
⏹️ ▶️ John never lose my internet connection It’s only when I’m in teams lots of other people also have complaints of like well
⏹️ ▶️ John It does something weird to my laptop or whatever but to be clear when I say I lose my internet connection I know that because
⏹️ ▶️ John I would see, speaking of that pinprick of green light on the Airport Extreme, when the Airport Extreme
⏹️ ▶️ John loses its IP address, essentially, or like, you know, it’s the thing that connects to my Fios
⏹️ ▶️ John RNT, and it’s the thing that gets my IP address. If that router dies,
⏹️ ▶️ John reboots, does anything bad, can’t get an IP, everything in the house is offline, because
⏹️ ▶️ John that is the internet connection. So when Teams starts flaking out, I just turn my head around and look behind
⏹️ ▶️ John me, and instead of seeing a green pinprick of light, I see there no light or a blinking orange light,
⏹️ ▶️ John I know that essentially my router is rebooting, right? Or has lost its IP address
⏹️ ▶️ John and is trying to gain another one. Like, you know, so if it’s just that your laptop loses wifi but everyone
⏹️ ▶️ John else is still online, you’re not having the same problem as I was. This was like literally knocking the whole house offline briefly
⏹️ ▶️ John and it would come back on. Was it crashing my router? Was it rebooting the router? Did it just lose its IP?
⏹️ ▶️ John Or was it really just a brief Fios outage and nothing in my house could have saved it? We’ll find out in a month.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Stay tuned to find out.
Crypto-mining follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey More from Carlos Lopez Pereira, this time on crypto mining. Thinking about crypto mining recently made me think of how
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wasteful typical heating systems are. I live in Norway and I have to heat up my house about seven to eight months of the year,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not to mention water heating for showers, etc. That made me think that we could produce heat in more intelligent, productive ways than just heating up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey resistors. Heating up the house is a necessity. How can we make the electricity to heat conversion more
⏹️ ▶️ Casey useful? And whether it’s mining cryptocurrency, protein folding, or some other useful computation, do you see
⏹️ ▶️ Casey any merit in this idea? If so, what would you choose to do to make heating smarter? Oh, these are technology
⏹️ ▶️ Casey connections video that somebody is linked, isn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so this this is about crypto, which we’ll get back to in a little bit to touch on. But the whole, you know, it’s,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s kind of the idea of I was talking before, like, when you’re enthusiastic about a new technology, and let’s say that technology has a downside,
⏹️ ▶️ John like using lots of energy, you think, well, I’m heating my house anyway. And
⏹️ ▶️ John if I can produce a bunch of heat by using my computer, at least I’m doing something useful with that
⏹️ ▶️ John electricity. So I’ve got to to produce it anyway, I’ve got to heat my house. So what if, you know, let’s
⏹️ ▶️ John say protein folding may be a better example than cryptocurrency. But,
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway, two angles in this. One, the electricity that you are using as an individual
⏹️ ▶️ John with a computer doing either protein folding or cryptocurrency is not really the problem we’re addressing
⏹️ ▶️ John here. Like, especially in terms of cryptocurrency, the real problem is like the giant, you know, shipping containers filled
⏹️ ▶️ John with GPUs that have their own power source burning coal somewhere or whatever. Anyway, like
⏹️ ▶️ John in the grand scheme of things, kind of like pollution, other things, individual action, especially
⏹️ ▶️ John by individuals who are just living a normal life is not that big a deal. But the second thing, and this is where I get to link to some fun videos,
⏹️ ▶️ John heating your house with electricity is not really the best way to go. So it’s not I know
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s it may be the only option you have, but in terms of efficiency, in terms of greenhouse gas emitted
⏹️ ▶️ John per BTU of heat provided to a human inside a house, it’s not like, oh, let’s just
⏹️ ▶️ John do something useful to the electricity. The real answer is, if you possibly can avoid it, do not use
⏹️ ▶️ John electricity to heat your home because it doesn’t have a particularly good carbon footprint unless you’re getting a lot of electricity
⏹️ ▶️ John from wind or solar, which maybe you are, in which case, you know, fine. But in the US, that
⏹️ ▶️ John is more rare. So to that end, I want to put some links into some technology
⏹️ ▶️ John connections videos. This is a channel on YouTube that covers sort of like how everyday things work. It’s very good.
⏹️ ▶️ John It is very, very good. Yep, it’s really good. And they did a bunch of episodes on heat pumps.
⏹️ ▶️ John And heat pumps are, in particular, in the first heat pump video, there is a direct comparison,
⏹️ ▶️ John again, in the US. So obviously, your mileage may vary based on where you live and what’s available to you. But in
⏹️ ▶️ John the US, electric heat is generally much worse in terms of carbon emission
⏹️ ▶️ John per BTU than heat pumps. And the videos explain why. And it’s pretty cool. So I think
⏹️ ▶️ John you should check those out.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I’ve only seen the first of these two videos, but it is very, very good. And, you know, I can only
⏹️ ▶️ Casey give you one data point, but here in Virginia, where we have winter, but certainly compared to my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey two co-hosts, it’s winter light. And the way my particular furnaces work
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in my house is that they’re heat pumps at reasonable temperatures and then if it gets cold enough,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have natural gas service via my city. And so if it gets that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cold, then it’ll start burning natural gas. And let me tell you, when it gets to that level, it heats up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey real quick in here, which is delightful. So yeah, it’s not just resistors getting warm like
NSRunningApplication follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, tell me about NSRunningApplication, please.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is the API that I was complaining about had all these bugs. We listed all the radars last time, the quote unquote worst
⏹️ ▶️ John API on the Mac. And I surmised that it’s like, it’s weird that it would be broken so much because I
⏹️ ▶️ John just assumed it was some really old API that had been around forever, but apparently not. Daniel Jalkut reminded
⏹️ ▶️ John me that this API was actually added in Snow Leopard, which might seem like ancient history to some people, but I
⏹️ ▶️ John was thinking it was back from the next days in the 90s. So 10.6 is when NSRunningApplication was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. And then we have good news about this, don’t we?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, this is the bug that I was talking about, where I had the
⏹️ ▶️ John one, the bug I filed on this was I needed like a reproducible test case, because the bug I described in the show was like, it works pretty much all
⏹️ ▶️ John the time, but not all the time. And that’s the worst kind of bug, in case you know, right? So,
⏹️ ▶️ John but to file a really good bug, you’re always looking for that reproducible test case. So when I was reaching my peak of frustration
⏹️ ▶️ John with these, you know, with the various window activation APIs not working correctly, I found
⏹️ ▶️ John a reproducible test case just from my experimentation or whatever. And my test case was
⏹️ ▶️ John a version of Microsoft Outlook that I was running never responded.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like you do like activate all windows in Outlook. Outlook would 100% of the time go, ha, no, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John bringing one window to the front. And I was like, yes, like this applicant, cause here’s the thing. It’s like, oh, well that
⏹️ ▶️ John must be a bug in Outlook. Again, I will say, like I said the last time, the Windows Server is
⏹️ ▶️ John part of the operating system. If the operating system offers an API that’s part of the
⏹️ ▶️ John OS, whose job it is to say, bring all the windows that belong to a particular application to the front,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t feel like the application should have any say in that happening whatsoever. Because
⏹️ ▶️ John the operating system runs the Windows Server and the operating system controls the window layering.
⏹️ ▶️ John It can bring, pull all those windows to the front. Even those windows don’t have any contents or the application
⏹️ ▶️ John is stuck in an infinite loop and hasn’t updated them. Doesn’t matter, the whole point of a double buffered window manager is the window
⏹️ ▶️ John manager has buffers for all those windows at whatever state they were in before. Like the content is available.
⏹️ ▶️ John So if that API fails to bring windows to the front, that’s a problem
⏹️ ▶️ John in the OS’s API. Nevermind what brokenness in Outlook is causing this. So I’m like, here’s a reproducible
⏹️ ▶️ John bug, Apple. I made a sample project with a little window that explains you
⏹️ ▶️ John need to be running Outlook, you need to be doing this, follow these steps, click this button, what should happen? All
⏹️ ▶️ John the Outlook windows should come to the front. What will happen, just one window will come to the front, 100% reducible
⏹️ ▶️ John every single time. It literally never, ever, ever works, right? And so we were talking about that bug in
⏹️ ▶️ John Slack, and occasionally I look at it, I’m like, yeah, they haven’t done anything to it. It’s just totally, you know, no comments,
⏹️ ▶️ John no nothing. It already had a cyst diagnosis attached, so they couldn’t ask me for one. And then, and I
⏹️ ▶️ John figured, you know what? I should check that bug again, because someone said they had changed a bunch of stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John in Big Sur, and lo and behold, in the current version of Big Sur, this bug is 100% fixed.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like it no longer reproduces. You run my sample project, you click the button, all the windows in it will
⏹️ ▶️ John come to the front every time. And so I was like, yes, my bug is fixed or this particular bug is fixed.
⏹️ ▶️ John But then I thought, wait a second. Oh no. Before when
⏹️ ▶️ John it wasn’t working, right? I just got through saying, this is something the OS is supposed to do.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like it controls the windows. It can bring any window to the front anytime. It’s the OS, it runs the Windows server, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John but it wasn’t working before only for Outlook. Like Outlook was the only app
⏹️ ▶️ John that would like not do it 100% of the time, right? Other apps would, you know, like Finder occasionally would
⏹️ ▶️ John freak out and Safari would freak out, but most of the time everything worked. Outlook never worked.
⏹️ ▶️ John So obviously there was something about Outlook that was triggering
⏹️ ▶️ John this bug in the OS, right? And Outlook, which I unfortunately know because I
⏹️ ▶️ John use every day at work, has changed a lot recently. In fact, there’s this new Outlook with this
⏹️ ▶️ John new look with a big switch at the top that says, would you like to try Outlook’s new look? Like it’s a whole new application. It’s a new
⏹️ ▶️ John application that I hate, but
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey anyway, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I like the new version worse than the old
⏹️ ▶️ John one. I’m sticking with the old version as long as I can. Anyway, Outlook has changed substantially.
⏹️ ▶️ John So now I’m like, okay, did Apple actually fix this bug or did Microsoft just
⏹️ ▶️ John so substantially change Outlook that it no longer triggers the bug in the OS? So
⏹️ ▶️ John now I’m depressed about it. So I’m excited that Outlook works now. So no one who’s running Outlook
⏹️ ▶️ John will send me complaints that, hey, I tried to use your thing and it didn’t bring all the Outlook windows to the front, your app is broken. And then
⏹️ ▶️ John I have to point them to this feedback number. And I was tempted to close the bug to say, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John so much for this bug, it doesn’t reproduce. But then I thought, you know what? I should just leave it there and let Apple close it. But then they’re never gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John close it. So I just closed it myself. Anyway, I’m of multiple minds about what
⏹️ ▶️ John I should do about this bug report. Practically speaking, this 100% reproduction that I had for this bug
⏹️ ▶️ John no longer works and we’re back to the situation I was in before where it’s an intermittent, impossible to reliably reproduce
⏹️ ▶️ John but nevertheless infuriating error.
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Cryptocurrency 000
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have to non-sarcastically congratulate our cryptocurrency enthusiast
⏹️ ▶️ Casey listeners and our Tesla enthusiast listeners because I saw a startling lack of feedback
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about how wrong we were about everything we said, which typically with those two groups doesn’t necessarily relate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to whether or not we were actually wrong about anything we said. But everyone kept it to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey themselves, and I’m very proud of you all. Which, by the way, quick aside, did you, did I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey put, I think I put in the neutral channel in the relay slack. Did you guys see that there’s an entire GitHub repo
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with a like delivery checklist for Model 3 owners? So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s this entire list, I’ll put it in the show notes. It’s this entire humongous list of things you need to look
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at when you take delivery of your Model 3, because more likely than not, at least one of these things will be wrong.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now, to be fair, a lot of them are like standard, you know, any new car sort of things, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh my goodness, it was hilarious to see this. But we also
⏹️ ▶️ Casey realized that we didn’t exactly cover kind of cryptocurrency 101, which I think, John,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you would like to do now.
⏹️ ▶️ John I like how in the intro to this tiny follow-up item, you managed to get another dig in at Tesla users. Like really,
⏹️ ▶️ John at a certain point, you’re bringing this on yourself, Casey.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I know, I know. Let me just
⏹️ ▶️ John say one more mean thing about Teslas. Yeah, this is not cryptocurrency 101. This is cryptocurrency 000.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the reason I wanted to bring it up is A, I don’t have much deep knowledge of cryptocurrency
⏹️ ▶️ John and I don’t think any of us do. But and you know, and B, I don’t really want to go into that deeply. But I felt
⏹️ ▶️ John like the last time we kind of talked about the issue with the
⏹️ ▶️ John assumption that everyone listening knew at least a tiny bit of the basics to have the context.
⏹️ ▶️ John And if you don’t, I feel like it’s our duty to explain one or two things about the basics. And that’s what
⏹️ ▶️ John I wanted to do. Marco mentioned thinking the sort of digital underpinnings of it are interesting.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that I think is the one that probably the coolest thing about cryptocurrency and blockchain
⏹️ ▶️ John and all that that people should actually read about because it’s kind of interesting. So the
⏹️ ▶️ John the quick version of that is Cryptocurrency, you know, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m probably using the wrong terms. People say it’s not cryptocurrency It’s the blockchain or whatever. Anyway, the the problem they’re solving
⏹️ ▶️ John is if you have I mean I mean, let’s just use money, because that’s what they use in the thing. If you have two parties and they want
⏹️ ▶️ John to, you know, exchange money or like complete a transaction, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, on some network, right? That involves exchanging, you know, money, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John But no one trusts anyone else. And there is no party in the middle being the referee.
⏹️ ▶️ John So there’s no bank, there’s no government, there’s just two completely anonymous, totally untrusted
⏹️ ▶️ John people on the internet. How can you possibly ever get any kind of exchange where someone doesn’t end
⏹️ ▶️ John up getting ripped off or like someone doesn’t end up like spending the same dollar two times or
⏹️ ▶️ John like how can you reliably do that? Isn’t that why banks and governments exist? To
⏹️ ▶️ John have a place who’s sort of like the, you know, the referee, the party in the
⏹️ ▶️ John middle that is going to make sure everything happens fairly or like the government with the military that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna come and, you know, drop a bomb on you if you don’t do what you’re supposed to be. Anyway, like
⏹️ ▶️ John with no enforcement, zero trust on the internet, right? And this is the problem they’re solving. Can we
⏹️ ▶️ John get a network of entities on the internet that are able to complete transactions
⏹️ ▶️ John where nobody trusts anyone else? And you know, and it’s assumed
⏹️ ▶️ John that people will attempt to do malicious things, they’ll attempt to double spend their money, they will attempt to
⏹️ ▶️ John receive money, but not send the amount that they promised, they will attempt to break and corrupt the system. How
⏹️ ▶️ John can we make a system that works in that environment? And that is part of what the whole block, train, and distributed
⏹️ ▶️ John ledger thing does, where there’s various consensus protocols and ways that everyone
⏹️ ▶️ John is incentivized to make sure that the transactions are valid and they can’t become validated
⏹️ ▶️ John until enough of the network agrees that they’re legit. So that one or two or a small
⏹️ ▶️ John number of bad actors can’t cause things to go bad. My understanding is a lot of these schemes,
⏹️ ▶️ John if one particular entity controls more than half the network, it kind of breaks down. So you want
⏹️ ▶️ John to avoid that, but I think there are other systems that try to help with that. So that is pretty cool and technically
⏹️ ▶️ John interesting, because if you think about that problem in the abstract, it seems like it’s impossible. Well, you can’t do it. If you have just a bunch
⏹️ ▶️ John of people who are liars and cheats, and you know, again, theoretically, like actors in the computer science sense,
⏹️ ▶️ John where it behooves them to lie about transactions and to cheat and to try to get more money or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John how is anything ever gonna work, right? And that’s the problem they’re solving. So I would encourage everybody, even if you don’t care about Bitcoin
⏹️ ▶️ John or cryptocurrency, to read up on the tech behind that, because that is a cool, in the abstract, cool kind of information
⏹️ ▶️ John computer science problem. And then you can look into the implementations. It’s like, OK, theoretically, I understand how it works.
⏹️ ▶️ John And there are various different schemes to sort of set up the incentives to work correctly, like
⏹️ ▶️ John what we were getting at with the pollution and everything. Some of them use proof of work,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is you have to solve a complicated problem that’s easy for other parties on the network to
⏹️ ▶️ John check your answer, but it’s hard for you to get the answer in the first place. There’s an asymmetry there.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the proof of work ones have the unfortunate side effect of, OK, well, you want me to do work? Well, I’ll just buy 1,000 GPUs
⏹️ ▶️ John and do tons of work and use tons of energy to do it, or whatever. There’s also proof of stake, which is a different
⏹️ ▶️ John system for solving the same problem that doesn’t have the exact same downsides.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then on top of all this, there are things like Ethereum, where if you have this sort of baseline distributed ledger
⏹️ ▶️ John type thing, you can use that to build other systems, like a system of contracts
⏹️ ▶️ John that describe what parties agree to and have those contracts be validated on the blockchain
⏹️ ▶️ John and agreed on by all parties and be verifiable and all sorts of stuff like that. So the tech part of this actually
⏹️ ▶️ John is cool. It’s just that the, I mean, you’ll hear this word a lot in the heat pump
⏹️ ▶️ John technology connections thing, the externalities are less than ideal, let’s say. Yeah, you get
⏹️ ▶️ John to do all these things, but at what cost to the entire planet and world? And by the way,
⏹️ ▶️ John what are these things actually good for other than speculating on the value of the things themselves. Right. So
⏹️ ▶️ John technologically and intellectually, I would encourage anyone who has any interest in this to read
⏹️ ▶️ John one or two or three of the Wikipedia articles that we link, we will link in the show notes to get a feel for
⏹️ ▶️ John it and dig deeper on how they actually solve the problems. But practically speaking, I would still encourage
⏹️ ▶️ John people maybe not to invest their life savings into Bitcoin just yet.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That I agree with, but I actually slightly disagree with reading up on this and maybe just because I’m a more visual
⏹️ ▶️ Casey learner or something. But I’m going to call out one more time the video I mentioned last week by,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh shoot, I forget the name of them, but it’s three blue, one brown or something like that. And it is like a 20, 25 minute video, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was the first time that I had seen something or read something for that matter, because I had tried reading on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it plenty that really helped me understand how you arrive at the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey blockchain and Bitcoin. And it starts with, you know, like you were saying, John, let’s Let’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey say you had two parties that you just wanted to agree on exchanging
⏹️ ▶️ Casey money or something like that, and it walks you through, okay, how do you land on the blockchain? It’s fascinating.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I also wanted to call out, since last episode when I mentioned this before, Twitter user Elijah
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pointed out to me, apparently these videos are just Python scripts that generate all the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey animation, and there’s a GitHub repo for the video’s Python script, which blew
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my mind. So I will link that in the show notes as well, which I thought was almost as interesting as video in the first place.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I really, really enjoyed that video. I cannot recommend it enough because I had tried on and off for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey years to understand what the crap this was all about. And it did not click until I saw that video and it will
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be in the show notes yet again.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the people who made that video were made from just a series of instructions. Oh my God. With it with
⏹️ ▶️ John it with, you know, DNA made up of those things in the case you couldn’t remember the name of before. Yep,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s right. That’s right. Oh, goodness. I snark on Tesla
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a lot, and they really do make good cars, usually. I snark on crypto
⏹️ ▶️ Casey more recently than before, but it is extraordinarily fascinating as an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey academic exercise, even though I have tremendous concerns about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey its impact on the planet. So I couldn’t agree with you more, John, that as an academic exercise, it’s very much
⏹️ ▶️ Casey worth looking into.
⏹️ ▶️ John And there’s the other angle that I didn’t get into is the political angle, obviously. If you don’t have to have a government
⏹️ ▶️ John or a bank involved, governments and banks, through their role in basically
⏹️ ▶️ John making the economy work, by being the things that enforce the
⏹️ ▶️ John correctness and validity of various financial transactions and agreeing on how much money you actually
⏹️ ▶️ John have and what even is money and all that other stuff and the whole fiat currency thing, any kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of system that can, in theory, solve the same problem without requiring banks and governments
⏹️ ▶️ John has some advantages, because banks and governments historically have done some pretty bad things and have their own terrible
⏹️ ▶️ John externalities. And then the final thing I’ll add is setting aside pollution
⏹️ ▶️ John and energy use and setting aside governments and banks, there is, on top of all of that,
⏹️ ▶️ John the basic economic question of, is this a pyramid scheme?
⏹️ ▶️ John What are we even doing here exactly? Is anyone buying anything with Bitcoin? Or is it just,
⏹️ ▶️ John again, great for people who need to be able to perform transactions with untrusted parties.
⏹️ ▶️ John So now hopefully, given all this rambling across two episodes, the description of, imagine if idling your
⏹️ ▶️ John car 24-7 would produce soft sudokus that you could change for heroin, I hope that all finally makes
⏹️ ▶️ John some form of sense because again, every part of that sentence hits on one of these things.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh man, that is such a perfect tweet. That is up there in my book is one of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey most perfect tweets of all time.
Oracle v. Google decision
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh yeah, yeah. All right. So there’s been some news in America recently about, for coming from the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Supreme Court with regard to Google and Oracle and whether
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or not Google copied the Java API and whether or not that’s fair use and so on.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m not even sure, even as Chief Summarizer in Chief, the best way to summarize
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this. I mean, I could take a stab at it unless one of you would prefer to, but I don’t know. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a lot of moving parts here.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think I can do a reasonable summary like this is a really old case. I’d forgotten that it existed in
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco between the time
⏹️ ▶️ John that it went to the Supreme Court and has a decision. But this is good news, right? The Supreme
⏹️ ▶️ John Court miraculously came to a decision, A, not along party lines, which is
⏹️ ▶️ John in itself is miraculous because our court is all so screwed up in that way. And B, they came to the right decision.
⏹️ ▶️ John The court case was essentially around the Java API
⏹️ ▶️ John that so Oracle bought Sun. Sun made Java, Oracle bought Sun and then, you know, Oracle being giant evil
⏹️ ▶️ John corporations, like, what do we have that we can sue somebody about? So Google, Google had basically
⏹️ ▶️ John re implemented the Java API itself, right? And so for programmers probably understand this, but
⏹️ ▶️ John goodness knows that the judges and lawyers in this court case clearly didn’t. But if you’re not a programmer, don’t know what
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re talking about here. And we say like the API, like the Java API, Java is a language,
⏹️ ▶️ John but there’s always like, you know, standard libraries that come with it, you use to do things. Some of them Some of them are complicated, some of them
⏹️ ▶️ John are simple, but you know, the Java API has a bunch of such a bunch of functions you can call. Oh, this function
⏹️ ▶️ John adds two numbers together. This function concatenates strings. This function opens a file. This function reads a file like just there has
⏹️ ▶️ John to be, you know, method calls. It’s like a name and a bunch of arguments. It says you call this thing with these arguments
⏹️ ▶️ John and you get a result. Like if you had an add function, the function would be called add and it takes two arguments, the two numbers you want to
⏹️ ▶️ John add and what does it return? The sum of those two numbers like that’s obviously silly and simple, but it’s a type of example of the game,
⏹️ ▶️ John the thing. Java SDK has tons of APIs, and that’s what makes
⏹️ ▶️ John it the library for Java. Someone has to pick, hey, when you open a file, what does that API look like? Is it called open
⏹️ ▶️ John file? Is it just called open? Is it called open buffer stream factory? Like maybe if it’s C++, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John But there is an API, right? And there’s all these different functions, and they take a certain set of arguments to do the
⏹️ ▶️ John thing, right? Google wanted to essentially have, you know, its
⏹️ ▶️ John own development system for Android phones and so on and so forth, that use
⏹️ ▶️ John the Java API, that had all the same functions with all the same names, with all the same arguments,
⏹️ ▶️ John with all the same return values, but they didn’t want to use or license Java. They just said,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, we’ll just look at what your API is. We can see that from your documentation. Here’s all the different function names. Here’s the argument takes,
⏹️ ▶️ John here’s what they’re supposed to do, here’s what they return. And then we’ll just implement them ourselves, right? They call it like a clean room
⏹️ ▶️ John implementation. We didn’t look at how you made this work. We just know there’s a function called add, it
⏹️ ▶️ John adds two numbers and returns the sum. So we will make that function signature and we’ll write the body
⏹️ ▶️ John part. And obviously it’s much more difficult for functions that are not just adding two numbers. But they
⏹️ ▶️ John re-implemented it all from scratch and Oracle said, you can’t do that. You copied our API. And they’re like,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, we didn’t look at your source code at all. We have an API that has the
⏹️ ▶️ John same functions that yours does but we wrote it all ourselves. There’s not a single line of this that came
⏹️ ▶️ John from what you did. We’re not stealing anything from you. You just made an API,
⏹️ ▶️ John and we implemented the same API to make it convenient for our programmers to
⏹️ ▶️ John use an API they might be familiar with. And this is the court case, right? And it would have been a terrible,
⏹️ ▶️ John catastrophic decision if they had said, oh, you can’t copy that API. Because all of a sudden, anybody who had
⏹️ ▶️ John any API with any kind of function that did anything, you know, like say someone did the add function, right? It would be like patents, basically,
⏹️ ▶️ John or an existing terrible system we have. If you made a function called add, A-D-D, that took two arguments
⏹️ ▶️ John and returned the sum, and then someone else had that function in their code, you could sue them and say,
⏹️ ▶️ John ah, ah, ah, we made the add function, that’s ours, you can’t have a function called add, you have to give it a different
⏹️ ▶️ John name and make it different. So yours has to be called add two numbers or something. It can’t just be called add.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it gets absurd from there. Like the entire foundation of the way software works, the idea that,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, I can make a function with the same name as yours, that takes the same arguments, does the same thing, but if I write the whole function
⏹️ ▶️ John myself, it’s my work, I didn’t copy anything from you. So anyway, the Supreme Court
⏹️ ▶️ John came to the correct decision, which is, yeah, they’re allowed to do that. Get a grip. Like, they didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John steal anything from you. It’s just, they used this, they copied the same public API
⏹️ ▶️ John as you, but they wrote every single line of that code themselves. So, tough luck.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I also think, like, you know, you can think that what Google did was slimy,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but also agree that this is not a, like, a legal thing that they should be barred
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from doing. And that’s where I fall on it. Google, they do slimy stuff all the time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Their corporate ethics are not great. This was a slimy thing to do. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I also think they should be allowed to do it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Here’s the thing. They needed a development platform for Android. Rather than make their own from scratch,
⏹️ ▶️ John they said, why don’t we just do a thing that we know people like already? People use and know Java. Why don’t we get on
⏹️ ▶️ John board that train? But do they
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, anyway, I feel like that shows it’s kind of a sign of weakness. and they didn’t feel like they could make
⏹️ ▶️ John their own API from scratch that would be attractive enough to make people come over to a new unfamiliar thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they also didn’t think they could make, you know, it’s like, I can’t, we’re not gonna make something so much better that people
⏹️ ▶️ John are willing to use it even though it’s not familiar to them. So why don’t we just copy the familiar thing? I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s a particularly strong move, but I don’t think it’s unethical. And there is something to be said for like,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a conservative move, let’s put it that way. It’s a safe move. Like we know people know Java already.
⏹️ ▶️ John Why don’t we just do that? And maybe people who, the people who do this, maybe they really like Java, right? To
⏹️ ▶️ John give an example, I’ll put these links in the show notes. We’re all familiar with, well, maybe not all, but anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John Nextstep, the operating system that Next made that eventually got purchased by Apple, and then, you know, the whole company
⏹️ ▶️ John got purchased by Apple and then turned into Rhapsody, and then Mac OS X, yada, yada.
⏹️ ▶️ John Has an API called AppKit, a bunch of other frameworks in there. And they’ve been around for years. They’ve been around since
⏹️ ▶️ John the 90s, since before Apple bought them, right? And it’s a cool new API, like from scratch,
⏹️ ▶️ John a thing that didn’t exist before with its own weird language, Objective-C, that was also made around the same time, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And the open source community saw that and they said, wow, these next things are cool, but they cost 10 grand. What
⏹️ ▶️ John if I want to write a program on my little Linux computer that costs way less than 10 grand?
⏹️ ▶️ John And I want to use that cool new API. I want to use Objective-C, and I think you could do that with a, you know, supported in GCC or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John open source compilers. But I also want to use AppKit. Like I want to make, I want to
⏹️ ▶️ John make an NS window and do all the things that you can do with the AppKit API.
⏹️ ▶️ John But of course they couldn’t get AppKit because it came as part of Next, which is a proprietary thing and they didn’t have the source code to all that.
⏹️ ▶️ John So they made GNU Step, which is a play on Next Step, which is an open source re-implementation
⏹️ ▶️ John of AppKit and a bunch of the other Next Step APIs. Exactly the same thing that
⏹️ ▶️ John Oracle was suing Google about. They saw the Next API, they didn’t have the source code for it, but they said,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s a cool API. Can we make something that has all the same functions with all the same arguments, but that we’ll just write all the
⏹️ ▶️ John code ourselves? And they did. Luckily, Next wasn’t foolish or litigious
⏹️ ▶️ John enough to try to sue the people, the volunteers that made the open source GNU Step implementation.
⏹️ ▶️ John They rightly surmised this was not a particularly big threat to the success of Next.
⏹️ ▶️ John And even when Next was bought by Apple, Apple didn’t sue GNU Step out of existence as far as I know. Tune in
⏹️ ▶️ John next week for people to send me all the court cases where Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco crushed GNU Step
⏹️ ▶️ John under its heel. But anyway, I think it was just another example that came to mind.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you know what AppKit and Cocoa are and can imagine someone looking, basically looking at Apple’s documentation
⏹️ ▶️ John and saying, that’s pretty cool. I would like to do that. And they just copy all those APIs, but write all the code
⏹️ ▶️ John themselves. That’s GNU Step.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know though, to go back to what Marco was saying, I tend to agree with him. I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the not slimy thing for Google to do would be to pay Oracle whatever they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey needed to pay in order to license the API. Like it went, hmm.
⏹️ ▶️ John Paying Oracle is always a little slimy.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it’s tough because I think I’m, as I’m listening to myself say this, I think I’m being slightly hypocritical because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think the most honest thing for Google to do would be to arrange some sort of agreement
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with Oracle, even if it’s that, you know, that they’re just going to use the API. I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you really look at the spirit of everything, Google arguably owed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey them something. Maybe not the absurd amount of money that Oracle would want, but they owed them something.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I think the kind of screw you, I want to have my cake and eat it too approach is to do what they did,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which isn’t necessarily wrong, but it’s slimy, like Marco said. But all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that being said, let me disagree with myself slightly and say I do think that the Supreme Court ruling was correct.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think an API really should be copyrightable,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or certainly they shouldn’t be able to be sued for copying the API, because API
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is, to my eyes, and I say I wanna use so many words that have double meaning, but it’s kind of like a framework
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in a sense. Like, if you want to be something that looks and smells like Java, then you need to be able
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to do these things. Or if you wanna be something that looks and smells like AppKit, you need to be able to do these other things. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think the more honest thing for Google to do would be to enter some sort of an agreement with Oracle,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong what they did. It’s just not the rightest
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing they could do. And certainly, I think the rightest and least evil, remember that, don’t be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey evil, the least evil thing they could have done was either to create something like Kotlin from the get-go,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is a very swifty, or I think it predates Swift, strictly speaking, but it’s a very swifty version
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of their APIs and language and whatnot, to start with Kotlin from the get-go or make their
⏹️ ▶️ Casey own thing in its entirety. And I understand how they landed, well, to some degree, I understand how they landed on let’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just use Java APIs. I’ve never been a fan of Java and I find Java to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be a very clunky language to work with, but I understand how they got there. Take another example,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey C-sharp by most metrics, especially early on, C-sharp was just Microsoft’s version two
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of Java. Like they looked at Java and said, hey, there’s a bunch of good ideas here, but let’s do this in a less crummy way,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a less crummy and more proprietary way, and we’ll make C sharp. And even though it’s spiritually
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very similar in execution and application, it’s very, very different. And that to me is a far less
⏹️ ▶️ Casey slimy approach. But it’s exactly what you said earlier, John, that they wanted anyone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey who knows Java to be able to just swoop in and continue where they left off for all intents and purposes. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I understand how they landed on this course of action, but I still find it to be slimy.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I don’t think it’s slimy. I just think I just think it’s weak I I think it shows that they didn’t they didn’t believe they didn’t believe
⏹️ ▶️ John they can make something better So they did this and I think it should always be valid for people to do this Like if
⏹️ ▶️ John someone sees like Swift UI, I mean, I think there already is a Linux implementation It’s with you. I like and you think
⏹️ ▶️ John Swift UI is a great API. I wish I had that API in Linux I think by all means write it especially
⏹️ ▶️ John if it’s like open source type stuff because no one expects a Band of volunteers to come up with a
⏹️ ▶️ John new thing as good as Swift UI maybe maybe, like on their own. But if you want to reimplement SwiftUI,
⏹️ ▶️ John like go for it. And Apple, I think wisely would say, that is not a threat to us. No one,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, it’s not on our platform. They’re writing for Linux. It is not going to take anything away from us. And in fact, the more
⏹️ ▶️ John people that know SwiftUI, the better it is for the thing that we wrote and controlled the evolution
⏹️ ▶️ John of, which is SwiftUI. So, you know, Oracle, I was gonna say Oracle was smart. If Oracle, if it was still Sun,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think they would say the more people who know the Java SDK, the better. And if they’re copying us and we’re leading,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s great. But anyway, I don’t attach any ethical
⏹️ ▶️ John consideration to it. It’s merely a potential strategy misstep or
⏹️ ▶️ John a smart strategy if you know for a fact that nothing your company is going to come up with is going to be any good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and I think it’s wise to remove ethics as the particular
⏹️ ▶️ Marco line you’re trying to draw. Is this ethical or not? To me, it’s not a question of ethics. It’s a question of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doing this is kind of distasteful, which is different. Lots of things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are not exactly unethical, but many people would find distasteful. A really good example,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think, on a different kind of scale, but for a similar problem, is Microsoft
⏹️ ▶️ Marco famously does not want to license any kind of proprietary technologies
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for Windows. And so they almost always, when something is popular out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there in the world that they might have to license to build support in, they will almost always
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make their own version of something very similar that they can then offer for free. A great example of this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is like, when MP3 was all patent encumbered, they didn’t want to build an MP3 encoder,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so they built WMA, their own similar format that they could do their own thing. A more common case
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is still the case today is certain fonts like Helvetica
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that they decided, you know what, Helvetica costs money to license. So instead of licensing this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco font that’s very popular and useful, we’re gonna make our own clone of it called Arial. That’s almost the same,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but just different enough not to get sued. By the way, I believe Google also did that. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anyway, it’s a distasteful thing to do, but they did it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it mostly was okay if you don’t care about taste. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Microsoft doesn’t and Google doesn’t. So, you know, it’s okay in the sense
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that like, you know, it is legally acceptable for them to have done this. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we don’t think it should be made illegal, but it is distasteful. And these companies should
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be, you know, in John’s parlance, giving a thumbs down maybe for having done this this way.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t give them a thumbs down though. I don’t. Oh, wow. I mean, I don’t even think it’s distasteful.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it’s, I mean, although your font example is interesting. So Apple obviously licensed Helvetica,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? But Apple also, with the original Mac, made a bunch of fonts
⏹️ ▶️ John because they couldn’t or didn’t want to license the real ones and they gave them names that are similar. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John instead of Times New Roman, they made a font called New York. And instead of Helvetica, they made a font called
⏹️ ▶️ John Geneva. Like you can do the mapping, it’s there, right? But then they licensed Helvetica,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? But then the modern Apple, what modern Apple did is they decided, you know what?
⏹️ ▶️ John We think in-house we can make a font that’s better than Helvetica for our purposes. and they did, well, as
⏹️ ▶️ John far as they’re concerned, San Francisco. They made their own font with many different variants
⏹️ ▶️ John suited to exactly what they need the font to do, which is work on watches, work on
⏹️ ▶️ John their Mac, work on the phone or whatever, and they did San Francisco. And I think that shows kind of, like,
⏹️ ▶️ John depending on what position you’re in, are you in the position to license the thing?
⏹️ ▶️ John Does licensing it help your competitor in a way that you want? Can you do your own thing that’s similar? Can
⏹️ ▶️ John you do your own thing that is 100% compatible with the thing you don’t own by just re-enabling the API?
⏹️ ▶️ John Or do you feel like you’re in a position to actually do an original thing that’s better, right? Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John bought Next, so arguably they didn’t do the original thing that’s better, although Steve Jobs did Next, right? But,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, Apple’s APIs are not, like, even though Apple used Java back in the day because
⏹️ ▶️ John Java looked like it was gonna be super popular, it was Java so you could call, you know, next step APIs
⏹️ ▶️ John from Java, right? It wasn’t, you know, swing or whatever. And
⏹️ ▶️ John when the time comes for them to do something better, they think, actually, we can make a new original thing that we think is even better.
⏹️ ▶️ John They come up with SwiftUI, right? They don’t say we’re going to copy WinFX or whatever the hell
⏹️ ▶️ John the, you know, the Windows new APIs are. They don’t copy the Java APIs,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? They come up with something on their own, but you’re not always in a position to do that. So I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ John if something is out there, like the implementation, obviously, You can’t steal their code, right? But
⏹️ ▶️ John if something is out there as a public API with publicly available documentation, and you think you can just simply re-implement
⏹️ ▶️ John that from scratch, just looking at the API, go for it. Because that’s not easy, right? Like
⏹️ ▶️ John just think of any operating system, and your Unix with all the system calls. I can give you a list of all the Unix system calls. No,
⏹️ ▶️ John go write your own operating system. Say, you can’t do that, that’s cheating. Shouldn’t you make your own operating system? Everyone accepts everyone’s gonna make
⏹️ ▶️ John a POSIX compatible operating system. And just because POSIX is this open thing that no company owns, is exactly
⏹️ ▶️ John the same thing. Oh, you have a call called F open and you have print F and you have S print F, you’re just such a
⏹️ ▶️ John copier. That’s distasteful. It’s like, no, it’s fine because you still have to write the implementations yourself
⏹️ ▶️ John or use Linux or whatever and have a bunch of other people write it for you. But anyway, I think
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s perfectly fine. But the best way to think about this legally speaking is imagine if the opposite was true. Like I
⏹️ ▶️ John said, if the opposite was true and it was illegal, absurd situations arrive immediately.
⏹️ ▶️ John That basically you could squad on all the sensible APIs for doing any kind of reasonable thing and no
⏹️ ▶️ John one can ever use them, right? And then you could have court cases over, you know, I have an ad API and they have one called
⏹️ ▶️ John add two numbers, but the arguments are exactly the same as mine.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco So they’re basically copying me.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like, oh God, look, sometimes when it comes time to make an API for opening
⏹️ ▶️ John a file, there’s only so many ways you can do that. And if we don’t have to want to have to avoid the 8 million other
⏹️ ▶️ John implementations made previously. I mean, again, it’s like patents, which is the stupidest system we have in this entire
⏹️ ▶️ John country see previous hypercritical episodes about, right? And as some people said in the chat,
⏹️ ▶️ John sometimes we have more sane law about this. You can’t copyright a chord progression, but you
⏹️ ▶️ John can copyright a performance of a song. It gets sketchy after that in music, so I don’t want to break up music too much.
⏹️ ▶️ John are similar in that I think you can’t copyright the shape of a font, but you can copyright the
⏹️ ▶️ John font itself. Anyway, laws should be made so that we don’t end up in absurd scenarios that discourage
⏹️ ▶️ John innovation and make it harder to do stuff. And if this court decision had gone the
⏹️ ▶️ John other way, it would make everything harder for everybody. So I’m glad it went this way.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, in general, I have similar views on patents. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t think any patents should exist on anything. Yes, including the vaccines. I was just talking about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything. I don’t think any patents should exist. I think the system causes more harm than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it prevents. But generally, when looking at technology,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of the biggest reasons the technology industry has been able to develop so quickly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and do such huge things in such a short amount of time in relative history
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and keep moving and advance is that there isn’t a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco intellectual property protection restricting it. Patents, while
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they are a burden on our entire industry, most developers don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use software patents. Most developers don’t file them. Most developers don’t need to license them, even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you believe in them, and even if you consider them
⏹️ ▶️ John And most developers are violating
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them. Right. And it just kind of goes unaddressed and unenforced
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most of the time, thank God. And everything is fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And you have people copying each other all the time. You have people, you have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco applications that compete in the same market space. They’re copying each other’s features back and forth all the time, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s fine. You have platforms copying each other’s stuff all the time. You have iOS and Android copying each other. You have Windows
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Mac copying each other. Everyone’s copying everyone all the time, and it’s fine. And that is a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fundamental reason why the tech industry has been able to get as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco big and great as it is. And whatever problems you might have with how big it is now, with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco political stuff, with certain big companies, whatever, the reality is the entire business, all of us, rely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on that relative unrestrictedness of most intellectual
⏹️ ▶️ Marco property in technology with the exception of like trademark, which I think of all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the intellectual property categories, I think trademark is probably the most defensible and the one that brings
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the fewest problems compared to copyright and patent as they are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco currently enforced. You know, the reality is like the industry is better off for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everyone, including themselves and all of us using this stuff when there are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco fewer intellectual property restrictions, basically as few as possible,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco besides really obvious stuff like direct copyright infringement or direct trademark infringement.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Otherwise, like almost nothing else being protected is a good idea in technology.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, and the proof is the lack of protections for this stuff has not caused the
⏹️ ▶️ John technology industry to fail to thrive, let’s say. I think the technology industry is doing
⏹️ ▶️ John pretty well with everybody free to copy everybody else’s APIs. Because again, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like having an idea for a startup. It’s the execution that matters. Feel free, anyone
⏹️ ▶️ John out there, if you would like to copy all of Apple’s APIs and make your own implementation of Mac OS X,
⏹️ ▶️ John go for it. It’s harder than you think. The APIs, even though they’ll say, it’s really hard to design
⏹️ ▶️ John a good API, there is, the implementation is also really hard. So Apple does not need
⏹️ ▶️ John legal protection to prevent you from copying Swift UI and their entire operating system,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? Their moat is the fact that doing that is incredibly hard and they already did it and you haven’t. So go ahead,
⏹️ ▶️ John copy. Apple does not need that legal protection. And if that legal protection existed, it
⏹️ ▶️ John would make everybody’s life miserable because we would very quickly run out of names for functions that add two numbers together.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’d be like domain names, quite like someone would just, you know, create and copyright every conceivable function
⏹️ ▶️ John that does a thing, you know, all possible print functions, right? just, and they would just, it would be like patent
⏹️ ▶️ John trolls. Like they’d be just a holding company. It’s like, we own the copyright of every conceivable API. Any human will ever think of
⏹️ ▶️ John to perform these basic tasks. And they just wait for someone to use an API like that. It’s like, oh, you can’t use that API.
⏹️ ▶️ John We own that one. License it from us. Just like patents. Oh God, patents are terrible. I don’t want
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey to go off on
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Anyway, we need to get to the next topic.
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Tim Cook interview on Sway
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Tim Cook did an interview with Kara Swisher sometime over the last day or two. I don’t know when this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey landed, but it is very interesting. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have thoughts. I’d like to point you to our show notes where someone,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey probably John, put in a link to the podcast. There’s also
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a transcript which we will put in the show notes. I’d also like to call out Dithering If you happen to be a subscriber,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I believe it was today’s or yesterday’s episode of the show. They kind of go through it a little
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bit. And also Upgrade this week was really good. And Upgrade touched
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on a lot of the things that I heard in this interview.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I should probably summarize it. So there was a lot of talk about a lot of different things,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey including Apple’s gatekeeping and their
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple tax, if you will, on the app store, you know, the 30 or 15%. They talk about AR and future products-ish.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey They talk about Tim’s future, which we’ll get to in a little bit. And there were several other things that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey were discussed. This was probably the best interview
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of Tim Cook that I’ve heard, and I didn’t come away from it feeling
⏹️ ▶️ Casey great. And I’m curious what you guys thought. Marco, since
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I heard you snicker a second ago, why don’t we start with you? Have you heard this and what did you think if you did?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I listened earlier tonight. And I do think the only other Tim Cook interview that I’ve really been
⏹️ ▶️ Marco able to get through was the one he did for, I think it was Outdoors Magazine or Outdoor Magazine,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that was also a podcast. I think podcasts are a good format for Tim because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first of all, smart speed, he really needs it. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m able to pay attention a little bit more easily. And you also are able to pick up little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bits of his personality here and there that he very carefully drips out.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But if you see Tim giving a TV interview, usually I don’t even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco watch those because they’re so usually relatively low in value. Certainly whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he says during the keynotes and presentations they do, that’s all so so incredibly tightly scripted that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he, again, there’s not a lot of value to what he says there. It’s hard to like see through the cracks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and actually see the personality and the interesting parts that don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seem like PR statements. And so podcasting, I think it’s nice to be able to get that sense from him a little bit.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco He’s still extremely guarded and extremely careful with every word he’s saying, but you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do get a little bit more of that personality and yes, SmartSpeed helps. So in general, I was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pleased with the interview. I liked Kara Swisher’s style. I don’t know if this was done in editing or if this is actually how it went,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but she was very just kind of like rapid fire questions. Maybe that was just the smart speed, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was very much like, she asked a lot of hard questions and Tim would
⏹️ ▶️ Marco answer some of them, many of them maybe. And then she would just move right onto the next thing. Like he would like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco question, one sentence answer, occasionally a follow-up question and then right onto the next thing. And it covered
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a very wide range of topics in a relatively short time. So that was actually, you know, as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just like a thing to listen to. And as, as an interview, I thought it was pretty good. Kara
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Swisher’s a good interviewer. She has interviewed a lot of CEOs, including Steve Jobs, multiple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco occasions, Tim Cook before. Um, and I think she knows what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can get out of somebody like Tim Cook and what you can’t. So it was very like the ratio
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of like, you know, meat on this bone versus PR filler or fluff, I think was pretty good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco As for the actual content of what Tim said, Obviously there’s a number of areas that we’ll talk
⏹️ ▶️ Marco about. One of them was the whole like app tracking transparency thing. I think that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was mostly fine. It’s actually, it’s worth listening to Dithering
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Stratechery because I like Ben’s approach to the tracking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco debate. You know, Ben is mostly on the side of that Apple’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco super clear and often accurate about the terminology they use on how they describe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco data brokering and tracking businesses and stuff like that. And like a lot of times Apple will say something like, you know, these companies sell
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your data, which is like technically untrue or at least not the whole story or misleading
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or something like that. So it’s good to hear that point of view. I lean a little closer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the Apple point of view, but that’s in part because I’m not one of these companies that does all this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tracking. I don’t have like an app install network where I’m trying to attribute,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which means track purchases between ads and stuff like that. I’m not doing any of that stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco My businesses don’t depend on any of that stuff. And I’m generally on Apple’s side of how things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco should be in theory with this kind of stuff. So even with all that said,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I found the app tracking transparency discussions mostly okay.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They were very high level. But when it got to the App Store
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is, and this applied to Steve Jobs as well, but it certainly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has not gone away with Tim Cook. Apple usually, when they give statements
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or when their executives give statements, or interviews, whatever, usually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they are straightforward and honest and it usually seems like they are arguing with good faith
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that they believe they’re doing the right thing and usually you can take them at their word and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re not trying to BS you, et cetera. And occasionally you get something like this,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where they’re doing something a little bit greedy or a little bit wrong
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or a little bit too something where the truth of the matter
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is not super PR friendly and so they start doing distortions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and spin and they hammer on certain talking points that are kind of misleading or kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of dodgy or whatever. Modern Apple, that’s the App Store. Like that’s the problem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they have with this. When they talk about stuff like other recent debates they’ve had with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco governments or the public, you know, things like as mentioned in the podcast, the San Bernardino shooting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phone unlocking thing. I think Apple was on the right side of that, of like not building in the back door
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for law enforcement. Like that’s, I think that was the right move in retrospect. I thought it back then. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think that move, that has held up as being the right move. And that was a big fight that Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had in public, but they were right. The App Store stuff is mostly about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco money. They make a ton of money from being the App Store gatekeepers, and that’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco great for PR, that that’s the reason for their App Store over-controlling behavior.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think one of the best questions that Kara asked during the interview was, they were on the topic of the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco App Store and Apple’s cut, and she said something on the lines of, because Tim was saying, oh, well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco our App Store protects users from privacy, which was, again, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco complicated and kind of misleading. And she had asked, like, well, why not allow
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people to basically accept in-app purchases directly in their apps through their own in-app purchase systems
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or make alternative app stores, something like that. And Tim’s answer was along the lines of,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well, then people need our app store to trust it, and if it wasn’t for our app store, people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wouldn’t trust it to, they wouldn’t input their payment information, they wouldn’t make purchases.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that’s just complete BS, because literally the entire internet is filled with independent
⏹️ ▶️ Marco websites that take credit card payments and have for many decades now, and it’s been fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco People do it all the time. And Tim is not an idiot. He knows the internet exists.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco He knows this is a BS argument, and he’s giving it anyway. And this isn’t just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco solely a Tim Cook thing. I guarantee you if Steve Jobs was still here, he would have made the exact
⏹️ ▶️ Marco same argument, for the exact same reason. That’s the story they tell themselves, which is partially
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but mostly not true, but they make a ton of money from it. And it’s so hard, you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that famous quote about, you know, it’s hard to get somebody to believe something if their job depends on them not believing it? It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so hard for people in the position of, like, an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple executive, who have told themselves this justification over and over and over again
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for years. We have to be the gatekeepers here because it keeps people safe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they then nobody would trust giving their credit cards to app so therefore we have to do this. Well
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s that’s really not true and hasn’t been true for a long time if it was ever true
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and but but they are they’ve told themselves that story so much for so long.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And they, you know, it’s like when you keep telling a lie over and over again, eventually you kind of start to believe that it’s the truth
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or at least you suppress the fact that it’s a lie in your mind so much even subconsciously that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like this is just you just say it over and over again. It’s it just becomes true to you. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this argument is so flimsy and and when you hear it like out in the world when you’re not an Apple executive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you hear these arguments, they sound completely ridiculous and and almost almost offensively so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so most of the rest of the interview, you know, we’ll, I’m sure we’ll get to the other stuff, but to me it’s just every time you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get an Apple person talking about the App Store cut and their in-app purchase policies
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and all that stuff, it’s just such a bad look for them. It’s so uncomfortable and it’s so cringeworthy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it is offensive because it’s almost like they’re insulting our intelligence by continuing to advance
⏹️ ▶️ Marco arguments that really don’t hold a lot of water. And Tim even said, it’s so funny, Tim even said at the beginning when I asked about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tracking transparency and, you know, Kara said something along the lines Like, you know, what do you think of Facebook counter arguments
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that this is hurting small businesses and everything? And Tim said, I think those arguments are flimsy.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And you can say the exact same thing about everything Tim said about App Store Control. All of Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco arguments are really flimsy. It sounds good on, you know, if you don’t think too much or if you don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco too much about it, it sounds logical.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But- I’m so mad you said that because that’s exactly what I was going to say. Because the thing of it is, is that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s, it’s when you look at it on the surface, you’re Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. And then you think about it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for a half second, you realize, no, Apple’s just pulling this like, oh, we’re so magnanimous card, like, look at us,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey look at all this innovation we created. There was some absolutely disgusting phrase used for that, like this economic
⏹️ ▶️ Casey miracle or something like that. I might have that wrong, but it was something along those lines. And, oh, look at all this that we’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey done. Like, oh, be thankful, plebes, that we have given you all these opportunities.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it’s like so obnoxious the way they seem to think. Well, and the thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is, like, some of that is true. they have given a lot, they have created a lot of opportunities, they have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco created an amazing ecosystem and lots of people make money from it. That’s true,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but that doesn’t answer the argument of why they have to be the only game in town for payment processing. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a totally different argument. It’s so funny that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even in the App Store, there are tons of apps that take credit cards
⏹️ ▶️ Marco directly in the app. They just aren’t selling digital goods. but I can type my credit card
⏹️ ▶️ Marco into the Amazon app to buy stuff that gets delivered to my house. I can type in a credit card into the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Uber or Lyft apps to get a car to come somewhere and pick me up and bring me somewhere, that’s fine. I can type a credit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco card into the parking meter app when I park somewhere and I have to go to the stupid Park Mobile app and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco enter in the numbers and then PayPal fails and Apple Pay fails and you gotta type in a credit card. I can do that and there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no trust issue there and people buy stuff online all the time from every other website.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it’s a complete farce of an argument. Like it makes no sense whatsoever
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that Apple has to be the only game in town for payment processing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for digital goods in apps on their phone. That makes no sense whatsoever.
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like another reason Apple should hire me is when
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I’m listening to his interviews, when he does these things, I feel
⏹️ ▶️ John like Tim, I can make the argument you’re trying to make, I think in a more
⏹️ ▶️ John convincing way. Now I think I know why he doesn’t make it in this way, because the way
⏹️ ▶️ John I would make it would be more revealing of Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John strategy than Tim Cook’s Apple has ever particularly wanted to do. And also
⏹️ ▶️ John I think, bringing up Steve Jobs again, I think I agree that he would be making similar arguments and I agree that he would also
⏹️ ▶️ John totally be thinking about the control and money behind the scenes. But I think also he would agree with
⏹️ ▶️ John this other angle that I was just a take, and that’s this. And you could disagree with it. Like it’s open
⏹️ ▶️ John for debate whether you find this convincing, but I think it’s a better argument, which is
⏹️ ▶️ John by having one method to do digital purchases, and you can get into a side argument
⏹️ ▶️ John about why are physical distinct or whatever, but in general, like digital purchases are the new thing that didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John exist before the app store in this particular fashion, like in-app purchases and all sorts of like digital goods,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? In our store, people were always paying things with credit cards, right? But for these
⏹️ ▶️ John digital goods in our store, which are very easy to basically, you know, rip people off with or whatever, because there’s no
⏹️ ▶️ John actual physical product moving around. It’s just bits and taking people’s money. Witness this, scam apps, signing
⏹️ ▶️ John up for weekly subscriptions. Having a single way to deal with that type
⏹️ ▶️ John of thing, right? The bulk of the purchases, all those in-app purchases, whatever. Having it always go
⏹️ ▶️ John through Apple, no exceptions, no ifs, ands, or buts for that type of thing, provides
⏹️ ▶️ John a simple to understand, unified experience for customers
⏹️ ▶️ John that Apple thinks differentiates its platform and makes it more valuable
⏹️ ▶️ John to customers than it would be otherwise if they just did what other people do, which is allow multiple payment
⏹️ ▶️ John methods. And that has more value to Apple as a company. Like in other words, why do we keep doing
⏹️ ▶️ John this? It’s because we think Apple is a more valuable, better company that is more differentiated from
⏹️ ▶️ John its rivals by this particular simplification, right? And that is true of so
⏹️ ▶️ John many things that Apple does, that it has fewer options and it is less
⏹️ ▶️ John flexible, but the simplicity is what provides the level of comfort to the
⏹️ ▶️ John customers and overall, overall, at net net that makes Apple a more valuable
⏹️ ▶️ John company, a more desirable company for customers to interact with. It’s the thing that makes
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple, Apple, right? But I think that reveals too much and Apple is basically describing, here’s
⏹️ ▶️ John why we’re beating you at your own game because all of these things that you
⏹️ ▶️ John think are detriments are computers that don’t have a lot of features and we seal in the batteries and all this other stuff that
⏹️ ▶️ John you think, and you get rid of the floppy drive. Like, I mean, by now all their competitors should know and they’re just choosing not to
⏹️ ▶️ John do it, but like that is the Apple MO. And it would be
⏹️ ▶️ John honest, I think there is a section of Apple, like part of the reason
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re doing this is exactly what I’m describing. And even though we feel like it has limits, the options for
⏹️ ▶️ John customers, and it’s certainly worse for developers and all these other things, there is an argument to be
⏹️ ▶️ John made that even though it is worse for all of those parties, and even though it’s actually kind of worse for customers in
⏹️ ▶️ John certain ways, overall it is still a win because it’s what differentiates Apple. Because if we didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John do that, we’d be down in the mud fighting with Google and Microsoft at their own level. By
⏹️ ▶️ John making these different choices, this is what makes Apple, Apple. Behind all that is also, let’s look
⏹️ ▶️ John at the server’s revenue graph, right? Like that is unavoidable. They’re not going to say that, but
⏹️ ▶️ John everybody knows it’s true, including Kara Swisher, right? And I thought in this interview, she was actually good
⏹️ ▶️ John with the quick, it wasn’t a follow-up question, it was like a follow-up assertion. Like to give
⏹️ ▶️ John an example, not particularly from the app store section, but like, we was talking about the tracking stuff and they’re like, oh, these companies
⏹️ ▶️ John are tracking you and doing all these things and invading your privacy and stealing all your stuff or whatever. And Kara would
⏹️ ▶️ John say, yeah, and they do that with the devices that you make running the OS that you, you know, like with
⏹️ ▶️ John the app they got from your app store. Right, she would always just stick that in and statement of fact, like, oh, They’re,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, and Apple could have come back. Tim could have come back and said, yeah, that’s why we’re doing this thing, because it is on our platform.
⏹️ ▶️ John But she was trying to say like, you are partially culpable for this because you have been vending these apps that do
⏹️ ▶️ John all these bad things. And yes, you’re trying to make up for it now by hurting your competitors who you won’t admit are really your
⏹️ ▶️ John competitors, right? And there’s that whole other angle there, right? But I thought she was
⏹️ ▶️ John good at about sort of just reminding people, just have a boy out. This is all happening on iPhones and you are the
⏹️ ▶️ John iPhone person. So it’s not like you can just say, this is all just a thing that happening at arm’s length from you.
⏹️ ▶️ John You are, you know, you are part of this ecosystem. In fact, you run this whole ecosystem. And then later in the interview, we’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John talk about how you run this ecosystem with an iron fist and don’t allow certain things to happen. So you surely share some
⏹️ ▶️ John of the blame for any bad effects that we’re experiencing now, even though you are also the one who’s trying to fix them.
⏹️ ▶️ John But anyway, I think, I wasn’t bothered by the interview. I enjoyed it. I’m used to Tim Cook saying these
⏹️ ▶️ John things. I wasn’t particularly frustrated by the App Store section, just because this is what I expected him to say.
⏹️ ▶️ John that I think there are actually stronger arguments than he was making. And I think mostly
⏹️ ▶️ John the reason he didn’t make them is because they are more revealing than he wanted to be. And I think he
⏹️ ▶️ John thinks and Apple thinks as a collective corporate entity that they continue, they can continue
⏹️ ▶️ John to make the case they’ve been making and essentially get away with it because
⏹️ ▶️ John it is may not be convincing to us in particular,
⏹️ ▶️ John but we are not the mass of the public. We are not the government. We are not Congress.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe the arguments they’re making are sufficiently convincing that they don’t have to go into the whole here’s how
⏹️ ▶️ John here’s what makes Apple Apple, and here’s why it’s a competitive advantage, which I totally buy and think
⏹️ ▶️ John is a huge factor. And maybe they never have to really examine the fact that like, OK, but what
⏹️ ▶️ John is this really about? We know you make a ton of money from this, right? So someone in the chat mentioned like how
⏹️ ▶️ John Steve Jobs said in the beginning, like they’re running the app store at break even. I’m pretty sure that was never
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I mean, maybe I’m wrong,
⏹️ ▶️ John but like I said, oh, so much has changed since when the app store is a huge source of money. Yes, obviously the app store and digital
⏹️ ▶️ John purchases have become way bigger than they were. But when Steve Jobs said, we’re running the app store at break
⏹️ ▶️ John even, I was given that side eye from day zero. It’s like, okay, all right, we get it, Steve. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re not trying to make a ton of money. I get what you’re saying, but the way he said it, it was like, all right,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah. What you’re trying, it’s like, nobody, who believed that? Who believed they were running, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe the app store was losing money, but he’s just saying that as a way to try to say, you know, look at
⏹️ ▶️ John what we’re doing now. Like you just said, we’re out here killing ourselves for you developers. I can’t believe the developers yelling
⏹️ ▶️ John as we’re making this great platform. You run this, this app store for you, like basically as a charity.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not buying it. Right. I mean, maybe they ran the app store at a loss for a while, but we understand
⏹️ ▶️ John projections. Like we understand that there is motivation to get people into the app stores and get them to start selling things. So
⏹️ ▶️ John you can start going on on this upward slope. Or maybe it was profitable from day one. I don’t know. Either way,
⏹️ ▶️ John claiming poverty or asking to be better appreciated for what they’ve given everybody are
⏹️ ▶️ John probably not viable strategies. But the safety argument, I think, has legs
⏹️ ▶️ John even without getting into the nuances that are described, because most people hear it like Casey just said and go, all right,
⏹️ ▶️ John that makes some sense. And they’re not listening to this podcast and they don’t care about the nuances. So, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John problem solved. So it could be that the Tim Cook strategy is actually the winning one.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Thinking back to our earlier conversation about how Marco and I seemed to think that what Google did was a little slimy,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I feel like Apple’s perspective on the App Store is slimy. Like, yes, I suppose
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as the gatekeeper, they could charge 30 or 15% to be on the App Store, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yes, they should earn some amount of money for innovating and creating the App Store in the first place and so on and so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey forth. Like, ah, it’s just the way in which it came across
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is it just, it was so gross to me. Like it was so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey looking down from on high and saying, be thankful for what we give you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You are welcome. What can I say except you’re welcome and also 30%.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it’s just, it’s just, it was so gross. I get that feeling like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even, even when I speak to friends at Apple about this, I get this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey feeling that it’s inherent within Apple as a corporation
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that they are owed for doing this. They, they are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey owed for bringing this into the world. And again, to a degree,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think that is reasonable, but I don’t know. At some point I feel like, okay, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yes, you did innovate 10 years ago, what is it, 13 years ago? How long has the App Store been out? It’s like 2008 or something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco like that. 2008.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep, so 13 years ago, you innovated, and I’m very happy for you, I am.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But things have changed since then. And like, oh, Tim says, oh, you know, the App Store rules aren’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey set in concrete or something like that. And I’m like, well, let’s change them then. Like, let’s move on. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you have extracted the rent you deserve.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think he was good in that section because he did make the point that the rules have changed. And he emphasized the point that they have essentially
⏹️ ▶️ John changed over time, more or less to be more favorable to people other than Apple, which I think is true.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, the obviously the 30 to 15 really supports that argument. Like a lot of that’s why I thought he did
⏹️ ▶️ John for the most part a pretty good job in this interview. He at various times and
⏹️ ▶️ John I think this is what you’re finding distasteful and B2 to some degree is that he sounded like he was he always sounds
⏹️ ▶️ John like he’s on a witness stand, right? He always sounds like a lawyer had coached him on exactly what to say, even when
⏹️ ▶️ John he’s being persuasive, or either that he’s on a witness stand or that he’s talking in front of Congress,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, he’s coming with the talking points and his talking points are, well, we do change the app store
⏹️ ▶️ John rules. And in fact, we pretty much only changed them in one direction. And in fact, we recently changed them to be way better for
⏹️ ▶️ John developers. So you telling us that we are ruled ruling with an iron fist and not,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, and making the rules that are bad for everybody. Like, we’re not saying the rules are perfect, but we
⏹️ ▶️ John change them all the time. And we basically changed them to get better. Right? Those are all true and
⏹️ ▶️ John valid points and reasonable counterarguments to the extreme arguments against. Well, but it’s all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey misdirection. Well, OK, don’t worry about that. But hey, have I told you about
⏹️ ▶️ John it? But it’s not. But it is true. Here’s the problem. So I just got through saying how
⏹️ ▶️ John Tim Cook could have made his case better that having a single payment method actually is a benefit to
⏹️ ▶️ John both Apple and the world at large, as in terms of differentiation and simplification, the basic Apple argument of
⏹️ ▶️ John why is it better for you to have fewer things, or fewer options. On the flip side of that, I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t understand why everybody, including Kara Swisher, doesn’t come back at him with the obvious
⏹️ ▶️ John counter-argument to this whole ecosystem thing that you’re talking about. It’s like, oh, this
⏹️ ▶️ John economic miracle that we’ve created in the App Store. And I think you’re right, there was something like that, right? The
⏹️ ▶️ John obvious comeback is like, everybody knows, Tim, everybody knows how platform works, right? Pick
⏹️ ▶️ John a platform, right? Games, right? PlayStation. Yes, they make the console and they sell
⏹️ ▶️ John it, but they need the games, right? It’s, you can’t have one without the other.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a clearly symbiotic relationship. Oh, we made the App Store, you should be thankful.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the game, the app developers or the game developers console say, we made the software, you should be
⏹️ ▶️ John thankful. You need both. It’s so obvious. Everybody, and maybe they don’t say it because it’s so obvious, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I think most people listening be like, oh, well, you know, Tim’s right. Like they did make the App Store. The App Store is nothing without
⏹️ ▶️ John the apps. It’s nothing, right? You need the apps. That’s how every platform works. You make
⏹️ ▶️ John the platform and you attract the developers to it by making it a good deal for them. And Apple did that,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s a partnership. I mean, not really, because Apple owns everything, but you know what I mean?
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, nobody who makes the world’s most awesome game console, like, it’s the best. It costs,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, a small amount of money and it has a huge amount of power and it’s better than everything else, but if no
⏹️ ▶️ John one makes games for it, it’s a brick. Nobody wants it. You need people to make
⏹️ ▶️ John games, and so you need to sell a lot of them or convince somebody that you are going to sell of them in the future, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, what did Microsoft have to do with the Xbox? Hey, or make it a game console. We’re trying to make some games ourselves,
⏹️ ▶️ John which is going to cost a lot of money, but we need other people to make games for it. And we haven’t sold any of them yet. We’ve sold zero.
⏹️ ▶️ John And in fact, we’ve never sold a game console, but we have to convince you game developer to put your game
⏹️ ▶️ John on this console that we can’t tell you how many we’re going to sell, but we think we might sell this many. What do you think? Right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And no platform is successful without people that build on it. And so every single time,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, Apple or Tim Cook or whatever says this, it should be the some sort of, you know, immediate
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of rote cliche comeback was like, Yes, but of course, the platform is pointless without the apps
⏹️ ▶️ John that develop for it. So you owe them, maybe not equal amount as they owe you,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s not 99 1%, like that, that everybody knows it’s useless without the apps,
⏹️ ▶️ John right. And in fact, every time someone makes a a cool app for your platform that adds value to your platform.
⏹️ ▶️ John And the reward is that they get 70% of the money you get 30 or 85 15 or whatever. Right.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so I’m frustrated when that counter argument is made. Kara
⏹️ ▶️ John probably didn’t make it because she knows and Tim knows and everybody here like they know between themselves
⏹️ ▶️ John that this is all right, all right, like in some some respects, I felt like when she got a talking point, she was just like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, over it, I wanted to go to the next one, because she knows it’s a BS talking point,
⏹️ ▶️ John and didn’t want to get bogged down in it. But even when these people go in front of Congress, I hope some congressional
⏹️ ▶️ John staffers like, you know, get them up to date and say, if they come in and say it’s an economic miracle, whatever, tell
⏹️ ▶️ John them how awesome it would be if they had zero apps. Right? How awesome would your store be if developers
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t didn’t write applications for it, right? It’s they’re, they’re not just doing you a favor, you’re not just
⏹️ ▶️ John doing them a favor by allowing their apps to be on your store. Their apps make people buy your phones
⏹️ ▶️ John and the phones you make bazillions of dollars with because they have great margins or whatever. So,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah. Yeah. Overall, I thought the interview was very good though. And I also wanted to briefly call out the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kind of prelude discussion on dithering. It was interesting hearing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John and Ben talk about, and I feel like they’d done this before, talk about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the questions that Carousel Research chose to ask because on the rare
⏹️ ▶️ Casey occasions that we get an audience with someone at Apple. It’s everyone’s favorite thing to do is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to yell at us about not asking the quote-unquote hard questions. And there was a really good discussion
⏹️ ▶️ Casey between John and Ben about how much of a waste of time that often is. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it then it becomes, I forget which one of them said it, but then it becomes, you know, us grandstanding at, look at us, look at the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey three of us and how fricking tough we are. We ask those hard questions.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Ben Domenickis This question is more of a comment.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Exactly. No, it really is. It really is like that. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you’re one of those people who thinks, oh, if the three of us or if somebody
⏹️ ▶️ Casey else has an audience with the king, so to speak, they better ask that question.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Nobody else wants to ask. They better stick it to them. And it’s just that’s oftentimes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a waste of time, because if there’s anything we’ve learned from Tim Cook particularly, and I actually think Schiller is also
⏹️ ▶️ Casey extremely good in this regard. Neither of them is going to reveal anything unless they absolutely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey want to. So, yes, like the three of us or Kara Swisher could ask the quote-unquote
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hard question, but there’s really not a lot of point to that because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all you’re going to do is waste time that you could be using to ask something that you may actually get interesting content
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and interesting data out of. So I just wanted to point that out as well.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I mean, it’s not even the hard questions. Like, don’t ask a question that you know that they’re not gonna give a real
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco right? You can ask the
⏹️ ▶️ John hard question, and very often they’ll, they invite the hard question, ask me the difficult thing, and let them give their canned answer
⏹️ ▶️ John for it. But like, if you’re looking to reveal information, if you want to extract information,
⏹️ ▶️ John information that your audience hasn’t heard before, getting them to regurgitate an existing talking point
⏹️ ▶️ John is not the route to that, right? Like, we’ve all heard those talking points, and
⏹️ ▶️ John some of the hardest questions have talking point, they’re, you know, canned answers, right? A lot of
⏹️ ▶️ John the questions Cara asked were hard questions. But then when Tim started the answer, you’re like, oh, he’s doing that one.
⏹️ ▶️ John The greatest answer,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco right? You know
⏹️ ▶️ John that there’s no new information. What people want is to ask the hard question and we get
⏹️ ▶️ John a different answer or more insight or for them to be more honest about it. But if they’re coming in with their, you know.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so in some respects, sometimes the, not easier, but the less expected question
⏹️ ▶️ John that they don’t have a prepared answer for, because you know the question about App Store and
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever, privacy and ad tracking. Those are hard questions.
⏹️ ▶️ John He’s coming in with answers to those.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco He knows they’re gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John be asked, right? But maybe if you ask something obscure, they don’t have a canned answer for that, and maybe you get something interesting
⏹️ ▶️ John out of that. Anyway, obviously Kara Swisher’s interview
⏹️ ▶️ John is different than our podcast, is different than a New York Times article, is
⏹️ ▶️ John different than congressional testimony, is different than court testimony. Context matters as well. So there’s, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, it all depends. But if if what you’re expecting is like
⏹️ ▶️ John a, oh, I got to do it again. But Barco still hasn’t seen it. A few good men style, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John moment of reckoning. You are not going to get that on a casual podcast. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John sorry. You’re just not. Yeah. And probably not even in court. If
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ve gone long on this topic. But just want to get in this one last bit is one that got a lot of press because it was
⏹️ ▶️ John it was the one. Hey, it was a tidbit of new information, information that hadn’t been said before. And this is why it’s getting
⏹️ ▶️ John all the press. And this is why it’s actually kind of a fun question that is not maybe something that he came in with,
⏹️ ▶️ John although knowing this, he probably knew all the questions at a time. Who knows? Anyway, I don’t think he had a can answer this, but
⏹️ ▶️ John he clearly came in prepared to give this answer, right? Maybe he’s been prepared
⏹️ ▶️ John to give this answer for three months now and no one asked it. And maybe he just, you know, told Carrie, you should ask me about this
⏹️ ▶️ John because I got a cool answer for you. Like that would be a nice
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco thing to do.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, the question was, can you see yourself still at Apple 10 years from now? Or something similar to like
⏹️ ▶️ John that. Basically saying 10 years from now you think you’ll still be at Apple. And what Tim
⏹️ ▶️ John said is, 10 years from now, probably not. But I have no plans to leave now and
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m really enjoying it and so on and so forth. He basically did an infinite timeline argument
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco with 10 years being the infinite
⏹️ ▶️ John He said, well 10 years from now, yeah, surely I’ll be gone by then. But I’m not leaving today and
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not leaving tomorrow I’m not leaving next year, but 10 years. Yeah, probably in 10 years, because 10 years now,
⏹️ ▶️ John Tim Cook will be 60 or 70 rather. And I think it’s, you know, that is not an unexpected
⏹️ ▶️ John answer. If you ask, Hey, hey, billionaire, do you think you’ll still be doing this backbreaking
⏹️ ▶️ John job when you’re 70? Or will you spend some time to enjoy your billions? It’s not a shocking
⏹️ ▶️ John answer to say no 10 years now, I’m out of here by 70. Perfectly valid,
⏹️ ▶️ John reasonable, not unexpected answer, but something he has never said before. And it is
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of like the first step in the seven year plan to sort of lay the groundwork for a transition,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? He’s a good CEO, you know, like knows how these things work. If you
⏹️ ▶️ John have the time, it’s good to set up these transitions well ahead of time. So here is the first
⏹️ ▶️ John little, first little tiny step, which is to say, just so you know, in case you were thinking I’m gonna live forever
⏹️ ▶️ John and be like the God Emperor of Apple, I’m not, I’m really rich.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not going to be working here when I’m 95. So let’s put a cap on it. So 10
⏹️ ▶️ John years, surely I’m out of here, but I’m not going to tell you when. It’s just the 10 years is so long from now and I’ll be so old.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m certainly out of here by then. So just keep that in mind. Anyway, I’m not leaving today
⏹️ ▶️ John or tomorrow. Don’t worry about it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I mean, before we blow past it, I also thought it was kind of interesting that he basically confirmed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the AR in car projects.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I mean, he’s been he’s he’s been doing that for a long time now. Every interview he’s in, he
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t shy away from the fact that Apple is very interested or looking into that. Or like he
⏹️ ▶️ John never actually says we’re going to make a thing. But he comes so close to for so many years
⏹️ ▶️ John now that it’s been so like unlike Jobs, who Jobs was better at just
⏹️ ▶️ John flat, bald faced, lying denial. Right. Just say, you know, we think
⏹️ ▶️ John AR is cool, but, you know, you know, is Apple doing anything about that? But he’s like, ah, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think that’s, we don’t talk about fear. But Tim is like, Apple is deeply interested in this and we are very
⏹️ ▶️ John interested in this area and we are looking into it deeply. And he’ll say every phrase that you can say other than we’re making a car,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? Even when they said, are you making a car? You’re making driving stuff. It’s like, he didn’t say we’re making a car.
⏹️ ▶️ John He didn’t say we’re making driving stuff. What he said was, boop, soundboard can’t answer number 12.
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple really lives at the intersection of software, hardware, and services,
⏹️ ▶️ John But it’s so obvious that it’s like wink, wink, nudge, nudge, software, hardware,
⏹️ ▶️ John and services. That’s all true. And that’s a canned answer. But when you give that
⏹️ ▶️ John to your answer over you’re making a car or you’re making software, it’s like hardware. It doesn’t really answer anything because
⏹️ ▶️ John what does that even mean? Are you going to build it yourself? Are you integrating with hardware of a car made by somebody else?
⏹️ ▶️ John So Tim Cook is still following the Apple playbook. We’re not going to actually tell you anything. but he is so
⏹️ ▶️ John not interested in hiding the fact that they’ve been working on AR. Honestly, how can he hide it? There’s been so many
⏹️ ▶️ John leaks and on AR, Apple, every WWDC has a new AR thing. They just don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John have the glasses, right? But here’s a new AR technology and you can use AR on your phone. And did you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John like, that’s a canned answer. Did you know that you can use AR with our iPads with the LIDAR detector or
⏹️ ▶️ John LIDAR thing in it? And they’re in our phones and look at this amazing AR. Are you gonna make any goggles? Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple really works at the intersection car, you know, there it is. We’re all just
⏹️ ▶️ John waiting. And I think at this point, Apple could never ship AR things
⏹️ ▶️ John and never ship anything with the car and all those answers are still valid because Apple has been shipping
⏹️ ▶️ John things in those areas for a long time. Will a product ever come of it?
⏹️ ▶️ John We think so eventually, but we also thought that air tags would arrive eventually and so far,
⏹️ ▶️ John so far nothing but you know, two weeks from now, check again.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and if anything, I think his answers regarding AR and the car
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically confirm what most rumors have been triangulating on for years, which is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, both of these are projects that are being worked on heavily. The car
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is probably not anywhere near being a product or even defining what the product might be.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s still very much seemingly in the exploratory or early development or experimental kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of areas. the third attempt at early development,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John maybe. Right, yeah, yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco possibly. And I think the AR project is very close. Like, I think you can look
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at like, you know, the way Apple talks, the way Tim talks, this basically confirms the AR product is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco real and very close. The car project is also real, but not very close, and not quite well-defined,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or you know, maybe not nailed down yet. And both of them are very much definitely products. Although, that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco being said, did Tim Cook make anybody less excited about AR? Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is it possible to be less excited about what he was talking about here? You know, as we’re talking right here, we could both be looking at a chart.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Just think of everyone in the audience was watching a chart. You know what, if only there was a way. He just wants
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to replace WebEx. Yeah. Even back
⏹️ ▶️ Marco room, back when we get back to quote normal, imagine if there’s a way that we can be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in a meeting together, and we can both be looking at the same chart.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We’ve never come up with a way to do this before. How amazing would that be? I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco am so, like, God, is anybody on Earth as excited about AR as Tim
⏹️ ▶️ John And the thing with the AR with Tim Cook is like, you know what he must be shown, and maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s the way to get Tim Cook personally excited is to share a chart, right? Because maybe that’s an application that
⏹️ ▶️ John he can relate to. But, so all the rumors of the AR stuff is like, whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John thing that is potentially in somewhat releasable state is essentially like a VR, VR
⏹️ ▶️ John thing that looks a lot like Oculus or, you know, what is the other big one? Vive,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I’ve forgotten all these
⏹️ ▶️ John brand names. Yeah. Anyway, that it’s a big honking thing. It’s not a pair of dainty little glasses
⏹️ ▶️ John that are magically and futury, right? No, you know, obviously Apple is internally working on things to
⏹️ ▶️ John that end, but they’re nowhere near release. Whereas Apple has had in-house, according to the rumors,
⏹️ ▶️ John many different prototypes and iteration of things that you would recognize as VR AR goggles, like HoloLens
⏹️ ▶️ John or like the Oculus things, but do you imagine those that you could actually look through instead of being completely opaque or
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever? And in that context, it’s still fascinating to me how Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John will try to sell that as a product, because as we known from years of these things existing,
⏹️ ▶️ John especially the VR things, so far it’s not a mass market product. I mean, Sony made one
⏹️ ▶️ John for their PlayStation, which is a mass market product, and even that accessory didn’t set the world on fire and there
⏹️ ▶️ John wasn’t really any killer app that made everyone go out and get one, right? And then, you know, hardcore gamers have them and
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s very sort of narrow interest. And it’ll be fascinating to see
⏹️ ▶️ John how, if Apple releases a product like that, which is what the rumors are, how they will try to sell
⏹️ ▶️ John it. Will they say this is also for hardcore people and early adopters or whatever? Will they try to make
⏹️ ▶️ John it mass market? Because to get back to what Tim Cook was saying, if you’re going to pitch this as mass market,
⏹️ ▶️ John like everyone else did it, but they didn’t know how to do it right. So we finally made a good one and this
⏹️ ▶️ John will be more widely appealing. Telling people they can share a document is not the way
⏹️ ▶️ John to do it. I mean, even with the Apple Watch, you can make fun of digital touch
⏹️ ▶️ John all you want, but whatever, but there was clearly a very mass market pitch about personal interaction
⏹️ ▶️ John and the power, what this watch was gonna do to you, Apple’s most personal product. And some
⏹️ ▶️ John of it panned out and some of it didn’t, but you can see, if someone showed you that pitch before, and it’s like, look, if
⏹️ ▶️ John you wanna make this a mass market product. This is a mass market pitch. Turns out that promise
⏹️ ▶️ John was not, you know, fulfilled. That’s not how we ended up using your watches, but the things
⏹️ ▶️ John that they are good for are equally mass market fitness. Fitness is essentially a mass market thing, right? It’s not,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not a narrow, you know, and health also mass market and telling time mass market very
⏹️ ▶️ John important, right? But sharing documents, no. So, uh, I guess
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe they haven’t come up with the pitch for the the AR product yet and all Tim’s got is the thing
⏹️ ▶️ John that makes him excited but I guess we’ll find out either at WWDC this year or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco One more quick thing I know this is ridiculous to cover as a one more quick thing at the end of a podcast that we haven’t prepared for at all but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s your way. Yeah if Tim Cook does
⏹️ ▶️ Marco retire or step down for what I know any other reason in the next 10 years who do you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think is the next CEO because like Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s why I put that’s why I put this element in there. I thought we were going to talk about that, but I think we had time, but now we will, I guess.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, like I’m just really I mean, because I don’t I don’t actually know that much about the like the people, you know, at Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and all their inner workings and everything. But you know, I think obviously it’s been very obvious
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that Jeff Williams is kind of being groomed in the public eye, not necessarily
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as the next long-term CEO, but at least as like a hot spare, you know, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey if something
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like if something happened to Tim Cook and he suddenly couldn’t be CEO anymore, I think it’s obvious that Jeff Williams
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would be the stand-in, like at least interim CEO. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think Jeff Williams is that much younger than Tim. I think they’re of similar age. If Tim is saying, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco by the time he’s 70 he probably won’t be CEO anymore, like by that time I don’t think Jeff Williams would be, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco super young at that point either. And once you go past Jeff Williams in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the, like, hierarchy, I don’t know that there is is an obvious next candidate up?
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I mean, the thing I was going to say about this was I think Jeff Williams, well, I think Tim
⏹️ ▶️ John Cook has shown that Apple can function reasonably well with
⏹️ ▶️ John someone as a CEO who is not a visionary and not a product guy. That was an open
⏹️ ▶️ John question when Jobs died, right? That could Apple function without someone who does what he does?
⏹️ ▶️ John And Tim showed more or less, yes, you can. Like he, Tim doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John have any of those skills and unlike, let’s say John Scully, sorry Mr. Scully, doesn’t try
⏹️ ▶️ John to have those skills. He delegates those to varying degrees of success depending on who he’s delegating
⏹️ ▶️ John to, right? So Jeff Williams, I think, could run
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple in a Tim Cook style successfully. Now you’re right about the age
⏹️ ▶️ John thing, but my instincts for super rich executives is
⏹️ ▶️ John that if you haven’t been the CEO of Apple, you at least wanna be it for a few years, even if you’re the same age as the guy who’s
⏹️ ▶️ John leaving, whereas Tim Cook is over it. Jeff Williams would be honored to be the CEO
⏹️ ▶️ John of Apple, even if he was the same age as the outgoing guy for let’s say five
⏹️ ▶️ John years, right? Just because he hasn’t been before, and Tim Cook has done it for a while, right? The danger
⏹️ ▶️ John of replacing Tim Cook with somebody who is not willing to govern in
⏹️ ▶️ John a Tim Cook style, as in not being the product visionary and delegating
⏹️ ▶️ John that to other people, is that you get someone in there who has bad ideas and forces them on the whole company, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Like that’s the danger of the position at the top of the org chart, is your badness becomes everybody’s problem.
⏹️ ▶️ John Whereas if you delegate, if you’re a good manager, you can deal
⏹️ ▶️ John with your mistakes. Oh, I delegated this to these people and they had bad ideas, but I can shuffle those people because I’m results
⏹️ ▶️ John oriented and I know how’s the company doing. Do people like our products? Are they selling well? what is public
⏹️ ▶️ John perception? Like, you know, Tim Cook, I think, is
⏹️ ▶️ John a little bit underrated. Like, I mean, he’s overrated. And if you look at the numbers, like, oh, look at what Tim Cook’s done
⏹️ ▶️ John with Apple since he came on, he’s the best CEO ever. But I think we underrate him a little bit just because we don’t care
⏹️ ▶️ John about that stuff and we only care about the products. But his style is,
⏹️ ▶️ John it has benefits. In that when you do make mistakes, you’re not sort of wedded to them in the same
⏹️ ▶️ John way that if, you know, if it was Tim Cook’s idea that he was wed to because he thought he was the visionary for this product.
⏹️ ▶️ John It would be harder to dislodge him if it turns out that was a bad strategy or whatever. We’ll see.
⏹️ ▶️ John But anyway, I agree with Marco that I don’t, I don’t know what the obvious sort of line of succession
⏹️ ▶️ John is. You can always hire from the outside. It’s not unheard of. It seems like a totally un Apple thing to do,
⏹️ ▶️ John but stranger things have happened. Um, but I, I am
⏹️ ▶️ John heartened by the fact that Tim book has shown that you don’t necessarily Steve Jobs to
⏹️ ▶️ John have a successful Apple and that really opens up the field to people who can be good at that job.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because if your demand is you must be Steve Jobs, it’s a hard position to fill.
⏹️ ▶️ John And Tim Cook is probably like the best in the world at the few operational things that he does, but you
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t have to be the best best when you have such a successful company. Maybe you won’t be as efficient as Tim Cook
⏹️ ▶️ John was, but there’s a lot of money raining down on Apple and I think as long as you don’t screw it up too badly,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can do pretty well. What I’m saying is, hire me, I’ll do it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think you would. I honestly think you wouldn’t. And I think you’d hate it if you did.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, delegate. Everyone else handle it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, oh, totally.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John That’ll be fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John work just great. Yeah, I’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John just talk to Kara Swisher. She’ll ask me the hard questions, and I’ll give her better arguments about why we need to control
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey the external processing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wow. Hold on. I got to give you my wild card because it’s going to really make you happy. So officially, my official answer is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey absolutely Jeff Williams, no question. That’s the next one. But my unofficial answer is,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I can’t believe I’m saying this out loud, what about Q?
⏹️ ▶️ John I was like, the guy from Star Trek? What?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Oh, I get it. That’s the thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like almost all the executives that we know their names, like that have been in presentation and everything, they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost all at least in their 50s. They’re
⏹️ ▶️ John old and rich, but like I said, they’re all, of course, they’re all old and rich, But if they haven’t been CEO before and they have
⏹️ ▶️ John any desire to be CEO, you take the job and you stay in it for a while. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think Eddie Q wants the job. So I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey CEO’s taking it. I’m not so sure. So Eddie Q is 56, as we are recording right now. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey again, my official answer is Williams, full stop.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Of course. Yeah. I think that’s Williams is clearly like, he’s the person who would replace Tim tomorrow,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Right, exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ John And would do it, I think, similar to how Tim does it, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, agreed. But I think about this and I think that Q seems to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have that, he seems to have the ambition that I think it would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey take to do it, I think. And beyond that, what’s important to Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey these days? Like, yes, hardware is important to Apple, but I don’t know. I don’t really see
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like Ternis just showing up or Srooge, Johnny Srooge just like showing up as CEO. Maybe Srooge,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe, but even then I feel like that’s a stretch. But What else is important to Apple these days? Services is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really fricking important to Apple these days. And so I could see the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey seemingly golden boy of services rising up and being the next CEO. I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that it would be a particularly good choice, but I see it. I can see it happening. I’m looking at apple.com
⏹️ ▶️ Casey slash leadership and I’m looking at Eddie Cuse stare me in the face saying, oh yeah, I’m your man.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Like I’m just looking at it. I’m telling you.
⏹️ ▶️ John I feel like if anybody on this leadership page could hear this segment, I’m of two
⏹️ ▶️ John minds. One, they’d be like, oh, Casey knows our secrets. How did he find out? But more
⏹️ ▶️ John laughing hilariously at
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey the idea of this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John happening. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hope so. I hope so.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, no, I mean, and actually, I would say a different, I would say Eddie’s not number, if Jeff Williams is number
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two, I don’t think Eddie’s number three. I think Deidre O’Brien is number three. Why do you say that?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So she is from operations.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has been recently promoted up to SVP level and becoming more visible.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We know Tim’s from operations, Jeff Williams, by the way, real time follow up, Jeff Williams is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco three years younger than Tim. So not a lot. He’s got five years to be CEO
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Deidre O’Brien is six years younger than Tim. So we’re not doing, still not doing great here, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at least, and Eddie, by the way, is up there too. Eddie is four years younger than Tim. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’re dealing with, everyone’s in their 50s or up, But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would say Deirdre O’Brien is the number three, like after Jeff Williams in the line of current
⏹️ ▶️ Marco succession. People keep saying like Federighi or Ternes, but like these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are like tech people. I don’t think they wanna be CEO. And frankly, I don’t think Eddie Q wants to be either.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think the desire to be CEO is the number one factor. Because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s a hard job and you have to want it. So just cross off everybody on this page who doesn’t want
⏹️ ▶️ John it. Eddie, I think, wants to go have fun. He deserves to go have fun. He wants to go
⏹️ ▶️ John to sports games again, and drive his Ferraris, and just generally have fun. And you don’t have fun as CEO.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a hard job. So you really gotta want it. Who on this page really, really wants it? Jeff
⏹️ ▶️ John Williams? I can believe he wants it. Deidre O’Brien? I can believe she wants it. Eddie Q? Can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John believe it. CFED? No. I mean, well actually, I don’t know. CFED, I can’t imagine
⏹️ ▶️ John them, because these people see what the job of CEO is like, And I can
⏹️ ▶️ John imagine them just being like, no, like that’s not for me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, because if you look at what the job actually is, it’s a lot of politics, it’s a lot of diplomacy,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a lot of PR stuff. Because this is such a big company in such a big world, Tim Cook
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has to deal with world leaders.
⏹️ ▶️ John He’s got to go on CNBC.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I guarantee you Federico doesn’t want the job, probably John Ternus, he’s also a nerd, probably given his job.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I guarantee you, these people do not want that job. Eddie Cue, I think you’re right. I think Eddie Cue doesn’t just want to retire
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and have fun. I think Eddie Cue has fun in his current job.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Everything I’ve ever heard about him. He
⏹️ ▶️ John wants to keep it, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it seems like he actually is a pretty fun person and has a lot of fun, even with his
⏹️ ▶️ Marco job of meeting with people from the FBI and stuff. I think he actually has fun. He’s
⏹️ ▶️ John with them right now.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Can I give you a second wild card, since now I’m going
⏹️ ▶️ Casey top four on this? What about Lisa Jackson? I don’t think she wants that. I feel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like, and this is a very California thing of me to say, but I feel like she has the right energy for it, like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel like she has that kind of Tim coolness to her, that just very
⏹️ ▶️ John chill. Do you think she wants to run a technology company though? I don’t get that impression.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know that I do. I very much not, I feel that way, way more about Q
⏹️ ▶️ Casey than I do about Lisa Jackson, but I could see Lisa Jackson wanting to do it. I could see Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wanting her to do it, because after all of our, and I mean ours, and the three of us and ours
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the collective community, all of our whining and moaning about
⏹️ ▶️ Casey diversity and how there’s a complete lack of diversity, especially above the fold here on this webpage I’m looking at,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I could see how that would check a few interesting and different check boxes than any CEO they’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco And I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know, I think I could see, she strikes me as the kind that can get difficult
⏹️ ▶️ Casey things done. Because certainly, doing all of this, doing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all the things that they do for environmental causes, while I argue is the right thing to do,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can’t say it’s the easy thing to do, or certainly not in many cases the profitable thing to do.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I mean, as much as we laughed about her saying, hey, enjoy the fact that you’re getting less crap for the same money,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when they took the power supplies out of the iPhone boxes, She did a pretty admirable job of it,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all told. I thought she sold it reasonably well. I don’t know. I feel like I can see a world where
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Q is the next CEO, and I can see a world where Lisa Jackson is the next CEO, although I expect
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to see the world where Jeff Williams is the next CEO.
⏹️ ▶️ John Paul You have quite an imagination. Aaron
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Thanks, Dad.
⏹️ ▶️ John Paul I have to, I just look at, I mean, what you made me think of when I was thinking as the, who was the retail
⏹️ ▶️ John person before, who was the Apple store person who left from Burberry? What was her name?
⏹️ ▶️ John Angela Aarons. Yeah, Angela Aarons. She wanted to be CEO. So she, she like, and not
⏹️ ▶️ John that, not that she would have been in line for that necessarily. But if you want to see somebody who has ambition
⏹️ ▶️ John to sort of climb the corporate ladder, and like that, you know, she was ambitious,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? Would they bring her back? I don’t, I wouldn’t want her as Apple CEO. I’m just saying like, it’s all about
⏹️ ▶️ John desire. Because you see this, you see this all the time in companies like, at a certain point, people don’t want
⏹️ ▶️ John to be promoted anymore. Right? They, they see the the jobs that their bosses do and they do not want them,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? For whatever reason. And the CEO is the ultimate version of that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think we can look at like, most of the people that we know from like, exactly, I think Eddie Q, I think Fred
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Federi, I think I think Phil Schiller, I think all those people, as far as I could guess, probably
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t and didn’t want to be CEO.
⏹️ ▶️ John Phil, Phil might take CEO, we should ask him, let’s give him a call. So you were offered CEO,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think Phil would take it. Here’s why I think Phil would take Not because he relishes the job of doing the work of CEO,
⏹️ ▶️ John but just because he thinks he would be good at it. And honestly, I think he would actually kind of be good at it, right, in his way.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because it’s a leadership position too. That’s the other thing we’re talking about. It’s not just going on CNBC. It’s about leadership. And
⏹️ ▶️ John Phil, I think, understands the job style of inspirational leadership and can actually
⏹️ ▶️ John execute it fairly well. It’s very different than the Tim Cook style. But, you know, if you think about Phil
⏹️ ▶️ John and how he operated in all of his roles, he was very much in that mold. and I thought he did a pretty good job of it. And
⏹️ ▶️ John that type of role you say, well, I hate the drudgery of CEO, which of course Steve Jobs did well, but I like the
⏹️ ▶️ John leadership part. And Phil would be a good leader, right? In the same way that I think Lisa Jackson
⏹️ ▶️ John would be a good leader. I just think she would want to lead a company that’s not Apple. Right? You know,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think her ambition is to run Apple. I think her ambition is to run a very different kind of company. If she was a CEO
⏹️ ▶️ John of Apple, I feel like she would change it to be a very different kind of company, uh, potentially
⏹️ ▶️ John a better company, but maybe they’re not going to the board is not going to throw her in there if they know that she’s
⏹️ ▶️ John going to, you know, shake things up that much.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I don’t know, because I feel like the idea of, you know, Schiller being CEO. I think that would have worked
⏹️ ▶️ Marco great back like during the Steve Jobs era when the company was much smaller, when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the world was much smaller around
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John them and when
⏹️ ▶️ John he when he was younger and actually wanted to do it. Maybe now he’s sort of on his way out and, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know. Oh, sure. That aside, like but I think like, you know, today’s Apple, you’re basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like a world leader. You have to operate on such a political level
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and such a operational level. I don’t think it’s an accident that the CEO
⏹️ ▶️ Marco today is a boring operations person who doesn’t show a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of personality ever, but can manage a large-scale operation and can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco give statements to Congress when asked. Product people or tech people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tend to be not only not very good at that, but also totally uninterested
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and actually turned off by all of that. So I can imagine, I think Phil is a diehard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco product person through and through. I think he always has been. I don’t think a product person today
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can take over as CEO of Apple. I don’t see it. I would love it if that was the reality because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would love a product person to be CEO again, at least if they made good decisions, as you said earlier.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John That’s the hard part, isn’t it? That’s a big
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if, yeah. But I think at today’s scale, I just don’t think that’s realistic.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the danger, again, looking at all these faces, is you see this happening in big companies all the time. Someone
⏹️ ▶️ John who you just described, like who is actually a tech person and probably is going to hate the job of CEO,
⏹️ ▶️ John nevertheless, really, really wants it because they don’t realize what it’s gonna be like.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like they just have sort of ambition blinders on and they’re just like, I wanna be CEO
⏹️ ▶️ John because I think I would be great at it. And then they get in the job and they’re like, oh my God, this is terrible. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John I didn’t think it would be like this. Like I envisioned, And you wouldn’t think that people who work a long time at high
⏹️ ▶️ John levels of companies would have illusions of what it’s like to be CEO. But especially in a company the size
⏹️ ▶️ John of Apple, it’s hard to really internalize what it’s really gonna be like. And sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ John people end up getting a CEO job, I mean, even at Apple. There was a long line of CEOs
⏹️ ▶️ John that you probably don’t know the names of because you weren’t following Apple back then, who clearly got the job and then went,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh no. All right? This is not what I thought it would
⏹️ ▶️ John be. It’s harder than I thought it would be, and I don’t enjoy
⏹️ ▶️ John it, but I can’t leave now, because you can’t really, once you get the job, you
⏹️ ▶️ John can’t be like, this is too hard, and leave after two weeks, because it’s kind of, you know. So I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John think anyone on this page falls into that category, but I look, and I wonder if some technical person would be
⏹️ ▶️ John like, you know what, I think I could be CEO, because I would do a much better job than Tim Cook, because he doesn’t understand technology, and then
⏹️ ▶️ John they get in a position, and they’re like, I didn’t understand CEO. Oh no.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks for listening, everybody. We were sponsored this week by Squarespace, ExpressVPN, and Hover.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can join as a member if you want things like ad-free episodes and our bootleg feed and stuff like that at atp.fm
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slash join. There’s also gonna be a merchandise sale pretty soon where you can get 15%
⏹️ ▶️ Marco off if you are a member. So go there, atp.fm slash join. Thanks, everybody. to you next
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin Cause
⏹️ ▶️ John it was accidental, oh it was accidental
⏹️ ▶️ John John didn’t do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him Cause
⏹️ ▶️ John it was accidental, oh
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental And you can find the
⏹️ ▶️ John show notes at atp.fm And if you’re into
⏹️ ▶️ 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, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco T. Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s accidental, they didn’t mean to
⏹️ ▶️ John Ooh, accidental Accidental Tech podcasts So
Marco’s i3/CarPlay review
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I have a quick after show if you want to see if you know anything else.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yes, please. I see something about your car and your quote unquote current car.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I am very interested what’s happening.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco As I mentioned in previous episodes where I had a flat tire and a minor impact on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my car because I was parked and it was hit while parked. Current theory
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that it might have been hit by a truck with a plow on the front that was not currently plowing at the time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because there was no snow on the ground during this two-week interval but this was a parking lot where a lot of contractor trucks were
⏹️ ▶️ Marco always parked and so it’s possible one of them had a plow mounted on the front because it does look a lot like it was hit by a plow.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The scratches prove deep enough that the that you know for for purposes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of a leased car that is not actually mine yet or ever maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I needed to get them fixed and it needed to go to a an actual body shop and they have to go through insurance and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everything this and it Just as a side note, this is the first time as far as I know that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve ever Filed an insurance claim. Huh?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You’ve been very lucky.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah Anyway, and it was actually not that hard yet. I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if it’s going to get hard. We’ll see Please don’t clip that sound out. Anyway, so
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Found it this is getting worse
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Then I kept flashing back to when I told Marco that he gets me so hard which was not at all what I meant
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but it is what I said.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey right along.
⏹️ ▶️ John I was expecting that’s what she said.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was dumbfounded.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s disappointment all around here. That’s what she said. Oh, boy.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Moving on, Chilton.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, yeah. So, I had to go to a body shop. You
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had to start this over. You’re never going to get a clean edit out of this. You’ve got
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John to start kind of bodies
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Marco? Anyway, so they have to have my car for like a couple of weeks to get, you know, get all the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco parts in and paint and everything that they’re going to be repainting two panels and it’s going to be a whole thing. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for coming back here, we took TIS car, the BMW i3. It’s not really made to go
⏹️ ▶️ Marco super long distances, but this is the longest. So I drove it for this trip. This included the vaccination
⏹️ ▶️ Marco trip and, and, and, you know, driving to the beach and this whole thing and long-term parking. I even stopped
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at a fast charger on the way to kind of to top off because I don’t know how it has to sit for like two
⏹️ ▶️ Marco weeks in the parking lot I don’t know how much charge is gonna lose on the way so so I wanted to like get there with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as much power as possible.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Can I just interrupt very briefly I would like to offer my apologies
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to Tiff for having to deal with you complaining and moaning as I’m sure you did
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about not having the access to the supercharger network about all the things that make this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a considerably worse electric car than the Tesla is. So, Tiff, on behalf
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of me, and perhaps only me, I’m sorry for having to deal with all this because I can only imagine how difficult
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and frustrating Marco has been over the last several days.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, actually, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. Oh, I’ll take it. I’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John take it. Carplay makes up for a lot, I guess.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. And I’m going to get to that in a second. But the i3, from a Model S driver, It is certainly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a step down in a few areas. You know, obviously it’s way less range, it’s way less like speed and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco power, and it has fewer luxury features in most ways. But I was actually really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco impressed by a few aspects of it. So first of all, I know from being an electric car driver
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the range estimate they give in miles, you can’t really take that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as an absolute because it depends on a lot of factors. And I knew on this day, for instance, that we’d probably be using
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the air conditioning. I knew that we’d be driving a lot on the highway, which might be going faster
⏹️ ▶️ Marco than 55 miles an hour, and therefore might be a little less efficient. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I knew it would be a very heavily loaded car. And so I thought, you know, maybe when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it tells me that we have, whatever it is, like 138 miles, whatever it is when it’s full, we were going on a 55 mile journey.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I thought maybe it actually would need to be charged in the middle before we could get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco home with it or whatever else. So I planned all the stop. to stop at, it’s actually kind of funny, the connector
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it uses for fast charging is not a common connector in the US. And if you search
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for fast charge stations with that connector, it’s, I forget what it’s called, but there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost none except like BMW dealers. And so, and there was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one BMW dealer on Long Island that has one of these things in their their parking lot.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I thought, great, I’ll show up. And so that’s what we did. So we drove
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there on the way first, I allocated like an extra hour so we could sit there and charge if we had to. So again, I had no idea how much
⏹️ ▶️ Marco battery drain we would see after, at that point, probably 45 miles of driving. Ostensibly that could
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be half the car’s range or more depending on how much it actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco used. So I put the car in Eco Pro mode, which really lops off the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco acceleration. But not only was the range estimate accurate,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it over-promised, or under-promised rather, and over-delivered. We drove something like 45 miles
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and had only lost like 35 miles on the range indicator. So it was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco great, and we actually needed very little charging. Like it couldn’t even take it at full speed anymore because we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco got there and it was at like 70%. So I fast charged for like 15 minutes just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because we were there. And it was kind of funny too, like you could tell, like the people at the BMW dealer, you could tell
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that they don’t get a lot of people doing this and that they really don’t like it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We pulled up and it was, you know, we spotted it from across the parking lot. It’s just, you know, that’s sort of like, you know, booth thing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with the big cable commander. So, oh, that must be it. And we went over to it. It was at a parking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco spot, but they had parked one of their cars, like one of their show cars. They just parked in that spot. Okay,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because clearly like no one uses this. And so I just pulled up next to that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco spot and just ran the cable like out to the car and just kind of partially blocked the driveway, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was, they could get by, it was fine. And charge for a few minutes. And like the, and the whole time I’m looking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco around like, okay, you know, maybe, you know, go inside, look at the new cars and walk around the showroom for a few minutes. What else am I going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do for 15 minutes? You know, Adam and Tiff had no interest. So I went in, walked around. I,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well, I was most, must’ve been in the showroom for five or 10 minutes. Zero salespeople came up
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to me or said anything to me or even looked at me, none. I got no acknowledgement that I existed.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I actually was curious to ask some questions to the salespeople about their future electric models, I really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco haven’t been paying much attention. Anyway, eventually I left and charging experience was totally fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It wasn’t as nice as superchargers because it was one of those charge point network things. So you have to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco unlock it by first logging into their app and putting in a payment method.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But even that was kind of nice once I figured it out because it supports the Apple Wallet,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like NFC type API. So you just hold your phone up to the thing once you have an account,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you just double tap it as if you’re using a wallet card, like on an NFC reader, and it just starts it up,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you do the same thing to stop it, and that’s it. So that whole thing worked pretty well. I can’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco remember what I paid, but it was not much. Maybe like a dollar. It wasn’t a lot. So anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I ended up driving this car for probably about 60 miles that day,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over multiple hours, lots of different environments and everything, using CarPlay the entire time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, imagine that. Of course, right. And this was, I think, the most real-world experience
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve had with CarPlay, because I haven’t had a car that has it. All the development I do on CarPlay for my app,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I do with a little test rig, but like on my desk, that’s plugged into like a 12-volt adapter.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I don’t own a car with CarPlay and never have. And so, but Tiscar has it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So in this case, I got to use it a lot, way more than I’ve ever used it before in any kind of real-world environment.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I have some thoughts. So first of all, the i3 was surprisingly good. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was not as nice as my Tesla, but it was not that much worse
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in a few big areas. The range proved to be very good. The power
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was okay. And I was actually kind of impressed how much we were able to fit into it. It is not a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco big car at all. It’s a very compact car, but you can fit a surprising
⏹️ ▶️ Marco amount of cargo into it, which I did not expect, because it looks like when you look at the trunk, you’re like, that’s super tiny.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But if with smart packing, you can actually fit a lot in.
⏹️ ▶️ John I just want to point out that this is reinforcing my notion that Marco should
⏹️ ▶️ John definitely look at other electric car brands, because in the grand scheme of things, the i3 is not looked upon
⏹️ ▶️ John as a particularly good electric car. It’s a very early effort from BMW
⏹️ ▶️ John that most people don’t particularly like, isn’t even considered a real competitor in the current
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco crop of electric cars.
⏹️ ▶️ John and yet you are finding it as not as bad as you thought compared to
⏹️ ▶️ John what is basically the best electric car in its class, right? And so
⏹️ ▶️ John if you think these things are that close, I can only imagine what you would think of anything that is
⏹️ ▶️ John actually a legit competitor to your Model S, which the i3 is not. So
⏹️ ▶️ John encourage you to look at like the weirdo, the Audi Taycan that’s coming out, whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John what is that one called, Casey? Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t remember. I know what you’re thinking of, I don’t remember
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John that. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John that, you know, if you are surprisingly impressed by the i3, I think you’d be blown away
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco car that is actually
⏹️ ▶️ John a competitor to yours. So
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco anyway, continue.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, well, and I will say, like, the i3 on paper doesn’t compete. In
⏹️ ▶️ Marco practice, it’s nicer than the paper suggests. Like, if you look at specs and value
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and things like that, it is outclassed by almost all the modern competitors, but it’s actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nicer than you would think based on its specs and class and everything. Anyway, so CarPlay.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I actually have very mixed opinions about CarPlay as implemented
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the BMW iDrive system.
⏹️ ▶️ John Circa 2017, like what year? Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it’s a 2019 model, but it’s not a super recent update for this. It is wireless, which is great.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s wireless CarPlay, but I have two main issues with CarPlay as implemented today in BMWs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco One is the scroll wheel style of interaction rather than a touch screen,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that time has passed. I think you now need these to be touch screens. You can operate CarPlay
⏹️ ▶️ Marco interfaces with wheels and buttons and stuff, you can.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey But yeah, it’s terrible. It’s awful.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s clearly designed as a touch screen. It’s clearly designed to have quick access to the little quick icons on the left for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things like quick app switching and Siri access and stuff like that. And going back between the map and the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco music app maybe or whatever. That kind of thing, like CarPlay is clearly touch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco first, and that’s clearly the right way to do it. This kind of thing should have a touch screen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I know we went through a time in the automotive industry where nobody wanted to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco put in touch screens, they wanted to have, you know, lots, everyone had their things.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had an entire episode of Neutral about this, if I’m not mistaken, where we were complaining and moaning about touch screens in cars.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and you really, with CarPlay, you really need to be a touch screen. It’s very awkward to use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with wheels and stuff like that. The other thing is the whole time I kept hitting weird little friction
⏹️ ▶️ Marco points between the BMW system and CarPlay, like which one of them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is running the show here. BMW thinks they are an Apple thinks they are. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the result is a really weird mixed bag of interaction and modes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and things like for instance, above the aforementioned wheel to navigate stuff, there’s like five or six buttons. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, it sounds like, you know, media menu map, stuff like that. Nav. And when you’re in CarPlay,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you tap the map button, it jumps you to the active navigation app in CarPlay, which is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco great. Oh, that’s cool. If you tap the nav button right below it, it jumps you to the BMW one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and kicks you out of CarPlay. I don’t know why. I’m not sure what the difference is, honestly. Somehow there’s map and nav.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Also, so tapping the map button brings you to the map app in CarPlay, great.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But tapping the media button does not bring you back to the music app. it brings you to the BMW
⏹️ ▶️ Marco media screen. There’s these little inconsistencies, you know, like one of the,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think, critical ways to interact with CarPlay is via Siri. How do you invoke
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Siri on the system? Well, there’s a voice button
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the steering wheel. Tap that, and you think Siri answers? Nope, BMW’s voice system
⏹️ ▶️ Marco answers instead and kicks you out of CarPlay. And there kept being these cases,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The car popped up a message about the range extender maintenance thing. Doesn’t matter. But it popped
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up this like, basically modal dialogue box a few times throughout the drive. And one of them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco caused me to almost miss a turn. Because it popped up this box from the BMW interface
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that kicked me out of CarPlay. And then getting back into CarPlay, there is no one button to get back into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it. You have to like, hit the media or home button or whatever, and then scroll over to the CarPlay
⏹️ ▶️ Marco item in that list. and then it goes right back into it. And so there was just all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these issues that I just kept facing, like, what I would actually want here is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the option for a car that is navigated only in CarPlay.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, you see, that’s where Apple excels, the union of software, hardware, and services.
⏹️ ▶️ John On an Apple car, you won’t have these problems, is what I’m saying.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, well, and so like, I think if I were ever to leave the Tesla family,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would want a car that was dumb enough to let car play just fully
⏹️ ▶️ Marco take over. Like, if I have a car play head unit, hell, give me a double din
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the dash and I’ll put my own in. That’s probably unrealistic to expect these days. I think most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco modern cars don’t let you easily swap in like a standard radio in there, you know, without like wrecking your
⏹️ ▶️ Marco entire dashboard. But what I actually want is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at least an option to just have car play literally take over and to have all of the buttons
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the car that are, you know, if there happens to be like a voice command button somewhere,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or a map button, or a radio button, or whatever, I want all of those buttons to map only to CarPlay,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and to never kick me out of CarPlay, unless I have to go look at, like, the tire pressure monitor, or some, you know, some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of, like, rarely used niche setting of the car. That’s fine,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but during routine driving, I want, if I’m using CarPlay, I want to only use CarPlay. I want to be locked
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in there. I don’t want to have to be kicked out of it every so often because I hit the wrong button and the car
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is taking over saying, oh, you wanted my crappy navigation system instead of your nice one using Waze? Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no, I like, I just want CarPlay. Whenever the time comes that I have to replace my car, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to actually look at this as a pretty important criterion of like, if I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going to get a car that supports CarPlay, I want that kind of takeover mode and it has to be a touch
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, so I think I understand how you’ve come to this conclusion, but I think you’ve been wronged
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by BMW’s implementation, most specifically that it doesn’t have a touch screen. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with my Volkswagen, there’s physical buttons on the outsides of the screen and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I forget exactly what they are, but there’s like media, nav, app, which really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey means car play. I forget what else is there. Shoot. But there’s like six or seven of them, maybe six or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey eight around the screen or on the left and right-hand sides of the screen. And if I hit
⏹️ ▶️ Casey anything other than app, I will be dumped back into the VW
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stuff. So if I hit media in there, I’m back to Volkswagen’s onboard
⏹️ ▶️ Casey media player. If I hit nav on there, I’m going to Volkswagen’s navigation. And on the surface,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that sounds terrible. And on the surface, the BMW implementation where you said map brings you to whatever your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey current map app is, sounds like it’s better than the Volkswagen way of doing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. But it’s actually way more consistent, which I’d argue is better. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s unlikely I’m going to be hitting any of those buttons because once I’m in CarPlay, like you’re saying, I’m just staying in CarPlay
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I’m just tapping the damn screen if I want to do something on CarPlay. And I don’t have to futz with the iDrive
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stick, which at the time, you know, when we were recording Neutral, at the time, car touchscreens
⏹️ ▶️ Casey were really bad and they weren’t in places that were very conducive to hit and they weren’t making touch targets
⏹️ ▶️ Casey big enough. So I, I stand by my opinion at the time that they were garbage, but now.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think you’re exactly right. That you really need to have a touch screen in the car in order to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey make a lot of things considerably easier. Um, similarly in Aaron’s car,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there’s not really any physical buttons around the screen, but only the bottom third or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so of the screen becomes CarPlay. And there’s still Volkswagen like UI and Chrome above it, or excuse
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me, Volvo UI in Chrome above it. And if you tap any of that stuff, it’ll kind of like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey minimum almost window shades, CarPlay. But you know, to get back to it, you just tap
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the title bar down at the bottom, and then there you are again. And, and I find that these implementations,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even though they don’t lock you in CarPlay, in the way you’re talking about, because it’s consistent,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and because you’re never ever, ever really interacting with any physical buttons, you’re only
⏹️ ▶️ Casey locked on on the touchscreen in a manner of speaking, I think it’s pretty decent that way. And I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think you would like it that way. And I think that that’s how these typically work.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I think if I had a touchscreen and like that easy one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco button somewhere to kick me back into CarPlay from anywhere, I think that combination would be fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep, and that’s what we have.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, the variety of implementations I’ve seen, like I haven’t used a car like this, but I’ve looked at like reviews of the various interiors
⏹️ ▶️ John and everything. They’re all over the place. And I think one combination that works really well is a touch screen
⏹️ ▶️ John for CarPlay, which although I disagree with you about the appropriateness
⏹️ ▶️ John of touch in cars, I agree that CarPlay itself needs touch, right? So
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re going to use CarPlay, touch is the best way to do that. If you’re going
⏹️ ▶️ John to operate the interior of a car, maybe touch isn’t the best way to do certain things.
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway, if you like CarPlay, definitely touch. But a central screen for CarPlay, and then a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John of the newer cars have a surprising amount of functionality in the instrument cluster
⏹️ ▶️ John on that screen. Cause that screen keeps getting bigger too. Like it’s no longer just like, oh, we can make two little gauges, but they’re graphics.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right now they’re huge. Like if you look at like Mercedes, like basically the entire dashboard is a giant screen. Right?
⏹️ ▶️ John So CarPlay sort of gets its outpost on the touchscreen. Right? And then when you do
⏹️ ▶️ John other things with the car features, like turning on the seat heaters or whatever, it’s not competing with the CarPlay
⏹️ ▶️ John screen. Right? That information is elsewhere on one of the umpteen other screens, whether it’s the instrument cluster or
⏹️ ▶️ John the various other screens that are between there or whatever, which lets you essentially do everything at once,
⏹️ ▶️ John to not have them fighting with each other because they are both active at once. I think that solution works really well because it
⏹️ ▶️ John sort of separates the duties. Like, okay, Apple, you get this square and the car makers are doing
⏹️ ▶️ John it knowing that people are mostly gonna use Android Auto or CarPlay or whatever and dedicating a chunk to it. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like, okay, that’s you. You get the touchscreen, you get this, you get to do those things, but we, the car maker,
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s a bunch of other crap that we want to have available and on display all the time, too. So it’s kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of like the next step after what Casey was describing, which is minimizing CarPlay and then popping it back up, which is great because you don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John lose state. But it’s clear that two things are fighting for the same screen. There’s no reason to fight
⏹️ ▶️ John in these things with acres of screens in them. So I think that will eventually trickle down and probably
⏹️ ▶️ John become the sort of most prominent way to do it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Just carve out a place for Android Auto or CarPlay, right? And then the Apple way to do it would be
⏹️ ▶️ John everything is all Apple from top to bottom, so you don’t have to worry about it.