579: Use Your Words
22 Mar 2024The US antitrust lawsuit against Apple.
Episode Description:
- Pre-show: We definitely recorded a day late because we’re clairvoyant and definitely not because of pyrotechnics.
- Follow-up:
- The M1 MacBook Air lives on at… Walmart
- Apple Silicon & Project Titan
- Safari hangs (via Wade)
- Apple’s DMA compliance efforts
- John’s curious obsession with street widths
- Marco: 8’ / ~2.5m
- Underscore: 19’4” / ~6m
- John: 23’5” / ~11m
- Magnets in Apple Watch bands (via Harvey Simon)
- Is podcast transcription is Apple’s first big cloud computing effort?
- US sues Apple for illegal monopoly over smartphones
- Post-show Ask ATP: What do John & Marco have against multiple monitors, anyway? (via Tony)
- Members-only ATP Overtime: Apple AI updates
Sponsored by:
- Squarespace: Save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code ATP.
- Trade Coffee: The best coffee is made at home. Enjoy a free bag of roasted-to-order coffee and $15 off select plans when you join.
Chapters
- Lucky scheduling
- M1 Air at Wal-Mart
- ATP Membership
- Apple silicon in Titan
- Why Safari hangs
- DMA Workshop
- Magnetic Watch bands
- Street widths 🖼️
- Sponsor: Trade Coffee
- DOJ sues Apple
- Sponsor: Squarespace (code ATP)
- DOJ sues Apple, cont’d.
- Ending theme
- #askatp: Multi- vs. single-monitor
Lucky scheduling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We were supposed to record yesterday. There was a reason why we didn’t that I’m not sure we want to share, but there was a reason why
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we didn’t. And then today, massive Apple news broke
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from this DOJ lawsuit. And so we look really prescient.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We look like we had a really good inside line to say, wait, hold the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco show until tomorrow.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, we did kind of know. I mean, everybody knew the rumors that the DOJ thing was going to be announced were
⏹️ ▶️ John known before we began recording.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They yeah, but I think they were like a little bit still squishy like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco might happen. It’s rumored to happen. Maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John we would have
⏹️ ▶️ John to be clear. We wouldn’t we would have just recorded as usual. Because here’s the thing. You have to record sometime. There’s always
⏹️ ▶️ John going to be more news that comes after the show. And, you know, I there was no way
⏹️ ▶️ John I would have said, oh, well, because the DOJ thing is supposed to come out tomorrow, we should delay. Now, I was a don’t record and we’ll talk
⏹️ ▶️ John about it next week. But as it turns
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no, no, no, no, no. This is the advantage of us accidentally bumping a day,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is we can claim, like Marco’s trying to do until you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John ruined it. We can claim
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that this is all just, that’s how good we are. Your hosts are that dedicated.
⏹️ ▶️ John not being good. That’s being, I don’t want to have the reputation that we would delay the show because of news, because everyone’s
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey gonna be like,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, you should delay the show, there’s news. And no, I feel like the show has to come when the show comes. It comes once a week, and
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s gonna be news that happens before it, and there’s gonna be news that happens after it. And guess what? All the news that happens after it it is
⏹️ ▶️ John fair game for the next episode. You just have to pick one day during the week and that’s going to be the day. So
⏹️ ▶️ John we occasionally shift things around, but for the most part, I really just want to say we’re very regimented Wednesday,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We are typically very regimented. Yes, it was. It was my fault.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know if it’s your fault
⏹️ ▶️ John necessarily. Your it was your problem, though.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Yes, it was. It was very much your problem.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s very much my problem. There were some, let’s just say, unexpected pyrotechnics. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so I needed to delay a little while and… I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna check your diet if there’s actual fire involved.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco fire. I think if fire
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is coming out of anything, you have a problem. It’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey figure to pyrotechnics. Figured to pyrotechnics. I do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco love the idea though, like, you know, at some point, we could like, you know, get called into a grand jury to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco testify how we possibly had inside information that leaked out of this lawsuit. And we might have to actually like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco put that on the record. This, well, this is why we really delayed the show. It was not inside information
⏹️ ▶️ Marco through some illegal leak.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Right, right, right.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, it was illegal leakage, but it was not,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey uh… It was! It was indeed! Oh, Jesus. Alright, let’s just move right on to follow-up.
M1 Air at Wal-Mart
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Alright, so the M1 MacBook Air that was dead, we had a funeral, what, two weeks ago? A week ago? I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even remember. It was dead and now it has risen again like a phoenix from the ashes. It
⏹️ ▶️ Casey lives on at Walmart and Best Buy. What? This
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is amazing. So here’s, so the news basically is Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has directly stopped selling the MacBook M1, the M1 MacBook Air. When
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they released the M3, what was it, two weeks ago, a week ago, whenever that was. We all thought they’ve been making this for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a long time. It’s a great computer, but it’s pretty old now. And they’ve gone two chip generations afterwards.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s time to discontinue it. So that made perfect sense to us. They’ve made some deal with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Walmart, where they are apparently going to still be making this for some interval
⏹️ ▶️ Marco into the future. We don’t know how long, but I would assume at least a year or two. It’s available,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think, seemingly exclusively at Walmart in the US for only $700. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and what was it about Best Buy?
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, so Best Buy has it on sale for 649, but as far as I know, the
⏹️ ▶️ John Walmart ones are not like they’re just clearing their inventory or their refurbished models or whatever, but they
⏹️ ▶️ John are brand new in the box M1 MacBook Airs. For the Best Buy 651,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know that that is not just them clearing inventory.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Whenever Apple wants to clear out excess inventory of something without doing their own like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco official sale price cut, it’s almost always discounted at Best Buy. Like Best Buy is, at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco least, I don’t know what they do around the rest of the world, but like in North America, Best Buy is, first of all, a huge
⏹️ ▶️ Marco retailer. So it’s easy to clear out inventory through there. And so you can always kind of tell, like whatever Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco products, either they have too many of because they’re about to replace them or they just did replace them. Or like in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco case of the HomePod, they just, they are not selling the way Apple needs them to sell or wants
⏹️ ▶️ Marco them to sell or they’ve made too many. And so that’s kind of where they dump inventory without
⏹️ ▶️ Marco officially saying from Apple’s side, we’re going to cut the price. So my guess is the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Best Buy thing is temporary for like for what was officially old stock, maybe Best Buy’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco own old stock. But the Walmart thing seems to be like Apple. And this is what’s interesting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is this is, I believe, the first time Walmart’s selling a Mac, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey correct. As far as I know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. So like, again, for people not in the US, you might not realize how big of a deal this is. Walmart
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is massive, and I’m sure, I know you’ve heard of it probably, if you listen to American media at all,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but there are so many American consumers for whom Walmart is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the closest and unfortunately oftentimes the only retailer that is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco within a reasonable driving distance from their house. So, because tons of rural America,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s just no big box stores, no Apple stores, nothing except Walmart’s. there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a huge amount of the US buying public that basically only
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shops at Walmart for most things. So to be, to have not been in Walmart all this time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is a pretty big deal. To be there now is now also consequently a very big deal.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And what’s interesting about Walmart too is that partly by just demographics of where they are, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco partly because of their own brand, Walmart sells things cheaply. That is kind of what they are known
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for. Oftentimes they sell crappy things in order to hit those prices. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you go to Walmart, you know what you’re getting. You’re not going there to get like the best of the best, but they do have some brand name stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so to have anything from Apple is interesting and to have a Mac
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at Walmart for the first time is also interesting. And to have it be an M1 MacBook Air
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at a price that Apple has never sold official new computers at, I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe I guess the Mac mini has hit those prices, but like nothing else.
⏹️ ▶️ John They haven’t sold a computer with a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco screen at that price, I don’t think. computer, let’s say. So to sell that at $700
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for what is actually a pretty great computer still, like yes it’s old, but the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco M1 MacBook Air, let’s not forget, like we were just saying this when the M3 came out, we were just saying how amazing this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco computer is. So to have this as what seems like a long-term
⏹️ ▶️ Marco inventory item that a retailer as big as Walmart means Apple is still making them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that they presumably don’t want to sell it on their own site to kind of, you know, encourage people who go directly to Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to get the higher price, newer offerings. It’s an interesting form of market segmentation that I don’t think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’ve really done to the public. They’ve had education only items
⏹️ ▶️ Marco before, like less expensive iMacs, the eMac and stuff like that. They’ve done that. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do this, this is pretty new. And I think this makes a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sense now that we have the Apple Silicon era jumped so far ahead. Even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this, what is it, it almost four-year-old computer because it was the Apple Silicon
⏹️ ▶️ Marco era it’s still just really really good so this is a great computer people can now get for 700 bucks
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from Apple well an Apple computer they can get from Walmart that’s a really great
⏹️ ▶️ Marco new expansion for their market I think it’s a very good idea and what’s also interesting is that you know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we heard those rumors about six months ago that Apple was preparing a new low-cost
⏹️ ▶️ Marco MacBook do you think this This was it? Like do you think, you know, something got confused
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the rumor chain and it was just a rumor about this? ____ I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t think the sourcing, like this is the type of thing that would be easy to keep a secret probably because it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John just two companies talking to each other. There’s not like a supply chain or manufacturing
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever. Not to say that other rumor is ever going to turn out to be true, but I don’t think this would have led to that rumor.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know because this probably would have caused a little bit of supply chain rumbling in the sense that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they are going to have to manufacture this particular laptop
⏹️ ▶️ John But the supply chain would know that they’re still making, that they’re making more of the same computer. The supply chain
⏹️ ▶️ John wouldn’t be confused to think that it was a new computer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, no, no, but it is, but I think it is suspicious. You know, if you only have a little bit of information
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from the supply chain, it is kind of suspicious to see that, hey, they’re producing inexpensive laptop parts for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way longer than one model would normally be produced. Like maybe that’s how it got started, who knows? Well, we’ll see
⏹️ ▶️ John time goes on, if they introduce a new cost model. Although speaking of the cost of this one, the one thing against this is,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re gonna keep selling in the Tim Cook way, keep selling your old models for just way longer than anyone ever thought you would
⏹️ ▶️ John keep selling your old models, in this case it’s fine, because as you pointed out, the M1 is still great or whatever. But if you are going
⏹️ ▶️ John to do that, it’s going to really, really highlight the worst thing about your products
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re Apple, which is that you are so stingy with the SSD space.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Not even the RAM, because whatever, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a $700 computer, eight gigs, but the SSD space. Like the thing about the RAM is, okay,
⏹️ ▶️ John so it’s got a small amount of RAM, but it’s incredibly inexpensive and you can get by with it. It will use swap, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John But when you run out of SSD space, there’s no more swap for that. There’s not a second SSD
⏹️ ▶️ John that you can swap. Like it’s a hard limit. And by the way, going to swap because you have
⏹️ ▶️ John eight gigs of RAM is just going to abuse that tiny thing even more. So this is not the fault of that computer,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s the fault of Apple for just being so stingy and holding the line on the 256 base model,
⏹️ ▶️ John because I believe that Walmart will only sell the base model. There is no BTO
⏹️ ▶️ John option. I don’t think they have any other options for the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco sizing. Certainly, the $700 price is
⏹️ ▶️ John for the base model. And if they follow Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ John typical pricing, as soon as you put a more reasonable size SSD in there, the price would
⏹️ ▶️ John go up tremendously. So I think it’s just the base model. But yeah, those decisions are bad at the time,
⏹️ ▶️ John but they get so much worse when the machine is two or three generations old, and you’re continuing to sell it as new, not
⏹️ ▶️ John even refurb. So that’s a sin of Apple’s past. That’s again, not the fault of this machine, but it really,
⏹️ ▶️ John it makes me wish that like, for example, the M3 MacBook Air should no longer come with 256 SSD as any, it
⏹️ ▶️ John shouldn’t be an option at all. Like it’s just Apple being incredibly stingy and again, putting all their margins into
⏹️ ▶️ John storage and RAM, which is painful for all of us. and a bad move in the long term, I would argue.
ATP Membership
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Please consider becoming an ATP member today. Membership
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the best way to support the show and you get some pretty cool perks too. So we just launched this new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco feature called ATP Overtime. This is effectively a bonus topic every week.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So we record the regular show, we record our regular after show, and then after we go off
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the air, we record one more topic. Usually we’re aiming for 15 to 45 minutes of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bonus content after each show and it’s a tech topic. It’s an ATP topic. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco last week’s episode, our bonus topic in ATP Overtime was we talked about the Rabbit R1,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that cool little playdate looking thing that’s the little AI gadget. We’ve wanted to talk about it for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a long time. We never had time, we never got to it in the show notes. We finally found out a way to get to extra topics.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s called ATP Overtime. You can get it by becoming an ATP member today, atp.fm
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slash join. And we’re aiming to do this pretty much every episode as far as I know. So we’re still trying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it out, still brand new, but ATP Overtime bonus content for members on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every single episode. Somewhere on the order of 15 to 45 minutes extra and a tech topic. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s one of the benefits you get. You also get an ad-free version of the show, of course, with ATP Overtime now included
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in it. And you get the bootleg recording feed if you wanna listen to a raw live broadcast, that’s in there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco too. And yes, Overtime is in that now as well. So atp.fm slash join, check
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it out today. Eight bucks a month, we have annual plans too. We have a couple different currency options as well if you’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco outside of the U.S. and it’s easier for you that way. Check it out. Once again, atp.fm.com.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s the best way to support the show. We really appreciate it. Thank you so much. And now, back to the show.
Apple silicon in Titan
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We have some genuinely fascinating feedback from an anonymous listener who writes, Early
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on in the car project, a very large rack of server gear was loaded into the back of SUVs for development
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and testing. When the Apple Silicon team was asked to help, it was years before Apple Silicon shipped in Macs.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The chip folks showed up with a literal black box about the size of a Mac studio. There were instructions on how
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to plug it in and an admonition not to open the box. All software
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was provided the chip team and was already installed on the box When connected this max to studio
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sized box outperformed the rack of server GPU gear by an order of magnitude While consuming a fraction
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of the power What was in the box was never shared and it was taken away after the test One of the interesting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey notes on project Titan is there was a huge effort to develop custom sensors LiDAR vision, etc That would also outperform
⏹️ ▶️ Casey industry standard equipment in both performance and accuracy What was in the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey knows? I mean, I
⏹️ ▶️ John it could have just been an M1 Ultra at that point back then, but I don’t know what things they had in the
⏹️ ▶️ John server rack. But yeah, Apple Silicon participating in this process and the idea that they’re making their own LIDAR sensors
⏹️ ▶️ John just as with everything involved with Project Titan, it seemed like, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, when you start a new project, the possibility space is big. Look at all the things that
⏹️ ▶️ John we could do because we do have a lot of money and there are lots of possibilities. explore them with money
⏹️ ▶️ John and time but unfortunately for Project Titan they never really seemed to narrow that to something
⏹️ ▶️ John that they wanted to do and so the project was canned but it doesn’t surprise me that especially
⏹️ ▶️ John in the early days they were like and we can make our own lidar sensors and they’ll be better than everybody’s and we’ll have our own silicon
⏹️ ▶️ John and that’ll be better than everybody’s and they just really didn’t know what they were doing in the end but that is interesting. Again,
⏹️ ▶️ John rumors of Apple Silicon for the car project rumored to be as powerful as
⏹️ ▶️ John what What was it? What did they say? 4 M2 Ultras or something like that? Something like that. I don’t know what stage
⏹️ ▶️ John those designs get, but like if they have anything that’s in a box the size of a Mac Studio, it must have gotten far enough along
⏹️ ▶️ John that it was fabbed on a reasonable process that it could be cooled in,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, I don’t know. I don’t know. I would love to hear more about this but we have to wait for all these people to get old and retire.
Why Safari hangs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. Wade writes with regard to John’s Safari hangs. When Safari
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gets into that state where it just stops doing network traffic, you described it as like as though it’s out of file handles.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s because of a deadlock bug in the Safari networking sub process. If you kill that, for example,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in Activity Monitor or with Kill All, it relaunches automatically and the problem is temporarily fixed. Note
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that killing Safari networking can sometimes cause open tabs to essentially crash, requiring a full reload. It’s funny you bring this up. Was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this from the most recent member special? Is that right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, that’s what I was talking about, why I use Safari and Chrome, and that Safari still sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ John starts refusing to load web pages for me.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So this happens to me. I don’t think I said anything during the show, because you were vibing in a great way. I didn’t want to ruin
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your whole flow there. But this happens to me not often, but often enough that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s annoying. And coincidentally, it happened earlier today. And I tried to do exactly this,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it didn’t make a darn bit of difference. Now, it very well could be user error. Maybe I screwed something up. Maybe I didn’t quit the right
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing or kill it in the right way. It didn’t do anything for me. Now, have you tried this, John? Has this worked for you?
⏹️ ▶️ John No, I haven’t had a hang since getting this. I’m glad you tried the experiment. Yeah, this
⏹️ ▶️ John probably worked for Wade. Maybe that’s where the problem was there. Although I would say to the people who are writing the Safari networking
⏹️ ▶️ John subsystem, maybe use structured concurrency. Might help avoid those deadlocks. No. Make sure all
⏹️ ▶️ John the threads of execution are always making forward progress.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, that’s all like C++ though, isn’t it? I don’t think they can get there. Yeah, I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know. I don’t know, I’m just saying like, Deadlock? Hmm. Yeah, it’s a problem.
⏹️ ▶️ John Concurrent programming is hard. Next time it happens to me, I will try it and I hope it does work, but I’m not particularly optimistic.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I mean, I’m gonna try it again, because like I said, maybe I was holding it wrong or-
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, what else can you do? Like my alternative is I have to quit Safari, right? Or for me sometimes, if I close enough Safari
⏹️ ▶️ John windows, it starts working, which is very suspect.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Or wait like a really, really long time, perhaps long enough for like some watchdog to trip and then it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe does all this resetting
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve never had waiting work for me. I mean, maybe I haven’t waited 24 hours or something, but I’ve waited.
⏹️ ▶️ John was like 15 minutes or something like that, I think. Yeah, because I would like walk away from the computer and be like, oh, this is annoying me, I’ll leave. And then I come back
⏹️ ▶️ John later in the day and I remember, oh yeah, Safari’s still misbehaving. So waiting has not worked for me.
DMA Workshop
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so we have a lot of legal news, and part of it is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with regard to Apple doing a nine-hour workshop feedback
⏹️ ▶️ John It wasn’t Apple. This was a nine-hour feedback session about Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey EU. Oh, OK, thank you. So this happened somewhere overseas. I’m not even entirely sure where it happened geographically, but it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey somewhere in Europe. And there was a whole bunch of talk about it. We’ll put some links in the show
⏹️ ▶️ Casey notes. It seems like it went. It went. I don’t even know if I would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey say it went well or went poorly, but it went. It was a thing. And I don’t think anyone left exceedingly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey happy, although I’m not sure anyone left angry.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, it’s just a feedback session. So this is Gruber’s summary of it from his post about it. He says, this was an
⏹️ ▶️ John opportunity for critics of Apple’s DMA compliance plans to address questions to representatives
⏹️ ▶️ John from Apple. And there is a video, apparently, but it’s behind a password, which Gruber gave
⏹️ ▶️ John them some stick about for not being transparent. And he says, I can’t imagine sitting through that even at 2x speed.
⏹️ ▶️ John But lucky for us, cage belly followed along and took copious notes in a thread on Twitter. So
⏹️ ▶️ John we’ll link to the Twitter thread of someone who was watching the video and writing the interesting things in tweet size
⏹️ ▶️ John bits. Steve Trout and Smith also use the whisper transcript
⏹️ ▶️ John generator thing to get text out of it. Obviously, whisper is going to be a little bit confused by technical jargon and stuff, but we’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John put a link to that in the show notes as well. He’s got it up on GitHub. Uh, and then there is one video
⏹️ ▶️ John clip of a Riley test suits question. Uh, the alt store guy, he was asking about,
⏹️ ▶️ John um, the idea that he was using an example from his life. Like he, I think he had like a,
⏹️ ▶️ John a viral hit application that was a free download on the, on the iOS app store when, when he was younger,
⏹️ ▶️ John like a college or high school. It was like, what if that happened to me today? And I’m like, I’m just a student
⏹️ ▶️ John and I make the free app, you know, no in app purchase, I think it’s just 100% free. And I put it up
⏹️ ▶️ John on one of these alternative stores, and it becomes like a viral sensation overnight. And everyone’s downloading it because someone talked about it on Tick Tock
⏹️ ▶️ John or something, I would owe Apple 5 million euros. And so his question to the
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple representative, it was like a Kyle and dear of a VP of Apple legal saying,
⏹️ ▶️ John what would you what would happen? Would you try to extract 5 million euros from this student who had
⏹️ ▶️ John a viral head application? And the response was, a bit of the end of the response from the Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John representative was, this is something we need to figure out. And it’s something we’re working on. So I would say
⏹️ ▶️ John on that one, stay tuned. Which is not much of an answer of just saying, yeah, that does sound bad. We’ll
⏹️ ▶️ John figure something out.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco But I think,
⏹️ ▶️ John like feedback sessions like this, I mean, I feel like what Apple should have said is, well, if you don’t want that
⏹️ ▶️ John to happen, stay in the App Store. Because we don’t charge
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey you anything for
⏹️ ▶️ John your apps. And then, you know, the EU would have said, yeah, but the whole idea is we want the alternative app stores to be an actual alternative,
⏹️ ▶️ John not something that’s always bad. And that was kind of what I imagined all nine hours of this was. If you look
⏹️ ▶️ John at the Twitter thread, there’s a lot of statements by representatives of the EU saying
⏹️ ▶️ John things like, yeah, we don’t think that thing Apple is doing is compliant.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like just as an aside, like I forget the core technology fee was one of them, but a whole bunch of like
⏹️ ▶️ John large components of Apple’s compliance, they would just offhandedly say, yeah, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John there. I don’t think they can do that. So this was just a feedback session. And I don’t think it’s worth dwelling on the minutiae
⏹️ ▶️ John of it because I think what will happen is, guess what? More changes. Just like last time,
⏹️ ▶️ John like, yes, they had nine hours of feedback. And surely in response to those nine hours of feedback and back
⏹️ ▶️ John and forth, Apple’s going to have to change more stuff because they were big parts of their compliance.
⏹️ ▶️ John The EU representatives were like, mm-mm, nope, yeah, that’s not it.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so I guess we’ll, this topic is not dead and we will be revisiting it.
Magnetic Watch bands
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Harvey Simon writes, this was weeks ago and it keeps getting pushed down in the show notes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but Harvey Simon writes with regard to magnets and Apple Watch bands, regarding its own Apple Watch band with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a magnetic closure, Apple says, quote, band contains magnets and may cause interference with compass on Apple Watch,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey quote. This is for, what is this, the modern buckle? I think that’s, yeah, that’s right.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so Harvey asks, you know, if magnets don’t interfere with the compass, why does Apple say they may? And I presume
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the answer for that is, you know, in part liability, in part just general cover your butt, but one way or another,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there is at least the possibility that there’s some interference.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, yeah, they say they may, I don’t know. I think it’s a butt covering as well, considering they sold
⏹️ ▶️ John that strap for a while and you didn’t hear widespread reports of saying, my compass doesn’t work on my Apple Watch.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I found that it’s because of this magnetic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco latch. I mean, in all fairness, I don’t think they sold a lot of modern buckles. I’ve seen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a very small number of them ever in real life. However, there are lots of other Apple Watch bands
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that have magnets in them. Like for instance, the leather link, or now the fine woven
⏹️ ▶️ Marco link, full of magnets. The Milanese loop also has pretty big magnets in it. So there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not only one band. It turns out probably a third of the bands have either one or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco many magnets in them. So I don’t think this is a big deal. I think
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s kind of interesting that they even say that it may interfere because especially on the modern buckle, the magnet is on the
⏹️ ▶️ John opposite side of your fleshy wrist from the watch. pretty big distance and you know so I don’t know.
Street widths
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so I don’t remember how you stumbled onto this, John, but you have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a very curious obsession with the widths of the streets
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in front of people’s houses. How did we land here?
⏹️ ▶️ John I wasn’t, remember we talked about this in like, uh, in the member special or something? I don’t remember how it came up.
⏹️ ▶️ John It was, it was recent though.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It was in the last week or two, and I don’t remember how or why this came
⏹️ ▶️ John The main issue is I’m basically complaining about how difficult it is to navigate my streets, And then, of course, Marco chimes
⏹️ ▶️ John in and said, we don’t even have streets. We just have sidewalks. The cars go on. And then you
⏹️ ▶️ John take for granted your ridiculously wide streets. And I think you said, mine aren’t that wide. They’re not that
⏹️ ▶️ John much bigger than yours. So as I said, I think when we first came up, we got to do some street measuring.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So we have some street widths. Marco is the winner at the beach with the tiniest
⏹️ ▶️ Casey streets. And having been there, I can attest to
⏹️ ▶️ John Streets slash sidewalk, let’s say.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Tiniest paved area, which, well, paved with sand
⏹️ ▶️ Marco top. Paved in quotes. It’s concrete
⏹️ ▶️ Casey squares. Eight feet wide. Underscore chimed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in from the UK saying his are nearly 20 feet wide.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John, you measured yours, and you got to about 23 and 1 1⁄2 feet. And I’m sorry
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if you live anywhere with sensible units. We’re not going to convert it. Just look it up. And for me,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I rank at 35 feet, basically 36 feet. So I am the winner for sure. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the winner in the sense that you live somewhere where there’s so much empty space that they’re able to make the streets
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a third wider than most places.
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s basically like new. Obviously, so you’re a special case, Marco, because you’re not in a normal street
⏹️ ▶️ John area or whatever. And so there’s very limited space there. And you got your little things. And they don’t expect there to be two-way traffic
⏹️ ▶️ John on any of these roads, right? Underscore is obviously in the UK, where it has notoriously narrow
⏹️ ▶️ John lanes, as they call them. And then Casey, I think the reason his are so
⏹️ ▶️ John wide is because he’s probably in the newest development. Like all the houses around
⏹️ ▶️ John him were constructed, like the, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey they’re certainly constructed
⏹️ ▶️ John after mine and probably after Underscore’s. And that’s what I think determines it, because
⏹️ ▶️ John the land that I’m living on was probably settled a long time ago, and these streets and roads existed
⏹️ ▶️ John and were made back when maybe horse-drawn carriages were on them or much narrower
⏹️ ▶️ John cars. And so they’re sized incorrectly
⏹️ ▶️ John for modern vehicles. They’re maybe sized incorrectly for automobiles entirely,
⏹️ ▶️ John even more so than a lot of the roads on Long Island that were made for maximum speed of 45 miles an hour and
⏹️ ▶️ John Model Ts or whatever going on them. But yeah, that’s why the roads are wider. It’s not that they have so much
⏹️ ▶️ John extra land. that land was not, there was no road there until some developer came and said,
⏹️ ▶️ John we’re gonna build a bunch of houses here. And at the time they did that, they used essentially the best practice for
⏹️ ▶️ John road widths, which is way wider than it was in the 1900s, or whenever the heck my road was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So yeah, I didn’t do the math I meant to, and I completely forgot. I didn’t do the math of, you had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey said to me, I don’t remember if this was privately or during the show, but you had suspected that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Aaron’s truck, car, SUV, whatever you want to call it, SUV, I guess, could park perpendicularly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey across the road and have quite a bit more road left over.
⏹️ ▶️ John Perpendicularly across the road, and then the space remaining after you parked sideways against
⏹️ ▶️ John the curb, like your rear bumper against the curb, the remaining space would be
⏹️ ▶️ John the width of my road.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That is incorrect. But you are not entirely
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John out of bounds.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It is incorrect. Because I think her car is something like 15 feet, which would make it like three,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your road is three feet longer than the remainder there.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, well, that was back when you said your roads were 37 feet. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well, whatever. That was an estimate.
⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, here’s the point. If you look at it, we’ll put a picture in the show notes, or maybe it’ll be the chapter.
⏹️ ▶️ John When you look at my, obviously Marco’s thing is not a real road, so disregard that. An underscore lives in
⏹️ ▶️ John Merrill, England, so whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Mine is not that much
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco bigger than.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s a big disregarding right there. Mine is not that much bigger than underscores.
⏹️ ▶️ John Keep this in mind when you look at this. So Marco’s Marco’s road is essentially the width of his car. The R1S
⏹️ ▶️ John is that is that wide, essentially. I don’t know what, especially, especially if you include the mirrors.
⏹️ ▶️ John I believe it is exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. Yeah. If you include the mirrors, I don’t think there’s a lot of a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ John space left. I did look up the R1S width and that’s about it. Right. So take that as being a car
⏹️ ▶️ John with and take two. We’re looking we’re both looking at this picture. Marco’s road is purple and mine is green.
⏹️ ▶️ John Take two Marco with purple stripes and try to arrange them on my green road so
⏹️ ▶️ John that two cars can pass each other going in opposite directions. Because I swear to you, I live on a two way street. It is not a
⏹️ ▶️ John one way road. It is designed so that in theory, two cars can pass each other, one going one direction,
⏹️ ▶️ John one going the other. So give each car eight feet, just like Marco’s thing here, and lay out those two purple
⏹️ ▶️ John things and see how much room you have left. OK, and now consider this fact. You are allowed to park on both
⏹️ ▶️ John sides of my street. Do you see how this doesn’t work in a
⏹️ ▶️ John functioning way? Right? There’s not even one side parking only. Even if it was
⏹️ ▶️ John one side parking only, I can tell you when someone parks one of their gigantic SUVs on one side of my road, there’s not enough
⏹️ ▶️ John room for two cars to safely pass in the space remaining. Because especially if they don’t literally have their rubber touching the
⏹️ ▶️ John granite curbs that are on my road, right? It is absolutely ridiculous.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so that’s why I’m always complaining about it because I’m constantly navigating these roads or trying to get one of my teen children to
⏹️ ▶️ John navigate these roads without scraping my wheels against the curb or killing us all.
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DOJ sues Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So there is some news. Uh, the U S the United States have sued
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple for illegal monopoly over smartphones. And I don’t know the right way
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to approach this. I mean, I think we can start going through little, I guess, snippets of what’s in this lawsuit.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Um, do we want to do John an opening statement of any sort, or do we want to try to establish the,
⏹️ ▶️ John the, I think we can go through it in the The order is here with breaks at various points to
⏹️ ▶️ John expound on things. I mean, so we’ll start with the summary from The Verge. The US Department
⏹️ ▶️ John of Justice, DOJ, and 16 states and district attorney generals have
⏹️ ▶️ John accused Apple of operating an illegal monopoly in the smartphone market in a new antitrust lawsuit.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I didn’t like the headline. I copied this headline from The Verge, US sues Apple for illegal monopoly over smartphones.
⏹️ ▶️ John But that, we’ll get to in a little bit, that that’s not, I saw the headline, I’m like that
⏹️ ▶️ John could be better written because that’s not quite it. So anyway, we will link you to The Department of
⏹️ ▶️ John Justice press release the verge article and we’ll link you to the actual Complaint
⏹️ ▶️ John like the legal complaint or whatever in the lawsuit That is a PDF that you can read through at your leisure.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve read through the entire thing today. It’s not that long But there
⏹️ ▶️ John are various excerpts from it and this this is this is well, I guess here’s the framing
⏹️ ▶️ John I would give okay, I I have lived through, we have all lived through, one other
⏹️ ▶️ John very significant Department of Justice lawsuit in the tech sector, which was the Department
⏹️ ▶️ John of Justice lawsuit, antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft in the, what, 90s? Yeah, late 90s. Late 90s.
⏹️ ▶️ John So we’ve seen something like this before. And a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ John our discussion of monopolies and antitrust laws in the US stems from that case, because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s so similar. It’s in recent memory, it’s in the tech sector. It used the
⏹️ ▶️ John same US law as the basis of the antitrust efforts, the same US law that is very old and
⏹️ ▶️ John predated computers and any of this stuff, right? And so it’s just been reinterpreted through the courts. But
⏹️ ▶️ John I guess the best way to set this up is that unlike the EU, DMA, all
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff that we’ve been going through, this is something different. This is
⏹️ ▶️ John the government suing a private company saying you have violated some existing laws that are
⏹️ ▶️ John on the books, whereas the EU DMA thing is a governing body saying,
⏹️ ▶️ John here are some new laws you have to follow. And that might seem like not a big deal, like what’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the difference? It’s basically both down to the same thing, telling Apple they can’t do stuff or whatever. But it’s very different because
⏹️ ▶️ John in theory, in the EU thing, a bunch of people can get together and say, we think this
⏹️ ▶️ John is how it should be. And then they write it down and then to give it to Apple and Apple complies with it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Now, that’s the idealized version. and as we’re seeing, that’s not going that well. Because apparently it’s a really hard thing to
⏹️ ▶️ John do, although I really feel like I could have helped them a lot if they had consulted me, but they didn’t. But
⏹️ ▶️ John the DOJ thing or any other lawsuit, this is what happens. The government says, company,
⏹️ ▶️ John you broke a law and we’re gonna go to court and try to prove that you broke a law and win a verdict from,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know if it’s gonna be a judge or a jury trial, I don’t know all the legal intricacies, but whatever. Like it’s in a court of law
⏹️ ▶️ John and they have to prove, Apple, you broke this law. It’s an existing law and here’s how you broke it we’re going to
⏹️ ▶️ John prove it right. And then if they’re found guilty, they just appeal forever and blah, blah, blah, whatever. Like look at the Microsoft
⏹️ ▶️ John wing, the Microsoft essentially lost but then on appeal got parts of it reversed and then they came to a settlement and
⏹️ ▶️ John legal stuff is always not right. But however the court case goes, first of all, there is a court case with all the US
⏹️ ▶️ John rules of evidence and all that crap or whatever, right. And then after that, there’s some kind of,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, assuming they even go to like a verdict and a remedy or a punishment or whatever, which is not
⏹️ ▶️ John necessarily the case, they could end up settling because a lot of court cases end up with a settlement where they said, never mind the court case, the
⏹️ ▶️ John two parties have agreed to settle according to these terms. The government could do that as well. But either way, there’s either going to be
⏹️ ▶️ John a settlement or some kind of verdict and punishment or remedy or
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever. And that is determined like like what what the what what Apple would
⏹️ ▶️ John have to do as kind of like you lost the case. Therefore X is determined by the court case
⏹️ ▶️ John by I don’t again, I don’t know how the details worked out as a term by the jury, the judge or whatever. But the
⏹️ ▶️ John whole point is it’s It’s not determined by lawmakers. It’s not determined by a bunch of people getting together
⏹️ ▶️ John and saying, here’s what we think Apple should do. Instead, they just say, you broke a law. Here’s how here’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John laws that you broke. And here is the remedy for you breaking them. And that is
⏹️ ▶️ John one of the worst possible ways to get a result that you want. Right? Unless
⏹️ ▶️ John unless it’s like a court case where it’s like, we just I just want money from you because you did something bad, and now you’re gonna be fined or something. That’s not how this is going
⏹️ ▶️ John to go right. It’s so much better if you have again, in theory, a bunch of people
⏹️ ▶️ John who get together and at their leisure, come up with a new set of laws or regulations or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John and say, there’s a problem, we’re going to write a new set of regulations that
⏹️ ▶️ John will tell Apple or whatever, here’s how it should be. And we’ll pay out, we can consult people,
⏹️ ▶️ John we can talk to experts, we can talk to all the other companies in the sector, we can talk to Apple, you know, in theory,
⏹️ ▶️ John what the EU did with DMA, only the US version of it is make new regulations, make
⏹️ ▶️ John new laws, say what you actually want, use your words, right? Instead of saying, Hey,
⏹️ ▶️ John a law from 100 years ago, you were actually broke that and we’re going to prove it and then we’re going to punish you somehow.
⏹️ ▶️ John And there are remedies listed in this thing. But I have to say, starting from zero, if you’re wondering how this is different from the EU thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John I can’t imagine that this is going to go better than anything. And the EU thing
⏹️ ▶️ John is not going well, to be clear, because but this is like, It’s not the
⏹️ ▶️ John way to get the change you want to see in the world is suing somebody and having the punishment from this
⏹️ ▶️ John suit that you think you’re going to win change their behavior. And that’s why I’m extremely
⏹️ ▶️ John pessimistic about this entire thing. There are other reasons, which we’ll get to as we start going through it. I’m pessimistic about it, but setting aside
⏹️ ▶️ John the actual complaint, even if the complaint had been written beautifully and perfectly and was everything I dreamed
⏹️ ▶️ John it could be in the end, if Apple loses this case, determining what they have to do
⏹️ ▶️ John as their, as the fix for them breaking this law is so much worse than actually writing
⏹️ ▶️ John a new regulation where you can just say exactly what you want. And that has really got me
⏹️ ▶️ John not feeling great about this whole exercise.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, having read this, I went through the whole thing and I was using my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPad and highlighting in green when I was like, yeah, in red when I was like, oh gosh.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I got to tell you, a lot more red than there is green.
⏹️ ▶️ John Even when you were going the yeah parts like though, but when I was looking through the the parts that we’ll get to them, the parts that we think, oh, they’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John actually realized something reasonable here. My question was always like, okay, so
⏹️ ▶️ John say you’re right about that, and say you prove it in court, and say Apple loses. Then what?
⏹️ ▶️ John The then what is the
⏹️ ▶️ John part? It’s not like you can slap them on the wrist and say, Apple, you were naughty, give me $10. Okay, go on your way.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like they’re going to ask for changes in behavior. And again, there is a remedy section in this document, but
⏹️ ▶️ John I looked at it and said, this, this is like, yeah, Apple should probably do this, that, the other thing and maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John some other stuff we haven’t listed here anyway you’ll figure it out court it’s like no that’s the hard part like
⏹️ ▶️ John this this whole thing is like you know the government’s gonna prove that Apple was bad and if they win
⏹️ ▶️ John yay we all celebrate no we don’t celebrate what so you prove they did something bad what is the fix
⏹️ ▶️ John how do you make how do you make it better that’s the hard part just ask the EU it’s apparently
⏹️ ▶️ John really hard to even even when you have the force of law with you and you could tell Apple you
⏹️ ▶️ John have to do X, Y, and Z. Apparently even that is next to impossible to do with any competence. And here,
⏹️ ▶️ John I look at this document and I’m like, let’s just assume that you’re brilliant and everything you say here is right and
⏹️ ▶️ John you win this case and it’s a slam dunk and they appeal and you win on all the appeals. Then what? The then what is
⏹️ ▶️ John just like, then it’s just probably going to either not do anything or make things worse. And it’s just
⏹️ ▶️ John making me feel sad.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. And I think to finish my opening statement here, I think the thing that’s troublesome
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is that I don’t think it’s unreasonable for Apple to be regulated
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or be asked to change or forced to change or have something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like what the EU is attempting and now what the United States is attempting, but I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey feel like either organization is doing a particularly good job of it,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and that’s frustrating. And the Americans, at least, having read
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the overwhelming majority of this document, it is clear that this is a bunch of people who
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t really understand what they’re talking about, shaking their fist at the air and going, but that just doesn’t seem
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right. And there’s very little justification, there’s very little corroboration, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just, and there’s very little understanding of what’s at play here. So I guess with that in mind,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey let’s start peeling it apart. So from the PDF,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from the actual lawsuit, This case is about freeing smartphone markets from Apple’s anti-competitive and exclusionary
⏹️ ▶️ Casey conduct and restoring competition to lower smartphone prices for consumers, reducing fees for developers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and preserving innovation for the future. And it’s like here, okay, like I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know that Apple has a monopoly on smartphones, but okay, sure.
⏹️ ▶️ John Presumably the document will get to that eventually.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, presumably. Um, but in principle, you know, anti-competitive and exclusionary conduct.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yup. Okay. Okay. Restoring competition to lower smartphone prices for consumers. Like, I don’t see
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that happening, but okay, sure. I mean, I guess that sounds good. Reducing fees for developers. Okay.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. You’ve got my attention now. And preserving innovation for the future. I’m not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sure that this is the right
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John vehicle for that, but okay. Sure.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a vague enough goal. You can say, okay, so again, tell me how this
⏹️ ▶️ John lawsuit is going to do that. Like what’s wrong. And speaking of like the
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff that’s in the document, of what I was thinking, again, not being a lawyer is like, they have
⏹️ ▶️ John to show that Apple violated some existing law. And so there
⏹️ ▶️ John I have to think that the things that they picked and we’ll get to the items that they picked to sort of highlight as examples
⏹️ ▶️ John are focused on the things they think are violations of some existing law and are not
⏹️ ▶️ John actually like kind of like the EU food focus on what are the things that are the most unjust or the most anti-competitive
⏹️ ▶️ John because it doesn’t really matter. What is unjust or what is anti-competitive or what just as long as it only matters
⏹️ ▶️ John what you can prove is a violation of an existing law. Again, that’s the big difference between this and the EU thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re not making up new rules. They’re saying, we have existing laws, and we have to prove Apple violated
⏹️ ▶️ John one of our existing laws. And there is ample case precedent about what constitutes
⏹️ ▶️ John a violation of the law and what doesn’t. So they have to pick things. Presumably, as lawyers, if you want to win the case,
⏹️ ▶️ John and you say they broke this law, this section of this law, you better have things that are going
⏹️ ▶️ John to show that they broke that. And those may be dumb things. Because again, the law is
⏹️ ▶️ John not tailored to deal with the smartphone market. It was for standard oil, right? It’s not,
⏹️ ▶️ John I actually looked up the Sherman Antitrust Act and looked at section two that they say they violated, and it was
⏹️ ▶️ John not illuminating. As you would imagine, there’s not, there wasn’t a lot of text and there wasn’t a lot, like this is it?
⏹️ ▶️ John This is section two of the Sherman Antitrust Act? And I’m like, well, you know, anyway, obviously
⏹️ ▶️ John just because that’s the words in the law, there’ve been so many cases that have been based on that law that there’s precedent,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, it’s complicated, right? So I trust the lawyers to do that, but being hemmed
⏹️ ▶️ John in by having to show that they violated this specific existing law, because it’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John only one that’s even remotely applicable, makes this whole thing just so much more stupid, frankly.
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DOJ sues Apple, cont’d.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So it continues, not directly, this is later on in the document. The iPod experience gave
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple a recipe for the future, a high-end device, a large number of platform participants, i.e. music labels and consumers,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and a digital storefront. More importantly, it gave Apple a playbook, drive as many consumers and third-party participants to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the platform as possible, and offer a wide selection of content, products, and services
⏹️ ▶️ Casey created by those third-party consumers. This structure put Apple in the driver’s seat to generate substantial
⏹️ ▶️ Casey revenues through device sales in the first instance and Subsequently the ancillary fees that it derives
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from sitting between customers on the one hand and the products and services they love on the other
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Doesn’t that just mean they’ve succeeded by making a good product that people wanted?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah well We’ll get to that in a little bit But like there’s a lot of sections of this this complaint that read like a book report
⏹️ ▶️ John a book report About the tech industry and it should get like a C- because Wow. Because it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not well-researched, and is wrong about the facts in several
⏹️ ▶️ John cases, and draws completely ridiculous conclusions that are not supported by any of the evidence.
⏹️ ▶️ John And again, I don’t know how legal complaints are written. Maybe that’s just a thing you do as background context or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because the complaint is not the court case. They’ll go to court. Lawyers will argue things. That’ll happen, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John So I don’t understand what are you supposed to put in the complaint. But there’s a lot of book report style
⏹️ ▶️ John table setting and background and stuff, and just lots of stuff in there. It’s like, if I was
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s lawyers and I saw this, again, maybe they don’t have to address this in the court case because I don’t know how things work.
⏹️ ▶️ John Just as a person who knows the tech industry, I’m like, nope, that’s not a thing. We’ll get to them. We should
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So today, only Apple and Google remain as meaningful competitors in the US performance
⏹️ ▶️ Casey smartphone market. We’ll get to that in a second. Barriers are so high that Google is a distant third to Apple and Samsung,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey despite the fact that Google controls the development of the Android operating system.
⏹️ ▶️ John I pulled this bit out because it is an example of a very confused understanding
⏹️ ▶️ John of the smartphone market in the United States. Only Samsung and Google remain as meaningful competitors.
⏹️ ▶️ John What we all know on this podcast, and anyone who’s in the tech world, is who controls
⏹️ ▶️ John the smartphone world? The answer is Apple and Google, the only two
⏹️ ▶️ John platforms that matter in the smartphone world, Android, which is controlled by Google, and
⏹️ ▶️ John iOS, which is controlled by Apple. And maybe regulators are confused, like, but wait a second, Google’s
⏹️ ▶️ John is open source and lots of people use it, and Google doesn’t control them, blah, blah, blah. Well, there’s a whole other court cases about
⏹️ ▶️ John how Google actually does kind of sort of manage to control the people who use Android, despite the fact that it’s open source and
⏹️ ▶️ John through the Google Play store and blah, blah. But like, to a first approximation, smartphone,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple, and Google, right? But this thing is like, you know, Google is a distant
⏹️ ▶️ John third to Samsung. Samsung, like, I know that, like, they’re saying, they’re just saying in terms of how many
⏹️ ▶️ John phones do you sell? Google doesn’t sell a lot of phones, despite the fact that Pixels are good, like they don’t sell a lot of them. I understand
⏹️ ▶️ John how they came to this, but in an antitrust suit,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think one of the main things that they never touch, again, maybe for legal reasons, because it doesn’t help their case or whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John is that Google is the other big company in the smartphone world. There
⏹️ ▶️ John are two big smartphone platforms, Apple’s and Google’s, and Samsung sells a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John of phones based on Google’s. Like, I understand that technical nuance there, but like I read this paragraph,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m like, I would say for a little Timmy, like turn this into a book report. It’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re right about the number of phones sold and the company that makes those phones, but you’re not seeing the
⏹️ ▶️ John forest for the trees here. And again, maybe Google is irrelevant to the suit because this is not a suit against
⏹️ ▶️ John Google, it’s just against Apple. But they do all this sort of background information.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco By the way, why isn’t it also against Google? Well, it’s a good question.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I think I kind of know the answer to that too, which we’ll get to in a second. But that was just the one excerpt.
⏹️ ▶️ John so many experts that I pulled probably I can’t do them all, but we’ll get to them eventually. So the DOJ had a press conference
⏹️ ▶️ John about this, where people got up on a podium and talked about things, right? And there is a transcript
⏹️ ▶️ John of I believe, just the prepared remarks of the the press conference, I’ll put a link to it in the show notes.
⏹️ ▶️ John A few few things that were in the press conference, which at that point, I hadn’t read the entire complaint
⏹️ ▶️ John yet. So I was going by what what they said. I was like, what? So what? Like, why are
⏹️ ▶️ John they what? Why are they suing Apple? What is this under? And the person at the podium, I believe it
⏹️ ▶️ John was the Attorney General Merrick Garland said there it’s for violating section two
⏹️ ▶️ John of the Sherman Antitrust Act. So it’s clear. That’s what this is about. It’s antitrust. It’s section two. You can look it up.
⏹️ ▶️ John And they also mentioned that Apple has over 65% of US smartphone of the US smartphone market. The Supreme Court
⏹️ ▶️ John defines monopoly power as, quote, the power to control prices
⏹️ ▶️ John or exclude competition. As set out in our complaint, Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John has that power in the smartphone market. Ok, I mean, I’m not a lawyer, so maybe that is the standard
⏹️ ▶️ John in the US, is just the power to control prices or exclude competition.
⏹️ ▶️ John I guess they’ll talk about that in the document. Now this is the key part we were getting from
⏹️ ▶️ John before. Having monopoly power does not itself
⏹️ ▶️ John violate the antitrust laws, but it does when a firm requires or maintains monopoly power not
⏹️ ▶️ John because it has a superior product or superior business acumen but by engaging in exclusionary conduct.
⏹️ ▶️ John As set out in our complaint, Apple has maintained its power not because of its superiority but because of its unlawful exclusionary
⏹️ ▶️ John behavior. So that is the key. That’s why I think the headline is crappy. US sues Apple for illegal monopoly.
⏹️ ▶️ John Monopolies are not illegal in the US. You can have a monopoly. It’s fine. There’s no such thing as an illegal monopoly.
⏹️ ▶️ John There is a such thing as using your monopoly to to illegally stop people from competing
⏹️ ▶️ John with you. And that’s what this is about. And there are two parts of that. One, you have a monopoly,
⏹️ ▶️ John and presumably the US has to show that’s the case. And that’s where they’re going like, oh, how do we define monopolies? Because
⏹️ ▶️ John X, Y, and Z. And two, okay, you’ve got that monopoly, which is fine. Did you use that monopoly
⏹️ ▶️ John to exclude competition in ways that are against the law according to all of our legal precedents,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? And that’s what the DOJ case against Microsoft was about. And that’s what this is about. It’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John about it’s illegal to have a monopoly. It’s you’ve got a monopoly and you used it in a way that you’re not allowed
⏹️ ▶️ John to, right? Because basically what it comes down to is if you have a monopoly, different rules apply
⏹️ ▶️ John to you. And that’s why in a lot of these cases, people, especially people in the US will get indignant.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’ll say, and kind of market was getting at it before. Like, aren’t you just complaining that Apple is too good at
⏹️ ▶️ John their job? Like they’re too good at business, right? They’re doing all these things and you may not like it, but
⏹️ ▶️ John like that’s business. Like they’re competing. This is what got them to where they are. Now you’re saying they can’t do it. And
⏹️ ▶️ John the answer, according to US law is, yeah, if you become a monopoly,
⏹️ ▶️ John if you gain monopoly power, you have a different set of rules that apply to you. Things that were fine for
⏹️ ▶️ John you to do when you were a little company, when you were a monopoly, those exact same things become illegal
⏹️ ▶️ John when you are a monopoly. So showing that Apple’s a monopoly is a really important part of this case, because
⏹️ ▶️ John if Apple was a tiny little company and not like the biggest company in the US.
⏹️ ▶️ John Every single thing we talk about and the things we complain about on the show and things we’ve always come out on the show is like,
⏹️ ▶️ John well, we don’t like it, but it’s not like it’s illegal or anything. They’re just kind of being jerks, or they’re doing things that are not in their interest, or they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John annoying us as developers or whatever. But this antitrust law says, when you are a monopoly, there are
⏹️ ▶️ John a bunch of things you can’t do. And that is the US-centric context of this entire thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John One more bit. This is not from the Merrick Garland, This is from the complaint itself. This says, plaintiffs
⏹️ ▶️ John bring this lawsuit under section two of the German Interest Act to challenge Apple’s maintenance of its monopoly over smartphone
⏹️ ▶️ John markets, which affect hundreds of millions of Americans every day. This is as close as I could find in the
⏹️ ▶️ John complaint to the government acknowledging a fact
⏹️ ▶️ John that I think is important, maybe not to this case, but is important to this situation.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because again, what’s important to this case, just determine it’s based on the law, and a lot of our laws are dumb or
⏹️ ▶️ John not applicable or never envisioned the situation they’re being applied to, right? But the
⏹️ ▶️ John bigger picture, as I’ve said it many times, is like, I think, setting aside US laws,
⏹️ ▶️ John that one of the reasons why a different set of rules should apply to Apple and Google is
⏹️ ▶️ John because, as the states, hundreds of millions of Americans have smartphones. Like, it is not like an
⏹️ ▶️ John optional thing or a frivolous thing like a game console or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John you can get by as an adult in America without a game console. But it is very
⏹️ ▶️ John difficult to get by these days as an adult in America without a smartphone because so many
⏹️ ▶️ John parts of business and job and everything, assume you have one and if you don’t,
⏹️ ▶️ John it is a hindrance. It’s kind of like the telephone, right? There’s no law that says you have to have a telephone
⏹️ ▶️ John back before cell phones, like a landline telephone. But at a certain point, if you didn’t have a telephone, it would really
⏹️ ▶️ John impair your ability to participate society and be a functioning person. It’s like the bar
⏹️ ▶️ John for what you need to have in society gets raised. And it’s not like it’s not illegal not to have
⏹️ ▶️ John a phone. It’s not illegal not to have a landline phone. You know, it’s not illegal not to have all sorts of things, but
⏹️ ▶️ John so many people have them that the phone, I think, should be treated differently
⏹️ ▶️ John than a game console or something like that, right? That’s not part of this lawsuit. There’s no part of the Sherman
⏹️ ▶️ John Antitrust Act that says, oh, if you if you sell something that everybody needs, it’s different, right? But I think
⏹️ ▶️ John it should be different. And this is one little bit of the lawsuit that leans in that direction. But unfortunately, that’s irrelevant, because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not like we don’t have any laws in the US that say, if you if you
⏹️ ▶️ John sell something that’s like important, super important, that everyone kind of needs a different set of rules applied to you. The
⏹️ ▶️ John EU is essentially saying that by saying we regulate all sorts of things, but we
⏹️ ▶️ John find it particularly important or interesting to regulate the smartphone market, because smartphones
⏹️ ▶️ John are so important to our modern lives. That’s why we in the EU are deciding that
⏹️ ▶️ John we should turn our attention to that and not turn our attention to, you know, I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know, something that is not as significant to daily life or whatever. Um, and so
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s why I pulled that little thing out of there. And speaking of the Microsoft DOJ trial at one point
⏹️ ▶️ John back to the people standing up at podiums, I think this was Jonathan Cantor, who I think is like the antitrust,
⏹️ ▶️ John the head of antitrust division of the DOJ or whatever, said this at the podium. He
⏹️ ▶️ John said, I’d wager that everyone in this room has a smartphone. And that reminded me a lot
⏹️ ▶️ John of during the Microsoft antitrust trial. At one point, I think this was literally during
⏹️ ▶️ John the trial, like the prosecutor said, everyone in this
⏹️ ▶️ John room who has a Windows PC, raise your hand. And it’s just a giant audience of people, reporters, the
⏹️ ▶️ John audience, people, people, government people, everybody raised their hand. This is the 90s. OK, who has a Windows PC?
⏹️ ▶️ John in a giant courtroom during everybody has a Windows PC. Of course everyone has a Windows PC. They had like 90 something
⏹️ ▶️ John percent market share. I would not be surprised if there was like one Mac user in that room
⏹️ ▶️ John of like 300 people right rate and it’s not again, it’s court
⏹️ ▶️ John case you can showboat or whatever but raise your hand if you have a Windows PC all the hands go up. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John yes, as part of the MSD OJ trial, the government had to prove the Microsoft was in a monopoly.
⏹️ ▶️ John But But let me tell you, it’s pretty easy to do. Like in the 90s, people who weren’t alive
⏹️ ▶️ John then or weren’t involved in the tech sector do not realize how dominant Windows was
⏹️ ▶️ John at that point. Windows was everywhere. Everyone had a Windows computer, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John This is not saying, raise your hand if you have an iPhone. This was, who here has a smartphone? Which is getting to my earlier
⏹️ ▶️ John point, which is like, look, we all, everyone has a smartphone. He didn’t even ask them to raise their hand. He just said,
⏹️ ▶️ John I assume everyone in this room has a smartphone. I agree. in the room did have a smartphone because it’s just something
⏹️ ▶️ John that everyone has to have. And another point from the podium, he said, roughly seven out of 10 smartphones are
⏹️ ▶️ John iPhones. So they went from 65% of us market share to the seven out of 10 number, which is what
⏹️ ▶️ John they were saying, well, in the performance, smart smartphone market share, whatever, Apple has
⏹️ ▶️ John even more, right? Still kind of fuzzy thinking from my point of view, it’s like, okay, well,
⏹️ ▶️ John is there some percentage of market share you need? Or is it not about market share? Is it about how much money goes through the thing?
⏹️ ▶️ John Or is it just about the ability to exclude competition and control prices? This will all be hashed out in
⏹️ ▶️ John the court case. But I feel like just from the day of dropping this complaint, it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John clear to me that the government has a
⏹️ ▶️ John bumper sticker they can put on that says, here’s why Apple’s a monopoly. Other than everyone has a smartphone,
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple makes a smartphone, something, something, Samsung Google monopoly.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I don’t, it’s hard for me to not get distracted when I read this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco complaint or the various coverage of it by little details of like, wait, that doesn’t sound right
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or wait, that shouldn’t be illegal or that’s common sense that how every, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well designed or well thought out product should be or that thing that they’re saying Apple’s doing. Yeah, of course they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doing that. That’s what makes it good or that’s what that’s their prerogative to do or things like that. But I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco trying to take a broader, higher level view of this. First of all, I am not a lawyer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t study the law. I barely even had time to read this because I also happen to be moving today.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it’s been a bit of a busy day, so I apologize. But it’s important for me to keep reminding
⏹️ ▶️ Marco myself what they’ve laid out here is not a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco complete version of what they have. It’s not a complete story that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco meant for necessarily people like us. What they’ve laid out here is a strategy. They’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco said everything they’ve said. They’ve used the words they’ve used, they’ve chosen very carefully
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as a legal strategy. What they’re trying to do is achieve a certain set of goals
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they’re trying to fit the law, the precedent and everything into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco supporting their goals. And so all the arguments they’re making, all the choices
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of how they’ve chosen to phrase what evidence or, you know, quote evidence they’ve chosen to cite.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All of that is legal strategy to achieve the actual goals. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a little hard to tell what specifically the actual goals
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John would be. Well, the goal is simple, you just
⏹️ ▶️ John said it. The goal is to win the case. And that’s part of the problem. If the, because that’s the goal. The
⏹️ ▶️ John Department of Justice, their goal is to win their court cases. That’s their job, literal, their literal
⏹️ ▶️ John job. And you say, well, okay, but the court cases are in service of a larger goal, right? Like that they bring this they
⏹️ ▶️ John why do they bring this suit because they must have some larger goal in mind and in the end The larger goal doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John really matter because it’s not like by winning the suit they get to dictate exactly what Apple has to do They can suggest
⏹️ ▶️ John remedies, but what’s actually going to happen, especially if they like settle or whatever. It’s just it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the wrong way to go about Bringing about change if if the government
⏹️ ▶️ John has ideas about how this situation could be improved they can pass new laws.
⏹️ ▶️ John They can pass new, it happens all the time. Hey, companies should not be dumping toxic waste into the
⏹️ ▶️ John river. What can we do about that? Can we sue them for violating some existing law that we think they vaguely might be violating?
⏹️ ▶️ John No, pass a new law that says you can’t dump toxic waste into the river. That’s the solution. The solution
⏹️ ▶️ John is not to say, well, technically they’re violating this law of like, they’re in violation of the
⏹️ ▶️ John constitution because they’re stopping people from their pursuit of happiness. No, just pass a law that says
⏹️ ▶️ John you can’t dump toxic waste into the river. That’s the solution, but we’re so bad at passing laws, and apparently so is the EU,
⏹️ ▶️ John that that is not what we’re doing. Wow. Instead, we’re going to sue them under the Sherman Antitrust
⏹️ ▶️ John Act, because if you squint, it’s like they’re buying up the entire supply chain
⏹️ ▶️ John so that no one can compete with them, except for Google, who has more market share. But I don’t know. Well,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco thing is, I think, obviously,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the Sherman Antitrust Act is the tool we have in the US to deal with monopoly behavior.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so again, I’m sure there’s a lot of legal, strategic reasons for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this, but what I’ve heard a lot of other people report on, who know more about this, is that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco obviously a lot of the success or failure of antitrust cases in the US
⏹️ ▶️ Marco relies on the market definition. And what they have done here is try to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco define this premium smartphone. Performance smartphone. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right, performance smartphone market as a separate market from all smartphones.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I actually like a lot of their arguments in it that said basically like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a little bit different from other market definitions in the sense that when people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buy the phone, they’re buying it for reasons like, you know, the camera,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the specs, like they’re buying it for reasons other than the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco parts where they’re being accused of being anti-competitive, like App Store, private APIs, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff like that. So I kind of get that argument. It’s not a terrible argument.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What I hope to see here, I don’t know their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco chances of winning this case. I don’t know the law enough and the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tricks and the details enough to be able to make any kind of call on how good their chances are. They’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very smart people. They probably think they have a pretty good chance. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have brought it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. They said on the podium, essentially, The DOJ wins most of the cases it brings, because it doesn’t bring
⏹️ ▶️ John cases unless it’s pretty sure it can win them. So I would trust them on that, that if you’re going to place betting odds,
⏹️ ▶️ John will the verdict come in favor of the DOJ, especially on the initial one
⏹️ ▶️ John before appeal? Like their odds seem reasonable based on historical precedent.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. And I don’t know how much of it is also like, can they maybe they’ll just win part of it and win some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco claims or some remedies. You know, I’m sure I’m sure this is going to be hashed out over over a while.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But however they have chosen to wedge their arguments
⏹️ ▶️ Marco into the existing legal frameworks that they have to use, I do agree
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that Apple does engage in a lot of anti-competitive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco behavior and that Apple has a scale and an importance in the market
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and to so much of commerce and so much of modern life, as you were saying earlier, John, with everybody having a smartphone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I’ve said over the years, I’ve said many times, I do think this is very different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco from a game console just because of how much of modern life and commerce
⏹️ ▶️ Marco runs through this gatekeeper. And that’s why I don’t object at all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the EU DMA kind of focusing on this idea of a gatekeeper and basically making
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a law that’s targeted at only a very small number of companies because it does control
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and restrict so much of modern life. That is exactly the sort of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing that regulation is made for. Regulation is ostensibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco usually to protect consumers or markets or the environment or something else from
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what capitalism would normally kind of do naturally.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. What would be in the self-interest of the company if their goal was to just make more money? It’s way cheaper just
⏹️ ▶️ John to dump your toxic waste into the river than to have to pay lots of money for someone to ship it away and safely dispose of
⏹️ ▶️ John it. And so without that regulation, a company with a soulless, evil company that just wants to make
⏹️ ▶️ John money is going to say, yeah, just dump it in the river. Why would we do anything different? And that’s what you put the regulation.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it says, but they’re just being a smart company. They’re saving money. They’re increasing profitability by not paying
⏹️ ▶️ John those expensive fees to dispose of toxic waste. That’s what regulation is for. And so, yeah, that would
⏹️ ▶️ John be a much better tool to do this. And it’s what the EU is trying to do. But in the US, that’s not how we’ve chosen
⏹️ ▶️ John to do it for the second time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can look again at things like the phone networks, like the original, the landline phone networks,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and how government regulation was required there to ensure good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco competition and use of those lines because the phone networks, while they were built by private companies,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco became so important to modern life and to everything in modern life that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was in the best interest of everybody, like the whole society, to have some basic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco regulations and how those were used so that the very small number of companies that built them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco couldn’t dictate modern life. Look also at the railroads, you know, similar problems
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and this is why these mechanics exist. And if you look at Apple, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, their size today, they are so big, they are so important to so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much of the world and so much of commerce and so much of society, they do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco need to have governments looking at them for regulation because the governments, because of Apple’s size
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and influence over so much, governments should be holding Apple responsible
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for making sure they use their power in a way that’s not going to really damage
⏹️ ▶️ Marco commerce, the economy, companies, etc. A lot of this complaint, I think, reads very poorly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to those of us watching it, because we look at it and say things like I was saying earlier, like, well, this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing that they’re being accused of, that’s just making a good product, why should that be illegal?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And to a lot of extent, I believe that, but you can also look at a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of Apple’s behavior over the last decade, and you can see a lot
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of anti-competitive, and also I would say needlessly anti-competitive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco behavior that really just comes down to greed or, you know, just extracting
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever they can, which itself is not necessarily inherently illegal.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco again, once you reach a certain scale, tighter standards have to be applied to you for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the good of the entire economy. So I do believe Apple has reached that scale
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that they still are doing certain anti-competitive behaviors that warrant government
⏹️ ▶️ Marco intervention. So even though I disagree with a lot of the specifics and the examples they cite,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think that what the DOJ is getting at has a decent amount of merit
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and maybe the reason their arguments seem a little a little bit absurd at times is because they’re trying to wedge,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, the current situation into these very old laws that have a hard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time directly applying.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. That’s because everything you just mentioned is not in the Sherman antitrust act. There’s nothing in the Sherman antitrust act that says, if
⏹️ ▶️ John the thing you supply is used by like most of the population and is required to be a part of daily life, that’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John in the Sherman. It’s the Sherman antitrust act is very succinct and to the point and does not make
⏹️ ▶️ John any distinction between like, well, what if you make a game console? How important is your product to society?
⏹️ ▶️ John How big are you as a company in terms of like, it’s not about that, it’s much simpler. And everything,
⏹️ ▶️ John all those nuances that are about that have been established by case law. And the case law leading up to this, including
⏹️ ▶️ John very recently with Microsoft, has not really made that distinction that we’re making here that it’s like it
⏹️ ▶️ John really does make a difference whether you make a smartphone or
⏹️ ▶️ John a blender, right? Every adult in America doesn’t need to have a blender to
⏹️ ▶️ John be able to function well in society, right? But a smartphone is just, it’s like a landline phone used to be. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John so necessary that we feel here on the outside of the legal system, it’s like it makes sense
⏹️ ▶️ John to give that more scrutiny. It makes sense to apply different rules to that. But
⏹️ ▶️ John to win the legal case, if that’s not in the law, there’s no point in bringing
⏹️ ▶️ John any of that up in the court case. They could have brought it up in this document because lots of random crap is brought up in this document. So I’m kind of disappointed
⏹️ ▶️ John not to see it here. But when it comes to proving they violated a law, I’m not sure. I mean, they can make that
⏹️ ▶️ John case. They can say, well, judge, is that how precedent gets set? You know, well, judge, even though Apple only has 65% market share,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s so important to have a smartphone. And they do make the point in the document that it sounds silly to us again
⏹️ ▶️ John in the tech world, but they make up this term for it everywhere. They call it like multi-homing or something. They’re like, look, people don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John use more than one smartphone. They either have an Android phone or an Apple phone, but they tend not
⏹️ ▶️ John to have both of them. So basically, they were basically saying like, if you make an app and you want to address the entire
⏹️ ▶️ John addressable market for smartphone users, like if you’re a DoorDash or Uber or something, you have to be
⏹️ ▶️ John on Apple’s platform. Even though Apple only has 65% market share, because
⏹️ ▶️ John people don’t own two phones, you can’t expect if I just make it for Android, everyone will be able to
⏹️ ▶️ John use Uber, right? You have to make it for both platforms. It’s a weird way of getting at the point of like saying,
⏹️ ▶️ John look, there’s essentially a duopoly, but we don’t really have any laws about duopolies. And a duopoly in
⏹️ ▶️ John something as important as a smartphone is arguably worse than having a monopoly, because they can both point to each other
⏹️ ▶️ John and say, see, there’s competition, which they absolutely will do in the court case, I’m sure. Yep, yep. Like, our laws are
⏹️ ▶️ John insufficient to capture the moment. But DOJ is going with the laws
⏹️ ▶️ John they have, and I guess trying to win based on those things. And that’s why a lot of this
⏹️ ▶️ John does not ring true to us. So I agree with Marco. I feel that something needs to be done.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I look at this complaint, and I’m like, yeah, this is not it. This is not what needs to be, because
⏹️ ▶️ John it necessarily can’t get at the heart of the problem. It has to instead prove that
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple violated this law. And that’s, you
⏹️ ▶️ John here, they gave five examples. And they were clear in the complaint. They said, this is not exhaustive. These are not the only
⏹️ ▶️ John things that we’re saying Apple did that’s bad. I’m sure the court case will, the government will roll out many, many
⏹️ ▶️ John things that I think Apple did that was bad, right? But they did give five specific examples. And they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So here we go. Here we go. Disrupting quote unquote super apps that encompass many different
⏹️ ▶️ Casey programs and could degrade iOS stickiness and make it easier for iPhone users to switch to competing devices
⏹️ ▶️ John Wait, what is this? I love it Alright, so maybe this is a term of art that I don’t know so bad on me for not being
⏹️ ▶️ John familiar with the term of art About super apps,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey but I didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John notice either if you’re if you’re listening to this and you think I’ve never heard of a super app Once we start naming examples, you’re gonna be like,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, I know what that is I just never heard it referred to as a super app
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, so what they define a super app is a super app is an app that can serve as a platform for smaller
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mini Programs developed using programming languages such as HTML 5 and JavaScript Super apps can provide
⏹️ ▶️ Casey significant benefits to users for example a super app that incorporates a multitude of many programs might allow users to easily discover
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and access a wide variety of content services without Setting up and logging into multiple apps Not unlike
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how Netflix and Hulu allow users to find and watch thousands of movies and television shows in a single app
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I think what they’re actually referring to though is WhatsApp, isn’t it? Oh, WeChat. Oh, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John sorry. Yes, WeChat. But basically, here’s what they’re talking about. At any time we’ve ever talked about like app store
⏹️ ▶️ John rejection and stuff like that, where some person wanted to make an app and then inside the app there was like a little miniature
⏹️ ▶️ John store where you could buy a bunch of individual like sub games like Roblox, but
⏹️ ▶️ John those aren’t games, those are experiences. It’s fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Roblox is, by the way, a pretty good thing to bring up here.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I think it will. I’m pretty sure it will be brought up,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco right? But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John Roblox is allowed. But like things like WeChat, like WeChat, my understanding is in China, you get WeChat
⏹️ ▶️ John and you can do so much stuff from that. You can get a taxi, you can pay for your meal, you can pay your electric
⏹️ ▶️ John bill. Like it’s all inside one super app, right? Now, this is weird
⏹️ ▶️ John in some ways because, well, so it’s weird because things like Roblox exist
⏹️ ▶️ John and sort of are in violation of sidelines. And the examples they have Netflix and Hulu, you log into your Netflix thing and there’s a whole
⏹️ ▶️ John bunch of things you can watch there within a single app. Netflix doesn’t have to put out a separate app rich individual show, which sounds dumb
⏹️ ▶️ John to you, but that’s what that’s what Apple was making people do for things like that. We’ll talk about cloud streaming
⏹️ ▶️ John services, but I think that could also kind of be under super apps. So like if you’re inside an app and there’s like a sub
⏹️ ▶️ John store, if it’s like another level of abstraction, there’s other things you can do in there. Apple tends to not allow those
⏹️ ▶️ John unless it feels like it. But this is one of the things I cite is here’s what Apple does, and it’s anti
⏹️ ▶️ John competitive because things like WeChat essentially can’t exist in the US. I would say,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, again, as a consumer looking at this in the big picture, I think super apps like WeChat
⏹️ ▶️ John are not what I want. I would much rather have Android and
⏹️ ▶️ John iOS with individual apps for all of those things competing in sort of a more
⏹️ ▶️ John fair open playing field. I do not want one super app where my phone is just a WeChat
⏹️ ▶️ John device and WeChat owns every aspect of my life because that’s just another you all you’re doing is shifting
⏹️ ▶️ John the antitrust problem to a different place. That is not And what I think, that is not an example
⏹️ ▶️ John of competition. But in the DOJ’s complaint, they’re like, look, Apple doesn’t allow these things to exist
⏹️ ▶️ John elsewhere in the world. They do exist. And even in the US, there are companies that want to do this, and Apple says no. And
⏹️ ▶️ John we think that’s stifling innovation. And I think, DOJ, pick a different example, because all you’re doing
⏹️ ▶️ John is setting up your 2038 lawsuit against the dominant super app in the US.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, this is one area where I think this, And this is gonna be a common theme
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to a lot of Apple fans’ responses to these complaints, is like, we actually want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it this way. I think we’re actually better off to not have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these big super apps because all that does is just create other monopolies
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that just sit above the smartphone and then can even be stronger monopolies because they can make that same super
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app for iOS and Android.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. All right, so the next one is related to that. blocking cloud streaming apps for things like
⏹️ ▶️ John video games that will lower the need for superior hardware. This is basically saying the cloud gaming services, where there’s like a streaming
⏹️ ▶️ John game service like Microsoft’s Xbox thing, where the games run in a data center on big gaming PCs and you stream
⏹️ ▶️ John the input and output to your phone, right? And Apple for a long time has rejected those.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s, I think this is one of their starter cases, was like, look, why are you rejecting this? Is there a safety
⏹️ ▶️ John concern? Is there a security concern? Is it confusing to customers? Are they gonna be exploited?
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like, no, no, no, no. This is Apple doesn’t want this just simply because first it makes a little mini store
⏹️ ▶️ John where you can go in and buy individual games Which I think is fine with the concept of gaming apparently Roblox can do it, but those are experiences
⏹️ ▶️ John not games and second like Like who cares like the only reason
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple doesn’t want this is because they make so much money with individual native games and like that’s They’re like
⏹️ ▶️ John well if we did this and we let them in then all gaming on the phone Oh first of all, I think this is wrongheaded because
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think streaming gaming would actually dominate I think Apple this is another one of those cases where I think Apple if you actually actually competed and allowed
⏹️ ▶️ John this, you’d be fine. But whatever, they’re scared to find out right? So they just said no to this. And I
⏹️ ▶️ John think this is actually a good example of anti competitive behavior, because they’re going to be able to say, Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ John remind me again why people aren’t allowed to do this. Like even if they were willing to pay you the 30% and do whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like, No, we just don’t allow things like that in the store. Well, why not? And the answer effectively is, because
⏹️ ▶️ John we make more money from the other things. It’s not there’s no privacy angle, there’s no security angle, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John no like There’s no anything. It’s just they were disallowing us. And of course, they changed this rule very
⏹️ ▶️ John recently to say, OK, Microsoft, you can’t. Remember the thing we told you you couldn’t do for years? You’re allowed to do it now.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I think the reason they changed it is because of all of the pressure
⏹️ ▶️ John that they knew was going to arrive or was arriving from the EU or was coming from the US or whatever. Like, they didn’t change it out of the goodness of
⏹️ ▶️ John their hearts, right? So this is, I think, a reasonable point, although maybe it’s undercut by the fact that Apple already allowed this.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it’s an historical example. Here’s the thing that they were doing to stifle competition.
⏹️ ▶️ John The next one, I think this is gonna be tough for the government for a variety of reasons.
⏹️ ▶️ John Suppressing the quality of messaging between the iPhone platform and competing mobile platforms like Android.
⏹️ ▶️ John Here’s what they mean in the complaint. Because only messages on the phone can
⏹️ ▶️ John do SMS, that makes it difficult to use any other third-party messaging
⏹️ ▶️ John platform as sort of your like, can do everything because the point of the thing is like, if you have to
⏹️ ▶️ John message someone, you can just go to messages, you type in their phone number and you send the message. And one of two things is gonna happen.
⏹️ ▶️ John Either it’s gonna send through SMS because that’s all they have and it’s the common denominator, or
⏹️ ▶️ John it will send through iMessage because they have an iPhone. And their argument is, they have a whole bunch of bogus
⏹️ ▶️ John arguments with the Bieber thing that we’ve talked about in the past episodes, right? But their argument is like,
⏹️ ▶️ John no other third-party messaging app can do that because Apple doesn’t allow third
⏹️ ▶️ John party apps to use the API for sending SMS messages. They could, they just don’t allow that API
⏹️ ▶️ John to third party access.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This whole section drove me nuts because what they’re saying,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey depending on how you interpret it, is either just straight up wrong or just a poor way of describing it. Because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the whole point of fast text, may it rest in peace, was to send text messages. And there
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is an API to do that. Now, I think what they’re saying is there’s no mechanism to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey go in and have a replacement for the messages app. There’s no mechanism for my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey app to become the system SMS app, which
⏹️ ▶️ John even that, I think that they’re saying you couldn’t make a client app, like a full, like I said, you can send messages, but you can’t basically be a
⏹️ ▶️ John client app that’s sitting there running in the background waiting for someone to send you a message and like, you know, and just being an interactive
⏹️ ▶️ John client. Like I, that’s basically, I feel like what they’re saying is that, yeah, there may be an API
⏹️ ▶️ John to send a message, but there’s not enough APIs for you to write,
⏹️ ▶️ John essentially write your own version of messages. Forget about it for replacing it as a system default. I think that’s what they’re saying.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think that’s true, right? That you couldn’t write messages yourself, make your own set of servers, make your own everything, make
⏹️ ▶️ John your own, like it’s all your own infrastructure, but just write an app that looks and feels just like messages.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not the default app on the phone, but it does the same stuff. I don’t think that’s currently possible.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, you’re right. And the other thing that drove me nuts about this section is that they were complaining and moaning incessantly about how,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh, you can’t run anything in the background. So you wouldn’t you wouldn’t receive your messages in a timely fashion or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And that’s also mostly not true. I mean, granted, it’s because of a PNS. But
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, I think I think I pulled pulled a quote out about that, which is I was like, there’s I really want to see them.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, this is not maybe what they’re going to say in court, but I really want to see them try to support the statement. Let me see if I can find it.
⏹️ ▶️ John All right, here. This is directly from the complaint. For example, third party messaging apps cannot
⏹️ ▶️ John continue operating in the background when the app is closed, which impairs functionality like message
⏹️ ▶️ John delivery confirmation. cannot continue operating in the background when the app is closed. I don’t think there’s any
⏹️ ▶️ John way you can interpret that sentence for it to be technically valid on iOS today. Like, and then
⏹️ ▶️ John the the second part is which impairs functionality like message delivery confirmation push notifications
⏹️ ▶️ John exist and can be used by third party apps. I swear they can, like you can get a push notification
⏹️ ▶️ John or like this. None of this is true. I don’t think any of this is true. And it is such a weird
⏹️ ▶️ John thing to be harping on that like, third party messaging apps can’t continue operating in the background. This is news
⏹️ ▶️ John to every third party messaging app that does exactly that, and notifies you when people send you a message. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t, I’m just flabbergasted that this is in here. It makes no sense. Like the one point they have
⏹️ ▶️ John is, hey, their private API is that they make this point several times, their private API is that Apple keeps to themselves.
⏹️ ▶️ John And those API’s would be useful to third parties of Apple at the museum, but they don’t. And it gives Apple competitive
⏹️ ▶️ John advantage because only Apple can make the app that does its own proprietary messaging plus
⏹️ ▶️ John SMS. And this is a weird, this is a weird thing to bring up as well. And there are five examples because
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s not, it’s not like there’s a lack of competition in messaging apps on iOS. There’s a lot of them and they’re popular.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like the one strike they have against them is I’ll guess they can’t do SMS. But and
⏹️ ▶️ John I guess there is a point to be made there. I think they will successfully make that point in the court case,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s not one of their stronger points. So, so far we’ve got super apps, which I think is wrong
⏹️ ▶️ John headed and bad cloud streaming, which is pretty good, but Apple’s already reversed that, uh, no SMS
⏹️ ▶️ John use of API, which I think is just one case of them keeping ABI’s themselves. Maybe they can bring that in that direction.
⏹️ ▶️ John Again, these are just examples in the document. Um, the next one is,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it gets worse again, limiting the functionality of third party smart watches with his iPhones, making it harder
⏹️ ▶️ John for Apple Watch users to switch from iPhone due to compatibility issues. These are summaries essentially, but like,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, they’re basically saying, uh, Apple watch can only be used with iPhones and it’s hard for
⏹️ ▶️ John third parties to make smartwatches. They can integrate with the iPhone and with the Apple watch does.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s all true. Uh, and to Marco’s earlier point, we look at that and say,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, yeah, cause they’re Apple and it’s their watch and it’s going to be tightly integrated with their operating system
⏹️ ▶️ John cause they make all of it. What’s wrong with that? And the government’s going to say, well, when you’re a monopoly,
⏹️ ▶️ John the rules change for you. And what would previously have been a smart business move now becomes illegal because you’re not letting other people
⏹️ ▶️ John compete. But this is the example they’re going to use is like
⏹️ ▶️ John there were smartwatch APIs before the Apple Watch came out. And Apple essentially just didn’t ever improve
⏹️ ▶️ John or expand them. And Apple Watch got to use its own fancy APIs. Like, man, we look at this as Apple fans and be like, yeah, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John how Apple works. That’s how the tech sector works. They made those those APIs for like the Pebble
⏹️ ▶️ John smartwatch or whatever, because Apple didn’t have its own watch. And then when it made its own watch, of
⏹️ ▶️ John course you don’t get to use those APIs, only Apple does, and those APIs are better. And tough luck, because
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s gonna Apple. And I guess the government’s gonna say that’s illegal because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, this is a weak one. This is why, again, like, you can look at Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you can find instances of anti-competitive behavior, I think, fairly easily, but I think the examples
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they have chosen to highlight are not great examples. Like, they seem to be trying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to frame the case against Apple as Apple makes it too hard
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for consumers to switch to Android. And I don’t think that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that strong of an argument. You can make lots of other arguments about Apple’s anti-competitive behavior.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think that is a good way to go. But what I can’t tell is like, do they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also, would they agree with that? and this is just how they’re going to give it the best chance of winning within the legal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco framework that we have? Or is this actually what they’re trying to argue? They’re
⏹️ ▶️ John not, they don’t actually, they do it a different angle on it. They’re not actually saying Apple makes it too hard to switch to Android.
⏹️ ▶️ John What they’re essentially saying in several parts of the document is they say, this change
⏹️ ▶️ John that Apple made was not made to make their products better. It
⏹️ ▶️ John was instead made to demotivate people from switching. That’s subtly different than saying Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John is stopping you from switching. It’s basically saying, oh, Apple, here’s some internal email that says, the reason
⏹️ ▶️ John you did this is because you were afraid if you did this, there would be less reason for people to stay on your phone.
⏹️ ▶️ John Which again, you would look at that and say, isn’t that Apple’s job to make their phone the most attractive platform so people
⏹️ ▶️ John wanna stay on it? And you’re saying, because they did that, it shows, well, you only made this change because then people
⏹️ ▶️ John would like the iPhone better. And if they left it, they would miss it because things are only on the iPhone.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you’re like, yeah, that’s just business. Isn’t that great? And again, it’s saying, oh yeah, that’s great right up until you’re a monopoly.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so if you’re a monopoly, you’re not allowed to do those things. But that’s, they use that angle constantly by quoting from
⏹️ ▶️ John emails in discovery, like the Epicase or whatever, saying, here you are, Apple, saying you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John not gonna do this thing that we, the DOJ, thinks would benefit consumers. And the reason you say
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re doing it is because you’re one of your executives says, we did this, people would have less motivation
⏹️ ▶️ John to stay on iPhone, it would be easier for them to get their kids’ Android phones, right? And that does not look nefarious
⏹️ ▶️ John when I read it, because I understand Apple and how things work. And a lot of the times
⏹️ ▶️ John I agree that they shouldn’t do that because it would make the iPhone worse. But the DOJ comes out and flatly states
⏹️ ▶️ John in this complaint, this would have been better for consumers. I’m like, already I disagree with you, DOJ. But
⏹️ ▶️ John and then they go on and say, and the reason you did it was to make it harder, not to make it harder,
⏹️ ▶️ John to make it so people don’t wanna switch because if they switch, they’ll be leaving behind this good thing here,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? Is there something only on the iPhone? Oh, well, they even say about the services, like all these services you have.
⏹️ ▶️ John It makes it so that if people leave, they’re sad because they’re like, oh, but all my things that
⏹️ ▶️ John I see on this service, I wouldn’t have them anymore if I want an Android because it’s not available there. It’s,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s so confused when I look at that and I say Sherman Antitrust Act and
⏹️ ▶️ John third party watches can’t integrate with the iPhone. Like I’m trying to connect
⏹️ ▶️ John those dots real hard. It’s just not, it’s not working for me. The final one
⏹️ ▶️ John they had here, which I think maybe is one of their strongest ones, but it’s so dead simple.
⏹️ ▶️ John And of course, the EU beat them to it, as with all these things, blocking third party developers from creating competing
⏹️ ▶️ John digital wallets with tap to pay functionality. Remember the whole hubbub I guess years ago was like, Hey, there’s going to be NFC
⏹️ ▶️ John and Apple phones, but only Apple can use it for these certain purposes. The EU, I think already
⏹️ ▶️ John made Apple not do that anymore and say, Hey, it’s part of the I think, hey, Apple, you have to let
⏹️ ▶️ John third party apps have access to the NFC thingy so that other companies can have an app
⏹️ ▶️ John on your phone so that when you smash your phone against the thing, you can pay with them. But in the US, I believe it is still
⏹️ ▶️ John the case that only Apple can access that through their whatever API is they’re protecting.
⏹️ ▶️ John That is kind of like a level playing field within the iOS market type of argument of saying
⏹️ ▶️ John there are features, there are hardware features of the phone that you don’t let other people use. And why is it?
⏹️ ▶️ John for consumers, Apple will surely argue that having only a single wallet app is better for consumers because it’s simplifying yada
⏹️ ▶️ John yada yada. But the DOJ is going to argue that it’s better if Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John really is doing it to basically make sure that all commerce on the phone goes through them and they get a cut of it and has nothing
⏹️ ▶️ John to do with simplifying things for their customers. That I suspect a lot of the DOJ case will
⏹️ ▶️ John be exactly that and not just this point on all of them. The DOJ saying you’re doing this Apple because
⏹️ ▶️ John it gives you a cut of all transactions and Apple saying no, we’re doing it because having a single wallet is better for consumers because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s simpler and it’s better for security and yada yada yada. And I think both of those things are true.
⏹️ ▶️ John It is simpler and easier for consumers to understand. And also Apple is also doing it
⏹️ ▶️ John so they can get a cut of all those transactions like they’re literally both true. It’s not like they’re they’re not
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re not in opposition to each other at all. Those are two reasons that Apple does it in probably equal
⏹️ ▶️ John measure and neither one of those reasons is wrong. the DOJ has to, I guess, prove
⏹️ ▶️ John that the money reason is more important than the, uh, being nicer for
⏹️ ▶️ John consumers reason and repeat that for all these points.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it seems so weird to me that the DOG really has a burr up its ass about the fact that people want to use
⏹️ ▶️ Casey alternatives to Apple wallet and who, why? Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t really get that. And in fact, I would argue that having that,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that compelling all of these different apps and Ticketmaster and everyone else. If Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is even compelling them to add things into Apple Wallet, I’m sure they are, which they, I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that they are, but I would expect that they are. I actually, why is that
⏹️ ▶️ John bad? So I see, I see the DOJ case on this and I think they have a strong case in terms of the law. It’s going to make
⏹️ ▶️ John sense to people who are on Apple nerds. Here’s the deal. Like from our perspective, we’re like, this is a simplification
⏹️ ▶️ John and because we trust Apple, we prefer this scenario. But from a a strictly business scenario, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John basically Apple saying, no commerce can happen unless we mediate it.
⏹️ ▶️ John So you’re a bank and our phones have NFC and you would love it if you could boop
⏹️ ▶️ John and do your bank stuff, but we’re saying, actually, you’ve got to go through us. I know you’re already a bank,
⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s got to go through us because we need to get our cut, right? And because we need to have control.
⏹️ ▶️ John And Apple would say, and it’s not because we need a cut, it’s not because we need control, we do it for security reasons. That’s why Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John pay is better. We have these temporary credit card numbers. You were just gonna send the same number constantly back and forth.
⏹️ ▶️ John It was totally insecure. Ours was better, blah, blah, blah. But from a strictly business perspective, it’s like they’re basically
⏹️ ▶️ John saying, hey, you bank can’t have an app that uses our phone to pay for things.
⏹️ ▶️ John You can do it on Android phones, it works fine. But here we’re saying, no, everything has to go through us. And for the DOJ’s
⏹️ ▶️ John case, and I think they’re gonna be able to make this pretty strongly to a non-tech savvy audience, is like, why does Apple get to insert
⏹️ ▶️ John itself there? And I think Apple’s obvious claim this is a simplification, it’s better
⏹️ ▶️ John for security, it’s better for privacy, may fall on deaf ears because they’re gonna say like, yeah, that’s exactly what you would say if you wanted to get
⏹️ ▶️ John yourself between every single transaction. And again, I think both are true. I think it is more
⏹️ ▶️ John secure and I do trust Apple more than a lot of these banks and it is better for consumers, but also Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John does wanna cut of that, right? Both things are true. And I don’t quite see
⏹️ ▶️ John how this is going to, how anything useful is going to come out of this because,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, if you have, If the government makes this case, and the things they’re saying are true,
⏹️ ▶️ John and Apple goes on the stand, and the things they’re saying are also true, it basically comes down to the judge and or jury, however this trial
⏹️ ▶️ John is going to go, deciding which one of those two completely true things is
⏹️ ▶️ John dominates the other. And it really just depends on, are you looking at Apple as a big evil corporation?
⏹️ ▶️ John Are you looking at the government as incompetent and tech ignorant? What if it’s both? Por que
⏹️ ▶️ John los dos? Yeah, that’s a difficult thing. And that’s why you never want to leave this up legal
⏹️ ▶️ John case. Just tell again, use your words, government, right regulation that tells Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John what you want it to do differently and Google for that matter, because they’re kind of important in this scenario. So
⏹️ ▶️ John bad. Anyway, this is some, I don’t want to pull this
⏹️ ▶️ John one. Let’s go to Apple’s response because I have a bunch of other excerpts that I want to just do a quick hits on, but here’s Apple’s,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, terse response. Obviously the day of this thing coming out. Uh, you want to read this, this,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Sure. At Apple, we innovate every day to make technology people love. Designing products that work
⏹️ ▶️ Casey seamlessly together, protect people’s privacy and security, and create a magical experience for our users.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This lawsuit threatens who we are and the principles that set Apple products apart in fiercely competitive
⏹️ ▶️ Casey markets. I like that they throw in the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John fiercely competitive part.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If successful, it would hinder our ability to create the kind of technology people expect from Apple, where hardware, software
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and services intersect. It would also set a dangerous precedent, whoo, empowering
⏹️ ▶️ Casey government to take a heavy hand in designing people’s technology. We believe this lawsuit is wrong on the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey facts and the law, and we will vigorously defend against it.”
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think this is better off being read through gritted teeth. At Apple, we innovate every
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey I can do that if you’d
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John like. I can do a second take. I
⏹️ ▶️ John feel like this is a canned thing that they have ready to go, probably had ready to go for ages, kind of like when you’re pre-writing obituaries.
⏹️ ▶️ John But this is a tangent, but it’s my favorite thing about this. We’ve talked many times in the show about how Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ John style guide wants you to say like, Apple Vision Pro and not the Apple Vision Pro, and they want you to say iPhone, not the iPhone.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, we believe iPhone is the best platform for blah, blah, blah. We don’t want you to say we believe the iPhone, right? That’s in
⏹️ ▶️ John all their style guides. That’s the way they do PR or whatever. So in this statement, they say, it would also send
⏹️ ▶️ John a dangerous precedent, empowering government to take a heavy hand. And when I originally read that, I’m like, did I miscopy
⏹️ ▶️ John and paste this? Shouldn’t it say empowering the government to take a heavy hand? But no, the government gets the iPhone treatment.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s called, it’s empowering government, not empowering the government. We don’t say the government, we just say government.
⏹️ ▶️ John Here at government, we believe that Apple is an illegal
⏹️ ▶️ Marco monopoly. I understand Apple’s attitude here because, look,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple does not like being told by external forces how to design their products.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I mean, I can’t blame them. I wouldn’t like it either. But the reality is, again, they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do actually anti-competitive behavior all the time and have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a while that I think is easily avoided. And they have brought this on themselves
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with this behavior. They have been so brazen and so comprehensive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with their anti-competitive behavior over the years that they have invited
⏹️ ▶️ Marco governments to—they’ve actually, you know, they’ve effectively forced governments
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to try to regulate them by behaviors that are not core to their products by
⏹️ ▶️ Marco behaviors like various anti-competitive app store policies and third party service policies
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they have, if you look at all that whole area of their behavior,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that has invited most of this regulation and most of these lawsuits
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and that has nothing to do with their products being good and well integrated with each other and secure
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and private. using that and actually the complaint directly addresses this. They
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use the like security and privacy angle as as an excuse to cover a lot of a lot of behavior.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And a lot of times it’s warranted because Apple products really are pretty secure and pretty private compared to everything else in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the industry. And for the most part, we appreciate that. But they also use that same
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cover on behavior that is not great. And where those
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are not the reasons for that behavior.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or they, very often they are reasons, but they’re not the only reason. And maybe not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John reason. That’s kind
⏹️ ▶️ John of like what you mentioned about trusting Apple, though. That’s part of the reason why I think this
⏹️ ▶️ John has a strong chance in a legal setting. We
⏹️ ▶️ John like a lot of these moves because we trust Apple more than we trust some stupid bank, for
⏹️ ▶️ John example, right? But the law is not just the law for Apple. It’s for all companies. So
⏹️ ▶️ John if you say it’s legal for Apple to insert itself between every transaction, we think great because I’d rather have Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John in there because we trust Apple more. But if you just remove the names and just say anonymous company
⏹️ ▶️ John A, B and C, do you want that to stand? Because one of the companies doing this in the middle was, for example, Microsoft
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever company you have less nice feelings about than Apple.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, exactly. Facebook, right? Whatever, right? The law has to be, you know, whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John the law, that’s not they’re not writing laws. This verdict is going to apply to all companies, not just Apple. And so while
⏹️ ▶️ John we We may actually prefer Apple to insert itself because we trust Apple more because of their proven
⏹️ ▶️ John track record and also because of how Apple makes money is not the same way that Facebook makes money. It’s their incentives
⏹️ ▶️ John are differently aligned. They have a strong legal case to say it’s all well
⏹️ ▶️ John and good because you like this benevolent dictator but it should be illegal for anyone
⏹️ ▶️ John to do that even though Apple’s being nice about it. And I think they might have a strong case there
⏹️ ▶️ John as far as that goes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, so I think Joe Rosensteil retweeted or retweeted an account
⏹️ ▶️ Casey glyph, which I’ve not been familiar with, but I think this is a perfect distillation of kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how I feel about it. Even if you’re an Apple stan and think the company really has no motivation but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a sincere desire to protect users, and government regulators are bad product designers and this will make things worse,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even so, this is Apple’s fault. The handwriting has been on the wall for years.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey They should have figured out a way to self-regulate by now, but because the appearance of impropriety
⏹️ ▶️ Casey clearly exists and has now been called out on multiple continents, this is not one regulator
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with a bias. I mean, it’s so true. You and the three of us have been saying this for years.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, we’ve talked about it for years. We said this was going to happen, and lo and behold, it has. And part of what,
⏹️ ▶️ John when we had these discussions years ago, what I always said is that Apple’s calculation is not that they’re going to avoid regulation,
⏹️ ▶️ John but that they’re going to survive it and it is better to essentially force it to happen
⏹️ ▶️ John and then like settle or like the essentially the making the calculation that yeah, we know we’re bringing
⏹️ ▶️ John on the bad thing. We’re doing it to ourselves, but we think in the end because we’re Apple and we’re so huge
⏹️ ▶️ John that we will still come out in a more powerful position than if we were to give concessions manually.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think that’s true. I think the reputational damage is what they weren’t taking into account, but that
⏹️ ▶️ John has always been like a plausible reason that not that Apple’s just dumb and didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John do that. Oh, they should write self regulated themselves. Why are they so dumb? I think they’re constantly making the calculation like I think we
⏹️ ▶️ John can. I think we can survive. I think we can come out ahead if we just hold firm, bring on
⏹️ ▶️ John the lawsuits, fight it in every continent like just because that’s effectively that’s what they’re doing and no one’s
⏹️ ▶️ John forcing them to do it. They’re choosing to do that. So their calculation much be this is actually the better way to go
⏹️ ▶️ John even though there’s gonna be short term pain and we’re gonna look bad in the end will come out ahead. Uh,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t think they are going to come out ahead. I think it was the wrong choice, but clearly they
⏹️ ▶️ John feel differently. Yeah. Let me do my quick hits with these. I don’t know how quick they’re going to be. I’ll probably stop eventually,
⏹️ ▶️ John but there’s some, some choice snippets that I pulled out of the complaint that I thought were interesting.
⏹️ ▶️ John We already did a couple of them. Um, this one, I mentioned Bieber before not going to go through
⏹️ ▶️ John it all. You can go look through old episodes when we talked about the Bieber thing, but this paragraph is essentially
⏹️ ▶️ John about beeper. This is the DOJ saying, recently, Apple blocked a third party developer from fixing the broken
⏹️ ▶️ John cross-platform messaging experience in Apple Messages and providing end-to-end encryption for messages between Apple Messages
⏹️ ▶️ John and Android users. By rejecting solutions that would allow for cross-platform encryption, Apple continues to make the iPhone less
⏹️ ▶️ John secure than they could be otherwise. This is entirely Beeper’s framing what was going on, but it was ridiculous
⏹️ ▶️ John when Beeper said it, and it’s ridiculous when Beeper was trying to use Apple servers in an unauthorized
⏹️ ▶️ John manner to run a messaging service where it didn’t have to run the servers. Like that’s what they were doing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Nothing to do. It’s like, but this is, this is, it’s as if Bieber wrote this, right? I think they
⏹️ ▶️ John will not do well at that point in court because it is ridiculous, but it’s funny that they shoved it in there.
⏹️ ▶️ John All right, so this is, this is about the, the NFC banking thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple acknowledges it is technically feasible to enable an iPhone user to set another app, for example, a bank’s
⏹️ ▶️ John app as the default payment app. And Apple intends to allow this functionality in Europe. I read this and I say,
⏹️ ▶️ John hmm, DOJ, Why does Apple allow that functionality in Europe? Did they just
⏹️ ▶️ John decide to do it in Europe because they like Europe better? Or is something else going on there? Maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John some other way to change Apple’s behavior other than suing them based on ancient antitrust
⏹️ ▶️ John laws. Like it’s right there in front of them. Apple intends to allow this functionality
⏹️ ▶️ John in Europe. It’s like the bell ringing somewhere. Although,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, keep in mind, like it does kind of work in the sense that like, you know, remember when Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco announced they were switching to, they were gonna add RCS support. And remember how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they announced when they were doing, when the DMA plan came out, they announced also, oh, by the way, the game streaming
⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps thing, that’s okay everywhere now? I mean, we thought at the time, oh, maybe it was China, maybe,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, and maybe that might be true, but there is, now it’s very clear, like, Apple did both of those things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco strategically to kind of get ahead of this. Like, they definitely got wind of these specific
⏹️ ▶️ Marco things the DOJ was going to cite.
⏹️ ▶️ John Also, I think that helped with the EU stuff, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Like it helps them
⏹️ ▶️ John everywhere people are complaining, but the whole point is that Apple is citing something that Apple is intending
⏹️ ▶️ John to allow in Europe. They’re intending to allow it in Europe because Europe actually passed regulations
⏹️ ▶️ John that forced them to. That’s why they’re allowing this in Europe, not because they decided to be nice to
⏹️ ▶️ John Europe. Europe did the thing where you have regulations and you say, Apple, you must
⏹️ ▶️ John allow banks to use the, so if the US government want that to happen, there’s a way that the government can make that happen
⏹️ ▶️ John besides suing them and hoping somewhere in the remedy that they’re forced to open up the NFC chip
⏹️ ▶️ John on phones, just say that’s what you want. They have an example. If you want that, Europe
⏹️ ▶️ John showed you how to do it. This is so targeted and so specific that I believe even our lawmakers
⏹️ ▶️ John could pass a targeted law or regulation saying that Apple has to allow access to it, but that’s just not the level the
⏹️ ▶️ John laws work here. Like, it’s absurd to even think that that would go through because it’s just so many things are aligned against
⏹️ ▶️ John it. Let’s see what else I have. So they have a bunch of stuff, anti-steering
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff in there, which I don’t, I mean, it’s anti-competitive behavior and presumably it would be
⏹️ ▶️ John illegal maintenance of monopoly if you can prove they have a monopoly, which is its own challenge, but this is very… Apple even
⏹️ ▶️ John prohibits developers on its app store from notifying users in a developer’s app that cheaper prices for services are available using alternative
⏹️ ▶️ John digital wallets or direct payments. Yeah, anti-steering, they mentioned anti-steering. They mentioned that there had been
⏹️ ▶️ John court cases that in the US that have said, Apple, you can’t do this anti-steering thing. And they basically
⏹️ ▶️ John say, we had those court cases, They told Apple they can’t do it, but still people are complaining that
⏹️ ▶️ John even though they lost that case and the court said that Apple had to do a thing, the thing that they did is not satisfactory.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m like, see, court cases are a bad way to make Apple do things. Already Epic is like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, continuing that in the legal system saying, hey, Apple lost the case and they did a thing and we think the thing they
⏹️ ▶️ John did doesn’t actually comply with the judgment. So that continues to rumble on. This is all
⏹️ ▶️ John like in their own complaint, it’s evidence that the thing they’re trying to do does not work well to
⏹️ ▶️ John get the end they want. So frustrating. So I guess the relief section,
⏹️ ▶️ John just to quote a few things from the relief. Again, I don’t know how this works legally speaking and who decides
⏹️ ▶️ John what they have to do. And all this is a moot point if they settle out of court with the government, in
⏹️ ▶️ John which case there will actually be a negotiation back and forth about what they’re supposed to agree to do or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John But near the end of the document, it instructs that what they want is, that Deere wants us to.
⏹️ ▶️ John Enter relief as needed to cure any anti-competitive harm, including but not limited to
⏹️ ▶️ John preventing Apple from using its control of app distribution to undermine cross-platform technologies, such as super apps and cloud streaming
⏹️ ▶️ John apps, among others. Prevent Apple from using private APIs to undermine cross-platform technologies, like messaging,
⏹️ ▶️ John smartwatches, and digital wallets, among others. And prevent Apple from using the terms and conditions in its
⏹️ ▶️ John contract with developers, accessory makers, consumers, or others to obtain, maintain, extend, or entrench a monopoly.
⏹️ ▶️ John That is all so vague as to be almost entirely useless. Like if they followed the letter
⏹️ ▶️ John of that, super apps are allowed, you can do cloud streaming, which they already allow.
⏹️ ▶️ John Can Apple not have private APIs? That’s absurd. But they can’t use them to undermine cross-platform technologies
⏹️ ▶️ John like messages, smartwatches, and digital. What does that even mean? Do they have to open up all their Apple Watch APIs to somebody
⏹️ ▶️ John else? I guess they have to open the NFC thing. They have to allow messaging apps to use SMS. And then
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t have terms and conditions in your contract with developers that are anti-competitive? There are so many of them in there. Which ones are you
⏹️ ▶️ John talking about? It’s, that’s the extent of the section where, I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know if that’s, it’s the job of this document is just what should change, but I really wish they had
⏹️ ▶️ John a clear headed vision of here’s what needs to change. Because if they had that, they could have just written a law and there’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a different branch of government that does that. And that’s not what they’re doing here, but yeah. After
⏹️ ▶️ John all this, and this is gonna go on for years and it’s just gonna be a disaster and it’s going to cloud everything that
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple is trying to do with its company over. You just asked Microsoft how much the DOJ trial
⏹️ ▶️ John was in a distraction and did reputational harm. It took them years to recover from. Oh, one
⏹️ ▶️ John other thing, I guess it’s the final. I just I don’t know where I have this in the excerpts or whatever, but there’s this whole
⏹️ ▶️ John section of the document where the DOJ tries to do a victory lap for its Microsoft’s case,
⏹️ ▶️ John saying, you know, the Microsoft case that we won, even though it was partially overturned on appeal. Anyway, you know, the Microsoft
⏹️ ▶️ John case that we won. That basically let Apple become the company it is
⏹️ ▶️ John today because we did that thing. You just, if you know anything about the tech industry, you just have to look at the document and look
⏹️ ▶️ John at the absurd conclusions they’re drawing. And because we did this, Apple could ship iTunes on Windows.
⏹️ ▶️ John the thing about the DOJ MS trial. If any of these people had any clue about anything
⏹️ ▶️ John having to do with the tech sector, here’s how that shook out. It was a huge distraction for Microsoft.
⏹️ ▶️ John it did a lot of reputational harm to them. But in the end, it did not change
⏹️ ▶️ John the shape of the personal computer market. Microsoft dominated personal computers in the 90s.
⏹️ ▶️ John And you know what changed about that? Nothing, nothing significant. You know what
⏹️ ▶️ John changed? The PC market became less relevant because the mobile market was where the new
⏹️ ▶️ John show was. But what happened in the PC market? Did Windows disappear? Did Linux on the desktop become
⏹️ ▶️ John common? No, the only thing that happened was the PC market became less relevant. But the shape of
⏹️ ▶️ John it did not change. This did not fix the DOJ trial did not fix Microsoft’s dominance
⏹️ ▶️ John of the PC market. It stayed basically the same. Apple eroded it slowly over many years or whatever. But
⏹️ ▶️ John it fundamentally didn’t change. It was Microsoft dominating with with Apple with a tiny
⏹️ ▶️ John market share. And now Apple’s market share is like 10 times what it was then, but still small.
⏹️ ▶️ John And that took decades, right? The DOJ trial, if it was supposed
⏹️ ▶️ John to fix the PC market, it didn’t. The PC market, it was like, Microsoft dominated,
⏹️ ▶️ John and there’s literally nothing this court case can do to fix it. Even if Microsoft loses, they have the settlement, blah, blah, blah.
⏹️ ▶️ John It did not change the PC market. What happened was, new market, the mobile
⏹️ ▶️ John market, and that is what this whole case is about. And so if they think that somehow, by
⏹️ ▶️ John massively winning this thing, they’re going to quote unquote, fix the phone market, if they’re using
⏹️ ▶️ John the Microsoft DOJ trial as their precedent, the best case scenario is that phones
⏹️ ▶️ John are replaced by digital holographic rings or some crap, and then even though the phone market
⏹️ ▶️ John never got any better, and it stayed Microsoft and Android, and it stayed the way it always is, eventually
⏹️ ▶️ John decades later a new market came along and phones became less relevant, and don’t hold your breath for that. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco just giving you an example, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. It’s so bad that they think, like, see what we did with
⏹️ ▶️ John the Microsoft case? like, DOJ, do not cite that. You did not fix the
⏹️ ▶️ John PC market. You were rescued by the fact that the PC market became less relevant. That’s it. You
⏹️ ▶️ John did not fix anything. It’s just, that’s the part that makes me give them a C-minus on this paper, because
⏹️ ▶️ John they do not understand. They don’t understand their own. I mean, these people weren’t the people who did that. Obviously, those people
⏹️ ▶️ John all retired. But they do not understand history and what the MS-DOJ case meant. It is not what
⏹️ ▶️ John allowed Apple to become the iPhone company at all. and it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John fixed the PC market.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right, thank you so much to our sponsors this week, Squarespace and Trade Coffee. Thank you also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to our members who support us directly. You can join us atp.fm slash join. Our new member
⏹️ ▶️ Marco benefit is what we’re calling ATP overtime. This is our special bonus topic at the end
⏹️ ▶️ Marco after we’ve recorded the regular stuff. We have a special bonus topic after the show, tech
⏹️ ▶️ Marco topics about 15 to 45 minutes. This week we are talking about Apple’s AI updates.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There was some AI stuff, AI updates from Apple this past week, so we’re gonna be talking about that in ATP Overtime.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thank you everyone, you can join in here atb.fm join and we will talk to you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin, Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was accidental, oh
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental. John didn’t do any research, Marco
⏹️ ▶️ John wouldn’t let him, Cause it was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental. And you can find the show notes
⏹️ ▶️ John at ATP.FM And if you’re into Twitter,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M, 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 Accidental, check podcast so long
#askatp: Multi- vs. single-monitor
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s do a post-show brief Ask ATP, because we didn’t get a chance to talk about it in the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey main show, and we needed something, a little bit of a palate cleanser. So we have a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey question that ostensibly is from Tony, but might as well be from me. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Tony writes, I’ve been listening to the show for years, and there’s a question I’ve been dying to know the answer to. Why do John and Marco
⏹️ ▶️ Casey only use one monitor? Is it aesthetics? Is it the cost of monitors? Is it comfort level, because that’s what they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey used to? Do they hate slightly turning their heads that much? I know not everyone wants triple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 32-inch 4K monitors set up like I have, connected to an M1 Max MacBook Pro, but the thought of working on just one
⏹️ ▶️ Casey monitor seems oppressive to me, and the amount of window management I’d have to do makes it a non-starter for me. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey then I will briefly add that in the same way that I can work on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one monitor, I mean I did on my iMac Pro for years, I really prefer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey having two. The three that I have now is admittedly overkill, but I have it, so why not use it? But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the other thing that we haven’t really talked about, and if I ever do my own version of John’s video, is I’m also a devout
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Spaces user, and to the best of my recollection, I know John very much isn’t, and I don’t think Marco is either. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what’s the deal with monitors and Spaces? Let’s start with Marco.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You’re right, I don’t use Spaces. I tried virtual desktops over the years
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here and there, not much because it just did not click with me at all, so I never spent a lot of time doing that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Multiple monitors, I did run for years. I ran first two 17s and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco then eventually two 24s, or I would do like a laptop and a 24, or a laptop and a 17, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at various points during that time as my setup changed and evolved over the years. So I did
⏹️ ▶️ Marco dual monitors for a long time. The reason I stopped is that once I switched
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to first a 30-inch 1X monitor,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an old HP thing that was basically HP’s version of Apple’s 30-inch monitor, and then once Retina happened,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s when those all became 27 inch 5Ks, which doubled the resolution, made it a little bit smaller,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and now on the XDR. The reason I switched to a single monitor is that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was able to have enough space and I got a whole bunch of benefits of having
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one monitor. And so for me, and again, this is so personal, that it really depends on how you work, but for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco me, one of the big benefits was there’s a whole bunch of like little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco subtle bugs paper cuts when you have multiple monitors that you just don’t get when you have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one. So the windows are never on the wrong screen, a bunch of weird bugs that could
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe occasionally happen never happen, so there’s a whole bunch of little paper cut things you avoid.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But just generally, I like the flexibility that if I want to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco see one thing really big, I can do that. Or if I want to have it subdivided,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco however I want to have it subdivided, I can do that too. I had multiple monitors, now admittedly I never did more than
⏹️ ▶️ Marco two. So maybe, you know, if I could do like the XDR in the middle and then maybe two smaller
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ones on the side. I mean that would be, I would need a larger desk and I think a larger office, but I could maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco make that work. But, that much screen space, I could do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, but I don’t think I would make good use of it. I even found, even when I was just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco using two 24s, I would find that I kind of had like a junk
⏹️ ▶️ Marco drawer style of window organization, where one would always kind of be my primary
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one, where I’d have like the main stuff I’m working on, and the stuff I would put in the second one would be stuff like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my music app, maybe like a chat room, if I’m in a chat room,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco maybe I’d put email over there, like you know, kind of like rarely used or like accessory apps,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not the main thing I’m working in. And what I found is that I was better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just doing those things on one big monitor because I didn’t need those to be constantly showing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, with, I wouldn’t even necessarily say like moderate to heavy window management,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would say any window management, you can pretty easily keep your mail
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and your music player and stuff hidden when you’re not using them and then bring them up when you wanna use them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that to me is not that much friction. And so I found that when I had like accessory
⏹️ ▶️ Marco monitors off to the side, I would have those things up there, but I really didn’t need them to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be there. So it was kind of wasted monitor space. And it encouraged
⏹️ ▶️ Marco me to keep more stuff open, even though I wasn’t really using it all at the same
⏹️ ▶️ Marco time. So it was more just like an alternative to hiding windows
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I didn’t really need. And meanwhile, you have all those paper cuts, you have the complexity, you have the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco physical complexity. And also, frankly, that was mainly a thing I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would do at work. Now that I work at home, one of the wonders
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I have partaken in as a home work setup is speakers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on my desk to play music sometimes when no one’s around. It’s wonderful.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I like big speakers, because they sound better, frankly. And I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t think I could put two monitors on my desk and also have speakers in a reasonable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco location to sound good to my ears at this distance. So all these things combined to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically be the benefits of multiple monitors, I found I didn’t use
⏹️ ▶️ Marco very well. You know, anything that was outside of my periphery of like, if I had to even slightly turn
⏹️ ▶️ Marco my head, I would just never use it. Like I would never do anything useful on those monitors.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I also going back to what I said earlier, I greatly like the idea of having
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one giant one so I can have one giant window sometimes when I need that. So, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that can be things like, if I wanna see my entire calendar month and not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have any days be truncated, I can do that. If I wanna edit a photo and see the entire resolution
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of this giant 100 megapixel photo, I can do that. If I wanna have a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco huge Xcode window and a huge documentation window and three different simulators running, I can do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that. I have tons of space to do that, but I have the flexibility that it’s one big monitor. So if I wanna have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one app, it can be one app. If I wanna have 10 apps, it can be 10 apps.
⏹️ ▶️ John John. It’s a lot of similar reasons.
⏹️ ▶️ John I do wanna have the most stuff in front of me that I possibly can, and I always feel
⏹️ ▶️ John like multiple monitors is just putting a strip of monitor bezel
⏹️ ▶️ John in the middle of that. And then you say, well, but there’s no way you can have a single monitor that is as big as two of these monitors
⏹️ ▶️ John and when you get to that size it does become about head turning. Like I don’t want to look to my
⏹️ ▶️ John left and look to my right that much. Like I do want the biggest
⏹️ ▶️ John possible thing right in front of me so I’ve got the XDR in front of me. Any monitor that I put to the left or the right of the XDR
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m gonna have to turn my head and the way I work doesn’t, like it doesn’t lend
⏹️ ▶️ John itself to that. Now that’s not to say I haven’t had multiple monitors, in fact during the whole classic Mac era, I
⏹️ ▶️ John had my SE30 and then I had a color monitor and so I had two monitors. And yeah, one of them was nine inch black and white. So
⏹️ ▶️ John what could you put there? But you could put small stuff there. I had like an IRC window there back in the early internet days. Like it’s just text.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s fine. It works. But I didn’t like the whole like,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not so much knowing where things are and which monitor or whatever, but like, I wouldn’t want to do active
⏹️ ▶️ John things that far to my left. I felt like I was it’s kind of like a driving a Viper
⏹️ ▶️ John for a little post show neutral here where you’re offset because the transmission tunnel is so big, you’re not even,
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re not even sitting sort of facing the direction the car is moving. You’re kind of sitting sideways because
⏹️ ▶️ John the pedal box is offset by the giant transmission tunnel. I don’t want to work looking
⏹️ ▶️ John to my left for any amount of time. So then you’re like bringing the window over to the monitor that’s in front of you to work
⏹️ ▶️ John on it. Then you got to remember to bring it back. It’s just a vast simplification for me to have one big
⏹️ ▶️ John monitor. As I’ve said in the past when we’ve talked about this, there’s a limit. if the monitor in
⏹️ ▶️ John front of me was 100 inches, now I’m turning my head to see one monitor, right? I know there’s a limit,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I can tell you it’s not 32 inches because I’ve got that now and I find this perfectly satisfactory and I love it.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think I could go with a slightly larger size than this in particular height wise, I
⏹️ ▶️ John could probably take three or four more inches of height and probably a couple inches on either side before it gets to the point where I feel
⏹️ ▶️ John like I’m turning my head, but it’s close. I feel like it’s close to the limit. So I’ll let you know, if Apple ever sells
⏹️ ▶️ John a 48 inch monitor that’s retina resolution, that’s probably too big for me, especially
⏹️ ▶️ John as my vision continues to decline, right? So there is a limit, but in general,
⏹️ ▶️ John I want the biggest single monitor in front of me that I can handle. And because I’m not constrained by the need
⏹️ ▶️ John to have every single window that is open visible at the same time, I’m fine with windows being on top of each
⏹️ ▶️ John other. I’m fine with hiding windows. I’m fine with hiding entire applications. I don’t use spaces, but I do hide things
⏹️ ▶️ John a lot. That solution allows me to have a tremendous amount of stuff on just
⏹️ ▶️ John one monitor. I often think that a lot of the times when people have multiple monitors, it’s like, but what if I wanna have
⏹️ ▶️ John all these things open at the same time? It’s like, dude, I have all those things open at the same time.
⏹️ ▶️ John what if I wanna see them all
⏹️ ▶️ John same time? I was like, well, you can only be looking at one place at once. So you’re not actually looking at the thing that’s on your
⏹️ ▶️ John far left monitor and the thing that’s on your far right monitor at the same time. You’re just looking at them in turn. And guess what?
⏹️ ▶️ John You can look at them in turn when they’re on your main monitor if you know how to manage windows because you can bring
⏹️ ▶️ John one to the front and now you’re looking at that one and you bring the other one to the front and now you’re looking at that one. There’s so many ways to do that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Spaces is one, command tab, clicking your mouse, hiding apps, right? I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t feel constrained by that. I definitely feel a lot of people like, I definitely need two monitors to help me work because I got to
⏹️ ▶️ John have this here and I got to have that here and I got to see them all at the same time. And it’s very often the case that they’re not
⏹️ ▶️ John seeing them all at the same time. They’re seeing them in turn. And the way they’re doing the in turn is by
⏹️ ▶️ John literally turning their head, which is valid. I’m not saying that’s the wrong way to do things, but the way I work doesn’t require
⏹️ ▶️ John that. And so I managed to get by with only the Pro Display XDR.