593: Not a European Lawyer
27 Jun 2024The EU giveth, and Apple taketh away.
Episode Description:
- Pre-show: Casey’s thought processes and traditions
- Follow-up:
- iCloud Keychain browser integration in Sequoia
- Ricky Mondello on
- Simeon (formerly Chrome, now Firefox) weighs in
- Niléane points out Network Locations was already back in Sonoma
- iPhone Mirroring doesn’t help with rearranging your home screen (via Hunt 2013)
- HomePods apparently have 1GB RAM
- Some insight on InSight
- Chess is around 35 years old
- CarPlay
- iCloud Keychain browser integration in Sequoia
- Apple Found in Breach of DMA
- Apple may delay features because of DMA
- Ask ATP:
- Does anyone keep track if rumor mongers’ claims are true are not? (via Todd Vaziri)
- Post-show: An update on Erin’s car situation
- Members-only ATP Overtime: Apple plans thinner devices?
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Chapters
- Goose season
- Follow-up
- Next-gen CarPlay
- EU: “You’re DMAing wrong”
- Apple: “No soup for you”
- #askatp: Rumor accountability
- Ending theme
- Neutral: Erin’s car
Goose season
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I changed up the band this time. I played some Goose this time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John So different.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, I don’t know if I like this at all. Because even though I’m in full support of you broadening
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your horizons, which to your credit you actually have done. But I’m not… So here’s the thing. I’m not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey an athlete. I’ve never been an athlete. Anyone who has met me in person will not find this surprising at all.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is where I ask myself, where is this going?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Yeah, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But as it so happens, I’ve been rewatching The Last Dance recently, which is a just phenomenal
⏹️ ▶️ Casey documentary series chronicling the Chicago Bulls double three piece. Still have
⏹️ ▶️ John Yep, me too. Unless you’re going to do the bus on the Chicago Bridge.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No. The Dave Matthews poop bus? Can we not? We’re required to mention the poop bus every time we mention any kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey band, right? Yes, yes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know, I know. In any case, something that athletes seem to do is wear
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like the same garments, you know, like, you know, or the same or tie their shoes in the same way or, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey left shoe than right shoe. You know, there’s all these superstitions. And now I feel like if we have a truly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey terrible recording, or I don’t know, maybe if I spill something on my computer, not that that would ever happen, perhaps
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s because you chose to break the mold and not play fish before the show
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for the live listeners. And so I am absolving myself, I am preemptively absolving
⏹️ ▶️ Casey myself of any guilt if anything bad happens this episode. It’s all because you broke tradition.
⏹️ ▶️ John This is a real insight into the way Casey’s mind works. So what he wanted to say was like, you broke the tradition
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s like superstition, kind of like the sports superstition. But he started with I’m not an athlete. Then he mentioned
⏹️ ▶️ John a movie he liked about sports.
⏹️ ▶️ John to people in sports do superstitious things. And then finally came around.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Gosh, I really am realizing my full potential as Alex Cox.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s no, it like it connected. Everything connected. It’s just it was a long path. And that’s an insight into how your
⏹️ ▶️ John mind works, because that’s that was your path to that thought.
⏹️ ▶️ John only thought was I was trying to come up with a like a fish fish goose joke and I didn’t know if you would get that reference.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, you get that one, but you don’t get duck season rabbit season. That one goes over both of your heads.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, that’s a Bugs Bunny. Why
⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t you get it before then? When did you say before? Oh, maybe you didn’t hear when you heard us.
⏹️ ▶️ John We couldn’t hear you.
⏹️ ▶️ John talking about the ducks out his window and he said he’s not sure if it’s duck season and said maybe it’s rabbit season. And then Marco took
⏹️ ▶️ John it straight up and said, no, the rabbits don’t come out yet or something. I’m like, no, there’s it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco full of rabbits. I have tons of rabbits, but I also did yes indeed miss the joke. Okay.
⏹️ ▶️ John All right, right It’s not a joke, just a reference. But Casey got it, so I’m declaring partial victory.
Follow-up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s get the show on the road. We have a lot of follow-up because we’re still in the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey WWDC follow-up season. And friend of the show, Ricky Mondello, wrote with regard to iCloud
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Keychain browser integration in Sequoia. So we had talked last episode, I think it was last episode, it was 592, whatever one
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we’re on now. And we had talked about how there were some kind of unusual
⏹️ ▶️ Casey JSON files stored on the file system and we weren’t really sure what it was about. And it didn’t seem
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bad, but it didn’t seem entirely right either. And Ricky
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has worked on a lot of the passwords-related stuff for Apple for a long time. I was lucky
⏹️ ▶️ Casey enough to see Ricky at WWDC. I don’t know if—I don’t think either of you were with me at the time, but they are doing great,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I was very happy to see them. Anyways, coming back to the point here, I’m going off on a tangent again. Gosh, I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so Alex this episode. You? Anyway, so Ricky writes, ATP Episode 592
⏹️ ▶️ Casey speculated that macOS Sequoia pre-installs the iCloud passwords browser extension for Chrome users.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It absolutely does not. The Disqus.json files support the user-installable extension
⏹️ ▶️ Casey communicating with the OS to securely access password data. See a link we’ll put in the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey show notes. The new passwords app does encourage Chrome and Edge users to install the extension on first launch,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey however. The button opens the browser to the, or the button that they’re using to promote
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this, opens a browser to the relevant Chrome or Edge web store page. So Simeon
⏹️ ▶️ Casey writes, I’m a DevRel engineer for Firefox add-ons and previously Chrome extensions.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The JSON file you mentioned is part of Chrome’s quote unquote native messaging system. As the name
⏹️ ▶️ Casey suggests, this allows extensions and native applications to exchange messages. More specifically, this files
⏹️ ▶️ Casey how a desktop application tells Chrome that if its partner extension is installed, Chrome can route the messages between them.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey In order for this to work, both sides have to know about each other and opt into communication over a native messaging port. Also,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey while browsers used to allow other applications to directly sideload extensions, they’ve scaled back that functionality
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for security, privacy, and annoyance reasons. Today, browsers let native apps notify the user that an extension
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is available for installation, but don’t actually install it until the user opts in. And there’s a couple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of more informative links that we will also put in the show
⏹️ ▶️ John notes. MARK MIRCHANDANI Yeah, so that explains it. The last episode, we were talking about how the path in the JSON file was
⏹️ ▶️ John to one of those system cryptexes or whatever. But apparently, that’s to the thing that mediates between. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John assuming it’s a thing that mediates between them, the native messaging system thing. So these are just sort of declaring, hey,
⏹️ ▶️ John if an app, if these Chrome extensions or Firefox extensions with these signatures appear, allow
⏹️ ▶️ John them to communicate through this mediated extension to, you know, get and set password
⏹️ ▶️ John data. So the actual extensions are not part of Sequoia.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, Nilyan, who’s doing incredible work over at MacStories, reminds us that network location support is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey already in macOS 14 Sonoma. Whoopsie-dipsies, I did not realize.
⏹️ ▶️ John That was my Casey List moment, because I think we talked about
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey this on the show. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I can’t expect either one of you to remember, but I know, of course, yeah, whenever it came back, it was
⏹️ ▶️ John probably in a follow up item. And I just totally forgot about it. I don’t even know if it came back in Sonoma might have come back in
⏹️ ▶️ John the OS before that, which of course, we all know the name of. Oh, no,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco doing this again. Let’s not do that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s not do that, please.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m not. I don’t even remember. I’m not even a wager. Yes, it’s going to be embarrassing. So I’m just going to plow for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco house of prime rib. We can never…
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Sacramento. Yeah, that’s it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey For a split second, I thought you were serious. So with regard to iPhone mirroring, we had thought
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that, hey, maybe what you can do is in Sonoma… Nope, not Sonoma. Yes. No.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What’s the new one? Sequoia.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You can’t use two S names in a row, Apple. Come on. I’m feeble-minded.
⏹️ ▶️ John Mac OS 18. Okay. Yeah. The one before was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Centura. Yep. In Sequoia in beta 2,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hunt2013 writes that you cannot enter home screen edit mode while using iPhone mirroring.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So the plague of jiggle mode lives
⏹️ ▶️ John on. Last night I had Merlin test this and he also could not figure out how to get into wiggle mode
⏹️ ▶️ John because apparently like the phone is locked when you’re doing the mirroring thing or whatever. So
⏹️ ▶️ John he couldn’t, I was like, I’ll just hold down on the icon on the phone. He was telling me he couldn’t like make it, the icons
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey wiggle that way. and
⏹️ ▶️ John apparently holding down with the mouse cursor on the mirrored thing on your Mac also doesn’t put it into wiggle mode. So
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe this is not definitive, maybe it’s just a limitation of the beta, but
⏹️ ▶️ John man, why would they do that? Why would they make it so you couldn’t enter wiggle mode on your home screen?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I’m not sure what that’s about. I don’t know, maybe, I was gonna say maybe it’s too much
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Yeah, like frame rate, but it’s right next to
⏹️ ▶️ John the, like they do sidecar with the iPad with a much bigger screen, so
⏹️ ▶️ John it doesn’t make any sense. Right. Could just be a bug. We’ll find out. And the reason I haven’t tried
⏹️ ▶️ John this is because I was all ready to try it. Oh, it’s in beta 2 of Sequoia. I have beta 2 of Sequoia installed
⏹️ ▶️ John on a real drive and also in a VM, although apparently VMs can’t do it because of some Bluetooth limitation. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John then I realized, oh, you also need the beta on your phone. I was like, well, I’m not ready to do that yet. So I haven’t
⏹️ ▶️ John been able to try this. But whichever one of us first installs
⏹️ ▶️ John the beta of Sequoia and the beta on their phone. We’ll see if we can figure it out.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Not it on that one. With regard to HomePod RAM, I think this was in the context of,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey does it have enough RAM to do Apple intelligence stuff? I think.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So anyways, Jan Gobel writes, according to every Mac, the HomePod 2 has an S7 chip
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with one gig of RAM and the HomePod mini an S5 with one gig of RAM. Seeming a little
⏹️ ▶️ Casey slim. I don’t think that’s gonna
⏹️ ▶️ John work. Probably not gonna be running any on-device Apple intelligence with that amount of RAM.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mm-hmm. We had somebody writing in anonymously, with regard to tvOS’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Insight feature. This is the like a clone of Amazon X-Ray. I run metadata APIs
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for one of the largest media companies on the planet. I don’t know exactly how Amazon or Apple tags metadata,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I can offer some insight into how we do it. We process hundreds of hours of content
⏹️ ▶️ Casey every week. And it’s all tagged scene by scene with actors, locations, music, attitudes, moods, DEI info,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and more. This is done with a mix of ML and a team of about 50 human taggers, and it is all done before
⏹️ ▶️ Casey content distribution. ML does the first pass, and then the humans are tasked with checking the machine, as well as adding
⏹️ ▶️ Casey contextual mood-based tags that the machine doesn’t or can’t understand. The first pass is relatively
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fast, and our accuracy is over 98%. This is achieved by having relatively
⏹️ ▶️ Casey limited datasets with specialized, dynamically generated ML models for each show or movie. For example, if the ML
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is tagging one of our sitcoms, the first thing it does is call for for a list of actors and locations that have been previously
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tagged. It then dynamically quote unquote trains a small specialized model using only that data.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This operation only takes a few seconds. Then the robot matches existing tags to faces and places them from
⏹️ ▶️ Casey within the custom model. If any faces are new to the model at the end of the tagging
⏹️ ▶️ Casey algorithms, then generalized ML facial and location matches are made and flagged as needing a human
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tagger approval. This tagging is much faster, more accurate than either human taggers or any generalized facial
⏹️ ▶️ Casey recognition ML, and can be automated on large batches of back library content
⏹️ ▶️ Casey without massive computing overhead.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s a great example of just machine learning really taking a huge chunk out of that workload. Because
⏹️ ▶️ John if it was done completely manually by humans, it was just what a slog. Not a particularly fun job,
⏹️ ▶️ John slow, and the point that the ML can potentially beat humans on a first pass just because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s so tedious, the work is so tedious, that the computer is
⏹️ ▶️ John as good as it is, but it does, it never gets tired. Right. So whatever, whatever it’s doing in the first
⏹️ ▶️ John hour, it’s also going to do on the 900th hour, whereas the humans are going to fade. So this is interesting, a
⏹️ ▶️ John human computer combination to do all this. And I love that they’re tagging it based on, and not just like who’s in the scene, but like the mood
⏹️ ▶️ John of the scene and stuff. It’s, you know, interesting that they’re throwing a so much metadata at whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John company this person works for, which they didn’t say in their message. But yeah, I’m all for this. I
⏹️ ▶️ John met a date is great. The more, the better.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. Mahai Parparita writes with regard to chess on Mac OS that based on infinitemac.org,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the chess app first showed up in Next Step 1.0 as a developer sample app. So that means,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey kids, it’s almost 35 years old. Holy jemoys.
⏹️ ▶️ John Wow. That’s a fun thing of infinitemac, which, if you don’t know, it’s a way to sort of run in your web browser really old
⏹️ ▶️ John versions of Mac OS and now also old versions of Next. And so to answer this question that I was musing about last
⏹️ ▶️ John time, I wonder how old chess as I said, I thought it was dated back to the next days, but I didn’t know how far. Well, you
⏹️ ▶️ John could try to look that up on the Wikipedia page, try to find someone blog post about chess in the next app, but like,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s so much more direct, just go to infinite mac.org and pick an OS and
⏹️ ▶️ John launch it like pick next step in some version and launch it and see if the chess app is there and then just go back in time and go older and older until
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t see it anymore. I love Infinite Mac. Whoever did that site is amazing.
Next-gen CarPlay
⏹️ ▶️ Casey With regard to CarPlay, where did we leave our Intrepid
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Heroes last episode? I feel I can’t recall specifically because it was a while ago and I’ve been busy, which we’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Casey talk about in the after show.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I believe we left them as next generation CarPlay has been announced and yet nothing has
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, which is where we’ve left it for the last what, two years? Three years?
⏹️ ▶️ John No, no. Let me help you here. So we had an item about it.
⏹️ ▶️ John There was some feedback from someone who’d watch the Next Generation CarPlay sessions at WWDC and was
⏹️ ▶️ John characterizing them as a bunch of Apple developers saying, here,
⏹️ ▶️ John look at all these variations you can have. You can pick any variation of this one font, for example. And that kind of attitude
⏹️ ▶️ John was not going to mesh well with the car makers’ desire to have much more control over
⏹️ ▶️ John the appearance of their cars. But many questions remained about
⏹️ ▶️ John Next Gen CarPlay because at that point, none of us had seen the sessions. Well, now I have seen all the sessions that are relevant
⏹️ ▶️ John to And so now we actually have some information to share.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, so I 2x’ed them earlier today. So you probably digested them far
⏹️ ▶️ Casey better than I did. But I was just trying to mainline them, basically, before we recorded. There were a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey couple of interesting parts. And you actually called out in the show notes, for the three of us, something that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was going to call out when I was watching it, a quote from the first session,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is entitled, Next Generation CarPlay Design System. And a quote
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from the host, they had said, it enables you to express your own visual design philosophy within CarPlay
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to create an iconic individual look tailored to you, your vehicles, and their unique functions. The result
⏹️ ▶️ Casey won’t just look like Apple, and it also won’t just look like a copy of the built-in system. It’s designed to be a unique celebration
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of both brands, a special co-branded experience only when your vehicle and iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey come together. And it reflects a great deal of hard work we’ve done with automakers all over the world to innovate
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the in-car experience. Our design system for automakers, this is a little bit later, empowers
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you in partnership with our team here at Apple to help, or excuse me, to develop a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey beautiful co-branded experience that celebrates both brands.
⏹️ ▶️ John All right, so this answers a lot of questions. So first of all, the question we were always asking, next-gen CarPlay, it takes over all the screens.
⏹️ ▶️ John A few shows ago, we had some, you know, quotes from interviews with the Mercedes and Polestar CEO
⏹️ ▶️ John on a Decoder podcast with the host asking, Would you let Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John take over all your screens? And one of them was like, no way, we’re not letting Apple take over our screens. The other one was like, oh, they can take over the screens because
⏹️ ▶️ John we still run the car and it’s not a big deal. But we still have this question, like, what does this mean? How does the car work when the phone’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John there? Is the phone required? Does this stuff run on the car? Does it run on the phone? Is it a combination?
⏹️ ▶️ John This and then also the feedback we had last time about, you know, you can pick one font. It’s got to look like Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever. This clearly gives a bunch of answers. Number one, there is a built in system.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you don’t have an iPhone and you get in the car, all the screens are filled with something, something made by the car maker,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? So that is clear. Number two, the way Apple sees this is
⏹️ ▶️ John that this next-gen CarPlay experience is supposed to be a blending
⏹️ ▶️ John of Apple’s branding and your car’s branding. It’s like, okay, your car is your car and whatever your car looks like
⏹️ ▶️ John and all the screens and everything. But when you get in with your iPhone, what we want is to say, now
⏹️ ▶️ John I phone-ify this car. What does this car look like when I come in with my iPhone? Woo,
⏹️ ▶️ John my iPhone takes over everything and it’s iPhone branded, but it’s also your branded, but it’s Apple branded, but it’s your brand.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re so clear that they’re saying, we’re not giving you a system where you car maker can
⏹️ ▶️ John make it look like how you want to promote your brand. That is not even what Apple is offering. Forget about whether
⏹️ ▶️ John they deliver, they’re not saying, hey, we gave you a system and you can make this look like Audi. Whatever you want Audi to
⏹️ ▶️ John look like, we give you the flex. No, they’re not even offering that. They’re saying, we will give you the ability
⏹️ ▶️ John to make a look that is a combination that celebrates both brands. It’s a combination
⏹️ ▶️ John of Apple’s aesthetic and yours. And you can debate how much of a balance, like where is that line?
⏹️ ▶️ John How much is it? Is it 50% Apple, 50% Audi? Or is it 60-40? Or is it 90-10 or whatever? But
⏹️ ▶️ John that is the pitch that this is what your car looks like when it’s painted with
⏹️ ▶️ John a giant iPhone paintbrush. And it only happens when someone enters with a phone. And when they don’t do that, or
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t connect their phone to your car, it just looks like your car. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I found this very surprising because I assume next-gen CarPlay took over all the screens. It would be some kind of thing
⏹️ ▶️ John of like, look, it’ll be a CarPlay-like experience, but Apple’s offering you
⏹️ ▶️ John the technology to do all your screens, right? And you can customize it and so on and so forth and integrate with CarPlay. But I
⏹️ ▶️ John thought that would be like the whole thing. And then there would be a carve out for when your phone’s there, but when your phone’s not there, it would still look like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John But that’s not it at all. And it makes me think even more like, who would want this?
⏹️ ▶️ John Who would want to have to design every screen in their car?
⏹️ ▶️ John You know, they have to design every screen in their car. They spend all this time to make everything look nice, they integrate
⏹️ ▶️ John all the features. And then Apple saying, we would like it when someone gets into your car with an iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John for that phone to cover up everything you’ve done, right? And
⏹️ ▶️ John by the way, you have to do work to integrate this and we’ll get to that in a little bit of how the integration works. Every pixel
⏹️ ▶️ John that you’ve done before, we want to potentially cover up. Oh, there’s places where your stuff can peek through and we’ll talk
⏹️ ▶️ John about that. But like, because that would be a co-branded experience that blends the best of Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John in your car. And the car makers would be like, why would I want to blend the best of Apple into my car? Like, why would I want to do that?
⏹️ ▶️ John Because people who own iPhones love iPhones so much, they want every screen they look at to look like an iPhone and be branded
⏹️ ▶️ John like an Apple thing. Boggles my mind, but at least question answered.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s what next-gen car play is. And now it is no longer, it is even less surprising that
⏹️ ▶️ John there have not been car makers jumping on this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I will say there’s one aspect of it that I saw just breeze by in some slide somewhere
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it’s one of the changes in next-gen CarPlay is quote, buffered audio.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This sounds a lot like AirPlay 2 and the way that approaches audio buffering, which is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so you know, AirPlay 1 had, in order to address, you know, the realities
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of like dropouts and interference and stuff so that your music wouldn’t have like little skips static
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it introduces a buffer. AirPlay 1 had a fixed two-second
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buffer on almost everything. It’s anti-shock all over again. Yeah, exactly. It made
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it very sluggish to respond to like play pause commands, stuff like that. And then AirPlay 2
⏹️ ▶️ Marco basically introduced a system where the app could send a whole bunch of data all at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco once of like a minute or a minute and a half of audio to the client device and have the client device play
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, you know, in a little bit more smart way where operations like play, pause
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and seek would generally be able to use the buffer and kind of respond immediately.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s one of the reasons why AirPlay 2 is so much better than AirPlay 1. And that just required, you know, more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco technical sophistication of like being able to transmit a whole bunch of data at once and have the client actually store
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a large buffer of it and be able to navigate a little bit more smartly. Well it sounds like that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco might be what they’re doing with this CarPlay Audio 2 where like In the current version
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of CarPlay, the audio just goes over what I believe is Bluetooth I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all of the time. Because it has, it creates like a little peer-to-peer Wi-Fi network for wireless CarPlay
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the video streaming. I don’t think the audio goes over that channel. I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the audio always is Bluetooth, but I could be wrong about that. But anyway, introducing quote
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buffered audio in this next-gen CarPlay sounds like the audio won’t go over Bluetooth
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anymore, which will give them so much more control over latency
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and various handling details of that connection. So honestly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I kind of wish they wouldn’t tie these two things together. I wish they could find a way to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco introduce this new audio situation to a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco version of car play. The automakers are more likely to actually adopt and maybe Maybe they will over time, but
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not clear whether. So this is the next gen car play and we’ll talk about the architecture in a second, but it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not clear whether they demand that to get next gen car play, you have to let us take over
⏹️ ▶️ John all the screens or whether a car maker could choose to implement next gen car play
⏹️ ▶️ John only on like the center screen. You know what I mean?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Oh, that’s those
⏹️ ▶️ John those type of business things were not mentioned in the WDC. It’s kind of a weird WDC
⏹️ ▶️ John session, too, because I guess the audience is people who work for car makers. we, as
⏹️ ▶️ John just regular developers, can do anything with, well, I guess your apps would run in XJARC,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I don’t think that experience has changed too much. But if they’re really talking to the people who work at
⏹️ ▶️ John car makers, the business people will have a lot more questions. Can we get the
⏹️ ▶️ John better audio without letting you take over the instrument cluster, for example? I don’t know the answer to that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, at the beginning of the first session about the design system, I wasn’t quick enough to call up the transcript. But the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey host says something along the lines of, This is for automakers or people who are just interested
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in design or cars or whatever, you know, and so that’s, and that’s where we come in. Um, one of the things that I did
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think was interesting was before I watched these videos, a lot of people were getting really perturbed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that the San Francisco font family is the only font family allowed,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which at first I was like, yeah, that stinks. But after watching the video, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey see that there, while that is a little bit crummy, I actually am not that bothered by
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it because There’s so many different variations between weight and kerning and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ John all look like San Francisco though. Like car makers have their own fonts that
⏹️ ▶️ John evoke the car maker’s brand. Some of them are, I think, kind of gaudy and ugly, but they
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco look nothing
⏹️ ▶️ John like San Francisco. Like again, because this is a co-branded experience, it celebrates both brands, but it only
⏹️ ▶️ John celebrates Apple in terms of the fonts. It does not celebrate BMW
⏹️ ▶️ John or Lamborghini or Ferrari in terms of the fonts. But there are, I mean, it’s a good, San Francisco’s
⏹️ ▶️ John amazing font. It looks great, but it always looks Apple. And so like, again, what is the balance between
⏹️ ▶️ John it celebrates both brands? How much does it celebrate Apple versus how much does it celebrate your brand? And I feel like it’s heavily
⏹️ ▶️ John weighted towards Apple because some things are not changeable. So the font family is one limitation. There’s a limited
⏹️ ▶️ John number of gauge types. So you, I mean, especially with all screen instrument clusters, there’s a lot of variation
⏹️ ▶️ John in gauge design. Most cars have three or four different variations,
⏹️ ▶️ John like little bar charts, a racing one, a regular looking one. Next
⏹️ ▶️ John Gen CarPlay has a wide variety, but not as wide as the actual
⏹️ ▶️ John world of existing cars. Another thing, a quote from the presentation, in our system, the speedometer
⏹️ ▶️ John is always paired with a fuel gauge or a state of charge gauge. That’s fine,
⏹️ ▶️ John like you’re going to have those things, but they’re not always paired. Sometimes in existing cars on their instrument cluster,
⏹️ ▶️ John the speedometer is in a different place than the fuel gauge or the state of charge gauge, right? But in
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s thing, they’re always paired. Limitations like that are probably going to annoy car makers because
⏹️ ▶️ John they won’t be able to do exactly what they want. But the architecture is actually really interesting.
⏹️ ▶️ John It is as complicated as you would imagine, which is also why it is difficult to adopt.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s basically four layers that are stuck together by two different compositors
⏹️ ▶️ John to, for example, form the instrument cluster. So the top one is the overlay UI, which has things
⏹️ ▶️ John like the tire pressure warning light and a bunch of other like what are
⏹️ ▶️ John they called? Telltales or indicators or as my daughter calls them emojis.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco She’s, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John how’s the gas in the car? I text her after she arrives at a destination because I never text her when she’s on the road.
⏹️ ▶️ John And and she said, it’s fine. It’s not even close to the gas emoji thing. I don’t even know.
⏹️ ▶️ John She’s like she calls them all emojis. But anyway, kids these days. Then the next layer is
⏹️ ▶️ John the punch through UI, which is the built-in system of the car can basically render
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever it wants on a region that it punches through. So lots of times,
⏹️ ▶️ John like the driver assistance thing, where they show like a 3D model of your car going down the road
⏹️ ▶️ John with the other cars that it’s sensing around it, that is all built into the car. You’re not going to redo that in
⏹️ ▶️ John CarPlay. You just punch that through. You pick a region of the instrument cluster and it says, OK, car,
⏹️ ▶️ John you get to display what’s here. Then there’s the local UI, which is the gauges
⏹️ ▶️ John and everything. And then there’s the remote UI, which is remote. All of the
⏹️ ▶️ John old CarPlay was all remote UI rendered by the phone and displayed. And so the remote
⏹️ ▶️ John UI, local UI, and punch through are composited together. And then the overlay UI is handled by the
⏹️ ▶️ John vehicle and composited together with those things. Yeah, so the remote UI is rendered by the phone,
⏹️ ▶️ John exactly like it is in the previous generation of CarPlay. The overlay UI is rendered by the vehicle, And
⏹️ ▶️ John that includes the telltales and all the turn signals, the headlight indicator, stuff like that. The local UI, this
⏹️ ▶️ John is what I have to say about that. Local UI is not affected by Wi-Fi interference or disconnect since data stays local to the vehicle.
⏹️ ▶️ John The next generation of CarPlay starts instantaneously if you were using it on your previous drive. As soon as the
⏹️ ▶️ John displays are lit, or maybe when the door opens, or maybe when the driver’s approaching the car, content is ready to show.
⏹️ ▶️ John This may even be before the iPhone has been detected or reconnected. So obviously this
⏹️ ▶️ John is not running on the phone. It is rendered locally by the vehicle. They use an OpenGL based render. Hey, Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ John discovered OpenGL again. Why? Because car makers use it, and they got to deal with it. It includes image
⏹️ ▶️ John assets, behavior scripts, and it’s specific to each vehicle, and it’s transferred during the pairing process, and it
⏹️ ▶️ John can be refreshed over time. So basically, Apple has to provide a wad of stuff, code,
⏹️ ▶️ John assets, and everything, that go into the car, that the car takes in, stores, and runs,
⏹️ ▶️ John because these screens need to come on instantly. So all that local UI, which includes the speedometer, all
⏹️ ▶️ John those gauge things, all that stuff, It’s rendered by the vehicle. Your phone hasn’t even been detected, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John So there is an aspect of this next-gen CarPlay that is in the car, but it is shoved
⏹️ ▶️ John there by the phone and updated by the phone as needed, and so on and so forth, right? And then the punch-through
⏹️ ▶️ John UI is entirely rendered by the vehicle. Another example is the backup camera. That’s just entirely rendered by the vehicle. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John just punched through wherever they’re going to display it. And they
⏹️ ▶️ John also mentioned visually rich features or settings. So you know in Mercedes or BMW, they show like this beautifully rendered picture
⏹️ ▶️ John of your seat with the little wavy lines with the heat and the massage and all that, you don’t have to re-implement that. They’re
⏹️ ▶️ John like, oh, just punch that through, right? But the punch through UI is such a weird compromise because
⏹️ ▶️ John if you know what any of those screens look like on a fancy modern car, especially the ones that are like about,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, adjust where the vents are pointing with the touchscreen or turn on the massaging function or
⏹️ ▶️ John like let’s see the outside of the car and show all the doors opening when they open, all that stuff, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John it does not and will not match Apple’s aesthetic. So they’re like, okay, just carve out
⏹️ ▶️ John a box on any of the screens that Apple is rendering and show a totally incongruous,
⏹️ ▶️ John totally unmatching, fonts aren’t the same, colors aren’t the same, design isn’t the same, just so you don’t have to
⏹️ ▶️ John re-implement that. This is Apple saying, we are not gonna make you re-implement literally every screen to be,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, carplay-y, but you can just punch through your existing UI, which makes us even
⏹️ ▶️ John less attractive because that’s not a combination of the two brands. That’s just
⏹️ ▶️ John the built-in system, an Apple system, in a patchwork, in an
⏹️ ▶️ John ugly quilt. Because I look at these Apple screens and I’m like, I’ve seen the screens in
⏹️ ▶️ John many, many different modern cars, none of them match this. Like, you don’t want
⏹️ ▶️ John to have to redo that big settings screen, just punch it through. It will look totally incongruous
⏹️ ▶️ John with everything else we render, but at least you don’t have to re-implement it. This is quite an
⏹️ ▶️ John uphill struggle for next-gen car play. And honestly, I don’t even know, like,
⏹️ ▶️ John what’s like, why do this? What’s the goal? Like, does Apple really want to be able to co-brand
⏹️ ▶️ John the instrument cluster? Why not just be satisfied having, to Marco’s point, better and better integration
⏹️ ▶️ John with the screen that people wanna see their car stuff on? Better audio, better lower latency
⏹️ ▶️ John video, more rich features, instead of saying, we wanna take over every pixel of every
⏹️ ▶️ John screen, except for the part where you punch through your existing UI that’s going to look nothing like ours.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You know, this makes me think of, let’s go on another journey, fellas. This makes me think of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Microsoft Teams and Slack. Android Automotive, I think that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the right one. Whatever it is, it’s like the base layer, not Android Automotive. Okay. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Android Automotive is like Microsoft 365. We’ll take care of it all for you.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We’ve got this. You just sit back, you worry about the car stuff, we’ve got the infotainment stuff. and it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all taken care of, easy peasy. And then Apple says, no, we need to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey basically duplicate all of your existing efforts and we need to do it together holding hands. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as a consumer, I think I would really enjoy this. I think it would be really nice and I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would like it. But as a car manufacturer, uh-uh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this juice ain’t worth the squeeze. ______ I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t think I would like it as a consumer. If I buy a car, like I buy a Polestar and they have Polestar
⏹️ ▶️ John branded infotainment that matches the car, matches the Polestar brand, fits in with the car, all the
⏹️ ▶️ John pictures on the screens reflect what’s in the car. Like it is a complete cohesive branded experience they pay a lot of people
⏹️ ▶️ John to do. When I get in that car with my phone, I don’t want to cover over all that Polestar
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff and make the car iPhone-y. I
⏹️ ▶️ John like the iPhone, it’s iPhone branded, but I don’t want the rooms and vehicles that I enter
⏹️ ▶️ John to suddenly become iPhone branded. Like I bought the car because I like the car’s brand.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know why you would allow someone, it’s like, oh, if I enter a home,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, with my iPhone, your television’s UI is gonna be covered up with my iPhone UI because I’ve entered it now and I have my iPhone.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like I don’t want that. It doesn’t match the car. Like you can’t change the design
⏹️ ▶️ John of the dashboard or the upholstery on the seats or the way the car looks. Why would I wanna change everything that’s on all the screens?
⏹️ ▶️ John It just like, the reason people like phone integration is because they like, you know, the phones are platforms and there
⏹️ ▶️ John are great apps for them and we have our life on them and all our songs are on them. And like, yeah, we want that integration.
⏹️ ▶️ John So stuff from our phone, we have a way to interact with it on the car, even so far as being able
⏹️ ▶️ John to use our voice on our phone through the car, like that’s great. Like leverage the strengths of the phone.
⏹️ ▶️ John But the phone has nothing to do with the instrument cluster as far as I’m concerned, other than again,
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe showing navigation in there or something like that. I don’t want my car to be
⏹️ ▶️ John phone branded when I enter with my phone. And I would be annoyed if that was the only choice because I would want to use CarPlay for the things
⏹️ ▶️ John that we all like CarPlay for. I would not, I would be saying, could I get that without
⏹️ ▶️ John you covering over my instrument cluster, the customer cluster that I liked with an
⏹️ ▶️ John iPhone UI that I don’t particularly like and also have no control over? Because yeah, the automakers can customize
⏹️ ▶️ John this and pick stuff, but it’s not like the user gets to design their own instrument cluster with this. They have
⏹️ ▶️ John the same limited options that probably even more limited options than the built-in systems offer. Because again, built-in
⏹️ ▶️ John systems usually offer two or three different instrument clusters on these fancy cars. And you could pick which one you like.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I think I like CarPlay. I mean, I obviously don’t usually have it in the Rivian, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I like CarPlay the way it is now, mostly, in a window. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in some cases, CarPlay is the entire display of certain displays. But most car makers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will let CarPlay take up most of the display when you’re using it, but then we’ll have some kind of like little area
⏹️ ▶️ Marco off to the side or below it or something that has like their toolbar buttons that’ll switch it back over to their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco interface and you still have to use their interface for most of the controls of the car. And then you switch back
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to CarPlay when you wanna look at your music player or your navigation. CarPlay already also
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has support for the secondary display. So if you wanna have something like, for instance, if you’re doing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco navigation and you wanna have a CarPlay display in the dashboard cluster during navigation, you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can already do that with the existing version of CarPlay, the CarPlay, you know, the old version. That was like a 1.5, that at that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So CarPlay, the way it is now, display-wise and integration-wise, already
⏹️ ▶️ Marco offers what I think I actually want as a customer. Like I want CarPlay to be contained.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t want it to take over everything because, like John was saying, like, I actually like car controls
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when they are well-designed. I like car UIs when they are well-designed. That is not the common case, but it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco does happen. And I just want more automakers to adopt CarPlay the way
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is. And I hope, because a lot of these technological
⏹️ ▶️ Marco details and implementation details, like stuff like more stuff running on the car, the audio being
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buffered differently, not using Bluetooth, stuff like that. A lot of those things would actually be great improvements
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the system we already have. And again, I hope that by
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple trying to reach much further design-wise. I hope this doesn’t preclude
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the automakers from adopting the technological advancements that they’re trying to get done as
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well. I hope we can actually have good car play with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco modern innovation and modern architecture behind it in a way that the car makers can swallow design-wise.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I don’t know if Apple’s going to be able to do that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that. Yeah, yeah. It’s it’s kind of I don’t know. I get where Apple’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey going here, but I just I’m really struggling to figure out who they think this is for because again,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if I’m an auto manufacturer, no, thank you. And it’s just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can’t think of a better way to verbalize this. And I think I’m being a little bit probably more than a little bit dramatic, but it’s kind
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of like Apple hubris. Like, of course, the car makers want to come to us and help us have us help them design their
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stuff. Why wouldn’t they do that? And
⏹️ ▶️ John And not just help them design it, but you’re like, and of course they would want our branding to be part of their car, because our branding is great. Wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John they want to have some representation of Apple inside their cars?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Right, exactly. Why?
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I think the most optimistic scenario is kind of the same reason people use Apple TVs. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, I got a smart TV, but the interface on the smart TV sucks. And Apple TV is so much better. So I’m gonna ignore
⏹️ ▶️ John my smart TV’s built-in interface, and I’m just gonna use the Apple TV. And first, I would say
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s a choice people who buy an Apple TV make. But second, I think
⏹️ ▶️ John the degree to which smart televisions built-in experiences are
⏹️ ▶️ John co-branded with the TV is much lower than the degree to which the infotainment
⏹️ ▶️ John on, especially fancy modern cars, is blended with the car. Like, if you look at the instrument
⏹️ ▶️ John cluster on a BMW or an Audi or a Volvo or a Polestar
⏹️ ▶️ John or one of these expensive cars, you can just look at the instrument cluster without seeing anything else. know
⏹️ ▶️ John what kind of car it’s in. They really heavily brand that and the good ones that do like their controls
⏹️ ▶️ John on like the other touchscreens, you know, whether the climate controls are there or adjusting the seats or the 360
⏹️ ▶️ John camera or whatever, those things are so heavily branded. Like I mean look at Rivian doing like the cell
⏹️ ▶️ John shaded 3D model of your car in the woods and everything. That is so different than what
⏹️ ▶️ John it looks like like in an Ioniq 5 versus what it looks like in a Volkswagen. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s so heavily branded. Now if you hate, if you hate your car’s interface as a consumer, I can say,
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, thank God, my car’s interface. I hate it. But when I get into my phone, it erases all that and replaces it with the phone you
⏹️ ▶️ John I can see some people wanting to do that. But I think I think
⏹️ ▶️ John people buy cars based on the whole car. If someone hated,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, I can’t stand. I’m an example. If you really don’t want climate controls on the touch screen, you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John not gonna buy a car with climate controls on the touch screen, right? You’re choosing based on what’s in the car
⏹️ ▶️ John in an apple world, they’re like, what if you didn’t have to do that? What if you were just happy with the way
⏹️ ▶️ John we paint over all those screens with our stuff, and you never had to see your credit built into them, and as long as you like our system,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can buy any car. I think that’s their pitch for the appeal, but again, I think people holistically
⏹️ ▶️ John buy cars, and that branding is part of like, if you buy some fancy
⏹️ ▶️ John electric Hellcat or the E-Ray Corvette or whatever, want
⏹️ ▶️ John the cool Corvette logo and startup animation and like the gauges and like whatever,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, you know, especially if they do the homages to like the old Corvette instrument clusters on the new one with screened
⏹️ ▶️ John like that’s when you’re buying Corvette people buy Corvettes want that they don’t want I’m gonna buy a Corvette
⏹️ ▶️ John and then I wanted to look like my iPhone. They don’t they want to look like a Corvette. So this
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m a car person maybe I did not representative of the audience but I think we’ll have to wait until
⏹️ ▶️ John this is actually implemented to see what the non-tech nerd, non-car
⏹️ ▶️ John nerd public thinks of it. But right now, it hasn’t been rolled out in any cars, which I think is reflective of
⏹️ ▶️ John what the auto industry thinks of it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I was going to say, that’s a long wait for a train or car that ain’t common.
EU: “You’re DMAing wrong”
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right. There is some big news that dropped sometime in the last week or two.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I forget exactly when it was. Apparently, it was leaked to the Financial Times,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if I’m not mistaken, and then formally stated a few days later, the European Commission has
⏹️ ▶️ Casey found Apple in breach of the what is the Digital Markets Act, the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco DMA, there you go.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so reading from a press release from the European Commission, the European Commission
⏹️ ▶️ Casey has informed Apple of its its permanent preliminary view that its app store rules are in breach of the Digital Markets Act
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or DMA, as they prevent app developers from freely steering customers to alternative channels for offers and content.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey In addition, the commission opened a new non-compliance procedure against Apple over concerns that its new contractual
⏹️ ▶️ Casey requirements for third party app developers and app stores, including Apple’s new core technology
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fee, fall short of ensuring effective compliance with Apple’s obligations under the DMA.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey In parallel, the commission will continue undertaking preliminary investigative steps outside of the scope of the present and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey investigation in particular with respect to the checks and reviews put in place by Apple to validate apps and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey alternative app stores to be sideloaded.
⏹️ ▶️ John Gotta love the efficiency of government, right? So we’ve all these things we’ve talked about on the show.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re anti steering rules, whether Apple’s complying core technology fee makes it unattractive for people to be an alternative
⏹️ ▶️ John app stores. And most recently, oh, they rejected UTM from notarization
⏹️ ▶️ John because they felt like it. Right? For third party app not for the app store, they said,
⏹️ ▶️ John actually, we don’t want that to be in any apps. We don’t want that in our app store, and also we don’t want that to be in any third party app stores. Why?
⏹️ ▶️ John Because we said so. So they have separate investigations into all these. And this announcement was just
⏹️ ▶️ John for the anti-steering thing of like, how easy is it for people to tell somebody in an app, hey,
⏹️ ▶️ John you can get a better deal if you go to our website, it’s $10 here, but on our website, it’s $5. And Apple’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John no, you can’t tell them the price. If you link it, you gotta do it the special way or whatever. So that’s what they found them in breach of. And
⏹️ ▶️ John they say, and just so you know, we’re still looking into the other things like the core technology fee. And most recently,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, I give them a pass on the UTM thing because that happened recently. But the core technology fee was there from day one. Why is
⏹️ ▶️ John it that they can’t like, get figure out all the different ways that Apple is noncompliant
⏹️ ▶️ John and tell them at once. But no, these are all separate investigations and everything takes a long time. But anyway, if you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John wondering if the European Commission thinks that Apple is following the rules of the DMA, in at least the anti steering
⏹️ ▶️ John thing, the answer is no, they think Apple is not correctly following the rules.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that seems like it shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey including Apple, but I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John so here’s the thing, like none of us are lawyers. We’re certainly not European lawyers, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John I think I’ve read most of the DMA. I said it before. I think
⏹️ ▶️ John the DMA is written in such a way that it opened the door for Apple to do something
⏹️ ▶️ John like this and to plausibly argue that they are compliant. Like, whatever the European
⏹️ ▶️ John wants, the European Commission wants, it could have been more explicit about it, right? Instead
⏹️ ▶️ John of just kind of hinting in the direction of we want competition or whatever. And in some ways
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like, well, they’re not gonna tell you exactly how to do it. Like, you don’t want them to pin it down entirely. That’s not how laws work. But in other ways,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like, I kind of, say Apple was acting in good faith, which I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John entirely think they are, but if they were, and they were trying to be compliant,
⏹️ ▶️ John they would still have a lot of questions. I don’t know how much back channel communication happens, but like if they were acting
⏹️ ▶️ John good faith, I would hope Apple could say to the European commission, we’re thinking of doing X, Y, and Z. Does that seem good to you? And I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John know if the European commission is being like the app store and saying, we can’t tell you anything. Just wait till you show us what you have.
⏹️ ▶️ John And then we’ll tell you about it nine months later. Right? Which is frustrating because it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John like Gerber complains about this. Cause he’s super against the European commission stuff. Where he’s like,
⏹️ ▶️ John they saying that Apple can’t make any money? There’s nothing in the DMA that says Apple is not allowed to make
⏹️ ▶️ John a profit on phones or the app store or anything like that. Right. But Apple might have a
⏹️ ▶️ John question of like, OK, well, if we if the core technology fee is going to be found to be noncompliant, like
⏹️ ▶️ John what can we do? And I mean, my answer would be like, you can’t make it so that there’s no
⏹️ ▶️ John way for anyone to make a more attractive option, because one thing that is clear in the DMA is they want more competition
⏹️ ▶️ John and competition doesn’t mean Apple. You set the rules so nobody can ever be better than you. Like, that’s clear. That’s why
⏹️ ▶️ John I think their compliance is obviously, you know, in in bad
⏹️ ▶️ John faith. Right. But OK, so say I accept that.
⏹️ ▶️ John How much competition should people be allowed to undercut us by 100 percent, a thousand
⏹️ ▶️ John percent? Like how how unattractive can we make it? Right. Can we charge people
⏹️ ▶️ John anything or can we charge people nothing? Because if the answer is we can charge people nothing, put that in the damn DMA and say, oh, and
⏹️ ▶️ John by the way, people need to be able to sell things and third-party app stores without Apple having any say
⏹️ ▶️ John on what’s there, with very narrowly defined exceptions, and also without giving Apple any money. But they didn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John write that. They just didn’t write that into the law as far as anything that I could see. Now, maybe I’m not a lawyer, and I missed it into staring me in the
⏹️ ▶️ John face because it’s using language that I don’t understand. But I
⏹️ ▶️ John feel like this DMA could have been written to be more specific, but I am glad that Apple was found
⏹️ ▶️ John noncompliant, because I think what they did is clearly not But achieving
⏹️ ▶️ John the thing that is stated in the DMA, which is like we want more competition,
⏹️ ▶️ John we want a more open market. And so you think you’re complying with this by
⏹️ ▶️ John making sure you have made a market that is not open and we’re going to ding you for that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. I think there’s no way to look at Apple’s compliance plan
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and say this is what Europe intended. As John said, we are not experts
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in European law and the dynamics of how they write the laws and how they enforce them and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We do know a bit about Apple and a bit about the App Store and a bit about that kind of stuff. And it is very clear
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that the intention of the DMA and of allowing different
⏹️ ▶️ Marco app distribution channels that Apple does not financially control with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco arbitrary terms, that was the intention. Apple should allow people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who are not them to distribute software on their platform without burdensome economic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco terms that are dictated by Apple. That’s clearly the
⏹️ ▶️ John intention of the law. Without terms that make it unattractive. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the main thing. There can be terms and there can be caveats and they have to prove a security
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, but you can’t make the terms such that nobody would ever want to do this. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ John like price fixing. It’s like, oh, you You can compete with me, but you can’t sell any products for any cheaper than I sell them. That’s not actually
⏹️ ▶️ John what they’re doing, but like effectively it’s saying, oh, you’re just going to have to pay us anyway. So we’re going to try
⏹️ ▶️ John to make it so that you running the store doesn’t, you don’t come out ahead. The people selling it in
⏹️ ▶️ John the store don’t come out ahead because they got to pay us for all those installs for 50 cents or whatever the core technology fee. People running the stores
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t come out ahead. Like it’s just nobody, you know, if you join into the
⏹️ ▶️ John system, you’re going to look over at us and say, why are we even doing this? This is basically the same as the Apple system.
⏹️ ▶️ John But that’s not competition. And so they found – Apple found a way to do that and they think, oh, we’re complying
⏹️ ▶️ John with the law and they’re going to argue because Apple has a chance to argue about this. They say, look, we’re totally
⏹️ ▶️ John in compliance. You should have written a better law. But I’m not sure that’s going to work out for them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No. Obviously, Europe is saying we need people to be able to compete
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in this giant marketplace that is a huge part of commerce. And I think that’s very defensible.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You look back at history, you see things like the railroads and the telephone companies. There’s a reason
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why we tend to promote freer, less burdensome competition,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even on a private company’s assets, once it becomes a huge part of commerce that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco starts to be able to affect lots of other businesses, especially in anti-competitive ways. And there is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no question that Apple has reached that size with the iOS platform, with the App Store.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that important in the entire economy, it matters a lot. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whether they should be regulated, I think that question is answered. I think the answer is yes, of course, they should be regulated.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And again, I mean, I’m not going to go too far into this, this time, I say it all the time, but this was 100%
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on Apple for effectively provoking governments to regulate them with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco obviously blatantly anti-competitive behavior. And again,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know I’m kind of down on Tim Cook’s strategy, I wonder what the heck he was thinking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all these years of blatant anti-competitive behavior, literally provoking governments
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to regulate him. What did he expect to happen here? And this is a theme that we’ll come back to in a little
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bit, but Apple definitely should have seen this coming. They rolled
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the dice. They said, you know, we’re going to keep doing 100% of what we’re doing. We’re even going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco tighten the screws over the last few years. What could possibly go wrong? This. This is what
⏹️ ▶️ Marco could go wrong. So I am cheering on the EU for this part of the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco DMA. I don’t love the entire law. It’s a big law and there’s some weird stuff in it. But the part about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ensuring freer competition for a giant app marketplace
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is a keystone of modern commerce and business in so many ways in so many parts of life, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is a hundred percent on point. Some of the details we can quibble over but the idea of that is on point and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you don’t have to just look at Europe. Look, Japan’s now doing the same thing. It’s only a matter of time before more
⏹️ ▶️ Marco countries around the world start doing this. And what we’re going to end up with is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this incredibly fragmented app store policy where Apple is going to not give
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an inch anywhere. They’re not required to. Uh, and instead they’re just going to have like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nine different rules of different where you are in the world and what kind of regional, you know, variations
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are necessary. And they’re going to keep just being absolute turds about it all. when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they would have just eased up a little bit in a few areas that actually wouldn’t have cost them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that much, they could have avoided all of this and continued to have one app store for the whole world basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and have relatively few variations between them. And they invited this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So you know what? If the EU is going to drag them through courts and everything forever,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good. They need it. They’re not doing it themselves, so someone has to do it.
⏹️ ▶️ John They’re burning so much time and energy on this too because it’s like if you can see the writing on the wall like you mentioned Japan and other
⏹️ ▶️ John countries doing similar things and maybe Apple thinks the US will never do it or whatever but like for the European
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff you know quibbling about like oh they didn’t write the law specifically enough and what do they even want and it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John so weird in the end Apple has very limited ability to
⏹️ ▶️ John control what European governments do like they have a system of government
⏹️ ▶️ John and they apply laws to things that are sold in the EU, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And I guess Apple can lobby the EU like any other big company can lobby them, but I feel like Apple’s ability to
⏹️ ▶️ John lobby the US government as a US company is stronger than their ability to lobby the EU. And they
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t also don’t seem to be particularly good at lobbying for their, you know, for what they want,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? But like Apple is essentially powerless. They’re not part of the European government.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, they’re not powerless because they have tons of money, but you know what I mean? Like they in the end, let’s say Apple wins
⏹️ ▶️ John in their like appeal and some judge in Europe says or whatever, well technically Apple did comply with
⏹️ ▶️ John how the law is written, the EU will just write a new law. Like they can’t, Apple can’t win this.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like it’s the same thing with the battles with China, it’s like you can either do what the Chinese government wants you
⏹️ ▶️ John to do and you know push back as much as you can or you could just not be in China, like so many companies aren’t, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s obviously complicated for Apple because of the manufacturing or whatever, but like those are your choices. One of your choices is not
⏹️ ▶️ John let’s change what the Chinese government wants. Like Apple’s ability to do that despite all their money
⏹️ ▶️ John and everything is extremely limited. So I’m not like Apple is just like burning time
⏹️ ▶️ John and energy implementing these things to try to to get away with as much as they can get away
⏹️ ▶️ John with. And in the end, the EU can just say, okay, well, we made a mistake in the law, we’ll write it and we’ll make
⏹️ ▶️ John it stronger. And let’s just go around and around as opposed to Apple acknowledging what surely Apple also understands
⏹️ ▶️ John what they’re trying to get at, increase competition and just say, let’s do this once. Let’s do it well.
⏹️ ▶️ John Let’s do it globally. As we’ve discussed the past episodes, imagine if they just said, look, we see the writing on the wall. Everybody’s going to want
⏹️ ▶️ John something more open. Let’s just do something that we think is open enough that will satisfy all government requirements
⏹️ ▶️ John present and future. Let’s do it once. Let’s apply it to the whole world. Let’s avoid
⏹️ ▶️ John fragmentation. Let’s move on with our actual business. But no, they’re not doing that. They’re going to fight tooth and nail. Every single one of these things
⏹️ ▶️ John comply as little as possible, fight it in courts. And it’s just it’s wasting time and energy. It’s making their platform
⏹️ ▶️ John more complicated, as we’ll see when we get to the next thing. Although we do have some quotes here from the various parties
⏹️ ▶️ John to see how they’re positioning themselves on the eve of this or just after this preliminary
⏹️ ▶️ John finding on one of multiple things they’re being investigated on.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple spokesperson Peter Ajermian, who is talking to the Verge, throughout the past several
⏹️ ▶️ Casey months, Apple’s made a number of changes to comply with the DMA in response to feedback from developers and the European Commission.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey As we have done routinely, we will continue to listen and engage with the European Commission.”
⏹️ ▶️ John so that’s their way of saying, you know, we’re talking to them
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco or whatever. It’s their way of saying
⏹️ ▶️ John and they will continue to listen to them. So here’s the thing. There is some meaning
⏹️ ▶️ John of the minds on this because the DMA has written with some acknowledgement that like,
⏹️ ▶️ John we can’t, it can’t just be the wild west, which is why there are carve outs for like, okay, Apple should have the gatekeepers,
⏹️ ▶️ John not just Apple, but gatekeepers should have the ability to reject things for security reasons
⏹️ ▶️ John from even being in third-party stores, right? The EU is not like, you just let
⏹️ ▶️ John anybody do anything. It’s like the PC of the 80s, right? They’re not doing that. And
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple, to its credit, is trying to provide lots of
⏹️ ▶️ John security stopgaps while also allowing things like the browser kit thing. We want to allow third-party
⏹️ ▶️ John browser engines, we want to do that as safe as possible. Ideally, all the
⏹️ ▶️ John browser engines go through the same restrictions. Safari and all, that’s not currently the case, but BrowserKit is basically
⏹️ ▶️ John built around what they already did for Safari, right? So the two parties aren’t so far apart that like one wants
⏹️ ▶️ John completely everything open free for all and the other one wants everything locked down. They agree
⏹️ ▶️ John with each other that certain things need to be done carefully, but like everything else they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John like, Apple’s like, how little can we get away with? How unattractive can we make third party app stores? How little
⏹️ ▶️ John disruption to our existing business can we make? Like, we’ll try to comply in a way that no one will ever take us up
⏹️ ▶️ John on any of these offers or only a few people would, but like in the end it’ll just be like a footnote
⏹️ ▶️ John and it won’t actually change anything, right? Or maybe like, as we’ll get to in a second, maybe we’ll even
⏹️ ▶️ John make things worse and people are like, boy, we thought we would like some third party competition, but now that we’ve
⏹️ ▶️ John seen it, we’re going running back to the app store because it’s so much better there because of the way Apple set everything up.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Then Marguerite Vestager, I hope I have that right. I forgot to brush up on it. I apologize.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But anyways, she said, the ball’s now in the gatekeepers’ court. They have to convince us that the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey measures they take will achieve full compliance with the DMA. And where this is not the case, we will
⏹️ ▶️ Casey intervene. We are concerned that Apple designated its new business model to discourage
⏹️ ▶️ Casey app developers and end users from taking advantage of the opportunities afforded to them by the DMA. The letter of the DMA is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey clear. Gatekeepers have to allow for alternative app stores to establish themselves on their platforms and for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey consumers to be fully informed about the offers available to them so that they can freely choose
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where they want to source their apps and at what conditions.
⏹️ ▶️ John I would argue that the DMA is not clear. And even when she
⏹️ ▶️ John it here, like gatekeepers have to allow for alternative app stores. Apple would say, yeah, we did that. To establish themselves
⏹️ ▶️ John on their platforms, yeah, we allow alternative app stores to be established on our platforms. For consumers to be fully informed, okay,
⏹️ ▶️ John there, they’re gonna say not fully informed. They’re informed through a narrow aperture that Apple defines and which is why they’re not compliant.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so they can freely choose. And Apple would be like, yeah, they can freely choose. It’s the details. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, we allow third-party app stores. We just don’t want to make them any more, impossible to be any more attractive than ours
⏹️ ▶️ John by applying financial burdens. And even her summary, she doesn’t even say, not like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John I know you did alternative app stores, but no one wants to do them because they cost so much money and suck so much.
⏹️ ▶️ John So change that. But she doesn’t. And by the way, that us that Casey read and emphasized, they
⏹️ ▶️ John have to convince us that italic us was in her thing. I didn’t add that emphasis. It was she
⏹️ ▶️ John italicized it. They have to convince us that the measures they take will achieve full compliance
⏹️ ▶️ John over the next, you know, 12 months or whatever. Like every one of these things, there’s like a nine
⏹️ ▶️ John to 12 month horizon. I’m like, okay, then Apple gets to challenge it and they have a hearing and they do a thing. And then
⏹️ ▶️ John like people think it’s gonna be like, oh, we passed the law and Apple did a thing, but they’re not complying. Now they get fined. No,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s not how any of this works. So long between the passing of this law to
⏹️ ▶️ John the point where Apple could potentially get those huge fines that yeah, I presumably
⏹️ ▶️ John Something will be worked out, but this is just gonna drag on for so long
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and and because the root of the problem is The DMA I guess that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know the EU way of doing this is not gonna specify too firmly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What they really intend which is there can’t be any fees like that. That’s that’s obviously
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what they intend I mean, I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know if they say there can’t be any, but you have to be able to undercut the App Store.
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know how they would phrase that, but it’s not competition if your competitors
⏹️ ▶️ John can never be better than you,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey course. It’s just…
⏹️ ▶️ John Right. And the other end is free-for-all. There’s no rules. The competitors
⏹️ ▶️ John can be… If they have enough funding, they can do loss leaders and say, everything is free. We’ll pay you
⏹️ ▶️ John to use our App app store, like or whatever, you know, like there’s competition is complicated because we all want competition,
⏹️ ▶️ John but there’s such a thing as unfair competition again, like there are laws in our country about like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, I think there are laws about like undercutting your competition by giving away stuff
⏹️ ▶️ John for free until your competitors are out of business. I know that’s a common thing that VC funding does these days,
⏹️ ▶️ John but I think there are actually laws in the books in certain industries where you’re essentially not allowed to do that, you
⏹️ ▶️ John know, to take a giant war chest of money and put all your competitors out of business by giving away milk for free until they’re all out of
⏹️ ▶️ John business and you buy them all up and then you start charging twice as much for milk or something. I mean, that’s what pharmaceutical companies
⏹️ ▶️ John do. But anyway, like there are anti-patterns to
⏹️ ▶️ John too much competition, but we’re at the other end of that spectrum right now. We’re at the like no competition and then like
⏹️ ▶️ John competition in name only where it’s not real competition. And so trying to find
⏹️ ▶️ John that balance is tricky. You can’t just say Apple, you can’t charge anybody any money.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I think that actually might be their intention. Like they won’t say it because it is, I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s legally a little bit tougher to argue. But I think that what they’re clearly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco intending is for it to be like distribution on the Mac and Windows of just like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, you should just be able to install things for free if you want to. Like that, I think that’s clearly the intent, but they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco won’t come out and say it. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John they didn’t say it. And also they do have the carve out explicitly in the thing where Apple gets to approve for security purposes
⏹️ ▶️ John and private APIs and stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, which they’re also, you know, doing in a somewhat BSE
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John way. Exactly.
⏹️ ▶️ John But like, but the fact that that carve out’s there, it’s like, they don’t actually want it to be like the Mac. You
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t need to do that on the Mac. Like you can just distribute unsigned stuff and right click it and open it. You know what
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean? It’s, and so the question, like, again, I’m not gonna say, oh, well, what does Apple supposed to do? They can’t tell what they want.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like, Apple clearly knows that they don’t want this. Like, it is, it is a question of like,
⏹️ ▶️ John how, how open should we be? And maybe you could argue, say, this was the Apple’s best play. Put out the most
⏹️ ▶️ John restrictive thing possible, get slapped for it, back it off. How do you like it now? As opposed
⏹️ ▶️ John to, you know, if your goal is to do as little as possible, start from a position of doing almost nothing, like
⏹️ ▶️ John almost allowing no competition, and then back it off slowly. I just think it’s going to be a waste of their time and energy, and it should have come up with
⏹️ ▶️ John something that everyone onlookers would consider reasonable, and put that out and then see what the US say. And
⏹️ ▶️ John if they put out something that was reasonable, like nominal fees to be a third-party app store,
⏹️ ▶️ John minimal oversight, the possibility of financially being way cheaper than Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? And they said to the EU, that’s competition, right? And the EU came back and said, actually,
⏹️ ▶️ John no, we had zero dollars in mind. Like you were saying, Marco, like actually, that is the thing that they wanted to say, but couldn’t.
⏹️ ▶️ John That would be kind of crappy of the EU. Because if you want to say, like, and they’re making the law, like this is not a negotiation.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like the EU 100% makes the rules and Apple can either choose to follow them or not be in the EU
⏹️ ▶️ John and they didn’t say, yeah, you can’t charge anybody anything to have a third party app store.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but it does like I think the whatever whatever the political will
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and backing to get regulations like this through legislatures
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wherever that comes from. I think when people are trying to argue for these laws
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or these regulations, I think what they have in mind is free distribution like PCs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and Macs. That’s what people are imagining. Now, obviously, again, legally it’s hard to require that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Legally, there’s a whole bunch of snags to that, of course, because you’re trying to legislate how a public,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how a private company operates and makes money, and that’s obviously very tricky.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, are there snags there? Because the EU does that all the time. I mean, and we just put 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? So like, they can, I don’t, again, I don’t know the political situation there. You could be right that to get
⏹️ ▶️ John this passed, they couldn’t be that explicit, because people would be against it. But as it was written, it overwhelmingly passed.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I wonder how much leeway there is to come out and say what they really want.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco My point is like, when these laws, you know, the Japan thing, the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco weird dating app thing in the Netherlands, and then, you know, obviously the big one, the DMA, when these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are passed, I think what people have in mind is free distribution, just like Macs and PCs.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And what Apple has done very well at is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco twisting and distorting the public discussion. Remember the very first time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that Tim Cook was on the stand, I think in the epic trial, I think this is where this came out, and the very first time that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he presented this, it was, look, I don’t have a lot of faith in Tim Cook’s long-term strategy,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but this was a good move from his point of view. I hated it, but from his point of view, this was a good move.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco When he mentioned something along the lines of, well, the in-app purchase fee
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is just the most straightforward way for us to collect our commission. How else would we collect our commission? When
⏹️ ▶️ Marco he said that, we all were like, what? Because what that told
⏹️ ▶️ Marco us was Apple believes it is entitled to collect their commission,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a commission, regardless of how the money is flowing, regardless of what it’s being purchased
⏹️ ▶️ Marco through. And Apple has successfully controlled the public narrative
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that all of us are talking about since then. That was what, two years ago? All of us have been talking since then
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as if it’s inevitable that yes, of course, Apple is going to collect a fee for everything sold. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we have totally bought into their fairly brazen framing of this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We also have everybody talking about how Apple has to monetize their IP somehow.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Why would anybody make software for a platform if Apple can’t monetize their IP? Why would Apple continue to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco invest in the iPhone if they can’t monetize their IP?
⏹️ ▶️ John Some people have bought into this. I certainly haven’t bought into it. I don’t think you have,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John of course, that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but but I’m saying like when we’re talking about this, I think it’s important for everyone out there to realize like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that entire framing of this being this inevitable thing that, of course, Apple has to collect
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their their commission so that so that they can justify working on the iPhone. That is a thousand
⏹️ ▶️ Marco percent BS and Apple has done a great job of controlling that message and getting us all
⏹️ ▶️ Marco talk about it. But that’s obviously not what people want. And when they create these regulations. What people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco want is Mac and PC-like free distribution. Yes, with security controls if need be on some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco broad strokes, but that’s what people want. Apple is the one who
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is refusing to give it up, and that’s why this is going to take forever, as John was saying. The EU is basically
⏹️ ▶️ Marco saying, we would like no barriers, please. And Apple is basically saying, we’d like all the barriers, please.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And it’s just going to take a long time to work this out, because neither of them is real—actually, The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco European Commission is not really being very clear about what they want. Apple’s being very clear about what they want. Apple’s very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco clear about, we deserve everything and we’re gonna give you, we’re gonna give up nothing and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’re gonna see how that goes. And so this is gonna keep going on forever. But again, like, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco don’t buy into Apple’s framing too much when talking about this because that came out
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of nowhere two years ago. That was not what anybody was ever thinking. And I mean, just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to rehash everything, Like they have plenty of reason to invest in the iPhone to maintain
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iOS and their developer tools without collecting a fee on every single app that transacts through it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I mean, the reason that the premise plays so well in America is that so Americans like, you’re gonna tell a company
⏹️ ▶️ John how they can make money, you’re gonna tell them they can’t make money in a particular way, that’s not fair. They should be able to do what they want and let the market
⏹️ ▶️ John decide. And like the whole, like, so the premise Tim Cook was offering was like,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, unchangeable premise, we have to make money. All we’re arguing about is how we can do that and in-app purchases
⏹️ ▶️ John is the best way and we can try other ways or whatever. But it’s like, I reject your premise, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John You don’t need it, right? But in the same way, the premise of US
⏹️ ▶️ John business is like, well, companies should be able to make money however they want. And if they pick a lousy way that people don’t like, people won’t buy from them.
⏹️ ▶️ John The premise of the DMA, as you stated before, is that Apple has
⏹️ ▶️ John power in a market that’s super important, and they have too much power. And so the government needs to step in
⏹️ ▶️ John to tell companies what to do. What you could do when you were a small company, And now suddenly we’re saying because
⏹️ ▶️ John you sell phones and because you’re this big and because you’re successful and because phones are so important,
⏹️ ▶️ John we are saying new rules apply to you. That’s exactly what the DMA is. We don’t really have anything like that in the US quite yet,
⏹️ ▶️ John but exactly when there’s various DOJ cases. But anyway, but we talked about in past episodes, but
⏹️ ▶️ John the DMA, that’s the premise of the DMA. The premise is you specifically
⏹️ ▶️ John gatekeepers, new rules apply to you. But the American mind rebels at the idea
⏹️ ▶️ John of a government telling companies how they can make money. And so people, you know, groomers are so incredulous. You’re
⏹️ ▶️ John telling them that they they can’t make money the way they want to from their phone. And it’s like, yes, because specifically,
⏹️ ▶️ John like even says, like the Japan thing, like, oh, imagine if the Japanese game console makers, we should tell them,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, well, guess what? You know, you have to allow third party apps on your PlayStation or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John Game consoles are not as important as phones. Like that’s what it comes down to. The premise of these cases is
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not like every company that’s like this. It’s technological gatekeepers for platforms that are so important
⏹️ ▶️ John to all of life and commerce that these rules apply to them. And gaming is big, but so
⏹️ ▶️ John far, right now, I’m going to say game consoles are not as important to the life and economy of a
⏹️ ▶️ John country as cell phones. That’s the determination made by many of these
⏹️ ▶️ John laws and lawsuits, and I agree with that determination. Game consoles aren’t as important. They’re more important
⏹️ ▶️ John than they used to be, and they are important, and maybe something could be looked at there, but if I had to say which is more important,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s the cell phone. It’s no contest. much more important. And so yeah, these
⏹️ ▶️ John people are passing laws specifically targeting gatekeepers for platforms that are
⏹️ ▶️ John super important in our life. And it can seem unfair. Again, you know, why do the game consoles get away with it? Because they’re less important.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe someday they’ll come for the game consoles. Where do you draw the line? How do you decide when somebody is too powerful? We talked about
⏹️ ▶️ John this before. When do you have a monopoly? What percentage is required? When is there too little competition?
⏹️ ▶️ John These are all complicated But the premise of all these things is Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John new rules apply to you and Microsoft and you know Google and all these things because
⏹️ ▶️ John of exactly what you make and how important you are and how much power you have and Some people just
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t accept that print the same way We don’t accept Tim Cook’s premise that he just has to make money Some people don’t accept the premise
⏹️ ▶️ John of the DMA and so they’re never gonna be happy with what the DMA does No details about no negotiation
⏹️ ▶️ John of the DMA no compliance, malicious or otherwise, is going to be satisfying because they
⏹️ ▶️ John disagree with the premise that Apple deserves to be regulated and so do other companies like it.
Apple: “No soup for you”
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All this is going on and around the same time, give or take a few days.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Actually, I think it was a few days before the EU’s announcement, but nevertheless, one way or another,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s around the same time. Apple has declared that it may delay
⏹️ ▶️ Casey some of its AI features and others in the EU because of the DMA. Whoo,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Nelly. All right. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco reading from the Verge.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This went over like a lead bullet.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Reading from the Verge, Apple says upcoming features like its Apple intelligence generative AI tools,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPhone mirroring, and share play screen sharing may not be available in the EU this year.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So now, quoting Apple, two weeks ago, Apple unveiled hundreds of new features that we are excited to bring to our
⏹️ ▶️ Casey users around the world. We are highly motivated to make these technologies available to all
⏹️ ▶️ Casey users. However, due to the regulatory uncertainties
⏹️ ▶️ Casey brought about by the Digital Markets Act, or DMA, we do not believe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that that we will be able to roll out three of these features, iPhone mirroring, SharePlay screen sharing enhancements,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and Apple intelligence to our EU users this year. Specifically, we are concerned that the interoperability
⏹️ ▶️ Casey requirements of the EMA force us to compromise the integrity of our products in ways that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey risk user privacy and data security. We are committed to collaborating with the European Commission in an attempt to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey find a solution that would enable us to deliver these features to our EU customers without compromising their safety.
⏹️ ▶️ John So this is one of the aspects of the DMA that. Is either the
⏹️ ▶️ John DMA overreaching or us not understanding what the DMA wants, the idea is working
⏹️ ▶️ John on those. Yeah. Or all those integrations that Apple has where there’s some feature that
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, this is an a D.O.J. case. Apple Watch only works with the Apple iPhone and this iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John mirroring thing between Macs and iPhones only works with iPhones, not Android phones like any feature that you can
⏹️ ▶️ John imagine Apple rolling out. There’s some
⏹️ ▶️ John interpretation of the DMA and again, maybe it’s straightforward interpretation, not a lawyer, that says, hey, if you add
⏹️ ▶️ John a feature, you can’t confine that feature to only first party stuff. Those features need to be,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, extensible by third parties and pluggable on day one. And as anyone who’s familiar
⏹️ ▶️ John with Apple’s platform knows, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not the way they do things. Like sometimes they roll out first party only for years and years
⏹️ ▶️ John and never allow third parties access. Sometimes they do a third party one five years later, 10 years
⏹️ ▶️ John later. Right. Like think of all the features we have. Well, how long do we got third party keyboards? How long until apps are allowed
⏹️ ▶️ John to run in the background? There weren’t Apple’s apps like on the Mac, on iPhone and iPad, all these platforms.
⏹️ ▶️ John They don’t always make it sensible by third parties ever, and doing it on day one is
⏹️ ▶️ John rare. So, if the DMA really does require every gatekeeper
⏹️ ▶️ John to implement every feature such that it is extensible and open to third parties on day
⏹️ ▶️ John one, I think that is a technologically ill-considered requirement.
⏹️ ▶️ John And Apple would be justified in saying, we just can’t roll out these new features because it seems like
⏹️ ▶️ John they are not going to be compliant with the law. Now, interestingly,
⏹️ ▶️ John they weren’t so hesitant to roll out all the other things that we said that we also agreed were probably not compliant, like
⏹️ ▶️ John the core technology fee and all the rules for alternative app stores. Somehow,
⏹️ ▶️ John their worry about whether those would be compliant did not stop them from deploying those. But these ones, Apple says,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know what? We’re afraid we might not be compliant, so it’s best that we don’t roll these out. I don’t know if they’re compliant.
⏹️ ▶️ John If they’re not compliant, the DMA in this respect is bad and needs to be changed because you can’t
⏹️ ▶️ John require technology companies to only launch something when it’s ready for the world to extend it.
⏹️ ▶️ John That is too high a bar. It’s not the right way to make technology. You can put a timeline on it,
⏹️ ▶️ John say it has to be extensible within five years. There are other things you could do to be more reasonable out of this.
⏹️ ▶️ John But I would also say that like, look, yeah, Apple’s an important platform, cell phones, gatekeeper cell phones, Android,
⏹️ ▶️ John Google, whatever. Those are super important platforms. They’re important to the economy, all that stuff, right? It doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John mean that you need to require them to be open in every
⏹️ ▶️ John respect? What’s the most important way they need to be open? You need to be able to get apps from somewhere else. Does every
⏹️ ▶️ John single aspect of that platform also need to be open? Every feature, every thing that you can do
⏹️ ▶️ John on it, every single minute thing, SharePlay, iPhone, does every single thing need to be open to third parties at all
⏹️ ▶️ John time? How about you wait to see if iPhone mirroring is a lever that Apple uses
⏹️ ▶️ John to dominate the industry before you decide that that needs to be opened up? Because we know the App Store is, right? So yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ John address the app star and the law, but you can’t make an open-ended thing that says, every little feature you
⏹️ ▶️ John add has to be open from day one. It’s pointless, it’s counterproductive, and in the end,
⏹️ ▶️ John does it matter if iPhone mirroring only works with iPhones? Probably not to the degree that there should
⏹️ ▶️ John be a law addressing it. So I really hope that the DMA actually doesn’t try to say,
⏹️ ▶️ John everything in the OS open from day one. And again, even if it did say that, Apple should probably just
⏹️ ▶️ John launch these features anyway, but that’s not why they’re holding them back. They’re
⏹️ ▶️ John them back to kind of show the world. We think this law is crappy. Uh,
⏹️ ▶️ John and we’re going to demonstrate that by holding back goodies that we were probably going to hold back anyway, because Apple intelligence
⏹️ ▶️ John is only supposed to be launching in English in the fall anyway. And I guess they could launch it in English in Europe because lots of people speaking English
⏹️ ▶️ John there. But like, this is part them making a statement
⏹️ ▶️ John about their interpretation of the DMA and part sort of active defiance to show the
⏹️ ▶️ John consequences. And it’s like, Hey, Apple could just pull out of the EU and not sell phones there. Like, that is the ultimate
⏹️ ▶️ John breakup move here. That’s the Brexit. We need to come up with a Brexit-like term for Apple pulling out of the EU. I don’t have
⏹️ ▶️ John a good one off the top of my head. But sure, by next week, we’ll have lots of suggestions. Exit,
⏹️ ▶️ John because it begins with an E. It has to be like an Apple thing, like Britain, exit, Brexit. Eugxit?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If they core the Apple?
⏹️ ▶️ John No. Well, anyway. We’ll see
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey what we come up with. We’ll workshop it.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s lurking out the end of this disagreement. but this move by Apple of just, you know, again,
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe they weren’t going to roll us out anyway. Like, but either way, this is a, this is a positioning move. Like we don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John know whether they’re doing something they weren’t going to do. Maybe this is just putting words around something that was going to happen
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway. But yeah, this is an escalate. Let’s say
⏹️ ▶️ John I would call this an escalation.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, the thing of it is, is that I feel like I can, I was going to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey say squint, but I’m not even sure it requires me squinting. I can look at the DMA
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and look at particularly the mirroring and SharePlay screen sharing stuff,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I can see an interpretation, a legitimate, honest, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey no BS interpretation that, wow, this may not fly with the DMA.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Maybe we should hold on to this. And I can legitimately argue that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that is a real concern.
⏹️ ▶️ John But they didn’t have that same concern about all the other stuff they rolled out, that you could have the same exact statement about,
⏹️ ▶️ John wow, this may not comply. Maybe we should hold it back.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because these are additive things that involve interoperability between devices,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right? And leaving aside the nuance of these particular selections, the broader point I’m trying
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to make is that I feel like we have,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and the three of us have talked about this a lot, Apple has not really read
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the room, both in a micro level and a macro level. At a micro level, they haven’t really read the room
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that, look, the EU is not going to like this, man. They’re not going to take this lying
⏹️ ▶️ Casey down and be like, oh, you know what? We messed up. Yeah, we screwed this all up. That’s our bad. Our bad.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s on me. My bad. That’s not what’s going to happen. And on a macro level, it’s fascinating to me what Marco
⏹️ ▶️ Casey said, because I had the exact same reaction. Marco said a minute ago, this went over like a lead balloon.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I think that’s broadly accurate. I think most people had that same reaction. And it took me thinking about it a little bit.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m actually not so grumpy about this anymore, but I certainly was at first. And what’s fascinating to me is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey everyone seems to, broadly speaking, I mean, everyone seems to assume ill intent
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from Apple, right? Like they’re doing this just to hold up a middle finger to the, to the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey European commission and say, well, Nananana, you can’t have cool stuff. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that very well may be true for the record. I don’t know. But it’s kind of funny
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and unfortunate that because Apple has been so belligerently
⏹️ ▶️ Casey stubborn about so much, and I think Marco was saying this as well earlier, they’ve been so stubborn
⏹️ ▶️ Casey about so much and haven’t given a frigging inch. And so because of that, everyone is just like, well,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is Apple being a dick again. News at 11, like same as it ever was. And that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the thing that kind of bums me out as someone who I consider, I mean, I consider myself a fan of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey company to the degree that anyone can be a fan of a company. And this bumps me out.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey As we’ve said many different times on the show over the years, all of a sudden I’m looking around and, or maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Apple should be looking around and asking, are we the baddies? Because this is baddie behavior.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey If this is them thumbing their nose at the European Commission, it’s just gross.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I can’t get past, and I know I’m repeating what Marco said before and what we’ve said
⏹️ ▶️ Casey many times on the show, I can’t get past this is an own goal. Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Casey knew this was coming. They could tell it was coming. Anyone with three brain cells that followed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this could tell this was gonna happen and that the laws are gonna change and they’re gonna change
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because Apple is greedy and they’re entitled and they just wouldn’t give an inch.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And now they screwed around and now they’re finding out.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think both sides of this are correct. Like two things can be simultaneously true.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple’s actually probably correct that these features there
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you could see why they actually might be against the interop requirements of the DMA
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which are terrible largely like you can see why like yes Apple is probably correct
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to to to cite this as a problem with the DMA with these things in particular
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that’s probably technically correct but But also, saying
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this and doing this and having to face this dilemma at all is a direct result of their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco blatant anti-competitive behavior over time. So none of this would have happened
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, that’s debatable. I mean, you could say that no matter what Apple would have done, something like DMA would have passed anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ John There’s no amount of opening up preemptively that Apple could have done. I still think they should have done it because you don’t know that
⏹️ ▶️ John you couldn’t have prevented it. This is the question everyone has. Could Apple have done anything to prevent it? I think we all
⏹️ ▶️ John agree, it was worth finding out. Try something, right? Instead
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco of doing nothing,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? And again, I want to remind people, Apple did loosen the App Store rules from 30%
⏹️ ▶️ John to 15, the small business program. Like stuff like that was like arguably Apple’s reaction
⏹️ ▶️ John to seeing the writing on the wall. Obviously it was very slight, very
⏹️ ▶️ John limited, not at all anything close to something that would have preempted action clearly, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John But there is still, I’m willing to entertain the idea that there is really nothing Apple could have done. But I just would
⏹️ ▶️ John have liked to seen them try. Show me there’s nothing you could have done by giving a big good faith effort
⏹️ ▶️ John to self-regulate to head off regulation. Maybe you would have failed, but they didn’t even make
⏹️ ▶️ John an effort. And so I think that’s what we’re arguing. And I’m not 100% convinced that they could have prevented something
⏹️ ▶️ John like this, but they should have tried because I think their odds were okay. Like it wasn’t impossible, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John It was, you know, there’s probably something they could have done. And even if they didn’t head it off, even if
⏹️ ▶️ John they did some good faith thing that really opened it up and made new worldwide rules that they thought would be compliant, but something like
⏹️ ▶️ John DMA passed anyway, and it turns out they’re not quite in compliance. Then you’re tweaking an existing worldwide system
⏹️ ▶️ John to comply. Like you’re probably closer to a meeting of the minds about this, right? As opposed to now
⏹️ ▶️ John where they’re just so far apart and it’s so adversarial. And even for this, like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think if you really want to demonstrate, like again, if Apple’s and the popular
⏹️ ▶️ John interpretation of DMA is such that like these interoperable rules really would forbid iPhone mirroring and share play, and
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff, right? And Apple intelligence. Ship the features, have the EU strike them down
⏹️ ▶️ John and then throw up your hands and go, see everybody? That’s how dumb the DMA is. It doesn’t allow
⏹️ ▶️ John us to ship iPhone mirroring. iPhone mirroring is not a giant lever of power that we use to dominate the industry.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a tiny feature that benefits people. If stuff like iPhone mirroring is disallowed, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John why the DMA is dumb. But they didn’t allow that to happen. They didn’t, they should have shipped it and
⏹️ ▶️ John got the complaints about it and had the evidence. Instead, now they’re holding it back saying, we think this might not be compliant. And of course,
⏹️ ▶️ John the EC is not gonna come out and say, Apple’s wrong, it would have been compliant or Apple’s right, it wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John have been. The EC is acting like the app store. It’s like, if you don’t submit the app, we’re not gonna tell you whether it’s compliant or not.
⏹️ ▶️ John So they’ve lost the opportunity to show that the DMA is dumb.
⏹️ ▶️ John And on the flip side, the EC, I guess, doesn’t have the opportunity to show the DMA isn’t dumb by saying,
⏹️ ▶️ John hey, ship iPhone mirroring. We weren’t gonna strike that down. Like we’re reasonable people here. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John know. I don’t know if I phone here. He’s compliant with the Ameri not either does Apple. I’m not sure if the EC
⏹️ ▶️ John knows if I maybe they need nine months to investigate to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think Apple knows that that that is probably a like something like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re looking for holes to poke in the DMA because they don’t like the whole thing. They’re looking for reasons.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco looking for ways to make it look overbearing and ridiculous. And this is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, the main difference here is that with this move for the first time, they’re not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just attacking policies. With this move, they’re attacking their own customers.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that is, I think again, I question the strategy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here. Is anyone strategizing over there?
⏹️ ▶️ John They may be thinking that Europe is filled with Americans who are going to be like, hey, the government’s stopping us from
⏹️ ▶️ John getting our cool Apple features, where it seems like a lot of people in the EU are going to say, hey, Apple’s being a jerk about this
⏹️ ▶️ John law that we all agreed on.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It turns out Europeans largely like the way Europe does things.
⏹️ ▶️ John Exactly, right? It’s like if Europe was filled with Texans, it would be a different story, but it’s not.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so I don’t know if they’re misreading that room.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Again, I don’t have a
⏹️ ▶️ John finger on the pulse of what Europe is like, but just look, the DMA passed overwhelmingly.
⏹️ ▶️ John The EU likes regulation. Just look at all the laws around like cheeses in Italy and stuff. It’s just like
⏹️ ▶️ John they like the way things work there, right? They vote for these people, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know how this is gonna work out, but just, I do think if this is the deal with the DMA, like
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple can no longer do business effectively in Europe because again,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it’s not reasonable to require every single feature added to all of their gatekeeping platforms to be open
⏹️ ▶️ John to third parties from day one. It’s technologically not feasible. So if the DMA is asking for that, it needs to be
⏹️ ▶️ John changed or Apple just needs to leave because otherwise, people in Europe are gonna get features like three years after
⏹️ ▶️ John the rest of the world gets them. And that’s if Apple decides to stay in the market and put in an effort to actually
⏹️ ▶️ John comply. Because that’s the best case, the roadmap. Like, you roll out the feature, and then
⏹️ ▶️ John you tweak the feature, and then maybe you open it up to third parties. And then the next year, the third party integration actually works well.
⏹️ ▶️ John Right? And that’s not Apple being a jerk. That’s just the way technology works. It’s not reasonable
⏹️ ▶️ John to require this. The App Store is the important thing to regulate on the phone. SharePlay is not.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right. But it was their behavior with the App Store that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Generated a whole bunch of political will to do a lot like this in the first place that happened to also include other things I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, and again, it’s not it’s not clear to me that shareplay like they wanted to wrap up shareplay in
⏹️ ▶️ John this like maybe They they’re like, oh no, we totally understand like shareplay is not what we’re after or whatever, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re looking for reason to discredit it. But again, I just I have to wonder How many
⏹️ ▶️ Marco battles is Apple willing to fight at once like they have a lot of lawyers. They’re doing battle with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everyone. They’re fighting on so many fronts and they seem to just provoke more of them to keep
⏹️ ▶️ Marco coming. And now they’ve involved a pretty decently sized chunk of their own customers
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as one of the fronts in these battles. Why? Is this worth it? Because again,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco what we’re talking about is not all services revenue. First of all, a huge chunk of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is Google. So, setting that aside for now. What we’re talking about is not even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all App Store revenue. We are talking about giving people the option
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to not use app store purchasing and commissions for apps that are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco largely not using the app store purchase system in the first place. Things like Spotify,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Netflix, HBO Max, like that’s kind of what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about allowing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these apps to like link out and use their own stores or to use their own purchase systems
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that already mostly aren’t using an app purchase. And that’s not where Apple makes most
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of its money. They make most of their money with games. So we’re not even talking about a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco huge chunk of app store revenue that would just disappear overnight. Apple is engaging in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco all these different battles all around the world, including in their own country now with the DOJ
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lawsuit, which touches on some of these things. They’re opening up all these fronts of war and battling
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and literally causing problems for their core product attributes like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco integration in the EU now and possibly the DOJ lawsuit that those both have integration components,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they are causing substantial threats to really important parts of how
⏹️ ▶️ Marco their products are designed and how they work in pretty large markets around the world in order
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to save some tiny percentage of App Store revenue. That to me, again,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have yet to see. I was trying to think, what are Tim Cook’s long-term
⏹️ ▶️ Marco strategy successes? I can’t think of many of those. I honestly do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not think Tim Cook as a leader has good long-term strategy in some pretty key critical
⏹️ ▶️ Marco areas to leading this company. And honestly, it’s time for new leadership. We’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seen the limits of the Tim Cook apple. We’ve seen he’s really good at making money
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and he’s a little spotty in some of the really important product details and a little bit,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, short-sighted with some of these, you know, regulation and app store details. We’ve seen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the limits of Tim Cook’s Apple. I’m ready to see something else. This is bad leadership and bad
⏹️ ▶️ Marco strategy at the top.
⏹️ ▶️ John This wouldn’t be an Apple DMA rant if Marco wasn’t ready to fire some people at Apple.
#askatp: Rumor accountability
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s do at least a little bit of Ask ATP. It’s been a busy season for us, so we’ve unfortunately put it on the back
⏹️ ▶️ Casey burner. Let’s bring it around. Some fellow by the name of Todd Vaziri, I wonder who he is,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey writes, an ATP-589 used Mark Gurman’s rumor bullet points as a conversation starter.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Rumors are great at sparking conversation and debate, but I wonder if anyone has ever revisited Gurman’s rumors post event
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to validate the rumors themselves. It seems like no one cares if the rumors are actually based on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fact and bear fruit since the rumors help create quote unquote content and discourse that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and that’s good enough for some. But when rumors that ultimately go nowhere are given full faith, I feel like we are all wasting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey out outrage or interest. Not to mention if a rumor doesn’t come true, the rumor monger can claim
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that Apple changed its plans and claim no responsibility. I don’t I feel like my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gut says that German is more he is over 50% but I’ve
⏹️ ▶️ Casey never actually done any mathematics or anything to see if that’s true.
⏹️ ▶️ John Back in the early days before you guys were Apple fans in the,
⏹️ ▶️ John God, I hope I’m going to get this right, Mac OS Rumors. I know you’re like, don’t you mean Mac rumors?
⏹️ ▶️ John No, I’m pretty sure I mean macosrumors.com. Anyway, there was a lot of websites that had Apple rumors.
⏹️ ▶️ John A lot of the, some of those websites just flat made up stuff, right? Some
⏹️ ▶️ John of those websites would publish things that were sent to them anonymously that the senders made
⏹️ ▶️ John up. And it was a very exciting time to be an Apple fan, because every possible thing that you
⏹️ ▶️ John could think would be like, whoa, look at this, look at that. And back in that time, I thought to myself,
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of like Todd here, it would be great if there was a meta website that kept track of all the things that were on all the rumors websites
⏹️ ▶️ John and then rated them on accuracy. And there are websites currently that do that. I wish I could remember the URLs.
⏹️ ▶️ John Probably will have them follow up next week if anyone cares. But there are websites that do that. But it turns out that activity is not that exciting, because
⏹️ ▶️ John very quickly, you kind of get a feel for what kind of things will people publish. Like, will
⏹️ ▶️ John this site publish anything that’s sent to them anonymously? Or will this site only publish things
⏹️ ▶️ John from sources that they have some reason to believe are actual real sources,
⏹️ ▶️ John not just like an anonymous email that comes to you or whatever? Mark Gurman is one of those
⏹️ ▶️ John people who publishes things from sources. And I mean, the
⏹️ ▶️ John main thing against him is that the information that he gets, the source information that he gets is usually buried
⏹️ ▶️ John in a giant pile of words, a lot of which are just his opinion on things. and it’s like, yeah, yeah, yeah. What did you what did your sources tell
⏹️ ▶️ John you? And the reason we care what his sources tell us is because his hit rate for things that are sourced
⏹️ ▶️ John that he says definitively very close to when they’re actually going to happen and even sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ John distantly is very good. He has real sources. He doesn’t have people making things up.
⏹️ ▶️ John He’s not guessing and being lucky. He has actual sources or maybe just one source, but whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John it is, when he publishes information without any qualifiers and says something definitively, it’s like a week before
⏹️ ▶️ John the keynote. So you can basically take that to the bank. Rare misses like the
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple Watch and everything or whatever. But the reason we go back to that and talk
⏹️ ▶️ John about it as if it’s a real thing is because like, well, it is a week before WWDC and German says no hardware at WWDC. We just
⏹️ ▶️ John take that at face value at this point. Because when he says that definitively a week before WWDC, guess what?
⏹️ ▶️ John No hardware at WWDC. And if he starts being wrong about that, he said no hardware and it was a huge
⏹️ ▶️ John hardware thing. Then we’re gonna look askance. As I think the Apple Watch rumor with the flat sides that never occurred.
⏹️ ▶️ John We look a little bit of scans of that. Not 100%, but he has real sources, as opposed to Mac OS rumors
⏹️ ▶️ John back in the day, which I’m pretty sure had no real sources and just published anything that sounded cool and occasionally
⏹️ ▶️ John got things right just because of, you know, dumb luck and occasionally got real leaks, but most of the time just made up stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John In the end, this is mostly like entertainment or whatever. But I think on this show, we, if something is a rumor
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s like, we have no idea about the sourcing or whatever, we will say as much. But when we
⏹️ ▶️ John say it looks like no hardware at WWDC because German said it. That’s based on past performance
⏹️ ▶️ John that, you know, that he’s been pretty accurate about things like that. Farther out, like, oh, the new Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John Watch is going to have different straps. Like, remember when we talked about ages ago, we were always framing that as like, it’s so
⏹️ ▶️ John far away. Who knows if that’s going to happen? He might have a source that just like even then it’s like source.
⏹️ ▶️ John Oh, OK, well, so they were they were working on an idea for a new strap on Apple Watch things, and he got a source rumor
⏹️ ▶️ John to say that that doesn’t mean and German doesn’t say definitively the next Apple watch will have different straps.
⏹️ ▶️ John He’s just saying this is the thing Apple’s working on. And it probably is. But you have to take that
⏹️ ▶️ John for what it is, which is Apple works on a lot of stuff. Not everything ships. Sometimes they decide to do something different or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s different than when he comes out and says, here are the features, here are the things, here’s what’s going to be in the
⏹️ ▶️ John keynote. Here’s what’s not going to be in the keynote again, especially as the day gets closer. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I agree that just getting outraged on stuff that are just rumors is pointless. But I hope mostly on this show
⏹️ ▶️ John We either talk about rumors as a jumping off point to like imagine if they did this or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John or we take as close to fact things that come from
⏹️ ▶️ John sources that are usually right very close to the date when they’re going to happen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and different rumor sources have different areas of strengths, I would say. Like for instance,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when we hear from Ming-Chi Kuo about a new display size or a new display panel
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that could be used for an Apple product, that’s usually pretty good because Ming-Chi Kuo is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco well sourced in the supply chain for displays, and we know that. But we don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ John what product that’s going to be in. Right, exactly. And very often he will definitively say, this is going to be in a new laptop,
⏹️ ▶️ John and it turns out it’s in an iPad or something, right? Because that’s not something you would know if you just have sources at the display manufacturer.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, and sometimes you can derive it like, you know, if it’s some giant, you know, 30 8K panel like that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably for a studio display not like a MacBook but you know there are some things that it’s more vague
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but yeah like we know when Ming-Chi Kuo reports pretty definitive like display size
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff especially when it’s something like an iPhone we know it’s probably correct.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or like the OLED iPad we were talking about the OLED iPad as if we were sure it was a thing for
⏹️ ▶️ John months and months and months because there are just so many sources and the display supply chain for so
⏹️ ▶️ John long saying iPad size OLEDs iPad size as OLEDs, dual layer iPad size OLEDs. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not just one source, it’s tons of them come in. And it’s like, eventually we just start talking about it as if it’s fact.
⏹️ ▶️ John And maybe that’s just like experience and kind of knowing like, you know, it looks like there’s gonna be
⏹️ ▶️ John OLED iPads with dual layer screens and there was. And every time that happens, it reinforces our
⏹️ ▶️ John instincts of when something like where there’s smoke, there’s fire versus just like a fanciful idea of like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I think they’re looking at different ways to attach watch straps.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, exactly. And we know, Mark Erman has limits too. Mark Erman oftentimes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will miss the marketing side of something or the story
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or the software details of certain things, but he’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really good at hardware. Mark Erman usually knows what hardware is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco coming. He knows usually some pretty good hardware details and he’s actually getting seemingly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco better sources over time. And so we pay attention to that, we notice that. but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we don’t treat rumors as absolute facts, but usually we also see the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco patterns. We know that if there’s pretty strong rumors about some new iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco display size from Ming-Chi Kuo, and then a few months later, Mark Gurmeyer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reports a few more details about an iPhone of that size, and we know that’s a plausible size and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s bigger than the existing ones. We know that’s probably true, just because we’ve seen the patterns before.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We know roughly how this goes. We’ve been doing this for a long time and so we,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, we’re not going to report on things in the show. We’re talking about them as if they’re facts, if they seem really far-fetched,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or at least we’ll tell you why we think it’s far-fetched if everyone else is talking about it and we feel like we need to.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But you know, it’s all, most of it is just kind of like gut feeling, putting in context
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like this sounds plausible from this source that is usually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco good in this area versus this thing from some random account on Twitter that no
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one’s ever heard of before is probably wrong.
⏹️ ▶️ John And sometimes we don’t even need rumors. Like for example, we talked about on past episodes, OLED
⏹️ ▶️ John screens are coming to MacBooks. I don’t even think there’s a rumor of that, but it’s like, duh, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Unless some better technology comes along, eventually the cool
⏹️ ▶️ John screens they just put on the iPads should be coming to MacBooks. Now what we’re ends up reporting
⏹️ ▶️ John on is, say there’s a rumor and says, oh, it turns out they can’t use the Tandem OLEDs in MacBooks because someone on the supply chain
⏹️ ▶️ John says they use too much power, they get too hot or something like that. That’s a rumor we would report on. But in the
⏹️ ▶️ John absence of any rumors, we’re just like, well, we assume these displays will come to the MacBooks. Now we wait to see,
⏹️ ▶️ John does the rumor mill support that and say, oh, here’s the schedule for the MacBook Air with a dual layer
⏹️ ▶️ John OLED display, right? Here’s when we think it’s coming out, 2025, 2026, and they’ll keep updating that date when they get it or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John Or are we looking for a rumor that says Apple changed their mind, they’re not using a micro LED on the watch, for example. Like they
⏹️ ▶️ John did all this investment in micro LED, they were gonna use it on the watch, and they said, no, actually we’re not. We bailed out of that, we sold
⏹️ ▶️ John the company or whatever. Those are things worth reporting on, but even in the absence of reporting, you can look ahead and you can
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of see where the, very often where the tech is going. What is going to be technologically
⏹️ ▶️ John possible. Look at the products Apple’s introduced, look at what technologies they would probably wanna use in the rest of
⏹️ ▶️ John their line and see how that goes. And then obviously there’s the easy stuff of like, hey, you know, Apple has an M4, there’s probably
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna be a more powerful than M4 chip, which historically speaking will probably be an M4 Pro
⏹️ ▶️ John and M4 Max, and maybe there’ll be an Ultra, maybe it will be an Extreme. You don’t need rumors to tell you that the M4 is coming to the Mac
⏹️ ▶️ John line. Like you just don’t need any. And all we do is look at the rumors and say, okay, it looks like this is coming in this
⏹️ ▶️ John year and this is coming in this month or whatever to sort of lay out where they’re coming. But no one is debating like, someone said the M4
⏹️ ▶️ John is coming to the MacBook Pro. I’m not sure about that. No,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’re pretty sure. All right, thank you to our members who were the exclusive sponsor of this episode.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are a hundred percent member supported this week. please consider joining us at atp.fm slash join.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And if you do join, you get a few different perks and benefits, including
⏹️ ▶️ Marco every week, the ATP overtime segment. This is a bonus topic that we do every week,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just for members. And this week it’s going to be about Apple allegedly planning
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thinner devices, seemingly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco whole product line. Yeah, speaking of German rumors, we were talking about this Apple thinner device rumor,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which seems plausible, I think has some interesting implications. We’ll be talking about that in overtime this week.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So you can join to hear it, atp.fm.com. Thank you so much and we’ll talk to you
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they didn’t even mean to begin
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Cause it was accidental,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh it was accidental
⏹️ ▶️ John John didn’t do any research, Margo and Casey wouldn’t let him Cause
⏹️ ▶️ Marco oh it was accidental
⏹️ ▶️ John can find the show notes at atp.fm And
⏹️ ▶️ John if you’re into Mastodon, you can follow them at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that’s Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Auntie 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
Neutral: Erin’s car
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So what’s going on with Aaron’s car? Any updates there? Yes,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I have updates. So we got a call from the adjusters saying, hey, I’m at Volvo.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Can you explain to me what the hell happened one more time? Like, because we had never spoken to the adjuster before. And I was like, I can,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but why don’t I put my wife on the phone? She was the one who’s there, you know, blah, blah, blah. So she does the whole song and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dance about what had happened, et cetera, et cetera. That same evening, the adjuster calls
⏹️ ▶️ Casey again. we are about to go to dinner. He says, okay, I have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey looked into the situation and we’re going to total the car.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey god, because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the car is worth not that much more than it would cost to repair
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. So we’re going to total the car. That means that now we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have to buy a car under duress because Aaron can’t drive my car
⏹️ ▶️ Casey doesn’t think she can and she did get a loner from our
⏹️ ▶️ Casey local Volvo dealer. It is a piece of trash, but it’s a piece of trash that will get her from
⏹️ ▶️ Casey A to B, as long as A to B is pretty close to home. And so we are very thankful for this piece of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey trash, but it is not a long-term sustainable solution, right? And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey service has been phenomenal. Like if you live in the Richmond area or anywhere near it and you want to get
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your car serviced by somebody who seems to really care, go to Volvo of Richmond, they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very good. But that being said, we still need to solve this problem.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And what we’re currently thinking is replacing the XC90 with another XC90, which I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey could understand and argue that that’s a dumb, terrible decision. But I really believe in my heart a few things.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And we’ll talk about why. But first of all, I really think that this is the best car for Aaron. I really, really, really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do. And number two, I really think it was a one in a trillion
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bad, unlucky break. I really,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John really do think that. Well, we
⏹️ ▶️ John know it’s not one in a trillion, because somebody wrote in to say that this happened to two of their other Volvos. So I’m going to say
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, but they were wildly different generations.
⏹️ ▶️ John let’s say it’s it’s a three and a nine billion.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, it definitely seems like it is not that rare.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like the fact that we, I think, I believe you heard from multiple people who say something similar happened to them with a Volvo
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in particular. So it could be like a just a design flaw of some
⏹️ ▶️ John their engines. Not enough shielding on the bottom of the car or something. Still super
⏹️ ▶️ John rare, I would imagine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but I think it might give me pause to own one out of warranty
⏹️ ▶️ John Whatever that effect is, like if he had had a Volkswagen and given the same story, we would have heard from the Volkswagen
⏹️ ▶️ John people who it happened to. Maybe this happens to three out of every nine billion
⏹️ ▶️ John of every car manufacturer. It’s difficult to draw conclusions from because it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John a random selection. self-selecting because we talked about Volvos, we hear from the Volvo people this happened to. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I think the jury’s still out on that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I assume, is there no chance of getting you into something electric
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ATP.fm slash join.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco aside. I know it’s more money. It’s also a lot nicer. It’s also no gas. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also can’t have that problem recur. Harder to find with CarPlay sometimes. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey Well, let’s put that- I believe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s something called the Volvo EX 90. Okay,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey so let’s put that. You
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John know, there’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and there’s a Volvo. No, no, no, just hold on, just hold on. Put that in the parking lot, ding, for a second and make sure I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey come back to that because there is an answer for that, but let me put that aside for a moment. So we look at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the local Volvo dealer and what we’re looking for is something around like a 2021 XC90. Aaron’s car
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was not driven that much, so it only had like 42, 43,000 miles on it. So we want something with fewer than 40,000 miles.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And we want something that doesn’t really give up any of the options we had before, which basically, if you speak
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Volvo, amounts to the climate package, which gives you like rear heated seats, which I think the kids are really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gonna want, even though we don’t have winter here. And it gives you a few other things. I forget, oh, a heated wheel,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which Aaron really, really liked. And the advanced package is, I think, what they call it, which among
⏹️ ▶️ Casey other things, gives you a heads up display, which Aaron has become completely addicted to. And honestly, I would too,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if I were her. So anyways, so to find that car has been challenging.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey used is what we think we want to do. Um, we could, I mean, potentially buy new,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but we’re talking, I mean, these cars are now $70,000 new and I genuinely think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they’re great cars and I could even make an argument they’re worth $70,000, but I don’t particularly want to spend $70,000 on a car right
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this minute. So we, we didn’t, we didn’t think that we really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wanted to go that route. So, okay. That was Monday. Tuesday I say to her, all right,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, let’s go to the place I often mention on the show these days, let’s go to CarMax, because CarMax
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is a used car retailer, and they’ll sell anything, right? And you can bounce between
⏹️ ▶️ Casey several different cars all in the same dealership and see and just sit in them, if not drive them
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and see what you think. So I or the four of us went to CarMax. And we sat
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in and looked at an Atlas, a Volkswagen Atlas, a Audi Q7, which I actually
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really liked, but Aaron was not that keen on a Kia Telluride, which is extraordinarily
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well-reviewed. And I know a couple people with them, and they love them. But Erin
⏹️ ▶️ Casey didn’t care for it. The Mazda CX-9, which was mostly because we had such good luck with her Mazda years ago, and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that didn’t impress either of us. And the Jeep Grand Cherokee, which I know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you two are going to snicker, but honestly is a relatively upmarket three-row car that feels to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me like it’s 13 miles long, like suburban
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s huge. The current ones are huge. I don’t know what year you were looking at.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We were looking at basically the brand new ones because we wanted a three row.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Are they meaningfully bigger than the XC90? I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey haven’t looked it up, but I feel like they are. Exactly. It may not be bigger, but it looks
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be. I genuinely don’t know, and I’m not going to look it up while I’m talking. But it looks way
⏹️ ▶️ Casey bigger. And what was really great about the CarMax experience was we walked
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in, and there’s a little greeter person. And they said, OK, what can I help you with? And I said, oh, I want to look at
⏹️ ▶️ Casey these cars. And of course, because it’s me, I have model names and stock numbers written down. And the lady
⏹️ ▶️ Casey looks at it and says,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You’re a nightmare customer.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, I am the worst. It gets worse because I had a different experience today. But she
⏹️ ▶️ Casey says, okay, this one’s over there. That one’s over there. That one’s over there. That one’s over there. Just, you know, let us know if you have questions.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco In other words, get out of my hair.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, but it was said with a smile. And so I’m like, what?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Are they open? Like, do I I need someone to go with me?” And she said, no, no, no, no, they’re all open. Just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey go to town. What? Really? Like, that’s not how this usually works. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be honest, I really enjoyed the CarMax experience because I didn’t have to talk to anyone.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so it was really great. We just walked around. And granted, we’re going through a heat wave here. So it was like over 100 degrees. I want to say
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s like 35 in stupid units. It’s over 100 degrees. You know, it’s 8 million percent
⏹️ ▶️ Casey humidity. And we’re all drenched as we’re looking at these cars. But you know, you do what you do. And so we looked
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at them all, and the only one that was really in the running was Grand Cherokee, but not enough that she was like, yeah, I want to test
⏹️ ▶️ Casey drive that. It’s huge. It’s not really my cup of tea, but it’s not my car.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And if she was more enthusiastic about it, I definitely would have said, all right, let’s go try it. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey none of this really revved her engine. And they had a couple XC90s, but they weren’t exactly what we wanted either.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I had my eyes on, and this is coming obliquely back to what you were talking about, Marco. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had my eyes on a T8 Volvo. So there’s three different
⏹️ ▶️ Casey styles of Volvo in this generation. There’s the T5, which was a, I believe it was turbocharged
⏹️ ▶️ Casey only instead of turbo and supercharged like Aaron’s was. And it did not have a third row of seats. It just had,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, empty space there. There’s a T6, which Aaron had, which again, super and turbocharged. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey there’s the T8, which depending on the generation or depending on the year, I should say, it was either the T6
⏹️ ▶️ Casey with a small electric motor for the, I believe it was the rear wheels, or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think in later years, it was a turbocharged only motor with a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey slightly larger electric motor for the rear wheels. And what’s great about this, what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I find super appealing about this is that you can, like some of these quasi
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hybrids, you can, well, first of all, it’s a plug-in hybrid, I didn’t specify that, but beyond that, you can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey go something like 20 miles pure electric. And part of the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey way that Aaron had a seven-year-old car that only had 40,000 miles on it is that most of the time
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we’re driving, or she’s driving, I should say, five miles, 10 miles, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe 20 in a day, maybe. And so on paper, well, first of all, on paper, a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey full electric car is the correct answer. I promise we’re coming back to this, Marco.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco I promise. But-
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But apparently the EX90 is not actually out yet.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s correct. And that’s where I’m meandering toward.
⏹️ ▶️ John You’re still talking about the XC90 here with the trim levels T8 and stuff, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco That’s correct.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yep Yeah, cuz the XC90 it’s it’s it’s still available now with a plug-in hybrid option for like, you know, 30 miles
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Exactly, right exactly and you know, the new ones the new plug-in hybrids are like 75 80
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thousand dollars and it’s just like oh Whether or not we could afford that which I don’t know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I don’t think I want to pay that You know, like even if we could afford it, I don’t think I want to pay that kind of money
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So anyways, Volvo of Fredericksburg, they had a T8 that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had, I think it’s 30,000-ish miles and was optioned the way we want. And I’ve been going back and forth with them over
⏹️ ▶️ Casey email and they wouldn’t come down to exactly the price we wanted. And I wanted to go see it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because we had never driven a T8 before. So we went up there today and we took it for a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ride. And first of all, it wasn’t in as quite as good condition as I like. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know it’s a used car. It’s not going to be perfect. I don’t expect it to be perfect. this is where I’m becoming a total pain in the butt
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or customer. I know it won’t be perfect, but we keep our cars really nice. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this one had enough dings and dents and whatnot that it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wasn’t quite up to snuff. But the thing that was a real bummer, and if you work at a car dealership,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey take note of this for me, if for nothing else, this thing has a battery,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right? It’s a small battery, but it’s a battery nevertheless. In order for this to really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey show us the differences between Aaron’s T6 and the T8, that battery needs to be what?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Charged. I’ll give you one guess if that battery was charged when we took it out for a spin.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s just like when I tried to drive the Wrangler plug-in hybrid. I feel
⏹️ ▶️ John like the car dealerships are not equipped to keep all the plug-in hybrids plugged in. Like I’m assuming electric
⏹️ ▶️ John car dealerships are, because you know, you kind of need that in the electric cars but the hybrids are sold by,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, gas car companies and they’re just on the same, on the lot, in the parking spots. Yeah, that’s a shame.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s a total shame because I went into this thinking this is it. I mean, I had her old plates
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in my car. I had our insurance information for the old car. Like I had a checkbook in the car like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was ready to rock and I didn’t know if they were going to come down to the price we wanted. But leaving that aside,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I thought, you know what? There’s a better than 50% chance we will leave the house with one car return with two cars
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and we took it around the block and Aaron keeps saying to me this feels the same as my car. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s not that I didn’t believe her, but I was like, it should feel different because in that application,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s her engine plus another like 70 horsepower or something like that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey from the pure electric motor. And so driving around in pure electric
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mode, it felt like a doggy, you know, a slower version of her car, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think makes sense, you know, because it’s not a strong electric motor. Real like battery electric cars like the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Rivian are stupid fast. This is different than that, right? It’s a little teeny electric motor and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s enough to get you around town and do the sorts of things that Aaron needs to do, but it’s not going
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to, you know, blow your hair back until you have the gasoline
⏹️ ▶️ Casey motor involved as well. And then this thing is like a 400 horsepower car or something like that. No, granted it weighs as much as
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a house, but Aaron’s car, her old car, her now totaled car,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that would keep up with my Golf R. It was surprisingly quick.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And in theory, I would have assumed this one would actually be faster than my car. And because the battery was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fricking dead, it just really was not that impressive. And I went there thinking she’s going to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like it and I’m going to frigging love it because I love fast SUVs. They’re stupid,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they’re dumb, and they make zero sense and I love them anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it feels like you’re violating the laws of physics. Like, it’s just like, why is this thing so fast?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey exactly. So anyways, so we weren’t impressed by that. And they had a couple other options. They were
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the least sleazy car salespeople I’ve ever worked with, so I really appreciated that. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they let us drive away without anything. And I mean, I don’t think there was much they could have done to put us in anything
⏹️ ▶️ Casey short of letting us effectively steal a car. But I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have no answers. And so I asked both Richmond Volvo and Fredericksburg Volvo the same question.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I asked them, OK, what’s the story with the EX90? The EX90 is basically a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey full battery electric version of Aaron’s car. I mean, there’s differences here and there. But in spirit,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s a full battery electric version of Aaron’s car. I’m still unconvinced that I want our workhorse
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to be a full battery electric vehicle, because we do long trips. And I don’t.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m sure. Well, so here’s the thing. I’m optimizing for like one to two trips
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a year, which I intellectually know is dumb. It’s so easy. I haven’t really gotten
⏹️ ▶️ Casey past that. And I recognize, full on, I recognize that I’m kind of being an idiot about this. You
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are. But nevertheless, the EX90, both dealers independently
⏹️ ▶️ Casey said they are just rolling off the lines now. And I think the Richmond dealer said, I’ve never
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even seen one. And I believe the Fredericksburg dealer said, we’ve seen one, but we have no idea when we’re getting them.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It could be months. And I don’t think that we have months to play with.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And with regard to other battery electric vehicles, even leaving aside the fact that I’m not entirely convinced that’s the right
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fit for us, the only other decent option was a Kia EV9,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which I’m not sure I love the look of at all, and Erin
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is very not sold on an electric vehicle for her. I think both of us agree that my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey next car should be an electric car of some sort, but I don’t think that it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey time for Aaron quite yet. So anyway, so I don’t really have any good answers with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey regard to a battery electric. And I mean, I would love to put her in an R1S, I really would.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would probably even hold my nose about CarPlay, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey certainly they are way more expensive than I want and it doesn’t look like there’s a robust
⏹️ ▶️ Casey enough and or really what I should say is cheap enough used market to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey get to the price point that I’m looking to get to.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, there isn’t. Not yet.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so all of that to say, I really thought today we were going to take care of business. It was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey going to get done. We were going to buy that T8, life was going to be good. And now I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what to do because there are enough used XC90s, broadly speaking in the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey area, but none of them are really just the exactly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what we want. And I’m not sure what to do. I don’t particularly want to buy new because it’s way more
⏹️ ▶️ Casey money than we need to spend. And I’m not snooty enough that I need, nor is she, that we need
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a new car. Like we don’t want or need to do that. But I’m having trouble
⏹️ ▶️ Casey finding that unicorn of something that I think is priced reasonably, not to say it’s a steal, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey reasonably and not beat to hell, not with a trillion miles on it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and optioned the way we want. And so now I’m kind of like back at, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the back at square one and I genuinely don’t know what we’re going to do. The plan is still to go with an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey XC90 of some sort. We might have to just wait it out for a while or I don’t know what we’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do. I mean, yeah, like the problem is like you have you’re under time pressure like that. Like exactly. Like there’s there’s really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no like when you when you have time pressure and you’re really picky
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with a whole bunch of stuff. Yep. has to give, and so you don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco get to make the ideal choice, you have to compromise on something or just get incredibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco lucky with what you find, but that seems like that didn’t happen. So, you know, the question is just which of these
⏹️ ▶️ Marco various things that you’re going to, you know, not be very happy about, which compromise are you willing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, and that’s the thing. And the only thing that is working on our side
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a little bit is that we’re going away for a couple of weeks next month.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so we really need to make it like three more weeks and then we disappear for two. And then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we can kind of reset and start over.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but that means so your wife’s gonna have no car for five weeks. Like that’s, that’s a bit much.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey She could presumably rock the loaner from Volvo for some or all of that. And if they need it back, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we’ve told them many times, like, look, the moment you guys want this back, tell us and we will
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have it back immediately. It’s such a piece of trash. This car is so bad but I don’t think they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gonna want it back anytime soon but it’s still, it’s not a fair or appropriate for us to hold on to this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for, you know, two months or whatever. So I genuinely don’t know what we’re gonna
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do. I mean, maybe we rent a car for a couple of weeks to give us a little more time but that’s not cheap or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey free, you know, or anything like that. So I don’t know. I’m genuinely at a loss of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to do. I mean, honestly, I think your best bet is, first of all, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have to also consider that Aaron’s the customer, not you.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and she got this ridiculously bad luck thing happen. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think your best bet is to get her back into an XC90 in whatever form that needs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to take. Like I would stop looking at other vehicles that if that’s the one she really likes and she really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco how to get an XC90.
⏹️ ▶️ John Is her mind closed to non SUVs?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think so. I mean, I will accept any kind of input, But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we do use the capacity of the XC90 enough that I don’t think she would do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a sedan, and there are no sedans that exist in this country anyway.
⏹️ ▶️ John I just put in there on our Slack a 2020 S60 plug-in hybrid for $35,000.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, that looks like a nice car,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but that’s a much smaller total cargo volume. Exactly. All right, well, you’ve got
⏹️ ▶️ John small children. They would fit in this car. It’s really nice. It’s a plug-in hybrid. One of the things we talked about, because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ended up having to rent a minivan to get to the beach and back, right? And I got to admit, this Chrysler Pacifica,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which actually, by the way, was delivered to us from Enterprise Rental with 36 miles on it. It
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just so happened we were the first people to rent it. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t want to own a minivan for a few reasons, but I will be the first to tell you, and she
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would agree, on paper, that is 100% the correct answer. Honestly,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco everyone I’ve ever heard from who owns a minivan, they all say they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Marco amazing. Like, you just have to get over the fact that you own a minivan, but like, once you get over
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that, people love them. Like, they are really good in a lot of ways.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And if what you’re looking for is a large amount of passenger and cargo volume,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and have it be roughly, you know, that kind of size and shape, you know, higher
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seating position, big volume, like fits a bunch of kids stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a reason minivans are so popular and have been for so long. They’re incredibly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco practical and people generally love them who have them.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And actually come to think of it, well first of all, yes to everything you just said. Second of all, when we go on these beach
⏹️ ▶️ Casey trips, and it’s getting better and better with each year as the kids get bigger and require less stuff and whatever, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we take Penny with us and so that’s a little bit of added cargo in and of itself. But when we
⏹️ ▶️ Casey go on these beach trips, We typically will put a toolie or whatever you call it, you know, one of those cargo carriers on the roof of Aaron’s car.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And we still fill this thing just freaking full.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s a lot. What are you bringing on your vacation with your two small children? And you have
⏹️ ▶️ John a giant car and you need to have a roof
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, John, we do this every year. I don’t have time for it right now. We can bicker about this another
⏹️ ▶️ John Are you bringing like a gas grill with you? No.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Can we push on this a little bit? Like, because that does seem
⏹️ ▶️ Casey excessive. We can come back to this if you want. But suffice to say, we have a Thule, or however
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you pronounce it, and the car is chock full, right? Well, this
⏹️ ▶️ Casey minivan, I am freaking out, because it doesn’t have any roof rails or anything like that. I am telling Erin,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I say to her, there’s no freaking way we’re going to fit everything. We’re going to have to cut some stuff. And she was like, first of all, we’ll fit everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Second of all, if we can’t, we’ll just leave some stuff behind. It’ll be fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I think it sounds like you might benefit from cutting some stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, OK, there is that. But nevertheless, we start packing the minivan and it turns out
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that under the middle row, like under the floorboard in the middle row, there’s these
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like freaking cavernous gullies. I genuinely don’t know if this minivan was all-wheel drive or not. I want to say it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey wasn’t, but either way, there’s these cavernous gullies under the kids’ seats or under their
⏹️ ▶️ Casey feet, I should say. We filled those with a bunch of stuff. Then the back,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was like two-thirds It was amazing. It was amazing how cavernous this thing was. It was incredible.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it also had wireless CarPlay, which we only used briefly, but actually, and this is a Chrysler,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey mind you, which I don’t personally consider a terribly fancy brand, even though I think they might
⏹️ ▶️ Casey think they are. But anyways, the wireless CarPlay was very good, like very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey low latency. The screen was very high resolution compared to either of our cars. It looked like retina. I mean,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it wasn’t literally, but it looked that way. It was very impressed, or impressive.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But anyway, so we rented this minivan for the beach, and that worked out really nicely. And we talked about, should
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we get a minivan? Or alternatively, should we get a sedan and then just understand we’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey going to rent minivans to go to the beach every year? And what we concluded was we do use that space
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the XC90 often enough to justify something large. But, I mean, John,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your question is not unreasonable. It really, really, really isn’t. But I think ultimately,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to come back to what Marco was saying, she had this thing that she loved
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ripped away from her by incredibly crummy luck. It’s not like she got in an accident that was her fault or something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like that. She didn’t get in an accident at all by any reasonable definition. It’s just she had catastrophic engine failure.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so I think I’m pretty convinced, and I think she is too, that an XC90 is the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right answer. So we are no longer cross-shopping. I forget which one of you was asking that question, but we’re no longer cross-shopping.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We did it just so we could check it off the list. not going to do that anymore. But the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey question I keep asking myself is, I do not want
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to spend new car money on a new car for her or for anyone really. It’s not her specifically.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But the more I think about it, the more I’m wondering if maybe I just need to bite the bullet
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and find her the exact car that she wants because A, she freaking deserves it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey She’s an angel. That is the correct answer. And B, if I can’t put my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey fingers on, if I can’t put my hands on a used one that she really, really likes, then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey why wouldn’t we get a new one? Now, I think I’m more on board with this idea than she is. She
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is unquestionably the more frugal of the two of us, or the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey more financially responsible of the two of us. So I think it might, even if I’m convinced, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey know if I could convince her, But it’s where I’m starting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to lean at this point, because I just can’t find exactly what we want.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco What about leasing, by the way? If you want to soften the burden a little bit up front, leasing could be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco an option. And I would also caution you that I would maybe not want
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to own a Volvo outside of warranty, and leasing fixes that problem as well.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I’m kind of allergic to leasing. But what I haven’t mentioned is both the dealers told us, and I don’t remember the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey specific incentive, I don’t know if it’s like a government thing or a Volvo thing, but apparently if you lease,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they’re offering like $7,500 off right now or something like that, like an absurd amount of
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not $700, it’s the EV tax credit thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey See, that’s what I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thought, but I don’t know how that would apply to these
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John cars unless it’s only- Maybe they’re
⏹️ ▶️ John just matching the government thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Automakers use lease incentives all the time to boost their quarterly numbers, so take advantage.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco frequently in the auto business, a lease special is often like the best deal on a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco new car that’s available anywhere. Because they do kind of bet against their own future selves to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco boost the short-term gain. So as a customer, if what you want is available with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a heavily discounted lease special, that’s often worth considering.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. And so even though I find leases to be… How do you pronounce the word? Anathema?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Is that right? Is that what I’m looking for? I find it disgusting to lease. Like it’s just not my jam.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But I shouldn’t say disgusting, it’s just not for me. But that being said, if you’re offering me 75 fricking, $7,500 fricking
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dollars off, I’ll carry a lease for at least a few months until I can
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pay it off or whatever the case may be. That’s not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that works. Well, according to Volvo, they said, you just got to lease it and last like three months
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or something like that. And then you can buy yourself out of it or whatever. I’ve never leased before, so I’d
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have to talk to them more about it if we get serious. But either way,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s between that, and I think most Volvo dealers, or maybe Volvo corporate offers like a, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’ve previously owned a Volvo, we’ll give you a thousand bucks to buy another one. Then we’re Costco members, and they
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do like negotiations with these different car manufacturers. And so I think we get a thousand dollars off from that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So suddenly we’re looking at like $9,500 off potentially on a brand new Volvo. And suddenly the $70,000 Volvo is $60,000,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey which is quite a bit more than I wanted to spend still, but nevertheless,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it at least makes this sort of thing approachable or a possibility, I guess I should say.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Can I convince you to use the $10,000 savings to get the plug-in hybrid version at least?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I would really, really, really consider it because again, leaving aside the fact that it makes the car kind of fast,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what I cannot stress enough is how appealing it is to me that we can have, even though I don’t really love
⏹️ ▶️ Casey plug-in hybrids in general, I think in this application, it actually is exactly the right answer because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we have the infinite range asterisk dagger, double dagger for when we go on whatever trip we need to go on.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But for all the around town piddly stuff, she can just go pure electric and it’d be fine. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Plug-in hybrids are very popular for good reason. Like they are extremely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco compatible with current American usage and priorities and fears.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like they’re very compatible with that. Like people want to dip their toe in electric.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco They think for those two trips a year that you take, that somehow it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco never going to be possible to charge an electric car on the highway. So they think they need gas.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So this is a way for you to try out electric, realize that you like it better,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then for the next vehicle after this that your family purchases, you’ll go actual electric. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the correct step now is to take the plug-in hybrid now and begin
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that transition in a comfortable way that won’t push anybody outside their comfort zone.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the problem with the hybrids is they got twice as much crap to go wrong. And historically speaking, the reliability of
⏹️ ▶️ John hybrids has not been as good as internal combustion REVs. They’re better now. The newer
⏹️ ▶️ John designs have less stuff in them, but there’s no getting around the fact that there’s more stuff than an
⏹️ ▶️ John EV and there’s more stuff than
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco an internal combustion
⏹️ ▶️ John engine because it’s got both. be not a concern. Obviously, if you’re not going to own the car that
⏹️ ▶️ John long, you probably don’t care, and it’ll probably be fine. But do keep that in mind.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, but also keep in mind that for all those electric-only local miles,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that serpentine belt is not going to be turning.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well, it depends on the hybrid drive trains. They’re very different from manufacturer to manufacturer, and
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s not necessarily the case. So I don’t know where the belt is, where the engine is facing
⏹️ ▶️ John on these hybrids. There’s
⏹️ ▶️ John potential options of how to do hybrid drives, and many of them are
⏹️ ▶️ John very different than the internal combustion engines in the same model. So you can look into that.
⏹️ ▶️ John But honestly, I just think that maybe the goal is just to keep the pebbles out.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Whatever’s going on with the belts, maybe
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t want the pebbles in.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, well, we’ll work on that for next time. But no, this is not a longitudinal.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What’s the opposite of that? A sideways mount. What’s the word I’m looking for? The engine’s mounted like your cars
⏹️ ▶️ Casey are. Transverse? Thank you, yes. That’s what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John I was listening
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Burruson Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s a transverse mounted engine so the belt is on the passenger side
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on an American car. But yeah, I mean we’ll see what happens. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just tough because we try to be financially prudent. We try to have an
⏹️ ▶️ Casey oh crap fund like I think any reasonable adult should at least try to do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but there are not a lot of people who have a $70,000 oh crap fund. You know what I mean?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And so it’s just obviously, we’re not going to pay cash for this, but it’s just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey still, it’s like, oh, there’s so much money that I was not planning on spending. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s just tough.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And consider that the insurance is giving you a hefty discount. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so there were all these various incentives and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Owning a car is always a massive money hole. There’s no way to own a car that you don’t lose money.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s just a question of when you lose the money. sometimes it’s not within your control, sometimes it is.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it’s just when and how this money gets burned. So it’s, you know, this was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco obviously you couldn’t have planned for this, but you are car owners and you like giant nice cars
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so like this is you’re going to burn this money at some point. You just have to do it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at a time that you weren’t necessarily expecting.