catatp.fm Unofficial Accidental Tech Podcast transcripts (generated by computer, so expect errors).

641: We're Saving That for the Egg

29 May 2025

Tiny EV trucks, what Jony and Sam might be making, and how Apple might turn around developer sentiment.

Episode Description:

Sponsored by:

  • TRMNL: A hackable e-ink display. Use code ATP.
  • Notion: Your notes, docs, and projects in one space.

Become a member for ATP Overtime, ad-free episodes, member specials, and our early-release, unedited “bootleg” feed!

Transcribed using Whisper large_v2 (transcription) + WAV2VEC2_ASR_LARGE_LV60K_960H (alignment) + Pyannote (speaker diaritization).

Chapters

  1. ATP if Apple sucks
  2. SSD-longevity follow-up
  3. AVP on Price is Right 🖼️
  4. Sponsor: Notion
  5. What Jony/Sam are making?
  6. Alexa Plus
  7. Sponsor: TRMNL (code ATP)
  8. Little EV trucks 🖼️
  9. Apple Turnover/Turnaround
  10. Ending theme
  11. Restaurant-tech MVPs

ATP if Apple sucks

⏹️ ▶️ John Suffice it to say there will be future ubiquity discussion on this program. Shocking, I know.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Shocking, I tell you. We’ll also be talking about Apple products in the future. No. What a surprise.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve been thinking a lot recently about Apple is not in a great spot

⏹️ ▶️ Casey right now, or at least the community doesn’t really love where Apple is right now. And what

⏹️ ▶️ Casey does that mean for us as a show? Because on the one side,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey my perception of the show is the three of us do our darndest to bring

⏹️ ▶️ Casey our genuine and honest opinions about pretty much everything that we talk about including when Apple

⏹️ ▶️ Casey is as the you know kids like to say these days cooked but that does that really make for

⏹️ ▶️ Casey entertaining and engaging programming and I don’t have any answers right now and I’m just kind of throwing

⏹️ ▶️ Casey spaghetti at the wall to see what happens but I don’t know what we’re the three of us going to do because I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Casey want to just continually moan about Apple and I don’t think you two do either, despite what this program leads you to believe.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s not, you know, all three of us tend to do this kind of frequently, but that’s not what any of us wants. Like, what are

⏹️ ▶️ Casey we going to do if Apple continues to circle the drain? What if, what if dub dub sucks, then what are we going to do?

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I mean, as I think I said, the last time we just talked, I talked about this, the show does, since we follow Apple,

⏹️ ▶️ John the show, uh, tone also follows Apple. So when Apple is kicking

⏹️ ▶️ John butt and doing great things, the show is excited about that. When Apple is not kicking butt and is doing

⏹️ ▶️ John not so great things, The show reflects that as well. I think the good thing is that Apple is a big

⏹️ ▶️ John entity and in any given time Not everything is bad and not everything is good.

⏹️ ▶️ John So even when things are awesome There’s always things to complain about and even when things are terrible. There’s

⏹️ ▶️ John still stuff that’s good in bright spots so I felt like if we just you know, it would be

⏹️ ▶️ John it would be sort of We would be doing disservice to our listeners to pretend things are awesome

⏹️ ▶️ John when they’re not and I think we’ve gone through this cycle The show’s been around long enough now that I think we’ve gone through this cycle

⏹️ ▶️ John multiple times of things, certain things being really bad. I mean, in fact, it’s kind of funny

⏹️ ▶️ John that the last time we went through something like this was a cycle where the hardware was the thing

⏹️ ▶️ John we were griping about. The hardware was bad. They ruined their laptops. Their most popular

⏹️ ▶️ John Mac hardware was bad for so long and we complained about it for so long. And here we are in this new era where

⏹️ ▶️ John the hardware is the best thing they’re doing. I mean, you never know what’s gonna happen.

⏹️ ▶️ John And especially with the AI stuff, it’s just like a wild card in all of this because nobody knows who the winner and losers

⏹️ ▶️ John there will be. But anyway, I don’t have a problem with it at all because I feel like it’s always

⏹️ ▶️ John going to be going in cycles and it’s worth talking about the bad things

⏹️ ▶️ John as much as the good. I mean, you know, from someone whose website is called hypercritical, surprise, surprise, I don’t mind criticizing things.

⏹️ ▶️ John I just feel like we can do it in a constructive way. And there’s lots of good, exciting stuff happening as well,

⏹️ ▶️ John like not just with Apple, but with the entire tech world. So I think we’ll, you know, we try to strike a good balance. And

⏹️ ▶️ John WWDC, like, that’s the story this year. You basically nailed it. It’s like, look, people are feeling bad.

⏹️ ▶️ John How does Apple react to that? What do they do to try to turn this around? Get to the top of

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey it. What do they do to try to turn this around at

⏹️ ▶️ John WWDC? That is the story of this WWDC in more ways than one, as I’m sure

⏹️ ▶️ John we’ll discuss when WWDC comes along. But to pretend that it’s not, and just to say,

⏹️ ▶️ John well, we’re only gonna discuss the things we liked about WWDC, that’s not the right thing to do. So I

⏹️ ▶️ John think we will ride this out and, you know, happy days will come again.

⏹️ ▶️ John And in the meantime, maybe it’ll be a new Mac Pro or something that will just make me happy enough to not worry about everything else.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and to point out too, like, we do focus on Apple news because that is, you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, most of our computing world and our computing passions, but the world of technology

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is much bigger than just Apple. We don’t owe Apple coverage. Apple

⏹️ ▶️ Marco earns coverage. If they have turned us off so much that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we have nothing nice to say about them, we’ll just talk about other stuff after a while. Like that’s just what, like we care

⏹️ ▶️ Marco about Apple a lot. We hope they don’t do that. We would rather talk about Apple because we like their stuff and we like them, you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, we like what they have stood for over time, most of the, for the most part.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And we like their general ethos when it does well. But

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we are not an Apple show exclusively and technology is not Apple exclusively.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so here’s what always happens. Before WWDC, we have like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the trough of disillusionment with Apple for the year, because we haven’t had any fun products

⏹️ ▶️ Marco recently, like nothing has like juiced us with like Apple enthusiasm recently.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So we’re left to wallow in the silence and realize like all the stuff

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that sucks about Apple. And then usually what happens is WWDC comes up

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And we are really excited about what they just announced. And we get to talk about that, and it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco interesting, and it’s fun. And then we have a little boost there.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Then the week after WBC, we install the betas, and half the stuff is broken and sucks.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And then we go a little bit down. But for the most part, we’re still held up by that high of the WBC announcements

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and all the new promise of what’s to come.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it’s the world of possibilities, that even if it’s not there yet and the betas stink, it’s like, but there’s a lot of possibilities.

⏹️ ▶️ John what could the future hold given the possibilities that have been put before us?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, and then maybe we start seeing betas from app developers later in the summer that take advantage of the new stuff,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s exciting and it’s interesting. And then the fall comes and we get the new product launches for the most part, like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’ll get the new iPhones and the Apple Watches and whatever else comes out, any kind of fun Macs

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or whatever else. Like we get those, new AirPods, whatever it is. And so we have these kind of Apple

⏹️ ▶️ Marco seasons of both enthusiasm and honestly of relevance.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the good thing is the world of tech is very big. And so if Apple

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is not earning our enthusiasm anymore for whatever reason, other

⏹️ ▶️ Marco things might. And we can talk about those. And if Apple wants to start

⏹️ ▶️ Marco earning more enthusiasm from us, well, they’re gonna have to do some things differently. And I don’t think they care at

⏹️ ▶️ Marco all. Like they don’t give two craps about us. So they’re either gonna do it or not,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and we’ll cover it or not, but it doesn’t mean anything bad for the show if Apple

⏹️ ▶️ Marco continues to anger and sadden us so much that we don’t really talk about

⏹️ ▶️ Marco them as much, and we start filling in with other stuff that does make us happy. That’s fine. Like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco my entire segment about restaurant stuff, that has almost nothing to do with Apple. Apple has almost

⏹️ ▶️ Marco no role whatsoever in my restaurant tech. And yet tons of stuff there has made me happy. We talk about Ubiquiti

⏹️ ▶️ Marco stuff. We talk about other platforms, we talk about wiring, and stuff like that. That

⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of stuff. We talk about home automation stuff. That has almost nothing to do with Apple because their home automation stuff sucks.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco We talk about Sonos stuff. That has almost nothing to do with Apple because Apple’s speakers suck. There’s a lot of areas

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that Apple sucks, and we talk about other companies that do great in those areas. And that’s fine. That

⏹️ ▶️ Marco can be a lot of what we do if, over the long term, Apple continues

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to slide into areas that we don’t really want to go.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s gonna become a Johnny Ive AI pin show.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Can you imagine? I mean, it’s possible. I can’t imagine that’ll be what happens, but it’s possible.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’ll just be called the Iopen. Same product, different name.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, this isn’t the Accidental Apple podcast, even though that’s oftentimes what it seems like. And to your point, I mean,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it is the Accidental Tech podcast. There are other things that we can talk about. I don’t know, it’s just, I feel like in the past,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey when we’ve had a malaise about things, it’s often been because,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey not always, but often been because they just make like product decisions that we don’t necessarily agree with.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Whereas here, I feel like they’re just acting like complete jerks. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that has happened in the past, for sure. But I feel like it’s happening more frequently and more

⏹️ ▶️ Casey vibrantly, for lack of a better word, than it typically

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John does.

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, there’s plenty of product decisions that we still disagree with, I think. There’s a good share of those

⏹️ ▶️ John as well. There’s policy decisions for the company, also product decisions that I think we disagree with strongly. Sometimes they just get overshadowed,

⏹️ ▶️ John I think, by the policy decision. I think that’s fair,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and I think that’s the thing.

⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, and we’ll probably have more at WWDC when they show all their redesigned OSes, and we’ll have lots of other product, a

⏹️ ▶️ John lot of opinions about those product decisions as well, I’m sure. Indeed.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Keep in mind also, we are hearing about Apple being jerks because we’ve had all these

⏹️ ▶️ Marco court cases and things that are coming out in Discovery, like internal communications and stuff that are

⏹️ ▶️ Marco showing that they are basically exactly as jerky as we all feared for the worst. We

⏹️ ▶️ Marco thought, what’s the least charitable interpretation their actions.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maybe that’s, you know, surely they won’t be that bad. And then we’re getting documentation that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco showing, no, they were that bad. Like, all the least charitable things, that’s exactly what they were saying. And that’s exactly their reasons for everything.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But if you look at any company, like, we’re seeing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this insight into Apple now. And we’re seeing, wow, Apple’s being real jerks. Like, should we really feel good

⏹️ ▶️ Marco covering them? Who are we going to cover instead? Google? Well, their executives are just

⏹️ ▶️ Marco as full of crap is these executives. Like they just full of they’re full of different crap. You know are we gonna cover Microsoft?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco They’re also full of crap again just different crap. But like every company is you know

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in order to be a CEO of a large corporation, in order to rise those

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ranks and to get into that position you’re probably a huge asshole on

⏹️ ▶️ Marco some level. That’s just it you know see also politicians. Like to rise above a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco certain rank you are much more likely to be a huge asshole

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because only huge assholes can rise that high in those sorts of systems most of the time.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So if you look at almost any company if you know anything about

⏹️ ▶️ Marco their leaders or about their internal communications at the high levels it’s gonna be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco mostly ugly. Or there will be ugly stuff to find and and we just don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know most of the time because most CEOs are smart enough to keep that stuff out of the public eye.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But when you have somebody like, some CEO who gets hooked on posting to Twitter, for instance, and they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco go off the deep end there, or in the case of court cases that the company is too stupid to avoid,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that they get all the stuff coming out in discovery, well, then you see, that door is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco open. You get to see, wow, these people are real jerks. But the reality is, most people who run most companies

⏹️ ▶️ Marco real jerks on some levels and we just don’t see it. So I think to some

⏹️ ▶️ Marco degree, and I know I’ve been all critical of Tim Cook and I will continue to be because he is a real jerk, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to some degree we kind of have to ignore the people at the top of these companies

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and just focus on the products. Because if we only cover products for which we can feel

⏹️ ▶️ Marco good about the leaders of those products, we’re going to have a really short list. And And so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it’s much better to just say, you know what, our goal, our job is not to focus too

⏹️ ▶️ Marco much on whether the executives of this company are being jerks or not. Our goal is to focus on the products.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because that’s ultimately what we enjoy about tech. We don’t need to be analysts for the executive teams

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of these companies most of the time. That’s not our job. That’s not what we care about. That’s not what we’re amazing at. Although

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Tim Cook should be replaced. But you know, I know he won’t be. That’s fine. And I know people say he’s the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco only person who can fix the problem he’s in, but he created the problem he’s in. person who can keep making it worse. I don’t see any

⏹️ ▶️ Marco sign he can fix it. But anyway, we are here for the products mainly. That’s most of what gets

⏹️ ▶️ Marco us going. That’s most of what we have the enthusiasm about. The hardware, the software,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the services even, the ones that are actually services and not just taxes. We’re here for that. That’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the stuff that gets us excited. That’s the stuff we love talking about. That’s the stuff that we have to like rationalize. Oh,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco do I, can I buy the new Sonos speaker? It looks so cool. You know, that that’s that kind of stuff.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s what we’re here for. And that’s what our audience wants to hear about most of the time. So we can keep talking like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco when Apple releases some cool stuff in a couple of weeks at WBDC,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we all know, yeah, you know what, Tim Cook’s a jerk. Like we know that. The way they treat developers

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is pretty rough. Like their relationship with developers had never been worse than it is right now. Like pretty bad.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The way they view us, the way they talk about us, the way they treat us, that’s all terrible. So I don’t love the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco idea that we’re about to do, you know, a puff week for their developer conference in a couple of weeks because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is a time when I don’t feel great about puffing Apple up, especially in regards to developers. But

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at the same time, you know, the other day I was writing some code. I love writing code. I was writing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco code for my iPhone, for my iPhone app, in Swift, in Xcode. I love writing code.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, that’s all good. Like, that stuff, I like all that stuff. And so I think we

⏹️ ▶️ Marco have to compartmentalize on some level and say, you know what? We will talk about these people being jerks

⏹️ ▶️ Marco sometimes, but we shouldn’t talk only about that. And that shouldn’t prevent

⏹️ ▶️ Marco us from enjoying the output of these companies, because for the most part,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the output can be really cool and really good. And that’s the side of tech that we love. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco we just have to ignore the fact that there’s some jerks along the way.

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, on the critical side of it, I tend not to ignore it because I’m always looking for, but why? Why does this product unsatisfactory

⏹️ ▶️ John in some way and the kind of digging we do eventually leads back to people. It’s like, well, now we kind

⏹️ ▶️ John of have to consider who was in charge of this and where did they go wrong and how might things be fixed?

⏹️ ▶️ John Because, you know, it’s not it’s not entirely a black box, especially with all this discovery and stuff. So

⏹️ ▶️ John I think we we you know, we cover it from all angles. But I think that’s one of the reasons that we dig down into it. It’s not because we love

⏹️ ▶️ John corporate drama. It’s because we’re back solving from why are there no more ports on the MacBook?

⏹️ ▶️ John Why does the keyboard not work? These are product problems. And yet when we five why them, it

⏹️ ▶️ John leads back to specific people and decisions and policies inside Apple. And

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s where we end up sometimes. But, you know, hopefully we never have to dig that far. Hopefully there are, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John simple surface level decisions that are easily remedied and not years long sagas

⏹️ ▶️ John of badness. But, you know, we’re in one of the down periods on on some

⏹️ ▶️ John things, but we’re in an upswing on hardware. So, you know, maybe someday we’ll be an upswing and everything upswing on hardware,

⏹️ ▶️ John software, and policies and leadership and developer relations. I’m not sure that has ever existed

⏹️ ▶️ John for Apple or any other platform company, because always there’s some part of it, you know, it’s like finding a bottleneck

⏹️ ▶️ John in your code. Once you get rid of one, there’s just whatever the next worst one is now the bottleneck.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey But,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, stranger things have happened.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey We can dream.

SSD-longevity follow-up

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, let’s do some follow-up. Thank you for indulging me, gentlemen. We have some more details with regard to SSD

⏹️ ▶️ Casey longevity. An anonymous person writes, I’ve been a firmware engineer for one of IBM’s enterprise SSDs for a little

⏹️ ▶️ Casey over a decade now, and I have at times worked on the error handling for powered-off data retention issues.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey There are a few strategies that Drive can optimize under the covers to attempt to make data blocks at rest readable again.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey The problem with all of them is that they require time to be able to evaluate what strategy is best and tweak it for all the program blocks.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So here’s my advice if someone is powering on an SSD that has been powered off for a while. Power the drive on

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and let it sit. How much time to let it sit is a function of how much data is on the drive, and how long it was powered

⏹️ ▶️ Casey off. The process for tweaking the read parameters for all the program flash so that reads can be successful could take a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey while. I can’t comment on how consumer-grade flash controllers handle this, but it would boggle my mind if there was

⏹️ ▶️ Casey no practice of internally moving data to avoid requiring the host applications to rewrite data, hence my suggestion

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of leaving the drive powered on to give these processes time to complete. I probably have too much of a biased perspective

⏹️ ▶️ Casey for how SSDs should handle scenarios like this. It’s nice to see someone doing real-world tests

⏹️ ▶️ Casey on the drive, though. Also, there was an offhanded comment about storing an SSD in the attic. Please don’t do this. 140 degrees

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fahrenheit, which is 40 degrees in the bananas temperature scale, is typically what the NAND devices

⏹️ ▶️ Casey are rated at. Don’t at me. We get everything wrong but this. Let us have Fahrenheit. It’s the only one we got right. Everything

⏹️ ▶️ Casey else is wrong. Right, you’re

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John right.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s typically what the NAND devices are rated at when reporting power-off data degradation rates. Keeping the drives in a cooler

⏹️ ▶️ Casey location will help in reducing data retention issues. Keeping them in your attic will likely accelerate the issues.

⏹️ ▶️ John This was put together from a little back and forth I had over email with this person. And so

⏹️ ▶️ John enterprise SSDs from IBM. I don’t doubt everything this person said about enterprise

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco SSDs

⏹️ ▶️ John from IBM. But what I was pushing back on is like, OK, but do you think the really cheap

⏹️ ▶️ John bargain basement consumer grade SSDs that we buy to try to save money to get the biggest

⏹️ ▶️ John drive possible, are they also doing this? And he’s like, it would boggle my mind if they’re not. I’m like, well, maybe your mind

⏹️ ▶️ John should be boggled.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco But anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ John here’s one perspective from someone who actually knows that if you buy good, quote unquote, enterprise class SSDs,

⏹️ ▶️ John merely powering the model and letting them sit there actually may do something to save things. Of course, the enterprise class SSDs

⏹️ ▶️ John are probably more over provisioned than the consumer grade ones and have all sorts of features that give them a higher

⏹️ ▶️ John chance of data retention. But anyway, I would still say it seems to me that

⏹️ ▶️ John on average, without knowing the specific SSD that you have and whether you got a quote unquote good one or bad

⏹️ ▶️ John one or whatever on average it seems like those clunky old spinning platter disks

⏹️ ▶️ John may actually hold on to their data longer than an SSD in ideal conditions

⏹️ ▶️ John but you know keep it in mind but anyway it’s good to know that enterprise SSDs do do this better.

AVP on Price is Right

Chapter AVP on Price is Right image.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Uh, we had, I’m sure many of you have seen this. Somebody recorded a video of

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the price is right now. If you’re not American, uh, the price is right is an hour long commercial

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that masquerades as a game show. And it is a staple.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was so old when I realized that.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco same.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Uh, it, it is a staple of American TV, especially if you’re a child because it comes on at 11 o’clock.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel like we just had this conversation, but it comes on at 11 o’clock and it’s a game show where

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you have to like guess the prices of things. And the Plinko is

⏹️ ▶️ Casey one of the most popular games, which John has sort of kind of used in descriptions of AI. Or no, that was Pachinko, wasn’t

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it? I’m

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John sorry. I’m

⏹️ ▶️ John very similar. You should describe prices right rules because non-Americans don’t know

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that. Okay. So the way this works is four contestants are brought up and they’re shown a product and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that product is not, it’s described, but they don’t state the price. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey so you are supposed to guess what you think the price of that product is. But the catch is you have to be

⏹️ ▶️ Casey as close as you can get without going over. So if the product is exactly a thousand dollars, and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey let’s say it was just the three of us, and I guess a thousand one, Marco guesses ten, and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey John guesses five hundred, even though I was only one dollar off, John is the winner

⏹️ ▶️ Casey because he was the closest without going over. This is a staple of American kids’

⏹️ ▶️ Casey lives when they’re homesick from school, comes on at eleven o’clock, perfect time to watch while you’re sick. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey so during the first round of this episode, they brought out a mixed reality

⏹️ ▶️ Casey headset made by Apple. That’s 256 gigabytes. I love

⏹️ ▶️ John how they described it, a mixed reality headset. Do you think the contestants on The Price

⏹️ ▶️ John is Right know what a mixed reality is? No. I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean, this is part of the problem of the Vision Pro. It’s like, how do you explain this to people?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Everybody

⏹️ ▶️ Casey look up, because the first prize is coming on down. It’s a mixed reality headset.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey This 256 gig Apple Vision Pro headset offers an immersive 3D camera system

⏹️ ▶️ Casey that can display photos and videos, take calls, and can be used to play games or watch

⏹️ ▶️ Casey TV. Nice. Back at the go. Goes

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to whoever gets closest to the actual retail price without going over. Good luck, everybody. Go ahead.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey $1,000. Thank you, Tamia. $1,000. Leroy? $750. $750.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, this is a good example of what people think a, quote unquote,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco mixed reality headset

⏹️ ▶️ John should cost somewhere around a thousand fifteen hundred bucks.

⏹️ ▶️ John Remember, they’re all trying to stay under it, so they’re not going to be overshooting it. And yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John that I mean, I was kind of surprised that they were guessing that much because they’re like, oh, this is a fancy product. Maybe this is not a product

⏹️ ▶️ John for me. Like it’s not saying how much they’d be willing to pay for. They were just saying, how much do you think this costs for somebody

⏹️ ▶️ John who’s not you who’s going to buy it? Because maybe you have no interest in this. You don’t even know what it is, but it’s a thing.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a shiny tech thing. How much does it cost for the people who want to get it? And these people think, oh,

⏹️ ▶️ John for those people, it’s a thousand, fifteen hundred bucks. And they’re very, very wrong.

⏹️ ▶️ John So it’s just, it really is a condemnation. It’s not saying how much would it have to cost for these people to consider it. It’s saying

⏹️ ▶️ John how much do they think suckers are paying right now for it? And they think suckers are paying fifteen hundred bucks.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right. I think the two saddest things about this Price is Right appearance for the Vision Pro is like, number one,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple paid for this. Like as Casey said, the Price is Right is a giant commercial. The companies

⏹️ ▶️ Marco whose products are on the Price is Right presumably pay for that. They certainly give

⏹️ ▶️ Marco them for free, but I think they actually pay for it also. Because when the show host

⏹️ ▶️ Marco describes the products, it just sounds like a commercial. It’s just a commercial for these products.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So Apple presumably paid for this. And so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Apple is so desperate for Vision Pro Marketing that they are going to this. And then secondly,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it just shows how no regular people know what this product

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is, and if you tell them it’s $3,500, they are out. There’s no

⏹️ ▶️ Marco chance of this selling to the public. I

⏹️ ▶️ John think they’re already out at $1,500, but they’re like, oh, for somebody who wants it, it’s probably a $1,500 thing.

⏹️ ▶️ John To be fair, if the Mac Pro is on the prices right, people would be hilariously wrong there too. So

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not, you know, in the realm of very expensive things, regular people are often very

⏹️ ▶️ John far off. There are cheaper Macs than the Mac Pro. there are no cheaper Apple headsets than the Vision Pro.

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What Jony/Sam are making?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Hey, so fellas, what in the world are Johnny Ive and Sam Altman building? Do you want to tell me about it?

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, we had the, uh, so when we recorded last week, the news had basically just broken

⏹️ ▶️ John about their official announcement, not the news. We knew they were working together, but like that, that they’re, uh, open AI is

⏹️ ▶️ John acquiring IO and they put out the video. And so all we really had to go on was the video they had put

⏹️ ▶️ John out and maybe one or two statements from them to press outlets. But pretty much as soon as we finished recording the

⏹️ ▶️ John very next day, everything in the tech press was like, what do they make? What do they make? And what is

⏹️ ▶️ John it? And all the rumor people come out. I think they’re making this. I think they’re making that. So it’s kind of good. We got to like,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, speculated about it before the input of the entire world. But there has

⏹️ ▶️ John been significant input from all the usual parties about what is it that they’re actually making.

⏹️ ▶️ John And unfortunately, it’s not great news for Margo’s watch theory. Because

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco yeah, basically

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what they said is like, it seems like it’s not something wearable probably. They said it’s definitely not glasses.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s probably not something wearable. And it seems like it’s some kind of third device that you like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco have on your desk or maybe wear around your neck or something. So

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it kind of sounds like the Humane AI pin 2.0.

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, so here’s the interesting thing about it because like in the days after OpenAI and

⏹️ ▶️ John Sam Altman said stuff. So there’s stuff you can take to the bank. Even if they’re going to be vague, it’s not a rumor. They’re

⏹️ ▶️ John saying it. But then the rumor people came in and said, OK, on top of what they told you, here’s

⏹️ ▶️ John what I know about it. And they get much more specific. So The Verge actually had a reasonable summary over here. So

⏹️ ▶️ John in a leaked call reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, Sam Altman, and so The Verge is reporting this,

⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s from The Wall Street Journal, so I’m going to say this is probably reliable. Altman told OpenAI staffers

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not a phone or glasses. So let’s take that to the bank. I mean, we knew it wasn’t a phone,

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not glasses.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco And

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, they mentioned that and Meta and Google have glasses. Altman also indicated

⏹️ ▶️ John that I wasn’t keen on a device that had to be wearable. Now that doesn’t

⏹️ ▶️ John necessarily mean there’s no wearable angle here. I wasn’t keen on, all

⏹️ ▶️ John right, whatever, anyway. And supposedly it would be part of quote, a family of devices and screenless.

⏹️ ▶️ John Family of devices in quotes, screenless is not. So this is from,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, Wall Street Journal, leaked call, open AI, Sam Altman. I’m taking this to the bank to say,

⏹️ ▶️ John no screen. But they say family of devices. I’m like, how the hell you make a family of devices? You don’t put a screen in any of them. But anyway, screenless,

⏹️ ▶️ John family of devices, not a phone, not a glasses. And I was cranky about wearability, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that

⏹️ ▶️ John it won’t be wearable. But then you go on to the rumor people who are like,

⏹️ ▶️ John like Ming-Chi Kuo is just like, let me tell you everything about this. And I knew everything

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco already,

⏹️ ▶️ John including someone like quote tweeted his thing and drew a picture of it and everyone’s passing it around as if it’s like a

⏹️ ▶️ John real thing. He’s like a mass production is gonna start in 2027. Here’s where it’s gonna be assembled.

⏹️ ▶️ John He’s just got everything he probably wants to know about. It’s slightly bigger than AI pin.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s as compact and elegant as an iPod shuffle. It’s like, if you know all this stuff about it, just tell us what

⏹️ ▶️ John it looks like. But it’s like, oh, I don’t, I can just tell you it’s elegant like this. And it’s bigger than a bread box

⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s smaller than, it’s just, anyway. One of the intended use cases is wearing

⏹️ ▶️ John the device around the neck, says Ming-Chi Kuo. But then the leaked call from Sam Altman says, I wasn’t keen on wearability.

⏹️ ▶️ John It will have cameras and microphones for environmental detection with no display functionality. It is expected to

⏹️ ▶️ John connect to smartphones, PCs, and PCs utilizing their computing and display capabilities.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, so I think the rumors are off to the races of like, we’ll see

⏹️ ▶️ John how close these supply chain guesses or whatever are.

⏹️ ▶️ John but we have at least closed out some possibilities. I feel like we’ve closed out the watch.

⏹️ ▶️ John It seems like we’ve closed out anything with a screen. I’m having a hard time letting that one go if it’s a family devices because what kind

⏹️ ▶️ John of family can you make out of screenless things? How many different screenless variations can there be? And then the wearability

⏹️ ▶️ John seems like not so much. That’s why you were saying, Marco, like I keep thinking of like one of those egg timers that shaped like an egg,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, you put you put it on the desk in front of you, because like I was saying, like their whole their pitch

⏹️ ▶️ John in their video was like, isn’t it annoying that when you use these AI products, you have to get them up to speed

⏹️ ▶️ John on the crap you’ve been doing. Presumably the stuff you’ve been doing in the real world, but maybe also stuff you’ve been doing on computer.

⏹️ ▶️ John Wouldn’t it be great if that content, if our if something had that context already

⏹️ ▶️ John and to have that context, the thing needs to be like somewhere where it can hear you,

⏹️ ▶️ John possibly see you, possibly have some connection to all of the other devices

⏹️ ▶️ John that are using so we can see what’s on their screens like. again, setting aside any platform

⏹️ ▶️ John barriers that we know exist. This thing, it would be nice if this thing could see everything on your phone screen

⏹️ ▶️ John and see everything on your Mac screen and see everything, hear everything you’re saying and, you know, record

⏹️ ▶️ John like if it had all that context. So when you asked it something, it’s not just like

⏹️ ▶️ John it was just born and has no idea what’s going on. It knows everything that’s going on and it can do useful stuff. That’s

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s the impression I got from what they were saying. But then I think about, oh, so what hardware device do

⏹️ ▶️ John you make that does that? and a little egg that you like. We’re about to have a meeting. I’m putting

⏹️ ▶️ John down my egg. All right, now we can talk and the egg will watch us and listen to us

⏹️ ▶️ John and record it. I don’t know how this is not just like a Microsoft recall, but like not no longer confined to your laptop,

⏹️ ▶️ John but like Microsoft recall for the world. Anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ John I found this speculation about form factor is really exciting, but I keep coming back to what I said last

⏹️ ▶️ John week, which is this is all well and good, but this new product entirely depends on the

⏹️ ▶️ John magic of the thing that is not the hardware. It doesn’t depend on its ability to see screens. It doesn’t depend on

⏹️ ▶️ John platform integration. It doesn’t depend on how cool the hardware is. It doesn’t depend on people are embarrassed to use

⏹️ ▶️ John it. What it depends on is, is the thing inside there that’s listening able to do anything useful that people want

⏹️ ▶️ John to pay for? That’s all that matters. And so, Johnny, I hope all your efforts

⏹️ ▶️ John in making a beautiful egg or whatever the hell you’re doing is not 100% wasted, because like I

⏹️ ▶️ John said, you make the best hardware in the world and you make it act like the human AI pin, nobody wants it.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s like, the more I hear about, like I was super optimistic last week because we had heard almost

⏹️ ▶️ Marco nothing. The more I hear about it now, I’m like, uh oh. Like it’s like red flags

⏹️ ▶️ Marco all over the place. Like it, and look, the world of tech is full of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco things that like when you hear the rumor version of it, it sounds stupid and then you, and the actual

⏹️ ▶️ Marco product comes out and and it’s a hit. Like that happens in tech. So it’s hard for us to say now,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco not knowing almost anything about this thing, like yeah, it sounds like it’s probably

⏹️ ▶️ Marco stupid now, but maybe it’ll come out and be amazing. The world of tech is also full of humane AI pens.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so you don’t know, like at this point we don’t know which one of those it is. That’s why companies

⏹️ ▶️ Marco make these kinds of bets, because they don’t know either.

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I hope they know better than we do, because like again, with the hardware, we can think of all sorts

⏹️ ▶️ John of hardware that would be good, but none of us can think of a thing inside the heart that would be good other than just

⏹️ ▶️ John fantasizing in a sci-fi type of way, because we haven’t seen it. But presumably inside OpenAI, they have technology

⏹️ ▶️ John we haven’t seen. And I hope that technology inside OpenAI is within

⏹️ ▶️ John spitting distance of making a good product, because everything depends on that.

⏹️ ▶️ John And like I said, if you have that, you can put it in a potato and people will buy it. But they’ll be like, the potato

⏹️ ▶️ John sucks, but man, inside it is a gene that can do everything I want. and people will be dying for that

⏹️ ▶️ John potato like they can. They would they would sell a million of them. They’d be selling like potato pancakes. I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco know.

⏹️ ▶️ John Wow. Wow.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Gracious. All right. Well, no, for what it’s worth this week’s upgrade, Jason

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and Mike went back and forth about this and Mike was super duper enthusiastic and Jason was super duper not and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey one of the things I love so much about the two of them and and upgrade is that they generally tend to take

⏹️ ▶️ Casey a far less cynical eye to things than a lot of people, including probably the three of us.

⏹️ ▶️ John Jason less cynical. Mike less cynical. I’ll buy that.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know. I don’t think Jason is generally that cynical, but oh man, he was not having it

⏹️ ▶️ Casey on, on this episode and I was here for it.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John It was, that was amazing. It was quite funny.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. I mean, because like I said, we, none of us have ever seen anything that can do something that would make this product good.

⏹️ ▶️ John Uh, but it all depends on your willingness to believe, okay, just because you haven’t seen it doesn’t mean nobody can ever do it. Maybe they’ve done

⏹️ ▶️ John it. And you know, I’m, I, in this case, I’m so much more willing to entertain the possibility because

⏹️ ▶️ John unlike, you know, humane pin or rabbit are one, they make the thing that would

⏹️ ▶️ John be inside there and they’re one of the leaders in the industry. So like, who has the best shot at it, one of the

⏹️ ▶️ John leaders in the industry. So I’m willing to entertain the possibility that they have it. But until I

⏹️ ▶️ John see it, I’m not willing to say, you know, Oh, for sure, they’re going to pull this off. Because

⏹️ ▶️ John I, one of the things I’ve been thinking about since last week is if open AI had something that would make this product

⏹️ ▶️ John desirable. I have a hard time believing they’d be able. They would be willing to hold it

⏹️ ▶️ John until the egg is ready, right? Like they’d be releasing it now is like, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John just a new version of chat TPT with a new model or whatever. Like, why would they sit on it? Why would they hold it? Because

⏹️ ▶️ John in the end, despite what Johnny may think, the physical form factor of this means almost nothing.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like it almost doesn’t matter at all. Like, and in fact, if you have this, it should

⏹️ ▶️ John be everywhere, not confined to an egg. Like, you know, so it’s just, I’m really, I’m really married to the

⏹️ ▶️ John egg thing here. I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco know why I didn’t think of this last week. Last week I was all

⏹️ ▶️ John potato. And like, are they the type of company, because, you know, things are happening so fast in this

⏹️ ▶️ John industry, are they the type of company that would sit on this? Apple would for sure sit on it, because that’s the type of company they are.

⏹️ ▶️ John But OpenAI is competing with, Anthropic is competing with, you know, Google Gemini, and they’re just

⏹️ ▶️ John like one-upping each other every week. So I have a hard time believing they’d be like, okay, yeah, but we do have the real good

⏹️ ▶️ John thing, but we’re saving that for the egg, So just don’t show it in public yet. And so in that respect, I’m

⏹️ ▶️ John on Jason’s side, which is like, but do they really have it? Or are they just gonna hook up what they already have

⏹️ ▶️ John to the egg and be like, now it’s great, isn’t it? And it’d be like, I guess it’s a little bit better that I don’t have to type as much, but

⏹️ ▶️ John in the end it’s still Chatchi BT with all its foibles and limits.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey We’ll see.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I don’t know. I still think that the potential here can be something

⏹️ ▶️ Marco really great. I do think that, you know, one concern Jason brought up on Upgrade was,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, we’ve seen unedited Johnny Ive. Like we’ve seen Johnny

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Ive under Steve Jobs produced, like that team was the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco dynamic duo. They produced like so much great stuff from that pairing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because Johnny Ive, like many artists, works better in a collaborative form.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And you know, it’s better when he’s like balanced by somebody with strong product sense and the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco power to, you know, say no to him or to like to be like on level

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with him.

⏹️ ▶️ John Or to point him in a direction. Like to, because Steve Jobs would say, I need one of these, go. And he’d be like,

⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll make you the best one of those that I can make, but Jobs is the one pointing him in the direction, make one of these.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco In other things, like you know, when after Jobs passed away and Johnny was given way too much power by Tim Cook with his amazing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco product sensibility, we saw like how Johnny Ive goes wrong. Like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco when he was the most powerful person in his world and he was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the most powerful person making product decisions. We saw him go to extremes that were

⏹️ ▶️ Marco worse for the products in a lot of ways. We don’t know what the dynamic here is between

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Johnny and OpenAI and Sam Altman. I’m guessing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s closer to uncontrolled Johnny than to Steve Jobs Johnny, but I don’t think

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s all the way in that direction necessarily because like he’s not the CEO of OpenAI and Sam Altman does seem to be

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to be pretty opinionated with products. So, let’s, like, I think I’m willing to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco see how this goes, but I do, like, again, the more I hear about this, the more I’m like, uh-oh,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that doesn’t sound right. That doesn’t sound great, oh no. So, we’ll see. I still

⏹️ ▶️ Marco maintain from last show that I think the best thing for Johnny Ive and OpenAI to try to make

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if they wanna make a hardware AI device for personal use is a smartwatch, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it seems like that’s probably not what they’re making, and everything that I’ve heard about what they’re making sounds

⏹️ ▶️ Marco worse. So we’ll see when Apple buys them, they’ll put it into the

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple watch. That’ll be fine.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, right. I mean, or you know, it could also be, you know, when the Amazon echo first

⏹️ ▶️ Marco came out, that sounded ridiculous. You’re gonna put an Amazon microphone

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in your house that’s listening to you all the time for you to say it’s wake word. What? What

⏹️ ▶️ Marco idiot is gonna do that? And now half the devices that we all buy and have in our houses

⏹️ ▶️ Marco have microphones, voice assistants on them. That was something that sounded totally ridiculous and creepy

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and nobody would ever do that. And then within a decade it’s ubiquitous. Everything

⏹️ ▶️ Marco does that. So this could end up being like that. Like maybe maybe there is something

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the AI obelisk that you put on your desk or wear

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John around your neck. It’s an egg Marco.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Whatever. But like maybe there is something to that. But I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco right now. I don’t see what that thing is, but hey, you never know.

⏹️ ▶️ John That reminds me of the Windows Recall. Like I’m such a proponent of live streams for so many years and

⏹️ ▶️ John Microsoft comes out with an OS level feature of it, but botched the implementation and the marketing of it so badly

⏹️ ▶️ John that now everyone hates it. I continue to think a thing that knows everything you’re doing and listens to everything,

⏹️ ▶️ John that is useful as long as you feel like you’re in control of it. And Microsoft failed that

⏹️ ▶️ John test with Windows Recall. Like they keep trying to put it out and keep having problems and security issues or whatever,

⏹️ ▶️ John the OpenAI’s Johnny Ive egg thing or whatever,

⏹️ ▶️ John it will be more useful if it knows, like I said, if it somehow magically could see everything that’s going on all your devices,

⏹️ ▶️ John but at the very least can listen to everything you’re saying as you sit there at your fancy bar in San Francisco

⏹️ ▶️ John and have cameras that sees you. Like that makes a more useful product if the thing at the other end of it can

⏹️ ▶️ John do something useful with that information. How do you pull that off? like in the way that the

⏹️ ▶️ John Amazon Echo did, it somehow like overcome the creepiness barrier,

⏹️ ▶️ John right? Like just that people see the value more than they worry about the privacy invasion

⏹️ ▶️ John or that they trust that it’s not doing, you know. And it is fascinating to me that Microsoft blew this so badly

⏹️ ▶️ John with Windows Recall because they’re not a small company and they know how to roll out products and they surely have

⏹️ ▶️ John to know what the objections were but they did so badly and they keep taking runs at it. I wonder how this is gonna work out because

⏹️ ▶️ John right now people have no problem chucking their whole lives into chat GPT because they enjoy the results from it

⏹️ ▶️ John and they don’t think about where a little bit information is going. Uh, yeah, that’s, that is another challenge

⏹️ ▶️ John here, but that’s, these are all like secondary and tertiary challenges to like, have they made a thing that people want to use? Chat

⏹️ ▶️ John GPT people want to use. So good job there. Uh, the egg

⏹️ ▶️ John we’ll see.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was talking with Jason privately, uh, before he recorded like a while before he recorded. And he was

⏹️ ▶️ Casey saying to me, you know, similar things that Johnny is better when, you know, he’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey reined in. And the classic example of this, because it’s me, or the classic, my classic

⏹️ ▶️ Casey example of this, because it’s me, is Top Gear versus Grand Tour. You know, these three dudes, these

⏹️ ▶️ Casey three old white guys, uh, did Top Gear under the auspices of the BBC, under the direction of the BBC,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and it was incredible. It, you know, there were problems, but by and large, it was one of my favorite TV shows

⏹️ ▶️ Casey of all time. And then eventually, one of them literally assaulted a crew member and they got

⏹️ ▶️ Casey booted from the BBC, and they went to Amazon, and they made, effectively, the same show

⏹️ ▶️ Casey called The Grand Tour. And it was mostly crap, if you ask me, or certainly not nearly as good as

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Top Gear was. And I think, I don’t know, but my strong theory is that nobody was there to

⏹️ ▶️ Casey tell them no. And that was a problem, because without those guardrails,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey they just, they were just not as good. And I think Johnny, as all three of us have said, have said, as

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Jason has said, I think Johnny needs those guardrails and needs somebody to tell him no, or perhaps just

⏹️ ▶️ Casey point him in the right direction like you were saying, John. So I don’t know. We’ll see what happens.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I mean, it’s I’m very, very skeptical and very, very dubious, but we’ll see. I mean, Tom will tell.

⏹️ ▶️ John I give him a lot of leeway for a new product category, though, because like laptops are an established thing and we know what makes a good

⏹️ ▶️ John laptop. Nobody knows what makes a good egg. So he gets it wrong because he overshoots and

⏹️ ▶️ John goes too extreme and make something with no buttons. a smooth capacitive thing that you have to draw like figure eights

⏹️ ▶️ John on to make work. Like people will complain that he went too far and made the hardware bad. But again, if the

⏹️ ▶️ John thing inside of it is magical, they’d be like, Oh, Johnny over cooked this one. Huh? Um, and it’s, it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John a awkward hardware, but man, the thing inside it, it’s great. And it does look like a really nice egg. So I feel like

⏹️ ▶️ John he has a safety net here, um, of being in a new product category where

⏹️ ▶️ John there’s no established anything except for established failures. Right. Um, and so he’s, he’s got,

⏹️ ▶️ John I put it this way. I would much rather have him doing this project than like working on another Mac or something or working

⏹️ ▶️ John on another iPhone for that matter. So you know, he’s, I feel like he is safely confined to

⏹️ ▶️ John the frontier of technology rather than taking established product categories that

⏹️ ▶️ John he’s grown bored with and doing things that please him but that make customers sad.

Alexa Plus

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, there’s an Alexa Plus update, a reading from The Verge. Amazon has officially launched

⏹️ ▶️ Casey its AI-powered Alexa Plus, but it’s only available to a small number of customers to start, Amazon spokesperson

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Christy Schmidt confirmed to The Verge. As shown on its early access page, Alexa Plus also doesn’t come with all the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey features Amazon showcased during its recent devices event, like the ability to brainstorm gift ideas, order groceries with your voice,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey or access Alexa Plus in your browser. There are some other missing features that, quote, don’t yet meet

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Amazon standards for public release quote, according to a report from the Washington Post, Alexa Plus

⏹️ ▶️ Casey still can’t order takeout from Grubhub using contacts from a conversation, nor can it identify family

⏹️ ▶️ Casey members around the house and give them reminders to do chores. You won’t be able to access Kids Plus features such

⏹️ ▶️ Casey as Stories with Alexa either.

⏹️ ▶️ John So this is disappointing. We talked about Amazon’s announcement that they had taken their quote unquote legacy voice assistant

⏹️ ▶️ John and totally overhauled it to be powered by LLMs to be even better, which is exactly what Apple has

⏹️ ▶️ John been trying and failing to do with their legacy voice assistant, which was already worse than Amazon’s, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John Amazon just said they did it. They went on this big press tour or whatever, and this is actually an

⏹️ ▶️ John older story, but still like, okay, but if you’ve done it, shouldn’t we be able to use it now and try

⏹️ ▶️ John it and see if it is what you say it is? And right now it is barely rolled out to anybody. I’ve never

⏹️ ▶️ John actually even heard of anybody who has it, and what is rolled out to them is extremely limited. So

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m gonna say that Amazon’s celebratory announcement that they had done this very

⏹️ ▶️ John difficult thing with their legacy voice assistant was perhaps a bit premature.

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Little EV trucks

Chapter Little EV trucks image.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco All

⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, let’s do a little bit of neutral. And speaking of Top Gear, the Slate truck was that was a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey overtime from a few weeks back. Is that right?

⏹️ ▶️ John I think so.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. Okay. The slate truck, which is the exceedingly cheap

⏹️ ▶️ Casey bare bones electric truck. Well, depending on your definition of cheap, you know what I mean?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Relatively

⏹️ ▶️ Casey cheap. Relatively

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John cheap.

⏹️ ▶️ John $20,000. It’s cheap for a gas car, let alone an EV.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right. So anyways, Top Gear did a preview of it and that’s a video preview which we’ll

⏹️ ▶️ Casey put in the show notes and it looks pretty good for the most part. I mean it’s it’s not

⏹️ ▶️ Casey exactly what I would want personally but I very very much respect the idea of giving you a blank slate

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and saying go forth do what you want to do.

⏹️ ▶️ John Ah you got it blank slate.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Right right. The

⏹️ ▶️ John good thing about the Top Gear video is like when we talked about it it was just a story and with some pictures and stuff but when

⏹️ ▶️ John you see Top Gear reviewing it like it’s this is a real thing that a person can poke around it’s not finished you know but

⏹️ ▶️ John you see like it’s real enough that they invited Top Gear to look at it and didn’t embarrass themselves. So I have one

⏹️ ▶️ John notch more confidence that they were actually going to produce something.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, very much so. And then additionally, Kevin Ayers writes that there’s a slate

⏹️ ▶️ Casey truck competitor, Telo, T-E-L-O, the all electric mini truck. And Kevin writes, it’s not as cheap as the

⏹️ ▶️ Casey slate truck, but the Telo is another new truck design to consider. And that’s telotrucks.com.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey All these links will be in the show notes. The range is between 216, 350 miles. The power is between 300 and 500 horsepower.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey The price after the, I think now discontinued $7,500 tax credit in the United

⏹️ ▶️ Casey States is between $34,000 and $39,000. This thing looks extremely weird because

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s basically like if you were to look at the overhead of it, which they show in the dashboard at some point

⏹️ ▶️ Casey in a video we’ll put in that DeMuro did, it looks as though they kind of just

⏹️ ▶️ Casey cut off the front of a pickup truck. And as it turns out, it’s just because there is no motor and they don’t have a

⏹️ ▶️ Casey frunk. They basically did just cut off the front of a pickup truck. But this thing is also very innovative

⏹️ ▶️ Casey and very interesting. Like I said, there’s a video from Doug DiMuro that we’ll put in the show notes. Kevin Cash

⏹️ ▶️ Casey writes, there’s an active discord with the engineers and founders. They’ve got their first prototype

⏹️ ▶️ Casey built and they’re hoping to start building actual trucks next year. Again, not really for me, but very, very cool stuff.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And one of the really neat things, it was the Tello, I believe, that did this, is that it has

⏹️ ▶️ Casey basically a regular size, a small bed, but a regular size small

⏹️ ▶️ Casey bed. I forget the term for it, despite the fact that it’s about the same length as a modern mini.

⏹️ ▶️ John I love that they made that comparison because they’re like, oh, it’s like a pickup truck and it’s got a bed, but it’s the size of a mini.

⏹️ ▶️ John And all I could think of was the other picture you see on the Internet, which is the size of the current mini

⏹️ ▶️ John compared to the size of the original mini. And that itself is hilarious. So, yes, it’s great that it’s the size of a mini,

⏹️ ▶️ John but the mini ain’t so many anymore. But you nailed it with like, it’s a pickup truck with the front not knocked off to the point where it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John hard to tell from these photos. But I believe if you were to drive this thing slowly inching

⏹️ ▶️ John your way towards a wall The first thing that hit the wall would I believe be the tires?

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey I think that’s right. Yeah

⏹️ ▶️ John any part of the body. That’s how little a front this Presumably this will be crash tested and whatever but it

⏹️ ▶️ John looks a little bit scary But yeah It’s it is taking advantage of the packaging that you can only do with an ev

⏹️ ▶️ John By making it like all passenger space no front at all and using

⏹️ ▶️ John the length of the vehicle that they save for bed space. Now it annoys me that, not annoys me, like it

⏹️ ▶️ John makes sense that these companies, Slate and Tello, were like, Americans love pickup trucks because for some reason they think

⏹️ ▶️ John they’re going to be picking stuff up. But what they actually want is a sedan. So we have to make things that are pickup trucks, but

⏹️ ▶️ John are essentially sedans on the inside. So the people that buy them can feel good about the truck, but that they’re never going to

⏹️ ▶️ John use, or that they’re going to protect very carefully with the cover, never let anybody, like, they have to do

⏹️ ▶️ John that for fashion reasons or whatever, for whatever reason they have to make this. I look at this and I’m like, I wish they

⏹️ ▶️ John would make a small, cheap EV that just holds people because most people

⏹️ ▶️ John in America need to carry around people and not bark, mulch, and plywood. But whatever,

⏹️ ▶️ John you got to do what you got to do. So I enjoy the fact that there are two inexpensive

⏹️ ▶️ John EVs with small batteries that companies are trying to make and sell in America. I don’t enjoy the fact that

⏹️ ▶️ John they’re both pickup trucks, but apparently everyone else in America does. So good luck, Tello and Slate.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, and the other thing is, I think was DeMuro said that they had originally built the Tello

⏹️ ▶️ Casey with the assumption that people would want a two seat or perhaps three seat cab and a little

⏹️ ▶️ Casey more bed space in the back. But as it turns out, as they started talking to like, um, you know, corporate

⏹️ ▶️ Casey buyers and things like that, they said, no, no, no, no, no, no. The crew cab, or that is to say the four, uh, four

⏹️ ▶️ Casey person cab is what everyone wants, even at the, at the expense of, you know, having a little itty

⏹️ ▶️ Casey bitty bed, which is bananas to me. I agree. I, I w with love and respect to pickup

⏹️ ▶️ Casey truck owners. I, including some of our mutual friends, I don’t get it, but teach their own.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah. I mean, some people need it. All right. And some people just want it because it’s a fun thing to have, but so many of them sell

⏹️ ▶️ John that like, okay, the people who need it and people who want it for like, just the, you know, a thing that they just want to have

⏹️ ▶️ John and the rest of the people, I feel like are getting it because they like, like a fashion thing. Like if it was

⏹️ ▶️ John up to them and they were on a desert island, they would never pick a pickup truck. Like they don’t actually have a personal affinity for it,

⏹️ ▶️ John but it’s like the thing to do, you know, culturally the thing to do or something. And so they buy these pickup

⏹️ ▶️ John trucks that are essentially four door sedans. Like I just put a picture in our slack that I found recently showing what pickup trucks

⏹️ ▶️ John were like when I was a kid and what they look like now. It just shows people want

⏹️ ▶️ John four door sedans, but they need to have like this. It’s like skeuomorphism. Like it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John the part of the part of the device that no longer needs to be there, but is there any way reflecting

⏹️ ▶️ John the previous function of this device, which is the actual definition of skeuomorphism? And yeah, I feel

⏹️ ▶️ John like the truck bed and pickups is now skeuomorphic in most cases.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The only downside to these cool, cute, new electric truck things is like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this all looks well and good, but will anybody actually buy these? That’s the question.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It could have POM-pre syndrome, where everyone tries it, and that’s really cool, wow. And what are you gonna buy? Well,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I bought a Ford. Because it turns out, the reason why people buy trucks,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s a huge number of people who buy trucks because where they live culturally,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s considered like a nice vehicle to have. Like that is the default nice vehicle. Like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’ve made it in the world when you have your own truck. It’s like a right of adulthood. Yeah, exactly.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so there’s these huge parts of America that are like that, where like the default vehicle that most people

⏹️ ▶️ Marco aspire to have is a pickup truck, even if they don’t really use the bed for much

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or hardly ever use it. But that’s just, that is the default. Second of all, there is kind of a tragedy

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the commons thing here where it’s like, you like, American vehicle size

⏹️ ▶️ Marco inflation is a real thing, especially on trucks. And when you are in an area,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like I live on Long Island, Long Island is full of trucks. Long Island is the South of the North. It is full

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of trucks. Everybody here drives trucks. They’re huge, they get them lifted, they get massive

⏹️ ▶️ Marco new wheels and tires put on them to get them lifted even further. The things I see on the road here are ridiculous.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the roads here are huge and they still don’t fit on them. Like this is, I live in truck area,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like big time. I don’t feel safe driving a very small low

⏹️ ▶️ Marco sedan here. Most people wouldn’t. So if you launch

⏹️ ▶️ Marco these new tiny mini sized pickup trucks in most of America, where most people

⏹️ ▶️ Marco are buying these massive, tall, blocky, heavy Ford and GMC and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Chevy trucks like that, everyone’s buying. you’re not gonna feel, you’re gonna feel like you’re in a motorcycle

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in one of these things. And so I think a lot of America is actually not going to be willing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to buy one of these because they’re not going to feel safe because everything else in the road is so much bigger than them.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s a big problem they’re going to face.

⏹️ ▶️ John Don’t they get higher than sedans? I think these are taller than sedans. It’s hard to tell from the photos, but I do think they’re like, I mean, look at next

⏹️ ▶️ John to the mini, look at the height of the driver’s head in the mini versus these things. They’re not as big as the giant trucks,

⏹️ ▶️ John but they’re actually not as small as a Honda Civic either. So I I think they have a shot. It depends. I mean, the real problem

⏹️ ▶️ John is the weenie factor. No one wants to feel like they got a weenie car. It’s like the smart cars didn’t do well here.

⏹️ ▶️ John I think the slate is has less weenie factor than the tello. The tello looks weird and

⏹️ ▶️ John sci fi ish, and maybe it will only be purchased by like people in Portland or something.

⏹️ ▶️ John The slate looks like slate is like mini macho and maybe maybe among younger

⏹️ ▶️ John people with like the whole K truck Japanese thing. Maybe there’ll be

⏹️ ▶️ John some niche for it. I don’t know, like that’s up to these companies marketing departments. Like they chose to make these things. I think

⏹️ ▶️ John they could have had a cleaner win by making a small, small battery for the people who currently buy the Prius,

⏹️ ▶️ John which like for for all the love of pickup trucks we have, there is a segment of people who want to buy

⏹️ ▶️ John small cars, small, inexpensive cars in America to get good mileage. I think Toyota sells a lot

⏹️ ▶️ John of those cars and Honda sells a lot of civics like that market exists. It’s just not the biggest market anymore.

⏹️ ▶️ John If I was aiming a small battery at something, I would be thinking about them. but both of these companies instead are thinking

⏹️ ▶️ John truck. So here we are. Or truck or whatever the hell the tello is, because calling it a truck is, it looks

⏹️ ▶️ John more like something that would take you from base to base on Mars.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. It’s true, actually. Yeah, I don’t see that one getting very far. I think Slate has a much better

⏹️ ▶️ Marco chance of

⏹️ ▶️ John success. That’s why I was so shocked to see Doug DiMiro do a video on the tello, because I think like, oh, this is a thing, this will never

⏹️ ▶️ John exist. Like, this is just a rendering, like this is not a real product. It was a real vehicle that he could like go around

⏹️ ▶️ John And it didn’t look like it was made out of cardboard. So I’m like, wow, they got pretty far along.

Apple Turnover/Turnaround

⏹️ ▶️ John All right,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you did the unthinkable, John. You wrote two blog posts,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey was it in as many days? It was certainly within the span of a week. And I don’t know what to do with

⏹️ ▶️ Casey myself because I’m not used to even the new improved John writing that much on his blog.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey So tell me about Apple turnovers and Apple turnarounds, please.

⏹️ ▶️ John So we talked about Apple turnover in my posts where I was talking about how I lost faith in Tim Cook’s leadership because there’s a bunch

⏹️ ▶️ John of things that I could no longer believe Apple would do unless leadership changes. Things that I thought they should do that I’d just given up hope.

⏹️ ▶️ John though of them ever doing with current leadership. And that’s what I talked about in Apple turnover. We talked about an ATP

⏹️ ▶️ John episode six thirty nine. And then to go meta for a second here,

⏹️ ▶️ John I kind of always wanted to do a follow up post because like the Apple turnovers is why

⏹️ ▶️ John I think Apple needs new leadership. And the next post I was going to do is like, I assume

⏹️ ▶️ John people would ask this and some people did. It’s like Apple needs some leadership and you’re you have no longer have

⏹️ ▶️ John faith that Apple will do the things you think you need to do. What things? What if they got new leadership, what would they do? Like, what

⏹️ ▶️ John do you actually want? Because you didn’t say that in the term of us. You just say, I’ve lost faith. New people

⏹️ ▶️ John to come in need to come in because I don’t think they’re going to do these things that I want, but you didn’t say what they were. So the

⏹️ ▶️ John obvious follow-up post is, okay, if there was new leadership, what the hell would they do differently? Like,

⏹️ ▶️ John why? What was the point? What was it? When what is the thing that you want them to do that you think they won’t

⏹️ ▶️ John do with Tim Cook that you think they should do? And the meta commentary is I was kind

⏹️ ▶️ John of planning this from the beginning, I’m like, won’t this be clever? The first one is called Apple turnover, which is at least a three way pun, probably

⏹️ ▶️ John also four way. Feel free to figure that out amongst yourselves. And then the

⏹️ ▶️ John next one was going to be well, just to pick out one of the common means turnover

⏹️ ▶️ John is when employees leave a company and replaced by other employees. That’s turnover. And that’s one that’s one of the

⏹️ ▶️ John past four possible definitions of Apple turnover. The next one was going to be Apple turnaround,

⏹️ ▶️ John which is when a company’s in turnaround. It’s when like, oh, things are going badly at the company. So they need

⏹️ ▶️ John things need to change. And so maybe they bring in new management or whatever. Like the example I give in the article is that

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple in the 90s was in turnaround. They were going down the tubes and they needed to get this thing

⏹️ ▶️ John turned around. And they tried a bunch of stuff, turn around, including multiple new CEOs and eventually acquiring

⏹️ ▶️ John next. And they did get it turned around, but they were in turnaround. Turnaround is either the last phase before the death

⏹️ ▶️ John of a company or the the beginning of the company having a resurgence.

⏹️ ▶️ John So that was my clever idea. I’m like, oh, right, I’ll do Apple turnover and then I’ll do Apple turnaround.

⏹️ ▶️ John I massively underestimated how confusing that would be for

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco people

⏹️ ▶️ John to make two posts, one called Apple turnover and one called Apple turnaround within like 10 days of each other.

⏹️ ▶️ John Because everybody, when they see one of them, Marco snapped a good problem. They’re like, oh yeah, I’ve

⏹️ ▶️ John already said that one. I saw that article. It’s that Apple turnaround article, right? Or is that Apple turnover? They just think it’s the same article. So I had

⏹️ ▶️ John to do this embarrassing post. It was like, I made a follow up to my other post. You may have read the other

⏹️ ▶️ John one, but this is actually a totally new post, even though the titles are very similar. So lesson learned.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like, honestly, I’d do it again because I’m stickler for, I like when I get an idea like this stuck on my head

⏹️ ▶️ John that I want to do this series of posts that sort of bookend each other and have multiple meanings. I

⏹️ ▶️ John would do it again, but I just so badly predicted how

⏹️ ▶️ John confusing this would be. So I apologize to the world, but I guess sorry, not sorry, because I would do it again.

⏹️ ▶️ John Anyway, sorry for the meta commentary and aside. No, that’s what we’re here for.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s what the people pay us for.

⏹️ ▶️ John What I want to go into now is what, you know, also new leadership, what should

⏹️ ▶️ John they do? What should they do differently? And I didn’t want it to be like a thousand, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John page article here. I also want it to be succinct, but there’s a lot of stuff. So I’m going to go through some

⏹️ ▶️ John things that I thought about. And if there’s anything you want to add to it that you think they should do differently.

⏹️ ▶️ John And in particular, as I tried to emphasize in the article, this is not a list of all the things that Apple should do differently.

⏹️ ▶️ John There’s tons of things that I think they should do differently. But most of those things, I believe, they can and will do

⏹️ ▶️ John differently with current leadership. For example, the Mac Pro that you hear me harp about. I don’t think there’s anything about Tim Cook’s leadership

⏹️ ▶️ John that precludes them making a decent Mac Pro. Like they haven’t even canceled the product. And even if they

⏹️ ▶️ John had canceled the product, I’m like, well, they could always come around. Like there’s nothing, Tim Cook is not dead set against making

⏹️ ▶️ John a decent Mac Pro, to put it that way. He doesn’t even care about it. So that’s just one personal example. There’s

⏹️ ▶️ John tons of things that they don’t need new leadership to do. So this article was entirely focused on what are the

⏹️ ▶️ John things that you think the current Apple is absolutely never gonna do that they should do and

⏹️ ▶️ John they need new leadership to do. So that’s what I’m confining myself to. And I think I made that point well

⏹️ ▶️ John enough that people aren’t saying, well, I also think Apple should do X. It’s like, yeah, they should, and they probably will someday, but

⏹️ ▶️ John they don’t, you know, Tim Cook doesn’t need to leave for that to happen. So the first, the most obvious

⏹️ ▶️ John one, which I titled the new deal for developers. This is the developer relations angle.

⏹️ ▶️ John This is one of the most important things that it just seems like, you know, I don’t want to go

⏹️ ▶️ John into it too much because we talked about so much on past shows and also on episode six, 39,

⏹️ ▶️ John that Apple’s attitude towards developers and their control

⏹️ ▶️ John of the platform, like there seems to be no crisis or regulation or anything

⏹️ ▶️ John that can happen that will change their mind about it. and it’s things that we’ve thought should be different

⏹️ ▶️ John for years and years. And it just seems like the only way this is going to change is with new leadership. And on top of that,

⏹️ ▶️ John I would say that even if the current leadership changes their mind has a change of heart and says, you know

⏹️ ▶️ John what? You’re right. We’ve been jerks. We need to rethink this relationship. They’ve lost so much.

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t credibility with the community and people are so mad at them that it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John hard for the it would be hard for those same people for the for us to them seriously when they say we’ve turned over

⏹️ ▶️ John a new leaf we’re going to be a new company it’s time for a new deal for developers with apple but it’s the same people

⏹️ ▶️ John we’d be like i like the decision you say you’re making but aren’t you the same people who did

⏹️ ▶️ John x y and z new faces really help that’s one of the reasons when a company’s

⏹️ ▶️ John in turnaround almost always new leaders are brought in even if the new leaders aren’t necessarily

⏹️ ▶️ John better or people like them more than the other ones it’s like you’re not the guy who screwed this up or the gal

⏹️ ▶️ John who screwed this up you’re You’re not the person who’s responsible for the crap we’re in now. So

⏹️ ▶️ John to get to Marco’s point about Tim Cook having the expertise to fix the supply chain problem, even if that’s true,

⏹️ ▶️ John a lot of people would feel better about, okay, but can we have the person who didn’t cause this problem be the

⏹️ ▶️ John solution? Because that would make me feel better, right? You just need new faces sometimes for credibility.

⏹️ ▶️ John And particularly when it’s a topic like this, which is Apple’s relationship with developers,

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s a touchy feely thing. That’s not just as simple as like policy changes, which would have to be part of this, but

⏹️ ▶️ John this is like, how does Apple communicate to developers? How do they see the relationship? And

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s gonna be like, even if all of Apple had to change their heart about this, it would

⏹️ ▶️ John be so hard over so many years for them to essentially win us back. It’s like the spurned lover is like, I’ve

⏹️ ▶️ John changed baby, right? Like

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco this time it’s gonna be different.

⏹️ ▶️ John Whereas if you get new people in there, even if it’s like, even if it’s like existing people, like say John Ternus takes over.

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like, well, he’s not a new person. He’s always been there. is john ternes was not making decisions about the app store you know what i

⏹️ ▶️ John mean so he is effectively a new face who never before was the person who is the decider

⏹️ ▶️ John for app store issues and so we would be like oh well okay well at least someone new is making decisions

⏹️ ▶️ John about the app store and john ternes is added toward towards developers is different uh and i tried to emphasize that

⏹️ ▶️ John like in this section because this is what people always ask so like what was the problem is it just the 30 or 15 like what’s

⏹️ ▶️ John the right percent what should it be what i tried to emphasize in this section of the article is like they they could

⏹️ ▶️ John leave the app store percentages and their cut exactly the same if they

⏹️ ▶️ John actually change the relationship. If customers, developers

⏹️ ▶️ John felt like Apple was supporting them and trying to get their apps out and provided good service, like

⏹️ ▶️ John they could earn their 30 or 15%. And one of the ways that I said they could do that is to

⏹️ ▶️ John do what they’ve essentially been forced to do in other regions of the world, which is open up a third-party app stores

⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever. Because like, like I said, I described it as the best way, perhaps the only way

⏹️ ▶️ John to make developers happy with the dealer getting from Apple, because that’s also another question. It’s like, what would make developer

⏹️ ▶️ John happy? They’re so cranky. What do they want? Do they want everything for free? Do they want like Apple to pay them to make stuff for this

⏹️ ▶️ John platform? What do they want? There’s no, you don’t need to really hash that out. You could say Apple,

⏹️ ▶️ John keep your percentage exactly the same. Hell, raise your percentage. But if you open

⏹️ ▶️ John your platform to third party app stores, guess what that is? competition. And everyone in

⏹️ ▶️ John that if you if they make as level a playing field as possible, they’ll never be able to make it totally level because of the platform.

⏹️ ▶️ John But if they make it as level as possible, they will have to compete for customers because

⏹️ ▶️ John a customer who doesn’t like apples cut, for example, will go to the Epic Store, or the

⏹️ ▶️ John Google Store or the Microsoft Store or whatever other vendor is out there. All those stores will have to

⏹️ ▶️ John compete for developers business.

⏹️ ▶️ John And can Apple sustain 15 to 30%? Yeah, if they provided a really good business,

⏹️ ▶️ John if they allowed upgrade pricing or fixed all their APIs and made StorKit 3 that’s 10 times

⏹️ ▶️ John better and allowed people to return refunds and gave developers respect and

⏹️ ▶️ John help things get through review and maybe were more strict about review and had a favored program

⏹️ ▶️ John for actual good developers versus junky stuff. And that once there’s competition,

⏹️ ▶️ John people will sort themselves out and Apple will know that it is succeeding when people choose

⏹️ ▶️ John to use, to pay them their 15 or 30% because of the benefits they’re getting. Marco

⏹️ ▶️ John said this a million times, of like, you know, people always say, well, you hate all these things, but why do you continue

⏹️ ▶️ John using that purchase? For a lot of people, even now, it is the best choice available.

⏹️ ▶️ John With competition, we would be sure that not only is this the best choice available, but like, there are other people competing

⏹️ ▶️ John for it. So we know that like, okay, well, they have a lower percentage in the Epic store, but they’re not as good about,

⏹️ ▶️ John you know, their their turnaround time and app review isn’t as good or their API’s for an app

⏹️ ▶️ John purchase aren’t as nice as Apple’s because Apple has massively expanded it and does stuff like if Apple had to compete with Stripe, for example,

⏹️ ▶️ John like anyway, that’s that’s what I tried to emphasize in this section is a new deal for developers. And it is so

⏹️ ▶️ John not about Apple should take less money. It is entirely about Apple should earn the money that it

⏹️ ▶️ John gets. And the way you earn that is by having competition and then people who are choosing you, you know you’re

⏹️ ▶️ John you’re doing a good job because people are saying, when I look at the totality of what is on offer from

⏹️ ▶️ John all the places, all the ways that I can sell software for Apple’s devices,

⏹️ ▶️ John I choose Apple because they have the best balance of things. Now, if they left everything the same and

⏹️ ▶️ John not just the price, a lot of people would leave Apple. But all I’m saying is that it’s not like, oh, well,

⏹️ ▶️ John should they give it away for free or whatever? I think Apple could earn almost any reasonable cut

⏹️ ▶️ John if they did a really good job and all the stuff they’re currently doing a terrible job with.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I think a lot of the feedback we get, as you mentioned, is people who say, well, if you don’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like the 30%, what should it be? What would be a fair cut? People kind of say that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco derisively, as if we’re just being arbitrary here. But to be clear,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t actually think that the 30 slash 15%

⏹️ ▶️ Marco cut in the current scheme is totally unworkable for a lot of people.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco What I want, what I, like, and to be clear also, I’m also still

⏹️ ▶️ Marco staying with it. Like, even though I now could, you know, offer something on my website or something, and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, for US customers, and by the way, my customers have already started

⏹️ ▶️ Marco asking me to do that. I have gotten multiple emails from people in the last week

⏹️ ▶️ Marco saying, can you please offer a web thing so I can subscribe in a way that gives you more money?

⏹️ ▶️ John A nerdy customer base. This is definitely like leading indicators.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes. And that shows like this is going beyond just developers, like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the public sentiment here. But anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey what I want- And just

⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco very quickly

⏹️ ▶️ Casey to jump in, you are uniquely well suited to do that because you

⏹️ ▶️ Casey know how to take money from people directly. That’s how ATP membership works. Now granted,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey you would have to rewrite some things, but you’ve been, you’ve done the hard work already. So I don’t think this would

⏹️ ▶️ Casey be, and tell me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think this would be that heavy a lift for you to make this work for Overcast.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It would be trivial. I have no doubt it would be trivial. I don’t want to do it because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t want to support it and I think it’s temporary. But if it turns out being long-term, maybe I will

⏹️ ▶️ Marco do it. I don’t know. But I am not pushing for my particular app

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to make 10 or 20% more money from those purchases. Like I am not,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is not the hill I’m dying on. What I want is for Apple to have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the best products by being forced to compete in a lot of areas that they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco are currently putting up artificial barriers to prevent themselves

⏹️ ▶️ Marco from needing to compete. Because when you look at the areas in which they have to compete,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco look at their hardware. They compete on hardware with a lot of other vendors out there. Look at

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the iPhone generally as a product. If you ignore the software situation, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the most part, if you just look at like the iPhone as a product, it’s the best. It is the best phone. Like by

⏹️ ▶️ Marco all means, it is the best phone. Look at the Macs. For almost any computing category, the Mac

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the best computer.

⏹️ ▶️ John The Macs are a great example because you can see almost identical looking laptops for like half the price,

⏹️ ▶️ John and yet people are still happy to pay for like the M4 MacBook Air because the hardware is that good.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like Apple is charging so much more than 30% more than its competitors for the M4 MacBook

⏹️ ▶️ John Air, and they earn that price by making a product that people value

⏹️ ▶️ John enough to pay that and be happy with their purchase.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, look at AirPods, AirPods Pro. These are incredibly good products

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because it’s a very competitive market and Apple has to compete. One of the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco areas that I think Tim Cook sucks at is it seems like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco how much effort Apple puts into a product line or a software

⏹️ ▶️ Marco option or a service option is inversely or is directly related to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco how much competition they have in that area. A common pattern we see from Apple in the Tim Cook era

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is they really half-ass something. Like Apple Music is a great example

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of this. Apple Music is a totally okay streaming

⏹️ ▶️ Marco service. There are a lot of areas in which Spotify is better than Apple Music. Not all,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Spotify is worse than some, But there’s a lot of areas, but Apple Music moves glacially.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Almost nothing ever gets better. It’s a very old, kind of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco unreliable code base. And why? Why isn’t Apple being forced to push harder

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there? Well, thanks to the 30% stuff, they give themselves a huge price advantage in that market. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco thanks to certain integrations they make that other people can’t make, Apple Music has some advantages that third-party

⏹️ ▶️ Marco apps like Spotify don’t. And there’s a lot of areas, Like, you know, iMessage is a great example. iMessage,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you compare iMessage, kind of feature and experience wise, to something like WhatsApp.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco WhatsApp is way better than iMessage at a lot of things. Again, not everything,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but way better. But Apple doesn’t really compete much with iMessage. They have a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco very strong platform lock-in, and they know that, and so they don’t really, they invest very

⏹️ ▶️ Marco conservatively in updating it or changing it at all. And you can kind of look

⏹️ ▶️ Marco around, there’s a lot of areas in Apple where they have this advantage they’ve given themselves through

⏹️ ▶️ Marco technical means, and then they kind of take their foot off the gas. And the in-app purchase

⏹️ ▶️ Marco system for apps, and the entire App Store, by the way, the App Store sucks.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco The App Store is terrible. Like, so much about it is terrible. First of all,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it still has just abysmal, terrible search.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco What decade is this? Like, they have never had good search in the app store,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it’s only getting worse over time. It’s full of spam. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco full of scammy apps that have like, super expensive weekly subscriptions to do very simple

⏹️ ▶️ Marco trivial things that trick you into signing up for. Like, it’s full of crap. Like, all the stuff they say about protecting

⏹️ ▶️ Marco consumers, I know they released their big new PR report about that. There’s, that’s really,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, they’re sure letting a lot through. Like, whatever their system is, whatever their numbers

⏹️ ▶️ Marco say that they’re doing to do us well here, they’re sure letting a lot of scams and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco terrible stuff through. And so, and there’s so much about the App Store that is just terrible

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or incredibly mediocre and hasn’t been touched forever.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Or when they do touch it, it’s really half-assed. And it’s because they don’t have to compete. The in-app purchase

⏹️ ▶️ Marco system, again, it’s very similar. Like the in-app purchase system, there’s a lot about it that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is, they have certain features that if they do a feature checklist comparison,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they do okay. Not great, but okay. But the actual experience of using it,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s so many rough edges, there’s so many rough details or pains in the butt that developers

⏹️ ▶️ Marco need to work around or work with or adapt to.

⏹️ ▶️ John Or business models that you can’t do because an app purchase doesn’t support them.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, entire business models that we can’t do or that we aren’t allowed to do by policy. And so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s so much there that is just really mediocre. The whole search ad system.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, Apple says that we don’t contribute if we don’t have their cut in our in-app purchases, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco also we have to keep paying to get people to install our apps now. Because search ads have perverted that entire

⏹️ ▶️ Marco system. So they’re also making money from us that way. So there’s a lot about

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the app store that’s just really kind of crappy or half-assed or mediocre.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And Apple doesn’t have to compete at all. So they don’t really put much into that. You look at the amount of effort they

⏹️ ▶️ Marco put to making these amazing new M chips every year for the Macs that are having

⏹️ ▶️ Marco amazing gains, doing amazing things, that is an area they have competition in and they do

⏹️ ▶️ Marco great work there. And all these little software fiefdoms that have little to no competition

⏹️ ▶️ Marco because of policy or technical implementations on their end, they just take their foot off the gas. They don’t touch them.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it’s what I want from Apple, if I’m looking for how do you turn around

⏹️ ▶️ Marco developer sentiment, it’s not so much about, oh I want to pay 10% instead of 15% I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean yeah when you have somebody in a job who’s unhappy with their job

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you can give them a raise that helps but if they’re unhappy for other reasons

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s not going to really solve the problem now is it if you want people in if you want developers to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco be happy what we really want is freedom that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what that’s what developers really want we We want to be freed from

⏹️ ▶️ Marco some of the rules that we think Apple shouldn’t have.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco One of those rules is, why can’t we have our own payments in our app or in a web page? Again,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it’s a stupid distinction. Whether you link out to a website and kick back to your app or whether you have it in the app, who

⏹️ ▶️ Marco cares? That is a distinction that I think judges and Apple and commentators keep trying to make and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think that distinction does not matter at all. But whatever, however you do external purchases

⏹️ ▶️ Marco with an external system from an app, there should be no prohibition on that.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco An app should be able to link out to a website for any reason and have any content shown

⏹️ ▶️ Marco there. An app should make money however it wants as long as it’s not a scam. Like that’s

⏹️ ▶️ Marco simple as that. And you can’t say the App Store payment system is super safe and easy when it is full of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco scams the way it is. It absolutely is. all those like antivirus apps on the App Store, again, all

⏹️ ▶️ Marco those like abusive weekly subscriptions that are mostly scammy, like, the App Store is full of scams, it always

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is, it always has been, so that’s a bunch of BS that they’re keeping that out. So what we want is freedom.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco We want, let our apps just do reasonable things that most reasonable

⏹️ ▶️ Marco people would assume apps should be able to do. And some of that is business related, and some of that means Apple

⏹️ ▶️ Marco won’t make that cut on everything, but that’s how you run a platform that’s actually healthy.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you’re not going to collect every single cent made on that platform. Do the people who make

⏹️ ▶️ Marco web browsers collect a commission on every transaction that happens across the entire web?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, that would be ridiculous. Does AT&T collect a commission on every

⏹️ ▶️ Marco transaction I make on my phone over their network? No, that would be ridiculous. They tried

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to. Like does, you know, PSEG, my local

⏹️ ▶️ Marco electric company here, Do they get a commission on all the work I do using their electricity?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Of course not, that would be ridiculous. So yes, while Apple has created this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco platform, they are being compensated for it in many other ways. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco people who run software platform companies should also be aware, although Tim Cook is not,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco clearly, but they should also be aware the value that software brings to their platforms,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that it is indirect value. The iPhone is useless

⏹️ ▶️ Marco without apps. Nobody would buy an iPhone if all of our collective apps from

⏹️ ▶️ Marco all of our developers were not on that phone. We give value to the platform. So what we want

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is freedom to do reasonable things and ideally for

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the higher ups at Apple to show that they see that value, that they actually agree

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that we bring indirect value to their platform besides just paying them directly. because

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that is a really not only shallow and short-sighted, but just factually wrong view

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the developer relationship. And what that tells us is these high-ups at Apple

⏹️ ▶️ Marco hate us. Like they see us as leeches if we’re not paying them. And that’s incredibly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco disrespectful and incredibly factually wrong. And it makes us feel like our work is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco worthless.

⏹️ ▶️ John So the fact that Marco thinks this is why you need new faces, because having those same faces say something different, Marco’s gonna be like,

⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know if I believe you. I

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco won’t believe them.

⏹️ ▶️ John I really won’t. Yeah, because it’s the same way it’s hard to believe somebody when

⏹️ ▶️ John you flip the bozo bid on them or whatever. And again, it’s not everybody. Again, if John Ternus

⏹️ ▶️ John comes in as new CEO and makes all these changes, it’s like, well, I’ll give them better than the doubt because

⏹️ ▶️ John none of these decisions that we see in these discovery transcripts or whatever, John Ternus is not involved in that conversation at all. He’s in charge

⏹️ ▶️ John of the hardware, and the hardware is something we love. So we’re like, maybe he’ll do something differently. So at least we give him a chance.

⏹️ ▶️ John he’s got a clean slate to just be like, now let’s see what kind of decisions you’re gonna make. Maybe I’ll believe you,

⏹️ ▶️ John but if the same people change their mind, they’re gonna have an uphill battle. One of the other things I listed here

⏹️ ▶️ John was like the app review and stuff and the whole frustration of feeling like you’re not conversing with a human at the other end of it.

⏹️ ▶️ John That’s another thing that’s like a competitive landscape of like, is essentially the customer support experience

⏹️ ▶️ John for app review reasonable? Do I feel like they’re trying to help me get my app out versus putting

⏹️ ▶️ John up ridiculous barriers and having my livelihood hanging in the balance? When there are other stores, they don’t have your livelihood

⏹️ ▶️ John hanging in the balance. If they reject you for some dumb reason, you peace out and put your stuff up in a different store. You know, like that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John the beauty of competition. And the final thing I’ll say is on the percentages and everything, I didn’t go into this here because it’s kind

⏹️ ▶️ John of a tangent, but like so many things could be different about

⏹️ ▶️ John competing app stores, including Apple’s own. If Apple wants to make more money, like

⏹️ ▶️ John I was saying, like they can keep their commissions the same, in fact, they could even raise them if they do everything else really well. One way they could

⏹️ ▶️ John do that, and these are all like policy decisions that happen on large

⏹️ ▶️ John scales across the entire world, is instead of it being 15% and 30%, have a

⏹️ ▶️ John essentially a more progressive tax, let’s say a competing app store opens, that says

⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t pay anything for your first million dollars each year. But as you make more and more money,

⏹️ ▶️ John that percentage goes up and up and up. So if you’re making a hundred million dollars, you pay us 45%.

⏹️ ▶️ John But if you’re making under a million, you pay us 0%. What kind of developers would that

⏹️ ▶️ John attract? Would Spotify leave and go off on their own store because they make too much money or is it because their app is free and they don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John care? Would, you know, like a more progressive tax, which is kind of what they did with the small business

⏹️ ▶️ John program, 15 versus 30 or whatever, but like plans like that do a real good

⏹️ ▶️ John job of, you know, we’ve always talked about making sure Apple makes its money from the whales who

⏹️ ▶️ John are like are satisfied essentially with in-app purchase and the huge volumes and they’re willing to pay 30% because they’re just

⏹️ ▶️ John making money hand over fist. while not bothering to lose

⏹️ ▶️ John developer sentiment from all these developers who are making essentially nothing as far as Apple is concerned, because you never know which one of those

⏹️ ▶️ John developers is gonna have the next big thing. And so you want as many of those people who are making under a

⏹️ ▶️ John million dollars per year on your store as possible. And if they all pay you 0%, what they were paying

⏹️ ▶️ John you before was practically nothing anyway. Like it’s peanuts compared, you know, like I don’t know what the

⏹️ ▶️ John breakdown is in terms of which, you know, the diagram of which developers give them which money for how much things, but like,

⏹️ ▶️ John we already know like 85% of it is games. So we can just, anything that’s not a game is already down there in

⏹️ ▶️ John the 15%. Stuff like that, you know, you’re open to

⏹️ ▶️ John do different, make different decisions there that may in fact make you more money. Having a higher top level tax

⏹️ ▶️ John bracket for the App Store could end up making you more money, even as you

⏹️ ▶️ John massively reduced or eliminated the App Store tax for lower brackets. And if Apple doesn’t wanna do this experiment in

⏹️ ▶️ John an open competitive field, other people will surely try it. as just as epic is now with like,

⏹️ ▶️ John there are various deals, like come to our store, you get X, Y, and Z like competition. It solves

⏹️ ▶️ John that problem. I think we may have spent too long on the, on the new deal for developers, but that was my

⏹️ ▶️ John first, first point of thing they could do differently. And it’s a no brainer. Like you need new

⏹️ ▶️ John people to do it. They’ve shown they’re not willing. They’ve shown they’re not going to turn around on this. Nothing that

⏹️ ▶️ John happens internally or externally will change their minds. And even if they did turn over a new leaf, we would have a hard time

⏹️ ▶️ John believing that. Um, The second item I had a hard time coming up with a heading for, but I called it a premium

⏹️ ▶️ John experience for premium prices. This is the thing I’m always hammering on just because I’m willing to accept

⏹️ ▶️ John for the sake of this bullet point that Apple’s deal is that they sell you a product that costs more

⏹️ ▶️ John than their competitors and they try to justify that price, like they do with the example of the MacBooks

⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever. That’s how they make a lot of money. Their products are more expensive and they

⏹️ ▶️ John make them better, so you’re willing to pay that price. One of the ways that

⏹️ ▶️ John historically, brands that charge people a lot of money have been able to continue to do that successfully

⏹️ ▶️ John is by really gaining a reputation for, I just phrase

⏹️ ▶️ John it as standing behind their products, but like products that do what they say they’re gonna do. So some

⏹️ ▶️ John stupid leather luggage brand, they cost a whole jillion dollars, like why would anyone ever pay that much for

⏹️ ▶️ John a piece of leather luggage? You say, well, I’ve had this one for 50 years, and when the strap broke after the 51st year,

⏹️ ▶️ John they replaced it for free. So that’s why I’m gonna continue paying 10 times as much. Or the whole

⏹️ ▶️ John Terry Pratchett expensive boots theory thing that I forget

⏹️ ▶️ John the details, we’ll find a

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco link

⏹️ ▶️ John for the show notes, but the rich people can buy one pair of boots for $100 and they’ll use it for 10 years. And

⏹️ ▶️ John poor people will have to buy a new pair of boots every year for $25. And the poor people end

⏹️ ▶️ John up spending up 100 times more on boots over their lifetime because they can’t afford to buy the good pair. That’s

⏹️ ▶️ John kind of the business Apple is in. They sell premium products. And if they

⏹️ ▶️ John wanna continue to sell premium products, they really need to justify that price. And in tons of

⏹️ ▶️ John areas, they do this. Their hardware, I think, costs more, and it is really nice. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ John nice to look at, it’s nice to feel, it actually is good, even when it wasn’t fast. It was still

⏹️ ▶️ John nice, even when it didn’t have ports. The laptops were nice. They felt good, they were

⏹️ ▶️ John pretty reliable. There wasn’t lots of catastrophes. Pieces didn’t fall off of them. You could quibble with the features,

⏹️ ▶️ John But like Apple makes nice hardware. So I’m not going to say this is a thing where Apple is falling down universally.

⏹️ ▶️ John But on the software front in particular, Apple’s products have long since

⏹️ ▶️ John stopped being that really nice piece of leather luggage that you know is going to be dependable for 50

⏹️ ▶️ John years. And this is essentially the balance between

⏹️ ▶️ John how much time do we spend making new features and, you know, adding stuff that, you

⏹️ ▶️ John know, whatever the fad is of the day or redesigning all our OS and putting in AI and how much time do we spend

⏹️ ▶️ John on fixing bugs? And that balance, even though it seems like one of those things like, well, that’s

⏹️ ▶️ John just a thing. They don’t need a new leadership to do this. They could fix that at any time. But I feel like

⏹️ ▶️ John maybe I’m in my my 25 years and working in corporate America and software has influenced me

⏹️ ▶️ John here. I actually think that this is not something as simple as like, oh, we’ll decide

⏹️ ▶️ John to put more ports on our MacBook, which you don’t need new leadership to do. the balance between

⏹️ ▶️ John fixing bugs and existing stuff and adding new features in the end always comes down

⏹️ ▶️ John to leadership because everything in this industry is pushing you towards

⏹️ ▶️ John ignoring the bug fixes, ignoring the tech debt, always chasing the

⏹️ ▶️ John new features. Sometimes you have to like we got to get on this AI thing. We’re already late blah blah blah like

⏹️ ▶️ John there’s there’s so much pressure to do that. The only way to hold the line and not

⏹️ ▶️ John allow your your products to crumble due to neglected tech debt and bugs that just never

⏹️ ▶️ John get fixed is you need leadership committed to maintaining that balance

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s current leadership like for the past several decades. I would probably

⏹️ ▶️ John include Steve Jobs in this as well Has not gotten that balance right for a premium

⏹️ ▶️ John brand because the premium brand is supposed to be the one that Basic functionality

⏹️ ▶️ John always works. And by the way, over the decades, even the basis functionality gets polished

⏹️ ▶️ John to a mirror finish. Copying files from one Mac to another in the Finder. I

⏹️ ▶️ John know there’s a harp on this one. It’s a feature that has existed since Apple talk in the 80s, right?

⏹️ ▶️ John That feature should be polished to a mirror finish at this point. It is not. It is filled with bugs, it is

⏹️ ▶️ John crappy, it is janky, and nobody cares about it. And repeat for a million

⏹️ ▶️ John features on whatever platform you care about. Stuff exists and mostly works most of the time, but because it’s not

⏹️ ▶️ John a glory feature, the bugs never get fixed, and no one ever spends any time making

⏹️ ▶️ John that a little bit better. Obviously, every year you’re not gonna make it awesome and add tons of features. You don’t want feature bloat

⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever, but over the decade, an existing feature should have fewer

⏹️ ▶️ John bugs than it did at the beginning of the decade, and it should be nicer than it was at the beginning of the decade. And Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John absolutely falls down on that, and that’s not something that a premium brand should do. So my second

⏹️ ▶️ John category of things that I think they need leadership for is to adjust the balance between

⏹️ ▶️ John fixing bugs and polishing existing features and adding new features. And it’s a difficult

⏹️ ▶️ John balance, but I think they’re off. Like the one thing I saw is like the last time Apple publicly

⏹️ ▶️ John demonstrated that it’s willing to sacrifice new features,

⏹️ ▶️ John it went to emphasize software reliability at the cost of new features is how I put it.

⏹️ ▶️ John Because plenty of time they say, oh, we’ll work on software reliability, whatever. Show me that you’re willing to sacrifice a

⏹️ ▶️ John thing that you wanted to do, a marketable new feature, publicly come out and say,

⏹️ ▶️ John we were gonna do this thing, but instead we’re not, and we’re gonna fix bugs in this other thing.

⏹️ ▶️ John The last time that happened was Snow Leopard, which everyone, you know, glorifies as this wonderful lesson. Let me

⏹️ ▶️ John tell you, 10.6.0 was buggy as hell. But, and there were new features like Grand Theft Auto Dispatch rolled out. Like I wrote

⏹️ ▶️ John a whole review about it. Anyway, like I’m not saying buy Apple’s marketing hype about no new features

⏹️ ▶️ John in Snow Leopard, but they publicly demonstrated that they are willing

⏹️ ▶️ John to not have things to show you on stage, because they didn’t. They had fewer things to show you

⏹️ ▶️ John on stage, because you have a demo of Grand Central Dispatch, people are like, ho-hum, I don’t know what that is. Right? Fewer things

⏹️ ▶️ John to show you on stage, fewer gee whiz things, they say, look at this new thing that’s in this new version of macOS.

⏹️ ▶️ John And the thing they were trying to sell you is, but we made the existing stuff better. And even if they only made

⏹️ ▶️ John it a little better or whatever, That was the last time they did that was 15 years ago. And

⏹️ ▶️ John even that demonstration is, again, debatable what they did. The

⏹️ ▶️ John balance is wrong right now. It’s been wrong for a long time, and it’s causing basic functionality

⏹️ ▶️ John to just rot, and it makes you feel less good. You feel like you’re not getting a premium experience or premium

⏹️ ▶️ John prices when it comes to software. Like, I’ve always liked the Jason survey things. Like, how do people feel about software quality? Just

⏹️ ▶️ John look at the software quality line versus the hardware quality line. I wish this things went back more than 15, 20 years, but like, it’s not good.

⏹️ ▶️ John And then the Apple intelligence fiasco is another example of

⏹️ ▶️ John them. I mean, in some respects, yeah, they are behind. They need to work on the Apple intelligence stuff, but like

⏹️ ▶️ John they’ve shown they’re even more willing to say, just announce something. We have to show,

⏹️ ▶️ John do something like, regardless of the reality behind it, forget about fixing bugs and existing

⏹️ ▶️ John features. They’re willing to just, they need so badly to have something to show you. we’re doing the

⏹️ ▶️ John thing, we’re in the mix, we’re in the whatever. And then they’re falling down on that as well. Like they turned

⏹️ ▶️ John the whole company and like, we’ll drop what you’re doing and try to add something that uses Apple intelligence and still didn’t do

⏹️ ▶️ John it. So certainly they weren’t fixing bugs and you know, SMB file transfers and finder.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. I don’t know. It’s, it’s tough to say. I think if I sat down and

⏹️ ▶️ Casey really had a proper think about it, I could come up with probably, you know, a list of three things that I would prefer, but

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I certainly can’t disagree with the two that you’ve come up with so far. And

⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think the third in particular, in some ways, I almost wonder if it’s

⏹️ ▶️ Casey the least likely because this is a delicious,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey delicious nectar that they’ve gotten very used to, but a man can dream. So what is your

⏹️ ▶️ Casey third one here?

⏹️ ▶️ John Actually, before I get to that one, I do want to throw in my, I always try to throw in a sports analogy for the sports people, and I

⏹️ ▶️ John feel like this is actually fairly apt here. Again, my perspective may be warped by

⏹️ ▶️ John all my years spent in corporate America trying to argue for addressing tech debt rather than

⏹️ ▶️ John adding new features and how hard that battle is and how you need leadership by and otherwise is never, ever going to happen. And

⏹️ ▶️ John the analogy is adding features when game wins games, but fixing bugs wins championships.

⏹️ ▶️ John And if you don’t know that the saying that that is mirroring, maybe that doesn’t ring true to you, but like

⏹️ ▶️ John everyone wants to win the game, everyone wants to add the feature, have the glory, win the game. But the way you win championships is

⏹️ ▶️ John by fixing those damn bugs and making sure the basic things that your your stuff does

⏹️ ▶️ John Has fewer bugs than I did last year and it gradually gets better over time Not every year

⏹️ ▶️ John not every two years But over the course of a decade pick any feature of any of your platforms and I just say how was

⏹️ ▶️ John this a decade ago? And how is it now and if it’s not better or at least the same things

⏹️ ▶️ John are going wrong And there are so many examples of that. Anyway rant over

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey the final

⏹️ ▶️ John But the final one is again, another hard time coming up with the title of this one. And this again, this is not an exhaustive list. This is just

⏹️ ▶️ John what I came up with the top three, let’s say, uh, growth the hard way. So many of the things that we talk

⏹️ ▶️ John about are like, Oh, they need, Apple needs growth and the iPhone is leveling off. And

⏹️ ▶️ John so they need services revenue cause that’s growing. And look at the service revenue graph has been going up, up, up for years and years and years.

⏹️ ▶️ John This is the source of Apple’s growth. And as you know, every company needs a source of growth because they’re like cancer. And that’s what

⏹️ ▶️ John stock market loves is cancer, constant growth, constant growth in the until the entire planet

⏹️ ▶️ John has been turned into paperclips. That’s what the stock market wants. So they need growth. And what everyone says

⏹️ ▶️ John is, well, there’s no more growing with the iPhone because every literally every human on the planet

⏹️ ▶️ John who can’t afford an iPhone caliber smartphone already has one. Look at the

⏹️ ▶️ John iPhone sales, see how they were going up and up and up and see how they’re not going up and up anymore. And there’s level. It’s

⏹️ ▶️ John a money machine. But like that’s not your source of of growth. We need a line that goes up. Service revenue is that line.

⏹️ ▶️ John Uh, and every time somebody says that I feel like the world and Apple

⏹️ ▶️ John are giving up too easily on that iPhone line because yeah, the iPhone line has

⏹️ ▶️ John leveled off and yeah, most people in the world who have, who can afford an iPhone caliber smartphone

⏹️ ▶️ John already have one, but they don’t all have iPhones. In fact, worldwide market share for iPhone

⏹️ ▶️ John is like 30% versus 70% for Android. Android, and it bothers me

⏹️ ▶️ John that everyone is like, well, Apple’s never gonna get any of that 70%. Like that the resignation, that

⏹️ ▶️ John the line between Apple and Android is totally unmovable. Now, obviously Apple is probably

⏹️ ▶️ John never gonna compete for the cheapest of the bargain basement Android phones, but there are tons

⏹️ ▶️ John of Android phones that are sold for iPhone prices, iPhone caliber Android phones selling for

⏹️ ▶️ John iPhone prices. We may not prefer them, but they’re good phones, and more importantly, they’re expensive

⏹️ ▶️ John phones. Apple should compete for that. How about changing it from 70, 30 to 31, 69?

⏹️ ▶️ John Like if the numbers involved here, it’s not impossible

⏹️ ▶️ John to have more growth with the iPhone. It’s not even like they have the majority share. I mean, maybe in

⏹️ ▶️ John America they have like 60% or whatever, but worldwide. And by the way, why

⏹️ ▶️ John shouldn’t Apple attempt to go slightly down market to get some of that back? It’s like,

⏹️ ▶️ John maybe they just think they can never do it, But like Apple as a company seemed several years ago to say, well, the iPhone thing’s

⏹️ ▶️ John done. We are never going to get another customer that 70% is using Android. We can never win

⏹️ ▶️ John their business. So just maintain our current sales at the level they’re at now. And let’s concentrate

⏹️ ▶️ John on services revenue. It’s like you’re going to give up 70% of the market for the most important

⏹️ ▶️ John technology product of the last several decades, because you think it’s just immovable and you can never get it

⏹️ ▶️ John like and again, it’s not like they need to make a bargain basement iPhone, like compete

⏹️ ▶️ John with the Android phones that cost as much as the iPhone 16. Get some of those customers like we can

⏹️ ▶️ John never get those customers. Why do you think you can never get those customers? That’s what I mean by growth the hard way. Don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John just say, well, services are going up. Let’s just take our existing customer base and milk them for more money with services. And I

⏹️ ▶️ John don’t even begrudge them services because services is a good idea. Like I want them to have a lot of services that Apple has. I’m glad that they

⏹️ ▶️ John have and I enjoy and use. But if that’s your only source, as we’ve

⏹️ ▶️ John discussed many times on past programs, services revenue is

⏹️ ▶️ John kind of uniquely corrosive to the spirit of the company because it encourages

⏹️ ▶️ John you to extract rather than to please your customers.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like, I have you now, you are captive in some way, can I get more value from the

⏹️ ▶️ John customers I already have versus why did that person choose a Samsung Galaxy, whatever, instead of

⏹️ ▶️ John the iPhone 16 or maybe last year’s model? Why did they choose that? Why did they pick that phone instead of ours? What

⏹️ ▶️ John is it about they like about that phone that’s better? Is it something having to do with the App Store? Is it? Is

⏹️ ▶️ John it simply the price? We’re within $50 to that phone? Is it like, do they have different feature set? Like, what

⏹️ ▶️ John is it that they like about that Android phone versus ours? Can we get that customer and then yet also maybe thinking

⏹️ ▶️ John about is that is should the cheapest iPhone really be $600? Can we

⏹️ ▶️ John make a $500 phone that people actually want? Is that possible? Can we go a little bit down

⏹️ ▶️ John market, we’re not going to make a $50 phone or something like but like, compete, like 7030 7030 is

⏹️ ▶️ John not a success that is not time to likes, we’re gonna rest on our laurels

⏹️ ▶️ John and set down the scepter and say, the iPhone is the iPhone wars are done and we are

⏹️ ▶️ John happy with a 30% because we have the most we have the most lucrative 30%. And they do they have the most lucrative 30%.

⏹️ ▶️ John But you know, 31% that one 1% growth at this point,

⏹️ ▶️ John they would kill for it because their growth is like, totally flat or sometimes negative. So

⏹️ ▶️ John yeah, this frustrates me every time I hear about iPhone sales plateauing. Cause it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John not going to be a source of growth like sales revenue, like service revenue. I don’t expect it to say like this suddenly it’s going to turn around. It’s going to be 70, 30 iPhone.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like I don’t have any illusions that’s going to happen, but I do think that they shouldn’t give up on it. And when

⏹️ ▶️ John I look at what they’ve been doing with their products, it seems like what they’ve been doing is, can we,

⏹️ ▶️ John all the people who are buying iPhones, what is their price elasticity like? Can we increase the price of the iPhone $100 every few years

⏹️ ▶️ John and our existing customers will keep paying it? Like maybe they’re selling fewer iPhones, but

⏹️ ▶️ John for more money and just maintain that even line in iPhone revenue, it just

⏹️ ▶️ John seems like they’re giving up too early. So this is maybe the weirdest, most wonky

⏹️ ▶️ John one because I’d never hear anyone else talking about this and everyone just accepts the breakdown, but

⏹️ ▶️ John it bothers me that they’ve given up on it.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and this is an area where, again, I think we have seen Tim Cook doesn’t

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know how to create new product categories very well nor does he have the product

⏹️ ▶️ Marco sense or maybe has he yielded the product sense correctly to the right people to meaningfully

⏹️ ▶️ Marco break into new markets that they’re not currently in. He’s been fine to like keep steering

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the ship in the direction it’s going and extract as much as he can along the way. But what areas

⏹️ ▶️ Marco has Apple broken into? Well, they’ve all been kind of accessories to the phone. Like between the Apple Watch and the AirPods,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think those have been like the biggest new product category hits of the Tim Cook era. Those

⏹️ ▶️ Marco are both great product categories. They’re also both, you know, kind of accessories

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in terms of, you know, revenue and numbers. And they’re also both like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco obvious and also unfairly locked in accessories to the iPhone.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco What new amazingness is today’s Apple going to break into

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for new categories? I think what we’ve seen pretty clearly is that they don’t really have that in them.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Okay, well, what can they keep expanding into in the categories they’re

⏹️ ▶️ Marco already in? As you mentioned, like, sell more iPhones to people who already buy smartphones but don’t buy

⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPhones. Sell Macs to people who buy computers but don’t buy Macs. Like, sell iPads

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in context where we’re not using iPads. Like, there’s lots of ways that Apple could

⏹️ ▶️ Marco attract new markets. And yeah, they might not all work out, and they might not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco all have like the highest profit margins compared to what they have now. But that is, as

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you mentioned, that’s the hard way. It is more of what we think of as like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco good Apple. It’s more good Apple’s style to get more money over

⏹️ ▶️ Marco time by making better products and selling more of them to more people.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco That is like Apple at its best, when they’re making awesome products that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco people buy because they’re awesome, not because they have to, not because they’re locked in in some way,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they buy them because they’re awesome. That’s Apple at its best. And so I think that’s what I want to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco see more of. And I have very little confidence that Tim Cook’s Apple either prioritizes

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that or even necessarily can do that.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I mean, I give them some credit for trying in various things, but in some respects, the trying

⏹️ ▶️ John is like another, like, it’s not connected, but it makes it like trying in a new category

⏹️ ▶️ John shouldn’t preclude you continuing to try to sell more Macs, continuing to try to sell more iPhones. Get the next 1%

⏹️ ▶️ John best customers in the phone market. Don’t, you know, don’t go for the people who can’t afford an iPhone for, you know,

⏹️ ▶️ John but like, can you get the next best 1%? How much money is that worth? How much is the next best 2% of

⏹️ ▶️ John the most lucrative cell phone customers in the world. I bet it’s worth a lot.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like one or 2% of a very big number is still a lot. And Mac, same

⏹️ ▶️ John thing. It’s almost as if they feel like they’re Microsoft in the 90s, where they have like 90

⏹️ ▶️ John something percent market share in the personal computer market. And then you’re like, well, where are we gonna go? Where’s the growth left? Like

⏹️ ▶️ John Microsoft really was like at one point at the peak of their dominance, it’s like the Wintel

⏹️ ▶️ John duopoly. There wasn’t a lot left to squeeze there. But 70 30, there’s

⏹️ ▶️ John plenty of room. And whatever the Mac market share is, I don’t even think it’s crack 30 worldwide. Probably far under that.

⏹️ ▶️ John There’s there’s room to grow. And then if it’s about making a egg like who should be

⏹️ ▶️ John making the thing that will eventually someday when we’re all dead, take over from the cell phone.

⏹️ ▶️ John I would hope that Apple would be trying to be in that conversation right now. Everyone else is trying to do that

⏹️ ▶️ John to Apple with eggs and not working out so far. but like, where is Apple in that?

⏹️ ▶️ John Apple can’t even get its voice assistant to be as good as the previous version of the Amazon one.

⏹️ ▶️ John They’re not well positioned to do that. So yeah, anyway, as I said, the conclusion here, this

⏹️ ▶️ John list is not exhaustive, blah, blah, blah. Professional driver closed course, do not attempt. Also

⏹️ ▶️ John do not name your blog posts very similar to each other’s people think it’s one blog post. But anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I did have

⏹️ ▶️ John enjoy making the graphics for them. Obviously the first one was upside down flag thing. I’m glad Casey identified it as a flag because

⏹️ ▶️ John that’s what I was going for, but I did not have the time or artistic ability to make it look like a flag. But

⏹️ ▶️ John yes, it was like an upside down flag, upside down, Apple logo flag, the rainbow one, because it’s the best one. And

⏹️ ▶️ John this one, I’m not sure if you guys remember this, but if you’re looking at the Apple turnaround thing, do you recognize what I was doing

⏹️ ▶️ John an homage to here?

⏹️ ▶️ Casey It seems like you’re trying to like have a spinner of some sort, but I don’t know what specifically

⏹️ ▶️ John Marco ring any bells. No. It’s 100% like essentially traced

⏹️ ▶️ John from the back to the Mac announcement graphic. Do you remember that one? Oh. Oh no. So it was

⏹️ ▶️ John when, it was before they had the Mac round table, but it was like they had been ignoring Mac OS

⏹️ ▶️ John for a long time.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco That’s when they brought a bunch of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco iPad features to it. Right?

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I forget. It was the Lion. So they, it’s questionable whether they’re back to the Mac

⏹️ ▶️ John WBC or Macworld or whatever it was, really was back to the Mac, but that was the hype. They, the announcement graphic

⏹️ ▶️ John was, let’s get back to the Mac. And it was literally this, It was an Apple logo shaped hole with a

⏹️ ▶️ John silver shiny Apple logo rotating it exactly the same way but instead of the black background

⏹️ ▶️ John what you saw back there was like a sliver of a lion’s face. No one remembers that except

⏹️ ▶️ John for me apparently.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Nope.

⏹️ ▶️ John So if you don’t remember it well Casey this guy but anyway I I don’t remember if we had a podcast

⏹️ ▶️ John back then when Lion I maybe we didn’t when Lion came out but this is this is an homage to the back to the Mac

⏹️ ▶️ John pre Lion invitation graphic that Apple put up but yes obviously For

⏹️ ▶️ John people who don’t remember that, it is literally an Apple logo turning around. Yeah, anyway,

⏹️ ▶️ John hopefully people read these articles. They’re a lot less long wind than what I just said, but I feel like all the information

⏹️ ▶️ John is in there as well.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right, thanks to our sponsors this week, Terminal and Notion, and thanks to our members

⏹️ ▶️ Marco who support us directly. You can join us at atp.fm slash join. One of the many perks of membership is exclusive

⏹️ ▶️ Marco content in lots of different forms, and our weekly bonus topic is one of these. called ATP

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Overtime, exclusive to members. This week on Overtime we’re going to be talking about Apple OS rebranding,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco possibly two different numbering schemes, and our predictions for the next macOS

⏹️ ▶️ Marco name. That’ll be in Overtime today. You can join to listen at AT.fm slash

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Thanks everybody and we’ll talk to you next week.

Ending theme

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Now the show is over, they didn’t even mean to begin Cause

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental, oh it was accidental John

⏹️ ▶️ Casey didn’t do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn’t let him Cause

⏹️ ▶️ Casey it was accidental, oh it was accidental

⏹️ ▶️ Casey And you can find the show notes

⏹️ ▶️ John at atp.fm And if you’re into mastodon,

⏹️ ▶️ John you can follow them

⏹️ ▶️ Marco at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that’s Casey Liss,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Auntie Marco Armin,

⏹️ ▶️ John S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A It’s

⏹️ ▶️ John accidental,

⏹️ ▶️ Casey they didn’t mean

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to Accidental, check podcast

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so long

Restaurant-tech MVPs

⏹️ ▶️ Marco All right, so more restaurant tech MVPs This

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the segment. I’ve debuted a few weeks back My favorite stuff as I was I was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco working in and rewiring and cleaning out and fixing stuff in the restaurant So I first

⏹️ ▶️ Marco covered, you know, just ubiquity as a general concept And a lot of their products being

⏹️ ▶️ Marco used there I then covered network cabling and making my own cable ends with

⏹️ ▶️ Marco some, you know, cheap Amazon tools

⏹️ ▶️ John I hope that was your second MVP cables. Yeah Wires they connect things.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Whoo. Yeah, I mean a huge part of my work was like tear down old wires and put up new

⏹️ ▶️ Marco wires

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, they’re surprisingly they’re surprisingly important when you don’t take them for granted Like just I was thinking about them for

⏹️ ▶️ John various reasons that will get into a future episodes in my own house I’m like, you know, there’s a lot of wire in here. Yeah that I

⏹️ ▶️ John don’t really want to deal I like it when it’s there. I like having to not think about it, but

⏹️ ▶️ John there’s a lot of it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, and a lot of it is like The wrong wires or in the wrong places like if you have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco old wire if you’re like well There’s a bunch of coax and phone lines like well. I don’t need any of those anymore.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You have knob and tube. Oh God That’s that’s even worse. No. I was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco fortunate enough to have that anyway, so as I was crawling around going

⏹️ ▶️ Marco through Doing you know mounting things going through attics and up above fridges and stuff

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and working inside of the audio gear rack, one thing I constantly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco needed was light. I’m going to paste the link in the chat now. This is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a Dewalt cordless work light. The world of battery

⏹️ ▶️ Marco powered power tools is incredibly rich with tons of options these days.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t really have an opinion on what system is best, whether you’re a Dewalt person or Black & Decker

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or whatever all the different options are. Whatever your system of choice

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is for battery powered power tools, get the LED light

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that attaches to those batteries. So I link here to the Dewalt one. It looks

⏹️ ▶️ Marco really simple. It is really simple. You stick it on top of one of the batteries that you already have four or five

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of and it provides light. And with a little pivoting head. I was constantly

⏹️ ▶️ Marco using this. If Tiff was there, we were constantly trading it back and forth doing whatever we were doing. I almost bought

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a second one, we use it so much. Every time somebody, like an electrician or a contractor,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco every time they would come, they would borrow it to do their work. It was the hit tool

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that, and everybody was like, ooh, I gotta get one of these. Like everybody loved this basic, like $50 LED

⏹️ ▶️ Marco light that attached to Dewalt batteries. I’m not gonna recommend

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot of like specific tools because those are very personal and different needs and everything, But

⏹️ ▶️ Marco whatever battery system you use, get the light for it. It will become your

⏹️ ▶️ Marco most used tool. I guarantee it.

⏹️ ▶️ John I think I was imagining this on a rec tips episode ages ago, but like one of the best gifts I ever got was the

⏹️ ▶️ John headlamp that Merlin sent me, which I never would have bought for myself because it looks so dorky

⏹️ ▶️ John to literally strap a light to your head. Oh my God. I use that thing so much

⏹️ ▶️ John because in scenarios where like, it’s difficult to even find a place to put the light or your body

⏹️ ▶️ John would be blocking the light. You know what’s great? If the light is literally strapped to your forehead and anywhere you look,

⏹️ ▶️ John the light shines. It obviously has way less light than this thing. This is like for big jobs and eliminating large

⏹️ ▶️ John areas. But for example, if you were, let’s say, crawling around underneath your desk to look at some of

⏹️ ▶️ John the aforementioned wires, and you don’t need to have a gigantic light lighting up the whole area,

⏹️ ▶️ John a LED head strap headlamp thing, if you have never owned

⏹️ ▶️ John one of those and think it sounds ridiculous and you would never use it and it’s embarrassing, get one. it will change

⏹️ ▶️ John your life. Yeah. And they’re like 10 bucks, like they’re nothing. It’s like, this is part of this product,

⏹️ ▶️ John I think is the magic of LEDs. Like, I don’t know what the Dewalt light looks like, looked like 50 years ago or 20 years ago,

⏹️ ▶️ John but before LEDs became common.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco They had like those plug-in halogen ones, which made a lot of light, but you know, they were huge and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco hot and expensive. You had to plug them into the wall. You know, this is a very different thing.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, LED lighting is such a revolution. So you really need to change the way you think. Although I do like the

⏹️ ▶️ John fact that this light that you link to, It has like the handle and the trigger. It’s like a man-made power tool. It’s like, it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John a light. You don’t, I just need the trigger.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I’m actually- The trigger’s the power button.

⏹️ ▶️ John I am, I know, it’s gotta be, it’s fun to pull triggers. I also am in the DeWalt family,

⏹️ ▶️ John but only because of the tire pressure inflator things that are in the trunk of

⏹️ ▶️ John all my cars. Oh, those are great. Yeah, and I had a series of, I had a bunch of really, I had a bunch of cheap ones

⏹️ ▶️ John from Amazon and they eventually just died from, you know, being in New England and having a rechargeable battery

⏹️ ▶️ John in the trunk of a car, eventually it dies. The Dewalt ones are just bulletproof and I love that they’re replaceable batteries.

⏹️ ▶️ John Although honestly, none of the Dewalt batteries have ever died. I so wish that my stupid, ridiculously

⏹️ ▶️ John expensive Dyson stick vacuum took one of the adapters that lets you use Dewalt batteries with,

⏹️ ▶️ John as so many of them do. But apparently I got the model that no one wants to make an adapter for because the

⏹️ ▶️ John Dyson batteries, I bought the first party Dyson battery because I was so terrified of cheap knockoff batteries Amazon

⏹️ ▶️ John is so expensive and also so terrible. And meanwhile, these Dewalt batteries just like do not die and are like

⏹️ ▶️ John Fisher price and are indestructible. Uh, I’m, I can’t vouch for their tools

⏹️ ▶️ John cause I’m literally just using them for tire inflators, but I can vouch for the batteries and the battery system.

⏹️ ▶️ John Super chunky, super great. Uh,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco even like the color, you’re like, I don’t know. I mean, I, I have no idea like what, you know, professionals needs

⏹️ ▶️ Marco are in this area. Like if you’re a contractor, I don’t know what your needs are, but for like a home casual

⏹️ ▶️ Marco user, I’ve been with Dewalt forever and it’s always been great. Like I’ve never had any private, I use their drills.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I, I was actually, what’s really great is they have these really good blowers, like,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, like electric leaf blowers, basically. They are remarkably good. You would think,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco how can electricity have this much power compared to gas? And like, yeah, if you’re like a professional

⏹️ ▶️ Marco lawn crew, maybe you’d need something gas but like for one person for your house,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the blower that they make is really good. I’ll maybe link to that too.

⏹️ ▶️ John Speaking of that and speaking of brands, like, cause I feel like DeWalt is like, it’s not an upmarket brand. It’s like, you’ll find

⏹️ ▶️ John that at Home Depot or whatever. And I think like one notch below DeWalt in terms of getting even cheaper and

⏹️ ▶️ John more Home Depot-y, Losey is a Ryobi, I don’t know how to pronounce it. You know that company? Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John yeah. I think their color is green. Everyone’s got a color. It’s like super friends or whatever. Every, every, Makita

⏹️ ▶️ John is that, that bluish teal.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Ryobi I think is like. I think they’re

⏹️ ▶️ John red, aren’t they? Gray and green. Is it Makita red? I don’t know.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco I don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John know. I don’t have their stuff. Ryobi, someone thinks? Anyway, I don’t even know how to pronounce

⏹️ ▶️ John it. That’s how I’m familiar. But anyway, the reason I have one of their products is because we got recently, I was

⏹️ ▶️ John compelled to get by one of my children, surprisingly. I didn’t have any time to do any kind of research and I wanted to get the cheapest

⏹️ ▶️ John one possible. Oh no. Yeah, I wanted to get the cheapest one possible. That’s why I ended up getting like the Home Depot special like

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like literally the cheapest one they had. But the thing that I got, as soon as I say these words, people’s heads are

⏹️ ▶️ John going to pop up like gophers who have fallen asleep and are not listening to the show anymore. And

⏹️ ▶️ John we’ll see if you two have any kind of reaction to it. I got a pressure washer.

⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, we have one. We have a gas powered one, which I kind of hate. And I kind of wish it was an electric.

⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I got an electric one because it’s cheap. And just go to YouTube, man. Pressure washer channels, people who have

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco no

⏹️ ▶️ John interest in anything like to watch people use a pressure washer to clean things. It’s very soothing

⏹️ ▶️ John and my daughter wanted to pressure wash some stuff in our backyard But she’s doing some kind of project back there

⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever. We don’t have a pressure washer I didn’t want to spend like Casey Shirley did for his expensive fancy

⏹️ ▶️ John gas-powered one I just like what is the what is literally the cheapest pressure washer you have that I think will do a decent job

⏹️ ▶️ John and So I got that and you know, it’s you know, what’s gonna happen? I’m a I’m a suburban

⏹️ ▶️ John dad who now finds himself with a pressure washer I’m like, well, I get better set this up and I better test it out to make

⏹️ ▶️ John sure it works works okay. Hour and a half later, I have pressure wash the whole side of my house, my shed,

⏹️ ▶️ John all

⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey my garbage

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco cans, all the walkway.

⏹️ ▶️ John Like you cannot stop once you have the power of the pressure washer. You’re like I

⏹️ ▶️ John didn’t realize this thing was dirty, but I just did this little test area and you know what the whole thing is dirty.

⏹️ ▶️ John So now it all needs to be pressure wash and it just I pressure you. You are crimping the world with your

⏹️ ▶️ John crimper. Yep. Like you cannot give a suburban dad a pressure washer. It is it’s too dangerous

⏹️ ▶️ John and especially if it’s not gas powered, whether it’s fidgety, like this is just plug it in, connected to the hose.

⏹️ ▶️ John And even just within the realm where the, because you need to have both the hose attached to it and the electric cord,

⏹️ ▶️ John there’s only so far that those two things can reach in my setup. And still everything that I could

⏹️ ▶️ John reach with that setup has now been pressure washed. And I still want to do more. I’m like, I need to stop. Like, this

⏹️ ▶️ John is not my thing. My doors, I, after like an hour and a half, I’m like, okay, it works. You can use it now.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco after you’ve burnt it out.

⏹️ ▶️ John No, I got this special pressure washer pump saver stuff that you’re supposed to put in it to keep the hard water from destroying

⏹️ ▶️ John the pump. Of course you do. Don’t get a dad a pressure washer, or a mom a pressure washer, or literally

⏹️ ▶️ John anyone who lives in the suburb and has property and things. Do not get them a pressure washer because everything you

⏹️ ▶️ John own needs to be pressure washed and then will be pressure washed.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Can confirm. That’s awesome. Well, anyway, pressure washers are indeed

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a universal appeal and I can go even higher than that. What’s an even higher

⏹️ ▶️ Marco universal appeal for anybody with things or any kind of cable work that

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you need to do? I’m running a lot of cables. There is one universal tool

⏹️ ▶️ Marco that all cable work at some point needs and might need in large quantities. Cable

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ties? It is the zip tie. Oh, yeah. You’re close. So, you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, a lot of the work I was doing was like, you know, replacing wires that were like mounted onto

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the walls or in channels, like in the ceiling or, you

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know, it’s strapped to electrical conduit, like, you know, they had like network wiring that was strapped to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco electrical conduit piping that’s like running across the ceiling, you know, those like metal commercial electric

⏹️ ▶️ Marco conduits. Like, things are like strapped to those, things are strapped to wooden beams

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so everywhere are zip ties. So a huge part of this job was

⏹️ ▶️ Marco removing all the old cables by, yes, cutting their zip ties.

⏹️ ▶️ John You didn’t undo them all?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, you can’t. Well, first of all, these have been there for a long time. They’re very brittle. A lot of them, they kind of just turn to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco dust. You

⏹️ ▶️ John just sneeze them and they snap off in your hand.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, exactly. They did not… It didn’t take much to cut them. A lot

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of them were also undersized for the job. It was like this little skinny, tiny zip tie holding up

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a huge amount of stuff. They were not going to be reused.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But anyway, so a lot of zip ties. And one thing I found, okay, well, when you, suppose you have,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, something that you’re attaching with a zip tie to a wall. Well, what holds the zip tie

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to the wall? I have tried many things in this area. Another zip tie?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Sometimes. One thing that matters a lot, that helps a lot,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is zip tie screw mounts. So it’s a simple thing.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s basically a little plastic bracket with a screw hole in the middle. and the zip tie goes through the bracket and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco you use a screw hole to screw it into the wall. What this creates is a very

⏹️ ▶️ Marco sturdy zip tie mount.

⏹️ ▶️ John Wait, what do you, what kind of wall are you screwing this into? What is the wall made out of?

⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s a lot of wood everywhere. This will not work in drywall at all.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John Okay, yeah, I was gonna say.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, and I don’t believe in drywall anchors. They have disappointed me too many times. There’s a lot

⏹️ ▶️ John of YouTube videos about them, by the way. I know. This is what I’m watching on YouTube. Let’s test these drywall anchors and

⏹️ ▶️ John see how they work with this cutaway.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John No, I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco know how they’re supposed to work. I have been, I’ve had a lot of drywall anchors fail on me.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And I just, I don’t trust them. Like if I really need to use one, I will,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I will avoid them if at all possible. I will try to find a stud or something

⏹️ ▶️ Marco else that I can screw into. You

⏹️ ▶️ John should come to New England where there’s no drywall in my house. It’s just nearly 100 year old plaster,

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco which is not

⏹️ ▶️ John an improvement.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh God, no, that’s worse in every way. Yeah, so anyway, no anchors

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for me if I can at all help it. But so zip tie screw mounts are

⏹️ ▶️ Marco way better than any kind of thing based on adhesives. Like I’ve tried, and I’ll get to those

⏹️ ▶️ Marco in a second. I’ve found a really great adhesive for a lot of things, but this is way better than most adhesives,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or than any adhesive for like mounting something to a wall made of wood or some kind of strong material. And

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what’s great about these too, one of the things that I was taking down sometimes was they make

⏹️ ▶️ Marco some zip tie mounts that have a screw hole in the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco zip tie. So you tie it and then you screw through like the loop, but it’s all part of the zip

⏹️ ▶️ Marco tie. But the problem with that is like, if you then need to open the zip tie, you need to like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco unscrew the screw from the wall and then screw a new one in. And so that is not as

⏹️ ▶️ Marco good as these if you have the space for these little brackets. So in areas where like, so the ones with

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the built-in holes that you have to, that are kind of single use screw-in ones. Those are great if you want like the smallest

⏹️ ▶️ Marco thing possible. So like there are areas in the restaurant where wires need to run in

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the dining room, like along a baseboard in the dining room to get to certain segments. So for those,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I used the single use screw ones because they’re way smaller. But in like utility areas

⏹️ ▶️ Marco where aesthetics don’t matter, I use these with the screws because they hold way tighter

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they are way more sturdy and it’s easy to change the zip tie you’re changing the cables later.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now I mentioned adhesives. In most cases you don’t need to use them but sometimes you do

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and by far the best adhesive situation I have found is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco 3M VHB tape. VHB I think it stands for very heavy bond, very high

⏹️ ▶️ Marco bond, something like that. I first discovered this when I was getting all those different phone mounts

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for my car. This is I believe the the type of of adhesive used by Peak Design

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for their mount, I think. So and you can get VHB adhesive and VHB tape and all sorts

⏹️ ▶️ Marco of different sizes, widths, you know, but what’s great about VHB tape is

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it once you stick it on, it does hold very, very strongly.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, it’s not it’s not perfect. It’s not going to hold like, you know, more weight than science would allow. But like it’s a

⏹️ ▶️ Marco very strong adhesive. Once you put it on, you can get these rolls of VHB tape. It stick to pretty much anything.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco But if you have to then take it off, you can generally do so without destroying

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the surface, unless it’s like, you know, paint, like anything can repaint off the wall, but

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, in most cases, like if you’re sticking it onto plastic or wood or

⏹️ ▶️ Marco metal or, you know, anything that’s like a little bit more sturdy than just paint, you can usually remove

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this if you need to down the road with like, you know, some like, you know, diagonal pressure

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or whatever, like There’s like there are ways you can do it that you don’t end up destroying the surface

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it doesn’t leave residue behind like it It kind of comes It’s kind of like a tacky rubber texture

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so when you pop the thing off if you need to read if you need to move It around or remove it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco what you’re getting is like you almost like roll it up into like a gum almost So it’s it’s a very

⏹️ ▶️ Marco practical Adhesive that I’ve used this to like mount things to walls like to

⏹️ ▶️ Marco mount you know like there’s like a sonos player that like I I first stuck it to the wall here before I reinforced it with

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like some screw mount things. There’s occasional like, you know, oh, this thing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco needs to stick here. One of the biggest things I use this for is strip lights

⏹️ ▶️ Marco from my favorite brand, Waveform Lighting. Did I mention this yet? I don’t think so. I

⏹️ ▶️ John think you did.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Thought you did.

⏹️ ▶️ John You’re talking about Waveform for sure. Oh, you’re talking about what the color temperature of the lights everywhere. And I think you might’ve mentioned the strip lights at the time.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yes. So I won’t go into too much detail, but yeah, basically Waveform Lighting, who I love, Although,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I did check earlier tonight and it appears that their prices have all gone up dramatically, probably

⏹️ ▶️ Marco from tariffs. And so that’s not amazing, but I also know it’s probably not their fault. Thanks,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco America. Um, but anyway. So, they make really good stuff,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I’ve used their LED strip lights in lots of different places. And their strip lights, in the strips themselves,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco come with VHB backing on them. But if you want to put it into any kind of other enclosure,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like they sell these like metal enclosures to kind of like diffuse the light a little bit,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco those you need to stick yourself with some other method. So I’ve used VHB tape for those.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I basically, I’ve used VHB tape for big and small applications all over the place. And it has been

⏹️ ▶️ Marco wonderful. It works like I use it in the freezers for certain things I get to in a little bit.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s been wonderful. So VHB tape, thumbs up from me.

⏹️ ▶️ John I wish I could remember the tape website I found. I found this obscure website that looked like it was from

⏹️ ▶️ John the late 90s, which was like, it’s kind of like this to that. There’s like stick this to that

⏹️ ▶️ John website, where it’s like, what do you need to connect together? What do you need to glue together? And you say, I have metal and I want to stick it to wood. And then it tells

⏹️ ▶️ John you the glue to use. It was like that, but for tape. Because the problem that I was facing

⏹️ ▶️ John is kind of similar to what you were describing. You want tape that’s gonna be good and sturdy and stick well,

⏹️ ▶️ John but also not destroy the surface and be able to remove it or whatever. And I didn’t land on VHB, but

⏹️ ▶️ John whatever tape it recommended to me, I had never heard of it. I think it might’ve been a 3M thing, but it was this really weird kind of tape.

⏹️ ▶️ John And my application was in my non-CarPlay cars, how do I wanted

⏹️ ▶️ John to get the USB cord from the USB port somewhere in the center console

⏹️ ▶️ John up to where the phone, the magnetic MagSafe phone mount is on our cars, which is like clip

⏹️ ▶️ John to event or whatever. And I wanted to get the cord up there with having it like nicely routed or whatever. So now

⏹️ ▶️ John I have a situation where I need to tape a USB cable to

⏹️ ▶️ John essentially a plastic center console of a dashboard. And that is actually a challenging

⏹️ ▶️ John environment

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco because it’s gonna be

⏹️ ▶️ John baking in the sun. It’s gonna be freezing in the winter. It’s a difficult

⏹️ ▶️ John environment in there. And also I don’t want it to destroy my car. So maybe if I got something that stuck

⏹️ ▶️ John really well, but like, let’s say like the adhesive melted and liquefied in the sun and then would ooze

⏹️ ▶️ John out and make everything sticky, or let’s say when I did want to remove it, it would just destroy the plastic and there’s no way

⏹️ ▶️ John I could get the stuff off. And whatever the weird tape it told me to get, which was also black by the way, but

⏹️ ▶️ John not thick like this VHB stuff is, it so far has held up in two different cars

⏹️ ▶️ John over many years really well. And I have had to remove it, and you can successfully remove it, and it doesn’t destroy

⏹️ ▶️ John the plastic, and it doesn’t come up. So the world of tape, like I think this VHB thing is another

⏹️ ▶️ John great example of like, don’t feel constrained by the three kinds of tape that you know about and have had in your house since you

⏹️ ▶️ John were a kid. Tape technology and varieties of tape, they’re great. Like don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John just think about like, oh, you know, gaffers tape and duct tape. And like, maybe you’re familiar with those

⏹️ ▶️ John and you use them but they have limitations. Sometimes you need a specific kind of tape that with specific

⏹️ ▶️ John requirements for, you know, again for like temperature and weather sensitivity and

⏹️ ▶️ John load and being able to peel up. And usually you can find some weird tape that will do that. The problem is it will

⏹️ ▶️ John cost you a bazillion dollars. I’ve been shocked at how much tape costs for my entire adult life and I continue to be so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, this is not that expensive it I feel like if you need $18

⏹️ ▶️ John for a roll of tape That just seems like too much money

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah But I mean like but you like I’ve in the entire restaurant I used One and a half of these

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I used a lot of it

⏹️ ▶️ John When my kids were small we bought them like like a wooden so cylindrical wooden

⏹️ ▶️ John thing that had like a a rainbow color of masking tape, like on this big

⏹️ ▶️ John wooden cylinder, right? So they could just, it was like, they’re all on the same cylinder, so you could just peel off from each one of them.

⏹️ ▶️ John And that lasted for like their whole childhoods. But then I look at that now, I’m like, every roll of

⏹️ ▶️ John that masking tape is like $8.

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Tape is so

⏹️ ▶️ John expensive, why is it so expensive? Anyway, sorry.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I will say, one of the waveform lighting things I did was especially nice.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco I forget whether I mentioned this or not, but they have these light strips that are called dim to warm. And they,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if you use their film grade dimmer, this is all very expensive, but if you use their power supply and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco their film grade dimmer, it starts out at one color temperature. And as you dim it, the color temperature gets

⏹️ ▶️ Marco warmer. So that, which is like how incandescent bulbs always look. So it looks really nice.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that, like the dimming experience of using the film grade dimmer with the dim to warm strip, it’s the

⏹️ ▶️ Marco smoothest, nicest, best feeling and looking dimming experience of a light I’ve

⏹️ ▶️ Marco ever seen. We have them under the bar illuminating some of the bar sinks and you know at night

⏹️ ▶️ Marco they want those to be pretty dim because the whole room gets dimmer as you get later into the night

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and so it is a beautiful look. It looks nice and even and it does not look harsh

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like LEDs at all because they start out warm and they just get warmer and warmer as you dim it so that’s been

⏹️ ▶️ Marco a really nice one. As I’ve been doing all of this, you know, installing

⏹️ ▶️ Marco light strips, new audio cables too. I’ve had to do a lot of

⏹️ ▶️ Marco wire stripping and let me tell you I’ve found my

⏹️ ▶️ Marco sole wire stripper. This, you know, when you have a good tool

⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the job, it really makes you feel good. And I have the, I

⏹️ ▶️ Marco think this brand is pronounced Knipex. If you watch Project Farm, it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John Knipex. Oh

⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco boy.

⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not sure you’re familiar with Project Farm if you’ve heard us talk about it in but it’s that guy who tests a bunch of tools.

⏹️ ▶️ John And this brand is very often featured and usually does pretty well in the tests.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, this was recommended to me by my brother-in-law, who knows everything about tools. At one time,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco an electrician came by to work on something else, and he saw that and he’s like, oh, nice ones. And he pulled out his,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and he had the exact same pair, and it was all like, you know, beaten up from, you know, months of use or whatever.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I assume these are considered good by people. But anyway, I have stripped

⏹️ ▶️ Marco so many wires as part of this project and these have

⏹️ ▶️ Marco just been fantastic. It’s a well-made, like nice,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco weighty, sturdy tool. All of the stripping blades are all sharp. The little

⏹️ ▶️ Marco pliers on the end are perfect. Like everything about it, it’s just nice. And when you have,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco again, when you have the right tool for the job, not only do you feel really good, but it also just makes

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the job a lot easier. Like nothing is more frustrating than when you’re fighting your tools

⏹️ ▶️ Marco or there or you’re being held back by your tools and a lot of them if you have like the wrong tool for the job or a really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco terrible crappy one that happens when you have something by nypex you never have the wrong tool for the job

⏹️ ▶️ Marco like this it’s a really this is just a really like i have a few of their like pliers and stuff they’re really

⏹️ ▶️ Marco good so anyway um that was uh

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the that was a great purchase like between the DeWalt cordless LED light and

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the NYPEX wire stripper. Those are like the star tools of the show.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco As I was rewiring all of those things, I discovered, I forget how I found

⏹️ ▶️ Marco this out, but I discovered the existence of Wago connectors.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco W-A-G-O. Never use a wire nut again.

⏹️ ▶️ John Well, I don’t want to show you the YouTube rabbit hole of these connectors because they are somewhat controversial.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Really? Well, we now have some of them in the restaurant, mostly for lighting and audio, but

⏹️ ▶️ John it’s probably fine. YouTube’s going to YouTube, but you might want to look at some.

⏹️ ▶️ Marco Maybe, maybe, maybe not. So, so way of connectors in short, they are basically

⏹️ ▶️ Marco alternatives to wire nuts. Those little like hats that you screw onto twisted

⏹️ ▶️ Marco together wires to cap them. And usually you might put tape around it to keep the keep the cap on. If you’re not

⏹️ ▶️ Marco an electrician, why are not so fine? They serve their purpose. They have been around for a billion years

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and they are simple devices that work better than you think they should,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco especially if you like screw them on properly, like wire nuts can be fine. Yeah,

⏹️ ▶️ John wire nuts are

⏹️ ▶️ Marco easy to do wrong. That’s the thing. They’re easy to do wrong, and they don’t always age

⏹️ ▶️ Marco well in certain situations, depending on how they were done and what kind of conditions they’re in. They’re also very difficult

⏹️ ▶️ Marco to change. So, what often happens is, you know, over time, the wire nut in

⏹️ ▶️ Marco your, you know, light switch box, you know, well over time, somebody puts in a dimmer switch or changes things up or rewires

⏹️ ▶️ Marco things and the nuts get taken off and things get retwisted together and put back on and doesn’t quite sit the same

⏹️ ▶️ Marco way because it wasn’t twisted on with the original twists and that solid core cable and all this stuff and so you know it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco if it’s not if wire nuts are not done really well they can be pretty unstable

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and pretty unsafe and they’re also just kind of a pain in the butt so the way wego connectors

⏹️ ▶️ Marco work it’s like a little tiny box they you know, connect whatever you plug into them

⏹️ ▶️ Marco together electrically, and they have one hole in the front per wire,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and these little tiny clips that you like, you lift up the clip, you put the wire in, you close

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the clip down, and it holds on really tight to that wire. Whatever you need to connect

⏹️ ▶️ Marco together, like, you can just plug one in, and you can pop the little connector up,

⏹️ ▶️ Marco eject it, and plug a different one in. And it makes wiring projects so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco much easier than wire nuts. Also so much safer in a lot of ways. Like if you’re working

⏹️ ▶️ Marco on live wires, which you shouldn’t be if you can help it, but sometimes you can’t. If you’re working on live

⏹️ ▶️ Marco wires, this is a way safer way to do it. Even if you’re not, like if you’re just working on, or

⏹️ ▶️ Marco even, you know, you’re just working on like low voltage stuff, like, all right, well, let me just plug in this audio cable that I’m splicing this

⏹️ ▶️ Marco audio connector onto this, you know, patch board or whatever. Using these for those connections

⏹️ ▶️ Marco is just so much nicer than using wire nuts or tape or whatever else like

⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John don’t

⏹️ ▶️ John use tape please right that’s a case where you shouldn’t look up the right tape to use because the answer is none

⏹️ ▶️ John exactly yeah

⏹️ ▶️ Marco the answer is you shouldn’t be using tape to hold wires together but you know if believe me i’m

⏹️ ▶️ Marco going through the restaurant i’ve seen a lot of things but when i when i do

⏹️ ▶️ Marco new connections or when i when i’m working in an area i put it in waco connectors it

⏹️ ▶️ Marco has made things so much easier because like i didn’t know know about them for the first like month or so

⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I was using wire nuts for things like joining together speaker cables and stuff and it just sucked. Once I found these

⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was like night and day difference so Wago connectors I don’t I don’t think I want to hear

⏹️ ▶️ Marco why they’re terrible maybe I don’t want to hear that. I

⏹️ ▶️ John mean I’m sure you can guess the whole thing is like well how well do they hold and you know how good is that connection

⏹️ ▶️ John versus a properly installed wire or not and there are complaints about wire nuts as well but like it’s

⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a for any new technology in the construction business There’s always it’s always gonna be controversial

⏹️ ▶️ John because like wire nuts have been used for like a hundred years or whatever And here comes something new that’s different

⏹️ ▶️ John and you’ll immediately people immediately find the weaknesses of the new thing while maybe

⏹️ ▶️ John disregarding some of the strengths and the first generation of these products will actually have problems and anyway you

⏹️ ▶️ John If you’re not interested in that type of YouTube videos and it’s working for your thing, I’m I’m sure it’s fine.

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