Not a European Lawyer
Marco:
I changed up the band this time.
Marco:
I played some Goose this time.
Casey:
Oh, God.
Marco:
So different.
Casey:
Oh, I don't know if I like this at all.
Casey:
Because even though I'm in full support of you broadening your horizons, which, to your credit, you actually have done.
Casey:
So here's the thing.
Casey:
I'm not an athlete.
Casey:
I've never been an athlete.
Casey:
Anyone who has met me in person will not find this surprising at all.
John:
This is where I ask myself, where is this going?
Casey:
Yeah, right.
Casey:
But as it so happens, I've been rewatching The Last Dance recently, which is a just phenomenal documentary series chronicling the Chicago Bulls double three peeps.
John:
Still have no idea.
John:
Yeah, me too.
John:
Unless you're going to do the bus on the Chicago Bridge.
Marco:
The Dave Matthews Poop Bus?
Marco:
Can we not?
Marco:
We're required to mention the Poop Bus every time we mention any kind of band on this show.
Casey:
Yes, I know.
Casey:
I know.
Casey:
In any case, something that athletes seem to do is wear the same garments or tie their shoes in the same way or left shoe then right shoe.
Casey:
There's all these superstitions.
Casey:
And now I feel like if we have a truly terrible recording, or I don't know, maybe if I spill something on my computer, not that that would ever happen, perhaps it's because you chose to break the mold and not play fish before the show for the live listeners.
Casey:
And so I am absolving myself.
Casey:
I am preemptively absolving myself of any guilt if anything bad happens this episode.
Casey:
It's all because you broke tradition.
John:
This is a real insight into the way Casey's mind works.
John:
So what he wanted to say was like you broke with tradition and it's like superstition, kind of like the sports superstition.
John:
But he started with I'm not an athlete.
John:
Then he mentioned a movie he liked about sports.
John:
Then he got to people in sports do superstitious things and then finally came around.
Casey:
Gosh, I really am realizing my full potential is Alex Cox.
John:
I know it like it connected.
John:
Everything connected is just it was a long path.
John:
And that's an insight into how your mind works because that was your path to that thought.
John:
My only thought was I was trying to come up with a fish fish goose joke, and I didn't know if you would get that reference.
John:
Oh, you get that one, but you don't get duck season, rabbit season.
John:
That one goes over both of your heads.
Casey:
No, that's Bugs Bunny.
John:
Why didn't you get it before then?
John:
When did you say it before?
John:
Oh, maybe you didn't hear it.
John:
Well, no, you heard us.
John:
We couldn't hear you.
John:
Marco was talking about the ducks out his window, and he said he's not sure if it's duck season.
John:
He said maybe it's rabbit season, and then Marco took it straight up and said, no, the rabbits don't come out yet or something.
Marco:
No, it's full of rabbits.
Marco:
I have tons of rabbits, but I also did, yes, indeed, miss the joke.
John:
Okay, all right.
John:
It's not a joke.
John:
Just a reference.
John:
But Casey got it, so I'm declaring partial victory.
Casey:
All right, let's get the show on the road.
Casey:
We have a lot of follow-up because we're still in the WWDC follow-up season.
Casey:
And friend of the show, Ricky Mondello, wrote with regard to iCloud Keychain browser integration in Sequoia.
Casey:
So we had talked last episode, I think it was last episode, it was 592, whatever one we're on now.
Casey:
And we had talked about how there were some kind of unusual JSON files stored on the file system, and we weren't really sure what it was about.
Casey:
And it didn't seem bad, but it didn't seem entirely right either.
Casey:
And Ricky has worked on a lot of the passwords-related stuff for Apple for a long time.
Casey:
I was lucky enough to see Ricky at WWDC.
Casey:
I don't think either of you were with me at the time, but they are doing great, and I was very happy to see them.
Casey:
Anyways, coming back to the point here, I'm going off on a tangent again.
Casey:
Gosh, I'm so Alex this episode.
Casey:
Anyway, so Ricky writes, ATP episode 592 speculated that macOS Sequoia pre-installs the iCloud Passwords browser extension for Chrome users.
Casey:
It absolutely does not.
Casey:
The Discuss JSON files support the user-installable extension communicating with the OS to securely access password data.
Casey:
See, a link we'll put in the show notes.
Casey:
The new Passwords app does encourage Chrome and Edge users to install the extension on first launch, however.
Casey:
The button that they're using to promote this opens the browser to the relevant Chrome or Edge web store page.
Casey:
So Simeon writes, I'm a DevRel engineer for Firefox add-ons and previously Chrome extensions.
Casey:
The JSON file you mentioned is part of Chrome's quote-unquote native messaging system.
Casey:
As the name suggests, this allows extensions and native applications to exchange messages.
Casey:
More specifically, this files how a desktop application tells Chrome that if its partner extension is installed, Chrome can route the messages between them.
Casey:
In order for this to work, both sides have to know about each other and opt into communication over a native messaging port.
Casey:
Also, while browsers used to allow other applications to directly sideload extensions, they've scaled back that functionality for security, privacy, and annoyance reasons.
Casey:
Today, browsers let native apps notify the user that an extension is available for installation, but don't actually install it until the user opts in.
Casey:
And there's a couple of more informative links that we will also put in the show notes.
John:
So that explains it.
John:
The last episode, we were talking about how the path in the JSON file was to one of those system cryptexes or whatever, but apparently that's to the...
John:
The thing that mediates between, I'm assuming it's a thing that mediates between them, the native messaging system thing.
John:
So these are just sort of declaring, hey, if an app, if these Chrome extensions or Firefox extensions with these signatures appear, allow them to communicate through this mediated extension to, you know, get and set password data.
John:
So the actual extensions are not part of Sequoia.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Nilyan, who's doing incredible work over at Mac Stories, reminds us that network location support is already in macOS 14 Sonoma.
Casey:
Whoopsie-dipsies, I did not realize.
John:
That was my Casey List moment, because I think we talked about this on the show.
John:
And I can't expect either one of you to remember, but I should have remembered.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Whenever it came back, it was probably in a follow-up item, and I just totally forgot about it.
John:
I don't even know if it came back in Sonoma.
John:
It might have come back in the OS before that, which, of course, we all know the name of.
Marco:
Oh, no.
Casey:
We're going to do this again.
Casey:
Let's not do that.
Casey:
Let's not do that, please.
Marco:
Big Island?
Casey:
I'm not even a wager guest because it's going to be embarrassing.
Casey:
So I'm just going to plow forward.
Marco:
House of Prime Rib?
Marco:
Sacramento.
Casey:
Yeah, that's it.
Casey:
For a split second, I thought you were serious.
Casey:
So with regard to iPhone mirroring, we had thought that, hey, maybe what you can do is in Sonoma.
Casey:
Nope, not Sonoma.
Casey:
Yes.
Casey:
No.
Casey:
What's the new one?
Casey:
Sequoia.
Casey:
Sequoia, you can't use two S names in a row, Apple.
Casey:
Come on, I'm feeble-minded.
John:
Mac OS 18, okay.
John:
Yeah, the one before was Centura.
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
Anyways, in Sequoia, in Beta 2, Hunt2013 writes that you cannot enter home screen edit mode while using iPhone mirroring, so the plague of jiggle mode lives on.
John:
Last night, I had Merlin test this, and he also could not figure out how to get into wiggle mode, because apparently the phone is locked when you're doing the mirroring thing or whatever.
John:
So he couldn't... I was like, I'll just hold down on the icon on the phone.
John:
He was telling me he couldn't make the icons wiggle that way, and apparently holding down with the mouse cursor on the mirrored thing on your Mac also doesn't put it into wiggle mode, so...
John:
Maybe this is not definitive.
John:
Maybe it's just a limitation of the beta, but man, why would they do that?
John:
Why would they make it so you couldn't enter wiggle mode on your home screen?
Casey:
Yeah, I'm not sure what that's about.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
Maybe...
John:
to say maybe it's too much motion and yeah like frame rate but right right it's right next to the like they do side uh sidecar with the ipad with a much bigger screen so it doesn't make any sense right could just be a bug we'll find out and i i the reason i haven't tried this is because i was all ready to try it oh it's in beta 2 of sequoia i have beta 2 of sequoia installed on a real drive and also in a vm although apparently vms can't do it because of some bluetooth limitation but anyway
John:
Then I realized, oh, you also need the beta on your phone.
John:
I was like, well, I'm not ready to do that yet.
John:
So I haven't been able to try this.
John:
But whichever one of us first installs the beta of Sequoia and the beta on their phone, we'll see if we can figure it out.
Casey:
Not it on that one.
Casey:
With regard to HomePod RAM, I think this was in the context of does it have enough RAM to do Apple Intelligence stuff, I think.
Casey:
So anyways, Jan Gobble writes, according to every Mac, the HomePod 2 has an S7 chip with one gig of RAM and the HomePod Mini an S5 with one gig of RAM.
Casey:
Seeming a little slim.
Casey:
I don't think that's going to work.
John:
Probably not going to be running any on-device Apple Intelligence with that amount of RAM.
Casey:
We had somebody writing in anonymously with regard to tvOS's Insight feature.
Casey:
This is the, like, clone of Amazon X-Ray.
Casey:
I run metadata APIs for one of the largest media companies on the planet.
Casey:
I don't know exactly how Amazon or Apple tags metadata, but I can offer some insight into how we do it.
Casey:
We process hundreds of hours of content every week, and it's all tagged scene by scene with actors' locations, music, attitudes, moods, DEI info, and more.
Casey:
This is done with a mix of ML and a team of about 50 human taggers, and it is all done before content distribution.
Casey:
ML does the first pass, and then the humans are tasked with checking the machine as well as adding contextual mood-based tags that the machine doesn't or can't understand.
Casey:
The first pass is relatively fast and our accuracy is over 98%.
Casey:
This is achieved by having relatively limited data sets with specialized dynamically generated ML models for each show or movie.
Casey:
For example, if the ML is tagging one of our sitcoms, the first thing it does is call for a list of actors and locations that have been previously tagged.
Casey:
It then dynamically quote unquote trains a small specialized model using only that data.
Casey:
This operation only takes a few seconds.
Casey:
Then the robot matches existing tags to faces and places them from within the custom model.
Casey:
If any faces are new to the model at the end of the tagging algorithms, then generalized ML facial and location matches are made and flagged as needing a human tagger approval.
Casey:
This tagging is much faster, more accurate than either human taggers or any generalized facial recognition ML and can be automated on large batches of back library content without massive computing overhead.
John:
That's a great example of just machine learning really taking a huge chunk out of that workload, because if it was done completely manually by humans, just what a slog.
John:
Not a particularly fun job, slow, and the point that like the ML can, you know, potentially beat humans on a first pass just because it's so, so tedious.
John:
The work is so tedious that like, you know, the computer is, you know.
John:
as good as it is but it does it never gets tired right so whatever whatever it's doing in the first hour it's also going to do on the 900th hour whereas the humans are going to fade so this is interesting uh human computer combination to do all this and i love that they're tagging it based on not just like who's in the scene but like the mood of the scene and stuff it's you know interesting that they're throwing uh so much metadata at whatever company uh this person works for which they didn't say in their message but uh yeah i'm all for this metadata is great the more the better
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Mihai Parparita writes with regard to chess on Mac OS that based on infinite Mac.org, the chess app first showed up in next step 1.0 as a developer sample app.
Casey:
So that means kids it's almost 35 years old.
Casey:
Holy jamal.
John:
Wow.
John:
that's a fun thing of infinite mac which for people don't know it's a way to sort of run in your web browser really old versions of mac os and now also old versions of next and so to answer this question that i was musing about last time i wonder how old chess is i said i thought it was dated back the next days but i didn't know how far well you could try to look that up in the wikipedia page try to find someone a blog post about chess in the next app but like it's so much more direct to just go to infinite mac.org and pick an os
John:
And launch it, like pick Next Step in some version and launch it and see if the chat app is there.
John:
And then just go back in time and go older and older until you don't see it anymore.
John:
I love Infinite Mac.
John:
Whoever did that site is amazing.
Casey:
With regard to CarPlay, where did we leave our Intrepid Heroes last episode?
Casey:
I feel, I can't recall specifically because it was a while ago and I've been busy, which we'll talk about in the after show.
Marco:
I believe we left them as next generation CarPlay has been announced and yet nothing has it, which is where we've left it for the last, what, two years?
Marco:
Three years?
John:
No, no.
John:
So let me help you here.
John:
So we had an item about it.
John:
There was some feedback from someone who'd watched the Next Generation CarPlay sessions at WWDC and was characterizing them as a bunch of Apple developers saying, here, look at all these variations you can have.
John:
You can pick any variation of this one font, for example, and that kind of attitude was not going to mesh well with the car maker's desire to have much more control over the appearance of their...
John:
cars but many questions remained about next-gen carplay because at that point none of us had seen the sessions well now i have seen all the sessions that are relevant to this and so now we actually have some information to share
Casey:
Yeah, so I 2X'd them earlier today, so you probably digested them far better than I did, but I was trying to, you know, mainline them basically before we recorded.
Casey:
There were a couple of interesting parts, and you actually called out in the show notes for the three of us something that I was going to call out when I was watching it.
Casey:
A quote from the first session, which is entitled, Next Generation CarPlay Design System.
Casey:
And a quote from the host, they had said, it enables you to express your own visual design philosophy within CarPlay to create an iconic individual look tailored to you, your vehicles, and their unique functions.
Casey:
The result won't just look like Apple.
Casey:
And it also won't just look like a copy of the built-in system.
Casey:
It's designed to be a unique celebration of both brands, a special co-branded experience only when your vehicle and iPhone come together.
Casey:
And it reflects a great deal of hard work we've done with automakers all over the world to innovate the in-car experience.
Casey:
Our design system for automakers, this is a little bit later, empowers you in partnership with our team here at Apple to help, or excuse me, to develop a beautiful co-branded experience that celebrates both brands.
John:
All right.
John:
So this answers a lot of questions.
John:
So first of all, the question we were always asking, next-gen CarPlay, it takes over all the screens.
John:
A few shows ago, we had some quotes from interviews with the Mercedes and Polestar CEO on a
John:
decoder podcast with the host asking would you let apple take over all your screens and one of them was like no way we're not letting apple take over our screens the other one was like oh they can take over the screens because we still run the car and it's not a big deal but we still had this question like what does this mean how does the car work when the phone's not there is the phone required does this stuff run on the car does it run on the phone is it a combination
John:
This and then also the feedback we had last time about, you know, you can pick one font.
John:
It's got to look like Apple or whatever.
John:
This clearly gives a bunch of answers.
John:
Number one, there is a built in system.
John:
If you don't have an iPhone and you get in the car, all the screens are filled with something, something made by the carmaker.
John:
Right.
John:
So that is clear.
John:
Number two, the way Apple sees this is that.
John:
that this next gen CarPlay experience is supposed to be a blending of Apple's branding and your car's branding.
John:
It's like, okay, your car is your car and whatever your car looks like and all the screens and everything.
John:
But when you get in with your iPhone, what we want is to say, now iPhoneify this car.
John:
What does this car look like when I come in with my iPhone?
John:
Woo, my iPhone takes over everything and it's iPhone branded, but it's also your branded, but it's Apple branded, but it's your brand.
Yeah.
John:
They are so clear that they're saying, we're not giving you a system where you, car maker, can make it look like how you want to promote your brand.
John:
That is not even what Apple is offering.
John:
Forget about whether they deliver.
John:
They're not saying, hey, we gave you a system and you can make this look like Audi.
John:
Whatever you want Audi to look like, we give you a flexible... No, they're not even offering that.
John:
They're saying, we will give you the ability...
John:
to make a look that is a combination that celebrates both brands.
John:
It's a combination of Apple's aesthetic and yours.
John:
And you can debate how much of a balance, like where is that line?
John:
How much is it?
John:
Is it 50% Apple, 50% Audi?
John:
Or is it 60-40?
John:
Or is it 90-10 or whatever?
John:
But that is the pitch that this is what your car looks like when it's painted with a giant iPhone paintbrush.
John:
And it only happens when someone enters with a phone.
John:
And when they don't do that or don't connect their phone to your car,
John:
It just looks like your car.
John:
So I found this very surprising because I assume next-gen CarPlay took over all the screens.
John:
It would be some kind of thing of like, look, you know, it'll be a CarPlay-like experience, but, you know, Apple's offering you the technology to do all your screens, right?
John:
And you can customize it and so on and so forth and integrate with CarPlay.
John:
But I thought that would be like the whole thing and then there would be a carve-out for when your phone's there, but when your phone's not there, it would still look like that.
John:
But that's not it at all.
John:
And it makes me think even more like, who would want this?
John:
Yeah.
John:
Who would want to have to design every screen in their car?
John:
You know, they have to design every screen in their car.
John:
They spend all this time to make everything look nice.
John:
They integrate all the features.
John:
And then Apple's saying, we would like it when someone gets into your car with an iPhone for that phone to cover up everything you've done.
John:
Right.
John:
And by the way, you have to do work to integrate this.
John:
And we'll get to that in a little bit of how the integration works.
John:
Every pixel that you've done before, we want to potentially cover up.
John:
Oh, there's places where your stuff can peek through and we'll talk about that.
John:
But like, because that would be a co-branded experience that blends the best of Apple in your car.
John:
And the car may be like, why would I want to blend the best of Apple into my car?
John:
Like, why do I want to do that?
John:
Because people who own iPhones love iPhones so much.
John:
They want every screen they look at to look like an iPhone and be branded like an Apple thing.
John:
boggles my mind but at least question answered that's what next gen carplay is and now it is no longer is even less surprising that there have not been car makers jumping on this i also there's one aspect of it that i saw just breeze by in some slides somewhere that it's one of the changes in next gen carplay is quote buffered audio
Marco:
This sounds a lot like AirPlay 2 and the way that approaches audio buffering, which is – so AirPlay 1 had – in order to address the realities of dropouts and interference and stuff so that your music wouldn't have little skips and static, it introduces a buffer.
Marco:
AirPlay 1 had a fixed two-second buffer on almost everything.
Marco:
It's anti-shock all over again.
Marco:
to the client device and have the client device play it in a little bit more smart way where operations like play, pause, and seek would generally be able to use the buffer and kind of respond immediately.
Marco:
So that's one of the reasons why AirPlay 2 is so much better than AirPlay 1.
Marco:
And that just required more technical sophistication of being able to transmit a whole bunch of data at once and have the client actually store a large buffer of it and be able to navigate it a little bit more smartly.
Marco:
Well, it sounds like that might be what they're doing with this CarPlay audio, too, where in the current version of CarPlay, the audio just goes over what I believe is Bluetooth, I think, all of the time.
Marco:
Because it creates a little peer-to-peer Wi-Fi network for wireless CarPlay for the video streaming.
Marco:
I don't think the audio goes over that channel.
Marco:
I think the audio always is Bluetooth, but I could be wrong about that.
Marco:
But anyway...
Marco:
Introducing, quote, buffered audio in this next-gen CarPlay sounds like the audio won't go over Bluetooth anymore, which will give them so much more control over latency and various handling details of that connection.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
Honestly, I kind of wish they wouldn't tie these two things together.
Marco:
I wish they could find a way to introduce this new audio situation to a version of CarPlay that automakers are more likely to actually adopt.
Marco:
And maybe they will over time.
John:
It's not clear whether...
John:
So this is the next-gen CarPlay, and we'll talk about the architecture in a second, but it's not clear whether they demand that to get next-gen CarPlay you have to let us take over all the screens or whether a carmaker could choose to implement next-gen CarPlay only on, like, the center screen.
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
Oh, that's interesting.
John:
Those type of business things were not mentioned in the WWDC.
John:
It's kind of a weird WWDC session, too, because I guess the audience is –
John:
People who work for car makers, it's not like we as just regular developers can do anything with like, well, I guess your apps would run an extra car.
John:
But I don't think that experience has changed too much.
John:
But like they didn't if they're really talking to the people who work at car makers, the business people will have a lot more questions like, you know, can we get like the better audio without letting you take over the instrument cluster, for example?
John:
I don't know the answer to that.
Casey:
At the beginning of the first session about the design system, I wasn't quick enough to call up the transcript, but the host says something along the lines of, this is for automakers or people who are just interested in design or cars or whatever.
Casey:
And that's where we come in.
Casey:
One of the things that I did think was interesting was before I watched these videos, a lot of people were getting really perturbed that the San Francisco font family is the only font family allowed, which at first I was like, yeah, that stinks.
Casey:
But after watching the video, I see that while that is a little bit crummy, I actually am not that bothered by it because there's so many different variations between weight and kerning and everything.
John:
But they all look like San Francisco, though.
John:
Like car makers have their own fonts that evoke the car maker's brand.
John:
Some of them are, I think, kind of gaudy and ugly, but they look nothing like San Francisco.
John:
Like, again, because this is a co-branded experience.
John:
It celebrates both brands, but it only celebrates Apple in terms of the fonts.
John:
It's not does not celebrate, you know, BMW or Lamborghini or Ferrari in terms of the fonts.
John:
But, you know, there are I mean, it's a good San Francisco is amazing font.
John:
It looks great, but it always looks Apple.
John:
And so, like, again, what is the balance between it celebrates both brands?
John:
How much does it celebrate Apple versus how much does it celebrate your brand?
John:
And I feel like it's heavily weighted towards Apple because.
John:
Some things are not changeable.
John:
So the font family is one limitation.
John:
Uh, there's a limited number of gauge types.
John:
So you, I mean, especially with all screen instrument clusters, there's a lot of variation in gauge design.
John:
Most cars have, uh, three or four different variations, like a little bar charts or racing one, a regular looking one, uh,
John:
car next-gen carplay has it has a wide variety but not as wide as the actual world of existing cars another thing a quote from the presentation in our system the speedometer is always pale paired with a fuel gauge or a state of charge gauge a
John:
That's fine.
John:
You're going to have those things, but they're not always paired.
John:
Sometimes in existing cars on their instrument cluster, the speedometer is in a different place than the fuel gauge or the state of charge gauge.
John:
But in Apple's thing, they're always paired.
John:
Limitations like that are probably going to annoy car makers because they won't be able to do exactly what they want.
John:
But the architecture is actually really interesting.
John:
It is...
John:
as complicated as you would imagine, which is also why it is difficult to adopt.
John:
There's basically four layers that are stuck together by two different compositors to, for example, form the instrument cluster.
John:
So the top one is the overlay UI, which has things like
John:
the tire pressure warning light and a bunch of other like, what are they called?
John:
Telltales or indicators or, uh, as my daughter calls them, emojis, you know, how's the gas in the car?
John:
I text her after she arrives at a destination because I never text her when she's on the road.
John:
Um, and, uh, and, uh, she said, it's fine.
John:
Uh, it's not even close to the gas emoji thing or I don't even know.
John:
She's like, she calls them all emojis, but anyway, um,
John:
Kids these days.
John:
Then the next layer is the punch through UI, which is the built in system of the car can basically render whatever it wants on a region that it punches through.
John:
So lots of times the like like this, the the driver assistance thing where they show like a 3D model of your car going down the road with the other cars that it's sensing around it.
John:
that is all built into the car you're not going to redo that in carplay you just punch that through like you pick a region of the instrument cluster and it says okay car you get to display what's here then there's the local ui which is the uh like the gauges and everything uh and then there's the remote ui which is remote you all all the old carplay it was all remote ui rendered by the phone and displayed and so
John:
The remote UI, local UI and punch through are composited together.
John:
And then the overlay UI is handled by the vehicle and composited together with those things.
John:
Yeah, so the remote UI is rendered by the phone exactly like it is in the previous generation of CarPlay.
John:
The overlay UI is rendered by the vehicle.
John:
And that includes the telltales and all the turn signals, the headlight indicator, stuff like that.
John:
The local UI is not affected by Wi-Fi interference or disconnect since data stays local to the vehicle.
John:
The next generation of CarPlay starts instantaneously if you were using it on your previous drive.
John:
As soon as the displays are lit or maybe when the door opens or maybe when the driver is approaching the car, content is ready to show.
John:
This may even be before the iPhone has been detected or reconnected.
John:
So obviously this is not running on the phone.
John:
It is rendered locally by the vehicle.
John:
They use an OpenGL-based renderer.
John:
Hey, Apple's discovered OpenGL again.
John:
Why?
John:
Because car makers use it and they've got to deal with it.
John:
It includes image assets, behavior scripts, and it's specific to each vehicle and is transferred during the pairing process and it can be refreshed over time.
John:
So basically, Apple has to provide a wad of stuff, code, assets, and everything that go into the car that the car takes in, stores, and runs because these screens need to come on instantly.
John:
So all that local UI, which includes like the speedometer, all those gauge things, all that stuff, it's rendered by the vehicle.
John:
Your phone hasn't even been detected, right?
John:
So there is an aspect of this next-gen CarPlay that is in the car, but it is shoved there by the phone and updated by the phone as needed and so on and so forth, right?
John:
And then the punch-through UI is entirely rendered by the vehicle.
John:
Another example is the backup camera.
John:
That's just entirely rendered by the vehicle.
John:
It's just punched through wherever they're going to display it.
John:
And they also mention visually rich features are setting.
John:
So you know in Mercedes or BMW, they show this beautifully rendered picture of your seat with the little wavy lines with the heat and the massage and all that.
John:
You don't have to re-implement that.
John:
They're like, oh, just punch that through.
John:
But the punch-through UI is such a weird compromise because...
John:
If you know what any of those screens look like on a fancy modern car, especially the ones that are like about, you know, just where the vents are pointing with the touchscreen or turn on the massaging function or like, let's see the outside of the car and show all the doors opening when they open all that stuff, right?
John:
It does not and will not match.
John:
Apple's aesthetic so they're like okay just carve out a box on any of the screens that Apple is rendering and show a totally incongruous totally unmatching fonts aren't the same colors aren't the same design isn't the same just so you don't have to re-implement that this is Apple saying we are not going to make you re-implement literally every screen to be
John:
you know car play and look like but you can just punch through your existing ui which makes us even less attractive because that's not a combination of the two brands that's just the built-in system and apple system in a patchwork in an ugly quilt because like i look at these apple screens and i'm like i've seen the screens and many many different modern cars none of them match this
John:
You don't want to have to redo that big settings screen?
John:
Just punch it through.
John:
It will look totally incongruous with everything else we render, but at least you don't have to re-implement it.
John:
This is quite an uphill struggle for a next-gen CarPlay.
John:
And honestly, I don't even know what's...
John:
why do this what's the goal like does apple really want to be able to co-brand the instrument cluster why not just be satisfied having to marco's point better and better integration with the screen that people want to see their car stuff on better audio better lower latency video more rich features instead of saying we want to take over every pixel of every screen except for the part where you punch through your existing ui that's going to look nothing like ours
Casey:
You know, this makes me think of, let's go on another journey, fellas.
Casey:
This makes me think of, like, Microsoft Teams and Slack, right?
Casey:
Like, Android Automotive, I think that's the right one.
Casey:
Whatever it is, it's like the base layer, not Android.
Casey:
Android Automotive, I think.
Casey:
Okay, yeah, yeah.
Casey:
Android Automotive is like, you know, Microsoft 365, right?
Casey:
We'll take care of it all for you.
Casey:
We've got this.
Casey:
You just sit back.
Casey:
You worry about the car stuff.
Casey:
We've got the infotainment stuff.
Casey:
And it's all taken care of.
Casey:
Easy peasy.
Casey:
And then Apple says, no, we need to basically duplicate all of your existing efforts and we need to do it together holding hands.
Casey:
Like, I...
Casey:
As a consumer, I think I would really enjoy this.
Casey:
I think it would be really nice, and I think I would like it.
Casey:
But as a car manufacturer, uh-uh.
Casey:
This juice ain't worth the squeeze.
John:
I don't think I would like it as a consumer.
John:
If I buy a car, like I buy a Polestar, and they have Polestar-branded infotainment that matches the car, matches the Polestar brand, it fits in with the car, all the pictures on the screens reflect what's in the car like it is a complete, cohesive, branded experience they pay a lot of people to do.
John:
When I get in that car with my phone, I don't want to cover over all that Polestar stuff and make the car iPhone-y.
John:
I like the iPhone.
John:
It's iPhone-branded.
John:
But I don't want the rooms and vehicles that I enter to suddenly become iPhone-branded.
John:
I bought the car because I like the car's brand.
John:
Why do...
John:
I don't know why you would allow someone, it's like, oh, if I enter a home, you know, with my iPhone, your television's UI is going to be covered up with my iPhone UI because I've entered it now and I have my iPhone.
John:
Like, I don't want that.
John:
It doesn't match the car.
John:
Like, you can't change the design of the dashboard or the upholstery on the seats or the way the car looks.
John:
Why would I want to change everything that's on all the screens?
John:
it just like the reason people like phone integration is because they like you know the phones are platforms and there are great apps for them and we have our life on them and all our songs are on them and like yeah we want that integration so stuff from our phone we have a way to interact with it on the car even so far as being able to use our voice assistants on our phone through the car like that's great like leverage the strengths of the phone
John:
But the phone has nothing to do with the instrument cluster as far as I'm concerned, other than, again, maybe showing navigation in there or something like that.
John:
Like, I don't want my car to be phone branded when I enter with my phone.
John:
And I would be annoyed if that was the only choice because I would want to use CarPlay for the things that we all like CarPlay for.
John:
I would be saying, could I get that without you covering over my instrument cluster, the customer cluster that I liked with an iPhone UI that I don't particularly like and also have no control over?
John:
Because, yeah, the automakers can customize this and pick stuff, but it's not like the user gets to design their own instrument cluster with this.
John:
They have the same limited options, probably even more limited options than the built-in systems offer.
John:
Because, again, built-in systems usually offer two or three different instrument clusters on these fancy cars, and you could pick which one you like.
Marco:
Yeah, I think I like CarPlay.
Marco:
I mean, I obviously don't usually have it in the Rivian, but I like CarPlay the way it is now, mostly in a window.
Marco:
Like in some cases, CarPlay is the entire display of certain displays, but most car makers will let CarPlay take up most of the display when you're using it, but then will have some kind of like little area off to the side or below it or something where
Marco:
that has like their toolbar buttons that'll switch it back over to their interface.
Marco:
And you still have to use their interface for most of the controls of the car.
Marco:
And then you switch back to CarPlay when you want to look at, you know, your music player or your navigation.
Marco:
CarPlay already also has support for the secondary display.
Marco:
So if you want to have something like, for instance, if you're doing navigation and you want to have a CarPlay display in the dashboard cluster during navigation, you can already do that with the existing version of CarPlay.
Marco:
The CarPlay, you know, the old version.
Marco:
That was like a 1.5 that added that.
Marco:
So CarPlay, the way it is now, display-wise and integration-wise, already offers what I think I actually want as a customer.
Marco:
I want CarPlay to be contained.
Marco:
I don't want it to take over everything because, like John was saying, I actually like car controls when they are well-designed.
Marco:
I like car UIs when they are well-designed.
Marco:
That is not the common case, but it does happen.
Marco:
And I just want more automakers to adopt CarPlay the way it is.
Marco:
And I hope, because...
Marco:
A lot of these technological details and implementation details, you know, like stuff like more stuff running on the car, the audio being buffered differently, not using Bluetooth, stuff like that.
Marco:
A lot of those things would actually be great improvements to the system we already have.
Marco:
And again, I hope that...
Marco:
by Apple trying to reach much further design-wise, I hope this doesn't preclude the automakers from adopting the technological advancements that they're trying to get done as well.
Marco:
I hope we can actually have good car play with modern innovation and modern architecture behind it in a way that the car makers can swallow design-wise.
Marco:
And I don't know if Apple is going to be able to do that.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
It's, it's kind of, I don't know.
Casey:
I get where Apple's going here, but I just, I'm really struggling to figure out who they think this is for.
Casey:
Cause again, if I'm an auto manufacturer, no, thank you.
Casey:
And it's just, I, I, I can't think of a better way to verbalize this.
Casey:
And I think I'm being a little bit, probably more than a little bit dramatic, but it's kind of like Apple hubris.
Casey:
Like, of course the car makers want to come to us and help us have us help them design their stuff.
Casey:
Why wouldn't they do that?
John:
And not just help them design it, but you're like, and of course they would want our branding to be part of their car because our branding is great.
John:
Wouldn't they want to have some representation of Apple inside their cars?
John:
Right, exactly.
John:
Why?
John:
I mean, I think the most optimistic scenario is kind of the same reason people use Apple TVs.
John:
Like, oh, I got a smart TV, but the interface on the smart TV sucks.
John:
And Apple TV is so much better.
John:
So I'm going to ignore my smart TV's built-in interface, and I'm just going to use the Apple TV.
Okay.
John:
And first, I would say that's a choice people who buy an Apple TV make.
John:
But second, I think the...
John:
The degree to which smart televisions built in experiences are co-branded with the TV is much lower than the degree to which the infotainment on especially fancy modern cars is blended with the car.
John:
Like if you look at the instrument cluster on, you know, a BMW or an Audi or a Volvo or a Polestar or one of these expensive cars.
John:
you can just look at the instrument cluster without seeing anything else and you know what kind of car it's in.
John:
They really heavily brand that.
John:
And the good ones that do their controls on the other touchscreens, whether the climate controls are there or adjusting the seats or the 360 camera or whatever, those things are so heavily branded.
John:
I mean, look at Rivian doing the cel-shaded 3D model of your car in the woods and everything.
John:
That is so different than what it looks like in an Ioniq 5 versus what it looks like in a Volkswagen.
John:
Like...
John:
It's so heavily branded.
John:
Now, if you hate your car's interface, as a consumer, I can say, oh, thank God, my car's interface, I hate it.
John:
But when I get in with my phone, it erases all that and replaces it with the phone UI.
John:
I can see some people wanting to do that.
John:
But I think people buy cars
John:
based on the whole car if someone hated you know i can't stand i'm an example if you really don't want uh climate controls on the touchscreen you're not going to buy a car with climate controls on the touchscreen right you're choosing based on what's in the car in an apple world they're like what if you didn't have to do that what if you were just happy with the way our we paint over all those screens with our stuff and you never had to see your credit built-in system as long as you like our system you can buy any car
John:
I think that's their pitch for the appeal, but again, I think people holistically buy cars, and that branding is part of it.
John:
If you buy some fancy electric Hellcat or the E-Ray Corvette or whatever, you want the cool Corvette logo and startup animation and the gauges and whatever, especially if they do the homages to the old Corvette instrument clusters on the new one with screened...
John:
When you're buying a Corvette, people who buy Corvettes want that.
John:
They don't want, I'm going to buy a Corvette, and then I want it to look like my iPhone.
John:
No, they don't.
John:
They want it to look like a Corvette.
John:
I'm a car person.
John:
Maybe I'm not representative of the audience, but I think we'll have to wait until this is actually implemented to see what the non-tech nerd, non-car nerd public thinks of it.
John:
But right now, it hasn't been rolled out in any cars, which I think is reflective of what the auto industry thinks of it.
Casey:
Yeah, I was going to say, that's a long wait for a train or car.
Casey:
That ain't coming.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
There is some big news that dropped sometime in the last week or two.
Casey:
I forget exactly when it was.
Casey:
Apparently, it was leaked to the Financial Times, if I'm not mistaken, and then formally stated a few days later, the European Commission has found Apple in breach of the, what is it, Digital Markets Act, the DMA?
Casey:
There you go.
Casey:
And so reading from a press release from the European Commission,
Casey:
The European Commission has informed Apple of its preliminary view that its App Store rules are in breach of the Digital Markets Act, or DMA, as they prevent app developers from freely steering customers to alternative channels for offers and content.
Casey:
In addition, the Commission opened a new non-compliance procedure against Apple over concerns that its new contractual requirements for third-party app developers and app stores, including Apple's new core technology fee, fall short of ensuring effective compliance with Apple's obligations under the DMA.
Casey:
In parallel, the commission will continue undertaking preliminary investigative steps outside of the scope of the present investigation, in particular with respect to the checks and reviews put in place by Apple to validate apps and alternative app stores to be sideloaded.
John:
Gotta love the efficiency of government, right?
John:
So we've, all these things we've talked about on the show, uh,
John:
They're anti-steering rules, whether Apple's complying core technology fee makes it unattractive for people to be an alternative app stores.
John:
And most recently, oh, they rejected UTM from notarization because they felt like it for a third party app stores, not for the app store.
John:
They said, actually, we don't want that to be in any apps.
John:
We don't want that in our app store.
John:
And also we don't want that to be in any third party app stores.
John:
Why?
John:
because we said so so they have separate investigations into all these and this announcement was just for the anti-steering thing of like how easy is it for people to tell somebody in an app hey you can get a better deal if you go to our website it's ten dollars here but on our website it's five dollars and apple's like no you can't tell them the price if you link it you got to do the special way or whatever so that's what they found them in breach of and they're saying and just so you know we're still looking to those other things like the core technology fee
John:
And most recently, you know, I give them a pass on the UTM thing because that happened recently.
John:
But the core technology fee was there from day one.
John:
Why is it that they can't like figure out all the different ways that Apple is noncompliant and tell them at once?
John:
But no, these are all separate investigations and everything takes a long time.
John:
But anyway, if you're wondering if the European Commission thinks that Apple is following the rules of the DMA in at least the anti steering thing, the answer is no.
John:
They think Apple is not correctly following the rules.
John:
And that seems like it shouldn't be a surprise to anybody.
Casey:
Including Apple, but I'm sure it is a surprise to them.
John:
Well, so here's the thing.
John:
None of us are lawyers.
John:
We're certainly not European lawyers.
John:
I think I've read most of the DMA.
John:
I've said it before.
John:
I think...
John:
The DMA is written in such a way that it opened the door for Apple to do something like this and to plausibly argue that they are compliant.
John:
Like if whatever the European wants, the European Commission wants, it could have been more explicit about it.
John:
Right.
John:
Instead of just kind of hinting in the direction of we want competition or whatever.
John:
And in some ways it's like, well, they're not going to tell you exactly how to do it.
John:
Like you don't want them to pin it down entirely.
John:
That's not how laws work.
John:
But in other ways, it's like I can I kind of.
John:
Say Apple was acting in good faith, which I don't entirely think they are, but if they were, and they were trying to be compliant, they would still have a lot of questions.
John:
I don't know how much back-channel communication happens, but if they were acting in good faith, I would hope Apple could say to the European Commission, we're thinking of doing X, Y, and Z. Does that seem good to you?
John:
And I don't know if the European Commission is being like the App Store and saying, we can't tell you anything.
John:
Just show us what you have, and then we'll tell you about it nine months later, right?
John:
Which is frustrating, because it's not...
John:
Like Gruber complains about this because he's super against the European Commission stuff where he's like, are they saying that Apple can't make any money?
John:
There's nothing in the DMA that says Apple is not allowed to make a profit on phones or the app store or anything like that, right?
John:
But Apple might have a question of like, okay, well, if the core technology fee is going to be found to be noncompliant, like...
John:
What can we do?
John:
And I mean, my answer would be like, you can't make it so that there's no way for anyone to make a more attractive option, because one thing that is clear in the DMA is they want more competition and competition doesn't mean Apple.
John:
You set the rules so nobody can ever be better than you.
John:
Like, that's clear.
John:
That's why I think there are compliances, obviously, you know, in in bad faith.
John:
Right.
John:
But OK, so say I accept that.
John:
How much competition should people be allowed to undercut us by 100 percent, a thousand percent?
John:
Like how how unattractive can we make it?
John:
Right.
John:
Can we charge people anything or can we charge people nothing?
John:
Because if the answer is we can charge people nothing, put that in the damn DMA and say, oh, and by the way, people need to be able to sell things in third party app stores without Apple having any say on what's there with very narrowly defined exceptions and also without giving Apple any money.
John:
But they didn't write that.
John:
They just didn't write that into the law as far as anything that I could see.
John:
Now, maybe I'm not a lawyer and I missed it and it's staring me in the face because it's using language that I don't understand.
John:
But I feel like this DMA could have been written to be more specific, but I am glad that Apple was found in noncompliance because I think what they did is clearly not...
John:
Achieving the the thing that is stated in the DMA, which is like we want more competition.
John:
We want a more open market.
John:
And so, you know, you think you're complying with this by making sure you have made a market that is not open.
John:
And we're going to ding you for that.
Marco:
Yeah, I think there's no way to look at Apple's compliance plan and say this is what Europe intended.
Marco:
As John said, we are not experts in European law and the dynamics of how they write the laws and how they enforce them and everything.
Marco:
We do know a bit about Apple and a bit about the App Store and a bit about that kind of stuff.
Marco:
And it is very clear that the intention of the DMA and of allowing different app distribution channels that Apple does not financially control with arbitrary terms, that was the intention.
Marco:
Apple should allow.
Marco:
people who are not them, to distribute software on their platform without burdensome economic terms that are dictated by Apple.
Marco:
That's clearly the intention of the law.
John:
Without terms that make it unattractive.
John:
That's the main thing.
John:
There can be terms and there can be caveats and they have to prove it for security or whatever, but you can't make the terms such that nobody would ever want to do this, that you can't
John:
it's, it's like price fixing.
John:
It's like, Oh, you can compete with me, but you can't sell any products for any cheaper than I sell them.
John:
That's not actually what they're doing, but like effectively it's saying, Oh, you're just going to have to pay us anyway.
John:
So we're going to try to make it so that you running the store doesn't, you don't come out ahead.
John:
The people selling it in the store don't come out ahead.
John:
Cause they got to pay us for all those installs for 50 cents or whatever the core technology fee people running the stores don't come out ahead.
John:
Like it's just nobody, it,
John:
You know, if you join into the system, you're going to look over at us and say, why are we even doing this?
John:
This is basically the same as the Apple system.
John:
And that that's not competition.
John:
And so they found Apple found a way to do that.
John:
And they think, oh, we're complying with the law.
John:
And they're going to argue, you know, because Apple has a chance to argue about this.
John:
Look, we're totally in compliance.
John:
You should have written a better law.
John:
But I, you know, I'm not sure that's going to work out for them.
Marco:
No.
Marco:
Obviously, Europe is saying we need people to be able to compete in this giant marketplace that is a huge part of commerce.
Marco:
And I think that's very defensible.
Marco:
You look back at history.
Marco:
You see things like the railroads and the telephone companies.
Marco:
There's a reason why we tend to promote commerce.
Marco:
freer, less burdensome competition, even on a private company's assets, once it becomes a huge part of commerce that starts to be able to affect lots of other businesses, especially in anti-competitive ways.
Marco:
And there is no question that Apple has reached that size with the iOS platform, with the App Store.
Marco:
It is that important in the entire economy.
Marco:
It matters a lot.
Marco:
So whether they should be regulated, I think...
Marco:
I think that question is answered.
Marco:
I think the answer is yes, of course they should be regulated.
Marco:
And again, I mean I'm not going to go too far into this this time because I say it all the time, but this was 100% on Apple for effectively provoking governments to regulate them with obviously blatantly anti-competitive behavior.
Marco:
And again, I –
Marco:
You know I'm kind of down on Tim Cook's strategy.
Marco:
I wonder what the heck he was thinking all these years of blatant anti-competitive behavior, literally provoking governments to regulate him.
Marco:
What did he expect to happen here?
Marco:
And this is a theme that we'll come back to in a little bit, but...
Marco:
Apple definitely should have seen this coming.
Marco:
They rolled the dice.
Marco:
They said, you know, we're going to keep doing 100% of what we're doing.
Marco:
We're even going to tighten the screws over the last few years.
Marco:
What could possibly go wrong?
Marco:
This.
Marco:
This is what could go wrong.
Marco:
So I am cheering on the EU for this part of the DMA.
Marco:
I don't love the entire law.
Marco:
It's a big law, and there's some weird stuff in it.
Marco:
But the part about ensuring freer competition...
Marco:
for a giant app marketplace that is a keystone of modern commerce and business in so many ways in so many parts of life.
Marco:
I think that is 100% on point.
Marco:
Some of the details we can quibble over, but the idea of that is on point.
Marco:
And you don't have to just look at Europe.
Marco:
Look, Japan's now doing the same thing.
Marco:
It's only a matter of time before more countries around the world start doing this.
Marco:
And
Marco:
What we're going to end up with is this incredibly fragmented app store policy where Apple is going to not give an inch anywhere they're not required to.
Marco:
And instead, they're just going to have like nine different rules of where you are in the world and what kind of regional variations are necessary.
Marco:
And they're going to keep just being absolute turds about it all.
Marco:
If they would have just eased up a little bit in a few areas that actually wouldn't have cost them that much –
Marco:
They could have avoided all of this and continue to have one app store for the whole world, basically, and have relatively few variations between them.
Marco:
And they invited this.
Marco:
So you know what?
Marco:
If the EU is going to drag them through courts and everything forever, good.
Marco:
They need it.
Marco:
They're not doing it themselves.
Marco:
So someone has to do it.
John:
they're burning so much time and energy on this too because it's like if you can see the writing on the wall like you mentioned japan and other countries doing similar things and maybe apple thinks the u.s will never do it or whatever but like for the european stuff you know quibbling about like oh they didn't write the law specifically enough and what do they even want and it's so weird in the end apple has very limited ability to control what european governments do like they have a system of government
John:
And they apply laws to things that are sold in the EU, right?
John:
And I guess Apple can lobby the EU like any other big company can lobby them.
John:
But I feel like Apple's ability to lobby the U.S.
John:
government as a U.S.
John:
company is stronger than their ability to lobby the EU.
John:
And they also don't seem to be particularly good at lobbying for what they want, right?
John:
But Apple is essentially powerless.
John:
They're not part of the European government.
John:
I mean, they're not powerless because they have tons of money.
John:
But you know what I mean?
John:
In the end...
John:
Let's say Apple wins in their like appeal and some judge in Europe says or whatever.
John:
Well, technically, Apple did comply with how the law is written.
John:
The EU will just write a new law like they can't.
John:
Apple can't win this.
John:
Like it's the same thing with the battles with China.
John:
It's like you can either do what the Chinese government wants you to do and, you know, push back as much as you can or you could just not be in China like so many companies aren't right.
John:
And it's obviously complicated for Apple because of the manufacturing or whatever.
John:
But those are your choices.
John:
One of your choices is not, let's change what the Chinese government wants.
John:
Apple's ability to do that, despite all their money and everything, is extremely limited.
John:
Apple is just burning time and energy, implementing these things to try to get away with as much as they can get away with.
John:
And in the end...
John:
the eu can just say okay well we made a mistake in the law we'll write it and we'll make it stronger and let's just go around and around as opposed to apple acknowledging what surely apple also understands what they're trying to get at increase competition and just say let's do this once let's do it well let's do it globally as we've discussed in past episodes imagine if they just said look we see the writing on the wall everybody's gonna want something more open
John:
Let's just do something that we think is open enough that will satisfy all government requirements present and future.
John:
Let's do it once.
John:
Let's apply it to the whole world.
John:
Let's avoid fragmentation.
John:
Let's move on with our actual business.
John:
But no, they're not doing that.
John:
They're going to fight tooth and nail.
John:
Every single one of these things comply as little as possible.
John:
Fight it in courts.
John:
And it's just it's wasting time and energy.
John:
It's making their platform more complicated.
John:
as we'll see when we get to the next thing.
John:
Although we do have some quotes here from the various parties to see how they're positioning themselves on the eve of this, or just after this preliminary finding on one of multiple things they're being investigated on.
Casey:
Apple spokesperson Peter Ajemian, who is talking to The Verge.
Casey:
Throughout the past several months, Apple's made a number of changes to comply with the DMA in response to feedback from developers and the European Commission.
Casey:
As we have done routinely, we will continue to listen and engage with the European Commission.
John:
I mean, so that's their way of saying, you know, we're talking to them or whatever.
John:
It's their way of saying F you.
John:
Well, and then we will continue to listen to them, engage with them.
John:
Like, see, here's the thing.
John:
There is some meaning of the minds on this because the DMA is written with some acknowledgement that, like, we can't – it can't just be the Wild West, which is why there are carve-outs for, like, okay, Apple –
John:
should have the gatekeepers, not just Apple, but gatekeepers should have the ability to reject things for security reasons from even being in third-party stores, right?
John:
The EU is not like, you just let anybody do anything.
John:
It's like the PC of the 80s, right?
John:
They're not doing that.
John:
And Apple, to its credit, is trying to provide lots of security stopgaps while also allowing things like the browser kit thing.
John:
We want to allow third-party browser engines.
John:
We want to do that as safe as possible.
John:
Ideally,
John:
All the browser engines go through the same restrictions, Safari, and it's not currently the case, but BrowserKit is basically built around what they already did for Safari, right?
John:
So the two parties aren't so far apart that like one wants completely everything open, free for all, and the other one wants everything locked down.
John:
they agree with each other that certain things need to be done carefully.
John:
But like everything else, they're like, Apple's like, how little can we get away with?
John:
How unattractive can we make third-party app stores?
John:
How little disruption to our existing business can we make?
John:
Like, we'll try to comply in a way that no one will ever take us up on any of these offers or only a few people would.
John:
But like in the end, it'll just be like a footnote and it won't actually change anything, right?
John:
Or maybe like, as we'll get to in a second, maybe we'll even make things worse and people are like, boy, we...
John:
We thought we would like some third-party competition, but now that we've seen it, we're going running back to the App Store because it's so much better there because of the way Apple set everything up.
Casey:
Then Marguerite Vestager, I hope I have that right.
Casey:
I forgot to brush up on it.
Casey:
I apologize.
Casey:
But anyways, she said, the ball's now in the gatekeeper's court.
Casey:
They have to convince us that the measures they take will achieve full compliance with the DMA, and where this is not the case, we will intervene.
Casey:
We are concerned that Apple designated its new business model to discourage app developers and end users from taking advantage of the opportunities afforded to them by the DMA.
Casey:
The letter of the DMA is clear.
Casey:
Gatekeepers have to allow for alternative app stores to establish themselves on their platforms and for consumers to be fully informed about the offers available to them so that they can freely choose where they want to source their apps and at what conditions.
John:
I would argue that the DMA is not clear, and even when she summarizes it here, like, gatekeepers have to allow for alternative app stores.
John:
Apple would say, yeah, we did that.
John:
To establish themselves on their platforms, yeah, we allow alternative app stores to be established on our platforms.
John:
For consumers to be fully informed, okay, they're going to say not fully informed.
John:
They're informed through a narrow aperture that Apple defines, and which is why they're not compliant.
John:
And so they can freely choose.
John:
And Apple would be like, yeah, they can freely choose.
John:
It's the details like, oh, we allow third party app stores.
John:
We just don't want to make them any more impossible to be many more attractive than ours by applying financial burdens.
John:
And even her summary, she doesn't even say not like that.
John:
I know you did alternative app stores, but no one wants to do them because they cost so much money and suck so much.
John:
So change that.
John:
But she doesn't.
John:
And by the way, that us that Casey read and emphasized they have to convince us, that italic us was in her thing.
John:
I didn't add that emphasis.
John:
It was she italicized it.
John:
They have to convince us that the measures they take will achieve full compliance over the next, you know.
John:
12 months or whatever like every one of these things there's like a 9 to 12 month horizon i'm like okay then apple gets to challenge it and they have a hearing and they do a thing and then like people think it's going to be like oh we passed the law and apple did a thing but they're not compliant now they get fined no that's not how any of this works it's so long between the passing of this law to the point where apple could potentially get those huge fines that yeah presumably
John:
something will be worked out, but this is just going to drag on for so long.
Marco:
Yeah, and because the root of the problem is the DMA, I guess the EU way of doing this is not going to specify too firmly what they really intend, which is there can't be any fees.
Marco:
I think that's obviously what they intend.
John:
I mean, I don't know if they say there can't be any, but you have to be able to undercut the App Store.
John:
I don't know how they would phrase that, but like...
John:
like it's not competition if your competitors can never be better than you right of course it's just right and the other the other end is free for all like there's no like there's no rules the competitors can be you know they can they can if they have enough funding they could do loss leaders and say everything is free we'll pay you to use our app store like or whatever you know like there's competition is complicated because we all want competition but there's such a thing as unfair competition again like uh there are laws in our country about like you know i i think there are laws about like uh
John:
So undercutting your competition by giving away stuff for free until all your competitors are out of business.
John:
I know that's a common thing that VC funding does these days, but I think there are actually laws in the books in certain industries where you're essentially not allowed to do that.
John:
You're not allowed to take a giant war chest of money and put all your competitors out of business.
John:
But giving away milk for free until they're all out of business and you buy them all up and then you start charging twice as much for milk or something.
John:
I mean, that's what pharmaceutical companies do.
John:
But anyway, like there are anti patterns to too much competition.
John:
But we're at the other end of that spectrum right now.
John:
We're at the like no competition and then like competition in name only where it's not real competition.
John:
And so trying to find that balance is tricky.
John:
You can't just say Apple.
John:
You can't charge anybody any money.
Marco:
but i think that actually might be their intention like they they won't say it because it is i think i think that's legally a little bit tougher to to argue but i think that what they're clearly intending is for it to be like distribution on the mac and windows of just like yeah you should just be able to install things for free if you want to like that i think that's clearly the intent but they won't come out and say it yeah they didn't say it and also they do have the carve out explicitly in the thing where apple gets to approve for security purposes and private apis and
John:
stuff right which they're also you know doing in a somewhat bs exactly but like but the fact that carve out's there it's like they don't actually want it to be like the mac you don't need to do that on the mac like you can just distribute unsigned stuff and right click it and open it you know what i mean it's yeah and and so the question like again i'm not gonna say oh well what is that supposed to do they can't tell what they want like
John:
Apple clearly knows that they don't want this.
John:
Like, it is a question of, like, how open should we be?
John:
And maybe you could argue, say, this was Apple's best play.
John:
Put out the most restrictive thing possible.
John:
Get slapped for it.
John:
Back it off.
John:
How do you like it now?
John:
As opposed to, you know, if your goal is to do as little as possible, start from a position of doing almost nothing.
John:
Like, almost allowing no competition.
John:
And then back it off slowly.
John:
I just think it's going to be a waste of their time and energy.
John:
And they should have come up with something that everyone... Unlockers would consider reasonable.
John:
And put that out and then see what the U.S.
John:
say.
John:
And if they put out something that was reasonable, like nominal fees to be a third party app store, minimal oversight, the possibility of financially being way cheaper than Apple.
John:
Right.
John:
And and they said to the EU, that's competition.
John:
Right.
John:
And the EU came back and said, actually, no, we had zero dollars of mine.
John:
Like you were saying, Marco, like, actually, that is the thing that they wanted to say, but couldn't.
John:
That would be kind of crappy if the EU.
John:
Because if you want to say, again, they're making the law.
John:
Like, this is not a negotiation.
John:
Like, the EU 100% makes the rules, and Apple can either choose to follow them or not be in the EU.
John:
And they didn't say, yeah, you can't charge anybody anything to have a third-party App Store.
Marco:
Yeah, but it does – I think whatever the political will and backing to get regulations like this through legislatures, wherever that comes from, I think when people are trying to argue for these laws or these regulations, I think what they have in mind is free distribution like PCs and Macs.
Marco:
That's what people are imagining.
Marco:
Now, obviously, again, legally it's hard to require that.
Marco:
Legally, there's a whole bunch of –
John:
snags to that of course because you're trying to legislate how a public how a private company operates and makes money and that's that's obviously very tricky i mean are there snags there because the eu does that all the time i mean and we just put 100 tariffs on chinese evs right so like that's they can i don't again i don't know the political situation there you could be right that to get this passed they couldn't be that explicit because people would be against it but as it was written it overwhelmingly passed so i wonder how much leeway there is to come out and say what they really want
Marco:
My point is, like, when these laws, you know, the Japan thing, the weird dating app thing in the Netherlands, and then, you know, obviously the big one, the DMA, when these are passed, I think what people have in mind is free distribution just like Macs and PCs.
Marco:
And what Apple has done very well at...
Marco:
is twisting and distorting the public discussion.
Marco:
Remember, the very first time that Tim Cook was on the stand, I think in the Epic Trial, I think this is where this came out, and the very first time that he presented this, it was... Look, I don't have a lot of...
Marco:
faith in tim cook's long-term strategy but this was a good move uh from his point of view i hate i hated it but from his point of view this is a good move when the he mentioned something on the lines of like well the in-app purchase fee is just the most straightforward way for us to collect our commission how else would we collect our commission when he said that we all were like what
Marco:
Because what that told us was Apple believes it is entitled to collect their commission, a commission, regardless of how the money is flowing, regardless of what it's being purchased through.
Marco:
And Apple has successfully controlled the public narrative
Marco:
that all of us are talking about since then that was what two years ago all of us have been talking since then as if it's inevitable that yes of course apple is going to collect a fee for everything sold or like what i like and and we have totally bought into their fairly brazen you know framing of this we've we also have everybody talking about how apple has to monetize their ip somehow they they have how why would anybody make software for a platform if apple can't monetize their ip why would apple continue to invest in the iphone
Marco:
If they can't monetize their IP.
Marco:
Some people have bought into this.
Marco:
I certainly haven't bought into it.
Marco:
I don't think you have, but some people have.
Marco:
No, of course not.
Marco:
But I'm saying, when we're talking about this, I think it's important for everyone out there to realize that entire framing of this being this inevitable thing that, of course, Apple has to collect their...
Marco:
commission so that so that they can justify working on the iphone that is a thousand percent bs and apple has done a great job of controlling that message and getting us all to talk about it but that's obviously not what people want and when they create these regulations that what people want is mac and pc like free distribution yes with security controls if need be on on some you know broad strokes but that's what people want and
Marco:
apple is the one who is refusing to give it up and that's why this is going to take forever as john was saying like because the eu is basically saying we would like no barriers please and apple is basically saying we'd like all the barriers please and it's just going to take a long time to work this out because neither of them is real actually the european commission is not really being very clear about what they want apple's being very clear about what they want
Marco:
Apple's very clear about we deserve everything and we're going to give you – we're going to give up nothing and we're going to see how that goes.
Marco:
And so this is going to keep going on forever.
Marco:
But don't buy into Apple's framing too much when talking about this because –
Marco:
That came out of nowhere two years ago.
Marco:
That was not what anybody was ever thinking.
Marco:
And I mean, just to rehash everything like they have plenty of reason to invest in the iPhone to maintain iOS and their developer tools without collecting a fee on every single app that transacts through it.
John:
Yeah.
John:
I mean, the reason that the premise plays so well in America is it's so American.
John:
You're going to tell a company how they can make money.
John:
You're going to tell them they can't make money in a particular way.
John:
That's not fair.
John:
They should be able to do what they want and let the market decide.
John:
So the premise Tim Cook was offering was like,
John:
Unchangeable premise, we have to make money.
John:
All we're arguing about is how we can do that, and an app purchase is the best way, and we can try other ways or whatever.
John:
But it's like, I reject your premise, right?
John:
You don't need it, right?
John:
But in the same way, the premise of US business is like, well, companies should be able to make money however they want, and if they pick a lousy way that people don't like, people won't buy from them.
John:
The premise of the DMA, as you stated before, is that...
John:
Apple has power in a market that's super important and they have too much power.
John:
And so the government needs to step in to tell companies what to do, that what you could do when you were a small company.
John:
Now, suddenly we're saying because you sell phones and because you're this big and because you're successful and because phones are so important.
John:
We are saying new rules apply to you.
John:
That's exactly what the DMA is.
John:
We don't really have anything like that in the U.S.
John:
quite yet.
John:
But exactly when there is various DOJ cases.
John:
But anyway, but we talked about in past episodes.
John:
But the DMA, that's the premise of the DMA.
John:
The premise is you specifically gatekeepers.
John:
New rules apply to you.
John:
But the.
John:
The American mind rebels at the idea of a government telling companies how they can make money.
John:
And so people, you know, groomers are so incredulous.
John:
You're telling them that they they can't make money the way they want to from their phone.
John:
And it's like, yes, because specifically, like he even says, like the Japan thing, like, oh, imagine if the Japanese game console makers, we should tell them, oh, well, guess what?
John:
You know, you have to allow third party apps on your PlayStation or whatever.
John:
Game consoles are not as important as phones.
John:
Like that's what it comes down to.
John:
The premise of these cases is it's not like every company that's like this.
John:
It's technological gatekeepers for platforms that are so important to all of life and commerce that these rules apply to them.
John:
And gaming is big.
John:
But so far right now, I'm going to say game consoles are not as important to the life and economy of a country as cell phones.
John:
That's the determination made by many of these laws and lawsuits.
John:
And I agree with that determination.
John:
Game consoles aren't as important.
John:
They're more important than they used to be.
John:
And they are important.
John:
And maybe something could be looked at there.
John:
But if I had to say which is more important, it's the cell phone.
John:
It's no contest.
John:
It's just so much more important.
John:
And so, yeah, these people are passing laws specifically targeting gatekeepers for platforms that are super important in our life.
John:
And it can seem unfair.
John:
Again, you know, why do the game consoles get away with it?
John:
Because they're less important.
John:
Maybe someday they'll come for the game consoles.
John:
Where do you draw the line?
John:
How do you decide when somebody is too powerful?
John:
We talked about this before.
John:
When do you have a monopoly?
John:
What percentage is required?
John:
When is there too little competition?
John:
These are all complicated questions.
John:
But the premise of all these things is...
John:
Apple, new rules apply to you and Microsoft and Google and all these things because of exactly what you make and how important you are and how much power you have.
John:
And some people just don't accept that.
John:
And the same way we don't accept Tim Cook's premise that he just has to make money, some people don't accept the premise of the DMA.
John:
And so they're never going to be happy with what the DMA does.
John:
No details about negotiation of the DMA, no compliance, malicious or otherwise, is going to be satisfying because they disagree with the premise that
John:
Apple deserves to be regulated, and so do other companies like it.
Casey:
Right, so all this is going on, and around the same time, give or take a few days, actually I think it was a few days before the EU's announcement, but nevertheless, one way or another, it's around the same time, Apple has declared that it may delay some of its AI features and others in the EU because of the DMA.
Casey:
Ooh, Nelly.
Casey:
All right, so reading Converge.
Marco:
Oh, this went over like a lead balloon.
Casey:
reading from the verge apple says upcoming features like its apple intelligence generative ai tools iphone mirroring and share play screen sharing may not be available in the eu this year so now quoting apple two weeks ago apple unveiled hundreds of new features that we are excited to bring to our users around the world we are highly motivated to make these technologies available to all users
Casey:
However, due to the regulatory uncertainties brought about by the Digital Markets Act or DMA, we do not believe that we will be able to roll out three of these features, iPhone mirroring, SharePlay screen sharing enhancements and Apple intelligence to our EU users this year.
Casey:
So this is one of the aspects of the DMA that...
John:
is either the DMA overreaching or us not understanding what the DMA wants.
John:
The idea is, yeah.
John:
Or all those integrations that Apple has, where there's some feature that, I mean, this isn't a DOJ case.
John:
Apple watch only works with the Apple iPhone and this iPhone mirroring thing between Macs and iPhones only works with iPhones, not Android phones.
John:
Like any feature that you can imagine Apple rolling out, uh,
John:
There's some interpretation of the DMA, and again, maybe it's straightforward interpretation, not a lawyer, that says, hey, if you add a feature, you can't confine that feature to only first-party stuff.
John:
Those features need to be extensible by third parties and pluggable on day one.
John:
And as anyone who's familiar with
John:
apple's platform uh knows that's that's not the way they do things like sometimes they roll out first party only for years and years um and never allow third parties access sometimes they do a third party one five years later 10 years later right like think of all the features we have well how long did we got third party keyboards how long until apps were allowed to run in the background there weren't apple's apps like on the mac on on iphone and ipad all these platforms um
John:
They don't always make it extensible by third parties ever, and doing it on day one is rare.
John:
So if the DMA really does require every gatekeeper to implement every feature such that it is extensible and open to third parties on day one, I think that is a technologically ill-considered requirement.
John:
And Apple would be justified in saying, we just can't roll out these new features because it seems like they are not going to be compliant with the law.
John:
Now, interestingly, they weren't so hesitant to roll out all the other things that we said that we also agreed were probably not compliant, like the core technology fee and all the rules for alternative app stores.
John:
Somehow, their worry about whether those would be compliant did not stop them from deploying those.
John:
But these ones, Apple says, you know what?
John:
We're afraid we might not be compliant.
John:
So it's best that we don't roll these out.
John:
I don't know if they're compliant.
John:
If they're not compliant, the DMA in this respect is bad and needs to be changed because you can't require technology companies to only launch something when it's ready for the world to extend it.
John:
That is too high a bar.
John:
It's not the right way to make technology.
John:
You can put a timeline on it, say it has to be extensible within five years.
John:
There are other things you could do to be more reasonable out of this.
John:
But I would also say that like, look,
John:
Yeah, Apple's an important platform, cell phones, gatekeeper cell phones, Android, Google, whatever.
John:
Those are super important platforms that are important to the economy, all that stuff, right?
John:
It doesn't mean that you need to require them to be open in every respect.
John:
What's the most important way they need to be open?
John:
You need to be able to get apps from somewhere else.
John:
Does every single aspect of that platform also need to be open?
John:
Every feature, everything that you can do on it, every single minute thing, SharePlay, iPhone, does every single thing need to be open to third parties at all times?
John:
How about you wait to see if iPhone mirroring is a lever that Apple uses to dominate the industry before you decide that that needs to be opened up?
John:
Because we know the App Store is, right?
John:
So yeah, address the App Store and the law.
John:
But you can't make an open-ended thing that says every little feature you add has to be open from day one.
John:
It's pointless.
John:
It's counterproductive.
John:
And in the end, does it matter if iPhone mirroring only works with iPhones?
John:
Probably not to the degree that there should be a law addressing it.
John:
So I really hope that the DMA actually doesn't try to say everything in the OS open from day one.
John:
And again, even if it did say that, Apple should probably just launch these features anyway.
John:
But that's not why they're holding them back.
John:
They're holding them back.
John:
to kind of show the world, we think this law is crappy.
John:
Uh, and we're going to demonstrate that by holding back goodies that we were probably going to hold back anyway, because Apple intelligence is only supposed to be launching in English in the fall anyway.
John:
And I guess they could launch it in English in Europe because lots of people speak English there, but like, this is,
John:
part them making a statement about their interpretation to the dma and part sort of active defiance to show the consequences and it's like hey apple could just pull out of the eu and not sell phones there like that is the ultimate like breakup move here that's the brexit we need to come up with a brexit like term for apple pulling out of the eu i don't have a good one off the top of my head but sure by next week we'll have lots of suggestions uh exit because it begins with an e it has to be like an apple thing like britain exit brexit you know exit i don't know if they core the apple
John:
no well anyway well we'll see what we can workshop it this is that's lurking out the end of this disagreement but this move by apple of just you know again maybe they weren't going to roll this out anyway like but either way this is a this is a positioning move like we don't know whether they're doing something they weren't going to do maybe this is just putting words around something that was going to happen anyway but yeah this is an escalate let's say i would call this an escalation
Casey:
Well, the thing of it is, is that I feel like I can, I was going to say squint, but I'm not even sure it requires me squinting.
Casey:
I can look at the DMA and look at particularly the mirroring and SharePlay screen sharing stuff.
Casey:
And I can see an interpretation, a legitimate, honest, you know, no BS interpretation that, wow, this may not fly with the DMA.
Casey:
Maybe we should hold on to this.
Casey:
And I can legitimately argue that that is a real concern.
John:
But they didn't have that same concern about all the other stuff they rolled out, that you could have the same exact statement about, wow, this may not comply.
John:
Maybe we should hold it back.
Casey:
I think because these are additive things that involve interoperability between devices, right?
Casey:
And leaving aside the nuance of these particular selections, the broader point I'm trying to make is that I feel like we have...
Casey:
The three of us have talked about this a lot.
Casey:
Apple has not really read the room both in a micro level and a macro level.
Casey:
At a micro level, they haven't really read the room that, look, the EU is not going to like this, man.
Casey:
They're not going to take this lying down and be like, oh...
Casey:
you know what, we messed up.
Casey:
Yeah, we screwed this all up.
Casey:
That's our bad, our bad.
Casey:
That's on me, my bad.
Casey:
That's not what's going to happen.
Casey:
And on a macro level, it's fascinating to me what Marco said, because I had the exact same reaction.
Casey:
Marco said a minute ago, this went over like a lead balloon.
Casey:
And I think that's broadly accurate.
Casey:
I think most people had that same reaction.
Casey:
And it took me thinking about it a little bit, and I'm actually not so grumpy about this anymore, but I certainly was at first.
Casey:
And what's fascinating to me is,
Casey:
Everyone seems to, broadly speaking, everyone seems to assume ill intent from Apple, right?
Casey:
Like, they're doing this just to hold up a middle finger to the European Commission and say, well, nah, nah, nah, nah, you can't have cool stuff.
Casey:
And that very well may be true for the record.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
But it's kind of funny and unfortunate that because Apple has been so belligerently stubborn about so much, and I think Marco was saying this as well earlier, they've been so stubborn about so much and haven't given a frigging inch.
Casey:
And so because of that, everyone is just like, well, this is Apple being a dick again.
Casey:
It's news at 11, like same as it ever was.
Casey:
And that's the thing that kind of bums me out as, as someone who I consider, I mean, I consider myself a fan of the company to the degree that anyone can be a fan of a company.
Casey:
And this bums me out.
Casey:
It's as we've said many different times on the show over the years, you know, all of a sudden I'm looking around and, or maybe Apple should be looking around and asking, are we the baddies?
Casey:
Because this is baddie behavior.
Casey:
Like I, if, if this is them thumbing their, their nose at the European commission, it's just gross.
Casey:
And I, and I can't,
Casey:
I can't get past, and I know I'm repeating what Marco said before and what we've said many times on the show.
Casey:
I can't get past this is an own goal.
Casey:
Apple knew this was coming.
Casey:
They could tell it was coming.
Casey:
Anyone with three brain cells that followed this could tell this was going to happen and that the laws are going to change.
Casey:
And they're going to change because Apple is greedy and they're entitled and they just wouldn't give an inch.
Casey:
And now they screwed around and now they're finding out.
Marco:
I think both sides of this are correct.
Marco:
Like, two things can be simultaneously true.
Marco:
Apple's actually probably correct that these features, you could see why they actually might be against the interop requirements of the DMA, which are terrible, largely.
Marco:
Like, you can see why.
Marco:
Like, yes, Apple is probably correct to cite this as a problem with the DMA, with these things in particular, but
Marco:
That's probably technically correct, but also saying this and doing this and having to face this dilemma at all is a direct result of their blatant anti-competitive behavior over time.
Marco:
So none of this would have happened if not for that.
John:
That's debatable.
John:
I mean, you could say that no matter what Apple would have done, something like DMA would have passed anyway.
John:
There's no amount of opening up preemptively that Apple could have done.
John:
I still think they should have done it because, like, you don't know that you couldn't have prevented it.
John:
This is the question everyone has.
John:
Could Apple have done anything to prevent it?
John:
And I think we all agree it was worth finding out.
John:
Try something.
Yeah.
John:
Instead of doing nothing, right?
John:
And again, I want to remind people, Apple did loosen the App Store rules from 30% to 15%, the small business program.
John:
Stuff like that was arguably Apple's reaction to seeing the writing on the wall.
John:
Obviously, it was very slight.
John:
Very limited, not at all anything close to something that would have preempted action, clearly, right?
John:
But there is still, I'm willing to entertain the idea that there is really nothing Apple could have done, but I just would have liked to seen them try.
John:
Show me there's nothing you could have done by giving a big, good faith effort to self-regulate to head off regulation.
John:
maybe you would have failed but they didn't they didn't even make a an effort and so i think that's what we're arguing and i'm not i'm not 100 convinced that they could have prevented something like this but they should have tried because i think their odds were okay like it wasn't impossible right it was you know there's probably something they could have done uh and even if and even if they didn't head it off even if they did some good faith thing they really opened it up and made new worldwide rules they thought would be compliant but up something like dma passed anyway and turns out they're not quite in compliance and
John:
then you're tweaking an existing worldwide system to comply.
John:
Like, you're probably closer to a meeting of the minds about this, right?
John:
As opposed to now where they're just so far apart and it's so adversarial.
John:
And even for this, like, I think if you really want to demonstrate, like, again, if Apple's and the popular interpretation of DMA is such that, like, these interop rules really would forbid iPhone mirroring and SharePlay and stuff, right, and Apple intelligence...
John:
Ship the features, have the EU strike them down, and then throw up your hands and go, see, everybody?
John:
That's how dumb the DMA is.
John:
It doesn't allow us to ship iPhone mirroring.
John:
iPhone mirroring is not a giant lever of power that we use to dominate the industry.
John:
It's a tiny feature that benefits people.
John:
If stuff like iPhone mirroring is disallowed, that's why the DMA is dumb.
John:
But they didn't allow it to happen.
John:
They should have shipped it.
John:
and got the complaints about it and had the evidence.
John:
Instead, now they're holding it back saying, we think this might not be compliant.
John:
And of course, the EC is not going to come out and say, Apple's wrong, it would have been compliant.
John:
Or Apple's right, it wouldn't have been.
John:
The EC is acting like the App Store.
John:
It's like, if you don't submit the app, we're not going to tell you whether it's compliant or not, right?
John:
So they've lost the opportunity to show that the DMA is dumb.
John:
Right.
John:
And on the flip side, the EC, I guess, doesn't have the opportunity to show the DMA isn't done by saying, hey, ship iPhone mirroring.
John:
We weren't going to strike that down like we're reasonable people here.
John:
I don't know if iPhone mirroring is compliant with the DMA or not.
John:
Neither does Apple.
John:
I'm not sure if the EC knows.
John:
Maybe they need nine months to investigate to find it.
Marco:
I think Apple knows that that is probably a... They're looking for holes to poke in the DMA because they don't like the whole thing.
Marco:
They're looking for reasons.
Marco:
They're looking for ways to make it look overbearing and ridiculous.
Marco:
And the main difference here is that
Marco:
With this move for the first time, they're not just attacking, you know, policies.
Marco:
With this move, they're attacking their own customers.
Marco:
And that is, I think, again, I question the strategy here.
Marco:
Is anyone strategizing over there?
John:
They may be thinking that Europe is filled with Americans who are going to be like, hey, the government's stopping us from getting our cool Apple features, where it seems like a lot of people in the EU are going to say, hey, Apple's being a jerk about this law that we all agreed on.
Marco:
Yeah, it turns out Europeans largely like the way Europe does things.
John:
Exactly, right?
John:
If Europe was filled with Texans, it would be a different story, but it's not.
John:
And so I don't know if they're misreading that room.
John:
Again, I don't have a finger on the pulse of what Europe is like, but just look, the DMA passed overwhelmingly.
John:
The EU likes regulation.
John:
Just look at all the laws around like cheeses in Italy and stuff.
John:
It's just like they like the way things work there, right?
John:
They vote for these people, right?
John:
So I don't know how this is going to work out, but just I do think if this is the deal with the DMA, like Apple can no longer do business effectively in Europe because –
John:
again i think it's not reasonable to require every single feature added to all of their gatekeeping platforms to be open to third parties from day one it's technologically not feasible so if the dma is asking for that it needs to be changed or apple just needs to leave because what otherwise people in europe are going to get features like three years after the rest of the world gets them and that's if apple decides to stay in the market and put in an effort to actually comply because that's like that's the best case the roadmap like you roll out the feature and
John:
And then you tweak the feature and then maybe you open it up to third parties.
John:
And then the next year, the third party integration actually works well, right?
John:
And that's not Apple being a jerk.
John:
That's just the way technology works.
John:
It's not reasonable to require this.
John:
The app store is the important thing to regulate on the phone.
John:
share play is not right but but it was their it was their behavior with the app store that inspired that that generated a whole bunch of political will to do a lot like this in the first place that happened to also include other things i mean yeah and and again it's not it's not clear to me that share play like they wanted to wrap up share play in this like maybe they they're like oh no we totally understand like share play is not what we're after or whatever but i i don't know
Marco:
They're looking for reason to discredit it.
Marco:
But again, I have to wonder, how many battles is Apple willing to fight at once?
Marco:
They have a lot of lawyers.
Marco:
They're doing battle with everyone.
Marco:
They're fighting on so many fronts, and they seem to just provoke more of them to keep coming.
Marco:
And now they've involved a pretty decently sized chunk of their own customers as one of the fronts in these battles.
Yeah.
Marco:
Why?
Marco:
Is this worth it?
Marco:
Because, again, what we're talking about is not all services revenue.
Marco:
First of all, a huge chunk of it is Google.
Marco:
So setting that aside for now.
Marco:
What we're talking about is not even all App Store revenue.
Marco:
We are talking about giving people the option to not use App Store purchasing and commissions for apps that are largely not using the App Store purchase system in the first place.
Marco:
Things like Spotify, Netflix, HBO Max.
Marco:
That's kind of what we're talking about here.
Marco:
We're talking about allowing these apps to link out and use their own stores or to use their own purchase systems that already mostly aren't using an app purchase.
Marco:
And that's not where Apple makes most of its money.
Marco:
They make most of their money with games.
Marco:
So we're not even talking about a huge chunk of App Store revenue that would just disappear overnight.
Marco:
Apple is engaging in all these different battles all around the world, including in their own country now with the DOJ lawsuit, which touches on some of these things.
Marco:
They're opening up all these fronts of war and battling and literally causing problems for their core product attributes like integration in the EU now and possibly the DOJ lawsuit that those both have integration components.
Marco:
They are causing substantial threats to really important parts of how their products are designed and how they work in pretty large markets around the world in order to save some tiny percentage of app store revenue.
Marco:
That, to me, again, I have yet to see.
Marco:
I was trying to think, what are Tim Cook's long-term strategy successes?
Marco:
I can't think of many of those.
Marco:
I honestly do not think Tim Cook as a leader has good long-term strategy in some pretty key critical areas to leading this company.
Marco:
And honestly, it's time for new leadership.
Marco:
We've seen the limits of the Tim Cook Apple.
Marco:
We've seen he's really good at making money and he's...
Marco:
a little spotty in some of the really important product details, and a little bit short-sighted with some of these regulation and app store details.
Marco:
We've seen the limits of Tim Cook's Apple.
Marco:
I'm ready to see something else.
Marco:
This is bad leadership and bad strategy at the top.
John:
This wouldn't be an Apple DMA rant if Marco wasn't ready to fire some people at Apple.
Casey:
All right, let's do at least a little bit of Ask ATP.
Casey:
It's been a busy season for us, so we've unfortunately put it on the back burner.
Casey:
Let's bring it around.
Casey:
Some fellow by the name of Todd Vaziri, I wonder who he is, writes, and ATP589 used Mark Gurman's rumor bullet points as a conversation starter.
Casey:
Rumors are great at sparking conversation and debate, but I wonder if anyone has ever revisited Gurman's rumors post-event to validate the rumors themselves.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
I don't, I feel like my, my gut says that German is more, he is over 50%, but I've never actually done any mathematics or anything to see if that's true.
John:
Back in the early days before you guys were Apple fans, uh, in the, uh, God, I hope I'm going to get this right.
John:
Um, Mac OS rumors.
John:
I know you're like, don't you mean Mac rumors?
John:
No, I'm pretty sure I mean, Mac OS rumors.com.
John:
Anyway, there was a lot of websites that Apple rumors, uh,
John:
Some of those websites just flat made up stuff, right?
John:
Some of those websites would publish things that were sent to them anonymously that the senders made up.
John:
And it was a very exciting time to be an Apple fan because every possible thing that you could think would be like, whoa, look at this, look at that.
John:
And back in that time, I thought to myself, kind of like Todd here, it would be great if there was like a meta website that kept track of all the things that were on all the rumors websites and then rated them on accuracy.
John:
And there are websites currently that do that.
John:
I wish I could remember the URLs.
John:
Probably we'll have them follow up next week if anyone cares.
John:
But there are websites that do that.
John:
But it turns out that activity is not that exciting because very quickly...
John:
you kind of get a feel for what kind of things will people publish?
John:
Like, will this site publish anything that's sent to them anonymously?
John:
Or will the site only publish things from sources that they, that they have some reason to believe are actual real sources, not just like an anonymous email that comes to you or whatever.
John:
Mark Gurman,
John:
is one of those people who publishes things from sources uh and i mean the main thing against him is that the information that he the source information that he gets is usually buried in a giant pile of words a lot of which are just his opinion on things and it's like yeah yeah yeah what did you what did your sources tell you and the reason we care what his sources tell us is because his hit rate for things that are sourced that he says definitively
John:
Very close to when they're actually going to happen.
John:
And even sometimes distantly is very good.
John:
He has real sources.
John:
He doesn't have people making things up.
John:
He's not guessing and being lucky.
John:
He has actual sources or maybe just one source, but whatever it is, when he publishes information without any qualifiers and says something definitively, it's like a week before the keynote.
John:
You can basically take that to the bank.
John:
rare misses like the apple watch and everything or whatever but the reason we go back to that and talk about it as if it's a real thing is because like well it is a week before wwc and german says no hardware wwc we just take that at face value at this point because when he says that definitively a week before wwc guess what no hardware wwc
John:
And if he starts being wrong about that, he said no hardware, and it was a huge hardware thing.
John:
Then we're going to look askance.
John:
As I think the Apple Watch rumor with the flat sides that never occurred, we look a little bit askance to that.
John:
Not 100%, but he has real sources.
John:
As opposed to macOS rumors back in the day, which I'm pretty sure had no real sources and just published anything that sounded cool and occasionally got things right just because of dumb luck and occasionally got real leaks, but most of the time just made up stuff.
John:
In the end, this is mostly like entertainment or whatever.
John:
But I think on this show...
John:
If something is a rumor that's like we have no idea about the sourcing or whatever, we will say as much.
John:
But when we say it looks like no hardware at WWDC because German said it, that's based on past performance that, you know, that he's been pretty accurate about things like that.
John:
farther out like oh the new apple watch is gonna have different straps like remember when we talked about that ages ago we were always framing that as like it's so far away who knows if that's gonna happen he might have a source that just like even then it's like source oh okay well so they were they were working on an idea for a new strap on apple watch things and he got a source rumor to say that
John:
That doesn't mean, and German doesn't say definitively, the next Apple watch will have different straps.
John:
He's just saying, this is the thing Apple's working on.
John:
And it probably is.
John:
But you have to take that for what it is, which is Apple works on a lot of stuff.
John:
Not everything ships.
John:
Sometimes they decide to do something different or whatever.
John:
That's different than when he comes out and says, here are the features, here are the things, here's what's going to be in the keynote, here's what's not going to be in the keynote, again, especially as the dig gets closer.
John:
So I agree that just getting outraged on stuff that are just rumors is pointless, but I hope mostly on this show...
John:
we either talk about rumors as a jumping off point to imagine if they did this or whatever, or we take as close to fact things that come from sources that are usually right very close to the date when they're going to happen.
Marco:
Yeah, and different rumor sources have different areas of strengths, I would say.
Marco:
Like, for instance, when we hear from Ming-Chi Kuo about a new display size or a new display panel that could be used for an Apple product,
Marco:
That's usually pretty good because Ming-Chi Kuo is well-sourced in the supply chain for displays, and we know that.
John:
But we don't know what product that's going to be in.
John:
Right, exactly.
John:
And very often he will definitively say, this is going to be in a new laptop, and it turns out it's in an iPad or something, right?
John:
Because that's not something you would know if you just have sources of the display manufacturer.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
And sometimes you can derive it like, you know, if it's some giant, you know, 30 inch 8K panel, like that's probably for a studio display, not like a MacBook.
Marco:
But, you know, there are some things that it's more vague.
Marco:
But yeah, like we know when Ming-Chi Kuo reports pretty definitive like display size stuff, especially when it's something like an iPhone, we know it's probably correct.
John:
Or like the OLED iPad.
John:
We were talking about the OLED iPad as if we were sure it was a thing for months and months and months because there are just so many sources in the display supply chain for so long saying iPad size OLEDs, iPad size OLEDs, dual layer iPad size OLEDs.
John:
Like it's not just one source.
John:
It's tons of them come in.
John:
And it's like eventually we just start talking about it as if it's fact.
John:
And maybe that's just like experience and kind of knowing like, you know, it looks like there's going to be.
John:
OLED iPads with dual-air screens?
John:
And there was.
John:
And every time that happens, it reinforces our instincts of when something, like, where there's smoke, there's fire, versus just, like, a fanciful idea of, like, I think they're looking at different ways to attach watch straps.
Marco:
Right, exactly.
Marco:
And we know, like, you know, Mark Gurman has limits, too.
Marco:
Like, he... Mark Gurman oftentimes will miss the, like, the marketing side of something, or the story, or the, like...
Marco:
software details of certain things.
Marco:
But he's really good at hardware.
Marco:
Mark Gurman usually knows what hardware is coming.
Marco:
He knows usually some pretty good hardware details.
Marco:
And he's actually getting seemingly better sources over time.
Marco:
And so we pay attention to that.
Marco:
We notice that.
Marco:
But we don't treat rumors as...
Marco:
absolute fact, but usually we also see the patterns.
Marco:
We know that if there's pretty strong rumors about some new iPhone display size from Ming-Chi Kuo, and then a few months later, Mark Gurman reports a few more details about an iPhone of that size, and we know that's a plausible size, and it's bigger than the existing ones.
Marco:
We know that's probably true, just because we've seen the patterns before.
Marco:
We know roughly how this goes.
Marco:
We've been doing this for a long time, and so
Marco:
So we're not going to report on things on the show or talk about them as if they're facts if they seem really far-fetched.
Marco:
Or at least we'll tell you why we think it's far-fetched if everyone else is talking about it and we feel like we need to.
Marco:
But most of it is just kind of like gut feeling, putting in context like this sounds plausible from this source that is usually good in this area versus this thing from some rando account on Twitter that no one's ever heard of before is probably wrong.
John:
And sometimes we don't even need rumors.
John:
Like, for example, we talked about on past episodes, OLED screens are coming to MacBooks.
John:
I don't even think there's a rumor of that, but it's like, duh, right?
John:
Unless some better technology comes along, eventually...
John:
The cool screens they just put on the iPads should be coming to MacBooks.
John:
Now, what we'll end up reporting on is, say there's a rumor and says, oh, it turns out they can't use the tandem OLEDs in MacBooks because someone on the supply chain says they use too much power, they get too hot or something like that.
John:
That's a rumor we report on.
John:
But in the absence of any rumors, we're just like, well, we assume these displays will come for the MacBooks.
John:
Now we wait to see.
John:
Does the rumor mill support that and say, oh, here's the schedule for the MacBook Air with a dual-layer OLED display, right?
John:
Here's when we think it's coming out, 2025, 2026, and they'll keep updating that date when they get it or whatever.
John:
Or are we looking for a rumor that says Apple changed their mind?
John:
They're not using a micro LED on the watch, for example.
John:
They did all this investment in micro LED.
John:
They were going to use it on the watch.
John:
And they said, no, actually, we're not.
John:
We bailed out of that.
John:
We sold the company or whatever.
John:
Those are things worth reporting on.
John:
But even in the absence of reporting, you can look ahead and you can kind of see where the very often where the tech is going, what is going to be technologically possible.
John:
Look at the products Apple's introduced.
John:
Look at what technologies they would probably want to use in the rest of their line and see how that goes.
John:
And then obviously, there's the easy stuff like, hey, you know, Apple has an M4.
John:
There's probably going to be a more powerful than M4 chip, which historically speaking will probably be an M4 Pro and M4 Max.
John:
And maybe there'll be an Ultra.
John:
Maybe there'll be an Extreme.
John:
You don't need rumors to tell you that the M4 is coming to the Mac line.
John:
Like you just don't need any.
John:
And all we do is look at the rumors and say, okay, it looks like this is coming in this year and this is coming in this month or whatever to sort of lay out where they're coming.
John:
But no one is debating like someone said the M4 is coming to the MacBook Pro.
John:
I'm not sure about that.
Marco:
No, we're pretty sure.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
Thank you to our members who were the exclusive sponsor of this episode.
Marco:
We are 100% member supported this week.
Marco:
Please consider joining us at ATP.fm slash join.
Marco:
And if you do join, you get a few different perks and benefits, including every week the ATP overtime segment.
Marco:
This is a bonus topic that we do every week just for members.
Marco:
And this week it's going to be about Apple allegedly planning thinner devices seemingly across the whole product line.
Marco:
Speaking of rumors.
Marco:
We'll be talking about that in overtime this week.
Marco:
So if you can join to hear it, atp.fm slash join.
Marco:
Thank you so much, and we'll talk to you next week.
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at atp.fm.
Marco:
And if you're into Mastodon, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Marco:
So that's K-C-L-I-S-S-M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-
Casey:
Accidental.
Casey:
Tech Podcast.
Casey:
So long.
Marco:
So what's going on with Aaron's car?
Marco:
Any, any updates there?
Casey:
Yes, I have updates.
Casey:
So we got a call from the adjusters saying, Hey, I'm at Volvo.
Casey:
Can you explain to me what the hell happened one more time?
Casey:
Like, cause we had never spoken to the adjuster before.
Casey:
And I was like, I can, but why don't I put, you know, my wife on the phone.
Casey:
She was the one who's there, you know, blah, blah, blah.
Casey:
So she does, you know, the whole song and dance about, you know, what had happened, et cetera, et cetera.
Casey:
That same evening, the adjuster calls again, we are about to go to dinner.
Casey:
He says, okay, uh,
Casey:
I have looked into the situation and we're going to total the car.
Marco:
Oh my God.
Casey:
Because the car is worth not that much more than it would cost to repair it.
Casey:
So we're going to total the car.
Casey:
That means that now we have to buy a car under duress because Erin can't drive my car, doesn't think she can.
Casey:
And
Casey:
She did get a loaner from our local Volvo dealer.
Casey:
It is a piece of trash, but it's a piece of trash that will get her from A to B, as long as A to B is pretty close to home.
Casey:
And so we are very thankful for this piece of trash, but it is not a long-term sustainable solution, right?
Casey:
And service has been phenomenal.
Casey:
If you live in the Richmond area or anywhere near it and you want to get your car serviced by somebody who seems to really care, go to Volvo for Richmond.
Casey:
They're very good.
Casey:
But that being said, we still need to solve this problem.
Casey:
And what we're currently thinking is replacing the XC90 with another XC90, which I could understand and argue that that's a dumb, terrible decision.
Casey:
But I really believe in my heart a few things, and we'll talk about why.
Casey:
But first of all, I really think that this is the best car for Aaron.
Casey:
I really, really, really do.
Casey:
And number two, I really think it was a one in a trillion bad, unlucky break.
Casey:
I really, really do think that.
John:
We know it's not one in a trillion because somebody wrote in to say that this happened to two of their other Volvos.
John:
So I'm going to say it's one in a trillion.
Casey:
Yeah, but they were wildly different generations.
John:
Right, but let's say it's a three and a nine billion.
Marco:
Okay, fair enough.
Marco:
I mean, it definitely seems like it is not that rare.
Marco:
Like the fact that we, I believe we heard from multiple people who say something similar happened to them with a Volvo in particular.
Marco:
So it could be like just a design flaw of some of their engines.
Marco:
Not enough shielding on the bottom of the car or something.
John:
Still super rare, I would imagine.
Marco:
Yeah, but I think it might give me pause to own one out of warranty ever.
John:
Whatever that effect is, if he had had a Volkswagen and given the same story, we would have heard from the Volkswagen people who it happened to.
John:
So maybe this happens to three out of every nine billion of every car manufacturer.
John:
It's difficult to draw conclusions from because it's not a random selection.
John:
It's self-selecting because we talked about Volvos.
John:
We hear from the Volvo people this happened to.
John:
Yeah.
John:
I think the jury's still out on that.
Marco:
So I assume, is there no chance of getting you into something electric here?
Casey:
ATP.fm slash join.
Marco:
I know it's more money.
Marco:
It's also a lot nicer.
Marco:
It's also no gas.
Marco:
It also can't have that problem recur.
Marco:
Harder to find with CarPlay sometimes.
Casey:
that's very true well let's put i believe there's something called the volvo ex 90 okay so let's put that whole star and there's a no no just hold on just hold on put that in the parking lot ding uh for a second and make sure i come back to that because there is an answer for that but but let me let me put that aside for a moment
Casey:
So we look at the local Volvo deal, and what we're looking for is something around like a 2021 XC90.
Casey:
Aaron's car was not driven that much, so it only had like 42,000, 43,000 miles on it.
Casey:
So we want something with fewer than 40,000 miles.
Casey:
And we want something that doesn't really give up any of the options we had before, which basically, if you speak Volvo, amounts to the climate package, which gives you like rear heated seats, which I think the kids are really going to want, even though we don't have winter here.
Casey:
And it gives you a few other things.
Casey:
I forget.
Casey:
Oh, a heated wheel, which Aaron really, really liked.
Casey:
And the advanced package is I think what they call it, which among other things gives you a heads-up display, which Aaron has become completely addicted to.
Casey:
And honestly, I would too if I were her.
Casey:
So anyway, so to find that car has been challenging.
Casey:
Used is what we think we want to do.
Casey:
We could, I mean, potentially buy new, but we're talking, I mean, these cars are now $70,000 new.
Casey:
And
Casey:
I genuinely think they're great cars.
Casey:
And I could even make an argument they're worth $70,000, but I don't particularly want to spend $70,000 on a car right this minute.
Casey:
So we didn't think that we really wanted to go that route.
Casey:
So, okay, that was Monday.
Casey:
Tuesday, I say to her, all right, you know, let's go to the place I...
Casey:
often mentioned on the show these days, let's go to CarMax because CarMax is a used car retailer and they'll sell anything, right?
Casey:
And you can bounce between several different cars all in the same dealership and see and just sit in them, if not drive them, and see what you think.
Casey:
So I, or the four of us went to CarMax and we sat in and looked at an Atlas, a Volkswagen Atlas, a Audi Q7, which I actually really liked, but Aaron was not that keen on,
Casey:
A Kia Telluride, which is extraordinarily well-reviewed, and I know a couple people with them, and they love them, but Aaron didn't care for it.
Casey:
The Mazda CX-9, which was mostly because we had such good luck with her Mazda years ago, and that didn't impress either of us.
Casey:
And the Jeep Grand Cherokee, which I know you two are going to snicker, but honestly is a relatively upmarket three-row car that feels to me like it's 13 miles long, like suburban long, but...
John:
The current ones are huge.
John:
I don't know what year you were looking at.
Casey:
We were looking at basically the brand new ones because we wanted a three row.
Marco:
I mean, are they meaningfully bigger than the XC90?
Casey:
I haven't looked it up, but I feel like they are.
Casey:
Exactly.
Casey:
It may not be bigger, but it looks bigger.
Casey:
I bet it's not.
Casey:
For sure.
Casey:
It may not be.
Casey:
I genuinely don't know.
Casey:
And I'm not going to look it up while I'm talking, but it looks way bigger.
Casey:
And what was really great about the CarMax experience was we walked in, you know, and there's a little like greeter person and they said, okay, you know, what can I help you with?
Casey:
And I said, oh, I want to look at these cars.
Casey:
And of course, because it's me, I have model names and stock numbers written down and the lady looks at it and says, you're a nightmare customer.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Oh, I am the worst.
Casey:
It gets worse because I had a different experience today.
Casey:
But she says, okay, this one's over there.
Casey:
That one's over there.
Casey:
That one's over there.
Casey:
That one's over there.
Casey:
Just, you know, let us know if you have questions.
Marco:
In other words, get out of my hair.
Casey:
Well, but it was said with a smile.
Casey:
And so I'm like, what?
Casey:
Are they open?
Casey:
Like, do I need someone to go with me?
Casey:
And she says, no, no, no, no.
Casey:
They're all open.
Casey:
Just go to town.
Casey:
What?
Casey:
Really?
Casey:
Like, that's, that's not how this usually works.
Casey:
And to be honest, uh, I really enjoyed the CarMax experience because I didn't have to talk to anyone.
Casey:
And so, and so it was really great.
Casey:
We just walked around and granted we're going through heat wave here.
Casey:
So it was like over a hundred degrees.
Casey:
I want to say it's like 35 and stupid units.
Casey:
Um,
Casey:
It's over 100 degrees.
Casey:
It's 8 million percent humidity, and we're all drenched as we're looking at these cars, but you do what you do.
Casey:
And so we looked at them all, and the only one that was really in the running was Grand Cherokee, but not enough that she was like, yeah, I want to test drive that.
Casey:
It's huge.
Casey:
It's not really my cup of tea, but it's not my car.
Casey:
And if she was more enthusiastic about it, I definitely would have said, all right, let's go try it.
Casey:
But none of this really revved her engine.
Casey:
And they had a couple XC90s, but they weren't exactly what we wanted either.
Casey:
So I had my eyes on, and this is coming obliquely back to what you were talking about, Marco.
Casey:
I had my eyes on a T8 Volvo.
Casey:
So there's three different styles of Volvo in this generation.
Casey:
There's the T5, which was a, I believe it was turbocharged only instead of turbo and supercharged like Aaron's was.
Casey:
And it did not have a third row of seats.
Casey:
It just had, you know, empty space there.
Casey:
There's a T6, which Aaron had, which again, super and turbocharged.
Casey:
And then there's a T8, which depending on the generation or depending on the year, I should say, it was either the T6 with a small electric motor for the, I believe it was the rear wheels, or I think in later years, it was a turbocharged only motor with a slightly larger electric motor for the rear wheels.
Casey:
And what's great about this, what I find super appealing about this,
Casey:
is that you can, like some of these quasi-hybrids, you can, well, first of all, it's a plug-in hybrid.
Casey:
I didn't specify that.
Casey:
But beyond that, you can go something like 20 miles pure electric.
Casey:
And part of the way that Aaron had a seven-year-old car that only had 40,000 miles on it is that most of the time,
Casey:
We're driving, or she's driving, I should say, five miles, 10 miles, you know, maybe 20 in a day, maybe.
Casey:
And so on paper, well, first of all, on paper, a full electric car is the correct answer.
Casey:
I promise we're coming back to this, Marco.
Marco:
All right, all right, all right.
Marco:
By the way, apparently the EX90 is not actually out yet.
Casey:
That's correct, and that's where I'm meandering toward.
John:
You're still talking about the XC90 here with the trim levels T8 and stuff, right?
Casey:
That's correct, yep.
Marco:
Yeah, because the XC90, it's still available now with a plug-in hybrid option for like 30 miles of range.
Casey:
Exactly right, exactly.
Casey:
And the new ones, the new plug-in hybrids are like $75,000, $80,000, and it's just like...
Casey:
Oh, whether or not we could afford that, which I don't know, but I don't think I want to pay that, you know, like even if we could afford it, I don't think I want to pay that kind of money.
Casey:
So anyways, it Volvo, Volvo of Fredericksburg, they had a T eight that had, I think it's 30,000 ish miles and was optioned the way we want.
Casey:
And I've been going back and forth with them over email and they wouldn't come down to exactly the price we wanted.
Casey:
And I wanted to go see it because we'd never driven a T eight before.
Casey:
So we went up there today, and we took it for a ride.
Casey:
And first of all, it wasn't in quite as good condition as I like.
Casey:
And I know it's a used car.
Casey:
It's not going to be perfect.
Casey:
I don't expect it to be perfect.
Casey:
This is where I'm becoming a total pain-in-the-butt client or customer.
Casey:
I know it won't be perfect, but we keep our cars really nice.
Casey:
And this one had enough dings and dents and whatnot that...
Casey:
That it wasn't quite up to snuff.
Casey:
But the thing that was a real bummer, and if you work at a car dealership, take note of this, for me, if nothing else.
Casey:
This thing has a battery, right?
Casey:
It's a small battery, but it's a battery nevertheless.
Casey:
In order for this to really show us the differences between Aaron's T6 and the T8, that battery needs to be what?
What?
John:
charged i'll give you one guess if that battery was charged when we took it out for a spin it's just like when i tried to drive the uh the wrangler plug-in hybrid i feel like the car dealerships are not equipped to keep all the plug-in hybrids plugged in like i'm assuming electric car dealerships are because you know you kind of need that in the electric cars but the hybrids are sold by you know gas car companies and they're just on the same on the lot in the parking spots yeah that's a shame
Casey:
It's a total shame because I went into this thinking, this is it.
Casey:
I mean, I had her old plates in my car.
Casey:
I had our insurance information for the old car.
Casey:
I had a checkbook in the car.
Casey:
I was ready to rock.
Casey:
And I didn't know if they were going to come down to the price we wanted.
Casey:
But leaving that aside, I thought, you know what?
Casey:
There's a better than 50% chance we will leave the house with one car, return with two cars.
Casey:
And we took it around the block.
Casey:
And Erin keeps saying to me, this feels the same as my car.
Casey:
And it's not that I didn't believe her, but I was like,
Casey:
It should feel different because in that application, it's her engine plus another like 70 horsepower or something like that from the pure electric motor.
Casey:
And so driving around in pure electric mode, it felt like a doggy, you know, a slower version of her car, which...
Casey:
I think makes sense, you know, because it's not a strong electric motor.
Casey:
Real like battery electric cars like the Rivian are stupid fast.
Casey:
This is different than that, right?
Casey:
It's a little teeny electric motor and it's enough to get you around town and do the sorts of things that Aaron needs to do, but it's not going to, you know, blow your hair back.
Casey:
until you have the gasoline motor involved as well.
Casey:
And then this thing is like a 400-horsepower car or something like that.
Casey:
Granted, it weighs as much as the house.
Casey:
But Erin's car, her old car, her now totaled car, that would keep up with my Golf R. It was surprisingly quick.
Casey:
And in theory, I would have assumed this one would actually be faster than my car.
Casey:
And because the battery was freaking dead, it just really was not that impressive.
Casey:
And I went there thinking...
Casey:
She's going to like it, and I'm going to frigging love it because I love fast SUVs.
Casey:
They're stupid, they're dumb, and they make zero sense, and I love them anyway.
Marco:
Yeah, it feels like you're violating the laws of physics.
Marco:
Right, that's what makes it so fun.
Marco:
Why is this thing so fast?
Casey:
Right, exactly.
Casey:
So anyways, so we weren't impressed by that.
Casey:
And they had a couple other options.
Casey:
They were the least sleazy car salespeople I've ever worked with.
Casey:
So I really appreciated that.
Casey:
But they let us drive away without anything.
Casey:
And I mean, I don't think there was much they could have done to put us in anything short of letting us effectively steal a car.
Casey:
But I have no answers.
Casey:
And so I asked both Richmond Volvo and Fredericksburg Volvo the same question.
Casey:
I asked them, OK, what's the story with the EX90?
Casey:
The EX90 is basically a full battery electric version of Aaron's car.
Casey:
I mean, there's differences here and there.
Casey:
But in spirit, it's a full battery electric version of Aaron's car.
Casey:
I'm still unconvinced that I want our workhorse to be a full battery electric vehicle because we do long trips.
Casey:
You don't.
Casey:
I'm sure.
Casey:
Well, so here's the thing.
Casey:
I'm optimizing for like one to two trips a year, which I intellectually know is dumb.
Marco:
It's so easy.
Casey:
I haven't really gotten past that.
Casey:
And I recognize, full on, I recognize that I'm kind of being an idiot about this.
Casey:
You are.
Casey:
But nevertheless, the EX90, both dealers independently said they are just rolling off the lines now.
Casey:
And I think the Richmond dealer said, I've never even seen one.
Casey:
And I believe the Fredericksburg dealer said, we've seen one, but we have no idea when we're getting them.
Casey:
It could be months.
Casey:
And I don't think that we have months to play with.
Casey:
And with regard to other battery electric vehicles, even leaving aside the fact that I'm not entirely convinced that's the right fit for us, the only other decent option was a Kia EV9, which I'm not sure I love the look of at all.
Casey:
And Erin is very not sold on an electric vehicle for her.
Casey:
I think both of us agree that my next car should be an electric car of some sort.
Casey:
But I don't think that it's time for Aaron quite yet.
Casey:
So anyway, so I don't really have any good answers with regard to a battery electric.
Casey:
And I mean, I would love to put her in an R1S.
Casey:
I really would.
Casey:
I would probably even hold my nose about CarPlay.
Casey:
But certainly they are way more expensive than I want.
Casey:
And it doesn't look like there's a robust enough or really what I should say is cheap enough used market to get to the price point that I'm looking to get to.
Marco:
No, there isn't.
Marco:
Not yet.
Casey:
And so all of that to say, I really thought today we were going to take care of business.
Casey:
It was going to get done.
Casey:
We were going to buy that T8.
Casey:
Life was going to be good.
Casey:
And now I don't know what to do because there are enough used XC90s, broadly speaking, in the area.
Casey:
But...
Casey:
None of them are really just the exactly what we want.
Casey:
And I'm not sure what to do.
Casey:
I don't particularly want to buy new because it's way more money than we need to spend.
Casey:
And I'm not snooty enough that I need, nor is she, that we need a new car.
Casey:
Like we don't want or need to do that.
Casey:
But I'm having trouble finding that unicorn of something that I think is priced reasonably, not to say it's a steal, but reasonably and not beat to hell, not with a trillion miles on it and option the way we want.
Casey:
And so now I'm kind of like back at, you know, back at square one and I genuinely don't know what we're going to do.
Casey:
The plan is still to go with an XC90 of some sort.
Casey:
We might have to just wait it out for a while or I don't know what we're going to
Marco:
The problem is you're under time pressure.
Marco:
Exactly.
Marco:
When you have time pressure and you're really picky with a whole bunch of stuff, something has to give.
Marco:
And so you don't get to make the ideal choice.
Marco:
You have to compromise on something or just get incredibly lucky with what you find.
Marco:
But that seems like that didn't happen.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
The question is just which of these various things that you're going to not be very happy about, which compromise are you willing to take first?
Casey:
Yeah, and that's the thing.
Casey:
And the only thing that is working on our side a little bit is that we're going away for a couple of weeks next month.
Casey:
And so we really need to make it like three more weeks.
Casey:
And then we disappear for two.
Casey:
And then we can kind of reset and start over.
Marco:
Yeah, but that means, so your wife's going to have no car for five weeks?
Marco:
Like, that's a bit much.
Casey:
She could presumably rock the loaner from Volvo for some or all of that.
Casey:
And if they need it back, which we've told them many times, like, look, the moment you guys want this back, tell us and we will have it back immediately.
Casey:
It's such a piece of trash.
Casey:
This car is so bad.
Casey:
But I don't think they're going to want it back anytime soon.
Casey:
But it's still, it's not fair or appropriate for us to hold on to this for, you know, two months or whatever.
Casey:
So I genuinely don't know what we're going to do.
Casey:
I mean, maybe we rent a car for a couple of weeks to give us a little more time, but that's not cheap or free or anything like that.
Casey:
So I don't know.
Casey:
I'm genuinely at a loss of what to do.
Marco:
I mean, honestly, I think your best bet is, first of all, like...
Marco:
You have to also consider that Aaron's the customer, not you.
Marco:
Yeah, that's fair.
Marco:
And she got this ridiculously bad luck thing happen.
Marco:
I think your best bet is to get her back into an XC90 in whatever form that needs to take.
Marco:
I would stop looking at other vehicles.
Marco:
If that's the one she really likes and she really wants, figure out how to get an XC90.
Yeah.
John:
Is her mind closed to non-SUVs?
Casey:
I think so.
Casey:
I mean, I will accept any kind of input, but we do use the capacity of the XC90 enough that I don't think she would do a sedan, and there are no sedans that exist in this country anyway.
John:
I just put in our Slack a 2020 S60 plug-in hybrid for $35,000.
Marco:
I mean, that looks like a nice car, but that's a much smaller total cargo volume, though.
Marco:
Exactly.
John:
You've got two small children.
John:
They would fit in this car.
John:
It's really nice.
John:
It's a plug-in hybrid.
Casey:
One of the things we talked about, because we ended up having to rent a minivan to get to the beach and back, right?
Casey:
And I got to admit, this Chrysler Pacifica, which actually, by the way, was delivered to us from Enterprise Rental with 36 miles on it.
Casey:
It just so happened we were the first people to rent it.
Casey:
And...
Casey:
I don't want to own a minivan for a few reasons, but I will be the first to tell you, and she would agree, on paper, that is 100% the correct answer.
Marco:
Honestly, everyone I've ever heard from who owns a minivan, they all say they're amazing.
Marco:
You just have to get over the fact that you own a minivan.
Marco:
But once you get over that, people love them.
Marco:
They are really good in a lot of ways.
Marco:
And if what you're looking for is...
Marco:
A large amount of passenger and cargo volume and have it be roughly that kind of size and shape, higher seating position, big volume, fits a bunch of kid stuff.
Marco:
There's a reason minivans are so popular and have been for so long.
Marco:
They're incredibly practical and people generally love them who have them.
Casey:
And actually, come to think of it, well, first of all, yes to everything you just said.
Casey:
Second of all, when we go on these beach trips, and it's getting better and better with each year as the kids get bigger and require less stuff and whatever.
Casey:
But we take Penny with us, and so that's a little bit of added cargo in and of itself.
Casey:
But when we go on these beach trips, we typically will put a Thule or whatever you call it, you know, one of those cargo carriers on the roof of Aaron's car.
Casey:
And we still fill this thing just freaking full.
Casey:
Yeah.
John:
That's a lot.
John:
What are you bringing on your vacation with your two small children and you have the giant car and you need to have a roof thing?
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
John, we do this every year.
Casey:
I don't have time for it right now.
Casey:
We can bicker about this another time.
John:
Are you bringing like a gas grill with you?
Marco:
No.
Marco:
Can we push on this a little bit?
Marco:
That does seem excessive.
Casey:
We can come back to this if you want.
Casey:
But suffice to say, we have a Thule, or however you pronounce it, and the car is chock full, right?
Casey:
Well, this minivan, I am freaking out because it doesn't have any roof rails or anything like that.
Casey:
I am telling Erin, I say to her, there's no freaking way we're going to fit everything.
Casey:
We're going to have to cut some stuff.
Casey:
And she was like, first of all, we'll fit everything.
Casey:
Second of all, if we can't, we'll just leave some stuff behind.
Casey:
It'll be fine.
Marco:
Yeah, I think it sounds like you might...
Casey:
benefit from cutting some stuff well okay there is that but nevertheless uh we start packing the minivan and it turns out that under the middle row like the under the the floorboard in the middle row there's these like freaking cavernous gullies i genuinely don't know if this minivan was all-wheel drive or not i want to say it wasn't but either way there's these cavernous gullies under the kids seats or under their feet i should say it
Casey:
we filled those with a bunch of stuff.
Casey:
Then the back, it was like two thirds full.
Casey:
It was amazing.
Casey:
It was amazing how cavernous this thing was.
Casey:
It was incredible.
Casey:
And it also had wireless CarPlay, which we only used briefly, but actually, and this is a Chrysler, mind you,
Casey:
which i don't personally consider a terribly fancy brand even though i think they might think they are but anyways the wireless carplay was very good like very low latency the screen was very high resolution compared to either of our cars it looked like retina i mean it wasn't literally but it looked that way um it was very impressed or impressive
Casey:
Um, but anyway, so we, you know, we rented this minivan for the beach and that worked out really nicely.
Casey:
And we talked about, should we get a minivan or alternatively, should we get a sedan and then just understand we're going to rent minivans to go to the beach every year.
Casey:
And what we concluded was we do use that space in the XC90 often enough to justify something large.
Casey:
But I mean, John, your question is not unreasonable.
Casey:
It really, really, really isn't.
Casey:
Um, but I think ultimately to come back to what Marco was saying, um,
Casey:
she had this thing that she loved ripped away from her by incredibly crummy luck.
Casey:
It's not like she got in an accident that was her fault or something like that.
Casey:
She didn't get in an accident at all by any reasonable definition.
Casey:
It's just, she had catastrophic engine failure.
Casey:
Uh, and so I think I'm pretty convinced and I think she is too, that an XC 90 is the right answer.
Casey:
So we are no longer cross shopping.
Casey:
I forget which one of you was asking that question, but we're no longer cross shopping.
Casey:
We, we did it just so we could check it off the list.
Casey:
We're not going to do that anymore.
Casey:
Um,
Casey:
But the question I keep asking myself is, I do not want to spend new car money on a new car for her.
Casey:
Or for anyone, really.
Casey:
It's not her specifically.
Casey:
But the more I think about it, the more I'm wondering if maybe I just need to bite the bullet and...
Casey:
find her the exact car that she wants?
Casey:
Because A, she fricking deserves it.
Casey:
She's an angel.
Marco:
That is the correct answer.
Casey:
And B, if I can't put my fingers on, if I can't put my hands on a used one that she really, really likes, then why wouldn't we get a new one?
Casey:
Now, I think I'm more on board with this idea than she is.
Casey:
She is unquestionably the more frugal of the two of us or the more financially responsible of the two of us.
Casey:
So I think it might, even if I'm convinced, I don't know if I could convince her, but it's where I'm starting to lean at this point because I just can't find exactly what we want.
Marco:
What about leasing, by the way?
Marco:
If you want to soften the burden a little bit up front, leasing could be an option.
Marco:
And I would also caution you that I would maybe not want to own a Volvo outside of warranty, and leasing fixes that problem as well.
Casey:
Yeah, I'm kind of allergic to leasing, but what I haven't mentioned is both the dealers told us, and I don't remember the specific incentive, but I don't know if it's like a government thing or a Volvo thing, but apparently if you lease, they're offering like $7,500 off right now or something like that, like an absurd amount of money off.
John:
$7,500 is the EV tax credit thing, isn't it?
Casey:
See, that's what I thought, but I don't know how that would apply to these cars.
Casey:
It wouldn't.
John:
Maybe they're just matching the government thing.
Casey:
That could be.
Marco:
Automakers use lease incentives all the time to boost their quarterly numbers.
Marco:
So take advantage.
Marco:
Very frequently in the auto business, a lease special is often the best deal on a new car that's available anywhere.
Marco:
Because they do kind of bet against their own future selves to boost the short-term gain.
Marco:
So as a customer, if what you want is available with a heavily discounted lease special, that's often worth considering.
Casey:
Yeah, and so even though I find leases to be – how do you pronounce the word?
Casey:
Anathema?
Casey:
Is that right?
Casey:
Is that what I'm looking for?
Casey:
I find it disgusting to lease.
Casey:
It's just not my jam.
Casey:
But I shouldn't say disgusting.
Casey:
It's just not for me.
Casey:
But that being said, if you're offering me $7,500 off, I'll carry a lease for at least a few months until I can pay it off or whatever the case may be.
Casey:
That's not how that works.
Casey:
Well, according to Volvo, they said you just got to lease it and last like three months or something like that, and then you can buy yourself out of it or whatever.
Casey:
I've never leased before, so I'd have to talk to them more about it if we get serious.
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
But either way...
Casey:
So it's between that and I think most Volvo dealers or maybe Volvo corporate offers like a, you know, oh, you've previously owned a Volvo.
Casey:
We'll give you a thousand bucks to buy another one.
Casey:
Then we're Costco members and they do like negotiations with these different car manufacturers.
Casey:
And so I think we get a thousand dollars off from that.
Casey:
So suddenly we're looking at like ninety five hundred dollars off potentially on a brand new Volvo.
Casey:
And suddenly the seventy thousand dollar Volvo is sixty thousand dollars, which is quite.
Casey:
quite a bit more than I wanted to spend still.
Casey:
But nevertheless, it at least makes this sort of thing approachable or a possibility, I guess I should say.
Marco:
Can I convince you to use the $10,000 savings to get the plug-in hybrid version at least?
Casey:
I would really, really, really consider it.
Casey:
Because again, leaving aside the fact that it makes the car kind of fast, what I cannot stress enough is how appealing it is to me that we could have, even though I don't really love plug-in hybrids in general, I think in this application, it actually is exactly the right answer because we have the infinite range asterisk, dagger, double dagger for when we go on whatever trip we need to go on.
Casey:
But for all the around town piddly stuff, she can just go pure electric and it'd be fine.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Plug-in hybrids are very popular for good reason.
Marco:
They are extremely compatible with current American usage and priorities and fears.
Marco:
They're very compatible with that.
Marco:
People want to dip their toe in electric.
Marco:
They think for those two trips a year that you take...
Marco:
That somehow it's never going to be possible to charge an electric car on the highway.
Marco:
So they think they need gas.
Marco:
So this is a way for you to try out electric, realize that you like it better.
Marco:
And then for the next vehicle after this that your family purchases, you'll go actual electric.
Marco:
But the correct step now is to take the plug-in hybrid now and begin that transition in a comfortable way that won't push anybody outside their comfort zone.
John:
Now, the problem with the hybrids is they got twice as much crap to go wrong.
John:
Like, and historically speaking, the reliability of hybrids has not been as good as internal combustion or EVs.
John:
They're better now.
John:
The newer designs have less stuff in them, but there's no getting around the fact that there's more stuff than an EV and there's more stuff than an internal combustion engine because it's got both.
John:
Maybe not a concern.
John:
Obviously, you know, if you're not going to own the car that long, you probably don't care and it'll probably be fine.
John:
But do keep that in mind.
Marco:
Yeah, but also keep in mind that for all those electric-only local miles, that serpentine belt is not going to be turning.
John:
Well, it depends on that.
John:
The hybrid drivetrains are very different from manufacturer to manufacturer, and that's not necessarily the case, so...
John:
I don't know where the belt is, where the engine is facing on these hybrids.
John:
Like there's so many potential options of how to do hybrid drives.
John:
And many of them are very different than the internal combustion engines in the same model.
John:
So you can look into that.
John:
But honestly, I just think that maybe the goal is just to keep the pebbles out.
John:
Like whatever's going on with the belts, maybe don't want the pebbles in.
Casey:
We'll work on that for next time.
Casey:
But no, this is not a longitudinal.
Casey:
What's the opposite of that?
Casey:
A sideways mount.
Casey:
What's the word I'm looking for?
Casey:
The engine's mounted like your cars are.
Casey:
Transverse?
Casey:
Thank you.
Casey:
Yes, that's what I'm looking for.
John:
This is longitudinal?
Casey:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Casey:
It's a transverse-mounted engine, so the belt is on the passenger side on an American car.
Casey:
But yeah.
Casey:
I mean, we'll see what happens.
Casey:
It's just tough because we try to be financially prudent.
Casey:
We try to have an oh crap fund like I think any reasonable adult should at least try to do.
Casey:
But there are not a lot of people who have a $70,000 oh crap fund, you know what I mean?
Casey:
And so it's just obviously we're not going to pay cash for this, but it's just still, it's like, oh, there's so much money that I was not planning on spending.
Casey:
And so that's just...
Marco:
Consider the insurance is giving you a hefty discount.
Marco:
Right, exactly.
Marco:
And so there were all these various incentives and everything.
Marco:
Owning a car is always a massive money hole.
Marco:
There's no way to own a car that you don't lose money.
Marco:
It's just a question of when you lose the money, and sometimes it's not within your control, sometimes it is.
Marco:
So it's just when and how this money gets burned.
Marco:
So this was obviously, you couldn't have planned for this, but
Marco:
You are car owners and you like giant, nice cars.
Marco:
And so you're going to burn this money at some point.
Marco:
You just have to do it at a time that you weren't necessarily expecting.