Worse in Stupid Ways
Casey:
I returned home earlier this morning today from our little beach vacation, and I'm a little sleepy, and I was really excited to see that we have nothing to talk about tonight.
John:
Oh, boy.
Casey:
It's going to be a real short, real easy show.
John:
It's good that we delayed a day on the recording, so your vacation worked out really well.
Casey:
That is very true, actually.
Casey:
You're welcome, everybody.
Casey:
You are welcome.
Marco:
And really before today, I thought we already had tons to talk about because since we recorded lots of significant things that we would typically talk about have happened.
Marco:
And some of them are like, well, I guess everyone else has talked about this already.
Marco:
So, you know, by now, maybe we shouldn't talk about some of them, but not most of them.
Marco:
And now we have this amazing.
Marco:
Oh, there's so much happening right now.
Marco:
I'm I am so excited.
Marco:
I just I can't wait.
Marco:
This is like, you know, get the popcorn.
Marco:
I just I can't wait to see how this goes.
Casey:
All right, so let's dig in.
Casey:
And lest dad get mad at me, we should start with follow-up.
Casey:
And I don't remember who sent this to me, and I apologize.
Casey:
I think it was sent to me, and I'm the one who put this in the show notes, and I screwed up and didn't leave attribution for myself to remember who sent this.
Casey:
But I think it might have been Kyle's the Gray.
Casey:
If it wasn't Kyle, I'm sorry.
Casey:
But anyway, somebody sent us that Tim Cook does play the game of donating to both sides of the aisle.
Casey:
We had talked, I guess, four years ago when we spoke last, that...
John:
four years ago slash yesterday depending on how it feels uh that that tim cook we didn't think really played that game that much it turns out he does and this article written no apple apple didn't play that game that's the distinction we were talking about apple the company unlike other companies does not give to individual candidates and that's the page that we linked to last episode this is about tim cook personally i'm sure every employee who works for apple personally potentially gives to some candidates or another but as the story notes tim cook plays both sides
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
Thank you for interrupting me.
Casey:
I'm glad you caught that.
Casey:
Yeah, so a very brief excerpt from the article, which was written in August of 2016.
Casey:
Cook has personally given $10,800 to Republican candidates and joint fundraising committees and $10,400 to committees on the Democratic side since 2008, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission.
Casey:
While he is by no means a large donor, Cook has increased his activity in this election cycle, again, that's 2016, with about 90% of those donations coming since April 2015.
Casey:
So, yes, thank you for the clarification, John, and whoever it was that sent this to us.
Casey:
Thank you.
Casey:
Big Sur Beta 4.
Casey:
There's things that have happened.
Casey:
John, you want to walk us through it?
John:
We spent a long time talking about the way things look in Big Sur, the areas where there's missing some contrast, the various line art designs for everything, the difficulty of telling what the active window is, all that stuff.
John:
Since then, Apple has made at least one significant cosmetic change in Big Sur Beta 4, which was not out at the time we talked about it.
John:
And that is to change the one thing that I used as an example of really well done, attractive styling that does not detract from usability, which is the subtle tinting of dark mode windows.
John:
I guess light mode windows as well.
John:
But I was using dark mode as a specific example where a dark mode window won't actually just be dark gray or black, but it will actually have a subtle hint of whatever the dominant color of the desktop background picture is.
John:
So it will be like dark gray.
John:
grayish with a hint of red maybe just just a little subtle you know to make it look not boring right but not in your face and bowling you over it's a little bit less subtle in light mode anyway in beta 4 of all the things they can add of all the stuff we complained about they added a checkbox to disable that specific effect
John:
just that specific effect it's not an accessibility thing it's not like where you turn off transparency entirely or increase contrast across the board this is a specific checkbox in the in like the non-accessibility preference i think it's in the general preference pane it says disable wallpaper tinting windows and by the way i don't like the fact that wallpaper has become the word they're using here used to be we we marveled at the fact that in system preferences you could type wallpaper and it would find like the desktop picture preferences and
John:
It's like, see, they know that Windows will type wallpaper, so they want to make sure that search term works.
John:
Now Apple's using wallpaper in their own copy.
John:
That's a regression, I think.
Marco:
Anyway.
Marco:
What was it before?
Marco:
Desktop background?
John:
Desktop picture, yeah.
John:
That's what used to be called, desktop picture.
John:
So, yeah, I don't, it boggles my mind that of all the, I mean, I guess, you know, this has sort of been the argument for graphite mode where it's like, what if you're doing color work?
John:
You don't want everything on your screen to be subtly tinted.
John:
by some other color if you're thinking your dark mode windows are neutral gray but they're actually all tinted slightly blue it's going to script your color perception like i i kind of get it but on the other hand that is such a narrow feature then i i don't understand why that raises to prominence to be like in the general preference painter where there is as opposed to buried someplace deeper so
John:
I mean, I guess if you're looking for a silver lining, it's that Apple is still at this semi-late stage considering adding features to the OS that affect the way it looks, which we talked about a lot a show or two ago.
Casey:
So we had a lot of conversation last week about whether or not live photos are good for humanity.
Casey:
And John, you incorrectly said that they are not good for humanity.
Casey:
I don't think that's what I said.
Casey:
That's pretty much what you said.
Casey:
I don't think that's what I said.
Marco:
It's a reasonable summary.
Casey:
Yeah, I think that's a pretty good summary as chief summarizer in chief.
Casey:
You're fired.
Casey:
Anyway, something that – I don't know how clear I made it on the show, but I really honestly didn't know at the time was that you could – and you said this, John, or maybe it was Mark.
Casey:
One of you said this probably, John, that you can disable sending a live photo and like a text message, which I really and truly did not know.
Casey:
And James Cocker wrote in to say a little bit more about that.
Casey:
So if you tap the live badge on a share sheet, it will disable the live photo only for that share, for example, to a shared album, messages, etc.
Casey:
And there's no need to completely turn it off for the photo first.
Casey:
So to reiterate, and I think this was covered last episode, but it's good to say it again.
Casey:
If you have a photo that you are sharing and if you put it like in a text message or iMessage compose window, you know, so you've already like pasted it in there.
Casey:
The little like live photo indicator in the upper left is actually a button.
Casey:
I had no idea it was a button.
Casey:
I thought it was simply an indicator.
Casey:
And it's a button that you can actually hit.
Casey:
And that would disable the liveness, if you will, of that live photo just for that one iMessage or text message.
Casey:
Well, obviously it would be disabled on a text message, but for that iMessage.
Casey:
And I, again, it was brought up last episode, but it was news to me.
Casey:
And ever since I last episode, I've now been more aware of what I've been sending to people because a lot of times I don't need the liveness.
Casey:
I hate that word so much, but whatever the motion of a live photo.
Casey:
And I just want the still.
Casey:
And now it will make you very happy, John.
Casey:
I know that I can turn that off very easily.
John:
That's wonderful.
John:
I look forward to seeing your properly curated pictures appear on my shared photo albums.
John:
Speaking of things not looking like buttons, you know, this sort of
John:
Famously an epidemic since iOS 7.
John:
Things that are buttons not necessarily looking like them.
John:
The camera UI and picture UI in particular is very... Its style is focused on not having a lot of Chrome.
John:
So the camera app and everything surrounding it tries not to have things that look overtly like buttons.
John:
But that sometimes makes it confusing to people.
John:
How do I use these features?
John:
For example, in the ancient version that I'm using, the camera app has the...
John:
words in the bottom i don't know if it's still like this is like photo uh panorama video you know that um and and there's words just text right and you might guess that they're kind of they were kind of like buttons like well how else because they fade out in the edges and it looks kind of like a timeline so i suppose i could tap those words and that works i suppose i could swipe those words and that works too eventually you learn oh actually i can swipe anywhere on this entire screen
John:
And it effectively lets me scroll through those things to go from video to photo to panorama to portrait or whatever.
John:
But that's not obvious at first glance, just like the live picture thing.
John:
Not obvious at first glance that the little indicator, I mean, I guess you just have to know that's the live picture indicator because I don't think it always says the word live next to it.
John:
It's just a circle in a circle thing.
John:
That's right.
John:
That you can tap that and it will act like a button and change modes.
John:
Live pictures in general have this problem.
John:
If someone sends you a photo, the little dot will be there if it's a live picture.
John:
And you may be wondering, how do I play the live picture?
John:
I've always been force pressing on it just because I think that was the first thing that they advertised in like the keynote when it came out.
John:
If you force press or something, it plays the live photo.
John:
And it does.
John:
But your finger is kind of obscuring the thing.
John:
I'm not sure if you can lift off of it.
John:
There are other ways to play live photos, but there's no obvious sort of playback controls.
John:
So I'm always sort of forcibly smushing my phone screen to get a live picture to play, only to be disappointed that once again, Casey sent a live picture, there shouldn't be a live picture.
John:
And there's nothing interesting in it.
John:
Harsh.
John:
But yeah, I feel like that's...
John:
that aspect of live pictures among their many problems one of them is that i think a lot of people don't understand how to use them and even if you do i think like playback controls would would seem i don't know too obvious for apple like you know what i mean like a little play button or like the word live and a little play triangle like even that like you have to know the i always i always wonder how many people know
John:
the things that we assume everybody knows like we assume everybody knows a triangle facing the right is play and two lines is pause but why do they know that what what makes us think people know that just because we know it because we grew up with tape recorders and had the word pause next to those two lines and play i mean seems like a thing that most people would know
John:
But anyway, that's not even there.
John:
But if it was there, it would still require the shared cultural knowledge of like what play, pause, fast forward, rewind, what all those symbols mean.
John:
And you'd still have to know that the word live was referring to a thing called live photos, which I suppose you would know if you read Apple's marketing literature.
John:
It's not like your phone comes with a manual.
John:
Anyway, technology is complicated.
John:
And I feel like live pictures, there's a lot of sort of hidden functionality and not great functionality.
John:
I think in the absence of force press, which is going away,
John:
or whatever it's called 3d touch which is going away across apple's line i guess it's just long press now which is kind of worse because again i gotta find a place to long press that's hopefully not covering the one interesting thing that's supposedly in this live picture right you know or i can just long press and then quickly remove my finger and hope i don't miss any of the playing i don't know my pictures are frustrating anyway i'm done
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
You know, the best part of all of this, which I don't think I really explained last episode, is John is painting it as though I'm sending him text messages hourly with useless live photos.
Casey:
I can't remember the last time I've sent you a text message with a live photo.
Casey:
And yes, there is a shared album that's of kid pictures that occasionally live photos will be added to.
John:
Occasionally?
John:
They have been 100% live photos for years.
Casey:
That's not true.
John:
The effect is cumulative.
Yeah.
Casey:
Oh, God.
Casey:
I put a lot of big camera pictures on there.
Casey:
Thank you very much, Dad.
Casey:
But anyway, suffice to say, this affliction apparently is much worse than I ever expected, given the volume of live photos that John is receiving from me.
Casey:
So I am so sorry, John, to put you through this terrible, difficult time.
Casey:
To help you feel better, can you tell me about preparing one's app to be the default browser or email client?
John:
wwc was so long ago and we had so many notes i mean that i was ditching a bunch of them because we did like three shows on wwc topics and that was enough and i can't for the life of you remember if we if we neglected to mention oh yeah and ios 13 uh you can change the default web browser and email client which is exciting and something we've been asking about for a long time and it's not everything we wanted but you can set the default back for everything but default app for email and web is a good start right because those are two important applications anyway that feature exists the reason i put it in follow-up is
John:
just in case we didn't talk about it, but also that Apple has put up a web page on a developer site saying, hey, developer, if you want to ship an app that can become the default web browser on an iOS device or the default email client on an iOS device, there is a bunch of rules we have to follow.
John:
And this is exactly what we've talked about many times in the past.
John:
Like,
John:
we're begging apple to let people change their default app and say apple you can define what it takes to be a default app like set a bunch of criteria people will follow it right it's no problem in fact we want this to happen and if you read the guide uh the guidelines for what it takes to be a default client you can see it's trying to stop people from making scam apps like oh download this and it becomes your default web browser and really it's not a web browser at all it's some kind of
John:
scam thing that steals all your keystrokes and sends all your amazon links through their affiliate and does all sorts of other stuff or you know obscures the address bar or whatever i would suggest people read these guys because it's a very uh it's what you'd expect and it's exactly the type of guidelines that we like from apple where they're doing stuff to essentially protect consumers and the reputation of their platform saying you know we're opening this up third parties you can
John:
Put an app on the App Store that can be the new default browser for users or the new email client, but we're trying to anticipate most of the shady things you will try to do and just say those are against the rules from the start.
John:
And, you know, of course, it'll be a battle for someone to figure out how to make a scammy email client despite these guidelines and they'll evolve over time.
John:
But anyway, I like this documentation.
John:
I'm glad it exists and I'm excited about finally, finally changing my default email client from an iOS for mail, which I never, ever want to use.
Casey:
And what will you be using instead?
Casey:
Gmail?
John:
You got it.
John:
That's my actual email client.
John:
The only time I ever see mail is every single time I tap a mail to link.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Casey:
So it's been a busy, what, week and change since we've last recorded.
Casey:
And the first thing that we should probably talk about is Phil Schiller is quasi-retiring.
Casey:
He has been, quote, advanced to Apple Fellow.
Casey:
And Joswiak is taking over marketing.
Casey:
I did not see this coming.
Casey:
Maybe the two of you did.
Casey:
But this came out of left field as far as I'm concerned.
Casey:
And I think I'm kind of bummed about it.
Casey:
all the stuff we're about to talk about notwithstanding but um i don't know i really like schiller obviously he was on the show many many many moons ago um i think i've said this publicly but one of my favorite um professional experiences in my entire life was getting absolutely dunked on by phil schiller about car related things at the end of that episode because he made all of us particularly me feel very very dumb um
Casey:
I like Schiller a lot.
Casey:
I think by and large, he does good work.
Casey:
And I'm a little bummed to see him go.
Casey:
A lot more bummed than I was to see Ive showing himself the door.
Casey:
But I don't know, Marco, what do you think?
Marco:
Well, I think, first of all, it's interesting to consider, like, you know, is he leaving?
Marco:
Because, you know, when you have a very high up Apple person who's been there forever, it seems like they don't actually leave.
Marco:
They just get promoted out of their job.
Marco:
And that's what happened to Johnny Ive.
Marco:
Like, he got promoted into the sky and ascended into whatever the universe that he lives in.
Marco:
Yeah, exactly.
Marco:
Like, he just kind of got promoted and promoted and he's gone now.
Marco:
He just got promoted into being gone.
Marco:
that seems to be possibly what's happening here but there are a couple of differences i mean you know number one is that the little detail that that uh live events and the app store will still be phil shiller's responsibilities and that's really interesting to me um you know and that could just be a temporary thing he could it could be you know he's transitioning those to other people over time who knows and
Marco:
But the big thing is that he has been promoted out of his marketing job.
Marco:
And Gruber's talked about this before.
Marco:
Marketing is not what it is at other companies at Apple.
Marco:
Phil Schiller was not in charge of just making the ads for the products.
Marco:
He has been deeply involved in the product development and in what products get made, how they prioritize or include certain things or don't include other things.
Marco:
He has been so deeply involved in product development at Apple for the...
Marco:
Is there a term called foreseeable past?
Marco:
I don't... What's... Rearseeable past?
Marco:
Anyway, he's been so deeply involved in all what we consider modern Apple product development.
Marco:
He kind of has his hands on everything.
Marco:
And so this is a significant change.
Marco:
Even if he does what they literally say and just basically stays on doing live events and the App Store...
Marco:
That's still a massive reduction in what he's been doing so far.
Marco:
Now, we don't really know how much he's going to remain involved in all that stuff.
Marco:
I mean, a lot of the things he did weren't part of his job title before, but he did them anyway.
Marco:
So now that his job title officially includes less, he might do less of that stuff.
Marco:
He might do the same amount of stuff, just with less responsibility or less time every week or something.
Marco:
Who knows?
Marco:
So it's hard to get a read on exactly what level of promotion into retirement this is and how much involvement he's going to have still.
Marco:
We really don't know.
Marco:
But assuming that this is kind of a graceful retirement for him in a way that won't freak out investors and everything too much, which I think is probably roughly close to what's happening...
Marco:
I am really going to miss Phil in this role.
Marco:
Phil is really old school Apple.
Marco:
He's one of the only old school people Apple left in leadership.
Marco:
And that's good and bad.
Marco:
He is razor sharp at the things he cares about, how deeply he can cut on things.
Marco:
He really has incredibly good product sense.
Marco:
I've always seen Phil as keeping the best parts of old Apple in current Apple.
Marco:
In the products, in the priorities, in the style, in the attitude.
Marco:
But that also cuts both ways.
Marco:
He also keeps some of the real hard-assness of old Apple in areas that we see in the App Store.
Marco:
It's funny.
Marco:
The first interaction I ever had with Phil Schiller, he sent...
Marco:
I wrote an article forever ago.
Marco:
Thanks for AppReview or an ode to AppReview or something like that.
Marco:
We'll find the link.
Marco:
And the idea was I was thankful for the concept of AppReview because as a developer, not only did it catch bugs for me, but it let people feel safe installing my apps.
Marco:
And that's something that we didn't have really in the world before that.
Marco:
It was much more Wild West in the world of PC and Mac, downloadable software, an era that Apple seems to pretend doesn't exist.
Marco:
But the other part of the BS app store defense that they're spouting now is true about the app store really did make a very safe environment that people trusted to try out new apps.
Marco:
And as we'll get to probably later...
Marco:
I actually don't want to get rid of AppReview.
Marco:
I don't want to create alternate app stores.
Marco:
I feel differently on some of the payment questions, but the actual concept of the app store, I think, is good.
Marco:
Anyway, so I wrote this article basically thanking the AppReview for existing for that reason.
Marco:
And I got an email from Phyllis Schiller, which I'd never heard from him before.
Marco:
I was quite honored.
Marco:
And this was during the Instapaper days.
Marco:
And he said something online.
Marco:
He's like, you know, thank you for your piece.
Marco:
I've shared it with the team.
Marco:
Something like that.
Marco:
You know, he's a nice guy.
Marco:
And then he was like, something along the lines of like, good job with Instapaper.
Marco:
It really deserves its four and a half star rating.
Marco:
and i just and i just love that so much because that like you know as i i have gotten to know phil better over the years that is so phil and i and i've really that story to a couple other people you know in the apple verse over the years and they all say the same thing like yeah that's so phil he's
Marco:
He is a very nice person, very capable.
Marco:
I love most of his work.
Marco:
I'm doing the gym now.
Marco:
I love most of his work.
Marco:
But he has that sharp edge.
Marco:
He can be kind of a dick about things.
Marco:
And I love that.
Marco:
Because he's an East Coaster.
Marco:
who's stuck in the west coast stuck in possibly why he's ascending into uh fellowship um you know to actually have time to you know go back to the east coast and enjoy it but you know east coasters like so i'm an east coaster when i go to the west coast everyone on the west coast thinks i'm an asshole and i don't try to be an asshole
Marco:
And I think that's how Phil is.
Marco:
And he's very warm and welcoming, except when you step in one of those things, he can be an asshole sometimes.
Marco:
Because he has to be, like, as part of those roles.
Marco:
And so he rubs some people the wrong way.
Marco:
But I've always liked him a lot because of that.
Marco:
Even when the ways that he can be an asshole negatively affect me, which isn't honestly that common, but even when that happens...
Marco:
I still appreciate, oh, well, you know, he's being Phil.
Marco:
Like, okay.
Marco:
Like, I'm okay with it.
Marco:
I accept it because it's kind of like we had the discussion a few months back out how I was kind of like finally accepting Swift, even though Swift is always such a dick because I'm like, well, you know, sometimes I'm friends with people who are total dicks.
Marco:
And it's like, you know, that's just like you can be friends with people and appreciate that they can be dicks in certain ways, but you're still friends with them.
Marco:
And that's always how I've seen Phil.
Marco:
I really respect him.
Marco:
I really like his work.
Marco:
And even though he can be a real jerk about things sometimes, about certain things that he cares a lot about, in a very old-school Apple way for all of its good and bad that brings in today's world, I still really like him.
Marco:
And so to have him be reducing his role in the company, I am a little sad about that.
John:
Sounds like you're saying that Phil really deserves his four and a half star rating.
John:
I hope he doesn't listen to this in here.
John:
I like him even though he's a jerk sometimes.
John:
I think he would agree.
John:
So the wordsmithing on this press release from Apple is wonderful because these type of press releases are very difficult to –
John:
walk the line that apple wants to walk because i think marco laid out a bunch of different possibilities there but they don't really want to pin it down if someone is slowly on their way out of apple you're not going to have a press release and say phil schiller gets one foot out the door that's not the headline that you want on that press release so the wording here is
John:
phil schiller advances to apple fellow now first apple fellow apple fellow is a title they give not many people have gotten it it's like you're the most distinguished title you can get it's kind of like the gold watch thank you if you look at some of the names on the list we'll link to uh a list in the apple fandom wiki i'm not sure if this list is complete but some of the people who are apple fellows are steve wozniak another person who got a kind of a slow exit alan k don norman guy kawasaki i don't know if you remember him bill atkinson steve capps
John:
There's not a lot of names.
John:
There's like, you know, 10, 20 names on this list.
John:
These are sort of distinguished people who are very important to Apple, who didn't apparently want to leave Apple, and Apple didn't want to get rid of them, but Apple kind of wanted to say...
John:
It's time for somebody else to get a chance to do that thing that you were doing.
John:
Right.
John:
But, you know, so if you become an Apple fellow, it's not a demotion for sure.
John:
It's like the most highest honor that Apple has to give you in terms of title except maybe CEO.
John:
Right.
John:
So you're not being demoted, but you're also not being promoted either.
John:
You're not getting more responsibility.
John:
You're not becoming more powerful within the organization.
John:
In fact, you're probably becoming less influential and less powerful.
John:
You're a fellow now.
John:
You're the wise elder who's still hanging around and still getting a paycheck.
John:
But really, the decisions that you used to make about Apple...
John:
Other people are going to make those decisions now and not you.
John:
And even though you might want to still make them, oh, you're an Apple fellow.
John:
So stay over there, right?
John:
So he advances to it.
John:
He does not, he's not promoted.
John:
He is not demoted.
John:
It's not a lateral move.
John:
It's not a move upward.
John:
How about advance?
John:
Advance says you're moving forward, but not upward, but not down, but not out, but not sideways.
John:
And twirling, always twirling.
John:
Yes.
John:
Okay.
John:
That was Simpsons.
John:
I got that one.
John:
Yay.
John:
So that in itself is interesting.
John:
The wording on the press release.
John:
And then there are a few sort of realities that we have to be aware of.
John:
So first one is that for many, many years now, Phil Schiller, financially speaking, has not needed to work.
John:
Right.
John:
So it's not as if and he's never struck me as someone who craves more money and power.
John:
So.
John:
At any point, many people in his career, many people would have said, okay, I'm done.
John:
I'm a multi-gazillionaire.
John:
I have everything I wanted.
John:
I don't know how many years I have left on this earth.
John:
See you later.
John:
I'm retiring to go live on the beach or something, right?
John:
He could have done that years and years and years ago and and had a storied career that we would talk about for years.
John:
Like he's he has nothing to prove to anybody.
John:
It's not hanging in there.
John:
Just I just got to get one more win.
John:
Like he's you know, his his career and legacy is set.
John:
He is a massive success.
John:
right but people who work for apple and love apple love apple so i guess he didn't want to leave right but there's always for those type of people it's like well when when does that seesaw tip when does it become okay i love apple and i love working but you know i am getting older and i do have all this money and it's stressful to work at apple and i love it but it's stressful but i love it but it's stressful and i don't
John:
And the second thing is, since he's been there for a really long time, one of the things that you have to deal with in organizations like Apple that are big and powerful and do important things is that we've talked about this before.
John:
You want to...
John:
attract and retain top talent but if the extremely famous extremely competent extremely well-established people never retire they're clogging up the top part of the org chart and that means people who are looking for advancement internally might say well i can't go anywhere because phil is still there and if phil's still there then my boss can't advance and if my boss can't advance and i you know and so on and so forth right
John:
And also attracting new people.
John:
You know, I want to be hired into the marketing org.
John:
Oh, but I'm not going to do that because I know I'll have no room for advancement because Phil's never going to leave.
John:
And how are you going to displace Phil, right?
John:
Like, it's not like I'm going to, he's going to do a bad job one quarter and suddenly he's going to get booted, right?
John:
That's not going to happen.
John:
So the organization also has a reason to... You don't want to get rid of him.
John:
The organization probably didn't want to get rid of Johnny Ive.
John:
In fact, they got rid of Forstall because they had to pick between Johnny Ive and Forstall and they picked Johnny Ive, right?
John:
You don't want to get rid of him, but at a certain point...
John:
He is kind of gumming up the works a little bit and you want to get some new talent.
John:
And because if you don't, if you just leave those people in place, everyone else will just go to a different company.
John:
And when he does retire, there'll be nobody to take his place.
John:
Right.
John:
And by the way, related to this, you know, Apple is continuing to work on their diversity and inclusion and so on and so forth.
John:
And if you look at their leadership page, there's a lot of white dudes you see there.
John:
Phil leaving opens up a spot.
John:
Of course, spot is just filled by another white dude who is also a longtime employee.
John:
Right.
John:
So you might think that's not making any progress.
John:
You do have to get rid of the people at the top to make room.
John:
It just so happens that their bench is filled with a bunch of old white dudes.
John:
So they're working on it.
John:
Right.
John:
Baby steps.
John:
Obviously, it's not the positive move we think it could be to make room, but it's better than no motion because Phil was still there.
John:
you know it would be even worse the final thing is app store we're going to talk about a bunch of app store stuff soon um we've talked about a bunch of app store stuff all this summer we've talked about it for years for the entire history of the app store and those types of stories are seem to get more dramatic and more numerous not less the most recent flare-up over the hay thing right before wwdc was a perfect storm in the bad sense in the george clooney movie sense um
John:
of things that landed right on phil's doorstep and i'm not saying oh there was a big app store kerfuffle and then tim said okay phil i've had enough of this app store stuff you had a chance to clean up but get out that didn't happen right but if you combine all those three things that i just said
John:
He doesn't actually need to work.
John:
You do need to make room in the org, and the app starts a pain in the ass.
John:
I think that combines to both make Phil perhaps finally slightly more amenable to quote-unquote advancing.
John:
And it also makes Tim Cook, perhaps, lean a little bit harder on Phil to say, do you really want to keep doing this?
John:
Because I know the app store is a pain in the ass, and you're doing a good job, but it's such a pain, and you've worked so hard for so long.
John:
How do you feel about being an Apple fellow?
John:
You can never tell from the outside what the hell's going on inside Apple.
John:
I think I would imagine...
John:
you can obviously imagine a dramatic version of this where you know tim cook has hated phil schiller for his entire career and just waiting to get rid of him and you can imagine the totally benign one which is like this has absolutely nothing to do with anything that we know about and it's just entirely a personal decision on phil's part and everything in between there um but the bottom line is as marco said
John:
He's not gone, but he's less there than he was, which is sad for all of us who like Phil and like the old school Apple stuff that he brings.
John:
But it's also good in that it's hopefully letting in new ideas and new approaches.
John:
And that will add at least at least perhaps some more unexpected things.
John:
Now, Greg Joswiak is also a very longtime Apple employee, so I'm not sure how much of a fresh take he's going to have versus Phil.
John:
But it's a different person making decisions.
John:
And when different people make decisions, things can happen.
John:
When Phil took over the App Store, a bunch of stuff happened very quickly that was all beneficial.
John:
So we'll hope things keep moving in the right direction.
John:
So...
John:
I will miss him.
John:
I have a personal curiosity to know exactly what was happening, but I choose to believe that he is on his way to enjoying the pleasant retirement that he so richly deserves, assuming we are all not killed by a virus.
John:
Wow.
John:
We can just put that at the end of every segment.
Marco:
That's true.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
These new iMacs are great if we don't all get killed by a virus.
Marco:
Yep.
John:
That's true.
John:
Right.
Casey:
That is true.
Casey:
New iMacs, so new Intel CPUs, new AMD graphic cards, SSDs across the line, although you can option the Fusion Drive.
Casey:
There's also options for 4TB and 8TB SSDs.
Casey:
There's True Tone.
John:
Wait, wait, wait.
John:
You can option the Fusion Drive?
John:
I believe that's right.
John:
Yeah, on the 21-inch model, you can still get a Fusion Drive because it's the cheapest way to get tons of storage.
John:
No more iMacs come by default with a spinning hard drive, but one of them you can ask for.
John:
I was about to celebrate that.
John:
You can still ask for it.
John:
On the non-retina, by the way, 21.5 inches, the non-retina Mac you can get with a spinning drive.
Marco:
That's why every time they update the iMac and you could still buy it with that terrible old hard drive and the terrible non-retina screen, I always make fun of it.
Marco:
I'm like, why in this day and age can you still buy a spinning platter Mac and...
Marco:
or a non-retina mac and this time they i guess asterisk now but they mostly got rid of the spinning platter so finally every mac comes standard with an ssd they're still a little bit small but okay we'll work on that some other time and they're very expensive for the amount of space but again we'll work on that for some other time as well
Marco:
So, thank God the era of the spinning disc coming on new Macs is actually over.
Marco:
But who would have guessed that the era of spinning discs would end before they stopped selling non-retina screens?
John:
it's because that model is is totally in apple's weird world the price conscious model it's the it's the cheapest of everything they can put in it it's the reason fusion drive is still there it's like well what i've got a lot of photos but i don't have a lot of money well we have this option for your fusion and by the way fusion drive is a brilliant innovation that i i talked about as a fantasy years and years before it existed because you know me and file systems and
John:
And when it came out, it was a great idea that gave great value and great performance.
John:
You could get tons of storage for way less money and still get way better performance than a spinning disk.
John:
It's just that that era was a transitional period, and we've now left that era.
John:
And now SSDs are big and cheap, and Apple should just ship them everywhere.
John:
And so, you know, in this non-retina model, for the price-conscious people, like, oh, well, what if I want the cheap one, but I want a little more storage?
John:
Ah, try...
John:
upgrading how about try advancing to a fusion drive right because it's not a downgrade because you're getting way more space but it's not an upgrade either i'll tell you that uh and there and there has been a little bit weird with their software support and everything like that so
John:
And like you said, the non-retina screen, that whole iMac model probably needs to die.
John:
But that brings us to the other point about these new iMacs.
John:
When you say new iMacs, we don't mean new.
John:
If you look at them, they look exactly like the iMac has looked for eight years or whatever.
John:
It's the same case design.
John:
as far as i'm aware this is an open question maybe one of you the answer know the answer to same thermal design as the old 5k iMac right i think yeah i haven't looked at the teardowns but i i'm pretty sure that's true that that it's basically like it doesn't they don't all look like iMac pros inside yeah so then you know it does not have the iMac pro thermal so you still want something that will be relatively quiet while under load this is not it
John:
But it's got otherwise it's got a whole bunch of other pro-ish features like the nanotexture display, which used to be a still is a $1,000 option on a $5,000 monitor.
John:
which I do not like, by the way.
John:
I did not get the nanotexture one on purpose because I saw it in person at WWDC, and I did not prefer it.
John:
But if you do prefer it, you can get a new iMac, obviously the expensive 5K one, for a mere $500 additional cost with a nanotexture display.
John:
And that I mean, obviously, this is this is the old iMac.
John:
Right.
John:
So there's nothing there's nothing really new about them.
John:
They're just, you know, different insides.
John:
And of course, the nanotexture display and true tone with presumably the new sensors and yada yada.
John:
But it's not an entirely new industrial design.
John:
And we spent past couple of shows talking about mostly in the context of Big Sur touch based Macs.
John:
One of the things you will not do with the screen with a nanotexture display is be touching a lot.
John:
In fact, you're not supposed to do anything to it except for touch it with the special cleaning cloth that Apple gives you and only the special cleaning cloth that Apple gives you.
John:
So, I mean, this doesn't say much of anything about the future of touch Macs, because obviously if they're going to offer a touch Mac with a screen the size of a 5K iMac, it's going to have to be on some kind of hinge.
John:
thing like the surface studio pro or whatever and this is not that machine so the fact that you can get the nanotexture display on what i assume is the last gasp of this very old design of the iMac doesn't say anything one way or the other about uh touch base max but it is kind of weird and many people have noted this that
John:
On this iMac, you can get the nanotexture display, but you can't get it on the quote-unquote Pro iMac.
John:
It's not even an option on the Pro iMac.
John:
The iMac Pro has not been revised in any way other than, you know, the internals being bumped.
John:
I think they bumped the GPU recently.
John:
They got rid of the 8-core version, right, and the 10-core is the default now.
John:
They balance the line, so if you look at it, you say, oh, I see, the Pro 1...
John:
starts where the non-pro one leaves off except for the nanotexture display which is kind of weird yeah i'm calling it now the iMac pro will never be updated yeah oh and this one does the iMac pro have a 1080p FaceTime camera or no i didn't think so anyway they gave this thing a better this the 5k iMac has got an upgrade to its camera so it's a better camera for all of your uh coronavirus teleconferencing uh you know better resolution better light performance
John:
They're quote unquote studio quality microphones, which everyone says do not sound as good as the ones they put on the new 16 inch MacBook Pro.
John:
But whatever.
John:
This looks like if you if you need an Intel Mac and if you think you're going to need an Intel iMac and you think you're going to need an Intel iMac for a while because, say, the application you're running on it, you're not confident will even be ported to ARM or something.
John:
This is a great machine with the only caveats being it's not going to be as quiet under load as the iMac Pro.
John:
the case is in a dark as dark a color uh and you can't go up to you know 12 cores or whatever the the high core count and i think everything else about it is basically the same between this and the imac pro in terms of the the specs obviously the amount of texture so all this is to say if you want a really good non-pro imac get this machine it's really good if there was no uh you know arm transition we'd be saying
John:
We'd probably be saying, well, this is the last great iMac before they redesign them.
John:
In this case, what we're going to say is this is probably the last great iMac before they, A, redesign them, B, use a different CPU.
John:
So it's a boring announcement, but in some respects, if you were just waiting for that, you know, for a really good 5K iMac with great internals, you can spec this machine to be like that.
John:
And you can even get it nanotextured, but you shouldn't because it doesn't look as good.
Marco:
anyway see i disagree i mean i only saw the end texture at the same time you did it at the wbc thing last year when they had that that like demo uh building set up um but i thought it looked great what would turn me off from potentially ordering it though is as we discussed when you were ordering yours like how difficult would it be to get a fingerprint off of that thing or like
Marco:
You know, I'm a person, I cough and sneeze sometimes, and sometimes a little dot of grossness gets on my monitor, and I have to wipe it off with like a microfiber cloth or something.
Marco:
How hard would it be to clean those little dots of grossness off of the nanotexture?
Marco:
And I don't know, but I don't think I'd be willing to spend an extra $500 to find out, and then to have basically an uncleanable iMac screen in front of me, or one that's much harder to clean than flat glass.
Marco:
Um...
Marco:
Like, I love the idea of a matte screen.
Marco:
I would like it a lot more if it was somehow possible to have the matte texture be on the inside of the glass instead of the outside.
Marco:
Although I don't think that is reasonably possible.
Marco:
But anyway, otherwise, I'm actually pleasantly surprised at how much they did update for this.
Marco:
because they could have just done a CPU spec bump, and that could have been it.
Marco:
CPU and GPU, and that's it.
Marco:
And you would think for a product line that's about to go through an architecture transition here, you would think, as you said, this is probably the very last Intel iMac update that's going to happen, and you would think that they would just phone it in and only do a spec bump because...
Marco:
At this point, people who are real power users are looking at this and probably thinking, can I skip this and just wait for ARM?
Marco:
If you've been eyeing the iMac and you see this update, are you going to jump on it knowing that ARM is about to happen?
Marco:
Some people are.
Marco:
It's still probably a great computer.
Marco:
It's probably a great buy.
Marco:
But if you can wait, you probably are going to wait.
Marco:
And they know this, so they could have just phoned it in because the only people buying this are people who really can't wait, who really need something now and can't afford to wait up to another year and a half maybe for whenever the ARM one comes out.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
They could have phoned it in, and they didn't.
Marco:
To have things like True Tone in the display, the nanotexture option, to be messing around with the default storage and everything, that's pretty nice.
Marco:
The new microphone array, the FaceTime camera improvement.
John:
The same video card that's in my Mac Pro.
Marco:
Yeah, like, that's all nice upgrades that they didn't have to do, and they did them anyway.
Marco:
And that, like, I love seeing this.
Marco:
This is the kind of thing, like, again, like, during kind of, like, the dark old days of the, like, the touch bar generation, or the butterfly keyboard generation of MacBook Pros.
Marco:
It really seemed like Apple was kind of giving the Mac as little attention as possible.
Marco:
And that has turned around so much in the last couple of years.
Marco:
It really shows that they really have their eye on the ball for the Mac again.
Marco:
And they do upgrades and advances like this that aren't necessary.
Marco:
Again, this could have just been a boring CPU and GPU thing.
Marco:
But instead, they gave it a whole bunch of other stuff.
Marco:
And that's really nice to see.
Marco:
Now, I am disappointed that this does basically say the iMac Pro is dead.
Marco:
And I'm only holding myself together here because I'm waiting for the arm position to see what actually happens then because it's going to change everything probably.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
what they did you know you said john they basically just like moved everything down a notch in like what configuration you get for the base so the base model now comes with a higher configuration that it came with before but the options that are available the components that are in the iMac pro are the same that it launched with just now you get the 10 core instead of the 8 core etc so
Marco:
And that's, you know, they did the same thing with the Mac Pro in the past when it was going to be a while before the next one.
Marco:
They would do that same move.
Marco:
And so I think what this is saying is the iMac Pro is not being touched anytime soon.
Marco:
And therefore, if it isn't being touched anytime soon, it's probably not going to be touched before the ARM transition happens.
Marco:
So therefore, the iMac Pro is effectively dead, which, again, would make me very sad because I'm using mine now.
Marco:
It is still the best computer I have ever owned.
Marco:
If they never replace it with something like it, I'm going to be pretty upset.
Marco:
But I'm hoping that the ARM transition makes the iMac itself so good that maybe the iMac Pro wouldn't be necessary anymore.
Marco:
Or maybe they would actually still have something called iMac Pro that just has Apple Silicon in it that is really amazing and still has like the ridiculously over-budgeted thermal design so it can stay silent no matter what and still has all like the high-end workstation parts and other areas.
Marco:
I would love that.
Marco:
And I hope that's what they plan to do.
Marco:
It is a little bit disappointing, though, that it's going to be a while before there's a new one.
John:
I don't know if it's going to be a while.
John:
The iMac Pro isn't necessarily dead.
John:
It's just we don't think there's going to be another Intel iMac Pro.
John:
That's what we're saying.
John:
They bump the iMacs.
John:
It doesn't seem like there's going to be another Intel iMac Pro.
John:
We're all assuming that the next set of iMacs that are not Intel won't look like these because this industrial design is very, very, very old.
John:
It needs to be revised.
John:
When they revise it, it's essentially a marketing exercise because you can imagine them taking the exact same industrial design
John:
you know, some new industrial design, but that same one across the entire line and using it for the plain iMacs and then just decide, hey, if we put a Xeon in it, we call it the iMac Pro.
John:
But just like they did with the current iMac, the iMac Pro case is the same as the iMac case on the outside and on the inside.
John:
It's a little bit different.
John:
And the cooling system is very different.
John:
But we're all hoping that they take what they learn from the iMac Pro and put a robust cooling system into the next generation iMac and that that can accommodate Xeons, but also take that same cooling system
John:
Yeah.
John:
But yeah, hopefully they'll all be redesigned.
John:
The wildcard, of course, is touch.
John:
There's a special iMac with the hinge for touch, but the other ones don't have it.
John:
Who knows?
John:
We can all fantasize about what future iMacs will look like, but it seems like this is the end of the line for Intel iMacs, and the iMac Pro will...
John:
Still go out on top because you can still get an 18 core one and it's still the most powerful iMac you can get and yada yada.
John:
But, you know, the 5K iMac got one last chance to make itself better and still noisy, but it's way more powerful than it used to be.
John:
And by the way, real time follow up, the iMac Pro does have a 1080p FaceTime camera already.
John:
So that distinction between them is gone as well.
Casey:
I'll be sad if this was a one-and-done effectively for the iMac Pro.
Casey:
But, I mean, we still don't know what Apple Silicon is going to look like.
Casey:
And it could be that it's so darn fast that the distinction is, like you said, it's just a color of the case and little else.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
I'm still super excited.
Casey:
I don't want to get down on this tangent because we have a lot more to cover.
Casey:
But I'm still super excited to see exactly how fast this Apple CPU will be or the Apple CPUs will be in Macs.
Casey:
Because, you know, what we've seen so far is really an iPad CPU.
Casey:
And goodness only knows what a proper Mac Apple CPU will look like.
Casey:
But here's what it is.
Casey:
I do love this machine.
Casey:
Two-thirds of ATP hosts.
Casey:
I swear by the iMac Pro.
Marco:
And also, I think so much of whatever direction the product line takes in the future depends on the thermal characteristics of Apple Silicon.
Marco:
How do they work that out?
Marco:
How hot do their chips have to run to achieve certain levels of performance in different product lines?
Marco:
Whatever their flagship laptop is, currently the 16-inch, whenever there's an Apple Silicon version of that,
Marco:
How much power do they give that CPU?
Marco:
Is it a 45-watt part like the current one?
Marco:
Or can they get enough power out of a 30- or 25-watt part?
Marco:
Who knows?
Marco:
In the case of the iMac, right now you have pretty big, hot Intel CPUs running in the regular iMac line, but then the iMac Pro has a larger thermal capacity, a whole different design, in part to accommodate higher wattage Intel CPUs.
Marco:
What do they do with Apple Silicon iMacs?
Marco:
They can kind of choose whatever thermal envelope they want and just maximize whatever performance they can get out of that.
Marco:
But we don't know how hot will the Apple Silicon CPUs spike up?
Marco:
What kind of fan noise do we expect?
Marco:
How will they configure all that?
Marco:
Those are all massive question marks in how they're going to allocate their product lines and the power they give each one and the cooling they give each one, what kind of fan noise they will tolerate, what kind of fan noise they will deem unacceptable and will lower the power or build bigger heat sinks.
Marco:
We don't know.
Marco:
That's all stuff I'm super excited to see.
Marco:
I don't honestly care as much about how much does the new iMac with Apple Silicon outperform the old one in Geekbench.
Marco:
That to me is...
Marco:
interesting but that's not like the the heart of it what i want to know is like can they make a regular you know 27 inch imac that is so silent under load that the imac pro has a lot less reason to exist that i want to see so
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Marco:
Once again, linode.com slash ATP using promo code ATP2020 to get a $20 credit on new accounts.
Marco:
Thank you so much to Linode for hosting all my servers and for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So as we record, it is Thursday the 13th, lucky number 13.
Casey:
And over the course of today, there's been some activity.
Casey:
And I've been plowing through popcorn all darn day watching this all go down.
Casey:
so i'm gonna do my best to summarize please interrupt me uh because i'm talking way out of my comfort zone because we're talking about video games now something that marco and i know just so much about but um there's a very popular game called fortnight and it's been out for at least a few years now and it is on ios and you can buy like coins or points or what have you that you can spend in the game and
Casey:
Up until today, you had to do that via Apple's in-app purchase if you're playing it on an iOS device.
Casey:
Exactly what you would expect.
Casey:
So you have to, you know, use Epic who makes Fortnite would have to use Apple's APIs and would give Apple 30% cut, etc., etc.
Casey:
Well, today, a couple of, well, several interesting things happened.
Casey:
First of all, apparently there was an update to the game that came in outside of any sort of app update.
Casey:
So the game updated itself.
Casey:
And I would assume that that's because it's using like Unreal or whatever, some sort of game engine under the hood.
Casey:
But one way or another, the game updated itself.
Casey:
And as part of that update, it allowed you to buy these coins, credits, whatever's directly from Epic, the people who make the game.
Casey:
And they would give you a 20% discount against the IAP price if you went direct through them.
Casey:
Naturally, Apple didn't like that.
Casey:
And so Apple said, you can't have Fortnite in the App Store anymore.
Casey:
Those who already have it can still play it, but no new people can download it.
Casey:
And this isn't going to work for us.
Casey:
All of this so far was surprising, but not.
Casey:
You know, okay, it's a bold strategy, Cotton.
Casey:
That's a reference, John.
Casey:
It's a bold strategy, Cotton, but we'll see how it plays out.
Casey:
And Epic apparently knew exactly how it was going to play out, as we all did, because they immediately said, we're suing you, Apple, and they put up a 45-second, and I thought it was just hilarious, the absurdity of it.
Casey:
It seems to be...
Casey:
getting very mixed reviews from our kind of circle, but a very funny parody of the original 1984 Macintosh ad called 1980 Fortnite.
Casey:
And I found it quite enjoyable, even knowing nothing about Fortnite, but maybe you guys didn't.
Casey:
And so one way or another, Epic seems to be going to war with Apple, if not legally.
Casey:
I mean, they're suing Apple or they've brought a suit against Apple, but
Casey:
One way or another, they are definitely starting a war with Apple in the court of public opinion.
Casey:
I have some mixed feelings about this, but the more activity that we've seen lately, and some of it we've talked about on the show, some of it we will talk about on the show, some of it we haven't yet talked about on the show, a lot of things that Apple is doing with regard to the App Store is starting to seem more and more gross and more and more actively anti-competitive and
Casey:
And so on the one side, a lot of people have been saying, oh, well, you know, don't get too riled up about two complete corporate juggernauts getting into a fight with each other, which is true.
Casey:
But at the same time, I am very here for watching this all play out because this is something else.
Casey:
I don't know which one of you would like to start, but maybe Marco will make John suffer even longer and have you give your opinion as the other non-gamer.
Casey:
And then, John, you can tell us what the reality is.
Marco:
I think really, if we wanted to make Jon suffer, I should also try to summarize what Epic and Fortnite are.
Casey:
Yes, please.
Casey:
I would love that.
Marco:
I'm not going to do that, just for Jon's sake.
Marco:
But yeah, first of all, with the disclaimer that this all happened within the last few hours.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And so this is a, like, developing story.
Marco:
We're trying to comment on it as much as we can, like, in a somewhat intelligent way.
Marco:
But everything's changing all the time.
Marco:
So, for instance, they also have already gotten kicked out of the Google Play Store and have already sued Google, like, just in the last few hours.
Marco:
Like, so Google is also now involved.
Marco:
They had a suit ready to go for them as well.
Marco:
So this is a big thing.
Marco:
I think, I'm going to call this now, I think we're going to look back on this as one of the biggest stories of the year.
Marco:
This is a very big deal, and I think it's going to have very important outcomes, however it goes.
Marco:
And it's part of a bigger conversation, of course, but this is a big deal.
Marco:
And I'm also sitting here for popcorn because I really side with Epic on most of this.
Marco:
Not all of it, but most of it.
Marco:
And I say this as the biggest Apple fan, but Apple, when it gets so big that it no longer needs to compete, they get greedy and they get complacent.
Marco:
And we see the complacency aspect play out in things like the butterfly keyboard and the kind of crap Macs they shipped for a little while there in the middle.
Marco:
And they fortunately have fixed that.
Marco:
The greedy side we see in things like the pricing of SSD upgrades.
Marco:
And then we see it in a really big way when it comes to their services revenue push.
Marco:
And we've seen for a little while now...
Marco:
the way that they're willing to make their products worse or at least not as good as they could be in order to push services revenue.
Marco:
And this is going to continue to be and is definitely being a corrupting and corrosive influence on Apple and its products and its customer satisfaction because in order to extract more and more services revenue, you can make things that people like and are willing to pay for willingly and they do that.
Marco:
But you can also tighten the screws and extract rents and taxes from things that you have control over because of your position that you didn't necessarily earn, but that no one has a choice but to pay you.
Marco:
As we saw in some of the documents that came out of the congressional hearings a few weeks back, it sure looks like Apple makes a lot more money from the latter than the former in the services category.
Marco:
The App Store was by far the biggest slice of their services revenue.
Marco:
And services revenue is the biggest growing section of Apple's revenue.
Marco:
So they need that.
Marco:
They need that to not only keep their revenue growth going, but then that also keeps the investors and the stock market happier with Apple's future because they can show, well, even though our product growth is slowing in various ways because it's such a mature market, we can now grow in services.
Marco:
And what we've seen with these documents that have come out so far is basically that what that means is not necessarily like making another news plus magazine subscription.
Marco:
It's extracting more money from the app store, which is basically, you know, it's some of Apple making things that people want and getting paid for that.
Marco:
But it's a lot more of Apple extracting a tax on all transactions that go through this entire commerce ecosystem here because they can and because they can dictate that no one else can make any other choice.
Marco:
That is a recipe for just incredible greed and a lot of self-distortion on their part of telling themselves why they're doing the right thing and trying to tell the world that same thing and we can kind of see through it and they seem not to.
Marco:
And there's been a good discussion on a few recent episodes of Dithering about this, too.
Marco:
And this kind of plays into the cloud gaming thing with Microsoft xCloud that also happened since we last talked.
Marco:
A lot has happened since our last episode.
Marco:
You have a lot of Apple fans saying, well, Apple built the store.
Marco:
They deserve to be paid for it.
Marco:
No one should be in the App Store for free.
Marco:
I guess you don't count things like Facebook and Instagram, but okay, we'll...
Marco:
We'll rule out most of the biggest apps in the app store that are there for free because they don't have any anti-purchases for anything because they're advertising-based businesses.
Marco:
But okay, we're going to rule all that out.
Marco:
Suppose we actually say Apple deserves something for their store.
Marco:
I agree.
Marco:
Apple does deserve something for their store.
Marco:
30% of all transactions or 30% of most transactions and 15% of the rest, that's a lot.
Marco:
And when that's the only option, that's an overreach.
Marco:
Apple also has built something that has gotten so big that you can no longer make comparisons to things like game consoles.
Marco:
You can say something like, well, you know, if you want to have your app on the Xbox, you have to play by Microsoft's rules.
Marco:
And they take a certain percentage and have all these terms and they review everything.
Marco:
Yeah, that's okay.
Marco:
That's true.
Marco:
That's a game console.
Marco:
A phone these days, especially one of the two major phone OS platforms, is much larger in its role in society and much larger in its role in business than any one game console has ever and will ever be.
Marco:
You reach a point when you have a general-purpose computing device that an Xbox is something that is used solely to play games, or I guess occasionally DVDs or whatever, but pretty much it's a game console.
Marco:
It's a specialized piece of hardware that plays a special type of software.
Marco:
It doesn't have a lot of general purpose computing uses.
Marco:
People aren't logging onto their game console to pay their bills or to have video chats with their school.
Marco:
It's a specialized thing that is not becoming the default interface to an entire era of commerce and communication the way that computers have.
Marco:
And I think you can look at a similar example back when the phone system was being built.
Marco:
When the phone system was being built, we established all sorts of useful precedents of how to look at what's going on today with this.
Marco:
Because the phone companies basically form monopolies, and they built out a whole bunch of infrastructure all across the country.
Marco:
That was a very big, expensive project.
Marco:
They built it out, and they deserved to succeed commercially for that.
Marco:
And they did.
Marco:
They got paid handsomely.
Marco:
And they also abused the crap out of their monopoly and eventually had to be regulated and broken up and then eventually reformed.
Marco:
But we'll skip over that part.
Marco:
So they built infrastructure that got so big and became such a critical part of everyday life and modern commerce and communication and everything.
Marco:
It became so big that...
Marco:
They weren't allowed to simply dictate everything that happened to and with it anymore because it was too much a part of modern life.
Marco:
It got so big that it had to be regulated by some kind of –
Marco:
External government forces, antitrust regulations, consumer protection stuff, all that stuff had to come into play because it had gotten such a big part of society and so important to entire massive sections of the economy and of everyday life and businesses and everything.
Marco:
It was so big that it transcended its initial thing of this is somebody's private playground and it became this is an important part of society that needs protection and regulation around it.
Marco:
And I would argue, I am arguing now, that the iOS platform, in particular the phone, honestly the iPad hasn't gotten this big to matter so much to this degree, but the iPhone in particular, and Android, but Android works differently, but the iPhone has reached that point now where it is such a massive market.
Marco:
And so much of society and business and commerce and communication and just functioning in everyday life these days, so much of that relies on phones that you can't just say, well, Apple can do whatever they want.
Marco:
They built it.
Marco:
They can regulate what happened through it.
Marco:
most of the economy happens through it so it's you could say that when the iphone was really new and for years and years and years apple has earned all the money well some of the money they've made from the app store that's another discussion another time but you know for years you could make that argument they built the store they they should profit from it how they see fit and we have the right to go somewhere else
Marco:
We don't have the right to go somewhere else anymore.
Marco:
If you make certain kinds of businesses now, you have no choice but to have an app on iOS.
Marco:
You have no choice but to play by Apple's rules and pay Apple's taxes.
Marco:
Once you cross a certain size, it becomes necessary for consumer protection and for economic protection and for economic regulation and growth to take that control away from Apple to some degree.
Okay.
Marco:
so the only question to me is like to what degree is that necessary or to what degree is that warranted and i've made my position on this pretty clear in recent discussions on this topic you know back when hey thing happened a few weeks back like i don't actually want epic to be able to make their own app store i actually don't want sideloading either although that might be forced by oh god that's yet another thing we didn't have time to talk about but the whole uh you know uh tiktok being forced to sell and possibly wechat oh god that's
Marco:
That's a mess.
Marco:
We'll get to that another time.
Marco:
I'm not pushing for sideloading or for alternative app stores because I see there are other problems with that for the platform for potential security and everything.
Marco:
I'm hoping that's not where this goes.
Marco:
What I want to be the solution here is for Apple to get rid of the reader app distinction that allows Netflix to have their own payment system and just not talk about it, but not, hey...
Marco:
Get rid of that distinction and let any app do what Netflix does and let any app say in the app, you can go to our website to either sign up or purchase credit or whatever.
Marco:
that is a compromise that i think would remove almost all of these problems from apple but apple has shown now you know more than ever they are not going to budge on this unless somebody compels them to a government consumer protection agencies you know the european union u.s antitrust that all might compel them to
Marco:
But now Epic has sued them.
Marco:
And this is also going to push on that.
Marco:
Epic's a big company.
Marco:
And Fortnite's a big deal.
Marco:
It's a huge deal that I don't know anything about.
Marco:
I can't... I have never seen Fortnite...
Marco:
All I know is that it's a massive game that a lot of people play.
Marco:
It's a really big deal.
Marco:
And that isn't Epic's only game.
Marco:
Epic's a big deal.
Marco:
So for somebody this big, I mean, it's as if Microsoft or Google or Amazon sued Apple.
Marco:
This is such a massive thing.
Marco:
I think we're at kind of a breaking point now.
Marco:
Between the European Union looking into this, the U.S.
Marco:
antitrust hearings that I mentioned a minute ago, Spotify filing complaints in various governments and agencies about this, and now you have Epic suing them and having this massive public campaign about to happen or happening now, I think we're at a breaking point.
Marco:
And Apple, if they don't know that, they should.
Marco:
I think this is actually finally going to change Apple's rules.
Marco:
Because here's the thing, if Apple doesn't change anything, if they just keep going hard-headed into this, making everything not only the same strictness, but increasing strictness over time to extract even more money out of people in the App Store.
Marco:
they're going to be compelled to change it in a much bigger way.
Marco:
If they keep tightening their grip, they're going to lose control much more so than if they loosen that grip just a little bit...
Marco:
still like on their terms and i think if apple wants to preserve the app store as the only way to get software and ios they have to relax that netflix rule they have to let other they have to let everyone do what netflix does and they have to let people doing that say so in the app go to our website to sign up or pay that they would make less money from the app store for sure but
Marco:
I don't think they would make a ton less because Apple still has this amazing payment system that has a lot of really big strengths.
Marco:
They could still give themselves an unfair advantage, which is still anti-competitive, just less so, where they can still have only their in-app purchase be the thing that apps can actually build into the app.
Marco:
So what Epic did would still be against that rule.
Marco:
But it would be a lot more defensible on Apple's point of view if third-party things could even exist and be mentioned at all.
Marco:
Apple has a payment system that I think I and most developers would still elect to use.
Marco:
Because everyone has stuff built in and I don't have to try to convince people to trust me to enter their credit card stuff into my app and my weird system and all that stuff.
Marco:
I could just offer a payment sheet and have it be, you know, look at this, swipe here, double click here, whatever, and you're paid.
Marco:
That's great.
Marco:
I would gladly continue to use it.
Marco:
But Apple would have to try a little bit harder to keep a lot of other people around.
Marco:
Apple would have to try a little bit to actually compete, to actually maybe offer lower rates.
Marco:
Maybe they could offer better features.
Marco:
Maybe they could offer things like refund control that we were talking about last time we talked about this.
Marco:
Right now, Apple doesn't have to compete, and they don't.
Marco:
Like, Apple's internet purchase system is not as good as other things, not only about the percentage they take, which is so massively high, but also, again, as I was discussing last time we talked about this, about features, things like control from the company's point of view, having a close relationship with the customers, being able to see exactly who paid what and be able to issue refunds if it doesn't work out and you have some kind of customer service issue, like...
Marco:
Apple doesn't compete right now.
Marco:
Apple wins by fiat right now.
Marco:
They win by default because they've made rules that say that no one else can do it.
Marco:
Apple does a lot better and produces better things and ultimately usually makes more money when they are forced to compete and make their stuff actually better than the competition.
Marco:
That's true across their entire business.
Marco:
They do better both with output quality and with money when they have a bit of a fire under them and they have to actually compete in the market.
Marco:
And so I really, really hope, I'm rooting for Epic here, not to get what they want in the lawsuit because I think it's too much.
Marco:
I want Apple to have to relax that rule because that would make a lot of problems significantly go away.
Marco:
Not all their problems, for sure.
Marco:
They still have lots of anti-competitive behavior in the app, in the app store rules.
Marco:
They have lots of anti-competitive behavior in the OS, like that crazy thing they're doing with news permalinks in the latest.
Marco:
We'll talk about that some of the time, probably, too.
Marco:
That's ridiculous, right?
Marco:
They're starting to do a lot of really gross anti-competitive behavior.
Marco:
in the push for ever more services revenue.
Marco:
And so if something forces them to take a small step back and loosen that grip a little bit in a really important way, that would actually really benefit them and their customers and their products and the app ecosystem.
Marco:
I think that's a very good thing.
Marco:
And I've never... Before this, before this lawsuit, I didn't think it was going to happen.
Marco:
I thought...
Marco:
Yeah, it would be nice if some government makes them do it, but it's probably not going to happen.
Marco:
Now, we've been getting closer and closer to this recently.
Marco:
This is now, I think, the straw is going to break the camel's back.
Marco:
I think they're going to have to do something.
Marco:
And whether they're compelled to by a lawsuit or by a government or whether they finally just realize, okay, enough is enough.
Marco:
We're getting too much heat for this.
Marco:
We are at risk of losing much more control.
Marco:
We better just deflate this tension ourselves.
Marco:
I think there's a chance of something finally happening here.
Marco:
And if that's true, that'll be the biggest news to happen in the App Store in 12 years.
John:
All right, John.
John:
So a couple months ago, I think it was when we were talking about the Hey App Store thing, I wrote this blog post, my annual blog post.
John:
It occurs to me, and it occurred to me after posting it, a little feedback that I got that people might not know what the title was about.
John:
The title was The Art of the Possible.
John:
Do either of you know what I'm talking about in the title?
John:
It's a reference.
Nope.
John:
No, I wrote this title the same way Dan Morton puts movie references in his subheadings, thinking, of course, everyone will get that reference.
John:
But then all my feedback from his article let me do believe people didn't.
John:
Politics is the art of the possible.
John:
It's a famous saying.
John:
I forget who said it.
John:
it's trying to describe that like the, you know, what does it mean to be into politics?
John:
You're trying to come to an agreement that everybody can live with.
John:
Uh, and it's the art of the possible because if you can't come to any kind of agreement, you get nothing.
John:
Like if I can't, if I can't get all of us or enough of us to agree on something, then we get nothing and we don't go anywhere.
John:
So politics is the art of the possible.
John:
um and pretty much everything i wrote in this hey article i didn't spend much time dwelling on the details of it it's applicable to the current situation as well the the app store you know there's a lot of stakeholders in the app stores obviously apple there's the application developers there's the users there's the larger societal issues but those three are the main ones the apple developers and users right and
John:
What Apple has expressed publicly and through its actions for the most part, especially in the beginning of the App Store, I've been trying to get to is everything we know and love about the App Store.
John:
Marco talked about a bunch of it already.
John:
A place where an individual developer who nobody knows can make an application and sell it and actually make money from it because customers who trust Apple
John:
will be willing to try this app they'd never heard of from this person they'd never heard of called Instapaper because they trust that Apple is making sure that it's not going to destroy their phone or computer or steal all their money because I trust Apple and by proxy I now trust Marco and I'll use his app.
John:
That's the kind of virtuous cycle there, right?
John:
And then Apple is hoping that people with good ideas for applications like Instapaper write those applications for iOS because if people can get that application on an iPhone, then they'll buy the iPhone
John:
Because Marco's app makes the iPhone more valuable to customers.
John:
And that's the sort of virtuous cycle, right?
John:
Customers want to feel safe.
John:
Customers want to have access to good applications at a low price.
John:
Developers want to get access to customers who are willing to spend money and not deal with all the hassles.
John:
And Apple wants to facilitate that because then they'll buy the phones and Apple will get a cut of those applications they sell.
John:
That's how everything works together.
John:
That has been what has made the App Store the App Store.
John:
And I think that's still been Apple's vision.
John:
But...
John:
They've been drifting from that vision because of things unrelated to the vision, right?
John:
Nowhere in that vision is, oh, and by the way, let's make the stock price go up, right?
John:
Nowhere in the vision is, we're the biggest company in the world, but let's also double our services revenue, right?
John:
That's not part of the virtuous cycle, right?
John:
The money comes out of the virtuous cycle.
John:
I tried to look this up online, but apparently Ambrosia Software's website is down.
John:
But Ambrosia, I think it had an Aristotle quote or something.
John:
I don't know.
John:
It's not in English anyway, so it's translation, I imagine.
John:
But it was like,
John:
I was like, wealth doesn't come, virtue doesn't come from wealth, but instead wealth comes from virtue or something like that.
John:
Someone in the chat room will find the quote for me, but it's basically, if you want to make a lot of money, don't set out to try to make a lot of money.
John:
Set out to try to make good products that people like and want.
John:
And if you do that, money will be a side effect because if people like your products and enjoy them and you make good ones and you keep doing that, people will be motivated to give you your money.
John:
That is the story of Apple's success.
John:
Like this is not I'm not saying anything controversial.
John:
I think every single person who works and has worked for Apple and the modern era will be nodding their heads.
John:
Yeah, that's how we work.
John:
We make good products and that's what we're concentrating on.
John:
We just want to make what any more of our competitors just to make the best whatever that we can make.
John:
We want to top ourselves.
John:
We want to be the best of the best.
John:
And yeah, we make a ton of money because we make good things.
John:
It's so much simpler when you're just making a product, right?
John:
But when you have an ecosystem, the calculus doesn't change that much, right?
John:
That cycle I just described where, you know, we want all the great apps to be on our devices and we want developers to want to be on there because they'll access the customers who trust us and give us money and it just goes around and around.
John:
Everybody's all smiles, right?
Yeah.
John:
And Apple still seems very attached to that dream.
John:
But there's this fourth stakeholder, which is like, I don't know, profit motive, power motive, paranoia.
John:
Calling it greed is like, you know, it's not...
John:
I don't think there's a single person making these decisions who literally craves more money.
John:
Like everyone making all these decisions has more money than I know what to do with.
John:
And it's probably, you know, a hassle to them at this point.
John:
Like it boosts your millions.
John:
Like they have too much money.
John:
Right.
John:
Power is different than that.
John:
And that can come from being an underdog and wanting to make sure you make, you know, as God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again.
John:
Like Apple will never be beleaguered again.
John:
It's like, all right.
John:
take off ease off there right but that's not none of this stuff is part of the virtuous cycle right users don't care about that they just care apple stays in business right developers don't care about that developers just want access to the customers and they want you know to be able to develop for the platform and make money right and apple should just want everybody with a good idea for an app to put it on the app store and
John:
And, you know, obviously, they're going to make some money off of that and get a cut of it or whatever.
John:
But basically, also, their devices become more valuable because they have all the great apps on them.
John:
And that's the cycle, right?
John:
And in the past several years, Apple has been stubbornly refusing to get back to that politics and the art of the possible and say, is it possible to do what we want?
John:
With this set of rules, is it possible for every developer to really want to be on our platform and for those developers to be happy and for every developer who has a great idea for an app and for every developer like Epic that has an incredibly popular app?
John:
Is it possible for them to totally want to be on our platform?
John:
And is it possible for the customers to want to buy from them and trust them and get low prices and so on and so forth?
John:
And is it possible for Apple to facilitate that thing?
John:
Is that all possible with the current set of rules?
John:
And the answer increasingly has been no.
John:
uh i talked about this ages ago when i wrote something about ebooks for artist technical only was uh book publishers uh but apple was in the mix then as well not every business has 30 handy to give to apple like literally doesn't have it books are an example of that like there's a bunch of people who make money off books as authors as the publishers as the retailers there's not an extra 30 oh and by the way also the iphone vendor platform like there there's just not that much money to go around
John:
And none of those groups want to shave, you know, divide the 30% by four and shave that off of that.
John:
Like it's not, it's not viable.
John:
And then there are, you know, big companies that, okay, maybe 30% is available, but I'm a big company too.
John:
Epic's not that big, but anyway.
John:
microsoft right google you know or a company that may be very tiny but instead just decides they don't want to give apple 30 like base camp right if apple wants all the applications that they have to be the best that they can be but these developers say i'm not really jazzed about following these rules and
John:
Then we kind of get to be at an impasse.
John:
And even before like people doing essentially civil disobedience here where they're like, I know your rules.
John:
I'm breaking them on purpose to make you punish me.
John:
And then I'm going to use that punishment as part of a PR campaign slash lawsuit.
John:
Right.
John:
Even before we get to that stage, we were in a situation where.
John:
Apple versus developers in this constant struggle was making the apps worse for customers.
John:
And when every time Marco says, oh, I want people to have different alternative payment methods and I want Netflix to be able to tell people to go to Netflix.com to sign up.
John:
I think that's too little.
John:
Like that is that is like the, you know, begging for scraps.
John:
Apps would be better if you could sign up for them in the app.
John:
The Kindle app is better if you can buy e-books using your Apple ID.
John:
inside the app like we like forget about all these people and these companies or whatever and just look at it from a customer's perspective a bunch of things in the app store are worse than they should be and could be technically speaking because of business crap that nobody cares about so we've all been dealing with these weird apps that are worse in dumb ways ways that people probably don't even understand or think about and i don't want to say oh well okay you still can't sign up for netflix in the app but they should be able to tell you
John:
But you can go to Netflix.com.
John:
No, they should be able to sign up for it.
John:
Because from a user's perspective, why can't I sign up?
John:
It's a computer.
John:
I can sign up for Netflix.
John:
Why can't I buy Kindle books on my phone?
John:
How awesome is that?
John:
I have a cell connection.
John:
I want to read a book.
John:
Two seconds.
John:
I press Kindle.
John:
I go bop, bop, bop, and I get a book and I read it.
John:
And why can't I do that with all the trust and everything that Apple provides and the payment?
John:
Trying to explain to a regular person who doesn't know about all this stuff why you can't do that.
John:
I mean, either they're they're so young that they're just like, I just thought that's the way it always was or never really thought about it.
John:
Or their eyes will just start to glaze over.
John:
But the bottom line is this leg of this three legged stool here.
John:
Hey, make it so the apps are, you know, the customers love the apps and the best they can be.
John:
Apple has already failed in that regard because of this battle between Apple and developers usually getting screwed by having apps that are worse in stupid ways.
John:
And so the art of the possible is like, look, Apple, you're never going to get to or back to depending on how you look at it.
John:
that virtuous cycle if already you're making your product worse because of your fight with developers and then on top of that if your fight with developers escalates to the point where the developers are like not only do i not like this not only do i resent you for the things that you're making me do to be on your platform
John:
but i've had enough and i'm just i'm literally going to go to war with you like i'm a big company too and i'm not just going to grumble to you in private i'm not just going to complain in the press i'm going to file lawsuits and i'm going to try to get government to take you down i'm going to call on the refs essentially to say all right i don't i can't deal with you anymore i hate this so much that i'm i'm willing to get kicked out of your store not quite yet willing to say we're leaving the app store and not develop before because they still want to be in the app store
John:
but they want things to change so badly that they're willing to sort of harm their business to do it
John:
still not quite at the point now because these are big companies or whatever where they're willing to all do it a collective action like can you imagine if you know microsoft google facebook netflix hbo epic if they all made a joint press release and said we're all pulling our apps from the app store right no one would do that because you know hbo is going to pull out and netflix like oh hbo's gone let's stay in we'll be the only team in town like
John:
Because they're competitors, right?
John:
They're not going to collude with each other to punish another competitor.
John:
That's probably illegal for some reason or whatever, right?
John:
But we're not at that stage of collective action.
John:
But individual actors, whether it be a tiny company like Basecamp or a larger company like Epic, are deciding now to do more than just Grumble.
John:
That shows a complete breakdown in this virtuous cycle.
John:
It was already pretty broken.
John:
Their fighting was already causing the apps to be worse and the experience to be worse for our customers.
John:
And when the experience is worse for customers, people like iPhones less, right?
John:
And if Fortnite someday literally isn't available on the phone, that's going to make people like iPhones less.
John:
And we've talked about this before in the context of Facebook and Netflix and the game of chicken.
John:
Like as big as Epic is, if you could not watch Netflix or use Facebook on your iPhone...
John:
That would hurt Apple a lot, right?
John:
Obviously, it would hurt Netflix and Facebook a lot, too, but it would hurt Apple way worse, right?
John:
We're not at that stage yet, but this is a complete breakdown, right?
John:
And Apple's stance so far has been to cross their arms and say, you may complain, but
John:
but we are not budging and my argument has always been not to the refs and the government to say how they should regulate things because i have no faith that our current government can do anything competently as evidenced by look around you um and not to try to say uh here's some tiny modification that apple could make to appease people enough so they go back in their corners and grumble because i think the current situation is already crappy crappy my appeal has always been to apple
John:
to say you have lost the apple has lost sight of what has made the app store the app store they're already damaging their own prospects and their own potential future profits by insisting on rules that have been proven not to be satisfactory to all parties involved the current set of rules are damaging the situation i'm not even getting into whether it's like oh it's your right to do it or it's illegal i don't even care i'm not i keep not thinking about it talking about antitrust stuff just from a business perspective
John:
If they keep doing what they're doing, it's not working.
John:
Politics is the art of the possible.
John:
Don't just say, well, if I can't get everything that I want, then then that's it, because they'll just continue to damage their platform.
John:
If they care, just you don't have to appeal to say, oh, it's not fair.
John:
You're charging too much in the amount of money.
John:
It's just forget about that.
John:
Forget about fairness.
John:
Forget about greed or anything like that.
John:
You're doing the wrong thing for your products and platform.
John:
It is making your stuff worse.
John:
In the long run, it is going to hurt you.
John:
And it's hard to see that now where it's like because success hides problems, right?
John:
Hey, Apple, we're a huge company.
John:
Our stock price is at all time high.
John:
Service revenue is doubling.
John:
Everybody loves it.
John:
What do you mean we're doing the wrong thing?
John:
Every number I see and every chart I see says we're doing exactly the right thing.
John:
This type of stuff is, you know, the damage in this does not show up in the moment.
John:
It shows up later, right?
John:
You don't want it to get to the point where Facebook pulls off your platform, right?
John:
You don't even want it to get to the point where Epic gets kicked off your platform.
John:
It's already gone too far by that point.
John:
But you say, well...
John:
don't worry they'll be back facebook has said the same thing about advertisers boycotting them it's like in the end we have the power and they'll be back and the thing is if apple is right or if facebook is right that actually we can't hold this line because actually we do have all the power that is yet more evidence which i think is part of epic's plan yet more evidence that there we do need to call on the refs because if in fact
John:
a company can continue to do things that are harmful to developers and users, but good for it, and nobody can stop them.
John:
Nobody in the market, the customers don't have the power to use it, and developers don't have the power to do it.
John:
That shows there needs to be some government intervention because they are being harmed to society, and none of the other stakeholders can apparently stop them.
John:
I don't think that's exactly the case now.
John:
I think...
John:
uh apple's big developers do have enough influence to change things right uh if only because apple does not have 99 market share and android exists although android is modeled very much on the map store so there's or you know i don't want to get to the entry store stuff but the point is that if apple stubbornly refuses to see that what they're doing is a not the right thing for their business and b not working and
John:
then apple had better hope that developers like epic can change their mind because if epic and microsoft and facebook and netflix and hbo can't change apple's mind if apple really does have the power to just cross its arm and say no 30 of everything sorry you don't like it go someplace else
John:
then apple deserves to be regulated needs to be regulated for the good of society and that's also not a place you want to be just ask microsoft it's not great for your reputation and it takes a while to recover from that so i i look at the epic situation and it looks to me exactly like the hay situation exactly like every other argument it's like
John:
if developers if you don't like the app store go someplace else and it only matters until the companies that go someplace else uh have an effect on apple and may like what will it take what will take apple what will it take to see that people are not happy obviously apple can't see that the kindle app not being allowed to buy books is bad for apple they obviously can't see it's been that way for years and years and apple's like it's it's bad but honestly people should buy from the ibook store anyway that kind of stupid strategy checks thinking like
John:
epic fortnite whatever you should use apple arcade like every apple can't own everything can't be the best at everything and it's not okay to say well we don't care about kindle everyone should just buy everything from us like we cannot live in a world where everything is apple and apple is everything and they get a cut of everything like that's not a world that anybody wants to live in in fact that's not a world that apple should want to live in because your motivation to make good products disappears in that scenario
John:
arguably already happening in some areas i don't want apple to be doing things to its product to advance its other strategies oh we'll get more subscribers to our service revenue oh let's make virtual workout tapes right let's you know like that's not what i want from apple i know those are new ways to make money but honestly apple does not need to make more money at this point that's like i wish i could just sort of
John:
flip a switch and turn apple into a non-profit and see their decision making change right because it's you're not going to go out of business tomorrow you get billions in the bank you're the biggest company in the world stop stop doing what you're doing it's bad and wrong but tim cook is not does not listen to this podcast and cannot be convinced and the very worst thing that can apple happen to apple is they continue down this road and
John:
and eventually and and quote unquote win because i don't know anything about the legal things my impression is that i don't think these lawsuits are going to go anywhere but will be cited in any government action that takes place assuming a government ever does anything ever again having to do with anything but that could happen conceivably in a couple years government could start functioning again and if that happens and apple finds itself um on the receiving end of regulation as i've said in past shows historically speaking our ability to
John:
right laws that regulate technology sector is not great also like as much as i said that the ref should be called in our refs are not great in this area so yeah even even the eu with the gdpr and everything like even when your heart's in the right place and you got a lot of smart people doing it's really difficult to do it's much better if a company just wakes up and says you cannot hold the line in this you're already screwing up
John:
we all just want to go back to like it was in the beginning let's all be happy together we want developers to be excited to make money we want users to have awesome apps they can't get anywhere that are as good as they can be and are not limited by non-technical limitations and we want apple to be successful and make money from that that's how it was in the beginning and somewhere along the line we've lost our way so
John:
Apple, just wake up, man, because it's not that hard.
John:
It's not that hard to make a change.
John:
The last thing you want to do is have someone dictate the change for you because it comes from the government.
John:
It'll probably be dumb.
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Casey:
Yeah, we've said this a million times.
Casey:
I've said this a million times.
Casey:
It's so frustrating because it just seems so much more gross because we don't know what's being talked about inside.
Casey:
And all three of us know plenty of Apple engineers and all three of us are told constantly, yeah, the biggest critics, the biggest Apple critics are on the inside.
Casey:
And
Casey:
I'm not saying that's not true, but man, from the outside, it sure seems like Apple's just being greedy and selfish and has lost touch with what makes Apple, Apple.
Casey:
And I, you know, I keep thinking of 1980 Fortnite.
Casey:
The entire premise of that was...
Casey:
Apple is the machine now.
Casey:
They are the conglomerate.
Casey:
They are, you know, big brother.
Casey:
And they're the ones that are doing the gross things that, you know, a mere 35-ish years ago we thought were disgusting.
Casey:
Well, not Marco and I because we were barely alive at that point.
Casey:
But, you know, but maybe John had opinions about it back in 84.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And it's so tough because the thing, and I think we were talking about this last week, the thing that I like about Apple is that it seems like as a sports team, if you will, it's a good team to root for.
Casey:
They're not the ones that have won forever.
Casey:
They're not the ones that used to win but still think they're good.
Casey:
Oh, God, I want to make so many sports references, but I don't want to have the entire internet yell at me.
Casey:
But yeah, it's not like they're the Cowboys.
Casey:
I couldn't resist.
Casey:
The Cowboys used to be good.
Casey:
They're not good anymore.
Casey:
And hey, you remember football at all?
Casey:
But anyways...
Casey:
Apple is the team that stank and then got good.
Casey:
And some of us, more than others, but all three of us to some degree, were there for that team ascending.
Casey:
You know, it's like, oh, the last dance that came out a couple of months ago about the Bulls was so good.
Casey:
And it was about how the Bull, in part, about how the Bulls stank.
Casey:
And then Jordan came along and Phil Jackson came along and they got good.
Casey:
And...
Casey:
having ridden the wave from bad or maybe in Marco and I's case, mediocre to good was super exciting.
Casey:
But now I feel like we're, we've crossed over the top of the bell curve and we're now going downward on the other end.
Casey:
And that's not a good feeling for someone who really likes his team.
Casey:
I'm having a real hard time reconciling that because like, you know,
Casey:
I don't know, the butterfly keyboards never got to me as much as I think it got to you, Marco.
Casey:
And that doesn't make me right or wrong, but that's another example of the team really kind of failing.
Casey:
And I just feel like over the last year or two or maybe four or five, what was a machine and a team that was firing on all cylinders maybe isn't anymore.
Casey:
And that's a tough thing to come to terms with.
John:
The history of people making 1984 parody ads where Apple is the big brother is a long and storied history.
John:
This is not the first time this has happened.
John:
Even when it happened there with IBM as the big brother figure in the original Macintosh ad, that type of advertisement and marketing where you position your competitor as a
John:
as being dominant and powerful and trying to crush opposition like in business like that's generally the case you you're the reason they're called your competitors because they're competing with you and you like to say well they're big and mean and we we want to do the right thing and they want to control you right and apple given their tendencies of wanting to
John:
have things just so and have a system that is limited in ways that they think is beneficial to the product is very often put up as big brother oh i've got to do things the apple way i can't build my own macintosh i have to buy them from apple and they're so overpriced right
John:
or you know the app store the walled garden i can't just load any software on i can only put the certain apple stuff on oh i can't just use a regular mouse i gotta buy an adb mouse because apple has to have everything their way apple wants to control everybody apple is big brother they've been calling apple big brother since the company was going you know it was practically going out of business it was still big brother because you know there are depending on what constituency you're coming from you're like i want to do a thing apple won't let me do a thing therefore apple is bad just having apple be in the big brother position is not necessarily
John:
bad writ large it may be bad from one company's perspective or even bad from a user's perspective say you want to build your own mac and apple won't let you apple is bad from your perspective but from a different perspective you say well that's what makes apple stuff apple stuff they they have control of the hardware and it makes their computers have fewer problems and that's why people like them you may not agree with that because you want to build your own pcs but there are a
John:
right so there's always going to be that divide of apple is doing a thing this other constituency does not like it and finds it limiting and controlling but there's another constituency that likes it and apple's position has always been yeah we're doing this thing that we're doing even though a bunch of people don't like it because we think it makes our products better and we think by having better products we will be more successful and in the high-minded thing of like
John:
in the end we really just do want to do want to make great products like we don't just want to make money we just don't just want to be successful like
John:
this warped American mindset that the ultimate lofty goal of every company is simply to make money.
John:
Apple has, A, never professed that, and B, I don't think they believe it, if only because everybody who runs the company doesn't need money.
John:
Like, they're not doing it, and maybe they're doing it to win a corporate game or whatever, but at most levels, people who work for Apple really do want to make good products.
John:
And sometimes, in making those products, you have constraints and rules that either your competitors don't like, or
John:
Or, and many times in Apple's histories, large portions of customers don't like.
John:
Again, if you want to build your own PC, you're going to spend decades not liking Apple because they don't let you do that.
John:
But there is another constituency that does like you for doing that because it makes the computer simpler.
John:
And those are Apple's customers.
John:
Same thing with the iPhone.
John:
Android offers a different operating system with a different set of trade-offs that most people like because it's cheaper and because you can have a diversity of hardware.
John:
You don't have to buy your phones from Google or whatever.
John:
Android sells many more phones as if Android is an entity.
John:
But there are more Android phones than Apple phones.
John:
But the trade-offs that Apple makes with the iPhone appeal to a certain set of customers.
John:
In particular, lots of customers who want to spend money on software, which is good for developers, right?
John:
so i think that dynamic of apple as big brother and apple quote-unquote doing the wrong thing and are we the baddies it's very important when analyzing that to think just because someone doesn't like what you're doing and especially if they're a competitor or wants to be a competitor like epic wants to have its own app store and take its own cut of everything is in fact epic does have its own store that competes with steam right just because a company like that is mad at you doesn't necessarily mean that what you're doing is wrong
John:
you have to always look at it from the lens of like, are we doing this thing that people are mad about?
John:
because it makes for better products because it makes our products more valuable and useful and desirable to customers which in turn leads those customers to want to buy our stuff which in turn leads to our success like it's such a simple formula apple professed it all the time every earnings call every time someone asks like we don't think of it that way we think we just want to make the best products and nothing about the situation with the app store can be backed up by that oh we just want to make the best products really you
John:
You think it's the best product when I can't buy an e-book in the Kindle app?
John:
Is that the best product?
John:
Well, service revenue.
John:
No, what happened?
John:
What happened to the reasoning?
John:
It's right there in front of you.
John:
They have to bail on it.
John:
And that's how you know when you're the baddies.
John:
It's not because someone puts you into 1984 at his big brother.
John:
It's because if your reason is not simply this makes the product better for customers, which in turn makes the customers want to be our customers, which in turn gives us money, blah, blah, blah.
John:
It's a straight line.
John:
That's how it's supposed to work.
John:
If you deviate from that, it's time to say, are we the baddies?
John:
Or more importantly, like I said, it's time to say, is this working?
John:
Again, what I always say to Apple, is it working?
John:
Is this going the way you want it to go?
John:
Do you have the very best apps that are the best they can be and customers love it and developers love it?
John:
That hasn't been true for a really long time.
John:
I feel like I'm talking in circles.
John:
We're not going to have time to probably dive into the cloud gaming stuff here, but I think I can briefly touch on it.
John:
We didn't really talk about the gaming aspect of Epic just because it's not really an issue.
John:
Although there is an interesting side conversation about the ability to update apps after Apple approves them.
John:
which is a thing that has been available to all developers through various means, but it doesn't change the fact that Apple's going to boot you out of the store.
John:
And there's really no way that Apple can solve that problem unless they also solve the halting problem.
John:
So anyway, the cloud computing thing.
John:
We've talked about this when we talked about Google Stadia, which was the last big entry on the show that we discussed.
John:
Briefly, the idea is instead of buying a thing that runs games and installing it in your house and using it,
John:
Instead, the thing that runs games is somewhere else far away from you in the data center.
John:
And...
John:
you merely access it remotely.
John:
You see the pictures that are being generated by that thing in a faraway data center and your control inputs are sent to it.
John:
And in response to your control inputs, you see the results.
John:
People call it streaming gaming, remote gaming.
John:
It's basically, it's like you have a game console or a gaming PC, but it's not in your house.
John:
It's really, really far away.
John:
And there's a bunch of tactical hurdles to that.
John:
And as we said, when we discussed it on Stadia, hopefully someone will find the episode number.
John:
The reason people keep trying to do
John:
something like this is because there are lots of benefits both financial and you know technological if it can be done in a way that is satisfactory thus far it's good for some kind of games it's not really good for other kinds of games but
John:
As we said, when Stadia came out, people are going to keep trying to do this because the upsides are just too big.
John:
So there's a bunch of things to do this.
John:
Google Stadia, NVIDIA GeForce Now, Microsoft's xCloud was the codename.
John:
I forget what it's called.
John:
Microsoft.
John:
I don't know.
John:
Some of the chat room will get it.
John:
Microsoft Xbox gaming, streaming, whatever.
John:
Microsoft xCloud.
John:
It's a market that's not going away.
John:
It's also a market that Apple didn't think about when they made the App Store rules.
John:
It didn't exist when Apple made the App Store rules and it came into being and Apple did not change the App Store rules to allow for it.
John:
And so all of these services are against the App Store rules.
John:
Now, in some respects, like, okay, well, people come up with new technologies, new business plans, new schemes for doing things all the time.
John:
And it's okay to give Apple a little bit of time to think about it and how they want to handle it.
John:
But at this point, they're enough of these services are out, and none of them are allowed on the App Store.
John:
And so Apple is once again...
John:
being left out of a thing that everybody else is doing.
John:
Customers clearly want these services because people keep making them.
John:
So if someone is signing up for them, right?
John:
And if you own an iOS device,
John:
You might want to do this, right?
John:
And if you can do this on your iOS device, it makes that device more valuable to you.
John:
And if you can't do it on your iOS device, it might make you consider a different product.
John:
All of that is bad for Apple.
John:
Apple wants all the apps that anyone cares about to be available on their phone.
John:
Good quality apps from big name companies like Microsoft and Google and Sony and, you know, whatever, like in the gaming realm, like these are not minor players in the market.
John:
Epic for that matter, right?
John:
This entire category of product seems to be excluded, not because Apple thinks it will make its products worse, but because they think it's a threat to their ability to extract money from everybody who goes to the app store, because we don't want these little miniature app stores hanging around.
John:
That's the reason it's against the rules.
John:
Oh, so you're going to go into the streaming thing, and then within the streaming thing, you can get a bunch of games.
John:
Like, you know, Epic wants to have its own little store, its own little Epic store where you buy games.
John:
And Apple's like, whoa, you can't make many app stores inside the app store.
John:
That's been a rule since forever.
John:
That way would lead to madness.
John:
All right, fine.
John:
Right.
John:
But Apple's job is figure out a way for your users to be able to use these services.
John:
So that the iPhone retains its value and doesn't become, oh, that's the place where I can't use any of the streaming gaming services.
John:
Because even though they're not super popular now, the fact that people keep trying to do it and the fact they keep getting better means that someday, eventually, streaming gaming is going to be an important enough application.
John:
It would be as if iOS did not support any streaming video services because the iOS app store had come to fruition at the time before streaming video services.
John:
And when streaming video services came along, Apple said, well, that's like having a miniature store where people will be able to, like...
John:
you know, subscribe and sign up for a service or buy movies.
John:
And we don't want to do that because we already have our Apple TV plus service.
John:
So we don't want any of those things in our platform because we already have a place for you to buy all that stuff.
John:
Can you imagine an iPhone that could not do streaming video because of some BS business reason to protect revenue for Apple?
John:
That is a less valuable, less useful product.
John:
And in the long run, it would have made Apple less money if the iPhone couldn't play Netflix.
John:
Now I'm not saying streaming gaming is the next Netflix because honestly, I think the technology is still not there.
John:
But it's getting better all the time and a bunch of these services are out.
John:
And if Apple's rules do not allow for it and they don't change their rules to allow for it or come up with some kind of compromise with all the companies by recognizing, hey, this is the thing.
John:
We'll have to come to some agreement where we can work out.
John:
Again, the art of the possible.
John:
Google, NVIDIA, Microsoft, tell me what it's going to take to get you onto the App Store.
John:
Let's find something that we can both agree on.
John:
We're not going to both be super happy, but we're also not going to say, nope, it's against the rules and we're not changing the rules at all.
John:
And we're going to play a game of chicken with you.
John:
And in this game of chicken, Apple basically lost because all the services said...
John:
We're mad at you, Apple.
John:
But guess what?
John:
We're not going to be on your platform.
John:
We can't.
John:
You won't let us on your platform.
John:
We could not come to some kind of an agreement where we can be on your platform.
John:
So we're just not on your platform.
John:
So you get an iPhone.
John:
You can't use any of these services from it or your iPad or whatever.
John:
And maybe Apple thinks that's a victory.
John:
Ha ha.
John:
Apple Arcade will win out.
John:
Apple still does not quite understand gaming for a variety of reasons that we don't have time to get into.
John:
But I think getting rid of all these streaming services on gaming services on iOS devices does not really increase the attractiveness of Apple Arcade.
John:
And in the end, it would be better for Apple if it could find some way to accommodate these type of applications on its platform.
John:
Just deciding that they're not going to and declaring victory when those things leave your platform is not a winning strategy.
John:
So it's the same argument over and over again.
John:
I really wish...
John:
Apple would come around on this sooner rather than later.
Marco:
Thanks to our sponsors this week, Linode, ExpressVPN, and Mac Weldon.
Marco:
And thank you to our members who support us directly.
Marco:
You can learn more about that at ATP.fm slash join.
Marco:
Thank you, everybody, and we will 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 Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Marco:
So that's Casey Liss.
Marco:
M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T.
Marco:
Marco Arment.
Marco:
S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A Syracuse.
Marco:
It's accidental.
Marco:
They did it.
Casey:
So long.
Casey:
There was news a couple of weeks ago, maybe a month ago, that the three pedal Accord is dead.
Casey:
I'm sorry, John.
Casey:
So my question is, let's assume, and I'm sure you're going to blow a bunch of holes in this question, but I'm going to, because I'm an idiot, I'm going to try one more time to ask you a question and see if you'll answer a hypothetical.
Casey:
If you were to buy a new car, a new car today, what would you buy?
Marco:
I'm going to buy an Accord six-speed.
Marco:
Because today it's still sold.
Marco:
Okay, right.
Marco:
So thanks for Syracusing that question.
Casey:
The funny thing is I left a parenthetical in the show notes for myself, but I chose not to read it.
John:
The parenthetical... The listeners can't see the show notes, Casey.
Casey:
The parenthetical reads, assume for the purpose of this question that the six-speed Accord is unavailable new and you want something new.
John:
So I guess we go into the future when they're all sold?
Casey:
Correct.
Casey:
They are all sold.
Casey:
But it's otherwise the lineup of cars available is the same as today.
John:
So you know, based on my past actions, what actually is going to happen here.
John:
I'm going to keep using my extremely low mileage, well-loved six-speed Accord for way longer than most people think I should, just like my Mac Pro.
John:
While I wait for something that I find a satisfactory replacement.
John:
I mean, that's totally on brand for me.
John:
And I've proven that I can do it with something that ended up being about as expensive as a car.
John:
That's honestly my answer.
John:
It's like, I like my car the way it is now.
John:
Obviously, if my car got into an accident or something, I needed to get another one.
John:
I have available to me other copies of essentially my same car, if not identical than the current generation one.
John:
Those will exist in the market and will be available for me to purchase.
John:
So it's not like I can't get that.
John:
So there's nothing really to stop me from using a six-speed Accord for a very long time.
John:
if you told me i wasn't allowed to some sort of game show rules like but you're just not allowed to have one you have to pick some other car then i would you know there are other there are a few but other six speed cars that i considered when i bought my accord like the the mazda 6 stick shift now i i don't know if they're also getting rid of the stick shift they probably are but um assuming they weren't that's what i would look at and if i can't get an accord i can look at a used one of those right and if you continue to narrow the game show rules saying okay well you can't have a six speed accord new or used and you can't have a mazda 6
John:
six-speed newer use it's like what are you trying to get me to do like you're just going to eliminate every sedan with four doors
John:
That has a stick shift until I pick a different car.
John:
Like, that's not much of a fun exercise, right?
John:
The real answer is that I will continue using my cord for way too long.
John:
And eventually, if there are no more stick shift four-door sedans available for me to purchase in any reasonable way, because I keep my car so long that even the used ones are super old, like, I'm going to replace it with electric, right?
John:
That's the goal, right?
John:
Oh, thank God.
John:
Like, I mean, what else are you going to do?
John:
But right now, there's no electric...
John:
that fits my criteria because my price range unlike the price range of my max is very very low when it comes to cars like i've never spent more than 25 grand on a car in my life uh so don't expect me to hop into a model s even though i think it's a great car but i do kind of just like tesla anyway um and all electric cars are super expensive name name an electric car that has four doors and you know is like basically like an accord but electric they're all way out of my desired price range for cars so
John:
If I keep using this Accord until it's 15 years old, hopefully by then I will be able to get, hell, it might even be a Honda, a reasonable electric four-door car.
John:
And that's what I will replace it with.
John:
But that said, I'm not entirely giving up on the whole six-speed thing.
John:
Obviously, they're disappearing from cars all over the place.
John:
But the places where they remain and the places where they may even spring back up are weirdo cars for weirdos.
John:
So like specialty, you know, weird specialty cars, especially if like, if my kids go off to college, I don't need a four door anymore.
John:
I, you know, the, the, what do you call it?
John:
The, the civic type R and the civic SI has also gone to, but anyway, it'll, it'll be back.
John:
Like in the next generation of civics, I think they still have sticks.
Casey:
I would love to see you driving a type R. That would be, I mean, obviously not this generation, right?
John:
But generations change.
John:
Honda's cars change.
John:
And you know, like I, what I'm saying is I could find myself in a smaller car.
John:
when the kids are gone i don't need a big accord anymore if they're out living on their own right and and this is the timeline i'm thinking about for replacement it's like well how long i'm going to use my accord like my accord what is it it's a 2014 and it's got under 30 000 miles
John:
Yeah.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Yeah.
John:
I put a new battery in it recently.
John:
The water pump and alternator and air conditioning compressor are going to go eventually.
John:
Maybe, you know, in seven years, I'll need a new clutch.
John:
But, like, it's possible to keep, you know, and it's not hard to find Honda Accord parts, let me tell you.
John:
It's possible to keep this car going for a surprising amount of time, assuming one of my children doesn't crash it when they're driving.
John:
So my current plan is...
John:
I haven't been looking for a new car.
John:
I'm still not looking for a new car.
John:
History has shown that I tend to skip Accord generations because they always come out with a generation that I hate and I have to wait five years for it to be gone, but then they come out with one that I like.
John:
So, I'll just be sitting back here, driving my car that I like, hoping that a stick shift Accord comes back, and if it doesn't, by the time I'm really ready for a new one, maybe a $30,000 electric will be on the market, and I'll buy that, and it'll be the most expensive car I ever bought, but I won't get the nanotexture.
LAUGHTER
Casey:
You know, it's not in your price range of $25,000, but I think we've briefly mentioned on the show that my parents got a Chevy Bolt probably about a year ago now.
Casey:
As much as I want to say it's a piece of garbage, it's actually pretty nice.
Casey:
And given how relatively affordable it is at about $40,000, which is a crud load of money, don't get me wrong, but given what it is, I think it's reasonably affordable.
Casey:
It's actually a very good option for you, and hopefully over time it would get cheaper.
Casey:
I've heard the eGolf, which is discontinued now.
John:
Why do you keep naming these cars that I would literally never own or drive or be seen in or near?
John:
Are you kidding me?
John:
A Bolt?
John:
I would buy a stick shift Civic before that.
John:
I would buy a used stick shift Civic before that.
John:
I do not like anything that looks like an SUV, eliminate.
John:
Anything that looks like a turd, like the Bolt, eliminate.
John:
No Prius, no Bolt, no hatchbacks.
John:
You know what, like, just because I drive an Accord, you think, oh, he doesn't care what a car looks like.
John:
I do.
John:
I like how the Accord looks.
John:
It looks like a car.
John:
It's a car-shaped car.
John:
Got a dog-shaped dog and a car-shaped car.
John:
The Bolt is not, I don't know what shape the Bolt is, but no.
John:
No Nissan Leaf, no Bolt, no E-Golf.
John:
I don't even like that weird Honda electric thing that Marco likes.
John:
The E?
John:
yeah it's not that's not to my taste not saying these are bad cars they're just not for me not for me uh speaking of dog shaped dogs this is a complete tangent uh i have been getting a lot of pressure from the homestead that it's a dog time for the list family and i'm resisting already hmm you're getting a pressure from where is this pressure coming from is this pressure from the little ones or the larger one
Casey:
The larger one, which is in vertically larger and the elder, the larger of the two littles.
John:
So is this a collaboration between Aaron and Declan?
John:
Like who's the leader in this?
Casey:
It's more Aaron than Declan, but he's definitely on board.
John:
You're doomed because it's only a matter of time.
John:
If it's just the kids asking, you'd be like, ah, kids, they always want things.
John:
But if it's your wife asking, you can get a dog.
Casey:
Yeah, it seems like it's going to happen despite my protestations.
Casey:
It's just a matter of time.
Marco:
I know John has a different opinion, of course, but I will say having a small, non-shedding dog has its benefits.
Casey:
Oh, it would have to be a non-shedding dog.
Casey:
I will not stand for dog hair everywhere.
Casey:
And plus, I don't think I'm allergic to shedding dogs, but I know I'm allergic to cats, and I know it's not apples to apples.
Casey:
But even beyond the allergies, I just don't want freaking dog hair everywhere.
Marco:
Yeah, there's a lot of practical real—I mean, look, I love any dog, but there are a lot of practical benefits to small, non-shedding dogs.
Casey:
Oh, yeah.
Casey:
So when I was growing up, we had, well, when I was really little, we had a standard poodle, then a Wheaton Terrier, then a different standard poodle, and then a cockapoo, which is a Cocker Spaniel poodle.
Casey:
And I think I would want something more along the cockapoo size class, which is a little bit bigger than hops, but not by a lot.
John:
Cockapoo is a lot bigger than hops.
John:
Have you seen hops?
John:
Yeah.
John:
Hops is tiny.
Marco:
It depends on the cockapoo.
Marco:
That breed has a wide size range.
John:
Yeah, I see a lot of cockapoos around here, and they're not hop size.
Marco:
They can be typically between about 20 and 40 pounds.
Marco:
They span a very big size range.
Casey:
Hops is like 15 pounds, right?
Marco:
Yeah, yeah.
Casey:
Yeah, the one that we had, I think, was in the 20-pound range.
Casey:
But yeah, two of my brother-in-law's... Brothers-in-law?
Casey:
Brothers-in-law?
Marco:
Brother-ins-law.
Yeah.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Brother Inslaw.
Casey:
Uh, they have dogs.
Casey:
One has a German shepherd, like purebred and so on and so forth.
Casey:
And, and I, I like the dog.
Casey:
I would not want that to be my dog.
Casey:
The other one is just a mutt, a rescue mutt.
Casey:
Um, and I've been around both of them a lot and I don't think I'm allergic to either of them.
Casey:
So I don't think allergy is the problem, but especially with the German shepherd, I just do not want that much damn hair in my house.
Casey:
No, thank you.
Casey:
Yeah.
John:
German shepherd's a whole other category.
John:
Like,
John:
I had a non shedding dog and a shedding dog.
John:
And if you don't want dog hair, don't get a shedding dog.
John:
But I have to say, having had both of them, maybe it's just like because now I've got the other kind.
John:
not having to groom my dog and having my dog essentially we were uh i was thinking about this musing about this out loud when we're all stuck here in coronavirus and getting like at home haircuts or worrying about not getting at home haircuts my dog always looks perfect never needs to be shaved or styled or groomed or it's just always always perfect can you imagine if people like that you didn't need to get a haircut and your hair always looks absolutely perfect that's my dog she always looks perfect
Marco:
Except that every time you sat on something, you'd get up and your hair would be all over it.
John:
Her hair is all over the house.
John:
That's true.
John:
But I'm saying like in terms at this point in my life, like she looks perfect.
John:
The house is covered in hair.
John:
And the other first point in my life, it's like, well, it's great that there isn't dog hair or everything.
John:
Although, by the way, depending on the dog.
John:
Dogs can be stinky too.
John:
And although stink doesn't show up, it's still there.
John:
So anyway, that was nice because not a lot of shedding, right?
John:
Great.
John:
But the hassle of having to remember to groom the dog and be procrastinating about grooming the dog and having your dog become overwhelmed with fur, which is a phenomenon that Marco is very well familiar with.
John:
We feel bad because the dog can't see anymore.
John:
it's just a giant fur thing and then getting it shaved the hassle of having to bring the dog in like i find it hassle to give myself haircuts and now to have it as another being that i'm responsible for haircuts to i already had to do it with the kids and now i have to give the dog a haircut it's a nice break to say yes we'd have to bring the dog to the vet and everything and walk the dog and do all the other things but one thing we don't have to do with the dog is get the dog a haircut so yeah anyway if you don't want shedding yeah get you know get a less sheddy dog because
John:
No dogs are zero shedding.
John:
No humans aren't serious shedding either.
John:
Like there is going to be some hair in your house, but as long as you're allergic, you'll live with it.
John:
My only thing that I would ask you,
John:
My one request to you kind of like, well, it's not like the live picture request, because honestly, what do you care what I think about your dog?
John:
But I think there is an epidemic of big, goofy dogs with curly hair.
John:
I know people love that.
John:
It's part of the Doodle series.
John:
It's like pool mixed with something.
John:
Right.
John:
But I just I think there's I think there's too many of them.
John:
I think we need more dog variety.
John:
in the world because if i see another this is coming from the guy who insists on a dog-shaped dog but yes okay let's let's have me do the non-dog-shaped dog so we have no no i mean arguably these doodly dogs aren't particularly dog-shaped either they're just big goofy pieces of fried chicken
John:
have you seen the fried chicken thing it's like identify this picture is it oh yes is it a cockapoo or if he's a fried chicken that's actually very hard to tell and I also think personally speaking that it's nicer to pet a dog that doesn't have like a really really tight perm
Marco:
That's true.
Marco:
I'll agree with that.
Marco:
So I agree with some of what you're saying.
Marco:
So first of all, on the haircut versus shedding thing, I think while having to get your dog a haircut is inconvenient, it's also like a once every three months kind of thing as opposed to having to vacuum up dog hair constantly every day.
John:
I think it's a very... You don't have to vacuum it every day.
John:
You just learn to live with it.
John:
Part of the stage I'm in in my life is I'm not cleaning up human's poop anymore.
John:
I'm still cleaning up a dog's poop.
John:
But the fact that there's dog hair all over my house...
John:
I'm able to live with, I mean, I think I would always be able to live with it.
John:
Some people just can't abide by that.
John:
They're just like, I can't have dog hair all over my house.
John:
Fine.
John:
You do you, right?
John:
Some people don't care at all.
John:
I care a little bit, but I find as I get older, I care less about dog hair all over my house.
John:
Yeah.
John:
So that's, you know, you know, how, how nice to, obviously we look at your car cases.
John:
It's clear that you want to keep your things very nice and neat.
John:
And by the way, if you're going to bring your dog to the vet in a vehicle, one of your vehicles, if it's not going to have dog hair in it, it's going to have a dog in it.
John:
And good luck protecting your vehicle in all possible ways from dog, because hair is not the only way that they can screw up your car.
John:
Anyway, that's just part of having a dog, I feel like, is they're going to mess up your life in some minor way.
John:
If you get a very small dog like Hops, they mess up your life in less ways.
John:
That's part of the reason people like these little tiny toy dogs look like tiny little rats.
John:
Hops is not a rat dog, but Hops is just outside the rat category.
Marco:
he's 15 pounds right he's not a rat dog but he's i don't know what's the next step up from that beaver dog i don't know oh my god what is happening i i will say i don't have a lot of these problems that i would also say on on the shedding front you know you said like that no dog sheds zero
Marco:
There are different degrees between like a, you know, really like a basically non-shedding dog and a fully shedding dog.
Marco:
You know, there's like, of course, there's like the kind of like constant sheddingness of most dogs.
Marco:
There's the like phased, like blowing their coat sheddingness of things like Huskies.
Marco:
Yeah, the German Shepherd thing where you can get a whole other dog out of that dog by coming.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
But when you have the various doodle combo kind of things, what most people don't realize is that if you want a dog that doesn't shed, both of the parent breeds have to not shed.
Marco:
If one of those parent breeds that it's mixed with sheds, you will have a partly shedding dog.
Marco:
How much of a part depends on the dog.
Marco:
That's kind of like luck of the genetic lottery at that point.
Marco:
It varies, but like... So Golden Doodles...
Marco:
Golden Retrievers shed like crazy.
Marco:
Poodles don't.
Marco:
So that dog has a pretty good chance that it's going to shed somewhat.
Marco:
And it varies per Golden Doodle.
Marco:
Cockapoos.
Marco:
Guess what?
Marco:
Cocker Spaniels shed.
Marco:
And so cockapoos do shed somewhat.
Marco:
As you know, Casey, because your parents have one, right?
Marco:
So, like, you've seen this.
Marco:
Like, they shed a little bit.
Marco:
My Wonderful Little Hops doesn't shed at all.
Marco:
Because neither Shih Tzus nor Poodles shed.
John:
This is assuming you're getting any kind of...
John:
precise breed mix if you get like we did and just uh you have a rescue dog we have no freaking idea what dogs contribute to your dog you just get what you get kind of like your children it's just a random connection you know you and aaron and whatever and trace your family trees and whatever combination that is that's what you're getting in your kids so
John:
I have no idea what my dog is, but it's obviously some kind of shedding dog, but also some kind of dog that I don't have to cut the hair on.
Marco:
Yeah, rescue is obviously the way to go.
Marco:
We went to a breeder merely because I am allergic to shedding dogs, and I wanted to be really sure that I was getting a dog that would not cause allergy problems for me.
Marco:
And sure enough, and Hops doesn't, but even when I go to my in-law's house, they have two cockapoos.
Marco:
i do have to take allergy pills more when i'm there because like if i don't take one i can feel like my eyes start to get itchy within a few hours of being there it's not like a severe thing not like the way it is like if they had a cat i wouldn't even be able to sleep there but so but it is like minor allergy irritation that i notice every time i go there because even cockapoo's shed a little bit but meanwhile like i'm like have my face and hops all night and i have nothing nothing bothers me are you all done with uh cleaning up human poop casey
Casey:
Uh, yes.
Casey:
Asterisk.
Casey:
So Michaela got potty trained a couple of months ago, three, four months ago during quarantine.
Casey:
Um, but she still has diapers for nap time and nighttime.
Casey:
That being said, it's, it's, it's been a minute since she's done a number two in a diaper.
Casey:
It's, it's been quite a while.
John:
So you can see light at the end of the tunnel, and I feel like it's good not to overlap them.
John:
It'd be good to give yourself a little grace period, and then you go back to cleaning up another creature's poop routinely.
John:
And also, by the way, I mean, you might want to get into the part where you could potentially sleep.
John:
I don't know how early your kids wake up, but...
John:
uh depending on the dog your dog may actually want to you know it's like you get to the point where finally the kids are sleeping past 6 a.m and you're like ah now finally i can sleep past 6 a.m because what the hell do i got to wake up for and then all of a sudden the dog's like uh hello like not every dog's like that not every dog wants to wake up at 6 a.m sometimes you could train them to sleep later but it is nice to have a break between now my kids are finally sleeping and
John:
and i don't clean up their poop and i can live like a human being for a month and a half and then i go back to having a new baby that is literally never going to grow up and go to college and i'm always going to be carrying its poop around that's a dog for you yeah you're really really selling it john really it's part of the experience like i i mean i had a longer break from all of that right but we eventually got a dog and now we're back in like when we went on vacation went on vacation and unfortunately the place didn't print loud dogs we would have brought our dog if the place allowed dogs
John:
um so you know we had the dog stay with we have someone that watches our dog uh and you know she likes there it's fun for her to be there uh but when we're on vacation we don't have a dog part of the vacation is not not having to wake up with the kraken on take the dog out like as bad as that sounds that's that's part of it so be prepared to
John:
Have a glimpse of the good life where you get to sleep past 6 a.m.
John:
and then to give it all up again in exchange for the undying love of a dog.
Marco:
Let me append my earlier statement.
Marco:
There is a lot of practical advantages to small, non-shedding, late-sleeping dogs.
John:
I don't think late-sleeping is a thing that you can count on, though.
John:
It might happen.
John:
It might not.
John:
It really depends on the dog.
John:
Other than age, I don't think there's any really good indicator of...
John:
how late the dog is going to sleep i mean obviously you can you can influence this you can try to adjust the dog's schedule to not wake up that early but my impression is that the smarter the dog is the more the more difficult it's going to be for you to get the dog not to do what it decides that it wants to do and some dogs just want to wake up early and go outside at least they're not freaking nocturnal like cats oh yeah we can all agree that cats are the worst yes