An Effective Operator
Casey:
I have a weird problem.
Casey:
I have many problems, lots of which are probably weird.
Marco:
Well, you've come to the right place.
Casey:
I have one specific problem that I'd like to discuss.
Casey:
So I have what I've always called, and I know it's not an official name by any capacity, an AirPods Pro Mark II.
Casey:
So what I mean by that is there were the AirPods Pro, and then there was the second iteration of the
Casey:
But it got, like, the buds themselves got a lot more smarts.
Casey:
I forget the actual delineations.
Marco:
That's the AirPods Pro 2.
Marco:
But the 2s, they had, like, a quiet, like, 2.1 version.
Marco:
Or I guess maybe they called it, like, 2.0 in OpenAI notification.
Yeah.
Marco:
So the AirPods Pro 2 have had two versions, the lightning port case version and then the USB-C case version.
Marco:
You can't just buy a USB-C case for the lightning port version because it's actually like a slightly different hardware revision.
Marco:
And the USB-C version, which is still called AirPods Pro 2, but has the USB-C case, that version has that special like lower latency mode for the Vision Pro.
Casey:
Yes, yes.
Casey:
I know exactly what you're talking about.
Casey:
So I have had these AirPods Pro Mark II.
Casey:
I know, again, not the right name, but I'm just going to call it that because that's what I think of it as.
John:
Well, wait, which one do you have?
John:
Do you have the first revision of the twos or the second?
Casey:
The lightning charging case one.
John:
Okay, so they're called AirPods Pro II, the first ones.
John:
I don't know why you want to put Mark in there.
Casey:
Because I drive a Volkswagen.
Casey:
That's how we talk.
Casey:
Anyways, so my AirPods Pro Mark II, I've had them for a year or two.
Casey:
I forget exactly when I got them.
Casey:
I believe it was a Christmas gift a couple of years ago now.
Casey:
I think it doesn't really matter.
Casey:
But I've had them long enough that it's not entirely unreasonable to replace them.
Casey:
You know, it's been a couple of years or whatever.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
The buds themselves still work great.
Casey:
The battery is still lasting sufficiently long for my needs.
Casey:
I am going to be traveling this week, so maybe I change my tune if I have them in for like four or five hours at a time, which is very unusual for me.
Casey:
But generally speaking, in day-to-day stuff, the batteries are great.
Casey:
No worries.
Casey:
However, I'm having the first-worldiest of first-world problems.
Casey:
The charging case doesn't seem to want to Qi charge anymore, which is okay, but it gets worse because remember what I just told you?
Casey:
It is what kind of charging case, gentlemen?
Casey:
A lightning charging case.
Marco:
Oh, no, I'd replace them.
Casey:
Well, so here's the thing.
Casey:
I concur with your assessment.
Casey:
However, we keep getting these rumblings that there's going to be a Mark III.
Casey:
I know not the right term.
Casey:
Mark III coming soon.
Casey:
It's going to come any day now.
Casey:
It's happening.
Casey:
It's happening.
Casey:
And so I feel like is now really the right time to do this?
Casey:
I don't know what to do.
Casey:
So we'll see how grumpy I get while I'm traveling over hooking up the lightning cable, which I can already tell you I'm getting pretty grumpy about it.
Casey:
And maybe I'll just like insta-buy something.
Casey:
while I'm on my trip or whatever.
John:
You're going to be more upset about missing out on when the threes come out because then just plug them in.
John:
Plug them in for a few months.
John:
You'll be fine.
John:
People plugged in their iPod cases for years and we all survived.
John:
It was terrible, John.
John:
It was terrible, I tell you.
John:
I still plug mine in.
John:
I mean, I do have the wireless charger next to my bedside, but every other place in the house, I plug them in and it's fine.
Casey:
The funny thing is, is that it does occasionally work.
Casey:
So I don't know what the problem is.
Casey:
I did try, I looked up like a KBase or whatever about it.
Casey:
And one of the things they said was like disown it from the iOS side, you know, disconnect and forget it from the iOS side and then mash down on the button on the back for something like 10 seconds or whatever.
Casey:
And that'll effectively clear them out and set them up as new, which I did assuming it would not make a difference.
Casey:
And it made no difference.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And so every great, like one out of every 10 times it will charge via Qi, but it generally doesn't.
Casey:
And I am unreasonably annoyed by it.
Casey:
And my brain knows that, John, you are right, that I should wait.
Casey:
But my heart is listening to Marco and saying.
John:
But your heart's going to be sad when the threes come out anyway.
John:
Unless you're signing up now to also buy the threes when they come out, you're going to feel so much worse when the threes come out.
John:
And you're like, oh, I can't get them because I just bought new twos.
John:
You are right.
John:
You are right.
John:
You can just get the case replaced.
John:
Isn't that like 80 bucks or something?
John:
That'll satisfy your need to buy something.
Casey:
I don't have a need to buy something.
Casey:
That seems like you do.
Casey:
As a quick aside, I think we talked, I believe we talked on the show that I've discovered that electric cars, the market for electric cars here in America is kind of bottoming out right now.
Casey:
And, um, and I've noticed that the really unaffordable Porsche Taycan or whatever you call it, the electric Porsche, um, that is almost affordable when it's bought used.
Marco:
Here it goes.
Marco:
This is how it begins.
Casey:
Speaking of having a need to spend money, I don't need to spend money on a stupid car.
Casey:
My car has under 30,000 miles on it and I've had it for eight years.
Casey:
It, it gets driven fast.
Casey:
at least every other day, but I go nowhere.
Casey:
So I have no reason to get rid of my car.
Casey:
I love my car.
Casey:
I don't want to lose the third pedal.
Casey:
And yet I see that the electric life is kind of calling my name and I can feel, I feel like there's, I see this with other people.
Casey:
I can't remember.
Casey:
There was some podcaster that was going through the same thing and I was like, oh, I know exactly what this feels like.
Casey:
But anyways, I can feel like my subconscious trying to like convince my conscious brain that, oh, it's time.
Casey:
And it's not.
Casey:
This is a terrible decision.
Casey:
I know intellectually it's a terrible time, but our country is crumbling.
Casey:
And I'm like, oh, yes, I'm going to buy an electric Porsche because I'm a jerk.
Casey:
It's just such a terrible decision, and yet I can't help myself.
John:
I'm going to try to talk you out of this last episode.
John:
I forget if it made it to the air or not, but I'll try again.
John:
The reason they're cheap is because the second revision, the Mark II, as you would call it, of that car came out, and it's so much better.
John:
That's why you can find the quote-unquote Mark I's for less money because nobody wants them.
John:
Don't buy it.
Casey:
I know you're right.
John:
You're right about both of these.
John:
Buy the second revision, which will cost way more money.
Casey:
No, I, oh God, I cannot afford, no matter how many shirts we hawk, which we will be doing momentarily, I cannot afford a new Taycan.
Casey:
I'm so sorry.
Casey:
I really should figure out how to pronounce this.
Marco:
That is not the one you should get anyway.
Marco:
Like you don't.
Marco:
What should I get?
Marco:
You should get some kind of like more normal electric car.
Marco:
BMW i3 based on your driving habits.
Casey:
Maybe an i4.
Yeah.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
I don't think I can do another BMW.
Casey:
Not only do I don't, I don't think I can do another BMW and leaving me out of it.
Casey:
I'm pretty sure the historical commission will 100% veto any future BMW.
Casey:
There's a prayer since it's electric and hypothetically much less to go wrong.
Casey:
But, um, yeah, I don't, I think she would poop all over that.
John:
You know, like, uh, I know you've soured on BMW for a bunch of good reasons, but, uh, Porsche repair bills and maintenance costs are not good.
John:
Don't ruin my moment.
No,
John:
You're not saying, I want to stay away from those expensive cars like BMW.
John:
Hmm, Porsche.
Casey:
It's so true.
Casey:
So when you said, I have a need to spend money, I don't have a need to spend money on an AirPods case.
Casey:
I can feel within me the need to spend money on a stupid car growing.
Casey:
And I need, John, I need you to convince me not to because you're the voice of reason.
Casey:
We all know Marcos didn't say just do it.
Casey:
But you're the voice of reason.
Casey:
You need to tell me not to because I know you're right.
Casey:
Intellectually, I know you're right.
John:
I already did.
John:
I told you this is not the time to buy that particular car.
John:
You just need to wait and you need to save a lot more money based on your apparent taste in cars.
John:
It's so true.
John:
We need to sell a lot more money.
John:
Just make a separate fund that is the Casey Car Fund and put money into it for like five years.
Casey:
That won't be enough, but I hear you.
Marco:
Here's the thing too.
Marco:
You already have the big family car and what you've described is that the role of your car is
Marco:
is shorter range and not usually hauling everybody around correct so you shouldn't have a giant porsche like you know ideally you would get like you know something reasonable like you know i'm a big fan of the ionic 5 at least the way it looks i've never actually been in one um there's all sorts of like reasonable like small-ish evs that are not that much money um and honestly again i i can say from like what i said last episode one before like
Marco:
BMW's EV drivetrain is awesome and very mature.
Marco:
And so I think you should maybe look at an i4 if you're itching to buy a car.
Marco:
The problems that you had with BMW were largely because you had one of the higher end engines in the engine time.
Marco:
And it was out of warranty.
Marco:
And so there are ways you can avoid this.
Marco:
You can get one in warranty.
Marco:
You can get one that doesn't have an engine.
Marco:
There's ways to do this that would be less of a risky experience and would limit your potential cost.
Marco:
There's ways you can do that.
Marco:
And certainly, as John said, I wouldn't recommend that you, in fleeing BMW for reliability concerns, go over to Porsche for getting
John:
It's just the maintenance costs and the parts and maintenance are just so expensive for those brands.
John:
Like you stare at the dealership for two seconds, hundreds of dollars fly out of your wallet.
John:
Everything is expensive.
Casey:
I mean, the reason, no joke, no snark, no exaggeration.
Casey:
The reason I got rid of the BMW was because it was going to the dealer every month, every other month, something like that.
Casey:
And every time it entered the dealer's parking lot, it didn't leave without me being at least $1,000 poorer.
Casey:
And that's not an exaggeration.
Casey:
It was literally $1,000 every single time, sometimes many thousands of dollars.
Casey:
It was bananas.
Casey:
It's absolutely a terrible idea to get a Porsche.
Casey:
Leaving aside the fact that I really can't afford it, I just – it's –
Casey:
Just barely outside of what I consider to be reasonable, and so I feel like I can afford it, even though I really can't.
Casey:
But no, Marco, you're right.
Casey:
You're both right.
Casey:
The Ioniq 5, I think I would maybe go a different route, like one of the other cars that shares the same platform, but we're saying the same basic thing.
Casey:
The Ioniq 5 is great.
Casey:
For my needs, and this is what you were talking about a minute ago, Marco, for my needs, what I really want, or excuse me, what I really need is a Chevy Bolt, which is what my parents have.
Casey:
And it's not a particularly pretty car, and it's not a particularly luxurious car, but it is the perfect car for the sorts of driving I do.
Casey:
But because I'm a car guy, I don't really want one.
Casey:
So I'm just going to continue to drive my Dino Juice mobile until it falls apart.
Marco:
And when that happens, go test drive an i4.
John:
At this point, you should keep driving your current car until it gets old enough that you won't mind teaching your son to drive on it, and then he'll crash it, and then you'll get a new car.
Casey:
Here's the thing.
Casey:
If you think that I need a new car, which I don't, and I should get an expensive car, which I shouldn't, then one thing you can do to help that process is go to ATP.fm slash store.
Casey:
This is such a great job.
Casey:
I am an expert and a professional.
Casey:
So here's the thing.
Casey:
The ATP store is back, and it is back until Monday, April 28.
Casey:
And this is the second episode we've talked about it.
Casey:
So now I get to do my little speech.
Casey:
Here's the thing.
Casey:
Every single time we do a time-limited sale like this,
Casey:
Every single time, there's at least one, usually three to five people, that reach out and say, oh no, oh no.
Casey:
I'm that guy.
Casey:
Or, I'm that person, really.
Casey:
I'm that person.
Casey:
I've done it.
Casey:
I'm the one that missed it.
Casey:
I thought I would remember, and I didn't.
Casey:
So, if you're driving your Porsche Taycan, or if you're driving your BMW i4, whatever you may be driving, then you should pull over and go to atp.fm/.store.
Casey:
And John will walk through, at least very quickly, some of the wares that we have on offer.
Casey:
And if you're walking...
Casey:
Pull over to the side of the sidewalk or get out of the way of the people that are still walking.
Casey:
Go to atp.fm.com.
Casey:
John, what is up for grabs?
John:
So this is a reminder of what we've got.
John:
The new shirts this time, we've got M3 Ultra shirts, including our Joke M3 Ultra shirt.
John:
And that brings me to the most common question since we announced the sale last episode.
John:
People are always asking about this, but then are asking even more now that the store is up.
John:
They usually say something like, I just got a new Mac and it's got an M-Whatever processor in it.
John:
And when you were selling the shirts for the M-Whatever processor, I didn't have this Mac.
John:
But that Mac broke, and now I have this one, and I want to get a shirt that matches my processor.
John:
And I always tell those people, buy the shirt for the chip that you want, not the chip that you have, which is a homage to the dress for the job you want, not the job you have advice back when people used to dress up for work, like in the 80s and stuff.
John:
Anyway, that's what that is.
John:
The idea is that, you know, if you, you know, don't, yeah, you can buy a shirt for the chip that matches whatever computer you have.
John:
But let's say you don't have an M3 Ultra, which you probably shouldn't.
John:
You can still buy the shirt for it because it's Apple's most powerful chip that they make.
John:
The reason I give this advice is because we don't sell these M shirts forever.
John:
There is lots of chips and lots of variants.
John:
The usual way it works is Apple announces the chip and puts it in a Mac.
John:
And then whatever the next sale we have is –
John:
Whatever chips were announced in that period we sell at that point and we usually don't sell them again So if you've seen people like on youtube or whatever wearing like a beat-up m1 ultra shirt That's because we sold it when the m1 ultra like shortly after the m1 ultra was released or at least announced
John:
And we haven't sold it since.
John:
So don't think you're going to be able to buy an M3 Ultra Shirt three years from now because you probably won't.
John:
I mean, thus far, we haven't brought back especially like the fancy variants.
John:
We do have in the on-demand store in between sales, we sell like the M1, M2, M3, M4, but just the plain ones with no modifier.
John:
And those are on-demand stuff.
John:
That's not for you.
John:
You're listening to the show.
John:
You shouldn't buy it in time-limited sale because the printing quality is much better.
John:
on these ones that you know we have to take the orders then they print them then they give them to you and that's it the on-demand ones they print as soon as you order them but the printing quality is not as good so we sell them in between if you're desperate for a shirt in between but really this is this is your time to shine if you're actually listening to the program so if you think you might ever want an m3 ultra shirt this is the time to buy it because the next sale we have the m3 ultra shirt will not be on sale and unfortunately for the people who are like well what about the m4 max that's in the max studio too
John:
Yeah, but it was in a bunch of computers before and we already sold it.
John:
So yeah, we have no M4 Max or M4 Pro or any of those shirts available.
John:
It's just M3 Ultra and the Joker M3 Ultra.
John:
So that's our system.
John:
It's not ideal for some people who like, I didn't know I was going to buy a new computer and I want the M shirt to match it.
John:
The only solution, obviously, is to buy every M shirt and then whatever computer you buy, unless you bought an M2 Ultra.
John:
Sorry about that.
John:
We never made that shirt.
John:
Anyway, we've got a Mac Pro Believe shirt, which is very important for certain disciples of the Mac Pro.
John:
We are trying to, as the kids would say, manifest.
John:
uh a decent mac pro if not we'll just get a crappy mac pro with an m3 alternate and we'll cry together uh the pro max triumph shirt is back uh very popular as we've sold it many times in the past then it went on a long break and now it's back and it's still very popular so check that one out we've got our performance shirt in a bunch of colors and our usual ftp stuff and the mugs which it seems like we're gonna have for the rest of our lives because no one is buying them oh well
John:
Oh, and also a hat.
John:
Anyway, that's the M-Chip situation.
John:
That's the store.
John:
This is the second show we were talking about.
John:
There will be one more show, which I believe we are also recording on a Monday.
John:
One more show where we announce this, and that's it.
John:
So don't think you can, as Casey said, that you're like, oh, I'm sure they'll remind me of it again.
John:
Yeah, we will remind you one more time.
John:
This is your second to last warning.
John:
If you want anything from the store,
John:
Get it now.
John:
And especially if you actually are going to WWDC, please buy a Mac Pro Believe shirt and wear it to WWDC and find John Ternus and make him look at your shirt until he gets it.
Casey:
Yes.
Casey:
Yes, please.
Casey:
Also, John, one clarifying question for you.
Casey:
Are there chip designs on the back of any of these that are being sold right now?
John:
No chips in the back of anything.
John:
Someday I may be inspired to do another chip, but the M3 Ultra wasn't it.
Casey:
Good deal.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Well, let's do some follow up and let's start with, can we, can we just skip the tariff stuff?
Casey:
Oh my God.
Marco:
How?
Marco:
We wish we could skip it.
Marco:
We wish we could all skip it.
Marco:
We wish we could skip this entire presidency, but unfortunately, that's not the reality we live in.
Casey:
Seems not.
Casey:
All right, so let's just dig in.
Casey:
Let me put on my big boy britches and let's just talk about it.
Casey:
All right, so Trump has decided, and just bear with me here, Trump has decided to exclude smartphones, computers, and chips from higher tariffs.
Casey:
Reading from the New York Times on the 12th of April, as we record this, it is two days later on the 14th.
Casey:
Anyways, on the 12th, the New York Times wrote, after more than a week of ratcheting up tariffs on products imported from China, the Trump administration issued a rule late Friday that spared smartphones, computers, semiconductors and other electronics from some of the fees and a significant break for tech companies like Apple and Dell and the prices of iPhones and other consumer electronics.
Casey:
A message posted late Friday by US Customs and Border Protection included a long list of products that would not face the tariffs President Trump imposed in recent days on Chinese goods as part of a worsening trade war.
Casey:
The exclusions would also apply to modems, routers, flash drives and other technology goods, which are largely not made in the United States.
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
That will also apply to some downstream products like electronics, since many semiconductors come into the United States inside other devices, a person familiar with matter said.
Casey:
I didn't realize you needed a person familiar with matter to know that particular tidbit, but that's all right.
Casey:
These investigations have previously resulted in additional tariffs.
Casey:
Again, this was this past Friday.
Casey:
We are recording on a Monday evening.
John:
Look at that.
John:
Tim Cook's butt kissing has finally paid off.
John:
He gets another exemption.
Marco:
Apple is saved.
Marco:
And that's the thing.
Marco:
Tim Cook's obviously a smart guy.
Marco:
He knows how to play the system.
Marco:
When you are the CEO of any major tech company today, and especially one as big and important as Apple, the job of being a CEO at that level is somewhat technical, but it is largely diplomatic.
Marco:
Tim Cook is basically serving as a diplomat between his massive company and countries around the world, including our own country that he's in.
Marco:
This is the job.
Marco:
However, you know, obviously we've had lots to say about how he's been doing that job and his other job over the course of the last few years, but...
Marco:
I think in this case, he is probably playing this game as best as he can, given the circumstances that they're in, which are largely his fault.
Marco:
But people who try to play with Trump always get burned.
Marco:
He probably knows that, but he also probably knows...
Marco:
At least he is, like, able to talk to him sometimes.
Marco:
But Trump is not working on any kind of, like, you know, long-term strategic level.
Marco:
He's impulsive, and he's a compulsive liar, and he doesn't really know what he's doing.
Marco:
He basically governs by chaos.
Marco:
Tim Cook is doing the best he can to try to, like...
Marco:
you know have his foot at the table and get what he wants done and by the way this is not just about tariffs it's also about getting the government out of apple's affairs and you know stop suing us stop regulating us etc like it's not all you know flowers over there um but this is what happens with trump he turns against everyone we are here yet again with more chaos this is how trump governs inept chaos after this announcement uh
John:
One of the celebratory posts I saw someone make, which was, again, short-lived, as we'll get to in a moment, was that Tim Cook's two primary... Top two skills that Tim Cook has is, number one, supply chain.
John:
Number two, despot management.
Marco:
Yeah.
John:
Because he's been dealing with China for just decades, right?
John:
And so dealing with China is a very similar situation where there's someone who is...
John:
You know, who is going to do things that don't make sense to you, but you have to kind of kiss up to them, but you don't really agree with them.
John:
And he's been doing that for years and years, which should have been his clue to maybe hedge his bets against China.
John:
But we are where we are anyway.
John:
So he made his play for it, as he did in the last Trump administration.
John:
How'd that work out for him, Casey?
Casey:
I mean, depends on who you ask, but I would say not great personally.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So moving on with regard to the last few days, smartphone tariffs are coming back in a month or two, says Trump admin.
Casey:
So this is yesterday as we record this on Sunday, the 13th.
Casey:
Smartphones, laptops, and other products are exempt from Trump's April 9th tariffs will be lumped in with duties on semiconductors in a month or two, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told ABC News anchor Jonathan Karl on this week.
Casey:
This is not like a permanent sort of exemption, Lutnick told Karl, saying that they will be subject later to a special focus type of tariff applied to the semiconductor industry similar to automotive tariffs Trump has already issued.
Casey:
When asked if the new tariffs will include products like iPhones, many of which are built in China, Lucknik said that's correct and that the goal is to encourage them to reshore to be built in America.
Casey:
It's not like you can open a factory tomorrow to build iPhones, Carl said.
Casey:
Yeah, you really can't.
John:
the best and brightest uh in this administration so this is the oh you've got an exemption but then it was i think it was like was it a day later less than 24 hours later the the person who's supposedly in charge of something you know the commerce secretary comes in and says oh well those are coming back in a month or two because we know you can't just you know we want those to be built in america but we know it's not like you can build a open a factory tomorrow to build iphones you can't open a factory in a month or two either
John:
it's like i don't know it's anytime they try to provide any kind of rationale like a rationale that they think will be acceptable to people other than like we're enjoying insider trading or we want uh power over people so they will come and beg us for things like whenever they try to explain it in a rational way it's like we want to we want to reshore manufacturing like if you let them talk they either reveal that they have no idea how anything works like saying well
John:
oh, well, you know, we'll put these tariffs and then next month iPhones will be built in the United States.
John:
Or they can't bring themselves to say that because they realize how ridiculous it is.
John:
Anyway, again, I feel like we need a date and timestamp every time we say anything about this because as Marco said, it's chaos.
John:
And just because they said this in the most recent story that's in our show notes does not mean that by the time you hear this episode, there won't be some new news related to this.
John:
It's ridiculous.
John:
I don't know how anyone is expected to run a business or live a life with this level of uncertainty and chaos on a day-to-day basis.
John:
But
Marco:
this is where we're at yeah and like you know the thing is like obviously as an economic policy like you know it seems like you know trump took one econ course ever maybe let's be honest he just he probably saw it on tv but like you know he he took like you know intro macroeconomic lessons i was like oh we can uh adjust prices with tariffs okay great that sounds awesome then we can screw people and they can negotiate with us and okay well
Marco:
um that's you know it as with all macroeconomics like it's pretty complicated and there's a lot of other factors to consider and a lot of side effects that you might not be considering and if you're going to do tariffs well uh the ways that tends to be done are you know a somewhat predictable and b usually a
Marco:
Most economic policy actually does best when it's – especially at the large US government level – slow, subtle, predictable tweaks.
Marco:
That's not what this is.
Marco:
So even if – even in the Republican fantasy world where this actually makes any kind of sense whatsoever, even if that was like what they were going for –
Marco:
having it be both you know large sudden tariffs that are seemingly nonsensical based on literally like impossible math that makes no sense and that partially was generated by chat gpt for them and to have them be erratic and to have them be changing like every day or every few days like oh now this oh now this oh there's gonna be the exception now that exception
Marco:
Even if it was a good idea to put these tariffs in, which it's not, but even if it was, you undermine that by having them change constantly.
Marco:
Because, again, suppose you were going to build a factory in America because of this.
Marco:
First of all, Trump's term is only four years long, and he'll be dead soon.
Marco:
So you only have a certain range that you even have to worry about this guy even being able to spout stuff off in public.
Marco:
and his time range of power is probably even shorter than that, what are you going to do?
Marco:
Move all iPhone production to America?
Marco:
Invest in all these factories only for him to say tomorrow?
Marco:
Oh, never mind.
Marco:
It's different now.
Marco:
No one's going to invest in moving stuff over here if the environment is so unpredictable and chaotic.
Marco:
No one's going to make long-term investments.
Marco:
All they're going to do is try to wait Trump out because they know that before too long, either he'll be out of office or he'll change his mind again.
Marco:
So the entire concept of this makes no sense, will not achieve what he wants, and all it's doing is causing chaos in our country and the financial markets around the world even.
John:
Which may be what he wants.
Marco:
I don't think he wants the chaos.
Marco:
I think he doesn't know how to govern any other way.
John:
No, I mean, anyway, when I get too far into it, but like the stated goals of these things are so disconnected from reality, up to and including the constant refrain that tariffs will increase prices and that other countries pay for them.
John:
Like just flat out unreal things that are not the case.
John:
It's just what he's going to say is usually not why he's doing the thing.
John:
It's, as you said, like the uncertainty is the worst part of this.
John:
And I'll just add that as a reminder, they're like –
John:
The amount of years and money it would take to build iPhones in America is double digit years and a vast amount of money.
John:
And that's assuming anyone ever wanted to do it.
John:
But certainly they're not going to go down that path because we all just assume this is a...
John:
temporary situation that will be rectified by the next sane person to hold office.
John:
But you never know what the future holds.
John:
But anyway, this is not the type of environment that attracts investment.
John:
So there's that.
Casey:
I think it's worth kind of drilling into something you just said a moment ago.
Casey:
And I didn't really think about this at first.
Casey:
I can't remember who I heard talking about this.
Casey:
I apologize.
Casey:
But
Casey:
You had said a moment ago, John, that nobody really wants to build the iPhones here anyway.
Casey:
And I think that that's important to note that I think you're – and maybe I'm out of touch.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
But I feel like the average American that I know doesn't particularly want to be screwing in the same screw for 8 to 13 hours a day, five days a week.
Casey:
I think that most Americans I know would find that sort of work or labor to be below them.
Casey:
And so even if you could stand up the physical factory –
Casey:
And even if you could do that in a timely manner, which I don't think you really could, where are you going to find the people?
Casey:
This is what you were saying, John.
Casey:
Like, where are you going to find the people to do it?
John:
It's not just the people who are screwing us, screwing over and over again.
John:
It's the skilled labor that does all the fancy machines that, you know, machine all the parts.
John:
We don't have them either.
John:
We don't have anything to do that.
John:
And there was – I think you might have seen my – one of my reposts I'm asked on or something.
John:
Someone did a survey of –
John:
A recent survey, as in like a couple days ago, of Americans saying, do you think it would be better if we manufactured more things in the United States?
John:
And 80% of the American public said yes.
John:
And then the second question was...
John:
Would taking a job, manufacturing things in a factory be an improvement in your job situation?
John:
And only 20% said yes.
John:
So 80% think we should do it, but 20% say, oh, well, I'll do it.
John:
Everyone always assumes that someone else will be working in the factory.
John:
Yeah, we should totally manufacture more stuff, but I don't want to do it.
Yep.
John:
I mean, and the thing is, like, because they're thinking of the factory job like, oh, I'm on a semi-line doing a boring thing.
John:
And that is part of the job.
John:
But also, the other reason we can't do it is we don't have people with the skills and the smarts and the experience to do the complicated stuff.
John:
All those CNC milling machines that carefully, you know, make all the little parts that go into the thing.
John:
And we don't have the supply chain of all the companies that make the screws that go into the thing.
John:
We're so far behind.
John:
We just we don't have the capacity to do that in this country at all.
John:
Not just because people don't want the job screwing in the screws.
John:
Every aspect of the only thing we have is the land to build the factories on and probably the power to power them.
John:
But everything else having to do with the factory, we can't do.
Marco:
We are sponsored this episode by BetterHelp.
Marco:
Therapy is something that I think we undervalue as a society.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
They're so important.
Marco:
They control so much about our lives.
Marco:
It's always good to check in with a therapist.
Marco:
I have personally used therapy and I find it really very helpful.
Marco:
And I strongly encourage everybody out there.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
Thank you so much to BetterHelp for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So we had an ask ATP with regard to cross-platform photo management and Kevin Militello writes, my wife and I are split household.
Casey:
We use Synology photos with smart albums.
Casey:
It backs up when charging.
Casey:
I see photos of her and my daughter without my wife tagging.
Casey:
She sees photo of me and daughter that I take without me tagging.
Casey:
The only manual thing I seem to have to do is tag people in video, which I rarely do.
Casey:
Then BAPT writes, I would like to recommend Image app as a cross-platform photosyncing solution.
Casey:
Let me jump in here.
Casey:
I have been, as you guys know, getting deeper and deeper into the self-hosted rabbit hole, which is, I think, mostly okay and healthy.
Casey:
But knowing me, I'll take it too far.
Casey:
Image seems to be one of the darlings of the self-hosted community.
Casey:
And I've not tried it myself, but I've heard many, many, many very, very good reviews of it.
Casey:
And this is kind of the same thing until the end.
Casey:
So let me go back to BAPT.
Casey:
It's open source and self-hosted, and its mission statement is basically to offer a Google Photos alternative.
Casey:
It's amazing.
Casey:
It's not as simple to use as Google Photos because you have to host it yourself, but you do get to keep ownership of your library and pretty much guarantee that it will keep running forever.
Casey:
It's also ahead of Google Photos in terms of features in some places.
Casey:
The one big caveat is that it warns you pretty explicitly about is that it's still under heavy development and you must keep backups of your photo library.
Casey:
But you should already be doing that anyway.
Casey:
Okay, I hear what BAPT is saying.
Casey:
I totally get it.
Casey:
But if Image is explicitly saying, hey, you really want to have another copy of all your photos because bad things may happen.
Casey:
I'm out.
Casey:
No, thank you.
John:
Yeah, the self-hosted ones, I didn't recommend any of those just because it seemed like the person was saying, like, if there's anything manual I have to do, I don't want to do it.
John:
But they also said they were willing to spend money.
John:
So maybe a Synology-type solution would be there.
John:
But like all the sort of like host your own cloud stuff in your own house.
John:
That just seems like a lot for someone who wants kind of a handoff solution or like I don't want to have to be bothered with it.
John:
Self hosting is not that like that's why you have other people host things for you.
John:
That's why the cloud is so attractive.
John:
Let someone else run the servers.
John:
But I thought it was worth mentioning there are solutions.
John:
Synology is one and this image thing is another one.
John:
If you want to run the cloud thing inside your house and take on that responsibility, you may be more likely to find cross platform solutions.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And just to be clear, it's pronounced sort of kind of image as far as I'm aware, but it's actually spelled I-M-M-I-C-H.
Casey:
And obviously there'll be a link in the show notes.
Casey:
But image, which is, I think, not a portmanteau, but a play on image.
John:
I thought it was like a German word or something.
Casey:
Oh.
Casey:
I mean, maybe both.
Casey:
Who knows?
Casey:
All right, John, you have some Nintendo Switch 2 follow-up for us.
Casey:
Let me start reading to interrupt when you're ready.
Casey:
Kyle McMahon writes, the Switch 2 is not capable of 4K 120.
Casey:
I believe all the games that have announced a 120 FPS mode, Mario Kart World, Metroid Prime 4, etc., have specified that they run at 1080p 120.
John:
Yeah, I misspoke in the last thing I said 4K 120 because I was so excited that it can output 4K to the TV and can do 120 frames per second, but not at the same time, which makes sense because that is a current generation console capability and Nintendo just doesn't do the current generation console thing anymore.
John:
But anyway, we'll put a link to in the show notes to the spec page, which tells you Nintendo spec page for the Switch 2, which says that does a maximum of 4K at 60 frames per second in quote TV mode, like when it's docked and connected to your TV.
John:
And it says it supports 120 frames per second in 1080p, but also in 2560 by 1440.
John:
So it can do 120 frames per second in theory at higher than 1080.
John:
We'll see if any games actually use that.
Casey:
Then with regard to the kickstand, like elbows or lumps or whatever they are, Stuart Gibson writes, regarding the Switch 2 stand nubbins, those exist on the improved stand on the current Switch OLED 2.
Casey:
They do act as a touch point when fully opened, but also have a multi-point hinge, which allows it to sit fully flush to the back of the console.
John:
Marco should have told me this because I've never actually even seen a Switch OLED.
John:
But yeah, the Switch OLED has the exact same things.
John:
And the two-point hinge is to, you know, again, help if you know how a two-point hinge works to help it fold out more.
John:
Like, I guess people might be familiar with them from kitchen cabinets where you open the cabinet and it has a two-point hinge inside it to let the doors open up more.
John:
Anyway, there you go.
John:
That's the Nubbins Explained.
Casey:
And then apparently there existed open world racing games before Mario Kart, which I've heard of all of these except one, but I don't think I knew that these were open world racing games.
Casey:
So we've gotten word from many listeners, Burnout, Need for Speed, The Crew, which I'd never heard of, and Forza Horizon are all open world racing games.
John:
Italians want you to say Forza.
John:
um yeah i think the thing that's notable is that like i guess maybe i never thought of mario kart as i've heard of all these games because i've heard of mario kart as a type of game because it's like what is the world like in these things they're generally set on earth with cities and highways between them and stuff and so it's like yeah there's a world but mario kart is like you're in space on an ice cream cone like it doesn't lend itself to like there you know what would the world be but i guess the answer is it's the mushroom kingdom anyway we'll find out
Casey:
Indeed.
Casey:
And then one of the things that broke a lot of people's brains, including very much my own, was that Mario Kart has been stated as being $80 MSRP.
Casey:
And we all thought that was kind of bananas because $80 is a lot of freaking money.
Casey:
But as it turns out, maybe not.
John:
Yeah, I referenced this graph in the last thing.
John:
I just didn't have the link for it.
John:
So I just wanted to put the link in the show notes.
John:
This is the graph I was talking about that shows the inflation adjusted price for video games.
John:
And you can see $80 is not out of line with what they have historically been.
John:
I remember buying Ocarina of Time for $70 when it was released.
John:
So whatever year that was, what was that?
John:
What was Ocarina of Time?
Casey:
I think it was high school for me, so late 90s.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Anyway, $70 in the late 90s.
John:
I can tell you that $70 in late 90s does not equal $80 today.
John:
So we're still doing okay, but yeah, some people are angry about it.
John:
But you know, if you look at this graph, I feel like it seems reasonable.
John:
Some people complain.
John:
We got one email that said, yeah, inflation adjusted, it's fine.
John:
But they're trying to trick you because you always have to buy a DLC and you have to subscribe and you have to buy the battle pass and you have to do this.
John:
And it's like live service games are a totally different ball of wax.
John:
Like World of Warcraft was charging people subscriptions ages ago.
John:
But, you know, and maybe they'll sell DLC tracks for Mario Kart or whatever.
John:
But the bottom line is, especially for a sort of like...
John:
When you pay $80 for Mario Kart World, you get what you get.
John:
And if you want to buy DLC later, fine, but you don't have to.
John:
It's a complete game in and of itself.
John:
Same thing with Breath of the Wild.
John:
You buy it and you get the whole game.
John:
So if they sell the next Zelda thing for $80 or whatever... Again, I bought Ocarina of Time for $70 in a gold cart for the Nintendo 64.
John:
I think I had that too.
John:
Yeah, I will gladly play similar prices.
John:
But it's difficult because...
John:
quote unquote, AAA games are expensive.
John:
They always have been.
John:
When you look at this graph, look back at the early days of home consoles with like the Atari 2600 and stuff.
John:
And look at those prices.
John:
Inflation adjusted $140 for like, I don't know, Tapper or something.
John:
I don't know what game that's supposed to be represented there, but it could be worse is all I'm saying.
Casey:
Indeed.
Casey:
Speaking of it could be worse, hey-o, Dropbox and file providers.
Casey:
Eric DeReuter writes, the Dropbox file provider API update is not tied to the app version and is not an account level change either.
Casey:
So you can have one Mac with file provider API version and another Mac without it.
Casey:
It does require a minimum Mac OS version of somewhere between 12.3 and 12.6, as well as the Dropbox app from late 2022-ish or newer.
Casey:
What triggers your eligibility beyond the app and OS versions is not clear.
Casey:
Dropbox support was not helpful in clearing up how you become eligible for the update.
John:
Yeah, this next item will tell you how I ran across this, but I have confirmed that if you are eligible, not only is it not a separate download, but you can change it.
John:
So I recently installed Dropbox on a fresh account, and it did the file provider one sort of by default.
John:
But if you Google for it, which I had to because it's not clear, there is a way to say, I don't want the file provider thing anymore.
John:
And it doesn't involve reinstalling app.
John:
It just involves signing out of the app and signing back into the app.
John:
And then during the onboarding, clicking some advanced link and then going to this thing and opting out.
John:
And, you know, anyway, it is is silly.
John:
The process is silly, but it is nice that you it's not tied to your account.
John:
the, you know, switching back and forth.
John:
And you don't need to re-download a second version of the app.
John:
I've never heard anyone tell me that the file provider one is better in any way.
John:
So as long as they keep giving you this option, that's the one I'm choosing.
John:
So yeah, I took the account that I had installed on and I signed out and signed back in and opted out of file provider and it just switched to the other version and I'm much happier.
Casey:
Good deal.
Casey:
And then several people wrote in, you have bought your daughter a laptop because of tariffs for school in the fall.
Casey:
And lots of people wanted to know, what did John do?
John:
Yeah, that actually, that's what I was getting at earlier.
John:
I got that laptop today and I've been setting it up and setting up Dropbox for people and putting accounts on it and stuff.
John:
I'm actually setting it up now to essentially be the photo laptop for my Long Island vacation because I always take whatever our best laptop is to be the photo laptop for a Long Island vacation.
John:
And that is now the M4 MacBook Air that I got my daughter.
John:
But I'm also putting her account on and all that stuff anyway The specs are boring like there are really no bad specs for this machine unless you have more data than will fit on the SSD What did I do?
John:
Not probably what you should do.
John:
I maxed out the RAM because
John:
I don't know.
John:
I just did.
John:
It wasn't that expensive.
John:
You don't need that much RAM.
John:
She's going to be writing papers and browsing the web.
John:
She doesn't need 32 gigs of RAM, but it comes with 16 stock, which is plenty.
John:
You can get 24, but her current one has 24 because that used to be the max.
John:
You kind of see how this goes here.
John:
I get max RAM a lot.
John:
on on machines where it's reasonable so i pick 32 gigs of ram i don't know why it just makes me feel better and then for the ssd uh she doesn't have much data at all most of her stuff is cloud synced but for my long island vacation i like to have enough space to put a substantial portion of my photo library on the laptop just so sometimes you like slideshows of like previous vacations or like you know i don't know i like having access to at the very least the favorites from my big photo collection if we ever do like photo slideshows or whatever
John:
Um, so I got a terabyte SSD.
John:
I would have got bigger if the prices didn't go up ridiculous amount, uh, after that.
John:
But anyway, there it is.
John:
M4 MacBook Air with all the parts working on the chip again, because I'm me.
John:
This is, I do not recommend this.
John:
You should, you can just buy the stock while it could buy 16 gigs of Ram, whatever size SSD you can fit that you can stomach because their prices are insane and you're fine.
John:
But people wanted to know what I got.
John:
So there you go.
John:
32 gigs, one terabyte.
Casey:
I love that you are so petulantly against having a laptop that you now enlist the rest of the family to meet your laptop-related needs.
John:
There's so many laptops in this house.
John:
I don't need to have one for myself.
John:
I just need one for one week a year, and there's plenty to choose from.
John:
And I bring the best one.
John:
When I had a work laptop, I used to bring that as my vacation laptop because it was the best one in the house.
Okay.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Peter Wagoner writes with regard to folding phone to aspect ratios.
Casey:
If you take an iPhone mini and make it a trifold like the Huawei Mate XT, you get nearly the same dimensions as an iPad mini.
Casey:
So this is MKB.
Casey:
There's a video on MKBHD that MKBHD did on the Huawei Mate XT, which I watched, which was very interesting.
Casey:
Like this is not for me, I don't think.
Casey:
But it was a much more compelling video than I expected it to be.
Casey:
I left that video thinking, oh, maybe that's not that bad after all.
Casey:
So it's worth a few minutes of your time if you have some time to kill.
John:
Yeah, that was like the problem we were talking about in his last video of like, if you just have a phone that opens and closes like a book, a foldable phone that opens and closes like a book, when it opens, it's not well proportioned for 16 by 9 video, which is most...
John:
TV and movies is around those, that aspect ratio.
John:
And so if you compare it to an iPad mini, maybe it's the same in area, but because the aspect ratio is so much more square, if you try to watch a video on your quote, and you're like, I unfolded my folding phone.
John:
I have such a big area to watch a video.
John:
It's not actually that big.
John:
like it's compared to an ipad mini so you can solve that by having a trifold because now you have you know one extra vertical strip instead of just opening like a book take another one of those quote unquote pages and put it alongside the problem is now you have a trifold phone it's incredibly thick like you can look at the video to see when you fold all three pieces up they did a good job of making the individual pieces thin but
John:
Boy, that's big.
John:
So it's quite a tradeoff to get a screen that is larger than a phone and also well proportioned to watch video.
John:
And if you're not watching video on it, I guess, you know, you can use that space for all of the great Android apps to take advantage of tablet proportions.
Casey:
Sick burn.
Casey:
And then finally, Jonathan Clayton writes with regard to Mac mini SSDs, some company from Malaysia of unknown reputation called IBOFF, I-B-O-F-F, claims to have reverse engineered the SSD modules found in the Mac mini.
Casey:
They are taking pre-orders for 250 gigs, 500 gigs, 1 terabyte, and 2 terabyte modules for way cheaper than official upgrades.
Casey:
According to them, they've made a, quote, legally distinct, quote, board layout that will be recognized by the Mac.
Casey:
They claim to have shipped a batch of orders to people with a new batch coming off at the or coming offline at the end of April.
Casey:
I watched this YouTube video that they themselves have put up.
Casey:
So I mean, you know, take this with a serious amount of salt.
Casey:
But I see what they're going for here.
Casey:
And it is interesting and reasonably compelling.
John:
Yeah, it's super compelling to me money-wise because I'm thinking of my future computer, and it's like, oh, especially since I'm pressing up against the 4-terabyte drive that I have, so the next jump is probably to 8.
John:
And you know what happens if you try to buy 8 terabytes of SSD from Apple.
John:
It's just it breaks the bank.
John:
Yep, been there.
John:
So, like, I just... I mean, granted, these modules for Mac minis, maybe they'll do them for the studio.
John:
Like, who knows?
John:
And who knows how well they work or whatever?
John:
But it just seems like...
John:
the technology involved should be within the reach of companies like this you know i kind of wish owc would do them but they would probably get sued by apple or whatever like it's it's kind of fly by 90 because like where do they get the where do they get the nand modules we did talked on a past episode about how those nand modules are not readily available and if you do get them it's possibly some kind of gray market leftover thing like who knows who knows where this stuff is coming from but technology wise it is indeed a printed circuit board with components on it
John:
That is a known technology.
John:
And if you could get essentially the same components as Apple is using and put them on a board that connects them in the same way, but doesn't have exactly the same traces.
John:
So Apple can't see you, sue you for taking their proprietary, you know what I mean?
John:
Like they're trying to sort of clean room, reverse engineer this because they can, they can take one out of a Mac mini and they can look at it.
John:
It's like, I see all these components.
John:
I can buy these off the shelf from whoever Apple is buying them from.
John:
The only thing I can't copy is the layout of the traces on their board.
John:
Cause that's work that somebody did for,
John:
on contract for apple so do your own work to do that and that's what these people are saying they're doing but if you go to their website they're all sold out who knows if this company will be here in a week who knows you know do you really want to spend even though it's cheaper than apple it may be a lot of money they don't even offer an eight terabyte they only offer two terabyte but i'm keeping my eye on this because i tell you whatever next mac i get if i can get third-party storage for sane prices
John:
I may actually risk it, especially if Apple offers them at insane prices.
John:
What I would do is go back to the good old days of buying Macs when we all said, get the lowest amount of storage you can get.
John:
Get the lowest amount of RAM you can get and then just swap it when you get the computer back when you do that.
John:
You can't do that anymore, but I would love to be back in those days because I could get a quote-unquote cheap Mac with the lowest amount of storage.
John:
And then if I buy one of the third-party ones and it's a disaster –
John:
oh well i'm out that money and then i could just buy the first party one and put it in there that's only possible i believe on the mac pro right now and maybe maybe on the uh with the uh parts program on the mac studio as well and the mac mini but i'm thinking about it i'm looking at it i can't vouch for this iboff thing we'll put the links in the show so you can look at it and see what you think anyway and like i said they're all sold out it's kind of like reading reviews of these hypercars where at the end they always say and by the way they're all already sold out
Casey:
right yeah now like i said the video i think it was like five or ten minutes and you know it's not required viewing by any stretch of the imagination but they made a pretty compelling a compelling uh argument and case for their themselves and again i mean obviously the company who put up the video about themselves is going to say that they're amazing i mean i get that this is you know self-serving or whatever but i i thought it was an interesting video and i and they went through kind of the
John:
behind the scenes as to the choice some of the choices they made why they made them and how actually they could have done better but you know then it would have been a lot more money and blah blah blah again if you have some time to kill i definitely recommend spending a few minutes yeah like i said like the thing that gives me encouragement about this is it's it's just a printed circuit board with surface mount components on it like there's no magic there's no like thing that can only be fab by tsmc because it's some super like it is just nand and a bunch of components and a board that goes with it so it
John:
seems it's so tantalizingly close it's not a standard it's not it's like it's proprietary we get it like there are lots of barriers to making this but i feel like it is it's plausible that you could get one of these and not have it be a disaster and there's so much cheaper that's what's tempting me
Marco:
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Casey:
All right, so I think we're only going to have time for one topic today because it's going to be a doozy, and that is there was a report on the information a few days ago as we record about how Apple fumbled Siri's AI makeover.
Casey:
And there's a few different – there's a lot in this article, and you can see a summary of it on MacRumors.com.
Casey:
John has done the yeoman's work of splitting this into different topics.
Casey:
John entitled this particular section, The Blame Game, which I think is perfectly apt.
Casey:
It says in the information article, some of Apple's struggles in AI have stemmed from deeply ingrained company values.
Casey:
For example, its militant stance on user privacy, which has made it difficult for the company to gain access to large quantities of data for training models.
Casey:
But an equally important factor was the conflicting personalities within Apple.
Casey:
More than half a dozen former Apple employees who worked in the AI and machine learning group led by JG, which that group is known by AIML for short, told the information that poor leadership is to blame for its problems with execution.
Casey:
They singled out JG's lieutenant, Robbie Walker, who oversaw day-to-day operations for Siri as lacking both ambition and an appetite for taking risks on designing future versions of the voice assistant.
Casey:
Among engineers inside Apple, the AI group's relaxed culture and struggles with execution have even earned it an uncharitable nickname, a play on its initials, Aimless.
Casey:
A-I-M-L-E-S-S.
Casey:
Which is almost A-I-M-L-I-S-S, which would have been very funny.
John:
That's not a good sign, by the way.
John:
Like, just when the group that's responsible for Siri is, like, other people in the company are, like, snickering at it behind its back.
John:
That's usually not a good sign.
Marco:
Honestly, I kind of took that as promising that, like...
Marco:
You know, we've always felt from the outside, like, Siri is so bad.
Marco:
Does Apple not realize how bad it is?
Marco:
So it is kind of comforting to know, like, no, lots of the company did realize how bad it was.
Marco:
Like, it isn't just us.
John:
Well, it's like corporate infighting, though.
John:
It's like the group that's responsible for it.
John:
Like, those people stink.
John:
They're not... Well, anyway, you can continue.
John:
You'll see.
John:
But, like...
John:
remember that, uh, the org chart diagram, uh, maybe early two thousands.
John:
There was like, uh, how each company is organized.
John:
Do you remember this image?
John:
I was going to say it's a gif.
John:
It wasn't animated, but it might've literally been a gif as in a single image.
John:
Um,
John:
The only two I remember were the Apple one had Steve Jobs in the middle.
John:
He was like the hub of a wheel with lines radiating any out from him, which is like, yeah, no, that seems right.
John:
You know, it's like a star, starburst coming out from Steve Jobs.
John:
And the Microsoft one was a bunch of different divisions all holding guns on each other.
John:
Oh, yes.
John:
I do remember this now.
John:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John:
It's like some amount of rivalry within your company is healthy.
John:
Like everyone wants to do better than the other groups, but it shouldn't be to the level where maybe they're undermining each other or maybe there's a group that everyone knows is low performing and the other groups get angry about it.
John:
And that seems like what's happening here.
John:
You can continue.
Casey:
The dim internal view of the group in many parts of Apple is a stark contrast to that of Apple's software engineering team, which Federighi has overseen since 2012.
Casey:
It has built up a reputation for efficiency and execution with its work on Apple's operating systems and messaging photo, mail, and other apps.
Casey:
Former Apple employees have reserved Siri as a hot potato continuously passed between different teams, including those led by Apple's services chief at EQ and by Federighi.
Casey:
However, none of those reorganizations led to significant improvements in Siri's performance.
John:
So this is another thread of this.
John:
Obviously, when you have these stories, the information sources this to a bunch of people who used to work at Apple but don't anymore.
John:
So anytime you're talking to ex-employees, you have to wonder, do they have an axe to grind?
John:
What is their perspective?
John:
Were they coming from the AIML group?
John:
Were they coming from the groups that were mad at AIML?
John:
What are their biases?
John:
But it is interesting to see that
John:
But Federighi's group actually within the company seems to have a reputation for getting things done.
John:
And I can see that.
John:
We have complaints about what they're doing with software and the quality and all sorts of other things.
John:
But the bottom line is they do ship stuff.
John:
And if you're complained about the AIML, this thing is they're aimless and they're not accomplishing anything.
John:
Federighi, it seems, when given a task, do this thing every year, have a new revision of these operating systems with these features and so on and so forth.
John:
seems to actually be executing on that and producing results.
John:
What is the quality of the results?
John:
We get this steady drumbeat of email.
John:
I don't know if it's the same three people who have just a grudge against Federighi, but they're always like, why doesn't anyone ever blame Federighi?
John:
Is it because he's in the videos and he's got nice hair and everyone thinks he's funny?
John:
It's like, oh, it's like our fun uncle.
John:
We never say anything mean about him, but he's in charge of all software.
John:
So anytime you have a software complaint, shouldn't you be blaming Federighi?
John:
maybe yeah we tend to focus our blame more on like well what about the people who do the ui stuff like that's not federally specific job he may oversee that but there is a dedicated group for interface design and i save most of my ire for them when they do something that i would like in the interface or whatever but in the end yes he is responsible for all software but not all all software for example until recently he wasn't in charge of siri although he had been at some point in the past and so had eddie q so
John:
It's not always clear.
John:
Like if you think, well, he's in charge of all software and you don't like Siri, therefore it's his fault.
John:
Had you not known that there was this AI ML group, same thing with vision pro that was often to its own little corner before it sort of got reintegrated.
John:
So the internal structure of how Apple arranged things is not always clear from the outside.
John:
Uh, and, uh,
John:
I mean, this is just another data point.
John:
Again, maybe these are people from his groups, or of course they're going to say, oh, Craig's great.
John:
We are in our group.
John:
We always did everything perfect.
John:
It's those AML people that are terrible.
John:
Like you got to take all this with a grain of salt.
John:
We don't know what their biases are, but I have personally not heard anything about Federighi, um,
John:
That didn't align with this, that essentially he does get things done according to what he thinks he should do.
John:
And you could disagree with his tastes and decision making, but he is an effective operator within the organization of Apple.
John:
Like he is not he does not struggle to accomplish the goals that he sets out for himself or the people set before him within Apple.
John:
Again, you could say maybe the goals that he's setting or that are being set for him are the wrong goals, but he is actually executing them, which is part of the job of someone at his level.
John:
So that's why I personally usually don't come for Federighi because it's not because of his hair.
John:
It's because it seems like he can get things done.
John:
And for someone like that, I feel like I could persuade him to get the things done that I think should be done.
John:
But in the end, I think he's an effective executive.
Casey:
Yeah, you know, I don't know, and I don't want to get too caught up in this tangent that I'm now starting, but I've heard mixed about Federici, mostly very good, for sure.
Casey:
And certainly his whole like stage persona, I just adore.
Casey:
Like he, I think you said this a moment ago, he's like everyone's favorite, you know, funcle, fun uncle.
Casey:
But he's not like that in meetings.
John:
no from what i gather he's not like unlike uh jg you didn't have to say you have to try to say his full name at least once per episode casey do you want to try uh yeah so it's john g and andrea i believe yeah and we just got reports from people who've worked with him that he's just the nicest person he's very good but like and i'm not saying we we've discussed this uh at length and there's actually a recent new york times article on this very topic that i didn't bring the link for because i didn't think we'd go off on this tangent but like
John:
Oh, you're such a nice guy, but maybe you can't be a nice guy to be effective within an organization.
John:
No, I haven't heard that Craig is not a nice guy, but you also have to be... Ruthless.
John:
You have to be a serious person.
John:
To quote...
John:
What's it called?
John:
The HBO show with the billionaires who are smarter than real billionaires.
John:
Yes, thank you.
John:
Succession.
John:
Succession.
John:
I love you all, but you're not serious people.
John:
Craig Federighi is a serious person.
John:
It doesn't mean that, you know, you shouldn't be mean and cruel to people, but you do have to be firm and clear in your direction and decisive and so on and so forth.
John:
And again, everything I've heard is that Craig is...
John:
smart, technical, decisive, going to make wrong calls occasionally, but again, an effective operator within the organization of Apple.
John:
And JG, all I've heard about him is that he's a really nice guy, very smart, very knowledgeable.
John:
And all I've seen from the outside is not able to effectively operate with Apple.
Casey:
Yeah, it's very true.
Casey:
The people I've spoken to within Apple have almost universally said good things about Federighi.
Casey:
And not to say that he's perfect by any means, like you were saying a minute ago, but that he's very, very smart.
Casey:
I've heard several people say that he is one of the smartest people that they know and apparently has an uncanny ability to understand really complex technical problems almost immediately.
Casey:
It's apparently incredibly impressive, which...
Casey:
I don't really know Federighi.
Casey:
I met him once for two seconds and he had no idea who I was, which is what I would expect and did expect.
Casey:
But he seems like a genuinely nice person.
John:
And by the way, someone who's worked in big companies with big executives, whenever I hear those stories of like, oh, Craig really knows his technical stuff, blah, blah, blah, this is how I take it because I've experienced this.
John:
What it means is that he's not entirely clueless.
Yeah.
John:
which is which is like the normal like he's been out of it like he used to be a programmer but he's been out of it for so long or whatever that he that he's not entirely clueless and that he understands that sometimes it actually is important to know like the the broad outlines of what the deal is but also i think he's the type of person who would feel the urge to as he said in various interviews to like dive into the code himself and he should absolutely never do that
John:
Correct.
John:
Because his skills are not up to date, because that's not effective use of his time, because better programmers work for him, and because that's not his job.
John:
And I don't think he does that, to be fair.
John:
But people are amazed when an executive knows anything.
John:
I think Craig mostly understands that
John:
that it's good that he has that background and that background is, should be part of his decision-making.
John:
Cause you see so much in big companies where there'll be a technical executive who will become an executive for enough time that they no longer think technical matters are, should be part of their decision-making at all.
John:
And they should be.
John:
They should always be an aspect.
John:
It doesn't mean he needs to understand everything from top to bottom.
John:
It means he needs to ask smart questions to people who know the real answers, who give him information that he then incorporates into his decision-making process.
John:
And people read that as, like, he knows everything and can do all of our jobs.
John:
He could not.
John:
He can't do all of your jobs.
John:
Like, that's never the case.
John:
He's not supposed to do all of your jobs.
John:
He's supposed to do his job.
John:
But there's a little bit of hagiography of, like, oh, he's so technical and understands everything.
John:
It just means that he is...
John:
properly using, properly taking into account technical considerations that worse executives discard because they're like, well, I don't need to understand that at all.
John:
And in fact, no one needs to understand that.
John:
And in fact, that's not even important.
John:
All I need to know is the finished product and I don't need to understand anything about how it comes to be.
John:
And Craig luckily does not subscribe to that theory.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
With regard to John G. and Andrea's Siri leadership, in 2018, when J.G.
Casey:
arrived from Google to run the newly formed AI group, he was, excuse me, his hiring was seen by the tech industry as a coup for Apple.
Casey:
And I remember this.
Casey:
We talked about this, that, oh, man, they pulled like the king of AI from Google.
Casey:
I never would have expected it.
Casey:
And I mean, I stand by that from what we knew at the time, even actually from what we know now.
Casey:
Even before Gianandrea took control of the assistant, members of the group working on Siri felt like second-class citizens at Apple.
Casey:
Siri's engineers were frustrated by the software engineering team's control over iOS updates, feeling they weren't prioritizing fixes for Siri.
John:
So this is a problem of when you're not in the one big software group.
John:
Like, wasn't everything under software at various times?
John:
No.
John:
And so Siri, for whatever reasons, was off to the side.
John:
And...
John:
that means that like if you know i can understand the frustration of like well there's this train going every year where they release a new version of ios a new version of mac os or whatever and is the siri team even in the meetings leading up to that and what what does the siri team want out of the platform or do they just kind of have to like are they just getting shoved along by the freight train that is the ios n plus one that's coming down the line uh
John:
When you see stuff, I mean, everything in this article is kind of like organizational dysfunction, but it's like, well, is Siri an important part of iOS?
John:
Then maybe it should be better incorporated in the process that produces a new version of iOS every year if the Siri group feels like...
John:
they don't they don't can't get what they want out of the ios updates and their complaints go on herb is like well you know craig's in charge of ios and craig's not in charge of you and so talk to your executive and your executive talk to tim then tim talks out like are you up the chain to try to get tim cook's attention to go back down the org chart back into craig to get what you want is never going to work and so this is maybe not the correct shape for the organization if you consider siri to be an integral part of ios which it seems like organizationally apple did not
Marco:
which is kind of crazy like it's siri is it's a foundational technology it is as foundational as many other foundational technologies in apple's os's things like the code like foundation at the code level you know swift core libraries networking libraries like siri is on that level uh and you know like icloud icloud is also integrated in everything like it should be treated in a similar fashion as that yeah and it's
John:
it's just wild that they have been outside for so long.
John:
Like it was an acquisition, right?
John:
So it kind of makes sense.
John:
They'd be off in their own little corner, but if anything, Siri has become more integral to Apple's products because we just got done talking about this in a couple of past episodes.
John:
Uh,
John:
Apple keeps introducing products that essentially hinge on Siri to be any good, starting with like the HomePod, but continuing to like this HomePod with a screen thing and other like other things that you can just talk to or Vision Pro.
John:
We'll get to that in a second, like things that don't have a screen or that it's convenient for you to use with the verbal interface.
John:
end up you know who knows if they're using quote-unquote real siri or whatever they use but the point is apple's branding for like a voice thing that you can talk to to do stuff is siri and at this point now the bad quality of siri is literally holding up products they can't release the home pod with the screen until they get the better siri because it's been designed with that in mind and that's not ready yet and it's just a really bad situation
Casey:
The software engineers for their part felt the Siri team couldn't keep up with supporting new features that came out of Federighi's group.
Casey:
In some ways, Dean Andrea stood out among his colleagues at Apple.
Casey:
Those who have worked with him described him as relaxed, quiet, non-confrontational, a contrast to many other members of Apple's executive team, some of whom were known for their demanding Type A personalities.
Casey:
Federighi's tough and demanding management style contrasts with JG's laid-back approach.
Casey:
When they're in meetings together, Federighi is known to bombard his colleagues with questions while JG tends to do more listening.
Casey:
After he joined, some of his colleagues told Gene Andrea that he should shake up series leadership, but he didn't do so.
John:
Yeah, so Federighi being described as type A and demanding...
John:
It seems like maybe that personality type is more successful within Apple, especially like JG was joined up and he's put in charge of Siri.
John:
I feel like he didn't read the moment like, oh, you've just come in from the outside.
John:
You're a hired gun.
John:
Your job is essentially do the thing that we couldn't do.
John:
We have had Siri for a while.
John:
We haven't done well with it.
John:
You know, Google Assistant is better.
John:
We're hiring you.
John:
Come fix things.
John:
not shaking up the leadership it's reads like oh do i really want to rock the boat maybe i'll settle in here figure out where things are which kind of makes sense you don't come in and fire everybody because you don't know which person you know who's responsible for what but coming in and having your colleagues say well of course you're here you are you're a big executive you've worked directly to tim uh what's what's your plan for shaking up series leadership and uh and the plan is oh i don't plan on doing that but
John:
Maybe he just thought it was the right call, but it reads as in this narrative of like, well, maybe he was just a little bit too nice to do the shakeup that was required.
John:
Or maybe he didn't know what needed to change or I don't know.
John:
But like that's that's it's a difficult situation.
John:
Like coming in as the fixer, like we've hired a big important person from outside who's going to come fix the thing that we haven't been able to fix internally.
John:
In some ways, you expect that person to rock the boat.
John:
And it seems like JG didn't do that.
Casey:
with regard to robbie walker one siri leader often criticized by colleagues was walker who joined apple in 2013 and became responsible for its daily operations at the end of 2022 in the eyes of his critics walker was unwilling to take big risks on siri and focused on metrics that didn't move the needle much on its performance rather than having a grand vision for overhauling the voice assistant for instance he often celebrated small wins such as reducing by minute percentages the delay between when someone asked siri a question and when it responded
Casey:
Another pet walker project was removing the hay from Hay Dingus voice command used to invoke the assistant, which took more than two years.
Casey:
Let me read that one more time.
Casey:
Another pet walker project was removing the hay from the Hay Dingus voice command used to invoke the assistant, which took more than two years.
Casey:
years to accomplish.
Marco:
Look, that is a funny headline.
Marco:
Obviously, that's not the only thing they were doing for two years.
Marco:
Yeah, but woof.
Marco:
I think what this reporting shows, and obviously we have to disclaim that this is obviously being reported by
Marco:
employees with an axe to grind so you know I'm sure there's lots of different opinions on how this team should be led and what it should be doing and the people who were on the losing end of those fights are the ones talking to the information and saying like this is how this is why they were all wrong or they're all idiots or whatever but that being said
Marco:
It sure does seem like the priorities of the Siri team have been focusing on features that are like really kind of surface level, you know, paint job kind of features without really fixing the underlying problem.
Marco:
And we've seen that on the outside.
Marco:
Like that seems like that seems right to us because what we've seen on the outside is like, great.
Marco:
This year, Siri has, you know, say a new voice.
Marco:
Okay.
Marco:
I mean... Or new animation.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
A new animation.
Marco:
Okay, that's nice, you know, but it still doesn't work a lot of times and gives bad answers and is slow and unreliable.
Marco:
And, like, none of those things seem like they were getting nearly enough work on them.
Marco:
Whereas Apple will come out and say, like, hey, you don't have to say hey anymore.
Yeah.
Marco:
Okay.
Marco:
Well, first of all, that wasn't really a problem.
Marco:
Second of all, now that you don't have to say hey anymore, it actually triggers itself automatically, erroneously, way more often than it did before.
Marco:
So you'll be doing something that has nothing to do with it.
Marco:
In the next room over, and your HomePod will say, hmmm?
Marco:
Or it'll start playing random music when you weren't talking to it.
Marco:
Or it'll, in the middle of your conversation with someone else, put it and say, I'm sorry, I can't look at that right now.
Marco:
Look at your iPhone or whatever.
Marco:
So they're doing things like, okay, these are minor cosmetic or interface types of things.
Marco:
You shouldn't be spending that much time on that if the fundamentals are bad.
Marco:
And if you are, you know, if you're tight for engineering resources or, you know, money from the higher ups, which we got to, like if we're tight from that, maybe things like that are not the best use of your time.
Marco:
Maybe like, you know, making Siri look and sound a little bit better or improving the interface, you know, in some relatively minor way, like dropping the hay.
Marco:
That, to me, shows bad leadership.
Marco:
That just shows the leadership is not properly allocating time and resources.
Marco:
They're not prioritizing the big problems.
Marco:
They're moving around some Titanic deck chairs instead of actually fixing the problem.
Marco:
Hopefully, that's all changed now.
Marco:
The reason why this hit so hard is because this kind of confirms what we've all suspected all this time, which is
Marco:
What is going on in Siri and why won't it ever actually get better in meaningful ways?
Marco:
And I think here's a bunch of reasons why.
John:
yeah i agree with you about the uh hey dingus thing uh removing the hay like oh it took two years like that's just how long projects take like it doesn't again it's not the only thing they were doing they tried to do it for one release it missed they said we'll schedule it for next year because it's not pressing that seems perfectly normal to me i don't yeah i think that is damning evidence again and it's anything although the most damning evidence against hey dingus is that they made it optional because it does cause accidental things so maybe it wasn't such a great idea to begin with but anyway the two-year timeline on that is fine i don't i don't it doesn't bother me at all that's just
John:
Everything they do, they try for one year, it doesn't make it, they go for the next year, it's fine.
John:
Increasing the, like, reducing the delay, making Siri respond faster, that's important.
John:
We complain about that all the time.
John:
But as Marco pointed out, yeah, okay, do that.
John:
But also, you have to see, like, the ship is going down, right?
John:
Yeah.
John:
Like, sure, by all means, do rearrange the tech shares.
John:
But, like, there is another problem that is much bigger.
John:
So I don't think any of these things shouldn't have been done.
John:
They should have been doing stuff.
John:
Like, in the meantime, can we get, you know, because Siri doesn't respond that fast, can we increase that?
John:
And say you've got a team trying to get rid of the hay because I think that could pay dividends for a more conversational product, like a thing with a screen, or it could make HomePods better.
John:
Like, by all means, do all those things.
John:
But I don't think that's what the entire team was doing.
John:
But whatever they were doing, it was not what they needed to do, which is...
John:
seriously overhaul Siri.
John:
And to that end, there's more to this section, believe it or not.
Casey:
Indeed.
Casey:
And last year, Walker dismissed an effort by a team of engineers to use LLMs to give Siri more emotional sensitivity so it could detect and give appropriate responses to users in distress.
Casey:
Walker told colleagues he wanted to focus on the next release of Siri rather than commit resources to the project.
Casey:
Without his knowledge, the project's engineers bypassed him to continue working on those capabilities with the Software Engineering Group's safety and location team.
John:
Warning, warning, another giant red flag.
John:
If someone in charge of some important group of things tells some part of their group not to do a thing and they go off and do it anyway in cooperation with another group, that is major organizational dysfunction.
John:
They're essentially disobeying the person who's supposed to be leading them and going over to like, it's like when, you know, your dad says no, so you go to mom to try to get a yes.
Right.
John:
That's not a healthy organization, right?
John:
The fact that this even was allowed to happen, right?
John:
Because this is the thing I believe what they're referring to is the thing that we've mentioned on the show and Casey brought it up.
John:
Like, have you noticed that Siri is more emotional now, right?
John:
I think this is a thing that shipped.
John:
Yeah, I think so.
John:
Did actually appreciably change something.
John:
And again, maybe that wasn't the thing they should have been working on, but it's a dysfunction when...
John:
They want to do it, and Walker's getting a lot of crap in a lot of these reports, because I assume he's under JG and more directly in charge of Siri.
John:
Apparently not setting appropriate priorities.
John:
Now, were these his priorities, or were they given to him by his management?
John:
Who knows?
John:
But yeah, when you say don't do this, and they go do it anyway with Craig's group or whatever, something is going wrong.
John:
And I feel like...
John:
walker should have been telling his boss like hey this is what's going on here i told them not to do this and they're doing it anyway but they're doing with another group but like are we in charge of syria are we not like maybe the current organization is not right and this should bubble up to the level of like i don't know companies that do like reorgs every year that's not healthy either but you do have to occasionally look at your org chart and say in light of our current uh
John:
uh products and our future plans does this organization make sense and i think for years and years siri has not been correctly homed is referencing it as a hot potato that had been bouncing around that doesn't reflect its importance to the company's current products and certainly doesn't reflect its importance to future products and then when the advent of llms definitely doesn't reflect like the future direction of the company so i mean to apple's credit they did eventually you
John:
figure this out and rearrange things and hopefully we can arrange them when it's better but yeah like anytime I've ever seen that happen like my boss says no but this other person over here says yes so we'll do it like I don't think it's in secret or whatever but we'll do it with them and just everyone grudgingly allows it someone needs to be noticing this is happening and saying this is a sign of an unhealthy organization we need to fix this
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
It's weird, too, because I am and we are so dissatisfied with the state of Siri today that the point that was made earlier is true.
Casey:
And it is worth remembering that there was a time that Federighi had Siri.
Casey:
There was a time that Eddie Q's team had Siri.
Casey:
And
Casey:
It was trash during those times, too.
Casey:
So I do think Craig has a well-earned reputation for delivering, and certainly Rockwell does after delivering the Vision Pro.
Casey:
Because whether or not you think the Vision Pro is a good product, it is a very, very impressive product.
Casey:
And he got it done.
Casey:
And we're going to talk more about him in a minute.
Casey:
But just because Federighi is pulling this back under his wing, it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to get any better.
John:
It is better aligned with like, if he's in charge of all the software and it's an incorporated thing, it makes sense.
John:
And like, I don't know how long he had it and how long Eddie had it.
John:
And the most important thing is when Siri was home to various other places, it was not quote unquote obvious what should be done, which the advent of LLMs is like, oh, we totally need to.
John:
Their capabilities are a good fit with what we're trying to do with Siri.
John:
And so now the direction is clear.
John:
Something, something LLM.
John:
Now, it's much clearer than before when we bought this company.
John:
We don't even know this technology.
John:
They produced this voice assistant for us.
John:
And it's okay, I guess, and we can try to improve it.
John:
But it wasn't so clear.
John:
I mean, obviously, Google Assistant was doing better and Alexa was doing better.
John:
So arguably, Apple should have hired away Google's person like they eventually did or someone from Amazon earlier.
John:
And ask them, hey, why are your assistants so much better than ours?
John:
And they probably would have said, oh, because it's structured nothing like Siri.
John:
And that company you bought had a good idea back in 2008, but we have better ideas now.
John:
But they didn't do that.
John:
They said, well, we've got this product.
John:
We're kind of stuck with it.
John:
It is what it is.
John:
It's not entirely clear how it could make like a quantum leap to be better than it is.
John:
So it got bounced around.
John:
But yeah, once JG appeared and once LLMs appeared, it's like now we know how we can make Siri better.
John:
And the failure to do that is why this article exists.
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Casey:
Cross-group tensions.
Casey:
We've kind of bounced off of this so far.
Casey:
Other resentments between JG's AI ML group and Federighi's software engineering group also built up.
Casey:
Some in the software engineering group were annoyed by the higher pay and faster promotions their colleagues in the AI group were receiving.
Casey:
And they were bitter that some engineers in the AI group seemed to be able to take longer vacations and leave early on Fridays, while they in the software engineering group faced more punishing work schedules.
Casey:
Distrust between the two groups got so bad that earlier this year, one of Gianandrea's deputies asked engineers to extensively document the development of a joint project so that if it failed, Federighi's group couldn't scapegoat the AI team.
Casey:
It didn't help.
Marco:
Can I just for a minute here?
Marco:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marco:
This is going to keep showing how terrible the AI team is probably, but I do want to step back by one paragraph and say...
Marco:
The workaholic culture is not helpful.
Marco:
No.
Marco:
The idea that, like, software engineers and Federighi's org resented the AI org because they were able to have weekends and evenings, like, that's just healthy.
Marco:
And, you know, Silicon Valley has kind of this, you know, this workaholism sickness and obsession.
Marco:
And there is this culture of...
Marco:
You know, if if you're doing either really important work or you're in some kind of crunch mode like you can't take a weekend.
Marco:
You got to work all the time.
Marco:
And if you don't, you're not a team player or you're not good enough or you're not devoted enough.
Marco:
That's just I mean, first of all, I find that incredibly unethical.
Marco:
And second of all, it's unnecessary and tends to produce worse output.
Marco:
So the idea that like the AI team was like lazy or whatever, because they were taking weekends and occasionally vacations and leaving early on Fridays.
Marco:
Oh my God.
Marco:
What like if the only way you can get good output is to overwork your people, you have a management problem, a serious management problem and a cultural problem.
Marco:
So yeah,
Marco:
I won't stand up for the Siri team on a lot of things, but I'll stand up to them for this.
Marco:
This is something that this is not a major deficiency.
Marco:
They have many, many, many other problems.
Marco:
This is not one of them.
John:
This type of work culture, this aspect of work culture does exist on a spectrum.
John:
I think one problem that Apple has had
John:
probably forever, but certainly in the Jobs 2 era and onward, is kind of the same problem that the game industry has.
John:
Game industry is even more notorious for crunch and burning through people and just, you know, not so much workaholics, but just like, you know, a wood chipper that you throw employees into, right?
John:
And part of the reason the game industry has that reputation is the thing that Apple holds victim to a little bit as well
John:
People really love games.
John:
You know, someone who's like, I grew up playing Doom.
John:
I want to work in the games industry.
John:
I want to work for id software.
John:
I mean, that's a dated reference.
John:
But anyway, acquired many times over by this point.
John:
People who get into the game industry, much like the entertainment industry, like they really want to be there.
John:
And not only do they really want to be there, there is...
John:
Not an infinite number of slots, not the same as Hollywood, where there's a tiny number of slots or whatever, but like it's the games industry is big enough to absorb a lot of people, but it is not trivial to break into, especially if you want to be doing something that's not menial.
John:
Like I want to be the designer for the next big AAA game.
John:
Well, how many jobs are there that is the designer of the next big AAA game?
John:
There's not hundreds of those jobs in the world because there's not hundreds of next big AAA games every year.
John:
Um, so you have an industry that people really, really want to be in and you take these employees often young and very enthusiastic and you hire them onto a company.
John:
And the thing is they want to work their butts off.
John:
They want to be workaholics.
John:
They want to stay on the weekends.
John:
They want to like make friends at work and do all this stuff.
John:
Like they don't, these people don't understand work-life balance and they want to do that.
John:
And the manager's like, Oh,
John:
they want to do it.
John:
Yeah.
John:
We'll just make that the culture, I guess.
John:
And then boy, look at this.
John:
We get our games out sooner and we can just, if, if we're missing a date, we'll just make them work 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
John:
And, and we'll call it crunch and I'll just be part of the industry and it'll be great.
John:
And that's one of the worst things about the games industry that it grinds people up like that.
John:
Apple has that problem, a smaller version.
John:
People really want to work in Apple because they admire Apple and they like its products.
John:
And so they get there and they're enthusiastic and they'd be like, we're working on the next version of iOS.
John:
And this is amazing.
John:
We're doing this amazing thing.
John:
And they care about it so much that they want to come in on weekends.
John:
They want to work on it.
John:
And it seems like the culture at Apple was like, oh, well.
John:
these people really want to work on.
John:
I mean, I'm not going to tell them, no, they can't come in.
John:
And so they come in and they work their butts off and they burn out.
John:
And as Marker pointed out, that's bad management.
John:
And it's tempting to do that because you have these people who are enthusiastic and who really, really want to work there.
John:
But like so much of Apple culture is
John:
sort of based on the premise that of course everyone wants to work for us because we're Apple and we're a great company and everything about our buildings are great and beautiful and our products are great and beautiful and don't you want to just be a part of that and know you're not going to get any credit and know your name won't be in the credits because jobs get rid of that too or whatever but don't you just want to be a part of it so much so that you're just going to work your butt off and like you have to figure out a way to
John:
balance employees' enthusiasm for doing their job, which is a good thing, with not grinding through them like human meat.
John:
Because it's not good long term for anything, but it's so tempting.
John:
Even if you're a good manager, even if you mean well,
John:
like your incentives are aligned to be like well one or two weekends shouldn't hurt and when it comes time to review people like well that person does come in a lot and so into that environment you add someone like the aiml group which is from a more like maybe let's say academic background or let's say a more google-like background google historically if maybe if not today had a much different reputation which was like come work here and you won't have insane hours and we won't expect you to be crunching on the next big release of whatever
John:
And you'll be able to just kind of float around and follow your interests and go from group to group.
John:
And it's much more like a college campus type of atmosphere, much more relaxed.
John:
And Apple people probably look at that and say, look at those people.
John:
That's why they can't ship any products.
John:
We're so much more serious here.
John:
I'm going to say that the correct position to be is somewhere between the lackadaisical early Google things and the current Apple philosophy.
John:
And I can understand how a group like AML inside Apple looks to the rest of Apple like a bunch of like...
John:
floofy head in the clouds college kids especially if they're like they're you know apple needs to hire people who know ai stuff so they're giving them uh more initial pay giving them big promotions and they work less than we do that's where the resentment comes from it's like well this is the you know someone at apple recognized if you want people who understand this ai stuff you've got to we need to hire them away we need to give them a lot of money
John:
we need to get them to come here and we, we can't grind them up like meat because we're trying to attract them.
John:
Like we need to get them here.
John:
Right.
John:
And the poor Apple engineers who are just grinding away at some objective C code are like, you know, we're making the actual product here.
John:
Like, yeah, but there's a million that you wait.
John:
If you leave, there's 20 more kids coming out of school who want to do the exact same job you do.
John:
So keep working hard.
John:
But anyway, over here at AIML, we give promotions freely and big pay packages and everything's so much more relaxed.
John:
You don't have to worry about shipping a product, just work on these big problems and publish your papers and, you know,
John:
Yeah, that can lead to cross group tension.
John:
And it is like so that documenting what you're doing so that when the thing fails, you know who to blame.
John:
You don't want anyone in your organization spending any amount of time on essentially butt covering because that's what that is.
John:
It's like.
John:
I am already thinking that this project is probably going to fail.
John:
And when it does, I want to make sure no one can blame me.
John:
So let me write down everything that happens in every meeting.
John:
So when they say, oh, look here, it wasn't our fault.
John:
How about you try to make the product succeed instead, right?
John:
How about you work together to make a success instead of planning for a failure?
John:
Like, so this is incredibly unhealthy.
John:
Just, just incredible.
John:
Like, like being instructed to do that or like having that take place, like someone in management go, wait a second, you told them to do what?
John:
same team guys say like how about we make the product not fail like and this is maybe like from bitter history it's like well when we tried to do that last time we got blamed for all the failures and everyone called us aimless and so we're going to make sure that we don't get blamed this time and it's just so unhealthy like this whole this whole org needs to be in like family therapy together
Casey:
Yeah, they really do.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So continuing on from the article, it didn't help the relations between the groups when Federighi began amassing his own team of hundreds of machine learning engineers that goes by the name Intelligent Systems and is run by one of Federighi's top deputies, Sebastian Marino Mess.
John:
I got to stop again.
John:
Here we go.
John:
He did what?
John:
He hired his own team of hundreds of machine learning engineers because he didn't like AI ML.
John:
How, how, how does that happen?
John:
How is there, does he have enough discretionary budget that he's like, you know what?
John:
The Siri team's not getting a job.
John:
I should hire some of my own machine learning engineers.
John:
A couple hundred would do it.
John:
Don't you think?
What?
What?
John:
How many are in AIML?
John:
How much money does Federighi have?
John:
Does Tim Cook know that there's a team being made with hundreds of machine learning engineers in Federighi's org, none of whom are working on Siri, but also there's the Siri group?
John:
Like, Apple is, you know, famously sort of
John:
tight with money internally in terms of they don't give the highest salary they don't like hiring tons of people their teams are small and yet somehow federigi gets a hundred hundreds multiple hundreds of machine learning people because i mean obviously there's machine learning stuff that's part of the os group it's not all siri like i'm not saying he shouldn't have any machine learning people but this seems like a duplication of effort that should have been another huge set of red flags of like
John:
shouldn't like having machine learning expertise and stuff.
John:
Shouldn't, shouldn't we have them all kind of like, well, aren't we a functional org?
John:
Why should Craig have his kingdom of them?
John:
And JG have his kingdom of them.
John:
And just, it's just, as this article went on, I just, it was a heads forehead smacker.
John:
You're like, Oh my God, this,
John:
this like and setting aside people with access to grind and grudges or whatever just like explaining like uh intelligence systems or whatever like i i think there's a perfectly good reason for that group to exist not saying it shouldn't exist at all i'm saying but there's siri over there like shouldn't the intelligence and some people like have lunch with them and say what are you guys doing hey what do you guys do maybe should we should we work together and like should we be cooperating more closely than we are should we have the same boss as you go up the org chart before you get to tim cook
Casey:
The answer to that is yes.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
It's really not great.
Casey:
Let's see.
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
Over the years, Intelligent Systems has trained its own models and built demos that enabled users to control apps with voice commands, often without the help from the Siri team.
Casey:
That created tensions within the Siri group.
Casey:
You don't say...
Casey:
In one internal Apple presentation, a member of Intelligent Systems showed a slide depicting an animation of two mountains smashed together and flattened, which some saw as a subtle dig at Gene Andrea's hill-climbing philosophy.
John:
Yeah, I cut that one out because he's been a fan of hill-climbing, which is a machine learning term of art.
John:
And I'm not sure how two mountains smashed together is saying hill-climbing is dumb, you shouldn't do it, but snarking at each other across the organization in your slide presentations is yet another sign that things are going wrong.
John:
And yeah, I can understand how, like, it's just...
John:
teams feel like they're not getting what they want out of siri but they do want to control things with the voice so they stick their private little team on it and show a demo a voice control and then jg's like in the room and someone was like thinking that's part of siri but it's not part of siri that's just i can imagine the siri team being territorial and saying anytime you talk to a thing at apple that you're calling siri it should be going through our group and they'll say well we can't go through your group because you guys think so we did it all ourselves and
John:
not healthy.
Marco:
Well, and this is the kind of thing, like, when you have groups fighting with each other like this at the same level, you know, you have, like, you know, Federighi's, you know, organization versus JG's organization, like, this is a problem that Tim Cook should need to handle.
Marco:
Like, when you have these two orgs fighting, like, if they can't work it out amongst themselves...
Marco:
then the person above them has to step in and say, hey, quit it.
Marco:
This is ridiculous and wasteful.
Marco:
Instead, let's make some changes to do this right.
Marco:
And this is one of the problems with Tim Cook generally seems like he does not like to get involved with things like this.
Marco:
What we hear a lot is that Cook's approach to conflict management is, don't bring me conflicts.
Marco:
That's what we hear many, many times.
Marco:
So what happens?
Marco:
The conflict just gets pushed downward in the organization into areas like this, where you have clear, obvious dysfunction.
Marco:
When these two orgs are both fighting to do the same things because they don't like each other and don't like the way each other are doing things, that's terrible.
Marco:
That's obvious dysfunction.
Marco:
It's not good for the products.
Marco:
It's not good for the company.
Marco:
It's not good for the orgs.
Marco:
But yet...
Marco:
Because conflict cannot be managed correctly above them, it's pushed down into these little fiefdoms and fights within them.
Marco:
And that's on Tim Cook.
Marco:
That is 100% on Tim Cook.
John:
I don't think it's 100% because I think Don't Bring Me Conflict is a valid philosophy, but the whole point is it's supposed to...
John:
breed people below you that can resolve conflicts because they know they can't bring them to you for you to solve so they have to solve them and that's why I think some of the failures also with Federighi and JG because they both reported to Tim Cook and Tim Cook says don't bring me conflicts they should understand that to me and that means we have to resolve this conflict ourselves and they simply failed to do so
John:
And you could say, well, you know, Tim should figure out that they're failing there and help them.
John:
But, like, that's delegation and organization.
John:
And the one thing I think about Tim Cook in conflict is one of his very early moves was, in fact, to resolve a conflict, which was Johnny Ive versus Scott Forstall.
John:
And he went for...
John:
the more harmony harmonious agreement which is like if i get rid of forestall everyone else agrees they can get along if i keep him people are still going to be angry therefore let's go for group harmony that was an extremely high level decision that involved johnny ive which is as close as you could get to like an important employee who's not steve jobs or the ceo and so i understand why he uh
John:
participated there, but I can also understand his philosophy of don't bring me conflicts.
John:
And so that's why I leave some of the blame for this to in fact be with, uh, Federighi and JG because maybe, maybe it's not them that were having a degree, but it was the underlings and whatever.
John:
Like you can chase it down in the end.
John:
Obviously it's Tim Cook's fault in the end.
John:
Everything is Tim Cook's fault in the end because he's the CEO is in charge of everything.
John:
But I don't think the don't bring me conflicts is a non-workable strategy.
John:
It's just, it's kind of like a trust, but verify.
John:
you have to also occasionally check in to see that the conflicts are in fact being dealt with at a level below you and you're not just being shielded from them.
John:
Like that's, we don't know how much communication goes up and down the chain or what people discuss, but I can totally see like, cause it's such a big organization.
John:
If everyone who, when they're meetings with Tim, just complained about the other groups, like you, the whole meeting could just be about which groups think the other group is letting them down or whatever.
John:
And he just wants to hear how you're succeeding.
John:
And so they should be motivated to work together.
John:
And just this seems like a failure of that system to work.
Marco:
Indeed.
Marco:
But I would also say the whole idea of don't bring me conflict, you are right that that should breed the people under them to work things out amongst themselves.
Marco:
But I think it's based on a fantasy that that will always be fine or that is even the best approach.
Marco:
I think what happens in reality is...
Marco:
If you say at the top, don't bring me conflict, that doesn't prevent conflicts from happening.
Marco:
It just prevents them from being resolved by the top, which means that they have to shove solutions together below that level, not necessarily in a good way.
Marco:
What happened here?
Marco:
This was a conflict that they seemingly could not resolve, so what happened was...
Marco:
They solved it in a terrible way.
Marco:
They kind of worked around the conflict, kind of exacerbating it, making worse outcomes less efficiently.
Marco:
This was a terrible solution.
Marco:
So I do feel like this should have involved higher levels stepping in, and they didn't, and that's a failure on their part.
John:
I mean, they eventually did, like as with so many things, as I think you've said on past episodes a couple of times, Apple will eventually, assuming it stays alive, figure out what it's doing wrong and correct it.
John:
But it's really slow.
John:
And so, I mean, look, they just this is an example of presumably Tim Cook stepping in and resolving a conflict.
John:
Years, years too late, not not even close to like in a timely manner.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And, you know, it's the the other, you know, Ed Catmull book, Success Hides Problems.
John:
It's also very difficult to deal with these things when everything's going gangbusters, even if it's not these particular things that are going gangbusters, but it's all the company is successful.
John:
Everybody loves iPhone stock price going up.
John:
That hides a lot of this stuff because that can lead people to do the things that they've done here.
John:
It's like, well, I'll just hire my own machine learning team and we'll work it out and blah, blah, blah.
John:
And it's just it's difficult.
John:
This is part of the difficulty of being, you know, one step down the org chart from a CEO who says, don't bring me problems because I'm sure Craig tells his lieutenants the same thing.
John:
it is a reasonable system and the opposite is way worse, which is all, all you ever do is that people complaining about problems.
John:
Like the whole point of you being getting the bazillion dollars is like, solve it.
John:
That's what we're paying you for.
John:
Don't bring, don't bring every problem to your parents to have them resolve it.
John:
That's not a functional organization either.
John:
Uh, but yeah, this was a misstep and the, like it's one of the difficulties of being Tim Cook is how thin your attention is spread.
John:
Uh,
John:
There are so many more things that he has to think about besides the quality of Apple's products, which is a weird thing to say.
John:
But when you're the CEO, things like where are we manufacturing them and what are we doing financially and how are we hiring things and antitrust and government like there's just so much to think about that.
John:
You know, this one can sneak up on you in a few dozen years if you don't pay attention to it.
John:
So, yeah, that's why we're talking about this.
John:
This is definitely one of the ones that did fester, didn't get addressed in a timely manner, finally did do something about it, and now we get to see the postmortem or the glimpses of the postmortem from the outside.
Casey:
With regard to the When Will My Mom's Flight Arrive demo during WWDC, during an onstage demo at WWDC 2024, one Apple executive asked Siri when her mom's flight would land.
Casey:
The voice assistant accessed her email and real-time flight data to provide the current arrival time.
Casey:
She then asked Siri to remind her about their lunch plans, and the assistant plucked the details from her iPhone's messages and plotted a route from the airport to the restaurant.
Casey:
Among members of the Siri team at Apple, though, the demonstration was a surprise.
Casey:
They had never seen working versions of the capabilities.
Casey:
Woof.
Casey:
At the time, the only new feature from the demonstration that was activated for test devices was a pulsing colorful ribbon that appeared on the edges of the iPhone screen when a user invoked Siri.
Casey:
Oh, my word.
John:
Yeah, so this is some interesting wording from the information here.
John:
And you can read it in a way that is not as ridiculous as it sounds.
John:
Because what they're saying is, like, the Siri team was surprised by this demo because they'd never seen it working.
John:
It doesn't mean they weren't working on it.
John:
It just means they knew it didn't currently work.
John:
And so they didn't expect to see it demonstrated because why would you demonstrate a thing that doesn't work?
John:
So all of a sudden you see it in the demo.
John:
Maybe you've been working on it for a year, for two years, but you know it's not in a state where you can demo it.
John:
And so they show the demo and you're like...
John:
we'd never seen that working.
John:
And then the, this other part here, I felt like it was straight from the information from the author of the article saying at the time, the only new feature demonstration that was activated for test devices was the pulsing colorful door border.
John:
It doesn't mean the only thing that had been developed was the pulsing cultural ribbon thing or whatever.
John:
It's that's the only thing that was activated for test devices again within Apple or whatever.
John:
Um, so I think this is just basically an example of, uh,
John:
The team being blindsided by a demonstration that essentially put them behind the eight ball to say, we know you've been working on this.
John:
We know it's not ready where we can actually demo it, which is why we're not going to show it to the press at all.
John:
But we are going to put it in the keynote.
John:
And as I said in past episodes, I feel like this is a type of thing that has happened many times at Apple.
John:
Not that I'm endorsing it or saying it is a good thing, but from the famous Steve Jobs saying we're going to open source the FaceTime protocol and everyone on the FaceTime team going, wait, what?
John:
It's all the way down to half the other demos we've seen where we know the software is not ready to be shipped, but they demo it anyway and they say this is shipping in iOS 5 or whatever.
John:
And the team is like, oh, God, I guess we have to get this thing working in time for iOS 5 because Steve Jobs just stood on stage and said it's going to come out on iOS 5.
John:
Uh, this smells to me like that, but in case you needed confirmation that that demo was way out ahead of where the product was.
John:
And that also that the team responsible for the feature was not apparently intimately involved in giving a go, no go decision, because I guess product marketing does that, or it's, it's above their pay grade to decide, is this going to be in the keynote or not?
John:
But can you imagine being the audience and being on this team and going, you know, as Marco would say, bleep.
Casey:
With regard to not invented here syndrome, despite the company's experimentation with OpenAI's models, Apple managers told their engineers in 2023 they couldn't include models from outside companies in final Apple products and could only use them to benchmark against its in-house models.
Casey:
Building large Apple models meant to compete with OpenAI was the responsibility of JG's group.
Casey:
However, they didn't perform nearly as well as OpenAI's technology, according to multiple former Apple employees who used the models in 23 and 24.
Casey:
In his new role overseeing Siri, Federighi has already shaken things up.
Casey:
In a departure from previous policy, he has instructed Siri's machine learning engineers to do whatever it takes to build the best AI features, even if it means using open source models from other companies and its software products as opposed to Apple's own models.
John:
So this is not shocking that Apple only want to use its own models.
John:
That's totally seems like an Apple-y thing, but also setting aside whether it's an Apple-y thing, I think it's actually a fairly prudent thing because especially back, you know, a couple of years ago, but even today,
John:
There's so much uncertainty about the stuff that goes into models and people getting sued over the things the models were trained on or whatever.
John:
It's prudent to be able to have an answer when someone says, hey, what did you train that model on?
John:
It's one of the reasons Adobe makes such a big deal out of training all of its models that are part of Photoshop on content that Adobe owns or licenses.
John:
Because they have an answer.
John:
If someone says, what did you train that on?
John:
They'll say, look, I can show you.
John:
It's this.
John:
And we paid for it all.
John:
And we have license to it all.
John:
We didn't pirate a bunch of books or throw a bunch of movies.
John:
I think that is a prudent thing to do.
John:
And of course, Apple being like, of course, we're going to use our own stuff.
John:
We're not going to use their things.
John:
We're Apple.
John:
We'll do everything ourselves.
John:
So it makes sense.
John:
And we'll get to it in a little bit.
John:
The whole idea, OK, well, you did that.
John:
But your models aren't as good at OpenAI.
John:
So now what?
John:
And so in this crisis situation, Federighi being more pragmatic and saying,
John:
all right well we've this has been gone on long enough that so far no one has been sued out of existence so if we use an open source model i guess worst case whoever's responsible for building that open source model like uh they get sued or maybe we like and it's like at this point we can't uh
John:
We have lost the ability to be as prudent as we want to be.
John:
It's more important now to fix things.
John:
And that means taking on more risk.
John:
That means using open source models.
John:
So be it.
John:
So that, again, it seems like Federighi being pragmatic, but it is not a situation Apple really wants to be in.
Marco:
Yeah, I agree.
Marco:
I think this was not the wrong call.
Marco:
For the stage Apple was in, you've got to figure out the position Apple's in in the market.
Marco:
If anything goes wrong, they get raked over the coals.
Marco:
They have so many eyes on them.
Marco:
If anything is possible that somebody could sue them for any kind of infringement, they're on the hook for that.
Marco:
They wouldn't want, probably, to involve themselves with other people's models shipping in their products.
Marco:
That is just the reality of their position in the market.
Marco:
It would be too risky for them.
Marco:
Even though I think the right thing to do would have been for Apple to have developed their own models earlier than they did.
Marco:
And what seems to have happened is they realized too late that this kind of product was a big deal and they needed to have something in this area.
Marco:
And so they rushed and put something together.
Marco:
And in a rush, you might think, which maybe we'll get to later, in a rush, you might think maybe we should use other people's models to speed this along.
Marco:
But I understand why, given Apple's position and the way they usually do things, I understand why they didn't want to do that at that point.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
And then on the 11th of April, which was Friday, the New York Times had its own article.
Casey:
And I don't have the title in front of me.
John:
It was the Trump title is much broader than this.
John:
But the only part that I thought was interesting or relevant was this tidbit, which is specifically about what we've just been discussing.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
The title of the article, there we go, is What's Wrong with Apple?
John:
Kind of a big topic.
John:
And they went all over the place.
John:
And I didn't think most of it was worth repeating, but this part was relevant.
Casey:
Yeah, this is Trip Mickel, who had recently written a book about the design team after Johnny Ive, which I personally didn't really care for, but that's neither here nor there.
Casey:
Anyways, reading from his article, the AI stumble was set in motion in early 2023.
Casey:
JG, who was overseeing the effort, sought approval from the company's chief executive, Tim Cook, to buy more AI chips, known as graphic processing units or GPUs.
Casey:
At the time, Apple's data centers had about 50,000 GPUs that were more than five years old, far fewer than the hundreds of thousands of chips being bought at the time by AI leaders like Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Meta.
Casey:
Mr. Cook approved a plan to double the team's chip budget, but Apple's finance chief, Luca Maestri, reduced the increase to less than half of that.
Casey:
Mr. Maestri encouraged the team to make the chips they had more efficient.
Casey:
A lack of GPUs meant the team developing AI systems had to negotiate for data center computing power from its providers like Google and Amazon.
Casey:
The leading chips made by NVIDIA were in such demand that Apple used alternative chips made by Google for some of its AI development.
Casey:
I should also add that after the article was published, well, they added the following later on.
Casey:
After this article was published, Trudy Muller, an Apple spokeswoman, said the company had fulfilled Mr. Gianandrea's budget request for GPUs over time rather than all at once.
Casey:
She said Mr. Maestri had never asked the team to make its chips more efficient.
John:
So when you're the New York Times, you actually get Apple to respond.
John:
Isn't that interesting?
John:
Funny how that is.
John:
If you're anybody who's not the New York Times, good luck.
John:
Yeah, so the earlier bit about, you know, Apple wanted to make its own models, but people inside Apple said that the ones the JDS group making weren't as good at open AIs.
John:
Seems like he was trying to do the right thing, which is like, look, everyone else who's making their own models
John:
They're spending tons of money buying GPUs.
John:
We have to do that as well.
John:
Can we do that?
John:
And Tim Cook said, yeah, but not as fast or as expensive as you want.
John:
And I also imagine the CFO probably is not telling people what they should do in terms of chip efficiency.
John:
But it is an interesting contrast with DeepSeek, which was forbidden from getting the best of the best GPUs due to import restrictions and stuff.
John:
And so had to figure out a way to essentially do what the CFO, the former CFO, was saying here, which is like, can you just be more efficient with the GPUs that you have?
John:
DeepSeek said, yeah, I think we can figure that out.
John:
Apple did not figure that out.
John:
But this is... I don't blame JG for this at all.
John:
It seems like he was trying to do the right thing.
John:
It seems like the organization, though, was like...
John:
not ready to commit the amount of money that other companies work so open ai is like this is this is the only reason we exist we're we're raising money and we burned all on gpus like just where we are in the phase where we're like gathering as much investment as we can and we dump all that investment into training models and if we fail we fail but like that's the state we're at and apple is like well
John:
That's not really currently our business.
John:
We have another business that works really well.
John:
Have you seen our services chart?
John:
We sell a lot of iPhones.
John:
Then these people over here telling us we need to spend $200 billion on, you know, GPUs in the data center.
John:
Can we not do that or do it more slowly?
John:
And can you just like use Google TPUs?
John:
I think we had a story many months ago about Apple using Google's resources.
John:
Yeah.
John:
um you know instead of buying your own stuff buying your own gpus rent time on somebody else's and you can do that as well but that is less money efficient and it's not what most of the big players are doing google uses its own they probably get really good rates on using tpus because they're their own things uh open ai is buying tons of stuff itself and using stuff from azure that microsoft is letting them use so i feel like this is
John:
This is sort of like evidence of Apple not correctly prioritizing, not prioritizing Siri, AI, ML, LM stuff to the degree that it would produce a successful result.
John:
Because I'm not going to say they didn't invest enough to do it because, again, DeepSeek figured out a way to do it with older hardware.
John:
Apple could have done that but didn't.
John:
But, yeah, this is not as bad as everything else that we saw.
John:
Even though the things like, oh, he wanted to buy stuff, but Tim Cook wouldn't let him.
John:
The company didn't invest as heavily or as quickly as, in hindsight, it seems like they should have.
John:
But if all that other stuff that we just went through about organizational dysfunction didn't exist, they still would have done way better with the resources they were given.
Marco:
yeah i don't know it's to me like it's hard look i've said before i don't want to drill it in too much here but like i really think this is like when microsoft missed mobile like apple missing llms and other similar like modern ai techniques i really think this is as big and and he will be judged harshly tim cook will be judged harshly in the future for like
Marco:
They missed AI.
Marco:
Apple missed AI the same way Microsoft missed mobile.
Marco:
And this, I think, is a good example of maybe why that happened or the mindset that was going on when it was happening.
Marco:
Apple should have been investing in this way earlier.
Marco:
And I think what's going to end up happening is their products will be uncompetitive in lots of important ways that will grow in importance over time.
Marco:
And they will either have significant losses to their market share in the future, potentially, or they will have to spend a huge amount of money buying AI companies or buying a big AI company down the road to make up for what they're lacking here.
Marco:
Either way, that's going to be way more expensive than it would have been for them to get on this earlier.
Marco:
It just seems like their heads were not in the right place over the last two years to realize that this is an area they should have been investing very heavily in.
Marco:
Instead, they seemed dismissive.
Marco:
They seemed like they were fully hubris and they were dismissive.
Marco:
They thought, there's no use for this stuff.
Marco:
This is all jokes.
Marco:
This is all useless BS generating machines and
Marco:
I think they've missed a lot here.
Marco:
They are still missing a lot.
Marco:
Now they are scrambling to catch up because, like, Microsoft missing mobile, Apple missed AI, and who knows when it will be if they ever catch up.
Marco:
I'm guessing it's going to be a while.
Marco:
So that, you know, this Times article about, like, you know, Luca Maestri denying them GPU budget issues,
Marco:
If Apple knew what they were dealing with back then, they should have put as much money into it as it took.
Marco:
Certainly, they had the money.
Marco:
And instead, they were being stingy because they didn't respect this as a problem.
Marco:
I hope they respect it now as a problem.
Marco:
I hope.
Marco:
But they're already really far behind for reasons like this.
John:
This is one of the most difficult decisions for a big company to make because there's always going to be some...
John:
Yeah.
John:
Apple's going to look at that and say, well, of course you're investing in that OpenAI because this is literally your whole company.
John:
It's like, this is your shot.
John:
You're taking it.
John:
But we shouldn't be investing the same amount that OpenAI is because it's not a bet the company thing for us.
John:
It is the whole company for OpenAI.
John:
So they shouldn't be the model for us because look at all the other companies doing things.
John:
We can't invest at that level anytime there's a startup or a bunch of startups in a thing getting tons of money.
John:
We can't chase that and say, well, we need to be investing the same amount as they did because maybe they'll fizzle out or...
John:
Maybe it won't be that big a deal or maybe we can just buy them the one that's successful or whatever, right?
John:
So it's so hard as a big company to know which ones you should pay attention to and actually which ones you should invest and like how – like maybe you don't do it the second they do but like how long do you wait –
John:
to decide, okay, well, OpenAI has been putting tons of money in this.
John:
And actually, they're kind of getting results.
John:
And I think that's kind of what Craig Federi's, like the story of his revelation about ChatGPT of like, oh, they've made a product out of it.
John:
And the product is good.
John:
We need to get on this train.
John:
And turning the ship is not, I mean, he's not the CEO.
John:
But even if he was, like, maybe at that point, you have already waited a little bit too long.
John:
And it seems like they just...
John:
have been slow to react to this and have been reacting in a more prudent big company kind of way of like, Oh, you need more GPUs.
John:
Okay.
John:
You can have more, but you need them that fast.
John:
And maybe you can rent some out.
John:
And like the soon as like the, like Bill Gates with the internet tidal wave memo.
John:
Right.
Yeah.
John:
When someone's sufficiently high up in an organization has that eureka moment, which, by the way, you know, lower level employees are constantly having eureka moments about things they think the company should do.
John:
And sometimes they're right and sometimes they're wrong.
John:
But we only notice when an executive of a sufficient high level has that eureka moment and says, oh, my God, the Internet.
John:
We need to turn the whole company around because guess what?
John:
I've just realized that the Internet is going to be a really important thing and we should get on that.
John:
arguably apple was even slower than microsoft in that regard it just didn't matter because they were so small and in the process of dying so no one cared what they did but microsoft was like all hands on deck bill gates went away on a vacation came back and says internet go uh and he did that for security he did that for mobile and like you know sometimes you're too late sometimes you're too early sometimes you're just on time but like there's that time before that where it's so hard to know like
John:
is this going to be the next big thing or is this not, or what should we be doing?
John:
And like, you know, with Apple, we've always talked about the car program of putting all that money into the car.
John:
It's like make big bets and I'm going to pay off like, Oh, well, right.
John:
Or even, even a vision pro like that.
John:
It's a big bet.
John:
It's not currently paying off.
John:
It's not even entirely clear that that's going to be the next big thing, but it is kind of cool.
John:
Um,
John:
when we think of Apple as this big giant sack of money that they are, right?
John:
And we say, well, you've got all this money.
John:
Like, it's doing you no good just, you know, sitting there accumulating.
John:
Like, you might as well make these big bets.
John:
I do wonder, like, in the pitch to say, okay, someone is convinced that actually, you know, have you seen ChatGPT, Tim?
John:
Like, they should put money in this.
John:
It only seems like a lot of money because we don't have Apple money, right?
John:
If you look into the percentage of Apple money and do that math like they always do of like, you know,
John:
a billionaire uh spends 100 million dollars it's the same as you spending five dollars right it's just like should we do that like i know you don't you don't get rich by spending all this money but it's it's so like apple was so late on this and from this reporting even when they had decided it was a thing they wanted they were still kind of acting like they needed to pinch pennies and it's like you spent like billions of dollars on a car that never shipped you're gonna
John:
slow roll the gpu roll out come on like just uh it is frustrating but i think it is hard even when you have so much money maybe especially when you have so much money to uh get out of the mindset of like the dragon on the horde of like yeah i have all this money because i don't spend it on every single thing that people want me to spend it on but anyway um unlike mobile i still continue to think that um
John:
so far this is not guaranteed but so far it doesn't seem like a thing that threatens apple's platform because in theory if they get off their butts and do something more sane they could be quote unquote the best platform for hosting voice assistants they're not currently that but technically they could be and chat gpt does not seem to be threatening them as a platform or any other company threatening them as a platform yet because they don't have a platform or a product other than like a web page that you can talk to and type things into
John:
But that's not guaranteed to be true forever.
John:
And so I really hope the dragon slumbering on its hoard of money has now woken up and we'll see some better results in the coming years.
Marco:
Honestly, I think ChatGPT has amazing products.
Marco:
And I think it's way beyond a webpage.
John:
But they don't replace the iPhone.
Marco:
They don't replace the iPhone, but I think they have the ability to replace a lot of iPhone apps and a lot of iPhone features.
John:
Yeah, Apple would love to take 30% from all of them.
Marco:
Yeah, true.
Marco:
But in my car, whenever I'm driving and I need some knowledge, I have a question about something, I will say, hey, thing...
Marco:
Ask ChatGPT and then my question.
Marco:
I say that every single time now because it's so much better than Siri that now at least Siri has the hook where it can just shell stuff out of ChatGPT, you know, not always well, not always at the right time.
John:
By the way, the reports have shown that
John:
Asking chat GPT directly has way better results than asking Siri to ask chat GPT, which doesn't make any sense.
John:
But that's the only thing we've seen because it's a, you know, man bites dog type of story.
John:
We don't see the other ones, but like it boggles wine.
John:
That should ever be the case.
John:
Like, shouldn't it be the same?
John:
But somehow it isn't.
Marco:
Right, but regardless, like, you know, like, ChatGPT, like, via CarPlay, via Siri, is way better than Siri ever was.
Marco:
You know, if you're actually on the device and able to use it directly, you know, mapping ChatGPT to, like, the action button is a pretty common thing on iPhones.
Marco:
On the Mac, of course, you can just tab open with the webpage, or they have a Mac app that you can have a shortcut key to, and it can integrate with other stuff, like...
Marco:
I think of all the AI companies, whatever model is on top changes week to week almost.
Marco:
But ChatGPT or OpenAI consistently has the best products in front of their model usually.
Marco:
They really do well with how can we take this technology, this amazing model that we have and actually make useful user-facing features and compelling user-facing features.
Marco:
Usually ChatGPT is the leader in that area.
Marco:
And
Marco:
So I really do not think it's out of the realm of possibility.
Marco:
Maybe down the road, Apple buys OpenAI for just a ridiculous, massive amount of money.
John:
That's after OpenAI buys Johnny Ives' company, right?
John:
That's another story maybe we'll have in a future episode, but that seems like it's coming down the pike too.
Marco:
Oh, God.
Marco:
I sure hope that isn't how we get Johnny Ive back into Apple.
John:
No, I think he'll just take the money and be gone by then.
John:
Because they're working on whatever, presumably something that's like the AI pin but not crappy.
John:
But yeah, OpenAI buys his company.
John:
He becomes even more fabulously wealthy, just spears into the wilderness, and then Apple buys OpenAI.
John:
I don't know.
John:
OpenAI at this point, Apple shouldn't buy it at current valuations, but it may not get cheaper.
John:
Probably not.
John:
We'll see how that goes.
Yeah.
John:
Apple still trying to do it on their own.
John:
And honestly, I think, uh, it is plausible.
John:
They still can do it on their own because as you noted, like open AI has good products, but the products they have, I was going to say, Apple should have no problem doing products just as good.
John:
But, you know, these days, who knows?
John:
But anyway, it's not out of sight.
John:
Apple's pretty good at making software products too.
John:
So maybe they could do that.
John:
And the question is, all right, well, what about the model part?
John:
Well,
John:
it's not entirely clear that, that open AI is lead over the rest of the industry is insurmountable, but it's still in the grand scheme of things, early days.
John:
So we'll see how this turns out.
Marco:
Well, and I think it's less, I mean, I think the lead is, is more, uh, insurmountable than I think a lot of commentators to give it credit for, because yes, other people can indeed go, you know, train a model and, you know, give it, give them somebody enough money.
Marco:
They can train a model from scratch and they can do okay.
Marco:
So far that has happened a few times, but, uh,
Marco:
we are already very rapidly moving past just the model itself being really good into lots of different ways to use the models, to hook them up in different ways, to engineer their prompts in different ways, to do all sorts of things with what you're feeding them and how you're feeding it to them, and then what your steps are that you're taking to call them multiple times.
Marco:
There's all these different techniques.
Marco:
It's getting more and more complicated very, very rapidly.
Marco:
This is a rapid development happening, huge advancement happening, and OpenAI is...
Marco:
pretty it's usually the head of the pack and that's going to you know before too long their lead is going to be pretty large in ways that are not easy to replicate so things like mind share among people what you know habits apps you know actual like you know integrations they have like they're growing growing growing i hope apple can do a good job themselves but
Marco:
I fear that for all the same reasons that Siri has sucked all this time, it seems like they don't have the culture or the talent to properly enable something like this to grow in their company.
Marco:
In many, many ways, AI companies and the development of AI-type stuff seem at odds with Apple's culture, and Apple as a company doesn't seem to give it the respect that I think it deserves.
Marco:
And so I don't think Apple will ever.
Marco:
do a really great job with ai what i think is most likely here is similar to you know things like you know apple music apple music is not an amazing music service i was just about to bring that up to say that i no longer had confidence that apple can make a digital jukebox style application that's that's confident remember when they used to be good at that right like apple like apple music is fine
Marco:
It's not great.
John:
I would not say it's fine.
John:
It's sub-fine.
Marco:
Yeah, fine.
Marco:
We'll call it that, whatever it is.
Marco:
But, like, Apple Music is not great.
Marco:
It's one of the biggest music services.
Marco:
Why?
John:
Oh, you're talking about the service.
John:
I was talking about the app.
Marco:
Okay, sure.
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
Yeah, the services, again, it's fine.
Marco:
It's not great, but it's fine.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
Apple gets by with that because of their lock-in.
Marco:
They have so much lock-in infrastructure now that they can get by with a series of mediocre offerings, and the lock-in keeps us all using them and gives them the user base they need.
Marco:
Their 30% makes it hard for other people to compete.
Marco:
Their technical boundaries make it hard for other apps to even integrate in the same ways.
Marco:
So they don't really need a great...
Marco:
AI story they just need a functioning AI story just like you know Apple Music is not a great music service it functions it's a functioning music service and that lets them compete really effectively against others in the area not because they have the best offering but because they have unfair advantages they give themselves
Marco:
That's how this is going to work, too.
Marco:
I don't see any outcome here where Apple has a great AI company.
Marco:
I just don't see it.
Marco:
I hope that through various forces, internal and external, I hope they are forced to let companies that are good at it, like OpenAI...
Marco:
put their models into different places in iOS.
Marco:
Replace Siri or integrate better the way the current one's done, maybe more extended.
Marco:
I hope that becomes the direction they go and Apple becomes more of the platform company that it's actually... Apple as a platform is generally a very good situation.
Marco:
Apple makes really good OSs.
Marco:
They make really good developer frameworks.
Marco:
They make really good APIs.
Marco:
They're really good at that stuff.
Marco:
It's when they start getting into all the services stuff and all the gatekeeping and rent-seeking and anti-competitive behavior.
Marco:
That's when we see the worst of Apple.
Marco:
I don't think AI is going to do well for them.
Marco:
I think it's going to be a second-rate feature just like Siri has been.
Marco:
It's been...
Marco:
okay at best and usually pretty bad, but what do you see in Apple's culture that's any different now compared to the last 10 years that will enable this to become a great AI company?
Marco:
I see nothing different.
Marco:
I see it being the exact same
Marco:
handful of people running the company, the exact same handful of people in all these leadership roles who don't really understand AI that well, who don't tend to do very well at big data problems and machine learning types of problems or big services.
Marco:
These are not Apple's strengths.
Marco:
They do an okay job sometimes.
Marco:
But then Google and other companies usually totally outclass them in a lot of these areas.
Marco:
That's probably what's going to happen here.
Marco:
but at least it'll be better than having no AI features and no AI models or the first round of Apple intelligence stuff so far, which has been like, you know, barely there.
Marco:
But I, I wish that they would do something a little bit bigger and actually try to make something really great themselves.
Marco:
Like if, if you're going to, if you're going to become, if you're going to own the whole platform,
Marco:
and lock out everyone else in lots of different ways you got to do a really good job yourself in every possible area that's not a great strategy but if you choose to do that strategy please do a better job and so i hope they like you know really i hope i hope i'm totally wrong about this i hope like in you know in two years we do an episode and we and somebody points out how down i was about their ai prospects and it turns out they turn out awesome that'd be amazing i would love that
Marco:
I don't see any evidence that they've changed anything that it would take for them to change to get from here to there.
Marco:
It seems like moving AI stuff under Federighi is good.
Marco:
That's better than wherever the heck it was before.
Marco:
It's better than this situation.
Marco:
But they're not really making the really big...
Marco:
Cultural changes or leadership changes at larger levels to really make them a different kind of company.
Marco:
What we get with Tim Cook being a diplomat, as I was saying earlier in the show, he's a diplomat.
Marco:
And that is what the company needs a lot of the time.
Marco:
But he's really not a product person at all.
Marco:
And people keep apologizing for that.
Marco:
And people keep saying like, oh, well, you know, he doesn't need to be a product person.
Marco:
He delegates that.
Marco:
But I don't think he delegates that very well.
Marco:
Because he fundamentally doesn't understand or respect it enough.
Marco:
And we're seeing issues like missing AI.
Marco:
We're seeing things like, don't bring me conflicts.
Marco:
We see things like that that are just like...
Marco:
I don't know if Apple is too big to have a product person at the head now.
Marco:
It might be.
Marco:
But I wish it would have a product person again.
Marco:
I miss having Apple have that kind of spirit in it.
Marco:
I'm not saying it had to be Steve Jobs forever.
Marco:
But we lost a lot when we lost Steve.
Marco:
And one of the things we lost is a really good product person.
Marco:
Who is the head of product at Apple right now?
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
I have no clue.
John:
It's like the Craig Cavetti-Reedy situation where it is good to have an executive who doesn't have to know how every technical thing works but comes from a technical background and incorporates that
John:
into his decision making because he considers it an area where he can have insight and something to add and tim cook again as i always said to his credit realizes that he doesn't really have anything to add on the product front because it's just who he is right ideally if you build your own ceo construction kit right you'd pick one that has product knowledge and you know if you're building your vp you pick one with technical knowledge
John:
But, you know, you can't have everything like you got Tim Cook's amazing skills in certain areas that led him to become the CEO, but he has deficits as well.
John:
And this is one of them.
John:
And so I every time I see him and this is a story for maybe next week, every time I see him trying to introduce product opinions, I think that he should not.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Oh, yeah.
John:
So he is who he is.
John:
But yes, it would be better if we had a CEO who had all Tim Cook's good qualities, but also a bunch of good qualities that he doesn't have.
John:
And, you know, that's again, he does the only thing he can do, which is or the only thing I think he should do, which is delegate that not because the CEO should always delegate that, but because Tim Cook personally.
Yeah.
John:
He has no choice but to delegate that because it is not one of his strengths.
John:
And yeah, there are so many things.
John:
There's an increasing number of things that are wrong with Apple that you look at and you think this is never going to change until a bunch more people retire.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Which will happen.
John:
Time marches on.
John:
There will be new leadership.
John:
But there are so many things that are...
John:
that you just don't see possibly happening with the current leadership because they just don't believe in it.
John:
And you wouldn't want them to do something they don't believe in because their heart's not in it.
John:
But sometimes that means they've kind of outlived their usefulness to the company and you need somebody who has a different opinion.
John:
And maybe we could have a whole show on that at some point of just like all the things that require new leadership for Apple to change and what they should be.
John:
And they're so big and so counter to everything every person on the Apple leadership page believes in that you just know they're not going to happen until those faces change.
Marco:
Alright, thank you to our sponsors for this episode, BetterHelp, Mack Weldon, and HelloFresh.
Marco:
And thanks to our members who support us directly.
Marco:
You can join us at atp.fm slash join.
Marco:
One of the many perks of membership is ATP Overtime, our weekly bonus topic.
Marco:
This week on Overtime, we're talking about Sony's new 2025 TVs.
Marco:
This is a big new lineup, and you know how much all of us, especially me and Casey, love talking about TVs.
Marco:
So it's going to be a very me and Casey heavy Overtime this week.
John:
Well, one of us wants to get a new TV, and it's not me, and it's not Casey.
Marco:
You can join us at tv.fm slash join to hear this and every other overtime, plus our member specials and get a discount on our current Mercs and all sorts of other fun benefits.
Marco:
tv.fm slash join.
Marco:
Thanks, everybody.
Marco:
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.
John:
And if you're into Mastodon, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Marco:
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T, Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A, Syracuse.
Marco:
It's accidental.
Marco:
Accidental.
Marco:
They did it.
John:
So speaking of all this AI stuff, and getting to what Margot was talking about in terms of mindshare among people who are not listening to tech podcasts, what do they come to think of?
John:
What becomes the Kleenex of voice assistants?
John:
At this point, among the non-tech enthusiasts,
John:
siri does have mind share as the one that's bad yeah yeah it's the punching bag yeah um and so that you know it's not like these things aren't penetrating to the mass market but they're penetrating in a bad way when it comes to siri um but anyway i was reminded of this when i was watching one of my many for um
John:
I watch car rebuilding channels and I watch channels about people who are either rebuilding boats or who live on boats or who are sailing on boats, which is very strange for someone who gets massively seasick and will never be on a boat.
John:
But anyway, that's what I watch on YouTube.
John:
And I'm watching this one channel that I've been watching for years and years.
John:
And it used to be like, hey, we live on a boat.
John:
How does that work?
John:
And I was like, oh, that's cool.
John:
How does that work?
John:
Anyway, that was years ago.
John:
Now they're at the stage where they are, they're upgrading their boat.
John:
They're building a new boat.
John:
They have their old boat is just, they docked it somewhere and they're constructing a new boat from scratch, which is a very fascinating thing.
John:
Doesn't involve a lot of being on the water, involves a lot of being in a workshop, but that's what they're doing.
John:
And I'm watching mostly to see if they all die because they don't know what they're doing when they're building their boat.
John:
There are videos that I watch and I just shake my head and I go, you're all going to die.
John:
It's like the, the scene that draws the YouTube can't, uh, recall because you probably haven't seen the movie or can't remember it anyway.
John:
Um, never seen it.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Anyway, setting aside whether they all die on their boat that's been shot and constructed.
John:
Um,
John:
in a recent episode they were faced with the problem where they were just i don't know they're putting a tube inside another tube and filling the gap between them with like epoxy to put in a tube for like the prop shaft or whatever anyway uh the youtube the youtuber the person running the channel uh made it a point to uh
John:
have an entire episode saying, here's how I decided to solve this problem and, you know, the tools I used or whatever.
John:
And they've made videos like this for years, but this time, uh, AI was in the mix.
John:
And so they use both chat GPT and deep seek, which kind of surprised me that deep seek had, uh,
John:
enough sort of mind share to even come up as an option maybe i think maybe they made this video when it was like all in the news because there's a big delay when the videos come out right it's not happening in real time so deep seek was in there as well but also chat gpt and this is a person like fabricating real things
John:
And they did like a screencast sort of like a conversation with ChatGPT and asking like, if I have a tube this diameter and another tube with this diameter inside it and it's this long or whatever, what's the area of the thing?
John:
Like it's math that a middle schooler could do, right?
John:
It's not complicated math.
John:
But their solution to doing that math was to ask ChatGPT.
John:
And anybody who has used LLM-powered things to do math knows, in general, it is not their strength.
John:
They are large language models, not large math models.
John:
As Marco pointed out recently, they're not as simple as that anymore.
John:
There's a million different things being orchestrated, and most of these things have some kind of math engine behind the scenes that they will feed the math stuff to.
John:
But still...
John:
they were asking it to do things and then going, Oh, okay.
John:
And writing it down.
John:
And similarly, there was another episode a little bit later, which is like a, I have something that I have a electric motor and it gets hot and I need something to cool it.
John:
Uh, and I want to build it out of aluminum.
John:
How big of a, like essentially heat sink do I need to dissipate this amount of heat in this amount of time?
John:
And, uh,
John:
They're having this conversation with ChatGPT and DeepSeek saying, OK, here's the thing.
John:
Tell me what this is.
John:
And they would say, OK, well, I made these assumptions about the temperature of the water and the temperature of the thing coming from the engine.
John:
And here's what the area you need, blah, blah.
John:
Not surprisingly, the two different LLM products came up with wildly different answers off by like a factor of three or four.
John:
the thing that bothered me about this whole thing is i'm watching this waiting for the point where they say but of course this is all just like a fun exercise and i'm not going to actually build something based on what chat gpt told me to do especially since as i've just proven by asking two different lms and getting wildly different answers i can't just go by what they say because which i don't know which one to pick and the fact that they're so different makes me think that i don't know enough of what i'm doing to make use of these tools and yet i saw him starting to cut aluminum i'm like well wait
John:
Did we skip a step here where you talk to someone who knows what they're doing?
John:
Like, don't, here's my thing.
John:
I worry that people think chat GPT is the same as Googling something, which is not helped by the fact that the top, you know, above the fold thing on Google search results is now, you know, has been for years, the thing where Google tries to get the answer for you.
John:
But with the advent of LLMs is much more prominent and much more likely to, you know, look like it's giving you the answer.
Yeah.
John:
there was some, uh, an article I read ages ago.
John:
I wish I had the link.
John:
It was like, um, if you're, don't try to use chat GPT to win an argument.
John:
Like if someone says, I think Tom Cruise is, you know, 60 years old.
John:
I think he's 50 years old and we'll settle this by asking chat GPT.
John:
That doesn't settle anything, right?
John:
All you did was put some words into a machine the new words came out of, but you're exactly where you started off, which is like, well, it's plausible.
John:
Is it right?
John:
Maybe we should look up somewhere where we think has a slightly higher chance of knowing Tom Cruise's age.
John:
Wikipedia, IMDb, call sheet, like, are they necessarily right?
John:
No, but you kind of know, in general, how frequently does Wikipedia know the age of famous people?
John:
You have no idea in general how frequently is chat GPT at the age of famous people because it'll say all sorts of things.
John:
And so if you're trying to figure out the area between two cylinders or how big a heat sink you need for the cooler for your boat or what Tom Cruise's age is, if you've asked chat GPT and said, well, there you go, I figured it out.
John:
It feels so much like when we all first got smartphones and someone would ask them a question and we just Google it and say, look, I got the answer.
John:
I just Googled it.
John:
But that, even though the actions are the same, I took out my phone from my pocket, I typed in a thing, I hit a thing, and I read a result.
John:
It's not the same.
John:
And is it because, oh, people need to know how LLMs work?
John:
They need to know the intricate details of LLMs?
John:
I just feel like there's a disconnect between
John:
what lms are actually good for and what people are using them for and that disconnect may be dangerous kind of in the same way that there's a disconnect between what uh driver assistance functions are actually good for and what people use them for and why they end up dying by going under a tractor trailer because they're not using the tools quote correctly but the tools are essentially designed to tempt them into not using them correctly sometimes advertised in ways that i feel like we're at that stage with lms and i really don't want this person to build anything on their boat base and something chat gpt said because you
John:
chat tbc doesn't know what a boat is or how to build anything please and i'm not saying that the first non lm uh non-ai search result on google is also the right answer all the time i'm saying maybe you have to do more research than googling to figure out how big the heat sink needs to be on your boat that's all i'm saying
John:
noted have you have you seen this in real life people saying i just looked up in chat gpt my kids do it and i sternly say no no that's not surprising bad child no you have not looked it up that's is that right i don't know do you spray them with a water bottle too it's like like studying for a test like oh i you know they everyone uses like the notebook lm type things where you tuck your notes into it it makes a study guide like that's that's actually pretty cool but it's like
John:
They show me things like that, and they say, well, what does it say there?
John:
I'm like, well, but I don't know if this is right.
John:
This is just what ChatGPT said.
John:
I'm like, oh, it's fine.
John:
I'll probably be okay for the test.
John:
And they're probably mostly right, but again, don't fabricate things on your boat.
John:
I would say don't put that answer on a test unless you actually know it's right.
John:
Like maybe study from the actual study guide materials instead of running through the LM, hoping it doesn't mangle them, but...
John:
I find it extremely bothersome.
John:
No, I know you think, oh, you're a crotchety old man.
John:
Eventually, LMs will get it right.
John:
Maybe they will, but they're not getting it right today.
John:
So right now, my crotchety-ness is correct.
Marco:
But I mean, like, is that that different from doing a random web search and landing on some random web page?
John:
yeah it's that different because the random web page i think people have better instincts for its sketchiness not as good like you're like oh people think you think people know web pages are good well that's kind of what we gave google like what google's supposed to do like how many people link to it and blah blah i know there's seo and so on and so forth but reputation wise i think people have heard of wikipedia and understand its reputation like that's why we have institutions like you know as crappy as we may complain about them the new york times wikipedia imdb whatever like
John:
It's the reason why if we landed on some person's GeoCities page that says Tom Cruise is 50 years old, we trust that less of landing on Wikipedia.
John:
And I know people aren't good at making that determination, but it's something to hang your hat on.
John:
People understand institutions.
John:
And the problem is, to get back to your earlier point, Marco, is that I think people are starting to think of ChatGPT as the institution that has a reputation in the same way that Wikipedia or the New York Times does.
John:
And that is unfounded.
John:
because chat gpt is many things but it is not like they chat gpt that you know open ai the company or the product they don't have any information they are just gathering information from elsewhere compressing it grinding it up and spitting it out to you in some form that looks plausible but it is not the same thing as what wikipedia or the new york times are doing with their information and so even though you may trust the brand chat gpt and it has never steered you wrong eventually you're going to be getting glue on your pizza and not knowing it
John:
That was Google.
John:
Sorry.
John:
Sorry, OpenAI.
John:
I know you didn't do that one.
John:
But you do say some very bad things and you do make people with three hands.
John:
So there's that.