Tech Brew Ride Home - Thu. 07/09 – Apple’s Not Gonna Abandon Thunderbolt

Episode Date: July 9, 2020

Coinbase might be the most important IPO of the next several years. More bad numbers from Quibi. Apple wants you to know it is not abandoning Thunderbolt. Elon Musk says he’s gonna win my self-driving by 2020 wager. And I explain my whole Clubhouse versus Twitter analogy from yesterday. Sponsors: DoubleUp.agency CodeWizardsHQ.com offer code RIDE Links: Exclusive: Crypto exchange Coinbase readies landmark stock market listing, sources say (Reuters) Quibi reportedly lost 90 percent of early users after their free trials expired (The Verge) Apple promises to support Thunderbolt on its new ARM Macs (The Verge) Nvidia eclipses Intel as most valuable U.S. chipmaker (Reuters) Google launches Android 11 Beta 2 with final APIs and behaviors (VentureBeat) Musk Says Tesla Is ‘Very Close’ to Developing Fully Autonomous Vehicles (Bloomberg) Microsoft's plan to make video calls less miserable (Axios) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the Tech Beam ride home for Thursday, July 9th, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough today. Coinbase might be the most important IPO of the next several years. More bad numbers for Quibi. Apple wants you to know it's not abandoning Thunderbolt. Elon Musk wants you to know he's going to win my self-driving by 2020 wager.

And I explain my whole Clubhouse versus Twitter analogy from yesterday. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. Aside from Airbnb, we might have have the biggest new tech IPO in a long time to look forward to. Coinbase. Sources say Coinbase is exploring going public via a direct listing as early as this year. In its most recent round of private investment, Coinbase was valued at more than $8 billion. And remember, Coinbase is arguably the most important crypto exchange, which is important to keep in mind because, quoting, Reuters, the listing would need the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's blessing, were the watchdog to greenlight it, it would represent a landmark victory for cryptocurrency advocates vying

for mainstream endorsement. Coinbase could pursue the listing later this year or early next year, the sources said, cautioning that the plans are still subject to change. The company has not yet registered its intention to go public with the SEC, but has been in talks to higher investment banks and law firms, the source is added. In a direct listing, a company does not sell new shares as it does in an IPO, and existing investors are not bound by lock up restrictions on when they can divest their holdings following the market debut. Founded in 2012, Coinbase is one of the most well-known cryptocurrency platforms globally and has more than 35 million users who trade various virtual coins, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and XRP, end quote. As ever, when I talk about Quibi,

I want to stress, I am not piling on here. The fact that Quibi increasingly looks like one of the bigger disasters of recent startup and media history is fascinating, but I take no joy in that, I swear. Sensor Tower says that of the 910,000 or so people that signed up for Quibi's three-month free trial back in April, only around 8% or 72,000 of them have converted to a paid subscription after the trial ended, quoting The Verge. That's not too bad, but compare it to the streaming video industry's most successful debut of the last few years, Disney Plus, and the resulting picture is a grim one for Quibi, which has struggled both to find a hit among its mobile-centric shows and gain traction with its desired younger TikTok-loving demographic, despite the surge in

screen time during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Censor Tower, Disney managed to convert a comparable 11% of early free trial users, but that was out of a whopping 9.5 million people, the firm estimates signed up for Disney Plus in its first three days of availability in the U.S. and Canada. Since then, Disney has added tens of millions more subscribers and now enjoys more than 50 million paying users as of April, thanks in part to its international expansion. These numbers are not to be confused with the number of current paying subscribers, Quibi has. While the company has yet to disclose that all-important figure, it has said that more than 5.6 million people have downloaded the app since April.

We don't know how many people downloaded the app after its first few days and decided to then convert to a paid user after the free trial ended. Censor Tower also estimates only four and a half million have downloaded Quibi in total. The discrepancy between that figure and Quibi's official one suggests Sensor Tower could also be far off in its estimates of how many users could be converted in its first three days. In a statement given to the verge, a Quibi spokesperson said, quote, the number of paid subscribers is incorrect by an order of magnitude. To date, over 5.6 million people have downloaded the Quibi app. Our conversion from download to trial is above mobile app benchmarks, and we are seeing excellent conversion to paid subscribers, both among our

90-day free trial sign-ups from April as well as our 14-day free trial sign-ups from May and June, end quote. Which I would quibble with to this degree. I don't get the sense that there is any momentum behind Quibi as of right now. So if what we're looking at is the high watermark, if basically Quibi shot their wad and that's the best they could do, this is not good. Pivots can happen, but a cash runway can only go so far, especially in a bit. business where you have to pay so much up front just to have content that people are willing to sign up to pay for. When I told you about the new Thunderbolt standard yesterday, this angle never occurred to me.

Apple has had to come out and affirm that it remains, quote, committed to the future of Thunderbolt and will support it in Macs with Apple Silicon, end quote, because everyone was suddenly worried that since Apple is ditching Intel chips, that would mean they might be willing to ditch Thunderbolt as well. I never thought that was a possibility, but if you were worried about that happening, worry no more, I guess, quoting the verge. Over a decade ago, Apple partnered with Intel to design and develop Thunderbolt, and today our customers enjoy the speed and flexibility it brings to every Mac. We remain committed to the future of Thunderbolt and will support it in Macs with Apple Silicon commented in Apple spokesperson in a statement to the Verge. While there was some concern that Apple might

be losing support for Thunderbolt on its upcoming Macs, the fact that Apple is sticking with the standard makes a lot of sense, given that it had helped develop the original Thunderbolt standard in collaboration with Intel. Despite that collaboration, though, Apple has yet to offer Thunderbolt support on any products outside of Intel-powered Macs. Apple's arm-based iPad Pro in particular stands out as featuring a regular USBC port, not a Thunderbolt 3 connector. Apple's arm-based developer transition kit also only features standard USBC ports, end quote. Again, this is a segment that's neither here nor there, but I think worth noting nonetheless, Nvidia has surpassed Intel for the first time as the most valuable U.S. chipmaker,

with a market cap of more than $248 billion, as its stock has surged 68% in 2020 alone. Quoting Reuters, Invidia's stock has been among Wall Street's strongest performers in recent years, as it expanded from its core personal computer chip business into data. centers, automobiles, and artificial intelligence. Intel, which for decades has dominated in processors for PCs and servers, has struggled to diversify its business after making critical stumbles in the smartphone revolution. U.S. chipmakers have mostly outperformed since the S&P 500 hit a low on March 23rd, but Intel has enjoyed much less of that rebound than Nvidia, which is frequently among the most

traded stocks on Fidelity and other retail investing websites. While Intel's stock has lost almost 3% in 2020. Invidias has surged 68%. Investors have been betting that the shift to working remotely because of the coronavirus pandemic will continue to fuel fast growth in NVIDIA's data center business, end quote. Worth noting that NVIDIA's sales remain only a fraction of Intel's sales. Invidia will do something in the neighborhood of $14.5 billion in sales this year, while Intel will probably do $73 billion or so. But you know how this stock market works, something, something, forward-looking, and expectations of growth. Android developers, Android 11 beta 2 for pixel phones is out, and Google says Android 11 has now

reached platform stability, and all app APIs and behaviors have been finalized. So feel free to get started on making those final compatibility updates, quoting Venture Beat. Android 11 has had a rocky beta schedule. Google launched Android 11. DP1 in February, the earliest it has ever released in Android Developer. Android 11 DP2 in March, DP3 in April, Android 11 Beta 1 was supposed to arrive in May, but we got Android 11 DP4 as a stopgap measure, and then Beta 1 arrived in June. Beta 1 would have normally been shown off at Google's I.O developer conference, where the first Android beta typically debuts, but the event was canceled due to the coronavirus. Hashtag Android 11, the beta launch show, was supposed to happen in lieu of,

but Google postponed and then ultimately canceled that as well due to protests over systemic racism and police brutality. Despite the delays, Google insists that Android 11 is on schedule. The final is officially slated for Q3, but Google hinted last night that it was aiming for September 8th. You can get Android 11 Beta 2 now via the Android beta program or download it directly. Google will also be pushing an over-the-air update for those on previous builds, end quote. Elon Musk has said that Tesla is, quote, very close to developing fully autonomous vehicles and could work out the basics of the technology as soon as this year, quoting Bloomberg. While other self-driving developers have tempered expectations for when their technology will be

ready for deployment, Musk is undeterred. He said in a pre-recorded video played Thursday during the World AI conference in Shanghai that Tesla is very close to level five autonomy, meaning its cars won't require human intervention. quote, I remain confident that we will have the basic functionality for level five autonomy complete this year, Musk said. I think there are no fundamental challenges remaining for level five autonomy. There are many small problems, and then there's the challenge of solving all those small problems and then putting the whole system together, and just keep addressing the long tail of problems, end quote. Musk's view contrasts with Alphabet's Waymo, which recently acknowledged that it will be relying on human safety drivers to back up its robot taxis for many years to

come. General Motors's cruise last year backed off its plans to make autonomous vehicles available for hailing rides and hasn't set a new timetable for when such a service will be ready, end quote. Yes, Lord knows, I don't want to bring the wrath of the musketeers down on me, but Elon Musk does have a tendency to, shall we say, be overly exuberant about his predictions for autopilot. Remember the whole idea that all Tesla owners would by this point be making side money by sending their cars out as autonomous taxis. But hey, if he's right, then Elon Musk has a chance to single-handedly win our true autonomy by 2020 side wager just under the wire. Microsoft has announced Together Mode for Teams, which overlays group call participants onto the same virtual background,

adds meeting transcripts, improved whiteboarding, and a whole bunch more. You know a space is hot when there is suddenly like a Cambrian explosion of product innovation in the space all at the same time. Mm-hmm. See what I did there? Quoting Axios. Teams Together Mode displays the images of the user and all the other participants in a video conference against the same backdrop, ranging from a coffee bar for a couple people to an auditorium for larger gatherings of up to 49 people. Since the users are in a fixed place relative to others rather than in one of many boxes moving around in a gallery,

they can point at each other and make eye contact. The effect is like sitting in a barber chair, seeing yourself and others in the mirror and having a conversation with them. Under the hood, the technology draws on understandings from virtual reality applied to a traditional 2D video chat. Indeed, one of the key collaborators on Together Mode is Jaron Lanier, a researcher known as the father of VR. Microsoft commissioned research finds that people are more stressed out

over video calls than other types of remote work. Lanier says that early testing shows those using Together Mode are more calm and retain more than those using traditional video calls. Quote, it makes pandemic era meetings less miserable, less isolating, less fatiguing, and less weird, Lanier said in a briefing with reporters, although he also acknowledged that the Together Mode setup is still weird in its own way, end quote. Look, it might not seem like a big deal or a huge innovation to just break out of the Brady Bunch style talking heads boxes that we've all been used to, but this is how product design kind of works.

you eventually find the metaphors that make sense for a given medium when the medium becomes mature and vice versa. And I think that the medium of video chat of virtual conversation is suddenly growing up, suddenly becoming the first new interesting platform or paradigm that we've seen in an awful long time. And to that end, yesterday when we were talking about Twitter may be creating a subscription product, I mentioned something about Clubhouse that buzzed about new app that a lot of people are talking about. And I got some pushback from listeners for bringing that up because the statement I made on its face sort of seemed very insidery and cryptic, which was not at all my intention. So let me explain what I was trying to say.

First, I'm not sure that we'll ever see a subscription product from Twitter, though Twitter investors sure seem to want one. Twitter's stock was up 11% just on the rumor of a... subscription product. And second, if they do do a subscription product, it's likely to be something else, maybe something for media folk or influencers and celebrities and such to manage their distribution and reach and all that stuff. But yes, I have been on Clubhouse for the last several weeks. And before I say what I'm about to say, I want to acknowledge that there has been some controversy around that platform recently. But my experience there has been very positive,

which is to say, I feel like it's one of the most pleasant and fascinating social media platforms that I've seen in a long time. And yes, that's what the controversy has been about, the fact that to this point Clubhouse is very exclusive, to the point of being elite. So yeah, maybe it's easy to build a pleasant social media platform if you only let a bunch of Silicon Valley bigwigs in. And while my experience has been pleasant, others might have had wildly different experiences than I have. And I'm acknowledging that and the obvious reasons for that. But the point that I was trying to make yesterday is the way clubhouse functions is similar to the way that Zoom functions. Whoever starts a room on Clubhouse controls the room, controls who can stay in the room,

who gets kicked out, but more importantly, a la Zoom controls who speaks and how and when. There's the whole raising your hand and muting and unmuting and bringing people into talk. In Clubhouse, they use the on-stage metaphor. You invite people on stage and then they can talk. Now look, Clubhouse is not the first to do stuff like this, experiments along these lines, you know, Discord, WhatsApp, a ton of apps have been dancing around these sorts of innovations. But I think this idea of a hierarchical structure to group discussions is really interesting and starting to crack things open a bit. And I use Zoom as the main example because suddenly a ton of mainstream people have been trained

to become comfortable with this sort of paradigm. And then you see the sort of product innovations of things like, mm-hmm, and even what I just told you about the new Microsoft Teams features in the previous segment. The point is, for the entire social media era, the paradigm for discussion online has been post and comment, has been talking in a feed. It's barely different than message boards on a website in, say, 1994. But now we're seeing a new paradigm for conversation and discussion online evolve. and I think it's more civilized because it has this new kind of hierarchical structure. It's not just everyone's screaming their opinions all at the same time, all at a loud volume. This new paradigm's entire point is volume modulation.

And think about it. What platform is most infamous for being a cesspool of unstructured instability, of everyone shouting at the top of their lungs all at the same time, shouting at each other? I'm thinking, of course, of Twitter. So the point I was trying to make yesterday was it might behoove Twitter to become more like Clubhouse before someone like Clubhouse builds a better Twitter.

That's something I'd be willing to pay a subscription for. Hey, I know I was going to come to you with my whole mystery to solve today, but something happened in the meantime, and I have to take this time to be a little personal, if you'll indulge me. last night my lifelong mentor, Warner Stocker, died after a brief battle with cancer. I think that there is one universal dynamic when it comes to mentors. They help guide you on your life's path, yes, but they do it in a very specific way.

A mentor is someone you admire, someone you respect, someone you find brilliant or cool or want to be like. In short, a mentor makes you better because you want to emulate them. You want to impress them. You want them to think you're cool or brilliant or whatever also. And Werner Stocker was that person for me. I dedicated my book to him by saying that while my father was the one who made me love history, Werner Stocker reminded me that I loved history and he did so at a very important crossroads of my life. I was at a a stage as a young man where I could have gone in a very different direction. I could have sublimated myself in a way, but instead, I met Warner, and he was so brilliant and so sophisticated and so urbane, and learned that I wanted to be like him. And more importantly, I wanted to impress him. I wanted him to think that I was as smart as I thought he was. And in my desire to impress him. He helped me re-embrace learning and reading and history and technology. He reminded me that being smart was cool. He also had a fundamental moral compass and moral code that taught me how you

could be ambitious in life without being venal. So I am where I am today because of my mentor, Werner Stocker. If you have a mentor in your life right now, and they maybe don't know that they're your mentor, take the time to tell them. If they already know that they're your mentor, tell them that you love them. Wernerstocker knew he was my mentor, and he knew he was loved, and now I hope he is at peace.