Tech Brew Ride Home - (TWTR SPC) The Spring Apple Event And Apple Podcast Changes

Episode Date: April 24, 2021

Figuring out the AirTags play. New iMac lust. And a deep discussion of the Apple Podcasts Subscription thing. 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. I want to start it by introducing Wesley. Yep. Yep.

So let's consider. I'll set it up and then I'll have a little. Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. Cool. All right, everybody. This is the TechMeme ride home experience for Tuesday, April 20th, 2020. Today was an auspicious day for the Apple event, the unveiling of a number of things, which we're going to talk about today.

A reminder that this show is essentially the after show of the TechMeme Ride Home podcast, which Brian is the host of. And we like to talk about anything that's going on in the tech world from a product, design, market, computer history, internet history perspective to try to put these things in a context to read the tea leaves to understand what's going on and why, what pressures are on these things and what might cause them to go in one direction or another into the future. And so with that, I will hand it off to Brian who would like to introduce a new guest today. Yes. So Wesley is a member in good standing of the Mutant Podcast Army. a listener to the show for, I think, a long time. But I actually got introduced to him. We were on a twit, Leoport's show, together.

And Wesley, I believe, is based out of Austin. But Wesley, tell us anything you want to say about you or promo anything, but I'd like you to be the co-host all night. Thank you. Thank you for the stage. My name is Wesley Falkner. I'm a developer advocate for a company called Daily at Daily.com. They provide an API for video chat, also audio chats, similar to Twitter spaces.

If you're familiar with Agora, with Clubhouse, we do a similar service with video and audio. That's D-A-I-L-Y-C-O. That's correct. Yeah, cool. yeah Chris is a much better host than me you know there's so many different ways to spell things these days it's just it's very important Wesley thanks for joining us

and you know look there's no like we're not formal table stuff here let me let me set the table by saying this before we get into the details of what happened today you know how I do the show is like you know I I have to

scramble on days like today and like watch everything, write it up as soon as I can, and get it out as soon as possible. You know, they hit, I swear to God, the hour on the hour. So like they are getting so tight, Apple, doing these events not live and in person that I, this is my first throw it out there to anybody.

I'm sure WWDC they'll do another live event, but do you think they might eschew these, you know, bringing the press into the Steve Jobs Theater? Like, they should just do this all the time because they're like, they've got it down to a science, I think. Wow, that's a, it's a sort of like in a physical, I don't know, stage. And one of the things I guess that I would point out, and I did tweet about this today, was how much the visual

are, they seem designed for like screenshoting and live commentary. And you just can't really do that when you have an audience, you know, regardless of where they're set up, taking photos in an auditorium, you know, and trying to get visuals that are going to actually look good in this, you know, day of social media. So ultimately, I don't see a lot of upside in terms of either like the live experience or, you know, I mean, yes, there is some like hob-nobbing, like rubbing shoulders kind of thing. but from what I heard, most of WWDC is going to be about having live one-on-one sessions where you can meet other sort of developer advocates and people on those lines to learn. And it's more of an educational experience, less of a media event because they just don't need it in the same way that they once did.

That's my thought. Yeah, and you're right. I forgot that WWDC is this year again virtual. So I guess I take that entirely back. but, like, Wesley, do you feel like, what I'm trying to suggest is that they're better this way? And I'm not just saying that as, like, media people that cover it, but I feel like they're better at, like, getting across what they want to get across. So, like, I'm wondering if, like, they're aware of that, too. I think it is good.

They do value control. The part that I see as a negative is not necessarily on out. Apple's fault, Apple side, but on the press and the just media relations side, there's a lot of questions that come out of these keynotes and these. That it's so much easier if you can just ask a lot of questions and even learn from the questions that are asked from them around. But also developing those relationships, not only just with the PR people, but also with your peers. I think that that is really something that helps with crafting a narrative and just makes the business of covering Apple better. Well, and just the hands-on. I mean, I guess that's the answer is they can't do away with it because they need, you know, Neelai and folks to go into the next room and be like, well, here's my first impression of this, you know, which Jesus Christ, I wish I could have been there for that today.

But we'll get to that because the IMAX are, God, I want one. But before we get to the IMAX, I want to, I want to, I want to start with the air tags. So like before we build up to the big ticket items, like the IMAX and the iPad pros, can someone explain the air tags thing to me from a business perspective? And maybe I'm asking you this, Chris. Like, is this, you know, as I've been covering it, it's like, oh, we've known about air tags for years and it's never happened, never happened, never happened. And so it's been built up into this big thing.

Is it a big thing? Like, is this a meaningful business to them? like if it was, why has no one else tried to do it? Like, it's not like tile is the next nest or anything like that. And Google and Amazon haven't jumped into this space. Like, can you, do you see what the angle is for air tags? Yeah. This one is hard.

Because on the one hand, I want to jump in and just like say yes. Like, it makes sense. And there's a number of reasons why. I think one of the things that I noticed, and watching the entire show was there was a very specific line, I think actually in reference to the IMAX, about how Apple's vision is really about having the computer just fade away and to basically not really be there.

And I thought that's very poignant, especially given that Apple computer was the original name and then they dropped it a couple years ago and now it's just Apple. And it seems like they're moving into both, you know, they've been in moving the services business for a long time, but it's also about experiences. So the air tags in a way kind of lock you into this ecosystem in a way that I don't fully, I can't fully anticipate. In other words, I mean, yes, you can, of course put these tags on any kind of device and you can label it and so forth.

But maybe it's that integration with the Find My App and the ability to see where your things are. And maybe that'll relate to, you know, cars in the future, right? So if you think, you know, I don't know when the car is coming out, if it's coming out in, you know, five or ten years or sometime less. than that. But the ability to trust Apple with all of these intimate details requires that you slowly, you know, boil the frogs, so to speak, and get people comfortable with the idea of identifying things with these trackers. There are interesting aspects of that, whether you're using Find My Friends or, you know, find my devices. I know personally my partner loses her phone constantly, and she's always using the Find My feature. And instantly when I sent her the photos of the

air tags. He was like, oh my God, like I need like 10 of those. So this is the thing that I think a lot of people experience. Actually, I just, I'll also share the tweet, but there's a great magic mushrooms reference in the little segment that actually is promo the air tags, and it's not really so much about the magic mushrooms as it is about the relationship that people have to their computing devices, which are now becoming legion, and they need to have access to. And if you lose something, pulling out your phone, you know, finding it quickly, I don't know if air tags, and Find My is going to be something that is on Android. I don't know if it's on Android now,

but that is another way of kind of creating this privacy mode where you're trusting Apple and the Apple Cloud to have access to all this personal information about where things are, and no one else will have that information. So that, to me, also feels like it's a part of this story. Wesley, do you buy that? Essentially, it's an ecosystem in lock-in play. I just don't feel like there's enough here.

I don't Yeah, go ahead Yeah, I don't think it's a lock in play per se But I think it's Um, akin to when the Apple Watch launched And, um, they kind of geared it towards what they thought people to like.

And then when they came out with the second gen, they say, oh, fitness is where it's at. This is the MVP. This is the minimum viable product for the U1 chip. They wanted to put this out there to see what people will do with it and what will really catch on. Yes, you can find your keys. Yes, you can find maybe your iPhone, but I bet they'll maybe use this for,

see if this is like a personal tracker for pets, maybe, or for other items around. Maybe work will use it as an internal office locator to figure out where people are or how close people are together if there's still issues with, you know, COVID in a few months from the aisle. So I just think that they're just going to put it out there. This is the MVP to kind of let people hack around and use the general audience as a public focus group to how they're going to evolve this in the future.

You know, what are to build on that, I think to some degree, it feels like, and Brian Romilly actually commented on this in all the way back in September 2019, but was talking about the U-1 chip in these products and getting those out into the world. And again, the other lens that I tend to evaluate Apple's practices through is around the degree to which it allows them to sell more silicon, right? Apple Silicon specifically, but they need more applications to move more product. You know, if the iPhone starts to, you know, trail off in terms of its growth potential, then there have to be many, many more devices and products that require that part of the supply

change to keep running in order for their business to keep minting as, you know, as many millions as it has been. And so in this case, the U-on chip and the ultra-wideband connectivity that is in it allows you to create a field of computing that allows all sorts of different things, I think, to start occurring, many of which we probably can't even imagine yet. But it does seem as though, again, Apple is trying to remove the centrality of the, you know, computer as the place where all computing happens and to put it into the world around you. So there's more ubiquity and universality. So I think that's part of this.

Well, and there's a piece already up today from Forbes that says that this is Apple's next billion-dollar business, which, you know, at Apple's scale, that's not hard to do. But the point of the piece was that all Apple has to do to make air tags based on what they're selling them at, a billion-dollar business would be to sell 35 million of them. year and there are over a billion devices that already have the Find My app on them. So it's entirely conceivable that they could sell 35 million air tags in the first year. I don't know. I see what you're saying that this is sort of laying the groundwork level,

which also we might talk about, especially with the Mac stuff coming up. Before we get to the Mac stuff, can I just put in a thing again, Chris, as, as product guru. How do you feel about the Apple remote theoretically being less shitty than it was all of a sudden? I mean, it does, well, sure. It seemed like it wasn't a very high mountain to climb there. And so, you know, I like to move the Siri button off to the side.

I like the hardware, physical buttons. It just seemed like that was an obvious thing that needed to happen. And it was, you know, I think TV is going to be one of their major core experiences, especially with the retirement of the large home pod. And so getting that entertainment center and experience right is very important. And also being able to use, and I have high doubts about the Apple remote in use for games. But it seems like using it for games is something that they want to at least have people contemplate, because gaming is going to be a major place where I think they're going to drive a lot of Apple subscriptions.

And so having that device just available for people to use, I think seems a piece of that. In other words, sticking with what they had before, the sort of, I don't know, like tongue depressor design, just wasn't helping anything move forward in our front. Agreed. And as I pointed out on the show, I was very disappointed by the fact that this would have been the opportunity to say that Find My is integrated into the remote. I saw that. Someone else mentioned that, and I was like, oh, Brian talked about this on the show today. Yeah, that's insane to me because that's, we lose. I mean, it does.

It seems so obvious and such a mess. And it's like one of those great examples where like one part of the company is not talking to the other part. And they just like, it was like fail in my sense. Especially since like the demo that they used was like losing your keys in the couch. Right. Right. Which no. Listen, I'm one of those guys that's like, you know, am I leaving the house?

I check all of my pockets with my hands. I've got everything in there. There's no way I could leave my house without my keys in my pocket. However, you know, the kids lose the remote. Yeah, constantly. Yeah, constantly. I'm not to mention the Airplots, right? I mean, we won't even get into that.

Okay, do you want to bring some folks up? Yeah, bring some folks up before we get into the max. Like, if anybody has any comments at this point, and even you can lead us into the max, but anyone that has questions, raise your hand and let's bring you up. Before we move on, I just wanted to jump in about the air tags. One more time is not to just focus on the consumer-facing usage for it. Because think about it if you went to a store, you get a coupon code, and you U1 chip tells you what shelf the item is or if you need help and internal GPS.

Now you can sell thousands of them to retail stores. So let's not be limited to the consumer-facing application right now. Yeah, the air tag is really interesting because, yeah, it was like, what, two years ago that it was rumored. Okay, this is Steve, by the way. I'm sorry, just to give quick intro. This is Steve's gross-back rumors. Cool. Go for it.

Yeah, so I don't know who's there this was, but the idea that, you know, it was rumored. Gouad Rambo at 9 to 5 Mac leaked it first, and then all this antitrust stuff started to flare up, and Apple's worried about Tile, and I guess I could go talk to, as a house or Senate hearing tomorrow, and Tile's going to be in attendance, so that should be. Yep, yep. That had finally been released. so Apple could have pivoted to focus on the Find My Network. But why does it make sense for them? Yeah, I still feel like there's something left out there that Apple hasn't announced yet.

And I think there's some patent around some AR piece of it, but it is interesting that there is an AR aspect to this because when you're finding it actually uses AR kit. It's not really clear to me how it uses AR kit to find your device when it doesn't seem like it's a visual thing, but poking around the code and stuff, it looks like there's some hints around. Like, it might ask you to turn on your flashlight or something if you're in a dark environment. Right.

Well, I described it. I used the term on the show today, like Marco Polo-esque, where it's like the video that they showed today, it was like, well, you're two feet away, turn left or whatever. But they specifically said that your phone would be using the LiDAR and the cameras and things like that to lead you to the thing as well. It's not just that it's like going to be pinging a noise underneath the cushion. It's also going to like lead you in that direction. Right. Yeah, I'm just wondering like, you know, like lead you around like it knows like a wall's there. So it says like, oh, yeah, you need to go forward an intern kind of thing or something.

But yeah, as far as the larger picture, it seems like it's got to be something related to like AR and Apple's focus there. And if we'll see something more, I think there's some patent about like using these some sort of tags for placing stuff in an AR VR space. So there's got to seem like there's this more hidden functionality here. But yeah, I'm really curious if these third-party trackers that have the U-1 chip in it will it be the same effect, or is there extra special secret sauce in the Apple air tags versus the third-party ones? It's yet to be seen. Hey, Steve, please stay on stage because we'll have lots of questions to ask you for input as well. But Nathan, real quick, jump in before we get to the Mac stuff.

Yeah, I think we just didn't touch on the privacy aspect, which is sort of like screen time. Right after screen time was released, you then saw other apps that were trying to do screen time-esque behaviors start complaining because they got restricted. You know, I back to the original Tile Kickstarter and I knew that I was like, okay, I'm trusting this company with this information. And if they ever get hacked, you know, there's some issues that, you know, I would have to worry about there. But I think Apple, knowing that they have the mesh network of all devices, not just the ones with the Tile app installed, plus the privacy, it's a good enough reason to do it just because they can deliver a better experience than any person who doesn't own the operating system. Yeah, I think one thing that's really interesting, and I don't understand this about the Tile product and the Tile, I was just looking to try to see their privacy policy. You know, whether or not Tile actually uses that information about where Beacons are to track you and to create profile. about you, right?

And one of the things that was specified, and I think this is actually kind of interesting, and Brian, you might have some thoughts about this too, is the way in which the air tags will recycle identifiers. And obviously this is a big deal when it comes to whether it's, you know, app tracking transparency or when it came to the, my God, I can't think of the name. What was the Google Apple COVID tracking API?

The name of it, I don't know, but it was, yeah, the Google Apple tracking. There was a really big deal for like five minutes. Exclusion. Yeah, exposure notification. Thank you. So that process of identifying a device and sort of, you know, holding onto the identifier for some period of time and then recycling it and then kind of like losing all recollection or memory of where it's been obviously is a very important feature, or privacy preserving

feature. And that is one of the things that they did tout in the air tag, you know, demo and conversation today. So if that contrasts, and Nathan, I think you're bringing up a very good point, with Tiles approach, then one, that sort of blows up Tiles' business. And second, does or may, as you suggest, you know, expose the underbelly of these kind of data aggregators, which Apple has been on a tear against, and that there's now laws in California that are fighting back against. And suddenly those businesses will be also disrupted, which, you know, is going to eventually

get to this passion creator economy thing probably later on in the show. But nonetheless, I think that's a very astute point. Yeah. And, you know, to be clear, Tile claims they don't sell any information whatsoever. But I'm more concerned about the sort of things like the Strava leak where, you know, people's run routes were exposed, you know, through not, you know, Strava's intentional, like selling up my information, but, you know, through just the mishandling of my personal data. Right. And I also, I don't want to speak out of turn. I don't know anything about tiles, you know, data practices. So I'm not speaking as though that's what they're doing.

I'm just saying if that is what they're doing, then this would be definitely shot across the bow of that practice. Yeah, certainly a only Apple setup where only Apple can turn off all lines for everyone that has played. Right, exactly. I also brought up, you go by Sweet or David, or do you prefer David? Yeah, David is fine. Hi, can you guys hear me okay? Yep, yep, you're good. To one comment and one question, maybe I'll start with the question first.

For those 1 billion devices to connect, do they all? need to have the U-1 chip or no? I don't think... Go ahead. I'm sorry, say it again? They only need Bluetooth to... Right. Yeah, that's where that number comes from.

So anybody, any of the eye devices that have Bluetooth on basically become part of that mesh, and they can essentially report any devices that they see that, I guess, happen to be emitting an ultra-wide-band signal or something that is probably compatible with Bluetooth low energy. So the question would then be, when there are more U1 devices, what does that mean to this mesh network? Yeah, that I don't know. I don't know enough about the U1 chip. That's beyond my ken entirely.

It seems like a good guy. I don't think any network effects with the U1 chip. I think it's for now, at least, just the finding aspect. Yeah, right now it's mostly like an emitter, right? Which is probably similar to the tile. And I don't know, again, I don't want to speak out of turn. It just seems like these chips are really, you know, they're Bluetooth low energy and they're just kind of emitting, you know, a signal. And, you know, you're getting some, I don't know.

And then that information is relayed to the Apple Cloud. And then if you're looking for a specific unique identifier from one of those U1 chips, then they'll be able to locate it within a certain range over a certain period of time, you know, based on battery limitations, et cetera. Yeah, it's fine and integrating the Bluetooth. So I can know kind of exactly, you know, with the same. centimeters of where you're at, also higher bandwidth. One difference, too, with the car key aspect is if you have the FC version of that,

you have to place it in a specific spot in your car to unlock your car. Very similar to the Tesla key. Does it anywhere in your car? The issue with the U1 chip is that it has beam forming, which means it can tell the direction of things, and that's not how it's able to burst at the higher data rates,

because it can actually do the beam forming for the antenna. So that's how it can tell direction. So that's what makes it different from Bluetooth. Cool. Yeah, you know, I used to work in the Apple stores and remember those beacons when iOS used to support beacons. And, yeah, and we were trying to use it for multiple different purposes, right? Security, device identification, but also updates and pinpointing problems.

but there's also one use case that were experimented was file transfer, data transfer among devices within the mesh network. So, you know, I just imagine AirDrop via the U-1 trip, you know, from Hong Kong to San Francisco. Anyway, I'm done here. Well, what was the other one that I was thinking about? You said AirDrop. Oh, the app clips, I don't know if this is any relevance to that. But the idea where you just sort of go around in the world and kind of, you know, get slices of apps or experiences

or do checkout or payments, all those things seem to be enabled by, again, just what I see is this growing mesh of Apple interconnected devices. Let me cut it off just because we're edging too much here. Can we get to the IMAX and then the iPad? Listen, I'm using sexual language because, you know, I don't give a shit about cars. Even sometimes phones leave me cold, but man, Nothing turns me on more than a sleek computer and mostly laptops, but Jesus Christ, man, what they did with this iMac is it's just blown my mind.

And I've been, I've been, you know, spending half the evening looking around and, like, I found the specs or like a side picture that claims that, like, the entire computer is in the chin. So, like, I described it as, and again, I, you know, I hope people have heard, some of you might have heard the show today, but whatever. I described it as essentially an iPad maxi, like the most blown-up iPad you can imagine on a sort of swivel arm. And then if you do like a side cut out of it, all of the computer is in the chin. That's why they still have the chin. And so it's just a glorified iPad where they just put more sort of a muscle down there in the bottom.

God damn. I don't even need an iMac right now. I'm still happy. And by the way, I need more ports. I need an SD card reader. So I'm not going to run out and get this. But listen, I'm opening up the floor to other people that either were disappointed or are like me. Like, God damn.

I love this thing. I think it's awesome. I think it's what's really interesting is this is the first Mac that Apple's released where they've redesigned the computer around M1. and being like what you said, like putting out all the guts in the chin, it's just really fascinating. I really like it. I just can't wait to see the M1X 27-inch replacement as well. I'm curious if we're going to see like a black bezel,

kind of more black professional look. I was kind of off a little bit by the whole bezel and everything. I don't know. And the no Apple logo is really odd, but I like it. I don't like how Apple brought back the MacBook Pro wordmarker or whatever. on the bottom of the MacBook Pro screen. They removed it for a bit, and then they added it back. Yeah, no logos, no text on the front of my machine, please.

I think it's great. I think that the power and data connection is an interesting mix, where you can now explore possibly having multiple ports or a hub that just ties into the power. I think that's super curious. And also the touch ID, how are they making that work? Because if you use this keyboard with touch ID on another older Intel-based Mac, touch ID doesn't work.

It just works as a Bluetooth keyboard. So there's something special there in terms of the data transfer. They actually talked about it. Yeah, so it's encrypted. So basically it's, I mean, the thing that's really interesting about this. And by the way, for those of you, actually everyone's here on Twitter spaces, You can go in and just look at the top of the space, and I'm pinning tweets that are related to what we're talking about.

So I just posted a photo of the guts of the IMac Pro. So, Brian, you can actually go and see this thing and what it was like in an X-ray review. But in terms of the touch ID, which I think is actually super important and super interesting, there's two features of this that are really great. So one is that, yes, it's just like the secure enclave chip that they use on other devices.

So they're still using the same RECHAs. texture and the idea is that there's some part of the computer that basically does that verification that holds the identification information. And then probably, and I don't know how this works or not, but probably passes like a go-no-go authentication, you know, I guess signal or something that says, okay, you can log in as this person. The other thing that it does, from what I could tell, at least from the video, was when you use your fingerprint, it actually identifies you as a user and we'll do fast user switching, which is new. Now, from what I recall, and you guys can tell me if I'm wrong,

because I don't actually share an iPad with anybody, but there's still sort of iPads are single user devices, right? Still true? Just no. Except in a business or education setting. So, yeah, for most consumers, it's a single user. But there's no, like, Apple account in the sense that all of your app settings, preferences, like on a Mac, right,

you can swap between different user accounts. Right, right. Okay, so I don't know when or if that might happen, but you can imagine that if that is happening on the IMAX here, then that type of behaviors, well, I don't know, I guess like maybe that the iPad will still remain forever, like a personal device that there will only ever be one user, whereas the IMAQ is a shared family computer,

and so therefore the fast user switching tied to the touch ID sensor, I think to me sounds like a super amazing, I guess convenience, innovation, and maybe that will happen more in other places too, but we haven't seen that kind of thing in the Apple TV. Although I do think that you can now swap your preferences around. Anyways, yeah, so the touch-out-out-eating thing is... Steve, can I ask you real quick? Were you surprised that we did get IMEX today, bringing M1 chips into at least some IMAX today?

I was going to be surprised, except then German said. Hey, what do you guys think about like an M1 and an I? Okay, yeah, there is a good chance that it's around the corner then because, yeah, I didn't really see too much like in the code pointing towards like IMAQ anytime soon.

But yeah, then they dropped it. But yeah, as far as like multi-user stuff, I don't see that coming to iPad. I think it's just like a fit back from the Unix underpinnings. But then again, I thought we'd never see touch ID and in a wireless keyboard. So there's

that I was spoken around the code and looked like there was something about some new cloud pairing or something with Bluetooth devices that isn't related to like the AirPods. It might be called like Firefly or something. So it seems like a lot of work around there to figure out how to make this work. And then one of the piece of that is like if you try to use Apple Pay on one of these new IMAX with the keyboard without the touch ID, it's going to tell you like, hey, you need to hook up a touch ID keyboard to use Apple Pay. Wait, are you saying it will tell you that? Yeah, yeah, there's a string in there that explicitly calls it out of like, hey, you try to use Apple Pay, but you're not connecting to your touch ID keyboard. So, but there must be some other way, some fallback, like where you can, like, authenticate with your phone, maybe? Yeah, maybe.

I don't know, like, yeah, I don't know how that works, but that was interesting. I think Apple kind of on background was talking to some bloggers about, yeah, You can use this keyboard with older devices, but it has that in one max. So that's the question that I had is that just to clarify that I understand it's a Bluetooth keyboard, but that transfer with the touch ID probably is not Bluetooth. So there's some other wireless standard that it's using on these M1 Max and IMAX that allows touch ID to work. So there's some radio other than Bluetooth that's,

handling the communication between the keyboard and the system. Why do you say that? Why would Bluetooth not be sufficient for that? Bluetooth is so insecure. It wasn't really built on super security, not to the point for touch ID that I don't believe that they would use on top of Bluetooth to do that type of transfer. Even if the payload is encrypted?

Yes, but we're talking about the, if the decryption is on the Mac, itself, not in the keyboard, in terms of how it's sending it over. That's, even if it's encrypted hash, I wouldn't, I would not have that over the air in something I didn't control. So there has to be something part of the stack. Yeah, and it could be something like AirDrop, Wi-Fi Direct or something. But I figured like if FCC would have, you know, we'd have some details. But that's something good to look for. I'll definitely make look out for that of, like,

is there any new FCC details on these keyboards or something? Yeah, that's interesting. David, just I brought up, I don't know if you had a comment or question. Okay, so I kind of wanted to zoom out in a way that I feel like might derail this conversation. So please let me know if I'm derailing instead of maybe providing. Thank you. So the thinness thing regarding products that are almost. certainly destined to basically remain static for 100% of the lifetimes, right? The IMAQ.

And these engineering gymnastics that I'm sure that, you know, the hardware team undergoes the R&D money. Basically, the thinness thing. Like, okay, I remember I was watching when the MacBook Air original was pulled out of the manila folder. It's cool, but it's long past time that we chill, in my opinion. I guess what I'm asking is, are we, like, at what point do we stop making tremendous hardware sacrifices in the name of miniaturization, generally, but especially for desktop PCs?

Can I, this is right at my alley, because Oh, I know. I've been saying that about the phones and things like that for a long time. But let me, let me, because this is actually something that I wanted to bring up. And look, this is, everyone knows this. Like, look at what they're doing. This is an IMac that looks like an iPad. The iPads, the iPad pros look the same, stay the same.

Your iPhone, the most recent iPhone, has the exact same design aesthetic as an iPad in a sense. Like, so we are, we know, they're doing it in front of us. They're not making any, uh, uh, secret about it. Like, they're, they're going to release sometime in the next five years, uh, a combination of, um, a MacBook and an iPad. And I don't know what they'll call it or what way they'll do it. But like, you know, I'm looking at this, this IMA and I'm thinking like, a Macpad. Right, a Macpad. But like, think about, like, look at that hinge where it's like, what's the, what's the, the huge Microsoft surface thing where you pull it down and you draw on it and things like that, you can see this coming. You can see that you could even maybe pull that out if it's light enough. We are literally a couple years away from this completely being unified. And what was it

that I quoted from today? It was like Dieter or Nilai was saying that like, yeah, look, I mean, it's all the same architecture now. They're all using the same M1 chips. So, like, this is so coming and the design language is pointing in this direction. So I get what you're saying, except for the fact that, like, I see what they're doing and I love it. I think you guys are talking, like, a little bit past each other, though. Because if I understand, I don't. So, David, the challenge, the issue that I have with your point, I guess, is what is it that you would like the computer to be able to do regardless of a foreign factor, right? Ultimately, this is a screen and it's got a bunch of pixels on it.

And every year you get some more colors and they move faster across the screen. And, you know, the computer can like calculate more things like simultaneously. Like that's kind of like the jam. And Apple, meanwhile, and you know, this is what I wrote about in like 2016, is, you know, building and making sand that is sold as jewelry. So the markups are amazing. It's like De Beers, except a little bit more interactive. And so when it comes to this question, I guess, that you're putting to us, which is, you know, couldn't Apple make a really fat, lazy computer that just, like, you know, is super, super honkin and, like, does all these amazing things and all the nits and the GPUs and all the rest and this. Like, that's their $16,000 product because that's sold to the high end, which is doing, you know, video animation or, you know, movie animation and stuff like that.

For their, I think, core audience, which I guess my thought is they're probably not too much like you or I anymore. You know, are people who want less computers in their life. They don't want to feel like they're around computers. Like the whole color aspect of this is that this is a device that you like live with, you know, more or less like the home pod. I was actually thinking about this again. Like with the air tags in particular and in a bunch of these other products, Apple is refuting the idea of what a computer is and should look like.

Like literally they partnered up with Hermé to elevate the idea of, you know, what tile has is sort of like this display. thing that you could like, you know, lose and like it's not a big deal and it's kind of around and, you know, it tracks your stuff or whatever. But they're saying that, no, this is a piece of jewelry that you attach to your very fine, your finest items. And when you want to find them, you will use your iPhone to get at it. And that's where they can charge their premium. So with all that said, I guess what is it that you really want the computer to be able to do that it can't do and that the foreign factor sort of prevents it from doing? It's not necessarily about features or capability. it's about checks and balances. And I guess instead of answering with specific features, I would answer, I would rather Apple spend their energy and their resources on a different direction. Okay, which is that?

And maybe just pause here. Like, with the, like, my 12 Chrome Max, I can't imagine it. being any thinner and still being usable. Useable for what purposes? Well, just meet, like, as a phone. I just, I don't, I guess, I just feel like the thinness thing

has pretty much run its course. And, like, the place to start bringing this up and taking your time would be on, specifically in the desktop segment. But, like, I understand, and actually, it's insightful because what I just realized is the iMac being um sort of they're differentiating with the word pro um between uh i don't know they really haven't bificated too much between the pro and the non-pro lines across the range i guess

but i guess the implication is that the iMac is for um everybody and that everybody that you're talking about are the people who want computers to be less visible in their lives Yeah, I mean, I think you just, you really have to look at, and I think this is really important, and it's a subtle way to gain insight, but everything in these events is intentional, everything that they put together, and especially now that they're not having to, you know, put this in front of the press, right, where the press is the audience, the press is the filter that explains to the end users what is important and what is interesting. Apple now can do that directly. So if you look at the clips of people using these products, that will tell you the story. A couple years ago, if you actually need to find it, I'll post it as a pin tweet to this space. But I wrote about how Silicon Valley was all wrong about the Amazon Echo Show. And my point was that the imagery and the people and the scripting that they used to talk about this new product, which was more or less just a video intercom, right, that had a voice assistant attached to it, which of course is very important to Amazon's long-term strategies, was super pedestrian.

It was not dulled up at all. These were not pieces of jewelry that are connected to the internet that you want to spend a premium on. The idea was that you'll buy a bunch of them, just like you'll buy a bunch of the echo puck devices or whatever and put them all over the place. Because that was the field of computing that Amazon wanted to offer people, and they wanted to do it at a price point that was super accessible. And so if you look at the way in which people are presenting the iMac, it is a statement piece, just like the HomePod was intended to be. When people come over, they see it and they're like, oh, well, aren't you fancy, Mr. Brian, Mr. Fancy Pants? You've got a new colored IMac. Well, that's brand new.

I love seeing that. And so I think it's, and I guess what I'm just trying to offer is a way to interpret the Apple event, like, film, and to look at the scenes they show and the way that people are interacting with those computing products. And when they show families who are interacting with these devices and the degree to which they, you know, kind of care. about like, I don't know, like going deep into the guts and understanding it. It's no, Apple's going to take care of this for you. You are the subject and Apple keeps you safe. And I know that that's very like sort of naphrma for those of us who sort of have been in the computer freedom movement for a long time. But it just feels like that's the message that I take away from that. So Brian? Yeah. So again, I feel like today, I was totally prepared to be underwhelmed by

today and I was more overwhelmed than I thought it would be. Chris, you know, listeners to the show know, like, I've been talking about like the Facebook portal and like why, you know, what did we do? It was a story last week about how, you know, Facebook is maybe doing something that's portal like or like the Amazon show or whatever. And I was like, of course they're doing that. No, again, it's right here. Look at what this is. Now, this is a higher end thing. This is still a computer. device. But this form factor where five years from now, this is a cute, colorful thing that you've got one in your kitchen, you put one in your kids' room, they're already putting the camera in there like the portal that moves around as you're walking around the room. This is, and then,

so imagine that this is also something that you can pick up and remove from the device and walk around as a tablet. This is, this is the, this is going back 20. five years. This is the sort of... The information navigator? No, it's... What do they call it? A computing... What do you call, like, a refrigerator, like a... An appliance. Appliance. A computing appliance. So, like, these are cute things that will be able to do all

of these things for you, and they're going to want... Like, what do... Already, iPads are sort of like the entry level into the deeper computing level of the Apple ecosystem. Like, they really want you to get an iPhone. But if you don't, like, you know, spend a couple, 400 bucks and get in with an iPad, the cheapest iPad you got. Well, they're going to, they can combine these things, and these are going to be the things that they're going to want to put four or five of them in your house in various rooms.

Like, I see that now. This is so clear to me. And then, and so, you know, there will always still be a bigger IMA and things like that. But, like, I'm seeing the form factor that. that is going to be the next decade of this angle of Apple computing. It was interesting. This was Apple's chance to have, like, I talked about before, a new design around the M1 and that architecture.

I was like, okay, if we're going to see a touchscreen iMac, it's going to be now, and we didn't get that. So it must be, okay, we're not going to get that. I don't know about a MacBook. I'd still love to see that. But as far as, like, you know, a larger computer, I think that's, like, the rumor much talked about X-Mac, that Apple's never going to make, which is the consumer Mac with replaceable cards.

But I don't think Apple wants consumers messing with cards at all. I think it's just going to be plug and play with the Thunderbolt ports. Although I guess I didn't see any EGPU stuff today. I think it's still to be seen if Apple's going to allow users to use third-party graphics cards with Apple Silicon architecture. So we'll see what's there. And I love the magnetic connector. It's like don't call MagSave Macsave connector

But I love it's just like little details It's got the color match cord And the color match lighting cable Which unfortunately we still have to flip over On beta Okay cool Slowly the room's coming back together I sent a link to Brian you should be here soon

Let's get Wesley up here there's Brian I'm going to crash it again Okay Brian's back up cool I was, you know, I was trying to bring up my post about Silicon Valley and the Echo Show. And, man, Twitter did not like that link. It's not very happy with me. So, but I'll send it to you guys and you can see it. Someone remind you.

Well, we're coming up here. I have a couple things I wanted to tack on to the size debate on the IMA. Go ahead. Yeah. I have two things. First of all, the form factor, why it's so thin. And it's so thin because it's a differentiator between Intel and AMD. They can't make form factors that look like that.

And they don't have a long, super long lead time. I mean, those are going to be in development, at least from the AMD side. I'm not sure how far behind Intel is, but they will not have an exclusive on that form factor for too much longer. So it's better to get out there now and seen as the leader while they still can. And so it's very important for them to do that from that perspective. So you're saying we're going to see everybody doing this, which happened after the air and everything like that. Like this is going to be the new hotness pretty quick. Right.

And the second thing that they mentioned several times, but it's not really a headlining issue is their 2030 initiative. When you use less materials, you can pack more of those devices and a show. shipping container. It's going to be lighter. So it's going to be cheaper logistically to get them around. And they're using recycled aluminum, which means the raw material now is something that is precious when you're recycling that and making more devices. And so the size is actually an advantage from them from a cost standpoint. They use less raw materials. And because of the lightness, it's cheaper for them logistically to ship it and to get it in the hands. hands of consumer. Yeah, I think just to add to that, I mean, one of the ways in which the event started, from what I recall, was Tim Cook coming out and basically talking about, you know, their plans to be carbon neutral and to be, you know, environmentally sustainable company, which you see a bunch of companies moving towards, but the fact that this is all aluminum, the fact that they're using a bunch of recycled material in the product itself, the fact that these are lay flat devices,

and they're no longer these curved weird shapes with all the styrofoam that goes in the packaging. The packaging itself is using, and I feel like I'm just like, you know, rattlemen, not only off their talking points, but like using virgin trees from like well-managed forest or something like that. I don't know. But like I think that is very important in terms of managing this enormous supply chain and the logistics, which obviously is, you know, Tim Cook's, you know, sort of bread and butter. And the more they can reduce the complexity and the different types of parts and components, the more streamlined and the more cost efficient this can be. So I think that's that's something that's underappreciated in certain circles where everyone thinks that, oh, of course, this is virtue. signaling for like we're, you know, going carbon neutral and we're doing recycling. No, there's efficiencies. Like what capitalism is making things cheaper, making things more efficient. And to a certain

degree. And then charging the same rate for years. And to a certain degree, that is exactly what happens when you see a Tim Cook stand up and say, like, you know, this is, the packaging has been reduced by 80% or whatever, you know, and exactly what you're saying is like, it is more efficient, and that goes directly to their bottom line. So when they're getting the PR benefit by saying that everything is environmentally friendlier and things like that, but they're also, what they're actually saying is that we are getting more efficient in our supply chain and our materials, usage, and all that stuff. Yep, yep, exactly. I buy this.

The other thing I wanted to point out is that, you know, Brian, you said that you see the merging of the two form factors. Keep in mind that if now that the iPad Pro has an M1 ship, there's very little keeping big, big sur for being ported to the iPad Pro. Yes. So there is a path now to a touchscreen. Right, exactly. There's a path now, right. Listen, I'm not going to do something dumb, like make predictions and things like that. But yeah, we're three years away from, we will have touchscreen Macs. But they'll do it in that way that I described where it's like it'll be the IMac that pulls down when you need to draw on it. And it'll be, you know, I don't know how they'll do it. Actually, that'll be interesting to watch is like, you know, they already have essentially a laptop where, you know, you've got these keyboards and, and, and, and, and, you know, hinges and things like that, and we've already got mouse and all that stuff in the iPad stuff. So, right, it's just, what will they do the first time that they're like, will they call it

a MacBook pad or something, like a Pad Pro Mac or something? Like, eventually it's just going to meld together probably in the portable space first. Yeah. It feels like, you know, like, so the problem that I have with a lot of these conversations is that we're old. And part of it is like, we remember a lot of these variations and generations. You're right. And it's sometimes helpful, you know, to sort of, you know, format the SD card and basically like start all over. And so, you know, Brian, like, if you were explaining to your kids, these different devices in this, like, three to five year timeframe for you, like, for you, like, would you really bother to take them through the tour of, you know, finder and like all these other things?

or would they just sort of be living in like a networked operating system world where they have their Apple ID, they authenticate to different devices through, you know, touch, through face, through augmented reality, through Apple glasses, which they're wearing all the time. You know, they acquired aura or something, and that's like the constant, you know, biometric authentication tool or something. And the thing that you're talking about where there's this merger of the Mac desktop and the portable iPad, to me it feels like, one, it's almost like a fiat accompli in terms of the, the, the, interface in many respects. Like, yes, there's a keyboard sort of element, and that's for typing, and there's like a mouse element, and that's for, you know, not putting your grubby fingers on the

screen. But ultimately, Apple is merging these two computing paradigms. One is touch and direct manipulation, and the other is indirect and typing. And that eventually is going to go away when voice actually becomes useful. Right? You're right. They're already jumping. The puck is already on the other side of the ice, and they're talking about, like, just you're going to use your your aeropods or your your your your air glasses your eye glasses or whatever they're going to be you're right go on sorry yeah so i mean i think i just on the one hand like i'm i'm vehemently like agreeing with you but i'm coming from the future and sort of coming back to you and saying why are you still talking about this like you know what i mean like all the things that and maybe this is just to

acknowledge like your point which is that the m1 being the the chip of uh sort of not not notubilation but you know the one that's unification unification right which is the The plan all along, we've talked about graphics independence for a long time, all those things are merging together, which hopefully will allow a new type of just, you know, application of computing in many, many more lived experiences. And that, I think, is going to be the major shift. And the question is, once we start bringing in, I guess, computing into more contexts that are more casual, where previously would have been really annoying or irritating to think about getting out your phone and kind of like doing a search for something and not quite sure what you're going to get, to one where you do have these assistants. that live with you and you just talk to them and you tell them what you want and, you know, through the magic of the internet, these things just kind of appear to you because you have a subscription to like the best possible content.

That's a very different world that we'd be living in. So I think that's, it's important again, maybe go back to first principles of the experience that most consumers will have when they're interacting with a computer because they're not thinking about it as a computer. Right. I just want to say I buy Wesley's point that the thinness ultimately comes down to efficiencies. more than I buy the thinness comes down to the fact that this is all being unified in five years. We're going to have an IMAX.

Sure. That detaches and you can carry around. Like I think David raised it originally, right? Like if Apple wanted to, they could make it thicker and have more functionality. Right. And they have that, you know, less. They have that higher end, right? And they have a visual design specifically for those types of products.

They're saying, you know, if you really want to go in that high end, you know, we've got those products for you. But for everyone else, you're going to get. like this very spelt sort of thin, you know, visual design. And aren't you going to be impressed that we packed in even more computing power into a thinner design? I don't know, because the argument that this is for the average Joe and not us, the average Joe is not going to notice if it's half a millimeter thicker, right? But it is, I agree that it's way more efficient, you know, if Apple can get the materials down. Yeah, I mean, it's a good point.

I don't know that normal, you know, users are necessarily going to like notice the millimeter, but they're going to talk about it. And they're going to notice when they go to their friend's house and they've got, you know, the new shiny, colorful, you know, Mac and, you know, or the iPhone and purple relative to, you know, a PC or a Chromebook. Well, they'll notice that the color, I don't know if they'll go and stand beside it

and be like, wow, look how thin. Especially because it's not, like, it's not being lifted up, right? To David's original point, it's not being picked up or anything. like it's just standing there. Yeah, but I mean, I'm with Chris on this. I'm with Chris on this. Go on. Yeah, like imagine walking new with friends.

So what is, what is this computer replacing? And if it's replacing a PC for starters, right? And I haven't had a PC or probably seen one in years at this point. But like, you know, you go to like someone's house who you've always noticed had a PC, let's say, for like the last five years. And finally they're ready to replace it. And they replace it. And then you come over.

I mean, they're going to be like bringing this thing out. like, you know, it's the family jewels. So it just, it feels like the relationship to it in that capacity is what's different. And the delta between what was there before, not for people who replace their computers over year, you know, and, you know, have that privilege. It's for a lot of folks who have, let's say, had an iMac that's like this huge, honkin thing for a couple years. And now they're replacing it with the latest thing.

And that's where they're going to see the most difference. Yeah, no, so I completely agree with you that the delta between whatever they had before to the new iMac is going to be much more valuable i'm talking about the delta between apple making it however much thinner or thicker i think that delta is much better addressed by wesley's point of like it's about how much cheaper it is to ship it because of weight and driving down efficiencies all that makes a lot more sense to me than you know that someone's going to like we will notice that it's that much thinner than it could have been but i don't think the average person they're going to notice the color and they're going to notice

oh, that's new and shiny, but they're not going to go and like, wow, it's, you know, that many millimeters thinner than it could have been. Yeah, I take your point. I take your point. Okay, so we've been wrapping on on hardware for almost an hour now and now to say, you know, when I blew up the space. By the way, I did pin the tweet about the Echo Show if you guys want to check that out. To pivot to something that was actually early in the Apple event film and something that Brian, I know,

has a deep relationship to, and I don't even know if. he's had the chance to dig into this yet, but this is something that he and I have been talking a lot about lately, and of course that is the change to the podcast app, which I feel like has been like this sleeping giant that Apple for so long was like, whatever, it's cool, you know, we don't really think there's much of a market there. People are not going to pay for podcasts. So we'll just let them, you know, it was sort of a benefit to the iPod, you know, back in the day, hence the name podcast. It was a way for people to get access to essentially, you know, radio and talk content on a device that was designed for music. And so it was sort of a come also kind of content experience

that of course over the years, and especially over the last year, maybe the last two to three years, that content space has exploded. And, you know, to me, there are several big things that have happened in the space. You know, there's social audio, obviously, which we're experiencing now. And then there's also the move to premium and exclusive content, which is all about what Scott Galloway calls the Rundle, the recurring revenue bundle. In other words, let me give you a bunch of, you know, pieces of content that you just can't say no to because, you know, it's like Netflix, you know, accessing millions of billions of pieces of content for $17, $19 a month, whatever it is. And Apple is trying to do the same thing. And so podcasts have been to one space where you really can't

spend money on podcasts. You can go to Patreon, you know, and sort of do a side load kind of like, hey, here's a tip for what you're doing. I really appreciate it. But for the most part, podcasts are monetized through advertising. And so this move to premium subscription-based podcast content I think is really going to shake things up. We just heard an announcement from Facebook wanting to get to the space. Spotify, obviously, has exclusive that are coming. They've just blogged about how they want to break their connection to RSS. So this seems all predicated and designed to preempt Apple's announcement today. So the tea leaves were out there for anyone who's close enough and connected enough to read them, and now they're out there for us to see and to interpret.

So, Brian, your thoughts? Yeah, I'm going to come in hot here. So this is a huge swing and a miss by Apple for everything that I've seen so far. Wow. For sure, I believe it's been confirmed that Apple's going to take their traditional 30% cut of revenue generated through podcast subscriptions, which would drop to their 15% after a year. But they're like, you know, pricing, you can do 50 cents a month or you can do whatever you want. You also have to pay 20 bucks to get into the program, just like the Apple developer program.

Exactly. So I can give you the straight-up economics. And I'm going to tiptoe around this a bit because, you know, I have deals with a couple different people. Because reasons. But the industry standard take is 10%. right? So it's similar to what substack does. So, you know, we have subscription programs and for, for the TechMeme right home. We use two different vendors to do it. There's, again, it's 10% industry standard. Then you've got the stripe fees on top of that. So essentially, you know, I'll just say it. I charge $5 a month for our subscription product. I see about $420. Ha ha ha. That's the. literally true, about 420. And also today. Yes, exactly. So I know what I'm saying, but it's... You mean $4.20? Exactly. Exactly. Out of the $5. So... And 80 cents is going to whom?

To... So around 10% is... Well, what, right, no, no. So around 10% is going to the partner that does the subscription stuff. Then the remaining percentage there, the whatever pennies is going to stripe and the... Is that supercast? You work with Supercast? Supercast and glow, which just got bought by Lipson. I'm curious. Now, I do know that Patreon charges less. Like, I keep hearing this 5% rate and 8% rate and things like that. I don't know about that. Now, I do know, listen, by the way, this is not a small business. Like, people are acting like this is a, like, I know podcasters that are making six figures a month and not a few. Wow. through Patreon, okay, and through their subscription programs through people like Glow and there's not a few. There are a lot. And so essentially, this is a very good business to be in because you can have, if you have a successful podcast, you can have a public-facing ad-supported podcast that is hopefully getting six figures and downloads per episode.

And then you're making a lot of money with that. I mean, there wouldn't be, you know, billions of podcasts, you know, in terms of the explosion. if people weren't making money and there wasn't a global ratio. And also look at certain podcasters, Patreon pages. If someone's saying they're getting 35,000 patrons a month and they're charging $5 a month, do the math. It's not that hard to see what people are doing. All right. So number one, coming back to Apple, that 30% is a non-starter because it doesn't take into account any reality for the creators.

And so that's the number one thing is that. like it's sort of been painted as this is Apple's acknowledgement of you know we're getting we want to be a part of this creator economy we want to support creators well in this space they have no idea what creators are doing so um the the second part of it is that like um and and and Ashley was here and she had to go and she's written about this so I'm going to I'm going to quote specifically from her tweets and her piece um that if you're if you're if you're if you're going to be a platform and a tool for creators one of the things that you have to do aside from in theory not charging them a 30% fee you know being reasonable about it is you want to give them analytics and data well that's not apple's game so ashley's tweet from five hours ago says that she confirmed i've been it to those base yeah podcasters will receive no specific info about their subscribers like emails which listen I don't collect people's emails. I don't need that. But apart from whatever analytics Apple provides, like where your show is most popular. So, okay, if you're Apple and you're like,

I don't want to sell people's data or whatever. But if you are a creator and a sole proprietor and you're this, then suddenly knowing emails and things like that, like you want to own that. That is kind of part. That's your business, right? I just, you know, I think, okay, keep going. Keep going.

Okay, so I understand, I understand the privacy angle. I understand that. But if the idea of being a creator and creating a creator business is that you have this audience that is with you, then you have to be able to have a closer relationship to that audience. And so, again, this is all, you know, hours old. Yeah, I think you're, sorry. I can take the devil's advocate side of this. Go ahead, please. Yeah, so I think this is great news.

It's just another option. Unlike the App Store and iOS, but the only option is the App Store. As far as I know, you can still side load your paid subscriptions. Yes, you can still take an RSS feed. In fact, I think that's what, if I read it correctly, that you can still do. So essentially, you can mint maybe subscriber content,

and then just offer an RSS feed that can be taken off to some of the platform. Right, exactly. And it's not exclusive, right? They don't say you can only have your subscribe, you know, your podcast on a... That I don't know. There might be content that you have to make exclusive to your Apple feed in order to get the upside or to participate in that marketplace. Sorry, quoting Ashley, confirm that Apple podcast subscription content has to be uploaded through Apple's back end, not through RSS. The regular content that you've had in the feed can still go through RSS, but if you do the subscription stuff, it has to go through them. It's not. an open RSS feed. Yeah. Yeah. Right. You could just like syndicate it everywhere.

You could still have your paid version of Patreon or whatever if you wanted to alongside the Apple version, right? Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah, no. As far as I know, they haven't said you can only do it through this. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I wasn't listening close enough.

No, no, that's a good detail. I didn't know about having to update it through there and there's no RSS. I guess that makes sense. But yeah, I mean, like I said before, I think this is great. It's another option. You can make your audience broader. that they have a credit card with Apple. They don't want to go to Patreon.

They weren't going to do that anyways, perhaps. And they can pay you this way. You get a little less. You don't get emails, certainly. But, you know, there's just some people that maybe they want a third party in between. I guess Patreon's a third party, but, you know, maybe they trust Apple more to cancel subscriptions and everything else. So I see it as a win, especially in the fight against Spotify, removing RSS and making this

last, you know. great open area of the internet as Spotify tries to close that down and remove RSS and everything else. I think this is good that it's that we have side loading. Like if they remove side loading, this would be a very sad day. But I love that we still have this option and Apple's still, I guess for now, maybe like, I don't know who's bigger, but it's teetering on Spotify or Apple. But I think this is good news, I think, to take the other side of the argument. Yeah, I think there's another point with the,

Apple's like in-app purchase there is no hi there there is no there is no alternative arrangement for in-app purchase it's Apple's way or the highway right so Apple hasn't locked down

the supercasts of the world or the Patrions so in this sense they actually have to compete to earn those subscriptions because they're not willing to take that PR hit of like oh we've shut down all feeds that aren't

actually listed for free in the directory. So, you know, what are they offering for that 30%? They're like, oh, building management, customer support, all the sort of stuff that they've, you know, had built out since before they were selling apps in the first place. That's an interesting point because I'm going to, I've never used Patreon, so I'm not chilling for them or anything. But the thing that podcasters have been doing on Patreon is amazing. Like the, if you go to any Patreon page, like, you know, the things that you can do where it's like, subscriber only posts and like you can add discord channels to it you can do polls and things like that like

one of my favorite podcasts um uh uh blank check like they they did a march madness this year that went on uh for a full month like deciding what the next movies were that they were going to do the podcast about and like that's all done through the patron so i'm again okay for the 30 percent i hear what you're saying that apple has you know all this platform that's set up but it remains to be I don't know that Apple has proven to anyone that they're good at social stuff and like providing a platform for creators or or anything like that. So, I mean, look, it's less than 12 hours since this has been announced, so it remains to be seen. But again, I'm super, super, super, super skeptical at this point. Yeah.

You know, like what, so I guess my pushback on this. And again, I don't, I'm not trying to be an Apple fan boy. I'm just trying to like understand this strategy in the broader ecosystem as it's evolving. There's been a sort of a thread around splinter nets occurring in the next several years or decades, largely based on geographic boundaries and restrictions. But it seems like in some ways that splinternet is actually coming as a sort of splintered content net, in that once you introduce payments and exclusivity or the ability to charge for content, now you have to protect that content and make sure it doesn't sort of get syndicated in places or to audience.

that let's say haven't paid for it or are not paying customers. And it feels like where Apple is going, especially with the Apple One subscription, and I think if you look at what Apple is doing in gaming with their Apple Arcade, like this feels like they're essentially doing a couple of things. One, and I don't know this, you know, I don't have any inside information, but I can imagine that there are people who have large audiences of podcast subscribers. And they're looking at Spotify and they're looking at other places in the market. And they're saying, hey, why are we not getting paid for the content that you're

distributing through the podcast app. And Apple was like, okay, we'll respond and we'll basically take the exact same terms and model that we have for iTunes and for music and apply it to podcasts. And that's the deal. And from there, they can evolve it. It's harder to sort of start from 15% and go upwards in terms of the take rate versus going downwards. So it seems like they're starting there at what is already working and where they have these deals already arranged. One thing that that is important about this, that it's probably hard for us to understand, and I don't fully understand it, but Apple announced that they are rolling this out to, or at least it will be made available in 170 countries. And that is, I believe, more than double than what Spotify is offering. So if you want your

content to get a global audience and you want to be able to charge people all around the world for it, Apple will take care of that. So the 30% cut that they take is about actually possibly giving you access to a much larger pie? No, except for the fact that... How is Apple doing distribution for you? They're not. That's not what this is. What do you mean? Explain.

No, because all they're saying is that if you have... If you want to do a subscription to your podcast, a subscription to you, we'll help you do that. They're not saying that we're going to help your podcast grow an audience or anything. We're going to give you a larger platform. That's not true. Okay. From what I'm reading. So a couple things.

You know, and I'll take your point. but they're introducing some new things, one of which they call channels. And it sounds like channels is part of their discovery engine. So if you are in, let's say, the, okay, I take your point that if every individual podcast wants to charge their own rate, then it isn't like an Apple one subscription where essentially you're inside and you're paying, you know, 30 bucks a month or whatever it is and you get access to a bunch of, you know, exclusive content. That's kind of where my mind was going.

You're right. If this becomes the next form of, you know, audio substacks and I have to pay five bucks for each podcast that I'm listening to, that becomes pretty onerous pretty quickly. What I did read, though, in what Apple's offering is they use the term they will protect your content. Now, I don't know what that means, but that is somewhat interesting relative to, again, you know, the fact that you can just take an RSS feed and plug it into some other reader, and now you've distributed that paid content elsewhere. Yeah, reading through the agreement, they, if you, all of the exclusive content in Apple Podcasts

will be DRM protected with their bear play stuff. Got it. Yeah. So Airplay is also a big, important part of that too. Nathan, do you want to say anything about your background? Yeah, sure. So I'm a sort of an indie designer developer who built a tool called Pod.com, which was just a free landing page to help podcasters link to their show across the entire ecosystem of podcasts and all the top podcast apps.

So, you know, one like link in biotype solutions so that you don't have to just link somebody to Apple Podcasts. You can also link to your Spotify and your overcast and all the way down the line. This is actually how Nathan got, Nathan and I got in touch. I was using PodLink, basically because I liked the ability to link to, essentially, I don't, you know, this is actually sort of a problem that I had with my partner. Like, I would send her links to podcasts. And at the time, I was listening to podcast through Google Podcasts, which she didn't use. And so I was like, I don't really know what she uses.

So I want to send her a link that's going to work. And so Podlink was kind of like the intermediary. And through that, Nathan and I actually sort of connected. And then I think you built an Alfred Workflow, where I asked you to build one. And anyways, I won't go too far. down that path. But just to say that Nathan's coming at this, and I don't mean to speak on your rehab, but I will, in the sense that he's able to link to all these different providers and all these different podcast players, all these podcatchers, if you will. And so this creates a very interesting,

you know, wiggle in this business. If suddenly there are a bunch of protected content that's out there, maybe there will be, you know, profiles or landing pages for these protected pieces, but you have to pay in order to access the content. You know, that's a pattern that we're seeing more and more, especially in the video landscape and in TV shows and things like that. And so it just makes it a lot harder and starts to break down, you know, what is the free and open web when you start landing at a bunch of, you know, paywalled content. Yeah. If the platforms all want a cut of, you know, some subscription revenue and you're offering it through Apple and through Spotify and through, you know, three other apps, you know,

they're still going to want to promote it as if it's one thing. And so that's the challenge for, you know, anybody who's building tools for podcast creators, they're not going to be able to rely on, oh, well, it's just one single RSS feed. And I have ways to look that up in each of the various platforms. Now I've got to maybe do a little bit more hard work. There's not open APIs to fetch all of this data easily. I guess the point when I come back to the creator economy,

that seems really, really tricky, which is that, I mean, so let me start from just brass tax. As it is, as a creator, if I want to publish content to each different, platform just to like keep all my you know followers up to date that in and of itself you know is its own full-time job if then I need to also remember are you saying that are you saying that in a podcasting content context I'm saying it as a is an internet content creator yeah that decides to publish on you know medium Instagram you know Twitter Facebook yada yada right like that has become a very large amount of work just to cross syndicate your content and all these different platforms

and it cut it up into reels, into stories, who knows, right? Now what I'm suggesting is adding to that matrix a whole other level of complexity when it comes to pricing your content, remembering what is premium, what is not, you know, basically being able to feed the beast of free ads for to content

as well as premium content that is exclusive. Or maybe it's premium content, which is, you know, a teaser and sort of gets you into a higher grade or higher paid tier. Yeah, Apple also lets you monetize your back catalog. So you could say like, hey, day and date, it's free. But, you know, if you want something older than three weeks, you got to pay.

And alternatively, you can, you know, flip it on its head. Hey, paid subscribers get early access. You know, it's going to go out in the RSS feed, you know, five days from now, two days from now. Right, right. So more exclusive or timeliness or whatever. Yeah. So I don't know. I just, it seems to me that these are broad swaths where a bunch of companies are moving in this direction.

And that's the new kind of battlefronts that are being turned. on. And for so long, Apple has been a fairly neutral player in the podcast space. And as of today, that is no longer the case. That is, and I'm only going to speak narrowly about the podcast space again. And I hope you guys aren't thinking that I'm like being too pedantic about it, because this is my space. I mean, it is your space. So, yeah, but what I, what I will say is this, is that, um, uh, as podcasters that most of the, that most of the, you know, that most of the the people that I know that are doing subscription stuff, they're on Patreon. They're paying at most 12%, so the 30% is a non-starter. It would be interesting if there was going to be some sort of like,

Jesus Christ, there's a giant truck going by outside. If there was some sort of like algorithmic uptake, like that's the shoe that we've always been waiting to drop in terms of like the Spotify stuff. And it, at least as far as I know, unless you've been bought by Spotify, it hasn't happened yet. like the partners that they have like Pushkin who has like you know the Malcolm Gladwell podcast and the Michael Lewis podcast and things like that and NPR or whatever those are the sort of partners that you would expect them to have in if if I am podcasts that I know that are making six figures with Patreon um there's no reason to go to Apple uh to do this to give away and it uh you know double to double your take to somebody else there's nothing that I'm

seeing and I've been trying to uh read as we've been talking all this stuff, that there's any sort of algorithmic uptake on this. So like, and this is actually a good thing. Like, one of the things that I'm always fearful of if I wake up and I find out that Apple is too involved in the space, every day that I wake up and RSS isn't broken is a great day. And so even though they're doing this and they're for the first time getting into the space and trying to monetize it, they're doing it with one hand tied behind their back,

and they're only doing it on this sort of subscription sort of stuff. So it's like basically you can ignore this. You can join them if they want to write you a check or whatever, or you can keep doing Patreon. So like this is what I'm saying where I feel like this is a nothing, if you're a podcaster, because there's nothing that they have proposed here that would make people leave Patreon.

There's nothing that would be like, I've never thought of doing a subscription thing. If people want to do it, great. Apple has the platform for it. But there's nothing that is in any of these announcements that is like, oh, I would really consider this because all of a sudden I think they can double my audience or something. I just like, okay, I will accept your point. Like it is a good and fair point.

And I guess I go back to the way in which Apple launches and rolls out products, which is that if you think about the very first app store, and what it offered. It was very, very primitive and very basic. Apple has a real tendency of, you know, coming out with something that's just the bare minimum and then growing up and building up from there. Now, I'm not saying that they will, but if you look at the amount of energy and movement around content, around Apple TV and Apple TV Plus, and then you look at like the App Store, and podcasts have been kind of like, I mean, ironically, they've actually have this enormous back catalog of content. that's just been freely distributed for years and years and years.

This is where I'm saying people have been monetizing this. You just are not aware of it. That's not what I'm saying. That's not what I'm saying. And people were monetizing apps before the apps. Yes, yes, yes. Okay? What I'm saying is if you play this out over the next 10 years,

what does this look like as far as a piece of important type of content that is, you know, it provides value for AirPods. It provides value for being in the Apple entertainment ecosystem so that when you subscribe to become an Apple customer for life, at some point, this content may be available to you as well. And that may drive more revenue for people over the longer term, over the long horizon. Like to me, this is a bit of a squeeze on Spotify. Oh, no. And in fact, that's what I was going to say. And then I'm going to get off my high horse.

The best thing about this is that I would prefer Apple to have woken up a little. bit as opposed to just letting Spotify roll the space. I would much rather, if I had to, if I had to choose between a Spotify or an Apple taking over podcasting, I hope neither of them ever succeed in doing that. I'd rather it be Apple. So, but, but I'm glad that Apple is not just continuing to sleep on the space. So if you're right, if this is just a first stirring, then that's great because, yeah, I am not impressed with Spotify at all and some of the moves that they're making. Interesting. I think you can view this as not as an either or with Patreon for the time being.

I think a lot of podcasters can just, you know, set up a subscription show on Apple Podcasts to get the free real estate that they're not asking for exclusivity. It's not like a Joe Rogan or a ringer situation. Like, you can do whatever you want to. It's just another option. asking for... Yeah. Yeah. And you can price it to take into account Apple's 30% cut

so that you walk away with the same thing and just hope that the Apple audience is not as price sensitive. But I think where the launch partner that is the most curious to me is the athletic. Because they offer, like, their bundle is all of this writing on the athletic website. And this whole time they've said, like, and we kind of have podcasts too. You got to listen to them inside our own app where it's not really the best podcasting experience. And they eventually like slightly opened that up a little bit. But here they are like joining, you know, as a full-fledged like, you know, competitor.

Like right there next to Luminary is like, oh, no, podcasting is as if that's our whole thing. That's a good point. Yeah. I was going to want to bring up like, how does this fit into the news plus audio stuff or is that interesting? Yeah. Are these totally separate subscriptions? Right. You're subscribing to the athletic podcast network as a separate fee from your news thing.

You most likely cannot connect your accounts in any way. I haven't heard any whispers around something like that. It's not like they can comp every single person who already is paying on the website and then Apple doesn't get a cut at all. So this is... I mean, this is such a good point. Just in terms of, you know, one, tying subscriptions to the Apple ID into the Apple user. And of course, sign in with Apple is a big part of their strategy, especially in Safari and on the web.

And so as that increasingly rolls out, then you can imagine that there might be satellite websites that you can go to to access exclusive content that is driven through Apple Pay. And so that's an important part of this as well. And then this other point where we move away from the concept of podcasts as being this special kind of syndicated format to one where it's just asynchronous audio consumption that when you may be such a lot. to the Athletic in the podcast app, and then you'll hop over into Apple News, suddenly you're getting access to exclusive content. That's part of your subscription that's folded into Apple's other properties. And so, Brian, in some ways, that actually answers your question about algorithmic amplification. Yes. Because if, let's say I have a premium subscription to the Technium Ryan Home podcast, and I go into the Apple News app, and I'm browsing around and seeing a story,

and then there's a podcast that's listed as related, well, that gets to be pretty interesting. And also, the most interesting thing to me would be if the next step is bundling, like people are starting to do a substack, right? Like, if Apple suddenly said, well, there's one subscription and you can join it and you'll get a cut depending on how many downloads you get, like a Spotify sort of-esque model, which I've been waiting for Spotify to do. Let me just do one more thing here. And then, again, I really hope I'm not, people don't think I'm hugging this.

this is something that I have to also tread lightly on. I got it. Various people have various ideas about what is a loss leader. And I'm thinking of people, or not a loss leader, but a customer acquisition vehicle. And people like the athletic and people like substack have different ideas of what that is. and I would say, I hope that, I think I can, like, the athletic thinks of podcasts as customer acquisition, and maybe they're changing their strategy so that they're monetizing that versus other people like Vox think of it in reverse. Like there are certain media entities that podcasts are their bread and butter.

Well, I think like the economists is a really good example of this. They put out a bunch of really, really great podcasts and it's to drive the print subscription, which I find sort of backwards in Iraq. So what I'm trying to say, treading lightly, is in this world of athletics and subsects and things like that, and there's multiple skews, a multi-skew business and things like that, various people have different ideas of where podcasting, because everyone just wants that ARR. It just depends on what they think the most valuable part of that ARR is. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm curious, Brian. You said that you'd rather, like, Apple would be the lesser of two evils versus Spotify to take over podcasting. I'm curious why, because I would prefer a world where, you know, Spotify has all of audio and the big tech companies continue to have all their fingers and all their pies. If you can sideload RSS into Apple podcast and you can't sideload RSS into Spotify. Well, that's now, just like they're not doing exclusives now, but that's yet, I would say. Okay. As carefully as I can tread, I think from my perspective, when I look at Spotify, their goal is still to increase their margins vis-a-vis what they have to pay to record companies. And so that podcasting is basically wide open and free versus like these contracts where down to the penny you have to pay for stream and things like that.

So I am not impressed by what Spotify is doing in the space yet, because I don't know how much they value audience building. I think that this is just their get-out-of-jail-free card in terms of margins and being married to the record companies for their entire business. Yeah, I think you and I are a little bit different on that just because of the experience. I don't know. Yeah, yeah. But then look, listen, and you know what, we need to wrap up. So we don't have to go into this now. But the fact that they, they, I do not, when, when, if you download my podcast from Spotify,

you're not downloading it from an RSS feed. Like, they take from my RSS feed and then they feed it to you something else. Like I, listen, I'm an old man. I believe in open standards and the open web. I don't want RSS to be killed. I don't want it to be. Spotify is just the new person that takes a, an open part of the web and throws a fence around it, like, has happened to, you know,

everything from blogging to whatever, you know. Right. I think that makes sense. Yeah. Wesley, do you want to chime in here? Yeah. I've been saving up my point, so please bear with me. Go for it.

Just to tell off what you said, Brian, about RSS and you don't want it to die, I wanted to highlight that this new subscription model is not RSS which means they are not bound by the restrictions of RSS. We're not just talking about video, we're not just talking to audio, but this opens the door for interactive content. If you've ever seen the book,

my kid had this, it's like there's a monster at the end of this book. Right. Where it's extreme... Yeah, yeah. Think about that possibility with subscription models or something like that. And have you heard of ASO? It's kind of like SEO, but for App Store optimization?

Yes. That is going to be a huge driver. Like right now, there's a lot of podcasts that say, give us five stars on Apple Podcasts. And you turn on to the subscription and you get high marks. I bet that's going to help with the ASO for a lot of people. So that's a big, big incentive for people to adopt this. And my last point, just throwing this in here.

don't be surprised if there's like a malformed RSS feed that crashes or causes a security risk to Apple Podcasts, and they have to turn off that feature to sidelode RSS feeds for security reasons. Yeah. Interesting. You don't think that after all this time they would have sanitized, like, sanitized, like, all that RSS stuff. It'll be an excuse, though, I think is what you're saying. I see. Yeah, maybe.

Is there what something that's interesting, like, with Spotify and podcast where it's a pay-per-podcast model versus when I first sold a headline, I was expecting it to be like a bundle sort of set up. With Spotify or what do you mean? Yeah, with Spotify, yeah, I was really curious because I was like, okay, yeah, Spotify, I just get pay one price and I get all this stuff. Like, no, no, it's like a per creator per podcast set up. Yeah, what I've been seeing in the little hints that I've noticed as well as the conversations is just that Spotify does seem to be, um, enabling, you know, exclusive, you know, downloads where you can unlock it, like, on an individual basis. It also unlocks podcast interactivity. Specifically, I know that they're exploring polls and Q&A. And to Brian's point, I actually think that Spotify is actually pretty focused on audience

development for podcasters. And, you know, Brian can tell me that that's, you know, BS because he's not actually seeing any of the results. But I just, you know, feel like Spotify is closer, I don't know, I feel like Spotify is closer to working with artists specifically into building out their fan base and to bring in a lot more different types of data onto artist profiles, and they'll do the same thing for podcasters. Whereas Apple just notoriously, going back to iTunes Ping, just doesn't really seem to do well when it comes to allowing for dynamic content and moving really quickly with trends and with culture. They're much better at producing jewelry than they are at producing, you know, kind of like, you know, lavish events and experiences that people, you know, interact through. Well, Spotify has to make this work, right?

They're like not profitable yet or barely profitable. This is, this is, they have to make this work. Apple, for this, for them, this is around here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is a great point. Kind of the point that I was making as well. Chris, we should wrap this up, but we should also make room for anyone that's on stage right now to, you know, tell a promo, whatever you want.

Any last thoughts. Yeah. Yeah. Any shoutouts? Sure. Any podcasts that you run that are premium subscription? Wesley, since you were up first, you can go first. You want us to follow you on Twitter. What should we know about you, Wesley?

Yeah, follow me on Twitter. Wesley 83. Of course, it's super easy to follow me on Spaces to my profile. But I want to promote my company daily, which is we're doing some amazing stuff. We have a couple of launches next week that I'm not going to spoil. but please follow the daily account at Get Daily. Or sorry, try daily. So follow Try Daily.

And it's going to be pretty earth-shattering, in my opinion. Oh, wow. It's going to make some news. So keep your ears there. All right. I'm going to go in order. So, Emilia, you're next, at least on my screen. Oh, I'm the last on my screen.

So I used to be the executive editor at Venture Beat, and I'm dabbling in newsletters now, so no podcast to plug, but not yet anyway. But one is a monthly one called Phi to Sci, which is about basically what you see in science fiction and how it's happening in our world. So addiction to science, basically, and it's monthly, so it's not that often. And the other one is Big Tech News, which is just what Big Tech has been up to in the week. That one is weekly. and they're all on my profile, so at E-Pro. Thank you. Cool.

And all right, we're going by my screen. So Steve, you're next. Hey, this is Steve Moser. I guess final parting thought on the Apple event is, I think the biggest part of the event was the M1 chip and the iPad and having up the 16 gigabytes of RAM and the future possibilities for Pro Apps. So I just can't want to see what they do next with that. But as far as what to plug, follow Macromeners, follow me, Steve Moser,

Also, I have a side site called Tape Drive where I try to go kind of deeper cuts into little Apple changes, but also recently I've gotten into digging into iOS app changes. So trying to find those hidden gyms in beta and other app updates. We should talk. Definitely. Also, Steve makes a good point, though. I feel like we didn't talk enough about the iPad and it getting the M1 and what does that actually mean because it already was on arm. We're terrible hosts and we get off. No, no, no, no.

That was not meant as a criticism. I just thought it was interesting. But actually, Steve, Steve, 10 seconds. Will we get an M2 chip? Is the next generation chip coming this year? Well, yeah, I think what is it? Did Apple say it was it in two years? They would hope to complete transition.

So, yeah, I hope, you know, if it's going to be November or December, something, the M2 chip or M1X, I mean, I'm all off now on, and whatever you think, you know Apple's naming scheme, they twist it, right? So I thought it was going to be the A14X. There's even code in there that said A14X, but then they're like, boom, M1 chip. And then, oh, yeah, this is M1 chip with the full 16 gigabytes of RAM. So, yeah, I definitely, I think it's a possibility, but the marketing names are really hard to come by in the code. And same thing with the advanced heart detail. That's all. I wasn't asking you to name the chip. I just want to know when I can update my MacBook Pro to

I don't want to do it on the Gen 1. Exactly. All right, so the last person on my screen is Nathan, so Nathan, you're up and then we can get out of here. All right. If you have a podcast, check out pod.link. It's a great link in

bio-style solution for promoting your own show everywhere. At the beginning of the year, Podlink was acquired by Podsites. So if you're advertising on podcasts and you want to measure that success, check out podsites.com, like pod insights smash together. And then the other thing you should check out is now that I no longer am working on Podlink

in my nights and weekends, my next side project is an API to enable the next generation of podcast platforms. So check out Episodes.fm to hear when that's coming next. That sounds good to me, and it sounds like some good news. Both Chris and I will be fun from that stuff. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, everyone that's listening. this will be put out on the TechMeme Right Home this weekend, Saturday afternoon usually. Thank you, Chris. Yeah, thank you, Brian.

Thanks, everyone. This is the TechMeme Ride Home experience following the Apple event on April 20th, 2021. This is a great conversation. I appreciate everyone for being here, and we will do these again sometime soon in the future. Thank you.