This Week in Startups - E1123: Emergency Pod! Jason reacts to the iPhone 12 fail & Apple jumping the shark; theories on the lack of innovation: is something big in the works or has Apple lost its magic?

Episode Date: October 14, 2020

FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis Apple Event 2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KR0g-1hnQPA

It's an emergency podcast. Apple has released a new iPhone 12, and for the first time, I'm not buying the new iPhone. And I'll tell you why when we get back on an emergency podcast, this weekend startups. This weekend startups is brought to you by DigitalOceans App Platform, a new platform-as-a-service solution to build modern cloud-native apps. With app platform, you can build, deploy, and scale apps and static websites quickly and easily. Get started for free at DO.co.co slash twist. That's DO.com slash twist. Hey, everybody. Welcome to an emergency podcast. And it's a big day always when Apple releases new product,

except for today when Apple jumped the shark. They've released the iPhone 12, and it is a literal shark jumping moment for me personally because I will 100% of the time always buy the latest iPhone. It is something I've done since iPhone 1. I always get the new iPhone on the day it comes out. I pre-order it the day you can pre-order it or I have one of my people pre-order for me these days. And I used to even send somebody like an assistant to wait in line to get it for me on the mornings. That's how much I anticipated the new iPhone. Today's was a huge disaster for Apple. And it's a disaster on so many levels that I'm going to unpack it for you.

First off, let's play their hype video. This is where they just kind of get everybody bumping and jumping to how amazing this is going to be. And sure, it's got a new chip in 5G. This is big news that it's got a 5G. But then they show the iPhone 12 and I just thought to myself, wait a second, I've seen this before. It's that goddamn iPhone 4. It's the iPhone 4. It's the iPhone 4 or the iPhone 5.

It's got the bezel on the side. And they're talking about how great this new design is. But it's actually the old design, which everybody actually loves. So they literally have redesigned it to look like an iPhone 4, completely uninspired and ridiculous. I guess it's got a slightly better. screen. They always have a better screen. Slightly better camera. They always have a better camera. This technology works. But this really jumps the shark when they went to their virtue signaling, we're going to save the planet, schick, which is, you know, in fairness of them, they do talk the talk

and walk the walk. They are going to be carbon neutral. They do care about the environment. They will take your products back to recycling. That's all fine and well. But when they went to this shot of the roof of the mothership headquarters, and I couldn't believe what they were telling me here, but listen to this, folks. We've also been transitioning our iPhone manufacturing partners to renewable energy. Okay, that's great. Renewable energy is perfect. We looked for ways to cut waste and use less material. Okay, I'm with you. Cut waste is a great idea. over 700 million lightning headphones. Okay, we got headphones, yes.

And many customers have moved to a wireless experience. Yep, I bought three pairs of AirPods. With AirPyts or other wireless headphones. Definitely. And there are also over 2 billion Apple Power adapters out of the world. I bought all these adapters from you. I got them in every room. And that's not counting the billions of third party adapters.

Yeah, I buy the anchor once. They're better than yours. And cheaper. We are removing these items from the iPhone box. What? Reduces carbon emissions and avoid the mining and use of precious materials. Removing these items also means. a smaller, lighter iPhone box.

And this is where my head is like, they're charging you $1,200 for a phone, but they took out the charger because there's already $2 billion on the planet. And they took out the headphones because they want you to buy the $300 ones. I mean, and then they're explaining to us that it's a smaller footprint and the box is smaller because they took stuff out. But this is in your best interest and better for the planet. Okay, I get you Apple. I see what you did there.

You basically took everything out except for. And this is where, you know, everybody went crazy on the Twitter. Not only to have the audacity to tell you you don't need a charger with your new $1,200 phone. And you don't need headphones with your new $1,200 phone. It's not like they lowered the price on this thing. It's still expensive. But then the audacity is they still use a lightning connection. So if they actually did care about chargers,

and they do care about the environment, why not go with the standard USBC? Then we don't need as many of these. You make us buy a USBC for our iPad pros. You make us buy it for our MacBooks and our MacBook Airs and MacBook Pros. And every other device has moved to USBC, except for this one device,

which still makes us buy redundant lightning cables. So forgive me, but I find this ridiculous. Let's watch the rest of this video. shot on the solar panel roofed of the mothership. We can fit up to 70% more products on a shipping palette. Great. Reducing carbon emissions in our global logistics chain. That's why I'm buying an iPhone.

I want to get that global logistics better. The changes we've made for iPhone 12 cut over 2 million metric tons of carbon emissions annually. Great. It's like removing 450,000 cars from the road per year. This is here. huge and we're really proud that Apple is taking the lead. We hope others will follow, making this impact even bigger for our planet. All right. So I thought that was like ridiculous and disingenuous. They should have said, hey, we took the $50 off the price of it because we're saving so much

money for you. But they didn't say that. And then they're creating this iPhone 12 mini, so it's a little bit smaller. And then they get into it. And like the big feature is, and they use James Bond music. This film is not coming out this year anyway. And here we go. They're launching a small version of the iPhone 5. By the way, the iPhone 5 was the small version. So this is not new. I don't know why you're making such a big deal about this.

You just gave us what we had 10 years ago. This is iPhone 12 Mini. With its amazing size, it fits in the palm of your hand. No, all smartphones used to fit in your hands. A Mini means smaller than that. So this is kind of ridiculous. I mean, I kind of want it. I'll be honest.

But with a larger 5.4 inch display that lets you see so much more. With its compact size, the iPhone 12 mini has the exact same features as iPhone 12. You're just choosing between two great sizes. Okay, great. So not much there. And then the only other thing they really did is they're including LIDAR in this. And so most people are going to ask, hey, what's the story with LIDAR? this is really their way of getting LiDAR into their products because they have AR coming, right?

And so it's just another way for them to know the distance between your phone and objects. And so Snapchat and filters and these kind of things will be more accurate and they'll be able to build models of the world. But what's really great about this is this is going to drive down the price of LiDar sensors. Because whatever you put in the iPhone, the price of that thing, whatever component you put in an iPhone or a smartphone, on the volume in which these things are produced will definitely lower the cost of all this. The one thing I thought was very cool is something that, you know,

Steve Jobs showed us, you know, decades ago, which is MagSafe. So everybody remembers MagSafe, the little plug you would put into your laptop, and then if somebody walked by and kicked the cable, it would just come off because it wasn't attached. And then they replaced it. USBC for some reason, and then now MacSafe doesn't exist anymore? Well, now they're bringing

MacSafe back. Okay. So, Macsave existed on laptops. They took it out of the laptops and put USBC on it. And now they're bringing Macsaf back and they put it on the phones. So you know, all those aftermarket magnets you put on the back of your phones and then you snap it onto something. They've basically included that in the iPhone. I do actually think that's the one thing that could potentially tip me over into wanting this device is that. I like having the wallet with my credit cards on the back. And now you can snap little devices onto the back. Or if you were using in a car, I assume they'll have car chargers, you know, from third-party

manufacturers, you just snap your iPhone on there. But I like to have a case. And so these things generally don't work with the case, but maybe I'll get the case on it. And let's roll the video here of the MagSafe components. And here is the MagSafe accessories, which will also charge the phone, obviously. The displays are now way past any just noticeable difference. There's no way for people to even see the difference in these displays. So that's kind of we've reached peak smartphone.

When we get back from this quick break, I'm going to tell you what this means for Apple, the company, and exactly how lost they are. And if Apple, as a stock, is going to go down because of the slowing sales of iPhones because of this mediocrity when we get back on this week at startups. This emergency podcast is brought to you by our friends at DigitalOcean, which just released their app platform. It's a new platform as a service solution to build modern cloud native apps.

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Dot CO slash twist. Great job, digital ocean. And let's get back to this amazing podcast. All right, welcome back to an emergency pod. Apple release the iPhone 12. And I'm literally, I think I'm going to skip it. I don't feel the need to upgrade. I think I'm going to wait for iPhone 13.

I wonder if they will come up with the 13 since it's an unlucky number. I wonder what their plan there is, if they're going to skip it or not. But this is a bigger issue for Apple. The most innovative product they've come out with since the iPhone and the iPad is AirPods. And AirPods are wonderful and amazing devices. I think the watch is, you know, it's done okay.

I'm not a super fan of the watch. And so you have to wonder, with Apple having declining iPhone sales, the number of units shipping has been going down year over year over year. because there's really not that much different about these phones. And I have to say, I keep a pixel four around. I always get an Android phone and the Pixel 5. Those phones are as good or better typically, and there's certainly better value for money than the iPhone.

And so while I am still a fan of Apple's phone, and it is still my default phone, I don't feel the loyalty to Apple I used to feel. I stopped buying their computers. I went to Chrome, and I started using Windows again. And I love my Dell Windows, and those machines are for the same price. I can get a machine that's like 50% or 100% more powerful when I buy a Dell. And really, you have to wonder now, what is the future of Apple, if the most innovative things they do are around cost savings and logistics in terms of what we just saw with making the boxes smaller.

like that's the announcement or like colors like the different colors of the iPhone is something that Steve Jobs did with the iPod for those of you who are generation C iPod was a device like an iPhone that only did one thing play music and it wasn't connected to the internet um the iPod mini had all the different colors like we we get it color and the the original iMac came in all the different fruity colors like we get it multiple colors gives you more options and it's interesting But really what we're starting to see is Apple feels like they're running out of steam. So there really is two theories right now as to what's happening at Apple. Either they see themselves the end of the line for desktop computing and the end of the line for the smartphone.

And they just think, you know what? We need to focus 100% on the AR glasses, which are obviously being worked on for a long time now. And those could come out in a year or two maybe. And that those would be the big paradigm shift. you'll put on your AR glasses, you'll see your smart screen in front of you, and you'll put in AirPods, and you'll listen, and you have your watch and you have your phone. Now, you have four computing devices on you. A watch AirPods, AR glasses, and your phone. And you could remove one of those from, you know, the package, say the phone, and you could just go out with your glasses on and your watch

and maybe your AirPods, or maybe like the Bose glasses I have, I have the Bose sound glasses, the glasses will probably play sound already and have Siri in them, so you won't need your AirPods. imagine putting on their AR glasses and their speakers playing you music, or you're talking to Siri, or you may have noticed in the latest update, Syria will read you your messages when your AirPods are in. That's the future. You get a message. You've got your air glasses on, boom.

So that's probably why Apple, that would be the most pro discussion you could come up with, the most pro hypotheses, is that they realize, yeah, desktop computing, you know, you saw the terrible Mac Pro tower they made for like developers and video editors and it was $5,000 and $10,000. It's ridiculous pricing. They're probably just milking everything to make massive profits and then the big innovation will be the glasses. We'll see.

That's a big bet. But they didn't buy Peloton when they could have and they still could. They didn't buy Tesla when it was $70 billion like I told them to. So here we go. The boldest thing they've bought is. beats for $2 billion? It's pathetic. They should have bought, absolutely should have bought Tesla.

They should buy Peloton now. They won't. They had too much pride. But Pelotons would be amazing if that was an Apple brand like Peloton by Apple. Buy that company now and have all those, have it integrated with the watch, have it run MacOS or iOS on the Peloton devices. Right now it runs Android. Perfect path to victory there. buy it before Google does.

I mean, Google's buying Fitbit. Why not by Peloton? And they could buy something like Slack and get into business software, or they could buy something like Zoom and get into the business space. They don't want to, I guess. They want to be a consumer. I understand that decision. But boy, just Apple needs to think of something that really is transcendent.

And this is not it. And these kind of like cutting margin here and all these margin plays, to me, it really, reeks of desperation. And you can see that in the cable. The cable they're putting in the iPhone 12 is a USB C to lightning. It doesn't take a genius. And I know this might seem cynical. They didn't do a USB to lightning because that's what those two billion charges. The woman on the roof was talking about. Everybody's got one of those, the traditional USB charger. No, they did USBC. So now you've got to go buy that $20 charger because people don't have a USBC plug, you know, in cable because you'd have to have the female USBC laying around. People don't have that laying around. So I hate to be cynical here,

but they took that out and then they're charging you $19 for it. And it only costs $9 to make one of those for them or maybe $2. So this is just Apple at its worst, milking their customers for every last dollar to make massive, you know, margin. And, God, I'll bless Tim Cook. He was a great steward for the company, I think, in a transition. But Tim Cook, I know he's had a great run in terms of the stock. I know they have a ton of cash. But this will catch up with them eventually. If they do not innovate and they do not have great products, resting on your laurels is a recipe for disaster for this company. They need to come out with an innovative product. And this incremental, uninspiring product, to me, it's just lame. And I think

people are starting to become hip to the fact that Windows is pretty good. Chrome operating system, excellent. These things are so much cheaper that even people who aren't price sensitive are, they might be value conscience, right? So you can be price sensitive. You can only afford a Chromebook, only afford an Android. But then there are value conscious people and businesses are value conscience. I got a value conscious.

They might want to buy 100 computers. You know what? buying the Dell XPS 13 or buying Chromebooks. The Pixel Go is a really great Chromebook from the folks over at Google. These things are better value. You could buy three computers for the price of one, two computers for the price of one. People are going to start to become hip to this. And there's no allegiance to the iOS operating system.

There's no allegiance to the Mac OSI operating system anymore. There's very few things that you can only do on a Mac. In fact, I have a hard time even thinking about what you can only do on a Mac. So Tim Cook, time to go. And that's not meant in a, you know, that I don't think he's done a great job. Obviously, stock is what he is playing for. He is gooseing the stock. But I think, man, they really need to get some people in there who can build innovative products.

I will say, I was wrong about Apple TV or Apple Plus, whatever they're calling it, they're Netflix competitor. I've seen two shows off of that. The movie Greyhound with Tom Hanks, war movie. I love a good war movie. Love Tom Hanks. I thought that was a great film or good. Somewhere between good and great.

I recommend it. And then Ted Lassau is absolutely fantastic. And I thought Apple would shut down Apple Plus, but I think they might find a niche for themselves in producing family-friendly content, nothing too racy. They're not going to do like a suicide squad or, you know, that kind of stuff where, you know, if you have kids, you might not want them to watch, you know, too vulgar or whatever and you're trying to, you know, use some common sense. And speaking of which I use common sense media, a great website for doing this. You really probably are going to love having Apple produce shows like Ted Lassow that are family fair. So I take it back. I know there's a lot of competition in this space, but, you know, HBO Max, Netflix, Disney Plus, and Apple Plus TV, whatever they call it, they're all doing great content.

So we might have as an industry underestimated the appetite for great content on a global basis. And that's why I think Disney is refocusing the entire company around this. And they're going to have that Obi-Wan series, Mandalorian's coming back, Disney Plus is going to crush it. Okay. This has been an emergency podcast. Apple, I don't know what to tell you.

you know, come out with something more inspiring. I'm just bored. So they have it, folks. iPhone 12. I think it's lame. Worst iPhone ever. Worst release ever. Apple, F-minus.

F-minus. Come back, try again with something more innovative. I'm sorry. And, you know, the speakers and all that kind of stuff, still lame. Nobody cares. Like, Sonos is better. You know, just really, the fact that they also just, they really didn't make a good,

They're probably too late to get into the music system for your home and speakers, but their smart speakers are also just overpriced and lame. So it's a lame day for Apple. Stock is down on the margins at the taping of this. And God, what are you going to do with all that money, Apple? You're going to just sit here and make increment, just poorly incrementally better iPhones? Be bold. Take a new product line.

Do something new and innovative. going into a new vertical and do something exciting for once Apple. Really, seriously. The last exciting thing were AirPods. I'm sorry, that's it. Everything else since AirPods has been lame and incremental. And before that, it was the iPad. Apple Watch was a dud for me. All right, we'll see you all next time on this being starters. Bye-bye.