Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - 2020 Apple Leaks & Mark Gurman Brings Us Behind the Scenes of the Tight-Lipped Tech World

Episode Date: May 1, 2020

On this episode, we welcome well-known Apple leaker and Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman, who joins us remotely to dive deep behind the scenes of his life as the predominant Apple leaker in today's technology world. He shares the story of how he began his career, some of his favorite leaks of all time, and all the juicy leaks about the upcoming iPhone 12. We close out the episode with Mark joining us as we answer all the burning Twitter questions that you fine people submitted! Stay informed, stay healthy, and stay safe out there, folks! Links: https://twitter.com/wvfrm https://twitter.com/mkbhd https://twitter.com/andymanganelli https://twitter.com/markgurman https://www.instagram.com/wvfrmpodcast/ Mark's Bloomberg Articles: https://bloom.bg/2SnmZXT Older 9to5Mac Articles: https://bit.ly/2VR3FEv Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Alright, hey, what's up, everybody? Welcome back to another episode of the Waveform Podcast. We're your hosts. I'm Marques Brownlee. And I'm Andrew Manganielli. And this week, it's all about the behind the scenes of the tech. We're talking about the leak game. So we won't get super specific because they're not literally actively trying to scoop anybody here. But that whole world of where tips come from, whether or not they spoil the eventual events, and the best and worst leaks we've ever seen is always fun to talk about. So joining us today is our special guest, reporter from Bloomberg News, noted Apple leaker, and also fellow NBA fan, Mark Gurman. Welcome to the podcast. Yeah, thanks for having me, Marques. I love your stuff, love your videos. It's always great running into you at all the events,

so thanks for having me on. Yeah, for sure. Did I miss anything? Because I know we always, we try to give like a title and a good intro for people, and we always banter about LA NBA teams, but anything else? I know we're also the same age, roughly.

Is that right? I think so. I'm 26. Same, okay, yeah. Yeah, I don't play frisbee though but i do some pickup basketball from time to time that's fair okay so we'll start just by getting into the whole the the leak stuff that we've seen in the news now we're going to talk about leaks and apple and big tech uh for this entire podcast but i just want to get right off the top just because we have

stuff in the news that i think a lot of people are interested in. One from you, Apple aims to start selling Macs with their own chips starting in 2021. This one's not as like juicy of a headline as maybe the iPhone, but I find this really exciting. So maybe break this down for us. Yeah, so I don't think this is really gonna apply to your setup, your rig,

whatever you have going on for your video recording, but this is gonna be a change they're to be making first on the low end so perhaps maybe the mac mini uh in the earlier wave but mostly i'm thinking there's going to be a new replacement for that remember that 12 inch macbook uh that was discontinued a few years ago they had the air and the pro before then then they did that one- one-off 12-inch MacBook with the new keyboard and all that technology. So I think we're going to see something similar to be the first computer with the ARM processor. And basically what an ARM chip is, it's the same thing that you have in your iPhone and your iPad. So it's basically replacing Intel with a processor designed by Apple.

And the benefits there are performance, know, performance, power efficiency, they can tie it more closely to the other components they design in the computer. They also are able to develop it much earlier on. So the roadmap is in their control. They don't have to rely on Intel. And so this is a transition you're going to see starting, you know, as early as next year in terms of when the devices are going to start being sold. And I think this is going to be a several year thing until they're able to replace the whole stack with Apple's own processors. Yeah, there's a lot there because I've said for a while, like the iPad Pro, super impressive chip, obviously, and obviously super powerful. But it's not this this A13 isn't

in their computers. But every time I, you know, benchmark a MacBook Air, for example, or I complain about performance in the 12 inch MacBook, you always have that thought in the back of your head, well, shouldn't Apple just make these chips for the machines themselves? I guess the biggest question that I think a lot of people might wonder is why would it take so long? What is the behind the scenes process at Apple to decide now is the time to do it or 2021 is the time to do it or last year was too early to do it? You know, that's a great question. So, you know, chip development at Apple, a new processor, whether that's the A14, the A13, it takes three to four years, right? So if these chips are going to start hitting the manufacturing lines end of 2020, sometime in 2021, This was a decision made around 2016, 2017. Now, around that

time is probably when people at Apple started to really get fed up with Intel, right? Around that time, you saw the increases year over year in terms of speed really decreasing. I'm sure you remember there was a time, you know, back when we were much younger that you would get a new MacBook Pro update, a new iMac update, maybe every six months or so, right? I remember there was an iMac updates three months apart, like, you know, 10, 15 years ago. That changed because Intel's roadmap really slowed down, right? And so in order to, you know, basically do it at their own speed, they have to do it themselves. And so that's something they probably realized four or five years ago. And it just takes that amount of time. Also, they wanted to get it right. From what I understand, the A12X,

to your point, the processor in the 2018 iPad Pro, basically the same one as in the 2020 iPad Pro from March, that's when they really felt like, okay, we can do this. And so what you're going to see is basically the version to succeed the A12X, the A14, likely be the first Mac chip. Nice. Okay. I mean, this is what we say about, you know, every time there's a new iPhone or a new iPad, the power of Apple is they don't have to focus on talking about the specs.

This is why they never tell me how many cores are in a chip or how much RAM is in a phone, because it doesn't really apply when you have the vertical integration of the software, the chip, the hardware, everything as lockstep as Apple does in those devices. So I'm really curious to see what sort of power the A14 might bring to something like a MacBook Air, whether they actually do start updating them more frequently, will it be ideal for most customers? The one question I have is because I've seen this question come up, is does compatibility potentially take a hit? When you change out from Intel chips that everyone knows and everyone ships and everyone codes for and put in Apple chips, do Mac apps suddenly have to all get updated or how does that work?

Yeah, I think you're going to see two things. One, you're going to see sort of a transition where Apple's going to start pushing developers, maybe at the upcoming WWDC, we'll see to start writing apps for that ARM code base. But I also think we're going to see some sort of software similar to Rosetta that we saw when they did the PowerPC to Intel transition to sort of make it easier to make current Mac apps compatible. Maybe they run in a special emulator. And then there's also this whole, I call it marzipan because that was the original code name, but they call it Catalyst now, the ability to run iPad apps on basically a Mac. So I think that's

going to play into it as well. There's also going to be the merged app store down the road. So I think these things are all concurrent. And to your point about the vertical integration, These things are all concurrent. And to your point about the vertical integration, something I noticed is I have this 2020 iPad Pro with eight gigabytes of RAM. The previous one from 2018 was four gigabytes of RAM and it was totally fine. I never had a slowdown, a sluggishness, right?

My 16-inch MacBook Pro, it has 16 gigs of RAM and it's like, I'm always hitting myself like I wish I would have went for the 32 or 64. And you know what? It comes down to Intel, right? Apple's chips allow for super slim power efficiency, everything's optimized, you don't need much RAM. Intel at this point is really the opposite. And so that's a really, I think, strong rationale for why they're doing this. Yeah, that's, it's a, I think, a bigger story than a lot of people realize. And Apple taking that control will be fun to see. The other one, the second one, I think the juicy, exciting one from a few weeks ago,

and I'll just read the headline and then I'll give you my reaction to it, which is iPhone 12 will be released weeks after the typical mid-September launch. We'll have an iPad Pro-like design, 5G, LiDAR, plus a smaller HomePod is in the works and Apple tags will come in a leather keychain pouch.

That's a lot. The thing I was most excited about was the iPhone 12 with the iPad Pro-like design. And I'll just start with that because we've seen all these like CAD-based renders and all these speculative drawings of what it might look like. What do you think of this new design? Well, first of all, I'm proud that I was able to get that story out before the first CADS hit. I think they hit like one or two days later. So I was kind of excited about that. But it basically, it looks like if the iPad Pro, I know this is really weird, the iPad Pro and the iPhone 11 Pro had a kid, right? It has a lot of

the aesthetics of both. The edges will be much sharper. You know, it's kind of like the iPhone 5, the 5S. That's what I've always wanted. Yeah, that's basically what it is. It's going to be a jumbo one of those, right? There's going to be that 6.7 inch version, which I know me and you are probably both going to spring for. And that's really exciting from what I understand. It looks cool, obviously. The LiDAR will be there. But my concern on the LiDAR, and I don't know if you feel the same way in your testing, there's really nothing to take advantage of it, right? Not an Apple app, not a third-party app. And it feels like the hardware, yet again for Apple, is way ahead of the software.

So at what point do they have a killer app for LiDAR? Who knows? Maybe it'll be ended this year, maybe next year, the year after. But, you know, this is a technology that people are paying for and you can't do anything with it yet. Yeah, 100% on that. I tested it, of course, in the iPad Pro. And you know, Apple gives their examples of a couple things that may use it. And of course, I'm over here pointing the measure app at things like trying to see if there's any notable improvement. But honestly, yeah, this is something people will be paying for

and probably not using much. And that also brings us to 5G, which is interesting to see because, you know, I've tested a couple 5G phones this year. I guess the word would be 5G capable that don't necessarily connect to any 5G network and they focus on it to varying degrees in their messaging. By the time this podcast goes

live, my review of the Moto Edge Plus will be live. And that phone's a Verizon exclusive for life. And that's a heavy focus for them is like, this is a 5G phone. You want this because it's got an edge screen and 5G. Like that's big time for them. How much do you think Apple leans into 5G in the new iPhone in 2020 if it is 5G capable? Yeah, in terms of how much they lean into it, I'd be shocked if they named it the iPhone 5G and made it central to marketing. They may try to underplay it a little bit just because of what you said in terms of the market penetration, but they have no choice really to put 5G because today 5G is not everywhere. But if you look at the lifespan of these phones,

three to four or five year life cycles, 5G is going to be everywhere. If you look at how long it takes between two iPhones to launch. So the iPhone after this next iPhone will be, you know, September, October 2021, right at minimum in terms of flagships, you can't wait till the end of 2021 to release a 5G phone. You're going to get crushed in the market by Samsung and, you know, everyone else, Motorola, like you mentioned. So they need to do it and they're going to do it. It's interesting, their whole background in terms of the negotiations with Qualcomm into this, they are running against the clock to get this thing out the door, right? 5G is not a difficult thing to do unless you struck an agreement with Qualcomm to get their chips in, you know, just about a year ago, right? These things have a long development cycle. And so they're running against the clock, but I think they'll get it done.

I think it's funny you say that. Apple is the one company that I think could probably get away with, you know, as long as the life cycles of the iPhones are, and maybe probably the best life cycle of any phone is like a new iPhone lasting four or five years. I think Apple is maybe the one company that could launch a phone that doesn't have 5G in 2020 and get away with it. They've done this in the past. They've launched phones that also don't have

bleeding edge tech like a high refresh rate or wireless charging might have come late, there's there's some things that they tend to lag on and get it right. So yeah, I don't know, 5g is a curious one for me. I don't know if they necessarily would get crushed if they didn't have it, you know, is there much about 5g that you can really get right, though? Or is the thing, the people getting 5g, right, the carrier services that are actually giving you 5G. True. You want to get millimeter wave compatibility. You want to get low and mid band compatibility, but also Apple designs the chips. So hopefully they just maximize

compatibility. And I think that's the issue too, the millimeter wave situation that you bring up. I think that version is going to be a little bit, you know, delayed that might be exclusive to the 6.7 inch phone. That's more of a higher end feature. And I think it's going to take them a year or two to balance out, you know, 5G compatibility across the line, right? What I think you're going to see is millimeter wave become part of all the iPhones, maybe in 21 or 22. But at least for this first go, it'll be limited more to the to the high end. And then there's a couple other nuggets in there, the smaller HomePod. I called the HomePod the dumbest smart speaker in my review. It's a fantastic sounding smart speaker, but it doesn't really do much.

It's Siri, which is, you know, it's Siri, great. You can pair them together, connect them to a TV. Do you think there's a market for the smaller HomePod? And if so, what price would convince you that it's actually worth making it? Yeah, I do. I think what really doomed the HomePod from the beginning was two things. One was the price, $350, way too much for a speaker of that size of that quality and functionality. And two, the OS in Siri, right? So this year, they're going to fix both. To answer your question, I think $149 is a price point that people will just run and buy these things. Is it going to be $149? Absolutely

not. Apple's not going to charge $150 for the speaker. I think it'll be between, you know, $200 and $250, right? I think that's going to be the sweet spot for them uh what i would assume is we'd have a couple less woofers probably still one tweeter and so yeah i think that'll be a nice device for people for the for the holiday season but the bigger picture here is getting siri right getting you know spotify integration in there and i think that's also part of the the set of goals for the home pod this year so they're not not killing it. They're doubling down. I remember such a big focus of the HomePod was sound quality. And I feel like maybe they didn't have to lean on that,

but that was easily their best feature of the HomePod because beyond that, there wasn't really a huge reason for people to go out and get a Siri box in their house. Is it possible the focus of the smaller HomePod is still get this for the great sound quality? Or maybe they're leaning into look, it's smaller, it's convenient, Siri is better. There are other reasons why you might want to buy this expensive smart speaker. Yeah, I think it'll be a mix of both. I think they're going to really play up the part about

Spotify integration or third party audio app integration, I should say, better OS features. or third-party audio app integration, I should say, better OS features. But I just don't think Siri is there yet. I think the Alexa capabilities are so much stronger. And a lot of people use these devices because of their integration with smart home setups, right? And so what you're going to see is there was that partnership announcement with Google, Amazon, and Apple to sort of unify the smart home language. So I think you're going to see a big push on that as well.

We'll talk about that when they announce this HomePod, even though that's more of a 21, 22 thing. But that is actually a really big area of focus. Apple has an office or a new little campus in San Diego, California. So, you know, 150 miles south of me in LA. And they're doing a lot of the smart home work there. And there's a lot of people engineering that smart home unified language with planes to implement that into the

HomePod. So what they're going to need to do is really up the amount of smart home devices they're compatible with. Right now they have fewer than 500, whereas Amazon and Google have over 100,000 combined. So there's quite a lot of room to make up. And I think having that unified language requires Apple to really up the ante in terms of support. Okay. Well, I guess that lets us move right to Apple tags. Because when I think of, well, the headline and the news is it'll come with a leather key chain pouch. First thing that comes to mind is sounds expensive. It sounds pricey. Yeah. You know, you look at Tile and how inexpensive you can get like a pack of three.

What is the marketing play? What is the reason to get an Apple tag versus other similar products that already exist? I mean, for me personally, the most important use case would be finding a way to connect it to my Apple TV remote. I have two Apple TVs. I know where one remote is.

I still can't find the other one. So I'm going to need one for that. But I think it's really going to be focused to keys, right? That's why it's going to be on sort of a leather keychain. You'll put on your keys. You won't be able to lose your keys. It makes the iPhone more sticky. Let's say you have, you know, an Apple tag in your backpack.

You have one in your purse. You have one on your keys. You have one on your remote, wherever, right? It's going to be like, oh, wow wow this new moto edge is so freaking cool this new samsung is so cool but it's going to be such a pain to you know to move off the tags i already spent this much money on the tag so it's like all right i might as well buy the iphone 12 right i think that goes into their thinking with pretty much everything these days. Yeah, exactly. Like the ecosystem is already strong and this kind of feels like one of those products like AirPods where maybe you could switch off of the iPhone

but if you have come to use and love tags, you miss whatever they're connected to, you drop your keys all the time. It's just another one of those plugins to the ecosystem where it makes it more difficult to leave. It's really smart. It's another thing that I could see Google or Samsung trying to copy one or two years later.

Yeah, like you saw the Pixel Buds, I saw your video on that and the leather case, I mean, like you said, it's gonna probably make these things pricey. I wonder if they're gonna sell them in bulk. Hopefully they do three, five, 10 packs, but I wouldn't be shocked if they sell them individually as well. I could imagine, you know, a 30 or $50 or even $80 price point,

you know, God forbid for each of those things. So not only is it going to make the ecosystem much more sticky to your point, it's also going to make them some nice cash. Andrew, want to venture a guess on the price of a dozen AirTags? I don't know how many, if you just bought one. of a dozen AirTags? On a dozen AirTags? If you just bought one. I think going one by one is a better way of going about it. I don't know. 80 sounds like fairly...

Give me... I would hope like $49.99 should be on that. But how much for those wheels you have, Marques? Yeah, man, I didn't buy them. I didn't buy the wheels. You know, I got the stand on the Mac Pro. I didn't of those wheels do you have, Marques? Yeah, man. I didn't buy them. I didn't buy the wheels. You know, I got the stand on my Mac Pro. I didn't spend $700 on the wheels, but I could see people, you know, having, you know,

two sets of keys, having the spouse's keys, get the tags on those. Suddenly you're spending twice, three times the money. So, you know, it's just another plug into the ecosystem. Let's take a quick break and we'll come back and we'll talk about just leaks in general and the Mark Gurman origin story and Bloomberg and everything. So and we'll come back and we'll talk about we'll talk about just leaks in general and the mark german origin story and bloomberg and everything so we'll be right back

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and pioneering research breakthroughs. But now is the time to aim even higher. You can help create a world where no one is left behind. Donate at CAMH.ca slash donate now from December 23rd to the 31st, and your gift will be tripled for three times the impact. All right, welcome back. We're here with Mark Gurman. We're going to talk just like leaks in general, because I know you've been a reporter for Bloomberg for a couple years now, but you have a proven track record leaking, I think, a lot of Apple stuff reliably for the past couple years. Take me back. How does that start, and then how does that build up to where you're at today? Yeah, so I'll give you the whole origin story. I don't know if I've told it all in detail,

so you get the scoop. So I sort of was a really, really, really very avid, huge Apple fanboy for a number of years. I remember I always wanted the new iPod, the iPhone, all that. And then I remember all the time, maybe I would be out and about. I didn't have a cell phone yet. And my cousin was always working from home at the computer. And so I would always call him up and be like,

can you go to macrumors.com for me or 95mac.com for me and read me all the recent headlines? This was like pre-smartphone days. And I was just obsessed to the to the nth degree and then i was always always on the mac rumors forums notify mac comments really looking at ways to get involved and i remember in 2009 um there were i was poking at different like domain names and such uh to see if there was any indication that Apple was preparing to release the iPad. This was like a few weeks before the Jan 27th, 2010 announcement, right? I found that Apple had registered a domain name, iSlate.com, and I sent it to Arnold

Kim at MacRumors. He's the founder and editor there, and he wrote a story. He wrote a little link to my website at the bottom of the story. It didn't end up being called iSlate, but we found that Apple actually registered it. And that was a name they considered. Obviously, we know today it's the iPad. And then, you know, after that came out, I sort of messaged a few websites asking, hey, can I intern for you? Can I do a little writing for you? I don't need to get paid or anything, but I would love to contribute any way I can. So I messaged Seth from 905Mac, and he said, sure, right?

I think actually at first I tweeted at him. I'm like, can you follow me? Just see what I tweet. And it's like, I was just trying to get Twitter followers, right? And so I ended up just interning for him writing. I did a few articles for like the first few months. And then by mid-2010 or on the launch of the iPhone 4 He really developed a lot of trust in me and you know, it became like a thing

I was doing right after school before school in class on the bus to school In the car home always just a you know, that was my whole world Apple news and you know for the first, you know Year, so it was very new at it. I didn't have sources, wasn't getting scoops, but I was doing what I could. I remember we did some code diving, worked with a developer to do code diving back in 2010. And we found a lot of references to FaceTime and the beta release of iOS 4, I believe it was at the time. in the beta release of iOS 4, I believe it was at the time. And so we had a story about some of the FaceTime details before the iPhone 4 was announced by Steve Jobs at WWDC 2010. And then by, you know, 2011, my name was, you know, really getting out there.

People were contacting me with stories and scoops. And, you know, I was doing a lot of work to meet people, engage with people that, you know, worked at Apple or around Apple or know people that worked at Apple to, you know, to really understand the company and learn about their, you know, their upcoming products and such. And, you know, 2011 was my really first big scoop. This was the iPhone 4S.

And so if you want the inside story about how I got that scoop, I can tell you. It's been a decade now, so I'm comfortable giving you a little bit. None of these people are still around at Apple or anything like that. But actually a friend of mine, he worked in the Apple world.

He didn't work at Apple per se, and he actually was able to get access to an iPhone 4S early and played with it. And this person basically had a beautiful mind and was able to remember every detail of Siri and the 4S. And, you know, it was able to work with him and putting together a pretty detailed story. And I think that iPhone 4S story sort of put me on the mat. If you look back at that story, the amount of detail in terms of series functionality was actually immense, right? I didn't think there was many articles to that date that were able to detail products in such an in-depth way. So I've always been very proud of that one.

in such an in-depth way. So I'm always been very proud of that one. And then, year after year, lots of stories on upcoming hardware products, different iOS releases, different things going on inside Apple corporate. And it's been really fun. Apple is perhaps the most interesting company in the world. It's one of the most invested in companies in the world.

And the news value and interest in that company tops any other company or institution to such a high degree. I like to say that covering Apple is basically equivalent to covering the White House. Perhaps not the current White House, but in terms of the prominence and the importance of what the White House represents, the U.S, you know, Apple is right up there and its impact on people across the world. So I find it a very important company to cover and to understand and to help people know, you know, what's coming down the pipeline. Yeah, it's got to be, it's got to be fun now to also have like sort of a peek into the inner workings of a company you've always been so interested in. And you also mentioned now, you know, Apple's a very interesting company to cover, but I'd say they're also maybe one of the most secretive now,

especially, you know, knowing their past and the history of how leaks have impacted their product launches. What if I just start with that? Leaks impact product launches, right? They come out, people are reading about what's about to come out before it actually gets announced by the company. They don't get the ability to shape it through the lens they want to.

I'm just, companies are so secretive now, or at least they try anyway. Do you feel like leaks ruin product launches or maybe just spoil the fun of product launches or maybe are just making the product launches more interesting just spoil the fun of product launches or maybe are just making the product launches more interesting because we're looking to confirm what we've already seen? Yeah, I mean, one thing is, is that I think it drives a lot of hype. People are very interested in Apple, what's upcoming from the company. I think that if people weren't interested

in this, this wouldn't be a career and a job and a life for me, right? I'm giving the people what they want. There's other people who cover Apple as well who, you know, who give nice, you know, rumors and leaks and such to what the community wants as well. I think that if I was not reporting on Apple and the interest in Apple that, you know, exists still existed, I think there would be other people covering Apple. Every day there's new people trying to get into the, you know, exists, still existed. I think there would be other people covering Apple every day. There's new people trying to get into the, you know, the Apple, the Apple news scene. So I definitely think it's an important institution to cover. It's an important thing for people to understand what's coming down the pipeline and people are extremely interested in it, right? Obviously, I understand that there's a perspective that this could impact, you know, Apple's product

launches, but I don't really think it does anything in terms of other than create additional hype. Yeah, I was talking to someone about this on Twitter lately, and we came to the conclusion that like companies, as they like build up hype towards their launches, they're building up hype towards the sale. towards the sale. So you see companies like OnePlus now like slowly, you know, tease out specs of the phone before it comes out. And we'll do almost sort of have the equivalent of a news story that a leak might have. And it builds the hype and it builds the hype and you arrive at the launch event. And they're here to give you the last bit of confirmed information and a price and and push you on to the sale. So yeah, I'm with you that it definitely builds up a lot of hype, whether intentionally or not. All right, so I guess the natural follow-up question is, have you ever seen a company intentionally leak something,

meaning like presenting some leaked information as if it's unintentionally just getting out there? Does that happen? Like contacting me or another reporter saying, hey, this isn't for me, but, you know, the new iPhone is going to do this, this and that. Right. In my experience, especially with Apple, that's never happened. I don't think they would ever do that. I know personally, like obviously I can't get into details, but like other companies will do that. Right. They'll cede information to certain reporters to drum a pipe. This is nothing that I've personally seen. It's stuff that I've heard about from other people that I don't work with. But in terms of Apple, I haven't seen it in terms of accidentally leaking things early.

I think we've seen Apple do that a lot lately. I remember there was a really fun, big one. This was, I think, 2014. I was in this building. I was at University of Michigan, so I was in school and I was waiting to go into class in like a building called North Quad. That's the building where my major is, and I'm sure we'll get into that. And I got an email from someone who downloaded an updated version on what was iBooks at the time of the manual for the iPad. And like midway through the manual, this was the day before the iPad Air 2 event in 2014. It had diagrams of the camera app, like for using it. you knew the ipad air 2 was going to have burst mode and then obviously you had the touch id home button so like the day

before and the ibooks update had you know the the key specs of the ipad air 2 and obviously we saw that like apple support video lately with uh with apple tags or air tags too so it's been a few of those fun ones can you kind of like guide us through when you get like, when someone reaches it, first of all, I'm sure people are reaching out to you all of the times. What's your first step in first taking that quote unquote scoop or information that you're getting and turning it into an actual, how do you vet your source? How do you know if someone is reliable? How long do you go about? There's probably like a thousand different ways you can go about deciding something is actually worthy enough for a scoop. So how does that kind of form? How does a thought form into that? And then it expands to you writing an article about it?

Yeah. I mean, first I'll give you my perspective or my philosophy on news, right? I really like it. I look at the first three letters, new, right? I think anything that hasn't been, you know, shared or told before is in the news category, right? So I think anything that hasn't been, you know, shared or told before is in the news category, right? So I think anything that's unheard of or unreported is basically a scoop. So there's nothing too big, obviously, or too small that I'll sit on. It's just the question is, do you want to package, you know, multiple things together? Like in that iPhone story, Marquise talked about, I didn't think the air tags coming in the leather case was great on its own right so it's like okay I knew this information now I have this info about this

iPhone so I'm going to pack it in there right I didn't think like the mini HomePod was a story on its own per se but I happen to also in a similar time hear about the iPhone stuff so bundled it all together so I think choosing what do you want to have as a standalone story or have as a story bundled with multiple things together is important. In terms of, you know, validating information, right, you have to get your information from people that you've known for a number of years, and you have to, you know, trust them. If things are, you know, consistently true 100% of the time, you know you're on good footing. Occasionally, there'll be information that comes from an anonymous tip or an email or a new source that you know you contact or reaches out to you and you

can't really run things based off of a single new source unless you really really trust them it has to be able to be verified by multiple people right my bar has always been and this is before boomberg this was at nine if i mac as well for putting out information has always been extremely high it's something that i take a lot of pride in this is the way i look at it if you get a hundred things right and you get one thing wrong it's enough to you know dampen your reputation a little bit people at this point i get a bunch of stuff right. People don't care. They don't blink an eye, right? You get something wrong, you know, that's going to be a significant

mark on your track record. I'd hope by now that I've done so much and developed such a reputation that, you know, people would understand that things change, blah, blah, blah. But the reality is people like the negatives. So that's why getting things right is very important to me. You know, back in the earlier days, the 9 to 5 Mac days, the college high school days working on this, there were a lot of sleepless nights, both putting stories together, talking to people, whether it's in the Asia supply chain and elsewhere, but also, you know, lots of lost sleep about worrying if things are going to turn out to be, you know, true or not, right? It's, you know, I'm lucky to say that this was a big burden for me. Obviously,

there's lots of people whose burdens on their shoulders are not talking about next generation tech products. So I'm lucky that that was my issue. But yeah, to say the least, it's not always pretty. Is there any one specific story you remember hearing about that you were not confident enough in releasing and then you found out it to be true and were upset? hearing about that you you were not confident enough in releasing and then you found out it to be true and and were upset not upset but you were like i could have ran that story but it wasn't up to my standards to to release it to the public yes there there actually was one recently uh i had heard about the ipad pro uh trackpad and trackpad support in iPadOS. And I was just not able to get enough confirmations on it. I mean, at first when I heard about it, I was like, okay, wait, there's no way

this is true, right? It doesn't make any sense. And, you know, I wasn't able to get enough confirmations in time to get that story out. But yeah, that is something I knew about that wasn't able to get enough confirmations in time to get that story out. But yeah, that is something I knew about that wasn't able to get out the door. But I'm more proud of all the, you know, hundreds and thousands of things I was able to get out before others do. Yeah. And that says obviously a lot about you. I mean, that story was pretty popular recently, and I'm sure you knew how great of a story that would have been. But to know that you'll pull yourself back because you're not confident enough. I think that's, that says immense amounts about, about your integrity and all of this. And thank you. I mean, it's important. You don't want to get anything wrong. I don't

think there's ever a story too big, too small. That's worth taking a risk over. I look at every story is the same. You can get the most minor thing wrong or the most major thing wrong. And it's basically the same thing in my mind and just having an understanding of your place and your responsibility where people believe everything that comes out of your mouth you have to hold yourself to that standard and you you can't deceive people and so if I'm not you know 200% sure about something it's not going online is there is there still a sigh of relief moment when something you were like 85% about is finally confirmed on stage? Or, you know, is it to the point where basically everything that's published now, we knew, like we knew 100% that was going to happen?

You know, obviously, there's always a sigh of relief when, you know, the Apple execs it on stage and announce it. But it's typically at the point where it's just like, okay, we know this is going to happen. announce it, but it's typically at the point where it's just like, okay, we know this is going to happen. There's usually lots of stories, you know, after ours saying, you know, the same things, there's other people saying the same things around the same time. So you have a pretty good idea these things are coming. So there's haven't, there hasn't really been a time recently where I've really been worried that something wasn't going to happen. I think when you get to like an Apple event day, I think everyone knows, you know, you guys, you know, myself, other people on Twitter, I think we have a really good idea about what's

coming. And, you know, it's actually always exciting to see, you know, some of the things that maybe didn't come out, right? And so, you know, what could we what could we get next time? Yeah, there's also one of the things that's most interesting is how far in advance some of these stories happen. Like we were talking about 2021 for for ARM based Macs. How far in advance some of these stories happen. Like we were talking about 2021 for ARM-based Macs. How far in advance is so far in advance that you're like concerned that it has room to shift and wiggle? Because we know about, you know, chip design taking years

and you can be confident in something two, three years in the future. But if someone came to you and said, look, the iPhone 16 is gonna have this crazy? Like how, how far ahead is too far ahead to trust something? Yeah, I don't, I don't think anything's ever too far ahead. As long as you put that caveat or disclaimer in the story to say, you know, and this is obviously obvious to most people, but you put a line in there that says, Hey, this is still really early. These things can change. It's very fluid. You could have a global pandemic in the middle of this whole thing that throws, you know, everything off, right? You never know what's going

to, you never know what's going to happen. And I think people understand that. I feel like if I was running like a major, like if MKBHD Studios was like a major company, and there was some leaks going out, like MKBHD's next video is going to be about this. If I had enough power, I would like sort of steer the ship based on those leaks. You know, like I would see those stories and I'd be like, oh, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to lean into this here or I'm going to get on stage and say this different thing to throw people off. Or I might just change my plans to make the leakers wrong. Do you find that you've ever seen Apple or any company sort of respond internally to leaks? Or you think maybe things change once some plans get revealed and plans change, they get to swerve away from that?

You know, in terms of Apple, I haven't seen it lately. I know that was sort of like a Steve Jobs type of thing. Just basically what you just said, Marquis. I'm going to change this up because this thing came out, right? I think that was more of a mentality back Apple 10 years ago. But at this point, Apple is such a big trillion dollar company with, you know, hundreds of thousands of employees and billions and trillions of dollars at stake that they need to basically stick to their playbook, right?

And they can't really change something unless it's really far in advance. I mean, you look at the iPhone 12, right? We're in April right now. That thing was finalized, I would say, probably between October and November of last year, right? So there's really not much they can do on that. In terms of other companies, the only thing that comes to mind,

this was, man, this was a decade ago. I remember HP slash Palm was going to have this big keynote with like the touchpad the pre-3 or pre-4 back at the time i don't remember um and the whole thing leaked like a couple days before so they put a whole statement out saying oh that's you don't have all of it right oh yeah i think that uh that's the only one i could remember um at this point i remember when the ip iPhone 4 was announced in 2010 after the Gizmodo leaks,

Steve Jobs made some quip on stage, like, you haven't seen it yet. You haven't seen how cool this thing is. So I think that, you know, maybe we'll see more of those in the future. But, you know, I think this is business as usual and Apple certainly and major companies, hopefully MKBHD Studios one day,

understands that this is part of the game. And you know what the worst thing could be for a company? And I've had to explain this to some smaller companies that I've covered in the past. Imagine if I didn't care. Imagine if people just didn't give a damn about your upcoming products and stuff. Imagine if people didn't want to read about that. Would you rather be in that position? Or would you rather be in the position where people want to know every foot you move, every move you make? That's true. That's true. There's a certain way to it.

I also think like, man, you said that, you know, the iPhone 12 was finalized late last year. That hits me because it's like, you could maybe, if you could tweak some things in the months leading up to finalizing it, like using feedback from the leaks, that could be like a sort of unintentional benefit. So let's say, you know, today we're getting info like, oh, we're going to see this new smart connector or this new form factor for the iPhone. And the internet is in an

uproar. We won't buy this. We hate this. But Apple's reading all this like, well, we finalized this and we're sending it to factories like we have to keep do they they really have to keep going with that. There's no room for for changing these things. There's no room now. It's actually a good point. The one similar situation to what you're talking about that I remember this was a year or two ago. This was before the first Facebook portal. And the Facebook portal was yeah, was supposed to be announced.

Like it was planned to be announced right in the middle of the whole Cambridge Analytica saga. Right. And that was a nightmare. People were about to put this new video chat device in. And so what Facebook had to do, even though this thing was already coming off the shipping lines, is they had to go back before these things were being shipped to customers they added uh covers camera covers to the original model a year or two ago um in order to sort of you know quell those privacy concerns so this is something that has happened but facebook portal volumes are less than a fraction of apple's volumes i mean you talk about how many devices they pump out of those factories annually you're talking hundreds of millions of products. That takes a really long time. They start building these things, you know, people don't realize like

this iPhone is going to start going into, you know, small scale production in the next few weeks, right? Probably in less than a month. So these things are going to start getting built pretty soon. So these things are ready to go. Yeah. Also, I always see you at Apple events, right? There's this whole, this huge stigma about like, don't say anything bad about Apple or they'll blacklist you or, you know, various, you know, versions of that statement. Um, but you know, I've talked about Apple stuff in the past. You've reported on upcoming products before they're supposed to be officially talked about. Have you found that's changed your relationship with Apple at all?

Do, does that ever come up or do, are they just inviting a 9to5 or a Bloomberg reporter? What's that like with Apple? Yeah. So, you know, I've seen 9to5 Mac at the, you know, the Apple events, some of them occasionally the Mac Rumors guys, basically the world that I was in prior to Bloomberg. I was never in an Apple event representing 9to5 Mac and no one from 9to5 Mac was ever invited to an Apple event during the, you know, time period where I was there. I was, I've been at most Apple events since I've been at Bloomberg. And what I found is that the people who work at Apple are actually,

they're cool. They're very nice. They're understanding, you know, this is business as usual. And in order to cover the, you know, the events in the best way possible, you sort of really have to be there. Obviously, order to cover the, you know, the events in the best way possible, you sort of really have to be there. Obviously, none of us are going to be at the June or September events likely because of COVID. But otherwise, I think that the relationship is good. You know?

Nice. I also think this kind of goes back a little bit to what we were talking about before, but companies like responding to leaks as they happen. One of the most infamous versions of that was the Pixel 4, where, you know, this phone was leaked pretty much completely, like everything you could possibly know. Yeah, you knew everything, probably including the price. That's usually the last thing you find out is, all right, here's how we're going to price it. You knew everything about this phone. And Google tried to lean into that and say, just you wait, like you haven't had this video on stage with like clips of YouTube videos from leakers and people talking about the phone. But they didn't

actually share anything that we hadn't already seen after all that. So I'm just curious, what's your reaction to that? And have you seen anything as bad as Pixel 4? On the Apple side? No, I mean, the iPhone 4, but the difference was they actually had some stuff up their sleeves. The whole retina display back with the iPhone 4, you know, because Moto couldn't get the phone powered on, right? The retina display, I have to say when the first time I looked at it, that was, I guess maybe the iPad 3 as well that was just like the most jaw-dropping usage of a new tech product I've had the whole FaceTime software integration was pretty new too we basically only had the design the faster processor and all that so there was a lot that didn't come out on the iPhone

4 despite them actually having you know a unit in hand since then you know I haven't you know nothing I've never seen. Since then, you know, I haven't, you know, nothing, I've never seen anything like the Pixel 4 leaks. And I think the Pixel 3 leaks were the same too. There's got to be a really, really interesting background story if it hasn't been done already. And I hadn't seen it about all those Pixel leaks. I mean, obviously you see them. I think a lot of those leaks happened in Vietnam and some of the other countries surrounding the supply chain too. So it'd be interesting to sort of dig in to see the how and why. I mean, there were people doing MKBHD style reviews

of the Pixel 4 before the announcement. I'm surprised you didn't have one. Yeah, man. I mean, it's just crazy because, like you said, they finish the design, they lock everything up, they start pumping it out, and they have them ready to go far, far before the actual date that they're supposed to show up in stores

and on shelves. Do you remember Pixel 3? It almost felt like the way they were hyping it up more is they latched on to everyone talking about Pixel Ultra and they started doing these like little fake meetings about Pixel Ultra and stuff, almost hyping people thinking it was going to get announced. And that was like a whole big deal on YouTube, the new Pixel Ultra, this and this. And if you think about maybe newer leakers or YouTube is this platform that everybody can get on right now. And it seems like a lot more people are trying to get into this leak game that you're already a part of. And as a somebody who's wants

to be trusted in the leaking community later, can you ever really recover from something like that? Do we have possibly a newer and younger audience with a smaller attention span that might forget about that once someone gets a couple things right? Or do you think that's kind of like too big of a mark on your permanent record to ever really recover from? No, that's a good question. I mean, not to insult anyone, but I do see some YouTubers trying to get into the game. And they put out some information that's, you know, not necessarily

reliable. It doesn't ring true with some stuff that I've been hearing. But I think that, you know, you can get a couple things wrong, you're just starting out, people understand. And then over the next year or two, you can get, you know, 15 things right. And it's like, who even remembers the first three things, right? So I find that people are more understanding lately. Do you ever hear information from a not very reliable leaker that you then start to worry about stuff that you hear and maybe they have a different source that you don't have, or you're not sure if they're just going off of something not reliable enough, but does it ever kind of get in your head and think, maybe what I have is wrong, or maybe I'm totally missing something?

You know, two things. One, I really feel like I'm in my zone where, you know, I'm really focused on what I'm working on, and I trust my people I talk to and my work ethic. But at the same time, it would be very irresponsible to ignore what other people are saying. You can't, just because someone has been wrong in the past, just because you don't necessarily like someone's attitude, it doesn't mean you can ignore what they're saying. You have to take it to heart.

You have to look into it. And you go from there, right? So I think having an open mind at all times is very important. All right, I have one more question before we get into Twitter questions. And that just comes from like, I get asked all the time,

how can I start a YouTube channel today? How can I get started doing what you do today? And my advice is always like, that's pretty tough. It's very saturated. There's a billion YouTube videos and a thousand tech YouTubers. Do what you can,

but there's no guarantees it'll work the same way it worked for me. Do people ask you the same thing about getting into leaks? And if so, is there a good answer? Like, how do you get started, you know, getting sources and reporting on tips and things like that? Yeah, you know, there, I get emails, Twitter messages, you know, other ways of contacting me all the time. People ask me for advice, how they can get into this. And what I try to do is I try to actually give them advice. I try not to ignore them.

I try to help them out. Sometimes people send me things and ask me, does this sound right? I'll give them my opinion. Because there have been so many people over the course of my career that have gone out of their way to be a tremendous help to me when they really didn't have to. And so I find it really important to try to, you know, help those folks out as much as they can. I don't I don't really look at them as rivals, more of a community. And, you know, I'm happy to help out help out as much as possible. Right. If it's someone who is a real competitor, I'm not gonna do what I can to boost them or help them,

but if it's someone just starting out, I'll do my best to give them some pointers. You mentioned a community. Is there any secret out of plain view Discord channel for all you leakers? What's the passcode? And is there some form of community behind closed door that all you guys are talking on yeah it's funny i get that question a

lot right like maybe some of the companies think that oh me and the other you know beat reporters from you know reuters or financial times or the journal, you know, we get together, we trade, you know, stories and such. Everyone I consider a colleague and they're all great people. We don't normally, when we see each other at the events and stuff, you know, we really don't talk shop, right? It's how's life, how are the Lakers, how are the Knicks, you know, not doing so well. You know, how are your, you know, how's your team? What's going on with you? How's life, right? We don't really get into the Apple stuff.

So yeah, no, really, really, at least if there's a secret community, I'm not part of it. And if you guys want to include me, I'm happy to join in. Always great to have more Zoom calls during this time. But the short answer is no. Amazing. All right, we're going to take a quick break and we'll come back and we'll ask some Twitter questions. Give yourself the gift of better mental health. BetterHelp Online Therapy connects you with a qualified therapist via phone, video, or live chat. It's convenient and affordable and can be done from the comfort of your own home.

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or they could be late for the bus. You never know. Ambition is on the inside. So that thing you love, keep doing it. Drive your ambition. Mitsubishi Motors. All right, welcome back. We're going to talk through some Twitter questions with Mark. I asked you guys on the waveform Twitter what you wanted to know, and we got some good ones. They're kind of all over the map because I didn't give anyone any specific subject to focus on, but that's no problem. We can just get right into them. So I got one here. Are you ever disappointed by a leak? And you know, there's tons of new products in the pipelines. And sometimes there's questions about will Apple do A or B? And we're all kind of hoping it's A, but maybe things

get off the rails and it ends up being a backup. Are you ever disappointed getting confirmation of something you hoped wasn't true? Disappointed? I mean, there's been so many stories over the last 10 years. I'm trying to go back and remember if anything's been disappointing. This one wasn't necessarily a leak, but just recently the iPad Pro update, that processor bump or lack thereof, I thought that was kind of disappointing when they first announced it. It was like, okay, this seems minor. They're keeping the A12 branding. And then when people dove a little deeper into it, we realized the A12 branding was there for a reason. It's the same thing. Yeah. Someone wants to know if you ever had the chance to create a product with Apple or maybe make a change to an Apple thing from a pure Apple fan standpoint, what would it be?

make a change to an Apple thing from a pure Apple fan standpoint, what would it be? Oh, for sure. Get rid of the notch on the iPhone. Yeah, that would be, that would be the first thing. Yeah. We go all screen. We put the cameras and the sensors behind the display, thin the thing out a little bit. And we use the iPad pro form factor that they're going to do the end of this year. That would be my most, uh, that'd be my most immediate thing. Uh, the other one on the airpods pro like when i'm walking they stay in my ears fine but i feel like sometimes when i'm running um they they tend to fall out or slip a little bit it makes me a little uncomfortable and a little anxious about they're gonna fall out maybe if there was some like uh pro beats is that what

they're called the the beats pro the beats The Beats. Power Beats Pro. The Power Beats Pro. The Power Beats Pro, right? Yeah. Maybe if there was something like the Power Beats Pro where there's like an accessory to put it over your ear, that would be a fun one to have. A bigger iPad Pro.

I think a 15-inch, 14-inch. A bigger iPad Pro? Yeah. A bigger iPad Pro, yeah. Whoa. Because like I'm on my 16-inch MacBook Pro all day, right? And then I move to the, like I'm always glued to my screens. I have the 12.9- bigger iPad Pro, yeah. Because I'm on my 16-inch MacBook Pro all day, right? And then I move to the, like I'm always glued to my screens, I have the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, and it feels like a little small, right?

It would be great to have maybe one size up, and I'd be shocked if they didn't eventually get there, to be honest. Okay, wait, I have follow-up questions from that. So you're a big iPad Pro person. I know that's a debate right off the bat. I really like the smaller iPad Pro, but even bigger, I know that's a debate right off the bat. I really like the smaller iPad Pro. But even bigger, I don't know, it just feels like it's already such a big, I carry that big iPad around. I'm like, I wish this thing was smaller every time. Yeah, that's how you shoot all your videos, right? Oh, yeah. I just carry, I just hold the huge iPad up and just point it at stuff.

Could you, could you see like an iPad Pro Mini? pro mini is that is that even does that make no sense at all ipad pro mini like a like a seven and a half inch bigger than an iphone doesn't sound right i don't think so like remember the ipad mini was updated last year with pencil support it's like they didn't even want to do that there were just so many people clamoring for that ipad mini update and you know sort of like a half not a half-baked update in the sense that i mean it's a great product for people who use it. But it's like it's using the original Apple Pencil. The whole thing is outdated.

And, you know, there was so much talk they were just going to end up killing the iPad Mini. So I'd be surprised. That one would throw me off guard a little bit. But, you know, in terms of iPadOS, I know you're an iPadOS fan. Are you still an iPadOS fan, actually? I still like iPadOS, but as an iPad. Yeah you're an iPadOS fan. Are you still an iPadOS fan, actually? I still like iPadOS, but as an iPad. Yeah, as an iPad. So biggest thing for me is Windows support. I still don't think they have the multi-window, multi-app usage situation down on iPadOS. I don't know why they

don't just let us do multi-window and interact with it just like you can on a Mac. I think they need to get there. Right now, the hardware still feels ahead of the software. And I love the Magic Keyboard. I really do. Wish the trackpad was wider. I wish that we had a little bit more space to make the trackpad longer or taller. So bigger both directions.

But the keyboard itself is a great experience. I don't like that it requires two hands to flip the lid open, but maybe those are things that'll be fixed down the road. I have a question here. What's your everyday carry? And I'm gonna add to that. Now that the Magic Keyboard is out,

are you a Magic Keyboard or a Folio or a naked iPad kind of person? That's funny. Okay, so my main Apple devices that I use and carry, I have the iPhone 11 Pro Max. I have the Midnight Green. I knew I had to cop the green one because that thing looked slick. I use the 16-inch MacBook Pro. Before the 16-inch MacBook Pro, I used, what did I use? Oh, I used the 13-inch Retina Air from 2018. And then I have the iPad Pro,

the 2021 coming from the 2018 one with the LiDAR and all that. And the Magic Keyboard. What was the other part of the question? Yeah. Oh, that's it. You got the big one too, I'm assuming. The big iPad.

Yep. So it's the 12.9-inch iPad Pro. I really like, like I said, I wish they had made an even bigger one. So I really like that bigger screen. I've been doing all my Netflixing, Amazon Prime on that. I think it's a cool experience for video watching. Do you think a larger iPad with a magic keyboard to fit that size could push you closer to ditching the laptop and turning your iPad into your full-time laptop? Oh, yeah. I mean, 95% of what I do can already be done on the iPad Pro. Obviously, the multi-window is what really holds me back.

They really need to get on that. And I really don't even think it's going to happen this year at WWDC. I think the iPad changes won't be so big after the investment that went into the trackpad stuff. But maybe in 21 or 22. I think the hardware is really there. The software. We need another iPad OS-like update, right? Yeah.

There's another one here. What did you major in in college? And did your parents approve of your major? Yeah, that's a good one. So I went to University of Michigan, graduated in 2016. So, you know, three, four years ago now. And my major was information systems. So it was a special set of classes just for stuff like programming, web development, user interface design, some business marketing, entrepreneurship, basically everything that I was really interested bottled up. This was actually a major that launched in my junior year at Michigan. And during my sophomore year, they sort of came to me and I

think a few other students asked for help sort of crafting this major together for people who were really interested in this tech stuff like me and you guys, of course. My parents, yeah, totally, totally on board with my major. They are extremely supportive of whatever I do. So yeah, no issues there at all. I love my parents and, you know, they're, you know, so, you know, they're, you know, totally on board with anything I choose to do and always extraordinarily supportive. A lot of people ask me why I didn't go to journalism school.

Journalism is obviously an awesome thing. You know, obviously I do journalism, but I really look at it and I'm really interested in the world from sort of a, you know, technology, business and design perspective. And that's what I was really interested in the world from sort of a technology, business, and design perspective. And that's what I was most interested in. I think that a lot of the tools and being able to break news are extraordinarily innate, very communication-based. You have to really understand the technologies you're writing about in order to put out good stories and be able to talk to sources at the levels that they're used to talking to. So I really don't think I needed journalism school. And I hope, you know, I've shown I've shown that not to detract from people who go to journalism school at all. But that was my decision. And I'm extremely happy with it. How often in your classes where did you have Mac rumors pulled up

when you're supposed to be paying attention to the teacher and looking up new leaks? Oh, that's funny. So when I was in college, it wasn't it wasn't Mac rumors. It was me doing my own stuff at that point. Oh, my God. Every story you may have read between 2012 and 2016 was written during class, right? Don't see that one. Don't tell my parents or my teachers. But yeah, plenty, plenty of work got done during class, you know, before class, in between, I was literally always working, whether it was schoolwork, or not, if I'm at work in college, we're talking, you know, 6am to midnight or later, every day for four years. And it really, you know, it took its toll, I'm not gonna lie, right, it took its toll,

college is a place where you're supposed to be social, and you know, you're supposed to, you know, develop relationships, and be with people, and really focus on, you know, education, and all that, I don't think I let any of this impact my schoolwork, but to be honest with you, you know, the first two years of college, a lot of the social stuff sort of was thrown out the window, because I was literally glued to my computer trying to, you know, build up this career, and this name for myself. But I let loose a little bit, you know, the second half of college, junior, senior year, tried to be more social. And what that really required was a lot more balance. And that's what I really learned as I got older was being able to balance better. And so that was really the difference maker. Yeah, I'm also guilty of watching live events.

Why do they always happen in the middle of like the worst classes? Like one on one classes. Yeah, crazy. I remember one time in high school, this is actually really funny. So, you know, I had like gym class at 10 a.m. Like an Apple keynote time.

And I was quote unquote sick during gym class. So I couldn't participate in order to to uh you know you know watch the the stream the live vlog on my phone at the time so don't tell anyone that one i can't live i can't live tweet if i'm playing dodgeball come on guys yeah yeah um there's another interesting question are you allowed in apple hq google hq etc just in Apple HQ, Google HQ, et cetera, just straight up? Yeah, so let's see. I've been inside of the old campus, the Infinite Loop campus, two or three times. I have not been in the Apple Park spaceship,

but I've been, I mean, we've seen each other at the Steve Jobs Theater in the area surrounding a few times, been there for a few shareholder meetings, which are in other parts of the campus where you can sort of watch the shareholder meeting as it's taking place. I've been to Google a few times, you know,

for meetings and such. So it's not like I could just walk into one of those campuses and say, hey, what's up? You know, grab lunch in the cafeteria, but you know, for official visits, right? For product presentations, keynotes and meetings and such, yeah, I've been there. There's no picture of me at the front of the campus saying, don't let this guy in.

With darts on it. Right. Another interesting one, I have to keep up my streak of bringing up Tesla on the podcast. So the Tesla Roadster, when it came out of the back of that truck on stage, was a complete and utter surprise. Didn't leak at all. Not a single, nothing at all outside of the company. This person's asking, you know, is it still on time and how did this thing not leak? But I think my main question would just be how does something that big and that requires that

many people not leak? Is there something about their supply chain being so local? How does that not get out? Yeah, that's a good question. So the roadster is supposed to come out when 21, 22, technically supposed to be 2020. But I don't think that's how Yeah, it's not gonna happen. You saw the news today, I'm sure on the semi. Yeah, right. So I'm sure that'll be delayed a year. This was announced when in 18, the realtor. Yep. So, you know, not having taken the device or sorry, the car in this case to a production facility, having to ramp up any of that pre-marketing, right. Pre a lot of the engineering that, you know, might bring in many more people in the

projects keeps it much more secretive, right? The longer a product is in development, the more people know about it, the more prone it is to leak. I have a follow up question to that. Do you think there is ever going to be another Apple piece of hardware that makes it to the stage without getting anything leaked at all before it gets announced on stage. Yeah, you know, there are just so many people interested in this stuff. The supply chain is so vast. So many people know about these things that I'd be surprised. One, I will tell you, though, the Apple Watch, and I see a few people that were asking on Twitter about the leaks that, you know, were sort of surprised or products that didn't leak,

things that were very surprising. Yeah, the Apple Apple watch we didn't really have a good idea on the watches overall functionality some of the intimate details until closer to to the announcement back in September of 2014 and that takes me back to the point about this was way pre-production right this thing didn't go into production until you know pre-production, right? This thing didn't go into production until, you know, nearly midway through 2015, right? A lot of the stuff wasn't polished yet. A lot of people weren't brought in on the project yet. And before getting it into manufacturers' hands, this is a way they could really keep it low-key. Yeah, I think that's the key is like, if we ever see another pure surprise piece of hardware on stage, I mean, not just from Apple, but from any company, it basically has to be like, here's something we're working on that's coming out. You know, like when the Mac Pro showed up and it wasn't even hardware, it was just like the images. It was like,

we're working on this. It's coming sometime later, but here's a little surprise for you. I feel like there's no way anything finished shows up. As long as it doesn't hit China, you could do it. They could do it. As long as it doesn't hit China, you could do it. They could do it. Got it. Awesome. I feel like we got a healthy amount of questions and a variety of topics in.

Mark, thank you for joining us on the Waveform Podcast. Yeah, this has been super fun. And obviously, we'll link your Twitter in the show notes. So if anyone's curious and wants to read any of this stuff or follow, dive deep back into Mark's history of leaks. Yeah, I might find some of those old articles we talked about and throw them in the show and throw them in the show notes yeah yeah you can dive back and look through that stuff but it's been a pleasure thanks for joining us uh and uh best of luck thank you you guys too really appreciate it waveform is brought to you in part with studio 71 and our intro outro music is created by cameron barlow