593: Not a European Lawyer

42:19That's clearly the intention of the law. Without terms that make it unattractive. That's the main thing. It's like there can be there can be terms and there can be caveats and, you know, they have to prove a security or whatever. But you can't make the terms such that like nobody would ever want to do this, that you can't. It's like price fixing. It's like, oh, you can compete with me, but you can't sell any products for any cheaper than I sell them. That's not actually what they're doing. But like effectively, it's saying, oh, you're just going to have to pay us anyway. So we're going to try to make it so that you running the store doesn't you don't come out ahead.

42:50The people selling it in the store don't come out ahead because they got to pay us for all those installs for 50 cents or whatever the core technology fee. People running the stores don't come out ahead. Like it's just nobody, you know, if you join into the system, you're going to look over at us and say, why are we even doing this? This is basically the same as the Apple system. And that that's not competition. And so they found Apple found a way to do that. And they think, oh, we're complying with the law. And they're going to argue, you know, because Apple has a chance to argue about this. Look, we're totally in compliance.

43:18You should have written a better law. But I, you know, I'm not sure that's going to work out for them. No. Obviously, Europe is saying we need people to be able to compete in this giant marketplace that is a huge part of commerce. And I think that's very defensible. You look back at history, you see things like the railroads and the telephone companies. there's a reason why we tend to promote freer, less burdensome competition, even on a private company's assets, once it becomes a huge part of commerce that starts to be able to affect lots of other businesses, especially in anti-competitive ways.

43:54And there is no question that Apple has reached that size with the iOS platform, with the App Store. It is that important in the entire economy. It matters a lot. so whether they should be regulated i think i think that question is answered i think the answer is yes of course they should be regulated and again i mean i'm not going to go too far into this this time i say it all the time but this was a hundred percent on apple for effectively provoking governments to regulate them with obviously blatantly anti-competitive behavior and and again i you know i'm kind of down on tim cook's strategy i wonder what the heck he was thinking all these years of blatant anti-competitive behavior, literally provoking governments to regulate him.

44:39What did he expect to happen here? And this is a theme that we'll come back to in a little bit, but Apple definitely should have seen this coming. They rolled the dice. They said, you know, we're going to keep doing 100 % of what we're doing. We're even going to tighten the screws over the last few years. What could possibly go wrong? This. This is what could go wrong. So I am cheering on the EU for this part of the DMA. I don't love the entire law. It's a big law and there's some weird stuff in it. But the part about ensuring freer competition for a giant app marketplace that is a keystone of modern commerce and business in so many ways in so many parts of life, I think that is 100 % on point.

45:22Some of the details we can quibble over, but the idea of that is on point. And you don't have to just look at Europe. Look, Japan's now doing the same thing. It's only a matter of time before more countries around the world start doing this. And what we're going to end up with is this incredibly fragmented app store policy where Apple is going to not give an inch anywhere they're not required to. And instead they're just going to have like nine different rules of where you are in the world and what kind of regional variations are necessary. And they're going to keep just being absolute turds about it all.

45:55If they would have just eased up a little little bit in a few areas that actually wouldn't have cost them that much. They could have avoided all of this and continue to have one app store for the whole world, basically, and have relatively few variations between them. And they invited this. So you know what? If the EU is going to drag them through courts and everything forever, good. They need it. They're not doing it themselves. So someone has to do it. They're burning so much time and energy on this, too, because it's like if you can see the writing on the wall like you mentioned japan and other countries doing similar things and maybe apple thinks the u.s will never do it or whatever but like for the european stuff you know quibbling about like oh they didn't write the law specifically enough and what do they even want and it's so weird in the end apple has very limited ability to control what european governments do like they have a system of government and they apply laws to things that are sold in the eu right and i guess apple can lobby the eu like any other big company can lobby them but i feel like apple's ability to lobby the u.s government as a u.s company is stronger than their ability to lobby the eu and they don't also don't seem to be particularly good at lobbying for their uh you know for what they want right but like apple is essentially powerless they're not part of the european government i mean they're not powerless because they have tons of money but you know what i mean like they in the end let's say apple wins in their like appeal and some judge in europe says or whatever well technically apple did comply with how the law is written the eu will just write a new law like they can't apple can't win this like it's the same thing with the battles with china it's like you can either do what the chinese government wants you to do and you know push back as much as you can or you could just not be in china like so many companies aren't right and it's obviously complicated for apple because of the manufacturing or whatever but like those are your choices one of your choices is not let's change what the chinese government wants like Like Apple's ability to do that, despite all their money and everything, is extremely limited.

47:53So I'm not like Apple is just like burning time and energy, implementing these things to try to get away with as much as they can get away with. And in the end, the EU can just say, OK, well, we made a mistake in the law. We'll write it and we'll make it stronger. And let's just go around and around as opposed to Apple acknowledging what surely Apple also understands what they're trying to get at. Increase competition and just say, let's do this once. Let's do it. well. Let's do it globally. As we've discussed the past episodes, imagine if they just said, look, we see the writing on the wall, everybody's going to want something more open.

48:24Let's just do something that we think is open enough that will satisfy all government requirements present and future. Let's do it once. Let's apply it to the whole world. Let's avoid fragmentation. Let's move on with our actual business. But no, they're not doing that. They're going to fight tooth and nail every single one of these things comply as little as possible, fight it in courts. And it's just it's wasting time and energy. It's making their platform more complicated, as we'll see when we get to the next thing. Although we do have some quotes here from the various parties to see how they're positioning themselves on the eve of this or just after this preliminary finding on one of multiple things they're being investigated on.

48:58Apple spokesperson Peter Ajumian, who is talking to The Verge, throughout the past several months, Apple's made a number of changes to comply with the DMA in response to feedback from developers and the European Commission. As we have done routinely, we will continue to listen and engage with the European Commission. i mean so that's their way of saying you know we're talking to them or whatever it's saying f you well and they will continue to listen to them engage them like like see here's the thing there is some meaning of the minds on this because the dma is written with some acknowledgement that like we can't it can't just be the wild west which is why there are carve outs for like okay apple should have the gatekeepers not just apple but gatekeepers should have the ability to reject things for security reasons from even being in third party stores right the the eu is not like just you just let anybody do anything it's like a like it's like the pc of the 80s right they're not doing that and apple to its credit is trying to provide lots of security stop gaps while also allowing things like the browser kit thing we want to allow third-party browser engines we want to do that as safe as a way as possible as possible ideally all the browser engines go through the same restrictions safari and that's not currently the case but browser kit is basically built around what they already did for Safari, right?

50:13So the two parties aren't so far apart that like one wants completely everything open free for all and the other one wants everything locked down. They agree with each other that certain things need to be done carefully. But like everything else, they're like, Apple's like, how little can we get away with? How unattractive can we make third party app stores? How little disruption to our existing business can we make? We'll try to comply in a way that no one will ever take us up on any of these offers or only a few people would. But like in the end, it'll just be like a footnote and it won't actually change anything.

50:44Right. Or maybe like, as we'll get to in a second, maybe we'll even make things worse. And people like, boy, we, we, uh, we thought we would like some third party competition. But now that we've seen it, we're going running back to the app store because it's so much better there because of the way Apple set everything up. Then Marguerite, this vestiger, I hope I have that right. I forgot to brush up on it. I apologize. But anyways, uh, she said the ball's now in the gatekeepers court. They have to convince us that the measures they take will achieve full compliance with the DMA, and where this is not the case, we will intervene.

51:13We are concerned that Apple designated its new business model to discourage app developers and end users from taking advantage of the opportunities afforded to them by the DMA. The letter of the DMA is clear. Gatekeepers have to allow for alternative app stores to establish themselves on their platforms and for consumers to be fully informed about the offers available to them so that they can freely choose where they want to source their apps and at what conditions i would argue that the dma is not clear and even when she summarizes it here like gatekeepers have to allow for alternative app stores apple would say yeah we did that to establish themselves on their platforms yeah we allow alternative app stores to be established on our platforms for consumers to be fully informed okay there they're going to say not fully informed they're informed through through a narrow aperture that apple defines and which is why they're not compliant and so they can freely choose and and apple would like yeah they can freely choose it's the details Like, oh, we allow third-party app stores.

52:03We just don't want to make them any more impossible to be any more attractive than ours by applying financial burdens. And even her summary, she doesn't even say, not like that. I know you did alternative app stores, but no one wants to do them because they cost so much money and suck so much. So change that. But she doesn't. And by the way, that us that Casey read and emphasized, they have to convince us, that italic us was in her thing. I didn't add that emphasis. It was she italicized it. they have to convince us that the measures they take will achieve full compliance over the next you know 12 months or whatever like every one of these things there's like a 9 to 12 month horizon i'm like okay then apple gets to challenge it and they have a hearing and they do a thing and then like people think it's going to be like oh we passed the law and apple did a thing but they're not compliant now they get fined no that's not how any of this works it's so long between the passing of this law to the point where apple could potentially get those huge fines that yeah out presumably something will be worked out but this is just going to drag on for so long yeah and and because the root of the problem is the dma i guess that you know the eu way of doing this is not going to specify too firmly what they really intend which is there can't be any fees like that i think that's that's obviously what they intend i mean i don't know if they say there can't be any but there have you have to be able to undercut the app store like they i don't know how they would phrase that but like it like it's not competition if your competitors can never be better than you right of course it's just right and the other the other end is free for all like there's no like there's no rules the competitors can be you know they can they can if they have enough funding they could do loss leaders and say everything is free we'll pay you to use our app store like or whatever you know like there's competition is complicated because we all want competition but there's such a thing as unfair competition again like uh there are laws in our country about like you know i i think there are laws about like uh undercutting your competition by giving away stuff for free until all your competitors are out of business i know that's a common thing that bc funding does these days but i think there are actually laws in the books in certain uh industries where you're essentially not allowed to do that you're not allowed to take a giant war chest of money and put all your competitors out of business by giving away milk for free until they're all out of business and you buy them all up and then you start charging twice as much for milk or something i mean that's what pharmaceutical companies do but But anyway, like there are anti patterns to too much competition.

54:27But we're at the other end of that spectrum right now. We're at the like no competition and then like competition in name only where it's not real competition. And so trying to find that balance is tricky. You can't just say Apple. You can't charge anybody any money. But I think that actually might be their intention. Like they won't say it because it is. I think I think that's legally a little bit tougher to to argue. but i think that what they're clearly intending is for it to be like distribution on the mac and windows of just like yeah you should just be able to install things for free if you want to like that i think that's clearly the intent but they won't come out and say it yeah they didn't say it and also they do have the carve out explicitly in the thing where apple gets to approve for security purposes and private apis and stuff right which they're also you know doing in a somewhat bs way exactly but like but the fact that that carve out's there it's like they don't actually want it to be like the mac you don't need to do that on the mac like you can just distribute unsigned stuff and right click it and open it you know what i mean it's yeah and so the question like again i'm not gonna say well what is apple supposed to do they can't tell what they want like apple clearly knows that they don't want this like it is it is a question of like how how open should we be and maybe you could argue say this was the apple's best play put out the most restrictive thing possible get slapped for it back it off how do you like it now as opposed to you know if your goal is to do as little as possible start from a position of doing almost nothing like almost allowing no competition and then back it off slowly i just think it's going to be a waste of their time and energy and they should have come up with something that everyone unlockers would consider reasonable and put that out and then see what the us say and if they put out something that was reasonable like nominal fees to be a third-party app store minimal oversight the possibility of financially being way cheaper than apple right and and they said to the eu that's competition right and the eu came back and said actually no we had zero dollars of mine like you were saying marco like actually that is the thing that they wanted to say but couldn't that would be kind of crappy of the eu because if you want to say like and they're making the law like this is not a negotiation like the eu 100 makes the rules and apple can either choose to follow them or not be in the eu and they didn't say yeah you can't charge can't charge anybody anything to have a third party out of star yeah but but it does like i think the whatever whatever the political will and backing to get regulations like this through legislatures, wherever that comes from, I think when people are trying to argue for these laws or these regulations, I think what they have in mind is free distribution like PCs and Macs.

56:58That's what people are imagining. Now, obviously, again, legally, it's hard to require that. Legally, there's a whole bunch of snags to that, of course, because you're trying to legislate how a public how a private company operates and makes money and that's that's obviously very tricky i mean are there snags there because the eu does that all the time i mean and we just put 100 tariffs on chinese evs right so like that's they can i don't again i don't know the political situation there you could be right that to get this passed they couldn't be that explicit because people would be against it but as it was written it overwhelmingly passed so i wonder how much leeway there is to come out and say what they really want my point is like when these laws you know the the japan thing uh the the weird dating app thing in the netherlands and then you know obviously the big one the dma when these are passed i think what people have in mind is free distribution just like macs and pcs and what apple has done very well at is twisting and distorting the public discussion to like remember the very first time that tim cook was on the stand I think in the Epic trial.

58:01I think this is where this came out. And the very first time that he presented this, it was look, I don't have a lot of faith in Tim Cook's long-term strategy, but this was a good move from his point of view. I hated it, but from his point of view, this was a good move. When he mentioned something along the lines of like well, the in-app purchase fee is just the most straightforward way for us to collect our commission. How else would we collect our commission? When he said that, we all were like, what? Because what that told us was... Apple believes it is entitled to collect their commission, regardless of how the money is flowing, regardless of what it's being purchased through.

58:41and Apple has successfully controlled the public narrative that all of us are talking about since then, that was what, two years ago? All of us have been talking since then as if it's inevitable that yes, of course Apple is going to collect a fee for everything sold or like whatever, like, and we have totally bought into their fairly brazen, you know, framing of this. We also have everybody talking about how Apple has to monetize their IP somehow. They have to, how, why would anybody make software for a platform if apple can't monetize their ip why would apple continue to invest in the iphone if they can't monetize their ip like some people have bought into this i certainly haven't bought into it i don't think you have but no of course not but but i'm saying like when we're talking about this i i think it's important for everyone out there to realize like that entire framing of this being this inevitable thing that of course apple has to collect their their commission so that so that they can justify working on the iphone that is a thousand percent BS and Apple has done a great job of controlling that message and getting us all to talk about it but that's obviously not what people want and when they create these regulations that what people want is Mac and PC like free distribution yes with security controls if need be on on some you know broad strokes but that's what people want Apple is the one who is refusing to give it up and that's why this is going to take forever as John was saying like because the EU is basically saying we would like no barriers please and apple is basically saying we'd like all the barriers please and it's just going to take a long time to work this out because neither of them is real actually the european commission is not really being very clear about what they want apple's being very clear about what they want apple's very clear about we deserve everything and we're going to give you we're going to give up nothing and uh we're going to see how that goes and so this is going to keep going on forever but like you know don't don't buy into apple's framing too much when talking about this because that came out of nowhere two years ago that was not what anybody was ever thinking and i mean just to rehash everything like they have plenty of reason to invest in the iphone to maintain ios and their developer tools without collecting a fee on every single app that transacts through it yeah i mean the reason that that the premise plays so well in america because it's so americans like you're going to tell a company how they can make money you're going to tell them they can't make money in a particular way that's not fair they should be able to do what they want and let the market decide and like the whole like so the premise uh tim cook was offering was like you know unchangeable premise we have to make money all we're arguing about is how we can do that and in app purchases the best way and we can try other ways or whatever but like they're it's like i reject your premise right right now you don't need it right but in the same way like there's the the premise of uh like u.s business is like well companies should be able to make money however they want and if they pick a lousy way that people don't like people won't buy from them the premise of the dma as you stated before is that apple has power in a market that's super important and they have too much power and so the government needs to step in to tell companies what to do that what you could do when you were a small company now suddenly we're saying because you sell phones and because you're this big and because you're successful and because phones are so important we are saying new rules apply to you that's exactly what the dma is we don't really have anything like that in the u.s quite yet but exactly when there's various doj cases anyway uh but we talked about in past episodes but the the dma that's the premise of the dma the premise is you specifically gatekeepers new rules apply to you but the the the american mind rebels at the idea of a government telling companies how they can make money and so people you know groomers are so incredulous you're telling them that they they can't make money the way they want to from their phone and it's like yes because specifically like he even says like the japan thing like oh imagine if the japanese game console makers we should tell them oh well guess what uh you know you have to allow third-party apps on your playstation or whatever game consoles are not as important as phones like that's what it comes down to the premise of these cases is it's not like every company that's like this it's technological gatekeepers for platforms that are so important to all of life and commerce that these rules apply to them and gaming is big but so far right now i'm going to say game consoles are not as important to the life and economy of a country as cell phones.

1:02:53That's the determination made by many of these laws and lawsuits, and I agree with that determination. Game consoles aren't as important. They're more important than they used to be, and they are important, and maybe something could be looked at there, but if I had to say which is more important, it's the cell phone. It's no contest. It's just so much more important. And so, yeah, these people are passing laws specifically targeting gatekeepers for platforms that are super important in our life, and it can seem unfair. Again, you know, why do the game consoles get away with it? Because they're less important.

1:03:23Maybe someday they'll come for the game consoles. Where do you draw the line? How do you decide when somebody is too powerful? We talked about this before. When do you have a monopoly? What percentage is required? When is there too little competition? These are all complicated questions, but the premise of all these things is Apple, new rules apply to you and Microsoft and, you know, Google and all these things because of exactly what you make and how important you are and how much power you have. And some people just don't accept that. And the same way we don't accept Tim Cook's premise that he just has to make money, some people don't accept the premise of the DMA.

1:03:56And so they're never going to be happy with what the DMA does. No details about negotiation of the DMA. No compliance, malicious or otherwise, is going to be satisfying because they disagree with the premise that Apple deserves to be regulated and so do other companies like it. Right. So all this is going on and around the same time, give or take a few days. Actually, I think it was a few days before the EU's announcement, but nevertheless, one way or another, it's around the same time. Apple has declared that it may delay some of its AI features and others in the EU because of the DMA. Woo Nelly.

1:04:34All right. So this went over like a lead bullet. Reading from the verge, Apple says upcoming features like its Apple Intelligence generative AI tools, iPhone mirroring, and SharePlay screen sharing may not be available in the EU this year. So now, quoting Apple, Two weeks ago, Apple unveiled hundreds of new features that we are excited to bring to our users around the world. We are highly motivated to make these technologies available to all users. However, due to the regulatory uncertainties brought about by the Digital Markets Act, or DMA, we do not believe that we will be able to roll out three of these features, iPhone mirroring, SharePlay screen sharing enhancements, and Apple intelligence to our EU users this year.

1:05:17Specifically, we are concerned that the interoperability requirements of the EMA force us to compromise the integrity of our products in ways that risk user privacy and data security. We are committed to collaborating with the European Commission in an attempt to find a solution that would enable us to deliver these features to our EU customers without compromising their safety. So this is one of the aspects of the DMA that is either the DMA overreaching or us not understanding what the DMA wants. The idea is... Por canelo stos. Yeah. Or all those integrations that Apple has where there's some feature that, I mean, this is in the DOJ case.

1:05:53Apple Watch only works with the Apple iPhone and this iPhone mirroring thing between Macs and iPhones only works with iPhones, not Android phones. Like any feature that you can imagine Apple rolling out. There's some interpretation of the DMA. And again, maybe it's straightforward interpretation, not a lawyer that says, hey, if you add a feature, you can't confine that feature to only first party stuff. Those features need to be extensible by third parties and pluggable on day one. and as anyone who's familiar with Apple's platform knows that's not the way they do things sometimes they roll out first party only for years and years and never allow third parties access, sometimes they do a third party one five years later, ten years later, right, like think of all the features we have, how long did we get third party keyboards how long until apps were allowed to run in the background that weren't Apple's apps, like on the Mac on iPhone and iPad, all these platforms they don't always make it extensible by third parties ever and doing it on day one is rare so if the DMA really does require every gatekeeper to implement every feature such that it is extensible and open to third parties on day one I think that is a technologically ill-considered requirement and Apple would be justified in saying we just can't roll out these new features because it seems like they are not going to be compliant with the law.

1:07:22Now, interestingly, they weren't so hesitant to roll out all the other things that we said that we also agreed were probably not compliant, like the core technology fee and all the rules for alternative app stores. Somehow they didn't, their worry about whether those would be compliant did not stop them from deploying those. But these ones, Apple says, you know what? We're afraid we might not be compliant. So it's best that we don't roll these out. I don't know if they're compliant. if they're not compliant the dma in this respect is bad and needs to be changed because you can't require technology companies to only launch something when it's ready for the world to extend it that is too high a bar it's not the right way to make technology you can put a timeline on it say it has to be extensible within five years there are other things you could do to be more reasonable out of this but i would also say that like look yeah apple's an important platform cell phones gatekeeper cell phones android google whatever those are super important platforms that important to the economy, all that stuff, right?

1:08:15It doesn't mean that you need to require them to be open in every respect. What's the most important way they need to be open? You need to be able to get apps from somewhere else. Does every single aspect of that platform also need to be open? Every feature, everything that you can do on it, every single minute thing, share play, iPhone, does every single thing need to be open to third parties at all time? How about you wait to see if iPhone mirroring is a lever that Apple uses to dominate the industry before you decide that that needs to be opened up. Because we know the App Store is, right? So yeah, address the App Store and the law.

1:08:49But you can't make an open-ended thing that says every little feature you add has to be open from day one. It's pointless, it's counterproductive. And in the end, does it matter if iPhone mirroring only works with iPhones? Probably not to the degree that there should be a law addressing it. So I really hope that the DMA actually doesn't try to say everything in the OS open from day one. uh and again even if it did say that apple should probably just launch these features anyway uh but that's not why they're holding them back they're holding them back to kind of show the world we think this law is crappy uh and we're going to demonstrate that by holding back goodies that we're probably going to hold back anyway because apple intelligence is only supposed to be launching in english in the fall anyway and i guess they could launch it in english in europe because lots of people speaking english there but like this is part them making a statement about their interpretation of the dma and part sort of active defiance to show the consequences and it's like hey apple could just pull out of the eu and not sell phones there like that is the ultimate like breakup move here that's the brexit we need to come up with a brexit like term for apple pulling out of the eu i don't have a good one off the top of my head but sure by next week we'll have lots of suggestions uh exit because it begins with an e it has to be like an apple thing like britain exit brexit you know exit i don't know if they core the apple no well anyway we'll see what workshop it this is that's lurking out the end of this disagreement but this move by apple of just you know again maybe they weren't going to roll this out anyway like but either way this is a this is a positioning move like we don't know whether they're doing something they weren't going to do maybe this is just putting words around something that was going to happen anyway but yeah this is an escalate let's say i would call this an escalation well the thing of it is is that I feel like I can, I was going to say squint, but I'm not even sure it requires me squinting.

1:10:41I can look at the DMA and look at particularly the mirroring and SharePlay screen sharing stuff. And I can see an interpretation, a legitimate, honest, you know, no BS interpretation that, wow, this may not fly with the DMA. Maybe we should hold on to this. And I can legitimately argue that that is a real concern. But they didn't have that same concern about all the other stuff they rolled out, that you could have the same exact statement about, wow, this may not comply. Maybe we should hold it back. I think because these are additive things that involve interoperability between devices, right?

1:11:20And leaving aside the nuance of these particular selections, the broader point I'm trying to make is that I feel like we have, and the three of us have talked about this a lot, Apple has not really read the room, both in a micro level and a macro level. At a micro level, they haven't really read the room that, look, the EU is not going to like this, man. Like, they're not going to take this lying down and be like, oh, you know what? We messed up. Yeah, we screwed this all up. That's our bad. Our bad. That's on me. My bad. That's not what's going to happen. And on a macro level, it's fascinating to me what Marco said, because I had the exact same reaction.

1:11:59Marco said a minute ago, this went over like a lead balloon. And I think that's broadly accurate. I think most people had that same reaction. And it took me thinking about it a little bit, and I'm actually not so grumpy about this anymore, but I certainly was at first. And what's fascinating to me is everyone seems to, broadly speaking, everyone seems to assume ill intent from Apple, right? Like they're doing this just to hold up a middle finger to the European Commission and say, well, you can't have cool stuff. And that very well may be true for the record. I don't know. But it's kind of funny and unfortunate that because Apple has been so belligerently stubborn about so much, and I think Marco was saying this as well earlier, they've been so stubborn about so much and haven't given a friggin inch.

1:12:50and so because of that everyone is just like well this is apple being a dick again news at 11 like same as it ever was and that's the thing that kind of bums me out as as someone who i consider i mean i consider myself a fan of the company to the degree that anyone can be a fan of a you know company and this bums me out it's you know as we've said many different times on the show over the years you know all of a sudden i'm looking around and or maybe apple should be looking around and asking are we the baddies because this is baddie behavior like i If this is them thumbing their nose at the European Commission, it's just gross.

1:13:23And I can't get past, and I know I'm repeating what Marco said before, and what we've said many times on the show. I can't get past this is an own goal. Apple knew this was coming. They could tell it was coming. Anyone with three brain cells that followed this could tell this was going to happen and that the laws are going to change. And they're going to change because Apple is greedy and they're entitled and they just wouldn't give an inch. And now they screwed around and now they're finding out. I think both sides of this are correct. Like two things can be simultaneously true. Apple's actually probably correct that these features, you could see why they actually might be against the interop requirements of the DMA, which are terrible largely.

1:14:12Like you can see why. Yes, Apple is probably correct to cite this as a problem with the DMA, with these things in particular. That's probably technically correct, but also saying this and doing this and having to face this dilemma at all is a direct result of their blatant anti-competitive behavior over time. So none of this would have happened if not for that. That's debatable. I mean, you could say that no matter what Apple would have done, something like DMA would have passed anyway. There's no amount of opening up preemptively that Apple could have done. I still think they should have done it because, like, you don't know that you couldn't have prevented it.

1:14:50This is the question everyone has. Could Apple have done anything to prevent it? And I think we all agree it was worth finding out. Try something instead of doing nothing, right? And, again, I want to remind people Apple did loosen the App Store rules from 30 % to 15%, the small business program. Stuff like that was arguably Apple's reaction to seeing the writing on the wall. Obviously, it was very slight, very limited, not at all anything close to something that would have preempted action, clearly, right? But there is still – I'm willing to entertain the idea that there is really nothing Apple could have done.

1:15:25But I just would have liked to have seen them try. Show me there's nothing you could have done by giving a big good faith effort to self-regulate, to head off regulation. Maybe you would have failed, but they didn't even make an effort. And so I think that's what we're arguing. And I'm not 100 % convinced that they could have prevented something like this, but they should have tried because I think their odds were okay. Like it wasn't impossible, right? It was, you know, there's probably something they could have done. And even if they didn't head it off, even if they did some good faith thing, they really opened it up and made new worldwide rules that they thought would be compliant, but something like the DMA passed anyway, and it turns out they're not quite in compliance.

1:16:00then you're tweaking an existing worldwide system to comply like you're probably closer to a meeting of the minds about this right as opposed to now where they're just so far apart and it's so adversarial um and even for this like i think if you really want to demonstrate like again if if apples and the popular interpretation of dma is such that like these interoperables really would forbid iphone mirroring and share play and stuff right and apple intelligence ship the features have the eu strike them down and then throw up your hands and go see everybody that's how dumb the dma is it doesn't allow us to ship iphone mirroring iphone mirroring is not a giant lever of power that we use to dominate the industry it's a tiny feature that benefits people if stuff like iphone mirroring is disallowed that's why the dma is dumb but they didn't allow it to happen they didn't they should have shipped it and and got the complaints about it and have the evidence instead now they're holding it back saying we think this might not be compliant and And of course, the EC is not going to come out and say, Apple's wrong.

1:16:58It would have been compliant or Apple's right. It wouldn't have been. The EC is acting like the App Store. It's like, if you don't submit the app, we're not going to tell you whether it's compliant or not. Right. So they've lost the opportunity to show that the DMA is dumb. Right. And on the flip side, the EC, I guess, doesn't have the opportunity to show the DMA isn't dumb by saying, hey, ship iPhone mirror. We weren't going to strike that down. Like we're reasonable people here. I don't know. I don't know if iPhone mirror is compliant with the DMA or not. either does apple i'm not sure if the ec knows if i maybe they need nine months to investigate to find right i think apple knows that that that is probably a like something like they're they're looking for holes to poke in the dma because they don't like the whole thing they're looking for reasons they're looking for ways to make it look overbearing and ridiculous and this is you know the main difference here is that with this move for the first time they're not just attacking policies.

1:17:54With this move, they're attacking their own customers. And that is, I think, again, I question the strategy here. Is anyone strategizing over there? They may be thinking that Europe is filled with Americans who are going to be like, hey, the government is stopping us from getting our cool Apple features, where it seems like a lot of people in the EU are going to say, hey, Apple is being a jerk about this law that we all agreed on. Yeah, it turns out Europeans largely like the way Europe does things. Exactly, right? If Europe was filled with Texans, it would be a different story, but it's not. And so I don't know if they're misreading that room.

1:18:28Again, I don't have a finger on the pulse of what Europe is like, but just look. The DMA passed overwhelmingly. The EU likes regulation. Just look at all the laws around like cheeses in Italy and stuff. It's just like they like the way things work there. They vote for these people. right so i don't i don't know how this is going to work out but just i i do think if this if this is the deal with the dma like apple can no longer do business effectively in europe because again i think it's not reasonable to require every single feature added to all of their gatekeeping platforms to be open to third parties from day one it's technologically not feasible so if the dma is asking for that it needs to be changed or apple just needs to leave because what otherwise people in europe are going to get features like three years after the rest of the world gets them And that's if Apple decides to stay in the market and put in an effort to actually comply, because that's like that's the best case, the roadmap like you roll out the feature and then you tweak the feature and then maybe you open it up to third parties.

1:19:26And then the next year, the third party integration actually works well. Right. And that's not Apple being a jerk. That's just the way technology works. It's it's not it's not reasonable to require this. The app store is the important thing to regulate on the phone. Share play is not right. But but it was there. It was their behavior with the app store. that generated a whole bunch of political will to do a law like this in the first place that happened to also include other things. Yeah, and again, it's not clear to me that SharePlay, they wanted to wrap up SharePlay in this. Maybe they're like, oh no, we totally understand SharePlay is not what we're after or whatever, but I don't know.

1:20:01They're looking for reason to discredit it, but again, I have to wonder, how many battles is Apple willing to fight at once? They have a lot of lawyers. They're doing battle with everyone. They're fighting on so many fronts, and they seem to just provoke more of them to keep coming. And now they've involved a pretty decently sized chunk of their own customers as one of the fronts in these battles. Why? Is this worth it? Because, again, what we're talking about is not all services revenue. First of all, a huge chunk of it is Google. So setting that aside for now. What we're talking about is not even all App Store revenue.

1:20:39We are talking about giving people the option to not use App Store purchasing and commissions for apps that are largely not using the App Store purchase system in the first place. Things like Spotify, Netflix, HBO Max. That's kind of what we're talking about here. We're talking about allowing these apps to link out and use their own stores or to use their own purchase systems that already mostly aren't using an app purchase. And that's not where Apple makes most of its money. They make most of their money with games. So we're not even talking about a huge chunk of App Store revenue that would just disappear overnight.

1:21:18Apple is engaging in all these different battles all around the world, including in their own country now with the DOJ lawsuit, which touches on some of these things. They're opening up all these fronts of war and battling and literally causing problems for their core product attributes like integration in the EU now and possibly the DOJ lawsuit that those both have integration components, they are causing substantial threats to really important parts of how their products are designed and how they work in pretty large markets around the world in order to save some tiny percentage of app store revenue.

1:21:55That to me, again, I have yet to see. I was trying to think, what are Tim Cook's long-term strategy successes? I can't think of many of those. I honestly do not think Tim Cook as a leader has good long-term strategy in some pretty key critical areas to leading this company. And honestly, it's time for new leadership. We've seen the limits of the Tim Cook Apple. We've seen he's really good at making money and he's a little spotty in some of the really important product details and a little bit, you know, short-sighted with some of these, you know, regulation and app store details. We've seen the limits of Tim Cook's Apple.

1:22:35I'm ready to see something else. This is bad leadership and bad strategy at the top. This wouldn't be an Apple DMA rant if Marco wasn't ready to fire some people at Apple. All right, let's do at least a little bit of Ask ATP. It's been a busy season for us, So we've unfortunately put it on the back burner. Let's bring it around. Some fellow by the name of Todd Vaziri, I wonder who he is, writes, an ATP 589 used Mark Gurman's rumor bullet points as a conversation starter. Rumors are great at sparking conversation and debate, but I wonder if anyone has ever revisited Gurman's rumors post-event to validate the rumors themselves.

1:23:11It seems like no one cares if the rumors are actually based on fact and bear fruit, since the rumors help create quote-unquote content and discourse, and that's good enough for some. But when rumors that ultimately go nowhere are given full faith, I feel like we are all wasting outrage or interest. Not to mention if a rumor doesn't come true, the rumor monger can claim that Apple changed its plans and claim no responsibility. I feel like my gut says that Gurman is over 50%, but I've never actually done any mathematics or anything to see if that's true. Back in the early days before you guys were Apple fans in the, God, I hope I'm going to get this right, macOS rumors.

1:23:53I know you're like, don't you mean mac rumors? No, I'm pretty sure I mean macOSrumors.com. Anyway, there was a lot of websites that had Apple rumors. Some of those websites just flat made up stuff, right? Some of those websites would publish things that were sent to them anonymously that the senders made up. and it was a very exciting time to be an apple fan because every possible thing that you could think would be like whoa look at this look at that and back in that time i thought to myself i kind of like todd here it would be great if there was like a meta website that kept track of all the things that were on all the rumors websites and then rated them on accuracy accuracy and there are websites currently that do that i wish i could remember the urls probably we'll have them follow up next week if anyone cares but there are websites to do that but it turns out that activity is not that exciting because very quickly you kind of get a feel for what kind of things will people publish like will this site publish anything that's sent to them anonymously or will the site only publish things from sources that they that they have some reason to believe are actual real sources not just like an anonymous email that comes to you or whatever mark german is one of those people who publishes things from sources uh and i mean the main thing against him is that the information that he the source information that he gets is usually buried in a giant pile of words, a lot of which are just his opinion on things.

1:25:10And it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. What did your sources tell you? And the reason we care what his sources tell us is because his hit rate for things that are sourced that he says definitively, very close to when they're actually going to happen, and even sometimes distantly, is very good. He has real sources. He doesn't have people making things up. He's not guessing and being lucky. He has actual sources, or maybe just one source, but whatever it is, when he publishes information without any qualifiers and says something definitively and it's like a week before the keynote you can basically take that to the bank rare misses like the apple watch and everything or whatever but the reason we go back to that and talk about it as if it's a real thing is because like well it is a week before wwc and german says no hardware wwc we just take that at face value at this point because when he says that definitively a week before wwc guess what no hardware wwc and if he starts being wrong about that he said no hardware and it was a huge hardware thing then we're gonna look askance as we as i think the apple watch rumor with the flat sides that never occurred we look a little bit askance of that not 100 but he has real sources as opposed to mac os rumors back in the day which i'm pretty sure had no real sources and just published anything that sounded cool and occasionally got things right just because of you know dumb luck and occasionally got real leaks but most of the time just made up stuff in the end this is mostly like entertainment or whatever but i think on this show we if something is a rumor that's like we have no idea about the sourcing or whatever we will say as much but when we say it looks like no hardware at wwdc because german said it that's based on past performance that you know that he's been pretty accurate about things like that farther out like oh the new apple watch is gonna have different straps like remember when we talked about that ages ago we were always framing that as like it's so far away who knows if that's gonna happen he might have a source that just like even then it's like source oh okay well so they were they were working on an idea for a new strap on apple watch things and he got a source rumor to say that that doesn't mean and german doesn't say definitively the next apple watch will have different straps he's just saying this is the thing apple's working on and it probably is but you have to take that for what it is which is apple works on a lot of stuff not everything ships sometimes they decide to do something different or whatever that's different than when he comes out and says here are the features here are the things here's what's going to be in the keynote here's what's not going to be in the keynote again especially as the it gets closer so i agree that just getting outraged on stuff that are just rumors is pointless but i hope mostly on this show we either talk about rumors as a jumping off point to like imagine if they did this or whatever or we take as uh close to fact things that uh come from sources that are usually right very close to the date when they're going to happen yeah and different rumor sources have different areas of strengths i would say like for instance when we hear from ming chi kuo about a new display size or a new display panel that could be used for an apple product that's usually pretty good because ming chi kuo is well sourced in the supply chain for displays and we know that but he but we don't know what product that's going to be in right exactly and very often he will definitively say this is going to be in a new laptop and it turns out it's in an ipad or something right because that's not something you would know if you just have sources of the display manufacturer right and sometimes you can derive it like you know if it's some giant you know 30 inch 8k panel like that's probably for a studio display not like a macbook but you know there are some things that it's more vague but yeah like we know when ming qi quo reports pretty definitive like display size stuff especially when it's something like an iphone we know it's probably correct or like the oled ipad we were talking about the oled ipad as if we were sure it was a thing for months and months and months because there are just so many sources in the display supply chain for so long saying ipad size oleds ipad size oleds dual layer ipad size oleds like it's not just one source it's tons of them come and it's like eventually we just start talking about it as if it's fact uh and maybe that's just like experience and kind of knowing like and you know it looks like there's going to be oled ipads with dual layer screens and there was and every time that happens it reinforces our instincts of when something like where there's smoke there's fire versus just like a fanciful idea of like i think they're looking at different ways to attach watch straps right exactly and and we know like you know mark german has limits too like he mark german oftentimes will miss the uh like the the marketing side of something or the story or um the like software details of of certain things like but he's really good at like hardware like mark german usually knows what hardware is coming He knows usually some pretty good hardware details.

1:29:44And he's actually getting seemingly better sources over time. And so we pay attention to that. We notice that. But we don't treat rumors as absolute facts. But usually we also see the patterns. We know that if there's pretty strong rumors about some new iPhone display size from Ming-Chi Kuo, and then a few months later Mark Gurman reports a few more details about an iPhone of that size, and we know that's a plausible size and it's bigger than the existing ones. We know that's probably true just because we've seen the patterns before. We know roughly how this goes. We've been doing this for a long time.

1:30:22We're not going to report on things on the show or talk about them as if they're facts if they seem really far-fetched or at least we'll tell you why we think it's far-fetched if everyone else is talking about it and we feel like we need to. Most of it is just kind of gut feeling putting in context like this sounds plausible from from this source that is usually good in this area versus this thing from some rando account on twitter that no one's ever heard of before is probably wrong and sometimes we don't even need rumors like for example we talked about on past episodes oled screens are coming to macbooks i don't even think there's rumor of that but it's like duh right unless some better technology comes along eventually the screen cool screens they just put on the iPads should be coming to MacBooks.

1:31:11Now, what we'll end up reporting on is, say there's a rumor and says, oh, it turns out they can't use the tandem OLEDs in MacBooks because someone on the supply chain says they use too much power, they get too hot or something like that. That's a rumor we report on. But in the absence of any rumors, we're just like, well, we assume these displays will come for the MacBooks. Now we wait to see. Does the rumor mill support that and say, oh, here's the schedule for the MacBook Air with a dual-layer OLED display, right here's when we think it's coming out 2025 2026 and they'll keep updating that date when they get it whatever or are we looking for a rumor that says apple changed their mind they're not using a micro led on the watch for example like they did all this investment in micro led they were going to use it on the watch and they said actually we're not we bailed out of that we sold the company or whatever those are things worth reporting on but even the absence of reporting you can look ahead and you can kind of see where the very often where the tech is going what is going to be technologically possible look at the products apple's introduced look at what technologies they would probably want to use in the rest of their line and see how that goes and then obviously there's the easy stuff like hey you know apple has an m4 there's probably going to be a more powerful than m4 chip which historically speaking will probably be an m4 pro and m4 max and maybe there'll be an ultra maybe it'll be an extreme you don't need rumors to tell you that the m4 is coming to the mac line like you just don't need any and all we do is look at the rumors and say okay it looks like this is coming in this year and this is coming in this month or whatever just sort of lay out where they're coming but no one is debating like someone said the m4 is coming to the MacBook Pro?

1:32:32I'm not sure about that. No, we're pretty sure. All right. Thank you to our members who were the exclusive sponsor of this episode. We are 100 % member supported this week. Please consider joining us at atp.fm slash join. And if you do join, you get a few different perks and benefits, including every week, the ATP overtime segment. This is a bonus topic that we do every week just for members. And this week, it's going to be about Apple allegedly planning thinner devices seemingly across the whole product line. Speaking of rumors. We were talking about this Apple thinner device rumor which seems plausible and I think has some interesting implications.

1:33:12We'll be talking about that in overtime this week. So you can join to hear it. ATP.FM slash join. Thank you so much and we'll talk to you next week.

1:33:23Now the show is over. They didn't even mean to begin. Because it was accidental. Oh, it was accidental. John didn't do any research. Marco and Casey wouldn't let him. Because it was accidental. Oh, it was accidental. And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm. And if you're into Mastodon, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S. So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-A-N-T, Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-S-Y-A-Q-U-S-A. It's accidental. Accidental. They didn't mean to. Accidental. Accidental. Tech Podcast. So long. So what's going on with Aaron's car? Any updates there? Yes. I have updates. So we got a call from the adjusters saying, hey, I'm at Volvo.

1:34:34Can you explain to me what the hell happened one more time? Because we had never spoken to the adjuster before. And I was like, I can, but why don't I put my wife on the phone? She was the one who's there, blah, blah, blah. So she does the whole song and dance about what had happened, et cetera, et cetera. That same evening, the adjuster calls again. We are about to go to dinner. He says, okay, I have looked into the situation, and we're going to total the car. Oh my God. Because the car is worth not that much more than it would cost to repair it. So we're going to total the car. That means that now we have to buy a car under duress because Erin can't drive my car, doesn't think she can.

1:35:17And she did get a loaner from our local Volvo dealer. It is a piece of trash, but it's a piece of trash that will get her from A to B as long as A to B is pretty close to home. And so we are very thankful for this piece of trash, but it is not a long-term sustainable solution, right? And service has been phenomenal. Like if you live in the Richmond area or anywhere near it and you want to get your car serviced, you know, by somebody who seems to really care, go to Volvo for Richmond. They're very good. But that being said, you know, we still need to solve this problem and and what we're currently thinking is you know replacing the xc90 with another xc90 which i could understand and argue that that's a dumb terrible decision but i really believe in my heart a few things and we'll talk about why but first of all i really think that this is the best car for aaron i really really really do and number two i really think it was a one in a trillion bad unlucky break i really really do it's not one in a trillion because somebody wrote in to say that this happened to two of their other Volvos.

1:36:20So I'm going to say it's... Yeah, but they were wildly different generations. Right, but let's say it's a three and a nine billion. Okay, fair enough. I mean, it definitely seems like it is not that rare. Like the fact that we... I believe we heard from multiple people who say something similar happened to them with a Volvo in particular. So it could be like just a design flaw of some of their engines. Not enough shielding on the bottom of the car or something or whatever. Still super rare, I would imagine. Yeah, but I think it might give me pause to own one out of warranty ever. Whatever that effect is, like if he had had a Volkswagen and given the same story, we would have heard from the Volkswagen people who it happened to.

1:37:01So maybe this happens to three out of every nine billion of every car manufacturer. It's difficult to draw conclusions from because it's not a random selection. It's self-selecting because we talked about Volvos. We hear from the Volvo people this happened to. So I think the jury's still out on that. So I assume, is there no chance of getting you into something electric here? ATP.fm slash join. All key aside. I know it's more money. It's also a lot nicer. It's also no gas. It also can't have that problem recur. Harder to find with CarPlay sometimes. That's very true. I believe there's something called the Volvo EX90.

1:37:42Okay, so let's put that. There's a Polestar and there's a electric Volvo. No, no, just hold on. Put that in the parking lot. Ding. For a second. And make sure I come back to that because there is an answer for that. But let me put that aside for a moment. So we look at the local Volvo deal. And what we're looking for is something around like a 2021 XC90. Aaron's car was not driven that much. So it only had like 42 ,000, 43 ,000 miles on it. So we want something with fewer than 40 ,000 miles. And we want something that doesn't really give up any of the options we had before, which basically, if you speak Volvo, amounts to the climate package, which gives you like rear heated seats, which I think the kids are really going to want, even though we don't have winter here.

1:38:19And it gives you a few other things. I forget. Oh, a heated wheel, which Aaron really, really liked. And the advanced package is I think what they call it, which among other things gives you a heads-up display, which Aaron has become completely addicted to. And honestly, I would too if I were her. So anyway, so to find that car has been challenging. Used is what we think we want to do. We could, I mean, potentially buy new, but we're talking, I mean, these cars are now$70 ,000 new. And I genuinely think they're great cars. And I could even make an argument they're worth$70 ,000, but I don't particularly want to spend$70 ,000 on a car right this minute.

1:38:54So we didn't think that we really wanted to go that route. So, okay, that was Monday. Tuesday, I say to her, all right, you know, let's go to the place I often mention on the show these days. Let's go to CarMax because CarMax is a used car retailer and they'll sell anything, right? And you can bounce between several different cars all in the same dealership and see and just sit in them, if not drive them, and see what you think. So I, or the four of us, went to CarMax, and we sat in and looked at an Atlas, a Volkswagen Atlas, a Audi Q7, which I actually really liked, but Aaron was not that keen on, a Kia Telluride, which is extraordinarily well-reviewed.

1:39:35And I know a couple people with them, and they love them, but Aaron didn't care for it. The Mazda CX-9, which was mostly because we had such good luck with her Mazda years ago, and that didn't impress either of us. And the Jeep Grand Cherokee, which I know you two are going to snicker, but honestly is a relatively upmarket three-row car that feels to me like it's 13 miles long, like suburban long. It's huge. The current ones are huge. I don't know what year you were looking at. We were looking at basically the brand new ones because we wanted a three-row. I mean, are they meaningfully bigger than the XC90?

1:40:07I haven't looked it up, but I feel like they are. Exactly. It may not be bigger, but it It looks bigger for sure. It may not be. I genuinely don't know, and I'm not going to look it up while I'm talking, but it looks way bigger. And what was really great about the CarMax experience was we walked in, you know, and there's a little like greeter person, and they said, okay, you know, what can I help you with? And I said, oh, I want to look at these cars. And of course, because it's me, I have model names and stock numbers written down, and the lady looks at it and says... You're a nightmare customer.

1:40:37Oh, I am the worst. It gets worse because I had a different experience today. But she says, okay, this one's over there. That one's over there. That one's over there. That one's over there. Just, you know, let us know if you have questions. In other words, get out of my hair. Well, but it was said with a smile. And so I'm like, what? Are they open? Like, do I need someone to go with me? And she said, no, no, no, no. They're all open. Just go to town. What? Really? Like, that's not how this usually works. And to be honest, I really enjoyed the CarMax experience because I didn't have to talk to anyone.

1:41:10And so it was really great. We just walked around. And granted, we're going through a heat wave here. So it was over 100 degrees. I want to say it's like 35 in stupid units. It's over 100 degrees. It's 8 million percent humidity. And we're all drenched as we're looking at these cars. But you do what you do. And so we looked at them all. And the only one that was really in the running was Grand Cherokee. But not enough that she was like, yeah, I want to test drive that. It's huge. It's not really my cup of tea. But it's not my car. And if she was more enthusiastic about it, I definitely would have said, all right, let's go try it.

1:41:42But none of this really revved your engine. And they had a couple XC90s, but they weren't exactly what we wanted either. So I had my eyes on, and this is coming obliquely back to what you were talking about, Marco. I had my eyes on a T8 Volvo. So there's three different styles of Volvo in this generation. There's the T5, which was a, I believe it was turbocharged only instead of turbo and supercharged like Aaron's was. And it did not have a third row seats. It just had, you know, empty space there. There's a T6, which Aaron had, which again, super and turbocharged. And then there's the T8, which depending on the generation or depending on the year, I should say, it was either the T6 with a small electric motor for the, I believe it was the rear wheels, or I think in later years, it was a turbocharged only motor with a slightly larger electric motor for the rear wheels.

1:42:36And what's great about this, what I find super appealing about this is that you can, like some of these quasi-hybrids, you can, well, first of all, it's a plug-in hybrid. I didn't specify that. But beyond that, you can go something like 20 miles pure electric. And part of the way that Aaron had a seven-year-old car that only had 40 ,000 miles on it is that most of the time we're driving, or she's driving, I should say, five miles, 10 miles, you know maybe 20 in a day maybe and so on paper well first of all on paper a full electric car is the correct answer and i promise we're coming back to this marco all right all right but but apparently the ex90 is not actually out yet that's correct and that's that's that's where i'm meandering toward you're still talking about the xc90 here with the trim levels t8 and stuff right that's correct yep yeah because the xc90 it's it's it's still available now with a plug-in hybrid option for like you know 30 miles of range exactly right exactly and you know the new ones the new plug-in hybrids are like$75 ,000,$80 ,000.

1:43:36And it's just like, oh, whether or not we could afford that, which I don't know, but I don't think I want to pay that. You know, like even if we could afford it, I don't think I want to pay that kind of money. So anyways, Volvo of Fredericksburg, they had a T8 that had, I think it's 30 ,000-ish miles and was optioned the way we want. And I've been going back and forth with them over email and they wouldn't come down to exactly the price we wanted. And I wanted to go see it because we had never driven a T8 before. So we went up there today and we took it for a ride. And first of all, it wasn't in quite as good condition as I like.

1:44:10And I know it's a used car. It's not going to be perfect. I don't expect it to be perfect. This is where I'm becoming a total pain in the butt client or customer. I know it won't be perfect, but we keep our cars really nice. And this one had enough dings and dents and whatnot that it It wasn't quite up to snuff. But the thing that was a real bummer, and if you work at a car dealership, take note of this for me, if nothing else. This thing has a battery, right? It's a small battery, but it's a battery nevertheless. In order for this to really show us the differences between Aaron's T6 and the T8, that battery needs to be what?

1:44:49Charged. I'll give you one guess if that battery was charged when we took it out for a spin. It's just like when I tried to drive the Wrangler plug-in hybrid. I feel like the car dealerships are not equipped to keep all the plug-in hybrids plugged in. I'm assuming electric car dealerships are because you kind of need that in the electric cars. But the hybrids are sold by gas car companies and they're just on the lot in the parking spots. Yeah, that's a shame. It's a total shame because I went into this thinking, this is it. I mean, I had her old plates in my car. I had our insurance information for the old car.

1:45:22I had a checkbook in the car. I was ready to rock. And I didn't know if they were going to come down to the price we wanted. But leaving that aside, I thought, you know what? There's a better than 50 % chance we will leave the house with one car, return with two cars. And we took it around the block. And Erin keeps saying to me, this feels the same as my car. And it's not that I didn't believe her. But I was like, it should feel different. Because in that application, it's her engine plus another 70 horsepower or something like that from the pure electric motor. And so driving around in pure electric mode, it felt like a doggy, you know, a slower version of her car, which I think makes sense, you know, because it's not a strong electric motor.

1:46:05Real like battery electric cars like the Rivian are stupid fast. This is different than that, right? It's a little teeny electric motor and it's enough to get you around town and do the sorts of things that Aaron needs to do, but it's not going to, you know, blow your hair back until you have the gasoline motor involved as well. And then this thing is like a 400 horsepower car or something like that. Now granted it weighs as much as a house, but Aaron's car, her old car, her now totaled car, uh, that was, that would keep up with my golf R. Like it was surprisingly quick. And in theory, I would have assumed this one would actually be faster than my car.

1:46:42And because the battery was fricking dead, it just really was not that impressive. And I went there thinking, she's going to like it, and I'm going to frigging love it because I love fast SUVs. They're stupid, they're dumb, and they make zero sense, and I love them anyway. Yeah, it feels like you're violating the laws of physics. Right, that's what makes it so fun. It's like, why is this thing so fast? Right, exactly. So anyways, so we weren't impressed by that, and they had a couple other options. They were the least sleazy car salespeople I've ever worked with, so I really appreciated that. but we you know they let us drive away without anything and i mean i don't think there was much they could have done to put us in anything short of letting us effectively steal a car but i i i didn't i i have no answers and so i asked both richmond volvo and fredericksburg volvo the same question i asked them okay what's the story with the ex 90 the ex 90 is basically in a full battery electric version of aaron's car i mean i'm there's differences here and there but in spirit it's a full battery electric version of Aaron's car.

1:47:41I'm still unconvinced that I want our workhorse to be a full battery electric vehicle because we do long trips. And I don't, you don't, I'm sure. Well, so here's the thing I'm optimizing for, I'm optimizing for like one to two trips a year, which I intellectually know is dumb. It's so easy. I haven't really gotten past that. And I recognize full on. I recognize that I'm kind of being an idiot about this. You are, but nevertheless, less. The EX90, both dealers independently said they are just rolling off the lines now. And I think the Richmond dealer said, I've never even seen one. And I believe the Fredericksburg dealer said, we've seen one, but we have no idea when we're getting them.

1:48:21It could be months. And I don't think that we have months to play with. And with regard to other battery electric vehicles, even leaving aside the fact that I'm not entirely convinced that's the right fit for us, The only other decent option was a Kia EV9, which I'm not sure I love the look of at all. And Erin is very not sold on an electric vehicle for her. I think both of us agree that my next car should be an electric car of some sort. But I don't think that it's time for Erin quite yet. So anyway, so I don't really have any good answers with regard to a battery electric. And I mean, I would love to put her in an R1S.

1:49:01I really would. I would probably even hold my nose about CarPlay, but certainly they are way more expensive than I want. And it doesn't look like there's a robust enough or really what I should say is cheap enough used market to get to the price point that I'm looking to get to. No, there isn't. Not yet. And so all of that to say, I really thought today we were going to take care of business. It was going to get done. We were going to buy that T8. Life was going to be good. And now I don't know what to do because there are enough used XC90s, broadly speaking, in the area, but none of them are really just exactly what we want.

1:49:44And I'm not sure what to do. I don't particularly want to buy new because it's way more money than we need to spend. And I'm not snooty enough that I need, nor is she, that we need a new car. Like, we don't want or need to do that. But I'm having trouble finding that unicorn of something that I think is priced reasonably, not to say it's a steal, but reasonably, and not beat to hell, not with a trillion miles on it, and optioned the way we want. And so now I'm kind of like back at square one, and I genuinely don't know what we're going to do. The plan is still to go with an XC90 of some sort. We might have to just wait it out for a while.

1:50:23I don't know what we're going to do. I mean, yeah. The problem is you're under time pressure. Exactly. There's really no – when you have time pressure and you're really picky with a whole bunch of stuff. Yep. Like something has to give like you. And so you don't get to make the ideal choice. You have to compromise on something or just get incredibly lucky with what you find. But that seems like that didn't happen. So, you know, the question is just which of these various things that you're going to, you know, not be very happy about which which compromise are you willing to take first? Yeah, and that's the thing.

1:50:58And the only thing that is working on our side a little bit is that we're going away for a couple of weeks next month. And so we really need to make it like three more weeks. And then we disappear for two. And then we can kind of reset and start over. Yeah, but that means so your wife's going to have no car for five weeks? Like that's a bit much. She could presumably rock the loaner from Volvo for some or all of that. And if they need it back, which we've told them many times, like, look, the moment you guys want this back, tell us and we will have it back immediately. It's such a piece of trash.

1:51:33This car is so bad, but I don't think they, I don't think they're going to want it back anytime soon, but it's still, it's not a fair or appropriate for us to hold onto this for, you know, two months or whatever. So I genuinely don't know what we're going to do. I mean, maybe we rent a car for a couple of weeks to give us a little more time, but that's not cheap or free, you know, or anything like that. So I don't know. I'm genuinely at a loss of what i mean honestly i i think your best bet is first of all like you have to also consider that aaron's the customer not you and so and and she you know she got uh this ridiculously bad luck thing happened i think your best bet is to get her back into an xc90 in whatever form that needs to take like i would stop looking at other vehicles that if that's the one she really likes and she really wants oh yeah yeah yeah figure out how to get an xc90 is her is her mind closed to non-SUVs?

1:52:25I think so. I mean, I will accept any kind of input, but we do use the capacity of the XC90 enough that I don't think she would do a sedan, and there are no sedans that exist in this country anyway. I just put in our slack a 2020 S60 plug-in hybrid for $35 ,000. I mean, that looks like a nice car, but that's a much smaller total cargo volume. Exactly. All right. Well, you've got two small children. They would fit in this car. It's really nice. It's a plug-in hybrid. One of the things we talked about, because we ended up having to rent a minivan to get to the beach and back, right? And I got to admit, this Chrysler Pacifica, which actually, by the way, was delivered to us from Enterprise Rental with 36 miles on it.

1:53:11It just so happened. We were the first people to rent it. And I don't want to own a minivan for a few reasons, but I will be the first to tell you, and she would agree, on paper, that is 100 % the correct answer. Honestly, everyone I've ever heard from who owns a minivan, they all say they're amazing. You just have to get over the fact that you own a minivan. But once you get over that, people love them. They are really good in a lot of ways. And if what you're looking for is a large amount of passenger and cargo volume and have it be roughly that kind of size and shape, higher seating position, big volume, fits a bunch of kids' stuff.

1:53:58There's a reason minivans are so popular and have been for so long. They're incredibly practical, and people generally love them who have them. And actually, come to think of it, well, first of all, yes to everything you just said. Second of all, when we go on these beach trips, and it's getting better and better with each year as the kids get bigger and require less stuff and whatever, but we take penny with us and so that's a little bit of added cargo in and of itself but when we go on these beach trips we typically will put a toolie or whatever you call it you know one of those cargo carriers on the roof of aaron's car and we still fill this thing just freaking full that's a lot what are you bringing on your vacation with your two with your two small children you need and you have the giant car you need to have a roof thing yeah john we do this every year i don't have time for it right now we can we can bicker about this another time you like a like a gas grill with you no can we push on this a little bit like that does seem excessive we can come back to this if you want but um supposed to say we have a toolie or however you pronounce it and uh and uh and the car is chock full right well this minivan i am freaking out because it doesn't have any roof rails or anything like that i am telling aaron i say to her there's no freaking way we're going to fit everything we're going to have to cut some stuff and she was like first of all good fit everything second of all if we can't we'll just leave some stuff behind.

1:55:17It'll be fine. Yeah, I think it sounds like you might benefit from cutting some stuff. Well, okay, there is that. But nevertheless, we start packing the minivan, and it turns out that under the middle row, like under the floorboard in the middle row, there's these like freaking cavernous gullies. I genuinely don't know if this minivan was all-wheel drive or not. I want to say it wasn't. But either way, there's these cavernous gullies under the kids' seats, or under their feet, I should say. We filled those with a bunch of stuff. Then the back, it was like two-thirds full. It was amazing. It was amazing how cavernous this thing was.

1:55:52It was incredible. And it also had wireless CarPlay, which we only used briefly. But actually, and this is a Chrysler, mind you, which I don't personally consider a terribly fancy brand, even though I think they might think they are. But anyways, the wireless CarPlay was very good, like very low latency. The screen was very high resolution. compared to either of our cars, it looked like retina. I mean, it wasn't literally, but it looked that way. It was very impressive. But anyway, so we rented this minivan for the beach and that worked out really nicely. And we talked about, should we get a minivan or alternatively, should we get a sedan and then just understand we're going to rent minivans to go to the beach every year?

1:56:32And what we concluded was we do use that space in the XC90 often enough to justify something large. But I mean, John, your question is not unreasonable. It really, really, really isn't. But I think ultimately, to come back to what Marco was saying, she had this thing that she loved ripped away from her by incredibly crummy luck. It's not like she got in an accident that was her fault or something like that. She didn't get in an accident at all by any reasonable definition. It's just she had catastrophic engine failure. And so I think I'm pretty convinced, and I think she is too, that an XC90 is the right answer.

1:57:08So we are no longer cross shopping. I forget which one of you is asking that question, but we're no longer cross shopping. We did it just so we could check it off the list. We're not going to do that anymore. But the question I keep asking myself is, I do not want to spend new car money on a new car for her or for anyone, really. It's not her specifically. But the more I think about it, the more I'm wondering if maybe I just need to bite the bullet and find her the exact car that she wants because a she freaking deserves it she's an angel that's that is that is the correct answer and b if i can't put my fingers on if i can't put my hands on a used one that she really really likes then why wouldn't we get a new one now i think i'm i think i'm more on board with this idea than she is she is unquestionably uh the the more frugal of the two of us or the more uh more financially responsible of the two of us so I think it might even if I'm convinced I don't know if I could convince her but it's where I'm starting to lean at this point because I just can't find exactly what we want what about leasing by the way if you want to soften the burden a little bit up front like leasing yeah could be an option and and I would also you know caution you that like I would maybe not want to own a Volvo outside of warranty and leasing fixes that problem as well yeah I'm kind of allergic to leasing but But what I haven't mentioned is both the dealers told us, and I don't remember the specific incentive, but I don't know if it's like a government thing or a Volvo thing.

1:58:38But apparently, if you lease, they're offering like$7 ,500 off right now or something like that, like an absurd amount of money off. $7 ,500 is the EV tax credit thing, isn't it? See, that's what I thought. But I don't know how that would apply to these cars. It wouldn't. Unless it's only – Maybe they're just matching the government thing. That could be. Well, because automakers use lease incentives all the time to boost their quarterly numbers. So take advantage. Very frequently in the auto business, a lease special is often the best deal on a new car that's available anywhere. Because they do kind of bet against their own future selves to boost the short-term gain.

1:59:13So as a customer, if what you want is available with a heavily discounted lease special, that's often worth considering. Yeah. And so even though I find leases to be – how do you pronounce the word? Anathema? Is that right? Is that what I'm looking for? I find it disgusting. to lease. It's just not my jam. I shouldn't say disgusting. It's just not for me. But that being said, if you're offering me$7 ,500 freaking dollars off, I'll carry a lease for at least a few months until I can pay it off or whatever the case may be. That's not how that works. Well, according to Volvo, they said you just got to lease it and last like three months or something like that, and then you can buy yourself out of it or whatever.

1:59:54I've never leased before, so I'd have to talk to them more about it if we get serious. But either way, it's between that and I think most Volvo dealers or maybe Volvo corporate offers like a, oh, you've previously owned a Volvo, we'll give you a thousand bucks to buy another one. Then we're Costco members and they do like negotiations with these different car manufacturers. And so I think we get a thousand dollars off from that. So suddenly we're looking at like$9 ,500 off potentially on a brand new Volvo. And suddenly the$70 ,000 Volvo is$60 ,000, which is quite a bit more than I wanted to spend still.

2:00:29still but nevertheless it's it at least makes this sort of thing approachable or a possibility i guess i should say can i convince you to use the ten thousand dollar savings to get the plug-in hybrid version at least i would really really really consider it because again leaving aside the fact that it makes the car kind of fast what what i cannot stress enough is how appealing it is to me that we could have even though i don't really love plug-in hybrids in general i think in this application it actually is exactly the right answer because we have the infinite range asterisk dagger double dagger for when we go on whatever trip we need to go on but for all the around town piddly stuff she can just go pure electric and it'd be fine yeah plug-in hybrids are very popular for good reason like they're they are extremely compatible with current american usage and priorities and fears like they're very compatible with that like people want to dip their toe in electric.

2:01:26They think for those two trips a year that you take that somehow it's never going to be possible to charge an electric car on the highway. Hi, it's me. They think they need gas. So this is a way for you to try out electric, realize that you like it better, and then for the next vehicle after this that your family purchases you'll go actual electric. The correct step now is to take the plug-in hybrid now and begin that transition in a comfortable way that won't push anybody outside their comfort zone. Now, the problem with the hybrids is they got twice as much crap to go wrong. Like, historically speaking, the reliability of hybrids has not been as good as internal combustion or EVs.

2:02:05They're better now. The newer designs have less stuff in them, but there's no getting around the fact that there's more stuff than an EV and there's more stuff than an internal combustion engine because it's got both. Maybe not a concern. Obviously, you know, if you're not going to own the car that long, you probably don't care and it'll probably be fine but do keep that in mind yeah it's something worth but also keep in mind that for all those electric only local miles that serpentine belt is not going to be turning well it depends on the hybrid drive drivetrains are very different from manufacturer to manufacturer and it's not that's not necessarily the case so i i don't know where the belt is where the engine is facing on these hybrids like there's so many potential options of how to do hybrid drives and many of them uh are very different than the internal combustion uh engines in the same model so you can look into that but honestly i just think that maybe the goal is just to keep the pebbles out like whatever whatever's going on with the belts maybe don't want the pebbles in yeah well we'll work on that for next time um but no this is a not a longitudinal it's a what's the opposite of that a sideways mount what's the word i'm looking for the engines mounted like your cars are transverse thank you yes that's what i was longitudinal yeah yeah uh it's a transverse mounted and engine so the uh the belt is on the passenger side on an american car um but yeah i mean i we'll see what happens i just it's just tough because you know we we try to be financially prudent we try to have an oh crap fund like i think any reasonable adult should at least try to do but you i mean there are not a lot of people who have a$70 ,000 oh crap fund, you know what I mean?

2:03:43And so it's just obviously, you know, we're not going to pay cash for this, but it's just still, it's like, oh, that's so much money that I was not planning on spending. And so that's just... Consider the insurance is giving you a hefty discount. Right, exactly. And so there were all these various incentives and everything. And, you know, owning a car is always a massive money hole. There's no way to own a car that you don't lose money. it's just a question of when you lose the money and sometimes it's not within your control sometimes it is so it's just when and how this money gets burned so it's obviously you couldn't have planned for this but you are car owners and you like giant nice cars and so you're going to burn this money at some point you just have to do it at a time that you weren't necessarily expecting I'm here to go test the robot part, and try to fix the mnie.