632: The Uncertainty Is Gone

28:58There were a huge number of challenges to get to that point. And when I look at the Vision Pro as a product, obviously I think there's a huge amount of that as a failure. But I think most of the failures come down to ecosystem and industrial design choices that probably were not his responsibility or his responsibility alone. And when you look at the technical side of how the Vision Pro behaves on those technical levels, it's rock solid. It's really good at those things. and those things were really hard technical challenges. So when you take somebody with the attitude I think he has, who is broadly intelligent about lots of things the way I think he is, who also seems to dislike Siri the way it is now, I'm very excited about this.

29:47I think this is going to be great. I think he's going to, especially, again, when we heard about Kim Varath and her reputation about being a fixer and being really good. This combination of these two, I think that's going to be great. and as for the move under federigi's organization it is a very good question to wonder like why wasn't the siri division already part of you know under that i think it might have been part of getting giandrea to come to the company was that you won't be under craig you'll report directly to the ceo yada yada because they poached him from google oh that's true yeah hired him away from google so that that could have been a thing but again it's just like do you have what it takes to get products done and shipped within apple and i think that rockwell has shown that he can make that happen you know i don't know how much she knows about ai um but he's a really sharp person i think he's i think he can learn it like whatever whatever he doesn't know about ai i think he'll be fine well i mean jandrea is still there right so now that's that was the question like is he on his way out the door or is he just going to have a more limited role i think he got promoted to the roof like he i think he's hanging up hanging out of there like you know with with johnny i've being in his advisory role you know like i think it's it's more like it's done i thought it might be done done i'm just talking out of my butt yeah that's that's probably the case but still like uh hey you just said say that about phil phil's still there right phil's still on the roof he's still he's testifying in court cases i mean he's still he's still hanging out there he has you know built a little built a little shade shelter he's like you know serving drinks i don't know what he's doing do you remember we saw rockwell was on a talk show a year or two ago do you remember that talk show live yeah yeah yeah so it's like he's not in a complete that was the most longest and most free form conversational i think he might been one of the rotating guests on that one where they like sweat brought in a couple other people but yeah i feel like of all the people involved in any apple drama we actually have some in-person impression of these people yeah and that's why like i i think this change is going to be very good now i still think apple has missed ai in the way that microsoft missed mobile they're already very late and it will hurt them greatly and i think this is not a small miss this is a big miss and they it is a huge problem that that will take them i think a long time to catch up if they ever do and they might not um so he's not starting from position of strength here like when you look at the timelines like i was saying last week how it takes tim cook's apple a long time to course correct when something is not right to the point where we were questioning like what is their feedback mechanism are they getting bad information what's going on like because it does seem like apple does eventually course correct on most of their major shortcomings but it takes them a very long time to do so compared to when you look at most of their companies in the business like apple apple fixes problems very slowly it took them until now to realize that siri was not good enough and turn things around.

32:41That's concerning on a number of levels, but at least they are doing it now. That's what JG's hire was supposed to be about, to turn around Siri. But remember, there was a report in the information about a year or two ago talking about how there was an effort internally to rebuild Siri from scratch, and apparently it lost to Turf War at some point. So they kept going back to, we can keep fixing the old one, just like the butterfly keyboard. We can keep fixing it. We got it this time. We swear if this is what we're seeing is basically another cycle of of that that level of like restart or or refactoring.

33:20It's going to take two more years before we see anything out of this project at least. So that part is concerning in the sense that like did it take them this long to finally realize that old Siri was not going to be patchable to the modern world because it didn't even work in the world it was in. I don't know. They seem very slow to address that kind of large failure. However, if they were going to address that kind of large failure, this is how it would look. So I'm optimistic. Again, I'm pretty confident about Mike Rockwell's general abilities to solve exactly this kind of problem. So I think this could be really good.

33:57We'll see. But I think if it ends up being really good for the product, I think we have to contextualize what that means. because they're so far behind. So what does being really good look like? I think A, it's going to be a long time out before we see any effort and any outcome from this, probably a year or two at least. And B, we have to see how much Apple prioritizes this. They have not done well in the area of Siri and related tasks or AI and its related tasks. They have not done well in that area so far. And it is not because they lack resources. They have all the resources in the world. It's because they don't prioritize them well or don't utilize them well or there's some kind of bottleneck somewhere in their structures or their workflows or whatever.

34:44They can do these things. They've been able to do these things for years. There's no reason why Google or OpenAI or like Amazon or, you know, all these other companies, there's no reason why all those companies were doing things that Apple couldn't do over the last, you know, three to five years. Like, no, Apple could have been doing all the same things. They just didn't. they just failed to see what was going on and failed to get into it or failed to do it in the right way so what this is going to look like over time depends a lot on how much apple realizes they messed up and how much they realize change has to happen i get the feeling mike rockwell is not the kind of guy to bs around about that i think he knows because he seems like he was held back by siri in his previous product the vision pro uh and i think he probably hates it as much as we do which is a good sign.

35:30I do think this also then raises the question of what the heck happened to the vision pro. What happens to it now? Uh, yeah, that's a good question. I mean, it seems like it's already on cruise control anyway, for the most part. Um, I mean, we certainly haven't heard very many rumblings about new hardware and I feel like all the existing rumors, the cheaper one, then the better one, those are still in process. Then there's a vision. OS 3.0 is supposed to be a big change. Like, I feel like that is that that train is continuing along and I don't think it needs someone driving it the way the initial one needed someone driving it just to get it out the door um again is it on the right course i don't know is that 1500 one and then the more expensive one are those the right products to be making what about all the various glasses projects some of which have been canceled that's still an open question but i see nothing that indicates that the vision pro is just not going to continue the way it's currently continuing which is extremely slowly yeah i mean probably but i don't know like i i think having having the vision pro chief be reassigned and having kind of nobody maybe assigned to his previous role paul mead is taking over and also vision vision os goes under craig which is more or less like it graduating to be in with the rest of the family you know yeah i i i to me this is very good news for all of apple's products except the Vision Pro where it's questionable and probably not good.

36:52It is neutral, I feel like, for Vision Pro. It's not going to benefit it, but I don't think it should hurt it that much given the plan. It's not going to hurt Apple's rumored existing plans. What we know of Apple's plans seem like they will continue fine with this change and not be hampered by it. Are Apple's existing plans the right thing to do for Vision Pro? That is a good question, but I don't think this change... Certainly, we're not hearing the story of like, you know what, Vision Pro needs all-new leadership because we were going in the wrong direction. that we don't hear happening. I do echo your optimism though, Marco, that I think this is on the whole and potentially for literally everything, a good thing.

37:27You know, if Siri really does get better and yes, I mean, it may not get better for a year or two, but if it does get better, that's wonderful because how many years have all of us, and I don't just mean the three of us, I mean all of us, how many years have we been whining about how bad Siri is? And I would love for it to be better. And if Siri's better, it makes pretty much every one of Apple's products better. And, you know, I agree with you as well, John, that being neutral for the Vision Pro, I think is fine. And that seems to be mostly cruising along anyway with no real urgency, which for better and for worse.

38:02Again, maybe the wrong move, but that's the way it's been going. So no change there. Yeah, absolutely. But the key is I think this is a good sign. And I don't think we didn't talk as much about it because we don't know her really at all. but you know kim varath really is supposed to be really freaking good and so if she and rockwell who from what you know marco was saying you know is kind of a don't take any names kick butt kind of person but it sounds like the both of them are that could be a really great way to to write this ship so i'm i'm excited uh the good news hasn't stopped there though uh john your long national nightmare is really for really for real this time i swear over there is one more story in the verge which looks exactly like the story they ran before, which is, hey, threads now lets you choose your default feed.

38:48No, for everybody really this time. And as far as I can tell, I think that is actually true. The places where I got it and then lost it. Now I've got it back again and it hasn't gone away. So, yeah, I don't know what the timeline is in this, but maybe like 120 days or whatever, since it was announced as being available in a limited capacity. That's too long for a rollout threads. I don't know what you're doing. Anyway, just wanted to follow up on that if you want to choose the uh your threads view to default to the one that shows your timeline of people you follow you can do that through a slightly byzantine thing of long pressing on the following tab and then doing edit feeds or something and then grabbing the little gripper thing and dragging the feed you want to be the default to the top not obvious at all which i think is part of the rollout of this feature is like can we make it so obscure that most people can't figure it out and they've apparently felt safe doing that because they want you to default to the algorithmic feed so they can feed your engagement muscles or whatever.

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41:40Okay, so we have some iPhone 16e or 16e follow up that we've been meaning to get to for the last few weeks. And we just have had other more pressing things that have bumped this off the list. This almost became an overtime topic, because if you recall, That's kind of what overtime is for, but I think we can plow through it real quick. John, can you put on your micro machines, man's voice and take care of this for us, please? Actually, the first item is for the, uh, the rumored phones that are, um, this should have been down in the 17th section, but I think we can put it up here as well. Um, some people wrote in for reasons why they might not arrange, rearrange the cameras on the new phones that are coming out, like basically leaving the three cameras on like they are on the pro phones, leaving them in the same place, despite the fact that they're extending the island to be huge on top of everything uh and one of the reasons was uh third-party lens attachments systems if someone makes an attachment thing they have to make an all new one for the phone i'm not sure i buy that one apple doesn't care if they break your stuff from phone to phone they'll just break it yeah um but you know hey maybe there is some influence in there of like not changing it too radically to help them out but uh the uh slightly better reason is to minimize view changes when you're changing lenses this kind of runs counter to the spatial video because for spatial video we're like wouldn't it be great if the lenses were farther away from each other it would be better for spatial video but it would probably be worse for when you change from like the 1x to the 2x to the 4x to the like they want zoom to be smooth and yeah they do this now like the you know smoothly blending between the different views of the cameras to make it look like it's just one camera uh but obviously it's not the farther you away you make the lenses from each other the harder it is to do that because when you switch to the camera that's on the other side of the phone it necessarily has a different angle on the thing that you're viewing and so that transition could be more jarring maybe maybe that's the way it is i mean you see a lot of cameras with uh a lot of phones with cameras in the back that are not in a triangle arrangement that are like three top to bottom like a stoplight or across the back of the phone um but it seems like apple doesn't want to do that anyway back to the 16e sorry for the slightly rearranged topic uh when the 16th iphone 16e came out mkbhd put out a video he is not a fan of the phone he introduced the video with this little uh fictional skit of uh as he described world's most honest salesman versus the buyer trying to get recommended the iphone 16e so as a customer he plays both parts he's both the salesman and the customer a customer coming in and saying i want a phone but i want x and y and z and basically he's trying to say what would a customer have to say for an honest salesman to say you know what the phone for you is the iphone 16e and the list of things that you would have to say to make that true are absurd but mostly only because mkbhd considers one of your options to be a refurbished iphone 15 pro because we'll watch the video especially it's just the intro part like you know how specific would you have to be why would you ever buy a 16e and not one of the many other phones that are offered.

44:39The 15 Pro is basically better than the 16e in every way, including price. But here's the thing. You might not be able to get a refurbished 15 Pro. How many are available? Are they available in your area at all? How long will they be available? So it's, I think it's kind of unfair to compare a refurb 15 Pro versus a new 16e. That said, it's kind of on Apple for saying, okay, well, if the 15 Pro really is better than 16e, why didn't you just keep selling the 15 pro at a lower price and that's not a thing that apple does they don't really keep selling the pro phones year after year anyway the this video we'll put in the show notes does make a pretty compelling case that the 16e is not really a price performance champion it's missing a bunch of weird features uh as we said when we talked about it but it does look really nice from the back it does indeed all right and then uh do we want to talk about teardowns yeah um these are a little bit old at this point but they opened up the 16e to see what it's looking like inside there um and the battery is about 12 bigger compared to the 16 uh if you look at the inside of the phone you'll see that the battery is bigger mostly the dimension you notice is mostly how tall it is because there is just one camera up there and the place where the other camera was especially the camera below it that's all filled with battery now uh thickness wise like oh they made the battery thicker and not having mag safe help with that that doesn't seem to be an issue at all in fact if you look at like one of these it's not x-ray but like some some kind of like thing that lets you see the internal components of the phone you can see a faint ring of where the mag safe uh magnets would have been i don't know if that means that's actually there's actually a channel car for them or there's just that could just be like the chi coil right because it still has wireless charging it just doesn't have magnets maybe but i assume that's just the chi coil i don't know it's difficult like it's difficult to tell it's not like you open it up and there's a place where the magnets go but the point is the magnets are not actually that thick and so if you're thinking that the 16e has a bigger battery because it has extra thickness to put the battery in that's if that is true is dwarfed by the actual like square centimeters of additional battery you get by not having those other cameras a single camera on the 16a is not just a cost savings it gives you more room for battery and it's a stark contrast if you look like the 15 or uh any other even just the 15 with just the two cameras there's just so much more room for battery when you just have one camera hopefully someday we'll get to a point where we can just have one really good camera on the back of the phone instead of you know three or four or five of them but uh that way seems a long way off and also if you want to look at the teardown you can see what the c1 looks like uh and it's actually pretty big so uh this is a pretty significant chip someday some portions of this may move into the soc but if you look at the size of the c1 chip right now you can see that uh some portion of it is probably still going to be external because it's pretty darn big 17e there's a post on nine to five mac that reads uh fixed focus digital one of the first sources of the iPhone 16e name ahead of Apple's announcement, recently posted this on Weibo.

47:47E-model is likely to be available in the next generation. At present, a new project code has been seen, which is suspected to be the 17e. Barest of slim rumors, but as we discussed in the past shows, does the fact that this is called the 16e and not the SE whatever mean that there'll be a 17e? People want there to be, and they see a model out there. that with a code name and they're going to say maybe this will be the 17e because what else would it be like if the rumor is for a phone that is clearly not uh the plain 17 or the 17 pro there's another model out there with another code name uh and it's not the slim like maybe it's a 17e i think that would be a wise thing for apple to do to revise the cheap iphone every year especially since i think they made a lot of bad choices with the 16e and 17e will give them another shot but stay tuned.

48:38Yeah, I think it's really, it's interesting to think about like, you know, the SE line was always like, here's a bunch of old parts on the outside inside a new chip upgraded every two to three years, basically. I think what we've seen so far with most of the way Apple addresses the lower price market is just keeping around old guts or old models. And in this case, they're not doing that. Like in this case, like they really may, I mean, they're still doing like last year's phone as as a cheaper option from the from the flagships but in this case they really did make like a cheap phone from scratch that does not really have a lot in common with an older model that they just picked from like in this case they didn't need to worry about like maintaining the home button maintaining face or touch id like mean you know like they they went all in with the modern stuff but they made a custom phone that was explicitly targeting inexpensive you know stuff here um but it's it's not like any of the others it isn't it isn't like just you know a three or four year old model and then adopted the the new better like easier to access better service and the better service case that they innovated in like the 14 or whatever so unlike the other ones where they did like oh it's like the old case but with new guts in it one of the weaknesses of that is like everything that you've improved about the case you don't get that in the cheap phone it's like oh the cheap phone always gets a crappy old case but this case is like a hybrid of all the best ideas we had about how to make this more easily repairable and easy to manufacture and so on and so forth with a bunch of stuff removed to save cost and a mixture of some different parts that we're trying to like it's it gives them a platform to try to make a phone that is modern like that doesn't like throw away all the stuff that they've learned over the past several years but also is cheaper because it is essentially decontented i just think they did the decontenting a little bit wrong this time sure but look at how this will play out then in the future.

50:32So, and first of all, I think, you know, a way to look at this, people were rumoring it and kind of framing it as this is the replacement for the iPhone SE. And I think that's not quite right. I think what really happened is they discontinued the iPhone SE and introduced a new line. And I know that's, you could say, oh, that's just naming, that's marketing, whatever. But when you look at the roles they filled, the iPhone SE was filling two roles. It was fulfilling the less price role, but also people who wanted to hold on to the old style of phone for whatever reason. Maybe they hated Face ID.

51:08Maybe they didn't want to change from the home button. Whatever it is, it was serving both of those roles. The new one throws away the latter and is only serving the price role. So what I think will happen now, if these rumors are correct that there's going to be a 17e, which will probably be fairly soon after the 17 is launched, maybe it'll be another one of these springtime things. Then if you think about them keeping this one around, they have right now – so where will we be a year from now? I think it'll be, we'll have the 17 and then we'll have the 16 for, you know, 100 bucks less. The 17E for this price, 600 bucks.

51:48And then the 16E kept around for 100 bucks less at 500 bucks. I don't like that. I bet that's where we are headed. where I bet the E line sticks around the same way the other lines do where you keep last year's model around for$100 less and maybe in certain more price-sensitive markets like India or other places, maybe you also keep the N-2 year around because that's what they do. Right now, we're on the 16 phones. They sell the iPhone 15 directly from Apple. In some markets, they would still sell the N-2. I don't know if they are they still doing this where like is the 14 still for sale in some markets?

52:31We were just talking about how the M2 MacBook Air is still for sale in some markets, not in the U.S., but somewhere it is. Right. I mean, the M1 MacBook Air is still for sale in Walmart in the U.S. The M1 is the Walmart thing. But setting the Walmart thing aside, the fact that they basically stopped selling the M2 MacBook Air except in certain places. Right. So I can see this playing out similarly where they won't sell the iPhone 14 right now from Apple, but I bet they're still selling it in certain markets. I bet the E line will work the same way where Apple in the US and certain other high-profile markets will sell 17E and 16E for$100 less next year.

53:08but then in some markets the year after that they'll still be selling the 16e as the as like the hundred bucks less than that even when we when we have an 18e and a 17e from apple and i think that would be a fairly smart thing to do because when you look at the 16e like as much as you hate the compromises they make they did make compromises that keep the price down and that's what they need not that much it did get a lot more expensive than the se i if i had to vote i would say do not continue selling 16e, replace it with a 17e, but we'll see what they do. We'll see. You want to make a$1 bet? I'm not predicting.

53:42I'm prescribing. I'm saying Apple should not do this. I agree that it definitely seems like something that Tim Cook would do. Absolutely. I think they should not do it. But they probably will. We'll see. All right. And then finally, the iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max, reading from MacRubers, according to the latest note from Jeff Poo of GFHK Tech Research, both the 17 Pro and Pro Max will feature 12 gigs of RAM. I love it. Love it. Keep adding more RAM. You got to run those bigger local models that don't do anything useful yet, but someday they might. So keep adding RAM to our phones. Excellent. All right.

54:16Breaking-ish news. I believe it was yesterday. As we record, WWDC 2025 has been announced. It is June 9th through June 13th. It is going to have a one-day thing at Apple Park like it has since almost, if not every year since the pandemic. And that's basically the story so far. Well, the real story is their laser-like precision at exactly nailing the weeks that both of my children graduated from high school. Thanks a lot for that, Apple. When my son graduated from high school, you put WWDC at the same week. Now my daughter is graduating from high school. Boom. This is not great for me. Even though her graduation is slightly later in the week, her prom is on Tuesday.

55:00WWDC is on Monday. the odds of me going to this even if i am invited are not looking great there are discussions happening amongst the family but time wise it may not make sense i am disappointed but that's just me personally bad luck the real story though is uh we got to look at the graphic for the wdc announcement and what is featured in the graphic besides the weird uh conjoined uh double w's and a rainbow tinted dc a frosted glass kind of 25 we do this every year there have been years where there's been like a bunch of remember they did like uh one of the san jose years they did a bunch of geometric shapes uh poking out of like a field like uh cylinders and squares and stuff was like is this a sign of what the new ui's gonna like it was not it was not a sign of the new ui at all it was just a cool looking graphic but this year with all the rumors and the various rumor battles about saying that john prosser's video showing the vision pro like os for ios 19 is not really what it looks like german's saying it actually looks a little bit different and then apple puts this out with a frosted glass look for the 25 that looks so good you could lick it but it's also not exactly the same as vision pro but it's also not exactly the same as the invites app but it's also not the same as the the mock-up of the phone app Thank you.

56:16who knows is apple just teasing us or are we going to be seeing a bunch of frosted glass UI in iOS 19 and mac os 16 and ipad os 19 and vision os 3 anyway we'll see we'll see what we get uh i still do believe that they are going to launch a big redesign across all their os's i assume it's happening this year although i wouldn't guarantee that uh but yeah if there was no rumors of like an os spanning redesign we wouldn't be reading that into this we'd just be like oh look it's nice it's frosted glass because we wouldn't be thinking hey what's the new look going to be for all of Apple's major OSes, but we are thinking that now.

56:54So everything we see is like, is this it? Especially since it aligns somewhat with the rumors and a little bit with the invites app and a little bit with the phone things. I do have to say, I like this frosted glass. I don't know if I would like a UI made out of it, but I think it looks nice for the letters 25 and the logo. I mean, I think I said this last week that when I use the vision pro, it feels like the future, not only because of the hardware, but also because of the software. And so part of that is the look and feel. And if we can get a look and feel that feels like that on iOS, iPadOS, macOS, etc., I think that could be really fun.

57:32That being said, and again, I think I'm regurgitating what was discussed last week, a lot of what feels so, or a lot of the affordances that feel so fun and new on Vision Pro relate heavily to depth. And there is, at least on macOS, for example, there is some modicum of depth, but nothing like a world that is 3D, right? And so I don't know how much it would make sense. But I mean, look at the Invites app on iOS. Like, that has a very strong feeling of the Vision Pro while still not really having too much depth. depth and i think that's a good thing i may have come across as a bad thing but it's actually a good thing i think it looks nice there's a lot of translucency there's a touch of depth there and it just generally feels very vision proy see also the sports app which is very similar if i'm not mistaken i haven't looked at the sports app in a couple of months now yeah you know it's a a lot of i don't even know how to put my finger on it i don't know the vocabulary for it but it's It just has a very similar feel to Vision OS, where Vision OS is much heavier on depth and very heavy on translucency.

58:41This is fairly heavy on translucency, but not as heavy on depth. But it looks good. I'm hopeful. I have tentatively booked lodging, which unfortunately is getting ever more expensive, and flights. I am hopeful that the three of us will get a press pass, and I'm hopeful that all three of us can make it out there and see what happens. But we'll see. If I don't end up with a press pass, I probably won't bother making the trip, and I presume, Marco, you feel the same way. This is also laser-focused on ruining or improving your birthday, depending on how you look at it every single year. So this is over Marco's birthday week as always.

59:22Well, no, not as always. As sometimes. My birthday is June 11th. Usually WBC was before my birthday. I don't know if I'm going to go this year. I think there's a combination of, you know, we'll see how busy I am with the restaurant. Frankly, I don't think I'm going to be too busy with the restaurant to go. I think I can go just fine. But first of all, I don't want to ruin my birthday by flying through it. and I'd rather be with my family and celebrate my birthday like in my favorite restaurant which I now own and you know like you know I want to I want to you know have a nice family day but also I don't know how much I need to be there as I was discussing on under the radar a couple episodes ago you know my relationship with Apple I think is evolving in my own mind and I'm realizing that But basically, they care a lot less about me than I care about them.

1:00:17And that's not really healthy for me. There's some question of whether us going is kind of carrying water for them in a way that they might not do for us. As press, I mean. As developers, if you're a developer and you want to go and have fun at the events, go and have fun at the events. It is really fun. It is really cool to see Apple Park. It's really cool to be there. It's a cool experience. I think from a press side, I'm needing a little bit of distance. As I mentioned before, I still love Apple's products and a lot of what they do as a company. And I still love computers, and they still make the best computers.

1:00:53And I still love writing software, and I can write my best software using their tools and their platform. And I love Overcast, and Overcast is an iOS app and always will be an iOS app and will always probably only be an iOS app. so like i'm i'm not like leaving the ecosystem but i do think i want to create a little bit more distance between me and them because certainly they have done their best to create that distance from their end and the idea of going out there and clapping for tim cook right now is not something that really appeals to me um and you know applauding you know this very corporate performance.

1:01:33I don't know. I think I've done a lot of it and I could use some distance from it. So I think I'm going to take this year off probably, but we'll see. I feel like it's always a fun time when I go. And some of that is because I know a lot of my friends that I don't have an excuse to see many other times during the year, including the two of you. Oftentimes we'll all end up there together. But I will echo what Marco said. If you have the ability to get to California slash get to the United States, which I know is troubling for a lot of people at the moment. If you have the ability to get there safely and, you know, experience the event, it is neat to experience.

1:02:12Again, I would love to be able to be there to cover it from a press perspective, but I don't disagree with what you're saying, Marco. I mean, I think if, if it's healthier for you to not go, I think that makes perfect sense. And John, obviously as much as I, I would never want to see you uncomfortable. I can only imagine how uncomfortable a red-eye home would be after a very long day. It's not even that. It's just like if anything goes wrong with flights, which is a thing that's known to happen, I can end up missing my daughter's senior prom. That's not a thing I want to do. Yeah, I get that. Yeah, I certainly, John, if I was in that position, I wouldn't do it.

1:02:48To me, that's not worth it. I think I agree. Even though I know this is the only chance I ever get to see you ever during the year because you refuse to leave your house ever, ever, ever, ever other than this. It's always next year. And then someday my kids are gone. Maybe we'll all get together. Yeah. I'll believe when I see it. But anyway. With no children. So get yours to grow up fast. Yeah. But nevertheless, you know, I am enthusiastic about the idea of going because my situation affords it. I am American and I, for now, feel like I can travel domestically okay. So if I am offered a pass, I will probably go.

1:03:23But if not, I don't know. We'll see what happens. But yeah, if you have the ability, like I said, I definitely encourage it. And you can sign up to get a free pass as a developer on their website. So you can check that out. All right. There's been a lot of news from the EU. It's funny because a lot of what they've been saying recently is like, ah, it's fine. You know, the browser choice screen recently, they were like, yeah, you're fine, whatever. It's good. You're fine because Apple made changes in response to things they complained about, to be clear. True. True, but the way the prior EU administration, you know, for whatever this group is, seemed to be hell-bent on sticking it to Apple no matter what.

1:04:01And for better and for worse, it seems like now, in a lot of ways, this administration is not as concerned with that. Well, I think they're equally concerned. They're just more chill about saying mean things in public about them. There is the rumor that actually a big giant fine is coming down the line for them and for Meta. I don't know if the meta one has already actually landed, but like, I think like there will be findings that are not in Apple's favors and there will be fines that are issued. And that is going to happen without the previous head of this effort saying mean things about Apple all the time.

1:04:29So I think Apple cares less about the mean things said about them and much more about the potential for very large fines. So stay tuned. Yeah. So the European Commission has said, and I'm reading from Mac rumors now, they've announced a long list of changes that Apple is legally required to implement in future iOS 19 and iOS 20 updates. The announcement clarifies interoperability requirements that Apple is required to adhere to in the EU under the Digital Markets Act, which has been fully enforced since March 2024. The changes will further open up the iPhone and its technologies to competing companies and devices.

1:05:01Some examples. Third-party smartwatches must be able to display and interact with iOS notifications by the end of 2025, which likely means iOS 19.2 or earlier. Apple must make its automatic audio switching feature available to third-party headphones by June 1, 2026, which likely means iOS 19.4 or earlier. This is the feature that allows most AirPods and select Beats to automatically switch connections between Apple devices such as Mac and iPhone. This is Marco's favorite thing in the whole wide world. This all sounds like a bunch of BS from the EU. Like, I think I fall mostly on, like, the Gruber POV on this one of, like, this is pretty ridiculous, largely.

1:05:44Wait, we got two more items, so you'll hear a few more of them and we'll discuss. Apple must make changes to iOS to allow for third parties to offer equivalent airdrop alternatives by June 1, 2026. Apple must make changes to iOS that allow for third parties to offer equivalent airplay alternatives by iOS 20 or the end of 2026. iOS 20 is expected to be released to the general public in September of 2026. The European Commission says, as always, these decisions fully respect Apple's rights of defense and remain subject to independent judicial scrutiny. Now, if you heard of that big list and you're like, all right, but this is just like giving years.

1:06:18And, you know, the Mac rumors are saying it wouldn't mean this iOS version of this iOS version. Right. but we will link to a page on the EU's website about the Digital Markets Act and you will see on their own web pages they have like a bulleted list of all the things that they're talking about and they have requirements for them and they say you need to do this in iOS 19 you need to do this but in time for iOS 20 or they do stuff like in iOS 20 and in any case by the end of 2026 so they're hedging their bets by saying well we're not just going to say iOS 20 because then Apple never rolls out ios 20 and they just go to decimal points or something and just never get to 20 so there are year boundaries on them but it is quite an interesting phenomenon to see a regulatory body putting in the names of in the apple world we've been so trained to say ios 20 that's not a thing that even exists what are you talking about there is no ios 20 there is no ios 19 i don't know what you're talking about those aren't real products but the eu is like no we all know the next ios will be the current ios with the number and currently by one and so we're going to put in our requirements you've got to do this on ios 19 which is probably pretty wrong-headed i mean that's why they're putting year dates on these things to say end of 2025 end of 2026 regardless of what os is really releases by the end of this year you need to do x by the end of this year you need to do y but this is just this type of uh requirements and timelines are a thing that no project manager whatever put out i'm going to lay out your next two years of features for all your os's with with deadlines on them go like even the people inside the company who know everything the company is going to be doing and all the resources involved and all the things like they couldn't make a plan this far out this many years out with this specificity and this kind of accuracy and yet here's a regulatory body saying i've just decided a bunch of your most important features for your next two years of rs releases with year deadlines uh now go yeah i mean this to me i mean look you listeners know i am happy to criticize apple for their long-term poor strategy of inviting regulation by blatantly anti-competitive behavior like they they have brought this on themselves A hundred percent.

1:08:35And that goes right to Tim Cook's feet. By doing that, Apple was basically overplaying its hand and inviting a hammer to come down on them. I think the EU is now making a very similar strategic error on their end. I think the EU is overplaying their hand and inviting a lot of challenges and friction and pushback. they even say like at the end there they say about like you know judicial interpretation like i think they are inviting apple to break the law sue them and and possibly even also involve some you know international trade war style diplomacy like there's going to be a lot of pushback against this from apple and well before we even get to the pushback though let's just imagine this hypothetical say apple desperately wants to do everything on this list not because the eu told them to but because apple wants to do it they they think it's important for the company for apple to do all these things i still think apple couldn't do it you know what i mean like say they wanted to do it it's the the thing they want the most no forget about ai they don't care about they want to do the things on this list according to these timelines i'm not sure they could it's an ambitious list of pretty big changes that involve third-party interfaces to their major os's that do really important things that have never been opened up to third parties let's say apple wanted to do this and put all of its effort in like that that's the that is the first and most important overreach before we get to the fact that apple doesn't want to do this and is going to fight them and so on and so forth i don't think it's plausible given the feature sets and timelines.

1:10:22Oh, yeah, but I mean, there's a lot of problems with this. I mean, but I think what it ultimately comes down to is the problem of a company like Apple inviting regulation by blatant anti-competitive behavior is that you get governments and regulators like doing things like this, that just from a technical or realistic product perspective are just bad ideas or are impractical or impossible. You know, see also whenever there's a threat to end-to-end encryption and people want to build in like back doors only for the good guys. And, you know, this isn't as bad as that. These are all plausible things.

1:11:03It's just the timelines that are associated with them are not necessarily plausible. It isn't as bad as that. However, you run the same risk. Like when technology, when the tech business gets looked at by the government, typically the people in the government who are looking at it don't have the expertise that they really need to make detailed regulations like that that run into problems like oh that's technically impossible or that's a really bad idea for other reasons or that would have all these different effects that you don't understand. So for Apple to have been so anti-competitive for so long this is the kind of risk they were running that like yeah the EU is not happy to just go after the app store now they're going after vertical integration of all kinds like that's that's significant and that could be very damaging and it is apple's fault that they started on this path because it was apple's behavior that invited it however this is a bad regulation now like that like there were parts of the original dma i think that were pretty rough this this uh you know extended version of it that the director's cut i guess uh or this this should have been deleted scenes like this is pretty rough but uh this version of it is the eu you know going even further with bad ideas that are i i think they come from a good hearted place i see what they're going for this is not a good idea and this is not a good way to go about it and apple will probably retaliate hard enough and maybe you know maybe involving you know us to eu diplomacy as well i think the result of this will be they will have like the eu will get so much of a challenge on this that i think the other parts of the dma like the alternative app stores and payment processing rules are at risk of being challenged and overturned into oblivion because of this part like they the the eu has now pushed too far they are inviting way more for way more pushback and And that puts at risk the other parts that we actually would probably want to keep.

1:13:12So the EU is making a big error here. I think Apple is about to get fined for not complying with the other parts. I think that's what's going to happen. But, you know, the other things that they're supposedly doing with the alternative app stores on term payment things, that's the rumor is that the EU is about to levy huge fines. They said, we've set out these requirements. You said you did them. We disagreed. We fought about it. And we studied it. And in the end, we've decided, nope, you didn't actually do it. Here's your fine. that's not going to help any of the negotiations say oh by the way we are fining you for x billion dollars but also let's just talk about these things um i i i disagree that these bad ideas i think most of these ideas are good but you can't just ask for all of them all at once and put timelines on all of them and expect you're going to get anything like that's not a winning formula like apple opening up its platform to third-party competition that's the whole point like there's there's not enough competition in this market only apple can make a watch that works with the iphone the eu thinks it's not fair not because no one can ever make a phone platform that only works with its own watch sure feel free but once you reach a certain size and become a quote-unquote gatekeeper like this is the determination that the eu has made every time gruber writes about this he this idea cannot penetrate into his into a place in his mind where he will agree with it but he'll say like what do you say they're going to making a bunch of rules that apple has to follow but its competitors don't yes that's exactly what they're doing the whole point is there are rules that apple has to follow and other people don't and it's like it's always brought out as like the hypocrisy of this like that is literally the basis of their of their decisions there are gatekeepers and those people and those companies have different rules because of whatever now you can disagree and say okay well i don't agree that they should be classified as gatekeeper i don't agree that whatever but the whole point is that's the premise of these regulations it's not like can you believe they made rules that only apple and and google and meta have to follow yeah i can believe it because we've known from day one they're like we think these companies require special regulations that other people don't so you could be on board with that or not but anyway like the opening up of things that only apple has been allowed to do to third parties i'm generally in support of that but as we all know every time apple has done that it is difficult time consuming and this is when apple wants to do it when apple decides we are we've had we've had this internally for years and now we're going to go up to third parties it is always painful and difficult things like this are which is why you have to be judicious about them you can't say like you know what every single thing on the ios platform needs to be open to third parties that's not technically sensible all right so let's come up with a short list and let's prioritize them a prioritized list wouldn't be this long first of all and it would be sorted and not unordered and second of all you can't just put out your wish list and say and here's when we want all of them that is not going to happen like again if apple wanted to do it they couldn't and they don't want to do it believe me right they really don't there's no way like this so regulation like that's the problem with regulations if you let it go so far that you have this totally closed ecosystem you've got to open it up slowly like what they were doing before is like look the app store that's a business thing this thing we can see apple kind of uh you know chose to do a huge amount of implementation work to make it as difficult as possible which is why they're about to be sued for billions of dollars whatever right but like you can see that changing and the timelines they had for the dma seemed to be reasonableish they were reasonable enough that apple had enough time to make all these frameworks and all this stuff that makes it so much harder for third parties to do everything right but but this this is just this is just a laundry like you can imagine this on like a whiteboard like again if apple wanted to do this at like a top 100 day of like this is our 10-year plan for our platforms because we think we need to open it up and we're But like you can't just ask for it all at once and put it on a two year timeline.

1:16:52So I don't know how that's going to work out because like the judicial scrutiny and blah, blah, blah. It's all happening within the EU. Like there is no guarantee any of that will go Apple's way. So let's say they decide, you know what, this is what we're going to do. And Apple challenged it. But upon review, we've said, you know what, actually, we're right. And you're wrong, Apple. This is what you have to do. You can you can make laws asking for Apple to make a rocket go to the moon. Doesn't mean it's going to happen. so what happens when this becomes the if this becomes the law of the land and these deadlines start rolling around of course apple's going to be like well we haven't had time to do it and it's blah blah but they in this case i know it's hard to believe them they won't be lying like you can't this is too much work in too little time so they have all the money in the world like you can't make new engineers pop out like you can't hire them fast enough to do this right and again this would be assuming that they really wanted to which they absolutely don't so i think i like marco i think the eu's heart is in the right place but i think they have overreached this not because they're like doing something that's not in their power but because they're asking for essentially the impossible timeline wise the impossible it is technically possible to do all of this but it's going to take time and it's best not to rush apple because if they rush it you get lousy miracles as they say casey anybody nothing nope got nothing it's princess bride man It's a really good movie.

1:18:12Maybe we should do that for a movie club. Oh, I haven't seen that in 30 years. And Marco hasn't seen it at all. I did see it 30 years ago. But you know what? The problem with that movie is that I saw it with my high school friends who had all seen it a thousand times before I did. And so the whole time they were all like repeating the lines or like saying them with the characters and laughing. And like that's a terrible way to experience a movie for the first time when you are the one person in the room who hasn't seen it. everyone else has seen it a thousand times and you're hearing your friends badly imitate the lines instead of hearing the actors deliver them like that's you know sorry guys that was a bad way to experience that movie anyway it was a good movie and there's a line about don't rush your miracle man you get credit miracles yeah so don't rush it like you can't you can't hurry love casey anybody you just have to wait hey not a movie he gets it it's music so i so i don't know how this is going to resolve itself like if i if i were the eu i would pick like the one or two most important ones of these and put extremely generous timelines on them because honestly like the app store was kind of the big one in terms of competitiveness on the platform and the thing they control and every other aspect of this like take your time do it right let let them you know like first of all get apple to comply with the one thing you did already do which they still haven't done like that he was seemingly about to declare that the previous regulations they had after years of trying out they have apple has not complied with them so maybe don't get ahead of yourself by taking a bunch of new ones out and then yeah don't make it just like a giant wish list of like we wish all this would happen and we wish it would all happen within one or two years oh that's great but i don't see that happening so this is just it's like a slow motion train wreck we see it coming we'd like this is not going to end well for anybody.

1:19:56And as Marco said, it's Apple's fault for inviting all this regulation. And from my perspective, it's the EU's fault for asking for unrealistic things, not because they are the wrong things to ask for or because they can't be done, but because you will find more success if you have some alignment between your desires and what is practically possible. But I don't think the EU cares that much what's practically possible. I mean, they're going to care when there's no compliance. We put in these regulations and you didn't do it. And Apple's going to say, well, we couldn't do it because there wasn't enough time.

1:20:27And the EU's going to be like, oh, that's not true. You've got all this money. And it's like, I'm here to defend Apple to say, even if Apple wanted to do this, I don't think they could. But again, I don't think the EU views that as a bug. I think that's a feature. So then they get paid a whole pile of money. No, they're not just trying to extort Apple. That's not their, that's not their whole thing. That is what it, that is kind of the implication of what I was saying. That's not what I was trying to say. My point is just that I don't think the EU gives a crap whether or not Apple can make this happen in those timelines.

1:20:57I think it's more like what Marco said. They're just not equipped to know what is and isn't possible. They don't have the technical knowledge base. Well, that is very true. Right? And so they think this all seems reasonable for the biggest company in the world. Not understanding that it's not like that these things themselves are, you know, again, it's technically impossible. They can't do it. it's that opening up any major component even when apple really wants to do it is difficult because you're going from a thing that you were just using internally it could change whoever you wanted to an api that you have to support forever and like i said when apple wants to do that they have difficulty like third-party keyboards what we didn't think they would ever do and third how buggy were third-party keyboards for like the first two years that's a thing they wanted to do that no one forced them to do that is very small compared to like allowing airdrop alternatives or like allowing other watches to go like it is so narrowly focused focused third-party software keyboards they apple the large very successful company had difficulty rolling that out in a way that wasn't a bug fest and some would argue today that there are still problems with that system and that is so much smaller than everything's being asked about here and you know some of these things touch on things that are equally or even more sensitive to security in terms of like you know wireless communications and communications with third-party devices and background execution and like there's all sorts of things here that to to open them up to third parties at all in a way that is not filled with bugs and damaging to to users and to everybody involved is difficult and unless let's let's be you know another thing that you and I might not realize is this is not Apple's strength Apple is good at certain things opening up formerly private APIs to third-party access has historically not been a thing that Apple is particularly good at, again, even when they want to do it.

1:22:53That's not the EU's fault, I get it, but like, if you just erased all the dates on these and had it as like a staggered timeline, this is going to be the next decade's worth of work or whatever, Apple would hate it just as much, but at least I'd feel like, all right, there's a chance that an Apple that is acting in good faith could comply with this and i look at this and i think an apple acting could in good faith is set up for failure and believe me apple will not be acting in good faith not even close and and again and i think this part too like you can look at all like again i think the eu's strategy here is wrong because they they are risking the win on the app store payment stuff to do a lot of other stuff that i think is much more challengeable and they're coming from a weaker position on a lot of it i don't think they've got that win yet they're risking what win they don't haven't have that win yet they're about to fine them for not getting that win so they have a they have partial compliance something did happen but it's like unsatisfying to most involved right but but like i i think what's going to happen is they're going to get a much larger pushback with this and we are going to lose the payment thing i mean i don't see how we could lose it if it's still the law of the land i mean as we talked about with the with the uk thing which by the way is still totally up in the air and we have no idea what's going on because secret courts or whatever but anyway um it's just it just seems like it's running headlong to apple pulls out of the eu because if the eu insists that these are the laws and apple does not comply with them either because they can't or they at least claim they can't then we're at an impasse there Apple's not going to endure like fines equal to some huge percentage of its global revenue or whatever.

1:24:36And so how does this resolve? This resolves by Apple no longer you're selling products in the EU. Like that's the doomsday scenario for everyone involved. Apple doesn't want that. The EU shouldn't want that. And yet both of them seem to be headed directly for that through their actions during this conflict. I agree with that very much. But I think what I keep coming back to is I don't think the EU's request – the timeline, yeah, the timeline is a bit absurd. And I think Marco's probably right that that probably comes from ignorance because every politician is ignorant about this stuff. American ones, European ones, it doesn't matter.

1:25:12All of them are. Um, but I, I, I feel like the EU today feels like they're, they're, they're in the driver's seat. And what is Apple really going to do? They're never going to pull out of the EU. I actually think they would, but from the EU's perspective, they're never going to pull out of the EU and we're fighting for our citizens, which is what that organization is literally supposed to do. They're fighting for their citizens. And I mean, I don't know that these are the exact things that I would hang my hat on personally, but I don't think they're unreasonable requests. And I feel like from the EU's perspective, they're doing everything they're supposed to do.

1:25:54And I kind of agree with them. and you know what is is apple really going to pull out of the eu well i don't know i mean i think they might but is that is that a bad thing from the from these politicians perspective look we chased the the big scary shark out of our waters and that's that's a win for us isn't it well i mean they're constituents though like if you look at this list you can squint and see there was some european constituent that said we are not able to integrate with apple's phone platform because they don't allow third parties to do x every single one of these looks like there you can you can just probably pick a bunch of companies and say these companies wanted to do this but couldn't that's what they all look like and that's as they should because that's exactly what people are complaining about these platforms control too much about our political our technical lives and we would like to make innovative things but we can't because the platform owner says no so let's just go down the list you want to make a watch but you can't do it because apple's watches can do stuff yours can't you want to do something with payments but you can't because apple controls the nfa nfc chip you wanted to make uh airpods that are you know earphones that work like the airpods do but you can't because apple like it just goes on and on now are these all european companies i don't know but either way that's the constituency so what you were saying casey was like okay well we we chased this big scary company out of europe isn't that great and the companies that were complaining that they couldn't make a watch for the phone or or earpods for the phone i said no that's not what we wanted we want to be able to make earpods for the phone and sell them all the people who have money who buy iPhones.

1:27:18So I think, I mean, certainly the citizens of the EU probably don't want Apple to pull out. And I think all the companies that are lobbying the European Commission to say, we can't integrate with Apple's platforms because of unfair practices, they don't want Apple to leave either, because Apple is the place where they think they can make money on that platform. They just want it to be opened up. So I really do think that the European Commission's goal is and should be to try to make the platform more open for companies to be able to sell into it and make an ecosystem that benefits more than just apple and so i really think it is a failure mode for for everybody involved if it just it turns out like no we can't come to agreement you refuse to do what we do we we give you fines and you refuse to pay them or you pay the fines but they're not big enough so we keep ramping them up like it just comes it you just it's a rising crescendo of uh corporate argument until eventually it just blows up and everybody leaves.

1:28:12And that's a failure on the EC side. They should be trying to avoid that. And I look at this list and I think you are headed directly for that. Yeah, I mean, they're playing the world's most expensive game of chicken. I mean, that's really what they're doing. And - Do they know they're doing that? That's the question. Or do they think what they're asking for is reasonable? I think the European Commission 100 % believes that what they're asking for is reasonable. And I think I think that the loudest members of their constituents would agree, but I also agree with what you said a few minutes ago, John, that the rank and file European Union citizen probably does not care that much.

1:28:53And this is where all the European nerds are going to write me and be like, you're totally wrong. I totally care. And I live in the EU. You're a nerd. I'm talking about regular people. I don't think regular people give two craps that they have to use an Apple Watch with an Apple iPhone. I really don't think that regular people do. They don't give a crap here. They don't give a crap there. They don't give a crap anywhere. Well, I mean, that's, that's when someone makes a closed market where there's no room for competition, of course, people aren't going to miss what they've never known was possible.

1:29:19Like that's kind of like, but, but yeah, like in general, people still want to be able to buy Apple products. Like that's what it comes down to. Like it would be weird if you couldn't get an iPhone in Europe that the European citizens would see that as a bad thing. I think, you know, like you were saying, like the company that wants to make uh i keep saying airpods what the hell is the generic name for them earbuds the company that wants to make earbuds to compete with the airpods but they basically can't because apple keeps all the private apis that allow that cool switching to happen or whatever that company really wants this to open up and if that does open up and citizens get access to less expensive earbuds or earbuds that have different features than apples and then you take it away from they'd be mad but right now they just don't know what they're missing so gauging consumer consent is It's just like consumers may be vaguely aware and they think this is probably the right thing to do, but they'd be mad if the products went away.

1:30:11But the companies are like, we want this to be opened up. We think we should be able to, like, basically more than just Apple should be benefiting from this ecosystem. We think more companies can benefit from this if the platform was more open. And that's what the ECU, I feel like, is trying to do. All right, and then a little bit more EU stuff, because apparently we haven't ticked off the citizens of the EU enough yet. Reading from MacRumors, the European Commission's decisions wrap us in red tape, slowing down Apple's ability to innovate for users in Europe and forcing us to give away our new features for free to companies who don't have to play by the same rules.

1:30:56It's bad for our products and for our European users. We will continue to work with the European Commission to help them understand our concerns on behalf of our users. I think what this is saying in a roundabout way is that the European Commission really is opposed to vertical integration. And I don't think that's not necessarily an unreasonable read of the situation. And I'm not here right this second to argue whether or not vertical integration is good or bad, but that is kind of what the EC is saying. is dc is not against vertical integration they're against vertical integration at a at the scale where it forecloses the potential for healthy competition in a market there's always that qualifier again if you want to if you want to make a vertically integrated platform or it's like everything works together with all your products and they only work with your products that's fine until you become a dominant player in the market according to the eu's definition which again i'm i have quibbles with their definition of what constitutes that but i think the duopoly and the mobile phone spaces it's not the same as a monopoly so we've discussed at length in the past years but look it's android and apple and that's not enough uh and so that's what they're foreclosing again is apple coming i might i might have been a blaming gruber for something in apple's own statements you know to give away our new features for companies that don't have to play by the same rules yes those companies don't have to play by the same rules you they will apple will argue the premise further because apple disagrees with the premise they said we shouldn't be a subject to different roles than other people.

1:32:21We're not any different from them. It's like, oh, you're one of only two mobile phone platforms in the whole world that matters, but okay. That's your argument, but I think they're arguing at another level here. So yes, Apple doesn't want to do this. They're being wrapped in red tape. They're angry about it. They will fight it. And then finally, the EU confirms that Apple can indeed make a portless iPhone without USB-C, reading from 9 to 5 Mac. European Commission Press Officer Federico McCauley writes, since such radio equipment cannot be recharge via wired charging, it does not need to incorporate the harmonized or wired charging solution.

1:32:56Yeah, I don't know why people are debating that. I think it was because like the there was rumors that the iPhone Slim or iPhone Air was originally conceived as a portless phone. They're like, oh, but they felt like they couldn't do that because of the EC. That never made any sense to me. And I'm glad to see the EC say, no, if it doesn't have a port, like it's fine, right? You want to make a portless phone, go for it. You don't have to. The EU doesn't say you must put a usbc port on every single device in the world they're saying if you do have a port and it's for charging it better be you and it's on a phone it better be usbc so i don't know if there's any foundation to those rumors other than like apple was going to do x but instead did y is that true is that not the rumors of a portless phone have been around forever probably apple will get into it eventually but not this generation anyway the ec says that's fine go for it all right thank you to our sponsor this week, Delete Me.

1:33:45And thanks to our members who support us directly. You can join us at atp.fm slash join. One of the many perks of membership is ATP Overtime. So in addition to the special we talked about earlier, Overtime is our weekly bonus topic. So every week, every episode, there is usually between 15 and 30 minutes of the show that if you're not a member, you're not hearing because we are talking about bonus topics. So that's called Overtime. This week on Overtime, our bonus topic is going to be revisiting some developments in solid state cooling. This is what it sounds like. It's solid state fan alternatives that can move air without being fans.

1:34:23So hear that and more in overtime and to join atv.fm slash join. Thank you so much. We'll talk to you next week. Now 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 Cause 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, Antimarco, Armin, S-I-R-A-C, U-S-A, Syracuse. It's accidental, accidental, they didn't mean to. Accidental, accidental, tech podcast so long.

1:35:35Okay, so a year and a half ago, and I don't even know what it was, when I released Call Sheet, it's been a little while now, we spent a lot of time on the show talking about pricing. And I was a little bit cagey about it, if I recall correctly, but that was because I didn't want to call a whole lot of attention to it. But in the end of the day, the reality of the situation was that the movie database, which is at themoviedb.org, they offered their API for free. And then if you were a commercial user, you needed to let them know and work out some sort of deal. And I started using it for free before the app was released.

1:36:14And then when I was about to release it, I said to them, hey, what's the story? I want to make this real. Can I have a key or whatever? and they basically said, don't worry about it. Oh, okay. So I didn't worry about it. And up until this week, the API was free for me to use. But having seen what happened with Reddit and with Twitter and several other sites over the years, I knew that that wasn't going to be the case forever. And because of that, that's really a large part of the reason why I decided to make CallSheet a subscription app. You get 20 searches for free. after that you have to pay me and i stood by that i thought it was the right answer at the time i certainly thought it was the right answer up until i got an email from the movie database saying hey we've just launched our official super duper commercial api so you're gonna have to pay now and so now as of earlier this week happy birthday to me it was really last week i guess uh happy birthday to me was my birthday week and the movie database said it will be 150 a month for you to continue to use our API.

1:37:20And my first reaction to that was, holy God, are you serious? Because when I think of adding a new bill to my household at$150 a month, that's a lot of freaking money. But it didn't take me long to change my perspective and think of it not as a bill to the household, but really a bill to the business, which is what it actually is. And so it is not an insignificant amount of money, but it is thankfully, and I'm very, very thankful for it, quite a bit less than I think, you know, it could have been. And ultimately, and I think Marco might have said that to me, it was John when we were talking about this privately in Slack, but, you know, it was at least once a week, sometimes several times a week that I would wake up wondering, is this the day that I get the email I just ended up getting?

1:38:12Is this the day that they say, oh, you need to pay us now, and it's$3 ,000 a week or something like that. And thankfully, that day came, but it was not$3 ,000 a week. It was$150 a month. And so the way the Movie Database API system works is that for non-commercial use, you can use it for free. I guess maybe not in unlimited fashion, but there's no stated limits as far as I'm aware. Then there's the commercial level, which is what I'm at now, which again is$150 a month. If you're using the movie database in a commercial manner, do less than$1 million in revenue per year and have less than 2 million users.

1:38:53I am saddened to report that I both make less than$1 million in revenue per year and have fewer than 2 million users of CallSheet. But you never know. You never know what will happen. How would you know how many users you have? Is that available somewhere? I have it through my very basic analytics, but I think it is available on App Store Connect. I almost never look at it. How would App Store Connect even qualify that? Apple IDs, I guess? Just counting Apple accounts, sorry. Well, they have a concept of opt-in versus opt-out stats, and I don't know if your total number of users is requiring opt-in or not.

1:39:30Because any of their stats, that's like when you go through the iOS setup process and it's like share information with developers or don't share. Many of the Appswork Connect stats, for people who don't select share with developers, they're just not included. And so it's hard to, like a lot of the stats are not that useful because you don't know like what percentage of people opted in versus opted out. Yeah, because Apple doesn't tell you that really. And the thing is, even if everybody opted in, mapping from users to Apple accounts is not one-to-one. And I'm not even sure which direction it would go in because you could have seven people using the same application on the same Mac sign to the, to single Apple ID.

1:40:11For example, my wife uses apps that were downloaded using my Apple ID for the app store, but she's a separate person than me. Or you could have the reverse where there's like, you know, one person with seven Apple IDs. So I think it may actually be difficult to comply with that particular thing. But at any rate, I just, if you can't audit it, neither can TMDB. And I think if you ended up having more than 2 million users, that's a problem you would love to have. yes i would uh and then finally you know they have an enterprise level with the pricing of contact sales uh if your business does more than one million dollars per year in revenue per year or has more than two million users enterprise is right for you contact sales for more information and pricing options for this plan yeah that that uh that third plan is what you should have been staying up at night worrying about because like oh they've you know you know the other shoe was going to drop at some point like you're not going to have free api forever and ever and unless the company goes out of business or something right so eventually they're going I have to find a way to monetize this.

1:41:02And you hope what they don't do is, okay, now you can use it for free for non-commercial use. Otherwise, contact us because it's time for an enterprise license and they start at$50 ,000 a month. Yeah, you never want to see contact us. As an independent person, you never want it. That's always bad news for you. Yeah, because companies can decide, look, it's not worth our time to do business with small fish. We just want to do business with people who can afford to pay us$100 ,000 every month or something. And that is a reasonable business plan. And your problem was uncertainty. Your problem was not so much like, oh, you know, they're going to charge me too much money.

1:41:35The problem was, I don't know how much they're going to just hang over your head. Like, what is it going to be? Like, they're going to come for the money eventually. And I hope what they decide is that their business plan includes me. And when I saw your, you know, you were posting on Slack that this happened, I was like, oh, this is great. This is the best thing that could have happened to you because the uncertainty is gone. Because now you're not wondering what they're going to charge you. They can tell you. And their business plan shows they do want customers like you. that this is in your price range for an app of your size.

1:42:03And yes, it's worse than paying$0, but the uncertainty, like just knowing that this is now just a cost that's part of your business. Assuming they don't raise the rates 400 % per year or something, if they instead just raise them slowly over time, now you can actually run your business with knowledge and say, here are my costs, here are my expenses, here's my income, and make decisions based on that. As opposed to just wondering, like, this is just part of the spreadsheet, but just an empty spot that is this faded cloud that could be negative$100 ,000 per month or, you know, negative$150 ,000.

1:42:34I think you had a good result here. No, I definitely did. You know, you were waiting to see the other shoe drop someday, and there was just like this axe hanging over your entire app that's like, if this axe falls the wrong way, I'm dead. This app is dead. So now the axe fell in a really low damage, normal, affordable way. so now i i think if if i were in your shoes i would be breathing a sigh of relief like oh okay this i can and look they can always in the future they can always change their plans if they if they want to you know it there's no guarantee they're going to keep this way forever but they'll probably keep it like this like this is probably what you're going to have for the lifetime of the app and it'll be fine yeah again unless they go out of business which would be worse like you wouldn't want them to keep going with free thing and never figuring out a business plan and then just going out of business because your app doesn't work without their api yeah yeah no you're exactly right.

1:43:23And that's the thing is that, like I said, my initial reaction was, are you kidding me? $150 a month? That's an incredible amount of money. But that's because I was thinking of it in terms of like, you know, my cell phone bill or something like that. Like how much you pay for Netflix. I wouldn't pay$150 a month for Netflix, but as a business expense, it is reasonable. And that's the thing is it took me, you know, a half an hour to an hour to really adjust my thinking on this and, you know, take a different lens to it, if you will, and realize ultimately it's not money I am in love with the idea of spending, but if it keeps the site operating so it doesn't fold, as you've said, and if it keeps them interested in having me around, then this is, in the end of the day, a win.

1:44:05It's a win-win. It's just the first reaction was, woof! And then after that I realized, no, this is actually pretty good news. Just hope they're not paying attention to Apple and they come for you and ask for a share of your revenue. Yeah, seriously. The Oracle way of pricing. Right. But no, I'm tentatively very excited about this. And in the email that was sent to me, I think the team there was like five people or something like that. And the email was sent by, I think, the founder, if I'm not mistaken. And the first email I wrote back was, are you freaking kidding me? But I didn't send it. And then the actual email I sent was, you know what, in the end of the day, I'm happy to do what I can to support the movie database.

1:44:45And their API is very good. There's a few things that I don't love about it, but in the grand scheme of things, it's well-designed. It works really well. It's really, really fast. I can't imagine it's super expensive for them to run. I certainly hope not. So this is, you know, all of us are working together, kind of holding hands and working together to keep all of our independent and individual businesses alive. And I think that's really the most you can hope for. Well, and the thing is, like, you know, it doesn't really matter how much their API costs them to run. What matters is their business costs them something to run and you are getting a lot of value from their business.

1:45:21And so, you know, what you're paying for with 150 bucks a month, you're not paying for like the additional web request traffic. Like you're not paying for the resources used by your API usage. You are paying for the value of their service. That's what you're paying for. And given that your entire business depends on that service, I think that's a very good price to pay. Yeah, yeah. Clip that segment out that Marco just said and try to insert it into our future conversations about copyright and open AI. Yeah. And LLM scraping the entire web and my earlier comments that their products are absolutely worthless without all the data they scrape.

1:45:57But once the data gets above a certain volume, apparently it's free. Anyway, different conversation. It's very easy. But yeah, so that's why the app is subscription. That's why I didn't want to do, well, I mean, we could get into this argument, which I'm not interested, to be honest. But this is why I didn't want to do a lifetime purchase, because, you know, what if my costs go up forever? What if a ton of people did a lifetime purchase? You know, those are all things I didn't particularly want to mess with. And honestly, the people who want lifetime purchase, they wouldn't have been happy with the amount I would have charged anyway.

1:46:29So ultimately, I'm feeling pretty happy about the way I priced the app. Actually, if anything, it might have been too low, but that's neither here nor there. But my point is that I am happy that I made it a subscription app, and I'm happy that I stuck with that. And ultimately, I'm happy that this axe, as you said, Marco, that was hanging over my head, it has fallen and it's not fallen on my neck. So that's the very good news. Yeah, you just lost maybe your pinky toe or something.