666: We Have Nothing That Hot

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37:34I really thought about bringing up a bottle of vodka and doing the thing I would never ever do again, because I have a feeling I don't, you're not going to need me for the rest of this episode because you're someone, probably John, put in the show notes in our internal show notes, the Mac Pro colon, don't believe. Oh, this is quite a capper too. I mean, I kind of covered it in the last episode. A lot of people are writing to me online asking me what I think about this and what I'm going to do. I think I actually did cover that in the last episode. I'll repeat it again here, but just FYI, it's not as if this is a shock.

38:06I've been increasingly sort of histrionic about the complete lack of any news about future Mac Pro products for a long time now. All these rumors I've been reading about all these other products this product's gonna have this chip and this year gonna do this thing and that and nothing about the pack pro just nothing or like if there'd be something we'd put it in there and the next week they say actually let me take the hot air let me deflate that rumor that was a misinterpretation of a thing don't get your hopes up that's not a real thing uh and so like I said in the last episode you know I was supposed to get a new mac this year as soon as I figured out what they were doing the mac pro apple did nothing with it and by the time it became clear they were going to do nothing because i kind of had to wait until like the october event just when they you know do much stuff that came on now it's too late in the year now i can't do what was my early in the year plan which is like let me just get an m4 max max studio or something but with the m5 out now i can't do that so the new tentative plan as of last episode was next year i'll get an m5 max max studio and or unless marco convinces me to get an m5 ultra max studio assuming the m5 ultra exists which is a separate issue um so that was my plan and that continues to be my plan but now finally we have some news about the mac pro the news is not good no i mean it's better than no news i will say that uncertainty was killing me but the certainty in this case is bad so right now you want to read this guy do you want me to do i can't yeah i feel like you should i don't it hurts me too much all right i will take this one for the team i'll read collins thing after do you want me to do it so you don't have No, no, I don't mind.

39:37I just feel like I'm stabbing my friend in the back. Mark Gurman writes, there's no longer an M4 Ultra in the works. A Mac Pro to support it was also next. And the next high-end desktop chip will be the M5 Ultra. So far, Apple has only focused on a new Mac Studio for the processor. That suggests the Mac Pro won't be updated in 2026 in a significant way. From what I've heard inside the company, Apple has largely written off the Mac Pro. The sentiment internally is that the Mac Studio now represents both the present and future of Apple's professional desktop strategy. Yeah, we noticed Apple. We noticed.

40:08I mean, it's got an M2 Ultra in it. And even that took so long for them to take it off of Intel. And when the M3 Ultra came out, they didn't update it. Even though it would have been dumb, they could have, but they didn't. And there was going to be M4 Ultra, but no, apparently not. And now they're saying there's going to be M5 Ultra, but it's not going to the Mac Pro either. And I know this is not a thing that Apple does. I know Apple doesn't come out and tell you like when they're not going to do something or like about their future plans in any way. But interestingly, one of the few times in recent history that Apple has ever told you about a thing they're going to do in the future, it was the Mac roundtable.

40:43They said, we're going to make a new modular Mac Pro that's not going to suck. And they did. They made a new modular Mac Pro that didn't suck. It took in the next several years, however long it took. So it would be kind of nice for them to say, we're not doing the Mac Pro anymore. Just put us out of our misery. Just tell us you're not doing it instead of pretending you're going to, but then never, ever updating it because it's just an embarrassing machine. It's a Mac Studio in a giant box with card slots that have very liminal usefulness with an increasingly ancient processor. It's just an embarrassment.

41:11I mean, even though I would have complained if they had put the M3 Ultra in it, at least they would have been like, well, this dumb product that you made, it is now an up-to-date dumb product. But not doing anything with it, it seems like they should like announce an end of life or just say like we're not making that anymore. now part of me thinks this the case on the 2019 mac pro the intel 2019 mac pro that case is big inexpensive and fancy and we knew they would keep it because you got to make your money back it's a low volume product it's not like they're going to change the case for the rm1 and lo and behold they didn't even though they did change the case for some of their other more popular products how long do they have to keep making and selling something called the mac pro before they're satisfied that they've made up the money that they spent to develop it.

41:57That's the only reason I think this product still exists for sale. It's going to become like the trash can where they were selling it for years after it was just a total embarrassment, I guess just to recoup the cost of the factory that only made this one product. So anyway, it's sad. I'm sad. But this is at least, I mean, I know this is an official announcement, but Gurman giving support to the idea that, you know, if there ever was any kind of internal battle inside apple about should we or shouldn't we do the mac pro apparently the we shouldn't team is winning and again as we can see from the outside but here's some rumored confirmation from a somewhat reliable source that things are not going well internally and again he's vague here this suggests it won't be updated in 2026 if it is updated and it gets an m5 ultra all it's doing is kind of it's like putting the m5 in the vision pro like you haven't changed the product in any way whatever problems the product had it still has and the problem being it's a it's thousands of dollars more expensive than the mac studio but it is absolutely no faster because it literally has the same chip in it it doesn't make a lot of sense um uh colin cornaby who is a fellow mac pro fan writes in to clarify that this is not a uh you know it's like who cares no no big deal nothing was lost right not entirely true as colin points out uh this is a thing from a toot the m3 ultra has finally caught up to the radeon 6900 xt in my 2019 mac pro and that's an old gpu at only a fraction of the power of something like geforce 5090 apple is really behind on gpu performance even if i wanted to upgrade today it would be a side grade or a step back i'm hoping m5 ultra is better but i was really hoping for an m5 extreme or the mythical 2x ultra mac pro and i i had to look this up just to to confirm i looked up uh geekbench score metal scores for the radeon 6900 xt which you can put in a 2019 mac pro that's a 231k and the m3 ultra is 225k so and the radeon 6900 xt is a video card that was released in december 2020 so apple's current best gpu the m3 ultra fastest gpu apple sells today today in the end of 2025 is just about as fast as a five-year-old GPU that you could get with the Mac Pro.

44:17And I think you might've been able to put two of these in the Mac Pro, but I'm not sure, but I'm not going to, don't quote me on that. You might've been able to get a dual car or something. But anyway, Apple is very, very behind in absolute GPU performance. When I was talking about the back in the M1 days, the possible sort of like, you know, M1 extreme, that's like two m1 ultras stuck together the back of the envelope calculations were that that ultra that sort of you know two ultra quad type of thing would be competitive with the fastest single gpu available back when the m1 was out still that calculation may be valid for a theoretical two m5 ultra stuck together but the thing is apple has never made that chip they never have and their current best ultra is two generations behind you the m3 ultra is the best ultra but the m5 is out now so not only have they never made a quad one even their double one is two generations behind which is why the very fastest gpu you can get in a mac is as fast as a five-year-old gpu and not just any five-year-old gpu a five-year-old gpu that you could put in an incredibly slow intel 2019 mac pro setting aside like today's current fastest gpus in the pc space now i know who cares about gpu it's all about ai and much faster wider memory bandwidth for the unified memory architecture and who cares that gpu is garbage for anything except running games and the m3 ultra would beat it in any modern benchmark they did ai and yada yada yada but the thing is graphics and games are in fact a possible use of lots of computing power we just got done talking about the all that steam stuff and that market for you know pc games and gaming hardware and apple has massively raised the floor on their gpu system on their systems in terms of gpu we talked about this over and over again in the in the apple silicon era all of apple's products now have non-embarrassing gpus a pro that for the amount of power that these things use they do amazing they have amazing performance but apple has basically abandoned the high end even in their supposed high end product so maybe i'll make like a mac pro rest in peace shirt or something like that when apple finally signs off on the thing but it's not as if nothing was lost nothing was lost for people who don't care about gpu power or gaming on the mac at the high end but for people who do something was definitely lost something is currently lost and will continue to be lost because it's very difficult to get high-end GPU performance in a box size like the Mac Studio.

46:47Look at the Steam machine. It's a six-inch cube. It does not have high-end gaming PC power. It's not supposed to. It also doesn't cost as much as the Mac Studio, I hope. But the high-end does exist. When we were looking at the iPod sock videos last week, looking at that Apple phone strap thing that I've already forgotten the name of, I think it was in that video or maybe in like one that youtube recommended similar was like maybe it was even that thing that steve jobs was there on stage doing a thing he'd done so many times before uh bragging that apple had the world's fastest personal computer he's said that on stage many times whether or not has been always been true he's wanted to say it because it's a it's bragging rights we have the world's fastest personal computer apple hasn't been able to say that in a long time and it doesn't look like they're going to for a long time they can say they have the world's fastest single core performance maybe which they did say but i'm not sure who's interested in that and people who are interested in the high end are interested maybe they're interested in ai and apple can say we have the world's best ai thing that's not an nvidia card that costs as much as a car or some other thing i just miss the days when apple was you know shooting for the stars and producing the world's fastest personal computer the world's most powerful personal computer the world's most whatever they could still say that with an m5 ultra max studio this is the world's most powerful ai work station or something like that if they can come up with something to back it up i'm not saying it has to be gaming performance i'm saying it has to be you know frame rates in some popular game or whatever but just even the trash can i feel like they were shooting for something impressive they missed but they were shooting for it and it just disappoints me to see them given up on trying to shoot for this particular kind of bragging right yeah i think what ultimately has killed this version of the mac pro has been a combination of decisions they've made and factors that have changed over time i mean as much as john hates this i think they do not care about a number of the markets at all that used to be pretty well served by by that machine or something like that machine so for instance like by going to apple silicon they totally gave up windows boot camp parallels gaming now gaming like those things have always kind of been like side benefits like apple did not switch to intel to get gaming and to get windows compatibility they switched to intel because at the time those were the best chips and the chips they were on were nowhere near the best and they needed to switch for just for competitive performance reasons um and so they did switch and it was a big deal but it was not it wasn't to get those markets those markets kind of came along as bonuses and they helped apple a lot the effort they put into boot camp was actually kind of surprising remember the kind of shock i'm like oh yeah you can boot windows in it we'll support it with this thing like boot camp itself is uh sort of from another era of apple where they were saying here's a thing we know you probably going to want to do with your machine and here's a first party solution for it and they and they supported that pretty much to the end of the intel era which was impressive and interesting and that shows that someone somewhere in apple had enough clout to say look it's we're so close to doing it and a few people will want to run windows games why don't we just let them boot windows and they said sure fine do it and they did it and they did it for all the intel era so i do appreciate that yeah but that was you know that was like a side bonus and you know and and there was you know at the time also in the intel transition especially early on apple was still you know very much trying to get people to switch over from windows and so windows compatibility through you know boot camp secondarily but i think primarily things like parallels i think that helped them a lot gain some of that market share i'm kind of giving people like some training wheels to bring their windows software along for the ride as they slowly switch to mac because it could run natively that and i experienced that in me getting max into the workplace during that era to say oh it can run windows software at full speed because it could like as long as you have enough ram to run the virtual machines you know i'm not running a games but you could run microsoft out you could run full-fledged windows right there in your mac it It was great.

50:38Yeah. But, you know, the move to Apple Silicon dropped all the Windows support, basically. I mean, there are small ways around it, but nothing that anyone's really doing because they're not very good or don't work very well or very slow or whatever. Or because Microsoft's Windows on ARM strategy is not compatible with what Apple's doing. There's no technical reason those two crazy kids couldn't get together and let you run Windows on ARM, except that Windows on ARM kind of sucks. Yeah. And God knows what Microsoft is doing these days. They're doing AI is what they're doing. Yeah. I don't think they're caring that much about Windows.

51:06so anyway so they you know the gaming market is something that apple has institutionally never really tried for in a meaningful way or understood and most pc gamers hate apple for lots of reasons some of which are very good reasons so like apple and apple and gamers with the exception of john as the only person in the middle of these venn diagrams apple and gamers do not get along in either direction and they don't care about each other's markets um and so you know you're left with like high-end or specialty high-end production maybe like video audio production 3d remember they demonstrated maya on the trash can like that kind of sort of high-end 3d that requires high gpu but it's not a game yeah and you have like some scientific computing applications and things like that but most of those markets are markets that apple has let go over the years either through outright neglect or just kind of the markets themselves moving because Apple was clearly not serving them very well.

52:05Most of those markets now use different hardware, PC hardware, Linux, cloud stuff, on-premises like servers. They're moving on to lots of different hardware. They're mostly not using Mac Pros. And then the AI revolution comes along. What powers the AI revolution is NVIDIA accelerators. And Apple and NVIDIA do not get along at all. Apple stuff has not included NVIDIA components for a very long time. And the entire world of NVIDIA and CUDA is totally separate from Apple. Like Apple has no foot in that market. And so these markets have either been abandoned by Apple or have left Apple or have developed outside of Apple completely and Apple has never been part of them.

52:52So at the same time, Apple Silicon is a huge benefit to the markets Apple holds on to and cares about the most and has the most success in. It's also very good at AI. I mean, coincidentally or not, like Apple Silicon, the SOC with the unified memory architecture, it's extremely good at AI workloads. It just so happens that it's not the market leader because they're not selling$30 ,000, you know, GPUs for the data center. But for running AI things locally, Apple Silicon is amazing for that. Yeah, absolutely. but that's you know but so apple silicon benefits apple's core markets substantially and we've talked about how amazing it's been for the iphone the mac like it's it's been amazing for apple's core markets there but apple silicon is just fundamentally not friendly with the idea of external gpus and so when you take out gpus from the reason for the mac pro to exist because of apple silicon transition it's like well what else is it for and it has some answers it you know there are certain like audio video um io cards that are used pretty frequently um in this kind of scenario setting aside the cards though what it's really for is the thing that apple has never made it's the case the mac pro 2019 mac pro case which again they're not going to redesign anytime soon because it costs a lot of money to make and it has low volumes is very good at cooling it has a tremendous cooling capacity, has huge fans, huge volume for huge heat sinks for a huge amount of air to go through.

54:22So you can put in there a thing with an integrated GPU, some monster chip that gets really hot, that gets hotter than you could fit in a Mac Studio case that goes faster and is more powerful. And Apple has simply never made that. Every chip they've made that has been powerful has been in the Mac Studio. So it's had to be designed to fit within the power envelope of a mac studio cooling system so forget about the card slots just view the mac pro case as a thing that can cool something that's too hot to fit in a mac studio but apple has never made that despite all the rumors and the attempts and they were going to make it and then they weren't and remember a long time ago the rumor is like it's not on the roadmap anywhere until at least after the m7 or something so tune in in a few years to see if that thing ever comes true but that was a thing that we mentioned in the show ages ago but that's what this case is for yes it has card slots but it's but it's like it can cool something hot that won't fit in your small cases and apple's like we have nothing we have nothing that hot yeah we could get something that hot it would do more work it would be more powerful it would be faster because the faster you go and the more transistors you put on there the more heat you generate it's like oh we can't handle all that heat it won't fit in a laptop it won't fit a mac mini it won't fit in a mac studio it'll fit in this case those huge fans are begging for something to blow on well but yeah but like you know they they have this machine and it has dropped most of its markets and at the same time apple is not helping by never updating it and by the fact that the cheapest one is seven thousand dollars like they when they launched it i don't think they were intentionally trying to kill this product line over time but you could i could see why people might assume that based on how they've executed on it right right it's it's almost as if like the enemies of this thing within the company have like subverted it intentionally that like there's obviously proponents and enemies and the proponents like we're winning we're shipping a product and the enemies are like we're making sure that whatever you ship is garbage yeah we're gonna make sure that no one buys this so that way we can say look no one buys this we can stop making it yeah that's exactly it's self-fulfilling prophecy so you know like i would love to see the back and forth on this but it's probably just you know this type of thing even just look at the imac such a storied name and yet I'm sure it was a battle to say, can we actually make a decent iMac again?

56:36And that battle was won with those colorful ones. Now it's like, okay, but you can't do anything with them for another, for like six years besides bump the CPUs, which is fine. But like, it's like these sort of boom and bust cycles. And to be clear, I mean, the iMac is obviously, it's not a laptop, so it's not Apple's bread and butter anymore. But it is a very, it is a higher profile product name than the Mac Pro, let's say. Like iMac still has some cache, even though nobody buys desktops anymore. and it took such a long time for apple to finally give that product its worth with that colorful redesign which was great and i'm glad they're updating it with the new so season it's still a pretty good computer but you know every five or seven years would be nice if they maybe like made the screen a little bit bigger or you know did something else fancy with it or rethought some of the compromises that they put into that particular computer yeah and that but like you know the mac pro like the you know the imac still has a strong market uh it's not it isn't what it used to be, of course.

57:29I mean, laptops took over most of the consumer market, but the iMac is still like if you want like a stationary computer, especially if you care for it looking nice in like an office or something, the iMac is a great choice for that. That's just not as big of a market as it used to be, but it's not no market. And Apple, I think, does a very good job serving that market with the iMac. The Mac Pro, you know, the world has moved in a direction that has shrank its market, but Apple by their own choices shrank shrunk shrunk uh shrank it shrank it so much further by their own you know choices and neglect which is a choice um and so it isn't that like even if Apple did a great job and kept this updated and it was very capable it would still be a very small market today but Apple has exacerbated this by by their execution and their choices and the other thing is that the iMac market is much more tolerant of like skipping a year and not being on the cutting edge because it's not a cutting edge computer like the people who buy the iMac don't care if it's like uh you know you know nine to twelve months behind on the fastest soc but the market for something like the Mac Pro they do care not that they want it to be changing constantly but they want it to not fall behind because part of the reason they spend all this money on this big computer is a they want something that only a computer this big with this many fans can do which apple has not offered in the apple silicon era and b they want to feel like oh i spent all that money but i'm getting the best i'm getting the fastest and apple's been like it'll be the fastest for like well in the case of the m2 one never it will never be the fastest but like say they had put the m3 ultra into it the mac pro before the other things it'll be the fastest for a little bit but like the phone will be faster in two years so sorry about the seven thousand dollars you spent on this thing.

59:17Also, when you look at the Apple Silicon scaling story... the cpu scaling is not good once you get past the max. like the ultra even like going from from the base through the pro through the max you don't get linear cpu scaling with core count um and that's true of any architecture but apple silicon like you definitely see like in the cores they've made so far you can see like there's a clear ceiling and you know going from base to max you get a pretty decent jump but not 2x and then going from max to ultra, you get another jump that's nowhere near 2x. GPUs scale very well. GPUs have scaled almost linearly.

1:00:02Although they did screw that up with one. I forget which one, but they did screw that up with one of them. And part of the non-linear CPU scaling, the argument there is that it's the silicon interposer. Like the fact that they made them out of two maxes stuck together, that is the... If you simply built a dedicated one with that same number of resources, it would be better than trying to take two maxes and get this economy of scale and only have to do the max design plus the interposer like that's the argument that yeah i mean and there's other bottlenecks i'm sure too like you know it's it's like scaling cpus is complicated but but in particular like setting aside when they screwed up the gpu thing by under resourcing some buffer or something the fact that they insist on building their ultras out of two maxes is it's a clever idea if it had worked out for them but i think that hurt the scaling more than anything else whereas if they had made the dedicated chip it wouldn't but if they made a dedicated chip they would they can't justify the expense that's been a little thing with the extreme you know with the quad thing they can't justify the expense we're not going to sell we're going to sell this many of them and it's going to cost this much to make it'll be our most expenses you know like intel have this problem to some degree but not really because they were sold to server farms and everything like this chip this whatever this high-end chip is going to cost the most and be the most complicated chip that we make and we're going to sell a tiny tiny fraction of the number we sell of our other chips like why are we doing this again and i would point them to my case for a true mac pro successor article and saying you're you know mount everest you're climbing because it's there blah blah blah but that apple doesn't apple doesn't have that they don't they don't have that in them they can't justify it someone comes down and says cost benefit no yeah so i think ultimately the mac pro as we know it today not only is very obviously doomed and abandoned but i think i think that's been that's been clear for a very long time but i think as i've argued on the show before the mac studio is the mac pro like when you look at what is what happened to the mac pro and the apple silicon era if the tower version was never released you would look at the mac studio it would probably it would the mac studio would probably be called mac pro and we would just say that's the mac pro for apple silicon i wouldn't say that because mac pro is the computer apple produces and says this is the world's fastest personal computer and they never said that about the studio because it's not true and it's also not expandable so it has none of the qualities of mac pro now i i agree with you that apple probably would have called it mac pro but saying the mac studio is the new mac trove is only true in the sense that it is the fastest computer from apple you can buy but it's not the world's fastest personal computer it is not let's see how fast we can make things go you know cost almost no object it's not it's not that it's just not there it's not the concept car it is just their most powerful desktop but it is so clearly constrained by trying to keep it you know queued and contained and kind of a big brother mac mini and don't be too obtrusive and that's something that has never been a concern for the mac pro being obtrusive is what it does that's i mean that's true but the mac studio i i think when you look at okay the mac pro in the apple silicon era can't solve high-end GPU needs because of the design of the architecture.

1:03:07So there's no external GPU, so it can't solve high-end GPU needs, at least that high-end. But it could if it had a quad. Again, back of the envelope, it could be as fast as a single, well, you know, they just never made it. Right, but like, so, you know, you look at like the GPU market is lopped off. Also because of the Apple Silicon architecture, the very high amounts of RAM market has also been lopped off. It used to be 1.5 terabytes in the Intel era. now i i think we're where are we now at 512 maybe let me see yeah 512 is the max now it's not reaching for the same extreme heights but on the other end of the resources the processing power is way better like the the cpu power way better any kind of you know neural and ml stuff might be better depending on how it's architected but like cpu processing it's way ahead of the intel era and way ahead of everything else just not by a linear amount but way everything else they make um if they keep it updated um and then you know things like throughput and thunderbolt bandwidth they probably have advantages there because it's newer and so like there are areas in which the mac studio is the mac pro of today it just isn't all areas but the tower covered almost no additional ones than the mac pro did only only do it apple's choices like again it's sitting there waiting for or something bigger, faster, hotter.

1:04:25Hell, they could have just put an overclocked M3 Ultra in there and just overclocked it and said, well, it's overclocked, but the extra heat produced is moved away by these giant fans. But they're just not into that. They're just not interested in doing anything advanced. The M2 Ultra Mac Pro kind of proved that, and the complete lack of updates since then proved it further. So I'm sad, but it's good to have some kind of rumor-based closure for this. And M5 Max Max Studio, let's see if they can put that out at WWDC and make me at least somewhat happy. You're taking this better than I thought, John.

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1:07:13and probably not 10 more years. And you glided over this in the quote, but I double-checked it. In the transcript, because this is a podcast, you can listen to the podcast, Tim Cook says, 10 more years, I probably not. He's like, 10 more years, I, and then he interrupts himself and changes course on that sentence. So he does say, I probably not. But you said, eh, probably not. Anyway, the point is that Tim Cook, who is a very careful speaker, managed to not carefully speak in this sentence and started one sentence and decided to turn in a different direction mid-sentence and go to probably not but anyway there was we talked about in the show this was merely a cap it's like up to you know whatever uh megahertz or gigahertz um because cara set the cara swisher set the uh the boundary will you be at apple 10 more years from 2021 so in 2031 and he just said 10 more years probably not he didn't even say definitely not he said probably not but that he'd reiterate 10 more years is a long time, probably not 10 more years.

1:08:12So all he said was, uh, 2031, I probably won't be there, but we have some news in that front. So on the 14th of November of this year, the financial times, uh, wrote under a four person byline, Tim Bradshaw, Steve Morris, Michael Acton in San Francisco and Daniel Thomas in London. Uh, Apple is stepping up the succession planning efforts as it prepares for Tim Cook to step down as chief executives as soon as next year. Several people familiar with discussions inside the tech group told the Financial Times that its board and senior executives have recently intensified preparations for Cook to hand over the reins.

1:08:42John Turnis, Apple's senior vice president of hardware engineering and former best friend of John Syracuse, is widely seen as Cook's most likely successor, although no final decisions have been made. People close to Apple say the long planned transition is not related to the company's current performance ahead of what is expected to be a blockbuster end-of-year sales period for the iPhone. The company is unlikely to name a new CEO before its next earnings report in late January, which covers a critical holiday period. An announcement early in the year would give its new leadership team time to settle in ahead of its big annual keynote events, its developer conference in June, and its iPhone launch in September, the people said.

1:09:21These people said that although preparations have intensified, the timing of any announcement could change. So Gruber's take is, I don't think there are many people, if any, outside of Apple's top executive team and board of directors who have any insight into Cook's thinking on this. That, quote, several people, quote, spoke to the Financial Times about this, says to me that those sources, members of the board, did so with Cook's blessing and that they want this announcement to be no more than a little surprising. I would also bet that Cook moves into the role of executive chairman and will still play a significant, if not leading role for the company when it comes to domestic and international politics, especially with regard to the monster in chief.

1:09:56Sorry, with regard to Trump. All right, so Joe Rosigdon from MacRumors writes, Apple's current chairman is Arthur D. Levinson, who turned 75 on March 31st of 2025. Apple's corporate governance guidance, excuse me, guidelines say, a director may not stand for re-election after age 75, but need not resign until the end of his or her term. Apple is unlikely to name a new CEO before its next earnings report in late January, according to the Financial Times, but it said an announcement could happen early in the year. There's one potential wrinkle. Apple typically releases the proxy materials for a shareholder meeting in mid-January, And that filing would need to indicate that Cook is up for election as chairman.

1:10:35That would be before Apple's next earnings report in late January. So the specific timing of how this might all play out remains to be seen. It is unclear if Cook would become chairman or executive chairman in the former role. He would focus more on managing the board and corporate governance. In the latter role, Cook would remain more involved in Apple's day-to-day operations and decision making, which could help ease the transition to a new CEO. Alternatively, Apple could opt out, excuse me, could opt to exempt Levinson from the age policy as it did for the now 77-year-old director Ron Sugar last year.

1:11:06Apple could also elect someone other than Cook as chairman. This, I feel like, is actually some of the most disappointing news for this week, even worse than the Mac Pro thing. Not Tim Cook leaving. I'm all for that, as we know. Wow. the idea that every article i've seen gruber the mac rumors everybody's saying oh tim cook might step down with zoys next year and let's talk about the timing let's talk about the 75 years old blah blah the idea that he would step down i talked about this the last time we talked about turn transition that he would step down but stay on as chairman like that's the last thing i want and i understand i understand why people are talking about that because it makes sense here's the thing when you are going to take over as the new ceo of a company if a company is doing terribly you have a lot of political capital to make lots of change like steve jobs at apple in 1997 the company's practically bankrupt he cancels a million programs changes everything radically obviously he was the co-founder coming back so that gives you a lot of political capital but also when things are bad people are willing to do things radically different apple as all these and things report.

1:12:13It's about to have like its best quarter ever. iPhones are sounding like crazy. Like the company is not doing poorly financially. So you get a new CEO in there. And what I want is that new CEO to do many, many things different than Tim Cook. But if Tim Cook, I think he should retire to an island and just forget about Apple and just go away. But if he's like, no, I'm going to be on the board for 10 years because I'm 65 and I could be there till I'm 75. In fact, I'm going to be the chairman of the board i'm going to be overseeing lots of things especially our interactions with the government i want to say no tim go away let somebody else make different decisions now i have no idea if john turnus agrees with everything tim cook has done or hates all of it or like i have no idea but i do know that if you're the new ceo and the old ceo that took your company from like 350 billion to like four trillion dollars is still there as the executive chairman and is still having like an active role in day-to-day things it is next to impossible to come in on day one and say, guess what?

1:13:09We're doing a lot of things different around here, everybody. And let me tell you, we're doing this, this, this, and this. And Tim is like, like, I don't know how like the, the corporate structure works in terms of the balance of power between the board and the CEO. That's different in every company. And I'm not familiar with the intricacies, but I do know if he hangs around and is on the board or as chairman of the board or as executive chairman of the board, I'm still going to be in this program saying Tim Cook should go. should he leave a ceo he already did that he needs to leave apple so that we can have different decisions be made and this is more upsetting to me than the mac pro really yeah because the mac pro it's like you know products come first of all john turnus is supposedly a fan of the mac pro but you think he's going to bring the mac pro back with tim cook staring over his shoulder and saying no i saw the spreadsheets no mac pro john but that's again that's the least that's the least of our concerns about tim cook i want so many things that he did need to be exactly reversed totally the opposite and you can't come in and say well our previous ceo is like the best ceo we've ever had in terms of financial return but i'm going to do everything differently that's not that's hard to do so i'm sad about this i am actually very very happy about this um i have a different take all right so obviously i agree with john that yeah i want tim cook out i've been very vocal about that and i think you should go go play golf somewhere or football he He can buy an island.

1:14:31So many things he could do. Yeah. And we know Tim Cook is such an exciting character. He's going to do none of those things. He does like football. He could go pay out the contract for that. Did he already do that? Sorry. Whatever he wants to happen with Auburn football, he can go do that. So first of all, I definitely agree with John Gruber that like the way this is sourced and the way this is coming out on the Financial Times with four different people bylining it with a lot of sourcing for something that's probably a very internal discussion. almost certainly a planned leak like by apple it's very much in the tim that's the way tim cook does things with big decisions exactly i think this is very likely to be true and that's very exciting for me now the the good thing about a leadership transition is that it shakes stuff up and that it isn't always going to be good it isn't always going to be smooth but it shakes stuff up Now, I do agree with John that like Tim staying on for a long time in a powerful position is not good and it's not good for the next CEO.

1:15:36And let's say for the sake of argument that they're right, that it is John Ternus. If I were John Ternus in that situation, like you don't want to be undermined by the old CEO still being very involved and very powerful. But Tim Cook also is a very carefully planned and measured person, somewhat to a fault maybe. And so I actually wouldn't worry about that being very likely. I think if Cook – if the rumor is that Cook might step down into some kind of board chair position, whether it's executive or non-executive chairman of the board, I think it's more likely that that would really just be to ease Wall Street.

1:16:16In the same way, that's what Steve Jobs did when he handed the reins over to Tim Cook. The idea was, look, we're going to make this look like, you know, everything is just smoothly transitioning. And it might be, but I don't think that would be a long term plan for Tim to stick around until he's 75. I don't think that's very likely. I don't want to have to wait an extra two years of him sitting there to ease. I agree with you about the easing transition. That's totally I mean, they did the same thing with Jeff, easing Jeff Williams out and apparently easing the CFO out. or maybe even easing JG out.

1:16:48That's how they work. With the exception of the forestall thing, Tim Cook's leadership has been very sort of easing the transition. But what it does mean is that Ternus can't come in on day one and do seven decisions that are the exact opposite of what Tim Cook was doing. But that's what he needs to do to get out. Like, I don't want to wait two years. Like, oh, investors are happy now. So now you turn it like... And also, it's like it would be an embarrassment for Tim Cook. Do you remember the speech Jobs gave to Cook as retold by, I think, cook just do what's right talking to uh he's talking to steve jobs on like his deathbed or whatever and steve jobs is like never ask yourself what i would do just do the right thing and for better or for worse uh eventually that's what tim cook did he clearly started doing things that he thought were the right thing that he certainly never worried about what steve jobs would think right in the beginning in the beginning tim cook was a little like it was a little bit shy of like making radical movies in the beginning i feel i feel like he lived under the shadow of Steve Jobs for a while.

1:17:43But eventually he started making Tim Cook moves, which is what Jobs said to do. But that's one of those monkey's paw curses, like, don't worry about what I would do, just do what you think is right. But if what you think is right is not right, then that's advice for you to say, well, nothing constrains me. I'm the CEO, and this is what I think we should do, therefore we should do it. And you just live and die by your own thing. There is something to be said for having some consideration of the legacy of the company when making decisions to try to keep you grounded in some way to not say we're going to be we're going to sell you know homemade yogurt or something now it's like well we're a computer company it's like well i feel like the yogurt thing is the right thing to do it's like well there's a right and a wrong answer sometimes and yogurt ain't it so and you know tim cook can sell yogurt but he did a lot of things especially with the app store and the political stuff and again specifically calling out i think he'll hang around to interface with the administration that's the job he's worst at in my personal opinion maybe not in wall street's opinion maybe not in tim cook's opinion but like wouldn't you like to see on day one an entirely different policy towards the u.s government but that is absolutely not going to happen all right see and this this is where i think you're not considering the reality of the situation i don't think even if tim cook was i was gonna say hit by a bus but the given this is episode 666 i don't want to put that out there yikes even if tim cook was immediately, he immediately retired and was not part of the board at all, I still would say, no way can the next CEO come in swinging.

1:19:10Because this is Apple in 2026 or whatever it will be. Apple is a financial juggernaut. They represent a huge, they represent trillions of dollars. They are massive. No one is going to walk into that company and start swinging and making massive changes like that in their first few months it's the line that everyone's been putting in their articles about this what good is having a few money if you never say fu that's the that's the cliche this will be the cliche of our times if anybody has fu money it's apple who's gonna who's gonna this is i'm making your argument for you who's gonna stand up and be the one to say fu it should be apple it's not currently with new leadership it could be i agree with you it probably won't be but like tim cook hanging around and looking over people's shoulders there's no way hey, the new CEO is immediately going to do things that essentially embarrass the former CEO, not just because it would spook Wall Street, which it would, but also because you don't get to be next in line to be CEO without having some kind of a relationship with the current CEO, which is such that you would never do that to them.

1:20:11Even if Turnus is the new CEO and he gets in there and Tim Cook says, do whatever you want, man, and Turnus walks in, he still can't. For example, some of the things that you're suggesting, which I agree with, things like app store policy, if you walk in there on day one and you make major changes there, you could cost yourself pretty big in the next quarterly earnings for things like high growth areas like your services area. If you screw that up or if you are too quick or too sudden or too rash about it, you could cost the company billions of dollars in a high growth area that can tank the stock significantly.

1:20:45And then think about all the rich people who are going to lose a bunch of money as a result of all that. Like, so when you think about like the pressures on this job, it is a juggernaut of a company in a juggernaut of a financial system. Anyone who gets into that job is going to have to very slowly turn that wheel. They're not going to. It's like trying to turn a cruise ship on a dime. Like you're not going to do it. It needs time and space to make changes. They have to very slightly course adjust. Like it's not going to be somebody coming in there and doing anything noteworthy in a one year time span.

1:21:22The problem with the political stuff in particular is that any turning of the wheel, this is what I talked about in the episode where I was bemoaning the limitations of the appeasement policy. If you do literally anything that is not pleasing to the administration, it is as if you have done everything against them. Because that's what appeasement is. You keep them happy and they can get unhappy really quickly. So let's say John Ternus declines to go to the state dinner with the murdering guy from Saudi Arabia. That would be front page news headlines, stock would tank. And it's like, I just didn't go to a dinner.

1:21:56How slowly can I turn the wheel on this giant ship? It's like, sorry, with the appeasement policy, if you do literally anything except for appease them, we've decided you are you are no longer a friend to the administration because that's how authoritarianism works. And so that's why I say, like, on that particular issue, there is no avoiding the FU. so just do the fu but they're probably not going to which means that this is one of the the timeline wise one of the hopes and one of the things that i have discussed is that uh tim cook could stay out the rest of the trump term and eat all of the crap and put all the sin on him and then have the sin leave with him and the new person can get a clean slate you know what i mean now that's not going to happen if this happens next year so it necessarily taints the incoming ceo who seemingly has no choice but to continue this stupid appeasement policy otherwise you know the stock tanks and blah blah blah and i think they should do that like again a few money like they should say a few but i agree with you that they probably won't especially if tim cook is still there so um i just i guess i just hope that tim cook wrote out these last few years however long trump sticks around and then cleanly transitioned after that and really got the hell of the company and let a new person go in and do entirely new things.

1:23:10But it looks like that's not happening. I don't know. I mean, and I do think like, you know, the dynamics with Trump could could be playing a role here. But keep in mind, like Tim Cook's actions suggest that he is a Trump supporter and that he uses Trump to get what he wants. So let's let's not try to pretend that like Tim Cook is trying to like minimize make a plan to minimize Apple's exposure to Trump. No, Tim has put Apple directly into Trump so that they can get Trump to do things that are convenient for them. Like, I don't think it's like a minimize the damage plan. I think it's you keep Tim around to keep cozying up to Trump to keep getting things that benefit Apple.

1:23:49Like, it's not about harm reduction. It's about opportunistically getting what they want. Like, look at all the preferential treatment Apple gets as a result of this cozying up. It's this is not Tim quietly saying screw you to Trump in the background. and then, you know, going and doing the minimum required. This is Tim stepping up to get favors and it's working. Tim Cook is a Trump supporter. I hate to tell everybody. Anyway, it isn't an angle of like, let's try to, you know, strategically plan out Trump. But, and I will gladly say Trump's name as much as possible on episode 666, hoping for things like that to happen.

1:24:25I'm hoping that what happens here is Tim Cook sticks around long enough to keep being the Trump sink. He is the Trump agent. He takes all the hate about Trump from people who believe in facts and decency. Do you think he still goes to the dinners with the murderers while John Ternus doesn't have to, even though John Ternus is the CEO? I think so. I agree. This is not necessarily guaranteeing that Cook is stepping down next year. It's more like Cook might step down as soon as next year. Or sometime next year, if not like January of next year. Right. And so maybe they can swing it such that Cook sticks around for the rest of Trump's term.

1:25:06And then maybe John Ternus takes over after that. But that's probably at least a few years out. So that's probably not within this timeline. So I don't know what's going to go on there. But I'm hoping that once Cook is no longer CEO, I'm hoping that that gives Ternus or whoever – sounds like Ternus – a new chance to have a new take on that relationship. and actually support Apple for what its core values really seem to be for most of its life and not what it has been this past year. That being said, so setting aside all that BS, thinking about a CEO transition at Apple, I don't know that much about John Ternus.

1:25:48We certainly don't know what he would be like as a CEO because he has not been a CEO. We do know that he leads a very successful division at Apple, the hardware engineering division. His division is just the rock stars of Apple right now. They execute well. And if you look back, when Tim Cook was made CEO, he came from operations. And at that time, operations was the rock star division of Apple. They were doing great. They were bringing the company forward. And that's what John Ternus' hardware division has been doing. They are top of their game, executing great, bringing great products out and making the company very successful with their advances, you know, among other things in the company.

1:26:32So I'm actually very excited to see, like, the next chapter of Apple, if it's led by John Ternus, even though I don't know what kind of CEO he would be, I'm a lot more excited about somebody who seems to, like, love computer hardware than somebody who seems to love spreadsheets and football and Donald Trump. All right, leave football out of it, but otherwise I agree. And so, like, Apple needs a product leader, and ever since Jobs passed away, they haven't had one. Ternus might be that. He certainly has a much better chance of being that than anyone in the Cook regime ever was. What's also interesting and I think a little bit exciting and I don't want to be mean to the people I'm about to mention because I don't intend it.

1:27:14What also tends to happen in a CEO transition is a bunch of other turnover happens near the high ranks. I would expect a lot of other people of the old guard to retire or move on to a different company. Jeff Williams already did. Jeff Williams already did. I would expect we would probably lose at least Phil Schiller, probably also Craig Federighi. No, I don't think Craig is going. Well, so there's a number of ways that could go. Number one, you know, and I don't think this would be like on day one. But what tends to happen in a transition like this is certain people who were not promoted as CEO either are upset that they weren't and might leave as a result of that.

1:28:00Or maybe they just don't really want to work for the new person or – dynamics change. Or they just think it's a good time to leave because things are in transition. I was thinking you're retiring anyway. Now is a good time. Right. Look, that's what happened when we went from jobs to cook. A lot of people shuffled around. You had the Forrestal versus Ive problem and then Forrestal was forced out. Like there was all things happen like that. And while I'm not like wishing in particular for any of these other people to go because I actually like a lot of their work, I am excited about the prospect of turnover.

1:28:33Because these are people who have been in this upper echelon of Apple leadership for a long time. They're all nearing retirement age, although not super close to it. like Federighi is, I think, like in his late 50s still. Schiller is like 61 or 62, something like that. So like we're not super close to like, you know, Cook is 65. So that's like that's a lot closer to retirement age. But I think what we will see is in the next one to five years, I think we're going to see a lot of people on that Apple.com slash leadership page retire and those positions will turn over. We've already started to see that.

1:29:08It's not just Jeff Williams. It's that CFO that I can't remember the name of. jg getting shuffled around for cause and like there's been like as those people age they're coming up but yeah this is definitely an inflection point for people to to rotate out like that's that's the thing with new ceo especially we don't even know who it is we can attach all our hopes and dreams to it and uh regardless of how we think the forestall and i have transition went you always hope that these transitions are going to take place and that the new person in that position will be better than the old in the ways that you care about but sometimes they're worse and so it's always a risky period like on the other hand like i do always feel like the the jobs to cook transition it was like i don't think anyone minded because we kind of like the direction jobs was taking things but i always felt kind of disappointed that it took like three years for apple to look like it had a new ceo you know what i mean like and again no one complains about that but it's like but we like what jobs is doing so we like that tim cook continued down that road Even though he kept quoting Jobs saying, just do what you want to do, he totally didn't.

1:30:07He did what Jobs wanted to do for years. And again, when that's something mostly you agree with, it seems fine. But I hope it doesn't take that long this time. I hope I don't feel like Tim Cook's Apple sticks around for four more years because the new CEO is too cautious to do anything different. I know the big ship turns slowly, don't spook Wall Street, yada, yada. But I hope he does something new. and obviously attaching my hopes and dreams hey uh get someone in user interface design who knows anything about user interface design uh you know update your products more often be more decisive about your your products uh you know bring back the mac pro like all my play the hits right i got all the things that i want change your relationship with the app store unify your operating system across all the regions to be more open because everyone's making you do that so why are you fighting in every possible like there's so many things but there's no guarantee that any of those decisions from a new ceo will go our way and maybe new ceo will come in and screw something else up like say hey podcast let's screw that up now so please don't you know this i think i'm just that i'm pessimistic because the times we're living in but like i do have lots of hopes and dreams for a new ceo lots of things they could do differently if i could sit down with the new ceo i could do it like a 10 bullet point thing do these 10 things in the next five years but they have their own stuff they're going to do and maybe it has zero overlap with mine and it's a scary it's a scary time like as as much as we're annoyed with tim cook it's tim cook's apple is such a known quantity at this point uh that they're you know going completely into the unknown it's like well surely it's got to be better right surely things have to improve and it's like well he could make certain things worse and we'll see how like the fact that he did great in hardware that just makes me it's like the peter principle like great keep that guy in charge of hardware he's doing great it's like but actually he's gonna be in charge of the whole company it's like when they put i've in charge of of hardware design and user interface design it's like well i mean he's made some great products but does he know anything about user interface design turns out not really no he didn't so like making making the hardware guy again like there's no one person who embodies everything right you know jobs couldn't do a whole bunch of these things do they all have specific skills right so it's just a question of like figuring out like we always talk about does cook know how to figure out whether a high level executive is going to be good and especially early on in cook's career is a bunch of like hires that flamed out a couple of them in retail that one was that paper master guy in like silicon like it's hard it's hard to do that like no one you know even jobs hired people who turned out not to be great and whatever like so it's just it's just such an unknown so i'm i'm i think i'm i mean obviously i'm excited for cook to leave but i'm kind of more scared about what the future holds because not because i want don't want things to change because i do but i fear that they're going to change for the worse, which would just totally be such a 2025 thing to happen.

1:32:51Yep, really would. Honestly, I find this very exciting. I think the Tim Cook era is surprisingly to me almost over. I really thought that he would at least last through the Trump term. Yeah. And this is looking like he's probably not going to. And I hope, you know, look, I don't wish ill on the man. I hope he's not like sick or something. But I am happy for his era of leadership to be passed along to somebody else because I I think he has taken Apple as far as he can. He's had a number of pretty big things that I wish they didn't do, a number of big directions that they didn't go in and should have, a number of big directions that they did go in and shouldn't have.

1:33:30It was like Game of Thrones where it seemed like it was going real good until the end. I didn't see it, so I don't know. It's a series that everyone loved until the final season when everyone was like, ugh. I feel like this is the final season of Tim Cook and everyone's like, ugh. I mean, that's like many TV shows, to be honest, including some of my favorite TV shows. But anyway, I'm excited to see turnover because we've had the same leaders for a very long time. And you're right. Turnover is scary because it is risky. But what it also tends to bring is fresh perspectives, new blood, new excitement, new directions and new ideas.

1:34:03And that's something that Apple could use. They are very successful financially, and many of their products are great, but they could use some new ideas and some fresh blood and some fresh leadership. So I find this very exciting, even though it is risky. Yes, do things that are scary. It is risky. It does scare me a little bit, but I'm ready to see who and what is next at Apple. I should do a series of blog posts called Apple Turnover. Isn't that a good pun? And then maybe Apple Turnaround after that? Yeah, maybe. All right. Thank you to our sponsors this week, Squarespace, Delete Me, and Skims.

1:34:41And thanks to our members who support us directly. You can join us at atp.fm slash join. One of the perks of ATP membership is ATP Overtime, our weekly bonus topic. Every single week, we bring you extra content just for members in Overtime, in addition to our monthly specials and things like that. So this week on Overtime, we're going to be talking about the App Store on the web and Apple's other web apps recently. you can join to listen atp.fm slash join. Thanks everybody we'll talk to you next week Now the show is over. They didn't even mean to begin cause it was accidental Oh it was accidental John didn't do any research.

1:35:26Marco 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

1:36:13I have a weird parenting moment that happened over the last few days. Let me back up a smidge. When I was in school, in grade school, we've talked about this in bits and parts throughout the years. Several of the schools I went through used Macs. And I thought they were very cool and very pretty. I didn't want one, but I thought they were fun. and at some point or another presumably somebody pointed out to me or maybe i stumbled upon hypercard and hypercard to a 10 year old was let's this is a way to make a choose your own adventure game right and it was amazing it was incredibly cool hypercard to this day even as someone who never really used a mac growing up other than in school is one of my favorite pieces of software I've ever used.

1:37:04It was just so cool and so approachable, even for a 10-year-old. Well, Declan has apparently discovered, quote-unquote, HyperCard. And by that I mean, I noticed that he's been obsessed with doing something on his Chromebook recently. I'm like, what's going on there, bud? He said, well, I forget exactly the words he used to describe it. But he said, I'm making a rage bait game. This is apparently what the grade schoolers think is the funniest thing in the world, is making people grumbly and upset and angry by asking silly questions and doing convoluted things. But what he's doing is, well, actually, let me ask, John, what is HyperCard for Declan?

1:37:48Did he use the word HyperCard or are you just using this? No. Oh, goodness, no. No. Because you wrote it in the show notes without a capital C, which I corrected. so i was wondering if there was a new product called hyper card with a lowercase c oh can i guess anyway intercaps intercaps were big in the early mac days capital h hyper capital c card anyway what is hyper card for kids these days i'm not up on the i mean unless he's using like uh uh like a whatever google's powerpoint uh equivalent is to that's that was my guess google slides that's it google slides that is his hyper card that is his hyper card i mean And that's selling HyperCard pretty short, but okay.

1:38:26It is. It is. It is. And I don't mean any offense by that. I truly don't. As I said, I loved HyperCard. This is a very different animal. But in the end of the day, what he's basically doing is making a HyperCard, what was it, stack? Is that right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Making a HyperCard stack. It's a stack of cards. Yeah. So he's making a HyperCard stack, again, my words, not his, in order to mess with his friends. And it's just so funny to me. a there's a little bit of like life finds a way b there's a little bit of like everything old is new again c it's similar to what i would have done at the time i think i was a little less nefarious but that's okay um but i just i i really thought it was adorable that here he is he's spending hours building up this choose your own adventure rage baity hyper card stack again my words not his and i just thought that was very adorable and very funny programming thing in Google Slides or is he just using links to other slides?

1:39:22Like is there the equivalent of HyperTalk? No, I don't think so. I think it's just links to other slides. Links to other slides. Yeah. I mean, I'm not sure if a HyperCard is the analogy. He's basically making web pages without web technology because he was just linking from one slide to the other. That's fair. Yeah. But I guess the vibe of it just felt like HyperCard to me because he's drawing buttons. Because it's a GUI editor and he's not writing markup. Right. And he's kind of drawing buttons and then he yells at me every time because I see a big rectangle or round rect really as a button. And so I'll tap anywhere on that button.

1:39:56And then you have to tap on the word. You have to tap on the word and it gets cranky me every time because I always forget. That's going to be new in iOS 27. I think they're going to add that change. But anyways, I just thought it was very, very funny that here it was the same sorts vaguely. If you squint, the same thing that I was doing in what the early 90s is effectively happening again in 2025. slightly different tech but same idea i was doing rage bait things i think in hypercard as well i remember a hypercard stack i had that i would use to troll my pc using friends i remember at one point i drew a cave and like in the black mouth of the cave there was like a malevolent pair of eyes and a c uh like a c drive prompt it's making fun of drive letters and dos you know i forget what it was called i should dig it out but it was basically like a max or better than pcs because PCs don't have GUIs, HyperCard stack, really driving the point home.

1:40:49I let my friends play and click around and they get angry. I was an adorable child. I can tell. Did you play the stack and see if it did make you enraged? Yes, to a degree. Is it because it used young person slang that you didn't understand? Some. Some of it was like one of the slides had a series of eight colors and each of these colors was a button and there was no label whatsoever and you just had to guess which one was the way to go forward. This is, yeah, so my kid has also made games, especially when he was like a little bit younger, so this tracks, games like that that basically it's like just kind of random failure and death and you have to just memorize the correct path through and it's the old school gaming and also the riddles in the dark from The Hobbit where Bilbo can't think give him our riddles and he says what have i got in my pocket that's this is a riddle it's like what which color should you click i don't know try one nope wrong