How Apple Survived and Thrived: The First Fifty Years with David Pogue

0:00Hello everyone, it's Guy Kawasaki. I believe we are in troubling and dangerous times. One of the things that's happening is that privacy is eroding. And when privacy erodes, so does democracy. So Madison, Nisberg and I, we just finished a book. It's called Everybody Has Something to Hide. This is a jargon-free book. It is for everybody to learn why and how they should use Signal. They should use Signal to ensure their privacy, safety, and well-being. It comes out on January 28th for five days. It'll be free, and then it'll go to$4.04. I hope you see what we did there. The forward is from Congressman Ro Khanna because he believes, like we do, that democracy is extremely important.

0:56and signal is one of the tools that can help us preserve democracy. So remember the name, Everybody Has Something to Hide. It's by Guy Kawasaki and Madison Nismer. He was wearing a t-shirt that said Occupy Mars. And this interview was taking place at SpaceX on the factory floor where they're building the rockets. And so I'm like, oh, I love that t-shirt. Can I get that in the gift shop? And he just turned his eyes toward me dead and cold like a shark. He had come into this interview angry and I don't know why. I mean, he had no clue what I had in mind to ask him. Somebody must have told him like this is likely to be a hostile interview.

1:39I don't know. Good morning, everybody. It's Guy Kawasaki. This is the Remarkable People podcast. There's no way for you to know this, but this is our fourth attempt at trying to do this interview. And you would think that two old tech guys like David and Guy would be able to do a podcast recording, but it has not been working very smoothly. There goes our credibility, but let me introduce today's remarkable guest. His name is David Pogue, and we go back a very long way. Macworld Magazine. David has won, I don't know, six or seven Emmys. He's a best-selling author. He's iJustine and Marques Brownlee before iJustine and Marques Brownlee were even born.

2:31He worked for the New York Times. He founded Yahoo Tech. He now works for CBS News Sunday Morning. He hosted 20 episodes of Nova. Basically, he is the man in tech journalism. And now I learned something that he was trained as a Broadway conductor. Yeah. Ten years. Yeah, I was a pit musician, man. Wow. So, yeah, maybe that has something to do with his wonderfulness as a tech journalist. You can say it. Show off. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the momentous occasion which brings us together is the publication of this book. And let me tell you something. And as a person who was inside the washing machine, when the washing machine was running, I learned a shitload of stuff about the company that I was at.

3:25And I had no idea. And listen, this is a really thick book. This is War and Peace of Apple, which War and Peace of Apple is a good description of what happened at Apple. So, David, first, I want to go on the record. When you first contacted me about writing this book, I had the chutzpah and the balls to suggest that I be your co-author and we write this book together. And you very wisely and very diplomatically told me, guy, don't even fucking think about it. You know, you're not up to my speed. And I have to say, David, now that I read this book, I said, you made the absolute right decision. I would not have added a damn thing to this book.

4:08And the book is better without me. That's a rare moment of humility on my part. You made the absolute right decision. You did give me an absolutely phenomenal interview. 600 pages is a lot, but I hope you at least read your sections. You were so funny in that interview. I used some great quotes. The first thing I did when I got the galleys was I went to look for the index. I could only read about me, but there is no index for galleys. Oh, that's right. okay well we've got the hardbound copies now i'll have to ship you one yeah the cover should say apple the first 50 years david polg without guy kawasaki that would have

4:56okay so first of all i gotta bring up some of your checkered past i just learned that you're in the Epstein files. So I'd like you to explain that for us first. I'm in the Epstein files four times. My wife said, are you in the Epstein files? And there's a public website where you can search it. And I popped up four times. All four are people forwarding to Jeffrey Epstein my articles like, hey, J.E., thought you should look into this new Sony camera. Never met the man. I'm not sure and had even heard of the guy. But apparently he knew who I was because people kept sending him my articles. Wow. If we had known that earlier, we would have never scheduled you on this interview.

5:39Exactly. All right. I got to get a little dark right now. So how close did you come to boarding an Ocean Gate submarine and taking that tour? I was on it. Yeah. In the water. Yeah, we're in the water. CBS Sunday morning did a story about Ocean Gate and that guy, Stockton Rush, and that was to involve going down to the Titanic on his thing. And so we got up at 4 a.m. and we got in and we got bolted shut from the outside. And we only got down 40 feet when they had some kind of really stupid malfunction. I can tell you how stupid it was, but I was really pissed because it was a 12 day commitment.

6:24and so they canceled the dive and brought us back to the surface and that was it for our time on the ocean gate i was very annoyed until i learned that three dives later that thing imploded and killed everybody so it was like a russian roulette moment everyone's always like well didn't you know it was a janky operation and the answer is no i don't know if it was theater or what but they were so apparently safety obsessed. There were checklists and countdowns and mandatory countdown stops. And like they had this rule of three, that if three, even little things were amiss, they would cancel the dive.

7:08Like the batteries in the flashlight aren't fully charged or the label on the gauge is peeling off, whatever. So what happened with us was we were 40 feet down and the sub is mounted to a big horizontal floating sinkable platform. So you sink to 40 feet and then scuba divers come and unbolt the sub and off you go. They do that so that the launch happens underwater where it's calm. And while they were unbolting us, one of these four little black buoys on the corner of the platform came untied and popped up. Like I said to the guy, who cares? The job of the platform is over. No one gives a crap about this stupid buoy.

7:49But it was like this strike three thing. So that was the end of my journey. Wow. This book could have been Apple the first 50 years by Guy Kawasaki without David Pogue. It could have. It could have. Okay. So I have to tell you that I'm surprised by your reaction because in my mind, it was all about this kind of billionaire bro arrogance that we got so much money. We can send everybody up into space for a few minutes. We can send people to the Titanic because we're billionaires and we can do anything we want. But that's not exactly the impression I just got from you. They were very careful. I know that the narrative is now that Stockton Rush was a crook and a con man and a killer, and he didn't care.

8:33I did four interviews with him during those 12 days, and he knew the science. He knew the materials. He had studied all the four previous submersibles that had gone to the Titanic. And he had on staff P.H. Narjale, the most experienced Titanic diver in the world. He'd been to the Titanic 27 times and he supervised the building of the submersible. And I'm like, you have no qualms about it's being made of carbon fiber. He's like, absolutely not. I wouldn't get in it if I would. wood what we saw was much more buttoned down and safety conscious than what we now think of in from the documentaries and so on where stockton was ignoring whistleblowers and all that wow that is 180 degrees in what most people's impression is of what happened there wow wow but i you know david i gotta ask you a question like what kind of person would name his company with the word gate at the end.

9:37I mean, you know, like there's Watergate, there's, you know, all the gates are considered bad, right? Why would you name your company with gate at the end? Maybe he was thinking that nobody could ever call it a scandal because it would have to be Ocean Gate Gate. And that was too silly. That's almost as dumb as naming an AI company perplexity. But anyway, That's a different discussion. So now I really want to know, how does one win an Emmy? Because I've never won an Emmy. I don't know how to win an Emmy. How does this happen? There are these academies, television arts and science academies. There's one on the East Coast, one on the West Coast.

10:19And the Emmys are for television, right? So television production companies and networks can submit stories for consideration in the various categories. There's news, there's sports, there's children. And it's a big honor, but I will also say it's also a big business because the trophy costs me$400. Like you buy those trophies, right? And there are many, many categories. There's documentary, there's sports, multiple things within each of these categories. Best one-off special, best series, best limited series, best supporting actor, best main actor, best main actress, best supporting actor. and so on, and times two, because there's an East Coast Academy and a West Coast Academy, and they all give out duplicate trophies.

11:09So I, for example, for 14 years, I've been the host of the technical Emmys. And at the tech Emmys, we give out awards to like the Steadicam and the first 4K camera and things like that. But meanwhile, I know in the back of my head that a similar event is simultaneously going on on the West Coast with another host, with another set of winners. So it's a business. Wait, there's East Coast, West Coast for the exact same award. So you could win an Emmy for the best USB-C cable East Coast, USB-C cable West Coast. There's two winners. You could. That's absolutely happened. And does winning an Emmy change your life?

11:49All of a sudden, you don't have to make reservations anywhere on the East Coast. And like Tavern on the Green is begging you to come eat there. Trump Tower gives you free rooms. What does it mean to win? Suddenly podcast hosts are interested in you. Everybody wants to co-author a book with you. I mean, I put them on the, I'm a former musician, so we put them on the piano. And I will say there's an instantaneous credibility thing that happens when somebody enters the house. They treat you better. The movers are more careful. Things like that. So, David, how many do you have? Seven. If I give you$400, will you give me one?

12:34And then I can say I have an Emmy, right? I mean - What kind of public figure idiot thinks that taking a trophy from a genuine winner, Nobel Prize, counts as having earned it? Oh, you mean somebody did that before me? I didn't know what you're talking about. I thought I was the most clever person to come up with that. I'd rather I'd give you$400 and get an Emmy than have to invade a country, but that's a different discussion. Okay, so now we covered the Emmy. I'm going down this checklist of my fantasy questions for David Polk here. Okay, so you've done a lot of interviews with a lot of famous people.

13:17I want to know who the nicest person ever was that you interviewed. Yeah, I can tell you that. When I was a teenager, my favorite band was Electric Light Orchestra, ELO. ELO. ELO, yeah. Mr. Blue Sky and all that. And it was run by a guy named Jeff Lin. He wrote all the songs. He was the singer. And then the band broke up. And so for 30 years, there was no ELO. And then about three years ago, the guy's like 70 now. and he put the band back together and was going to do a U.S. tour of ELO. And they were coming to Madison Square Garden. I told my wife, oh, my God, we have to go. We have to go. This is my inner child healed, you know.

13:58And she said, well, dude, you work for a national news show. Why don't you propose doing a story about him? And then instead of just seeing them from the seats, you get to meet him. And if you can believe it, my bosses said yes. And I went and I got to spend the day with Jeff Lynn at his house in California. And, you know, it's always risky meeting your heroes, as I knew from the day I met you. I was just about to say the same thing about you, but okay. Your intro was wrong about one thing. In 1983, 84, when you were changing the world at Apple, I was in college and all I knew of you was reading about you.

14:39And your evangelist newsletter would come out during the darker times and man i dropped everything to read that email to to give myself hope to tell me that i wasn't deluded being an apple fan so we were not friends in 1983 you were a hero and i was your reader in 1984 so let's make that clear you you seem a lot older than you are okay but anyway so yeah so i got to meet jeff lynn of yellow okay and i didn't know if he would be a jerk or what, but he was so nice and so funny and so vulnerable. It was unbelievable. Oh, that's great to hear. Okay. So now I got to ask you the flip side, which is, you know, which of these people gave you the most bullshit?

15:27Which was the most difficult? I interviewed Elon Musk. Yeah. And this is for CBS, right? Yes, that's right. And it was a terrifying interview for a bunch of reasons. One is that every damn person had their own agenda and hopes for this interview, right? Like all these liberal people in Westchester County where I live were all like, you go there and you cut his balls off on camera. And then CBS was being sued by the Trump administration for the 60 Minutes thing. And they're like, you have to be clear. You have to be patient. You can't edit him. And meanwhile, Musk's people obviously wanted a glowing thing about SpaceX.

16:12So everybody had their own agenda. And I had been told by his people that any subject was open. So I could ask him about politics. I could ask him about Tesla, anything. So he came onto the set to meet me and they take a couple of minutes to adjust your mics and the lighting. And so during that time, I generally try to disarm my interview subject by making some small jokes or chit chat. He was wearing a T-shirt that said Occupy Mars. And this interview was taking place at SpaceX on the factory floor where they're building the rockets. And so I'm like, oh, I love that T-shirt. Can I get that in the gift shop?

16:50And he just turned his eyes toward me dead and cold like a shark. He had come into this interview angry. And I don't know why. I mean, he had no clue what I had in mind to ask him. Somebody must have told him like, this is likely to be a hostile interview. I don't know. And then I started asking him a couple of space questions. And then I asked him, you came over to the United States on this program that lets foreign students, he was from South Africa, study in American universities. And now your boss is trying to shut down that program. How does that make you feel? And he's like, no, we're not talking about that.

17:30We're just talking about space today. And I'm like, but your people told me anything goes. And he's like, no. And so it just made my blood ran cold because I had prepared for a whole thing. And I had one vision of how this would go. And then I kid you not, unasked, I didn't bring up Trump, unasked, he starts going. But I got to tell you something. This big, beautiful bill is a disaster. I don't like it. It's going to erase everything I've tried to do with Doge in like three months. And he said, I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful, but it can't be both. So immediately CBS takes that line and releases it to the internet as a promo for the Sunday where this is going to air.

18:18And it goes super viral, top left corner, the New York Times, you know, Musk turns on Trump, this whole thing. Trump is asked about it in the White House. You know, we saw a clip from a CBS interview. And the next day, Elon Musk is out of the White House. I've heard a couple of people say that he intended to use this interview as a way to get himself out, you know, because like he volunteered that stuff. I had not asked him. Wow. I told you to take some ketamine for him when you did that interview. Are you thinking, David? Oh, my God. And have you had any interaction with him afterwards? No. No?

19:01It was suggested that I contact them after he announced that he was leaving the White House. It suggested that I seek a follow-up comment, which I did, and there was no response. Yeah, I think that bridge is burned.

19:28you're listening to remarkable people with guy kawasaki do you still drive a model 3 i do i love those cars i love those cars do you have you tried the self-driving recently i know that you did it you loved it if lyft shows up and it's a tesla i'll get in but i will not voluntarily get in a Tesla or do anything with a Tesla. Just ideologically. Just because of the association. Yeah, yeah. I know. We do have the sticker on the car. We bought this before Elon went crazy. Wait, so are you telling me that you would absolutely trust your life to the FSD of Tesla right now? I do every day. I have not driven manually in like three months.

20:12It is extraordinary. Like you're in your garage, right? You put in the address, you hit start self-driving. At this point, you can just cross your arms. The garage door opens, the car backs out, does a three-point turn to get out the driveway, puts on the signal, turns onto the road, gets to the highway, merges onto the ramp beautifully. If there's somebody slow in front of you, it puts on the turn signal and passes him and then gets back into the non-passing lane. It knows what exit to take. And when you get to the destination, the mall or the store, it goes up and down the rows of the parking lot looking for the closest space and then parks itself all by itself.

20:55It is so obviously safer and better than a person, like way better. I keep having these incidents like I was showing my dad the self-driving in Manhattan. He's 97. It was the night before Thanksgiving. It was raining. It was dark. It was horrible, chaotic traffic. And we're at a light, a red light. And my dad says, but how is it going to know when to go? And like, Dad, it has cameras all around. It can see the light. And at that moment, the light turned green and the car didn't move. And I was all ready to come up with some compensatory excuse when this crazy, grungy, screaming high guy runs from behind from the back left of the car, diagonally across the front fender, screaming in the rain.

21:47And the car had seen it from behind and projected the trajectory of this guy. And if it hadn't, I would have plowed him over. There's no question the car saw him before I did. Oh, Madison, I'm in a big moral dilemma. Should we edit out that whole section where David Polg is testifying to how great Tesla is? Oh, man. Of course, you got to put this into context. This is the same guy who got in Ocean Gate and was ready to go. So, okay. So, you know, you're one of the few people in the world who have interactions with Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. Which of these two people do you think has altered the universe more, Elon or Steve?

22:32Wow. I think it's impossible to answer because both of them hugely - Don't be chicken shit, David. I need an answer. I guess Steve, because in 1976, when Apple was founded, no one had ever seen a computer like in person, right? Corporations and governments had computers. They did not have keyboards. They did not have screens. You operated them with flippy switches on the front and they gave you your answers with punch cards or lights that light up. And it was Woz who first thought of attaching a TV screen and keyboard. And it was Jobs who said, we should market this and bring this to the masses.

23:14So those two guys with the Apple one, especially the Apple two, brought computers into homes, like to make it something that everybody could own, which was something no one thought coming. and that led to everything else. And that led to the phone, which led to social media, which led to Airbnb, Tinder, Grubhub, all the social media sites, which has changed the world politically, culturally, environmentally, all because of that central mission of putting advanced technology into the hands of everybody. All right. We might as well tackle the Apple question now. After all, that's why you're here.

23:55How much more can I endorse your book without talking about your book? But anyway, as I was reading your book, I said to myself over and over, I didn't know that was true. Like the first time was, I didn't know that Apple was the fourth thing that they did together. So correct the record, two guys in a garage start Apple. Can you just give us the full story? Because I didn't know the full story. Yeah, no, Apple didn't start in a garage. That's another myth. I will tell you, so I interviewed 150 people for this book, You Among Them. That was an unbelievably great interview. And like 40 % of these guys, the first thing out of their mouths was, please get it right this time.

24:37Because all these previous books, first of all, they tend to be written by business writers. So they have a sort of executive boardroom focus. I'm a technology dude. So I wanted it to be more about the origin stories of the products and the technologies and stuff like that. So I really, really tried to fix the game of author telephone that's been going on for 50 years, where the first Apple book cited a story that wasn't true. But then the next Apple book author refers to the first book as source material. And the story keeps getting propagated on and on. Like there's the story that everybody tells about the iPod jobs wanted it as small as possible.

25:20and so they brought him a prototype and they're like, here you go, Steve, this is as small as it's going to get. And he drops it in the aquarium in the fish tank and air bubbles come out. He's like, see those air bubbles? That means there's still room in there. Make it smaller. I mean, what a wonderful story, right? Absolutely not true. Not a single person remembers or could say that. Yeah, it turns out that this was the fourth business of the two Steves. They had gone into business locally trying to sell the Apple One, of course, which wasn't called the Apple One. It was just Waz's circuit board.

25:58That was the first one. The second one was they were hired by a local timeshare company. These are companies who would own a mini computer and let poor non-corporate slobs connect to the online military network remotely by dialing in. And they wanted the two Steves to build a little$200 terminal that this guy could sell to clients who wanted to use his mini computer remotely. And then there was the blue box. That was a huge one. When Woz was in college, he built this little device that could mimic the touch tones of telephones dialing the bell phone system and make free phone calls. And once again, as with the Apple one, Jobs was like, dude, that's amazing.

26:43We should sell this. And so he began marketing this thing to college kids who would make free phone calls and save a lot of money. So Apple was actually the fourth one. And you probably know this guy, but a lot of people don't realize that there was a third founder who was cut in for 10 percent. This guy, Ron Wayne, that Jobs knew from his work at Atari. And Ron was an entrepreneur. He was a jack of all trades. He was an engineer. He was a draftsman. So he made Apple's first logo. He designed a case for the Apple One. And more to the point, he got Steve and Steve Jobs and Waz over the hump of some disagreement stuff.

27:25And he said, look, let's found you as a company. And on April 1st, 1976, the three of them signed the founding documents. Ron Wayne, if he had held onto his stock today, would have$400 billion. But instead, Instead, 12 days later, the two boys, the two Steves who were, by the way, young, long-haired, grungy, Jobs was barefoot and smelly. He did not use deodorant. He did not do good hygiene. He was a very counterculture kid. They got a loan for$15 ,000 worth of parts to build these Apple Ones. And Ron Wayne was on the hook for some of that because he was one of the founders. and he had just gone through some really nasty startup entrepreneurial disasters where he was on the hook for loans that he couldn't pay back.

28:19And he was like, dude, I'm 40. This is crazy. What am I doing messing with these two 20 year old hippies with a$15 ,000 loan? I'm out. So he went back to the Santa Clara registrar's office and took his name off the agreement 12 days later. So they paid him$800. And then Apple's lawyers said, we'll give you another $1 ,500 if you'll agree that this is really it. So that was it for Ron Wayne. He's never done an interview. I tried to reach him for the book, couldn't find him. Apparently, he wrote a little memoir, which is really sweet. He's like, everybody wants me to say I regret backing out. And honestly, I did what I had to do at the time.

28:59And I've never starved. So I'm okay, which is really moving and mature and sweet. And so on March 11, I don't know if that's before or after this is aired, but March 11, I'm launching the book at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View with special guests on stage. We're having John Scully and Chris Espinosa and Avi Devaney and so on. Waz is going to make a video appearance, we hope. Who emails the museum from nowhere but Ron Wayne? Wow. He's like, do you think I could say a few words? Wow. Hell yeah. No one's ever seen you. So he's going to stand up and I'm going to ask him a couple of questions at this thing.