Episode 977: Memories of Apple on its 50th Anniversary

0:00Slow draining sinks, a foul kitchen odor, standing water in the shower, it's time to get your dreams cleaned with OneSource's $99 drain cleaning special. OneSource does it all without draining your wallet. Scheduled today at OneSourceAir.com. Unscripted, unfiltered, unafraid, welcome to the Macworld podcast. My name is Michael Simon and today I'm joined by a different Jason, a special guest, longtime writer, editor, podcaster, former Macworld editor-in-chief, Jason Snow.

0:36Hi, it's good to be sitting in the Jason chair. And of course, our producer, Roman Loyola. Oh, hi there. This is episode number 977 and we are recording this on April 1st, which is, if you haven't read any news stories for the past two weeks, Apple's 50th anniversary birthday, whatever you, whatever, whatever it's, it's called. But 50 years ago today, Apple was, was burst into existence. So we're excited to have Jason join us today. He has been covering Apple, I

1:09don't think quite as long as 50 years, but no, I did the math. I think I've been covering Apple for two thirds of its existence. All right. That's, that's impressive. So I have a bunch of questions for you, if you don't mind. And, you know, there's no one better to talk to who has a history, at least that I know of, than you. You have a ton of stories, you've been to a ton of events, you've covered a ton of products and I, I can't wait to, to pick your brain. So we're going to have a pretty long main segment. If we have time, we're going to do a, what we're watching

1:41segment because I want to talk to Jason also about baseball. And I know our listeners hate when I talk about baseball, but this will be Apple related. So we'll see if we have time and then we'll close with our comment corner. Speaking of comments, you can contact us through blue style, Facebook threads, search for Macworld, look for the blue mouse logo, send an email to podcast at macworld.com, comment under a story, comment under a video, comment under a post, just somehow get us a message. And we'll talk about our favorite ones on a future show. Okay. Roman, we're going to start with Apple history because it's a, it's a history

2:18show, but wait, before we do that, Jason, I just want to quickly talk. You were on Jeopardy recently. Yeah, I was. And so you're actually the third Macworld, I think the third, at least the third former Macworld employee to be on Jeopardy, Glenn Fleischman and Dan Morin. Yeah, that's true. That's true. I was number three. They, they did one thing different than me, which is they won and I did not. I did not. I got, I got beat by a guy who has since established that he is in the top 20 and rising best Jeopardy players ever. So yeah, he's still

2:53rolling. He's still going as we record this. Yeah. But you were close to beating him. We had a good game. If you look at the numbers, if you look at the metrics, um, I buzzed in the most, uh, percentage wise, uh, successfully of any of the players. Um, I think we had one of the best games against him in the like 13 or 14 games he's played, but yeah, he's really good and knows everything. So that was a tough one. I, I, I got a lot of advice from people who basically said number one piece of advice is don't go up against a super champion and, uh, you don't get to control that. And I, turns out I did. We

3:24didn't know it quite yet. He set a bunch of records in the morning before we taped my episode. And, um, that was the moment where everybody was like, Oh no. Yeah. Like everybody knew that this guy was going to roll and he has continued to roll. So was your game like, was it? So that day was that the beginning of his run? Yeah. So they tape, uh, they tape a week at a time, uh, three in the morning, two in the afternoon with two different audiences. They had three different tape days that week. Cause they were behind. Sometimes they only do two tape days, but they were, they were behind schedule because they were taping other

3:57stuff. So, um, so the day before I was there, Jamie Ding, this great champion, um, he was there all day. He got called to play in the last game of the day on the Friday. He won it had to come back the next morning and we meet him and we're like, Oh, he's just a one game champion. There isn't somebody here who's a 20 game champion. This is going to be okay. And then in game two, he set a couple of all time jeopardy records, like all time jeopardy records. And that was when everybody else in the green room is just like, Oh no, you know, and then he proceeded to beat all of us. So you get to watch the, you get to watch him

4:32play. Yeah. Yeah. You're watching jeopardy. You're going to play. You watch first. I didn't realize you watching him just destroy the first two games were really ugly and everybody else just like, Oh, what are we doing here? And, and do they have alternates? I had a moment of like, is somebody here going to just like get sick and leave, but we all stuck it out. We stuck it out and he defeated all of us in turn. So I feel good. I mean, that's, I feel good because like get beat by a guy like that. I have no regrets. It's like that guy was so good. Like, I feel like I played pretty well and it just didn't matter. And he, he

5:04knows so much. There's a moment where he started answering. I thought I had a gauge on what his knowledge base is. Cause everybody's got holes in their knowledge. And then he, I was like, he's a lawyer. He's a bureaucrat. He was answering questions. I was like, yeah, okay. I see what he knows. And then there was this obscure fairy tales category that he ran. And I thought, Oh no, he actually knows everything. And he has proven over the last three weeks that he does know everything. Yeah. Um, so going into final jeopardy, you, you were within shouting distance. Yeah. The way it works, uh, you have to make a bet. And I had

5:34that moment where I realized if I bet nothing, cause so you have, you have horror categories that come up just like the categories that I always joked before. It's like the things that you never, ever, ever want to pick and you never want to see him if you're on jeopardy. And for me, one of them is classical music. I just don't know anything about it. I read books about it in studying for this and the final jeopardy category comes up and it's composers. And I'm my wife says that she saw me laughing, uh, when it came up because I'm like, uh, it's the worst, literally the worst. But in that moment I had to bet in case I got it right. And the other two players got it

6:05wrong. I would have won. And in fact, if you look at the, the bets from that episode, I would have won by a dollar if Jamie got it wrong and I got it right. And Jordan, my other player also got it wrong. The problem is Jamie got it right. We didn't get it right because we don't know anything, neither of us about classical music. So it didn't matter, but it means that it means I've finished third because I decided rather than trying to guarantee that I finished second, I wanted to try to win. I would never forgive myself if I didn't try to win. So I tried to win right on. Well, it was, it's a, I don't, I haven't watched Jeopardy in years, but it was,

6:35it was a good episode. It was, uh, I actually knew some of the categories. It was a good smattering of stuff. Yeah, it was a tough, there were a bunch of, they called triple stumpers, which is when nobody answers and it just beeps. There were a lot of those. It was a tough board for that. And when I walked out afterward, um, you know, the audience can kind of go back in between shows and sort of stand in the hallway behind. And my wife was at the, at the door of the green room. I was going to get my stuff and they let us watch the Friday game, but I, I was just kind of going to drop some stuff off. And my wife said, I think you did great. And I said, I feel like we got our, we got our punches in. And that's all again, like I was worried that I was going to say a

7:11lot of stupid stuff on Jeopardy and make really dumb mistakes and all of that. And I got 15 right and one wrong as it turns out. And the one wrong was really like by two letters. I just, I, I, so I'm, I feel, I feel pretty good that I did not come up with something incredibly stupid on Jeopardy that I'm going to regret for the rest of my life. So, uh, I'm okay. You got wrong. Uh, the one you got wrong is, um, related tangentially to Apple. Cause yeah, well, I mean, I got the segue personal transporter wrong, which Steve jobs famously said was going to change the world. Uh, cause I called it the personal transport. And that was me being a little too like, I don't know, British or something. I don't know.

7:45I don't know what I was thinking, but, um, I, I literally, it's that thing where I just didn't say the error. Cause I thought, well, I said transport, maybe that's enough. And it was not enough, but oh, well. Do they kind of like instill in you? Like, it's really important that you get every syllable, every, like every answer has to be exact. Yeah. I think everybody knows that who watches Jeopardy, they know what the rules are. And if you, if you get it even a little wrong or insert the wrong vowel in the wrong place so that it can't be plausibly pronounced that way, they will just knock you off. And they're pretty, they're sticklers about that. And if there's a question, they'll

8:16stop the show and, uh, and check it out and then restart the show. They, they will do that. But, um, but yeah, it's a real machine. I mean, you really, we just all got fed in there and then we left and then, and it would be, it'd probably feel different if you had like cycling through different champions, but we just had Jamie beat us, you know, two at a time. So that's just how that went. Uh, I Roman, I'm sorry. We're, we're, we're taking too long on this, but just real quick, how, how long is the whole process to like apply, get tested and then go on the show?

8:47So the beauty of it now, and this didn't used to be like this, but they have embraced the internet. So there's a test you can take any time on their website. And if you score highly enough on it, um, you get put in a, uh, a pot basically. And I don't know quite how you, whether you're randomly selected or what, but like I did that in two weeks later, I got a call that said, we would like you to take the test again on zoom and it's proctored basically to make sure you didn't cheat when you took the test and they watch you take the test. It's silent. You're just sitting there taking the test. And then two weeks after that, I got a call that said, we would like you to be on

9:20a zoom call where we're going to play a couple of practice games with like six other people. And this was essentially the audition where they see you, they hear you, they understand something about your demeanor. They ask you some like chatty questions and they watch you play the game. And I think what happens then is you basically, your zoom file gets put in a database somewhere with a lot of demographic information. And then you're in the casting process and that can take as little as six months. And as long as I haven't met anybody who was in that process longer than me, I was in that process for two and a half years before they called me that I, I had entirely given

9:54up that Jeopardy was ever going to call me. And then two and a half years later, after my zoom audition, they called me. It's usually more like six months to a year and a half. Okay. Well, they were waiting for a master champion to show up. Yeah. They're like, who can we get to lose to Jamie? These people.

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10:45the best of both worlds. Get the Unreal College Deal. Everything you need to study and play with select Windows 11 PCs. Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 Premium and a year of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more at windows.com slash student offer. While supplies last. Ends June 30th. Terms at aka.ms slash college PC. Well, that's, that's cool. Um, and, uh, all right, I'm going to segue because your little, you have a

11:17little interview segment with, uh, Ken Jennings and you talked about the iPhone launch during that, um, bit. Yeah, he, um, they, they ask you for a bunch of different, uh, things that you might chat about and then they pick five. And then before the show, you do a little chat with the producer and they ask you to kind of like go through a couple of the stories and then they circle one and say, that sounds like that's the one. And that's the one they circled for me. And I linked, I linked on, on six colors to the Macworld story. That's still up about it where, which is basically

11:48me saying, yeah, I touched it, which for six months, nobody got to touch the iPhone after that week where a few people in the press did. And, and my memory of it, as I told Ken is, you know, you're in a briefing, you're a product briefing, right? So like there are Apple people there. I think Joswiak was there. I think Natalie Karras was there. Like not like, I don't know. Phil Schiller was there. He might've been like, it was serious. It was not even like the B team. It was like a really, it wasn't jobs. Right. But it was a good smattering of Apple execs. And this is the iPhone.

12:18You have questions. They have answers. You want to ask them questions, but they also hand you a freaking iPhone and say, here it is. And I'm holding it in my hand. I remember it was warm. I remember seeing how high resolution that screen was, even though it's higher now it was so much higher resolution than like a Mac screen was right. Or an, or an iPod screen. It was bright and colorful and high resolution and warm. And I started swiping and it's like moving with my finger and I'm tapping. I remember I tapped the notes app and it brought a screenshot up. That was a mock-up of what

12:51the notes app was supposed to look like. Cause it wasn't done. It was made, they, they had written that app yet. Right. Uh, which was a good note, but like, I'm supposed to do that and ask probing questions and write down their answers all at once. Just brutal. So I think I did a bad job asking them questions, but I did focus on having that iPhone experience. Cause I knew nobody was going to touch this thing again for six months. And if, and that personal, I mean, this is the same reason we go, Michael, you and I were just at, um, at the Apple event in New York, right? The Apple

13:24experience. And like, there is value in getting your hands on products, especially for that period of time when nobody in the public has seen them. Cause you can explain to them with your personal experience, like what you saw. And so in that moment, I knew I had to do that. But like I told Ken Jennings, the result is also that like, I'm trying to like ask questions, but it's like, I can't form sentences. I don't know what I asked. I don't know what they said. Cause I was so just kind of overwhelmed by the tactile feel of that first iPhone. Yeah. Was that your favorite keynote?

13:59Roman just wrote a story that went up this morning about his two favorite keynotes. One was the when Steve Jobs came back with and introduced, um, well that introduced, but Bill Gates was part of that and the Microsoft, um, investment and just like the, the, the turning of the, like you could feel the company turning. And of course the iPhone event, which everyone is just like, he was a rockstar that day. Um, what's, what's your favorite Apple keynote that you've been to? It's hard not to pick the iPhone because it was kind of a magical moment. There have been some others. Um, there was a WWDC

14:32where they introduced like a whole new language Swift that the developers around me were just floored. It was kind of fun to see that in the audience and that original iPod, uh, which we were talking about before we got started, the original iPod event, which was a town hall. It's a super tiny room. There were a bunch of people from Mac world there, including, um, Roman's wife. And, uh, I was there and, and, and not six months that this was actually one of my jeopardy anecdotes was not six months goes by that. Somebody doesn't say, is that you in the video at the launch of the iPod? Cause I'm

15:05on screen a lot in that as an audience, there are lots of audience reaction shots. And I guess I was right in the center. So the answer is yes, it is me. Um, but that was an amazing event because a bunch of us there had iTunes and had ripped a bunch of CDs to our max. And so we got it. Like we were all like, Oh, I can put my whole music collection on this thing. And, and jobs is trying to explain it to people and how you can rip music and the Gala's iPods with a bunch of like a tape together, a bunch of CDs that they had ripped on it to make clear that it wasn't piracy. And like,

15:37that was a pretty good event, a really close up kind of world changing. And also when you think about the fact that it was right after nine 11. So the vibes were really weird. There were a bunch of people who weren't like a month and a half. Yeah. There are a bunch of East coasters who just didn't come out for it. It's probably why there were six people from Mac world there is because, uh, yeah, there was just nobody else there, but it was, uh, that was, that was kind of magical too, especially since that, again, we walked away. Maybe the only time this has happened, everybody who was there walked away with an iPod and it didn't come out for another like

16:11month and a half, but we had beta iPods that they just gave to everybody there. And my daughter was born like a couple of weeks later, um, with an iPod playing music in the delivery room, which I think outside of Apple employees, she's probably the first person to be born to iPod music, uh, because it wasn't out yet. Um, and then the best part of that story is I could keep that iPod as a souvenir, except for one thing, which is, um, they did a firmware update to it that killed all the beta iPods and they said, we're sorry, send them back and we'll send you a real one. So we all had to send it back at the end.

16:43So, uh, the iPod event, um, it was before I was working like, as a, as like a real journalist, I was, I was, you know, I was into Apple. I was, I was reading Apple. Did you guys in the press know? So I remember the invitation said like, join us. And there was that parentheses hint. It's, it's not a Mac. So like, you knew it wasn't a computer. Did everybody know, like now we know what's like, we knew MacBook Neo was coming out. There were a few surprises. There were rumors. There were like, did you like, but did the, the, like, sorry. So maybe you knew there was an MP3

17:16player, but like, were you like, when you saw the iPod, were you like blown away? No, that was it. It was the details is like, we knew there was a rumor that Apple was building a music player, but you know, when, when you see a rumor like that without details, what you end up thinking is like the context of the other products that are out there. Right. So it was like, we were all thinking, is it going to be like a Rio, which was this very small thing that had a compact flash card in it that, that like I had one, you could fit, you could fit like a CD on it, which was sort of stupid, but it was cool. Um, you could choose different tracks, but only really about

17:49a CD's worth. And then there was like the nomad jukebox and stuff like that, which were these kind of large, large blobs with, um, a big spinning hard drive in it and a battery. And they didn't last very long. And so you think about it in terms of those products and Steve jobs absolutely knew it. Um, and so his presentation is sort of like, these are not what we're doing. We found this space in the middle. And as the story goes now, cause they've told the story, like literally, uh, John Rubenstein and, um, Jeff Williams were like doing a kind

18:22of goodwill tour of, of Japan and they got to Toshiba, I think. And a Toshiba executive literally brought out what became the iPod hard drive. And I was like, we made this tiny hard drive and we have no idea what to do with it. And they, as the story goes, they basically said, we'll take all of them. Cause they immediately were like, I know what I can build with this product. Let's do it. Um, cause they had obviously been thinking about a music player, but, uh, didn't think that a flash memory was going to be practical. It was too expensive. And they didn't like the size of like the nomad. And then they saw that drive and they're like,

18:54oh yeah, we got it. And they bought like all of them that, that Toshiba could make, which meant that nobody could match the iPod for a long time. Cause they couldn't get the drive. Right. Yeah. By the time even like the zoom came out, like the iPod was off and running, like they had no chance. Yeah. And then in David Pogue's book, um, speaking of people who used to work for Macworld, David Pogue wrote for Macworld for years and years and years before he went to the New York times. Um, he talks about how he talked to a bunch of the people involved with the creation of the iPod and how every Christmas after that. So 2002, they waited for

19:27Sony to release, uh, an iPod killing Walkman. They didn't 2003, they waited for it. They didn't. When Sony finally came out with a digital music player, it didn't play MP3s. It was like only the weird Sony DRM format at all. And they couldn't believe it because they were waiting to get squashed by Sony, which is funny to think about Apple people being afraid of a competitor like that. But they, they felt like Sony could absolutely put them to shame and they just never did it. And so they, they felt like they escaped. They had enough momentum, uh, even to deal with the fact

20:01that like the first iPod didn't work with PCs. Right. They, they, they dodged a lot of bullets with that iPod. Yeah. I mean, back in nine, uh, 2001, Apple was not a music, even a music adjacent company. So for them to enter this world and to convince millions of people that they knew what they were doing, that the sound quality was good, that the experience was good. It's a, it was an uphill battle and it was 400 bucks. Yeah. It was expensive. And the piracy concern was real, right? At that time, people who didn't live through it might not remember, but like digital music was

20:36synonymous with piracy, right? It was Napster. It was basically like a Napster devices, a piracy device and all the record companies were really mad. And the iTunes music store didn't exist. That came after the iPod got a little more successful. So the only way, that's why they taped together a cube of CDs in the box when they gave us the iPod. Cause the iPod came preloaded with music. They gave us the CDs and they said, this is why it's legal. You rip your own CDs and put it on the iPod. And they had to explain all of that. So, so that was, that was a real part of the story

21:08too, is just like, not only is why is Apple doing this, but like everybody else was like, is this a piracy device? We don't get it. Like why, how would you do this? And they had to step you through this whole idea of ripping your CDs and then transferring it using iTunes to the, to the iPod. Yeah. Rip Nick's burn that whole campaign. That was, that was around that time. But that's, I mean, that's more technical, right? You got to take your CDs, put them in the CD drive of your computer, press the button, bring them in, then send them back out to your iPod. Like there are a lot of steps there, which is why they tried so hard to get the iTunes store going because

21:41that was a lot easier. If I had all the time back that I spent ripping CDs, I'd be like five years younger. Yeah. Yeah. Um, all right. So iPod 2001, iPhone 2007, what was the first, all right, wait, before I ask that, did you, so you, were you an Apple user before you were an Apple journalist? Oh yeah. Um, I had an Apple two, I have friends with an Apple two. I had an Apple two in high school and my, my first couple of years of college. So like I went to college with an Apple two E and a,

22:17you know, Epson RX 80 dot matrix printer for my papers and stuff. Um, and then only, you know, gradually I, I, that's where I discovered the Mac, uh, working on my college newspaper my sophomore year. And that's where I ended up becoming a Mac user is, is that that they had switched over to an all Mac shop. And, and so I just, I, and nobody knew how to use that stuff and I picked it up really fast. And, um, and it was definitely one of those moments of like, this is what you're meant to do in your life and career was I was, I ended up being the editor in chief of my college newspaper,

22:51my senior year. Plus I was the one running like networking connectors so that all the computers could print to the printer, the really nice printer, instead of just, we used to have to take like floppies over to the nice computer that was attached to the nice printer to print. And I was like, this is ridiculous. And, and we, we bought like phone net back then it was just using phone wires to connect to it. So I was simultaneously like wiring the network and editing the paper. And that was like, I think there's some strong signals here about what I'm going to end up doing for my career. And those signals were accurate. So yeah, I was an Apple two user and then a Mac user very

23:26quickly, huge, a huge Mac fan bought a power book when I went to grad school and then met, uh, I'm, I think I mentioned this in a, in a piece for, for Mac world that is not up yet, but maybe up soon. Um, I met Pam, Pam Piffner, who was the last editor in chief of Mac users. She was a senior editor back then. And, um, she was teaching a class in basically desktop publishing at the journalism school at UC Berkeley, where I was, and I was her TA. And basically I spent that entire semester bugging her about getting an internship. And, uh, and she finally relented, I guess. And I became a summer

24:00intern, which is where I met Roman. Um, and then, uh, and, and sort of that, that was it. That was basically it. And I came over to Mac worlds when the two magazines merged in 97. So, yeah.

24:13Oh, I didn't realize you guys worked together before Mac world. I don't know if I knew that. Oh yeah. Roman was already there when I started as a summer intern. I'm Roman was already there working in the Mac user lab. Yeah. I started in 1991 working in the Mac back when magazines had these computer labs and Ziff Davis had a gigantic computer test product testing lab. And, um, yes. And so I had been there, I guess a year and a half, two years before Jason had, but

24:47and I was in the lab and then I transitioned over to editorial. Yeah. I think by the time Jason came over. So, yeah. And then we worked together until, until the magazine shut down in 97. So yeah. And then he came back later after going to Mac addict, Mac life, and then kind of came back to, to Mac world. So boomeranged a couple of times, but, but yeah, back in the day, Roman and I both lived in the East Bay and we worked on the peninsula and we would just play marathon, uh, for until the traffic got lighter on the bridge. So fond memories of marathon from back in the day at Mac user magazine.

25:20That was recently an Apple history thing, Roman. We were, it was some anniversary. We, we talked about marathon and, and, uh, I believe you play. Yeah. Yeah. Marathon was released. Yeah. I forget what, what date, but yeah. Groundbreaking. Yeah. I mean now Bungie, I mean, basically, you know, they went on to do halo and, and became incredibly successful, but it was all there with the marathon games. That was very, and those were Mac, Mac first and Mac only for a while. And that was a, that was a real win for Mac users. Cause there were not that many games, but we had the best

25:51one. Yeah. Yeah. There's so many stories about that. Like, I mean, I think a Siri as well, but like Apple, that was like in there at the beginning and had all these things. And then they just kind of lost like, you know, gaming on a, on a Mac. No one thinks about it now, but they were there at the beginning. That's always been the case. And we, you know, we worked with, uh, Peter Cohen for a long time who did Mac games and like the story, Apple, not getting Mac game, get gaming has always been true. Games succeed on Apple's platforms, not due to anything Apple does, but due to Apple, I mean, doing not anything Apple does on purpose. Let's put it that

26:25way. They will create environments where games will happen, but like, I don't think Apple really ever makes it happen. They just sort of happen around Apple. And that has remained the case to this day. I still don't know if I see any real evidence that Apple likes super gets gaming. Um, but sometimes they create the right environment for games to flourish. I mean, the, I, the app store is the perfect example of that. Yeah, right. Exactly. All right. So you use Macs, you use the Apple 2e. What

26:57was the first Apple product that you reviewed as a journalist? Oh, that I reviewed, it's going to be some boring beige computer. It was the first exciting product you reviewed. Right. Like, I think my first Apple product briefing for, was, was for like the Power Mac 6,100 or something. There was, there was a Power Mac that had a 6,300 actually. I think it was like, uh, we went to a briefing room, the pizza box one or the, it was a pizza box that had a bunch of AV on the back. It had like,

27:32uh, video input and output and stuff. Cause they were getting into sort of like quick time enabled. And that was about when they did the Mac TV and stuff like that. So I, that's the, that's the first briefing I went to, but I was a junior editor there. So I doubt I actually wrote the review of that. I first Apple product I reviewed, I don't know. I mean, I'm sure it happened at some point. It probably didn't happen until I was at Mac world because I was, I was like the web editor at back user. And I wrote about the internet when the internet was getting big

28:05and posting things on the internet, uh, on our website and all of that. Um, I was told at one point that I, um, that I shouldn't focus on the website. I should focus on CompuServe. Ha ha ha. Anyway, I've, I was proven right. Eventually we got there. But, um, but then when I went over to Mac world, I was a features editor, uh, in that transition, I'd never done features before, but they found a place for me and, um, and my friend Sholly McFarland. Um, they just dropped us in under, uh, an editor from Mac world who had also, I think never done features before and said,

28:38good luck. And, you know, when you're doing those features, longer features, sometimes the new Mac review is a feature. And I'm sure that at some point in there, I reviewed a, a, a Mac for the first time, an Apple product for the first time. But I honestly, I have, I have no memory of it. My big memory of that period is that that was right. Um, well, like the, I, the iMac came out. And so we were doing a lot of stuff about the iMac and, uh, and USB, which nobody had USB devices. It was brand

29:11new. So there was a lot of that stuff. So I'm sure somewhere in there, it's probably, in fact, it's probably like an iMac is what I, what I reviewed first, like not the first one, but like some secondary one where the editor in chief didn't want to write it. So he said, who else will write it? And I was like, I'll do it because I did start writing some features as a features editor. I just, and that, and that's sort of how I fell into it. And, and yeah, so that, that was probably it. Um, but I don't even know. I do remember my first cover story. I wrote a review of, um,

29:43all the web browsers, uh, back in the day for Mac user. That was my first cover story ever. And that was, um, internet Explorer for Mac and Netscape. And the big shocking revelation that internet Explorer for Mac was actually better than Netscape, which it was. And I ended up bundling it with a Mac, but I had to recommend a Microsoft product. And that was a little sad. I mean, you could argue that internet Explorer saved Apple from bankruptcy. I mean, it, it, it helped, but, but it also, I mean, I just wrote about this in one of all of these Apple 50 pieces that I've, I've written, I think

30:14that on six colors, I wrote about this, that like, also though, when the internet started to rise, Steve jobs realized that everybody was comparing the Mac to windows PCs based on their browsing efficiency and IE on the Mac was slow. And so it made the Mac look bad. And that's why we have Safari. It's like, literally he's like, why are we, why are we being judged based on Microsoft's bad software? And I bet he didn't say bad. I bet he used nastier words than that. And that, I mean, that's literally why Safari exists is because Apple decided that was one of those things they had to do themselves. Yeah. Roman, do you remember your first Apple review or cover story or future or

30:50whatever you want to talk about? You know, I, I don't think I wrote an Apple review until I got to Mac addict. Um, but I was involved in the testing of the new power PC max. Right. So the whole lab, like we used to have beats and one of my beats was printers and I did some other stuff, but then when power PC was coming out, they said what the whole lab was being devoted to testing. And I remember running benchmarks.

31:23And back then Mac user used application based benchmarks. So we had to do things like open a a hundred page word document and scroll it and time, how long it took to scroll it and things like that. Uh, and for that particular test suite, we ran, I don't remember how many benchmarks, but it was more than we usually ever did. And it was, it was boring. It was, but yeah, that was the first time I

31:56was involved in like Apple, a product testing for Apple. So that was for Mac user back in the day. Yeah. It wouldn't surprise me if you got a byline at some point in there, just because there's often those, like there's five products come out and somebody's, you know, one of your big writers is writing the top three and the other two were like, this definitely happened to Mac world where it was like, Hey, the lab, the lab guys tested this. Can they just write this? Yeah. Yeah. Actually, now that I think about it, I may have, I may have done a review of like an

32:26Apple laser writer printer or yeah. So before, before doing like any Macs or anything like that, so laser writer did not make the little 50 product video that Apple tweeted or, or on Instagram today. I thought I would, I thought maybe it would, it was at the time it was important. Um, all right. So you guys were both working in the Mac world or working in Mac world, working in Apple journalism in the early nineties. Did you think you'd have a job 25 years later?

33:03There was a dark time in there, right? I mean, you, I mean, when, when, when Mac world merged with Mac user, I ended up hanging on with Mac world. You went to some others of Davis, you went to like PC computing or something, right? Yes. So when that all happened, I was invited to come along and I decided that it was time to try something new. I thought that the timing's right. I'm going to try something different. So I went to PC computing and I think I lasted four months. I just didn't fit there. Yeah.

33:35There was a great staff and everything. And, but I, it was just a weird fit for me there. So then I went to a trade publication called windows NT systems. Did you use window PCs in your personal life or did you still use Macs? I did. I did. So when I switched over to PC computing, I used both. I had a gaming PC. That's what it was. And I, and I put it and I actually built it. Uh, I didn't buy it off the rack. I put it together to learn so I could learn how to build a PC. Yeah. And then I was

34:10at this trade publication for like two years and that was a nightmare. Um, cause it was like this niche B2B publication that for Miller Freeman that nobody even heard of. And it was just really narrow and focused in, and then, um, I have to actually go into LinkedIn to see where I work. Cause I can't remember. Um, I'm impressed your LinkedIn history goes back that far. Yeah. At some point I went to,

34:44then I think I went to tech TV. Ah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. And I worked with Leo Laporte on the screen savers. I was the web producer for, for the screen savers and I was there for like, I don't remember how many years. And did you work with Jerry day? Was he there then too? It's literally a guy I went to kindergarten with who suddenly is a producer at tech TV is so weird. Yeah. So weird that we ended with that windows NT. I just want to say like people, people might be like, why was that? Cause this is, this is my career crossroads too, right? This is the same point. And we took

35:16different paths, but like in that moment, what everybody in the publishing industry, which was the most important core of Apple's owner or Apple's users was publishing the whole plan when Apple went out of business was that the publishing industry was going to go to windows NT because it was way more advanced than windows 95 was right. Like it was the, it was on the modern kernel. It was essentially what Mac OS 10 would end up being. And, and so it seems weird. They're

35:47like, Oh, well, windows NT, not windows. It was like, yeah, but that was, that was sort of like, you're a Mac guy. You understand this segment of the market, that whole market's going to collapse and they're all going to move to windows NT. So maybe the career move is to go to windows NT. That was the sales pitch. And I mean, that was certainly my moment where my family members are saying, what are you going to do? You seem to have chosen the wrong career. The story I like to tell about windows NT was that I was literally at sitting at my, my

36:17then fiance, maybe she was, yeah. My then fiance is garage, her in-laws garage doing a garage sale. And the editor in chief of the windows NT systems magazine came over to garage sale and he had, he was acquaintances with my in-laws at the time they were talking. And then I think the question was to ask of him, Hey, so what are you looking for? And then he jokingly said, I'm actually looking for a new editor. And I said, well, I kind of do that. And then

36:49he ended up hiring me. So he literally hired, got me at a garage sale. You got me at a garage sale. Amazing. Yeah. Yeah. So. Yeah. It was dark. It was bad times. It was bad times. And we, I mean, the merging of the two magazines, this is like the worst business decision ever by those two. These are two companies publishing companies at each other's throats. They're arch rivals. But what happened like, cause when I, right when I started the Apple two magazine was still being published in foster city where we worked at Mac user, it

37:19shut down a couple months later. Um, and what happened with the Apple two magazine is there used to be two a plus and insider, and they got merged together because that, that platform was, was going to die. And so they were all like, uh, kind of like pooling their resources to extract the final amount of money out of it before shutting it down. Well, so as if Davis and IDG decided that Apple had no future. And so they were just going to push Mac world and Mac user together, uh, in order to reduce their losses. And that was, that was like literally two weeks before Steve jobs got that investment from Bill Gates on stage and all of that.

37:53But those were really bad times, by the way, Roman, you made the right decision not to go over to Mac world because that was the most difficult three months of my, of my career because merging, you would think two magazine staffs. It's very funny that I am now thought of as the Mac world guy. Cause I was a Mac user guy coming into Mac world, two magazine staffs in San Francisco, doing literally the same job on the same topic every month could not have been more different culturally. And it was brutal. And a year later, most of the people from Mac world had left.

38:24And a lot of the people from Mac user had left too, because it was just awful. Like personality clashes, power struggles. It was terrible. So I don't recommend it. But, um, but then there was a day where I got a phone call that said, Oh my God, they just introduced the iMac. Everybody get back to the office and we're going to figure out how we will cover it. And that was like literally the start of the ride where things started getting interesting again. So you weren't at the Mac, the iMac. No, I wish I could remember why, but Apple in those days kept calling these media events that

38:59we would go to and they would announce nothing. There'd be like, Hey quick, I believe I'm not a hundred percent sure on this. I believe the event that we had gone to before that was like, Hey, isn't quick time. Great. We're like, what is this? Why do we come here for this? What is a quick time? Great. Sure. Okay. Why are we here? And so when they said we've got an event for you at the Flint center, um, uh, you should come all the way down to Cupertino for this event. Um, literally the only person from Mac world who went was Andy Gore, the editor in chief, and he did it as a courtesy.

39:31And then they unveiled the iMac. Interesting. And he literally called back to the office and he was like, all hands on deck. I'll be back in two hours. Get, you know, get everybody in. And I was working at home that day. That was my work from home day. And I was like, guess I'm driving into San Francisco right now. And, uh, yeah. Cause they were like the boy who cried wolf before that. They, they, they, it was so badly managed, but in that moment we got, we got a clear signal like Steve's back and this is what it's going to be like. So it was, so working within Mac world, just in the, in the, in the, in the journalism world, like you could feel that this was a turning

40:06point for Apple. It wasn't just another computer. It was so different than what also as a journalist, um, the fact that it was so new, it looked different. I mean, we could put it on our cover. We put it on our cover like every month, right? Like it was, it was, how could you not people were talking about it. And in terms of the coverage, like one of the things I'm so grateful about is that Steve looked at the max, uh, legacy peripheral stuff and just said, get all of this out of here. So by doing USB on the iMac that gave us so much material because like literally

40:40in the summer before the iMac shipped, we, we had feature stories about all these companies that, that were either shipping USB devices that were meant for PCs that they suddenly snapped plastic parts on to say, Oh no, it's for the iMac and stuff that was legitimately pre-announced, but wasn't shipping yet. And we didn't, we'd never seen it. Um, but it like gave us something to write about. I think, I think the content was really moribund at that point. Like it was, it was Apple circling the drain and the iMac was that first sign

41:13that things were going to be interesting and that there were going to be things for us to write about. And, you know, and at that point it was like then the blue and white G3, which for a magazine, you're talking about like, how do I use a SCSI drive, uh, with this thing? Or how do I add a card into the blue and white G3? It'll, I guess it had a 180 B port on it. Like, but it became a conversation for a while. It was about like transitioning to the Steve Jobs era of like, how do I get my old Mac that's beige into this new world? And then eventually we got to OS 10 a few years later, but like, yeah, I don't know if we knew that

41:46it would succeed, but I think we had things to write about, which was a sign it would succeed, but succeed or fail, like things were happening. And when you're doing a magazine, it's really hard to fill all those pages if nothing is happening. Also, they sold a bunch of ads to all those companies with the translucent blue plastic stuff, which made, which actually for lots of legal reasons mean we had to do even more, uh, editorial content, which was good for us. Cause we, we had more to say and more room to say it in. So, yeah, I don't know if I believed Steve was going to turn it around right away, but, uh, once we saw that

42:20iMac, there was a sense that they were going to, at the very least they were going to go down swinging. And I think it didn't take very long for us to realize that iMac was going to be a hit. Right. Uh, Roman, I'm, since we're talking iMac, did you, were you like, were you at, I've tried to remember your chronology. So according to LinkedIn, I was, yes. Uh, so I was, but I actually remember this cause I was at tech TV at the time and on the screen savers. And so, um, um, the iMac came out and so tech TV loved it because here's this

42:57different looking computer that looked different, you know, from all the beige boxes that they had. It looked great on television. Steve jobs was great on television. So tech TV just ate it up cause it was, you know, it was different from what they usually had. But I remember sitting there, uh, you know, doing what I did for, for the, for the website and thinking, being a little jealous that I was detached from the coverage at that point. So, I mean, I, I, you

43:27know, I, I worked on the website for the screen savers and so I wrote stuff up, but I didn't have the direct connection that I remember having when I was back, you know, in the magazine days. So, so it was a little different. So I, that's what I remember most about it is the personal kind of like, uh, that fear of missing out. I, I was, I was fully in that a little bit. So, uh, you know, when we like looking back on Steve jobs now, like from, from my vantage point, like, it's like, how did Apple ever let him leave? But he was obviously a

44:02very different person back in 1985. There's a book coming out in May called Steve jobs in exile that will detail all of the reasons why Steve jobs would, uh, he, cause he next was so badly mismanaged by him. And like, he had to fail hard and learn a lot of hard lessons in order to come back. Cause the Steve at Apple, when he left, like he didn't like the Mac didn't succeed at Apple until they got rid of Steve because Steve wouldn't do the Mac to really saved Apple's bacon because it was a corporate machine that you could put

44:33slots, you know, the, you put cards in and stuff. And like, Steve was adamant, like no cards, no slots, nothing. He had the same argument with was about the Apple too. And, and was just like, are you high? We're absolutely doing slots. And that happened again. And it was really only when Steve left and they brought in Jean-Louis Gasset and they, they shipped the Mac two and that whole Mac two series plus the Mac SE. And that's what made Mac sales go through the roof. So like Steve was bad for Apple back then, I would say, I mean, it's great that he shipped the Mac and we all owe him a huge debt of gratitude for that, but

45:05like he had a lot of bad ideas and it took him the beating he took at next for him to grow up. And so that book, Steve jobs in exile coming out in a couple of months, um, or next month in May, uh, highly recommend it's, it's kind of brutal reading. Cause it's, they, there are so many moments in the book where you're like, Oh, at this moment, if he made the right decision next might've been huge next could have even taken on windows and he makes the wrong decision every single time. It's amazing. When he came back, when, when they announced

45:37that they were buying next and bringing him back as a, like, what was the feeling from your, like from your end of things? What, did it matter? Or was it like, Oh, okay. That's interesting. I got it. Cause now it's like, well, that was the greatest. He was like a character from a TV show. Like almost it's like, Oh yeah, this guy, I remember this guy's famous from the Mac. Right. But like he had been out of it for so long. My overriding memory of that was more that in 96, right? So he came back, they signed the deal in late

46:10December, 96. And he appeared on stage at Macworld Expo in early 97, January 97. Yep. In 96, you got to keep in mind what the Mac world was like then. The classic Mac OS was so hacked together. It crashed all the time. Mac OS 8. I, I, I remember working at Mac user the last year where we were there Roman in that era. I remember rebooting my machine after hard crashes, like four times a day, at least like it was so buggy. There was no protected

46:40memory. There was no real multitasking. It was so clear. And I've written this in stories like 10 times now. I keep using it. It's like Apple knew it had to do something, right? That is the word they knew. But the problem is everything they tried failed. They tried, uh, they tried Copeland. They had Taligent, which they spun off, but it was the pink project. They're trying to make a next generation operating system while also doing Mac OS. And they just completely botched it. And that's why they were in, I think such dire straits is that meanwhile,

47:11Microsoft executed on windows 95. And although there were lots of issues with those 95, it was good enough for most people. And meanwhile, Apple had this kind of heap of a, an old operating system, like a previous generation operating system that they were keeping alive, but it was really falling apart. So for me, the big memory of that deal and Steve coming back was not Steve. Steve was interesting because he was like, obviously charismatic. He had a plan. He knew how great next step was going to be for me, the whole thing of them choosing between B, which we also really

47:41liked. And next step was, Oh, thank God. Apple finally has a solution to this problem because it had become, I think it had become clear that Apple couldn't save itself. And so the question was just going to be, is it going to be BOS, which was super snazzy. But what I've heard since then is that under the hood, it was lacking like a bunch of stuff that just was not there because they prioritize certain features. And then next step, which was basically feature complete. And Steve jobs, big surprise did a great sales job. And they were like, Oh, we'll buy this instead

48:15of, instead of B and, and Jean-Louis Gasset overestimated his worth and demanded an amount of money for B that was completely unreasonable. And he might've sold it. If they had sold it for less, they might've bought it, but they, that he, he demanded a lot of money, but like, so for me, that's the moment it's like, Oh, thank God they have a strategy for the future of Mac OS because it was so clear. We were in the end times for like two years. We knew we were in the end times and they, they did Copeland and they announced it and they showed it at WWDC and it never shipped.

48:48And they're like, forget it. We're going to ship a different Mac OS eight. That's really just like a couple of new features. You're like, what are you even doing? So that was the sign that they were circling the drain. So that was the biggest sign to me that there was a heartbeat is that they were, they actually had something that, that as Steve stood on stage, he was like, we can fix this. Next step is awesome. It's going to be the great foundation for Mac OS. And, you know, there was a huge amount of work in many years before they got there, but it was the sign of life for them. Yeah. It didn't ship until a one. So it was 2001. Yeah. Oh yeah. I mean that, that gets erased

49:21by history a lot that, that they had like four years to ship OS 10. They did not ship it and solve it. I mean, iMac gave them the lifeline. iMac sales running Mac OS eight and OS nine gave them the lifeline to get to the point where they could ship Mac OS 10. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. People, we give credit to the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone, but OS 10 is just as important as all those products for bringing Apple to where it is now. Yeah. I was on some podcasts. I don't even remember now. Apple 50. I've been on so many podcasts, but like, I feel like Avi Tavanian, who is the software chief at next and came over to

49:54Apple became the software chief does not get enough credit for saving Apple because if you think about the scope of the work he had to do, so he invented the mock micro kernel, which is at the core of every Apple OS to this day, he had next step, but they had to bring next step to Apple. He brought his engineers with them, but he also had to work with Apple engineers. And I just said earlier about how tough it was to bring Mac user and Mac world together. I can only imagine that new management from next coming in and telling all these Apple engineers, Hey, you completely failed. So they had to bring in us, but now you need to work with us because the job they had to do is

50:29take this other operating system and somehow so that Apple didn't lose every single customer it had make it work with and look like the Mac. And that meant they needed those Apple engineers and the next engineers to execute. And, and, you know, OS 10, the Rhapsody server in 2000 was weird. And OS 10, 10.0 was not really production ready. I would argue 10 one was where it was like, plausibly you could use it. And that was 2002. Like it took them a long time. And fortunately they had the iMac and then

51:06the iPod to kind of like keep them alive. Yeah. But when they got it there, like literally it is the foundation for every platform to this day that Apple has. Yeah. And so it is a huge accomplishment, even though it took them five or six years. Yeah. I remember what 10.0, like it didn't have a DVD drive. Like it was really not ready for public use. It was a true sense. Cause one of the things I did at Mac world is like, I edited Stefan Samoji wrote the first 10.0 feature story. And then I wrote all the rest of them after that. I edited Stefan. So I, I had my hands on like every Mac world feature story

51:39about new Mac OS 10 for like 10 years. And my memory of it is that 10.0 was, well, first off, my memory is that there was Rhapsody and it was in the lab Roman. It was in the lab. I would go in there and talk to Christina and we had it on and like, we had it on one system and, you know, we looked poked at it and it was like, this is really weird. And it looks a lot like next step, but it's sort of Apple, but not really. And then 10.0 came out and it was like a science experiment. Like you could boot into it. Like we booted into BOS and like, try it out. But I do remember with 10.1, I could stay

52:17booted into 10.1 all the time and it worked. It was really slow, but that was, for me, that was the threshold is like, it's actually a thing you could use instead of just being a science experiment. And then for those first early years of OS 10, it was all about like, it's faster because it was so slow and, um, and they got there, but it was, uh, it was, yeah, it was a brutal, like four or five years where you were using this old outmoded Mac OS on this amazing, like iMac and waiting for the OS 10

52:49shoe to drop, which it finally did in like, yeah, 2002, I would say 2003. And you had to pay for it. It was like 130 bucks back then. Yeah. They weren't for software back then. Yeah. It was weird. Roman where we're reaching like an hour, but just a couple more questions. Uh, all right, Jason, you've been through a couple of CEO changes. Is Tim Cook, is Tim Cook really on the verge? Do you think of retiring with them? Like we'll say 12 to 15 months.

53:22I think so. Yeah, I think so. I'd be a little surprised if he was still CEO at the end of this year, but I would be shocked if he was still CEO at the end of next year. I don't think he's leaving Apple, right? That my, my scenario and a lot of other people share this scenario is that he's going to get another title. You know, I think he's going to be chairman of the board. I think that he's going to take on, uh, look, Steve jobs is cancer precluded Tim from having a proper handoff of

53:54the job of CEO. He got to be interim for a bunch on emergencies. And then they executed the plan to make Steve the chairman of the board. And then Steve died like two months later. So if there's anybody at Apple who understands the value of a, a good adult planned CEO transition, it's Tim Cook. Tim doesn't want to let whoever the replacement is, if it's John Ternus or somebody else have to learn without support. So I think Tim will provide that support in some role. Um,

54:25probably chairman of the board that could do something else, but he's already on the board, making the executive chairman. They, they kick the can down the road for the current chairman, but he, he, he can retire at any point. And Tim could take that job over. So I think it will happen. And I think it's really healthy that it happened. Not, not that Tim Cook hasn't presided over an amazing era of growth for Apple, but, but like they've been so successful for so long that there's been no turnover and really not a lot of change in approach because forgive me for carting this out again, but it's the classic, uh, John Madden, the football coach line, which is a winning

54:59is the best deodorant when you're making huge profits and your stock is up and everybody loves you. It is very hard to convince anybody to change anything. Even if there are things that you're doing that kind of stink, because why would we change a thing? We are doing so great. And so you've got executives who've been there for 15 years, 20 years doing this stuff and why change? And I think that's unhealthy after a while, just because it's so static. And the fact we're starting to see change into Apple's upper echelon of, of executives. And I'm not saying like Tim Cook is, is doing a bad

55:33job. I'm saying at some point, a new person is going to bring fresh eyes and it's going to have the opportunity to make changes. And I think that it will be good for Apple. I also think I never believed that it was bad that a, uh, an operations guy was the CEO after Steve jobs because nobody was going to be Steve jobs. And, and Tim Cook has proven to be a good CEO, especially in his operations background. But overall that said, after all this time, having somebody who's a little more product focused as CEO, if it is John Ternus, probably healthy too. So I'm, I'm looking forward, not

56:06from a, let's get Tim Cook out of here. He's a bum kind of approach, but more like, I think change is good. I think change is good after a while. And I think Apple has been so successful for so long that it would be useful for them to have the opportunity to revisit some of their decisions and some of their policies and some of their strategies and just say, does this make sense now in a way that it's not going to ever be the case when it's the people who've been making those decisions over the last 15 years. Right. Uh, yeah. I mean, Steve jobs, the last great thing he did was to appoint

56:39Tim cook as his successor, because had it been someone who tried to be another job, it wouldn't have worked. Yeah. Tim cook was perfect. Perfect. Because he understood because he wasn't, right. Yeah. But he still understood Steve's role and importance and the culture. Like he still talks about it today. He was in an interview talking about how Steve jobs is still the head of the company basically. Like he let him be, he let him breathe. He let him have his air yet. He still did things his own way. Is it going to be turn as you think next? I, I struggle. I mean,

57:15that name has been in our heads for two years now. Thanks Mark Gurman. So we don't, you know, it's hard to say, but I don't know who else it would be honestly at that level. Um, there was a time when it could have been like Jeff Williams or somebody, but who's the same age as Tim cook. John Ternus is younger. So there's more of a, a runway for him. I have a hard time seeing who else it would be. I think that Apple's hardware is its strongest feature and has been for the last 15 years, really 10 years, certainly. Uh, and so, uh, and I don't know enough about the personalities

57:49of like, could Johnny Shrooji be a CEO? I mean, maybe, I don't know, but like there are not that many people at Apple who I would look at and say, I think that person could be the CEO. And I don't think that it can be anybody from the outside. I think it has to be somebody from Apple because like you said, Steve jobs, one of the products that he shipped before he died was Apple's corporate culture. Like that's why Apple university exists. We have a bunch of former colleagues backworld to work at Apple university now among other places. Like that is about the Steve jobs

58:19culture persisting. And so like, you know, I, I think you gotta have somebody who gets Apple and, and, and Ternus is basically an Apple lifer. So he's a good choice from the right place. Um, but we, none of us have worked with him directly. Right. So I appreciate that there could be other people. I'm not, you know, given all of the buzz about it. He does seem like the obvious choice though. Yeah, I agree. I, uh, I remember the first time I took notice of John Ternus was during the, it was when the Mac studio was introduced. So the M one ultra and he did, you know, they don't

58:54have events anymore. So they have those like production, production. So that was just videos in 2020. Yeah. And I remember like, like, Oh wow, who's this guy? And he was, you know, he just commanded the screen. You know, he has a personality. We saw him a couple of weeks ago in New York city and he can work a room. Like he, he has the personality that's, you know, Tim cook is Tim cook. Like he doesn't have that energy, that electricity, but I mean, he's, you know, listen, he, he's great at what he does. Ternus kind of has a little bit

59:25of both. He has the, the, the, the Tim cook way of seeing things and the, and the Steve jobs charisma. And I think maybe, maybe like, he's kind of perfect for them right now. I could, could be worse than having a product guy at this moment in time, especially if Tim makes a point of still being there deals with a lot of the like global politics and tariffs and things stuff so that, that he can sort of shield John Ternus from that and focus on like the other parts of Apple. I do think that that's the best scenario. And I think, cause

59:57I don't think Tim wants to like, what else is Tim cook going to do? Right. I think he wants to be involved with Apple, but at some point I think even he will say, baby, I can take one step back. And, and like I said, I, I don't want to overemphasize it, but like Tim didn't get the chance to have the mentorship that I think he wishes he had with Steve because Steve was gone too soon. And I don't think he wants to do that to his successor. Sure thing. And this is a kind of a perfect year, 50th anniversary, the MacBook Neo came out, iPhone falls coming out. Like this is, this is a legacy, a legacy year. And if he

1:00:32says in January, February, like I'm going to step down and it'll be a two year process and he's my success. I got that, that could absolutely work. All right. Probably record sales numbers too. The iPhone sales are going so well. It'll probably be record, a bunch of record quarters and record sales going through the roof. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I, uh, I got so many questions I didn't ask, but what, like, like, what product do you think of when you think of something that you tested and you were like, this thing just sucks. Oh, wow. Well, my, I mean, my memory goes, there was a company that may, who

1:01:06will remain nameless, who made a security hard drive. Um, and, uh, with a, with a, a fingerprint scanner on it. And the idea was it was encrypted until you scanned your fingerprint and we opened it up and took the hard drive out and just plugged it in and it worked because all their encryption was in the bridge chip, not on the hard drive. And, um, and they were, they were a big advertiser and they were very unhappy with our negative review and yelled at me a lot about it. And I kept saying like, you marketed this thing everywhere as being secure and it's

1:01:40super insecure. So why are you yelling at me? But that was, that was maybe the angriest and that vendor in general was a very angry vendor. I, I, I, I did a lot of damage control visits to those people, um, over the years. That was, I don't even know if they do. They might, I haven't, I mean, I don't know. There, there, there's, there's another vendor who is also very angry, who does still exist. And I actually buy products from them all the time, but the, but that, you know, sometimes some of these independent, um, Apple related vendors, it's like there, some of them, there's just some guy in charge who is a nightmare and you just have

1:02:14to deal with them as a member of the press. But, but, and woe, woe to you, if you write a bad review of their product, but that product was so bad that we had to do it. All right, Jason, last question. What's, what are you most excited to see of all the rumors that are coming out? There's, there's quite a few. What are you most excited to get your hands on in the next, you know, X number of months, whatever, a year and a half, whatever it is. I mean, everybody I think is really interested in what this folding phone is, a folding iPhone. If it exists, I think that it'll be interesting to see what they do that other folding phones haven't done. I, I, there's a question of like,

1:02:46what, why now, why is now the time for them to do that? So what have they done in terms of the software? You know, the rumors are that they have a, they are happy with the, the level of the crease on the folded screen. The, the dimensions of it that are rumored are interesting because they're, it's more interesting as an iPad than it is as a phone. I don't know how well it'll do, but I'm not sure it matters because it'll, it'll be an iPhone and it will be an interesting experiment. And I suspect because it's an iPhone, it will be the best selling folding phone ever

1:03:17just because it's an iPhone. Um, and those other folding phones haven't sold that well anyway, but, um, I just kind of, you know, from, uh, leaving aside its business success, I just want to see that product cause that is Apple stretching in a really different way. And, um, Apple success with the iPad, I think is their huge, um, secret sauce on that product is Android tablet apps are so bad. Even now are so bad. And the iPad, you have the entire iPad app library, which I know this is technically not an iPad, but like those size classes for apps of that

1:03:51size when it's unfolded are going to basically be iPad apps and Apple has those. So I'm, that's the weirdest product that Apple, I mean, the MacBook Neo is already out, so I can't anticipate that anymore. So we're left with that. I think the folding phone is the, is going to be the weirdest Apple product in a while. And I love it when Apple tries something weird, they've obviously got a reason to do it, right? Like they don't, they don't do the Samsung thing where they throw things against a wall and see what sticks. They, they try to pick their moment and they pick, if they pick this moment, I really want to see why it's been what six or seven years since the first like real actual

1:04:25folding phone was sold. So it's not like it's, it's, and they could have just said, you know what, it's not, it's not a success. People don't care. We're not going to do it. So yeah, I agree. I'm, I'm super interested to see, um, you know, how they market this thing. I'm, I'm expecting it to be at least $2,000. So it's, it's not, it's not something that's, you know, an impulse, but even if you're buying a pro phone, it's way more expensive than that. Yeah. Seeing, I think one thing that I keep thinking about is when they did the iPhone 10 and it got, it was so much more expensive than the standard iPhone was. Remember it was a thousand dollars for a phone. What? And, and then they, you

1:04:58know, they keep raising the price and they added a pro max above it and they keep raising the price. And what I think has happened, and then we see they they've got four or five new iPhone models every year. I think since the iPhone 10, Apple has been trying to find the point at which some portion of their market will say that's too much money. I don't want to give that money to Apple. I don't think they found it either. Yeah. And I think that is part of the reason for the fold is like, well, they'll buy a $1,600 pro max. Will they buy a 2,100, $2,200 folding phone?

1:05:29And the answer is yes. Right. Like how many, I don't know, but I think the answer is yes. And that, that is honestly, if you're, if you're Tim Cook, if you're a business person and you realize that you've got, you're charging a price that some portion of your audience is not flinching at, you need to give them something more expensive to buy because they'll give you even more of their money. And I think they've been doing this since the iPhone 10. And the nice part is that there are also like the iPhone 17, no pro is amazing, especially since they added all those pro features

1:06:01in. Right. So it's not like there isn't a more affordable iPhone, but what they want to do is say, if you want, if you only want to spend 700 for a phone, great. If you don't mind spending 2000 for a phone, we would love for you to give us that money. And I think that's, they're still exploring that. And it's not like the Samsung Z fold, whatever it's called is that's two grand too. It's not like they're going to be that much more expensive than other ones. Right. True. So yeah, I, uh, I'm, I'm, I'm with you on that. And the, the kind of hybrid iOS iPad OS, like, will it have a different

1:06:36name? Will like the, they homogenized all these OS is now finally with 27. So they could just kind of squeeze one in there between iOS and iPad or it's iOS on the outside iPad OS on the inside. Like it's, you know, I think it's just going to be iOS and they're going to say that there's a, you know, split view mode on the inside. I don't even think they'll say iPad OS. People have the floating windows like we do on iPad OS. I don't think so. I don't think so. I think German said it probably won't. And I think he's probably right. Like it's so, it's so small

1:07:07because it's smaller than an iPad mini. I think if you could do, you know, picture in picture and split view, I think you're good enough on that device. All right. Well, cool. Um, well, we're not going to wait another 50 years to have you on the show because this was fun. All right, Roman, do we have time for, I've been on time to talk hundreds of macro podcasts over the years, but it's been a little while. So it's good to be back. Uh, Roman, do we have time to talk baseball? What do you think? I'll, I'll leave it up to you as producer. You're, you're muted. You're muted. Sorry. I'm muted. We always have time to talk about baseball real quick. We'll

1:07:42try to keep it regardless of what our listeners say it under like 10 minutes, but I know you're a baseball fan, Jason. I, are you a giants fan? So I, I, I, I wear this hat in your, in your honor. I'm actually a Red Sox fan, but thank you. Baseball in general fan and the Red Sox stink right now. So, um, all right. So opening day was last week on Netflix. I assume you watched it because it was your, it was your team. I did. Um, my team. Yeah. Those are

1:08:14the, uh, and so Amazon does baseball too, but we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll compare Netflix and Apple. Apple's been doing Friday night baseball for about four years. And when, when they started, I read an article that you wrote kind of, you know, taken in the task for not doing it right. So your opinion, is Apple getting it better than Netflix did? Because I have my thoughts too, but I, I want to hear yours first. Yeah. I mean, I think, I think Apple's broadcast looks way better than Netflix's broadcast. Um, and they've toned down some, like they

1:08:48had like weird odds with like percentages into the thousands of a percent that were just ludicrous. I actually, um, wrote that. And then the guy from the company who made those stats emailed me and he's like, yeah, I think you're right. I'm sorry about that. I was like, okay. Uh, and they're not as bad now. So that's nice. But, um, you know, it's hard. The other thing to remember is that like Netflix and Apple both are just kind of using somebody else's, broadcast infrastructure. I believe they're using MLBs own MLB network, basically infrastructure.

1:09:19And then they, you know, but Apple's, Apple's graphics are, are custom and they're clean and Netflix's graphics were custom and they were garbage. Um, they're just a mess. So I don't know, but you know, it's the first baseball game for Netflix and they've got an ongoing relationship. We're going to, they're going to do some special events. They're going to do the home run derby. You know, I think you got to give them time. It's an experiment for them. Kind of like it's been for Apple and, um, it's, it's fine. I mean, neither of them are, are, are setting the world on fire, but it's okay. Like I, I, I want to give Netflix some

1:09:52credit that they'll figure it out because Apple has figured it out. But Apple's secret sauce is Apple is not, has tried really hard to do HDR and not compress the video. And so it looks good. Like even if it's the same trucks that MLB network is, is using, um, the Apple broadcast or something about it, it just looks good. Yeah. Even when they, they do it, like Apple will cut to a iPhone. Like it'll say shot on iPhone and those look better than like other broadcasts. I have MLB leak pass. Yeah. Cause they're, they're not compressing it. It's got a better bit rate. It's got HDR. I heard that their truck is 4k now for the

1:10:25first time this year. So like it's, uh, yeah, I think, I think it's fine. Um, my biggest question is nobody who's a fan of a baseball team and you know this cause there's a story about the Yankees being like this too, your arch enemies, but, um, like finding these games when there are a bunch of national exclusives is the, is the brutal part where it's like, this is on Apple. It's not on your local. This is on Netflix. It's not on your local. Um, that is very frustrating. This is on Peacock. It's not on your local. And when they, and there's

1:10:57a strategy that major league baseball is trying to get to where they solve a lot of these issues in when all their contracts, uh, expire, I just hope that when that happens, fans of a team are given the option to see all the games of their team. Right. I just hope that these exclusive national broadcast windows go away, not, and this is a question is like, if you're Peacock or Apple or whatever, do you want to pay for something where all the Red Sox fans or all the Giants fans are just

1:11:30watching their local stream instead? I don't know if you do, but I think that's, what's really making fans angry right now is the idea that if I want to see tonight's game, I have to subscribe to Peacock. What's that about? And like, I get it for a national showcase where it's like, we're showing this to everybody and it's on Peacock, but in San Francisco and Boston, this Giants Red Sox game is also on their local TV. That's what the NFL does. And it works pretty well. If you're in a local market and it's on cable or streaming, it's also on a local channel in your market. I think that's

1:12:03the part that Apple has to solve because right now, Apple can, or that MLB has to solve because Apple does a good job with Friday Night Baseball. It's fine. But most of what they get is ridicule and anger because fans don't understand why their game's not on TV because it's a national exclusive that's been taken away from them by Apple. And like, I don't know, it just seems broken and that they shouldn't do that. Yeah. And it's a separate, separate discussion, but I, I, I subscribe to MLB league pass or, or season pass, whatever it's called. And I can't watch Red Sox, Yankees or

1:12:36Mets games through that because I live in Connecticut and I'm close enough geographically to each. I'm assuming you're in the same boat in California with a blackouts. Yeah. I mean, I think I blacked out of the A's games, but there is, there should be now. Yeah. I don't know. I think there's a package now where you can, you can pay Nesson and get all Red Sox games. Yeah. Or I could pay yes network. Exactly. It is extra because it's the local revenue thing. But you're right. If you want to watch every game for your favorite TV, you know, assuming you're not a fan of like

1:13:08the Cincinnati Reds, if you're a fan of a major market team, you got to subscribe to several different, uh, everybody, even the Reds, even the, even the Mariners, even the brewers, like everybody gets their, their week in the barrel where they're on Peacock or, or Apple TV or something. And, and, uh, and baseball so much about continuity about your local announcers and stuff that I just, that's the, that's the part because the broadcasts are fine. I don't have a problem with that. I am glad actually one of my favorite things that Apple did is that they put

1:13:38the local radio broadcasts on the Apple TV stream now. So you can listen, you can watch their pictures and listen to your local radio, uh, broadcast of that game. That's really a good move. That's really smart. And, and then, yeah, I think, I think that that is a way forward that maybe everybody should do. Yeah. And, uh, we'll, we'll have you on in a future show to talk about sports because I'm Apple and sports is one of those things that I'm constantly put a big label up and tell people danger. This is a sports episode run away. All right, Roman. Um, Apple history is done. So let's talk. We know we didn't do Apple history. We were supposed

1:14:12to start the show with you talking about all we did. All we talked about was Apple history. We actually said we were going to talk about April 1st versus January of next year and your corporation versus the founding, but we've, we forgot all about it. Um, we could cover that next year. Yeah. Yeah. There's a scandal here that allows us to do an Apple 50th anniversary again, because, because Apple was not incorporated on April 1st of 1976. They just fought Ron Wayne filed some paperwork saying that there was an Apple computer company partnership and Apple

1:14:44computer ink didn't happen until January of 1977, which means we get to do this all again next year. Or it's a year long celebration. That's what you, I feel like I've, yeah, burst into Apple park while Paul McCartney is performing and knock over his microphone. It's all wrong. It's not until January and see how you do. But yeah, uh, just quick before we leave Apple history. Um, like April 1st, it has nothing to do with April fool's day, right? Like I've done so much research on this and I can't find it. It just seems to be like just coincidental,

1:15:16right? Yeah. They signed the paperwork on March 31st and Ron Wayne took it down to the Santa Clara County office to file it as a legal partnership on April 1st. And it didn't have anything to do with I don't, I've seen no evidence that had anything to do with, I mean, jobs and laws were married pranksters. There's no doubt about it, but I don't think so. I think this, one of the great things about this anniversary is that a lot of, uh, myths about Apple have gotten squashed. Uh,

1:15:48Pogue did a bunch of them in his book. Harry McCracken did a bunch of them in his oral history for fast company. Like there's a lot of these going around, including the fact that they, the incorporation happened in January of 1977. Uh, but yeah, the, the whole myth that those two pranksters, uh, did it on April fool's day for fun. No evidence for that at all. Perfect. It's just that Ron Wayne, Ron Wayne went down there and then 11 days later, he went down there again and said, take my name off of this thing, which is amazing. Amazing. Amazing. That's why he,

1:16:21he still claims that he hasn't cashed any of those checks and he still owns 10% of Apple. But one of the books I read pointed out that when they incorporated in January of 77, sorry, I'm stealing our podcast for January of seven of 2027. But like that, that what happened is later that year, Apple computer incorporated bought Apple computer company purchased them and they sent Ron Wayne, another check for 10% of that purchase price. And so if Ron Wayne said, well, but I didn't cash it. It's like, okay, you could cash it. We'll write you another check for

1:16:52that amount. But like the thing you were a partner of and the thing we're celebrating today, it, it's not what Apple is now. The Apple corporation purchased the assets of that partnership in 77. And so it's not a continuation really legally of the, the partnership in 76. He could, you know, that's all, I am not a crackpot. This really happened. He could probably sell the check for like a couple mil at Sotheby's or something. Yeah. Yeah. He's still with us. He was at the, he was at the poke event at the computer history

1:17:25museum. He's in his nineties now. He's a little bit of a kook, but you gotta love him. Yeah, I suppose so. That's true. That's fair. All right, Roman, let's, let's wrap this up with a comments. Yeah. All right. We'll do some quick comments. Arthur K sent us an email about his fond memories of the Apple IIe. He wrote, I gushed over the machine and that excitement continued when I installed the expansion cards. That machine was my bedrock and definitely was an ally for my

1:17:57production support tasks. See, see Steve cards. They're important. Cards were important. My personal Apple experience, I never actually used a one or two at Apple one or Apple two. My first introduction was a Macintosh. So back in 86 in high school, um, do you use an Apple IIe Jason? He used an Apple IIe. Oh yeah. That was, that was the first Apple product that I bought was the, the IIe as a high school student. That's what I got. So yeah, it was great. That was kept Apple alive for, um, way after the Mac

1:18:33started. The Apple IIe was still the primary revenue generator at Apple for like another three or four years. Like, and they, like I said earlier, they couldn't kill it. Like the, the, the Lisa, the Apple three kept trying to kill it, the Mac. And they just kept, they just kept selling because it was such a hit, uh, Jason cross. Uh, he posted a short about the original Apple logo, uh, which features a quote from Isaac Newton. Uh, no, it's Wordsworth. It's a picture from Wordsworth. It's Ron Wayne. It's the

1:19:08genius of Ron Wayne. Again, his 11 days at Apple. Uh, so if you're watching the video, I'll, I'll, you probably, I'll show the, uh, original Apple logo. Uh, Nova has fleas on YouTube said a logo with a poem in it is kind of metal. They should bring it back. I, I was thinking, um, it looks like a stained glass window. Somebody should do a stained glass window version of the, it's a gorgeous logo of the Newton Apple logo. It's a beautiful work of art. Ron Wayne was a graphic designer. He, he, you know, and it is beautiful. It's a terrible logo, but it is actually

1:19:43kind of a beautiful piece of art. Yeah. Yeah. And finally the run on Tik TOK said, man, I remember when we used to look forward to the Mac world expo time just flies on by. Yeah, it does. Yeah, it does. Apple, Apple realized at some point it could just make their, make its own events whenever it wanted. Exactly. Yeah. The first, uh, expo I ever went to was New York. I saw the 17 inch iMac G4 on display or whatever on the, I wasn't a journalist at the time I was a kid, but that

1:20:14was the first one at the Javitson 2003, something like that. The sunflower Mac. Yeah. The sunflower, but the second version with the larger screen or whatever. Yeah. That's why we don't have those anymore, by the way, is that they kept making larger screens and the little arm couldn't hold up. That's still, so they're like, okay, still stands as like my grail. Holy grail Mac. Like that thing was just amazing. It's an all timer. Yeah. Best, best designed Mac. Absolutely. Yeah. It was very cool. All right. And that does it for comic. And that does it

1:20:49for this episode of the macro podcast, episode number 977. Uh, uh, I see. I wrote Jason cross in here. Thank you, Jason Snell. Uh, seriously. Thank you so much. Jason acknowledge you. Oh, you know, I, I want to ask you, you're not, you're not related to, uh, Blake Snell by some distant thing, right? I'm not at all. I'm, I'm related to basically no Snells that anybody's ever heard of. When I, when I told my wife, you were on the show, she's like, Oh, is he, uh, like Blake Snell's nephew or something like that? However, as a lifelong, as a lifelong Giants fan, when the one year that he pitched for the Giants, everybody in

1:21:23my family buy giant stuff because it's personalized for just no extra. It's just personalized. So I've got a lot of Blake Snell gear. That's just my gear now. Now he's on that, uh, the hated Dodgers. So you can, um, yes, it's unfortunate with that memorabilia. Uh, and thank you Roman for, uh, corralling this very long. It's not that long. It's about as long as it used to be. No, it's not that long. But, uh, Jason, thank you again. This was, this was a lot of fun. You can subscribe to the Mac world podcast in the podcast app on Spotify, YouTube

1:21:55at the Mac world podcast channel, or through any other podcast app. Actually, Jason, you have a podcast app. You want to plug it? Do you, uh, uh, yeah, people should check out the upgrade, uh, which is it really dot FM. That's my weekly tech podcast that I do with Mike Hurley. Um, and then there are a bunch of pop culture podcasts at the incomparable dot com. And, uh, you can read my stuff at six colors.com. That's where you can find me and at Mac world every other week, more or less. Yeah. Jason is a podcast, um, aficionado and an expert and makes us look silly. So go listen to his stuff. So many podcasts, comments

1:22:30or questions. You can contact us through blue sky, Facebook threads, search for Mac world, look for the blue mouse logo. Um, look for a video comment under that. Look for a post comment to the, that send us an email to podcast at macro.com. Send an email to Roman or Jason or me, or just get in touch with us. And we will, um, collect all those and talk about them on a future show. And you can join us in the next episode of the macro podcast, which won't be anything about Apple's 50th anniversary. I don't know what we're going to talk about. Roman, do we have any ideas next week? I don't think so. We'll see. We'll figure something

1:23:02out. Oh, well I thought of something that we didn't, I think that happened between last episode and this episode. It was a major thing that we didn't talk about the Mac pro. Oh, you're right. Cause that happened between last episode and this episode. All right. That's good. Yeah. Let's do that. And then we could also finally get to Jason, uh, crosses display reviews, which are somewhat related that we've kicked down the can, kicked down the road. Uh, so join us in the next episode as we talk about the Mac pro and everything else. I screwed

1:23:37it up again. And talk about, well, yeah, you know what? Just that's it. We're done. See you next week. You're not. Well, that's the thing, Mike, you're not allowed now. Our readers, our listeners expect you to mess up the closing. So you're not allowed to get it correct now. We will see you next week. Thanks again, Jason. This was all, this was a lot of fun.