593: Not a European Lawyer
Update: 2024-06-27
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Description
- Pre-show: Casey’s thought processes and traditions
- Follow-up:
- iCloud Keychain browser integration in Sequoia
- Ricky Mondello on
- Simeon (formerly Chrome, now Firefox) weighs in
- Niléane points out Network Locations was already back in Sonoma
- iPhone Mirroring doesn’t help with rearranging your home screen (via Hunt 2013)
- HomePods apparently have 1GB RAM
- Some insight on InSight
- Chess is around 35 years old
- CarPlay
- Ricky Mondello on
- iCloud Keychain browser integration in Sequoia
- Apple Found in Breach of DMA
- Apple may delay features because of DMA
- Ask ATP:
- Does anyone keep track if rumor mongers’ claims are true are not? (via Todd Vaziri)
- Post-show: An update on Erin’s car situation
- Members-only ATP Overtime: Apple plans thinner devices?
Become a member for ATP Overtime, ad-free episodes, member specials, and our early-release, unedited “bootleg” feed!
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Transcript
00:00:00
I changed up the band this time, I played some goose this time.
00:00:03
- Oh, so different.
00:00:06
- Oh, I don't know if I like this at all, 'cause even though I'm in full support of you broadening your horizons, which to your credit you actually have done, but I'm not, so here's the thing.
00:00:16
I'm not an athlete, I've never been an athlete, anyone who has met me in person will not find the surprising at all.
00:00:20
- This is where I ask myself where is this going.
00:00:22
- Yeah, right?
00:00:24
- But as it so happens, I've been rewatching the last dance recently, which is a just phenomenal documentary series chronicling these Chicago Bulls, double three pieces.
00:00:34
- Still have no idea.
00:00:35
- Yep, me too.
00:00:36
- Unless you're gonna do the boss on the Chicago Bridge.
00:00:38
- No, the Dave Matthews poop bus?
00:00:41
- Yeah, and we not.
00:00:41
- We're required to mention the poop bus every time we mention any kind of band, right?
00:00:44
- Yes, yes, I know, I know.
00:00:46
In any case, something that athletes seem to do is wear the same garments, or tie their shoes in the same way, or left shoe,
00:00:56
then right shoe.
00:00:57
You know, there's all these superstitions.
00:00:59
And now, I feel like if we have a truly terrible recording, or I don't know, maybe if I spill something on my computer, not that that would ever happen.
00:01:06
Perhaps it's because you chose to break the mold and not play fish before the show for the live listeners.
00:01:13
And so I am absolving myself, I am preemptively absolving myself of any guilt, if anything bad happens this episode, it's all because you broke tradition.
00:01:22
This is a real insight into the way Casey's mind works.
00:01:25
So what he wanted to say was like, you broke tradition and it's like a superstition, kind of like the sports superstition, but he started with, I'm not an athlete, then he mentioned a movie he liked about sports, then he got to,
00:01:36
people in sports do superstitious things, and then finally, came around.
00:01:39
- Gosh, I really am realizing my full potential is Alex Cox.
00:01:42
- No, it connected, everything connected is just that it was a long path, and that's an insight into how your mind works, 'cause that was your path to that thought.
00:01:52
- My only thought was I was trying to come up with a like a fish fish goose joke, and I didn't know if you would get that reference.
00:01:58
Oh, you get that one, but you don't get duck season rabbit season.
00:02:02
That one goes over both of your heads.
00:02:03
- No, that's Bugs Bunny.
00:02:05
- Why didn't you get it before then?
00:02:07
When did you say it before?
00:02:09
- Maybe you didn't hear.
00:02:09
When you heard us, we couldn't hear you.
00:02:11
As Barco was talking about the ducks out of his window, and he said he's not sure if it's ducks season.
00:02:15
He said maybe it's rabbit season.
00:02:16
And then Marco took it straight up and said, no, the rabbits don't come out yet or something on my edges.
00:02:20
- No, there's, it's full of rabbits.
00:02:21
I don't have tons of rabbits, but I also did, yes, indeed, miss the joke.
00:02:23
- Okay, all right.
00:02:24
It's not a joke, just a reference.
00:02:26
But Casey got it, so I'm declaring partial victory.
00:02:29
- All right, let's get the show on the road.
00:02:32
We have a lot of follow up because we're still in the WWDC follow-up season.
00:02:36
And Friend of the show, Ricky Mandelo, wrote with regard to eye cloud keychain, browser integration in Sequoia.
00:02:43
So we had talked last episode, I think it was last episode, it was 592, whatever one we're on now.
00:02:46
And we had talked about how there were some kind of unusual JSON files stored on the file system.
00:02:53
And we weren't really sure what it was about.
00:02:54
It didn't seem bad, but it didn't seem entirely right either.
00:02:59
And Ricky has worked on a lot of the passwords related stuff for Apple for a long time.
00:03:06
I was lucky enough to see Ricky at WWDC.
00:03:08
I don't think either of you are with me at the time, but they are doing great.
00:03:11
And I was very happy to see them.
00:03:13
Anyways, coming back to the point here, I'm going off on this engine again.
00:03:16
Gosh, I'm so happy.
00:03:17
- You.
00:03:17
- Anyway, Ricky writes ATP episode 592, speculated that Mac OS Sequoia pre-installs, the eye cloud passwords browser extension for Chrome users.
00:03:27
It absolutely does not.
00:03:29
The discussed JSON files support the user installable extension communicating with the OS to securely access password data.
00:03:36
See a link we'll put in the show notes.
00:03:38
The new passwords app does encourage Chrome and Edge users to install the extension on first launch, however.
00:03:43
The button opens the browser to the or the button that they're using to promote this, opens the browser to the relevant Chrome or Edge Web Store page.
00:03:52
So Simian writes, "I'm a dev rel engineer for Firefox add-ons and previously Chrome extensions."
00:03:58
The JSON file you mentioned is part of Chrome's quote unquote native messaging system.
00:04:02
As the name suggests, this allows extensions to and native applications to exchange messages.
00:04:07
More specifically, this file is how desktop application tells Chrome that if it's partner extension is installed, Chrome can route the messages between them.
00:04:13
In order for this to work, both sides have to know about each other and opt into communication over a native messaging port.
00:04:18
Also, while browsers use to allow other applications to directly side load extensions, they've scaled back the functionality for security privacy and annoyance reasons.
00:04:26
Today, browsers let native apps notify the user that an extension is available for installation, but don't actually install it until the user opts in.
00:04:33
And there's a couple of more informative links that we will also put in the show notes.
00:04:38
- Yep, so that explains it.
00:04:39
The last episode we're talking about how the path in the JSON file was to the one of those system cryptexes or whatever, but apparently that's to the thing that mediates between.
00:04:48
I'm assuming it's the thing that mediates between them, the native messaging system thing.
00:04:51
So these are just sort of declaring, hey, if an app, if these Chrome extensions are file file extensions with these signatures appear, allow them to communicate through this mediated extension to get and set password data.
00:05:04
So the actual extensions are not part of Sequoia.
00:05:07
- All right, Nilean was doing incredible work over at MacStories.
00:05:11
Reminds us that network location support is already in Mac OS 14 Sonoma.
00:05:15
Whoops it up season, I did not realize.
00:05:16
- That was my case list moment, because I think we talked about this in the show, and I can't expect either of you to remember, but I should remember it.
00:05:23
- Yeah, whenever it came back, it was probably in a follow-up item, and I just totally forgot about it.
00:05:27
I don't even know if it came back in Sonoma, might have come back in the OS before that, which of course we all know the name of.
00:05:33
- Oh no, we're not doing this again.
00:05:34
- Let's not do that.
00:05:35
Let's not do that, please.
00:05:37
- Big Island?
00:05:38
- I'm not even, I'm not even a major guest, 'cause it's gonna be embarrassing.
00:05:41
So I'm just gonna plow forward.
00:05:42
- How so prime rib?
00:05:44
- Yeah, Sacramento.
00:05:46
- Sacramento, yeah, that's it.
00:05:48
For split second, I thought you were serious.
00:05:50
So with regard to iPhone mirroring, we had thought that, hey, maybe what you can do is in Sonoma, nope, not Sonoma, yes, no.
00:05:58
What's the new one?
00:05:59
- Sequoia.
00:06:00
- Sequoia.
00:06:01
You can't use two S names in a row, Apple, come on.
00:06:03
I'm feeble minded.
00:06:04
- Mac OS 18, okay.
00:06:05
- Yeah, the one before was Centura.
00:06:07
- Yep.
00:06:08
(laughing)
00:06:10
- Anyways, in Sequoia, in beta two, hunt 2013 writes that you cannot enter home screen edit mode while using iPhone mirroring.
00:06:19
So the plague of jiggle mode lives on.
00:06:22
- Last night, I had Merlin test this and he also could not figure out how to get into wiggle mode because apparently like the phone is locked when you're doing the mirror or anything or whatever.
00:06:31
So he couldn't, I was like, I'll just hold down on the icon on the phone.
00:06:34
He was telling me he couldn't like make it, the icon's wiggle that way and it apparently holding down with the mouse cursor on the mirrored thing on your Mac also doesn't put it into wiggle mode.
00:06:42
So I, maybe this is not definitive.
00:06:45
Maybe it's just a, you know, limitation of the beta.
00:06:49
But man, why would they do that?
00:06:50
Why would they make it so you couldn't enter wiggle mode on your home screen?
00:06:54
- Yeah, I'm not sure what that's about.
00:06:57
I don't know, maybe, I was gonna say maybe it's too much motion and-- - Yeah, like frame rate, but I don't think.
00:07:01
- Right, right, right.
00:07:02
- It's right next to the, like they do side car with the iPad with a much bigger screen.
00:07:07
So, doesn't make any sense.
00:07:08
- Right.
00:07:09
- It would just be a bug.
00:07:10
We'll find out.
00:07:10
And the reason I haven't tried this is because I was all ready to try it.
00:07:15
Oh, it's in beta two of Sequoia.
00:07:16
I have beta two of Sequoia installed on a real drive and also in a VM.
00:07:20
Although apparently VMs can't do it because there's some Bluetooth limitation.
00:07:22
But anyway, then I realized, oh, you also need the beta on your phone.
00:07:26
I was like, well, I'm not ready to do that yet.
00:07:28
So I haven't been able to try this.
00:07:30
But whichever one of us first installs the beta of Sequoia and the beta on their phone, both see if we can figure it out.
00:07:38
Not it on that one.
00:07:40
With regard to HomePod RAM, I think this was in the context of, doesn't have enough RAM to do Apple Intelligence stuff.
00:07:46
I think.
00:07:47
So anyways, Jan Gobble writes, according to every Mac, the HomePod 2 has an S7 chip with one gig of RAM and the HomePod Mini and S5 with one gig of RAM.
00:07:57
Seeming a little slim.
00:07:59
I don't think that's gonna work.
00:08:00
- Probably not gonna be running any on device Apple Intelligence with that amount of RAM.
00:08:04
- Mm-hmm.
00:08:05
We had somebody writing in anonymously with regard to TVOS's Insight feature.
00:08:11
This is the clone of Amazon X-Ray.
00:08:14
I run metadata APIs for one of the largest media companies on the planet.
00:08:17
I don't know exactly how Amazon or Apple tags metadata, but I can offer some insight into how we do it.
00:08:23
We process hundreds of hours of content every week.
00:08:26
And it's all tags seen by scene with actors locations, music attitudes, moods, DEI info, and more.
00:08:32
This is done with a mix of ML and a team of about 50 human taggers, and it is all done before content distribution.
00:08:38
ML does the first pass and then the humans are tasked with checking the machine as well as adding contextual mood based tags that the machine doesn't or can't understand.
00:08:45
The first pass is relatively fast, and our accuracy is over 98%.
00:08:50
This is achieved by having relatively limited data sets with specialized dynamically generated ML models for each show or movie.
00:08:55
For example, if the ML is tagging one of our sitcoms, the first thing it does is call for a list of actors and locations that have been previously tagged.
00:09:02
And then dynamically, quote unquote, "trains" a small specialized model using only that data.
00:09:07
This operation only takes a few seconds.
00:09:08
Then the robot matches existing tags to faces and places them from within the custom model.
00:09:14
If any faces are new to the model at the end of the tagging algorithms, then generalized ML facial and location matches are made and flagged as needing a human tagger approval.
00:09:24
This tagging is much faster more accurate than either human taggers or any generalized facial recognition ML and can be automated on large batches of back library content without massive computing overhead.
00:09:35
That's a great example of just machine learning, really taking a huge chunk out of that workload.
00:09:40
Because if it was done completely manually by humans, just what a slog.
00:09:44
Not a particularly fun job, slow, and the point that the ML can potentially beat humans on a first pass just because it's so tedious.
00:09:52
The work is so tedious that the computer is as good as it is.
00:09:57
But it never gets tired, right?
00:09:59
So whatever it's doing in the first hour, it's also going to do in the 900 hour as the humans are going to fade.
00:10:05
So this is interesting, a human computer combination to do all this.
00:10:09
And I love that they're tagging it based on not just like who's in the scene, but like the mood of the scene and stuff.
00:10:13
It's interesting that they're throwing so much metadata at whatever company this person works for, which they didn't say in their message.
00:10:21
But yeah, I'm all for this.
00:10:23
Metadata is great.
00:10:24
The more, the better.
00:10:25
Yeah, Mahai Parperita writes with regard to chess on macOS, that based on infinitemac.org, the chess app first showed up in next step 1.0 as a developer sample app.
00:10:36
So that means kids, it's almost 35 years old, holy gem.
00:10:40
Wow.
00:10:41
That's a fun thing of infinitemac, which for people don't know, it's a way to sort of run in your web browser really old versions of macOS and now also old versions of next.
00:10:48
And so to answer this question that I was using about last time, I wonder how old chess, as I said, I thought it was data back the next days, but I didn't know how far.
00:10:55
Well, you could try to look that up in the Wikipedia page, try to find someone blog post about chess in the next app.
00:11:00
But like it's so much more direct to just go to infinitemac.org and pick an OS and launch it, like pick next step in some version and launch it and see if the chess app is there.
00:11:09
And then just go back in time and go older and older until you don't see it anymore.
00:11:13
I love infinitemac, whoever did that side is amazing.
00:11:17
With regard to carplay, where did we leave our intrepid heroes last episode?
00:11:23
I feel I can't recall specifically because it was a while ago and I've been busy, which we'll talk about in the after show.
00:11:27
I believe we left them as next generation carplay has been announced and yet nothing has it, which is where we've left it for the last, what, two years, three years?
00:11:36
No, no, so let me help you.
00:11:38
So we had an item about it.
00:11:41
There was some feedback from someone who'd watched the next generation carplay session at SWC and was characterizing them as a bunch of Apple developers saying, here, you look at all these variations you can have.
00:11:52
You can pick any variation of this one font, for example.
00:11:55
And that kind of attitude was not going to mesh well with the car makers desire to have much more control over the appearance of their cars.
00:12:05
But many questions remained about next-gen carplay because at that point none of us had seen the sessions.
00:12:09
Well, now I have seen all the sessions that are relevant to this.
00:12:12
And so now we actually have some information to share.
00:12:14
Yeah, so I two X them earlier today.
00:12:17
So you probably digested them far better than I did, but I was just trying to mainline them basically before we were recorded.
00:12:24
There were a couple of interesting parts and you actually called out in the show notes for the three of us, something that I was going to call out when I was watching it.
00:12:32
A quote from the first session, which is entitled Next Generation Carplay Design System.
00:12:39
And a quote from the host, they had said, "It enables you to express your own visual design philosophy within Carplay, to create an iconic individual look tailored to you, your vehicles, and their unique functions."
00:12:50
The result won't just look like Apple.
00:12:52
And it also won't just look like a copy of the built-in system.
00:12:54
It's designed to be a unique celebration of both brands, a special co-branded experience, only when your vehicle and iPhone come together.
00:13:02
And it reflects a great deal of hard work we've done with automakers all over the world to innovate the car experience.
00:13:09
Our design system for automakers, this is a little bit later, empowers you in partnership with our team here at Apple to help or excuse me to develop a beautiful co-branded experience that celebrates both brands.
00:13:20
All right, so this answers a lot of questions.
00:13:22
So first of all, the question we were always asking, Next Gen Carplay, it takes over all the screens.
00:13:26
A few shows ago, we had some quotes from interviews with the Mercedes and Polestar CEO on the Coder podcast with the host asking,
00:13:36
"Would you let Apple take over all your screens?"
00:13:38
And one of them was like, "No way.
00:13:39
We're not letting Apple take over all our screens."
00:13:41
The other one was like, "Oh, they can take over the screens, because we still run the car, and it's not a big deal."
00:13:44
But we still have this question like, what does this mean?
00:13:46
How does the car work when the phone's not there?
00:13:48
Is the phone required?
00:13:49
Does this stuff run on the car?
00:13:50
Does it run on the phone?
00:13:51
Is it a combination?
00:13:53
This, and then also the feedback we had last time about, you know, you can pick one font.
00:13:57
It's got a little like Apple or whatever.
00:13:59
This clearly gives a bunch of answers.
00:14:00
Number one, there is a built-in system.
00:14:03
If you don't have an iPhone and you get in the car, all the screens are filled with something, something made by the car maker, right?
00:14:09
So that is clear.
00:14:11
Number two, the way Apple sees this is that this next-gen car play experience is supposed to be a blending of Apple's branding and your car's branding.
00:14:22
It's like, okay, your car is your car, and whatever your car looks like on all the screens and everything.
00:14:26
But when you get in with your iPhone, what we want is to say, "Now iPhoneify this car."
00:14:32
What does this car look like when I come in with my iPhone?
00:14:35
Ooh, my iPhone takes over everything, and it's iPhone branded, but it's also your brand.
00:14:39
But it's Apple branded, but it's your brand.
00:14:41
They're so clear that they're saying, "We're not giving you a system where you car maker can make it look like how you want to promote your brand."
00:14:49
That is not even what Apple is offering.
00:14:51
Forget about whether they deliver.
00:14:52
They're not saying, "Hey, we gave you a system and you can make this look like Audi.
00:14:55
Whatever you want, Audi to look like, we give you a flexible..."
00:14:58
No, they're not even offering that.
00:14:59
They're saying, "We will give you the ability to make a look that is a combination that celebrates both brands.
00:15:07
It's a combination of Apple's aesthetic and yours."
00:15:09
And you can debate how much of a balance, like where is that line?
00:15:13
How much is it?
00:15:13
Is it 50% Apple, 50% Audi, or is it 60/40, or is it 90/10, or whatever?
00:15:17
But that is the pitch that this is what your car looks like when it's painted with a giant iPhone paintbrush.
00:15:24
And it only happens when someone enters with a phone.
00:15:26
And when they don't do that or don't connect their phone to your car, it just looks like your car.
00:15:32
So I found this very surprising, because I assume next-gen car play took over all the screens.
00:15:37
It would be some kind of thing of like, look, it'll be a car play like experience, but Apple's offering you the technology to do all your screens, right?
00:15:45
And you can customize it and so on and so forth.
00:15:47
And it's a great way to car play.
00:15:48
But I thought that would be like the whole thing.
00:15:50
And then there would be a carve out for when your phone's there, but when your phone's not there, it would still look like that.
00:15:54
But that's not it at all.
00:15:55
And it makes me think even more like, who would want this?
00:16:00
Who would want to have to design every screen in their car?
00:16:04
You know, they have to design every screen in their car.
00:16:07
They spend all this time, they make everything look nice, they integrate all the features.
00:16:10
And then Apple's saying, we would like it when someone gets into your car with an iPhone, for that phone to cover up everything you've done, right?
00:16:20
And by the way, you have to do work to integrate this and we'll get to that in a little bit on how the integration works.
00:16:24
Every pixel that you've done before, we want to potentially cover up.
00:16:28
Oh, there's places where your stuff can peek through and we'll talk about that, but like, because that would be a co-branded experience that blends the best of Apple and your car on the car.
00:16:36
Like, why would I want to blend the best of Apple into my car?
00:16:39
Like, why do I want to do that?
00:16:41
Because people who own iPhones love iPhones so much, they want every screen to look out to look like an iPhone and to be branded like an Apple thing, boggles my mind.
00:16:48
But at least question answered.
00:16:51
That's what next gen car play is.
00:16:53
And now it is no longer, it is even less surprising that there have not been car makers jumping on this.
00:16:59
I also, there is one aspect of it that I saw just breeze by in some slides somewhere that it's one of the changes in next gen car play is quote, buffer audio.
00:17:09
This sounds a lot like AirPlay 2 and the way that approaches audio buffering, which is, so AirPlay 1 had in order to address the realities of like dropouts and interference stuff so that your music wouldn't have like little skips and static,
00:17:26
it introduces a buffer.
00:17:27
AirPlay 1 had a fixed 2 second buffer on almost everything.
00:17:32
It's anti shock all over again.
00:17:34
Yeah, exactly.
00:17:36
It made it very sluggish to respond to like play pause commands and stuff like that.
00:17:40
And then AirPlay 2 basically introduced a system where the app could send a whole bunch of data all at once of like a minute or a minute and a half of audio to the client device and had the client device play it in a little bit more smart way where operations like play pause and seek would generally be able to use the buffer and kind of respond immediately.
00:18:02
So that's one of the reasons why AirPlay 2 is so much better than AirPlay 1 and that just required more technical sophistication of like being able to transmit a whole bunch of data at once and have the client actually store a large buffer of it and be able to navigate a little bit more smartly.
00:18:16
Well, it sounds like that might be what they're doing with this CarPlay audio too, where like in the current version of CarPlay, the audio just goes over what I believe is Bluetooth,
00:18:28
I think all of the time because it has, it creates like a little peer-to-peer Wi-Fi network for wireless CarPlay for the video streaming.
00:18:36
I don't think the audio goes over that channel.
00:18:39
I think the audio always is a Bluetooth, but I could be wrong about that.
00:18:43
Anyway, introducing quote, "buffered audio" in this next-gen CarPlay sounds like the audio won't go over Bluetooth anymore, which will give them so much more control over latency and various handling details of that connection.
00:18:58
So honestly, I kind of wish they wouldn't tie these two things together, I wish they could find a way to introduce this new audio situation to a version of CarPlay that automakers are more likely to actually adopt.
00:19:14
And maybe they will over time, but.
00:19:16
- It's not clear whether, so this is the next-gen CarPlay, and we'll talk about the architecture in a second, but it's not clear whether they demand that to get next-gen CarPlay, you have to let us take over all the screens or whether a car maker could choose to implement next-gen CarPlay only on like the center screen.
00:19:33
You know what I mean?
00:19:34
- Oh, those type of business things were not mentioned in the WWDC, it's kind of a weird WWDC session too, because I guess the audience is people who work for car makers,
00:19:44
it's not like we as just regular developers can do anything with like, well, I guess your apps would run in next-gen CarPlay, but I don't think that experience has changed too much.
00:19:52
But like, they didn't, if they're really talking to the people who work at Carmakers, the business people will have a lot more questions like, you know, can we get like the better audio without letting you take over the instrument cluster,
00:20:04
for example?
00:20:04
I don't know the answer to that.
00:20:06
- Yeah, at the beginning of the first session about the design system, I wasn't quick enough to call up the transcript, but the host says something along the lines of, this is for automakers or people who are just interested in design or cars or whatever,
00:20:18
you know, and so that's where we come in.
00:20:20
One of the things that I did think was interesting was before I watched these videos, a lot of people were getting really perturbed that the San Francisco font family is the only font family allowed.
00:20:32
Which at first I was like, yeah, that stinks.
00:20:35
But after watching the video, I see that there, while that is a little bit crummy, I actually am not that bothered by it because there's so many different variations between weight and curning and everything.
00:20:46
- But they all look like San Francisco though.
00:20:48
Like, car makers have their own fonts that evoke the car maker's brand.
00:20:55
Some of them are, I think, kind of gaudy and ugly, but they don't think like San Francisco.
00:20:59
Like again, because this is a co-branded experience, it celebrates both brands, but it only celebrates Apple in terms of the fonts.
00:21:05
It's not, does not celebrate, you know, BMW or Lamborghini or Ferrari in terms of the fonts, but you know, there are, I mean, it's a good, San Francisco is an amazing font, it looks great,
00:21:15
but it always looks Apple.
00:21:16
And so like, again, what is the balance between, it celebrates both brands, how much does it celebrate Apple versus how much does it celebrate your brand?
00:21:23
And I feel like it's heavily weighted towards Apple because some things are not changeable.
00:21:27
So the font family is one limitation.
00:21:29
There's a limited number of gauge types.
00:21:31
So you, I mean, especially with all screen instrument clusters, there's a lot of variation in gauge design.
00:21:37
Most cars have three or four different variations, like a little bar charts, a racing one, a regular looking one, next thing CarPlay has, it has a wide variety,
00:21:49
but not as wide as the actual world of existing cars.
00:21:53
Another thing, a quote from the presentation in our system, the speedometer is always paired with a fuel gauge or a state of charge gauge.
00:22:00
That's fine, like you're gonna have those things, but they're not always paired.
00:22:04
Sometimes in existing cars on their instrument cluster, the speedometer is in a different place than the fuel gauge or the state of charge gauge, right?
00:22:12
But an Apple thing, they're always paired.
00:22:14
Limitations like that are probably going to annoy car makers because they won't be able to do exactly what they want.
00:22:20
And so, but the architecture is actually really interesting.
00:22:22
It is as complicated as you as imagine, which is also why it is difficult to adopt.
00:22:29
There's basically four layers that are stuck together by two different compositors to, for example, form the instrument cluster.
00:22:36
So the top one is the overlay UI, which has things like the tire pressure warning light and a bunch of other, like, what do they call it?
00:22:44
Telltales or indicators or, as my daughter calls them emojis.
00:22:49
(laughing)
00:22:52
How's the gas in the car?
00:22:54
I had a texture after she arrived at that station 'cause I never texted her when she's on the road.
00:22:59
And she said, it's fine.
00:23:01
It's not even close to the gas emoji thing, or I don't even know if she's like, she calls them all emojis, but anyway, kids these days.
00:23:08
Then the next layer is the punch through UI, which is the built-in system of the car can basically render whatever it wants on a region that it punches through.
00:23:18
So lots of times the driver assistance thing where they show like a 3D model of your car going down the road with the other cars that it's sensing around it.
00:23:27
That is all built-in to the car.
00:23:29
You're not gonna redo that in car play.
00:23:31
You just punch that through.
00:23:33
You pick a region of the instrument cluster and it says, okay, car, you get to display what's here.
00:23:37
Then there's the local UI, which is like the gauges and everything.
00:23:41
And then there's the remote UI, which is remote, all the old car play, it was all remote UI rendered by the phone and display it.
00:23:49
And so the remote UI, local UI and punch through are composited together.
00:23:54
And then the overlay UI is handled by the vehicle and composited together with those things.
00:23:59
Yeah, so the remote UI is rendered by the phone.
00:24:01
Exactly like it is in the previous generation of car play.
00:24:03
The overlay UI is rendered by the vehicle, and that includes the tail tails and all the turn signals they had light indicators, stuff like that.
00:24:10
The local UI, this is what I have to say about that.
00:24:12
Local UI is not affected by Wi-Fi interference or disconnect since data stays local to the vehicle.
00:24:17
The next generation of car play starts instantaneously if you were using it on your previous drive.
00:24:21
As soon as the displays are lit, or maybe when the door opens or maybe when the driver's approaching the car, content is ready to show.
00:24:27
This may even be before the iPhone has been detected or reconnected.
00:24:31
So obviously this is not running on the phone.
00:24:34
It is rendered locally by the vehicle.
00:24:36
They use an open GL-based render.
00:24:37
Hey, Apple has discovered open GL again.
00:24:39
Why?
00:24:39
Because the car makers use it and they got to deal with it.
00:24:41
It includes image assets, behavior scripts, and it's specific to each vehicle and it's transferred during the pairing process and it can be refreshed over time.
00:24:49
So basically Apple has to provide a lot of stuff, code, assets and everything that go into the car, that the car takes in stores and runs because these screens need to come on instantly.
00:25:01
So all that local UI, which includes like the speedometer, all those gauge things, all that stuff, it's rendered by the vehicle.
00:25:06
Your phone hasn't even been detected, right?
00:25:09
So there is an aspect of this next-gen car play that is in the car, but it is shoved there by the phone and updated by the phone as needed and so on and so forth.
00:25:18
And then the punch-through UI is entirely rendered by the vehicle.
00:25:21
In other examples, like the backup camera, right, that's just entirely rendered by the vehicle.
00:25:24
It's just punched through the wherever they're going to display it.
00:25:29
And they also mention like visually rich features are setting.
00:25:31
So you know, in like Mercedes or BMW, they show like this beautifully rendered picture of your seat with the little wavy lines, with the heat and the massage and all that.
00:25:38
You don't have to re-implement that.
00:25:39
They're like, oh, just punch that through, right?
00:25:42
But the punch-through UI is such a weird compromise because if you know what any of those screens look like on a fancy modern car, especially the ones that are like about, you know, just where the vents are pointing with the touch screen or turn on the massaging function or like,
00:25:56
let's see the outside of the car and show all the doors opening when they open all that stuff, right?
00:26:01
It does not and will not match Apple's aesthetic.
00:26:04
So like, okay, just carve out a box on any of the screens that Apple is rendering and show a totally incongruous, totally unmatching, fonts aren't the same,
00:26:15
colors aren't the same, design isn't the same, just so you don't have to re-implement that.
00:26:18
This is Apple saying we are not going to make you re-implement literally every screen to be, you know, car playy and look like that.
00:26:25
But you can just punch through your existing UI, which makes us even less attractive because that's not a combination of the two brands.
00:26:33
That's just the built-in system and Apple system in a patchwork and an ugly quilt.
00:26:40
Because like, I look at these Apple screens and I'm like, I've seen the screens and many, many different modern cars, none of them match this.
00:26:48
Right, like, you don't want to have to redo that big setting screen, just punch it through.
00:26:52
It will look totally incongruous with everything else we render, but at least you don't have to re-implement it.
00:26:58
This is a quiet and uphill struggle for an extreme car play.
00:27:02
And honestly, I don't even know, like, what's like, why do this, what's the goal?
00:27:07
Like, does Apple really want to be able to co-brand the instrument cluster?
00:27:11
Why not just be satisfied having, to Marcus point, better and better integration with the screen that the people want to see their car stuff on, better audio, better lower latency video, more rich features.
00:27:23
Instead of saying we want to take over every pixel of every screen except for the part where you punch through your existing UI that's gonna look nothing like ours.
00:27:30
- You know, this makes me think of, let's go on another journey, fellas.
00:27:33
This makes me think of, like, Microsoft Teams and Slack, right?
00:27:38
Like, Android Automotive, I think that's the right one.
00:27:41
Whatever it is, it's like the base layer.
00:27:43
Not Android Automotive, I think.
00:27:45
- Okay, yeah, Android Automotive is like, you know, Microsoft 365, right?
00:27:49
We'll take care of it all for you.
00:27:51
We've got this.
00:27:52
You just sit back, you worry about the car stuff.
00:27:54
We've got the infotainment stuff.
00:27:56
And it's all taken care of, easy peasy.
00:27:58
And then Apple says, no, we need to basically duplicate all of your existing efforts and we need to do it together holding hands.
00:28:05
Like, as a consumer, I think I would really enjoy this.
00:28:10
I think it would be really nice and I think I would like it.
00:28:13
But as a car manufacturer, uh-uh.
00:28:17
This is, this is saying worth the squeeze.
00:28:19
- I don't think I would like it as a consumer.
00:28:20
If I buy a car, like I buy a poll star and they have poll star branded infotainment that matches the car, matches the poll star brand, it fits in with the car, all the pictures on the screens, reflect what's in the car.
00:28:31
Like it is a complete cohesive branded experience.
00:28:33
They pay a lot of people to do.
00:28:35
When I get in that car with my phone, I don't want to cover over all that poll star stuff and make the, like, make the car iPhone-y, right?
00:28:45
I don't, I like the iPhone, it's iPhone branded, but I don't want the rooms and vehicles that I enter to suddenly become iPhone branded.
00:28:53
Like, I bought the car because I like the car's brand.
00:28:55
Why do, like, I don't know why you would allow someone, it's like, oh, if I enter a home, you know, with my iPhone, your television's UI is gonna be covered up with my iPhone UI because I've entered it now and I have my iPhone.
00:29:08
Like, I don't want that.
00:29:09
It doesn't, it doesn't match the car.
00:29:11
Like, you can't change the design of the dashboard or the upholstery on the seats or the way of the car looks.
00:29:16
Why would I want to change everything that's on all the screens?
00:29:18
It just like, the reason people like phone integration is 'cause they like, you know, the phones are platforms and they are great apps for them and we have our life on them and all our songs are on them and it's like, yeah, we want that integration.
00:29:29
So stuff from our phone, we have a way to interact with it on the car, even so far as being able to use our voices and it's on our phone through the car, like, that's great.
00:29:36
Like, leverage the strengths of the phone, but the phone has nothing to do with the instrument cluster.
00:29:43
As far as advocates are, other than, again, maybe showing navigation in there or something like that.
00:29:46
Like, I don't want my car to be phone branded when I enter with my phone.
00:29:53
And I would be annoyed if that was the only choice 'cause I would want to use car play for the things that we all like car play for.
00:29:58
I would not, I would be saying, could I get that without you covering over my instrument cluster, the customer cluster that I liked with an iPhone UI that I don't particularly like and also have no control over because,
00:30:10
yeah, the automakers can customize this and pick stuff, but it's not like the user gets to design their own instrument cluster with this.
00:30:17
They have the same limited options that probably even more limited options than the built-in systems offer.
00:30:21
Because, again, built-in systems offer, usually, offer two or three different instrument clusters on these fancy cars and you could pick which one you like.
00:30:28
- Yeah, I think I like car play.
00:30:30
I mean, I obviously don't usually have it in the review, but I like car play the way it is now, mostly in a window.
00:30:38
Like, in some cases, car play is the entire display of certain displays, but most car makers will let car play take up most of the display when you're using it, but then we'll have some kind of like little area off to the side or below it or something that has like their toolbar buttons that will switch you back over to their interface and you still have to use their interface for most of the controls of the car.
00:30:59
And then you switch back to car play when you want to look at your music player or your navigation.
00:31:04
Car play already also has support for the secondary display.
00:31:08
So if you want to have something like, for instance, if you're doing navigation and you want to have a car play display in the dashboard cluster during navigation, you can already do that with the existing version of car play, the car play,
00:31:18
you know, the old version.
00:31:20
That was like a 1.5, not that at that.
00:31:22
So car play the way it is now display-wise and integration-wise already offers what I think I actually want as a customer.
00:31:31
Like, I want car play to be contained.
00:31:33
I don't want it to take over everything because like John was saying, like, I actually like car controls when they are well designed.
00:31:40
I like car UIs when they are well designed.
00:31:42
That is not the common case, but it does happen.
00:31:45
And I just want more automakers to adopt car play the way it is.
00:31:49
And I hope because a lot of these technological details and implementation details, you know, like more stuff running on the car, the audio being buffer differently,
00:32:00
not using Bluetooth, stuff like that.
00:32:02
A lot of those things would actually be great improvements to the system we already have.
00:32:07
And again, I hope that by Apple, trying to reach much further design-wise, I hope this doesn't preclude the automakers from adopting the technological advancements that they're trying to get done as well.
00:32:22
I hope we can actually have like good car play with modern innovation and modern architecture behind it in a way that the car makers can swallow design-wise.
00:32:32
And I don't know if Apple's gonna be able to do that.
00:32:35
- Yeah, yeah, it's kind of, I don't know.
00:32:39
I get where Apple's going here, but I'm really struggling to figure out who they think this is for.
00:32:44
'Cause again, if I'm an older manufacturer, oh, no, thank you.
00:32:48
And it's just, I can't think of it a better way to verbalize this.
00:32:52
And I think I'm being a little bit, probably more than a little bit dramatic, but it's kind of like Apple hubris.
00:32:56
Like of course the car makers wanna come to us and help us help them design their stuff.
00:33:00
Why wouldn't they do that?
00:33:02
- And not just help them design it, but you're like, and of course they would want our branding to be part of their car because our branding is great.
00:33:07
Wouldn't they want to have a some representation of Apple inside their cars?
00:33:11
- Right, exactly.
00:33:12
- Why?
00:33:13
- I mean, like I think the most optimistic scenario is kind of the same reason people use Apple TVs.
00:33:17
Like, oh, I got a smart TV, but the interface and the smart TV sucks.
00:33:21
And Apple TV is so much better.
00:33:22
So I'm gonna ignore my smart TVs built in interface, and I'm just gonna use the Apple TV.
00:33:27
And first, I would say that's a choice of people who buy an Apple TV make.
00:33:31
But second, I think the degree to which smart televisions built in experiences are co-branded with the TV.
00:33:41
It's much lower than the degree to which the infotainment on especially fancy modern cars is blended with the car.
00:33:48
Like, if you look at the instrument cluster on a BMW or an Audi or a Volvo or a Polestar, one of these expensive cars, you can just look at the instrument cluster without seeing anything else.
00:34:00
And you know what kind of car it's in.
00:34:01
They really heavily brand that.
00:34:03
And the good ones that do like their controls on like the other touch screens, you know, whether the climate controls are there or adjusting the seats or the 360 camera or whatever, those things are so heavily branded.
00:34:14
Like, I mean, look at Rivian doing like the cell shaded, 3D model of your car and the woods and everything.
00:34:19
That is so different than what it looks like like in an ionic 5 versus what it looks like in a Volkswagen.
00:34:25
Like, it's so heavily branded.
00:34:27
Now, if you hate, if you hate your car's interface, as a consumer, I can say, oh, thank God, my car's interface, I hate it.
00:34:33
But when I get in, when I phone to erase all that and replaces it with the phone, you why.
00:34:36
I can see some people wanting to do that.
00:34:38
But I think people buy cars based on the whole car.
00:34:43
If someone hated, you know, I can't stand, I'm an example.
00:34:49
If you really don't want a climate controls on a touchscreen, you're not gonna buy a car with climate controls on a touchscreen, right?
00:34:55
You're choosing based on what's in the car.
00:34:57
In an Apple world, they're like, what if you didn't have to do that?
00:35:00
What if if you were just happy with the way are we paint over all those screens with our stuff and you never had to see your credit built into the system.
00:35:06
And as long as you like our system, you can buy any car.
00:35:09
I think that's their pitch for the appeal.
00:35:11
But again, I think people holistically buy cars and that branding is part of like, if you buy some fancy electric hellcat or the E-Ray Corvette or whatever,
00:35:23
you want the cool Corvette logo and startup animation and like the gauges and like whatever, you know, especially if they do the homage just to like the old Corvette instrument clusters on the new one with screened.
00:35:34
Like when you're buying a Corvette, people buy Corvettes want that.
00:35:37
They don't want, I'm gonna buy a Corvette and then I want it to look like my iPhone.
00:35:41
No, they don't, they won't look like a Corvette.
00:35:43
So this, I'm a car person.
00:35:45
Maybe I did not represent it of the audience, but I think we'll have to wait until this is actually implemented to see what the non-tech nerd, non-car nerd public thinks of it.
00:35:55
But right now it hasn't been rolled out into cars, which I think is reflective of what the auto industry thinks of it.
00:36:01
- Yeah, I was gonna say, that's a long wait for a train or car that ain't coming.
00:36:05
All right, there is some big news that dropped sometime in the last week or two, I forget exactly when it was, apparently it was leaked to the financial times,
00:36:16
if I'm not mistaken, and then formally stated a few days later, the European Commission has found Apple in breach of the, what is the digital market sack?
00:36:24
The DMA, there you go.
00:36:26
And so reading from a press release from the European Commission, and the European Commission has informed Apple of its permanent preliminary view that its app store rules are in breach of the digital market sack to DMA.
00:36:38
As they prevent app developers from freely steering customers to alternative channels for offers and content.
00:36:43
In addition, the Commission opened a new non-compliance procedure against Apple over concerns that it's new contractual requirements for third party app developers and app stores, including Apple's new core technology fee,
00:36:54
fall short of ensuring effective compliance with Apple's obligations under the DMA.
00:36:59
In parallel, the Commission will continue undertaking preliminary investigative steps outside of the scope of the present investigation in particular with respect to the checks and reviews put in place by Apple to validate apps and alternative app stores to be side loaded.
00:37:12
- Gotta love the efficiency of government, right?
00:37:14
So we've, all these things we've talked about on the show.
00:37:17
Their anti-steering rules, whether Apple's complying, core technology fee, it makes it unattractive for people to be an alternative app stores.
00:37:23
And most recently, oh, they rejected UTM from notarization because they felt like it, right?
00:37:30
If we're third party app stores, not for the app store, they said, actually, we don't want that to be in any apps.
00:37:34
We don't want that in our app store, and also we don't want that to be in any third party app stores.
00:37:37
Why?
00:37:39
Because we said so.
00:37:40
So they have separate investigations to all these.
00:37:42
And this announcement was just for the anti-steering thing of like how easy is it for people to tell somebody in an app, hey, you can get a better deal if you go to our website.
00:37:52
It's $10 here, but on our website, it's $5.
00:37:54
And Apple's like, no, you can't tell them the price.
00:37:56
If you link it, you got to do this special way or whatever.
00:37:58
So that's what they found them in breach up.
00:38:00
And they say, and just so you know, we're still looking into those other things, like the core technology fee and most recently.
00:38:05
Now, I give them a pass on the UTM thing because that happened recently.
00:38:08
But the core technology fee was there from day one.
00:38:10
Why is it that they can't like figure out all the different ways that Apple is non-compliant and tell them at once, but no, these are all separate investigations and everything takes a long time.
00:38:19
But anyway, if you're wondering if the European Commission thinks that Apple is following the rules of the M.A.
00:38:24
And at least the anti-steering thing, the answer is no.
00:38:26
They think Apple is not correctly following the rules.
00:38:30
And that seems like it shouldn't be a surprise to anybody.
00:38:34
I mean, including Apple, but I'm sure it isn't a surprise to them.
00:38:36
Well, so here's the thing.
00:38:37
Like, when none of us are lawyers, we're certainly not European lawyers.
00:38:41
Right.
00:38:42
I think I've read most of the DMA.
00:38:45
I've said it before.
00:38:46
I think the DMA is written in such a way that it opened the door for Apple to do something like this.
00:38:54
And to plausibly argue that they are compliant.
00:38:58
Whatever the European wants, the European Commission wants, it could have been more explicit about it.
00:39:03
Right.
00:39:03
Instead of just kind of hinting in the direction of we want competition or whatever.
00:39:07
And in some ways, it's like, well, they're not going to tell you exactly how to do it.
00:39:11
Like, you don't want them to pin it down entirely.
00:39:12
That's not how laws work.
00:39:13
But in other ways, it's like I kind of say Apple was acting in good faith, which I don't entirely think they are, but if they were.
00:39:22
And they were trying to be compliant.
00:39:25
They would still have a lot of questions.
00:39:26
And I don't know how much back channel communication happens, but like if they were acting good faith, I would hope Apple could say to the European Commission, we're thinking to do an X, Y, and Z.
00:39:34
Does that seem good to you?
00:39:35
And I don't know if the European Commission is being like the App Store and saying, we can't tell you anything.
00:39:38
Just wait till you show us what you have.
00:39:40
And then we'll tell you about it nine months later, right?
00:39:43
Which is frustrating because it's not.
00:39:46
Like Gerber complies about this because he's super against the European Commission stuff.
00:39:49
And he's like, oh, they say that Apple can't make any money.
00:39:52
There's nothing in the DMA that says Apple is not allowed to make a profit on phones or the App Store, or anything like that, right?
00:39:58
But Apple might have a question of like, okay, well, if the core technology fee is going to be found to be non-compliant to like, what can we do?
00:40:06
And I mean, my answer would be like, you can't make it so that there's no way for anyone to make a more attractive option because one thing that is clear in the DMA is they want more competition.
00:40:16
And competition doesn't mean Apple.
00:40:17
You set the rules so nobody can ever be better than you.
00:40:20
Like that's clear.
00:40:20
That's why I think their compliance is obviously, you know, in bad faith, right?
00:40:27
But, okay, so say I accept that.
00:40:30
How much competition should people be allowed to undercut us by 100%, a thousand percent?
00:40:36
Like how unattractive can we make it, right?
00:40:40
Can we charge people anything, or can we charge people nothing?
00:40:43
Because if the answer is we can charge people nothing, put that in the DMA and say, oh, and by the way, people need to be able to sell things in third party app stores without Apple having any say, what's on what's there with very narrowly defined exceptions and also without giving Apple any money.
00:40:56
But they didn't write that.
00:40:57
They just didn't write that into the law as far as anything that I could see.
00:41:00
Now, maybe I'm not a lawyer and I missed it into staring me in the face using language that I don't understand.
00:41:04
But it's, I feel like this, the DMA could have been written to be more specific, but I am glad that Apple was found non-compliance because I think what they did is clearly not achieving the thing that is stated in the DMA,
00:41:21
which is like we want more competition.
00:41:24
We want a more open market.
00:41:25
And so, you know, you think you're complying with this by making sure you have made a market that is not open and we're going to ding you for that.
00:41:35
- Yeah, I think there's no way to look at Apple's compliance plan and say, this is what Europe intended.
00:41:42
As John said, we are not experts in European law and the dynamics of how they write the laws and how they enforce them and everything.
00:41:51
We do know a bit about Apple and a bit about the App Store and a bit about that kind of stuff.
00:41:55
And it is very clear that the intention of the DMA and of allowing different app distribution channels that Apple does not financially control with arbitrary terms.
00:42:08
That was the intention.
00:42:10
Apple should allow people who are not them to distribute software on their platform without burdening some economic terms that are dictated by Apple.
00:42:19
That's clearly the intention of the law.
00:42:21
- Without terms that make it unattractive.
00:42:23
Like that's the main thing.
00:42:25
It's like there can be terms and there can be caveats and they have to prove a security or whatever, but you can't make the terms such that like nobody would ever want to do this.
00:42:34
That you can't, it's like price fixing.
00:42:37
It's like, oh, you can compete with me, but you can't sell any products for any cheaper than I sell them.
00:42:41
That's not actually what they're doing, but like effectively it's saying, oh, you're just gonna have to pay us anyway.
00:42:45
So we're going to try to make it so that you running the store doesn't, you don't come out ahead.
00:42:50
The people selling it in the store don't come out ahead because they got to pay us for all those installs for 50 cents or whatever, the court technology fee.
00:42:55
People running the store don't come out ahead.
00:42:57
Like it's just nobody, you know, if you join into the system, you're gonna look over at us and say, why are we even doing this?
00:43:04
This is basically the same as the Apple system.
00:43:07
And that, that's not competition.
00:43:08
And so they found, the Apple found a way to do that and they think, oh, we're complying with the law and they're gonna argue, you know, 'cause Apple has a chance to argue about this.
00:43:16
They say, look, we're totally in compliance.
00:43:18
You should have written a better law, but I, you know, I'm not sure that's gonna work out for them.
00:43:22
- No, obviously Europe is saying we need people to be able to compete in this giant marketplace that is a huge part of commerce.
00:43:31
And I think that's very defensible, you know.
00:43:33
You look back at history, you see things like the railroads and the telephone companies, there's a reason why we tend to promote freer, less burdensome competition,
00:43:45
even from, even on a private company's assets, once it becomes a huge part of commerce that starts to be able to affect lots of other businesses, especially in anti-competitive ways.
00:43:55
And there is no question that Apple has reached that size with the iOS platform or with the App Store.
00:44:01
It is that important in the entire economy.
00:44:04
It matters a lot.
00:44:06
So whether they should be regulated, I think that question is answered.
00:44:10
I think the answer is yes, of course they should be regulated.
00:44:12
And again, I mean, I'm not gonna go too far into this, this time I say it all the time, but this was a hundred percent on Apple for effectively provoking governments to regulate them with obviously blatantly anti-competitive behavior.
00:44:25
And again, you know I'm kinda down on Tim Cook's strategy.
00:44:30
I wonder what the heck he was thinking all these years of blatant anti-competitive behavior, literally provoking governments to regulate him.
00:44:39
What did he expect to happen here?
00:44:42
And this is a theme that we'll come back to in a little bit, but Apple definitely should have seen this coming.
00:44:47
They rolled the dice.
00:44:49
They said, you know, we're gonna keep doing a hundred percent of what we're doing.
00:44:53
We're even gonna tighten the screws over the last few years.
00:44:56
What could possibly go wrong?
00:44:57
This, this is what could go wrong.
00:44:59
So I am cheering on the EU for this part of the DMA.
00:45:04
I don't love the entire law.
00:45:05
It's a big law and there's some weird stuff in it.
00:45:07
But the part about ensuring freer competition for a giant app marketplace that is a keystone of modern commerce and business and so many ways and so many parts of life.
00:45:19
I think that is a hundred percent on point.
00:45:22
Some of the details we can quibble over, but the idea of that is on point.
00:45:25
And you don't have to just look at Europe, look Japan's now doing the same thing.
00:45:28
It's only a matter of time before more countries around the world start doing this.
00:45:32
And what we're gonna end up with is this incredibly fragmented app store policy where Apple is going to not give an inch anywhere they're not required to.
00:45:43
And instead they're just gonna have like nine different rules of where you are in the world and what kind of regional variations are necessary.
00:45:51
And they're gonna keep just being absolute turds about it all when if they would have just eased up a little bit in a few areas that actually wouldn't have cost them that much they could have wooded all of this and continued to have one app store for the whole world basically and have relatively few variations between them.
00:46:09
And they invited this.
00:46:11
So you know what, if the EU is gonna drag them through courts and everything forever, good, they need it.
00:46:19
They're not doing it themselves, so someone has to do it.
00:46:22
They're burning so much time and energy on this too because it's like if you can see the writing on the wall like you mentioned Japan and other countries doing similar things and maybe Apple thinks the US will ever do it or whatever but like for the European stuff,
00:46:33
you know, crippling about like, oh, they didn't write the law specifically enough and what do they even want and it's so weird.
00:46:38
In the end, Apple has very limited ability to control what European governments do.
00:46:46
Like they have a system of government and they apply laws to things that are sold in the EU, right?
00:46:53
And I guess Apple can lobby the EU like any other big company can lobby them but I feel like Apple's ability to lobby the US government as a US company is stronger than their ability to lobby the EU and they don't also not seem to be particularly good lobbying for their,
00:47:08
you know, for what they want, right?
00:47:09
But like Apple is essentially powerless.
00:47:12
They're not part of the European government.
00:47:14
I mean, then it's powerless 'cause they have tons of money but you know what I mean?
00:47:16
Like in the end, let's say Apple wins in their like appeal and some judge in Europe says or whatever well, technically Apple did comply with how the law is written.
00:47:26
The EU will just write a new law.
00:47:28
Like they can't, Apple can't win this.
00:47:30
Like it's the same thing with the battles with China.
00:47:32
It's like you can either do what the Chinese government wants you to do and you know, push back as much as you can or you could just not be in China.
00:47:38
Like so many companies aren't, right?
00:47:41
And it's obviously complicated for Apple because of the manufacturing or whatever but like those are your choices.
00:47:45
One of your choices is not let's change what the Chinese government wants.
00:47:49
Like Apple's ability to do that despite all their money and everything is extremely limited.
00:47:53
So I'm not like Apple is just like burning time and energy, implementing these things to try to get away with as much as they can get away with it in the end.
00:48:03
The EU can just say, okay, well, we made a mistake and the law will write it and we'll make it stronger and let's just go around and around.
00:48:09
As opposed to Apple acknowledging, surely Apple also understands what they're trying to get at increased competition and just say let's do this once, let's do it well, let's do it globally as we've discussed the past episodes.
00:48:20
Imagine if they just said, look, we see the writing on the wall, everybody's gonna want something more open.
00:48:24
Let's just do something that we think is open enough that will satisfy all government requirements, present and future.
00:48:30
Let's do it once, let's apply it to the whole world, let's avoid fragmentation, let's move on with our actual business.
00:48:36
But no, they're not doing that.
00:48:37
They're gonna fight tooth and nail every single one of these things, comply as little as possible, fight it in courts and it's wasting time and energy.
00:48:43
It's making their platform more complicated.
00:48:45
As we'll see when we get to the next thing although we do have some quotes here from the various parties to see how they're positioning themselves on the eve of this or just after this preliminary finding on one of multiple things they're being investigated on.
00:48:58
- Apple spokesperson Peter Ajameyan, who was talking to the verge, throughout the past several months, Apple's made a number of changes to comply with the DMA in response to feedback from developers in the European Commission.
00:49:09
As we have done routinely, we will continue to listen and engage with the European Commission.
00:49:13
- I mean, so that's their way of saying, we're talking to them or whatever.
00:49:16
- I can't say FU.
00:49:18
- Well, and then we will continue to listen to them and engage them.
00:49:21
Like, see, here's the thing.
00:49:22
There is some meaning of the minds on this because the DMA is written with some acknowledgement that like, we can't just be the Wild West which is why there are carve outs for like, okay,
00:49:32
Apple should have the gatekeepers, not just Apple, but gatekeepers should have the ability to reject things for security reasons from even being in third party stores, right?
00:49:42
The EU is not like, you just let anybody do anything.
00:49:46
It's like the PC of the 80s, right?
00:49:48
They're not doing that.
00:49:50
And Apple, it's credit, is trying to provide lots of security stopgaps while also allowing things, like the browser kit thing.
00:49:59
We want to allow third party browser and we want to do that as safe as possible.
00:50:04
Ideally, all the browser engines go through the same restrictions, Safari, and that's not currently the case, but browser kit is basically built around what they already did for Safari, right?
00:50:13
So the two parties aren't so far apart that like one wants completely everything open, free for all and the other wants everything locked down.
00:50:21
They agree with each other that certain things need to be done carefully, but like everything else, they're like, Apple's like, how little can we get away with?
00:50:29
How unattractive can we make third party app stores?
00:50:31
How little disruption to our existing business can we make?
00:50:34
Like, well, we'll try to comply in a way that no one will ever take us up on any of these offers or only a few people would, but like in the end, it'd just be like a footnote and it won't actually change anything, right?
00:50:44
Or maybe like, as we'll get through in a second, maybe we'll even make things worse and people like, boy, we thought we would like some third party competition, but now that we've seen it, we're going and running back to the app store because it's so much better there because of the way Apple set everything up.
00:50:57
- Then Marguerite, this vestiger, I hope I have that right.
00:51:01
I forgot to brush up on it, I apologize.
00:51:02
But anyways, she said the balls now in the gatekeeper's court, they have to convince us that the measures they take will achieve full compliance with the DMA and where this is not the case, we will intervene.
00:51:14
We are concerned that Apple designated its new business model to discourage app developers and end users from taking advantage of the opportunity supported to them by the DMA.
00:51:22
The letter of the DMA is clear.
00:51:24
Gatekeepers have to allow for alternative app stores to establish themselves in their platforms and for consumers to be fully informed about the offers available to them so that they can freely choose where they want to source their apps and at what conditions.
00:51:37
- But the DMA is not clear.
00:51:39
Anymore, and she said, right, keepers have to allow for alternative app stores, Apple would say, yeah, we did that to establish themselves on their platforms.
00:51:46
Yeah, we allow alternative app stores to be established on our platforms.
00:51:49
So consumers to be fully informed, okay, they're gonna say not fully informed.
00:51:52
They're informed through a narrow aperture that Apple defines in which it's why they're not compliant.
00:51:56
And so they can freely choose and Apple would be like, yeah, they can freely choose.
00:52:00
It's the details, like, we allow third party app stores, we just don't wanna make them any more, impossible to be many more attractive than ours by applying financial burdens.
00:52:09
And even her summary, she doesn't even say, not like that.
00:52:13
I know you did alternative app stores, but no one wants to do them because they cost so much money and suck so much.
00:52:18
So change that, but she doesn't.
00:52:20
And by the way, that us that Casey Redd and emphasized they have to convince us, that italic us was in her thing.
00:52:26
I didn't add that emphasis.
00:52:27
It was she italicize it.
00:52:29
They have to convince us that the measures they take will achieve full compliance over the next, you know, 12 months or whatever, like every one of these things, there's like a nine to 12 month horizon.
00:52:40
Like, okay, then Apple gets to challenge it and they have a hearing and they do a thing.
00:52:43
And then, like, people think it's gonna be like, "Oh, we passed the law."
00:52:47
And Apple did a thing, but they're not compliant.
00:52:49
Now they get fined.
00:52:49
No, that's not how any of this works.
00:52:51
It's so long between the passing of this law to the point where Apple could potentially get those huge fines that, yeah, presumably, something will be worked out,
00:53:02
but this is just gonna drag on for so long.
00:53:05
Yeah, and because the root of the problem is, the DMA, I guess the EU way of doing this is not gonna specify to firmly what they really intend,
00:53:16
which is there can't be any fees.
00:53:19
Like, that's obviously what they intend.
00:53:21
I mean, I don't know if they say there can't be any, but you have to be able to undercut the app store.
00:53:26
Like, they, I don't know how they would phrase that, but like, it's not competition if your competitors can never be better than you, right?
00:53:34
Of course, it's just right.
00:53:35
And the other one is free for all, like, there's no, like, there's no rules.
00:53:39
The competitors can be, you know, they can, if they have enough funding, they could do lost leaders and say, everything is free.
00:53:45
We'll pay you to use our app store, like, or whatever.
00:53:46
You know, like, there's, competition is complicated because we all want competition, but there's such a thing as unfair competition, again, like, there's laws in our country about like, you know,
00:53:57
I think there are laws about like, undercutting your competition by giving away stuff for free until all your competitors are about our business.
00:54:04
I know it's a common thing that VC funding does these days, but I think there are actually laws in the books in certain industries where you're essentially not allowed to do that.
00:54:11
You know, I'll just take a giant war chest of money and put all your competitors out of business by giving away milk for free until they're all out of business and you buy them all up.
00:54:18
And then you start charging twice as much from milk or something.
00:54:20
I mean, that's what pharmaceutical companies do.
00:54:22
But anyway, like, there are anti-patterns to too much competition, but we're at the other end of that spectrum right now.
00:54:29
We're at the, like, no competition and then, like, competition in name only where it's not real competition.
00:54:35
And so trying to find that balance is tricky.
00:54:38
You can't just say Apple, you can't charge anybody any money.
00:54:40
But I think that actually might be their intention.
00:54:43
Like, they won't say it because it is, I think that's legally a little bit tougher to argue.
00:54:48
But I think that what they are clearly intending is for it to be like distribution on the mac and windows of just like, yeah, you should just be able to install things for free if you want to.
00:54:59
Like, I think that's clearly the intent, but they won't come out and say it.
00:55:01
Yeah, they didn't say it and also they do have the carve-out explicitly in the thing where Apple gets to approve for security purposes and private APIs and stuff, right?
00:55:08
Which they're also doing in a somewhat BSE way.
00:55:11
Exactly, but the fact that that carve-out's there, it's like they don't actually want it to be like the Mac.
00:55:17
You don't need to do that on the Mac.
00:55:18
Like, you can just distribute unsigned stuff and right click it and open it.
00:55:21
You know what I mean?
00:55:22
It's, yeah.
00:55:24
And so the question, like, again, I'm not gonna say, well, what does Apple's supposed to do?
00:55:27
They can't tell what they want.
00:55:28
Like, Apple clearly knows that they don't want this.
00:55:31
Like, it is a question of like, how open should we be?
00:55:35
And maybe you could argue say this was the Apple's best play.
00:55:38
Put out the most restrictive thing possible, get slapped for it, back it off.
00:55:42
How do you like it now?
00:55:43
As opposed to, you know, if your goal is to do as little as possible, start from a position of doing almost nothing.
00:55:48
Like, almost allowing no competition and then back it off slowly.
00:55:51
I just think it's gonna be wasted their time in energy.
00:55:53
They should have come up with something that everyone, our muckers would consider reasonable and put that out and then see what the US say.
00:55:59
And if they put out something that was reasonable, like, nominal fees to be a third party app store, minimal oversight, the possibility of financially being way cheaper than Apple,
00:56:10
right?
00:56:11
And they said to the EU, that's competition, right?
00:56:13
And the EU came back and said, actually, no, we had zero dollars of mine.
00:56:16
Like, you were saying Marker, like actually, that is the thing that they wanted to say, but couldn't, that would be kind of crappy of the EU.
00:56:22
'Cause if you wanna say, like, and they're making the law, like this is not a negotiation.
00:56:25
Like, the EU 100% makes the rules and Apple can either choose to follow them or not be in the EU and they didn't say, yeah, you can't charge anybody anything to have a third party app store.
00:56:36
- Yeah, but it does, like, I think the, whatever the political will and backing to get regulations like this through legislatures,
00:56:47
wherever that comes from, I think when people are trying to argue for these laws or these regulations, I think what they have in mind is free distribution like PCs and Macs.
00:56:58
Like, that's what people are imagining.
00:56:59
Now, obviously, again, like legally it's hard to require that.
00:57:02
There's a whole bunch of snags to that, of course, 'cause you're trying to legislate how a public, how a private company operates and makes money and that's obviously very tricky.
00:57:12
- I mean, are there snags to that?
00:57:13
'Cause the EU does that all the time.
00:57:14
I mean, and we just put 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs, right?
00:57:17
So like, they can, I don't, again, I don't know the political situation there.
00:57:21
You could be right that to get this past, they couldn't be that explicit 'cause people would be against it.
00:57:26
But as it was written, it overwhelmingly passed.
00:57:28
So I wonder how much of leeway there is to come out and say what they really want.
00:57:32
- My point is like, when these laws, you know, the Japan thing, the weird dating app thing and the Netherlands and then, you know, obviously the big one, the DMA, when these are passed,
00:57:44
I think what people have in mind is free distribution just like Macs and PCs.
00:57:49
And what Apple has done very well at is twisting and distorting the public discussion to remember the very first time that Tim Cook was on the stand,
00:58:01
I think in the epic trial, I think this is where this came out.
00:58:03
And the very first time that he presented this, it was, look, I don't have a lot of faith in Tim Cook's long-term strategy, but this was a good move from his point of view.
00:58:12
I hated it, but from his point of view, this was a good move.
00:58:15
When he mentioned something on the lines of like, well, the anti-purchase fee is just the most straightforward way for us to collect our commission.
00:58:23
How else would we collect our commission?
00:58:25
When he said that, we all were like, what?
00:58:29
Because what that told us was Apple believes it is entitled to collect, you know, their commission, a commission, regardless of how the money is flowing,
00:58:39
regardless of what it's being purchased through.
00:58:42
And Apple has successfully controlled the public narrative that all of us are talking about.
00:58:48
Since then, that was what two years ago.
00:58:50
All of us have been talking since then as if it's inevitable that yes, of course, Apple is going to collect a fee for everything sold or like what it like.
00:58:57
And we have totally bought into their fairly brazen, you know, framing of this.
00:59:03
We also have everybody talking about how Apple has to monetize their IP somehow.
00:59:07
They have to, why would anybody make software for a platform?
00:59:11
If Apple can't monetize their IP, why would Apple continue to invest in the iPhone if they can't monetize their IP?
00:59:17
Like some people have bought into this.
00:59:19
I certainly haven't bought into it.
00:59:21
I don't think you have, but some people have.
00:59:23
But I'm saying like, when we're talking about this, I think it's important for everyone out there to realize like that entire framing of this being this inevitable thing that of course Apple has to collect their commission so that they can justify working on the iPhone.
00:59:37
That is 1,000% BS.
00:59:39
And Apple has done a great job of controlling that message and getting us all to talk about it.
00:59:44
But that's obviously not what people want and when they create these regulations.
00:59:48
That what people want is Mac and PC like free distribution.
00:59:51
Yes, with security controls if need be done on some broad strokes.
00:59:56
But that's what people want.
00:59:59
Apple is the one who is refusing to give it up.
01:00:01
And that's why this is going to take forever, as John was saying.
01:00:03
Like because the EU is basically saying, we would like no barriers please.
01:00:07
And Apple is basically saying we'd like all the barriers please.
01:00:10
And it's just going to take a long time to work this out because neither of them is real.
01:00:14
Actually, the European Commission is not really being very clear what they want.
01:00:17
Apple is being very clear about what they want.
01:00:20
Apple is very clear about we deserve everything and we're going to give you, we're going to give up nothing and we're going to see how that goes.
01:00:27
And so this is going to keep going on forever.
01:00:29
But don't buy into Apple's framing too much.
01:00:33
You weren't talking about this because that came out of nowhere two years ago.
01:00:38
That was not what anybody was ever thinking.
01:00:40
And I mean, just to rehash everything, like they have plenty of reason to invest in the iPhone to maintain iOS and their developer tools without collecting a fee on every single app that transacts through it.
01:00:51
- Yeah, I mean, the reason that the premise plays so well in America is it's so America is like, you're going to tell a company how they can make money.
01:00:57
You're going to tell them they can't make money in a particular way, that's not fair.
01:01:00
They should be able to do what they want and let the market decide.
01:01:02
And like the whole, like, so the premise Tim Cook was offering was like, you know, unchangeable premise we have to make money.
01:01:09
All we're arguing about is how we can do that and app purchases the best way and we can try other ways or whatever.
01:01:14
But like there, it's like, I reject your premise, right?
01:01:16
- Right.
01:01:17
- That you don't need to write.
01:01:18
But in the same way, like just the premise of the US business is like, well, a company should be able to make money however they want and if they pick it allows you way that people don't like, people won't buy from them.
01:01:27
The premise of the DMA, as you stated before, is that Apple has power in a market that's super important and they have too much power.
01:01:36
And so the government needs to step in to tell companies what to do.
01:01:40
That what you could do when you were a small company, now suddenly we're saying because you sell phones and because you're this big and because you're successful because phones are so important, we are saying new rules apply to you.
01:01:50
That's exactly what the DMA is.
01:01:52
We don't really have anything like that in the US quite yet.
01:01:54
But exactly, and there's various DOJ cases anyway.
01:01:57
But we talked about in past episodes.
01:01:59
But the DMA, that's the premise of the DMA.
01:02:02
The premise is you specifically gatekeepers, new rules apply to you.
01:02:07
But the American mind rebels that the idea of a government telling companies how they can make money.
01:02:12
And so people, you know, groomers, they're so incredulous.
01:02:14
You're telling them that they can't make money.
01:02:17
The way they want to from their phone.
01:02:18
And it's like, yes, because specifically, like he even says like the Japan thing.
01:02:22
Like, oh, imagine if the Japanese game console makers, we should tell them, oh, well, guess what?
01:02:26
You know, you have to allow third party apps on your PlayStation or whatever.
01:02:30
Game consoles are not as important as phones.
01:02:33
Like that's what it comes down to.
01:02:34
The premise of these cases is it's not like every company that's like this.
01:02:38
It's technological gatekeepers for platforms that are so important to all life and commerce that these rules apply to them.
01:02:44
And gaming is big, but so far right now, I'm gonna say game consoles are not as important to the life and economy of a country as cell phones.
01:02:53
That's the determination made by many of these laws and lawsuits, and I agree with that determination.
01:02:59
Game consoles aren't as important.
01:03:01
They're more important than they used to be, and they are important, and maybe something could be looked at there.
01:03:05
But if I had to say which is more important, it's the cell phone.
01:03:08
It's no contest.
01:03:09
It's just so much more important.
01:03:11
And so yeah, these people are passing laws specifically targeting gatekeepers for platforms that are super important in our life.
01:03:19
And it can seem unfair.
01:03:20
Again, why do the game consoles get away with it?
01:03:22
Because they're less important.
01:03:23
Maybe someday they'll come for the game consoles.
01:03:25
Where do you draw the line?
01:03:26
How do you decide when somebody's too powerful?
01:03:28
We talked about this before.
01:03:29
When do you have a monopoly?
01:03:30
What percentage is required?
01:03:32
When is there two little competition?
01:03:34
These are all complicated questions, but the premise of all these things is Apple.
01:03:39
New rules apply to you and Microsoft and Google and all these things because of exactly what you make and how important you are and how much power you have.
01:03:47
And some people just don't accept that print.
01:03:51
In the same way, we don't accept Tim Cook's premise that he just has to make money.
01:03:53
Some people don't accept the premise of the DMA.
01:03:56
And so they're never gonna be happy with what the DMA does.
01:03:58
No details about the negotiation of the DMA.
01:04:01
No compliance malicious or otherwise is going to be satisfying because they disagree with the premise that Apple deserves to be regulated and so do other companies like it.
01:04:11
- Right, so all this is going on and around the same time, give or take a few days.
01:04:18
Actually, I think it was a few days before the EU's announcement, but nevertheless, one way or another, it's around the same time.
01:04:24
Apple has declared that it may delay some of its AI features and others in the EU because of the DMA.
01:04:34
- Boonelli, all right, so this went over like a led bullet.
01:04:38
- Reading from the verge, Apple says upcoming features like it's Apple Intelligence Generative AI tools, iPhone mirroring and share play screen sharing may not be available in the EU this year.
01:04:48
So now, quoting Apple, two weeks ago, Apple unveiled hundreds of new features that we are excited to bring to our users around the world.
01:04:55
We are highly motivated to make these technologies available to all users.
01:05:00
However, due to the regulatory uncertainties brought about by the Digital Markets Act or DMA, we do not believe that we will be able to roll out three of these features,
01:05:12
iPhone mirroring, share play screen sharing, enhancements and Apple Intelligence toward EU users this year.
01:05:17
Specifically, we are concerned that the interoperability requirements of the DMA force us to compromise the integrity of our products and ways that risk user privacy and data security.
01:05:27
We are committed to collaborating with the European Commission in an attempt to find a solution that would enable us to deliver these features to our EU customers without compromising their safety.
01:05:36
- So this is one of the aspects of the DMA that is either the DMA overreaching or us not understanding what the DMA wants.
01:05:45
The idea is-- - Pork and Elastos.
01:05:47
- Yeah, all those integrations that Apple has where there's some feature that, I mean, this is in the DOJ case.
01:05:53
Apple Watch only works with the Apple iPhone and this iPhone mirroring thing between Max and iPhones.
01:05:59
Only works with iPhones, not Android phones.
01:06:01
Like any feature that you can imagine Apple rolling out, there's some interpretation of the DMA and again, maybe it's straightforward interpretation and not a lawyer that says,
01:06:12
"Hey, if you add a feature, "you can't confine that feature to only first party stuff.
01:06:17
"Those features need to be, you know, "extensible by third parties and pluggable on day one."
01:06:22
And as anyone who's familiar with Apple's platform, knows, that's not the way they do things.
01:06:30
Like sometimes they roll out first party only for years and years and never allow third parties access.
01:06:37
Sometimes they do a third party one to five years later, 10 years later, right.
01:06:41
Like think of all the features to be had.
01:06:42
Well, how long do we got third party keyboards?
01:06:44
How long until apps were allowed to run in the background that weren't Apple's apps?
01:06:47
Like on the Mac, on iPhone and iPad, all these platforms, they don't always make it sensible by third parties ever and doing it on day one is rare.
01:06:58
So if the DMA really does require every gatekeeper to implement every feature such that it is extensible and over third parties on day one,
01:07:08
I think that is a technologically ill-considered requirement.
01:07:13
And Apple would be justified in saying, we just can't roll out these new features because it seems like they are not going to be compliant with the law.
01:07:22
Now, interestingly, they weren't so hesitant to roll out all the other things that we said that we also agreed were probably not compliant like the core technology fee and all the rules for alternative app stores.
01:07:32
Somehow they didn't, they're worried about whether those would be compliant, did not stop them from deploying those.
01:07:38
But these ones, Apple says, you know what, we're afraid we might not be compliant so it's best that we don't roll these out.
01:07:43
I don't know if they're compliant.
01:07:45
If they're not compliant, the DMA in this respect is bad and needs to be changed because you can't require technology companies to only launch something when it's ready for the world to extend it.
01:07:55
That is too high a bar.
01:07:56
It's not the right way to make technology.
01:07:59
You can put a timeline on it, say it has to be extensible within five years.
01:08:02
There are other things you could do to be more reasonable about this.
01:08:05
But I would also say that like, look, yeah, Apple's an important platform cell phones, gatekeeper cell phones, Android, Google, whatever, those are super important platforms that are important to the economy, all that stuff, right?
01:08:15
It doesn't mean that you need to require them to be open in every respect.
01:08:21
What's the most important in the way they need to be open?
01:08:24
You need to be able to get apps from somewhere else.
01:08:25
Does every single aspect of that platform also need to be open?
01:08:28
Every feature, everything that you can do on it, every single minute thing, share, play, iPhone.
01:08:34
Does every single thing need to be open to third parties at all time?
01:08:37
How about you wait to see if iPhone mirroring is a lever that Apple uses to dominate the industry before you decide that that needs to be opened up?
01:08:44
Because we know the app store is, right?
01:08:46
So yeah, address the app, starting the law, but you can't make an open-ended thing that says, every little feature you add has to be open from day one.
01:08:54
It's pointless, it's counterproductive, and in the end, it doesn't matter if iPhone mirroring only works with iPhones, probably not to the degree that it should be a law addressing it.
01:09:04
So I really hope that the DMA actually doesn't try to say everything in the OS open from day one, and again, even if it did say that Apple should probably just launch these features anyway,
01:09:15
but that's not why they're holding them back.
01:09:16
They're holding them back.
01:09:17
To kind of show the world, we think this law is crappy, and we're going to demonstrate that by holding back goodies that we're probably going to hold back anyway, because Apple intelligence is only supposed to be launching in English in the fall anyway,
01:09:29
and I guess they could launch it in English in Europe because lots of people speak English there, but this is part them making a statement about their interpretation to the DMA,
01:09:40
and part sort of active defiance to show the consequences.
01:09:44
And it's like, hey, Apple could just pull out of the EU, and not cell phones there.
01:09:46
Like that is the ultimate break up move here.
01:09:48
That's the Brexit.
01:09:49
We can need to come up with a Brexit-like term for Apple pulling out of the EU.
01:09:52
I don't have a good one off top of my head, but show it right next week.
01:09:55
We'll have lots of suggestions.
01:09:57
Exit, because it begins with an E.
01:09:59
It has to be like an Apple thing.
01:10:00
Like Britain, exit, Brexit, you know?
01:10:02
You exit, I don't know.
01:10:04
I don't know if they call it the Apple.
01:10:06
No, well, anyway, we'll see what we can.
01:10:08
Let me workshop it.
01:10:09
This is, that's lurking out the end of this disagreement, but this moved by Apple of just, you know, again, maybe they weren't going to roll us out anyway.
01:10:17
Like, but either way, this is a positioning move.
01:10:20
Like, we don't know whether they're doing something they weren't going to do.
01:10:23
Maybe this is just putting words around something that was going to happen anyway.
01:10:27
But, yeah, this is an escalation.
01:10:31
Let's say, I would call this an escalation.
01:10:33
- Well, the thing of it is, is that I feel like I can, I was going to say squint, but I'm not even sure it requires me squinting.
01:10:41
I can look at the DMA and look at particularly the mirroring and share play screen sharing stuff.
01:10:49
And I can see an interpretation, a legitimate honest, you know, no BS interpretation that, wow, this may not fly with the DMA,
01:10:59
maybe we should hold on to this.
01:11:01
And I can legitimately argue that that is a real concern.
01:11:06
- But they didn't have that same concern about all the other stuff they rolled out that you could have the same exact statement about, wow, this may not comply, maybe we should hold it back.
01:11:14
- I think because these are additive things that involve interoperability between devices, right?
01:11:20
And leaving aside the nuance of these particular selections, the broader point I'm trying to make is that I feel like we have, and the three of us have talked about this a lot.
01:11:32
Apple has not really read the room both in a micro level and a macro level.
01:11:39
At a micro level, they haven't really read the room that look, the EU is not going to like this, man.
01:11:44
They're not going to take this lying down and be like, oh, you know what, we messed up.
01:11:48
Yeah, we screwed this all up.
01:11:50
That's our bad, our bad, that's on me, my bad.
01:11:52
That's not what's going to happen.
01:11:54
And on a macro level, it's fascinating to me what Marco said, because I had the exact same reaction.
01:11:59
Marco said a minute ago, this went over like a lead balloon.
01:12:02
And I think that's broadly accurate.
01:12:03
I think most people have that same reaction.
01:12:05
And it took me thinking about it a little bit.
01:12:07
And I'm actually not so grumpy about this anymore, but I certainly was at first.
01:12:11
And what's fascinating to me is everyone seems to, broadly speaking, everyone seems to assume ill intent from Apple, right?
01:12:21
Like they're doing this just to hold up a middle finger to the European Commission and say, well, na, na, na, na, you can't have cool stuff.
01:12:29
And that very well may be true for the record.
01:12:32
I don't know, but it's kind of funny and unfortunate that because Apple has been so belligerently stubborn about so much,
01:12:44
and I think Marco was saying this as well earlier, they've been so stubborn about so much and haven't given a friggin' inch.
01:12:50
And so because of that, everyone is just like, well, this is Apple being a dick again, news at 11.
01:12:55
Like same as it ever was.
01:12:57
And that's the thing that kind of bums me out as someone who I consider myself a fan of the company to the degree that anyone can be a fan of a, you know, company.
01:13:06
And this bums me out as we've said many different times on the show over the years.
01:13:10
You know, all of a sudden I'm looking around and, or maybe Apple should be looking around and asking, are we the baddies?
01:13:15
Because this is baddie behavior.
01:13:17
Like if this is them thumbing their nose at the European Commission, it's just gross.
01:13:23
And I can't get past, and I know I'm repeating what Marco said before.
01:13:29
And what we've said many times on the show, I can't get past, this is an own goal.
01:13:34
Apple knew this was coming.
01:13:36
They could tell it was coming.
01:13:38
Anyone with three brain cells that followed this could tell this was going to happen and that the laws are going to change.
01:13:44
And they're going to change because Apple was greedy and they're entitled and they just wouldn't give an inch.
01:13:51
And now they screwed around and now they're finding out.
01:13:54
- I think both sides of this are correct.
01:13:57
Like two things can be simultaneously true.
01:14:00
Apple's actually probably correct that these features, you could see why they actually might be against the interop requirements of the DMA,
01:14:10
which are terrible largely.
01:14:12
Like you can see why, like yes, Apple is probably correct to cite this as a problem with the DMA, with these things in particular.
01:14:21
Like that's probably technically correct, but also saying this and doing this and having to face this dilemma at all is a direct result of their blatant anti-competitive behavior over time.
01:14:34
So, like none of this would have happened if not for that.
01:14:39
- Well, that's debatable.
01:14:40
I mean, you could say that no matter what Apple would have done, something like the DMA would have passed anyway, there's no amount of opening up preemptively that Apple could have done.
01:14:47
I still think they should have done it because like you don't know that you couldn't prevent.
01:14:50
This is the question that everyone has.
01:14:51
Could Apple have done anything to prevent it?
01:14:53
And I think we all agree, it was worth finding out.
01:14:57
Try something, right?
01:14:58
Instead of doing nothing, right?
01:15:00
And again, I would remind people, Apple did loosen the App Store rules from 30% to 15, the small business program.
01:15:07
Like stuff like that was like arguably Apple's reaction to seeing the writing on the wall.
01:15:12
Obviously it was very slight, very limited, not at all, anything close to something that would have preempted action clearly, right?
01:15:21
But there is still, I'm willing to entertain the idea that there is really nothing Apple could have done, but I just would have liked to see them try.
01:15:27
Show them that there's nothing you'd have done by giving a big, good faith effort to self-regulate, to head off regulation.
01:15:34
Maybe you would have failed, but they didn't even make an effort.
01:15:37
And so I think that's what we're arguing.
01:15:38
And I'm not 100% convinced that they could have prevented something like this, but they should have tried because I think their odds were okay.
01:15:45
Like it wasn't impossible, right?
01:15:47
It was, you know, there's probably something they could have done.
01:15:50
And even if they didn't head it off, even if they did some good faith thing that really opened it up and made new worldwide rules, they thought would be compliant, but up something like the MA passed anyway, and turns out they're not quite in compliance.
01:16:00
Then you're tweaking an existing worldwide system to comply, like you're probably closer to a meeting of the minds about this, right?
01:16:07
As opposed to now where they're just so far apart and it's so adversarial.
01:16:11
And even for this, like, I think if you really want to demonstrate, like again, if Apple's and the popular interpretation of the MA is such that like these interoper rules really would forbid iPhone mirroring and share play and stuff,
01:16:24
right?
01:16:24
And Apple intelligence, ship the features, have the EU strike them down and then throw up your hands and go, see everybody?
01:16:32
That's how dumb the DMA is.
01:16:33
It doesn't allow ship iPhone mirroring.
01:16:36
iPhone mirroring is not a giant lever of power that we use to dominate the industry.
01:16:39
It's a tiny feature that benefits people.
01:16:42
If stuff like iPhone mirroring is just loud, that's why the DMA is dumb.
01:16:46
But if they didn't allow that to happen, they didn't, they should have shipped it and got the complaints about it and had the evidence.
01:16:51
Instead, now they're holding it back saying, we think this might not be compliant.
01:16:54
And of course, the EC is not going to come out and say, Apple's wrong, it would have been compliant or Apple's right, it wouldn't have been.
01:17:01
The EC is apping like the app store.
01:17:02
It's like, if you don't submit the app, we're not going to tell you whether it's compliant or not, right?
01:17:06
So they've lost the opportunity to show that the DMA is dumb, right?
01:17:11
And on the flip side, the EC, I guess, doesn't have the opportunity to show that the DMA isn't dumb by saying, hey, ship iPhone mirroring, we weren't going to strike that down like we're reasonable people here.
01:17:21
I don't know.
01:17:21
I don't know if iPhone mirroring is compliant or not.
01:17:24
Either does Apple, I'm not sure if the EC knows if iPhone, maybe they need nine months to investigate to find it.
01:17:30
I think Apple knows that that is probably a, like something like, they're looking for holes to poke in the DMA because they don't like the whole thing.
01:17:39
They're looking for reasons, they're looking for ways to make it look overbearing and ridiculous.
01:17:44
And this is, you know, the main difference here is that with this move for the first time, they're not just attacking, you know, policies,
01:17:54
with this move, they're attacking their own customers.
01:17:56
And that is, I think, again, I question the strategy here.
01:18:02
Is anyone strategizing over there?
01:18:04
There may be thinking that Europe is filled with Americans who are going to be like, hey, the government stopping us from getting our cool Apple features, where it seems like a lot of people in the EU are going to say, hey, Apple's being a jerk about this law that we all agreed on.
01:18:16
Yeah, it turns out Europeans largely like the way Europe does things.
01:18:19
Exactly, right?
01:18:21
If Europe was filled with Texans, it would be a different story, but it's not.
01:18:26
And so I don't know if they're misreading that room.
01:18:28
Again, I don't have the finger on the pulse of what Europe is like.
01:18:31
But just look, the DMA passed overwhelmingly.
01:18:35
The EU likes regulation.
01:18:36
Just look at all the laws around, like, cheeses and Italy and stuff.
01:18:39
And it's just like, they like the way things work there.
01:18:44
All right, they vote for these people.
01:18:45
All right, so I don't know how this is going to work out, but just, I do think if this, if this is the deal with the DMA, like Apple can no longer do business effectively in Europe because again,
01:18:56
I think it's not reasonable to require every single feature added to all of their gatekeeping platforms to be open with the third parties from day one is technologically not feasible.
01:19:04
So if the DMA is asking for that, it needs to be changed or Apple just needs to leave because otherwise, people in Europe are going to get features like three years after the rest of the world gets them.
01:19:13
And that's if Apple decides to stay in the market and put in an effort to actually comply because that's like, that's the best case, the roadmap.
01:19:21
Like you roll out the feature and then you tweak the feature and then maybe you open it up to third parties and then the next year, the third party integration actually works well, right?
01:19:29
And that's not Apple being a jerk.
01:19:30
That's just the way technology works.
01:19:32
It's not, it's not reasonable to require this.
01:19:34
The app store is the important thing to regulate on the phone.
01:19:37
Shareplay is not.
01:19:39
Right, but it was there, it was their behavior with the app store that generated a whole bunch of political will to do a lot like this in the first place that happened to all sorts of things.
01:19:48
I mean, and again, it's not clear to me that Shareplay, like they wanted to wrap up Shareplay in this.
01:19:54
Like maybe they're like, oh no, we totally understand like Shareplay is not what we're after or whatever, but I don't know.
01:20:01
They're looking for reason to just credit it.
01:20:02
But again, I just, I have to wonder how many battles is Apple willing to fight at once?
01:20:08
Like, they have a lot of lawyers.
01:20:10
They're doing battle with everyone.
01:20:12
They're fighting on so many fronts and they seem to just provoke more of them to keep coming.
01:20:18
And now they've involved some a pretty decently sized chunk of their own customers as one of the fronts in these battles.
01:20:25
Why is this worth it?
01:20:27
Because again, what we're talking about is not all services revenue.
01:20:32
First of all, he's chunk of it as Google.
01:20:34
So that's not a side for now.
01:20:35
What we're talking about is not even all app store revenue.
01:20:40
We are talking about giving people the option to not use app store purchasing and commissions for apps that are largely not using the app store purchase system in the first place.
01:20:52
Things like Spotify, Netflix, HBO, Macs.
01:20:55
Like that's kind of what we're talking about here.
01:20:57
We're talking about allowing these apps to like link out and use their own stores or to use their own purchase systems that already mostly aren't using in app purchase.
01:21:08
And that's not where Apple makes most of its money.
01:21:10
They make most of their money with games.
01:21:13
So we're not even talking about a huge chunk of app store revenue that would just disappear overnight.
01:21:18
Apple is engaging in all these different battles all around the world, including in their own country now with the DOJ lawsuit, which it touches on some of these things.
01:21:28
They're opening up all these fronts of war and battling and literally causing problems for their core products attributes like integration in the EU now and possibly the DOJ lawsuit that those both have integration components.
01:21:42
They are causing substantial threats to really important parts of how their products are designed and how they work in pretty large markets around the world in order to save some tiny percentage of app store revenue.
01:21:55
That to me, again, I have yet to see.
01:21:59
I was trying to think, what are Tim Cook's long term strategy successes?
01:22:05
I can't think of many of those.
01:22:07
I honestly do not think Tim Cook as a leader has good long term strategy in some pretty key critical areas to leading this company.
01:22:15
And honestly, it's time for new leadership.
01:22:18
We've seen the limits of the Tim Cook apple.
01:22:21
We've seen he's really good at making money.
01:22:24
And he's a little spotty in some of the really important product details and a little bit short-sighted with some of these regulation and app store details.
01:22:33
We've seen the limits of Tim Cook's apple.
01:22:36
I'm ready to see something else.
01:22:37
This is bad leadership and bad strategy at the top.
01:22:42
This wouldn't be an Apple DMA rant.
01:22:45
Marco wasn't ready to fire some people at Apple.
01:22:48
[LAUGHS]
01:22:50
Let's do at least a little bit of Ask ATP.
01:22:52
It's been busy season for us.
01:22:53
So we've, unfortunately, put it on the back burner.
01:22:55
Let's bring it around.
01:22:57
Some fellow by the name of Todd Viseria-- I wonder who he is-- writes an ATP 589 used Mark German's rumor bullet points as a conversation starter.
01:23:05
Rumors are great at sparking conversation and debate.
01:23:07
But I wonder if anyone has ever revisited German's rumors post-event to validate the rumors themselves.
01:23:12
It seems like no one cares if the rumors are actually based on fact and bear fruit since the rumors help create "content" and discourse that's good enough for some.
01:23:21
But when rumors that ultimately go nowhere are given full faith, I feel like we are all wasting outrage or interest.
01:23:27
Not to mention, if a rumor doesn't come true, the rumor monger can claim that Apple changed its plans and claim no responsibility.
01:23:35
I feel like my gut says that German is over 50%.
01:23:41
But I've never actually done any mathematics or anything to see if that's true.
01:23:44
But back in the early days, before you guys were Apple fans, in the kind of help I'm going to get this right, macOS rumors.
01:23:53
I know you're like, don't you mean mac rumors?
01:23:55
No, I'm pretty charming macOS rumors.com.
01:23:57
Anyway, there was a lot of websites that Apple rumors.
01:24:01
Some of those websites just flat made up stuff, right?
01:24:05
Some of those websites would publish things that were sent to them anonymously that the senders made up.
01:24:11
And it was a very exciting time to be an Apple fan because every possible thing that you could think would be like, well, look at this, look at that.
01:24:18
And back in that time, I thought to myself a kind of like taught here, it would be great if there was a meta website that kept track of all the things that were on all the rumors websites and then rated them on accuracy accuracy.
01:24:28
And there are websites currently that do that.
01:24:30
I wish I could remember the URLs probably will have them fall up next week if anyone cares.
01:24:33
But there are websites to do that.
01:24:34
But it turns out that activity is not that exciting because very quickly, you kind of get a feel for what kind of things will people publish.
01:24:41
Like, will this site publish anything that's sent to them anonymously?
01:24:44
Or will this site only publish things from sources that they have some reason to believe are actual real sources, not just like an anonymous email that comes to you or whatever.
01:24:54
Mark Gurman is one of those people who publishes things from sources.
01:25:00
And I mean, the main thing against him is that the information that he gets, the source information that he gets is usually buried in a giant pile of words, a lot of which are just his opinion on things.
01:25:10
And it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, what did your sources tell you?
01:25:12
And the reason we care what his sources tell us is because his hit rate for things that are sourced that he says definitively, very close to when they're actually going to happen.
01:25:22
And even sometimes, dissently, is very good.
01:25:25
He has real sources.
01:25:27
He doesn't have people making things up.
01:25:28
He's not guessing and being lucky.
01:25:30
He has actual sources or maybe just one source.
01:25:33
But whatever it is, when he publishes information without any qualifiers and says something definitively, and it's like a week before the keynote, you can basically take that to the bank.
01:25:42
Rare misses like the Apple watch and everything or whatever.
01:25:46
But the reason we go back to that and talk about it is if it's a real thing is because like, well, it is a week before WRC and Gurman says no hardware WRC.
01:25:53
We just take that at face value at this point, because when he says that definitively a week before WRC, guess what, no hardware WRC.
01:26:01
And if he starts being wrong about that, he said no hardware and it was a huge hardware thing, then we're gonna look at scans.
01:26:06
As we, as I think the Apple watch rumor with the flat sides that never occurred, we look a little bit of a scans of that.
01:26:11
Not 100%, but he has real sources.
01:26:13
As opposed to macOS rumors back in the day, which I'm pretty sure had no real sources and just published anything that was sounded cool and occasionally got things right just because of dumb luck and occasionally got real leaks.
01:26:23
But most of the time, it just made up stuff.
01:26:25
In the end, this is mostly like entertainment or whatever, but I think on this show, we, if something is a rumor that's like, we have no idea about the sourcing or whatever, we will say as much.
01:26:35
But when we say it looks like no hardware WRC because Gurman said it, that's based on past performance that, you know, that he's been pretty accurate about things like that.
01:26:45
Farther out, like, oh, the doing Apple watch is gonna have different straps.
01:26:48
Like, remember when we talked about ages ago, we were always framing that as like, it's so far away, who knows if that's gonna happen.
01:26:54
He might have a source that just, like, even then it's like source.
01:26:57
Oh, okay, well, so they were working on an idea for a new strap on Apple Watch things and he got a source rumor to say that.
01:27:03
That doesn't mean and Gurman doesn't say definitively the next Apple Watch will have different straps.
01:27:07
He's just saying, this is the thing Apple's working on.
01:27:10
And it probably is, but you have to take that for what it is, which is Apple works on a lot of stuff.
01:27:15
Not everything ships.
01:27:16
Sometimes they decide to do something different or whatever.
01:27:19
That's different than when he comes out and says, here are the features, here are the things.
01:27:23
Here's what's gonna be in the keynote.
01:27:24
Here's what's not gonna be in the keynote.
01:27:26
Again, especially as the dig gets closer.
01:27:28
So I agree that just getting outraged on stuff that are just rumors is pointless, but I hope mostly on this show, we either talk about rumors as a jumping off point to like,
01:27:38
imagine if they did this or whatever, or we take as close to fact things that come from sources that are usually right very close to the date when they're gonna happen.
01:27:49
Yeah, and different rumor sources have different areas of strengths, I would say, like for instance.
01:27:54
When we hear from Mingshiqo about a new display size or a new display panel that could be used for an Apple product, that's usually pretty good because Mingshiqo is well sourced in the supply chain for displays and we know that.
01:28:09
But we don't know what product that's gonna be in.
01:28:11
Right, exactly.
01:28:12
And very often he will definitively say, this is gonna be in a new laptop and it turns out it's in an iPad or something, right?
01:28:17
Because that's not something you would know if you just have sources of display manufacturer.
01:28:20
Right, and sometimes you can derive it like, if it's some giant 30 inch 8K panel, that's probably for a studio display, not like a MacBook, but there are some things that it's more vague.
01:28:31
But yeah, we know when Mingshiqo reports pretty definitive display size stuff, especially when it's something like an iPhone, we know it's probably correct.
01:28:40
Or like the OLED iPad.
01:28:41
We were talking about the OLED iPad as if we were sure it was a thing for months and months and months, because there are just so many sources and the display supply chain for so long saying, iPad size OLEDs,
01:28:52
iPad size OLEDs, dual air, iPad size OLEDs, like it's not just one source, it's tons of them come in and it's like, eventually we just start talking about it as if it's fact.
01:29:01
And maybe there's just like experience and kind of knowing like it looks like there's gonna be OLED iPads with dual air screens and there was.
01:29:09
And every time that happens it reinforces our instincts of when something, like where there's smoke, there's fire versus just like a fanciful idea of like I think they're looking at different ways to attach watch straps.
01:29:20
Right, exactly.
01:29:21
And we know like, you know, Mark Irman has limits too.
01:29:23
Like he, Mark Irman oftentimes will miss the, like the marketing side of something or the story or the like software details of certain things,
01:29:35
like but he's really good at like hardware.
01:29:38
Like Mark Irman usually knows what hardware is coming.
01:29:42
He knows usually some pretty good hardware details and he's actually getting seemingly better sources over time.
01:29:48
And so, you know, we pay attention to that.
01:29:50
Like we notice that, but we don't treat rumors as like absolute facts, but usually like, you know, we also see the patterns.
01:29:57
Like we know that if there's pretty strong rumors about some new iPhone display size from Minky Quo and then, you know, a few months later, Mark Irman reports a few more details about an iPhone of that size and we know that's a plausible size and it's bigger than the existing ones.
01:30:13
And so like, we know that's probably true just because we've seen the patterns before.
01:30:17
We know roughly how this goes.
01:30:19
We've been doing this for a long time.
01:30:21
And so, we, you know, we're not going to report on things on the show, we're talking about them as if they're facts if they seem really far-fetched.
01:30:29
Or at least we'll tell you why we think it's far-fetched if everyone else is talking about it.
01:30:32
We feel like we need to.
01:30:34
But, you know, it's all, most of it is just kind of like gut feeling, putting in context like this sounds plausible from this source that is usually good in this area versus this thing from some random account on Twitter that no one's ever heard of before is probably wrong.
01:30:52
- And sometimes we don't even need rumors.
01:30:53
Like, for example, we've talked about in past episodes, OLED screens are coming to MacBooks.
01:30:59
I don't even think there's a rumor of that, but it's like, duh, right, unless some better technology comes along.
01:31:05
Eventually, the screen, cool screens they just put on the iPads should be coming to MacBooks.
01:31:11
Now, what we're ends up reporting on is, say this rumor, it says, oh, it turns out they can't use the TANIMO LEDs in MacBooks because someone on the supply chain says they use too much power, they get too hot or something like that.
01:31:21
That's a rumor we report on.
01:31:22
But in the absence of any rumors, we're just like, well, we assume these displays will come to the MacBooks.
01:31:26
Now, we wait to see, does the rumor mail support that and say, oh, here's the schedule for the MacBook Air with a dual-layer OLED display, right?
01:31:35
Here's when we think it's coming out, 2025, 2026, and they'll keep updating that date when they get it or whatever.
01:31:39
Or are we looking for a rumor that says Apple changed their mind?
01:31:42
They're not using a microLED on the watch, for example.
01:31:44
They did all this investment in microLED.
01:31:46
They were going to use it on the watch and they said, actually, we're not.
01:31:48
We've bailed out of that.
01:31:49
We sold the company or whatever.
01:31:51
Those are things worth reporting on.
01:31:52
But even the absence of reporting, you can look ahead and you can kind of see where the, very often, where the tech is going.
01:31:58
What is going to be technologically possible?
01:32:01
Look at the product samples introduced.
01:32:03
Look at what technologies they would probably want to use in the rest of their line and see how that goes.
01:32:07
And then obviously this is the easy stuff of like, hey, you know, Apple has an M4.
01:32:10
There's probably going to be a more powerful than M4 chip, which historically speak will probably be an M4 pro and M4 max.
01:32:16
And maybe there'll be an ultra, maybe there'll be an extreme.
01:32:18
You don't need rumors to tell you that the M4 is coming to the Mac line.
01:32:21
Like, you just don't need any.
01:32:22
And all we do is look at the rumors and say, okay, it looks like this is coming in this year and this is coming in this month or whatever, to sort of lay out where they're coming.
01:32:28
But no one is debating.
01:32:30
Like, someone said the M4 is coming to the MacBook Pro.
01:32:33
I'm not sure about that.
01:32:34
No, we're pretty sure.
01:32:35
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This is a bonus topic that we do every week just for members.
01:32:57
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01:33:04
Yeah, speaking of government rumors, we were talking about this Apple thinner device rumor, which seems plausible.
01:33:10
And I think it's some interesting implications.
01:33:13
We're talking about that in overtime this week.
01:33:14
So you can join to hear it atp.fm/join.
01:33:18
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01:33:18
And we'll talk to you next week.
01:33:21
[MUSIC PLAYING]
01:33:23
Now the show is over.
01:33:25
They didn't even mean to begin.
01:33:28
Because it was accidental.
01:33:30
Oh, it was accidental.
01:33:34
John didn't do any research.
01:33:36
Margot Casey wouldn't let him.
01:33:39
Because it was accidental.
01:33:41
And he was accidental.
01:33:44
And you can find the show notes at atp.fm.
01:33:49
And if you're into mastodon, you can follow them at c-a-s-e-y-l-i-s-s-s.
01:33:58
So that's Casey List, M-a-r-c-o-a-r-m-e-n-t-marko-r-m-n-s-i-r-a-c-u-s-h-e-r-q-s-a.
01:34:10
It's accidental.
01:34:13
They didn't mean to accidental.
01:34:18
Take my cast so long.
01:34:25
So what's going on with Aaron's car?
01:34:26
Any updates there?
01:34:28
Yes.
01:34:28
I have updates.
01:34:29
So we got a call from the adjusters saying, hey, I'm at Volvo.
01:34:35
Can you explain to me what the hell happened one more time?
01:34:37
Like, as we had never spoken to the adjuster before.
01:34:39
And I was like, I can.
01:34:40
But why don't I put my wife on the phone.
01:34:41
She was one who's there blah, blah, blah.
01:34:43
So she does the whole song and dance about what would happen, et cetera, et cetera, that same evening, the adjuster calls again.
01:34:51
We are about to go to dinner.
01:34:52
He says, OK, I have looked into the situation and we're going to total the car because the car is worth not that much more than it would cost to repair it.
01:35:07
So we're going to total the car.
01:35:09
That means that now we have to buy a car under duress because Aaron can't drive my car, doesn't think she can.
01:35:18
And she did get a loner from our local Volvo dealer.
01:35:23
It is a piece of trash, but it's a piece of trash that will get her from A to B as long as A to B is pretty close to home.
01:35:29
And so we are very thankful for this piece of trash.
01:35:32
But it is not a long-term sustainable solution, right?
01:35:36
And the service has been phenomenal.
01:35:39
If you live in the Richmond area or anywhere near it and you want to get your car serviced by somebody who seems to really care, go to Volvo for Richmond, they're very good.
01:35:49
But that being said, we still need to solve this problem.
01:35:53
And what we're currently thinking is replacing the XC90 with another XC90, which I could understand and argue that that's a dumb, terrible decision.
01:36:01
But I really believe in my heart a few things and we'll talk about why.
01:36:04
First of all, I really think that this is the best car for Aaron.
01:36:07
I really, really, really do.
01:36:09
And number two, I really think it was a one-in-a-trillion bad, unlucky break.
01:36:16
I really, really do think so.
01:36:17
Well, we do not want it a trillion because somebody wrote in to say that this happened to two of their other Volvo.
01:36:20
So I'm going to say it's-- Yeah, but they were wildly different generation.
01:36:23
Right.
01:36:24
But let's say it's a three-in-a-nine billion.
01:36:27
Okay.
01:36:28
Fair enough.
01:36:29
I mean, it definitely seems like it is not that rare.
01:36:33
The fact that we-- I believe we heard from multiple people who say something similar happened to them with a Volvo in particular.
01:36:39
So it could be just a design flaw of some of their engines.
01:36:44
Is there not enough shielding on the bottom of the car or something?
01:36:47
Or whatever.
01:36:48
Still super rare, I would imagine.
01:36:50
Yeah, but I think it might give me pause to own one out of warranty ever.
01:36:54
But yeah, whatever that effect is, if he had had a Volkswagen and given the same story, we would have heard from the Volkswagen people who it happened to.
01:37:01
Or maybe this happens to three out of every, you know, nine billion of every car manufacturer.
01:37:07
It's difficult to draw conclusions from because we're-- it's not a random selection.
01:37:11
It's self-selecting because we talked about volvos.
01:37:14
We hear from the Volvo people this happened to.
01:37:15
So I think the jury's still out on that.
01:37:18
So I assume is there no chance of getting you into something electric here?
01:37:25
ATP.fm/join.
01:37:26
I know it's more money.
01:37:30
It's also a lot nicer.
01:37:31
It's also no gas.
01:37:33
It also can't have that problem, Ricker, harder to find with carplay sometimes.
01:37:37
That's very true.
01:37:38
Well, let's put that-- I believe there's something called the Volvo EX90.
01:37:41
Okay, so let's put that in the parking lot thing for a second and make sure I come back to that because there is an answer for that.
01:37:52
But let me put that aside for a moment.
01:37:54
So we look at the local Volvo deal and what we're looking for is something around like a 2021 XC90.
01:37:59
Aaron's car was not driven that much, so it only had like 42,000, 43,000 miles on it.
01:38:03
So we want something with fewer than 40,000 miles.
01:38:07
And we want something that doesn't really give up any of the options we had before, which basically if you speak Volvo amounts to the climate package, which gives you like rear-heated seats, which I think the kids are really going to want, even though we don't have winter here.
01:38:19
And it gives you a few other things.
01:38:20
I forget, well, a heated wheel, which Aaron really, really liked.
01:38:24
And the advanced package, as I think what they call it, which among other things gives you a heads-up display, which Aaron has become completely addicted to.
01:38:31
And honestly, I would too if I were her.
01:38:33
So anyways, so to find that car has been challenging, what we think we want to do, we could potentially buy new, but we're talking, I mean,
01:38:44
these cars are now $70,000 new, and I genuinely think they're great cars.
01:38:48
And I could even make an argument that they're worth $70,000, but I don't particularly want to spend $70,000 on a car right this minute.
01:38:55
So we didn't think that we really wanted to go that route.
01:38:59
So OK, that was Monday.
01:39:01
Tuesday, I say to her, all right, let's go to the place I often mention on the show these days.
01:39:07
Let's go to CarMax, because CarMax is a used car retailer, and they all sell anything, right?
01:39:12
And you can bounce between several different cars all in the same dealership and see, and just sit in them, if not drive them, and see what you think.
01:39:20
So I, or the four of us went to CarMax, and we sat in and looked at an Atlas, a Volkswagen Atlas, a Audi Q7, which I actually really liked, but Aaron was not that keen on,
01:39:31
a Kia Telluride, which is extraordinarily well-reviewed, and I know a couple of people with them, and they love them, but Aaron didn't care for it.
01:39:40
The Mazda CX-9, which was mostly because we had such good luck with her Mazda years ago, and that didn't impress either of us, and the Jeep Grand Cherokee, which I know you too are going to snicker,
01:39:52
but honestly, is a relatively upmarket three-row car that feels to me like it's 13 miles long, like suburban, but the current ones are huge.
01:40:01
I don't know what year you were looking at.
01:40:02
We were looking at basically the brand new ones, because we wanted a three-row, right?
01:40:05
Are they meaningfully bigger than the XC90?
01:40:07
I haven't looked it up, but I feel like they are.
01:40:10
Exactly.
01:40:11
It may not be bigger, but it looks bigger.
01:40:13
I bet it's not.
01:40:14
Sure.
01:40:15
It may not be.
01:40:16
I genuinely don't know, and I'm not going to look it up while I'm talking, but it looks way bigger.
01:40:21
What was really great about the CarMax experience was we walked in, and there's a little like greeter person, and they said, "Okay, what can I help you with?"
01:40:28
And I said, "Oh, I want to look at these cars," and of course, because it's me, I have model names and stock numbers written down, and the lady looks at it and says, "You're a nightmare customer."
01:40:37
Oh, I am the worst.
01:40:38
It gets worse, because I had a different experience today, but she says, "Okay, this one's over there.
01:40:44
That one's over there.
01:40:45
That one's over there.
01:40:46
Just let us know if you have questions."
01:40:47
In other words, get out of my hair.
01:40:49
Well, but it was said with a smile, and so I'm like, "What?
01:40:54
Are they open?
01:40:56
Do I need someone to go with me?"
01:40:58
And she said, "No, no, no, they're all open.
01:40:59
Just go to town."
01:41:00
What?
01:41:01
Really?
01:41:02
That's not how this usually works, and to be honest, I really enjoyed the CarMax experience because I didn't have to talk to anyone, and so it was really great.
01:41:12
She just walked around the grant and we're going through heatwave here, so it was over 100 degrees.
01:41:17
I want to say it's like 35 in stupid units.
01:41:19
It's over 100 degrees.
01:41:20
It's 8 million percent humidity, and we're all drenched, just we're looking at these cars, but you do what you do.
01:41:26
We looked at them all, and the only one that was really in the running was Grand Cherokee, but not enough that she was like, "Yeah, I want to test drive that.
01:41:33
It's huge.
01:41:34
It's not really my cup of tea, but it's not my car."
01:41:37
If she was more enthusiastic about it, I definitely would have said, "Alright, let's go try it."
01:41:42
None of this really breved her engine, and they had a couple of X-E90s, but they weren't exactly what we wanted either.
01:41:49
I had my eyes on, and this is coming obliquely back to what you were talking about, Marco.
01:41:54
I had my eyes on a T8 Volvo, so there's three different styles of Volvo in this generation.
01:42:02
There's the T5, which was a, I believe it was turbocharged only instead of turbo and supercharged, like Aaron's was, and it did not have a third row of seats, it just had empty space there.
01:42:12
There's the T6, which Aaron had, which again, super and turbocharged, and then there's the T8, which, depending on the generation or depending on the year, I should say, it was either the T6 with a small electric motor,
01:42:23
I believe it was the rear wheels, or I think in later years, it was a turbocharged only motor with a slightly larger electric motor for the rear wheels.
01:42:36
What's great about this, what I find super appealing about this is that you can, like some of these quasi hybrids, you can, well, first of all, it's a plug-in hybrid, I didn't specify that,
01:42:46
but beyond that, you can go something like 20 miles, pure electric, and part of the way that Aaron had a seven-year-old car that only had 40,000 miles on it is that most of the time we're driving,
01:42:59
or she's driving, I should say, 5 miles, 10 miles, maybe 20 in a day, maybe, and so on paper, well, first of all, on paper, a full electric car is the correct answer,
01:43:10
and I promise we're coming back to the smart car, but the EX90 does not actually out yet.
01:43:16
That's correct, and that's where I'm mandering toward.
01:43:20
You're still talking about the XC90 here with the trim levels T8 and stuff, right?
01:43:23
That's correct, yep.
01:43:24
Yeah, because the XC90, it's still available now with a plug-in hybrid option for 30 miles of range.
01:43:30
Exactly, right.
01:43:31
Exactly.
01:43:32
And the new ones, the new plug-in hybrids, they're like $75,000, $80,000, and it's just like, well, whether or not we could afford that, which I don't know, but I don't think I want to pay that.
01:43:43
Even if we could afford it, I don't think I want to pay that kind of money.
01:43:46
Anyways, Volvo of Fredericksburg, they had a T8 that had, I think it's 30,000-ish miles and was option the way we want, and I've been going back and forth with them over email,
01:43:56
and they wouldn't come down to exactly the price we wanted, and I wanted to go see it because we had never driven a T8 before.
01:44:03
So we went up there today, and we took it for a ride, and first of all, it wasn't as quite as good condition as I like, and I know it's a used car, it's not going to be perfect, I don't expect it to be perfect,
01:44:14
this is where I'm becoming a total pain in the butt client, or a customer, I know it won't be perfect, but we keep our cars really nice.
01:44:22
And you know, this one had enough dings and dents and whatnot, that it wasn't quite up to snuff, but the thing that was real bummer, and if you work at a car dealership,
01:44:33
take note of this, for me, if there's nothing else.
01:44:36
This thing has a battery, right?
01:44:38
It's a small battery, but it's a battery nevertheless.
01:44:41
In order for this to really show us the differences between Aaron's T6 and the T8, that battery needs to be what?
01:44:49
Charged.
01:44:50
I'll give you one guess if that battery was charged when we took it out for a spin.
01:44:54
It's just like when I tried to drive the Wrangler plug-in hybrid, I feel like the car dealerships are not equipped to keep all the plug-in hybrids plugged in.
01:45:02
I'm assuming electric car dealerships are, because you kind of need that in the electric cars, but the hybrids are sold by gas-car companies, and they're just on the same, on the lot, in the parking spots,
01:45:12
that's a shame.
01:45:13
It's a total shame, because I went into this thinking, this is it.
01:45:17
I mean, I had her old plates in my car, I had our insurance information for the old car.
01:45:23
I had a checkbook in the car, I was ready to rock.
01:45:26
And I didn't know if they were going to come down to the price we wanted, but leaving that aside, I thought, you know what, there's a better than 50 percent chance, we will leave the house with one car, return with two cars.
01:45:36
And we took it around the block, and Aaron keeps saying to me, "This feels the same as my car."
01:45:41
And it's not that I didn't believe her, but I was like, it should feel different, because in that application, it's her engine plus another like 70 horsepower or something like that,
01:45:51
from the pure electric motor.
01:45:53
And so, driving around in pure electric mode, it felt like a doggie, you know, a slower version of her car, which I think makes sense, you know, because it's not a strong electric motor.
01:46:05
Real like battery electric cars like the Rivian are stupid fast.
01:46:09
This is different than that, right?
01:46:10
It's a little teeny electric motor, and it's enough to get you around town and do the sorts of thing that things that Aaron needs to do, but it's not going to, you know, blow your hair back until you have the gasoline motor involved as well.
01:46:23
And then this thing is like a 400 horsepower car or something like that, granted it weighs as much as a house.
01:46:28
But Aaron's car, her old car, her now totaled car, that was, that would keep up with my golf car.
01:46:36
Like, it was surprisingly quick.
01:46:38
And in theory, I would have assumed this one would actually be faster than my car, and because the battery was frickin' dead, it just really was not that impressive.
01:46:46
And I went there thinking she's going to like it, and I'm going to friggin' love it, because I love fast SUVs.
01:46:53
They're stupid, they're dumb, and they make zero sense, and I love them anyway.
01:46:57
Yeah, it feels like you're violating the laws of physics.
01:46:59
Like, it makes it so fast.
01:47:00
That makes it so fast.
01:47:01
Why is this thing so fast?
01:47:02
Exactly.
01:47:03
So, anyways, so we weren't impressed by that, and they had a couple other options.
01:47:07
They were the least sleazy car sales people I've ever worked with, so I really appreciated that.
01:47:13
But we, they let us drive away without anything, and I mean, I don't think there was much they could have done to put us in anything short of letting us effectively steal a car.
01:47:21
But I didn't, I have no answers.
01:47:25
And so I asked both Richmond Volvo and Fredericksburg Volvo the same question.
01:47:29
I asked them, okay, what's the story with the EX90?
01:47:31
The EX90 is basically a full battery electric version of Aaron's car.
01:47:36
I mean, there's differences here and there, but in spirit, it's a full battery electric version of Aaron's car.
01:47:41
I'm still unconvinced that I want our workhorse to be a full battery electric vehicle, because we do long trips, and I don't, I'm sure, well, so here's the thing.
01:47:52
I'm optimizing for, I'm optimizing for like one to two trips a year, which I intellectually know is dumb.
01:47:58
It's so easy.
01:47:59
I haven't really gotten past that, and I recognize, full on.
01:48:02
I recognize that I'm kind of being an idiot about this, but nevertheless, the EX90, both this dealers independently said they are just rolling off the lines now.
01:48:14
And I think the Richmond dealer said I've never even seen one, and I believe the Fredericksburg dealer said we've seen one, but we have no idea when we're getting them.
01:48:21
It could be months.
01:48:22
And I don't think that we have months to play with.
01:48:26
And with regard to other battery electric vehicles, even leaving aside the fact that I'm not entirely convinced that's the right fit for us, the only other decent option is the, as a Kia EV9,
01:48:37
which I'm not sure I love the look of at all, and Aaron is very not sold on an electric vehicle for her.
01:48:45
I think both of us agree that my next car should be an electric car of some sort, but I don't think that it's time for Aaron quite yet.
01:48:54
So anyway, so I don't really have any good answers with regard to a battery electric.
01:48:59
And I mean, I would love to put her in an R1S, I really would.
01:49:02
I would probably even hold my nose about car play, but certainly they are way more expensive than I want.
01:49:12
And it doesn't look like there's a robust enough and or really what I should say is cheap enough used market to get to the price point that I'm looking to get to.
01:49:21
No, there isn't.
01:49:22
Not yet.
01:49:23
And so all of that to say, I really thought today we were going to take care of business.
01:49:27
It was going to get done.
01:49:28
We were going to buy that T8.
01:49:30
Life was going to be good.
01:49:31
And now I don't know what to do because there are enough used XC 90s broadly speaking in the area, but none of them are really just the exactly what we want.
01:49:45
And I'm not sure what to do.
01:49:46
I don't particularly want to buy new because it's way more money that we need to spend.
01:49:50
And I'm not snooty enough that I need nor she that we need a new car.
01:49:54
Like we don't want or need to do that.
01:49:57
But I'm having trouble finding that unicorn of something that I think is priced reasonably.
01:50:02
Not to say it's a steal, but reasonably and not beat to hell, not with a trillion miles on it and option the way we want.
01:50:11
And so now I'm kind of like back at, you know, the back at square one and I genuinely don't know what we're going to do.
01:50:18
The plan is still to go with the XC 90 of some sort of we might have to just wait it out for a while or I don't know what we're going to do.
01:50:25
Like the problem is like you have your under time pressure, like that's exactly like there's really no like when you when you have time pressure and you're really picky with the whole bunch of stuff.
01:50:36
Yep.
01:50:37
Like something has to give like you and so you don't get to make the ideal choice.
01:50:42
You have to compromise on something or just get incredibly lucky with what you find.
01:50:46
But that seems like that didn't happen.
01:50:48
So, you know, the question is just which of these various things that you're going to, you know, not be very happy about which which compromise are you willing to take first?
01:50:56
Yeah.
01:50:57
And that's the thing.
01:50:58
And the only the only thing that is working on our side a little bit is that we're going away for a couple of weeks next month.
01:51:08
And so we really need to make it like three more weeks and then we disappear for two.
01:51:12
And then we can kind of reset and start over.
01:51:15
Yeah, but that means so your wife's going to have no car for five weeks like that's that's a bit much.
01:51:20
She could presumably rock the loner from Volvo for some or all of that.
01:51:24
And if they need it back, which we've told them many times, like look, the moment you guys want this back, tell us and we will have it back immediately.
01:51:32
It's such a piece of trash.
01:51:33
This car is so bad.
01:51:34
But I don't think they, I don't think they don't want it back anytime soon.
01:51:37
But it's still, it's not a fair or appropriate for us to hold onto this for, you know, two months or whatever.
01:51:43
So I genuinely don't know what we're going to do.
01:51:46
I mean, maybe we rent a car for a couple of weeks to give us a little more time, but that's not cheap or free or anything like that.
01:51:53
So I don't know.
01:51:54
I'm genuinely at a loss of what I mean, honestly, I think your best bet is, first of all, like you have to also consider that Aaron's the customer,
01:52:05
not you.
01:52:05
And so, and she, you know, she got this ridiculously bad luck thing happen.
01:52:11
I think your best bet is to get her back into an XC 90 in whatever form that needs to take.
01:52:17
Like I would stop looking at other vehicles that, if that's the one she really likes and she really wants to figure out how to get an XC 90 is her, is there a mind closed to non SUVs?
01:52:25
I think so.
01:52:26
I mean, I, I will accept any kind of input, but we do use the capacity of the XC 90 enough that I don't, I don't think she would do a sedan and there are no sands that exist in this country anyway.
01:52:39
And I just put it in there on our Slack a 2020, a 60 plug-in hybrid for $35,000.
01:52:47
I mean, that looks like a nice car, but that's a, that's a much smaller total cargo volume.
01:52:53
Exactly.
01:52:54
All right.
01:52:55
Well, just you've got two, you've got two small children they would fit in this car.
01:52:57
It's really nice.
01:52:58
It's a plug-in hybrid.
01:52:59
One of the things we talked about because we ended up having to rent a minivan to get to the beach and back, right?
01:53:04
And I got to admit, this Chrysler Pacifica, which actually, by the way, was delivered to us from Enterprise Rental with 36 miles on it.
01:53:11
It just happened to the first people to rent it.
01:53:15
And I, I don't want to own a minivan for a few reasons, but I will be the first to tell you and she would agree on paper.
01:53:25
That is 100% the correct answer.
01:53:27
Honestly, everyone I've ever heard from who owns a minivan, they all say they're amazing.
01:53:34
Like you just have to get over the fact that you own a minivan, but like once you get over that, people love them.
01:53:40
Like they are really good in a lot of ways.
01:53:43
And if what you're looking for is a large amount of passenger and cargo volume and have it be roughly that kind of size and shape, you know,
01:53:53
higher seating position, big volume, like fits a bunch of kids stuff, like there's a reason many vans are so popular and have been for so long.
01:54:03
They're incredibly like practical and people generally love them who have them.
01:54:08
And actually come to think of it, well, first of all, yes, everything you just said, second of all, when we go on these beach trips and it's getting better and better with each year, is the kids get bigger and require less stuff and whatever.
01:54:18
But we take penny with us and so that's a little bit of added cargo in and of itself.
01:54:23
But when we go on these beach trips, we typically will put a tool year, whatever you call it, you know, one of those cargo carriers on the roof of Aaron's car.
01:54:30
And we still feel this thing just freaking full.
01:54:34
That's a lot.
01:54:35
What are you bringing on your vacation with your two small children and you have the giant car and you need to have a roof thing?
01:54:42
Yeah.
01:54:43
John, we do this every year.
01:54:44
I don't have time for it right now.
01:54:45
We can pick her about this another time.
01:54:47
Are you bringing like a gas grill with you?
01:54:49
No.
01:54:50
Can we push on this a little bit like that does seem excessive?
01:54:54
Well, we can come back to this if you want.
01:54:55
But if I say we have a tool year, however you pronounce it and the car is chock full, right?
01:55:03
Well, this mini van, I am freaking out because it doesn't have any roof reels or anything like that.
01:55:07
I am telling Aaron, I say to her, there's no freaking way we're going to fit everything.
01:55:11
We're going to have to cut some stuff.
01:55:12
And she was like, first of all, good fit everything.
01:55:14
Second of all, if we can't, we'll just leave some stuff behind.
01:55:17
It'll be fine.
01:55:18
Yeah, I think it sounds like you might benefit from cutting some stuff.
01:55:22
Well, okay, there is that.
01:55:23
But nevertheless.
01:55:24
We start packing the mini van and it turns out that under the middle row, like under the floor board in the middle row, there's these like freaking cavernous gullies.
01:55:34
I genuinely don't know if this mini van was all wheel drive or not.
01:55:36
I want to say it wasn't, but either way, there's these cavernous gullies under the kid seats or under their feet, I should say.
01:55:43
We filled those with a bunch of stuff.
01:55:46
Then the back, it was like two thirds full.
01:55:49
It was amazing.
01:55:50
It was amazing how cavernous this thing was.
01:55:52
It was incredible.
01:55:53
And it also had wireless car play, which we only used briefly.
01:55:56
But actually, and this is a Chrysler mind you, which I don't personally consider a terribly fancy brand, even though I think they might think they are, but anyways.
01:56:05
The wireless car play was very good, like very low latency.
01:56:09
The screen was very high resolution compared to either of our cars.
01:56:12
It looked like a retina.
01:56:13
I mean, it wasn't literally, but it looked that way.
01:56:17
It was very impressive.
01:56:20
But anyway, so we rented this mini van for the beach, and that worked out really nicely, and we talked about should we get a mini van, or alternatively, should we get a sedan, and then just understand we're going to rent mini vans to go to the beach every year.
01:56:33
And what we concluded was we do use that space in the XC90, often enough to justify something large.
01:56:40
But I mean, John, your question is not unreasonable.
01:56:42
It really, really, really isn't.
01:56:45
But I think ultimately, to come back to what Marko was saying, she had this thing that she loved ripped away from her by incredibly crummy luck.
01:56:54
It's not like she got in an accident that was her fault or something like that.
01:56:57
She didn't get in an accident at all by any reasonable definition.
01:56:59
It's just she had catastrophic engine failure.
01:57:02
And so I think I'm pretty convinced, and I think she is, too, that an XC90 is the right answer.
01:57:08
So we are no longer cross-shopping.
01:57:09
I forget which one of you was asking that question, but we're no longer cross-shopping.
01:57:12
We did it just so we could check it off the list.
01:57:14
We're not going to do that anymore.
01:57:17
But the question I keep asking myself is, I do not want to spend new car money on a new car for her, or for anyone, really,
01:57:27
it's not her specifically.
01:57:29
But the more I think about it, the more I'm wondering if maybe I just need to bite the bullet and find her the exact car that she wants, because, hey, she deserves it.
01:57:39
She's an angel.
01:57:40
So that is the correct answer.
01:57:42
And B, if I can't put my hands on a used one that she really, really likes, then why wouldn't we get a new one?
01:57:51
Now, I think I'm more on board with this idea than she is.
01:57:54
She is unquestionably the more frugal of the two of us, or the more financially responsible of the two of us.
01:58:03
So I think it might, even if I'm convinced, I don't know if I could convince her.
01:58:07
But it's where I'm starting to lean at this point, because I just can't find exactly what we want.
01:58:15
What about leasing, by the way?
01:58:17
If you want to soften the burden a little bit up front, leasing could be an option.
01:58:21
And I would also caution you that I would maybe not want to own a Volvo outside of warranty and leasing fixes that problem as well.
01:58:29
Yeah.
01:58:30
I'm kind of allergic to leasing.
01:58:31
But what I haven't mentioned is both the dealers told us, and I don't remember the specific incentive.
01:58:36
I don't know if it's like a government thing or a Volvo thing.
01:58:38
But apparently, if you lease, they're offering like $7,500 off right now or something like that, like an absurd amount of money off.
01:58:45
The same amount of dollars is the EV tax credit thing.
01:58:47
See, that's what I thought, but I don't know how that would apply to these cars unless it's owned.
01:58:52
Maybe they're just matching the government thing.
01:58:54
That could be.
01:58:55
Well, because automakers use leasing incentives all the time to boost their quarterly numbers.
01:58:59
So take advantage.
01:59:00
Like, very frequently in the auto business, a lease special is often like the best deal on a new car that's available anywhere.
01:59:08
Like because they do kind of bet against their own future selves to boost the short-term gain.
01:59:13
So as a customer, if what you want is available with a heavily diskind of lease special, that's often worth considering.
01:59:21
Yeah.
01:59:22
And so even though I find leases to be, how do you pronounce the word as an "Athaba"? Is that right?
01:59:27
Is that what I'm looking for?
01:59:28
I find it disgusting to lease, like, it's not my jam.
01:59:32
But I shouldn't say disgusting.
01:59:34
It's just not for me.
01:59:35
But that being said, if you're offering me $75, $75,000 off, I'll carry a lease for at least a few months until I can pay it off or whatever the case may be.
01:59:44
That's how that works.
01:59:45
Well, according to Volvo, they said you just got to lease it in last like three months or something like that.
01:59:51
And then you can buy yourself out of it or whatever.
01:59:54
I've never leased before, so I'd have to talk to them more about it if we get serious.
01:59:57
Okay.
01:59:58
But either way, between that and I think most Volvo dealers or maybe Volvo corporate offers like a, oh, you've previously owned a Volvo, we'll give you a thousand bucks to buy another one.
02:00:11
Then we're Costco members and they do like negotiations with these different car manufacturers.
02:00:15
And so I think we get a $1,000 off from that.
02:00:18
So suddenly we're looking at like $9,500 off potentially on a brand new Volvo.
02:00:22
And suddenly the $70,000 Volvo is $60,000, which is quite a bit more than I wanted to spend still, but nevertheless, it at least makes this sort of thing approachable or a possibility,
02:00:36
I guess I should say.
02:00:37
Can I convince you to use the $10,000 savings to get the plug-in hybrid version at least?
02:00:42
I would really, really, really consider it because again, leaving aside the fact that it makes the car kind of fast, what I cannot stress enough is how appealing it is to me that we can have even though I don't really love plug-in hybrids in general.
02:00:56
I think in this application it actually is exactly the right answer because we have the infinite range estrus dagger, double dagger for when we go on whatever trip we need to go on.
02:01:05
But for all the around town Piddly stuff, she can just go pure electric and it'd be fine.
02:01:10
Yeah.
02:01:11
Plug-in hybrids are very popular for good reason.
02:01:14
They are extremely compatible with current American usage and priorities and fears.
02:01:21
They're very compatible with that.
02:01:23
People want to dip their toe in electric.
02:01:26
They think for those two trips a year that you take, that somehow it's never going to be possible.
02:01:33
It's a charged electric car on the highway.
02:01:34
They think they need gas.
02:01:37
This is a way for you to try out electric, realize that you like it better, and then for the next vehicle, after this, that your family purchases you'll go actual electric.
02:01:47
The correct step now is to take the plug-in hybrid now and begin that transition in a comfortable way that won't push anybody outside their comfort zone.
02:01:56
The problem with the hybrids is they have twice as much crap to go wrong, and historically speaking, the reliability of hybrids has not been as good as internal combustion or EVs.
02:02:06
They're better now.
02:02:07
The newer designs have less stuff in them, but there's no getting around the fact that there's more stuff than an EV, and there's more stuff than an internal combustion engine, because it's got both.
02:02:17
Maybe not a concern.
02:02:18
Obviously, if you're not going to own the car that long, you probably don't care, and it will probably be fine, but do keep that in mind.
02:02:24
Yeah, but also keep in mind that for all those electric only local miles, that serpentine belt is not going to be turning.
02:02:33
Well, it depends on the hybrid drive trains.
02:02:35
They're very different from manufacturer to manufacturer, and that's not necessarily the case.
02:02:41
I don't know where the belt is, where the engine is facing on these hybrids.
02:02:44
There's so many potential options of how to do hybrid drives, and many of them are very different than the internal combustion engines in the same model.
02:02:54
So you can look into that, but honestly, I just think that maybe the goal is just to keep the pebbles out, like whatever's going on with the belt, maybe go with the pebbles in.
02:03:02
Yeah, well, we'll work on that for next time, but no, this is not a longitudinal.
02:03:07
It's the opposite of that.
02:03:09
The sideways mount, what's the word I'm looking for?
02:03:12
The engine's mounted like your cars are.
02:03:14
Transverse?
02:03:15
Thank you.
02:03:16
Yes.
02:03:17
That's what I was wondering.
02:03:18
It's a transverse mounted engine, so the belt is on the passenger side, on an American car.
02:03:23
But yeah, I mean, I will see what happens.
02:03:26
I just, it's just tough, because we try to be financially prudent.
02:03:31
We try to have an O-Craft fund, like I think any reasonable adult should at least try to do.
02:03:37
But you, I mean, there are not a lot of people who have a $70,000 O-Craft fund, you know what I mean?
02:03:43
And so it's just, obviously, we're not going to pay cash for this, but it's just still.
02:03:48
It's like, oh, there's so much money that I was not planning on spending.
02:03:52
And so that's just...
02:03:53
Consider the insurance as giving you a hefty discount.
02:03:57
Right.
02:03:58
Exactly.
02:03:59
And so we're all these various incentives and everything, and you know, owning a car is always a massive money hole.
02:04:07
There's no way to own a car that you don't lose money.
02:04:09
It's just a question of when you lose the money, and sometimes it's not within your control, sometimes it is.
02:04:14
So it's just when and how this money gets burned.
02:04:18
So it's, you know, this was, obviously, you couldn't have planned for this, but you are car owners, and you like giant, nice cars.
02:04:25
And so like this is, you're going to burn this money at some point.
02:04:29
You just have to do it, you know, at a time that you weren't necessarily expecting.
02:04:32
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02:04:42