00:00SPEAKER- Brad, this isn't an Apple episode this week.
00:02SPEAKER- No?
00:02SPEAKER- Well, I mean, asterisk, I guess.
00:04SPEAKER- Kind of is, not 2000, not 2026 Apple,
00:07SPEAKERmore like 1991 Apple.
00:09SPEAKER- But it's funny 'cause,
00:10SPEAKERwell, we'll talk about what the episode's about in a minute,
00:12SPEAKERbut like watching the keynote this week,
00:14SPEAKERthis was Apple keynote week for phones and watch, I guess.
00:17SPEAKER- Yes, finally somebody's making a folding smartphone.
00:20SPEAKERNobody's ever done it before.
00:22SPEAKERIt's amazing that they've cracked the technology.
00:24SPEAKER- It's not the folding phone.
00:25SPEAKERIt's neither phishing nor foul for me.
00:27SPEAKERLike it's not the tall folder that opens square.
00:30SPEAKER- Oh, I saw one of those yesterday when I was at PC World.
00:33SPEAKER- Yeah, Adam has one.
00:34SPEAKER- Somebody had one of the very tall ones
00:36SPEAKERthat basically look like half of a Nintendo DS
00:38SPEAKERwhen they're closed.
00:39SPEAKER- Yeah, and it's not like the Motorola one
00:41SPEAKERthat's like an old Razer phone
00:44SPEAKERthat folds into a tiny square, right?
00:46SPEAKER- Right.
00:46SPEAKER- Like they either start as a square and unfold in vertical
00:49SPEAKERor they start vertical and unfold into a square.
00:51SPEAKERAnd this one just is squatty and unfolds wide.
00:54SPEAKERAnd I don't, I don't know.
00:55SPEAKERI gather that that is passport style.
00:58SPEAKERLike that's the term.
00:58SPEAKERI guess that's a thing in Android phones now
01:00SPEAKERis the passport form factor of foldable phone.
01:03SPEAKER- Yeah, but like I don't put my passport
01:05SPEAKERin my front jeans pocket, man.
01:07SPEAKERIt's a back pocket thing.
01:08SPEAKERAnyway, we're not gonna talk about that today.
01:10SPEAKERWe'll talk about that after we get,
01:12SPEAKERlike once they have them in the stores,
01:14SPEAKERI don't think I'm gonna buy one of those.
01:15SPEAKERI'm gonna go to the store and look at it
01:17SPEAKERand wait for my friends who buy one
01:20SPEAKERto talk to them about it.
01:21SPEAKERBut like, I kind of don't care.
01:23SPEAKER- Yeah, yes, I bought my iPhone 17
01:25SPEAKERbefore the price increase this year
01:28SPEAKERand intend to be on that phone for like five years at least.
01:31SPEAKER- So I'm in the spot though.
01:33SPEAKER'Cause like I have the 15 Pro
01:35SPEAKERand it's starting to feel a little janky.
01:36SPEAKERSo I either need to put a new battery in it
01:39SPEAKER'cause we're reaching that point of its life now.
01:42SPEAKEROr I need, like had they made a phone
01:44SPEAKERthat I was excited about this year,
01:45SPEAKERI would have probably just gotten a new phone.
01:47SPEAKERBut I don't, like I don't leave the house enough
01:49SPEAKERto justify spending $2,000 on a phone.
01:51SPEAKER- You're in that life now.
01:53SPEAKER- Yeah, like in 2016, 2017,
01:55SPEAKERwhen I was traveling all the time doing VR stuff,
01:57SPEAKERI was 100%, it's an absolute no brainer
02:00SPEAKERto spend two grand on a phone, right?
02:01SPEAKERLike it's a business expense, whatever.
02:03SPEAKERAnyway, the thing I wanted to talk about with this
02:05SPEAKERwasn't that this was the goodbye Tim keynote.
02:08SPEAKER- Yeah, I was sitting here wiping my windows machine
02:11SPEAKERand doing a fresh reinstall.
02:12SPEAKERI've been deep in the partition labs
02:15SPEAKERdoing some science this week.
02:17SPEAKERBut while I was doing that,
02:18SPEAKERI had the laptop in front of me
02:19SPEAKERand I specifically wanted to see the beginning
02:20SPEAKERof that keynote because it was like,
02:21SPEAKERhe's only, Turnus has only been on the job for like a week,
02:24SPEAKERno, two weeks maybe.
02:25SPEAKER- Yeah, like I assume that the transition
02:28SPEAKERstarted several months ago at least.
02:29SPEAKER- Yeah, but I mean like Tim Cook's official last day
02:32SPEAKERwas only a couple of weeks ago at most.
02:34SPEAKERSo I knew there would be some like,
02:35SPEAKERI want to see what kind of silly pageantry
02:37SPEAKERthey'd throw out there at the beginning of this thing.
02:39SPEAKERLike there's definitely going to be some changing
02:41SPEAKERof the guard thing happening, right?
02:43SPEAKERAnd there was kind of.
02:44SPEAKER- Yeah, I thought it was like,
02:46SPEAKERit was oddly sweet for a multi,
02:48SPEAKERfor a trillion dollar corporation presentation thing, right?
02:52SPEAKERThey did a whole bunch of like,
02:53SPEAKERthis is how you cold open a thing bits
02:56SPEAKERwhere they shot some stuff with the iPhones
02:57SPEAKERand I assume they got either student directors
03:00SPEAKERor fancy action directors or something
03:02SPEAKERto shoot like car crashes and like horror movies
03:05SPEAKERand all the different, you know, genres of film.
03:08SPEAKER- Yeah, I was thinking about the Tim Cook walking out
03:11SPEAKERbait and switch part.
03:12SPEAKERI completely forgot about that montage
03:13SPEAKERof like filmmaking vignettes that they did.
03:15SPEAKERThat was pretty neat.
03:16SPEAKER- Yeah, but they hooked it together
03:17SPEAKERwith the James Bond intro, right?
03:18SPEAKERLike they had the aperture on the camera
03:20SPEAKER'cause the cameras have moving apertures this year.
03:23SPEAKERAnd then they had a circle shot down a hallway
03:28SPEAKERand Tim Cook popped up and was like,
03:29SPEAKERthis is the man you're waiting for, blah, blah, blah.
03:31SPEAKERBut it's not me, it's this guy.
03:33SPEAKERAnd then John Ternus comes out
03:34SPEAKERand starts talking about how your iPhone is three devices
03:38SPEAKERand like we've come full circle, here we are.
03:41SPEAKER- Where have I heard that before?
03:43SPEAKER(upbeat music)
03:53SPEAKER(upbeat music continues)
04:11SPEAKER- Welcome to "Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod."
04:13SPEAKERI'm Will.
04:14SPEAKER- I am Brad, hello.
04:15SPEAKER- Brad, there's magic in the air.
04:17SPEAKERIt's that time of year.
04:18SPEAKER- Is there?
04:19SPEAKER- It's a hundred degrees outside.
04:20SPEAKERI hooked up the air conditioner
04:21SPEAKERfor the first time in two years.
04:23SPEAKER- Yeah, I don't know if magic
04:24SPEAKERis what is flowing through the air these days,
04:26SPEAKERwhether we're talking about particulates or radio waves, but.
04:30SPEAKER- Unbelievable sunset the other night though.
04:32SPEAKER- Oh yeah.
04:33SPEAKER- Did you not see it?
04:34SPEAKER- Oh, hi.
04:35SPEAKER- It was all over socials and everything.
04:36SPEAKERLike everybody, I found out people lived in San Francisco
04:38SPEAKERbecause they were posting pictures of the sunset.
04:41SPEAKERI'll send it, you can make it the show art if you want,
04:42SPEAKERunless you decide to do something else.
04:43SPEAKERBut it was maybe the prettiest sunset I've seen
04:48SPEAKERsince like the bad fires a few years ago.
04:50SPEAKER- I can never, I feel like that's something
04:52SPEAKERApple should maybe focus on when they're,
04:53SPEAKERwhen they're ballyhooing their new camera technology
04:55SPEAKERis finally being able to capture a sunset
04:58SPEAKERas it actually looks impressionistically in front of you.
05:01SPEAKERLike I can never, every time I see a cool sunset,
05:04SPEAKERI try to take a picture of it
05:05SPEAKERand it never looks quite as nice as it does in person.
05:08SPEAKER- I mean, look, there's a quantum conversation here
05:11SPEAKERabout whether you can truly observe anything
05:13SPEAKERand capture the raw essence of it, right?
05:16SPEAKER- Maybe we're better off just living in the moment.
05:18SPEAKER- Yeah, just enjoy yourself, man.
05:19SPEAKERBut take the picture so you remember
05:20SPEAKERhow nice the moment was, that's what I say.
05:22SPEAKERI used to be a just remember it guy.
05:24SPEAKERFor years and years and years I was like,
05:25SPEAKERI don't need to take pictures, I just remember everything.
05:28SPEAKERAnd now it turns out having the pictures
05:30SPEAKERto remind you of the things so you remember them
05:32SPEAKERis important as we get older.
05:35SPEAKERBut that's not the kind of magic I'm talking about.
05:37SPEAKERI'm talking about general magic,
05:38SPEAKERwhich we said last week or the week before,
05:40SPEAKERwe're gonna watch this week, we've watched it.
05:42SPEAKER- Hopefully people heeded our warning and watched the movie.
05:45SPEAKERIf you haven't watched it,
05:47SPEAKERwell, we haven't had the conversation yet.
05:49SPEAKERYeah, we haven't had the conversation.
05:50SPEAKERMaybe you'll get something out of this
05:52SPEAKEReven without having watched the documentary,
05:53SPEAKERbut it's a good documentary and it's also on YouTube,
05:56SPEAKERwhich I don't think we mentioned last week,
05:57SPEAKERbut it's just fully, I think the production company
06:00SPEAKERput it up.
06:01SPEAKER- Yeah, I didn't know it was on YouTube
06:02SPEAKERwhen we talked about it last week.
06:03SPEAKERI found that out like two days ago
06:04SPEAKERwhen I went to watch it again.
06:06SPEAKER- Right, so I'll link that YouTube video in the show notes
06:08SPEAKERif you want to pause and watch it.
06:10SPEAKERIt's about an hour and a half.
06:12SPEAKERIt's not super long, it's a breezy.
06:14SPEAKERI watched it all in one sitting.
06:15SPEAKERIt's a breezy little film, but there's a lot of cool stuff
06:18SPEAKERin there, which we will talk about.
06:19SPEAKER- It's a 2018 documentary about a company
06:21SPEAKERthat was founded in 1989 or '90, depending on who you ask,
06:26SPEAKERthat spun out of Apple, basically.
06:28SPEAKERSo it was kind of a,
06:31SPEAKERI feel like Steve Jobs always had Xerox PARC envy
06:36SPEAKERfor years and years and years.
06:38SPEAKER- I mean, you remember the famous Pirates of Silicon Valley
06:42SPEAKERscene where he and his cronies raid the Xerox PARC office
06:46SPEAKERover the strident objections of the people who worked there,
06:49SPEAKERwhich is not, I don't think historically,
06:50SPEAKERthat's not really how it went, is my understanding.
06:54SPEAKERBut it was a bit dramatized for the film.
06:56SPEAKER- It wasn't Anthony Edwards either, so, you know.
06:59SPEAKERBut anyway, or Anthony Michael Hall.
07:01SPEAKERAnthony Michael Hall.
07:02SPEAKER- Oh yeah, it's Anthony Michael Hall is the-
07:04SPEAKER- Is Bill Gates.
07:05SPEAKER- It's Bill Gates, yeah, yes.
07:06SPEAKER- Is that Noah Wylie as Steve Jobs?
07:08SPEAKER- Yes, Noah Wylie is a career-defining turn as Steve Jobs.
07:11SPEAKER- Yeah.
07:13SPEAKERBut no, so General Magic was this kind of incubatory startup
07:16SPEAKERthat ended up having a big IPO path.
07:18SPEAKERIt was a Silicon Valley darling for a little bit.
07:21SPEAKERAnd they were trying to invent the post-computer computer.
07:25SPEAKERRight, that's what they set out to do.
07:27SPEAKER- Yeah, so I had a very different impression
07:29SPEAKERof what this was going to be about
07:31SPEAKERand what this company was going to have been
07:32SPEAKERbased on the little bit you had told me
07:34SPEAKERabout this documentary and also reading,
07:36SPEAKERremember last week I read the first paragraph
07:38SPEAKERof their Wikipedia summary and it was rattling off
07:41SPEAKERlike kind of they prefigured USB and e-commerce
07:45SPEAKERand like eight other like foundational technologies.
07:47SPEAKERAnd I was like, oh, this is going to be a Xerox PARC style
07:50SPEAKERlike freewheeling R&D shop that was just there
07:53SPEAKERto incubate ideas and make cool stuff
07:56SPEAKERand not like driving toward any particular goal
07:59SPEAKERother than like, hey, let's brainstorm cool technology.
08:02SPEAKERBut that is the opposite of the reality,
08:05SPEAKERwhich is that they were founded to make a product.
08:07SPEAKERLike they were doing all that stuff
08:09SPEAKERin service of making a thing, which by this film's narrative
08:14SPEAKERwas basically the iPhone before the iPhone.
08:16SPEAKERLike that's actually the kind of narrative thrust
08:19SPEAKERof this movie is like, hey, these people came up
08:21SPEAKERwith the iPhone a decade before the iPhone came out
08:23SPEAKERor more actually like 12 years or whatever when.
08:25SPEAKER- 15, 20, 18. - Product launch, right.
08:29SPEAKERLike the story of this thing is very much,
08:32SPEAKERthese people were way too smart and ahead of their time
08:35SPEAKERfor the time they lived in.
08:37SPEAKERLike they could have changed the world with this thing.
08:38SPEAKERLike I don't, I guess we should dissect
08:41SPEAKERover the course of this how much we buy that story
08:45SPEAKERor like how much, how convincing that narrative is
08:48SPEAKERthat this could have been the iPhone
08:49SPEAKERif a few things had been different,
08:50SPEAKERbut it's an interesting subject to look at.
08:53SPEAKER- So there are a couple of things
08:55SPEAKERthat are really interesting to me about the story.
08:56SPEAKEROne is that usually you get these kinds of documentaries
08:59SPEAKERabout companies that are wildly successful,
09:01SPEAKERnot companies that bombed out
09:03SPEAKERand didn't reach their actual potential.
09:06SPEAKER- And like bombed out is almost underselling it
09:08SPEAKERbecause they, I don't know how we wanna tackle this.
09:10SPEAKERI don't know if we wanna go in like narrative order
09:12SPEAKERfrom the film, but when they get to the product launch
09:15SPEAKERand they've, like the music is very melancholy
09:17SPEAKERand they're talking about how badly they bombed.
09:19SPEAKERLike, I don't know if I've ever heard of a story of,
09:23SPEAKERI'm trying, how do you put this?
09:24SPEAKERIt's like a riches to rags kind of story
09:26SPEAKER'cause they had so much investment
09:28SPEAKERfrom all the biggest tech companies on the planet.
09:30SPEAKER- Yep.
09:31SPEAKER- And the utter, utter lack of sales
09:34SPEAKERis like astonishing to hear of.
09:36SPEAKERIt's like they basically only sold it to investors
09:38SPEAKERand friends and family and nobody else bought it.
09:41SPEAKER- Yeah, that--
09:41SPEAKER- It's like an astonishing failure.
09:42SPEAKER- I didn't realize it was that bad.
09:44SPEAKER- It's like an absolutely astonishing failure.
09:46SPEAKER- So I think the thing that's interesting about this
09:49SPEAKERand the reason this is an interesting story
09:51SPEAKERis that it's the first of the,
09:53SPEAKERthese people had exactly the right idea
09:55SPEAKERand they had the right people in place
09:57SPEAKERand they had the resources to do something,
09:59SPEAKERbut they were fully 10 years
10:01SPEAKERbefore the technology could support the idea, right?
10:04SPEAKERSo if you look at, I mean,
10:07SPEAKERthere's been other examples of this.
10:08SPEAKERPalm fits in the same category in a lot of ways, I think.
10:12SPEAKERThe early kind of handheld tablet stuff
10:16SPEAKERthat Microsoft did with Windows prior to,
10:19SPEAKERWindows touch stuff prior to 10 years before the iPad
10:23SPEAKERmade a lot of sense, but if that had been a startup,
10:28SPEAKERthey would have collapsed before they shipped any product.
10:30SPEAKERThey could just had Microsoft's billion dollar revenue
10:32SPEAKERto prop them up and keep them going.
10:35SPEAKERThis being a thing that spun out
10:38SPEAKERof some investment from Apple
10:40SPEAKERand I think Sony and Apple both put in like 10%,
10:43SPEAKERbought 10% shares when they were founded right out the gate.
10:47SPEAKERAnd then they put together this coalition
10:50SPEAKERof electronics and telecom companies
10:52SPEAKERlike AT&T and Motorola and Matsushita,
10:55SPEAKERwhich is Panasonic, obviously.
10:58SPEAKER- You mean the General Magic Alliance?
11:00SPEAKER- Yeah, the General Magic Alliance.
11:03SPEAKERAnd they based this all on this guy, Mark Porat.
11:12SPEAKER- Mark, yeah, Porat.
11:12SPEAKER- I don't think I ever heard him say his last name,
11:14SPEAKERbut who was an Aspen Institute guy that came to Apple.
11:18SPEAKERAspen Institute was kind of like an MBA,
11:22SPEAKERgreenfield think tank type situation.
11:26SPEAKERAnd they did conferences where people could come
11:29SPEAKERand share ideas and talk about the digital future.
11:32SPEAKERIt's a little bit like whole earth catalog,
11:35SPEAKERbut with a Goldman Sachs angle on it
11:37SPEAKERis the vibe I've always gotten.
11:39SPEAKER- That seems very accurate.
11:41SPEAKERI did realize he was at Apple.
11:44SPEAKER- Briefly.
11:46SPEAKER- Okay, maybe that's what it was.
11:47SPEAKERThere's a few little things maybe we'll get into
11:48SPEAKERin the course of this that the movie glosses over
11:50SPEAKERa little more than I would have liked.
11:51SPEAKERAll the former Apple employees that came to
11:55SPEAKERor that went and started this company
11:56SPEAKERare very well delineated like the Andy Hertzfelds
12:00SPEAKERand Bill Atkinson's and Susan Care.
12:02SPEAKER- Joanna Hoffman, yeah.
12:04SPEAKER- Like huge names from the Macintosh team.
12:06SPEAKERLike basically the people that built the Macintosh
12:08SPEAKERall went on to do this.
12:09SPEAKERBut then Porat is sort of the almost presented
12:13SPEAKERlike the spiritual guru of the whole thing.
12:15SPEAKER- Yeah.
12:16SPEAKER- But his entrance into the whole thing
12:18SPEAKERis not as clear to me, like where he came from.
12:20SPEAKERI mean, obviously he came from the Aspen Institute,
12:22SPEAKERbut his route through Apple into leading this thing,
12:26SPEAKERphilosophically is maybe a little more murky than I.
12:29SPEAKER- Well, so he wasn't a tech guy,
12:31SPEAKERhe was a business guy, right?
12:32SPEAKER- Okay, okay, so that helps to know.
12:34SPEAKER- And he came in, I mean, he was a business tech guy,
12:36SPEAKERbut he was not like a writing code and doing circuit boards
12:39SPEAKERand all that kind of stuff like Woz or Andy Hertzfeld
12:42SPEAKERor whatever it were.
12:43SPEAKER- Really, really to go to the narrative of the film again,
12:46SPEAKERhe's presented as the Steve Jobs figure here.
12:48SPEAKERLike he's, they very much are propping him up as here,
12:50SPEAKERhere is the charismatic idea guy
12:52SPEAKERthat wants to change the world
12:53SPEAKERand is kind of driving this team
12:55SPEAKERof like brilliant technical people.
12:56SPEAKERBut like, I don't know if I fully buy the like stagecraft
13:01SPEAKERsort of glow up that they were trying to give him in this.
13:04SPEAKERLike they talk repeatedly about like,
13:06SPEAKERoh, he could sell anything to anybody.
13:08SPEAKERLike he was so electric and engaging on stage, you know?
13:11SPEAKERAnd like, he's not a bad speaker, but there's,
13:14SPEAKERlike I said, there's a bit of a,
13:18SPEAKERI'm trying to figure out how to put it, like.
13:20SPEAKER- It's a little PT Barnum.
13:21SPEAKERIt's always a little PT Barnum for those people though.
13:23SPEAKER- Yeah, for sure, but there's something about like a,
13:26SPEAKERlike a more of like a new agey guru kind of vibe to him.
13:29SPEAKERLike he's very like soft-spoken and philosophical sounding.
13:33SPEAKERYou know, he doesn't, he's not very up.
13:35SPEAKER- That's also the way Steve Jobs was, dude.
13:37SPEAKER- Yeah, but he, yeah, but he had an ineffable like,
13:42SPEAKERactually, I don't know.
13:43SPEAKERI feel like he was a bit more active and forward
13:46SPEAKERin his stage presence than this guy.
13:48SPEAKERBut anyway, it's a minor detail.
13:51SPEAKER- What I will say is he was a very good,
13:53SPEAKERlike watching these videos and remembering
13:54SPEAKERwhat other executives were like at that time.
13:56SPEAKERHe was pretty good for that time period.
13:58SPEAKER- Fair, yes, fair.
13:59SPEAKER- I think he also was the originator of that,
14:02SPEAKERof the big book.
14:03SPEAKERThey show the book a couple of times,
14:04SPEAKERwhich is the Pocket Crystal Design Dock,
14:07SPEAKERwhich is like this big giant red binder
14:09SPEAKERthat looks like it weighs about 10 pounds.
14:11SPEAKERAnd it has, it has a bunch of stuff,
14:13SPEAKERbut I think it, I don't know if it starts with,
14:15SPEAKERor if this is just like their design goals or their pillars,
14:18SPEAKERbut they have like one, two, three, four, five, six,
14:20SPEAKERnine pillars that they list, that I think Joanna Hoffman,
14:24SPEAKERwho was the Apple head of marketing early
14:26SPEAKERand was on the Mac team, the original Mac team, read out.
14:30SPEAKERWhich is, we understand how people use information machines
14:33SPEAKERbetter than anyone else.
14:35SPEAKERNot a computer, an information machine.
14:36SPEAKERThis is an important delineation.
14:39SPEAKERA tiny computer, a phone, a very personal object.
14:43SPEAKERThose are the three things that this is.
14:45SPEAKERIt must be beautiful.
14:46SPEAKERThat's some Steve Jobs business there.
14:48SPEAKERIt must offer the kind of personal satisfaction
14:50SPEAKERthat a piece of fine jewelry brings.
14:52SPEAKERAnother Steve Jobs, that like,
14:54SPEAKERthere's a through line from there to Tony Fidel,
14:55SPEAKERto Johnny Ive talking about how thin and beautiful
14:58SPEAKERthe reveals are and all that stuff, right?
14:59SPEAKER- Yeah, like Apple's destiny to become
15:01SPEAKERkind of the Rolex of computing.
15:03SPEAKER- Yeah, it must have perceived value
15:05SPEAKEReven when it's not being used.
15:06SPEAKERIt should offer the comfort of a touchstone,
15:08SPEAKERthe tactile satisfaction of a seashell,
15:10SPEAKERthe enchantment of a crystal.
15:12SPEAKEROnce you use it, you won't be able to live without it.
15:15SPEAKERIt's not just another telephone,
15:16SPEAKERand it must be something else.
15:18SPEAKERSomething else like the quote, quote, accent.
15:21SPEAKERNow, that's an iPhone.
15:23SPEAKEREverything about that is an iPhone.
15:24SPEAKERThe touchstone, seashell, chick crystal stuff
15:27SPEAKERis a little bit of like the 80s, 90s, Apple, Boomer,
15:31SPEAKERpost hippie, woo, Silicon Valley business.
15:35SPEAKER- Yeah, and that's kind of the vibe
15:36SPEAKERthat Marc Porat sort of embodies for me,
15:39SPEAKERwatching him in this.
15:39SPEAKER- I think that's that whole era of Apple.
15:41SPEAKERLike I remember going to Macworld at Maximum PC
15:43SPEAKERin the early 2000s, and it was,
15:45SPEAKERthose guys were still around, right?
15:47SPEAKERLike the guys wearing flip-flops or Birkenstocks
15:51SPEAKERwith like giant, huge, Grizzly Adams beards
15:54SPEAKERthat were unkempt and were just kind of do it.
15:57SPEAKERLike they were hippies who were computer hippies.
15:59SPEAKERThat was a Berkeley hippie, computer hippie vibe.
16:02SPEAKERThere were suit computer Berkeley guys,
16:05SPEAKERand there were like patchouli computer hippie guys
16:09SPEAKERthat you knew from Berkeley back then.
16:10SPEAKERAnyway, I thought, like this was the part
16:15SPEAKERwhere I was like, oh, this is a thing.
16:17SPEAKERI didn't understand exactly what this is.
16:20SPEAKERThe other thing that we haven't talked about at all,
16:22SPEAKERwe've talked about where this comes from,
16:23SPEAKERbut the actual legacy of this is that
16:26SPEAKERfor most of the run of this company when it mattered,
16:29SPEAKERTony Fidell and Andy Rubin sat six feet from each other.
16:32SPEAKER- Yeah.
16:33SPEAKER- So like Tony Fidell is the guy
16:36SPEAKERwho designed the original iPod,
16:38SPEAKERcame up with the wheel metaphor famously,
16:41SPEAKERled the early iPhone teams.
16:45SPEAKERAndy Rubin is the father of Android.
16:47SPEAKER- The Android guy, the guy that, yeah.
16:49SPEAKERSo there's a couple of weird things there.
16:51SPEAKERI had no idea who Tony Fidell was going into this,
16:53SPEAKERbut he is very forward in this film as a talking head.
16:57SPEAKERBut then they have a ton of footage of the company
16:59SPEAKERat the time because they hired documentarians in the '90s
17:02SPEAKERto document what they were doing for some-
17:04SPEAKER- That's the best part of the whole thing, honestly.
17:06SPEAKER- For some unknown purpose that at the time
17:08SPEAKERthat went on to become this film.
17:10SPEAKER- This is what happens when you have too much money
17:12SPEAKERstarting out as a startup is you're like,
17:14SPEAKER"Oh, we have $200 million.
17:16SPEAKERWell, let's get documentarians in here
17:17SPEAKER'cause clearly what we're doing is important."
17:19SPEAKERTurns out-
17:20SPEAKER- Just actually, not if I think about it,
17:22SPEAKERjust from the standpoint of documentary filmmaking,
17:23SPEAKERI'm not sure I've ever seen a documentary
17:25SPEAKERwith this much access to primary footage
17:28SPEAKERof the subject being documented.
17:30SPEAKERLike half of this movie, it feels like,
17:32SPEAKERis footage from within the offices while they're doing work.
17:35SPEAKER- It's definitely not something you see for documentaries
17:38SPEAKERabout stuff from the past.
17:40SPEAKERYou see it for contemporary documentaries
17:42SPEAKERor like, you know, yeah, whatever, but yeah.
17:45SPEAKER- Yeah, so when Fidel is on so much at the beginning,
17:48SPEAKERbut when they cut to him in the old footage,
17:50SPEAKERhe's like this very fresh faced.
17:51SPEAKERI mean, he was not a literal intern,
17:53SPEAKERbut like his whole origin story in this
17:54SPEAKERis about how he was like beating down their door
17:57SPEAKERwith his resume in his fist,
17:58SPEAKERlike hire me, hire me until they finally did.
18:00SPEAKERBut I kept going like,
18:02SPEAKER"Why is this guy who was clearly
18:03SPEAKERlike straight out of college pretty low level
18:05SPEAKERand also like very like fresh faced looking guy
18:08SPEAKERin this footage was so forward as a talking head here
18:11SPEAKERand only at the very end of the film."
18:13SPEAKER- Oh yeah.
18:14SPEAKER- And I gathered he went on to become someone important,
18:17SPEAKERbut I did not realize until the very end that it's like,
18:19SPEAKER"Oh, he was one of the main people
18:21SPEAKERthat made the iPod and the iPhone."
18:22SPEAKERAnd then he went and founded Nest after that.
18:24SPEAKER- Well, so the other people that you see a lot
18:26SPEAKERin this movie are Kevin Lynch,
18:28SPEAKERwho's now the, or was at least at the time of the movie,
18:30SPEAKERI think still is a VP of hardware at Apple
18:33SPEAKERand was the Apple watch guy for all intents and purposes.
18:37SPEAKER- Yes, that's a great bit at the end
18:39SPEAKERwhere they do these little floating subtitles
18:40SPEAKERattached to people from the footage from the nineties
18:43SPEAKERat the end of the film,
18:44SPEAKERlike they pop up what so many of these people
18:46SPEAKERhave gone on to do since.
18:48SPEAKERAnd it's like CTO at Adobe or like ran the iPod team
18:51SPEAKERor whatever, like it's a lot.
18:53SPEAKERThe founder of eBay, the guy who founded eBay
18:56SPEAKERwas like just a programmer at this company.
18:57SPEAKER- Tech support programmer, yeah.
18:59SPEAKERThey were like, "Nobody wants a flea market, man.
19:02SPEAKERGo take your business elsewhere."
19:04SPEAKERWhoops.
19:05SPEAKERMegan Smith, who was one of the mechanical engineers,
19:07SPEAKERthere's a really good segment, I think with her,
19:10SPEAKERshe ended up being the CTO of the United States for Obama
19:13SPEAKERfor several years and was an executive president
19:18SPEAKERor something at Google for a long time as well.
19:24SPEAKERSo yeah, I kind of don't know.
19:26SPEAKERThere's some funny business with the documentary also
19:28SPEAKERin terms of timing.
19:30SPEAKERSo the IPO for, they present the IPO for the company
19:33SPEAKERas happening before the launch of the hardware.
19:36SPEAKERBut those two things are actually reversed in reality.
19:39SPEAKER- Yeah, and I did not know that until I saw that
19:41SPEAKERin the show notes 'cause they vary much.
19:42SPEAKERIn fact, they kind of go out of their way to say
19:44SPEAKERin the documentary that they were investors
19:47SPEAKERwere investing in a concept or like they--
19:50SPEAKER- They were.
19:51SPEAKER- Don't they describe it as it was the first concept IPO,
19:53SPEAKERmeaning it was a company going public
19:56SPEAKERbefore it had a product or a revenue stream
19:58SPEAKERis how they portray it.
19:59SPEAKERBut then like you said,
19:59SPEAKERthey actually had shipped the product already.
20:01SPEAKER- Yeah, and so the sources for this,
20:03SPEAKERthey're not great sources for some of this stuff,
20:05SPEAKERbut everything I could find indicated that the IPO was in '95
20:10SPEAKERand the hardware launched, the Sony hardware launched in '94.
20:13SPEAKERSo anyway, I guess should we,
20:17SPEAKERlike that's, you tell a documentary,
20:19SPEAKERyou're telling a story, you're making a narrative flow,
20:21SPEAKERwhatever, like, I get it.
20:24SPEAKER- Yeah, you're moving pieces around.
20:26SPEAKER- Yeah, they don't actually say
20:27SPEAKERthat they happened in the wrong order.
20:29SPEAKERThey just present them in a way that implies that strongly.
20:31SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, definitely.
20:33SPEAKER- I think that there's, like the things that they invented,
20:36SPEAKERyou kind of touched on this earlier,
20:37SPEAKERbut responsive touchscreens and the controllers
20:40SPEAKERto drive them, they go from showing like
20:43SPEAKERkind of barely being able to push.
20:45SPEAKERLike if you're not old enough to remember
20:47SPEAKERwhat a touchscreen was like in the '80s,
20:49SPEAKERit was something you had to really bang
20:51SPEAKERwith your finger hard and push really hard.
20:53SPEAKERYou could do one input at a time and it just,
20:55SPEAKERthey didn't work well.
20:55SPEAKERAnd they show like at the end of the movie,
20:58SPEAKERthem touching, just tapping with their fingers
21:00SPEAKERwith a stylus, two fingers at a time,
21:02SPEAKERbasically the same way we interact
21:04SPEAKERwith a modern smartphone keyboard now.
21:06SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, there's a good bit in there about them.
21:08SPEAKERKind of, I forget which person it is on the team
21:10SPEAKERcomplaining about the fidelity
21:12SPEAKERof the touchscreens they can get themselves
21:14SPEAKERand like novel workarounds mathematically
21:16SPEAKERthat they're coming up with trying to make them better.
21:17SPEAKERAnd I gather at some point,
21:19SPEAKERthey just kind of made their own hardware
21:21SPEAKERto drive some of this stuff.
21:23SPEAKER- It seems like, I think that's one of the recurring themes
21:25SPEAKERis that the hardware to do the thing
21:26SPEAKERthat they wanted to do didn't exist
21:28SPEAKERand they had to create a lot of it or--
21:29SPEAKER- So like, it's not USB itself,
21:32SPEAKERbut it's a USB-like serial bus for connecting peripherals
21:36SPEAKERthey just invented from scratch.
21:37SPEAKERLike they say that in here because there was no standard
21:40SPEAKERat the time for plugging devices into other devices
21:43SPEAKERin a way that was universal.
21:44SPEAKERSo they just came up with their own serial bus
21:46SPEAKERand form factor to make it work.
21:48SPEAKER- It's a lowercase universal serial bus,
21:50SPEAKERnot the capital universal serial bus.
21:52SPEAKER- Yes, yes, and it seems like they did that for everything,
21:55SPEAKERwhich like, I don't know if we wanna like
21:57SPEAKERmake a value judgment on the wisdom of that,
21:59SPEAKERbut I guess that's kind of the whole story of this thing
22:01SPEAKERis that they had to do that because the technology
22:03SPEAKERfor what they wanted to do didn't exist yet,
22:05SPEAKERwhich is kind of really maybe the crux
22:07SPEAKERof why this thing failed.
22:08SPEAKER- Well, but they also invented stuff conceptually
22:11SPEAKERlike emoticons or emoji, right?
22:13SPEAKERLike images that represent feelings and emotions.
22:15SPEAKERThey were the first place that came up with software modems.
22:18SPEAKERSo those were the bane of our existence in the '90s
22:21SPEAKERwas cheap modems that ran the modem software on your CPU.
22:26SPEAKERBut that stuff was really important.
22:27SPEAKERThe guy who did that ended up working at, God,
22:31SPEAKERone of the big modem companies,
22:32SPEAKERRegus Robotics or somebody.
22:34SPEAKERThey did SOC advances where they were putting
22:36SPEAKERmore and more coprocessors on the same system on a chip,
22:42SPEAKERall sorts of stuff, and networked apps and games.
22:45SPEAKERSo like games where the display was happening
22:47SPEAKERon the end terminal and the compute was happening
22:50SPEAKERon a server or you were interacting with multiple people
22:52SPEAKERat the same time and all this stuff was,
22:55SPEAKERlike this didn't exist at that time, right?
22:57SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.
22:58SPEAKERAnd there's one other, this is getting very technical
23:00SPEAKERand I only barely understand it,
23:01SPEAKERbut the movie doesn't touch on this at all
23:02SPEAKERuntil you sent me like an AT&T pitch video
23:05SPEAKERfrom the era about this thing,
23:07SPEAKERwhere they talk about the Telescript programming language
23:09SPEAKERthat came up for this thing, which sounds insane to me
23:12SPEAKERto have come up or to have been invented at this time.
23:15SPEAKERBecause it's kind of a Java-like thing
23:17SPEAKERwhere it's like it runs in a little virtual machine
23:19SPEAKERso it can kind of run on any range of devices
23:22SPEAKERthat can run the interpreter.
23:23SPEAKERIt's like years before Java.
23:24SPEAKER- But it can also transfer its state to another computer,
23:28SPEAKERwhich is wild.
23:29SPEAKER- So it's like the opposite, but it's like Java in reverse
23:32SPEAKERwhere instead of downloading the code
23:34SPEAKERto the client machines and running it there,
23:36SPEAKERyou're effectively uploading the code to servers
23:39SPEAKERthat are in the early '90s, so there's like zero power
23:41SPEAKERthat you can pack or compute,
23:43SPEAKERyou can pack into a tiny PDA-like device, right?
23:46SPEAKERSo the idea was we can see just enough data
23:49SPEAKERfrom the client device up to bigger servers
23:51SPEAKERwhere all the compute lives and the program runs,
23:54SPEAKERand yeah, like you said, like a running program
23:56SPEAKERcan like serialize its state and transfer it
23:59SPEAKERto the remote server for heavier execution.
24:02SPEAKER- Probably across like a 14.4 modem
24:04SPEAKERor something really rudimentary,
24:05SPEAKER'cause Wi-Fi didn't exist,
24:06SPEAKERthere's no cellular data at that point.
24:09SPEAKER- Telescript is crazy because like the Wikipedia page
24:11SPEAKERdescribes it as an agent-oriented programming language,
24:15SPEAKERkind of like an object-oriented one
24:16SPEAKERwhere like it's very much designed for dispatching
24:19SPEAKERthese autonomous little agents, messengers,
24:24SPEAKERwhatever you wanna call them, like software messengers,
24:26SPEAKERto go out to this closed network, which we'll get into,
24:30SPEAKERit was a closed proprietary network that they were building,
24:32SPEAKERbut you're dispatching little programs from your device
24:37SPEAKERto go off and do their thing and then come back
24:38SPEAKERwith the payload or return whatever it is you need.
24:41SPEAKER- That was very much an Arthur C. Clarke idea,
24:43SPEAKERthat was in either 2001 or 2010, I can't remember,
24:46SPEAKERas one of his core ideas about how people would compute
24:49SPEAKERin the future was that we would have these agents,
24:52SPEAKERwe assign tasks and we pay a certain amount of money
24:54SPEAKERwhile the agent runs for it to go find the thing
24:56SPEAKERthat we want and then bring it back to us,
24:58SPEAKERnot realizing that the search and return
25:00SPEAKERwould be instantaneous up until a point that it was,
25:03SPEAKERanyway, we don't need to talk about what's happened to that.
25:06SPEAKER- We brute forced our way past needing solutions
25:09SPEAKERlike that, right?
25:09SPEAKERAlso, I should say really quick,
25:11SPEAKERtalking about agents here,
25:12SPEAKERlike that word is used in a somewhat different context
25:15SPEAKERin the AI world these days,
25:16SPEAKERthat's not like we were talking about,
25:18SPEAKERmuch more deterministic.
25:19SPEAKER- There's a through line though from one idea to the other.
25:22SPEAKER- In outcome, definitely, but in function
25:24SPEAKERor the way they work internally, very different,
25:27SPEAKER'cause this would have been a,
25:28SPEAKERthis was a much more well-defined and deterministic thing
25:30SPEAKERthat these things would obey exactly
25:33SPEAKERwhat they were programmed to do.
25:34SPEAKER- Yeah, the overarching,
25:38SPEAKERthere's a lot of Arthur Clarke in this.
25:39SPEAKERI think there's a Stephen Levy article in Wired
25:43SPEAKERfrom like 1994 that talks about general magic
25:46SPEAKERaround the time the hardware was coming out
25:48SPEAKERor was about to come out,
25:49SPEAKERand he talks about the name being of reference
25:53SPEAKERto the any sufficiently advanced technologies
25:56SPEAKERindistinguishable from magic,
25:57SPEAKERwhich is another Arthur Clarke quote.
25:59SPEAKER- Yeah.
26:04SPEAKER- It's really fascinating how far ahead they were.
26:09SPEAKERI wonder how much of those,
26:11SPEAKERwe've talked about those AT&T commercials
26:12SPEAKERfrom like '92, '93, the you will commercials,
26:17SPEAKERand I wonder how much of those were influenced by,
26:21SPEAKERthere's a moment in this movie
26:22SPEAKERwhere they have film of a bunch of AT&T executives
26:25SPEAKERcoming to their offices shared with Rambus, by the way.
26:29SPEAKER- Yeah, I did not, that was not in the movie, that's--
26:30SPEAKER- No, it's, you can see it on the sign up front, yeah.
26:33SPEAKER- Oh, I totally missed that.
26:35SPEAKER- Doomed office building there.
26:37SPEAKER- Sure.
26:38SPEAKER- But yeah, so Rambus famously failed
26:40SPEAKERhigh-speed memory interface from like the early 2000s,
26:43SPEAKERlate '90s, it was in the '64 and a couple other things.
26:47SPEAKER- Didn't they make like a fortune on patents, though?
26:49SPEAKER- Yeah, it's a patent company now.
26:53SPEAKERSo anyway, there's video of the AT&T limo
26:57SPEAKERwith the AT&T executives coming for this meeting,
27:00SPEAKER'cause they called AT&T because they were like,
27:02SPEAKER"Hey, we need people that can run these services
27:06SPEAKER"for us 24/7 with no downtime."
27:10SPEAKERThat's the phone company, that's gotta be the phone company.
27:12SPEAKERThey bring these AT&T executives in,
27:13SPEAKERthey roll into this valley office park
27:16SPEAKERwith a limo that they can't get into the driveway.
27:19SPEAKERThe executives come up, the engineers are all
27:21SPEAKERSan Francisco hippies that haven't taken a shower in a week.
27:24SPEAKER- It's the classic free-spirited technologists paradigm,
27:28SPEAKERyou know, of they're all in their smelly and bare feet
27:31SPEAKERand like cut off jeans.
27:32SPEAKER- It did seem like they were wearing shoes
27:34SPEAKERfor the most part, but--
27:36SPEAKER- Fair.
27:37SPEAKERBut yeah, and then they say yes in the meeting
27:40SPEAKERis how it's presented in the documentary.
27:41SPEAKERI don't know if that's actually true or not,
27:43SPEAKERbut it would have been the right time for them to come back
27:45SPEAKERand be like, "We need to start marketing this stuff
27:47SPEAKER"so we get the ideas in the people's head
27:48SPEAKER"so we can sell it in three years."
27:50SPEAKER- Yeah, they really make it seem like all these companies
27:52SPEAKERwere just like tripping over each other
27:54SPEAKERto throw money at this thing.
27:55SPEAKER- I think they were.
27:56SPEAKER- There was a fair amount of hype around it.
27:57SPEAKER- Yeah, it was, the decrease in cost on the PC at that time
28:03SPEAKERwas, and computers in general,
28:04SPEAKER'cause like we'd gone from personal computers
28:06SPEAKERbeing like a $5,000 thing or equivalent $5,000
28:09SPEAKERin the early '80s to being relatively affordable.
28:12SPEAKERYou could go to Walmart and buy a PC in 1994.
28:15SPEAKERAnd it was heady, and this was still before the web
28:22SPEAKERfor all intents and purposes.
28:23SPEAKERThis was before anybody knew really what the web was.
28:26SPEAKER- In fact, yeah, the web was not even invented
28:28SPEAKERuntil Tim Berners-Lee didn't, what was it, '93 that he--
28:32SPEAKER- But '93 was when the first website was published.
28:36SPEAKER- Right, right, and this thing was around since '90-ish,
28:38SPEAKERso they were even ahead of that substantially.
28:40SPEAKER- Yeah, and it was like there were online services
28:43SPEAKERlike Prodigy and CompuServe around those times,
28:45SPEAKERand BBSes, but there weren't, there wasn't an idea.
28:49SPEAKERI mean, some people knew about the open web,
28:52SPEAKERbut it didn't have traction.
28:53SPEAKERIt was just one of many ideas about different ways
28:55SPEAKERthat people could do stuff, right?
28:57SPEAKERSo anyway, these AT&T executives said yes.
29:00SPEAKERThey came in.
29:01SPEAKERA couple years later, they released that video
29:03SPEAKERthat you talked about, the cloud video.
29:04SPEAKERThey show it a little bit in the movie.
29:06SPEAKERIt's got like, I don't know, I tried to find out
29:08SPEAKERwho the artist was that did the animation,
29:11SPEAKERbut they have a bunch of like,
29:12SPEAKERit looks like the Red Bull Gives You Wings cartoon ads,
29:16SPEAKERkind of like pastel line art, little squiggly animation,
29:22SPEAKERand it's where they talk about the cloud
29:24SPEAKERbeing the place where the computer happens,
29:26SPEAKERthe computing happens.
29:28SPEAKER- Yeah, did this project define the word cloud
29:30SPEAKERin this context in the sense of remote computing?
29:33SPEAKER- So I looked, I tried to find that out,
29:34SPEAKERand there are definitely people who say that
29:37SPEAKERthere are some other things that are attributed as well.
29:39SPEAKERIt is unclear if this is actually,
29:41SPEAKER'cause this doesn't exactly mean like,
29:42SPEAKERhey, we're gonna host our servers someplace away
29:44SPEAKERand not, you know, it doesn't mean exactly the same thing,
29:47SPEAKERbut it's definitely the same idea, I guess.
29:49SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, I wish the movie had spent a little more time,
29:52SPEAKERlike they could have accomplished this in like 90 seconds
29:54SPEAKERwith a snazzy little motion graphic or something,
29:56SPEAKERdemystifying or kind of unpacking
29:58SPEAKERwhat the eventual like product and service stack
30:01SPEAKERwas gonna look like for this thing,
30:02SPEAKERbecause, okay, General Magic designed hardware,
30:05SPEAKERand then they have their magic cap operating system
30:08SPEAKERand UI and interface and everything for it,
30:09SPEAKERbut then the actual selling devices
30:12SPEAKERwere all gonna be branded by the different hardware partners
30:15SPEAKERis what I gather from this,
30:16SPEAKERlike Sony sold the magic link and Motorola had the Envoy,
30:20SPEAKERbut then they were all going to connect
30:21SPEAKERto the personal link network
30:23SPEAKERthat's with one L, one word, one L branded, personal link.
30:27SPEAKER- Capital L, camel case.
30:29SPEAKER- Yeah, which was run by AT&T, right?
30:32SPEAKERSo is that the stack, it was network solely,
30:36SPEAKERone network, not multiple commercial networks,
30:38SPEAKERone network run by AT&T, which devices from all these,
30:43SPEAKERit was like the 3DO basically,
30:44SPEAKERit was basically like General Magic defined the device
30:48SPEAKERand then different companies
30:49SPEAKERwould sell their versions of it, I guess,
30:50SPEAKERand all connect to the same network, is that the gist?
30:53SPEAKER- You have to remember that the breakup of the Bell system
30:55SPEAKERwas still new enough that AT&T was the main
31:00SPEAKERlong distance provider,
31:01SPEAKERlike was the one company that had their fingers
31:03SPEAKERin all of the different areas, right?
31:05SPEAKERSo otherwise you had to go through Southwest Bell
31:07SPEAKERand Southeast Bell and all the different,
31:09SPEAKERthe different children of Ma Bell.
31:13SPEAKERSo yeah, that's why they went with AT&T only, I assume.
31:16SPEAKERThat I think at the time the kind of nationwide BBS services
31:20SPEAKERlike Prodigy and CompuServe
31:22SPEAKERprobably didn't have great reputations for uptime.
31:25SPEAKER- Right, yeah, that makes sense for sure.
31:27SPEAKERI guess it's really the products on the shelf
31:30SPEAKERlayer of the stack to me is what got a little confusing
31:33SPEAKER'cause it seems like only two products
31:35SPEAKERever even made it to market.
31:36SPEAKER- I think that's right.
31:37SPEAKERWell, there was some stuff later
31:38SPEAKERthat's in time after the documentary covers.
31:41SPEAKERSo post Mark Perrette and all the kind of original people
31:44SPEAKERmostly leaving, they had a new CEO that did like a phone,
31:49SPEAKERlike a PDA that you could use your phone basically
31:52SPEAKERto call into and it would read your email to you
31:54SPEAKERand stuff like that.
31:54SPEAKERWe need to talk about that.
31:55SPEAKERThat stuff was kind of goofy.
31:57SPEAKER- Yeah, also another just real quick,
31:58SPEAKERanother detail of the product launch I wasn't clear on.
32:00SPEAKERWas it a phone?
32:01SPEAKERLike what did it?
32:02SPEAKER- It had phone.
32:03SPEAKER- It didn't have actual, did it have actual phone?
32:05SPEAKERLike a literal voice call,
32:06SPEAKERanalog voice call functionality in it?
32:08SPEAKERIt was not a cell phone.
32:09SPEAKER- I don't know if the phone had,
32:10SPEAKERif it had, like I don't know how any of that stuff works.
32:13SPEAKERI've never actually seen one of these
32:14SPEAKERaside from in the case of the Computer History Museum.
32:17SPEAKER- Yeah.
32:18SPEAKER- So yeah, I don't--
32:18SPEAKER- There was a phone jack on it, right?
32:20SPEAKER- It has a phone jack on it,
32:21SPEAKERbut I assume that was for modem.
32:22SPEAKERBut I don't know if you could also use it as a phone.
32:24SPEAKERThat's actually a good question.
32:27SPEAKERThe thing I wanted to know about,
32:29SPEAKERso in the Wired article with Steven Levy,
32:31SPEAKERthey talk about building the first demos
32:36SPEAKERfor this in HyperCard.
32:39SPEAKERHyperCard was Bill, what's Bill's name?
32:44SPEAKER- Bill Atkinson.
32:45SPEAKER- Bill Atkinson, yeah.
32:46SPEAKERHe did HyperCard at Apple.
32:49SPEAKER- And Quickdraw, for what it's worth,
32:51SPEAKERlike an extremely very famous foundational Apple program.
32:55SPEAKER- But he built the demo, like the first prototype demo
33:00SPEAKERthat they used to raise money, presumably,
33:02SPEAKERand I assume was what they showed AT&T as well,
33:04SPEAKERwas from everything I could tell was built in HyperCard,
33:08SPEAKERwhich was Apple's kind of like hyperlinked note card app
33:11SPEAKERfrom the early Mac days.
33:14SPEAKERI don't know when that came out.
33:15SPEAKERI feel like it was one of the mid,
33:18SPEAKERlike one of the last good pre-OS 10 Mac OS releases.
33:22SPEAKER- 1987 was the first release.
33:25SPEAKERWas Mist made in HyperCard?
33:27SPEAKERIt was, wasn't it?
33:29SPEAKER- I think HyperCard is involved in how it works, yes.
33:32SPEAKERBut I can't, I'm not 100%.
33:34SPEAKERMaybe they built a prototype there too.
33:36SPEAKERAnyway, they built this prototype
33:38SPEAKERof this whole OS in HyperCard,
33:40SPEAKERand then they had to figure out how to make that work
33:42SPEAKERon the incredibly limited SOCs of the time,
33:48SPEAKERwhich were 128 kilobytes of RAM and five megahertz.
33:55SPEAKERIn a time when the computers were slow by modern standards,
33:58SPEAKERwhen a fast computer was a 486, 25 megahertz or 50 megahertz,
34:03SPEAKERthe handheld stuff was much, much slower.
34:05SPEAKER'Cause these were all designed to run
34:06SPEAKERon double A batteries as well.
34:08SPEAKERLike these Sony devices used six double A batteries
34:12SPEAKERthat they sold.
34:13SPEAKER- God, I didn't even think about that.
34:14SPEAKERThat is intense.
34:15SPEAKER- Yeah.
34:16SPEAKERAnd so like balancing battery life
34:18SPEAKERand balancing the capabilities that they could do,
34:21SPEAKEReven if they had more capable things,
34:22SPEAKERthey didn't have power to do it
34:24SPEAKER'cause the battery technology blew in the mid '90s.
34:28SPEAKER- Right.
34:28SPEAKERSo you were always, it's worth,
34:31SPEAKERespecially for people who were younger
34:32SPEAKERand don't remember a time before ubiquitous cell coverage,
34:35SPEAKERlike you were always gonna be tethered
34:36SPEAKERto a location using this thing.
34:38SPEAKERLike you were never gonna be sitting on a subway,
34:40SPEAKERtapping away at your smart email or whatever.
34:43SPEAKERLike you were always gonna be near a phone line
34:46SPEAKERand also in need of batteries to use this thing.
34:48SPEAKER- Yeah, I think the GPRS network,
34:50SPEAKERwhich was the kind of first general packet radio service,
34:54SPEAKERwhich was a spinoff of the 2G network,
35:03SPEAKERdidn't start until after this probably, I'm looking now.
35:08SPEAKERIt was, yeah, 2001.
35:12SPEAKERThat doesn't seem right, that seems late.
35:13SPEAKERBut anyway, yeah, it's like the whole story about this
35:17SPEAKERis everything they were doing they were too early for.
35:19SPEAKERThat like, that's the recurring theme.
35:21SPEAKERLike they spun off from Apple too early.
35:25SPEAKERJohn Sculley then announced the Newton
35:27SPEAKERbefore they were ready to announce something,
35:28SPEAKERwhich makes him kind of the villain,
35:30SPEAKERbut also kind of sympathetic at the same time.
35:31SPEAKERLike he had his own problems.
35:34SPEAKER- Such a, yeah.
35:34SPEAKERI mean, it's such a baffling part of this movie though,
35:36SPEAKERbecause it comes so out of left field.
35:37SPEAKERIt's like this company spun out of Apple.
35:39SPEAKERApple was the primary corporate investor of this thing.
35:43SPEAKERAnd then all of a sudden they launched a product
35:44SPEAKERto compete with what this company was doing.
35:46SPEAKERLike just kind of without any preamble.
35:48SPEAKERLike, and obviously understandably,
35:50SPEAKERthe employees of this company are furious when this happens.
35:52SPEAKERBut yeah, Steven Levy,
35:54SPEAKERactually I think Apple and Sony had equal shares.
35:56SPEAKERSteven Levy tells a story in the Wired article
35:59SPEAKERabout them taking the pitch to Sony in Japan.
36:03SPEAKERAnd then the CEO of Sony saying,
36:05SPEAKER"Hey, we have to have consensus," you know.
36:08SPEAKERAnd then their hearts sinking
36:10SPEAKER'cause they thought that they were cooked
36:11SPEAKERbecause it would take them months to get consensus.
36:14SPEAKERAnd the CEO was like,
36:17SPEAKER"We'll have consensus, get consensus by Thursday."
36:20SPEAKER(laughs)
36:21SPEAKER- There's a great line from,
36:23SPEAKERthere is contemporary footage of the Sony CEO at the time
36:26SPEAKERwhere what, 'cause this was a small,
36:28SPEAKERit was like a hundred people or something.
36:29SPEAKERWhat was it he said?
36:30SPEAKERLike he's a small team, big thinking,
36:32SPEAKERI think was the way he put it.
36:33SPEAKERLike he was very enthusiastic about what they were doing.
36:35SPEAKER- It's well, I mean,
36:36SPEAKERand this is hard to remember knowing modern Sony,
36:39SPEAKERbut Sony at the time was doing really wild stuff.
36:41SPEAKERLike they were doing tiny laptops
36:44SPEAKERand they were doing,
36:44SPEAKERlike they were applying everything they knew
36:47SPEAKERabout making things smaller to the PC in an interesting way.
36:52SPEAKER- I mean, this was the heyday
36:53SPEAKERof Sony's innovative technology, consumer technology era.
36:56SPEAKERYou know, like they were fresh off the Walkman
36:58SPEAKERand the Discman at this time,
36:59SPEAKERor the Discman maybe hadn't even come out yet, you know.
37:01SPEAKER- Yeah, it was a time,
37:03SPEAKERlike it was honestly,
37:04SPEAKERit was the time when they were probably incubating the PS1
37:08SPEAKERand working with Nintendo on their console
37:13SPEAKERand all that stuff during that time period, right?
37:15SPEAKER- Yes, that is definitely this era as well.
37:18SPEAKER- It's, I think the most fascinating thing
37:21SPEAKERof all of this for me is the idea
37:23SPEAKERthat they had this coalition that they put together
37:26SPEAKERwith these companies that absolutely,
37:28SPEAKERlike Panasonic and Sony were locked in a mortal fight
37:31SPEAKERfor world dominance in electronics, in Japanese electronics.
37:35SPEAKERAnd the fact that they were all sitting on the stage
37:37SPEAKERduring the keynote when they announced this together,
37:39SPEAKERlike not exactly, they weren't exactly smiling.
37:41SPEAKERThere's a reason people don't put executives
37:42SPEAKERfrom different companies on stage together now.
37:44SPEAKERWe know not to do that.
37:46SPEAKERBut like they were all sitting up there together
37:48SPEAKERand it was like, it gave them real weight
37:50SPEAKERin a way that was shocking.
37:52SPEAKERThe fact that they could get them all there
37:53SPEAKERafter this thing came out
37:54SPEAKERand then kind of tanked is wild to me.
37:58SPEAKERI guess they were sitting on the keynote
37:59SPEAKERbefore the thing came out and tanked.
38:01SPEAKERThis was, anyway, yeah, it's a fascinating, fascinating story.
38:06SPEAKERI think there's some ephemera.
38:07SPEAKERIf you want to talk about, like there was some weird stuff
38:09SPEAKERthat popped up in the video that made me smile.
38:12SPEAKER- Sure, yeah, I should have made more notes
38:14SPEAKERof stuff like that 'cause I think I saw
38:15SPEAKERa fair amount of that too.
38:17SPEAKER- There's a Fry's mouse pad at some point in there.
38:21SPEAKERThey talk about going to Fry's as well.
38:23SPEAKER- Yeah, I was gonna say there was a dramatic scene
38:24SPEAKERinvolving Fry's around the product launch where they,
38:27SPEAKERI guess I assume it's the Fry's in the Valley
38:29SPEAKERclosest to their office.
38:30SPEAKER- I assume the Santa Clara one, yeah.
38:32SPEAKER- Yeah, like right around the time of the product launch,
38:35SPEAKERlike the Fry's employees have supposedly been trained
38:37SPEAKERto demo the unit for customers
38:39SPEAKERand like the General Magic people show up
38:40SPEAKERall excited to see this demo
38:42SPEAKERand it's in the very back of the store
38:44SPEAKERbehind the refrigerators where you can't even see it
38:46SPEAKERand the Fry's employees clearly don't care
38:48SPEAKERand have no idea how to use the product and it's just--
38:50SPEAKER- Did you ever go to that Fry's?
38:53SPEAKER- I'm not sure.
38:54SPEAKER- That Fry's--
38:55SPEAKER- I don't know if I've ever been in a Fry's before actually.
38:56SPEAKER- Behind the refrigerators and that Fry's
38:58SPEAKERis a cursed location.
38:59SPEAKERJust to be clear, like the movie does not sell
39:02SPEAKERhow fucked they were by putting them
39:03SPEAKERbehind the refrigerators 'cause like you'd go in
39:06SPEAKERand there was like all the checkouts on the right
39:08SPEAKERand then there was a bunch of random like desk furniture
39:10SPEAKERusually on the left, like office furniture
39:13SPEAKERand then all the cool computer stuff was off in the right
39:15SPEAKERin the well lit section and the further back you got,
39:18SPEAKERthe darker it got so that by the time you were
39:20SPEAKERinto the appliances where like the microwave ovens
39:22SPEAKERand the refrigerators and stuff were,
39:24SPEAKERit looked like somebody might jump out and knife you.
39:26SPEAKERSo if they were behind that, it was not a place of honor.
39:30SPEAKER- That's grim.
39:31SPEAKER- Yeah, it was bad.
39:33SPEAKER- Let's see, what else?
39:35SPEAKERThe Fry's mouse pad, the Bart Simpson on the wall
39:40SPEAKERin the office, just like a big, like the most '90s thing,
39:42SPEAKERlike hey, we got a big wall decal of Bart Simpson
39:44SPEAKERto put up on the wall.
39:47SPEAKERThe music in this whole thing is really, really good.
39:50SPEAKERThe way the, whoever did the score
39:54SPEAKERlike evokes the '90s AT&T theme chimes really delightfully
40:00SPEAKERin a way that made me smile.
40:01SPEAKER- Yeah, also I had to make note of another appearance
40:04SPEAKERof talking heads in a thing about Apple.
40:06SPEAKER- Oh yeah.
40:07SPEAKER- I don't know why talking heads in Apple
40:08SPEAKERand '80s imagery get paired together quite a bit.
40:11SPEAKER- I would have thought it would be Devo
40:12SPEAKERif I was gonna pick an '80s game.
40:13SPEAKERMaybe talking heads is more available.
40:14SPEAKERDavid Byrne's probably available.
40:16SPEAKERHe writes, he catches the check.
40:19SPEAKERThe Dr. Dobbs shirt that Andy Hertzfeld is wearing
40:21SPEAKERin a couple of shots is fantastic.
40:23SPEAKER- Who's Dr. Dobbs?
40:24SPEAKER- Dr. Dobbs' journal is an old like comp sci journal.
40:29SPEAKERIt's like bite for the real nerds
40:33SPEAKERif that tells you what I'm talking about, yeah.
40:36SPEAKER- Yes, yes, I can, yes, 100%.
40:38SPEAKER- If you wanna talk about register programming
40:40SPEAKERfor a specific Motorola CPU from 1984,
40:43SPEAKERDr. Dobbs had you covered.
40:47SPEAKERAnd then we talked about the agent thing already,
40:49SPEAKERbut like the way they were talking about agents
40:51SPEAKERis very reminiscent, like there is a straight through line
40:54SPEAKERto the agentic thinking of modern AI software development,
40:57SPEAKERwhich good or bad, it was there.
40:59SPEAKERSo I guess we should talk about, like they failed.
41:03SPEAKERThe reasons they failed, we've talked about it already.
41:05SPEAKER- I feel like that's kind of both what the movie builds to
41:07SPEAKERand what we've been building toward,
41:08SPEAKERwhich is like this thing was pretty radically innovative.
41:12SPEAKERWhy did it fail?
41:13SPEAKER- Yeah, they kind of, so this movie came out in 2018,
41:16SPEAKERwhich puts it, I think, at the end of the era
41:19SPEAKERof the Silicon Valley technologist as heroes
41:22SPEAKERpresented in pop culture.
41:24SPEAKER- That seems right.
41:25SPEAKERAnd I think like even people like Elon Musk
41:27SPEAKERwere still seen mostly as heroic aspirational figures
41:30SPEAKERat that time.
41:31SPEAKER- Yeah, I think that was around the time
41:34SPEAKERhe was calling the guy in Thailand a pedophile.
41:36SPEAKERSo maybe it was like as the shine was starting to come off,
41:38SPEAKERbut yeah.
41:39SPEAKER- We were just starting to enter a new paradigm.
41:41SPEAKER- But yeah, so it's like in that context,
41:45SPEAKERthis is very much, hey, these people had a really good idea.
41:50SPEAKERThese execute, they executed poorly.
41:53SPEAKER- Yeah, actually.
41:54SPEAKER- For reasons, like they presented it as the reason
41:56SPEAKERthey made them, the reason this didn't work
41:58SPEAKERis 'cause they didn't embrace the open internet,
42:00SPEAKERwhich is funny to me for a documentary in 2018
42:02SPEAKERwhen the open internet was already on its like,
42:04SPEAKERwas already stumbling and like the rise
42:07SPEAKERof the closed networks like Facebook
42:08SPEAKERand all the kind of closed social stuff that we use now
42:13SPEAKERwas there, like that stuff had happened.
42:15SPEAKERThe web was on its dying legs at this point.
42:18SPEAKER- We wrapped back around.
42:20SPEAKER- Yeah.
42:21SPEAKER- But they wanted to do it more formally here.
42:22SPEAKERI mean, we should say explicitly like AT&T
42:24SPEAKERwanted to charge service fees to be on this network.
42:26SPEAKERI mean, of course they did.
42:27SPEAKERLike that was the whole business model
42:28SPEAKERwas that they wanted to keep it closed
42:31SPEAKERso they could like rate people's,
42:32SPEAKERthey wanted to meter people's usage very intensively.
42:35SPEAKER- Yeah, of course.
42:36SPEAKERThat's AT&T, baby.
42:37SPEAKER- So they were never, yeah,
42:38SPEAKERthey loved those long distance fees at the time.
42:41SPEAKERLike they were never gonna pivot to an open network
42:43SPEAKERbecause that would have undercut the entire business model
42:45SPEAKERthis thing was built around.
42:46SPEAKER- Yeah, but I think the real problem was that,
42:49SPEAKERlike in my eyes, they were 10 years too early
42:51SPEAKERon the hardware, the hardware being able to do anything
42:54SPEAKERthey wanted to do and unlike,
42:57SPEAKERthey talk about this a little bit,
42:58SPEAKERthere's a bit where I think it was Megan Smith
43:00SPEAKERwas pulling stuff out of like their prototype closet.
43:02SPEAKERThey had a big, one of those big like industrial,
43:06SPEAKERlike two handle metal stand closets
43:09SPEAKERand she was just pulling box after box
43:11SPEAKERof old hardware prototypes out,
43:13SPEAKERshowing all the bad touch screens
43:15SPEAKERand all the different ICs that they tried
43:16SPEAKERand then the ones that they built themselves
43:18SPEAKERand all this different stuff
43:19SPEAKERand I was just like, this is absolutely fascinating,
43:21SPEAKERbut also like getting from, hey, we have a prototype
43:25SPEAKERthat works to being able to manufacture it
43:27SPEAKERis the thing that Tony Fidel and Tim Apple,
43:31SPEAKERpresumably at Apple brought in in the early 2000s
43:35SPEAKERthat let them go from, hey, we can make X number of iPods
43:39SPEAKERthat use these SOCs and have these LCD screens
43:44SPEAKERand have these capacitive interfaces
43:46SPEAKERto, hey, we have a whole logistics chain,
43:49SPEAKERthis much flash memory, this much LCD screen,
43:52SPEAKERall of this stuff to have a logistics chain
43:54SPEAKERthat will get them to, hey,
43:56SPEAKERwe can ship a billion iPhones in 2015.
43:58SPEAKER- Yeah, I assume there's been like business case studies
44:01SPEAKERwritten about that phenomenon at Apple
44:03SPEAKERand maybe they're not the only ones to ever practice this,
44:05SPEAKERbut that idea of planting seeds
44:09SPEAKERand growing your own supply chain
44:10SPEAKERfor the future dream device you want to make
44:13SPEAKERby launching like lesser products first
44:15SPEAKERto kind of build up the production capacity
44:18SPEAKERand the demand for these parts that you will then need later
44:20SPEAKERlike that's kind of this really interesting forward thinking.
44:23SPEAKER- I would hope that that's the kind of thing
44:24SPEAKERyou learn at business school.
44:25SPEAKERI don't, nobody ever writes about it
44:27SPEAKER'cause it's boring nerd stuff.
44:28SPEAKER- Well, yeah, but also it's like,
44:30SPEAKERit's not a phenomenon that can happen all the time
44:32SPEAKERbecause that was such a,
44:33SPEAKERthat was a period of such rapid technological innovation.
44:36SPEAKERLike now these days we have advanced touch screens
44:38SPEAKERand fast SOCs and all this stuff like that.
44:40SPEAKERThat was just a specific moment in history
44:43SPEAKERwhen the vision was there, but the hardware was not
44:46SPEAKERand the hardware needed to be created.
44:47SPEAKER- Yeah, and like, I mean, Elon Musk did the same thing
44:50SPEAKERwith batteries, lover, hate him,
44:52SPEAKERbut like the starting out by selling a roadster,
44:56SPEAKERa small volume roadster,
44:57SPEAKERand then moving to the high expensive luxury car,
45:01SPEAKERlet them build the battery manufacturing volume
45:03SPEAKERthat supported then the entire electronic car infrastructure
45:07SPEAKERthat's going on right now.
45:09SPEAKERSo yeah, like it's definitely happened multiple times.
45:12SPEAKERIf you can see the need for something 15 years
45:15SPEAKERin the future and to have a path to get there,
45:18SPEAKERI'm sure people are doing it constantly,
45:19SPEAKERbut like also the cost because of the rise of phones,
45:23SPEAKERthe cost of manufacturing, those types of components
45:25SPEAKERhas gone way, way down in the last 20 years, 30 years.
45:28SPEAKERAnyway.
45:28SPEAKER- There's a couple of subheadings,
45:30SPEAKERI think from watching this about their failure,
45:32SPEAKERbesides, you know, again, the big two are like,
45:34SPEAKERthey were just too far ahead of their time
45:35SPEAKERand couldn't realize their vision as well
45:38SPEAKERin hardware as they would like
45:39SPEAKERand also that the closed network,
45:41SPEAKERbut there's a couple other things.
45:42SPEAKERI mean, people just kind of didn't like what they made.
45:45SPEAKERLike there's some like man on the street interview footage
45:48SPEAKERwith people who have been allowed to test the device
45:51SPEAKERat the launch and they just weren't feeling it.
45:53SPEAKERYou know, like let's be real.
45:55SPEAKERLike it was described as very slow to use and pretty buggy.
45:58SPEAKERIt's black and white, like the, you know,
46:00SPEAKERI don't know how well the touch actually worked in practice
46:02SPEAKERfor people who were not familiar
46:03SPEAKERwith handheld touch devices at the time,
46:05SPEAKERwhich was almost everybody, you know,
46:06SPEAKERlike it just wasn't received well by consumers,
46:09SPEAKEReven before the $800 in early nineties money price tag
46:14SPEAKERis factored in.
46:15SPEAKER- I don't think $800 was that much cheap.
46:18SPEAKERIt wasn't that much out of the ballpark
46:21SPEAKER'cause the Newton was in the five to $700 range,
46:24SPEAKERdepending on which one you got, if I recall.
46:25SPEAKER- I've got the exchange.
46:27SPEAKERIt was about $1,700 in today money, so.
46:30SPEAKER- So it's an iPhone duo, basically.
46:33SPEAKER- Sure, but you know, it's not--
46:35SPEAKER- Less capable.
46:35SPEAKER- That's not out of the realm
46:36SPEAKERof what people were spending on technology at the time,
46:38SPEAKERbut you really need to wow them
46:40SPEAKERto get them to spend money like that.
46:42SPEAKERAnd apparently they just did not do the wowing.
46:44SPEAKER- Yeah, it's important to note,
46:45SPEAKERthis was probably when a laptop, a decent laptop,
46:48SPEAKERwas probably still $2,500 or $3,000 entry level.
46:52SPEAKERThe other thing about this that I thought was,
46:55SPEAKERlike the cost was definitely a problem.
46:58SPEAKERThe functionality was a problem.
46:59SPEAKERI don't think they did a good job selling it, right?
47:02SPEAKERLike if you think about the Steve Jobs three devices thing
47:06SPEAKERwhere it was a world-class telephone,
47:09SPEAKERa music player where you can hold all your songs
47:11SPEAKERin your pocket, and an, what did you say,
47:14SPEAKERan internet communication device?
47:15SPEAKERIs that the third thing?
47:16SPEAKER- Yeah, an internet communicator is the third pillar.
47:19SPEAKER- Their three things were a phone, a fax machine,
47:22SPEAKERand phone, fax machine, and a PC.
47:27SPEAKERAnd it clearly wasn't a PC.
47:28SPEAKERIt's not gonna compete with your PC.
47:30SPEAKERIt's definitely not, I guess the concept of a PDA existed
47:34SPEAKER'cause of the Newton,
47:35SPEAKERbut they also weren't beating Apple on the,
47:38SPEAKERat that point people felt like you had to handwrite
47:41SPEAKERfor the PDA to be worth doing.
47:42SPEAKERPalm at the same time was coming up with the Jot stuff
47:45SPEAKERand they were doing constrained handwriting
47:47SPEAKERso that it could run on cheaper hardware
47:49SPEAKERthan the Newton would run on, right?
47:50SPEAKER- We should mention for people who haven't seen the movie,
47:52SPEAKERlike the actual interface of this thing,
47:54SPEAKERlike the front dashboard style thing
47:56SPEAKERis like a skeuomorphic desktop.
47:58SPEAKERIt's a little black and white graphical physical desktop
48:01SPEAKERwith like a-- - Rooms.
48:03SPEAKER- With like a binder and a globe
48:04SPEAKERand a stack of papers on it
48:05SPEAKERthat you like, I hate to say this,
48:08SPEAKERbut it's kind of in the same spirit
48:10SPEAKERas things like Microsoft Bob
48:12SPEAKERand like kind of the other products
48:13SPEAKERthat were coming out around the same time
48:14SPEAKERthat we're trying to put
48:15SPEAKERlike a friendly real world interface layer
48:17SPEAKERon top of computers for people
48:19SPEAKERwho didn't understand computers.
48:20SPEAKER- The '90s were a heady time, Brad.
48:22SPEAKER- Yes, so it was definitely not like a real computer
48:24SPEAKERin any sense.
48:25SPEAKER- Yeah, it's, the quote I thought that was the worst one
48:30SPEAKERfor them was John Battelle, who was one of the founders
48:34SPEAKERof WIRED and went on to start the EFF
48:36SPEAKERand a bunch of other stuff.
48:37SPEAKERLike he's been around for a while.
48:39SPEAKERThere's a quote from him at the time that said,
48:41SPEAKER"It comes down to a personal decision
48:43SPEAKERwhether you want to be in touch all the time."
48:45SPEAKERWhich like, yeah, that's some real 2020 vibes there in 1994.
48:52SPEAKER- That was dire.
48:53SPEAKER- Yeah.
48:54SPEAKER- That was definitely the, I mean like you see stuff in this
48:56SPEAKERlike they're, it's like, this is like distilled early '90s
49:01SPEAKERtechno-optimism, you know, like almost utopianism
49:04SPEAKERabout what the future of expanded computing
49:08SPEAKERand telecommunications are gonna mean for people.
49:10SPEAKER- Pairing that with this closed service feels like
49:12SPEAKERthose two things feel like they're in huge contrast, right?
49:15SPEAKER- They definitely are.
49:16SPEAKERBut also even just looking at the philosophy
49:18SPEAKERthat they were abiding by at this time
49:19SPEAKERand knowing what the effect of these devices
49:22SPEAKERwould be on the world
49:23SPEAKERonce they actually did come to fruition
49:24SPEAKERis like kind of a bitter pill to swallow while watching this.
49:29SPEAKER- It did not have the tactile satisfaction of a seashell
49:31SPEAKERor the enchantment of a crystal, Brad.
49:33SPEAKER- No, it did have some other effects on society though.
49:36SPEAKER- Yeah, so that's kind of it, I guess.
49:39SPEAKERIs there anything else?
49:40SPEAKER- Well, there was one other thing
49:40SPEAKERI was gonna mention real quick
49:41SPEAKERabout the failure of the company.
49:43SPEAKERThis is, I mean, this is not a primary one
49:45SPEAKERbut there is some time spent in this thing
49:47SPEAKERtalking about the internal culture of the company.
49:51SPEAKER- Oh yeah.
49:52SPEAKER- They really didn't want management.
49:54SPEAKERLike they was basically just like,
49:55SPEAKERoh, we're engineers, we're smart, we'll all figure it out.
49:57SPEAKERLike they were like very anti-project management
50:00SPEAKERand did not have anybody like setting schedules
50:03SPEAKERand trying to keep them on task
50:04SPEAKERand working toward the goals.
50:06SPEAKERAnd so like it's just mentioned how over and over
50:08SPEAKERhow much they kept slipping,
50:10SPEAKERlike how sort of shoddy the everything,
50:13SPEAKERshoddily everything was coming together, I should say.
50:15SPEAKERYou know, like everything was very buggy
50:16SPEAKERand behind schedule all the time.
50:18SPEAKER- Well, and then they talked about doing a huge crunch
50:20SPEAKERwhere they were all sleeping in the office for months
50:22SPEAKERto like get it into shipping shape.
50:24SPEAKER- Like it's like the worst example of that era of software
50:28SPEAKERor game development of like, you know, it's like,
50:30SPEAKERoh, we are smart people,
50:31SPEAKERwe'll figure out how to get this done.
50:33SPEAKERAnd then it's just like a bunch of herding cats
50:35SPEAKERall the time.
50:36SPEAKER- I thought the reflecting on failure segment at the end
50:38SPEAKERwas really good where they kind of went down
50:40SPEAKERand Mark Peratt told the story of his wife
50:44SPEAKERtelling him not to come home
50:45SPEAKERif he wasn't gonna be present with the kids
50:47SPEAKERand the company and marriage failing
50:50SPEAKERwithin like six months of each other.
50:52SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, a lot of prominent people from this company
50:54SPEAKERhave gone on to make good, which you see at the end of this,
50:57SPEAKERbut his path out of here is pretty rough.
51:01SPEAKERLike the company he founded and his marriage
51:03SPEAKERboth collapsed simultaneously.
51:06SPEAKER- So at the time the movie was made, he had kids, young kids.
51:08SPEAKER- Yeah, he seems to have kind of had a renaissance
51:11SPEAKERof his own finally.
51:12SPEAKER- Yeah, and went on to do environmental,
51:14SPEAKERlike, look, it's the failed Silicon Valley executive route
51:17SPEAKERof I'm hoping an environmental consultancy
51:20SPEAKERand or charity and here we go.
51:23SPEAKERJoanna Hoffman, who was the marketing lead for the Mac
51:26SPEAKERand also for this company retired
51:31SPEAKERand is doing charitable work now.
51:33SPEAKERWe talked about Andy Rubin and Tony Fidel.
51:36SPEAKERAndy Rubin, I think didn't participate in this.
51:39SPEAKERHe was one of the main,
51:40SPEAKERone of the primary people that didn't talk to them.
51:42SPEAKER- I was gonna say this, that seemed like a weird omission.
51:44SPEAKERLike it's a literal footnote at the very end of the movie
51:47SPEAKERthat like, oh, by the way,
51:48SPEAKERthe guy who started Android worked at this company,
51:50SPEAKERlike that's just super glossed over.
51:53SPEAKER- Yeah, I think they hit Tony Fidel at just the right time
51:55SPEAKERwhen he was on his way out from Google
51:56SPEAKERbefore he'd started the next thing really
51:58SPEAKERso that he had time and energy to spend on this.
52:00SPEAKERAnd it also feels like I've like,
52:04SPEAKERthey had actually shots from a talk with him
52:06SPEAKERat the computer history museum and I think 2017
52:08SPEAKERthat I tried to go to and couldn't get tickets to.
52:11SPEAKERBut in that talk, he talks about general magic.
52:14SPEAKERLike he painted a really clear picture of his path
52:17SPEAKERfrom starting out at general magic
52:19SPEAKERto the things he did in between
52:21SPEAKERto understanding the logistics part of the iPad, iPod
52:26SPEAKERand how he got from there to iPhone and all that stuff.
52:29SPEAKERThat was like super informative and really interesting.
52:33SPEAKERAnd he literally highlights that,
52:35SPEAKERlook, you have to ship these things small,
52:39SPEAKERstart small scale, ship them, iterate based on feedback
52:42SPEAKERbecause you're never gonna be able to anticipate
52:44SPEAKEReverything that people do with them.
52:45SPEAKERAnd we make fun of move fast and break things now
52:51SPEAKERbut that's why you move fast and break things
52:53SPEAKERis so you can get feedback from those early users.
52:57SPEAKER- Yeah.
53:01SPEAKER- Yeah, I thoroughly enjoyed this.
53:02SPEAKERIf you haven't watched the documentary,
53:04SPEAKERI think you'll learn more stuff.
53:05SPEAKERWe didn't get into anywhere near all of it here.
53:08SPEAKERThe Steven Levy article in Wired is really interesting.
53:11SPEAKERThere's some Wikipedia articles
53:12SPEAKERI think we'll chuck links to in the show notes.
53:16SPEAKERBut yeah, I thoroughly enjoyed this one.
53:20SPEAKER- So did I, highly worth the time.
53:22SPEAKER- Yeah, and I don't have a good segue here
53:26SPEAKERbut this is the part of the show
53:27SPEAKERwhere we thank everybody for supporting the Patreon
53:29SPEAKERand supporting the podcast.
53:30SPEAKER- We hope our patrons have found this podcast
53:32SPEAKERworth the time.
53:33SPEAKER- There you go, you should do this.
53:35SPEAKER- I shouldn't say that out loud.
53:36SPEAKERI don't wanna make them question whether they did or not.
53:38SPEAKER- No, no, no, this kind of stuff is always interesting
53:42SPEAKER'cause it's like there's a way to look at it
53:44SPEAKERand there's an alternate future
53:46SPEAKERwhere this worked out for them.
53:48SPEAKERAnd the other thing I realized is watching this
53:50SPEAKERis that now if they had come out with this demo in 2015
53:54SPEAKERand said hey, it's gonna take us 10 years
53:57SPEAKERto get to the point that this is a real business
53:59SPEAKERbut we have a 10 year plan and we can make that happen
54:02SPEAKERand we're the people that made the iPhone
54:05SPEAKERor the Macintosh or some high value prop.
54:07SPEAKERLike Andreessen Horowitz would write them a $50 million check
54:12SPEAKERand tell them to come back to us in two years
54:15SPEAKERand let us know how much more money you need, right?
54:17SPEAKERIt's not like they would flame out
54:19SPEAKERafter the initial product launch was no good.
54:21SPEAKERThey would have done that as a closed friends and family beta
54:24SPEAKERand then they would have released the real thing
54:26SPEAKERthree years later when the silicon caught up
54:28SPEAKERto the technology, to the idea.
54:30SPEAKER- Well, it's such a different world now.
54:32SPEAKERLike, I mean, the internet didn't even exist
54:33SPEAKERand nobody really knew what the full potential of it was
54:36SPEAKERfor business at the time, right?
54:37SPEAKERLike obscene fortunes have been made
54:40SPEAKERsince this company rose and fell.
54:42SPEAKER- God, you're not kidding.
54:44SPEAKER- That have kind of laid the groundwork
54:45SPEAKERfor what you're talking about.
54:46SPEAKERThere's one other quick thing I was gonna ask you about this
54:48SPEAKERbefore we wrap up here.
54:50SPEAKERLike you're five-ish years older than me,
54:52SPEAKERwhich as we've discussed before,
54:54SPEAKERlike kind of gives you just a little bit more insight
54:57SPEAKERinto earlier computing than I have.
55:00SPEAKERWere you aware of this company at the time?
55:02SPEAKERBecause like I super had never heard this name
55:04SPEAKERthat I could remember when we got into this.
55:06SPEAKERBut then in the movie they talk about like, you know,
55:08SPEAKERthere's like newspaper article after article
55:10SPEAKERand magazines and hype around the IPO
55:13SPEAKERand like all these, again,
55:14SPEAKERlike massive tech company investors.
55:16SPEAKERLike they talk about it like it was a little mini phenomenon.
55:19SPEAKERI'm just curious if you remember ever hearing about it
55:21SPEAKERat the time.
55:22SPEAKER- So I remember hearing about the magic link
55:24SPEAKERwhen Sony rolled that thing out.
55:26SPEAKERI regularly read Wired and I'm pretty sure I read this Tony,
55:29SPEAKERthe Steven Levy article about them
55:30SPEAKERwhen they did the release.
55:32SPEAKERI don't know, like I think one of their failures,
55:36SPEAKERand this is a lesson that Jobs took forward
55:38SPEAKERwhen he was doing the iPod and the iPhone and the iMac
55:40SPEAKERand all that stuff, was that like letting,
55:44SPEAKERlike you remember that Motorola made the first iPod?
55:47SPEAKERThey made, sorry, they called it,
55:49SPEAKERthey'd had a different name.
55:50SPEAKERThey called it the iTunes phone.
55:52SPEAKER- What?
55:53SPEAKER- Yeah, Motorola made a like candy bar style phone
55:57SPEAKERthat you could connect to iTunes
55:58SPEAKERand sync your iTunes movies, your music over to
56:02SPEAKERtwo or three years before the iPhone.
56:06SPEAKER- Is that the Moto, I'm just frantically googling here,
56:09SPEAKERthe Moto Roker E1?
56:11SPEAKER- Rocker, yeah.
56:12SPEAKER- That's not how you pronounce that.
56:13SPEAKER- They didn't name it as Roker.
56:15SPEAKERIt was after, 'cause it was for listening
56:16SPEAKERto your rock and roll music.
56:18SPEAKER- Sorry, yeah, it was R-O-K-R.
56:21SPEAKER- Yes.
56:22SPEAKER- Sorry, I wasn't, yes.
56:23SPEAKER- You know, in line with the R-A-Z-R and all those.
56:26SPEAKERBut the point is, he fucked that up, right?
56:28SPEAKERThat was a mistake because the Motorola
56:30SPEAKERhad the big brand on and nobody knew
56:32SPEAKERthat that was an Apple phone, right?
56:34SPEAKERAnd this is the same mistake they made with Sony is,
56:37SPEAKERnobody knew it was a General Magic device.
56:39SPEAKERThey knew it was a Sony thing that sucked.
56:42SPEAKER- Right, I remember now one of the big sticking points
56:44SPEAKERat the launch of the original iPhone is,
56:46SPEAKERdo you remember the carriers wanted to brand the iPhone
56:49SPEAKERthat they were selling like they did
56:50SPEAKERwith every other cell phone that they had?
56:52SPEAKERAnd that was like widely reported in the press at the time
56:54SPEAKERthat was like, that was one of the things
56:56SPEAKERJobs would not budge on is no carriers
56:58SPEAKERare putting any branding on this product.
57:00SPEAKERIt is only Apple.
57:01SPEAKER- Yeah, the first wave of Samsung Android phones
57:04SPEAKERwere called like the Captivate and the,
57:07SPEAKERthere were three of them, one for C-Mobile,
57:09SPEAKERone for Verizon and one for AT&T.
57:12SPEAKERBut they all had like their own names
57:14SPEAKERand even though they were basically the same phone
57:16SPEAKERwith different radios, yeah, it was the same thing.
57:19SPEAKERSo anyway, like a lot of the lessons from this thing
57:22SPEAKERcarry forward into these people's future lives, right?
57:25SPEAKERWhether it was an Android or Apple or wherever.
57:30SPEAKERBut anyway, that's what we're here to talk about.
57:32SPEAKERWe're here to thank the patrons for supporting the show.
57:34SPEAKER- Yes, thank you, patrons.
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58:31SPEAKERThank you all so, so much.
58:33SPEAKER- Thank you.
58:34SPEAKER- Thanks everybody.
58:35SPEAKERAnd we do really appreciate the support
58:38SPEAKERand we will see you all next week
58:40SPEAKERwith another edition of the Tech Pod or sooner.
58:44SPEAKER- Oh.
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58:47SPEAKERbefore you print this podcast.
58:48SPEAKER- Oh.
58:49SPEAKER(upbeat music)
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