Tricky Bits with Rob and PJ
The Emperor Has No Clothes : Tech is Boring
Enjoying the show? Hating the show? Want to let us know either way? Text us!
Hype is all around around the tech stories that are out there....
Apple has a terrible ad for a thinner iPad!
Google is leaving San Fran and moving jobs overseas!
Announcements around AI that is going to revolutionize everything!!!
Tech companies are acting like big corporations!!!
Maybe it is just us...but does anyone get the impression that tech news is actually a bit boring right now?
Perhaps we are just exhausted from the constant barrage of "bigger", "smaller", "better", "faster", "newer", "revolutionary, "evolutionary", "different"...
But it does feel like a moment when tech is really trying to keep its whizz bang growth cycle going...and not start to admit that these companies, while still wildly profitably, are transforming into the value, blue chip stocks (oh, no, we're IBM!) who are trying to eek out more profit from ads on smart TVs rather than actually innovate.
Join us as we rant a little bit on the current state of affairs!
Enjoying the show? Hating the show? Want to let us know either way? Text us!
Hype is all around around the tech stories that are out there....
Apple has a terrible ad for a thinner iPad!
Google is leaving San Fran and moving jobs overseas!
Announcements around AI that is going to revolutionize everything!!!
Tech companies are acting like big corporations!!!
Maybe it is just us...but does anyone get the impression that tech news is actually a bit boring right now?
Perhaps we are just exhausted from the constant barrage of "bigger", "smaller", "better", "faster", "newer", "revolutionary, "evolutionary", "different"...
But it does feel like a moment when tech is really trying to keep its whizz bang growth cycle going...and not start to admit that these companies, while still wildly profitably, are transforming into the value, blue chip stocks (oh, no, we're IBM!) who are trying to eek out more profit from ads on smart TVs rather than actually innovate.
Join us as we rant a little bit on the current state of affairs!
Ierengaym. com ierengaym. com
PJ McNerney's audio recording-2:Welcome back to tricky bits with Rob and PJ, you know, folks, Rob and I love to pick apart, talk about some of the latest stuff that's going on in tech today, but I'll be honest, and maybe this is just me. I think a lot of the stories that are coming out are a bit boring, and this might be an emperor has no clothes moment. So many of the companies out there are promoting products that are great, they're incremental improvements over what we have already. We have a lot of hype around a few technologies. We have a lot of hype around, you know, companies leaving places or laying off people. And in many ways, when I step back and think about it, either in the moment or from a historical perspective, I kind of think of it's more of the same of what we've seen in the In that way, I think it's kind of boring because so many things we're seeing, we're like trying to get excited about, we're trying to get hyped up about it. So this episode, which might be a little bit on the ranty side, is Rob and I digging into a few of these stories that have been coming out. These things that are happening in the media today. And really trying to discuss whether or not there's anything real, or if it's just more of the same. So, we hope you have fun with it.
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:I've been thinking a lot about the tech news that's out there, and I don't know if you feel this way, but I feel like it's kind of boring. Thinking about kind of the stories that have been happening the last couple of weeks. The Apple iPad event, I think was fine. The iPad's thin. People lost their minds over the ad.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:Oh
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:They did a mea culpa.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:the ad was, I don't know,
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:It was,
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:was typical Apple being look at us but they, they did kind of crush the whole of human artistic,
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:Oh, it's a, it's pretty tasteless. Uh,
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:in one giant hydraulic press.
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:yeah, it's, it's a tasteless ad, but you know, the, the sort of reframe, cause I was thinking a lot about it is why is the ad right now, or has been more important than kind of talking about the actual technology that was Announced there.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:is bullshit. There's
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:I know. And that's the,
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:to
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:this is the problem.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:the problem. Why so thin? It's like, if they'd have made it 0. 1 millimeters thicker, they could have doubled the battery capacity.
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:Right.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:a good marketing spec.
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:Right.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:No one needs a longer battery. It already lasts ungodly amount of time, but 24 hour battery life would have been something that's holy crap. That's really good for 0. 1 millimeter thick.
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:Yeah.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:It's like, why, why this incessant shrinking to make it so thin that it basically at some point going to bend one enough.
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:Right.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:And
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:could do it now. Right.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:that strong. It's only half of 75 millimeters thick, half a centimeter thick, uh, which is what? Eighth of an inch, a little bit over an eighth of an inch. And for, for non metric people, it's, uh, it's ridiculous. And has to have a name. I've like, Twinner OLEDs is now Tandem LEDs.
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:Yep. Yeah.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:everything have to get its own name? It's, it's just call it what it is. Call it what the trade calls it. Calls it what, call it what everybody else calls it. So it's comparable in terms.
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:Yes.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:Uh, so that why the M4 in an iPad, why is use the iPad as a launch platform? It's a consumption device. It will never be. Having Logic Pro and Final Cut Pro as, look, we have professional grade apps on this. Just go jump off a cliff. No one's going to use an iPad to do any real production with your limited storage, your limited connectivity, your limited networking options, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. There's only one type C port. It's never going to get used. Maybe on the field, you could do some quick edit, but you're not going to be, using it as a, uh, a full on editing suite when you have a studio to do that in.
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:Yeah. I, I, I think that the, the M four being in there. I mean, the story really is really about the TSMC production lines. Right. I mean, they had like the M three. Process, which have I've, everything I've read was that that was a dead end that they decided they were going to abandon, but they had to continue it to get the M three out for Apple. And so the switch to the M four is basically to get everybody onto the new process, which is why this is a disjoint place to be putting the M four, but it sort of makes sense to kind of clean up, you know, the M three dead end.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:Yeah, there are definitely some benefits to having the M4 in a mobile device for sure, but it still seems like a, a weird platform to be using to announce the M4. It,
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:Oh, a hundred percent. It was a hundred percent weird.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:whole presentation could have been six minutes if it took all the fluff out and all the stupid fucking animations.
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:One of the, one of the things I was looking up, because I thought this was a, a like questionable decision on their part was they mentioned being able to run, you know, I think it was Octane on the M4 and have it run really fast. And my initial thought was, can you run Octane on an iPad? Cause otherwise this is just a preview and it turns out you can, there is an app for it. I didn't realize that until
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:do it, are you? Why
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:no, you're not
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:sitting in the corner over there in a monster
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:correct.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:Again, yes, you can, but you could do a lot of things you probably don't want to do, or will regret, of like, I have a, giant PC with a couple of 4090s in it, and a monster power supply. Oh, yeah, it takes a lot of power. But if, again,
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:cares?
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:who cares if it's production? It's the same argument as Open source versus Photoshop. Yeah. And
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:Yes.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:before. Photoshop sucks. It's expensive. The whole Adobe licensing model is broken. Blah, blah, blah. Keep going, keep going. You can shoot it down as much as you want. But if I need to make money, if my client is expecting a Photoshop file, I have to give them a Photoshop file. Using some open source package, which half ass supports Photoshop, makes them do more work. You're now not a good partner for them.
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:Yep. Yeah.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:some point, throw your religion out the window and use what the industry uses. And all the big apps got there this way,
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:Yeah.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:no matter what it is. it's the thing you have to do. And if I have to render something in Octane. Why would I even start on an iPad? I'm not going to be on a train going, Oh, well, look, I'll, I'll, uh, make some new
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:Oh, yeah.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:or some new architectural walkthrough while I'm on the train, it's like, I'm going to be at my desk doing things for real clients on a
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:Right.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:of hardware. And unfortunately, when it comes to high end graphics, Apple are always going to be playing catch up. They can put as many marketing stats as they want in them videos. The point is, is yes. Instantaneous speed isn't sustained speed.
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:Right.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:Yeah. And lot of these. Devices look at, say a PlayStation five, that's a device that's made to sustain full power indefinitely. Yeah. It, when it's idle, sure. It takes a little tiny amounts of power because it's everything to scale back. So it can power throttle, but it can't in a game.
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:Right.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:their story isn't the end user's story is Apple's problem. They're like, Oh, we have this amazing performance, but only when we want to give it to you.
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:Mm hmm.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:we decide it can do this for whatever reasons, we're not going to tell you what those reasons are, by the way. Yes, you get these instantaneous spikes in performance, which do look impressive, but now let me do that continuously. And
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:Yeah.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:it soon. Thermally throttles on Apple's takes over because their story is battery life is more important than everything. Their story is form factors, more important than everything. M4 with the giant heatsink on it would be a better M4. No questions asked, but where would they put that giant heatsink? And no matter, no amount of engineering can ultimately get around. laws of thermodynamics at some point, things are gonna get warm. And they also miss stupid things like on the MacBook air, people got it to run the same speed as the MacBook pro by simply putting a heat pad between the processor and the case. So it used the case as a full on heatsink. And because it has no thermal, it has basically no thermals at all, but
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:Oh my God.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:heat pad between the processor and the case, allow the case to act as a massive heat sink and the process doesn't get hot in rooms. Therefore it runs faster. Um, it's things like that where. In the real world, that's not tolerable. In the real world, I need this thing to work. Apple could never be mission critical because Apple's story would take over at some point. No, no, no. Don't worry about landing your airplane. We're getting warm. We've got to slow this thing down. Same as the Apple Watch, as I've bitched on a thousand times before. Why can't I have the stopwatch on? I mean, I always bitch about my skydiving app, which you can't
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:Yeah.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:but it's even worse than that. You can't keep the stopwatch is just a normal app. So if you want to time something on your stopwatch, okay, for a minute, it's fine. And then it'll basically return to clock after some amount of time. And now I can't stop the stopwatch without going through the app list to find the damn stopwatch. So, oh yeah, it's like in their mental use case, that's fine. But most people who want to use a stopwatch, they need to be able to start and stop it. A 1975 Casio watch can stay on the stopwatch. For as long as you like and show you the lifetime. It's not going to update once per second. It's not going to get
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:Right.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:It's just going to, do you want to stop watching? There's a stop. It's like with the kind of marketed is changing the thought process of what we actually need and what we want to use.
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:Correct me if I'm wrong. They've decided they're going to optimize, as you said, on three factors. One is form factor. Two is thermals. Three is battery life. And that's it, right? I mean,
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:right? I mean, the last two are kind of the same thing.
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:well, I guess, I mean, there's, I mean, here's the thing. It's like,
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:Like if you ran the iPad flat out with a massive heatsink on it, you would get awful battery life.
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:you, you would, but I'm, I'm thinking of the case you just mentioned of the iPad, where I, not the iPad, the, the, uh, the MacBook Air, where I could have it plugged into the wall. And I could like, I'm not, I don't care about battery life at that point in time. I just want you to run as fast as possible. And it will run into the thermal problem separately. So that's why I, I mean, I hear what you're saying. Like they're, they're highly coupled, but I can tease them out in the case of a laptop, which is one of the majority use cases for Apple. So would this, would this presume then that I could go nuts with a studio or a pro, I mean, forget the laptops, forget the iPads for a second. Like, if not, then are we still stuck kind of into the same old pattern? I mean, in theory, I should be able to put whatever fucking heatsink I want into those things, right? I mean, I can't, but Apple should be able to.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:Yeah. It's just, I don't know. The whole thing is just bad. It's
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:So,
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:being like,
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:I,
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:carve that a little niche for them. The point is, they're building a house of carves because that niche gets nichier and nichier.
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:yeah. I think they're trying desperately to pop the iPad out of its consumer side, and you saw that in the event. Of saying, Hey, there are these prosumer enterprise esque cases that you can use this for. And we'll sort of like piggyback on the M four for this.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:Point is, why can't I just take my MacBook? It's a laptop. Anywhere I could use a giant iPad, I can also
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:yeah,
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:and it doesn't run, it only runs iOS, it doesn't run OS X.
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:right, right. So
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:OSX touch compatible and made iPads have the option to run either one. I think you'd see a massive switch to people using, OSX on an iPad. And then it becomes more useful,
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:it would,
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:control too. But don't forget, uh, OSX can also run iOS apps. So they're not
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:yeah.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:anything. They only gaining things. And again, it's, it's market segmentation by force. If they give us a free market. People will decide what to use that
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:Correct.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:wouldn't be what Apple's pushing.
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:I think Apple doesn't want to admit that, hey, the sort of touchscreen iPad should be something available like on your laptop. I should be able to touch the screen and be able to do whatever the heck I want, draw on it, but they don't want to effectively like, Give up the sort of philosophical notion that yeah, Microsoft had this right with their tablet where I could have it as a, as a laptop, or I could flip it around and draw on it. Like, I think they, they have lost that capability of being able to cannibalize themselves like they had to cannibalize themselves with the iPod when they brought out the iPhone that was necessary and I don't think they can do that now. And if they feel sort of stuck in these lanes, one thing that could have been cool, and again, I, I still kind of put this under the, I feel like it's still under the boring stories is like they, they kind of like tiptoe up to the line,, for the AI side of things for the, what's going on with the neural engine, but we don't actually see anything popping out. We're also seeing this duke out with regards to open AI and Google at this point in time. Yeah. But I don't think we've actually showcased how it's going to change how anyone actually works yet. We're still in this hype cycle about AI and I think it's getting a little bit tiring. I'm not sure if that's, if you have that feeling.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:just the thing. I think it's being forced on us
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:Yeah.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:I don't want any of this stuff. It's like, I don't really use Siri for what it is today. Uh, I use it for like, Oh, play music. And she typically plays something I don't want. And sometimes I'll set an alarm with it. So Siri is definitely needs an upgrade. I'll give you that. But I don't want this forced AI chatbot us. That's gonna be equally frustrating. And I think, I think as everybody's doing it, like everybody is now just forcing ai, it's like, oh, it's ai. It's ai. It's ai, it's everywhere. It's like, how about none of it? Yep.
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:that's the thing is that the only, the only use cases I have found for it that are I wouldn't even say interesting, they're just fun for me is I like turning my photos into anime photos. And I know that they've trained that with stable diffusion or something in the background to actually do that. Like, Oh, that's fun. That's cool. It's not going to change my life. there's some fun videos I've seen on YouTube where they're like re imagining what would Star Wars look like in the 1950s or the matrix or, you know, the fifth element or Superman. And it's fun. It's fun, but it hasn't, it hasn't justified in my mind, the amount of money that is going into. The startups. Um, and even to a certain extent, the amount of money that's going into NVIDIA ultimately for purchasing hardware, because really all that money that's going into startups is going effectively straight through to either NVIDIA directly to purchase a whole bunch of, H one hundreds or, or whatever, or they're paying a cloud provider who already has those, uh, those units in place.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:I go speak of the cloud. Apple have, well, people respect that they're using their own hardware in the cloud and not buying Nvidia hardware, which
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:Seriously.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:we had the other week.
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:Huh? That is interesting. So you think that they've built a whole slew of, I don't know, there's M series processors that are just beefed up with, without the thermal limitations and that's running the neural engines there.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:idea and they're not talking openly about it, but it, it seems to be that's what's, uh,
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:That's the rumor.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:yeah.
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:Huh. So yeah, I, I don't know, man, like you and I have, I think I've attempted to use AI and I know we've talked about doing an upcoming episode on like, is it actually like matter to us? And I, I find it a little bit hard to actually integrate it into my life in a meaningful way.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:I think it has its places, but it's, it's all very, uh, it's all very, it's kind of uncontrollable. It's like, yeah, when it works, it works. But when it don't work, it's like, eh.
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:Yeah. I feel it's very speculative. Yeah,
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:still problematic.
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:yes. Context isn't there. And I feel like the use cases are, are still kind of. nebulous. You know, you hear about stray stories where it's like replacing people in call centers. It's like, okay, I could kind of see that I could see it kind of driving kind of these chat bots, like when I'm trying to cancel Comcast. Although even in that case, I ultimately have to make a call to get into a queue to talk to an agent to cancel Comcast at my old house. So
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:Yeah.
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:AI has not solved that problem.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:it's not, you can sign up with a bolt, but you can't cancel with a bolt.
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:Correct? Correct. It's always a bit like a pain in the ass to actually do the cancel side. And I get it. They're, they're trying to make it that way. On other boring tech news, and I realize it's a weird, a weird way to kind of frame it, uh, there was a story that came, I missed it until Jen pointed it out to me the other, like last night. Um, Google's leaving one of its buildings in San Francisco
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:Wow.
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:it, yeah. And the, the line that they use is basically kind of funny to me because they're saying we're focused on investing in real estate efficiently. to meet the current and future needs of our hybrid workforce. And there's two, there's multiple reasons why this is funny to me. One is that the San Francisco office for Google used to be the most crowded office. Like people talked about, everyone wanted to be in San Francisco because a lot of people lived in San Francisco and they wanted their commutes to be easy. they didn't want to have to go all the way down to Mountain View from San Francisco, which would really suck. it used to be like incredibly like. Like coveted space. The other bit though, that's funny to me is that Google once was very laissez faire about its return to office policy. And it got way more intense about its return to office policy, even trying to get people who went fully remote to come back in. And the final reason why this tickles me a little bit is that if you look on LinkedIn, there's actually lots of jobs that Google is posting despite all its layoffs. But where is it posting those jobs? Lower cost regions.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:Yeah, of course.
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:if you, if you want to be in Mumbai, awesome. We've got a ton of jobs there for you in Google or Mexico or basically someplace else other than the U S what's funny me though, Rob is I kind of question, is this even a real story? Because like, it's only a story. If you like, think of big tech as being some aberration, instead of like, this is just typical company behavior, like, if you sort of accept the fact that, hey, this is what big companies do, it should be a surprise to nobody.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:Yeah, it is. And, but ultimately they are, pandering to their shareholders.
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:But again, like that is, that is like what, like these, what big companies do, like they ultimately basically default back to this notion, not of like, you and I have talked about many times before, Hey, we're a family, not of like, Oh, we're looking to do all this innovation. It's like, Hey, how are we maximizing profits for our shareholders?
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:Yep. That's
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:And that's what it is. And it's like, It's only shocking to people, I think, if you've had some kind of vision of like, Oh, Google's going to be different or all of big tech's going to be different and it'll somehow grow forever. The money will keep flowing forever and it'll never change. And we know that's bullshit.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:Couldn't agree more. And I think it is. I think they're having that, that realization that the money is drying up or at least infinite growth of money's drying up. They still have a crap ton of money. I mean, that's
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:Oh yeah.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:not reducing except that this 10 percent growth per year. But it makes you think of all these MBAs that they hired to run the business. Blah, blah, blah. Does nobody realize that 10 percent growth for years is not sustainable for more than a decade or so? There's
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:Well, I mean,
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:on the wall when you started. It's not like the writing appeared later. It's like, oh crap, we've got to change course. It's just, they got so into themselves of,
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:yeah.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:grow, grow, grow, fund this, fund that, blah, blah, blah. Oh, we've, we've, this 10 percent growth is not there anymore. we're spending
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:was, it was 20 percent growth. It was like, it was like 20 percent year over year growth for a very, for decades. I mean, it was huge and insane. And yeah, you're right. How did no, like no one say this can't last forever. And the reality is this is that, you know, Google and honestly, like Facebook fits into this category as well.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:Well Facebook just ran out of people.
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:Did, but it's still posting incredible revenue numbers.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:Oh, yeah. I mean the numbers are great, but the
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:Yeah.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:they uh, They are kind of admitted like yeah, our growth con is not sustainable because we need more people
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:Right. Right. And that's actually one of the reasons why they, I think they're stopping reporting of user growth and instead focusing on revenue growth. So focusing on how much money per person.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:for sure.
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:Correct.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:don't uh, They just don't have many ways to grow anymore
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:Right.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:people on the planet.
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:And, you know, this connects to the layoff stuff we talked about eons ago too. But I think there's a reality that the Difficult problem that I think Facebook and Google are encountering, and I say difficult somewhat tongue in cheek because, you know, it's a problem of success, is that you eventually go from being a growth company to a value company. Like, even if they didn't grow anymore, they're still kicking off incredible amounts of money. It's just that their stock valuation probably would no longer be recognized as being growth. It'd be recognized as value. And so your, your price to earnings multiple would effectively half at the very least at that point in time. So you can, if you can basically say, Oh, you're a value company, then you probably deserve something around the 15 to one range rather than the 30 to one range,
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:Mm hmm
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:which means that your stock price drops by 50%, like right off the bat of that realization. So I think these guys are fighting as hard as possible tooth and nail to try and stave off that day as much as possible. But the reality is they're becoming IBM
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:All
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:or they became IBM.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:I mean Well, they're all, all the become as a fight in becoming IBM. It's kind of just a life cycle.
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, and again, like one of the ways they're fighting it is part of the road to getting there, which is all these layoffs they've laid off tons of people basically to try and reduce these costs and effectively increase profits. But it takes you down the road to becoming one of these value companies. Cause. You're focusing in on preserving your PNL and the growth of that PNL. You're not focusing on creating new products and that's okay. That's okay, but it's really just about having that maturity to admit that's where you're at, rather than go through a near death spiral that IBM did.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:It's true. And I don't know what they'll do about it, but you sent a link out earlier. That was, uh, pulling away from things that it shouldn't be doing.
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:I did. I did. So, uh, to baseline this for the audience, there's a project called, I think it was like Starline was the name of it? yeah, Project Starline, which is, it's, it's really meant to be a better video conferencing solution. So instead of this. Standard camera that we use, even if we're using something more fun, like a, a, uh, an iPhone as our camera, there's a lot that's missing in there. And so like just doing kind of a background blur is not quite enough. So project starline is neat. I mean, they brought together a whole lot of rendering engineers. That, you know, determines like a wireframe, determines textures in real time, like determines like lots of like cool ambient lighting stuff to make the experience more real. So they have like this beefy set of cameras atop a monitor and then do some real time rendering to make a more realistic interaction when you're doing video conferencing. Now, a classic Google move, and you, you saw this in the Jamboard product, is Google would put out a piece of hardware that it had no right or reason to do so, and then it would deprecate it. like each Jamboard was a monitor that could draw on like a whiteboard. Each one was 5, 000 bucks. And now that product is deprecated. Starline, they did an intelligent thing. They decided to partner with HP who's got a lot of experience in the video conferencing space, especially the professional video conferencing space., we actually at DreamWorks partner with them for our video conferencing solutions back in the, uh, mid two thousands basically. Um, so HP is going to be the one that actually brings this product to bear. So I think this is actually a smart move on Google's part. To at least not try to do it themselves, but then also, like, partner with someone who has experience in hardware to bring this to market. Will it succeed? I don't know. Like, I don't know if it's like, again, kind of a, an overly expensive whiteboard, but at least Google is trying to not, like, do its traditional thing.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:Yeah, I think, I think the whole deprecation of products that you own is something we should talk about on a separate podcast because it goes across the gamut of even from video games to like security cameras to enterprise pieces of hardware.
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:And I think this gets to the general shittiness that we're talking about, which is that, you know, whether it's like thinner iPads or, Hey, we're going to try and put smarter stuff in your TV so you can give us back data so we can train our AI so we can sell you more ads. Like where the fuck is the innovation? Where's the fun? Where's the joy in this anymore? It all feels like, it's just like. Like, everyone's like, grinding at the nub to like, try and eek out a little bit more data, money, like, from whatever sources they've been doing it for eons at this point in time. Like, we're not getting anything new out of it, we're just getting shittier.
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:Yeah, it's true. I mean, that's all it is. It's like, it's the enshitification of everything.
pj_1_05-14-2024_100748:I know, this wasn't the way it was supposed to be. I
rob_1_05-14-2024_100748:And it's a slippery slope. Yeah. No one's taken a huge step from five years ago to today. It's a little bit, a little bit, a little bit. It's only when you look back and think, Oh, that's where we came from.
pj_2_05-14-2024_110522:I think we're back in this overall race to the bottom. We're seeing it across multiple segments at this point in time. And I, again, like one of the, one of the sort of stories that I think is a, a, a non story. And I, this is going to sound heartless from my perspective, but, you know, layoffs have continued. Tesla had a lot of layoffs. I think they laid off about 10%. Video game companies are still laying people off but we predicted this basically 4 months ago that this is going to be continuing. So the. The crappiness basically is taking, you know, it's across the board still.
rob_2_05-14-2024_110522:the layoffs though, it is that just short sightedness at this point, or is it actual bloat from overhiring during COVID times? It's, we're a long way from COVID times. We keep saying COVID times, but it's years ago,
pj_2_05-14-2024_110522:I think covet is, uh, I think it's a red herring. Right at this point in time, I think this is. I think this is. Uh, it's a combination of, of both of what you just said, which is there was over hiring before coven people. Basically, we're not being maximized for their jobs and people weren't being maximized for their skills. It was a lot of empire building. We've talked about this in the past where, you know, if you had a huge set of head count, that was an indication that you were important and you could get promoted to your director level, senior director, VP, SVP, what have you. And that, that basically is really just the bloat that's there. And you notice there's not a whole lot of SVPs being laid off from these, these companies. The other side of it is short sightedness, and it's, it's interesting because I've chatted with people that say that there is a lot of interest in, you know, the, the revenue market that's out there for video games is still huge. It's predicted to be something in like the 400 billion range, I believe. In this year, so the idea that a lot of these video game companies are shrinking down, closing up either is an indication that, hey, like those projects they've been working on, like, we don't think is going to fly, um, or they think that, oh, we're just going to, like, put ourselves behind whatever our big titles are going to be and just, like, take it for granted that that's just going to work. So I think a lot of talent has been kicked out into the marketplace across the board. with this background fear that somehow AI is actually going to make everybody a 10x programmer and therefore you need, you know, one 10th the number of programmers, assuming you're going for the same value, which as we talked about earlier, that's what a lot of these companies are going after, whether it's Google or Facebook, like
rob_2_05-14-2024_110522:but it's going to be bland. You're going to lose all that human creativity. It's
pj_2_05-14-2024_110522:hundred percent.
rob_2_05-14-2024_110522:I get a programmer with AI is better than a programmer without AI, but It's not going to be the same result. And I think
pj_2_05-14-2024_110522:Yeah.
rob_2_05-14-2024_110522:that out at some point.
pj_2_05-14-2024_110522:Uh, here's where I'll counter with that. No, I think what will happen is that The companies that are basically trending towards blue chip companies, bland is fine. Bland is great. Bland basically is cost effective. And these are not companies that are still in their growth, growth phases. They're ultimately trending towards value their value, their blue chip. That's where they're going. I think basically though it, it opens the doorway for something to be innovative, to be not bland. Um, and I, I think this is where, like, the startups basically get to have a lot of really angry people who got laid off from their jobs, who want to do something innovative to actually go and do something innovative. I don't expect it from the big guys. I just don't like if, if really what we're saying is that Apple, which is one of the most lauded companies for being innovative. Give me a pause here for a second, Rob, but like, if what they are able to say is, you know, response to their tasteless commercial aside is we're able to shrink the iPad by 0. 1 millimeters or whatever the hell it is. That's really bland already. Like we're, we've hit blandness, like, like it's, it's, and in some sense, it's really fine. It just means that there's an opening for everyone else now. To be not bland. It means everyone else can do something that's interesting.
rob_2_05-14-2024_110522:Yeah, I'll take that, but it's still
pj_2_05-14-2024_110522:Yeah. I don't want to take anything away from, you know, you know, the, the layoffs basically happening or wrecking people's lives. This is real damage that's being done. And I fully hold the big tech companies accountable for this. Like they created false promises for people over decades. We're a family, the money will last forever. They created entitlement culture. They created promotion culture. They focused on all these things, believing they were above it all. And again, the story gets boring at the end, which is that, Oh, we're going to go back to the old tried and true methods, let's ship jobs overseas. Let's lay off people that are more expensive. Let's utilize, you know, let's utilize AI to like shrink how many human personnel we need. And again, I'm not even, it just is what it is. Like this is what they chose to do and it's fine. I give them sort of no moral high ground though. Like they can't claim to be like these companies that were different. They're just the same as everybody else. And it was,
rob_2_05-14-2024_110522:I mean, they were different for a little bit,
pj_2_05-14-2024_110522:they were different when the money was good, but my, I don't know, my contention always was that when the money's good and free That's what Bell Labs was, like, you know, like how many more, how many more projects can you name beyond C that made it out of Bell Labs?
rob_2_05-14-2024_110522:the transistor.
pj_2_05-14-2024_110522:Okay, I'll grant you that one.
rob_2_05-14-2024_110522:there's a law that came out of Bell Labs.
pj_2_05-14-2024_110522:Um, okay. So the transistor in C but like towards the end, can you like, I can't, it's hard for me to think of anything. I know they did like a lot of formant stuff or like sound and analysis, but it's hard for me to think of a lot of commercial products that came out towards the end. And again, it's like, this was free flowing money that like came their way by virtue of the fact that Ma Bell was a giant monopoly.,, These companies being different were only different because economically they could cast off enough money that they could pretend to be different for years, for decades. And now, they're just boring.
rob_2_05-14-2024_110522:Yep. It is true. That is definitely true. I certainly over big tech.
pj_2_05-14-2024_110522:Yeah. And it's now like the, the, the, opportunity for everybody else, basically, to take that innovation, take that anger, take that opportunity to do something better. Don't make shitty TVs that insert ads over HDMI, you know, make a device that's actually useful.
rob_2_05-14-2024_110522:innovation. The actual, the, the innovation we want is dead. The innovation they want, the things that they say, Oh, it's innovative. It's this it's because it's benefiting them.
pj_2_05-14-2024_110522:Yeah,
rob_2_05-14-2024_110522:And the more it benefits them, the more we are the product.
pj_2_05-14-2024_110522:a hundred percent. I think the innovation is dead at those companies. I don't think, I think the opportunity is not dead for everybody else.
rob_2_05-14-2024_110522:true. But that's what they call innovation. Yes. Samsung's innovation is making shittier TVs from our point of view, but benefit them in. some way because it benefits their bottom line. It benefits their shareholders. Someone just needs
pj_2_05-14-2024_110522:Yeah.
rob_2_05-14-2024_110522:back and be like, that, that, that way's broken. And until somebody does, we're stuck with what we have. It's the innovation is not innovation we want.
pj_2_05-14-2024_110522:The innovation that we're getting basically is all about driving these profits, driving the bottom line. And the, the sad thing is like the pendulum swung so hard because we went from a world where it was like, let's create innovation without. Economic underpinnings to only go towards innovation that drives some kind of economic engine and that pendulum swung so hard because the expectations of growth for these companies were so high if they had done the groundwork in the beginning of trying to create economic models that were actually sustainable. Then we could have an engine that is actually laying golden eggs where it's like, Hey, we don't need to mind your data. Maybe you're paying a subscription for maps at this point in time. But we can create something so that we're providing value in exchange for value. And because no one did that, it was like, let's just make everything free. Let's make it a free for all like we end up in the enshitification of tech.
rob_2_05-14-2024_110522:Yep. Don't have much to add to that.
pj_2_05-14-2024_110522:Then we have to go, let's go break all these economics models now, Rob.
rob_2_05-14-2024_110522:I think the mass majority of people don't want to break these models. I think they want the cheap products and are willing to give up the data. And it's only when you realize that a little bit here, a little bit there, a little bit there individually don't mean much, but when it's everywhere and you add them all up, it becomes a huge amount. It's like a subscription. Yeah. It's. It's five bucks here, eight dollars there, twelve dollars there. Individually, no one cares, it's the cost of a beer. But you add them up, and you realize how many you have, and the ones you forgot about, blah blah blah, and it's hundreds of dollars a month that you're spending on subscriptions, like you don't really use.
pj_2_05-14-2024_110522:I mean, that's especially true of a lot of these like streaming services at this point in time. It's funny when you, when you talk about, Hey, give this up, you give that up. I'm reminded of the Ben Franklin quote, which he had said something along the lines of, you know, those who are willing to give up their freedom. Yeah. For security are deserving of neither something along those lines. And in this case, basically what we're talking about is like giving up our privacy.
rob_2_05-14-2024_110522:It's the same thing, yeah.
pj_2_05-14-2024_110522:I have this, this potential thesis basically is that in this, you know, drive towards ads in this drive towards an exchange of Time for, free content, quote unquote, free content. We've effectively devalued our own time. We've basically said that, Oh, I'll, you know, I don't mind giving up this, you know, bit of my time in order to get something free, we've increasingly effectively said our time is worthless.
rob_2_05-14-2024_110522:And our data's worthless, our info is worthless, because we'll give it to anybody for anything if it's cheap enough.
pj_2_05-14-2024_110522:Right. Right. Like we just don't care. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
rob_2_05-14-2024_110522:And it's been, like I said, it's been step by step by step, little tiny steps here and there. I think people are starting to wake up that their data is valuable, but we have a long way to go to, uh, make people realize what they're actually giving up. And people always, a good example is people always suspect that Facebook is, listening to you because you have a conversation about something somewhere and then it gives you ads. And the point is, is you've spilled so much information. They don't even need to listen to you. It's, it would be more expensive than them to actually listen on your microphone on your phone and avoid all the Apple stuff and the Google stuff that indicates the microphone is being used, blah, blah, blah. Uploading all that audio, processing all that audio to figure out what you're talking about so they can give you ads. They don't need to, they already know, they have so much information on you from trackers and things like that, that you, that would be a ridiculous path to go down. They don't literally don't need to, they gain nothing from it. They already know way more than you think. At this point, it's just a data grab, get as much data as you can from as many sources as you can,
pj_2_05-14-2024_110522:Right.
rob_2_05-14-2024_110522:we don't mine it today, we can go back and mine it. Like, retro mining is a very big industry right now because there's a lot of data that was never processed with modern tech. And in 10 years, tech will be better. So the data we're giving up today will be reprocessed.
pj_2_05-14-2024_110522:Yes.
rob_2_05-14-2024_110522:that itself is data.
pj_2_05-14-2024_110522:And the data now is actually likely going to be more valuable and cleaner than the data in ten years, because once we start unleashing, like, AIs generating content out there, it is definitely the snake eating its own tail.
rob_2_05-14-2024_110522:Yeah, this is peak, peak real data is,
pj_2_05-14-2024_110522:Right.
rob_2_05-14-2024_110522:at right now.
pj_2_05-14-2024_110522:Right. This is before the AIs have flooded the market, so like, who knows, man, maybe this is the height of civilization.
rob_2_05-14-2024_110522:Who knows, but, uh, we have to do something about the amount of data that's being gathered from everywhere. I mean, even calls and. device that exists is now connected to the internet and gathers data in any way it can,
pj_2_05-14-2024_110522:Yeah.
rob_2_05-14-2024_110522:either directly or indirectly.
pj_2_05-14-2024_110522:I'm momentarily saddened by it because I mean, this is exactly how we get Samsung's, uh, sending data back, like from the smart TVs.
rob_2_05-14-2024_110522:we need to get them to stop. And
pj_2_05-14-2024_110522:Right.
rob_2_05-14-2024_110522:hard part. And it all, it all fits together somehow.
pj_2_05-14-2024_110522:It does. We need, we need something where it's, we have innovation, economic sustainability, and taking back people's privacy.
rob_2_05-14-2024_110522:You're not going to be able to use any of these devices for anything that the original manufacturer didn't consider. Which is another problem. It's like, we want to cross use these devices. This would be good for this or whatever. It's it's when the manufacturer locks everything down and decides whether you can or can't do that. Is it really your device?
pj_2_05-14-2024_110522:No. It's not. It belongs to the ecosystem.
rob_2_05-14-2024_110522:or companies like that need to make products. Tell us why we want that product and then let us decide if that's the same story. your story through protections and encryption and things like that isn't the, isn't the free market.
pj_2_05-14-2024_110522:Mm mm.
rob_2_05-14-2024_110522:your story and your side of the story is correct, but we don't know if there's a better way because we never got a chance to try it.
pj_2_05-14-2024_110522:Yeah. We're ending up basically with these little dictatorships that are effectively each of the individual tech companies that own a different piece of the sphere and are increasingly not competing with each other, but they're ossified into. A very comfortable, like fiefdom model.
rob_2_05-14-2024_110522:Yeah. Well, they all find a little spot. Yeah. They initially compete in some areas, but the pie is big enough that each one gets a little bit. They kind of compete at the edges of those slices and, and that's it. There's the Apple camp. There's the Google camp. They, they do what they do. There's a little bit of overlap. There's some people who switch back and forth and there's some people who'll never switch back and forth.
pj_2_05-14-2024_110522:Yeah.
rob_2_05-14-2024_110522:they're basically only competing for the people who will switch.
pj_2_05-14-2024_110522:Yeah, it's true.
rob_2_05-14-2024_110522:The rest of the market's pretty stable. It's a perfect example. It's the people in the Google camp. There's a few old switch. And if I have a friend, I switched years ago. but there are some who just don't like the way Apple does business and they don't like the closed wall system that's fine. You'll never convince those people to switch. So that's not even an Apple customer. It's the people in the edges. So that says it's a pie that you've divided and it's against the edges of the slices where people move around. The slices might change size a little bit.
pj_2_05-14-2024_110522:yeah,
rob_2_05-14-2024_110522:by culture. It varies by, uh, socioeconomic status. It varies by country. It's all different everywhere, but it's always the same setup. It's like, there's, there's a thin margin of people who is actually your market.
pj_2_05-14-2024_110522:right. Otherwise everyone just kind of stays in their lane. I mean, I'm thinking about this from a product perspective. Like, Google attempted a couple of times to do a social network and then turned it down. So there was no, they didn't really ever have a serious competitor to Facebook. Facebook basically bought the serious competitors for its social network, basically Instagram and to a certain extent WhatsApp. Who knows what Apple will do with the Apple Vision Pro, but I could also see them turning that down and basically making Oculus still the reigning champ in that area.
rob_2_05-14-2024_110522:The vision pro is a good example. Like in a year, Apple decided to get out of the AR space. What happens to the vision pro? 3,
pj_2_05-14-2024_110522:yeah, yeah,
rob_2_05-14-2024_110522:piece of hardware that without of backend support isn't, uh, really usable.
pj_2_05-14-2024_110522:I don't know, man. I
rob_2_05-14-2024_110522:And Apple have got no statement made as to how long they're going to support this thing for. They could stop supporting at any point in time. And your investment is now just a paperweight.
pj_2_05-14-2024_110522:And that's it. Like there's not really competition. They're just kind of settled in their niches that serve different purposes for people. As I said, let's go break the model.