Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Apple vs The Paradox of Choice!”.
Hey what’s up I’m Kim PhD here, so you know those fish that suction themselves to sharks, and you always see them along the side of sharks like they follow the shark everywhere they go swimming alongside it usually attached to it. It’S called The remora fish and they are fascinating creatures. They have this relationship, that’s kind of amazing for the Remora it gets to snack on the scraps of whatever the shark is eating, and it has a 24 7 bodyguard, basically and a shark allows it to do that, because it’ll also eat parasites off the shark’s back, Keeps it clean it’s a win-win: they have a symbiotic relationship, meaning they both benefit, but really really there are more fish definitely needs the shark way more than the other way around. So you never really see them out in the wild without some sort of host or something to attach to now in the tech. World apple is that shark and there are a whole bunch of companies.
You’Ve probably heard of them whose primary business function happens to be an accessory that attaches to something Apple does, and that is a dangerous place to live. So this whole dynamic is it’s so fascinating to watch, because there’s so many examples of it now. Of course, air tags is, you know the one recent announcement. That’S got me thinking a lot about this lately, but really anytime Apple enters a new product category. It gets a lot of attention because it’s interesting like how will Apple do it the apple way? Will they separate themselves from the competition or do anything technically different and air tags? They have some legitimately unique features.
The little Precision find feature makes for a cool demo, but Bluetooth trackers are not new. Not even close. Uh tile has been making these things since 2013 and they do fundamentally the same thing. They help you find whatever they’re attached to by pinging other phones around that have the Tile app, which creates the community mesh Network and help. You find your thing plus there’s a couple other features and a variety of shapes and sizes and tiles also built in to some other items, but for the core function of finding your thing. Air tags have a massive Advantage, which is their network, isn’t just people using the Tile app. It’S all the stuff on Apple’s find my network. So it’s iPhones, it’s iPads. It’S Max and they’ll all passively update the position of something near it anytime. It’S around a device on that Network, it’s frictionless, it happens silently and effortlessly. In the background you don’t even know what’s happening and the network is massive.
It’S approaching a billion devices, so there are some best case. Estimates that put tile’s presence in some of the most densely populated cities in the world like Manhattan and San Francisco at one tile user per block, meaning you can’t go more than a block without encountering a tile that will update the location on the network, which is Pretty impressive, but when you think about those same blocks in those same cities, you’re gon na get what a dozen plus iPhones and Macs and iPads and that’s not even considering all of the other less populated areas. So immediately Lee Apple’s ability to plug a feature into the iPhone gave them a huge advantage over the competition. That is the theme, so I already made a video called.
The Apple ecosystem explained I’ll link it below the like button. If you haven’t seen it already, but I talk about why people keep choosing the iPhone just because of the walls around the ecosystem. But here’s another thought because of Apple’s ability to plug things into the ecosystem, especially with the iPhone Apple, can kill entire companies. But they don’t do it menacingly, they do it so nicely by presenting it as a choice on a silver platter, less than a month ago, Apple actually opened up the find my network to allow third-party accessories to take advantage of this incredible Network right. So out of the gate, there were e-bikes and earbuds and conveniently and other cheap plastic Bluetooth tracker that you can find based on nearby devices in this network. Amazing.
So now for tile, there’s technically a choice: you can make a tile, that’s compatible with Apple’s find my network or not it’s a choice, pretty simple, but it’s actually a bit of a paradox of choice because either way you choose Apple still wins. So let’s say they choose to make a compatible tile that works in the find my iOS ecosystem. That seems great right. It works great for the users they take advantage of that better network. But now that means a portion of new tile customers who were going to buy a regular tile that plugs into and improves the tile network will actually be plugging into and improving Apple’s network. Instead, the plug-in to find my and they won’t use the Tile app for locating a device which means now tile, is selling a product that actively hurts their own business and makes their own network less desirable over time.
So the other choice is to not participate in the find my network and not offer a tile that works with it, which just means you’re missing out on those sales and they’re less appealing Network slowly dies over time as people just buy the ones with the more Deeply compatible iPhone but hey technically, it’s a choice. Right, look, look how friendly this guy is. He would he would never force you to do anything he didn’t want to you can just you can choose to work with the iPhone or not it’s up to. You could also choose to swim off into the rest of the ocean or you could stay swimming with me.
The shark makes sense right. I’D actually argue. This Paradox of choice happens twice with air tags, so once with Kyle, as we just saw, but also again for the customer. So, if you’re an iPhone user now, technically you have a choice between the two different options, which one is going to require a separate app and has a much smaller Network and the other just kind of plugs right in and seamlessly works in the background and not Much thought to it and they’re around the same price, see what I’m getting at now.
Apple apple will always repeat day in and day out. There is competition, we have competition and you can always choose our competition over the product we make but Apple’s smart. So obviously they know they have deep Market penetration with the iPhone, and so when they want to leverage that to jump into a new product category they’ll. Do it every time they’ve done it before Apple watch is maybe the most popular watch on Earth.
I think they’ve said this before and airpods are honestly some of the most popular wireless earbuds ever made, that’s because of the iPhone, but it’s even more fascinating when they literally kill whole companies like when the shark decides to close its mouth and eat the fish. That was cleaning its teeth. Apple’S done this so many times. I’Ve got four more examples for you: uh each one of them a little bit more brutal than the last, so I’m going to rank them on a scale of one to ten one being a light.
Scratch 10 being absolutely finished on how bad apple left them after they jumped into the new product category and if you’ll notice they’re all on the back of this Paradox of choice, so flux or F dot Lux, you might have heard of them. They are an app that lets. You change the color temperature of your screen right, so it’ll adjust to have more or less blue light output, and it can automatically make your screen warmer and dimmer the later it gets in the day. Flux used to be in Apple’s app stores, but then in 2015 they were kicked out and Apple’s reasoning was developers can’t take advantage of the use of certain private apis, so it seems reasonable.
We all know Apple’s been very specific about the way you know Macs and iPhones and iPads should look and feel. But what feels weird about that? One specifically is later that year, Apple came out with an update or they built in that exact functionality into the OS themselves. It’S on the Mac behind me. It’S called night shift so with night shift, your iPhone or iPad or Mac can get warmer or cooler based on the time of day or where you’re at, and it can set a schedule for when you want that to happen.
Super useful, of course, and convenient now that it’s baked in so now you’re a Mac User. You’Ve got a choice. You can. You can go to the flux website and download it since it’s not in the App Store anymore and then approve it through security and then set it up and get the schedule going or you can just use the one built into system preferences. But she have a choice: I’m giving this one a 5 out of 10 only because Apple could only kill half the company when it’s also available on Windows and on Android, if you root, but also Android’s added some of this functionality. Windows 10 has added some of this functionality, so all of them combined would make it about a 10 out of 10, but Apple could only kill half all right.
So then there are iPad styluses and this isn’t one company so much as it’s like a whole product category that sort of got pummeled when Apple decided to enter so there’s a big Variety in this space. There’S the markers and pens and pencils and styluses that can all write on the iPad Surface, and so you can get anything from Ultra cheap to Ultra Premium, depending on what you want it to do, and then Apple just drops in at the high end, with the Apple pencil now the apple pencil, as we all know, works with and plugs into the iPad Pro better than any other stylus. I would say literally because of the first gen apple pencil, but no other iPad, Pro stylus slaps onto the side of the iPad pad magnetically and pairs instantly and charges while sitting there. It works with all of iPad os’s built-in tools and minimizes latency.
With that high refresh rate display. It is the best possible implementation of an iPad Pro input device. Plus, I can imagine in future versions of the apple pencil having a U1 chip right. It would make a lot of sense. You can add it to the find my network.
You can direct your iPhone to find it when you lose it. We all know: we’ve lost that pencil before there’s just no way to justify buying a different stylus for 100 bucks. For the iPad I mean you: can you have that choice? So I’m going to give this one like a six six or seven just because you can still buy the cheaper ones if you just want a very simple input device, normal stylus, but the second you go.
100, bucks plus that whole category really hard to compete with the apple pencil. So, okay, then there’s duet display. So you might not have heard of this one, but you probably have heard of sidecar the feature right that lets. You use your iPad as a second display for your Mac.
What you might not know is duet display is an app and a company. That’S been built to do exactly this for a long time, much before a sidecar existed and just like flux, you know it still exists, still got Windows and Android and even Chrome OS versions, and it actually does still work for iPad. But you can imagine most people who are just searching for something on Google like how to use an iPad as a second display. Sidecar is going to come up the majority of the time and it’s going to be the easiest way to do it. Plugging straight into iPad OS, the majority of the time so duet display, does have a couple extra features on top of sidecar like you, you can use the touch screen while you’re mirroring, but still like flux and like tile, but most people are just going to be Satisfied with the first party built-in version, so I’m going to give this a seven, because there’s still the windows users with iPads we’re still going to make that happen. So last but not least, there is Watson and this one probably hurts the most.
So this was a Search tool in the Mac that let you search the web and and search all kinds of other things without actually having to open up your browser and their tagline was actually an Innovative utility that bypasses the web browser. But, as you probably already know, Apple came out with Sherlock 3, which was then called a spotlight which is in everything they make now. I use it all the time and it does exactly the same thing search the web search, your Mac search whatever also the Mac. Does it the iPhone? Does it the iPad? Does it Android phones? Do it like you can still technically choose to download This original? But look at their website like you can imagine. There hasn’t been a good reason for people to download Watson in a long time if this is what their website still looks like that, that I’m going to say, is a 10 out of 10 rip completely gone right. Alongside like the flashlight app, you remember those when you used to be able to download a flashlight app on the iPhone, then Apple literally built it into the lock screen on iOS and now there’s no reason to download a flashlight app. I mean you can choose to technically, but you’re not going to. So all this is a dynamic.
I encourage you to pay attention to the shark and the Remora of the tech world right and there’s a lot of this talk going on in in the public sphere. Already, with the the whole Anti-Trust and the Walled Garden talks funny enough, the day after air tags were announced, tile testified in front of Congress to explain how Apple was leveraging an unfair advantage to enter that market. But of course Apple would argue. No, we didn’t we.
Let people choose, we gave people a choice. Everyone had a choice you could plug in to the find my network. If you wanted to or not that’s up to you, you can do it the apple way or not, and whichever product people decide to buy so be it. So I don’t think there’s any correct answer. There’S no easy right answer, but what do you think should Apple? Not be allowed to plug into their own ecosystem and leverage that to make new great products or does Apple have too much power in that way. But I encourage you to pay attention to when Apple inevitably enters even more new product categories like when they make an AR headset or a camera or whatever other new product. They do end up making watch how much they plug in to that ecosystem in ways that their competition literally can’t and watch how those fish respond to the shark, but either way it’s crazy to think about how far Apple has come from being a small company. Out of a garage to literally one of the biggest companies ever to exist, mostly on the backs of the iPhone speaking of which my friend Renee Ritchie, also he’s made a nebula original on the introduction of that original iPhone with a bunch of Industry.
Folks, including myself, talking about you, know the fact that that made such huge Ripples and the first keynote and what that original iPhone meant. So you can watch that whole thing on nebula, a video streaming service built by independent creators, including myself, and that is bundled with this video’s sponsor curiosity Stream. So nebula is already pretty dope. There’S a lot of the smartest creators. I know on their minute physics, Tech alter Renee Ritchie, as I mentioned all using nebula, to share their best stuff and sometimes even trying new stuff that doesn’t quite work on YouTube. So I’ve been putting my videos on nebula ad free, so you’re welcome for the info on how to watch the videos without sponsors as a sponsor.
It’S getting pretty meta. But besides that, Curiosity stream is a subscription service sort of built to, like my exact tastes, it’s a home to all kinds of thousands of documentaries and shows about technology and futurism and culture and invention and the Social Web. All that kind of stuff.
Just look at this category drop down on the site. I mean that’s pretty amazing. I feel like I’m perfectly in the Target demographic and, if you watch my videos or enjoy them, you probably would like these too there’s one called Shark family tree which looks at how incredible great white sharks are they’re all in 4k.
There’S also plenty more where I can learn way too much about sharks, so I encourage you to check them out. So since the two together are kind of a no-brainer, you can use my code or the link below to get both nebula and curiosity stream, bundled together. I have a feeling I’m going to be recommending a lot more of this stuff in the future, either way, that’s been it again. Let me know what you think of the Apple Paradox of choice, I’ll talk to you guys in the next one, peace .