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Tony, welcome to Giant Ideas.
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>> Tommy, great to be here. Thanks for having me.
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>> I've been trying to get you to do this for literally years, and so I'm really excited that you're you're going to do it.
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And tomorrow I'm seeing you do something with with Al Gore.
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So, I'm going to have to beat Al Gore in terms of the quality of my questions today.
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Well, I I >> It sounds like it's a great competition for the listeners. >> Let's see.
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Let's see where we get to.
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Um let's talk about the the iPod and the iPhone.
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You co-invented the iPhone. You invented the iPod.
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I [snorts] want to hear what do people miss when people talk about the story of these incredible sort of smash-hit products which totally changed the world.
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So much has been written and said about them.
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But when the historians come to look at this, which they will, what do you think people miss about why these things happened, why they were so powerful, why they worked, what did Apple and you guys get so right, what do people not understand?
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>> In the case of the iPod, Apple was not the company you knew it today, which is multi-trillion-dollar company.
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It was worth like three to four billion dollars, which today, you know, is a round for a almost a series B company.
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Yeah, it's like, "Okay, yeah, that's how much you get for a round, you know, not even profitable."
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So, it was worth not almost anything.
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It had less than 1% market share.
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And so, Apple was on the ropes.
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Steve had already been back a couple of years. Right.
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He launched the the iMac, these gel Lifesaver-colored uh Macintoshes. >> Yes.
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>> And it was going to be, "Okay, Apple's back."
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And Apple had a kind of a resurgence for a few quarters with the new iMac, and then it all collapsed again because there were not people weren't going to move from Windows machines, PCs, over to Mac. It was just too hard.
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It was just It wasn't happening. >> Yeah.
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>> There was no Apple retail.
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Apple was in debt of 500 million dollars.
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It was barely break even.
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Apple was on its last legs. >> Right. >> Okay?
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So, Michael Dell said, famously, "Just close Apple down, give the money back to the shareholders. That's it. Apple's over.
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That was even after the iMac. This was after the iMac.
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>> Cuz that's that is kind of a lighted that that gap in history, isn't it?
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Where people just look back and go, "Yeah, they did the iMac and then it was all up into the right."
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>> Yeah, no, no, the iMac and then the shares crashed. >> Right.
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>> The shares crashed cuz there's no more demand. >> Right.
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>> And it was they were sitting there and they were still doing the okay, we're better than Windows, we're better than Windows, but the nobody wanted to move back. Like it was too hard.
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There wasn't enough software.
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That was when Microsoft famously invested in Apple. >> Right. >> To help it.
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When Apple had to sell its arm shares.
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It had It had arm shares back in the day cuz it was one of the first investors.
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It sold those to keep the company alive. >> Wow. >> Okay?
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So very, very different thing.
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So So when you say you're going to build an iPod >> Mhm.
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[clears throat] >> and many people in the team didn't want to do that because there was no cash. >> Okay.
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>> It was like, you're going to distract everyone from this fight we're in. >> Yeah.
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>> For this, it is a it's an existential it's an existential question that and and decision that's going to be made saying, "Okay, the Mac is this other thing.
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This iPod thing is going to help sell more Macs.
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We're going to go for consumer electronics.
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We've never done that before for the most part.
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We're going to make that happen."
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And so when you do that, it's a huge bet.
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Now, I had been in the in the valley for 10 years. >> Mhm.
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>> And I had gone through countless failures starting with General Magic or whatever.
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So and Apple is a failing company again even with Steve back at the helm. Why would I even join?
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So why should a company go off its script?
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Why should other people join the company who who watched from the outside? It doesn't look good.
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>> And and so what is the answer to all these questions?
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Why why did they why did Steve Jobs take the risk?
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Why did you did Why did you take the risk to do this?
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>> Okay, so yeah, all those are very good questions.
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So, the first thing was when Steve said, you know, it's kind of like, you know, Thomas Edison's No, excuse me, Albert Einstein's definition of insanity.
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Try to keep this doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. >> Right.
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>> So, if you think of that, like, okay, they're sitting here Mac versus PC, Mac versus PC, and it's not going anywhere. Right?
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So, it's like, what are we going to do?
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What are we going to do differently?
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And so, this was the different thing, which was we're going to get back into consumers' hands because they love music and they're going to use iTunes on a Mac and they're going to use an iPod.
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So, the only way you're going to sell more Macs is be by selling iPods because people need to have Macs for that iPod to work. >> Mhm.
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>> [clears throat] >> Which was a strategy, but it didn't work >> right away. >> Right.
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>> So, we shipped it after 10 months of the burn the boats, we're going to make this iPod.
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We make a really great first generation product.
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And it sold for a quarter or two, and then the sales stopped. >> Okay. >> And why?
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Because nobody else had Macs.
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And it didn't work with anything else. >> Right.
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>> And so, Steve's like, we got to fix the product, we got to change these things.
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So, we changed the product and then and all the time the the team and I were all going, we have to work on Windows, we have to work on Windows.
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And he's like, no, we're going to sell more Macs because of the iPod.
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And [snorts] and and at the end of the day, the third generation iPod finally took off. Why?
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Because it worked on a on a on a Windows machine.
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>> Okay, so Steve said no to that until >> Steve said no to a Windows Windows compatible iPod Yeah.
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for two generations of the iPod, the first two generations, because he wanted to sell more Macs. Okay.
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And the argument was, and I made and other people made on the team was, you're you've now taken a $300 iPod and made it $2,700. Right.
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Cuz you have to buy a Mac, too, and you have to switch your life over. Yeah.
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So, you were making the switching cost really, really high to get into Apple. Let's make it cheaper. >> Okay.
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And and how did that argument eventually How did you prevail in the end?
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>> How did we prevail in the end?
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That was the That was the interesting piece, which was we had to go to a third party.
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His name was Walt Mossberg.
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He didn't know this, but Walt Mossberg was the tech tech writer that everybody wanted to be at at The Wall Street Journal.
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He was the person before Kara Swisher, before you know, Joanna Stern, before all of them. He was the OG.
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Okay, great guy, and he set the tone for how people would review any product because he was able to make it very consumer.
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So, we created an I I So, so we were at odds, and Steve was like, "No, no, no."
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And we were like, "Yes, yes, yes."
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And so, ultimately, we had to go to an opinion-based decision.
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Steve didn't want to make that opinion-based decision.
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Neither did We couldn't as the team.
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Steve had to make the decision.
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So, he said, "I'm going to let Walt Mossberg tell us, the number one tech reviewer, if this iPod on Windows is good enough to ship or not, because he's going to set the tone.
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So, he's going to do But he didn't know this." >> Okay.
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>> So, we we set up a demo. He tried it.
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He's like, "Yeah, it seems pretty good to me." You know?
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And so, Steve said, "Okay, we're going to do it because Walt said it was okay." >> Yeah, yeah.
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>> So, that was the really interesting thing cuz he didn't want to make the decision one way or another. He'd say he was wrong. >> Yeah, yeah.
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I told Steve, "You know, if you'd have just listened to us 2 years ago, you know?" >> Yeah, yeah, whatever.
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That you know, sometimes [laughter] it Like I've always said at Apple, when we were working under Steve, sometimes there were insane decisions being made.
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Absolutely insane decisions made.
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And I And I learned over the time over my 10 years there.
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I was like, "Sanity will prevail.
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It's just a matter of time." >> Okay.
7:54
And so, but just going back a bit, tell us a little bit about your your vision for the iPod and how you came up with the idea and, you know, what what was it about this thing?
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Cuz there were MP3 players before.
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I remember having one before and, you know, they kind of did roughly the same thing.
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But they were just, you know, orders of magnitude less beautiful, less exciting.
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How did you What was your vision?
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>> Well, so the the first thing was, you know, I was started as a consultant.
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They hired me and as a consultant, they bought iTunes.
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Um Jeff Robin and iTunes it was bought and then they were became iTunes.
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And said, "We're trying to use these MP3 players out there like you you you mentioned, but they're they don't hold enough songs.
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They don't have good battery life.
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They Or they hold a lot of songs and they take forever to transfer.
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And the interface, if you have lots of songs, it does So, we've tried for a few months now to make it work.
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It They're horrible experiences.
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What would an Apple experience be?
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An Apple product be in a for this?
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And we didn't have the name iPod at the time, obviously.
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This was um February 2001. >> Okay. >> Okay?
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And so, what had happened then was I had already had a startup company making MP3 players, rack mount ones. >> Right.
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>> Looking at the future of what what um what a portable one would look like.
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I was already making portable little devices for 10 years.
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So, I I had a a mix, you know, of things and I was a a DJ as well.
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So, I was carrying all these CDs with me around to go between gigs.
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So, they're very heavy, all the plastic and everything.
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And so, I I had been working on handhelds handhelds and I was like, "Oh, here's this We were doing we were the first handheld to do audiobooks."
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So, um Audible audiobooks like on the the Amazon store, we were the first product at Philips to make Audible audiobooks work on a handheld. And it was like, "Oh."
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And I'm looking at my DJ stuff and I'm like, "This could be music."
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So, and then MP3 player and I'm like, "Wait a second, we could make a handheld."
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So, it first started as a rack mount pivot player like literally under your TV.
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And then it was ultimately going to be a um a portable product.
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So, I had already been working on this for a few years with a a couple of people.
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And then Apple called and I was like, "Oh, yeah, I know something about this.
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Let me rescan the market."
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And I found a company called Portal Player that had um had a low-power chip for rack-mounted MP3 players, but it was low enough power to make it battery-operated. >> Oh. >> Okay, that's cool.
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And then what we're like is, "Wait a second, what do we need to do to make an Apple-like product?"
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So, well, first it has to be low power, it has to fit 1,000 songs.
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There was a hard drive that came out in January 2001 from Toshiba that allowed us to store basically 1,000 songs.
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It was five 4 GB or 5 GB drive.
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And we could store 1,000 songs on that drive on a hard drive.
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So, hard drive, battery, processor. Okay, with display.
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We need to have a enough of a display, a bigger calculator display that could just write to display text.
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But it was not fancy, it was just it was it was black and white or grayscale. Okay, great.
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Okay, then the interface.
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So, it was all about what were all the problems, make a better interface, make it really fast.
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So, we gave it FireWire, make sure it could charge fast.
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FireWire you could charge over it.
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So, it was all of these things, better, better, better combine fit in your pocket with a thousand songs and it worked with iTunes.
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So, all of those pieces came together because of the problems we saw with the current existing players as well as what would we love to have, which would be the next generation Sony Walkman, which was, you know, my love growing up those and and people on the team.
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So, it was really about bringing a better music experience into the digital world where you could have a thousand songs in your pocket.
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Was fast to transfer, fast to select, listen to anything and take all the music to back then all your music with you wherever you went. >> Yeah.
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And the tagline that that does kind of still stay in the mind is a thousand songs in your pocket.
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>> Yeah, you know, today everyone's got unlimited songs in their pocket.
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They got unlimited everything on their pocket.
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But back then there was no connection.
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There was no mobile data network or anything.
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So, you got a thousand songs.
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And for us older people, that was like insane.
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That was, you know, that was a hundred CDs of content. Right?
12:33
>> Let's talk a little bit about some of the products making philosophy that you you had at the time and you developed.
12:38
Tell us a little bit about the concept of habituation.
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>> Steve had a a saying that always was stay beginner. Stay beginner.
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And what that really meant was look at the thing you're making and the marketing and the customer journey as if you were a beginner, as if you have fresh eyes. What confuses you?
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What it it what excites you?
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What And remember that each of our customers are beginners.
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And so, don't habituate away a problem that might be inside the inside the device or the product because we've used it enough times and we're like it's fine.
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So, habituation like a perfect example is you know, you wake up and you get in the shower in the morning and the handle's a little sticky, you know, to set the temperature or the the volume of your of your shower.
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And you're like, "Eh, eh, eh, eh."
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And you keep wiggling it till you get exactly the right volume and the right temperature.
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But it you and it's just cuz you're tired in the morning.
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It After four or five times, you're just like, "Well, okay, whatever. Okay, whatever."
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And you just kind of go through the motions.
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Well, that's habituation, right? >> Okay.
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>> So, if you were that same guy, gal, waking up in the morning and it wouldn't get right to that temperature you wanted right away, you would be mad, right?
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And so, you have to remember those emotions at that very very interaction with that new experience. >> Yes.
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>> And so, stay beginner and then so that you can see the things that might be habituated away so you can fix them.
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So, you can delight the user as they as they use the product.
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In in all in all respects.
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>> One of the great examples I thought of that was this idea of charge before use, which still today, I got my kid a toy the other day. So excited. Package comes.
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It's like a little remote control car.
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And then, there's the enormous deflation of you then have to charge this thing for for an hour.
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You know, and you're just crashing this four-year-old's dreams. >> Yeah.
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>> [laughter] >> You know, you're like, "I I I just bought it. I I'm excited.
14:45
I want to go use it to rip it apart and then I got to charge it."
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And it could take a half an hour, could take three hours. Like, "I got to wait." Don't do that.
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And so, what was really interesting um was we were using a new Now, it's very old, but it was a first for one of the very first consumer products that used lithium-ion batteries or lithium polymer batteries, to be to to to be clear.
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And it could save charge over a long period of time.
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The previous generations nickel-cadmium, nickel-metal hydride, they would self-discharge over a period of 30-40 days.
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Well, lith- lithium ion could store it for a long time.
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That's why electric cars and everything now.
15:29
So, okay, we needed to also test the hard drive.
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We would test these things and we was called burn-in and we would burn in the hard drives for 2 to 3 hours before we'd let them leave the factory to make sure that the hard drive the delicate hard drive was working well.
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So, that was the same exact time we could use to charge it.
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So, we charged the product at the same time as we tested the product and we could wrap it up and ship it right away and it would stay charged for months, 6 to 9 months.
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And so, when people woke got it out of the got it out of the the package, they could use it right away.
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And that was like, "Duh."
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Like, "What do you Are you kidding me?"
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Like, today that's like it's kind of a table stakes.
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>> What about the virus of doubt?
16:15
>> So, there's a term I coined and it is to reawaken people to those things that they've habituated away.
16:27
So, specifically in the case of Nest, the Nest learning thermostat, we had a whole set of virus of doubt lines that we would use to remind people because so, we were Nest, we're making a thermostat.
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We're making a smart AI the first AI consumer product that I know of ever in a home.
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We didn't call it AI then, we called it the learning thermostat, but it was AI. Right.
16:50
Um to get people to save energy and to be more comfortable around, you know, around their house.
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And so, most people had forgotten about the thermostat.
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The thermostat was there since they were a kid.
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It was the same damn thermostat.
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It was ugly for the most part.
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You didn't know how to use it.
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Um in a lot of ways it It hidden away.
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Usually it was painted over with something. It was just this thing.
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It was a utility thing that no one cared about.
17:23
So, through that, people have habituated away a thermostat. What? A thermostat What?
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What is What does that have to do with anything?
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Who cares about a thermostat?
17:32
So, the virus of doubt lines were specifically, you know that box that no that's unloved, that no everyone touches and fights over because of the temperature not being right?
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Do you know that ugly box that you hate?
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So, remember, now think of each line we're using here.
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Making people remember that it's ugly. They hate using it. They fight over it.
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By the way, you know that box you hate cost you half of your energy bill every year because you're dumping money into your heating and cooling.
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That's the most expensive energy use device in your house that you hate, that you fight over, that's ugly.
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So, you keep creating these virus of doubt.
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So, you keep reminding people, you know that thing? You know that thing?
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And you say, there could be a better way.
18:20
What if it was to learn the temperatures you like?
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What if it was to turn on when you're only there and turn off immediately when you left the house? Those kinds of things.
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So, you first set up like, remember all those horrible things of this thing?
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This thing that you don't even consider anymore?
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And now let's give you a much better way.
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So, you first start with the virus of doubt to to dehabituate people from those those learned experiences of just I don't want to deal with that anymore.
18:52
>> You see, that's really interesting because I think it gets to what people I think know about Steve Jobs and and Apple and the culture you guys built of, you know, consumers almost don't know what they want, right?
19:00
But then when you give it to them, you just delight them to extraordinary levels. >> Correct. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
19:05
You have to You have to understand like, what is the pain you're trying to solve?
19:10
And it was really about understanding the pain, giving them a painkiller for that pain, and then hopefully making it a superpower for them.
19:23
Making it into something that was like, "Oh my god, I didn't know that this could exist.
19:27
I didn't know I could and I want this and it makes my life better in certain ways or what have you."
19:32
And so, that was the that was the the you know, kind of you had to walk through that um when you were making the product and designing the product to understand what the journey was you were taking users on.
19:47
And it had to start with pain.
19:49
>> Painkiller, not a vitamin. >> No, yes.
19:51
Pain painkillers, not vitamins as you say.
19:55
Um because you don't vitamins like at the end of the day, um you don't have to take vitamins.
20:01
They're probably good for you in certain cases and certain types of, you know, people. But, pain, oh my god.
20:05
When you have neck pain, when you have neck pain, when you have a headache, when you have a you're like, "Give me whatever it is to get rid of this pain.
20:12
I have to have it, right?"
20:14
Vi- vitamins, yeah, well, you maybe maybe in a month or two I'll feel better.
20:20
It's not going to solve my problem right now.
20:22
What pain was the iPhone solving?
20:25
Oh, that was that So, at General Magic, movie that everybody should watch.
20:29
But, it what we were doing we were solving the the the iPhone, we were building the iPhone 15 years too early.
20:39
And so, here's the pains we were solving at General Magic. None.
20:45
>> [laughter] >> We were making downloadable email uh and internationally mailing downloadable games uh e-ticketing.
20:51
We were making all kinds of We were making uh search before the internet.
20:57
We were doing all this stuff in '91 before the internet, before anybody knew what e-tailing was, what No one even knew what emojis were.
21:03
We did all this stuff in '91.
21:08
Because we thought that those would be great things that people would want to do in the future. >> Right.
21:13
>> The iPhone, 15 years later, came and solved the problems that had started to be created because of the internet and all the other things.
21:22
And so, the pains that we thought we didn't know that we were solving for showed up 15 years later.
21:28
That was, okay, the iPhone Now, there were no mobile phones in '91 for the most part.
21:33
So, communications People were texting and they were calling people. Okay, communication. So, iPhone had that.
21:39
So, they had a mobile phone in their hand.
21:43
Then, they had productivity tools, which were Microsoft Word, Excel, whatever, email, web browsing.
21:49
That was done on a computer.
21:51
Oh, well, I have a computer, so I have a mobile phone and I have a computer.
21:55
And now, I also like mobile entertainment.
21:57
I have my iPod with all my music, I have my photos, I have my videos, um movies and all that stuff.
22:04
So, I was carrying at that time three devices, a laptop, a computer, and uh iPod.
22:12
Well, let's put them all together.
22:14
And that's what the iPhone was.
22:14
So, we were taking that pain of carrying three devices with all the chargers and all that different stuff, and let's now put it in one compact form factor so you can take it wherever you want to go.
22:25
And now, oh by the way, it also hooks up to 2G networks or through It hooks up to Wi-Fi. It hooks up to internet. It does all that stuff.
22:33
At General Magic, none of that stuff existed. Nothing existed.
22:36
So, we solved that problem before there was pain.
22:39
The reason why I iPhone worked is because everyone had the pain. >> Yeah.
22:46
>> Or at least a good set of people, and they said, "I want all of this in under one roof." Which was the iPhone.
22:51
>> And if you had to distill down why it was so magic, and it kind of was magic when it when it came out, why why was it like that?
22:58
What what was it about your team, about the leadership, about the the idea, the timing.
23:03
Why was it so brilliant and so so much better than its competition?
23:09
>> Let's go back to the context of when the iPhone was created, designed and created.
23:15
Like we talked about the iPod one.
23:17
Let's talk about the iPod. Okay.
23:19
So Apple now was on an upswing.
23:21
It's the iPod's happening.
23:23
People are starting to get interested in these things called Macs.
23:28
The company is profitable.
23:28
50% of the revenue's coming from iPod.
23:31
Apple's got its swagger back.
23:34
Okay, the Apple brand, American ingenuity's back.
23:37
Okay, things are happening. Okay.
23:41
Now, obviously Nokia, which was the num- no- number one cell phone company, this mobile handset supplier, and there's Siemens and Motorola and Sony and they all see this.
23:55
They all see the iPod and they see Apple and they're like, "What? What is that?"
23:59
They're like, "Oh, that's a pocketable device that plays music.
24:01
Well, we have a pocketable device.
24:02
We'll make ours play music.
24:05
We'll make our mobile phones work and play music."
24:10
And they're like, "Okay, we're going they're going to start stealing basically the iPod lines and everything else and start integrating it."
24:16
Well, we're waking up to that too and going, "Oh, finally Apple's successful and we look over our shoulders and go, 'Okay, now we have these behemoths, huge consumer electronics companies who are selling millions of units, you know, a day.
24:34
Um And saying, "Oh, we're going to go take their market."
24:40
And we had 80 to 90% market share in these MP3 players.
24:43
So we had another existential problem.
24:46
Before it was the the the the the the company, right, was going to die.
24:51
Now it was like, "Oh, this new product line could could be gone yeah, these guys take it.
24:58
So, we need to do something dramatically different. >> Okay.
25:02
>> And so, let's go and figure out how to bring communications into the iPod.
25:06
So, it was all about first getting cuz everyone was texting and and and calling, let's get texting and calling into the iPod.
25:15
So, we went down that road. >> Right.
25:19
>> And that route was not successful.
25:19
We tried it internally, but we threw it away because at the end of the day we couldn't make the user interface with a dial. >> Yes. >> An iPod dial work. >> Yeah. >> Right?
25:29
So, because if you want to dial a number that wasn't in your contact book, you basically had like a rotary old rotary phone. >> Okay.
25:36
>> If you wanted a text, you basically there was no voice commands and all that other stuff.
25:40
We didn't have any of that, right?
25:41
So, you had to do everything with and that was like it unsustainable. Like it doesn't work.
25:47
So, it was like, "Okay, iPod plus phone does not work." So, we tried that.
25:52
Then we had to we were building a an a video iPod, which was an iPod that had a full screen without and a virtual wheel.
26:01
It had a virtual wheel like a software wheel that you could use on top of this full screen device that looked like a horizontal iPhone today, right?
26:10
Um no no buttons or anything, but but it had a single touch display that allowed you to do the same user interface as a hardware iPod.
26:21
It was like, "Okay, great.
26:21
So, we have this full screen.
26:22
We have this pocketable unit, but it had single touch."
26:27
And then trying to do a keyboard or anything, it did just didn't work because there's a lot of limitations with a single touch.
26:35
So, we're like, "Okay, well, that didn't you know, iPod plus phone didn't work.
26:39
This full screen video iPod, well, it sort of doesn't it works for certain things, but you still can't get any good texting or anything else like ah."
26:51
And then Steve was already working on with a guy Steve Hotelling, they had just bought the company, working on this thing called multi-touch to make a multi-touch Macintosh, which was a, you know, basically Mac OS, but you could use your fingers like a a tablet to or an iPad to then use the Mac.
27:15
And so those three things came together, the communications, the full-screen iPod the full-screen iPod, and the multi-touch interface were put together and we had a a crazy project cuz this was going to save Apple.
27:31
And we had to basically kill the iPod to save Apple from the big mobile phone giants that were going to come and eat our lunch.
27:40
And so I think that that really put our getting put a test to the company say, "This is what has to happen."
27:50
And Steve was driven that this is what had to happen if Apple was going to live past the iPod.
27:57
>> I think this is really interesting that in both cases these defining products, there's an element of fear driving this, right?
28:02
And sort of existential threat.
28:03
In both cases, it's not just, you know, these kind of wonderful Californians doing this cool thing and they love design and they love fonts and it's all very nice. It's like fear.
28:10
This this thing could go under if we don't deliver on something >> Yeah, and I I I don't think, you know, that that might be a there was an undertone of that.
28:20
Everyone's like, "Okay, this is it's serious." >> Yeah.
28:22
>> But it did it wasn't the oh god, we're panicked. >> Okay.
28:25
>> It was the we got to get it right. >> Yeah.
28:28
>> It was like, "Let's do a great job."
28:28
And we would never not do a great job. >> Yeah.
28:31
>> But we had to get even a better job than ever because Apple was back and you didn't want to slip. >> Okay.
28:39
>> And we had now at that point done five, six generations of iPod and it was really flying and everybody's like everybody's talking Apple again. So, we couldn't slip. >> Okay. >> We couldn't slip. >> Okay.
28:52
>> Now, this existential thing, look what just happened with Google with the in the AI race. >> Yeah.
28:57
>> Google was Googly, and it was like, you know, Google just kept shipping ads, and they couldn't ship anything else. It was that was it. It was ads and search.
29:06
Nothing else Google did would basically would work. >> Yeah.
29:09
>> And then they were like, "Oh, now we have an existential thing with OpenAI and Anthropic."
29:15
And they tried to ship something and got it wrong, and then it was like, "Oh, this is really important."
29:18
And they finally turned around and got Gemini to a to a world-leading situation.
29:24
Again, I I've seen this through my time in Silicon Valley, through my time at Philips, um and just in in human nature in general.
29:38
People don't change unless it's a near-death event.
29:41
So, we see this all the time in health. >> Yeah.
29:45
>> People are like, "I'm going to get healthy.
29:46
I'm going to get healthy."
29:46
Then they have the heart attack. "Shit.
29:51
Now I got to really change."
29:51
They wait till it's too late, and maybe, you know, in a small percentage people do change and get back, but a lot of times people are like, "Ah." And they just die.
29:59
And you see this with big companies, too.
30:00
"Oh, everything's fine till it's not."
30:02
Nokia was a perfect example. Nokia's gone. Sony, gone.
30:04
Like, all these things cuz we bested them, and they were like, "Yeah, yeah, whatever."
30:11
It was a And they didn't take it seriously enough.
30:14
So, whether it it cuz companies are run by humans, and humans have that same thing.
30:18
Unless they're really under threat, do they actually, not always, but do can they rise the occasion?
30:23
And it's usually when they're under heavy threat do they rise the occasion?
30:28
>> It's interesting with Google that also, like with Apple, the return of the founder, right?
30:31
So, Sergey Brin coming back and then having the founder energy of uh of Demis from DeepMind.
30:35
That feels important in the >> Yeah, you know, all of those things you you're going to have to shake up the culture.
30:42
You can't just do whatever.
30:42
So, it's it's it's important to understand that if you want to make dramatic change, you got to think about the culture.
30:52
>> Let's throw it forward a little bit and talk about the future. Let's talk about AI.
30:55
I'm really curious if you were designing a physical product, a wearable, where people were going to, you know, basically interact with AI through a physical product, which your former colleague Jony Ive is now doing with Sam Altman at OpenAI.
31:07
What form factor do you think you would do?
31:10
And then what form factor do you think is going to be the one that in reality does get made? And when?
31:17
>> So, look, we are not going to just have one device.
31:22
If you're going to have one device, the best device is a smartphone. >> Okay.
31:27
>> We already have that device.
31:27
It needs to get upgraded.
31:29
It needs to get other things, but we've been upgrading them for 20 years now.
31:32
So, they're they're getting better and better and better. >> Yeah.
31:37
>> We don't need a different device.
31:37
Like we already saw Humane die.
31:39
Like Humane died and they were like, "Oh, we're going to replace the phone."
31:42
It's not about replacing the phone.
31:45
AI works better when it has lots of context.
31:48
Lots of context from what and this was from the days of Nest, um means a lot of devices all around you working together in a federated way to give context both on the device as well as into the cloud of what's going on to get better answers for you to get your work done or whatever you're trying to get done.
32:12
And so, to say there's one-size-fits-all, absolutely not. >> Okay.
32:17
>> Now, maybe in some 10, 20, 30 years from now when we really understand what AI is and and how it can get context from all kinds of things around it and there everything's interconnected, will you be able to read from the environment the context?
32:37
And the smart enough that it can do most of the things with voice and it can project into your brain a display or in your retina.
32:46
Okay, I'm saying for the next kind of 10 years really. Okay.
32:48
You're going to see a federation of devices. You already have them.
32:52
You have a watch, you have a ring, you have a you you have your meta glasses, you have your phone, you have your laptop, you have your car, you have your smart TV, all all the devices in your home.
33:03
Those are going to be that federation of things where the context is being taken from and the best place to see uh visual information is visually on a display.
33:16
To say you're going to have a display-less device, like well, okay, I want to look at a map.
33:20
I want to look at a picture.
33:22
I want Where are you going to do that?
33:23
Unless it's projected in your retina or it's bolted into your brain with a BCI, a brain-computer interface, you need a display.
33:30
So, are you going to get a different display from your small smart phone?
33:35
Is it going to be rollable or foldable? We're having those now.
33:37
So, to think that we're going to have a device that replace everything, absolutely not.
33:43
And every time I've lived this thing since personal computers till today, every time there was the oh, there's the iPod killer and the iPhone killer and then the the laptop killer and then the blah. Guess what?
33:56
We have more devices than ever.
33:59
It didn't replace anything. It just added to it.
34:01
And so, I see more and more stuff.
34:03
Like I said, maybe quite 20, 30 years in the future, maybe we'll get removing stuff, but right now that's not the case.
34:11
>> Tony, I've got two very, very sweet children, a 1-year-old and a 4-year-old. >> Congratulations.
34:17
>> They are unbelievably cute, in my opinion.
34:18
And sometimes my wife says to me, "Are you not curious?"
34:20
Cuz they're both very different cute in different ways.
34:23
And my wife says, "Are you not curious to see what we'd like if we did have a third and a fourth?
34:27
And they'd be, you know, cute in different ways."
34:30
You've done the iPod, the iPhone, Nest.
34:34
All of them are kind of smash hit products.
34:35
Do you ever sit there and think, what if I done a fourth act?
34:37
What if I still do a fourth act and create the next kind of Tony Fadell hit product?
34:43
>> Well, >> [gasps] >> you know, luckily because of who I work with and and the companies I invest in, I get to basically build a lot of products and design a lot of products.
34:53
I just don't have to do it day-to-day. >> Okay.
34:58
>> So, you know, I worked with a company called Ledger, helping them.
35:00
I, you know, and designing a set of products for them.
35:04
I have a couple other products that I'm not talking about yet, but uh that I'm helping other companies with.
35:10
So, so I get to design products.
35:10
I get to do this stuff without having to do the day-to-day anymore.
35:15
And I think it's it's more rewarding because I get to actually work on you know, I have a whole over a hundred direct investments now.
35:22
And I'm able to work with all these teams doing AI in in in surgery, AI in textiles, AI in recycling, AI AI in drug discovery.
35:34
I like So, I get to work on all these different products.
35:39
And so, I get to have even more fun than ever and be able to use reuse the things that I've learned and the networks and enable these other really smart teams who are really dedicated and passionate to do that. So, it's fun.
35:52
>> Tony, thank you so much.
35:52
An amazing place to end part one.
35:54
We'll be back next week with part two.
35:56
We're going to talk about life working with Steve Jobs, what you learned from him, and also lessons for careers more widely.