Welcome to the votes, cast the flagship podcast of third party operating systems. I'm your friend David pierce since we're a little under a week out from Wwdc apple's annual developer conference. I have begun a ritual I like to call the charging. I pull my phones tablets old phone old tablets old. Max everything can find out of storage and get it all updated in charge, takes a lot of time giant pan, but worth it, because I am going to spend a lot of this summer, inevitably, testing new stuff from apple and a lot of its break everything, and I need a backup plan anyway apple. Is the focus of today's show, but we're actually not going to talk about Wwdc we're going to do a lot of that over the next week, so we'll hold off for now. Instead, we're going to look backward at apple, Until you two stories about two computers from the seventies and eighties, they can act

they tell us an awful lot about how apple and the tech industry as a whole work now and it is your wondering no, I don't think either of these computers will support. I was seventeen or makko s. We joke, or whatever else gets launched next week, but we're gonna get. The all of the rest of it in just a second. This is the verge cast, will be right back, hey, I'm ryan, reynolds at mid mobile. We like to do the opposite of what big wireless. Does they charge you a lot? We charge you a little so naturally, when they announced they'd be raising their prices due to inflation, we decided to deflate our price

do not hating you. That's right. Recording the price of meant unlimited from thirty dollars a month to just fifteen dollars a month, give it a try at mid mobile dot com, slash, switch new activation and up front payment for three month. Plan required taxes in these extra additional restrictions apply seem at mobiles outcome for full terms. Support for the shell comes from shop of eye to run a successful on my business. All you need is an idea and shop if I can take care of the rest shop. If I is a commerce platform to help run your business and their flexing templates and powerful tools make building and managing your online present simpler than ever. You can sign up for a one dollar a month, trial period at shop if I'd dot, com, slash, vocs business, all lowercase visit shop if I'd dot com, slash box business to see of shop. If I can take your business to the next level today, that's shop, a five hour come slash, vocs business.

welcome back. The first apple computer I want to talk about today is the apple to which apple introduced back nineteen, seventy seven watch what you can do with his apple to personal computer and any color tv. You can print your own reports, talk to other computers and get information like dow jones reports charge your bio rhythms, teacher children, mac, improve your trust game and there's lots more nineteen, seventy seven was a huge year in the history of computing, for reasons, you'll hear about a minute, and the apple too is probably, most important device. That was released back here. Lean nguni just wrote a whole book about why I'm late I'm an assistant, professor of media industries in the department of media culture and communication and new york university lanes book is called Apple to age, how the computer became personal, it's a history story, but it's also a culture story, and it really goes through all of how computers came to take over our lives and why it was not at all inevitable that

so there's like going on here, we got a lot of spreadsheets to talk about, let's just get into it. Just kind of lay the land a little bit when the story starts its like the middle of the nineteenth seventies. Give me a sort of very brief picture of like what's happening. Bigger picture like in the world right now cause it actually turns out the matter more than I expected so the next These are a decade of real political social and economic concern in the united states, seventies or when we really start seeing the outcomes. I d industrialization of the movement of factory labour on the united states a tremendous amount of anxiety about what is the future. You know of this country that built its back on the idea of the factory of labour, You know in the nineteen sixties, America was producing the majority of the world's manufactured goods, and that really starts to trickle down and shrink over the course the night he said, You also have a number of echo.

Mc recessions, oil shocks, mass unemployment, sound familiar there is. It was a real kind of moment where there wasn't a clear picture for a lot of americans about what next and how do we restore the sense of national pride that had been so core to the american idea of itself in the post war and the cold war, and then out of that comes a phrase I had never before you. You called the holy trinity. Take me through like what was the whole region. Like. Why was this kind of thing that happened all at once that, like change the computing industry forever? Yes you're referring to is the nineteen seventy seven trinity- and this is a term that use commonly among computer historians or retro computing enthusiasts, but totally people in like a general populous would have no reason to use it but the nineteen seventy seven trinity refers to the same will take Yes, release that year of the first three, what we could call concern humor grade microbes.

Peters or more comfortable term might be personal computers, and that includes the terrorist eighty that was released by radio shack, the commodore pet and the apple to which was apples. First, real commercial product or consumer oriented product we can say and gives three computers were a religion magic change from the way that consumer computing was imagined even just a couple years earlier in, like nineteen, seventy five, which is to say there, was it really ike idea of a commercial or consumer oriented computer. The personal computing, as we enter, stand. It comes out of like radio, hobbism, electronics hobbism. It was like a nerd of a nerd of nerd dams if that make answer. This was an extremely niece activity that kind of took off in the mid nineteen. Seventy right there was this

the question like. Why would anyone want a computer in their home? But there were a set of companies quite a wide, ranging set of companies that thought there might be economic opportunity in this moment and so in eighteen, seventy seven there's both v. I think technical head of the prices of reach a threshold where these are goods that anybody can buy, but at least upper class people can buy them and also there's enough be an investment interests right from venture capitalists from investment firms. There's a number of things that change can, if you know economically with regards to changes even in laws around capital gains tax and where money can be invested that helps juice. The idea that this might be a thing work peddling to a new american consumer. I was trying to think if there are other examples in the history of technology. Where there's been that much progress that the meat

ITALY, and there so many stories that you can tell us like things that happened very fast. They happen over the course of a few years and big things change, and but the idea that basically three different approach is to functionally the same thing landed at basically, exactly the same time is just crazy to meet like was that was that as much of liquor, sonic boom of a moment as its like to me all these years later, I'm not sure I mean we look at something like television and radio that we certainly multiple companies vying at the same time to release fundamentally different but more or less similar products. And personally Meaning defiling has a much slower lag time and a lot of ways, but it was interesting that it sounded. It seemed too, sound a bell within these communities that maybe there was possible this idea of computing hobbyists them to get away from the workbench in the garage and maybe come into the home. To have a broad

a range of applicability or to be more useful to more people, and I think the three systems that come out in eighteen. Seventy seven point toward at least that imagination. I did. We often see what I might call speculative concurrence right than that more companies than we think are going to try and like boom rush, a new technology but Most of them are not going to sustain right, we don't talk about, commodore, more like a relevant computing company x, radio shack is a nostalgic icon. Only apple right kind of survives from that moment guess. Is that why you picked the apple two to write about cars? I think there's a way you could have sort of going back to the beginning of the story and written about the trinity and kind of that moment in technology. You followed the radio shack story, which is probably much less complicated for time it like did very well, then it I'd really fast. Was it the sort of law successful history of apple. That was what drew you too, like let's, let's look at the apple to a particular. That's a good question. I think there's a couple very

balls that, as they say in the book, made the apple to an optimal historical object. I was always very clear with myself that I was not trying to write. Celebration of a particular piece of hardware, but I was trying to find a piece of hardware that could open up a bigger story if I was trying to write about multiple micro computers at the same time, that gets a little unwieldy just in terms of book length write. History is all about scope. It's like what problem and I going to choose, and how am I going to take a lateral slice through it read yeah you'd have to have like two chapters, just about like different ideas about keyboards. If you wanted to yeah it'd, be a lot yeah exactly right. You make yourself accountable to a lot of things, I'm trying to get tenure. I had to get this book out. It can't be all of my hopes and dreams right here yeah, but the apple two was such

interesting computer for a number of ways it welled up by nineteen, eighty three having the largest amount of software released for it of any personal computer on the market? It had about two thousand programs, which meant you know from where I was standing. If I want to ask a question about how did the computer become personal? It's not really a question about the computer hardware person, it's a question about what do people do with their computers and that's a software question, and so with the apple to what you actually had was access to the broadest possible range of software available to an american consumer like in the country

right and so apple seemed like a really good target. There was also one really relevant publication that a lot of the research in the book is grounded on, which is a magazine called soft talk that ran software sales listings that were done in a a kind of very accurate way and are probably the closest we have for having any sense of what sales records even really were given that distribution records have not existed from this time, and so there was this cool confluence that apple. Both canna had the best records and also had the most software and then the machine itself as a piece of cake. Knowledge is a really interesting case, because it was a machine that was robust enough for people who wanted to use it as a serious business appliance people who wanted to hardware or software hack or programme, but also, if you wanted to just like, not have to know

your computer worked. You can kind of maybe get away without an apple to its straddled. A home in office divide that very few other computers could get away with totally One of the things that jumped out me reading the book was that I couldn't decide how much of what you ve just described well did on purpose. Keziah you remind back and like steve jobs, does he bosniak are like flailing trying to figure out something to build some way to make a business, something that's gonna happen and you have steve jobs whose just like and to fund the thing, and you know canna going nuts about it and then Steve Wozniak, whose justice like happy tinker in his garage who just sort of like builds fun things for other people to play with, and what I couldn't decide is. If, inside of that feeling, is this a grand vision about giving that kind of access to other people, and that's why apple and so open or if it was just a happy acts that sea wozniak was not like a controlling capitalists who wanted to with a sea control everything they got sold on top of his device like, if, if you put yourself in you know

eighteen, seventy six steve wozniak brain? Would he have guessed and foreseen. What was coming over the next five or six years in that run, we're apple went from being like a relatively small player to like the arbiter of this gigantic software, system that is ultimately what may be able to work. So I think You were Steve Wozniak and nineteen. Seventy six one. I think that he was absolutely intent. This to be an open system because Steve was near cause may be the epitome of a hobbyist hobbyist. This is a guy who you know the commercial aspirations were not what was motivating him, and I think that's also why, if you were Steve Wozniak and nineteen, seventy six you're not having a family see about what this is going to turn into necessarily. I think that there was a kind of monocular into

hence engineering focus that was near it brought to the engineering of that system and that kind of blocked l, I think, a lot of stuff that jobs was far more attractive to interested in how to better vibe. For feeling you don't like. I don't know if I could say that was nea was sitting there, trying to figure out how to please consumers, I think was the act was trying to figure out how to please himself and enough any way that turned out to be. What did he want? He wanted a system that was elegant, usable, accessible and open, and that's where the apple to kind of like strikes all of the cords at just the right time of its both to the kind of quality and caliber bits? Engineering, as well as its openness. Availability for people who maybe aren't Computer engineers till I understand how d you something like that. Yet what? What did that? Look like again thinking about

folks who are new were to apple than forty five years ago to everything you just described absolutely nothing like apple apple is the most close, the most controlled, the most precious company on earth about what its products are and how you use them its full, not to read this book and realize how completely the opposite it used to be and how much the early success of apple depended on that. So they sort of brass tacks, tactically speaking like what about the apple two was more open than some of it's competitors like. Why was it that people it to it in a different way: absolute yeah and everything you're saying about apple. You know, if you want someone to blame that steve jobs I mean there's a somewhat infamous clash, but about the design of the apple to between wozniak and jobs and wozniak winds, and I think it has everything to do with kind of one of the reasons that month for become successful, but an important thing to understand it.

that a lot of the initial interest ends but say speculative engineering that first created. Some of these systems comes out of electronics, hobbyist communities and he's. Hobbyist communities are not interested in using proprietary tools. They are accustomed to engineering at the level of like wires and transistors right. That's the engineering history, your talking about here that then begins to apply themselves to technologies like microprocessors that become the foundation for something like a personal computer and fry them for happiness. The idea is that the spirit of the activity is about trying to press up against the boundaries or the limits of the technology itself right. So you want that access. You want that documentation. You wanna be able to get into your computer and either programme at the lowest level right programme really close to the metal or to be able to hide

we're hack it if you want to and was brought that sensibility into the machine. One of the most remarkable parts of the apple too was that you can literally just lift the lid off. There was no, screws. There was no like funky class mechanism, but the whole thing just comes off and you can put your hands inside of it and also look down directly. into the board. This was necessary because the apple too had a bay of expansion slots which were things that would allow users to add anything from sound equipment to joy sticks to printers to floppy discs. Imagine almost like universal! You must be in the in the kind of a demon sense of the word right and compared to other, computers at that time there was a real set of trade offs that companies were looking out about how much access. Do you give a user, particularly a non technical users, so the terrorist? Eighty, for example, you can't open it. It's good shot, there's no hardware, manipulation! You can do

If you want to expand the machine, you have to go by an extra peripheral set for that and the terrorist eighty deals. Things opened like the hood of a car like the whole sheet metal case lifted off, and so you could like get your head into it. It was we could save right, but there was something so shocking. Anything surprising for people to take gonna take the top off this apple too, and that they could really directly access these Oh it's! That was extremely compelling unnecessary for hobbyists and I think that's a space where the apple to earned its credit. Woody as a serious machine, even as there is definitely a growing subset of consumers who did not want to take the lid off that thing at all yeah one of the questions I rode down as I was reading the book is: is this book sneakily about how open access to floppy discs actually invented the future of computing and the longer? I think about it? The more I kind of thing it is about a patent. The hits what they did was say: here's the thing that you can,

There are things into and it's easy and you can do lots of things with it and it is kind of nuts in retrospect how big a change that was yeah yeah, I would say you you pick these five years. Was of different kinds of software. That really tell the story- and I think I think I'm right in saying visicalc is probably by far the best known of the funds, the five freight. Undoubtedly, it's like the prototype she'd software, it's the one that sort of made everybody won't want to work. It was like the thing yet, but I think the story that interested me, the most was la

smith, and I want to get into why in a second? But can you just sort of quickly expand like what locksmith was and why it was it very controversial, because it ended up being controversial in ways that are like even today unsettled and super fascinating? Yes, so the book's main organization is that it chooses five different software categories and tells a story of both each category kind of how it grew from this diffuse kind of. What are we supposed to do with a computer to something that was recognizable by consumers and to tell that story? I focus on a specific case in each one and tell the development history of a specific piece of software. Locksmith was basically copy protection. Breaking software, at least, if you were a developer or publisher in the industry, that's what you would have understood it to be software that helped you commit piracy at a very technical level. We would call something like the locksmith a bit copier or a nipple copier, which meant that it allowed users to basically create duplications of the data pattern.

Floppy disk onto a blank floppy disk so that they can make a back up or, as many in the industry were concerned, you could pirate your software, ok and this sort a whole fight that ends up being very sort of philosophical about essentially like who owns your stuff. It's just very funny to me that this quickly, We go from well, I guess not. Even discreetly, like simultaneously were saying, this thing is very inaccessible and that's a huge part of why it's successful and and we're bringing this stuff along, and it's been very valuable to people and there's this whole tinkering culture. Wouldn't this all be great and then kind of rate over the top. You have a bunch of people saying nope close down. This is a business I'm in charge and if I'm understanding correctly

the reason: why is just a simple was money right like suddenly, this became a big business for a lot of people in a lot of people suddenly had an interest in protecting that money. Is it that simple? It is really that simple. The concern was that, if no one paid for software that, if, if piracy took off and people got more comfortable, pirating software or freely sharing it, no one would pay for it, and then how do you have some one employed in doing it right? It is on the surface and understandable argument, right sure, is that people want to be paid for their labor and food and that people will leave if there's not a way to self support right. But the amount of like on the on the surface, reasonable argument that reasonable argument then becomes made by companies that are beginning to make millions of dollars beginning to serious investment capital beginning to go public and there's a great suspicion between

consumer base, and these kind of you know history publishers, industry developers about contested. It over or who should have power over software. How much financial gain is too much financial gain in these debates really go back to kind of the origins of personal computing right. This was you know, bill gates, right rather infamously blew up at the entire hobbyist community for pirating, the first software that he made, which was a witch. Interpreter of basic from the altar. Eighty eight hundred, so there was always discussion of leg. No one could quite decide what the appropriate for natural were numeration should be or how much profit is too much

and it was. It was quite a difficult thing for these different parties to communicate with one another. So software magazines become this really interesting site where one of the only places were, those conversations actually become kind of visible and archival. In a way, that's really useful for an historian totally. Where did the locksmith fight and others I think that the bigger picture stuff you're talking about like who deserves to be compensated and how much and open versus closed, I think, still vary it goes on today, but I think we have as a society. these sort of landed on. You should be able to make lots of money, and things should be closed I think, we're we're still we're we're, not one hundred percent, neither of resurrections yet, but the the locksmith's story ended right like how did it at well the locksmith? What made this particular piece of software a case that was different from any of the others I I wrote about

was that no one really knows who designed it there's some kind of speculative rumours about it, but we don't have there's no archival evidence about its actual author right that kind of person sort of his drifting off into an and an image, and once the software kind of just as the industry figures out how to tighten up particularly after the launching of the software publishes association, which is an industry trade organization precisely dedicate to using the power of the law, to hunt down, not just people doing software, but also to come after companies like locksmith that are providing ways for people to duplicate their software. That locksmith sister, a kind of each said this offer just going to say into anonymity. There's a few versions of it into the mid eighties, maybe into the late eightys, but the company that was running it sort of disappears. There was such an embargo against its existence that it was very

hard for it to get any kind of mainstream coverage in the putting news and computing journalists, and so on. She were really kind of in the weeds the industry into the sort of insider arguments and stuff like that. It was the kind of thing you probably didn't even know existed. It certainly wasn't the kind of thing that you were probably going to pick up at a radio shack also right cause. There is a lot of different ways that the industry was embargoed wing software or preventing consumer access to software that they thought would threaten their own bottom line. So that's an issue to retailers. That's an issue to publishers, it's an issue for journalists and they all kind of in a uncensored but weirdly coordinated way, operated together to protect what

I felt, was a burgeoning, but not yet kind of solidified industry yeah. What that one of the things that amazing authorities how quickly that thing? Flipped, because I want to talk what sort of mainstream consumer people in a second, because that's a big part of kind of the journey of computing, is what since when more and more people get access, but even this group of tinkerers and hackers the people and going to hombre computer clubs like the people who built these things? Specifically for the fund. Enjoy it. It's like, as soon as ten dollars showed up the whole industry changed and I go to some extent. Maybe that's. It double that when money gets involved. All of the conversations change, but I don't know what it is really struck me- how quickly Everyone's mine changed about even the things that they had built themselves as soon it is these other interests got involved yeah. I think there's a careful needle untrained, a friend with the book where One of the things I'm I'm really trying to do is not give us the impression that

marshall. Interests were, and after a fact or a kind of side bet on computing, but were there in various forms from the moment that it gets instantiated right I mean The electronics hobbyist industry was a multi million dollar project right. There was always the expectation that you were gonna pay. by transistors and wire, and microchips and stuff like that. Software was a much harder and were, I think, confusing issued, because the question of where is the labour is more diffuse right. There isn't an object in the obvious sense and I think the number of people for whom there was really no financial interest was fairly slim. I think there were a lies, is a fairly low number. I think a lot of people what they wanted was to provide themselves with sustainable, reasonable incomes. I think that was a lot of the initial energy. What happens is that you get in order for these

industries to truly reach a tipping point of mass scale. Mass consumer is asian with what the strategy becomes, that you have to take outside capital right that trying to grow yourself or that the companies who are willing to take outside capital are going to do that scaling faster. So if you want to scale to, if you don't want to get left behind, you need to also go out and seek that right, and so it creates this kind of self producing, churn where maybe you worked necessarily worried about being one of the top companies in the industry, but you realize very quickly. You're gonna get left behind. If you dont do the thing that everybody else is doing right. All you need is a few people chasing a huge payday for the entire industry to follow in that just that kind of jet stream, and it creates a very, I would say, self paper

she weighting system where the whole project gets kind of instantaneously rationalized among its many actors. Yet what what was the guys who is building the like education, software for his middle school class and then tom cider. What a perfect example red he goes from! I'm gonna build this a thing for the people who need it to I'm gonna make a sort of cottage business out of this too, sudden. I have to be a multinational corporation or else a multinational corporation will come after me and shut down. My lifestyle for a multinational corporation comes in and basically pays him to do work for them, and so he changes its entire approach to Hell. Software is built. He has two in order to make his offer makes sense. To account that doesn't want to sell software for groups of children no school but wants to sell individual units of individual floppy dis to individual families, cost that's a better market run. That's it super interesting and it does there's so much in your book where the question of like

Is this inevitable just kept coming up to me? It's like, and I think the money thing is the clue this thing to inevitable of of all of it that it take and I've just I've been covering. This enough that I'm just so trains to like undressed that, as soon as venture capital appears, all the sense of change, all the business models, change and neither get bigger you die and that changes everything and It was just interesting to watch that get traced through this entire process as well, but the other pieces offer that I thought was particular interesting. Was the print shop is, I think, fundamentally, a story about like how to teach regular people how to use computers right, and this this point you make over and over is that at the beginning, people had to be taught not just how to use computers, but why they would give a crap about having one which I think it goes back to the same point of like these. we're not like inevitable societal goods, that we have been waiting for and emerged perfectly to solve all our problems. They showed up and

I forget youtube and say it. One point like most people's responds to computers is basically ok. Whatever you go back to my life, like I don't care, and and there's this big history push to basically say here's what you need them for, which is one side of it, but then also here's how you use it and I think the here's how you use it story is very much kind of like us to say that both of them are a print shops for it seems like it. a better job of answering both of those questions for regular people. Then almost anything so Can you get me like sort of the very brief background of of what the french up was and I guess still is, is it still around? So there is like a weird vestigial tale of that software, its own by a different company in the two developers kind of cast off their ownership of it men who put the years ago, but I believe that you can still buy it. It's fantastic print shop, deluxe, six point four is still available.

Forty nine ninety nine on the broader bun website, and it's like what is broader bond as a company. Just like it's like that. This is just an ip yeah yeah. I think there's this mythology that, in particular, the contemporary tech industries want us need us to believe re part of the fuel here is that we all have to invest in this faith of the idea that the future is inevitable, and so I think we ve been fed this idea that people saw personal computers and they were like oh yeah. I gotta have this right. I need one in my home. Obviously this is going to change my life in. That was just not true. None of the statistics bear and out computer adoption was perilously slow in actual people's homes. You could force people to use computers and schools and offices, but you could not force people to buy a computer for their house, and there was all of these ideas about you. No part of the that why there is so much software was because so many

people were trying to answer the question. What do you even do with a computer, and there is also a weird answers to this right- a lot of them to answer the question: what would you do with a computer in your home? Was this idea of what we did? You ties it's full of activity. So, oh you have a physical address book we're going to make software, so you can have a digital address book or a digital recipe keeper or your software that can track your gas mileage or chart your bio read the software that can intervene in your sex life, you know there was this great ambivalence right and people really had to be taught not just how to want a computer. But I think how desire one. There is definitely like an emotional aspect to wanting to get people to imagine how to computerized their lives, but the whole software sector had really struck out. They could not really make a compelling case beyond word processing with super useful if you had a we're in a profession or had a hobby that

they required a lot of typing and then otherwise, maybe you needed spreadsheet software, so the print shop is a wonderful, almost kind of disk or punk or a roach controls. The prompt ray is how I think of it is that this software, which you know, begins development, I believe in nineteen. Eighty two. It is co developed by a gay couple who were in san francisco. One of them was an imp he brought her bundy after time and had a lot of back running graphics, programming, Marty, khan and David balsam, who are both in their kind of you, know, early late twenties at the time- and you know they're in this hub of activity in san francisco, washing everyone else get rich and there, like we ve got skills. We know how to program. We ve got ideas, let's figure out what we can do and they create ultimately through various iterations the shop, which is,

Some people call it a pro desktop publishing software, but it was. It was really a piece of software that allowed you to do this kind of very who d mentoring printed objects, so you could create banners, you could create greeting cards, you could create let her head and things like you know. You could create signs and they say it just the hawks design experience was on a rail. You chose what kind of thing you wanted to make and then you decided will. This is the graphic many use. This is the This is the border. It was highly formulaic you typed in your little message, and then you sent it to print and this blue people's minds and they had so much fun with it.

and it was a programme that was really advertised on the premise that you did not even need to read the manual. That's how well designed it was and getting people computing was it's hard to express how confusing computing what's it was just it was terribly complicated. Yet you know, even for people of like modest or decent technical skill was very frustrate. And the prince shop really promised this idea of what we might call a user friendly experience that also I meant you gave you the ability to take something that you made on a computer and bring it into the world, and that was really powerful. I think, as a as a gesture as creating a kind of visual culture of computing, that people had never handled or experienced themselves to make material. This stuff that was trapped on a screen felt, I think, transformative. It was a real aha moment, I think, for a lot of home users. It's interesting a it's! It's a very funny counter to the

if things develop after that, which is, I think, computers became so much about simplicity and consumption and like printing now is something I do like when I have concert tickets, rightly that's it that's about as prisoners of war all right, but I think that there was idea and, to some extent we were getting back to this idea of marrying technology and physicality with like a r and all that stuff. But that's that's a whole separate thing, but I think the idea that, like this is a that is useful in there of my life and not kind of as its own thing that exists entirely inside of it. Scream is really interesting, and if you like, we could we could use more of that perspective knock world right now. You, I think,

at the moment when computing was an extremely foreign object to so many people there needed to be a different pitch, then what what? If you typed your papers rather than you know, rather than using a typewriter or what? If your checkbook was on your computer? A lot of people's response to this was: who cares, but the print shop allow people to do something that otherwise was really kind of impossible that they could like feel and touch share and it was about friendships and communities, and you know small businesses and things like it was about. You know little kids making these where computer cards for their grandma and banners further birthdays and putting up a sign in your talent that set a yard, sale suddenly it was it like serious profiting by it, allowed the computer to exceed the boundary of the screen itself and in a way that was instructive. I think I want to emphasise for new users totally anything that point about it being a truly new.

behavior is really interesting, and I had not thought about this until just now, but that kind of unites all the software. You talk about, even even is a colleague right where you have all your numbers on a screen and you can update and all the rest update like that is eight. That is a new thing that was not possible before and even games was like. You can do a different thing collaboratively with you're schoolmates than you, ve ever been able to do before, and that idea like one by one, the soft developers finding not just like take a thing that exists and do it on a computer, but an end. I think a huge amount of software over the years has been take a thing that exists and do it, I'm a computer right, but it's the stuff that is really transformative is the stuff that is like actually like a net new capability you have, because you are doing this thing on a computer. Yes, the activities that if render the power of computation in a way that is very different from what we do in a in a physical setting yeah, and I think that that's really interesting and it makes me wonder, one of the sort of unknowable hypotheticals I kept coming back to over

where's. This is like, if all of these things had just sort of stayed resolutely complex and it's like. No, you have to learn how to speak computer language in order to use a computer, but we're going to add more and more of these cool capabilities like if the print shop had been just as cool as it was, and much harder to use wood Everyone has eventually come around and with their benefit, then like two generations earlier. That would have learned a code as result and obviously under well, but it's really different future of it. That, like we, sort of computers, learn to be human much faster than we learned how to speak peter, and I wonder what would have happened if we had gone the other way. I mean, I think that what you indeed, is a society that is actually interested in being structured in that way, right like as as it s like a step one, what are these

the incentives and structures that are going to support people learning how to be highly advanced in computer use when we have problems with like literacy rates right for her, and so it really becomes a a question of life. Where do you what what are social like that? I think the social problem is the thing that's harder to imagine. Sometimes I encounter students and, like a computing engineering degree or something who have this fantasy of like if we all just learned how to program- and I'm like you mean if we lived in a fundamentally different right like this I do that somehow. That is supposed to be a thing that I, as a person, want or will teach myself free from a society that is going to make or provide an adequate amount of scaffolding, for that is a problematic fantasy ambassador, one that really centres the idea that we that these technologies do things on their own. if they so resolutely? Do that we acknowledge that. I think that absolutely right,

one more thing and then I'm nominally go here. You talk a bunch of the city of a personal computer and I get the since you sort of hate the phrase personal computer. You like We spend most of the time in the book, calling it a microcomputer, which I think for a bunch of technical reasons, is totally fair, but you kind of at the beginning and end reckon with like what is a personal computer, and I think right now that question is more interesting than ever right. We're using forms we dont control. We have actually can be pulled from our devices at any time. The content I doesn't belong to me. The content I buy often doesn't belong to me. Amazon can just pull books up my kindle I cant open up my computer with avoiding the warrant. All this stuff. And if you like, our devices Are we so called them personal computers, but they feel less personal than ever, so both wonder a if it feels that we do you and be a kind of as you ve spent all this time. What how do you define a personal computer as to have his leg the nineteen seventy seven definition or even in twenty twenty three historians always think of languages. A moving target right like there's nothing there, personal computer, is a

from the assembly of what most people think it is that as a given moment in time and we still use. I think that the target has moved with personal getting precisely for all these reasons that you're talking about in many of these things, I kind of hedge and hint tat, or sometimes through directly, say in the dark about the sir long tail consequences of proprietary platforms of these mega corporations that just have basically let which these technical systems to own more and more and more of our creativity of our interaction. Of our communication and our collaboration with other people write and sue the thing that is you know when my students, if I were to ask my students, what makes your computer personal they would Probably say that it's the interface for interacting with their lives right, like they would think of probably their smart phone as a personal computer, has all their images and has all

social networks. It has all their chat and has older gmail they do. They watch t v on it. They play games on it, that's an extremely personal object. It contains all of their data. It is also a funnel for taking that data and sending it all for the place right to all sorts of places that are busy that data you know in many cases, may not even be on the phone it all right. It's just a tap into a server. God knows where and sue you know I had perhaps apple is you know one of the most guilty culprits here in that day, have secured this idea that what makes computing personal is the reduction of the computer self to our assembly, of like files or into actions that are about our lives, rather than about the way that we may be relate or even understand how these objects- devices technologies, Would it be better if we understood it better? I mean this goes back to the lake. We should

learn how to code thing and I think to some extent, this is like an intractable problem right if you want to set up your own email server in such a way that you have all of your emails on your own server and no one else can touch them. You can, but nobody does because its in the ass and I can just centre for gmail, and it does a bunch of things that my own email, server, couldn't and so part of me wonders if, if we ve just delete really chosen convening in power over that kind of lake person. de in ownership. But part of me also thinks this next decade of technology is to be about reckoning with that decision. And whether we can pull some of it back, and I think I do just I saw so much of the like Steve Wozniak in the seventies ethos in the people. I talk to about, like the federal and the open web- and this idea about like what, if you had things that were yours again, that way really truly yours and it does. It seems like we're about to reckon with kind of that. You know forty five year, history in a big way, going forward and scooby fascinating,

yeah. I I think the we is doing a lot of work here. You know when I talk about, like you and me or people who we are structurally disincentive eyes or actually structurally incapacity did from when negotiating around these systems, except at great financial, personal time cost right, and that is the advantage of corporations that to make these interactions seamless, smooth easy. I mean the apple tree was a funny case right. That is a computer that Anyone who used it would have said that it was one of the easiest to use your I even though at, but it gave you total access to to the system itself, the sort of incremental quite want to say is that I do. I really reject them. proposition that this is a consumer failing or that somehow we need to like vote with our dollars or something something like that right, like

they got really under serves the true men. his power and authority that these corporations have right in and there and the kind of levels of count ability that that need to be put in place. That often we don't because we're so busy thinking that the market is a transparent reflection of people's desires. Re do you know, as for that, history component of it. I do think in general. Historical literacy is bad in the you know, I just did teaching a very large two hundred and forty person lecture class in my own university. It's a history of media and communication, and I dedicate about half the semester to the twentieth century. forward, andrew mostly students. No one has ever explained to the how computer works. What it is. You know their tat

Illiteracy is extremely poor because there has been no concerted educational effort to try to make it accessible to them and because the people who really control a lot of the cycles of conversation about computer history, our people who either want to have a new style, jake celebration about it or are the kind of same financial actors who got us into this problem to begin with, and so, if there's something my book is really trying to do is make this conversation relevant to people who maybe don't care about computers or don't see them as formative to their identity and if we could just kind of wrench open our understanding of what actually happened beyond this sort of. You know nostalgic mass return. We first of all, we all seem to keep one to be. Having brought person about these drew computing that you know, maybe there's a net gain their yeah. I love that why you're talking about this for hours, but I sure that you go this was incredibly fund. Thank you so much for doing this event in David, this was a total pleasure. Thank you so much for this interview.

We need to take a break and then we're gonna talk about another much less successful, but me We just as interesting apple computer. Will we re back a ride reynolds at mid mobile. We like to do the opposite of what they wireless. Does they charge you a lot? We charge you a little so naturally, when they announced they'd be raising their prices due to inflation, we decided two deflate our prices. Do not hating you! That's right! We're cutting the price of meant unlimited from thirty dollars a month to just fifteen dollars a month. Give it a try, men, mobile dot, com, slash, switch new activation and up payment for three meant plan required taxes, and these extra additional restrictions apply seem at mobiles outcome for full terms. We with our eyes and our mouths obvious

but also our brains noon can help. You learn more about that psychological component to healthy eating, new music science and personalization. So you manager wait for the long term there. Psychology based approach helps you build better habits and behaviors that are easier to maintain and they help you understand the science behind your eating choices and why you have those cravings Numerous personalized courses are easy to follow and will help you grow your confidence with tools you can put into practice on day one the best part. You decide how new fits into your life not the other way around start taking control of your, management and join the millions who have lost weight with new. You can sign up for your trial, day at noon? Dot com, that's in o m dot com to sign up for your trial today,. Welcome back so

twenty twenty three is the fortieth anniversary of a computer. You may have heard of called the apple LISA haven't heard of it. That's fine in the group and legacy of apple. It tends to be kind of overlooked, which is actually exactly why we're gonna talk about it today, a few. The folks on the verges video team have spent the last few months working on a documentary about LISA. was quiet flopped. And why Everyone remembers the Mcintosh, which came out a year after the lisa, so much more fondly, a weird story and rather than spoil it for you, I just grabbed will pour the virtuously video preserved. Tell me all about it. I will allow, I feel like I, been hearing about this. Like mysterious apple story, you ve been working on for several decades. Now the it's been, it's been a long time. What was the ec

and for this I actually don't think. I know the beginning of this story like the first thing I heard was just like: oh yeah, wills going to utah to see a dump, but that's kind of the extent of it. We had gotten this tip via the computer history museum about the apple leases. Fortieth anniversary was this year and there were were inches. And findings fun stories around that anniversary and some one had. I think someone there had had given us a tip that there are number of apple, lisa computers buried somewhere in utah, and they were like. We heard that go see if there's anything to that and we put her hand on line, and we found this one article, it's nothing in an actual, like article hosted on a newspaper website. It was like the text of an article from nineteen, eighty nine that was copied and pasted on to this defunct tech blog type website. It was all very, very sketchy, but it had the this article had the basics of this weird thing that had happened wherein, in nineteen eighty nine there were like

twenty seven hundred lisa computers that word dumped unceremoniously in this landfill and logan utah, and there was a huge computer dealer who was involved, and there is this sort of strange business arrangement that he had with apple and there is talk of a tax rate off, and the dealer was sad. This feels like the first active, like a really great true crime, documented yeah, I mean that's what kind of we're like. Maybe this is exactly what that is, so we say we started to look into it. So what really happened that day to get answers? We went back forty years a shovel start digging to find the people who brought LISA too late. I was really excited. This was the new foundation of the new frontier to figure out why it really flopped, but there definitely was an element of revenge and to understand why apple would bury it's own past literally

So I waited some of the story, but I realized in preparing for this that I don't really know anything about the lisa. I know it was a computer. I know it didn't they do much. I mean, did allotted nineteen eighty, three, that's fair, but it wasn't like in the history of like vaunted apple devices. I don't feel like anybody talks about the lisa like what was this thing? Why does nobody talk about it? So I didn't. I mean that's about as much as I knew about it myself until I started to look into it and still talk about it today. In so far as it was, this milestone thing for apple. It came out in nice, eighty three a year before the Mcintosh come LISA personal office, MR from next year,

apple lisa was was really the first big mass market computer to introduce all of these new ideas for personal computing to the masses. So as the super big deal, but then a year later, the macintosh comes out and for a lot of reasons that we can get into that's the one that succeeds and the macintosh goes on, and, enough is the mcintosh then changed everything for personal computing, whereas the lisa just kind of went away, and then the Burial is just sort of like the most extreme version of just went away It's sort of in keeping with this feeling that, like the mac one and the least, has just done dumping duties so end, of course, as you would you, in order to figure out what happened, you went to of random tiny town in utah, like people do to find all good stories about the history of technology. All there was the hope, however, unlike you, gotta go to them dump we just take this.

road up and around when we hit that fan will become a right in the middle of where they were, and so, if we park near that bend walk there some under thirty years ago? So yeah, but we got there and it was like a reality hit. We like walked up the mountain of decades of garbage. We talk to this guy that was driving a dump truck around and he was like, oh yeah, nineteen. Eighty nine! That's like fifty feet down. and its december it snowing is the place, is completely desolate, we're, like others, no earthly clue that were actually going to dig these things and we later found out after talking to a bunch of the people who were there, that the folks at the landfill went out of their way to run all the computers over with the dumb trucks before they buried them. Too, like make sure

we're dead, oh wow, which may have been an instruction given to them by apple. Depending on that, that's like a thing that we don't know but, like those computers are dead, I have so many question. About why a company would choose to do that, but I think back up a little bit and psoric, because I think in the documentary there's this guy bob cook, who becomes a sort of a main character, and it seems like a lot of the like a surprising amount of the story of the lisa runs through him. Tell me about him Yes, so he is serve the other half of the least historic, there's a whole half of the least story that is well documented. Well understood it's about the development and the launch of this thing. Steve jobs is role in leading the development and kind of sabotaging ed and then walking away from it all this stuff. So all of that happen

it's the lethal launches any way it's ten thousand dollars. It's hardware is a little flaky. It's aimed at the business market and apple's not great at dealing with the business market. I b m's kind of like already got the market cornered there, so apple cans, the lisa and nineteen. Eighty five. This story picks up because, while that's all happening there's sky in utah, bob cook, I was written in the computer magazines and there was an advertisement. This has become an apple dealer. Phil This form and mail it in, and I did that he was an apple reseller in the late seventies early eighties. He was struggling with that, but he kind of happened onto this idea of selling older discontinued computers, and this was right around the time that there were older, discontinued personal computers cause personal computers were so new, but there was this apple computer, the apple three that was a flop for apple. It was supposed to be this

successor to the apple too, but it was expensive and people really by it the another one. Nobody really talks about in the history of that right, ex havel and and we're not going really talk about it. If there were a bunch of left over apple threes, apple, each q, that that sky bob found out about and he kind of wine them and dine them over a period of time and eventually convince them to you sell him all of their old apple. Three is that they didn't totally note to do with, and so I created this business for himself of selling kind of outdated fields apple hardware there was a lot of people. There were seven brand new equipment. Computers both to be leading edge. Nobody was thing:

about selling the trailing edge of high technology. You know I kind of love that yeah and that sort of thing we all think about now now that computers are expensive and they last and we are cheap and we want to you, know sable bit of money, but that just wasn't a thing as much back then so he makes this. He does this deal with the apple three and it goes really well and then, according to him apple, called him after this apple three deal and said: can you just quit? Do this all again with the leases cause, the lisa had just flops and it was same story all over again. The apple didn't know what to do with all of its unsold He says so they put them all in a truck and shipped him off to you, too so that's out like the story of LISA takes this. Turning to northern utah out of nowhere, so apple has now completely moved on, but there's people in utah who are buying and using. Please us, there's people all over the country who are now buying and using leases. Does this guy bob operated a male?

business. He had eight hundred phone lines and me there's that he sent out everywhere, and so yes, the apple computer, is off selling the apple to line and off selling macintoshes, and out of this one kind of warehouse in northern utah, the lisa, it's like back to life, Bobby's upgrading. It he's like new hardware into it modified the system, software, so they would work more like a mackintosh. Plaza could actually run the most. The latest version of makko s so sort of the least is actually kind of fun like macintoshes and sold at a super steep discount, so they were competitive with the macintoshes. That apple was offering, but they had the state Big screen like the least ahead is there is a whole supper product line, basically right well. That's super fascinating because my my initial impression from the way he described it, was that it was. He was running something like sort of a secondhand store right where it's like. It's not the best thing, but it's cheaper. Oh you're, describing is actually like somebody sort of

king in turning apple products and being like. Actually, I can maybe do this better and more usefully, then apple is really do this. Work like was was this a good in like a genuinely successful business. It was for him. You know it's like compared to act. Obviously no but like he had really hit on something he. He called these things: the LISA professional because even put so much time and energy in the hardware and software here, this whole kind of branding campaign and moved a bunch yeah his his business grew. He was selling these computers all over the country, his customers loved him. He was helping to support the existing, LISA user base through repairs and replacement parts and things like that, an apple, notably. We know one of the reasons. Says that they really liked the deal is cause they kind of wash their hands of the entire product line. They were the apple three and the lisa both they would just send.

support, calls directly to him, allow for either of those model so like he, he sort of became this he's like a de facto apple executive. Yet exactly it's just like you scratch my back, I scratch years apples get rid of these computers that they are not good at selling one way or the other, and he is making the marketable and finding a market for them We'll never did son generated four million dollars last year and drew the attention of newsweek magazine and after the article hit the streets, sales skyrocketed, there's a lot of people that saw the newsweek article. I mean that was huge sounds like a win win. Everybody should be happy, but at some point this story has to go horribly wrong right for yet said something like all roads lead to the land Maybe we know the end of the story, which is that dump looking right riot act, three gotta be a doozy. Here, though I mean honestly,

It's super abrupt what happened caught bob by surprise. He says he just got a call one day. He says that apple loved him for what he was doing and then one day got this call from apple lawyers. That said, hey we're coming to get the computers. He said. We've decided that we want to exercise our clause in the contract to pick up the computers that we own it important detail is that he had most of these on consignment. Okay, there was a clause in their contract. That said, would we can come pick these up at some point, and so they did other a bunch of, as he describes them. Very large men showed up. They were ex marines, the six foot six there, just these muscle man, they started loading up trucks. He thought they were headed, baxter cooper tino, but he says he got in the car and found them and ended up,

at the landfill in town, we were, he just got in the car and he was like I'm going wherever these computers are going. Let's see what this is. I mean this was like he. He really banked his whole isn't this on these computer? Yes, so when apple through this curveball yeah, he says he was very, very invested in understanding what was going on. You can just picture the moment where they're driving down the street and it's like the highways to the left and the dump is to the right, he's like he put on his left signal to turn, and it said the truckers are right, music. What has happened? And this is, I mean like with a little bit more budget like these. Are the reenactment insists that we really need internet have done yet? This is an animated, serious waiting to happen here. Man, I'm standing, I now I now ok, but not well. Today, then take these computers to the dump, for us absolutely no reason, but they like beat them to death. It sounds like

They were just kind of mean about in this. Is this is like kind of one of the central mysteries of this story, because they told the reporter who wrote this article, that it was this business decision they didn't want to be, the hook for spare parts any longer through Bob. anyone else they could really claim a tax write off for the inventory that there does and they were just like yep. That's that's what we're doing, but the the weird thing about it is that it just all seemed sketchier than that bob and we we found the reporter and the photo editor the photo editor and Bob both described the people who showed up to take these computers to the dump, as one of them called them tepees. It seemed like the mob had today. I often hear us about what was in. It was a very strange day. They were very intimidating. There are big guys who were like they were charged with keeping people from following the action. So this is not like apples, accounting department coming for attacks

I know it is not yeah, it's it's very unclear who these people were other, that they were affiliated with apple and they were trying reasonably hard to prevent any one from watching what they were doing. So the newspaper got tipped off to this from the landfill. We probably wouldn't know anything about this, except that the landfill tipped off the newspaper can imagine getting that tipp like we're. We're we're both journalists? Can imaginative from a landfill pickwick you cut, it didn't see, what's being dumped I mean I dream about that? Every time, Mr there's no downside to that story, and now you just what you just wait at your phone work like that yeah, so they show up and they stand their ground and they they get the story, but they watch as these dumptruck operators will run He's computers over with the dumb trucks and then drop them in a hole in the ground and bury them. So you know if it was a tax thing: what's that all about yeah, it's all just very

very fishy feeling. Did you get any kind of information from apple by the way like did you? Did you ask me what they think about all this? Okay, we asked very nicely and they said quote we're declining to participate. They just they just like, gave us a a wave or enough, and that was that we were praying that they would give us something because, after thirty plus years, it's weird enough trouble nailing down the just the particulars of what actually happened, let alone the lake. But why did you really do that and why are you so weird about it? Yeah? Well, that's things that I find myself wondering is like is this. Is this I can. legend in logan now, like people go to dinars and everybody has a theory about what was going on, because there really are we so you describe it. Basically like this one guy, as one primary document and kind of other than that? essentially no information I can just imagine, is being the kind of thing, especially in its unlike logan use, our where everyone in town would have a theory about what happened here.

And somebody would have been like. I think I saw steve jobs that day, like rain very the heap, he did it himself. Is it and amiss. that story in that town. Now there is rising little of that there, and I suspect it is because it just wasn't a big deal when it happened. That's where there is that one article we found a letter the editor about a week. Later in the same paper complaining like why didn't these computers go to the schools like the sculls need computer, What you destroy them like that, what sort of the extent of the response to It- and I think everyone just kind of shrug moved on with their lives. If I were suggests wildly print, advocate based on nothing except the store that you ve, told me yes element. Would, I would think is that this is pure vindictiveness from Eve jobs that not only to save jobs, want to kill the lisa with the mcintosh. He wants to stamp it out of history to literally like a leg. I wouldn't be surprised if he was at the landfill that date

personally driving a stake through the heart of the lisa. As if to say like I won the mcintosh one, I am steve jobs and as far as I except this would not have been out of character for steve jobs in the eighty two to go, fly to utah and do not in the slightest. So do you think that sort of that corporate intrigue you old any of this again, like we don't know it's an old story, but can I have a hard time not seeing those two things is very connected one another. What so I like that is the most natural thing in the world to think and and Bob the computer reseller, like that's, always been at the forefront of his kind. He like feels personally persecuted by steve jobs, so he's like Steve came for the last of these. Exactly the funny thing is that Steve jobs had left the company in nineteen eighty five, this all happen in nineteen, eighty, nine on it right, Steve jobs. He was running next. He had his own computer company. He was literally just like doing so. He was not

officially anywhere near the decision making process for any of the stuff others, and we found no evidence that he was pulling the strings from afar or anything like that. It's shame thoroughly put a damper on my theory. One hears what I can tell you is that we talk to, and bruce Daniels who was a manager on the lisa team and was around for a lot of the rise and fall of steve and eightys, and one thing he told us was that Steve had so poisoned the well at apple against the law. certain had spent so much time bad, mouthing the lisa and preventing any one from saying anything good about the lisa that he was like tat, probably lasted? Well? Certainly, glass was their me already. He was saying the least was terrible in horror, one not worth it, and so I couldn't help it cut, permeate the thinking her out there.

I mean, if I were there, I would just for your own job security. You wouldn't say anything good about the lisa and you'd say good things about the map and the wonderful leadership. The mac repaired, There are also assuming like publicly. This thing was something you you rather have not an existence even made by retailer, like, like apple ninety eighty, nine. If I have my yes one rate is not do in great, like the mcintosh is pretty good. It's pretty successful, but still in pretty tough streets is a com, me you're, absolutely right. There selling good computers, they're selling, expensive computers and they're not selling very many of them, so they're building his reputation with ourselves of being this, like fancy niche computer business and they're, under a ton of pressure to release cheaper computers to compete with I b m compatibles, and just like claw back some of the market share that they lost over the course of the eighties, and so you see how a super spencer

business, oriented, flopped computer that just like won't go away, could feel like a thing that they might want to make go away once and for all. You know it's a small scale, it's just this one reseller, but he's punch above his weight this is making the rounds at mac world expose he's. He got written up induce week. You started the face of the this, like trailing edge business, massey ogg- that actually makes sense an absolutely see if I, you know John Scully, the sea of apple, I'm looking at this in its hang apple, couldn't make the least any good, but this duty talking, but this guy did yeah absolutely and there's just article after article in in magazines. These trade publication just like the lisa second shot, the least rides again there's just all of this like LISA's back. Everybody, which I can't imagine is is useful at apple.

yeah so again, like one hundred percent speculation, apple was not super forthcoming. We had a really hard time finding any one who is at apple at that time. And was in any other rooms where this kind of thing was discussed, but it all kind of lines up in that way. Yeah that makes a lotta sense. Okay, so you didn't find the home. How many thousands of leases was it again about twenty seven hundred of them. Ok, you didn't find the twenty seven hundred. How close do you think? got like you stood in the landfill. Could you feel the vibes of the twenty seven hundred leases like? Did they call to you? I mean there are three ghosts worse also. He was like coal windy and it just like stinky that had a virus. But a place, a way that we are ready to go I don't have. That was the like, anguished cries of the LISA just driving us away, but it was not a super pleasant environment

all the slow process are saying get out of here, but it did feel like we at least proved out the basics of the story, which does have the sort of like tech, urban legend kind of feel too at we. We went to the utah state archives and, like found the actual microfilm print of the hour, prove that it like was actually. article and not this lake. You know pilot text on this blog and there we had scans of of all the photos of the photographer took that day, so we got to just like click through photo after photo of, just like the dumpster bulldozer and there's like this one photo of a just a bulldozer and a keyboard just like a sad keyboard in the garbage, with a like bulldozer coming up over it? It feels like an album cover for like a really sad piano brazier, like Ben folds, five album just that of would have loved. So what would you take away about? This is like a story about apple cause, it's a really interesting time, because apple is obviously dislike untouched,

Lee ascendant company right now, but it also really funny moment, because everybody thinks they about to launch a headset. There is also potentially were back in this kind of like thing before the thing moment, rats like his horse is going to be when apple like reinvents the future. Or is this going to be dumb disastrous too expensive thing before sanity actually figure this out so to some extent like history is repeating itself a bit, but also apple is this untouchable gigantic company that feels dominant in a way that It wasn't obviously in the eightys and the whole idea of apple like work with an outside dude, to make their computers better, is so like hilariously impossible. At this point blank Do you take away as a as a person who thinks about apple as a company? Now? What did you learn? I've been thinking about the you know the pending release of this headset too, not least of which, because I just realized that the this documentary is about the lisa, is going to come out and then, like a week later,

It's gonna be completely buried by the news of whatever apple releases end. Like that so perfect for this story about the lisa that he's gonna, have this like very brief window of play and that is just going to be buried under this avalanche of apple news- then, thirty years later, somebody will find it and they'll be like gosh remember in two thousand and twenty three was a documentary. And the whole cycle will start at anew, and some welcome find me and I'll be like I was there, but yeah. I think you can it hid it, because I also have this feeling about apple, that they are completely unstoppable untouchable and I feel just like a plaything of apples as as their customer, and this story was really interesting to dig into because because I wasn't always like that. It's just like this completely different portrait of this company that does not

That's shit figured out that is willing to work with whoever comes calling with an interesting idea that can make these colossal mistakes and just try something else. It just sort of brings them down to earth a little bit and I think that's valley, the ball and it's especially valuable as they and whoever knows else is going to take this next leap to try to like figure out what comes next after the smartphone, and that, like the story, beats of this story, which just feel quaint and from a very different time, could be super relevant again and it could be, you know a kisser, he could absolutely repeat itself, and so I think in this era of huge infallible tech companies, that's always a good reminder. Clause does nothing lasts economist, meaning the like the vanishing thinness of the line between getting it right and not getting it right, and it's

the alternate history where the lisa was the one that worked and like the computer in front of me is at least a book air instead of a macbook areas like not crazy and there's a handful of what seems like really, fifthly, minor and often not product related things that made one work and not the other absolutely and its seeing two of them side by side, really drives that home people really like honestly seriously talk about one of the reasons: the mcintosh it was more successful than the lisa was that just cuter leg people actually, I see that you know, like designers, of these computers say that the wreck, while the mac was just kind of cuter and people kind of went, oh mac, that's kind of all. You have to go off of when you're looking at the two computers by side is the least was like a little bit bigger and bulkier, unlike looked like it belonged in, and office to do been important office things, and The map is like jazz and it's like that's really stupid that they're so similar, but there is something to it somehow

totally added the line between changing the world and being in a dump is always smarter than you think. Has that for a life lesson has just everyone will remember that just carry that one around with you. I will is awesome. Everybody should go watch, it will link it in the show notes. It's an adverse outcome, congrats on being done to this to the story, different, I'm really glad you got to go to a dump in utah and figure it all out. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for chatting about it, we'll be right back. The support for the show comes from gold peak real brew tea, there's the time of day about an hour before sunset, where the rays feel warm and the breeze feels cool. But the half hour of golden endless is always gone too soon. He may rekindle.

that feeling, with a bar of gold peak made with high quality tea, leaves it smooth taste transports you to golden hour at any hour gold peak tea, it's got to be gold fox creative. This is advertiser content from se. Johnson my name is call in also known as trash call. It did you know, that only about nine percent of plastic waste gets recycled. That's because recycling is not always intuitive, that was our wish cycling, which is when you toss something into the recycling, been hoping it'll get recycled its good intentions, but unfortunately it's not that simple, like plastic bags, ten billion but not when their mixed in with other recyclables, making clogs?

voting machines and cause an entire batch of recyclables to end up in the land. So a little bit of research goes a long way. Look up your city, recycling programme to find out what they can take and make a plan for items. They can't it's normal to feel overwhelmed by the plastic crisis, but which Smee hopeful is taking small actions every single day, knowing that those actions, adult learning about how to end the wish cycle at essie, johnson dot com, slash action matters. Before we go, we have a question from the first class hotline where you are entering one of these every week, because we just get too many fun ones to save them all up and doing episode every once in a while. Sometimes I'll have an answer, sometimes I'll grab some one else who knows better. This is the first one and will find out over. This is just one taxes. I have a question about

music extreme services, and why is there not an easier way to switch to other streaming services? It kind like world, where companies are providing tools to help you switch your phone or your desktop operating systems, or even trying to make things worked together. Colleague, what's happening with matter but if you like on the music streaming services side, it's like none of the providers are interested in solving this problem and we're just kind of stuck with third party services. So my questions are: are any of these third party services? to switch and also why are these companies not giving us the tools to help us get to their platform knows how the shell, thanks for if I can actually answer this one, I just did this recently. This is perfect. The first thing that I should marry. is that these services have absolutely no incentive to work together. Josh mentioned the smart home thing and actually all those companies have a huge incentive to work together because the easy

you're smart home is the more likely you already used more smart, hum stuff, it's the exact opposite with music services, it so similar from one music service to the next, what content you actually have access to that switching is too easy all of these companies. If they made it easy to switch, the price would go down. Everybody would have to build new features because it just a music library? None of these come We want to make it easy for you to switch because they don't really have any moats. Otherwise, that said, there are some who's that make it easier. I used one recently called sound these s. Oh you and d. I see, and it worked well ended up paying five bucks for a month of pro, but then I basically was able to just check. Next to all of my spotify, playlists and kind of all at once create identical playlists on youtube music. That's all it moved. It can really grab every other part of. What's going on inside of my spotify, but at least I had all of my playlists that was pretty good. are also tools like free or music song, ship,

and to my music that have their own spin. On kind of that same idea, we have to have a good How to sorry that I will link in the show shots on how to switch between a bunch of music services, not perfect, but you can jupiter The downside is you can't really tee, a new system to know you like the old one. Does you can't transfer your listening history? The algorithms dont transfer, so now. Have no more a decade of spotify, listening and the service. Just knows me really well you are going to have a very real cold start problem matter what you do with a new service. It would be good if it was better and you could just move between music services as you want to, but I would not arise. that's it for the votes cast today, thanks to everyone who came on the show- and thank you so much for listening, there's a whole lot more. From this conversation at the first outcome, will put some links in the show notes to leans book into the dark so diverse. I come to school at eight like I said we are going to have not off a lot of apple coverage through debate of idiocy and all is actually, if you have

its questions, feelings predictions of you to be to see or anything else in your mind, you can always email us at verge, cast adverse outcome or call the hotline. Eight six, six, four, on one like, I said we're going answer a question on the show every week and we're to do hotline upset prison so keeping up coming this, produced by andrew marino and Liam James brook mentors is our editorial director of audio verge gases, verge production and part of the vocs media podcast network nila alex- and we back on friday, to talk about well problem. w w c, plus easy plus polity. Other tech news gone on this week will see then Rock'N'Roll, hey, I'm ryan, reynolds at mid mobile. We like to do the opposite of what big wireless. Does they charge you a lot? We charge you a little so naturally, when they announced they'd be raising their prices due to inflation. We just

added to deflate our prices due to not hating you that's right. We're cutting the price of men, unlimited from thirty dollars a month to just fifteen dollars a month, give it a try: men, mobile dot com, slash, switch new activation and prompt payment for three month plan required taxes, and these extra additional restrictions apply seamen The com for full terms, the support for the show, came from all effects money transfers sending overseas can be complement. O effects keeps it simple. With over twenty years and business it provides. A fast, reliable and secure way to transfer your money globally and, at a great rate, plus their oath experts, stay on top of global markets and are available twenty four seven so that you can stay focused on your business. Oh, if X, is a license to u s, money, transmitter and registered money service business, reduce your ethics, ass a headache today go to both legs dot com to get started. The.