The Magic Touch Is Money

Parker Dillmann
Welcome to circuit break from macrofab. A weekly show about old you know what? It's a weekly podcast not a show. A weekly podcast. Or is a show podcast?

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Let's go with that. A weekly podcast about all things engineering. Yeah. But you clicked on this knowing it was a podcast, and you would know it's weekly.

Parker Dillmann
If this is your Stephen Kraig and I talked for, like, Steven and I'd, like, talk for an hour. We're all ready to go.

Stephen Kraig
Warmed up here.

Parker Dillmann
What is the topic? Yeah. We're all warmed up. All things engineering. The we all warmed up about all things engineering.

Parker Dillmann
Just finish the intro parts. Manufacturing, industry news, and market monopolizations. We're your hosts, electrical engineers, and go. Greg. This is episode 429, and we just finished that.

Parker Dillmann
Finally. That's how that's how you can tell it's not prerecorded.

Stephen Kraig
We've been we have been warming up for a mo we've been talking about hot topics before this.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Hot topics. This is the next hot topic of the day. So from last week's episode, we didn't get to this topic, and we're just gonna cover this whole thing maybe probably an hour or

Stephen Kraig
so. Yeah. We'll we'll see how it goes. So this is a topic that that well, okay. So I'll I'll just introduce with back on March 21, 2024, the justice department sued Apple for monopolizing the smartphone market.

Stephen Kraig
And this is a topic that when it first came out, I saw articles hit on this, and it was like, woah. Okay. That's really interesting. I'm I'm curious why this is even going forward. And I and and the first article I saw of this was like, oh, we gotta talk about this on the podcast.

Stephen Kraig
And now we are over a month after this started, and we're finally getting around to talking about it. And I was kinda Well, not Not not really. I mean, we've had guests, and we've had other stuff go on. And this isn't necessarily a super normal topic for us to do. And for those who have been listening for a while, you know, Parker and I have talked about Apple many times in the past, both positive and negative things.

Stephen Kraig
But I'm really curious about this topic because it brings up a bunch of almost ethical issues and ideas or concepts with how you handle your product and how you handle your competitors product. And that's really what's got me riled up on this one is how Apple handles their competitors product and the perception about it. And that's the one big word that I really wanna press this whole episode. Because to me, this whole lawsuit comes down to, I guess, penalizing Apple for the way they have changed people's perception about anything that is not Apple. So so from the office of public affairs press release, there's a little bit of a statement I wanna read here on there's an article from the office of public affairs that says Apple's broad based exclusionary conduct makes it harder for Americans to switch smartphones and undermines innovation for apps, products, and services and imposes extraordinary cost on developers, businesses, and consumers.

Stephen Kraig
Apple exercises its monopoly or monopoly power to extract more money from from consumers, developers, content creators, artists, publishers, small businesses, and merchants among others. So this is something that I have had an issue with Apple for a long time. They're very exclusionary platform that they've created. Now in general, you know, for people who've listened for a while, it's fairly obvious. I I tend to fit more in, let's say, a bit more of a conservative political mindset.

Stephen Kraig
And I'm a bit of a capitalist myself. And so for the most part, I land in the category of, you know, Apple made a product, Apple made a platform, Apple has their ecosystem, you know, thumbs up. Good for you. Go for it. And you know what?

Stephen Kraig
They're uber successful. So a lot of people really like the product that they make, and you know what? They give them a ton of money for it. So, you know, thumbs up. Good good to go, Apple.

Stephen Kraig
But at a point, does it start to become a monopoly, and do they start to control the market in unfair practices or by using unfair practices? And a bit of this lawsuit is addressing those kinds of things. Are they charging too much for developers to put stuff on their on their platforms? Are they creating a false narrative for their competitors product? Are they adjusting people's mindsets around what the industry has within it?

Stephen Kraig
And and this lawsuit is really kind of approaching that. So I don't know. I'm I'm really curious about this one, and I was surprised when I first saw it come out because Apple seems to be like a darling baby. Everyone seems to like them. They just have that magic touch that, you know, everything that they do is magical and it just works beautifully.

Stephen Kraig
Right?

Parker Dillmann
The magic touches money.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. A lot of money. Right? So so so I found another another quote I wanna I wanna say real quick from a CNET article that came out not long after the, the lawsuit came out. So it says, the 88 page lawsuit argues that Apple's tight grip on its software, hardware, and app marketplace makes third party apps and smartwatches significantly less appealing to iPhone users, therefore, stifling innovation and resulting in fewer choices for consumers.

Stephen Kraig
Above all else, the complaint alleges these policies entrench iPhone users by imposing barriers when switching to Android, which, okay, that's an interesting statement because when it comes to businesses I've worked for in the past, we've had these exact kind of conversations where it's, hey. We want our customers to buy our stuff, and we want them to be happy with our stuff, but we want them to stick with our stuff, and we want them to buy more of our stuff. And that's not necessarily specifically greed based thing. That is, hey. How do we get the customers cool stuff and they give us money for it?

Stephen Kraig
Right? And in in some ways, creating a platform or no. I shouldn't say a platform. Creating an ecosystem that they can work within, you know, in a way, I'm not gonna say locks them into your thing, but they commit. Let's put it that way.

Stephen Kraig
They commit to using your product and you create services that work for you, but not necessarily they don't necessarily support your competitors. And I'm typically way thumbs up with that. But it feels like in some ways, Apple has gone so far to the extreme that they put lots of effort into preventing you from using your customers stuff. It's not that they just make such a good product that you want to use it. It's that they actively work to make you not use 3rd party anything whatsoever.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. That's, like, that's actually a really good point because let's take for example Bluetooth devices to for a normal Bluetooth speaker can connect to any iPhone or Android or whatever. Any other Bluetooth device. Right? They can connect with PlayStat.

Parker Dillmann
That's the point. But if you want to trans yeah. That's the point. But if you want to transfer data between 2 Bluetooth devices and one of them is an iPhone, you need to have a a basically, an Apple authentication co processor in that other device to do the needful basically between the two devices so you can share data, which is mind boggling. That's a thing.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Exactly. It it's mind boggling because if it feels to me like if anyone else did that, they would be skewered immediately. They would be chastised, and they would they would be considered that this is terrible business practice. You're being evil.

Stephen Kraig
You're being disgusting. But when Apple does it, everyone just kinda turns a blind eye to it and says, oh, but it's Apple, and everything's awesome in Apple world.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Think about if Samsung you had to buy a a Samsung approved cable to talk to your computer because it has the Samsung chip in it. Now they the the Apple gets around that by selling that chip to the 3rd parties. That's how they get around that. So they that's how they make the FCC happy with that is they go, well, we at least supply that component so you can use it.

Parker Dillmann
Right.

Stephen Kraig
And, you you know, we talked about it. I was gonna say a handful of months ago. It's probably more like a year or 2 ago now. But the EU requiring all smartphones to be able to be charged over USB c, which for the longest time going back

Parker Dillmann
Oh, that's Yeah. Yeah.

Stephen Kraig
That was great. But going back all the way, I gosh, even probably to the first iPhone. I never owned one, but I I've certainly seen enough of them. They they've always had proprietary connectors. Right?

Stephen Kraig
They had lightning or they had that big long tongue looking one. There there's always been Apple proprietary connectors that are not necessarily, at least this is the perception from not being an Apple fanboy, but the the connectors or or these proprietary cables or whatnot are not necessarily there to provide innovation to the world. They're there to lock you into their ecosystem. They're there to make sure that you use their thing. And I understand that it's it's painted on with this perception of if if Apple controls everything all the way from everything in the hardware all the way to everything in the software, then they can hyper tune the experience that you have such that you get that elite product.

Stephen Kraig
And I think that's one of the things that they do actually very well, like to a extreme degree is they make you they make this feeling that you have this elite item, like you are part of the select. You are part of the top 1% of the 1% of the 1% even though the 3 quarters of people have that. It they their marketing is so beyond anything else that there's this perception, like, the that word that I keep coming back to that it's the top line thing, but it's available to you, and it's available to everyone. But that is done through a ton of exclusionary business practices that I'm not sure I really

Parker Dillmann
enjoy. Yeah. Yeah. You might remember because you you could make the argument that the lightning connector, which is what they were using before the type c, is comparable to type c. So it's it doesn't offer any more or less than type c.

Parker Dillmann
It's just a different connector that's high speed, allows fast charging, etcetera. Now before then, though, was probably, like, the worst connector I've ever had to deal with, which is the Apple 30 pin dock connector, which had, like, little, like, tabs on the side that you had to punch to unconnected, which is great for positive retention, but that thing, like, it probably only worked for 6 months before it stopped working. If you had a dock that you would actually put your iPod in, porn would work for 6 months before it would crap out. That was, like, that literally was to lock you into the Apple ecosystem, because it was a clearly inferior cable Mhmm. Design.

Stephen Kraig
And on top of that, because they are these proprietary things and because they're manufactured by Apple, they can set the price to be whatever they want. And the idea is the price is typically on the higher end of things, but with that idea and that mentality of it being elite, it seems like everyone just accepts that is fine. That is okay. And, you know, with the lightning connector, I wouldn't mind if lightning connectors became the standard. If USB c didn't exist and everything use lightning connectors, wouldn't bother me one bit.

Stephen Kraig
But the thing is Apple wasn't pursuing that. Apple wasn't pursuing the enhancement of all electronics. They only pursue the enhancement of their electronics and their bottom line. And and I'm not trying to say, like, Android or any other smartphone manufacturers or whatever are trying to do that, but I just don't feel like there's the same level of exclusionary practices that happened with other manufacturers, and it just seems surprising that everyone seems to be just okay with it when Apple does it. And I think that comes back to that point where you get that that elite feeling.

Stephen Kraig
I'm using this really awesome piece of gear, and I don't want it to change. And I want to be I want to continue to be within that ecosystem.

Parker Dillmann
I think my dad had to buy, like, 8 of those cables, like, any cables over 2 years he had an iPhone. They just wore out like crazy. But I did find the podcast article that we or podcast episode when we talked about the EU, and that was September 15th Okay. Last

Stephen Kraig
year 2023. So that that long ago. Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
I think we first started bringing that up in June 10, 2022 with the episode, this podcast attention left blank, episode 332, that was when the EU was just starting to talk about it.

Stephen Kraig
Which which I think it's funny because on on the newest or maybe I don't keep up with it, but I know it's on the newest iPhone. They used type c as a selling point, like, it's a marketing point. It's, like, Apple has finally gone type c as as a selling point. I'm, like, guys, you were forced to by the European government. This is not a selling point.

Stephen Kraig
You were liter like, if you weren't forced to, you would not be going to type c. So, like, behind the scenes, like But

Parker Dillmann
it's titanium now.

Stephen Kraig
But it's titanium now. Yeah. That's true. They did push that really hard. In fact, it's funny.

Stephen Kraig
Every time an iPhone commercial would come on and I'm sitting on the couch watching the show with my wife, I'd be like, hey. Did you know it's made of titanium? And She finally got annoyed. She was like, just shut up because every commercial was, oh, titanium.

Parker Dillmann
So this is a good segue into the next topic because we were talking about commercials. Remember the commercials of hello, I'm a Mac, and I'm a PC. This is a very this might be the first instance of I remember of them downplaying straight up the competitors' products in an advertisement. And sure there were great commercials. I think they're, like, I think those commercials are legendary.

Parker Dillmann
Everyone remembers those commercials and how good of it they did to turn basically turn Apple's band around. But is it okay to even if you have a superior product, is it okay to bash or talk down of your competitors' products in marketing?

Stephen Kraig
You know? Okay. I so I think, yes. I think the answer is is yes. You can say why your competitor's product is inferior.

Stephen Kraig
I think it is better to say why your product is superior. I think that is a better marketing ploy, and and and I personally respond more to that. But I don't see an issue with saying, our our competitors product works 30% worse than ours. You can do that. I don't think that there's an necessarily an ethical issue with that.

Stephen Kraig
One of the biggest problems, however, that this lawsuit that that the justice department came out with is is that Apple actively adjusts data that flows through their product if it is coming from a non Apple product. So that includes downgrading, images and videos, but, also, this is really petty and stupid in my opinion. But text bubbles, whenever you're texting with people, are different colors if they're coming from a non Apple product, indicating that person that you're talking to is inferior in some way. And I'm gonna make that statement. I know I know that, like I said, it it seems really petty.

Stephen Kraig
But they want you to know that person you're talking to does not have the elite product that is in your hand by indicating that with a different color from them. And there's there's reduced functionality as well, like

Parker Dillmann
Could you imagine being a a a kid and everyone's got the latest iPhone and you have and your family can't afford the latest iPhone, and now everyone knows that you're not as well off. Mental health is a huge issue, especially for kids in America right now. That's a terrible implementation.

Stephen Kraig
I totally agree. And like I said, I the word that keeps coming to my head with with that one is petty. It's just petty. I don't think it enhances anything. I don't think it brings anything to the table.

Stephen Kraig
It except for the intent that they want you to know that who the person you're talking to, if they have a I think it's a green bubble if they're Android. They want you to know that person is not on your level. Let's just put it that way.

Parker Dillmann
They're not in your social economic sphere.

Stephen Kraig
But they they which is funny because the competitor's product is the same price. It's the same price.

Parker Dillmann
It's not like Yeah.

Stephen Kraig
Same price. Like

Parker Dillmann
well well, it's not you can buy a $40 Android powered phone. Yeah. Actually, I use a I use a $40 phone for the garage.

Stephen Kraig
Sure. Sure. But but but but if you wanna get if you wanna get the iPhone equivalent from Samsung, let's say, you're paying effectively the same the same price. Okay. So so I actually have some some funny quotes that I've I've found over the past few weeks.

Stephen Kraig
I heard a political commentator talking about this. Now this commentator explicitly said that they use Apple product, And they pulled up actually, they showed a a video of the US attorney general Merrick Garland. They showed a portion of a press conference that Merrick Garland gave about this particular lawsuit, and they were talking about the green bubble, blue bubble kind of thing along with the downgrading of videos. And immediately after showing that clip, this political commentator said, if Android wants to be taken seriously, then they need to step their game up. And that's a paraphrase.

Stephen Kraig
That's not the exact words they said, but effectively, that's what they're going. If Android wants to be taken seriously, then they need to step their game up, which is funny because they said that immediately after Merrick Garland in the press conference was saying they are specifically downgrading it such that you would have that perception. Android doesn't need to step their game up. This particular commentator totally bit into it and truly thought that Android was an inferior product because of these things even though like even though it is actively degrading your competitors data effectively, which is entirely unfortunate. Now another quote completely tangent on this.

Stephen Kraig
I saw a clip from a comedian that was doing crowd work. And as part of one of the jokes that was going on crowd work, I think somebody's phone went off in the in the crowd, And the the comedian was like, hey, can I have your phone? I wanna see who's calling or whatnot. So they so the crowd passed the phone up to the stage. The the comedian grabs the phone and immediately holds it between 2 fingers like it's a disgusting animal or whatnot, and he goes, ew, it's an Android.

Stephen Kraig
Ew. This perception that there's something gross about it because it was not an Apple product. Like, gosh. The brilliance that Apple has, that their marketing team has, that they have implanted this. They've embedded this into everyone's psyche that if it's not Apple, it's just bad.

Stephen Kraig
And not only that, like, disgusting in a way. You gotta give it to them. They've done such a damn good job on that. So, yeah, I think, like I said, it a lot of it comes down to it being extremely petty, and it's all about perception here. I am I'm frankly surprised that there is a lawsuit about this.

Stephen Kraig
I mean, I I I personally think that there's probably something to be had with this lawsuit even though, like I said previously, I in general, I I think in in a capitalistic business society, these things are not necessarily out of the question of of of things you can do. But has Apple taken it too far? Has this gotten to be so much of a problem that the US government needs to step in and do something

Parker Dillmann
about it. I don't think they I I don't see a point to this lawsuit. The if Apple wants to downgrade and have that kind of experience of putting together an elitism attitude for their ecosystem, that's sure. They can do that. I don't have a problem with that.

Parker Dillmann
I just view it as I just view it as you're overpaying for the hardware and the software experience. So I already have my own view if you're buying an Apple product for it being like there's some valid reasons to buy an Apple product. There's some software that only runs in that ecosystem, etcetera. Totally valid. Mhmm.

Parker Dillmann
Go for it. But it's when you start buying it because it's a status symbol. That's when I'm like I can't even say the word I wanna say for that kind of yeah. It's it's you're not good with money. It's I'm gonna put it's like marketing people buying MacBooks.

Parker Dillmann
A 100% of your tools are are either gonna work in Linux or they're also gonna work in Windows or they're browser based. Like, I think the only tool that maybe a marketing person uses that's not browser based is gonna be like Adobe Photoshop. And if you're using Adobe Photoshop, you might want to use, like, the nicer Apple monitors that are actually, like, color calibrated and stuff like that. Totally cool. The funny thing about that is most marketing is view like, ads are viewed on many different kind of displays that don't have calibration, so you need to make sure it works on those displays.

Parker Dillmann
So it's not it doesn't matter if you're on a color. Like, you should also so there's no point. If you're an artist doing digital work, 100% makes sense. Having a really good representation of what the print is gonna look like, that's awesome. That's actually good use of that technology that Apple's made, but an ad that's gonna scroll on Twitter, it doesn't need that.

Parker Dillmann
I'm sorry. So it's honestly a waste of money to buy Mac devices for that those kind of departments. So but Michelle, who's our director of marketing, is gonna listen to this, and he's gonna probably pull me in his office the the week after this comes out. Yes, Michelle. It's a waste of money to buy Mac Looks.

Stephen Kraig
Okay. And I know it sounds like Parker and I are absolutely shitting on Apple.

Parker Dillmann
No. I just gave completely valid

Stephen Kraig
And I wanna come out and just be clear about it. I exclusively used Apple products for about 10 years of my life, and that was, like, pick it. It doesn't matter what it is. It was an Apple product. My whole family used nothing but Apple products.

Stephen Kraig
And that was I remember my father having a discussion with me about it. He's completely bit into the idea that they just make a superior product. And I remember parroting that for a long time. But I also remember at that time being like, well, okay. Yeah.

Stephen Kraig
Sure. Apple makes up a superior product, but there's a lot of things that I want to do that this product won't let me do. I'm literally, they just don't make the thing for this product. And so I had to I had to go in and take a bite and buy a non Apple product. And what's funny is the second I bought a non Apple product, my family started using that more than the Apple product.

Stephen Kraig
And and and be there was a lot of reasons behind that, but it was just there was a little bit of irony behind it. And I'm and I don't want it to I don't want it to come off as I hate Apple products. That's not even slightly true. It's just a lot of these business practices that I see seem very dishonest and they seem very in they seem very intent on controlling the way you think about electronics as a whole. And to that, I kinda take a little bit of issue.

Stephen Kraig
Like, I I I I make amplifiers. Right? What if I made an amplifier that if I detected that one of the inputs was from an Apple iPhone, I purposefully degraded the quality of the audio just because it was Apple. There's not a chance on earth anyone would buy anything from me ever. Why can Apple get away with that kind of stuff?

Stephen Kraig
Why is everyone okay with that kind of business practice? I don't know. Like, that that that that it irks me a little bit. And, actually, I I have some thought experiments that that I wrote up that I'd love to just kinda play around with and see may maybe they're analogous, maybe some people won't think they are, but the first one here is, let's say your car has an issue and you take it to a mechanic, and the mechanic purposefully puts inferior parts in your car based on the brand of car that you brought in there. Is that is that a business practice that we would be okay with?

Stephen Kraig
Would would would that mechanic be in business? I don't think so. I think that's kind of slimy. Right?

Parker Dillmann
It depends on the car. If it's a Chrysler, putting OEM parts is actually still a good unit. I like that. As someone who owns Chrysler vehicles.

Stephen Kraig
So Right. Yeah. It's

Parker Dillmann
yeah. I I yeah. It purposely putting inferior parts. One is just bad business practice because then you have to do double labor when that part fails and yet that person runs back. I don't think that's a completely analog situation.

Parker Dillmann
So I guess it's kinda hard, but, yeah, I actually, there are some mechanics that technically do that, but they let you know that you're doing that they're doing that. And actually, if you go to a good mechanic is gonna be, like, hey, You need widget z for your car. And widget z OEM cost this much, but widget z from Billy's AutoZone down the street cost this much because it's it's a aftermarket part. But then he goes, well, I can also can we have one of the we have a a widget z in the the car behind the shop that we're parting out, and that one costs this much, so it's used. I that's actually what a good mechanic would

Stephen Kraig
be for you. Yeah. But if the mechanic said, I'm gonna fix your you bring it in, they say, we know what the problem is. I'm gonna fix it. And they don't tell you what they're putting in in, but they just arbitrarily pick inferior parts.

Parker Dillmann
I I could see this it'd be more close to what you're going with is if you took your car to your dealer. So you took your car brand c car to dealer c, but it's like an older model. And then they put inferior parts that makes your car not perform as well as you. That's a little closer

Stephen Kraig
to what real Apple does with their products.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. But that's that's closer to what Apple does. They push you updates that make your phones slower

Stephen Kraig
and and, have less battery. Yeah. We didn't even mention that.

Parker Dillmann
Because remember that? Yeah. That that was a whole thing couple years ago that they got dinged for.

Stephen Kraig
Right.

Parker Dillmann
What was the result to that?

Stephen Kraig
People went out and bought the newer model. I don't remember. Wouldn't surprise me if that was Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
I'm looking it up real quick. Apple agreed in 2020 to that's a long time ago. 2020 to pay between a 100 $310,500,000,000 as part of the settlement and response to a class auction lawsuit were stemmed from earlier legal complaints about this company's software updates were deliberately throttling the performance of specific older iPhone models. So, yes, Apple was pushing updates that were slowing down your phone on purpose to push you to newer models. How is that not if you how why would you wanna buy a new

Stephen Kraig
iPhone device? Know that they're that that is a practice that they're willing to do, why would you feed that monster? I don't know. That's scary. But I mean, I guess I guess, you know, they had there there's a lawsuit, and they had to fess up to it and pay out for it.

Stephen Kraig
So quite

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Because before, there was just, like, perception, and there was no data behind it. But then there's your proof right there that it was actually Yeah.

Stephen Kraig
And but, I mean, they're still I think I looked it up the other day. It's 2 2 thirds or 3 quarters of all people in the United States that own a smartphone own an iPhone. Even with them doing those kinds of things, like being willing to pay into that.

Parker Dillmann
Right. What's the next type of vehicle?

Stephen Kraig
So say if you have a a smart TV that detected you are watching ads, say on YouTube, for a competitor's product, would it be acceptable for that TV to prevent the ads? And as in just you can't watch this? Or what if it just actively made the videos look bad? Or even further? What if it use some kind of technology to make the product look bad, but not just but the ad look good, but the product looked bad inside the ad.

Stephen Kraig
So one company actively making another product, their competitors product look bad.

Parker Dillmann
I'm more worried about the fact that the TV knows

Stephen Kraig
you're not watching. That's what that's more what I'm worried about. Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
But smart TVs do that. I mean, that's why smart TVs are so cheap is because they're harvesting data and set and selling it to do we even know what they sell it to? Where's what's that pipeline like?

Stephen Kraig
How do you get involved in that? How do you purchase data from a data miner? It's easy because I'm

Parker Dillmann
in marketing now. Yeah. Well, I'm saying is the TV side is what kind of data is that used I guess there was that what's that you can get a my neighbor was on this where they got paid to have a little box on their Nelson. So there's but they Yeah. Something like that.

Parker Dillmann
My neighbor was on that program, and but they you have to sign a contract, and they pay you, and you install a little box, and my Android phone is listening to me right now because it now it's it said it, like, broke down, like, the past 5 minutes on the Oh. Jeez. But that's like you're entering a two way agreement from the get go. Like, that's up front. Right?

Parker Dillmann
But these smart TVs, the agreement is in that ginormous user agreement that you've signed by basically buying the TV. It's so you never actually read it. But where does that data, like, I don't know where that goes.

Stephen Kraig
I have no idea.

Parker Dillmann
I I Probably goes to some, like, AWS server. Actually, no. AWS is probably too expensive for that. It's probably because some Chinese data farm somewhere.

Stephen Kraig
So so if you are falsely representing your customers, sorry, competitors, think at some point in time, at there's some threshold at which you are lying and causing issues. But what where what's that threshold? You can't just make a commercial. Okay. If GM came out and made a commercial and where a guy just walks out onto a stage and says, all Toyota cars explode the moment you buy them.

Stephen Kraig
You can't just do that. Right? Like, there there there is actually a

Parker Dillmann
great moment in car history. There's an ad that's similar to that way back. I gotta find that ad. I don't have it off hand, but it's something like this is back when the imports were crushing. This is like the the early eighties.

Parker Dillmann
It were, like, the new compacts and stuff were, like, Toyota and Honda were, like, crushing domestics here in the States. And there was, like, an ad that was very similar to what you just said, where, like, they blame the consumers for not buying American. They're like, don't you see all these cars? Like, this show 10 years ago, like, all these American cars. All these cars fund American workers, but look at it now.

Parker Dillmann
All these cheap foreign cars. Yeah. Just blaming the consumers for basically buying a better product.

Stephen Kraig
Okay. I I feel like that's a little bit different because they're not necessarily slandering the competitor's product. Well, they are. They are because it's

Parker Dillmann
you're buying these products that are not giving your neighbors jobs, and they're cheap, and they're cheap because maybe they're inferior.

Stephen Kraig
Well, but okay. I now we're getting into legalese. I don't think that there's actually an issue with saying that, Okay. If the perception is that they're cheap, I don't know. I don't know.

Stephen Kraig
The the the there's a fine line with walking that. Because if you're blaming your own customers, you can do that. That's really stupid. But you could do that. Right?

Parker Dillmann
I mean, there was automotive and domestic automotive in, like, the early eighties. Yeah.

Stephen Kraig
It's it's really stupid, but but there's nothing saying you can't do that. That sounds more like shooting your own foot as opposed to trying to shoot your, your competitor's foot. But but but completely lying about your competitor's product through your product. Now okay. Here's another fun hypothetical.

Stephen Kraig
I actually remember this because I heard that it actually happened. I don't have any data on it. Maybe I can find something. But if you are currently signed up for Internet service through your ISP, do they have the ability to prevent you from looking up other ISPs, for shopping for other ISPs, or can they just arbitrarily slow the, the another ISP's website, which it might change your perception about that I, the the ISP. If you go to their website and be like, oh, man, it's running really slow, but nobody else runs really slow, so maybe they just have a bad product.

Stephen Kraig
That's changing your perception.

Parker Dillmann
No. You're a 100 percent you're a 100% right. That's called packet shaping, and ISPs do it all the time. And there are, were lawsuits out there where they would allow speed your you would go to a speed test site, and it would, like, open up the knobs and let all the data go through. And so your speed would be really fast, but when you would do some things like this is back when, like, it really the package shaping really took off in, like, when Netflix streaming became a thing because a lot of these ISPs also had cable packages, and so they would they would literally degrade YouTube and Netflix data.

Parker Dillmann
This is the whole thing with net neutrality back then, which now all these companies that were, like, were for it or now are against it, man. Net neutrality is, like, a battle

Stephen Kraig
Oh, it was crazy. I remember

Parker Dillmann
the history of all the companies flip flopping on whether they supported or or against it and what it actually means for the customer. Yeah. That that was a great time trying to not, like, make a decision if you were for against that thing. But that's not what this podcast is about. This is we're talking about degrading.

Parker Dillmann
So they were literally your ISP was or your media provider because they also do cable, TV, was degrading the performance of basically other services on purpose. I don't know if they got in trouble for that or anything. A great way to basically figure out if it was happening to you was did you just turn on a VPN, and then they can't packet shape it because it gets encrypted and they don't know what the data is? And yeah. So you'd connect to once yeah.

Parker Dillmann
And your beautiful 480p YouTube would come through because that was the resolution of YouTube back then when this was starting to become a big thing. So, yeah, I think it's a 100% wrong, especially for ISPs, because they're not they're they're not supposed to be they're supposed to be agnostic to the data, because you're paying for the pipeline to get the data. You're not paying for anything else. So in theory, that's how it should be. That's not the case.

Parker Dillmann
Because we actually last week on the podcast, you were trying to open up the article for the GM. Right. Vic, the Visual Information Center.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. The the CRT, Oldsmobile.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. The Oldsmobile Toronado, and you could you got a 403. And you tried it on your phone that was connected to the Wi Fi, and you got a 43, but then when you turned off the Wi Fi and went through the tower, it loaded up just fine. So that ISP does not like that website for

Stephen Kraig
sure. No idea why. It's just the automotive whatever.

Parker Dillmann
That's just an automotive website that's linked through Hackaday, so it's today is fine. Right. It's not some weird dartru account or TLD. Man, if I'm googling for like weird data sheets be don't click on the ones that say dotru. Oh.

Parker Dillmann
Because it's t l Yeah.

Stephen Kraig
For sure. That that's an easy one to just be like, nope.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Not clicking on that one. I see that pop up a lot when you start searching for really weird, like, text strings and stuff because they're, like, trying to find, like, error codes and stuff. Those pop up a lot. It's kinda interesting.

Parker Dillmann
That's I guess if you're only, like, a technical person, you might and so they're trying to infect, like, a I'm I'm assuming here they're trying to infect, like, technical workstations and stuff. So that's kind of an interesting ploy to get higher up in search results because there was a whole oh, man. There was a whole thing where companies were paying Google Ads for very specific phrases, and so you would and so you would get a notification on something. And so you would you'd be curious as you would Google it, and it would send and that would be, like, the only result in Google, so you would click on it. Very interesting tactics.

Parker Dillmann
So so Talk about degrading performance. And we just degraded the performances

Stephen Kraig
Well, okay. I actually I I remember a a story. I wanna I wanna reel it back for a second just because I think that this is both sad and funny. So so so okay. Back back on the topic of Apple changing people's perceptions.

Stephen Kraig
The the the whole texting thing where they identify if you don't have an Apple product. I don't have any problem whatsoever with prioritizing people within your network. I think that's a I think that's a totally fine thing and totally acceptable. But making sure that people are well aware that someone is not using your product is perhaps I don't know. It's perhaps there's problems with it.

Stephen Kraig
And it's funny because so so an old friend of mine, old roommate of mine, we still keep in touch to this day. He's actually on a handful of dating websites, and, you know, we talk about random stuff every and one day, he he hit me up with an image. So he matched with a girl on one of these dating sites, and he sent her the first message, like the introduction. Hi. I'm blah blah blah blah person blah blah.

Stephen Kraig
Whatever. I don't even remember what he said. The very first response from this woman to him was, oh, thank god. This is not a green blob bubble. So she was judging romance and a potential relationship based on the technology that was in that person's hand.

Stephen Kraig
Oh, thank God you're not one of those Android weirdos. Thank God it's a blue bubble that came up. That kind of mentality. And my buddy sent me that because he knew that would just get me riled up, and of course it did. I was like, you gotta be freaking kidding me.

Stephen Kraig
Right? This kind of idea that, like, I can't I couldn't even pretend to go on a date with somebody who had a green bubble in my text, you know, stream. First of all, I'm, like, petty to the max, right, to the extreme in that sense. But, like, how did we get to the point where we have a company that has created this? And how did they want that to be the case?

Stephen Kraig
Like, I just it just feels kind of gross and disgusting to me that that we we've we've built this wall in between people that is based on the technology that's in your hand. I don't know. I thought that was a funny a funny thing because the guy who sent it to me is a total Apple fanboy. His house is appled out. And so he and I chat about this topic quite a bit, actually.

Parker Dillmann
Well, it it it comes down to Apple's a corporation and channeling mister Krabs from SpongeBob. I like money.

Stephen Kraig
True. They really do like money, and people really like giving it to them.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. So if they and, again, if if they wanna create that kind of ecosystem Yeah. So be it. I am glad that my Android device doesn't tell me what kind of device they use because I don't care.

Stephen Kraig
I'm in the same boat as you, Parker.

Parker Dillmann
Yep. That's a very interesting, like, social economic decision by that lady.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah. Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
I think you I think you know what? I think if I well, if when I get back to dating, it's been a couple years now. Yeah. People are crazy being in your mid thirties.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
I think it might be a good thing to avoid those kind of people.

Stephen Kraig
Well, I mean, you can yeah. Just like they used do you have an Android as a a weed out tool for potential relationships? You can use people who act like that as a potential weed out tool for relationships.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. May I put that in my profile? No Apple devices allowed in this household. No.

Stephen Kraig
No. No. Like, my wife for a while used Apple tool products. I don't like, I certainly let her know my thoughts on some of the business practices.

Parker Dillmann
I got an idea. I got k. Is it immoral because my mom my mother uses Apple products is it immoral if I went onto the router and I purposely throttled that MAC address for her device to get her to switch to Apple?

Stephen Kraig
I mean, if you're Apple, then maybe that would be moral. That's the thing. I don't think Apple actually throttles your data. They just degrade it.

Parker Dillmann
I mean, it's insane.

Stephen Kraig
Maybe. Speed versus quality, though.

Parker Dillmann
You know you know what she would do? She would just buy the next asset.

Stephen Kraig
Hoping that it would fix the problem?

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Because it wouldn't be the same

Stephen Kraig
market address anymore. You just have to stay one step ahead. Oh, man. Yeah. I don't know.

Stephen Kraig
I feel like we've complained quite a bit here. I'm I'm actually curious what other people's thoughts are on this lawsuit. Is this do you think that this is warranted? Do you think that this is something that the federal government should get involved with? Or is this just business as usual and, you know, totally acceptable behavior by by a company of that magnitude?

Stephen Kraig
I'm not sure where I land. There's certainly aspects of it that just from a emotional standpoint, I don't really like, but I'm not really into telling companies you can't do it. I just I think my overall feelings is I just wish they wouldn't do that, but I don't know if I really agree with telling you can't do it.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. That that's where the stickler is because I I'm I'm in that camp. I'm more of the why are why is our government wasting

Stephen Kraig
its time on this? That's a good point.

Parker Dillmann
That's a

Stephen Kraig
good point.

Parker Dillmann
There's a lot of other things that we can have them be doing and should be doing than caring if a messaging app has a green or blue bubble. Yes. That's petty. Is it immoral also on the engineering side? Probably as well.

Parker Dillmann
Is it something that the US government had needs to get a hold of? No. It's not.

Stephen Kraig
That's a really good point, Parker. Just like people on dating apps probably shouldn't care if the bubble is green or blue, maybe our government shouldn't care if the bubble is green or blue. And maybe Apple shouldn't care if the bubble is green or

Parker Dillmann
blue. Yep. There's that too. But clearly, some people like it being green. Somebody does.

Stephen Kraig
Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. Let us know in the comments. You know what? I'm gonna put it right here. I wanna pull on Android versus app well, actually, how about just Apple versus other devices?

Stephen Kraig
Mhmm. And

Parker Dillmann
then we can have a mix. So if you have, like, mix Also,

Stephen Kraig
seriously, I'm I'm being dead serious here. Please, if you think I'm wrong, tell me how I'm wrong. I want to hear that. Come to our come to our our discourse, form.macrofab.com. And I'm totally open to being educated on what I have wrong here.

Stephen Kraig
And I'm sure there's plenty of our listeners who have opinions on why I'm wrong here, and I'd love to hear it. I really do, and I'm willing to I'm willing to listen here. Or if if you believe that these stances are worth defending, please come and and defend them, and maybe it's maybe I'll jump on board and be like, hey. Yeah. No.

Stephen Kraig
I don't think may maybe all of this is acceptable business behavior. So

Parker Dillmann
Yeah. But, again, I'm on you know, they can do what they want. I'm not giving them money, so it doesn't no skin off my back. So Yeah. Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
Let us know. Forum.macrofab.com. Thank you for listening to circuit break from MacroFab. We are your hosts And

Stephen Kraig
Steve and

Parker Dillmann
Craig. Later, everyone. Q. Yes. You breaker for downloading our podcast if you have jeez.

Parker Dillmann
I've just reprote

Stephen Kraig
this, so

Parker Dillmann
Thank you. Yes, you breaker for downloading our podcast. Tell your friends and coworkers about circuit break podcasts. That's really I even wrote that wrong. Circuit Break Podcasts for Mac that sounds terrible.

Parker Dillmann
If you have a cool idea, project, or topic you want us to discuss, let Steven and I and the community of Breakers know. Our community where you can find personal projects, discussions about the podcast, and engineering topics and news is located at forum.macrev fab.com. I'm gonna put a note here for me to change that

Stephen Kraig
Will you miss the word the? Tell your friends and coworkers about the circuit break podcast from Macrofab.

Parker Dillmann
Oh, you're right.

Stephen Kraig
It's written well. Okay. Or it's written okay. Yeah.

Parker Dillmann
It's okay enough for for the engineers I go good enough for the engineers I go out with. Stopping. We had some connectivity here.

Stephen Kraig
I saw that. I noticed one time that that you just went kaput, so I just kept going.

Parker Dillmann
And it it caught up or something. It says it stopped. Is it stopped on your side? No. Please reload and try

Stephen Kraig
It says it's recording. Oh. It still says recording on my side, but it also says that I'm uploading.