Speaker 1: Every year in June, Apple hosts a huge conference in
Speaker 1: northern California called the Worldwide Developers Conference or ww d C.
Speaker 1: Goody good, this is one of the biggest moments of
Speaker 1: the year. This is Apple basically saying, hey, this is
Speaker 1: our big software roadmap for the next year or so,
Speaker 1: while also hinting at the hardware it's planning for the fall.
Speaker 1: Of course, it's also where developers learned to build new
Speaker 1: apps with the latest technologies, which drives Apple's growing services revenues. So, Mark,
Speaker 1: we're giving you an episode of Decrypted, the preview this
Speaker 1: year's w w DC. What do you have for us?
Speaker 1: Thanks Brad Well. Today I'm going to give you an
Speaker 1: even earlier peak into what's coming at the conference and
Speaker 1: take you inside the key app store approval process with
Speaker 1: Philip Schumacher. He used to run Apple's app store review
Speaker 1: department and play a role in some of the WWC conferences.
Speaker 1: He left Apple a few years ago and he's now
Speaker 1: the CEO of a security company called Identity dot Com
Speaker 1: m We reached out to Apple on a number of
Speaker 1: points in this interview and they declined to comment. I'm
Speaker 1: Brad Stone and Dim mark Erman, and you are listening
Speaker 1: to decrypted. Okay, Mark, I'll let you take it from here.
Speaker 1: I remember this must have been ten years ago. In
Speaker 1: a past life, they used to do some some app development.
Speaker 1: Oh I know ya back in the day. So we
Speaker 1: were in ninth grade or tenth grade, my friend Aaron
Speaker 1: and I. We saw there was an app called I
Speaker 1: Am Rich. It was a thousand dollars and I think
Speaker 1: that's uh, maybe before you started or a little bit
Speaker 1: after you started, and that app got removed, got from
Speaker 1: the App store after I think sixteen or eighteen people
Speaker 1: bought it. So we thought it would be funny to
Speaker 1: come up with a hundred dollar version called you Are Rich.
Speaker 1: That get that got pulled from the app store. And
Speaker 1: that's how I met you, because after I got pulled,
Speaker 1: I called to complaint again, before I did all the
Speaker 1: Apple News wanting to talk to you, demanding to talk
Speaker 1: to Philip Shoemaker's and then I got you. So what
Speaker 1: was that? Like? How often were you were you doing
Speaker 1: stuff like that? Well, you know, to be honest, you
Speaker 1: were one of the few developers that actually reached out
Speaker 1: and you were persistent about it. Right that you're doing
Speaker 1: what you're doing now. But at the time, there were
Speaker 1: a few developers that would reach out. Two thousand nine
Speaker 1: was really breakthrough year for Apple and learning a lot
Speaker 1: about the App Store, and we learned a lot about
Speaker 1: how approving the wrong app can actually make the stock
Speaker 1: price go down. And when that happens, you get calls
Speaker 1: like I did from Steve, from al Gore and folks
Speaker 1: like that that would just you know, be mad at
Speaker 1: you for for your team approving an app like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, that's interesting. I didn't realize it went literally
Speaker 1: all the way to the talk and beyond with Jobs
Speaker 1: and al Gore. What what was the interaction between app
Speaker 1: review and was actually you know, volume submission volume. In
Speaker 1: March two tho nine, we're just skyrocketing and they kept
Speaker 1: going anyway. We were doubling the size of the team
Speaker 1: every three to six months, so uh so it would
Speaker 1: it was very involved, this very involved process, and to
Speaker 1: put these questionable apps in front of the executives once
Speaker 1: a month was ridiculous to me. So I made that
Speaker 1: meeting weekly, which meant I got a beating weekly right
Speaker 1: when you'd miss your numbers or you to prove the
Speaker 1: wrong app, which you know, in the early days we
Speaker 1: did all of that. It was. It was a process
Speaker 1: we were trying to refine because we were we were inventing. However,
Speaker 1: when certain apps got to prove that they shouldn't have
Speaker 1: you know that three more three weeks into my job,
Speaker 1: Apple released, uh an Apple or approved an app called
Speaker 1: baby Shaker. I'm sure you know all about that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: take us through that. What take us start to finish?
Speaker 1: What happened there? Baby Shaker was was one of these
Speaker 1: really weird things because at the time, early early on
Speaker 1: in the app store, we were not certain as to
Speaker 1: what apps we should have proved and not approved. Early on,
Speaker 1: we really had eight uh seven or eight things that
Speaker 1: Steve gave us specifically to look out for, and things
Speaker 1: like I Am Rich weren't on there. Things like baby
Speaker 1: Shaker just really weren't there. So early on we were
Speaker 1: having three sets of eyes look at every app. It
Speaker 1: went to somebody that one of my peers, uh someone
Speaker 1: senior that I took the team over from, and two
Speaker 1: of his employees, and they all approved it. And what
Speaker 1: it was was it's a it's a drawing of a
Speaker 1: baby and when it would start to cry, just randomly,
Speaker 1: you would rock it to sleep, and that was great,
Speaker 1: but if you were getting frustrated, people would shake the
Speaker 1: heck out of that device, and then it put excess
Speaker 1: over the eyes of the baby. And it says never
Speaker 1: shake a baby, but it was I wouldn't say it
Speaker 1: was a a a good message, but it should never
Speaker 1: been approved. So when that app got approved, it was
Speaker 1: an interesting day. I got approved on a Monday or Tuesday,
Speaker 1: and we announced record earnings. We announced I think Eddie
Speaker 1: had announced something like a billion download for the app store.
Speaker 1: I mean, all these amazing numbers, and our stock price
Speaker 1: went down. And that's because of the bay, because of
Speaker 1: the baby Shaker. We had the shaking baby syndrome. Folks
Speaker 1: piketting outside of infinite loop for me baby shap. It
Speaker 1: was interesting because I saw my phone ring and it
Speaker 1: said Steve Job's office, and I picked up Reticent and
Speaker 1: I got as admin who said Steve would like to
Speaker 1: talk to you. And Steve just had simple word for me,
Speaker 1: You're stupid and you hire stupid people. This was one
Speaker 1: of the best conversations I had with Steven. Was just
Speaker 1: so succinct, to the point you hung at the phone.
Speaker 1: I knew I understood his gist right. It just was
Speaker 1: and I had nothing to do with this app. I
Speaker 1: didn't hire the people that reviewed it, I didn't review
Speaker 1: it myself, but I get it. The next phone call
Speaker 1: I got was from the office of Al Gore, and
Speaker 1: then that just blew my mind. And talking to Al,
Speaker 1: he he just wanted to know what the review process
Speaker 1: was and how we missed this and what were the mistakes,
Speaker 1: and he was very pleasant, unlike the Steve. Interesting. Is
Speaker 1: that common for board members to get involved with the
Speaker 1: senior executives at Apple across? They're not usually. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is the first time and only time it ever happened
Speaker 1: to me at Apple. So tell me about the review
Speaker 1: process itself, how it started under you, and what it
Speaker 1: progressed too, because, like you said, I remember this was
Speaker 1: like a one two week thing. These days you can
Speaker 1: get an Apple proof within two hours, right, So how
Speaker 1: does it work? Someone submits an app to the app store,
Speaker 1: someone on the app review team downloads the file, puts
Speaker 1: on the phone, take us into the room. There's no secret.
Speaker 1: First of all, there's zero automation. Well you have to
Speaker 1: wrap your head around that, right. Every app has to
Speaker 1: see a set of eyes, and that's something that Phil
Speaker 1: was always Phil Schiller was always adamant. And that's the
Speaker 1: senior VP of marketing who now runs all the app
Speaker 1: store operations. That's correct. And Phil Wood was adamant that
Speaker 1: we needed a set of eyes because things slipped through.
Speaker 1: So you'd go there in the morning, and you're a
Speaker 1: good reviewer, you say, you know, I could review probably
Speaker 1: between fifty d apps a day. Now, that's high. Sounds
Speaker 1: like most reviewers could do about thirty, especially if it's
Speaker 1: like a game or something super involved. You know, it
Speaker 1: could take forever. That's right. Some of the some of
Speaker 1: the levels, some of the the other features unlock over time,
Speaker 1: so it's difficult to review every app. We don't have
Speaker 1: any special functionality to go in and look at a
Speaker 1: specific screen. We're using it just like users are. So
Speaker 1: a reviewer goes in, they aim say, let's just say
Speaker 1: it's a it's a basic reviewer. They claim thirty apps,
Speaker 1: and so they go and they claim up. Now, what
Speaker 1: that does is that downloads it from the server internally
Speaker 1: and then starts sinking it to your device. Once everything sinked,
Speaker 1: you have now thirty apps on your device. And you go,
Speaker 1: you you load up the tool on your Mac. You
Speaker 1: say okay, I'm gonna review this one first, and then
Speaker 1: you launch it on your on your device and you
Speaker 1: just start looking. Now, there's over a hundred and fifty guidelines.
Speaker 1: In the early days, it wasn't that defined, and so
Speaker 1: it's a little more nuanced than what you see in
Speaker 1: the guidelines. The guidelines are written up in a gray
Speaker 1: way for a very valid reason. Right, we want we
Speaker 1: don't know what we're going to see what you're talking about,
Speaker 1: the like the famous app review guidelines that are on
Speaker 1: apples Felt website. That's correct, but so developers would submit
Speaker 1: apps not knowing what's allowed and what's not allowed. And
Speaker 1: the way most developers in the early days would determine
Speaker 1: what's okay is they would look at the store. If
Speaker 1: it's on the store, clearly it's all right. But if
Speaker 1: you think about it, app reviewers are human, so in
Speaker 1: in in a case like this, I saw that as
Speaker 1: an absolute failure, and I've always always tried to fix it.
Speaker 1: That's why I think automation would be so so helpful.
Speaker 1: But you and I know a I can only get
Speaker 1: us so far. Now, then we relied heavily on this weekie,
Speaker 1: and this Weekie became hundreds of pages long. You expect
Speaker 1: a reviewer to review an app in about thirteen minutes,
Speaker 1: right for a new app thirteen minutes while looking at
Speaker 1: a hundred pages of a wiki. It's just it's untenable.
Speaker 1: So over time, we we just started refining these these
Speaker 1: wiki guidelines. We we started refining all of our processes
Speaker 1: to be able to make a little flow flow a
Speaker 1: little faster, and to be honest, to get it down
Speaker 1: under three weeks, which is what it was when I joined.
Speaker 1: We we had to make a lot of changes, and
Speaker 1: one of the first was over time, I got rid
Speaker 1: of the three eyes on every app and got it
Speaker 1: down to one set of eyes. But all these reviewers
Speaker 1: had to pass a lot of education that we did
Speaker 1: internally and then ultimately I sit down with me. So
Speaker 1: in order to be you know, the guy who can
Speaker 1: put the stamp down to push our guy or girls
Speaker 1: push the app out, they had to have a chat
Speaker 1: with you first. You had to approve them as a
Speaker 1: member of the team. Yeah, I sat down with everybody
Speaker 1: before they could push that final button and remind them
Speaker 1: about Baby Shaker, remind them about I am rich, and
Speaker 1: and talk to them about stock price going down based
Speaker 1: on just one bad decision that the team makes. And uh, look,
Speaker 1: that baby shaker incident was painful internally. So what's the
Speaker 1: room like? Is it like this big, you know, big
Speaker 1: room with a bunch of desks, a bunch of iPads, iPhones, etcetera,
Speaker 1: where everyone saying next to each other collaborating or is
Speaker 1: it very individualized? Yeah, tell me, pretend you're an opper viewer.
Speaker 1: Tell me what your days like. So I'll tell you
Speaker 1: about the first days. Right, the early days March two
Speaker 1: nine and most of two thousand nine, we were in
Speaker 1: infinite loop three, so I O three and we were
Speaker 1: scattered in conference rooms, so no rooms not bigger than this.
Speaker 1: In a room this big, we would probably put in
Speaker 1: five reviewers with you know, a foot and a half
Speaker 1: two ft of death space, and we're in a small
Speaker 1: room by the way, we're in a small room. We'd
Speaker 1: fit five folks in there. We'd black in all the windows,
Speaker 1: and we would card activate every door. Because this was
Speaker 1: you're dealing with developers secrets, right, they haven't released as
Speaker 1: publicly yet. You want to be able to hold onto
Speaker 1: these things and make sure that um um and make
Speaker 1: sure that nobody outside of the app review team sees
Speaker 1: these apps in advance because we have a we have
Speaker 1: a responsibility to the developers. So everything was locked down.
Speaker 1: We had black curtains everywhere and UH and the reviewer
Speaker 1: would sit in front of a MacBook and and one
Speaker 1: or two phones typically, you know. Obviously, after the iPad
Speaker 1: came out, we put an iPad and every UH, every
Speaker 1: UH reviewer had multiple iPads and multiple iPhones. And over
Speaker 1: time we added to the processes such as wiping out
Speaker 1: each device every morning, and we had a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of crazy situation scenarios in in those rooms
Speaker 1: where people would be eating UH. So what one of
Speaker 1: the big ones was oatmeal every morning with fish sauce
Speaker 1: on it, and half the team would choke at that.
Speaker 1: The other half the team loved it. So just crazy
Speaker 1: things like that always happening. Now. The way it is
Speaker 1: now is it's an open I'm sure you've been to
Speaker 1: Facebook and other companies like that and you've seen their
Speaker 1: open floor plan. It's pretty much like that. Everybody gets
Speaker 1: about three ft now of death space. But it's all
Speaker 1: open and it's extremely collaborative. Now, how many people would
Speaker 1: you say are reviewing apps? And is it localized to Cupertino.
Speaker 1: Do places otherwhere, elsewhere in California, elsewhere in the world.
Speaker 1: How what's the setup like in in in a company
Speaker 1: where where you're representing over fifty three countries. We are
Speaker 1: fifty three languages that were represented by my team. You
Speaker 1: would be great to be able to hire people outside
Speaker 1: of Cupertino, but that's not the Apple way, right. The
Speaker 1: Apple way is this is an intellectual property. What we
Speaker 1: do on the review team and how we review apps
Speaker 1: is very new to the world. We didn't want anybody
Speaker 1: like Microsoft or Google or anybody learning our secrets, so
Speaker 1: we never hired contractors and we kept them all in Cupertino,
Speaker 1: and then ultimately we built a few buildings in Sunnyvale
Speaker 1: and that's where they're to this day. What do you
Speaker 1: think of the recent App store changes? There's been a lot,
Speaker 1: you know, to improve it on the consumer side, the interface,
Speaker 1: but also uh subscriptions, new ways for developers to create
Speaker 1: additional revenue. What are your thoughts. There's good and bad
Speaker 1: with all of it. You know. The thing that pained
Speaker 1: me as a I've I've always been a uh. You
Speaker 1: could look at my job at Apple is kind of
Speaker 1: a regulator to make allow what goes on the store,
Speaker 1: and what how they marketed all of that other stuff.
Speaker 1: I didn't really care about that. The thing that kind
Speaker 1: of got me a little nervous was when we started
Speaker 1: putting advertisements in the and when you would search for
Speaker 1: a certain game added the top. The search ads were
Speaker 1: painful like Google search results, and they would have to
Speaker 1: pay per click or pay for every hundred clicks or
Speaker 1: so or hundred downloads, so you could have the worst
Speaker 1: app ever that's always appearing at the top. And uh,
Speaker 1: and I talked about worst apps a lot, because there's
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff in the store that's that shouldn't
Speaker 1: be there in my opinion, right, So how do you
Speaker 1: think it should be? Do you think they should be
Speaker 1: more stringent? I remember were very early days, especially when
Speaker 1: the first iPad came out. Tell me about that with
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs involved personally, and what are the first styles
Speaker 1: and apps for the iPad, You're gonna be extra careful
Speaker 1: because I remember when I submitted iPad apps, those things
Speaker 1: were getting rejected left and right. Doesn't make stay that
Speaker 1: it doesn't make sense to have as one of the
Speaker 1: first bundle of apps. Talks about that, right, the the
Speaker 1: the iPad was was interesting. It was the first hardware
Speaker 1: release that my team got really involved in. For the
Speaker 1: most part, Apples super tight on on new equipment, new products,
Speaker 1: and they don't want to expose it to anybody. And
Speaker 1: my team was mostly a bunch of ex Apple genius
Speaker 1: Apple store folks, right, That's where we hired a majority
Speaker 1: of our of our people from, and so Apple didn't
Speaker 1: see them as the standard corporate folks, and therefore the
Speaker 1: team wasn't as as trustworthy as the others. And plus
Speaker 1: it's a large group. It grew over time. So so
Speaker 1: we typically weren't involved in new product releases and I
Speaker 1: understand that, but sometimes we have to get involved, like
Speaker 1: the watch and the iPad were two examples. The iPad
Speaker 1: we were involved pretty much about three weeks before launch,
Speaker 1: not much more than that, and that's when we started.
Speaker 1: Except this was the only time we allowed people to
Speaker 1: submit apps that were in alpha or beta state, just
Speaker 1: so we could start understanding what people were because people
Speaker 1: developers didn't have iPads yet, someone needed to test it
Speaker 1: out on hardware, obviously would be Apple, so they could
Speaker 1: be ready for day one when consumers get them. That's right,
Speaker 1: really good point right in the past, we don't. We
Speaker 1: never allow you to submit an app until the hardware
Speaker 1: has been released because we want to make sure you're
Speaker 1: trying it on actual hardware. You don't just do it
Speaker 1: based on a simulator build, because it's not it's never
Speaker 1: the same, never the same. But you and I you
Speaker 1: probably know this as well as I do. Most developers
Speaker 1: submit on a simulator build. So every night I'd send
Speaker 1: a bunch of apps off to the Exacts and say
Speaker 1: here's the issue we have, right it's tracking location or
Speaker 1: whatever the issue was, and trying to figure out if
Speaker 1: this was something that's appropriate or not. Everybody wanted to
Speaker 1: change the UI. They wanted to go to like a
Speaker 1: desktop UI for the iPad. So we are a lot
Speaker 1: of developers drawing these, uh these like desktop metaphors, which
Speaker 1: we rejected all of them, even though it's kind of interesting,
Speaker 1: it just didn't fit the iPad and iPhone model, the
Speaker 1: iOS model, So we rejected a bunch of those. But
Speaker 1: early on I grabbed a team about fifteen people. We
Speaker 1: put them in a special room from the app review team,
Speaker 1: and they were the only ones that were able to
Speaker 1: play with the hardware. We hadn't mounted uh you know,
Speaker 1: with the cable light like used to see in the
Speaker 1: Apple stores, mounted to the desk and uh, and we
Speaker 1: collected them every evening. So it was a very tight
Speaker 1: process and we rejected and rejected every day. We rejected apps,
Speaker 1: and developers resubmit every day those same apps to be
Speaker 1: able to be in that first block. So that leads
Speaker 1: me to my next question. And I know, I mean,
Speaker 1: you could easily just flatly deny this. Do some developers
Speaker 1: get you know, special attention or special policies? And in circumstances,
Speaker 1: what's the difference between you know, me as a developer
Speaker 1: back then in high school, uh, you know, a mom
Speaker 1: and pop shop development firm and Facebook. Because the idea
Speaker 1: was they would all be treated the same. But is
Speaker 1: that necessarily the case. Steve always argued that all developers
Speaker 1: should be treated equally. For me, it was all about
Speaker 1: I took Steve's word and I said, yes, all developers
Speaker 1: are created equally. I will not give one developer any allowance.
Speaker 1: And if you if you read some of the early
Speaker 1: stuff that I wrote on Twitter, etcetera, I was calling
Speaker 1: out Facebook all the time, even though they were one
Speaker 1: of these privileged few developers, they had some of the
Speaker 1: worst code at the time. I mean they uploaded remember
Speaker 1: the Wall Street Journal article the apps are Watching You.
Speaker 1: That radically fundamentally changed what we did at atter View
Speaker 1: because we realized that even big developers linked In and
Speaker 1: the facebooks that were taking your contacts and sending them
Speaker 1: to the cloud, you just couldn't trust them, right. They
Speaker 1: weren't notifying people that they were doing this yet Path
Speaker 1: and Facebook and LinkedIn and so many companies were doing
Speaker 1: this that you start giving this special allowances to these
Speaker 1: big guys because they're who they are, and you get burned.
Speaker 1: There is another app I did want to ask you
Speaker 1: about Google Voice. Obviously you know today ten years later
Speaker 1: this is Google's calling service. But Google wanted to do
Speaker 1: was launch Google Voice for iPhones. This was in the
Speaker 1: early days of the App store. But there's a whole
Speaker 1: back story. There was talk us through it. Well it
Speaker 1: actually you know, Google Voice for for online for the
Speaker 1: web came out long before before they tried to push
Speaker 1: through a Google Voice for the for the iPhone, and
Speaker 1: the third party developer was the first one on board.
Speaker 1: And what he did was he wrote an app for
Speaker 1: uh I forget what the name of it was, and
Speaker 1: for Google Voice Voice. I think I think it was
Speaker 1: with Sean. I don't good memory, good memory, Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: definitely g Voice. And I had weekly calls with him.
Speaker 1: I mean he and I had many conversations and it
Speaker 1: lasted eleven months, probably of me saying you're not going
Speaker 1: to get on the store. You're not getting on the
Speaker 1: store today, You're not getting on the store then, and
Speaker 1: it went on daily. Now let's take a look at why, right,
Speaker 1: what is Google Voice. Well, it replaces the telephone features
Speaker 1: of your It replaces that the calling features of your iPhone.
Speaker 1: That was kind of strike number one. Apple says, no,
Speaker 1: this this is for we don't want Google to take
Speaker 1: over the phone. We don't want there to be a
Speaker 1: Gmail client, a browser, a phone calling contacts, etcetera, etcetera. Right,
Speaker 1: because then it would become the g phone. Was the fear, right,
Speaker 1: just like they're afraid of the Facebook phone. So there
Speaker 1: was an actual fear inside Apple early days of the
Speaker 1: app store that if they allowed these different Google services
Speaker 1: on the phone, the phone could basically become a Google phone.
Speaker 1: That was a real thing, that was a real thing.
Speaker 1: And the fear that somebody would come along a Facebook
Speaker 1: and Google whomever and wipe off and remove all of
Speaker 1: our items, you know, the dialing, the contacts, and replace
Speaker 1: that with Facebook or Google variations of it. That was
Speaker 1: the number one fear because then suddenly you're kind of
Speaker 1: you're losing this this uh um, You're you're losing the
Speaker 1: cash of the phone. You're losing the people think more
Speaker 1: about Apple once they start using these other apps, they'd
Speaker 1: be thinking more about Google. Now is that a reason
Speaker 1: why still to this day, and I believe that will
Speaker 1: be the case for iOS thirteen, which we'll get to.
Speaker 1: You cannot set other third party apps as defaults for
Speaker 1: main functions. Yes, I would say that's absolutely the reason. Now,
Speaker 1: if if you look at it, if if if you
Speaker 1: look at historically what app was doing Apple Finally, you know,
Speaker 1: Scott Forstall, the VP of engineering at the time, uh
Speaker 1: said something really good. He says, look, I don't care
Speaker 1: if these other competing services come on the platform. It's
Speaker 1: actually good for us. We work harder to make a
Speaker 1: better product. And Scott was the was the wise man
Speaker 1: in the room. But but others always pushed back on that. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: we got Google Voice in, at which point I was
Speaker 1: able to to get g Voice on onto it and
Speaker 1: allow other voipe apps like line too and uh and
Speaker 1: other apps as well. So that takes me to my
Speaker 1: next point. What about this growing concern of competition between
Speaker 1: Apple and the app developers. You have this whole Supreme
Speaker 1: Court situation where they ruled that there can be lower
Speaker 1: court lawsuits in regards to the percentage that Apple takes
Speaker 1: from developers. There's also fear. There was a story in
Speaker 1: the New York Times recently that Apple was pulling a
Speaker 1: lot of apps that competed with screen Time. Apple said
Speaker 1: that was because of privacy concerns, which I totally believe,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't take away from the fact that there
Speaker 1: is that concern, especially now with these new iOS releases
Speaker 1: that are coming out with better and better core apps. Right,
Speaker 1: what do you think of that? I'm really worried about
Speaker 1: about the competition piece. You know, you see the like
Speaker 1: Spotify going to the EU regulators about breaking um and
Speaker 1: you have Elizabeth Warren talking about breaking up Facebook and apples, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And and I struggle with that. I recently wrote a
Speaker 1: Medium post on on this thing because I believe that
Speaker 1: that there is now a conflict as Apple goes into
Speaker 1: these spaces that are ripe with competition. You know, in
Speaker 1: the early days of the iPhone, everything Apple was doing
Speaker 1: was new, but once there started being competition, like Spotify
Speaker 1: was a big one. Right. Remember back in the day
Speaker 1: when Steve said nobody wants to rent their music. I
Speaker 1: was at Rhapsody at the time. I love the digital
Speaker 1: subscription music business and to hear that just kind of
Speaker 1: broke my heart. And now you have Apple Music, and
Speaker 1: now you have Apple Music. So when Apple Music comes
Speaker 1: out and they put it on the thing and on
Speaker 1: on the platform, and then they require Spotify or or
Speaker 1: let's say Netflix for a different business model, and they
Speaker 1: put them out there and say, oh, by the way,
Speaker 1: you still have to pay us. The margins are too thin.
Speaker 1: That's why we changed some of the guidelines in the
Speaker 1: early days about allowing for UH magazines and certain types
Speaker 1: of of content to to not have to use an
Speaker 1: app purchase. Right, they could get around that. Remember that
Speaker 1: because of the March was a shift. So originally you
Speaker 1: cannot build free to play apps and games, so if
Speaker 1: you wanted to offer in app purchases, you're app needed
Speaker 1: to be paid one. Two years later they switched it
Speaker 1: so you could do that's right, that's right. And Apple
Speaker 1: really was focusing on a few core things like like music, movies, uh,
Speaker 1: magazine subscriptions because the margins are just so thin there
Speaker 1: they can't spare the so Apple made a special allowance
Speaker 1: for that. But they're now in a position of of
Speaker 1: of dominance again. Right, we have the Apple Music, but
Speaker 1: Apple Music doesn't have to carve out and pay that
Speaker 1: to some other entity, but Spotify has to. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is where you can absolutely annihilate the competition. But
Speaker 1: so what do you think is going to happen? What
Speaker 1: do you think the outcome is going to be? Do
Speaker 1: you think Apple will lower the the split, the commission split?
Speaker 1: What's the solution there? This is a tough one because
Speaker 1: I don't know what the right answer is here. You
Speaker 1: know too, and I think it's gonna be status quo. So,
Speaker 1: speaking of developers, we are sitting here just two weeks
Speaker 1: ahead of the Annual Developers Conference, and given your background
Speaker 1: and your knowledge of apps and developers, I thought it
Speaker 1: would be great to talk about this upcoming w w
Speaker 1: DC with you. And We've reported a lot about what's
Speaker 1: to be expected, but I'm mostly curious from you. What
Speaker 1: was Apper views involvement or your involvement specifically in your
Speaker 1: more senior role on ww d C this big conference
Speaker 1: for thousands of developers. What were rehearsals like was the
Speaker 1: atmosphere for the company leading up to this big June
Speaker 1: launch Every year, it's, uh, it's chaos there right now,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just a few weeks away. Apple. Apple
Speaker 1: really starts diving digging into this in in January time frame,
Speaker 1: and they start focusing internally. Now, the venues and all
Speaker 1: of that's already been reserved, you know, so that gets
Speaker 1: handled a well in advance. But that January and we
Speaker 1: come back from the holiday break, Uh, it's it's crunch
Speaker 1: mode for for everything. And one of the first things
Speaker 1: is getting the tickets in the right developers hands. So
Speaker 1: as you know, it used to be we would make
Speaker 1: them available, we wouldn't tell people when we'd make them available,
Speaker 1: and people would buy them up quickly. Now it was
Speaker 1: always on us time zones. So we'd open in the
Speaker 1: door the first thing in the morning, ten a m.
Speaker 1: On Apple time in California, and we'd find that the
Speaker 1: Chinese developers were way under represented. The European ones were
Speaker 1: a little better represented because of the time zone. But
Speaker 1: people in the East, uh in Asia and stuff, they
Speaker 1: were not able to get um the tickets they needed
Speaker 1: to and that's when it really started selling out. You know,
Speaker 1: before the iPhone, we couldn't give away tickets, and now
Speaker 1: it's more of a lottery system. But you know, you
Speaker 1: have to use air quotes when you say that, because
Speaker 1: it's a lottery for for you and me, But it's
Speaker 1: not a lottery for the Epics and the Zingas in
Speaker 1: the ten cents right, they're guaranteed admission and it will
Speaker 1: always be that way because you need some of their
Speaker 1: products on board. So it starts out with just trying
Speaker 1: to get the tickets into people's hands, and then it's
Speaker 1: all about getting the right content. And there's a lot
Speaker 1: I was on all those planning meetings trying to figure
Speaker 1: out exactly what we're gonna do, who the band is
Speaker 1: going to be. This is all pretty much and right
Speaker 1: now it's in crunch mode for presentations. The developers are
Speaker 1: all getting during their rehearsals right now. Because you know,
Speaker 1: we always Apple always wanted at least a thousand developers
Speaker 1: to be in attendance at this, which is Apple Developers.
Speaker 1: Apple engineers. Yes, that's correct, Apple engineers. So they have
Speaker 1: their main keynote which is always on that Monday, typically
Speaker 1: on that Monday, but then throughout the week hundreds of sessions.
Speaker 1: You would say, Apple engineers a little going a little
Speaker 1: deeper on the new API s, new developer frameworks, the
Speaker 1: new applications. That's right, and so that's what they've been
Speaker 1: preparing for the last six months. That's what we're preparing for.
Speaker 1: And then after that they're expected to be in the
Speaker 1: lab for long periods of time because when you release
Speaker 1: a new feature, uh, you want to be able to
Speaker 1: come down and speak directly to some of the developers
Speaker 1: that are trying to use your APIs, etcetera, and be
Speaker 1: able to answer some of these questions. A lot of
Speaker 1: bugs get fixed. Developers learn Apple developers learn a lot
Speaker 1: about how people are trying to use the APIs and
Speaker 1: were able to fix them up before it goes to production.
Speaker 1: What was your involvement in new features, new iOS features
Speaker 1: or mac os features that were presented annually pretty much
Speaker 1: zero to be honest. It's these features was great about
Speaker 1: when Scott Forstall was run. It changed when when he
Speaker 1: left Scott became he helped us build out the app Store,
Speaker 1: and he saw all the pains we were going through
Speaker 1: when we were building it, and so Scott was very
Speaker 1: uh knowledgeable of what would impact app review, and so
Speaker 1: whenever they had a new feature that we were gonna
Speaker 1: have to review for, he'd always make his team figure
Speaker 1: out how is Apple, how is the app review going
Speaker 1: to review for this feature? How are they going to
Speaker 1: be able to tell if they're doing it right or
Speaker 1: if they're doing it wrong. And he was really good
Speaker 1: about that. When he left, everything changed. We had less
Speaker 1: visibility into engineering. Engineering never consulted us when they would
Speaker 1: submit a new feature or put a feature out that
Speaker 1: would greatly impact us. We just got notified a few
Speaker 1: weeks before the dub dub d C and then we'd
Speaker 1: have to kind of figure out how we were going
Speaker 1: to work with it. So how else do you think
Speaker 1: Apple software development changed From the transition from Scott Forstall,
Speaker 1: who was the first person in charge of iOS software,
Speaker 1: to Craig Federigo who now runs iOS and mac os
Speaker 1: software and all the underlying frameworks. It's it's it's tough
Speaker 1: to know how much was was the changing of the
Speaker 1: guard versus just the amount of code that people suddenly
Speaker 1: have to write. I mean, I think we're all pretty
Speaker 1: aware that that things are a little buggier than they
Speaker 1: used to be, right that the fit and finish of
Speaker 1: the software, and I'm not talking the hardware, the software,
Speaker 1: it's just not what it used to be now. I
Speaker 1: completely agree with you. We had a story last year
Speaker 1: that after a couple of years of people making comments
Speaker 1: like this, which is entirely valid and true, they sort
Speaker 1: of changed the development process so instead of focusing on
Speaker 1: one annual release, they would focus on the next couple
Speaker 1: of releases, and they could give and take software features
Speaker 1: between the two. And I think that's what we're going
Speaker 1: to see a little bit more this year, is new features,
Speaker 1: but with a big performance push. So I want to
Speaker 1: talk about some of the new things that they're going
Speaker 1: to be pushing on. On one hand, the Apple Watch
Speaker 1: is going to be getting more independent, so they're going
Speaker 1: to be adding for the first time, the App Store
Speaker 1: to the Apple Watch. That's something that you think developers
Speaker 1: have been asking for, anticipating what would the benefit be there?
Speaker 1: How would even look on such a small screen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's that that's a great question. It's uh, it's something
Speaker 1: we always expected when we released the watch. The expectation
Speaker 1: in the very first was that we were gonna have
Speaker 1: a watch store right on the watch. But it became
Speaker 1: embarrassing the number of apps that you would um that
Speaker 1: were submitted specifically for the watch. I mean, as you
Speaker 1: know right now when it's watch only apps, which if
Speaker 1: you think about in the in in or apps that
Speaker 1: support the watch, I want to say watch only apps,
Speaker 1: apps and support the watch only about versus two point
Speaker 1: two million. So it's always been kind of uh embarrassment
Speaker 1: for Apple there. They didn't get enough people understanding the
Speaker 1: design how to design for a watch, but also people
Speaker 1: just didn't gravitate towards it as much as they did
Speaker 1: the iPad, iPhone and Apple TV. The apps were super,
Speaker 1: super buggy, like the launch apps. They would take a
Speaker 1: very long time to load. It was like very It
Speaker 1: was remembering when the iPhone three G came out with
Speaker 1: the app store. Okay, so the phone cum July, then
Speaker 1: Steve jobs and bills this big software update in September,
Speaker 1: but within the three month period that thing was really
Speaker 1: bugging really But that's what the Apple Watch was like
Speaker 1: for like the first year or two. That's right, you know,
Speaker 1: and so so yeah, Apple was always kind of embarrassed
Speaker 1: by by the Watch submission numbers. I tracked him every
Speaker 1: week and I remember doing that for about six months.
Speaker 1: Finally the executive said, you know, we don't need that
Speaker 1: data anymore because it's just kind of a letdown when
Speaker 1: you see it. I mean, I always tracked data for me.
Speaker 1: Transparency is important, right, you want to be as open
Speaker 1: as you can with the executives on my team would
Speaker 1: make a mistake, et cetera. But we always included this data.
Speaker 1: We always wanted to see how it was trending up
Speaker 1: or down and submissions because I could allocate team resources differently,
Speaker 1: take people off the Watch team because I had different
Speaker 1: teams for everything. I had Chinese language team, I had
Speaker 1: to Watch team, and and the idea was to be
Speaker 1: able to to use allocate your resources appropriately. So I'm
Speaker 1: excited that the Watch is finally getting its own store.
Speaker 1: It's going to be difficult to navigate, and we know
Speaker 1: all of the issues that are in a constrained UI,
Speaker 1: but but I'm excited that finally the pushes there because
Speaker 1: the idea is that now you have a place to
Speaker 1: look watch only you be able to sit there and
Speaker 1: while you're sitting on the bus, you'll just be able
Speaker 1: to swipe through your watch and see what apps you
Speaker 1: want to download. I think it might have a little
Speaker 1: more engagement. I think it'll be good for them. And
Speaker 1: they're also doing a few new applications for the Apple Watch.
Speaker 1: There's going to be a voice memos out for the
Speaker 1: first time. There's going to be a woman's health app
Speaker 1: called Cycles, a pill reminder reminders app called Dose. What
Speaker 1: do you think of them adding? And there's this Apple
Speaker 1: Books out for listening to audiobooks that they're adding. Do
Speaker 1: you think that's gonna, you know, push developers to build
Speaker 1: their own competitive apps for the watch as well, or
Speaker 1: does it scare them away? That's the question. What do
Speaker 1: you think? I think it's it's it's a difficult one
Speaker 1: to me. Apple hasn't been getting the uptake on on
Speaker 1: watch submissions that they want. People love the watch, don't
Speaker 1: get me wrong. People love to watch for it's built
Speaker 1: in functionality for the most part. These apps are are
Speaker 1: are tertiary or secondary your tertiary. So I think it
Speaker 1: will probably drive more development if if they start getting
Speaker 1: more engagement, especially with these apps that that are needed.
Speaker 1: I mean, why haven't we had a voice memos app
Speaker 1: on the on the watch? It would have been helpful
Speaker 1: for this would have been very helpable. And and so
Speaker 1: for a long time you're you're wondering why had they're
Speaker 1: doing that. I'm glad Apple is finally doing a push
Speaker 1: to do more native apps, because yeah, I think absolutely
Speaker 1: will drive more engagement. A few other things here on
Speaker 1: This is on the iOS thirteen side, So the iPhone
Speaker 1: and iPad update. Obviously, the iPad is gonna get big
Speaker 1: updates for multitasking as they try to push away from
Speaker 1: the Mac in some respects Spring developers more towards the iPad.
Speaker 1: Will get into that in a second, but also some
Speaker 1: more functionality taking over some third pretty apps, like a
Speaker 1: way to create a second display by connecting your iPad
Speaker 1: to a Mac, a new reminders application that's pretty nifty,
Speaker 1: new stuff and messages, updated maps, and new find my
Speaker 1: Friends and find my iPhone combined app. Do you think
Speaker 1: this is going to present issues for developers whereas Apple
Speaker 1: was coming out with better versions in some respects of
Speaker 1: what app developers are doing, or do you think this
Speaker 1: is just going to make both sides better. It's it's
Speaker 1: a very valid point a question. It's it's tough. It's
Speaker 1: tough to know the answer here, right, Apple, Apple and
Speaker 1: App Review have been putting companies out of business since
Speaker 1: two thousand nine. Right that That's what I was like
Speaker 1: to say, because you know how many companies I had
Speaker 1: to call and destroy and say, look, your business model
Speaker 1: doesn't work anymore. We can't allow that type of app
Speaker 1: in the store. I've done that too many companies. Now,
Speaker 1: some of those people are still friends of mine, oddly enough,
Speaker 1: or they became friends in this process because they like
Speaker 1: the transparency and the openness of me saying, look, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: we're entering into this business. And so that's happened too
Speaker 1: for you. I mean, I'm sure it was. What's the
Speaker 1: personal broke my heart? Broke my heart every time, because
Speaker 1: I would say to the reviewers almost every day, it's like,
Speaker 1: because remembers two thousand nine, uh, a lot of developers
Speaker 1: were submitting apps and we weren't in there. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: say it was a session, but the economy wasn't super strong.
Speaker 1: A lot of developers were out of jobs, and I
Speaker 1: would remind the review team every day that you are
Speaker 1: what's stopping an app from getting on the store and
Speaker 1: potentially making money for this developer to put food on
Speaker 1: the table and send their kids to school. But look,
Speaker 1: this is one of those cases where um, a developer
Speaker 1: can can take Scott four Stalls advice and say, look,
Speaker 1: I can do something better. Let me out think Apple here. Uh,
Speaker 1: not easy to do always. Apple's got a lot of
Speaker 1: money and they've got a lot of big brains. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, I think we're gonna always come
Speaker 1: and find another avenue at this same same type of technology.
Speaker 1: What about the Forgotten app Store, the t VUS App Store,
Speaker 1: What is going on there? Her are they getting a
Speaker 1: lot of submissions? It doesn't seem like new apps are
Speaker 1: getting added to that regularly or people are really taking
Speaker 1: advantage of the plot. It's it's sad to me past
Speaker 1: the iOS app store, the the TV app store. To me,
Speaker 1: it was going to be was was my fair of it,
Speaker 1: because I loved having the big screen. I love just
Speaker 1: being able to sit there and do that. But you know,
Speaker 1: it's not easy to enter your credentials. You don't have
Speaker 1: to get your app out and and uh on your
Speaker 1: iPhone and and so for me, it's just it's not
Speaker 1: still not a great user experience, and how many people
Speaker 1: enter the password by speaking it into the thing, And
Speaker 1: when you're surrounded by folks, you know you don't do that.
Speaker 1: So it's it's difficult to get into the TV app
Speaker 1: store um for a user to get in there and
Speaker 1: find interesting things. But I think there's still so much promise.
Speaker 1: We just need better ways of interacting with it. And
Speaker 1: I still love yet to see that, right And what
Speaker 1: about the home Pod. There's no official app store, but
Speaker 1: there is a way to tap iPhone apps into it.
Speaker 1: I think it's a huge, huge missed opportunity. Agree, I
Speaker 1: don't anticipate that being fixed this year. But do you
Speaker 1: would Do you think they would go up against the
Speaker 1: Alexa app? I think they should, absolutely should. It's just
Speaker 1: they need more right for right now, Alexa has got
Speaker 1: pretty you know. I I go into Alexa if if
Speaker 1: I want to get something new on that, I go
Speaker 1: to my phone. I find something interesting and I install it,
Speaker 1: and pretty much anything I want is there for the
Speaker 1: most part, and I enjoy that. When you can get
Speaker 1: to that point with the home Pot, when there's enough submissions,
Speaker 1: I just don't know how much there is there right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems like one of the weaker products in their lineup.
Speaker 1: But just one other thing here that I just wanted to,
Speaker 1: you know, to touch upon. Going back to w w
Speaker 1: d C. What was it like for you personally, like
Speaker 1: that week, that time that lead up to it. What
Speaker 1: was the drop off after those June introductions and does
Speaker 1: the process really ramp up for you in those three
Speaker 1: months between the new iPhone release and w w DC finishing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: w d d C was was difficult for my team.
Speaker 1: The first year I was there. We had no presence
Speaker 1: at at dub d C as far as my team
Speaker 1: was concerned. My team was back in Creuputino just trying
Speaker 1: to prove apps right to any review apps UH and
Speaker 1: I would walk the halls and I would talk to
Speaker 1: developers UH, and I realized that was a big missed
Speaker 1: opportunity for us for the app review organization to actually
Speaker 1: sit down and meet with developers. So was that that
Speaker 1: next one in two thousand and ten that I said,
Speaker 1: we need a room I need I need to be
Speaker 1: part of a marketing event or something so we can
Speaker 1: start talking to developers. And that became a big room
Speaker 1: full of my most senior app reviewers. These were typically
Speaker 1: the ones that would call developers. You got calls from
Speaker 1: these people. All of us got calls from these guys.
Speaker 1: They were the ones that would be able to represent
Speaker 1: the team well and be able to answer questions right,
Speaker 1: because developers love to record app review and try to
Speaker 1: put them on I remember there were some blog posts
Speaker 1: were posting the recordings. Hi, this is whoever from Apphole's right,
Speaker 1: And you know what I would do. I would download
Speaker 1: all those I would listen to them, and then I'd
Speaker 1: bring them to the person that was was talking and
Speaker 1: the rest of the team, and I'd say, Okay, here's
Speaker 1: how we should handle these calls. Now. It was embarrassing,
Speaker 1: but it was also a teaching moment. I wasn't doing
Speaker 1: that to out anyone and so you did a bad job,
Speaker 1: It's like, hey, let's learn from this, let's figure out
Speaker 1: how to make this better in the future. So it
Speaker 1: was great to have all these reviewers there and the
Speaker 1: and then I started getting iTunes connect folks in there,
Speaker 1: started getting app store marketing folks into this room, and
Speaker 1: so we basically had this big room full of If
Speaker 1: you were a developer and you want to come into
Speaker 1: our lab. You get answers to all your questions, how
Speaker 1: do I get featured? You know, why are you rejecting
Speaker 1: my app for sixteen point one or whatever the guideline was,
Speaker 1: And and we get everyone together to be able to
Speaker 1: help out developers. And so after that point two thousand
Speaker 1: ten on dubbed d C was hard. I was in
Speaker 1: the lab every day, but I get pulled into other
Speaker 1: meetings with bigger developers. But mostly I would spend all
Speaker 1: my time in the labs trying to solve people's problems.
Speaker 1: And we had laptops there. We could look up exactly
Speaker 1: what your problem was and be able to diagnose it
Speaker 1: and tell you specifically what you needed to change this
Speaker 1: screen right here right. Stuff that's difficult to do a
Speaker 1: remail or even over a phone call. We could sit
Speaker 1: down with the developer and let them know what the
Speaker 1: problems were. This is where it was in these meetings
Speaker 1: that some of these developers whose businesses I took down
Speaker 1: would come to me and talk to me, and we
Speaker 1: became friends over time. An amazing turn. Um, well, thank
Speaker 1: you so much. This was incredibly fascinating and eye opening.
Speaker 1: I feel like we have a real inside peek into
Speaker 1: you know the app store. Well, thank you, this is great,
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you. Felt really appreciate it. And that's
Speaker 1: it for this week's episode of Decrypted. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: I want to know what you thought about this show
Speaker 1: right to us at Decrypted at Bloomberg dot net or
Speaker 1: I'm on Twitter at at Mark German and I'm at
Speaker 1: brad Stone And please help us spread the word about
Speaker 1: our show by leaving us a rating or review wherever
Speaker 1: you like to listen to podcasts. This episode was produced
Speaker 1: by Pia good Cary and Lindsay Kraditwill. Our story editor
Speaker 1: was Aki Ito. Thank you also to Ann vander May
Speaker 1: and Emily Us. Francesco Levie is head of Bloomberg Podcasts.
Speaker 1: We'll see you next week.