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Speaker 1: When it comes to the device in your pocket and

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Speaker 1: the one on your desk and on your wrist and

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Speaker 1: even in your ears. There are Apple people and there

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Speaker 1: are not Apple people, and Heaven help you if you

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Speaker 1: try to persuade either kind to switch sides.

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Speaker 2: I do not like Apple products because I like the

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Speaker 2: layout of that products. I think that products are convenient

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Speaker 2: and easy to use.

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Speaker 3: To be honest, it looks slick and luxury with the iPhone.

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Speaker 1: Really, I have a Samsung Galaxy so Android device. I've

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Speaker 1: never felt the need to have an Apple product.

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Speaker 3: Also, it just seems to be cheaper on average.

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Speaker 1: Some typically strong opinions there of people in London. Apple

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Speaker 1: is especially adept at keeping customers inside their walled garden

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Speaker 1: of hardware, apps and services. Its products are designed to

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Speaker 1: work effortlessly with one another and sometimes less effortlessly, shall

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Speaker 1: we say, with other companies gear. The idea, of course,

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Speaker 1: is to make you never want to leave. I found

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Speaker 1: that a lot of.

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Speaker 3: The Apples products you needed other Apple products. I think

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Speaker 3: it's just a loop, like you have to have Apple everything.

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Speaker 2: They forced the youth to buying everything else from them,

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Speaker 2: But it's makes it rigid.

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Speaker 3: You're just kind of.

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Speaker 2: Get stuck in the system of just buying the next

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Speaker 2: one as soon as it comes out, and then the

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Speaker 2: next one comes out and you buy that one instead.

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Speaker 1: So what happens if you do decide to set foot

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Speaker 1: outside that cocoon like Apple ecosystem and venture into the

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Speaker 1: wilds of Android and Windows. That's exactly what Bloomberg's Austin

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Speaker 1: Carr tried to do. He found out just how complicated

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Speaker 1: it can be to leave Apple behind, and he's here

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Speaker 1: to tell the tale.

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Speaker 4: So I thought, maybe maybe now that I'm switching this Android,

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Speaker 4: Windows and Friends model, this would be a lot more

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Speaker 4: easy for my digital lifestyle. It was not just not easy,

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Speaker 4: it was nightmarish.

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Speaker 1: I'm West Kasova today on the Big Take. Apple really

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Speaker 1: really hates to say goodbye, Austin. Before we get into

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Speaker 1: your epic journey of trying to leave Apple, tell us

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Speaker 1: about your Apple life beforehand, like what made you want

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Speaker 1: to do this.

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Speaker 4: I was one of those families that grew up with

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Speaker 4: an old school Macintosh, so I've been using Max for

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Speaker 4: many years, with the exception of the occasional Toshiba PC

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Speaker 4: or other Dell or HP, and that really accelerated when

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Speaker 4: Steve Jobs returned in the early two thousands or late

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Speaker 4: nineteen nineties when he was sort of first made interim CEO.

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Speaker 4: I remember vividly getting that first iPod back in the

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Speaker 4: early two thousands, and it was a miraculous moment. Other

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Speaker 4: MP three players had existed, but nothing with this clickwheel,

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Speaker 4: nothing that puts so many songs in my pocket, Nothing

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Speaker 4: with those beautiful commercials that had people dancing around with

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Speaker 4: the white headphones if you all remember it, to the

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Speaker 4: U two songs. And I was hooked, and I bought

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Speaker 4: into that ecosystem where you can draw a direct line

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Speaker 4: from my purchase of an iPod to an iPod Touch,

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Speaker 4: eventually to an iPhone when I could afford it, and

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Speaker 4: so forth. Up until now, we have a very Apple

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Speaker 4: centric household. My wife uses a MacBook, I use a MacBook.

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Speaker 4: We have iPhones. I have an Apple Watch, we have AirPods.

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Speaker 4: I subscribe to TV plus an iCloud. I am that

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Speaker 4: sort of prototypical dream of an Apple shareholder, the one

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Speaker 4: that is stuck on that cycle of hardware and software

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Speaker 4: and subscription upgrades. And I've been doing that now for gosh,

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Speaker 4: I mean, it must have been a decade or two

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Speaker 4: at this point. And heaven forbid I ever look up

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Speaker 4: how much all this stuff's costs, but I promise you

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Speaker 4: it would fund my new daughters five twenty nine.

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Speaker 1: And people who are Apple users and people who are

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Speaker 1: Android users really do live in these two different worlds,

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Speaker 1: and you describe it as the blue bubble world and

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Speaker 1: the green bubble world.

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Speaker 4: This has become quite a stigma, especially among younger generations,

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Speaker 4: like the TikTok generation, if you will, which really makes

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Speaker 4: me sound like a boomer. But I'm relatively my mid thirties,

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Speaker 4: so i still am somewhat with it. But in so

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Speaker 4: far as the bubbles go. You know, I'm sure everyone

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Speaker 4: probably listening has a family member or friends that are

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Speaker 4: mixed on a group chat between Android users and Apple users.

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Speaker 4: And you've probably wondered why some text are green. It's

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Speaker 4: actually really interesting technical story of why they don't make

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Speaker 4: it easy to text between platforms. You probably grew up

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Speaker 4: with something called SMS that's like a very foundational form

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Speaker 4: of text messaging, and that modified over the years to

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Speaker 4: something called MMS, which is multimedia text messaging. But the

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Speaker 4: issue is that has been stuck that way for so long,

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Speaker 4: and so every time you send a text with a

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Speaker 4: photo or a video back and forth. The quality of

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Speaker 4: it is profoundly reduced because it's based on a protocol

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Speaker 4: or standard that's many, many years old, and Apple doesn't

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Speaker 4: want to update it because they think, if you want

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Speaker 4: to have the Apple ecosystem, the Apple quality, those blue

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Speaker 4: bubbles that send perfect videos and can share seamlessly with

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Speaker 4: iCloud and all your photos, you should become an Apple user.

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Speaker 4: And so it's both actually a technical problem, but also

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Speaker 4: a stigma, a social one, in that younger people might

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Speaker 4: feel pressure.

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Speaker 3: They don't want to be a green bubble.

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Speaker 4: They want to be part of that community with your friends,

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Speaker 4: because you don't want to get left out of photo sharing,

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Speaker 4: you don't want to get left out of video sharing

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Speaker 4: or heaven forbid a group chat. So there's almost a clickishness,

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Speaker 4: and that was very intentional by what Apple has done.

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Speaker 4: There's been legal records that have come out from discovery

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Speaker 4: and court filings that have showed that they were very

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Speaker 4: savvy about recognizing, hey, we have to keep this sort

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Speaker 4: of quote unquote lock and model alive, keeping people within

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Speaker 4: the Apple iOS ecosystem, the MacBook and AirPods, that whole thing,

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Speaker 4: and I message is actually at the court of that

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Speaker 4: those blue bubbles.

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Speaker 1: And so this whole idea that Apple wants to make

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Speaker 1: a blue bubble coveted seems to actually be working.

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Speaker 4: It seems not only to be working, but it seems

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Speaker 4: to be extraordinarily unprecedentedly successful considering their market cab. And

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Speaker 4: that's not to say I message is at the root

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Speaker 4: of it, but that idea, it's referred to in the

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Speaker 4: tech world as a wald garden. And the idea is

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Speaker 4: that if you're choosing a company's brand, you want the

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Speaker 4: products to work seamlessly together.

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Speaker 3: This makes sense.

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Speaker 4: I mean, for example, if you have perhaps a lawnmower

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Speaker 4: that's electric these days, those batteries will be interchangeable with

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Speaker 4: that brand's weed whacker or leafblower.

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Speaker 3: That's a form of a walled garden.

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Speaker 4: Or if you have a Lionel train set, you might

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Speaker 4: have train tracks that only work with Lionel for those

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Speaker 4: model trains.

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Speaker 3: That is a form of a walled garden. This is

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Speaker 3: not a new idea.

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Speaker 4: What Apple has made new, though, is expanding it so

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Speaker 4: thoughtfully that they've really completed what Steve Jobs wants described

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Speaker 4: as the quote unquote whole which this idea that Hey,

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Speaker 4: if you're part of this ecosystem, whether it's with Blue

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Speaker 4: Bubbles or iCloud or the iPhone or AirPods, they will

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Speaker 4: work so seamlessly together that they will actually be the

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Speaker 4: core platform, not just for Apple, but for all your

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Speaker 4: computing habits. And that's why it's not just limited to

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Speaker 4: text messaging or Apple products. But when I get into

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Speaker 4: my Subaru outback, you know, I'm plugging that into CarPlay,

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Speaker 4: and that disintermediates Subaru's control of the customer and gives

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Speaker 4: it over to Apple. That's what's so profound about this

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Speaker 4: version of a walled garden. And then the other half

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Speaker 4: of that coin is whether or not you can actually

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Speaker 4: leave the wald garden, which is of course what this

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Speaker 4: story was all about.

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Speaker 1: So when you look outside that wald garden to the

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Speaker 1: Android world or the non Apple world, a lot of

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Speaker 1: people who use that system like it because it gives

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Speaker 1: them a certain amount of freedom, even if it comes

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Speaker 1: at a certain amount of frustration trying to get all

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Speaker 1: those things to work together.

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Speaker 3: That's exactly right, Wes.

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Speaker 4: I think part of the issue is is it is

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Speaker 4: pretty much not a lot of options when you do

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Speaker 4: look outside of the Apple ecosystem. If you want something

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Speaker 4: that's incredibly unified, safe, and also super easy to use,

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Speaker 4: you're inevitably going to run into troubles. For example, Android

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Speaker 4: is pretty much the only other mobile phone platform maker

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Speaker 4: out there. Anytime you're using some of these things on Samsung,

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Speaker 4: or if you see any platforms even that Amazon makes,

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Speaker 4: they're often based on this Android ecosystem. And that's because

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Speaker 4: of something that happened many many years ago during the

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Speaker 4: early mobile phone wars, when Microsoft and BlackBerry and Amazon

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Speaker 4: and so many others were trying to get a foothold

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Speaker 4: into this market, and it just turned out that Apple

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Speaker 4: and Google ended up winning the platform doopoly. The distinction

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Speaker 4: is on the Apple side, they make phones, they make iPads,

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Speaker 4: they make MacBooks and AirPods.

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Speaker 3: Google does not.

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Speaker 4: They make chromebooks, and a Chromebook is not as powerful

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Speaker 4: as a MacBook, So I have to go outside to

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Speaker 4: a Windows laptop if I want something that's more fullfledged,

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Speaker 4: or I'd buy a MacBook, and then I'm stuck with

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Speaker 4: that wallach between the pristine Eden that is Apple's ecosystem

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Speaker 4: and this sort of mess of devices that is essentially

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Speaker 4: an Android slash Windows based operating system. In which I

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Speaker 4: might have a Dell XPS laptop. I might have an

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Speaker 4: HP or Asus desktop. I might have earbuds from I

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Speaker 4: don't know bos, I might have a phone from Google

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Speaker 4: or Samsung. And so that mix of devices is pretty freeing.

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Speaker 4: It's very liberating to be able to say, hey, I

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Speaker 4: want to buy whatever I want. But it's also not

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Speaker 4: particularly a cohesive package.

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Speaker 1: And so why did you want to leave?

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Speaker 4: The ironic thing of this whole process was it was

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Speaker 4: painful to leave. I've not only invested in this Waldgarden

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Speaker 4: ecosystem serious capital, i should say, but I also continue

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Speaker 4: to admire from afar Apple's design ecosystem and their philosophy.

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Speaker 4: And when I do look out at the competitive market,

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Speaker 4: there's not a lot that has that seamless integration, partially

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Speaker 4: because they don't all have a Waldgarden a roach, but

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Speaker 4: also because sometimes they just cannot make products that are

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Speaker 4: as quality, as esthetic, and beautifully integrated as Apples. With

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Speaker 4: that said, I was feeling claustrophobic. There have been times

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Speaker 4: over the last year or two that I've just grown

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Speaker 4: frustrated with some of the more forced versions of that.

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Speaker 4: I'm happy to be an Apple customer, but I really

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Speaker 4: don't like using Siri. They're trying to make Siri this

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Speaker 4: all encompassing star Trek like AI that helps you along

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Speaker 4: your way with your computing habits.

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Speaker 3: I don't want that. I don't even want Siri on.

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Speaker 4: But they make it difficult to turn off, and then

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Speaker 4: they integrate into other parts of your apps and your usage.

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Speaker 4: Ditto other programs that are just superior to Apples. I

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Speaker 4: really don't like Apple Maps. I'm not saying it's a

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Speaker 4: bad program, but my preference is for Google Maps. I

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Speaker 4: cannot make that my default. I cannot text with my

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Speaker 4: Android friends. I have a lot of them, a lot

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Speaker 4: of family members who I want to send pictures of

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Speaker 4: my daughter to in a high quality form. I can

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Speaker 4: use WhatsApp sure to send those, but I cannot make

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Speaker 4: WhatsApp my defaulting program. So it's really Apple has this

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Speaker 4: very my way or the highway approach, which I'm happy

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Speaker 4: to drive on. I'm happy to take that highway. The

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Speaker 4: issue is when they say, hey, here's also the car

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Speaker 4: you have to use. And I'm mixing metaphors there, but

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Speaker 4: that's genuinely When we were buying a super out back,

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Speaker 4: I said, oh man, we really do need to pick

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Speaker 4: something with CarPlay, and I've actually grown to dislike CarPlay

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Speaker 4: ironically for these very same restrictions.

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Speaker 1: After the break, Austin tries to move his digital life

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Speaker 1: into a new home. All right, so you made the

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Speaker 1: decision to climb the wall of the garden. Tell us

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Speaker 1: what it was like.

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Speaker 3: Well, first fall, it was very funny.

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Speaker 4: I almost felt like I had to send out disclaimers

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Speaker 4: to some of my friends to say, hey, heads up,

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Speaker 4: in the next couple of days, you might see green

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Speaker 4: text bubbles.

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Speaker 3: In fact, we might I actually don't know.

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Speaker 4: We might have to remake some of these groups because

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Speaker 4: it might not keep the thread history on my phone.

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Speaker 3: And it was funny. Even the response to that.

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Speaker 4: Some of my friends and family members joked, oh my god,

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Speaker 4: like is everything okay? Like can you not afford a

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Speaker 4: new iPhone? One of my friends just joke like, well,

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Speaker 4: that's the end of knowing you, as if I was

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Speaker 4: dead to them. There is that question mark about why

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Speaker 4: would you ever leave this Apple ecosystem?

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Speaker 3: Do you not get it?

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Speaker 4: Why are you not with this program that everyone else is?

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Speaker 4: And I'm talking if you probably pulled every tech reporter

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Speaker 4: out there. I'm guessing ninety percent of them have a MacBook,

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Speaker 4: and that's just that social pressure that leads to that

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Speaker 4: stigma of green and blue bubbles. So actually my journey

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Speaker 4: started by reaching out to people that I admire, or

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Speaker 4: reading reviews or looking up different ways to sort of

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Speaker 4: create something that was corollary.

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Speaker 3: You know.

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Speaker 4: I never expected it to be quite as good, But

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Speaker 4: I thought, if I could hack together some mix of

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Speaker 4: a Windows device, the perfect most advanced Android phone, and

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Speaker 4: perhaps a Garmin watch because I like to do more

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Speaker 4: outdoorsy stuff, none of those particularly integrate well with Apple.

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Speaker 4: So I thought, hey, maybe now that I'm switching with

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Speaker 4: this Android and Friends model or Android Windows and Friends model,

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Speaker 4: this would be a lot more easy for my digital lifestyle.

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Speaker 1: But it turned out not to be so easy.

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Speaker 4: It was not just not easy, it was nightmarish. And

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Speaker 4: I was really shocked because generally speaking, all my data

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Speaker 4: is in the cloud.

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Speaker 3: I'm one of those people. I am.

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Speaker 4: You know, if you've ever seen that TV show Hoarders,

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Speaker 4: I am the digital version of that. I've never deleted

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Speaker 4: a text. I've also really never deleted any photos, any videos,

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Speaker 4: just because I like posterity and I like to have

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Speaker 4: those memories and I pay serious cloud bills as a

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Speaker 4: result of that, especially with iCloud. But generally speaking, the

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Speaker 4: cloud is supposed to make it so you can move

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Speaker 4: your data around very easily, and it turns out Apple

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Speaker 4: iCloud does not make it particularly easy to move your

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Speaker 4: data out of there. That was my first step is

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Speaker 4: to try before I even bought devices, before I even

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Speaker 4: purchased a new phone, and I ended up going with

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Speaker 4: this very high end Google Pixel phone, which is a

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Speaker 4: gorgeous device, and I was so excited to use the camera.

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Speaker 4: I ended up going with this high end Dell XP yes,

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Speaker 4: which is another gorgeous device that a lot of people

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Speaker 4: think is a very good replacement for a MacBook. But

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Speaker 4: the bigger issue beyond the hardware was my data. How

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Speaker 4: do I get my photos? How do I get my

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Speaker 4: text messages out of I message? During this process, just

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Speaker 4: to give you a little summary, let's see, I had

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Speaker 4: one hundred and three gigabytes worth of eye messages and

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Speaker 4: file attachments. File attachments being you know, photos or videos

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Speaker 4: I've shared with my friends. One hundred and three gigabytes,

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Speaker 4: So that's a lot of data. There's no way to

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Speaker 4: port that to anywhere. Apple's a very secure platform, it

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Speaker 4: does not want you to be able to export that data.

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Speaker 4: And even if you could, where would you put it.

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Speaker 4: There's no perfect apples to apples, not to use a

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Speaker 4: terrible pun platform out there that can just seamlessly swallow

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Speaker 4: that information and translate it and suddenly, with this new device,

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Speaker 4: have you up and running with your same contacts as

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Speaker 4: if you've been there the whole time. So that's number one.

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Speaker 4: It's a technical problem. But the second thing is it's

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Speaker 4: a technical problem that people should be able to solve,

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Speaker 4: but that companies really don't want to. Back in Like

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Speaker 4: twenty eighteen, twenty seventeen, they did try to make this

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Speaker 4: data transfer program more accessible. They're called data takeout programs,

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Speaker 4: in which you can go to Apple or Google and say, hey,

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Speaker 4: I request all my data.

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Speaker 3: I want it all.

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Speaker 4: The issue is you will get some weird compressed ZIP

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Speaker 4: file full of a ton of different things that it

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Speaker 4: would take you a lot of coding abilities to be

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Speaker 4: able to decompress. And even with Apple, just as a

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Speaker 4: funny example, I made that request, it took fifteen days

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Speaker 4: to process my download request for just my ninety two thousand,

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Speaker 4: six hundred and fifty four photos which I had store ancloud,

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Speaker 4: and fifteen days later I got an email from Apple saying, hey,

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Speaker 4: unfortunately we've completed your transfer, but there's been ninety two,

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Speaker 4: six hundred and fifty four errors. In other words, zero

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Speaker 4: photos transferred. The same happened for somewhere in the ballpark

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Speaker 4: of twelve hundred videos, and the same thing continued to

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Speaker 4: happen again and again throughout this process, whether I went

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Speaker 4: through a data takeout program directly with Apple, or I

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Speaker 4: tried to transfer my data from my iPhone directly to

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Speaker 4: the Google Pixel, which is an option when you sign

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Speaker 4: up to these things, you just play your device is in.

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Speaker 4: They're supposed to be able to essentially hoover, like a

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Speaker 4: vacuum out all that data into the Google Pixel.

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Speaker 3: And it took hours and hours and hours and just

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Speaker 3: never worked.

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Speaker 1: And what does Apple say about how difficult it is

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Speaker 1: for people who want to try out a different product?

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Speaker 4: So Apple stands on this generally speaking, I mean we

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Speaker 4: should go to the man at the top, Tim Cook,

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Speaker 4: the CEO, who has been part of this expansion of

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Speaker 4: Steve Job's dream of having not just hardware and software combined,

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Speaker 4: but also hardware, software and services and subscriptions.

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Speaker 3: And he was actually asked that this question.

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Speaker 4: A few months ago at a conference, there was a

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Speaker 4: Q and A from the audience and someone essentially came

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Speaker 4: up and said to Tim, Hey, you know, my mom's

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Speaker 4: on Android.

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Speaker 3: It's really difficult.

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Speaker 4: What are your thoughts on, like, when are we going

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Speaker 4: to get rid of this stigma this class system around

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Speaker 4: green and blue bubbles?

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Speaker 2: Communication was revolutionized with the eye message, right, How do

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Speaker 2: you think Steve would feel currently about the state of

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Speaker 2: communication specifically between people who aren't within the community of

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Speaker 2: apps and are part of the I message, but more

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Speaker 2: so on the green side of things with Android.

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Speaker 5: I don't hear our users asking that we put a

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Speaker 5: lot of energy in on that at this point, and

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Speaker 5: so now I would love to continue. I would love

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Speaker 5: to convert you to eyeball.

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Speaker 2: It's just it's it's tough not to make it personal.

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Speaker 2: But I can't see my mom certain videos, or she

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Speaker 2: can't see me certain videos, and.

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Speaker 5: So we buy your mom eyeball.

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Speaker 4: When I reached out to Apple about this, they did

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Speaker 4: provide a lot of information. Apple is very generally speaking,

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Speaker 4: and this is a fact, not an opinion. Apple is

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Speaker 4: very opaque as a corporation, and Apple spokesperson essentially said

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Speaker 4: that they actually have tried to make it easier to

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Speaker 4: transfer your data to other services. Their argument is essentially

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Speaker 4: that three and four people choose to stay with Apple

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Speaker 4: is a reflection of how much they love their products,

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Speaker 4: how much they're satisfied with Apple. It's not an example

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Speaker 4: of lock in. In other words, they're essentially saying without

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Speaker 4: saying it, if Android and Google want people switching, if

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Speaker 4: Samsung wants people switching, they have to do a better

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Speaker 4: job at making better quality products. Don't blame that on us.

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Speaker 4: They often cite the app market is example not of

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Speaker 4: lock in, but as a way that they help all

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Speaker 4: these developers in small businesses. They talk about ways that

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Speaker 4: they've made it easier to transfer your data via iCloud

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Speaker 4: and other services to take out data. They did not

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Speaker 4: comment on the fact that I could not get my

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Speaker 4: data out of there.

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Speaker 1: To be clear, Austin, on the other side of this

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Speaker 1: equation is when you tried to get your data onto

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Speaker 1: your new Android and Windows devices, that if Apple made

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Speaker 1: it difficult to leave that world, on the other side,

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Speaker 1: didn't exactly make it welcoming.

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Speaker 3: For you to come in either.

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Speaker 4: That's true. Let's put it this way. I think a

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Speaker 4: lot of companies are to blame for this. You know,

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Speaker 4: Windows could make it here, could be more seamless, but Google.

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Speaker 4: I was pretty surprised at how bumpy the experience was

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Speaker 4: when I was onboarding. And I'm talking about even put

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Speaker 4: aside some of the data issues getting it out of Apple,

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Speaker 4: the onboarding experience for Android was really complicated. When I

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Speaker 4: did sync some of my Apple data, some of it

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Speaker 4: did transfer. For example, all of my contacts transferred over

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Speaker 4: successfully my iPhone contacts, which is a limited list of

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Speaker 4: people that I tend to text or call most frequently. Unfortunately,

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Speaker 4: they actually merged it with my Google account, which is

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Speaker 4: through Gmail. I've been using Gmail since about two thousand

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Speaker 4: and five when it came out, and so it auto

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Speaker 4: merged all of my contacts with every single Gmail contact

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Speaker 4: I've ever had, and I'm talking there were nine older

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Speaker 4: versions of myself in my phone. Suddenly the contact list

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Speaker 4: was suddenly thousands of contacts long. It had every contact

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Speaker 4: I've ever had from every Craigslist outreach I've done for

400
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Speaker 4: apartments as if they were human beings as opposed to

401
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Speaker 4: just Craigslist lane.

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Speaker 3: There were so many.

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Speaker 4: Instances in this and this as I learned from just

404
00:20:00,240 --> 00:20:03,760
Speaker 4: reporting around Android is actually a big deal. It's called

405
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Speaker 4: the first impression problem. They have not figured out a

406
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Speaker 4: way to welcome users to this different style of experience

407
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Speaker 4: that is a little bit more open. But it was

408
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Speaker 4: just a very unusual experience for what was originally promised

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Speaker 4: to me by a Google sales rep of saying, Hey,

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Speaker 4: this is going to be easy as copy and pasting

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Speaker 4: on your computer.

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Speaker 3: It turned out to be anything but that.

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Speaker 1: And you would think that Google Microsoft would want to

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Speaker 1: make it really easy to get people like you because

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Speaker 1: it's an incentive.

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Speaker 4: It blows my mind that Google has not invested more

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Speaker 4: in tech support. When I was communicating them on their

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Speaker 4: online chats, tech support or buy email would essentially just

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Speaker 4: copy and paste instructions to me that I've already read

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Speaker 4: that's on their website. So they actually pointed me instead,

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Speaker 4: ironically to Apple customer service through a one eight hundred number,

422
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Speaker 4: and to Apple's credit, this really brilliant senior technician hopped

423
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Speaker 4: on the phone with me for nearly an hour and

424
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Speaker 4: work through as many fixes as possible.

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Speaker 3: We couldn't figure it out.

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Speaker 4: This tech support person, who was very generous and very kind,

427
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Speaker 4: and ironically knew that he was helping me leave Apple

428
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Speaker 4: as a customer, but was still willing to help.

429
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Speaker 3: We have to give Apple credit for that.

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Speaker 4: He essentially said, one of the issues is that internally

431
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Speaker 4: at Apple, they block Android's website, so he couldn't even

432
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Speaker 4: open Android's website to see what steps I was using

433
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Speaker 4: or that Google was recommending, because that's the type of

434
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Speaker 4: barriers that they have between these companies, and we could

435
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Speaker 4: ultimately not get my data off of it.

436
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Speaker 3: All of his recommendations did not work.

437
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Speaker 4: When I asked him once why I couldn't just download

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Speaker 4: all my iCloud data, he compared that to me essentially

439
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Speaker 4: driving to jam fifty thousand pieces of paper into a

440
00:21:37,000 --> 00:21:39,720
Speaker 4: fax machine and expecting it to fax those pieces of

441
00:21:39,720 --> 00:21:41,760
Speaker 4: paper faster rather than jam, which I think is an

442
00:21:41,760 --> 00:21:45,120
Speaker 4: app metaphor, but it also speaks volumes frankly about eye Cloud,

443
00:21:45,200 --> 00:21:47,040
Speaker 4: that it's more of a fax machine than it is

444
00:21:47,440 --> 00:21:49,160
Speaker 4: perhaps a modern data sharing tool.

445
00:21:49,760 --> 00:21:51,840
Speaker 1: And you had this very funny moment that you write

446
00:21:51,840 --> 00:21:54,840
Speaker 1: about in the story when you contacted Google.

447
00:21:55,359 --> 00:21:58,120
Speaker 4: I thought, originally Google would be totally game to help

448
00:21:58,160 --> 00:22:01,840
Speaker 4: with this insofar as I was having and I wondered, Yeah,

449
00:22:02,200 --> 00:22:03,760
Speaker 4: I'm going to be writing about this at this point.

450
00:22:03,840 --> 00:22:05,760
Speaker 4: To be clear, when I started this, this was just personal.

451
00:22:06,160 --> 00:22:08,120
Speaker 4: You know, I never expensed any of this stuff. This

452
00:22:08,200 --> 00:22:12,320
Speaker 4: is all because I really wanted genuinely to try to switch,

453
00:22:12,359 --> 00:22:14,520
Speaker 4: which I promise will make this different than any story

454
00:22:14,560 --> 00:22:15,760
Speaker 4: you read if you're going to read one of these

455
00:22:15,760 --> 00:22:18,720
Speaker 4: about switching. I had just returned from a reporting trip

456
00:22:18,880 --> 00:22:21,520
Speaker 4: in Poland and Lithuania in which some of the apps

457
00:22:21,520 --> 00:22:24,200
Speaker 4: that I was using overseas, especially in Europe, like VPNs,

458
00:22:24,200 --> 00:22:26,760
Speaker 4: were not working on Apple. I was jet lagged, I

459
00:22:26,800 --> 00:22:30,359
Speaker 4: was perhaps a little cranky. I was really having frustrations

460
00:22:30,359 --> 00:22:32,280
Speaker 4: with Apple, and that's when I made the decision to

461
00:22:32,359 --> 00:22:35,320
Speaker 4: try to switch. I actually emailed Google to request interviews

462
00:22:35,359 --> 00:22:37,960
Speaker 4: with some of their executives about my experience switching and

463
00:22:38,000 --> 00:22:41,639
Speaker 4: whether they had any guidance, and that Google spokesperson accidentally

464
00:22:41,720 --> 00:22:44,720
Speaker 4: cesed me on his message to his colleagues. He didn't

465
00:22:44,760 --> 00:22:47,000
Speaker 4: know I was reading, but he wrote, this is like

466
00:22:47,080 --> 00:22:49,720
Speaker 4: doing a car comparison, but trying to compare a Honda

467
00:22:50,040 --> 00:22:52,239
Speaker 4: to a car you built from parts you got at

468
00:22:52,240 --> 00:22:55,360
Speaker 4: pep Boys. To be clear, he's referring to Honda as

469
00:22:55,400 --> 00:22:59,040
Speaker 4: the Apple, the unified experience and he's referring to the

470
00:22:59,080 --> 00:23:01,600
Speaker 4: parts you got at pep boy to using Android and

471
00:23:01,640 --> 00:23:02,320
Speaker 4: Windows together.

472
00:23:03,680 --> 00:23:17,440
Speaker 1: When we come back, Austin starts to have second thoughts. So, Austin,

473
00:23:18,000 --> 00:23:19,920
Speaker 1: how did this saga end?

474
00:23:20,680 --> 00:23:23,480
Speaker 4: This ended with my wife laughing at me for wasting

475
00:23:23,600 --> 00:23:27,600
Speaker 4: so many months and dollars. Basically, what ended up happening

476
00:23:27,840 --> 00:23:30,919
Speaker 4: is other than the few glimmers of what I was

477
00:23:30,920 --> 00:23:33,920
Speaker 4: trying to experience, which was an open ecosystem in which

478
00:23:34,080 --> 00:23:36,960
Speaker 4: these tech companies act like adults and realize, hey, not

479
00:23:37,040 --> 00:23:40,040
Speaker 4: everyone's going to have all Apple products. Not everyone's going

480
00:23:40,119 --> 00:23:43,280
Speaker 4: to have all Amazon products, or Google or Microsoft products

481
00:23:43,320 --> 00:23:46,640
Speaker 4: or Samsung, that hey, we should work these products altogether.

482
00:23:47,240 --> 00:23:50,080
Speaker 4: I realized that I just had no choice but to

483
00:23:50,119 --> 00:23:55,480
Speaker 4: go back into the Apple ecosystem. I just ultimately returned

484
00:23:55,520 --> 00:23:58,800
Speaker 4: the Google Pixel, I returned the del xps, and of

485
00:23:58,840 --> 00:24:01,520
Speaker 4: course I bought a new MacBook.

486
00:24:01,680 --> 00:24:03,160
Speaker 3: I bought a new iPhone.

487
00:24:03,480 --> 00:24:06,080
Speaker 4: I am wearing currently a new Apple Watch Ultra, and

488
00:24:06,119 --> 00:24:08,560
Speaker 4: I have new AirPods because my dog chewed on the

489
00:24:08,560 --> 00:24:11,800
Speaker 4: old ones. And so that's where I'm at. I will say,

490
00:24:11,800 --> 00:24:14,720
Speaker 4: it's like the end of nineteen eighty four. What's the

491
00:24:14,760 --> 00:24:17,080
Speaker 4: last line of the book spoiler alert. He says something

492
00:24:17,119 --> 00:24:19,320
Speaker 4: to the effect is I learned to love big Brother.

493
00:24:19,680 --> 00:24:21,760
Speaker 4: And that's not to say Apple is dystopian, but I

494
00:24:21,800 --> 00:24:24,880
Speaker 4: can tell you it's very difficult to leave its ecosystem.

495
00:24:25,240 --> 00:24:25,439
Speaker 3: You know.

496
00:24:25,480 --> 00:24:27,159
Speaker 4: It was really interesting when I talked to some of

497
00:24:27,200 --> 00:24:31,560
Speaker 4: the ex Google early Android designers who talked about trying

498
00:24:31,960 --> 00:24:35,520
Speaker 4: to get people to switch from Apple, and they did

499
00:24:35,520 --> 00:24:38,239
Speaker 4: early consumer feedback in which they talked to consumers, they

500
00:24:38,280 --> 00:24:40,520
Speaker 4: walked them through the experience, They took diaries and so

501
00:24:40,600 --> 00:24:44,520
Speaker 4: forth of their responses they got, and first impressions were

502
00:24:44,560 --> 00:24:46,840
Speaker 4: so important. They realized if you couldn't make a good

503
00:24:46,840 --> 00:24:49,560
Speaker 4: first impression with Android, people were more likely to return

504
00:24:49,600 --> 00:24:51,880
Speaker 4: the phone and get rid of it and go back

505
00:24:51,880 --> 00:24:54,119
Speaker 4: to the iPhone. One of these sources told me they

506
00:24:54,160 --> 00:24:57,680
Speaker 4: remember a sample customer saying I just want my life back,

507
00:24:57,760 --> 00:24:59,440
Speaker 4: and that's why they switched.

508
00:24:59,160 --> 00:24:59,800
Speaker 3: Back to Apple.

509
00:25:00,160 --> 00:25:03,600
Speaker 4: And I realized I went through that same experience Google

510
00:25:03,600 --> 00:25:04,200
Speaker 4: had a chance.

511
00:25:04,280 --> 00:25:05,760
Speaker 3: I was that weird customer.

512
00:25:05,800 --> 00:25:07,320
Speaker 4: There's not many of them out there that's going to

513
00:25:07,320 --> 00:25:08,760
Speaker 4: spend a lot of money, that's going to waste a

514
00:25:08,760 --> 00:25:10,879
Speaker 4: lot of time, that's going to deal with the headaches

515
00:25:10,920 --> 00:25:13,480
Speaker 4: of switching and as soon as I got that first impression,

516
00:25:13,840 --> 00:25:17,080
Speaker 4: regardless of whose fault, whether it was Apple or Google's fault,

517
00:25:17,119 --> 00:25:20,160
Speaker 4: that it was not a seamless experience. The first impression

518
00:25:20,240 --> 00:25:22,879
Speaker 4: was back and as that old sample customer said, I

519
00:25:22,960 --> 00:25:24,000
Speaker 4: just wanted my life back.

520
00:25:25,920 --> 00:25:28,160
Speaker 1: Do you imagine this is going to change at any

521
00:25:28,240 --> 00:25:31,720
Speaker 1: time that people will simply demand to have more options,

522
00:25:31,760 --> 00:25:34,080
Speaker 1: to be able to leave, to have the apps they

523
00:25:34,119 --> 00:25:36,680
Speaker 1: want on their phone without the big companies telling them

524
00:25:36,680 --> 00:25:37,720
Speaker 1: what they can and can't do.

525
00:25:38,280 --> 00:25:39,000
Speaker 3: I don't think so.

526
00:25:39,240 --> 00:25:41,000
Speaker 4: I don't know when that's going to happen or how

527
00:25:41,000 --> 00:25:42,720
Speaker 4: it would change. I mean, if you think back to

528
00:25:42,720 --> 00:25:45,000
Speaker 4: what Tim Cook said to that fan in the audience,

529
00:25:45,760 --> 00:25:48,880
Speaker 4: they don't hear a lot of their customers asking about that.

530
00:25:49,119 --> 00:25:51,040
Speaker 4: I think the truth is they're just not listening, and

531
00:25:51,080 --> 00:25:52,960
Speaker 4: they don't need to because they're the biggest company in

532
00:25:53,000 --> 00:25:53,280
Speaker 4: the world.

533
00:25:53,280 --> 00:25:55,040
Speaker 3: They're worth almost three trillion dollars.

534
00:25:55,520 --> 00:25:58,760
Speaker 4: The iPhone, the iPad, and we'll see what the Vision

535
00:25:58,760 --> 00:26:01,800
Speaker 4: Pro does their new headset. But they're blockbuster products and

536
00:26:01,840 --> 00:26:05,680
Speaker 4: there are not probably enough people out there who are

537
00:26:05,680 --> 00:26:08,600
Speaker 4: clamoring for this. There's not windows people out there that

538
00:26:08,720 --> 00:26:11,359
Speaker 4: affect Apple's market share and say, hey, we want I

539
00:26:11,480 --> 00:26:14,400
Speaker 4: message on this device, Apple just doesn't have to listen

540
00:26:14,480 --> 00:26:14,840
Speaker 4: to those.

541
00:26:15,680 --> 00:26:18,320
Speaker 1: Austin, thanks so much for coming on the show, Thanks

542
00:26:18,359 --> 00:26:21,840
Speaker 1: for having me, Thanks for listening to us here at

543
00:26:21,880 --> 00:26:25,200
Speaker 1: The Big Take. It's a daily podcast from Bloomberg and iHeartRadio.

544
00:26:25,480 --> 00:26:29,879
Speaker 1: For more shows from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

545
00:26:29,960 --> 00:26:32,479
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen, and we'd love to hear from you.

546
00:26:32,800 --> 00:26:36,080
Speaker 1: Email us questions or comments to Big Take at Bloomberg

547
00:26:36,080 --> 00:26:39,760
Speaker 1: dot net. The supervising producer of The Big Take is

548
00:26:39,840 --> 00:26:44,400
Speaker 1: Vicky Ergalina. Our senior producer is Katherine Fink. Rebecca Shassan

549
00:26:44,520 --> 00:26:48,720
Speaker 1: is our producer. Our associate producer is Sam Gebauer. Rafael

550
00:26:48,760 --> 00:26:52,520
Speaker 1: I'm see is our engineer, with additional production support from

551
00:26:52,640 --> 00:26:58,159
Speaker 1: Jill Namazzi, Zeno Sidiki, and Moberra. Our original music was

552
00:26:58,200 --> 00:27:01,880
Speaker 1: composed by Leo Sidrin I'm West Ksova. We'll be back

553
00:27:01,920 --> 00:27:03,760
Speaker 1: tomorrow with another Big Take