September 6, 2023 • 27 mins
The Apple “ecosystem” has tremendous appeal – sleek design, genius marketing and a myriad of products and services that are seamlessly compatible. This makes users feel at ease within its closed circuit.
Unless they want to try something else.
Bloomberg reporter Austin Carr decided to scale Apple’s walled garden to see if the grass was greener in the Android and Windows world. But his attempts to transfer his photos, messages and contacts to his new devices turned into a maddening, months-long saga. In this episode Austin details his experience– and explains why Apple put up those walls in the first place.
Read more: iQuit: My Hellish Attempt to Leave Apple’s Walled Garden
Listen to The Big Take podcast every weekday and subscribe to our daily newsletter: https://bloom.bg/3F3EJAK
Have questions or comments for Wes and the team? Reach us at bigtake@bloomberg.net.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
When it comes to the device in your pocket and
the one on your desk and on your wrist and
even in your ears. There are Apple people and there
are not Apple people, and Heaven help you if you
try to persuade either kind to switch sides.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
I do not like Apple products because I like the
layout of that products. I think that products are convenient
and easy to use.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
To be honest, it looks slick and luxury with the iPhone.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Really, I have a Samsung Galaxy so Android device. I've
never felt the need to have an Apple product.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Also, it just seems to be cheaper on average.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Some typically strong opinions there of people in London. Apple
is especially adept at keeping customers inside their walled garden
of hardware, apps and services. Its products are designed to
work effortlessly with one another and sometimes less effortlessly, shall
we say, with other companies gear. The idea, of course,
(01:00):
is to make you never want to leave. I found
that a lot of.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
The Apples products you needed other Apple products. I think
it's just a loop, like you have to have Apple everything.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
They forced the youth to buying everything else from them,
But it's makes it rigid.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
You're just kind of.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Get stuck in the system of just buying the next
one as soon as it comes out, and then the
next one comes out and you buy that one instead.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
So what happens if you do decide to set foot
outside that cocoon like Apple ecosystem and venture into the
wilds of Android and Windows. That's exactly what Bloomberg's Austin
Carr tried to do. He found out just how complicated
it can be to leave Apple behind, and he's here
(01:41):
to tell the tale.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
So I thought, maybe maybe now that I'm switching this Android,
Windows and Friends model, this would be a lot more
easy for my digital lifestyle. It was not just not easy,
it was nightmarish.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
I'm West Kasova today on the Big Take. Apple really
really hates to say goodbye, Austin. Before we get into
your epic journey of trying to leave Apple, tell us
(02:22):
about your Apple life beforehand, like what made you want
to do this.
Speaker 4 (02:27):
I was one of those families that grew up with
an old school Macintosh, so I've been using Max for
many years, with the exception of the occasional Toshiba PC
or other Dell or HP, and that really accelerated when
Steve Jobs returned in the early two thousands or late
nineteen nineties when he was sort of first made interim CEO.
I remember vividly getting that first iPod back in the
(02:48):
early two thousands, and it was a miraculous moment. Other
MP three players had existed, but nothing with this clickwheel,
nothing that puts so many songs in my pocket, Nothing
with those beautiful commercials that had people dancing around with
the white headphones if you all remember it, to the
U two songs. And I was hooked, and I bought
(03:11):
into that ecosystem where you can draw a direct line
from my purchase of an iPod to an iPod Touch,
eventually to an iPhone when I could afford it, and
so forth. Up until now, we have a very Apple
centric household. My wife uses a MacBook, I use a MacBook.
We have iPhones. I have an Apple Watch, we have AirPods.
I subscribe to TV plus an iCloud. I am that
(03:33):
sort of prototypical dream of an Apple shareholder, the one
that is stuck on that cycle of hardware and software
and subscription upgrades. And I've been doing that now for gosh,
I mean, it must have been a decade or two
at this point. And heaven forbid I ever look up
how much all this stuff's costs, but I promise you
it would fund my new daughters five twenty nine.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
And people who are Apple users and people who are
Android users really do live in these two different worlds,
and you describe it as the blue bubble world and
the green bubble world.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
This has become quite a stigma, especially among younger generations,
like the TikTok generation, if you will, which really makes
me sound like a boomer. But I'm relatively my mid thirties,
so i still am somewhat with it. But in so
far as the bubbles go. You know, I'm sure everyone
probably listening has a family member or friends that are
mixed on a group chat between Android users and Apple users.
(04:31):
And you've probably wondered why some text are green. It's
actually really interesting technical story of why they don't make
it easy to text between platforms. You probably grew up
with something called SMS that's like a very foundational form
of text messaging, and that modified over the years to
something called MMS, which is multimedia text messaging. But the
issue is that has been stuck that way for so long,
(04:54):
and so every time you send a text with a
photo or a video back and forth. The quality of
it is profoundly reduced because it's based on a protocol
or standard that's many, many years old, and Apple doesn't
want to update it because they think, if you want
to have the Apple ecosystem, the Apple quality, those blue
bubbles that send perfect videos and can share seamlessly with
iCloud and all your photos, you should become an Apple user.
(05:17):
And so it's both actually a technical problem, but also
a stigma, a social one, in that younger people might
feel pressure.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
They don't want to be a green bubble.
Speaker 4 (05:24):
They want to be part of that community with your friends,
because you don't want to get left out of photo sharing,
you don't want to get left out of video sharing
or heaven forbid a group chat. So there's almost a clickishness,
and that was very intentional by what Apple has done.
There's been legal records that have come out from discovery
and court filings that have showed that they were very
savvy about recognizing, hey, we have to keep this sort
(05:46):
of quote unquote lock and model alive, keeping people within
the Apple iOS ecosystem, the MacBook and AirPods, that whole thing,
and I message is actually at the court of that
those blue bubbles.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
And so this whole idea that Apple wants to make
a blue bubble coveted seems to actually be working.
Speaker 4 (06:06):
It seems not only to be working, but it seems
to be extraordinarily unprecedentedly successful considering their market cab. And
that's not to say I message is at the root
of it, but that idea, it's referred to in the
tech world as a wald garden. And the idea is
that if you're choosing a company's brand, you want the
products to work seamlessly together.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
This makes sense.
Speaker 4 (06:30):
I mean, for example, if you have perhaps a lawnmower
that's electric these days, those batteries will be interchangeable with
that brand's weed whacker or leafblower.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
That's a form of a walled garden.
Speaker 4 (06:41):
Or if you have a Lionel train set, you might
have train tracks that only work with Lionel for those
model trains.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
That is a form of a walled garden. This is
not a new idea.
Speaker 4 (06:51):
What Apple has made new, though, is expanding it so
thoughtfully that they've really completed what Steve Jobs wants described
as the quote unquote whole which this idea that Hey,
if you're part of this ecosystem, whether it's with Blue
Bubbles or iCloud or the iPhone or AirPods, they will
work so seamlessly together that they will actually be the
core platform, not just for Apple, but for all your
(07:13):
computing habits. And that's why it's not just limited to
text messaging or Apple products. But when I get into
my Subaru outback, you know, I'm plugging that into CarPlay,
and that disintermediates Subaru's control of the customer and gives
it over to Apple. That's what's so profound about this
version of a walled garden. And then the other half
of that coin is whether or not you can actually
leave the wald garden, which is of course what this
(07:34):
story was all about.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
So when you look outside that wald garden to the
Android world or the non Apple world, a lot of
people who use that system like it because it gives
them a certain amount of freedom, even if it comes
at a certain amount of frustration trying to get all
those things to work together.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
That's exactly right, Wes.
Speaker 4 (07:55):
I think part of the issue is is it is
pretty much not a lot of options when you do
look outside of the Apple ecosystem. If you want something
that's incredibly unified, safe, and also super easy to use,
you're inevitably going to run into troubles. For example, Android
is pretty much the only other mobile phone platform maker
out there. Anytime you're using some of these things on Samsung,
(08:17):
or if you see any platforms even that Amazon makes,
they're often based on this Android ecosystem. And that's because
of something that happened many many years ago during the
early mobile phone wars, when Microsoft and BlackBerry and Amazon
and so many others were trying to get a foothold
into this market, and it just turned out that Apple
(08:38):
and Google ended up winning the platform doopoly. The distinction
is on the Apple side, they make phones, they make iPads,
they make MacBooks and AirPods.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
Google does not.
Speaker 4 (08:47):
They make chromebooks, and a Chromebook is not as powerful
as a MacBook, So I have to go outside to
a Windows laptop if I want something that's more fullfledged,
or I'd buy a MacBook, and then I'm stuck with
that wallach between the pristine Eden that is Apple's ecosystem
and this sort of mess of devices that is essentially
(09:08):
an Android slash Windows based operating system. In which I
might have a Dell XPS laptop. I might have an
HP or Asus desktop. I might have earbuds from I
don't know bos, I might have a phone from Google
or Samsung. And so that mix of devices is pretty freeing.
It's very liberating to be able to say, hey, I
want to buy whatever I want. But it's also not
(09:30):
particularly a cohesive package.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
And so why did you want to leave?
Speaker 4 (09:37):
The ironic thing of this whole process was it was
painful to leave. I've not only invested in this Waldgarden
ecosystem serious capital, i should say, but I also continue
to admire from afar Apple's design ecosystem and their philosophy.
And when I do look out at the competitive market,
there's not a lot that has that seamless integration, partially
(09:58):
because they don't all have a Waldgarden a roach, but
also because sometimes they just cannot make products that are
as quality, as esthetic, and beautifully integrated as Apples. With
that said, I was feeling claustrophobic. There have been times
over the last year or two that I've just grown
frustrated with some of the more forced versions of that.
I'm happy to be an Apple customer, but I really
(10:20):
don't like using Siri. They're trying to make Siri this
all encompassing star Trek like AI that helps you along
your way with your computing habits.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
I don't want that. I don't even want Siri on.
Speaker 4 (10:31):
But they make it difficult to turn off, and then
they integrate into other parts of your apps and your usage.
Ditto other programs that are just superior to Apples. I
really don't like Apple Maps. I'm not saying it's a
bad program, but my preference is for Google Maps. I
cannot make that my default. I cannot text with my
Android friends. I have a lot of them, a lot
of family members who I want to send pictures of
(10:53):
my daughter to in a high quality form. I can
use WhatsApp sure to send those, but I cannot make
WhatsApp my defaulting program. So it's really Apple has this
very my way or the highway approach, which I'm happy
to drive on. I'm happy to take that highway. The
issue is when they say, hey, here's also the car
you have to use. And I'm mixing metaphors there, but
that's genuinely When we were buying a super out back,
(11:14):
I said, oh man, we really do need to pick
something with CarPlay, and I've actually grown to dislike CarPlay
ironically for these very same restrictions.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
After the break, Austin tries to move his digital life
into a new home. All right, so you made the
decision to climb the wall of the garden. Tell us
(11:43):
what it was like.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Well, first fall, it was very funny.
Speaker 4 (11:46):
I almost felt like I had to send out disclaimers
to some of my friends to say, hey, heads up,
in the next couple of days, you might see green
text bubbles.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
In fact, we might I actually don't know.
Speaker 4 (11:56):
We might have to remake some of these groups because
it might not keep the thread history on my phone.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
And it was funny. Even the response to that.
Speaker 4 (12:03):
Some of my friends and family members joked, oh my god,
like is everything okay? Like can you not afford a
new iPhone? One of my friends just joke like, well,
that's the end of knowing you, as if I was
dead to them. There is that question mark about why
would you ever leave this Apple ecosystem?
Speaker 3 (12:18):
Do you not get it?
Speaker 4 (12:19):
Why are you not with this program that everyone else is?
And I'm talking if you probably pulled every tech reporter
out there. I'm guessing ninety percent of them have a MacBook,
and that's just that social pressure that leads to that
stigma of green and blue bubbles. So actually my journey
started by reaching out to people that I admire, or
reading reviews or looking up different ways to sort of
(12:39):
create something that was corollary.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
You know.
Speaker 4 (12:42):
I never expected it to be quite as good, But
I thought, if I could hack together some mix of
a Windows device, the perfect most advanced Android phone, and
perhaps a Garmin watch because I like to do more
outdoorsy stuff, none of those particularly integrate well with Apple.
So I thought, hey, maybe now that I'm switching with
this Android and Friends model or Android Windows and Friends model,
this would be a lot more easy for my digital lifestyle.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
But it turned out not to be so easy.
Speaker 4 (13:09):
It was not just not easy, it was nightmarish. And
I was really shocked because generally speaking, all my data
is in the cloud.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
I'm one of those people. I am.
Speaker 4 (13:20):
You know, if you've ever seen that TV show Hoarders,
I am the digital version of that. I've never deleted
a text. I've also really never deleted any photos, any videos,
just because I like posterity and I like to have
those memories and I pay serious cloud bills as a
result of that, especially with iCloud. But generally speaking, the
cloud is supposed to make it so you can move
your data around very easily, and it turns out Apple
(13:42):
iCloud does not make it particularly easy to move your
data out of there. That was my first step is
to try before I even bought devices, before I even
purchased a new phone, and I ended up going with
this very high end Google Pixel phone, which is a
gorgeous device, and I was so excited to use the camera.
I ended up going with this high end Dell XP yes,
which is another gorgeous device that a lot of people
(14:02):
think is a very good replacement for a MacBook. But
the bigger issue beyond the hardware was my data. How
do I get my photos? How do I get my
text messages out of I message? During this process, just
to give you a little summary, let's see, I had
one hundred and three gigabytes worth of eye messages and
file attachments. File attachments being you know, photos or videos
I've shared with my friends. One hundred and three gigabytes,
(14:23):
So that's a lot of data. There's no way to
port that to anywhere. Apple's a very secure platform, it
does not want you to be able to export that data.
And even if you could, where would you put it.
There's no perfect apples to apples, not to use a
terrible pun platform out there that can just seamlessly swallow
that information and translate it and suddenly, with this new device,
have you up and running with your same contacts as
(14:45):
if you've been there the whole time. So that's number one.
It's a technical problem. But the second thing is it's
a technical problem that people should be able to solve,
but that companies really don't want to. Back in Like
twenty eighteen, twenty seventeen, they did try to make this
data transfer program more accessible. They're called data takeout programs,
in which you can go to Apple or Google and say, hey,
I request all my data.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
I want it all.
Speaker 4 (15:06):
The issue is you will get some weird compressed ZIP
file full of a ton of different things that it
would take you a lot of coding abilities to be
able to decompress. And even with Apple, just as a
funny example, I made that request, it took fifteen days
to process my download request for just my ninety two thousand,
(15:26):
six hundred and fifty four photos which I had store ancloud,
and fifteen days later I got an email from Apple saying, hey,
unfortunately we've completed your transfer, but there's been ninety two,
six hundred and fifty four errors. In other words, zero
photos transferred. The same happened for somewhere in the ballpark
of twelve hundred videos, and the same thing continued to
happen again and again throughout this process, whether I went
(15:49):
through a data takeout program directly with Apple, or I
tried to transfer my data from my iPhone directly to
the Google Pixel, which is an option when you sign
up to these things, you just play your device is in.
They're supposed to be able to essentially hoover, like a
vacuum out all that data into the Google Pixel.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
And it took hours and hours and hours and just
never worked.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
And what does Apple say about how difficult it is
for people who want to try out a different product?
Speaker 4 (16:16):
So Apple stands on this generally speaking, I mean we
should go to the man at the top, Tim Cook,
the CEO, who has been part of this expansion of
Steve Job's dream of having not just hardware and software combined,
but also hardware, software and services and subscriptions.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
And he was actually asked that this question.
Speaker 4 (16:32):
A few months ago at a conference, there was a
Q and A from the audience and someone essentially came
up and said to Tim, Hey, you know, my mom's
on Android.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
It's really difficult.
Speaker 4 (16:41):
What are your thoughts on, like, when are we going
to get rid of this stigma this class system around
green and blue bubbles?
Speaker 2 (16:47):
Communication was revolutionized with the eye message, right, How do
you think Steve would feel currently about the state of
communication specifically between people who aren't within the community of
apps and are part of the I message, but more
so on the green side of things with Android.
Speaker 5 (17:06):
I don't hear our users asking that we put a
lot of energy in on that at this point, and
so now I would love to continue. I would love
to convert you to eyeball.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
It's just it's it's tough not to make it personal.
But I can't see my mom certain videos, or she
can't see me certain videos, and.
Speaker 5 (17:36):
So we buy your mom eyeball.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
When I reached out to Apple about this, they did
provide a lot of information. Apple is very generally speaking,
and this is a fact, not an opinion. Apple is
very opaque as a corporation, and Apple spokesperson essentially said
that they actually have tried to make it easier to
transfer your data to other services. Their argument is essentially
that three and four people choose to stay with Apple
(18:02):
is a reflection of how much they love their products,
how much they're satisfied with Apple. It's not an example
of lock in. In other words, they're essentially saying without
saying it, if Android and Google want people switching, if
Samsung wants people switching, they have to do a better
job at making better quality products. Don't blame that on us.
They often cite the app market is example not of
(18:22):
lock in, but as a way that they help all
these developers in small businesses. They talk about ways that
they've made it easier to transfer your data via iCloud
and other services to take out data. They did not
comment on the fact that I could not get my
data out of there.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
To be clear, Austin, on the other side of this
equation is when you tried to get your data onto
your new Android and Windows devices, that if Apple made
it difficult to leave that world, on the other side,
didn't exactly make it welcoming.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
For you to come in either.
Speaker 4 (18:55):
That's true. Let's put it this way. I think a
lot of companies are to blame for this. You know,
Windows could make it here, could be more seamless, but Google.
I was pretty surprised at how bumpy the experience was
when I was onboarding. And I'm talking about even put
aside some of the data issues getting it out of Apple,
the onboarding experience for Android was really complicated. When I
(19:15):
did sync some of my Apple data, some of it
did transfer. For example, all of my contacts transferred over
successfully my iPhone contacts, which is a limited list of
people that I tend to text or call most frequently. Unfortunately,
they actually merged it with my Google account, which is
through Gmail. I've been using Gmail since about two thousand
and five when it came out, and so it auto
(19:37):
merged all of my contacts with every single Gmail contact
I've ever had, and I'm talking there were nine older
versions of myself in my phone. Suddenly the contact list
was suddenly thousands of contacts long. It had every contact
I've ever had from every Craigslist outreach I've done for
apartments as if they were human beings as opposed to
just Craigslist lane.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
There were so many.
Speaker 4 (19:58):
Instances in this and this as I learned from just
reporting around Android is actually a big deal. It's called
the first impression problem. They have not figured out a
way to welcome users to this different style of experience
that is a little bit more open. But it was
just a very unusual experience for what was originally promised
to me by a Google sales rep of saying, Hey,
this is going to be easy as copy and pasting
(20:18):
on your computer.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
It turned out to be anything but that.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
And you would think that Google Microsoft would want to
make it really easy to get people like you because
it's an incentive.
Speaker 4 (20:31):
It blows my mind that Google has not invested more
in tech support. When I was communicating them on their
online chats, tech support or buy email would essentially just
copy and paste instructions to me that I've already read
that's on their website. So they actually pointed me instead,
ironically to Apple customer service through a one eight hundred number,
and to Apple's credit, this really brilliant senior technician hopped
(20:52):
on the phone with me for nearly an hour and
work through as many fixes as possible.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
We couldn't figure it out.
Speaker 4 (20:59):
This tech support person, who was very generous and very kind,
and ironically knew that he was helping me leave Apple
as a customer, but was still willing to help.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
We have to give Apple credit for that.
Speaker 4 (21:09):
He essentially said, one of the issues is that internally
at Apple, they block Android's website, so he couldn't even
open Android's website to see what steps I was using
or that Google was recommending, because that's the type of
barriers that they have between these companies, and we could
ultimately not get my data off of it.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
All of his recommendations did not work.
Speaker 4 (21:28):
When I asked him once why I couldn't just download
all my iCloud data, he compared that to me essentially
driving to jam fifty thousand pieces of paper into a
fax machine and expecting it to fax those pieces of
paper faster rather than jam, which I think is an
app metaphor, but it also speaks volumes frankly about eye Cloud,
that it's more of a fax machine than it is
perhaps a modern data sharing tool.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
And you had this very funny moment that you write
about in the story when you contacted Google.
Speaker 4 (21:55):
I thought, originally Google would be totally game to help
with this insofar as I was having and I wondered, Yeah,
I'm going to be writing about this at this point.
To be clear, when I started this, this was just personal.
You know, I never expensed any of this stuff. This
is all because I really wanted genuinely to try to switch,
which I promise will make this different than any story
you read if you're going to read one of these
(22:15):
about switching. I had just returned from a reporting trip
in Poland and Lithuania in which some of the apps
that I was using overseas, especially in Europe, like VPNs,
were not working on Apple. I was jet lagged, I
was perhaps a little cranky. I was really having frustrations
with Apple, and that's when I made the decision to
try to switch. I actually emailed Google to request interviews
with some of their executives about my experience switching and
(22:38):
whether they had any guidance, and that Google spokesperson accidentally
cesed me on his message to his colleagues. He didn't
know I was reading, but he wrote, this is like
doing a car comparison, but trying to compare a Honda
to a car you built from parts you got at
pep Boys. To be clear, he's referring to Honda as
the Apple, the unified experience and he's referring to the
(22:59):
parts you got at pep boy to using Android and
Windows together.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
When we come back, Austin starts to have second thoughts. So, Austin,
how did this saga end?
Speaker 4 (23:20):
This ended with my wife laughing at me for wasting
so many months and dollars. Basically, what ended up happening
is other than the few glimmers of what I was
trying to experience, which was an open ecosystem in which
these tech companies act like adults and realize, hey, not
everyone's going to have all Apple products. Not everyone's going
to have all Amazon products, or Google or Microsoft products
(23:43):
or Samsung, that hey, we should work these products altogether.
I realized that I just had no choice but to
go back into the Apple ecosystem. I just ultimately returned
the Google Pixel, I returned the del xps, and of
course I bought a new MacBook.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
I bought a new iPhone.
Speaker 4 (24:03):
I am wearing currently a new Apple Watch Ultra, and
I have new AirPods because my dog chewed on the
old ones. And so that's where I'm at. I will say,
it's like the end of nineteen eighty four. What's the
last line of the book spoiler alert. He says something
to the effect is I learned to love big Brother.
And that's not to say Apple is dystopian, but I
can tell you it's very difficult to leave its ecosystem.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
You know.
Speaker 4 (24:25):
It was really interesting when I talked to some of
the ex Google early Android designers who talked about trying
to get people to switch from Apple, and they did
early consumer feedback in which they talked to consumers, they
walked them through the experience, They took diaries and so
forth of their responses they got, and first impressions were
so important. They realized if you couldn't make a good
(24:46):
first impression with Android, people were more likely to return
the phone and get rid of it and go back
to the iPhone. One of these sources told me they
remember a sample customer saying I just want my life back,
and that's why they switched.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
Back to Apple.
Speaker 4 (25:00):
And I realized I went through that same experience Google
had a chance.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
I was that weird customer.
Speaker 4 (25:05):
There's not many of them out there that's going to
spend a lot of money, that's going to waste a
lot of time, that's going to deal with the headaches
of switching and as soon as I got that first impression,
regardless of whose fault, whether it was Apple or Google's fault,
that it was not a seamless experience. The first impression
was back and as that old sample customer said, I
just wanted my life back.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
Do you imagine this is going to change at any
time that people will simply demand to have more options,
to be able to leave, to have the apps they
want on their phone without the big companies telling them
what they can and can't do.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
I don't think so.
Speaker 4 (25:39):
I don't know when that's going to happen or how
it would change. I mean, if you think back to
what Tim Cook said to that fan in the audience,
they don't hear a lot of their customers asking about that.
I think the truth is they're just not listening, and
they don't need to because they're the biggest company in
the world.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
They're worth almost three trillion dollars.
Speaker 4 (25:55):
The iPhone, the iPad, and we'll see what the Vision
Pro does their new headset. But they're blockbuster products and
there are not probably enough people out there who are
clamoring for this. There's not windows people out there that
affect Apple's market share and say, hey, we want I
message on this device, Apple just doesn't have to listen
to those.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
Austin, thanks so much for coming on the show, Thanks
for having me, Thanks for listening to us here at
The Big Take. It's a daily podcast from Bloomberg and iHeartRadio.
For more shows from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen, and we'd love to hear from you.
Email us questions or comments to Big Take at Bloomberg
(26:36):
dot net. The supervising producer of The Big Take is
Vicky Ergalina. Our senior producer is Katherine Fink. Rebecca Shassan
is our producer. Our associate producer is Sam Gebauer. Rafael
I'm see is our engineer, with additional production support from
Jill Namazzi, Zeno Sidiki, and Moberra. Our original music was
(26:58):
composed by Leo Sidrin I'm West Ksova. We'll be back
tomorrow with another Big Take
When it comes to the device in your pocket and
the one on your desk and on your wrist and
even in your ears. There are Apple people and there
are not Apple people, and Heaven help you if you
try to persuade either kind to switch sides.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
I do not like Apple products because I like the
layout of that products. I think that products are convenient
and easy to use.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
To be honest, it looks slick and luxury with the iPhone.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Really, I have a Samsung Galaxy so Android device. I've
never felt the need to have an Apple product.
Speaker 3 (00:35):
Also, it just seems to be cheaper on average.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Some typically strong opinions there of people in London. Apple
is especially adept at keeping customers inside their walled garden
of hardware, apps and services. Its products are designed to
work effortlessly with one another and sometimes less effortlessly, shall
we say, with other companies gear. The idea, of course,
(01:00):
is to make you never want to leave. I found
that a lot of.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
The Apples products you needed other Apple products. I think
it's just a loop, like you have to have Apple everything.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
They forced the youth to buying everything else from them,
But it's makes it rigid.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
You're just kind of.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Get stuck in the system of just buying the next
one as soon as it comes out, and then the
next one comes out and you buy that one instead.
Speaker 1 (01:20):
So what happens if you do decide to set foot
outside that cocoon like Apple ecosystem and venture into the
wilds of Android and Windows. That's exactly what Bloomberg's Austin
Carr tried to do. He found out just how complicated
it can be to leave Apple behind, and he's here
(01:41):
to tell the tale.
Speaker 4 (01:43):
So I thought, maybe maybe now that I'm switching this Android,
Windows and Friends model, this would be a lot more
easy for my digital lifestyle. It was not just not easy,
it was nightmarish.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
I'm West Kasova today on the Big Take. Apple really
really hates to say goodbye, Austin. Before we get into
your epic journey of trying to leave Apple, tell us
(02:22):
about your Apple life beforehand, like what made you want
to do this.
Speaker 4 (02:27):
I was one of those families that grew up with
an old school Macintosh, so I've been using Max for
many years, with the exception of the occasional Toshiba PC
or other Dell or HP, and that really accelerated when
Steve Jobs returned in the early two thousands or late
nineteen nineties when he was sort of first made interim CEO.
I remember vividly getting that first iPod back in the
(02:48):
early two thousands, and it was a miraculous moment. Other
MP three players had existed, but nothing with this clickwheel,
nothing that puts so many songs in my pocket, Nothing
with those beautiful commercials that had people dancing around with
the white headphones if you all remember it, to the
U two songs. And I was hooked, and I bought
(03:11):
into that ecosystem where you can draw a direct line
from my purchase of an iPod to an iPod Touch,
eventually to an iPhone when I could afford it, and
so forth. Up until now, we have a very Apple
centric household. My wife uses a MacBook, I use a MacBook.
We have iPhones. I have an Apple Watch, we have AirPods.
I subscribe to TV plus an iCloud. I am that
(03:33):
sort of prototypical dream of an Apple shareholder, the one
that is stuck on that cycle of hardware and software
and subscription upgrades. And I've been doing that now for gosh,
I mean, it must have been a decade or two
at this point. And heaven forbid I ever look up
how much all this stuff's costs, but I promise you
it would fund my new daughters five twenty nine.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
And people who are Apple users and people who are
Android users really do live in these two different worlds,
and you describe it as the blue bubble world and
the green bubble world.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
This has become quite a stigma, especially among younger generations,
like the TikTok generation, if you will, which really makes
me sound like a boomer. But I'm relatively my mid thirties,
so i still am somewhat with it. But in so
far as the bubbles go. You know, I'm sure everyone
probably listening has a family member or friends that are
mixed on a group chat between Android users and Apple users.
(04:31):
And you've probably wondered why some text are green. It's
actually really interesting technical story of why they don't make
it easy to text between platforms. You probably grew up
with something called SMS that's like a very foundational form
of text messaging, and that modified over the years to
something called MMS, which is multimedia text messaging. But the
issue is that has been stuck that way for so long,
(04:54):
and so every time you send a text with a
photo or a video back and forth. The quality of
it is profoundly reduced because it's based on a protocol
or standard that's many, many years old, and Apple doesn't
want to update it because they think, if you want
to have the Apple ecosystem, the Apple quality, those blue
bubbles that send perfect videos and can share seamlessly with
iCloud and all your photos, you should become an Apple user.
(05:17):
And so it's both actually a technical problem, but also
a stigma, a social one, in that younger people might
feel pressure.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
They don't want to be a green bubble.
Speaker 4 (05:24):
They want to be part of that community with your friends,
because you don't want to get left out of photo sharing,
you don't want to get left out of video sharing
or heaven forbid a group chat. So there's almost a clickishness,
and that was very intentional by what Apple has done.
There's been legal records that have come out from discovery
and court filings that have showed that they were very
savvy about recognizing, hey, we have to keep this sort
(05:46):
of quote unquote lock and model alive, keeping people within
the Apple iOS ecosystem, the MacBook and AirPods, that whole thing,
and I message is actually at the court of that
those blue bubbles.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
And so this whole idea that Apple wants to make
a blue bubble coveted seems to actually be working.
Speaker 4 (06:06):
It seems not only to be working, but it seems
to be extraordinarily unprecedentedly successful considering their market cab. And
that's not to say I message is at the root
of it, but that idea, it's referred to in the
tech world as a wald garden. And the idea is
that if you're choosing a company's brand, you want the
products to work seamlessly together.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
This makes sense.
Speaker 4 (06:30):
I mean, for example, if you have perhaps a lawnmower
that's electric these days, those batteries will be interchangeable with
that brand's weed whacker or leafblower.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
That's a form of a walled garden.
Speaker 4 (06:41):
Or if you have a Lionel train set, you might
have train tracks that only work with Lionel for those
model trains.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
That is a form of a walled garden. This is
not a new idea.
Speaker 4 (06:51):
What Apple has made new, though, is expanding it so
thoughtfully that they've really completed what Steve Jobs wants described
as the quote unquote whole which this idea that Hey,
if you're part of this ecosystem, whether it's with Blue
Bubbles or iCloud or the iPhone or AirPods, they will
work so seamlessly together that they will actually be the
core platform, not just for Apple, but for all your
(07:13):
computing habits. And that's why it's not just limited to
text messaging or Apple products. But when I get into
my Subaru outback, you know, I'm plugging that into CarPlay,
and that disintermediates Subaru's control of the customer and gives
it over to Apple. That's what's so profound about this
version of a walled garden. And then the other half
of that coin is whether or not you can actually
leave the wald garden, which is of course what this
(07:34):
story was all about.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
So when you look outside that wald garden to the
Android world or the non Apple world, a lot of
people who use that system like it because it gives
them a certain amount of freedom, even if it comes
at a certain amount of frustration trying to get all
those things to work together.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
That's exactly right, Wes.
Speaker 4 (07:55):
I think part of the issue is is it is
pretty much not a lot of options when you do
look outside of the Apple ecosystem. If you want something
that's incredibly unified, safe, and also super easy to use,
you're inevitably going to run into troubles. For example, Android
is pretty much the only other mobile phone platform maker
out there. Anytime you're using some of these things on Samsung,
(08:17):
or if you see any platforms even that Amazon makes,
they're often based on this Android ecosystem. And that's because
of something that happened many many years ago during the
early mobile phone wars, when Microsoft and BlackBerry and Amazon
and so many others were trying to get a foothold
into this market, and it just turned out that Apple
(08:38):
and Google ended up winning the platform doopoly. The distinction
is on the Apple side, they make phones, they make iPads,
they make MacBooks and AirPods.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
Google does not.
Speaker 4 (08:47):
They make chromebooks, and a Chromebook is not as powerful
as a MacBook, So I have to go outside to
a Windows laptop if I want something that's more fullfledged,
or I'd buy a MacBook, and then I'm stuck with
that wallach between the pristine Eden that is Apple's ecosystem
and this sort of mess of devices that is essentially
(09:08):
an Android slash Windows based operating system. In which I
might have a Dell XPS laptop. I might have an
HP or Asus desktop. I might have earbuds from I
don't know bos, I might have a phone from Google
or Samsung. And so that mix of devices is pretty freeing.
It's very liberating to be able to say, hey, I
want to buy whatever I want. But it's also not
(09:30):
particularly a cohesive package.
Speaker 1 (09:34):
And so why did you want to leave?
Speaker 4 (09:37):
The ironic thing of this whole process was it was
painful to leave. I've not only invested in this Waldgarden
ecosystem serious capital, i should say, but I also continue
to admire from afar Apple's design ecosystem and their philosophy.
And when I do look out at the competitive market,
there's not a lot that has that seamless integration, partially
(09:58):
because they don't all have a Waldgarden a roach, but
also because sometimes they just cannot make products that are
as quality, as esthetic, and beautifully integrated as Apples. With
that said, I was feeling claustrophobic. There have been times
over the last year or two that I've just grown
frustrated with some of the more forced versions of that.
I'm happy to be an Apple customer, but I really
(10:20):
don't like using Siri. They're trying to make Siri this
all encompassing star Trek like AI that helps you along
your way with your computing habits.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
I don't want that. I don't even want Siri on.
Speaker 4 (10:31):
But they make it difficult to turn off, and then
they integrate into other parts of your apps and your usage.
Ditto other programs that are just superior to Apples. I
really don't like Apple Maps. I'm not saying it's a
bad program, but my preference is for Google Maps. I
cannot make that my default. I cannot text with my
Android friends. I have a lot of them, a lot
of family members who I want to send pictures of
(10:53):
my daughter to in a high quality form. I can
use WhatsApp sure to send those, but I cannot make
WhatsApp my defaulting program. So it's really Apple has this
very my way or the highway approach, which I'm happy
to drive on. I'm happy to take that highway. The
issue is when they say, hey, here's also the car
you have to use. And I'm mixing metaphors there, but
that's genuinely When we were buying a super out back,
(11:14):
I said, oh man, we really do need to pick
something with CarPlay, and I've actually grown to dislike CarPlay
ironically for these very same restrictions.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
After the break, Austin tries to move his digital life
into a new home. All right, so you made the
decision to climb the wall of the garden. Tell us
(11:43):
what it was like.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Well, first fall, it was very funny.
Speaker 4 (11:46):
I almost felt like I had to send out disclaimers
to some of my friends to say, hey, heads up,
in the next couple of days, you might see green
text bubbles.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
In fact, we might I actually don't know.
Speaker 4 (11:56):
We might have to remake some of these groups because
it might not keep the thread history on my phone.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
And it was funny. Even the response to that.
Speaker 4 (12:03):
Some of my friends and family members joked, oh my god,
like is everything okay? Like can you not afford a
new iPhone? One of my friends just joke like, well,
that's the end of knowing you, as if I was
dead to them. There is that question mark about why
would you ever leave this Apple ecosystem?
Speaker 3 (12:18):
Do you not get it?
Speaker 4 (12:19):
Why are you not with this program that everyone else is?
And I'm talking if you probably pulled every tech reporter
out there. I'm guessing ninety percent of them have a MacBook,
and that's just that social pressure that leads to that
stigma of green and blue bubbles. So actually my journey
started by reaching out to people that I admire, or
reading reviews or looking up different ways to sort of
(12:39):
create something that was corollary.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
You know.
Speaker 4 (12:42):
I never expected it to be quite as good, But
I thought, if I could hack together some mix of
a Windows device, the perfect most advanced Android phone, and
perhaps a Garmin watch because I like to do more
outdoorsy stuff, none of those particularly integrate well with Apple.
So I thought, hey, maybe now that I'm switching with
this Android and Friends model or Android Windows and Friends model,
this would be a lot more easy for my digital lifestyle.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
But it turned out not to be so easy.
Speaker 4 (13:09):
It was not just not easy, it was nightmarish. And
I was really shocked because generally speaking, all my data
is in the cloud.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
I'm one of those people. I am.
Speaker 4 (13:20):
You know, if you've ever seen that TV show Hoarders,
I am the digital version of that. I've never deleted
a text. I've also really never deleted any photos, any videos,
just because I like posterity and I like to have
those memories and I pay serious cloud bills as a
result of that, especially with iCloud. But generally speaking, the
cloud is supposed to make it so you can move
your data around very easily, and it turns out Apple
(13:42):
iCloud does not make it particularly easy to move your
data out of there. That was my first step is
to try before I even bought devices, before I even
purchased a new phone, and I ended up going with
this very high end Google Pixel phone, which is a
gorgeous device, and I was so excited to use the camera.
I ended up going with this high end Dell XP yes,
which is another gorgeous device that a lot of people
(14:02):
think is a very good replacement for a MacBook. But
the bigger issue beyond the hardware was my data. How
do I get my photos? How do I get my
text messages out of I message? During this process, just
to give you a little summary, let's see, I had
one hundred and three gigabytes worth of eye messages and
file attachments. File attachments being you know, photos or videos
I've shared with my friends. One hundred and three gigabytes,
(14:23):
So that's a lot of data. There's no way to
port that to anywhere. Apple's a very secure platform, it
does not want you to be able to export that data.
And even if you could, where would you put it.
There's no perfect apples to apples, not to use a
terrible pun platform out there that can just seamlessly swallow
that information and translate it and suddenly, with this new device,
have you up and running with your same contacts as
(14:45):
if you've been there the whole time. So that's number one.
It's a technical problem. But the second thing is it's
a technical problem that people should be able to solve,
but that companies really don't want to. Back in Like
twenty eighteen, twenty seventeen, they did try to make this
data transfer program more accessible. They're called data takeout programs,
in which you can go to Apple or Google and say, hey,
I request all my data.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
I want it all.
Speaker 4 (15:06):
The issue is you will get some weird compressed ZIP
file full of a ton of different things that it
would take you a lot of coding abilities to be
able to decompress. And even with Apple, just as a
funny example, I made that request, it took fifteen days
to process my download request for just my ninety two thousand,
(15:26):
six hundred and fifty four photos which I had store ancloud,
and fifteen days later I got an email from Apple saying, hey,
unfortunately we've completed your transfer, but there's been ninety two,
six hundred and fifty four errors. In other words, zero
photos transferred. The same happened for somewhere in the ballpark
of twelve hundred videos, and the same thing continued to
happen again and again throughout this process, whether I went
(15:49):
through a data takeout program directly with Apple, or I
tried to transfer my data from my iPhone directly to
the Google Pixel, which is an option when you sign
up to these things, you just play your device is in.
They're supposed to be able to essentially hoover, like a
vacuum out all that data into the Google Pixel.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
And it took hours and hours and hours and just
never worked.
Speaker 1 (16:10):
And what does Apple say about how difficult it is
for people who want to try out a different product?
Speaker 4 (16:16):
So Apple stands on this generally speaking, I mean we
should go to the man at the top, Tim Cook,
the CEO, who has been part of this expansion of
Steve Job's dream of having not just hardware and software combined,
but also hardware, software and services and subscriptions.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
And he was actually asked that this question.
Speaker 4 (16:32):
A few months ago at a conference, there was a
Q and A from the audience and someone essentially came
up and said to Tim, Hey, you know, my mom's
on Android.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
It's really difficult.
Speaker 4 (16:41):
What are your thoughts on, like, when are we going
to get rid of this stigma this class system around
green and blue bubbles?
Speaker 2 (16:47):
Communication was revolutionized with the eye message, right, How do
you think Steve would feel currently about the state of
communication specifically between people who aren't within the community of
apps and are part of the I message, but more
so on the green side of things with Android.
Speaker 5 (17:06):
I don't hear our users asking that we put a
lot of energy in on that at this point, and
so now I would love to continue. I would love
to convert you to eyeball.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
It's just it's it's tough not to make it personal.
But I can't see my mom certain videos, or she
can't see me certain videos, and.
Speaker 5 (17:36):
So we buy your mom eyeball.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
When I reached out to Apple about this, they did
provide a lot of information. Apple is very generally speaking,
and this is a fact, not an opinion. Apple is
very opaque as a corporation, and Apple spokesperson essentially said
that they actually have tried to make it easier to
transfer your data to other services. Their argument is essentially
that three and four people choose to stay with Apple
(18:02):
is a reflection of how much they love their products,
how much they're satisfied with Apple. It's not an example
of lock in. In other words, they're essentially saying without
saying it, if Android and Google want people switching, if
Samsung wants people switching, they have to do a better
job at making better quality products. Don't blame that on us.
They often cite the app market is example not of
(18:22):
lock in, but as a way that they help all
these developers in small businesses. They talk about ways that
they've made it easier to transfer your data via iCloud
and other services to take out data. They did not
comment on the fact that I could not get my
data out of there.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
To be clear, Austin, on the other side of this
equation is when you tried to get your data onto
your new Android and Windows devices, that if Apple made
it difficult to leave that world, on the other side,
didn't exactly make it welcoming.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
For you to come in either.
Speaker 4 (18:55):
That's true. Let's put it this way. I think a
lot of companies are to blame for this. You know,
Windows could make it here, could be more seamless, but Google.
I was pretty surprised at how bumpy the experience was
when I was onboarding. And I'm talking about even put
aside some of the data issues getting it out of Apple,
the onboarding experience for Android was really complicated. When I
(19:15):
did sync some of my Apple data, some of it
did transfer. For example, all of my contacts transferred over
successfully my iPhone contacts, which is a limited list of
people that I tend to text or call most frequently. Unfortunately,
they actually merged it with my Google account, which is
through Gmail. I've been using Gmail since about two thousand
and five when it came out, and so it auto
(19:37):
merged all of my contacts with every single Gmail contact
I've ever had, and I'm talking there were nine older
versions of myself in my phone. Suddenly the contact list
was suddenly thousands of contacts long. It had every contact
I've ever had from every Craigslist outreach I've done for
apartments as if they were human beings as opposed to
just Craigslist lane.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
There were so many.
Speaker 4 (19:58):
Instances in this and this as I learned from just
reporting around Android is actually a big deal. It's called
the first impression problem. They have not figured out a
way to welcome users to this different style of experience
that is a little bit more open. But it was
just a very unusual experience for what was originally promised
to me by a Google sales rep of saying, Hey,
this is going to be easy as copy and pasting
(20:18):
on your computer.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
It turned out to be anything but that.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
And you would think that Google Microsoft would want to
make it really easy to get people like you because
it's an incentive.
Speaker 4 (20:31):
It blows my mind that Google has not invested more
in tech support. When I was communicating them on their
online chats, tech support or buy email would essentially just
copy and paste instructions to me that I've already read
that's on their website. So they actually pointed me instead,
ironically to Apple customer service through a one eight hundred number,
and to Apple's credit, this really brilliant senior technician hopped
(20:52):
on the phone with me for nearly an hour and
work through as many fixes as possible.
Speaker 3 (20:57):
We couldn't figure it out.
Speaker 4 (20:59):
This tech support person, who was very generous and very kind,
and ironically knew that he was helping me leave Apple
as a customer, but was still willing to help.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
We have to give Apple credit for that.
Speaker 4 (21:09):
He essentially said, one of the issues is that internally
at Apple, they block Android's website, so he couldn't even
open Android's website to see what steps I was using
or that Google was recommending, because that's the type of
barriers that they have between these companies, and we could
ultimately not get my data off of it.
Speaker 3 (21:26):
All of his recommendations did not work.
Speaker 4 (21:28):
When I asked him once why I couldn't just download
all my iCloud data, he compared that to me essentially
driving to jam fifty thousand pieces of paper into a
fax machine and expecting it to fax those pieces of
paper faster rather than jam, which I think is an
app metaphor, but it also speaks volumes frankly about eye Cloud,
that it's more of a fax machine than it is
perhaps a modern data sharing tool.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
And you had this very funny moment that you write
about in the story when you contacted Google.
Speaker 4 (21:55):
I thought, originally Google would be totally game to help
with this insofar as I was having and I wondered, Yeah,
I'm going to be writing about this at this point.
To be clear, when I started this, this was just personal.
You know, I never expensed any of this stuff. This
is all because I really wanted genuinely to try to switch,
which I promise will make this different than any story
you read if you're going to read one of these
(22:15):
about switching. I had just returned from a reporting trip
in Poland and Lithuania in which some of the apps
that I was using overseas, especially in Europe, like VPNs,
were not working on Apple. I was jet lagged, I
was perhaps a little cranky. I was really having frustrations
with Apple, and that's when I made the decision to
try to switch. I actually emailed Google to request interviews
with some of their executives about my experience switching and
(22:38):
whether they had any guidance, and that Google spokesperson accidentally
cesed me on his message to his colleagues. He didn't
know I was reading, but he wrote, this is like
doing a car comparison, but trying to compare a Honda
to a car you built from parts you got at
pep Boys. To be clear, he's referring to Honda as
the Apple, the unified experience and he's referring to the
(22:59):
parts you got at pep boy to using Android and
Windows together.
Speaker 1 (23:03):
When we come back, Austin starts to have second thoughts. So, Austin,
how did this saga end?
Speaker 4 (23:20):
This ended with my wife laughing at me for wasting
so many months and dollars. Basically, what ended up happening
is other than the few glimmers of what I was
trying to experience, which was an open ecosystem in which
these tech companies act like adults and realize, hey, not
everyone's going to have all Apple products. Not everyone's going
to have all Amazon products, or Google or Microsoft products
(23:43):
or Samsung, that hey, we should work these products altogether.
I realized that I just had no choice but to
go back into the Apple ecosystem. I just ultimately returned
the Google Pixel, I returned the del xps, and of
course I bought a new MacBook.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
I bought a new iPhone.
Speaker 4 (24:03):
I am wearing currently a new Apple Watch Ultra, and
I have new AirPods because my dog chewed on the
old ones. And so that's where I'm at. I will say,
it's like the end of nineteen eighty four. What's the
last line of the book spoiler alert. He says something
to the effect is I learned to love big Brother.
And that's not to say Apple is dystopian, but I
can tell you it's very difficult to leave its ecosystem.
Speaker 3 (24:25):
You know.
Speaker 4 (24:25):
It was really interesting when I talked to some of
the ex Google early Android designers who talked about trying
to get people to switch from Apple, and they did
early consumer feedback in which they talked to consumers, they
walked them through the experience, They took diaries and so
forth of their responses they got, and first impressions were
so important. They realized if you couldn't make a good
(24:46):
first impression with Android, people were more likely to return
the phone and get rid of it and go back
to the iPhone. One of these sources told me they
remember a sample customer saying I just want my life back,
and that's why they switched.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
Back to Apple.
Speaker 4 (25:00):
And I realized I went through that same experience Google
had a chance.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
I was that weird customer.
Speaker 4 (25:05):
There's not many of them out there that's going to
spend a lot of money, that's going to waste a
lot of time, that's going to deal with the headaches
of switching and as soon as I got that first impression,
regardless of whose fault, whether it was Apple or Google's fault,
that it was not a seamless experience. The first impression
was back and as that old sample customer said, I
just wanted my life back.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
Do you imagine this is going to change at any
time that people will simply demand to have more options,
to be able to leave, to have the apps they
want on their phone without the big companies telling them
what they can and can't do.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
I don't think so.
Speaker 4 (25:39):
I don't know when that's going to happen or how
it would change. I mean, if you think back to
what Tim Cook said to that fan in the audience,
they don't hear a lot of their customers asking about that.
I think the truth is they're just not listening, and
they don't need to because they're the biggest company in
the world.
Speaker 3 (25:53):
They're worth almost three trillion dollars.
Speaker 4 (25:55):
The iPhone, the iPad, and we'll see what the Vision
Pro does their new headset. But they're blockbuster products and
there are not probably enough people out there who are
clamoring for this. There's not windows people out there that
affect Apple's market share and say, hey, we want I
message on this device, Apple just doesn't have to listen
to those.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
Austin, thanks so much for coming on the show, Thanks
for having me, Thanks for listening to us here at
The Big Take. It's a daily podcast from Bloomberg and iHeartRadio.
For more shows from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen, and we'd love to hear from you.
Email us questions or comments to Big Take at Bloomberg
(26:36):
dot net. The supervising producer of The Big Take is
Vicky Ergalina. Our senior producer is Katherine Fink. Rebecca Shassan
is our producer. Our associate producer is Sam Gebauer. Rafael
I'm see is our engineer, with additional production support from
Jill Namazzi, Zeno Sidiki, and Moberra. Our original music was
(26:58):
composed by Leo Sidrin I'm West Ksova. We'll be back
tomorrow with another Big Take
Hosts And Creators
Sarah Holder
Saleha Mohsin
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