
290: ‘The Least Worst’, With Christina Warren
The Talk Show With John Gruber
07/28/20
•157m
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Special guest Christina Warren joins the show. Topics include the App Store and antitrust, the general crumminess of video streaming service UIs, and historical examples of when Apple gets something wrong.
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Links:
- Steven Levy on the G4 Cube’s 20th anniversary.
- Me on the Cube and lessons learned.
- Report commissioned by Apple comparing the App Store to other “digital marketplaces”.
- Rolling Stone TV Critic Alan Sepinwall: “Who Loses Big in the Great Streaming Wars? The User”.
- Jason Snell pointing out that even the playback UIs stink for a lot of streaming apps.
- Jonathan Mann on Apple (Steve Jobs) deciding to use his “Antennagate Song” to open their emergency press conference.
- From the DF Archive: “Antennagate Bottom Line”.
- “The Innocence Files” — outstanding series on Netflix documenting the work of the Innocence Project, which works to free those convicted of crimes they didn’t commit.
- Rocket — Weekly podcast hosted by Christina, Simone de Rochefort, and Brianna Wu.
- Christina on Twitter.
This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.
Previous Episode

289: ‘I’m Batman. America. Freedom.’ With Adam Lisagor
July 23, 2020
•159m
Adam Lisagor returns to the show. Topics include the cinematic and presentation style of Apple’s WWDC keynote, some post-production details on The Talk Show’s WWDC episode, the tribulations of producing professional videos during COVID-19, and the new sounds of MacOS 11 Big Sur.
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- Linode: Instantly deploy and manage an SSD server in the Linode Cloud. New accounts get a $20 credit with code talkshow20.
Links:
- Big Sur alerts.
- Big Sur system sounds.
- Prank with a loud computer startup chime in a crowded library.
- Sandwich’s conceived/shot/produced in quarantine video for Slack — working from home to make a video about working from home.
- The Talk Show Remote From WWDC 2020.
- Apple’s video with Craig Federighi introducing the iPad Magic Keyboard back in March, a precursor to the WWDC video style.
- My eve-of-keynote guess that WWDC’s keynote would look like that Magic Keyboard intro video.
- Apple’s old iTunes “Rip Mix Burn” commercial set in an empty theater.
- Steve Jobs introducing the G4 Cube at Macworld New York in 2000.
- Adam’s delightfully thoughtful thread on face masks.
- John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight on coronavirus conspiracy theories.
- Mat Honan back in 2012 on how and why he got hacked.
- California King — the reboot of You Look Nice Today.
This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.
Next Episode

291: ‘Algorithms, How Do They Work?’, With Nilay Patel
July 31, 2020
•141m
Nilay Patel returns to the show to discuss this week’s House antitrust hearing featuring testimony from Tim Cook, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai, and Mark Zuckerberg.
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Links:
- Full 5.5-hour video of the hearing.
- Casey Newton at The Verge: “Overdue, messy, and unsatisfying — but also a necessary part of a hugely important conversation”.
- Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) and famed character actor M. Emmet Walsh, who was born to play him.
- Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) grilling Jeff Bezos on anti-competitive business practices at Amazon.
- Lina M. Khan: “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox”. Seminal paper published in The Yale Law Journal in 2017.
- The Verge on the 2010 emails between Phil Schiller, Eddy Cue, and Steve Jobs that set the rules that keep Amazon from selling Kindle books in their iOS app.
- Tim Wu’s The Curse of Bigness.
This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.
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