Learn, Make, Learn
Learn, Make, Learn is two product geeks sharing qualitative & quantitative perspectives to help you make, better. Hosted by Ernest Kim and Joachim Groeger.
Learn, Make, Learn
The Weight of History
The pressure to repeat history, as in the previous year’s sales for a given product, can be pernicious. We share ideas for unshackling yourself from this weight so that you can avoid, as Marshall McLuhan put it, marching backwards into the future.
FOLLOW-UPS – 00:43
Humane is looking for a buyer
Coffeezilla on the Rabbit R1
NOMOS at Watches & Wonders
NOMOS: The icon in 31 color compositions
Noel Gallagher on Jimi Hendrix
The Panic Over Smartphones Doesn’t Help Teens (paywall)
THE WEIGHT OF HISTORY – 21:57
Reuters: Retailers slash prices on more Nike sneakers
Porsche 914, 924 & 944
The Failure of ‘New Coke’ Is a Lesson for Engineers
BMW’s EV success: learning from past failures
The Athlete’s Voice
An Interview with Nike’s Phil Knight
Steve Jobs Explained the Best Decision He Ever Made
Prevent Defense
Why Reed Hastings Should be Applauded for Netflix Split
Volvo Spins Off Combustion Engines
BMW 2002
Hoffmeister Kink
WEEKLY RECS – 58:19
Read: Starbucks’ Digital Dilemna
Avoid: Yoto
Pentagram on Yoto
Watch: The First Omen
A Battle With The Devil And An NC-17 Rating
CLOSING & PREVIEW – 01:15:50
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CREDITS
Theme: Vendla / Today Is a Good Day / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
Drum hit: PREL / Musical Element 85 / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com
Hello and welcome to Learn Make Learn, where we share qualitative and quantitative perspectives on products to help you make better. My name is Ernest Kim and I'm joined by my friend and co host Joachim Groeger. Hey, Joachim, how's it going?
Joachim:I just took a sip of coffee. I'm ready. I think that's, that's it. Let's do this. How about you?
Ernest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's been a dreary day in the Pacific Northwest, so definitely I've got a little caffeine going as well. So, uh, I feel good to go. this is episode 18, and today our topic is the weight of history. We'll dive into this in greater detail in just a minute, but let's start with some follow ups to our previous episode on the perils of fan service, or to any episodes prior?
Joachim:Yeah, so our episode enough is enough, which was dealing with the zero interest rate, World and the world of limitless possibilities. Um, we discussed two AI products, the Humane AI Pin and the Rabbit R1. And so actually there are follow ups that are related to both of those products. First Humane AI, uh, is trying to find a buyer. So the founders of this company are trying to swiftly find the exit door. And they're going to sell this thing. I don't know. I don't know. I just don't know what they're hoping to be able to achieve with this. Maybe just get some cash in the bank and then move on. Because this is I mean, this product has been thoroughly dis Discredited and reviewed so poorly. Um, so that's the one little follow up. That's interesting to see these guys trying to exit. Um, and not, and not stick with it, which is, I think in our conversation, we talked a little bit about the possibility that these companies are trying to iterate and they're going to push things out and then it's going to get better. And we've all become accustomed to that idea of iterating on a product as we own it. Um, you get software updates. I mean, we're doing it with cars. Why not do it with everything else as well? Right. So, um, But it seems like they don't want to do that. They just want to get out there, finish it off, and cash out. Which feels like it's, a consequence of this environment. the lack of free money flowing through the system means that they don't see the path forwards. And they know they won't be able to raise any more money given that everything is just so expensive. So, an interesting little tidbit there about Humane. And then the other one, which I really wasn't expecting, this is, uh, part of my YouTube subscription set. Um, a couple of weeks ago, a video was posted by Coffizilla. Um, I don't know if anyone listening to this knows about him, but I'll give a quick summary. Coffizilla is a fraud buster, I think, put simply. He puts it as, um everything up on YouTube, all of his investigations. And he has uncovered pretty awful scams that involve NFTs, Bitcoin. Um, he was one of the early people to highlight some red flags surrounding FTX. He does not qualify in a traditional sense as an investigative journalist. You know, like the, he's not, he's not working for the New York times, but he holds himself to a very, very high standard because he is calling people frauds outright. It's very risky. so to our followup coffee Zilla did a two episode, uh, special on.
Ernest:Ah.
Joachim:I was not expecting that. And the title of it was basically, is this, you know, the scam that preceded Rabbit? And the second part of the video was it gets worse. This could be a scam again. Um, and the first video explains how the founder of Rabbit, uh, was essentially a crypto king. making all kinds of fraudulent claims. Uh, and the product that he was pushing was a currency that was also carbon neutral, or even carbon negative, that it would start cleaning up the air. Um, and it would then be used in a game. And immersive experience. That was like the metaverse. And it was so immersive and there's going to be AI and it, It's going to feel like the Matrix and I think at one point he even, the founder even says that, you know, if you die in the game, you die in the real world, like referencing all of this Matrix lore. So really, really rotten stuff. People have lost money. that kind of sets the scene for the, this founder's reputation already. I mean, it's a little bit shabby. It's not clear that this person's actually legitimate and if they're even. sensible, you know? So that is, uh, one piece. The second part of the video is actually very focused around the RabbitR1, and he digs into the code, talks to specialists and experts, and all of the discussion is around the large action model. And, and the bit that we discussed that we saw as well, that there are lots of problems with this large action model, and its potential that it doesn't actually even exist. and people have been looking at the code base. And from what they can gather, there is nothing fancy. That's basically using off the shelf, um, automatic macro creators and so on. So the scam piece is the fact that the founder keeps telling us that LAM is. in the system now. Uh, and he's trying to pass off this product as a large action model in existence right now, but it's clearly not there. Um, so it just really, I was just struck by the whole, uh, discussion and having everything laid out back to back in that way really makes you wonder, um, what was this environment that we were operating in that this behavior was allowed to just continue. And I think maybe for the product innovators in the world, it's heartening because as soon as you leave the realm of vaporware and then the next level of vaporware software and code, and then you try and make hardware, it becomes very, very hard to hide, doesn't it? When people can hold this thing and you make all these claims, it's very different than you make all these claims and it kind of exists in the cloud, let's say, you know, abstractly. Physical products need to be designed well. And the fraudsters will be found out pretty quickly because we still have our senses when it comes to these tactile experiences, I think. So, um, I recommend we'll put links in the show notes for these two videos. And also I recommend that channel in general. It's absolutely fascinating. If anyone is concerned that they don't understand about Bitcoin and NFT and crypto, Don't worry, most of it is fraud. And that's Coffeezilla reminds us. So, you know, at the end of the day, a lot of these schemes do not have to be viewed through the lens of blockchain, crypto, anything, they're just frauds. Uh, and I think that's also important reminder of, uh, you know, the essential truth of a lot of the technologies that we're surrounded by really take away the hype and maybe it's just a bit of a fraudulent thing. So, uh, those are my followups to our episode on, you know, enough is enough and the rabbit R1 and humane AI.
Ernest:Oh, that's great. I'm really glad you called those out. I can't wait to check that out. I have a couple of follow ups this week. The first connects to three recent episodes, namely our last episode where we highlighted the perils of fan service. But also our enough is enough episode where we discuss the impacts of our new post zero interest rate phenomenon era like you were just referencing as well, actually. Um, and then our time to learn episode where in the lead up to the annual watches and wonders trade show, we highlighted learnings from the watch industry that go well beyond the world of the internet. Horology. Um, to set this up, I'm going to quote an excerpt from an article by Alex Dent at, um, Worn and Wild. Quote, After several years away from the international trade show scene following the demise of Baselworld, Nomos is back this year making their first trip to Watches and Wonders and featuring a fun spin on a classic. With new, limited edition takes on the Tangente 38 Date. With eye catching color palettes, the new Tangente 38 Date models combine a fan favorite design with an array of new colors the brand hopes will give wearers a chance to better express themselves. through their watch. With a staggering 31 different colors, there are plenty of options for the watch enthusiasts who want something a little different from what you might typically see in the watch world. But what might be most eye catching is the price. Unlike many of the limited edition watches being unveiled at Watches Wonders, the new Nomos Tangente 38 Dates are genuinely affordable and actually cheaper than the standard model. The regular run Tangente 38 date can be found on the Nomos website for 2, 780 US. The limited edition watches will sell for 2, 310 US, a discount of 470 and a move Nomos sees as an investment in brand accessibility, unquote. Now I know this is belated given that watches and wonders took place this last April, uh, but I wanted to highlight this. Because I think it's such a great example of that enough is enough concept we discussed a couple of episodes ago crossed with the perils of fanservice. On that latter point, if Nomos had only listened to hardcore watch enthusiasts, they would have concluded that the thing for them to do to mark their debut at Watches and Wonders would have been to create an ultra complicated watch, ideally a chronograph, which they don't currently offer and which many watch geeks covet. Of course, being ultra complicated, this new model would also have been ultra expensive. Now, you know, two to three years ago at the height of the zero interest rate phenomenon era that exorbitant cost might not have mattered. But today it absolutely does even in inherently lux segments of the economy like the watch market. So fortunately for Nomos, they didn't listen to the superfans of the watch world and neither did they conform to the status quo of upcharging for a limited edition models. Instead, they took an enough is enough approach. In that episode, I mentioned that when we talk about enough being enough, we're not talking about a lack of innovation. Instead, it's about innovating against the things that matter for your customers, rather than your CEO's ego. Which was a dig at Elon Musk and the Titanic failure. That is the Tesla Cybertruck. Uh, in the case of Nomos, they focused on the modern watch customers desire for self expression and delivered on it through a joyful celebration of color and individuality. We'll include a link to the full collection in the show notes because the colorways really are fantastic. And some of them are just really wild. Uh, and importantly, they, they based it on their most iconic model, the Tankente, and as Alex Dent noted in his article, they actually priced this limited edition version. Below the price of the equivalent standard issue Tangente because as Dent wrote, Nomos sees this collection as an investment in brand accessibility. I think this is just such a great example of product planning and creation through a period of significant headwinds. The easy thing for Nomos to do would have been to retrench and focus on their highest margin customers with higher margin offerings, such as precious metal versions of existing models. But instead they're leaning into the headwinds and using them as an opportunity to win new customers in an environment where many of their competitors are taking the easy path. And by all accounts, Nomos approach seems to be working. Many journalists cited this Tangente collection as one of the standout hits of Watches and Wonders 2024. And as far as I can tell, Every single one of the 31 colorways is already sold out online. Um, so I just think this is a great example of some of the ideas we've discussed in recent episodes being applied with great success out in the real world. Had you seen these at all? Yeah.
Joachim:I'm really happy that you brought this up because when I saw them as a Okay, watch, watch enthusiast. I was so uninterested. I have to, I have to be very honest. I just thought, okay, great colors. Brilliant. Don't care. Show me something chronograph complicated. You know, I need to see lots of cogs flicking around. give me the IWC eternal calendar. That's going to be accurate for a million years. Great. So. Hearing your description makes it very clear. Yes. Why target me? I'm, I, I'm not the right person. This is, and as you said, the headwinds that they're facing right now is that this is a, this could shrink this marketplace. I think what's interesting also from a pure business perspective is as you were highlighting the fact that the prices of these items are actually lower than the normal, uh, the regular tangente. This is a really, really clever approach to the problem because each piece is limited to 175 watches. And then they're going to have, wait, are they doing 175 colors or 31
Ernest:Yeah. 31.
Joachim:175 limited pieces in 31
Ernest:Right.
Joachim:and they're knocking off three or 300 off the price. So this sounds insane. But it's really, really well thought out because your cost and exposure is super limited. You know exactly how much money you're foregoing. And you have a very clear idea of what you're trying to do. You're saying this is a, an investment in the future customer base. And so unlike a pure marketing push that you're just going to throw money into the, into the ether and hope that someone gets the vibes of your brand this way, it's very direct to saying this is for the people who are interested in this watch. And it's investment for Nomos and they understand that and the exposure is fixed. So I really liked that. It reminded me in some ways to that, um, point that you made actually in the, uh, time to learn episode about Cartier buying it's debt, the stock that was just not shifting and just pulling it out of the market. Again, the math and the arithmetic is very clean. There are so many units out there. It's going to cost so much to pull them back. That's how, that's your exposure. And so from a, the, the business manager's friend is always like, suddenly this is a very clear, certain thing, uh, in many ways, even though it's, and that's why you can go crazy with it. You don't have to be super conservative because the exposure is so well controlled. Um, so a lot of things here that I really appreciate. I'm really happy you brought it up. And like I said, I was so uninterested in this. It's great because I just let it wash over me. So the people that would be interested are the ones that are most likely to click and buy and want to buy. It'll probably not interest flippers because flippers care about aficionados who want to buy stuff. Again, there's a lot of little bits here that I think really make this a smart move that goes beyond just, um, the typical growth strategies that businesses like to pursue. I think there's a lot of lessons in this one. So yeah. Thank you so much for bringing that one up.
Ernest:No, no, I'm so glad you were honest about your initial reaction to it. Because I have to admit, that was also my reaction. Like, oh, you know, this is just colors on an existing model. But once you dig into it, I think it does make a ton of sense. Another thing I didn't mention that I love about their approach here is they didn't just do another one of these, you know, stupid vacuous collabs with some streetwear brand, you know, which Tag Heuer just did was I think kids, um, you know, they applied their own design prowess, which they have, you know, great talent in. and their own taste and judgment to create this beautiful collection. I just think it's just such a great example that I hope other brands pick up on, um, and kind of follow Nomos lead on. All right, well now the second piece of follow up I have is Is a comment from a friend, a former colleague from when I worked out in Singapore and also a listener to the show named Tony. For context here, Tony has deep firsthand experience in user experience design. He's a fantastic interaction designer in response to our perils of fan service episode, Tony wrote. Quote, another awesome episode. He said that, not me. Uh, it's so true that customers sometimes don't have the language to express what they want and are only able to provide feedback based on what they already know. The biggest problem with UX design now is that some organizations design teams just listen and don't innovate. Sometimes I think short UX design courses in schools like Hyper Island are killing innovation, because they teach people how to gather data, but not how to be innovative and learn more about the problem. I think this is a great observation by Tony, and I find his point about the mechanistic ways in which product creation in general, and UX design in particular, are taught to be particularly resonant. There's such a focus on the execution and so little attention paid to understanding the why Underpinning it these days. So a big thank you to Tony for taking the time to share this observation. And I just want to say that, you know, we love hearing from you. So please keep the comments and questions coming to learn, make learn at gmail. com. Joachim You had raised some great points in past episodes on the potential risks associated with an over focus on user centered design. And so I was wondering if you have any thoughts on Tony's points about the ways you UX design tends to be taught these days. You Heh heh
Joachim:Yeah, I'm really,
Ernest:heh.
Joachim:I'm so happy that Tony wrote in and shared his perspective on these things and also brought up the, the user experience and user interaction design aspects. Having someone who's an expert say very directly, there's something fundamentally wrong with the way we're doing it right now and the way we're educating the next generation of designers. Um, and I stumbled on this, um, old video of Noel Gallagher that I thought was perfect that described this whole phenomenon. And Noel Gallagher, of course, the guitarist, main songwriter of Oasis, and, uh, he uses a lot of colorful language, as you should know. But in this small, uh, tidbit from an interview, uh, he talks about the consumer. And so it starts off like this. He says the consumer didn't want Jimi Hendrix, but they got him and it changed the world. And he's got a couple of other examples. And then he just says very bluntly, F the customer. The customer doesn't know what he wants. You give it to him. He likes it. That's it. Customers are idiots. So I think there's a lot, there's a lot of wisdom in that, right? We lack the language to describe the thing that we want. Um, and so. listening to the customer as we do nowadays feels very limiting because we're trying to, we're just literally asking them, what do you want? And you say, well, could I have more of that thing, please? Okay, here it is. And so that's the other piece that Tony was talking about that I think is a deeper point. He says, you know, the biggest problem is that they teach people how to gather data, but not how to innovate, There's this focus around user data, gathering what they're doing But that's very backward looking because you're just asking them, what do they know? and I think there's a really, there's a big danger in that, in the domain of interaction design, if you try and become too quote unquote data driven because data driven is inherently conservative. It means that you have seen something and you're collecting data on an existing phenomenon. And. That's going to fail to capture the complexities and the nuance and the essence of what, uh, is actually going on under the hood. If you think of the interaction design domain, people will ask questions like, how many seconds did they spend on this screen? Uh, where did they click? Uh, did they hit the back button and how often, um, and things like that, that are just metrics And so. If you're just looking at these aggregates where you just add up all the numbers that have happened in a session or over a month, you miss the whole chain of events that leads to something that's magical. And that's where the innovation comes is when you start understanding the journey. There is a way to do that with the data, but just adding up numbers from that is going to mask the whole thing. And you're going to just look at. I've really low fidelity picture of it, and you're going to focus on the things that are easily measurable. And therefore you think those are the things that you should focus on. There are innovation is not measurable because you haven't made it yet. They don't know what it is. This is a very, very common phenomenon, this inability to unpack a journey and just focus on the stats. So here's a really unrelated tangent that I just stumbled on. It's from a recent Atlantic article on. social media and young people's minds. A new book has come out by Jonathan Haidt where he's saying that social media is destroying young minds and we're incapable of functioning anymore as children. So they have in the Atlantic, a response from Candace Hodges, who is a developmental psychologist and the title of her piece is the panic over smartphones doesn't help teens. And subtitle, it makes it worse actually. One little thing that she points out there is that so many of these studies they just say, this is how many minutes of social media a person's having, and they're all depressed. the more minutes, the more depressed these children are. In the few studies that she has seen where people actually look at. The path that a young person's mind is taking. So they follow an individual from age 12 onwards or some point, and then they see what they're doing. In most cases, what they find is that they're already exhibiting depressive behaviors due to other trauma, more serious trauma rather than social media. And as a result of that, they then start consuming more social media. So the causation is completely the wrong way around. But when I look at a slice of a person at age 16, I see, look at the hours of social media, look at their depressive state. You're missing the whole picture. So, um, Well, thank you, Tony. That's all I can say. It gave me, it gave me an excuse to, to, to talk about these, these things, but I think it's one of those things that's going to, in our current climate where people want to lean on data so much and look back and data is also kind of a historical weight that sits on you and you need to unpack it properly to really understand the chain of things that gets you to where you are today, as opposed to just here's the snapshot.
Ernest:Oh, that's a great point and also a great segue actually into the main topic for today. Uh, so as we mentioned, we're going to discuss how, um, you as someone in the business of making products can escape the weight of history. Now just to give you some background on this, um, the two most powerful forces in any organization are inertia and history. Inertia is easy to understand, and it is a cousin to history in that history is the pressure that develops within companies to beat, or at the very least repeat history, as in the previous year's sales for a given product. This leads to a tendency to fall back on the tried and true, what you know works, just like you were talking about Joachim, because last year's numbers are always looming in your rearview. But ultimately this leads to stagnant products and puts you at risk of disruption by more nimble competitors who aren't weighed down by your historical baggage. One manifestation of the weight of history that's been in the news recently is Nike. Now, in the spirit of full disclosure, I am employed by Nike, but as we said on our very first episode, hello world, the views expressed here are ours and ours alone, and don't represent those of our employers past, present, or future. At the same time, I'm not going to disclose any privileged information. So, anything I said on this episode Is based on public third party sources. All right. So getting back to Nike, a piece in Reuters from earlier this year, cited longtime industry analyst, Matt Powell, who said, quote, Nike has been stuffing the market with top sellers, like it's retro lifestyle sneakers and iterations of its Jordan brand, releasing too many styles to retailers, despite signs that shoppers have grown weary of Nike shoes. A sample of eight retailers by analytics firm Vertical Knowledge showed that they sold far more Nike sneakers at a discount than they did Hoka sneakers, Adidas shoes, Switzerland based on running shoes or Puma styles. Another sign of waning shopper demand. Nike styles, including the Nike Dunk Low Retro, have also sunk in price on the sneaker resale marketplace. In 2023, Nike released 116 new versions of that shoe, compared to just 31 in 2019, according to Dylan Dittrich, head of research for Alton Insights, which studies the collectible sneaker market. Unquote. So that's just one example to get us started. And, uh, as I mentioned just a minute ago, given Joachim and my history with Nike, we're not able to discuss the brand in any detail, but Joachim, does this example spark any broader thoughts on the weight of history that extend beyond Nike?
Joachim:As I was thinking about this question around, you know, the weight of history, it turns out we call the weight of history many different things. That's the negative version. But if you rotate it a bit, the weight of history also has different, you know, words that we use to describe it, it can become something like heritage. Uh, and if it's a specific item or product that we've created, then it becomes iconic, um, or the things have a lineage, uh, you know, all of these other words become, there's such a positive version of that thing. We've discussed brands that have got really iconic products. Porsche's 911 is iconic, Land Rover's Range Rover is absolutely iconic. But we've seen how they've managed to balance it, maybe sometimes successfully, sometimes a little bit unsuccessfully, but there is a way to, to move things forward. What's of interest to me is now the question, what if they had not leaned back on those things to regain their customer's confidence. So Porsche, of course, had a period where they were getting experimental, quote unquote, uh, nine, 14, uh, car partnership with the vw. With vw. Um, pretty experimental car. Mid engine, very quirky. Not a success when it came out. Um, 944, 928, all of those survived long enough, but were never considered parshas for some reason, and have just disappeared. Um, So I wonder, you know, had they, and then they brought back the 911, you know, essentially the 911 remained pretty unchanged for a long period of time we'll never really know if they had tried to just break away from a 911. What kind of company would Porsche have been today? You know, maybe it could be an even more successful company, right? So there's this question of, yes, we are living this specific timeline right now. So it's really hard to know if something has been a successful thing. And so you have to take a step outside of it and you have to revisit those old decisions because those cars are brilliant. The nine for four is a. From the design is fantastic. It was modern, uh, water cooled engine. That thing was a real, really, really prime product for its era. And somehow it just didn't, it just didn't work. So I think it's worth revisiting those decisions, the failures there and understanding what it was, because it can't just be, it wasn't a 9 11 and this is what people wanted, something else was going on. And I think it's worth thinking about. So those are just some brief thoughts that I was going, uh, that were going through my head. But, um, what about you, Ernest? This is something that we were discussing. In fact, when we met in person, we were thinking about, you know, when you work for big companies that have been around for a while and are so well known for specific products. How do you even communicate in your amongst yourselves in a way that allows you to move beyond that, but, but build on it as well without forgetting it? I guess there's some respect to the past that you want to maintain.
Ernest:Yeah. Um, I want to answer that in just a sec, but, um, What you said about Porsche made me think about, the fact that there isn't one way to go about this, right? Like, for example, Porsche, they found that they did have to get back to the touchstone of the 911. And there are going to be examples like that. For example, when I was at Wadden Kennedy, I worked on the Coca Cola account. They learned the hard way that that brand is all about history, and you know, the value of that brand is in the fact that it doesn't change the core product. But, it's kind of like we talked about, I think it was last episode, you can take this yes and approach, the way that Porsche has, where Yes, we're going to stay true to the shape of this thing called the 911 and build on top of it with these other models that are, uh, more relevant to our current times, you know, specifically the SUVs. Similarly with Coke, they found, you know, we can't mess with the original, the classic, but we can build around it. We could add Diet Coke. We could add Coke Zero. We could add these other, um, things around it as long as we stay true to that core. So that's a, you know, they're going to be these distinct examples. So, uh, you know, I don't think we don't want to get across the board. The idea that there's one approach to this, um, but your car example, you know, also brought to mind BMW, um, you know, and you referenced them as well. And I think they're such an impressive company in that, you know, that's a company with a lot of heritage, or if you want to say it negatively, a lot of weight of history, but they've shown a remarkable. Willingness and capacity to change. And one example that comes to mind that I find so admirable is they were early, very early to the, you know, Electric transition in their introduction of the I three and the I eight. I can't remember off the top of my head what year that was, but you know, they were, I think the first, uh, of the German carmakers and first of the big European carmakers to introduce commercialized electric vehicles and. BMW is actually a relatively small company and that was a huge bet for them, almost kind of betting the company. And those were very unsuccessful products. they had to create these new product lines, uh, new, you know, manufacturing lines, all new, um, processes. And, um, ways to get, um, the different materials into their factories and process them. It was this huge bet that failed. And I think most companies would have seen that and said, okay, screw that. We're going to go back to, what we've done well in the past, kind of historically, what our heritage has been in, you know,, they're Bavarian motorworks. They've been about engines, classic engines, but instead they were able to learn from those mistakes and build on them. And now I've come back with an evolved approach to EVs that's been showing great success. And so I think that is such a great example showing that if you're willing to confront History, just like you're saying, it creates opportunities for learning that can help you to navigate the future because the future is always going to change. It's going to be very difficult. Porsches and Coca Cola's of the world are the exceptions. Um, so I just think that's a great example showing that yes, you can. You can break from history and you can learn from history to help kind of chart your course down into the future. Um, in terms of that question of how you, you do it from what I've seen, I think that ultimately it, it always in the cases I've seen that where it's been successful, it always just comes down to culture. It has to be something that's really baked into the culture of the company in the, you know, for an example of something that I'm familiar with at Nike, what, when I think Nike has always been at its best is when it's delivered on Phil Knight's mantra of listening to the voice of the athlete. You know, that might sound corny, but I think that's in my experience, that's always been the case that when Nike is at its best, it's when it's listening to the voice of the athlete. I think the fortunate thing for Nike is that athletes, in my experience, tend to be people who aren't particularly introspective, you know, who are very forward looking, um, and who aren't too worried about the past, uh, but at the same time are also, very willing to learn from past mistakes because they, they recognize that if they want to improve, they're going to have to learn from things that they didn't do as well as they wanted to. So that gives you this built in culture of people that you're talking to and engaging with that are, Just by their nature going to be forward looking. And as long as you stay true to that, you know, your company as a whole is going to reflect those values and those behaviors. In the case of say Apple, I think it was just a matter of their CEO having this, um, innate inability to stand still. A famous Steve jobsism was, he said, if you don't cannibalize yourself, someone else will. So, might as well be the one to do it to yourself. And he didn't just say that they talk to talk, Apple was constantly cannibalizing their own products with things that they believe are better. And, so in that case, that very much came down from the top of, of something that, um, Steve jobs represented. Um, So I think that that's one really important and effective way to deliver on this is, is to build that into your culture. You know, obviously, if you're coming into a company like you mentioned, that has an established culture that doesn't maybe reflect these sorts of values that might be more challenging. But, um, that's, I think the most effective way, because, you know, kind of leaning on another sports analogy here, I think the tendency is in all walks of life. Once you've found success. The tendency is to want to play defense to protect that success. Uh, in American football, there's a famous coach turned broadcaster named John Madden, and he had this expression I always loved. Um, in American football, there's this thing called the pre vent defense. It's just a basically a type of defense where you play very soft. You allow the offense to, to gain yards just as long as they don't score a touchdown. Because you're just trying to prevent them from getting that one big play because you've got a lead and you're, you're trying to protect it. But something that John Madden said was all the prevent defense does is prevent you from ruining. I think that's true in football, true in sport and true in business in large part as well. That, um, Once you get into this just kind of defensive mode of almost trying to fight the future, uh, you know, maybe you can tread water with that approach for a little while, but invariably, it's going to catch up to you. And, um, you know, you're going to be in a very difficult position. So, uh, I, I feel like. Um, based on my own, my own experiences, it's always better to just be on the offense, um, so that you just don't find yourself in that position. And, you know, that doesn't mean you're not going to make mistakes, just like BMW, they, they made some big mistakes in their first EV push, but so long as you're willing to learn from those mistakes, um, as long as you stay on that offense, then, um, I think you're going to tend to find yourself in a good position, much like BMW has found itself now. I'd say, you know, you could say the same thing of Hyundai. That's very much been on the offense and it supports the EVs and just this new future. Um, and I'd say over and over again, you could see companies, the companies that are succeeding. Another one I'd give you as Netflix, you know, that business was built on DVDs by mail, right? And that was a very successful business and you know, they could have continued to ride on that success for many, many more years. But they realized their leadership realized the future was streaming and we need to get there. Before everyone else sooner rather than later, and we can't allow our weight of history, the weight of success we have had in this previous business model to slow that down. And so they completely disassociated the physical DVD business from the streaming business business. A lot of people thought that was really, um, Extreme at the time they recognized how powerful these forces are. This, this weight of history. It's just so powerful, um, that they needed to detach it. One last example I'll give is Volvo. I know we're kind of just defaulting to some car examples, but they too, again, I think a lot of people think of Volvo as a pretty big company because they've been around for a while, but they're a tiny company in terms of their overall global market share. So for them, making the transition to EVs was. You know, again, a big risk, um, and much like Netflix, they recognize that if they didn't kind of detach themselves from the old ways of doing things, they would never get there. And so they actually spun off their internal combustion engine business to a different company, different manufacturer. It's almost like the equivalent of burning the boats, right? So that you have no, Nothing to fall back on. You're forced to look forward because without these forcing functions, whether it's culture, whether it's a CEO who instills this culture or, you know, mechanisms that you can put in place like Volvo and Netflix did, um, the weight of history is so strong that, um, you're just always going to have this tendency to fall back on it. So, but I think the great thing is you can see that there are these examples of companies that have found ways to break away from that. Um, you know, whether it's through culture or through mechanisms that they've put in place to break away from that. Uh, so I just wanted to, you know, make that point that, um, you can do something about it. There are things you could do about it. There's some great case studies out there showing that you can have success. Uh, even as a company with a lot of heritage, there's things you could do to break, um, from those tendencies that just fall back on the past.
Joachim:Yeah, I think cars are actually a really, really rich well to draw from because a lot of changes do get forced onto the car manufacturer. Safety regulations is the biggest forces that really. imposes constraints on what a car manufacturer can and cannot do, um, so I think in that sense, there's something interesting in this domain because, because of that forced change, a car manufacturer that wants to keep making cars has to keep innovating and has to change the shapes of its cars. It can't get away with holding onto the designs for too long. and so back to BMW is a good example of that. They lean on their history in a very, very specific and very limited way. So I think the best example is the 3 Series that has been in production. As the three series since I guess the late seventies. Uh, and the three series was the replacement for the O2 series. Not to get too car geeky, but the 2000, we'll show pictures of these cars. So the 2002 BMW was kind of this small, nimble, fast, compact car, uh, still looks great. Um, and even though it looks nothing like any of the BMWs you see on the road today, you can kind of see the connection to the cars today. And so. I think BMW with the 3 series has just continuously told us and educated its audience. This thing is going to keep changing, you know, we're not too precious about this thing. So the 2002 becomes the first generation 3 series, which is the E21. And you can see the evolution of that car. It is, it is. And then you go from the E21 to the E30, which is getting to more the eighties boxy designs. And then they're just on a roll. They just keep changing these designs in dramatic ways. However, there are always two things that stay the same on a BMW, the kidney grill and the Hofmeister knick, which is the little Corner, uh, the, the rear window from the passenger side, a little corner, the angle that they've put in there, that is a distinctive feature of the BMW rear window named after one of the early designers Hofmeister. So they kept the kidney grill, which makes no sense because the kidney grill originally was, uh, attached to another car because the grill was actually, that was the shape of the grill, but they just somehow kept This design like plonked on the front of the car because it was echoing that past. Um, and so the kidney grill and the Hofmeister Knick just kind of persist as these echoes of their heritage. And they're not super constraining. But then I think some designers and BMW got frustrated with that kidney grill. I said, why the heck do I have to start with a kidney grill? And they just said, instead of getting rid of it, which they knew they couldn't do, They just said, we're going to make it massive. We're going to just make it this gigantic thing, and we're going to fully confront and embrace this kidney grill. And it's going to be divisive., and now the M3 has just got this, some people have likened it to bugs, bunny teeth at the front. And it's terrible. I mean, I hate it, but it's also admirable. It's an admirable quality that this car company making a car is a really, really expensive thing. And these executives sat there and they said, man, this looks like nothing else we've ever done. And maybe it looks terrible, but maybe we should do it as well. Who knows how it's going to go down? And maybe that was the conversation. I would really like to have been a fly on the wall for that. But like you said, I think BMW is a really great, a great example of, it's about, the vibe of what the brand was standing for. The Hofmeister Knick has absolutely no bearing on the function of the car. It's just a thing. And those that know, know, and it's enjoyable. He goes, Oh, I think there was one car that didn't have the Knick. And it was very controversial amongst the aficionados. Um, it's just kind of a thing that you do out of respect when you join BMW.
Ernest:It reminds me a lot of something you said. I think it was last episode or two episodes ago, you said the quote from Steven Soderbergh, and I'm going to get it wrong, but it's something like, you know, Follow the creator, not the work. Was that right? Something like that?
Joachim:It was, that was the vibe. I don't remember the exact quote, but it was exactly the, that was the essence of what he was saying.
Ernest:Yeah, I think that, I think there's so much to that, because, um, like you're saying, it's really what's kept BMW so vibrant is that they've continued to deliver on this vibe, this spirit, which, you know, has a couple of touchstones to it, but, It's really about this spirit of kind of pushing forward and, you know, making you uncomfortable, just like, um, Jimi Hendrix, right? It's, it's less about the specific works and more about that spirit. And, you know, I think that maybe is why they've managed to stay relevant for so long without, you know, just aping a specific silhouette because they've stayed true to the spirit, um, very effectively.
Joachim:I think what is very easy to understand with a car, like I just said, The regulation shape, the car and technology shapes, the car fuel efficiency requirements shape, the car. All of these things contribute to the way the car has to be set up, I think what's interesting about that is that it's very legible why certain choices were made. As you go through the history of the thing. And so maybe that's what it is. It's the legibility of the history in a car that makes it really easy to understand what is an essential feature. And what was a feature that was a response to something that was necessary or a response to something that was necessary because customers wanted it. I think there's a way to probably partition these things out more easily in the car domain, potentially. So if you're able to unpack, you know, and we were talking about this earlier, unpack that history, unpack the sequence of events and the needs that were being addressed as you're moving through the history of this thing, then I don't think the history becomes a burden anymore, because now you're not just looking at the snapshot of the final product. Instead, if you understand actually where you've come from and the context in which that product emerged from and the sequence of events that led to that product, I think that might help you then understand what you need to do next, because now you're going to be able to hopefully partition out. the causes. And you can say, well, that, that cause is no longer relevant because that was something that was very specific to that time period and what the customers wanted in that time period or the prevailing wisdom amongst customers around that period. Now customers want something different. Um, and I think that's the, um, that's kind of interesting. I don't want to get too deep into sneakers, but I do feel like other brands like have been on a roll because they just, through the rule book out, they understood something about what the previous innovations were trying to do. They're trying to understand this sequence of causes that led to That's the kind of foams that were being used and they put support here. And you mentioned, you talked about pronation being such a big deal for such a long time and that kind of shifting and moving away. And then it just, you know, the arm guys, I think the initial prototype, they just took garden hoses and cut them up and glued them to the bottom of the shoes. That's a, I mean, Mike, what a great story. It's like, um, Bauman and the waffle shoe, right? Really similar thing of just the person. working away in that little workshop, coming up with something and presenting this incredibly weird shoe, um, that was fulfilling what they thought was a, the customer need. And they themselves were a runner, I think as well. Right. I think the person who started on was, uh, an ultra distance marathon run. I can't remember now, but they were running through a lot of shoes and they thought this is the way to move forwards. And now it's become a style thing totally separately from that. But again, that, that person. You know, even though they weren't working for a company, they were still bound. They still want to sell the damn shoes. So that means they are still bound as well. Like I said, we're always constrained by history. They would have to educate the, the runners out there that they are actually addressing a need. This is not just some quirky look to get your attention. And, and here is the thing that I've been pulling apart from the history of running shoes. And now we've got this design. Uh, actually I've never worn on shoes, so I don't know if they're any good, but people who have worn them told me that they are so comfortable relative to other things that have been on the market for them. And I don't know, it's kind of ironic because, you know, they're just. hollow. There's like air, you know, not to name names, but there's air flowing through the bottom of the shoe. So it's kind of, again, it's an interesting thing where they've maybe taken the essence of things that have existed that were out there in the ether and plonked it into this shoe. And we're not constrained by the history, but understood that there was something valuable in it that they could then bounce off from.
Ernest:Yeah, I do think that there's a benefit, that's a big part of the benefit of being a new company is you're unconstrained by history. I think, um, oftentimes as a company, you, you know, as you, you, UI designers might talk about cruft in interfaces. You also develop cruft as a company of ideas where. You've tried something and it failed. So just like BMW, it would have been very easy for them to say, Oh, we tried to use and they failed. So screw that we're going to, you know, we're not going to do that again. Right. And so it takes a lot of wisdom, I think, to recognize that maybe it was just the timing, maybe there were some specific things in the execution, but you know, the broader sweep of history is, is pointing in this direction. So. We need to, we can't just, we don't have the luxury of just saying, we're not going to do that. We need to pursue that just in a better way. Um, but I think that often I'd say in my experience, at least companies often fail to have that amount of, um, Uh, insights in their own processes and in, in examining their own histories, you know, it's like, Oh, well, we just tried that and it didn't work. So forget it. Whereas, you know, a company like on like, Oh yeah, let's try this. And you know, maybe company X tried it in their in house labs a million times and it didn't work. But you know, we don't know about any of that. We don't know any better. So we're going to give it a go and make it work. Um, that kind of reminds me of another anecdote related to Apple, which is Supposedly when Steve Jobs came back to Apple, uh, became its interim and then full time CEO, one of the first things he did was he eliminated their in house museum. Apparently Apple had a kind of in house corporate museum. And, um, it was just a reflection of, I think of him, but also of his desire to get Apple out of its sort of navel gazing phase that it was in at the time when he came back, of just kind of wanting to recreate past success, um, and instead having to kind of create a new future for themselves. Um, you know, it's a little bit different from the approach that you talked about of maybe being able to learn from the context of history. And I think it's a starker approach that maybe has a little bit more risk, but I think that's, that's something that could be another path, uh, towards this as well.
Joachim:Yeah, I think maybe another negative version, and maybe this is what. Steve Jobs's act was really trying to get out is the perils of nostalgia, you know, the idea that man, everything was so good back then. And if only we could get back to that point, it's always back. You're not thinking about the journey that got you to that point. Which is the lesson, right? That is the, the path to the thing is the interesting thing, not the thing that happened. Um, it's kind of related to, um, a deeper philosophical error that a lot of people fall into as well. I was, you were talking a lot about failure. The failure is a deeper consequence of not having thought more deeply about what it was that was going on. So introspection and revisiting the decision process, the chain again, I think is quite, um, critical to, to assessing a failure in these cases, right? So I think that's right. The weight of a failure and the historical failure that is also always on everyone's mind, I think must've been on everyone's mind when Steve Jobs was thinking, let's do iPhone and everyone that's probably sitting and going, we did the Newton. Remember that that didn't work so well. And if you actually uncover the history of the Newton, you actually, you start looking at this and you start realizing that actually there was some magic in that and they were, they were onto something, but. It's been misattributed is, I think we've now, you look back on it and say, obviously that was a bad idea. So there was something in there that they had missed and I think they still have not leaned on and, and they haven't learned again. I have to say, I'm so sorry, Apple guys. But. Come on, thinner everything. That's, that's not the way. That's not the way you, that is truly being crushed by the weight of history in the ad as every object is being crushed. It feels like that's actually history crushing you guys. You're not, you're just, it makes no sense. I was tempted by the specs of the new one. I don't know why I don't need a new one. I picked up my iPad Pro, which I got a few years ago, and I'm holding it up for the listeners. I'm holding it up to for earnest to see, and I've never picked this up and said, man, this is so thick. It is not. I mean, it's nothing. But do you know what I do complain about all the time? The fact that I'm locked into iPadOS. That upsets me, no end, no one cares. A lot of reviews of the new iPad was saying, this is absolutely incredible. The chip is incredible. The technology is incredible. It's so thin. And everyone then ends on a note too bad. It's running iPad OS. The iPad was this thing that was the middle point between full blown laptop, phone, bigger screen. And yeah, it's a little bit conniving and manipulative and so, but they got us, right? With that. Value proposition, and it wasn't so expensive. The iPad Pro now cost as much as a high performance laptop, and it's locked behind a terrible operating system. Something has gone awry there. They've forgotten what it was that allowed the iPad to even gain an audience. And so it, it was the, it was the not computer person's computer. Um, and that was okay, but now you're trying to turn it into a pro tool. With an operating system that's not going to meet those users where they need it to be. I mean, if you put all this effort into it, and then it's still just like a big iPhone operating system. I don't think that's acceptable.
Ernest:I do think that's a great example of a company that does seem to be caught in this weight of history. is just my conjecture from the outside looking in, but I feel like a big part of the reason they're in this situation with the iPad is they're trying to protect their existing business lines of their existing. laptop business and their existing iPad business because they're both, you know, pretty sizable businesses. Cause the, I mean, I mean, it seems to me at least obvious that you would want to combine these things. And they've talked for years about the fact that they're not going to do that. And there are many differences in the OS that they'd have to confront, but yeah. Yeah. So then do that, right? Instead of making a thinner iPad, address these challenges so that you can get to the thing that people want, which is a single device. You don't want to have to have a laptop and an iPad and an iPhone. You know, obviously I guess for someone like Tim Cook, that might look like a good thing. Oh yeah, look, we're selling people three things, you know, instead of one. And that's, I think, Where the culture becomes so important in that Steve Jobs would do things that didn't necessarily make logical sense from a pure finance perspective, but we're true to what people were looking for and created the spirit of innovation for this company that made so many people around the world fall in love with them because you could see it was like the Jimi Hendrix, right? Maybe I didn't ask for that, but wow, I'm so glad you made it.
Joachim:The, even something like price points become these anchors
Ernest:Mm
Joachim:or floors, really, right? A price is generally seen as a floor. Never go below that because now you're going to undermine the perception of this brand's quality. So of course, in luxury items, they just keep jacking up the price as opposed to even ever lowering because then that would signal something is wrong. No mosses approaches completely the opposite. So this is an investment. Uh, and if you just took this short run KPI perspective, you say, well, we sold all these watches, but we didn't make as much money as we normally would have. So that's not the point. The point is that they're trying to seed something new here, new territory. And it's not meant for those people, it's meant for these people. Um, and again, iPad fulfilled that thing. I think for a long time it was the thing that you gave your parents so they could get, they didn't have to go full computer but they had a big screen that they could read. And um, I remember actually there was, there was this German comedy show where someone was taught to say they've given their parents an iPad and um, she's watching her dad prepare a meal and she said, where's the, um, where's the iPad? He says, Oh, I think it's really great. It's really practical. Um, so good. And then she notices that she's, he's been using the iPad as a cutting
Ernest:Ha ha
Joachim:it's a cutting board. There was no other purpose. But all of that to say that that. That thing fulfilled a very specific niche, kind of a funky one for a while. And then it caught, it wasn't an investment thing. So again, it comes back to what is the chain of events that gets you to this point. And then more interestingly, from an innovation perspective, you need to think you need to form beliefs about what you think is going to happen in the future. Right. And so I think I'm speculating, of course, about Nomos. I don't know anything about them. But I do think they're thinking about it as an investment that has limited exposure financially, but is a seed. And you, when you're planting seeds, The logic is not immediately obvious. It won't come out in your measurement today. The value that it's going to generate is not something that will come straight away. The discipline isn't actually forming a clear narrative and story of what you think that forward trajectory is going to look like. Right. And then I think the no most example of limited financial exposure, it's fixed guys. 175, 31 colors. We know exactly how much money we're losing on this, you can put that money aside and then do it. You don't have to even pull money and leverage. So. Um, yeah, that was just a bit more of a point of look to the past form beliefs about the future and maybe do it in a way that's limiting your financial exposure in a smart way. Yeah.
Ernest:I think that's a great, important point to make. I think that's going to help a lot of folks who are just in the business of making products on a daily basis to make that argument is to make it self contained, create boundaries for this so that it's more palatable because, you know, obviously your boss is in a tough situation as well. Everybody's, you know, looking at numbers that aren't looking so great. So, how can you make something, um, make it easier to say yes. To something basically versus coming to them with an idea that's very open ended, you know, and just feels like it could have a lot of risk, infinite risk associated with it. Instead, you know, give it some boundaries. Um, so because you have to empathize and recognize that it is a risk, right? To, to do something different, it's always a risk. Um, but as long as you can help paint a picture of what the future is going to look like and show that, um, You know, your exposure, your potential downside is a specific finite figure. I think that's going to really help you make your case. Um, all right, well, now that you've heard our perspectives, we want to hear from you. Please share your thoughts with us at learn, make, learn at gmail. com. Now let's move on to our recommendations of the week. Joachim, do you have any recommendations you'd like to share?
Joachim:Um, yeah, I have one blog post and then a recommendation not to buy something. So I'm going to flip our recommendation. So the first one is an interesting read. Um, I think it, it speaks to all of the. The things that we've been discussing here, it's, um, by Chung Fan, who is prolific Twitterer, but also writes a nice newsletter. And his latest bit is called Starbucks Digital Dilemma. And it's all about the fact that the quarterly revenue numbers at Starbucks don't look as good as they did before. And the brief, uh, the summary of his pieces, the thing that was making so much money for them is actually probably killing their business at the same time. And so that's the. The app, because Starbucks has really gotten everyone focused on mobile ordering and loading up their cards on their phones with money. And that's very profitable because sometimes people don't spend that money and so they can then convert some of those funds into revenue and that's becomes pure profit for them. But the point is that because they've pushed everyone into this, uh, situation on being on the mobile thing, their stores are suffering The stores are not making as much money as they did before. And so, and that's probably what's sitting at the root of that weakness in their revenue. Now And so. Trang Phan does a little bit of anecdotes, uh, scouring, and he hears a lot about people who, uh, ex managers, who are upset with the way, uh, Starbucks has become just this volume business of driving, you know, get these mobile orders in and push them out as quickly as possible. The coffee shop space is no longer a third place where people want to be. People coming in, uh, customers have said this, they, they see. The mobile orders getting serviced first. So they see this line of mobile orders and they're not getting the treatment that they used to from a barista. And so they stopped coming to the shop. Now what's interesting is a manager in that shop, here's this kind of KPI thinking, no one's in the shop. I don't need chairs anymore. Get rid of the chairs, right? That's not the thing. You, you, you didn't understand the chain of events that's led to the people. Not, they're not coming because they're not, they're not buying from you anymore. They're done with this product. The product that they wanted was the brief interaction with the barista, and they like the ambience of the shops. And now the shop is just a hollowed out counter where people pick up stuff. Um, So a really interesting, there's a lot of stuff in there that we touch on and I think is a really interesting case study on Starbucks. So an interesting thing there. Um, my other recommendation slash rant is about a product that is a children's first product. Um, it's very popular. So if there are any parents listening to this, I'm very sorry. But um, this product is the YotoPlayer. Um, that is a ebook playing device. So it's a small cube like, uh, sh object. At the top is a slot. You put a card in there, credit card shape, a sized card, place it in there. And then this thing starts playing an audio book or some pieces of music. It has a, uh, pixel screen on the front of it. So it can show an image of what's actually playing, which is really great. It has two chunky knobs on it that you can turn. Everything is right about this thing. Aesthetically roughly, you know, there's a, it was designed by Pentagram who got stuck in with the industrial design and I will, we'll link to their description of what they think this machine is supposed to be doing. It's just great to have a dedicated device that's not necessarily. a phone or whatever else that we would be using to listen to audiobooks. And my children like listening to audiobooks before bedtime. So having a little nightlight with a little animation plus the sound, I mean, this is hitting all the right notes. So it's meeting the customer's needs right where it is. So I'm unboxing it, plug it in, and I just shove a card in it. I'm like, play. And the pixel screen is just blinking back at me angrily, and it's saying, wifi, give me wifi, give me wifi. And I was so annoyed. So I was like, okay, fine. How do I give you wifi? Oh, download the app first. Get the app and then you, oh, and I was just. What is going on here? Um, so you download the app, you pair it up. You then you need an account, you need a bloody account. I'm sorry. You have to sign up for an account. Then we know what your library is because you need to make sure digital rights management, did you really buy these things? You really don't want people swapping cards and making their own cards. God forbid that happens. So lock that down, get that ecosystem locked down, hook your device to wifi. It can have some local cache so you can store things on it. Um, but the cards are essentially NFC cards. There's nothing on them, no storage. They're just there to say, this is the serial number. Please play this thing. And pulls the item from the cloud, probably shoves it onto the player, caches it there briefly, and then it plays it back. It is everything that I have railed against in this podcast. I really sat down and tried to think about this product really from, from the ground up, and I understand that, um, there's a lot of bits that make sense that the cards are easy to shove into the machine. There's no contacts in there. So it's all near field communication. Um, So for children, it's ideal, right? It's not this Nintendo entertainment system. You got to shove it in there and blow on the car. All that, all of that's out the window. You just shove it into this thing and it communicates wirelessly with the device. Wonderful. So I love that. That's great. I understand the thinking behind that, but why, and why in God's name, do I need to go to the cloud and have an app that does all of these things? This app, requires engineering and it requires backend engineering and the service that, you know, meets my box and lets it access out that needs another backend service. So you've gone from a complex thing that should just be, why don't I just put the media on a card? And I innovate on how that card makes connections to the device, to this. We'll just use the cloud. We'll have all of this other stuff that, Is hidden in the background, but it's actually the complexity that allows this thing to operate the way it does. It really is one of those things where I think if this company goes bust, I can't use these cards anymore. I'm pretty sure about that. I think the whole service collapses and they will break it. And we just had a recent story about Spotify essentially breaking all of its car devices as well because it's not making money for them. So they just shut the service down and that's it. It's dead. So I was very sad as I was looking at this device because there are so many elements of it that work really well. And I really get that they're trying to meet the parent where they are, but this reliance of outsourcing that complexity to the cloud and software feels really, really lame. I would have preferred that they don't hire Pentagram and just give me a gray box with a pixel screen. And you've got a clever way of getting content on cards. I actually looked up there are NFC chips, NFC chips generally have very little data on them, but you can get NFC chips. They're a little bit more expensive, but they have a couple of megs of data on them. And I have to be clear, this, the speaker on this thing is not good. It is not a good speaker. So you can compress the crap out of that audio file and shove it on that NFC card and children will be happy. I think if a parent would like to have a device that plays an audiobook for them, I think you should just use your phone and put it in a corner and don't mess around with the stuff. Because it is, the thing is expensive. It's over a hundred dollars. The cards are expensive. And here's the thing where they did not meet the parent. These cards are credit cards sized. So we have lost two already. They say, Oh, don't worry. If you lose a card, you can use the app. That's not why I bought this thing. I bought the thing to use the cards. So again, like a chunky, chunky card is what a kid wants. They don't want like a flimsy little thing. It needs to be big, like a brick, so that I can find it when they shove it somewhere in between books or something and a toy box. Um, and so again, the chunkiness of a cartridge would allow you to innovate so many things so if anyone, if someone from Yota, please hear me out, let's, let's work on something that's more hardware focused as opposed to cloud focus. Anyway, I'm done. That was too long. But,
Ernest:No, no, that's
Joachim:yeah.
Ernest:I
Joachim:got for us? Artists?
Ernest:curious actually, I wonder, I should look into this. Do you know the Qi charging standard? The magnetic induction charging. Can you transmit data through Qi as well?
Joachim:I think, yeah. So I think not necessarily magnetic, but this near field communication is just radio, right? So it, it, the thing that allows you to do Apple pay and all that. That's sending data back and forth. Okay, let's just hand wave it and say there's a way to do this. I think there's a way, but again, if there isn't, then I would like to have seen someone on the engineering side really just come up with something cool, because I mean, here's the thing. Nintendo innovated in this domain quite early on. Um, the Game Boy cartridges. Game Boy had an open slot and then you just shove the cartridge in and it works there. The Switch has a similar cartridge that can be shoved in and kids use those all the time. It doesn't feel impossible to create something that does have contacts, but in the end, uh, near field communication devices or RFID, and I think there is a way to, I think there's a way to move data pretty quickly. It need not pull that data every time, right? So you could just say the first play, it might take 10 seconds for it to, to push things onto the local storage, but you have it.
Ernest:Mm hmm.
Joachim:even if it's wiped, you can put it again. So I think there's little, there's a way to do this. Um, and as I'm describing it, it sounds so much more complicated. And. And that's right. It's more complicated because I'm putting it all in front of your face, as opposed to I'm going to push it onto a cloud server. That is incredibly complicated, right? This needs teams of software engineers to keep this thing going. And you know, if there are outages, someone's going to get page and say, Hey, the Yota player servers down. You need to get back on it. You know, that's, that's what's hidden in the cloud. It's these software engineers who have to devise these solutions, create this resilient infrastructure and it's also super expensive, right? So this is, and so it's not clear. Am I going to start getting a bill in the mail to, Oh, if you want to keep using this, you will have to pay a 5 subscription charge. And I can't say no, because they can brick the thing. So there are many, and you know, on the topic of bricking things remotely, I mean, that is, uh, it sounds terrible to do this to people, but it happens all the time. You know, it is standard business practice. Now,
Ernest:right. Oh, I mean, the Spotify's car thing example you shared has just happened this past week. So Yeah,
Joachim:just this week. Exactly. Yeah. We'll link to a story about that as well, because it's absolutely ridiculous. Oh,
Ernest:that. Uh, on my end, I have something very different. It's actually a movie. Um, uh, it's called the first omen. It just started streaming on Hulu. It was out in theaters for a little while. Um, it's also available for purchase on iTunes and prime video. I think it'll be available for streaming, uh, for rental. digital rental on those platforms by late July. But for now, it's only streaming on Hulu. And, um, I should note too, I'm not a big fan of horror movies in general, but, um, my brother in law, uh, recommended this to us and we watched it, uh, my wife and I earlier this week and we both really enjoyed it. Um, and I wanted to highlight it for a couple of reasons. So let me share a little bit of background. This is a. snippet from an article by Angel Millenson on Fangoria. It was titled the first omen, a battle with the devil and an NC 17 rating for folks not in the U. S. NC 17 is kind of like a X rating or, you know, it's beyond rated R. So meaning like really for adults only, and it's kind of the kiss of death. If you have an NC 17 rating, your movie's not going to do any business in theaters. So, uh, quoting this Melanson piece now, the first omen hits theaters with a solid R rating, but that nearly wasn't the case. Director Arkasha Stevenson made her feature directorial debut, and for Stevenson, this story is rooted in the reality of forced birthing and woman's autonomy, or lack thereof. Because of this, showing a woman's body in a non sexual manner was key to driving the horror home. As stated by the director, the horror in a key scene is how dehumanized that woman is. This has been my life for a year and a half, fighting for the shot. It's the theme of our film. Producers David Goyer and Keith Levine backed Stevenson through the whole process. Goyer points to a bit of a double standard when it came to fighting the NC 17 rating. Noted Goyer, the movie by its nature deals with female body horror, and I do think there's a double standard. That was really interesting when we were negotiating with the ratings board. I think there is more permissiveness when dealing with male protagonists, particularly in body horror. Um, so I just thought that was very interesting in, you know, really highlights the importance of diversity in storytelling and obviously in all fields. But in this case, I, I, my, I didn't, when I, when we watched the movie, I didn't know it was directed by a woman, but after the fact it was very obvious that it was, it was, it, it offered a very distinct perspective. Um, I, I made an Instagram post about this, but you know, I know this is somewhat highfalutin language, but I think a lot of horror movies for, you know, which are almost always directed by men are produced with a male gaze, you know, it's kind of leering at women. Um, and this was a very different sort of experience. You're, you're, you're really into it. in this world with the, the main character in the film, who's played remarkably by this actress named Nell Tiger free. Uh, there's one scene in particular, which actually isn't even the scene in question where, Oh my goodness, she's, it's this one on, uh, you know, kind of on uncut sequence, which is just incredible. But, um, so. You know, I think the fact that it was directed by a woman really led to a much richer, different sort of story. Um, and, and the scene that the director's talking about is one example of it. And I think it just, you know, the, the quote here from the producer, David Gore, speaks to the, To this double standard that exists and without more, uh, critters from diverse perspectives pushing against these double standards, you know, they're never going to break down. So, um, I think that was one, one reason I wanted to highlight it. The second is that I was so impressed. You know, horror movies typically are pretty schlocky. You know, they, they're, I think they're kind of mass produced off of assembly line. And within a few minutes of watching this movie, I felt like, Holy crap, this is so much better than it needs to be. You know, someone really cared about this. Um, and I looked it up afterwards. The film had a budget of about 30 million. All of it is on the screen. I mean, it's remarkable how well they deployed that money. Cause it's actually a period piece. It's set in the early seventies and period pieces always, yeah. They always crank up, you know, the cost of a movie and somehow they managed it. Um, and it was kind of a stark contrast with another movie actually that also came from a Disney imprint because, so this movie was released by Fox, which is owned by Disney now. It's kind of remarkable. They were willing to release this movie, but, uh, last year Disney released, uh, the latest Indiana Jones sequel, the dial of destiny, that movie reportedly cost over 387 million to produce was also a period film set in like 1969 or, you know, late sixties. So very similar time period 10 X the cost. And it looked so much worse. So, um, I really, uh, think it's remarkable, um, what the director and the team were able to achieve within a really, um, pretty, you know, tight constraint for a film of 30 million, um, showing that, you know, you can really make something very compelling, uh, that has great production value without having to spend, you know, 387 million, uh, to make it happen. And so. Uh, the first domain streaming on Hulu available for purchase on iTunes and, um, Amazon prime video is my recommendation for the week,
Joachim:Nice. I'm now very. I'm quite tempted now. I would, uh, I was, I, I remember seeing bits of trailers and things like that advertised and I was like, Oh God, not another remake fan service, weight of history, all of this stuff. But this feels like this is significantly different leading on the law that's there, but telling a very different story. So that makes it. And then of course, this perspective is so unique.
Ernest:And you know, the thing is that, um, I think it could very easily have been just a standalone film. It, you know, unfortunately it wouldn't have been made if it were standalone because the way Hollywood works these days. But I think the worst parts of the film are the parts where they're trying to create this connectivity into this. Bigger lore of the omen. Fortunately, there's not too much of that. Um, but yeah, it's, it is this sort of a weight of history penalty that, uh, they're having to contend with. All right. Well, I think that does it for us. Thank you so much for joining us here at learn, make, learn. As we mentioned, we want to hear from you. So please send any questions or feedback to learn, make, learn at gmail. com and tell your friends about us. As for our next episode, we're working on something and we're not entirely sure what's going to come together, so I can't give you our typical preview, but it's going to be a new type of episode and we really hope you'll join us for the next Learn Make Learn.
