Gadgetory

good morning on monday january thirtieth and we are back after an unforeseen hiatus welcome to episode 170 of the 359 podcast with Ben Fox Rubin and Alfred A and good morning guys Hey morning nice good back morning yeah we have a lot to talk about today so we're going to try to cram in a lot in four minutes we're going to start with the tech industries response to the new Trump immigration ban also the delete goober hashtag which is of course related and then we'll talk about something that's a little more solidly in the tech world which is apples earnings which are going to get reported tomorrow night as always send in your questions and comments Brian's going to get to all of them or as many as you can at the end of the show and without further ado let's get this thing going okie dokie hang out for a second will be back and check in with you in the chat after we do the recording will see you in three minutes and 59 seconds from 32 welcome to the 359 I'm Ben Fox Rubin I'm Alfred Aang it looks like the good vibes between the tech industry and president Trump didn't last long after a bunch of tech leaders including Tim Cook Jeff Bezos and Sheryl Sandberg met with Trump last month to find ways to work together many tech execs many tech execs slammed Trump's new immigration band first off despite the meeting last month I mean what what do you think these folks do you think these folks like really had much of a friendly relationship to begin with I don't think so i think that was kind of more of a formality than anything Tim Cook himself said when he attended that when he explained to Apple employees why he attended that meeting saying you can't you know foster a lot of change sitting on the sidelines you have to play ball if you want right so that's why I like they wanted to have that means yeah so I don't think it was kind of like hey we're gonna be buddy buddies but you know I'm gonna see what I can do like like I'm gonna play this game because I have to so with all these tech executives calling out the immigration band also do you think that this is really going to fundamentally change the relationship I mean like we're kind of discussing that already is that they didn't really trust this guy or they didn't they didn't support him during the campaign it doesn't seem like this is this is going to materially change much as far as that relationship I mean I think that meeting was more about business though and I think this one is more about you know standing in solidarity with all their staffers you know Google's already mentioned that a lot of their employees will be affected by this travel ban and that was one of the points of that brought up to you know would fit with the visas for a lot of their staffers being able to come to the United States that that was a point that they had brought up during the their tech summit with him and now it's just you know even if you have a visa a lot of people are being affected by this yeah yeah another flash point over the weekend was the delete goober hashtag in solidarity with protests over the new ban at JFK the taxi unions stop service for an hour at the airport uber meanwhile suspended surge pricing there which was seen as a way of exploiting the taxi strike now folks are deleting their uber accounts do you think that that's a justified response I think so I think the best way to get any action or kind of response from a company is a boycott I mean we've seen it work you know with plenty of companies during the civil rights movement and I think this was a this was a response to hoovers actions here I mean ubers been defending itself they've been saying you know we you know didn't do this you know we did this we didn't do this to break the strike we did this outside of that hour long you know protest yeah and they put up some money to to try to support their drivers do you think that like some of these efforts to quality outrages like working or it's helping at all I'm not sure if it's working I I do know that even before this immigration ban and this you know surge pricing issue uber has been catching a lot of flack for this because of its CEO serving as one of trunks Trump's economic advisors yeah yeah I figured that might be related as well also last stop Apple is reporting earnings tomorrow but don't expect too many fireworks that's because the iphone 7 and 7 plus probably didn't deliver massive sales growth the same way the iphone 6 and 6 plus did two years ago we talked about this a lot on the show do you think that smartphones are still interesting as far as innovation is concerned or we like kind of at a standstill I think it's plateaued but I I still think it's interesting I don't think you know I think I don't think we've taken any steps back yeah well that's true but like my biggest concern with the iphone 7 is that it looks just like the iphone sex I do you agree with that we know it doesn't it doesn't have a headphone jack oh my god a very big difference that is a huge huge difference justifying a lot more money so I try to make the push towards more bluetooth earbuds yes and it's a big difference all right well if you want to read more about these stories check us out on cnet I'm Ben Fox Rubin I'm Alfred hang thanks for listening okay so as someone who is a little bit disconnected from the news last week myself lucky you yeah fair enough at some point we're all just going to go off the grid and go live in caves which is probably coming sooner than we thought according to the Doomsday Clock just send me a Facebook invite to that oh there there won't be there won't be one pair of you um so just help me clarify i want to start with the the what's going with uber right right cuz i've completely missed the bus on this again due to i had to deal with some family stuff last we have o to stay up on the news help me do you want it this thing all right well you know it's i think a lot of people have already expressed concern about uber and their business practices to begin with so as we mentioned on the show getting rid of surge pricing especially while a taxi strike was going on a lot of people probably saw that is just like a craven effort to you know exploit the situation get more get more customers yeah even even if it wasn't during that hour it's certainly like a lot of people were already outraged and inflamed about what was going on here uh it's it's not surprising that lift a major competitor jumped in and said that they were gonna put up what it was in a million dollar about three million dollars yeah so lift was also trying to at least take advantage by saying hey we're not the bad guys here but I think I think the the sorry was already layin dollar it was Amelia from thanks for tracking yeah um three million was from from uber actually to support their drivers but i think that the ground was already rattled rather fertile for people to go and do the hashtag delete uber thing because their CEO has been working with Trump I was like it in an advisory capacity during during the inauguration they were protesting outside of Hoover's office also in San Francisco where they weren't letting uber staffers into the building um now is he actually sympathetic to try to to the trump administration is that where the question lies because it nothing wrong with someone trying to work with I don't stretch I don't know is encouraged that we should be working together more which is part of a lot of the discrepancy I feel right now there I don't think it he's at fault for wanting to get in by mean even louvers CTO like put out a scathing letter you know against Donald Trump so it was one of those things where it was basically you know it's not even though his CEO is it knocking out economic adviser for Donald Trump it's not exactly you know uber as an entire company sure yeah but and we were talking about this before the show to that Elon Musk is also working in an advisory pacity with Trump and hasn't gotten nearly as much flak and I think Alfred you you correctly identified that like you can much much more easily protest against uber because people use uber pretty regularly as opposed to Tesla which what am I going up is it's definitely easier to boycott something that you can actually use you know bear yeah i just gotta wonder though is there also an element of is the uber camp sympathetic to administration which has become undoubtedly more polarizing and then tesla is more of an obligatory position is there an element to that no uber as a company doesn't really put out a whole like we support Trump kind of okay do I think it's usually the CEO you know that draws the backlash by I mean you've seen it happen like LL Bean sure the captain of the ship is the one representing the company a large right yeah it's it's I at the very least I think that uber realized over the weekend that they need to present themselves a little bit more clearly as far as what the position is and they've they've presented themselves in support of drivers yeah who obviously a lot of them have immigrant backgrounds a lot of them perhaps even come from some of the areas that had been banned so they want to they want to show that they do support those for ya up until friday and saturday the the conflict was you know him sitting on as want one of trumps advisors but now the the surge pricing thing is what kind of tipped it over for that where you know why would you were already protesting despite not having any taxi drivers go to or from JFK and you know that would bring up surge pricing because the demand so high and that's the point of a protest this is disrupted to kind of make things harder on your rightful dear i realize your problems and then why in the hell would you just hey we're gonna get rid of surge pricing for now and make it easier going back going back to my original point uber was already controversial to begin with for a number of reasons including their business practices for the past couple years suggesting lift did something like this I don't know that it would have caused as much of a backlash maybe it would have because people were already outraged they were already protesting and they were really upset but I think uber has continued to be a bit of a lightning rod as a company yeah so yeah like the ground was fertile main do we want to do do we think that's just uber trying to keep the wheels turning and letting people who really have a message to make their message known kind of thing or do you really feel like uber is kind of at fault here should they have like just kept the nose out of that I think they definitely stepped in it a little bit this time and ya know that so they've been doing a lot lot really wrong yeah they've been doing a lot of damage control since then because they realized that they kind of screwed up at the very least from a perception standpoint let's say that like they tried to do everything right and this wasn't intentional or whatever from a perception perspective like they pissed off a lot of customers and and III wouldn't I would disagree with that notion you know like that wasn't that wasn't such a great way to present themselves okay thank you help me clear that up I was really kind of at loss i'm trying to play catch-up here in the last couple of days and and figure out where we're going with this let's move back on to the phone before we call today yeah he got a good comment here from polar jf x official he says smartphones are interesting in my opinion but if companies make phones kind of look like the previous generation and remove that useful thing that people have gun used to that makes a huge difference so what he's saying is like it's all part of the puzzle you know and one tiny little you know broken cog in the machine changes the whole game i wonder what that useful thing from the previous generation was if we're talking about the iphone 7 here I don't right I can't imagine if they take a small piece out of the general worry I think they still sold the the analysts expect apple to have sold 78 million iPhones over the past three months though and granted they don't break down exactly how many of those are iphone 7s and seven pluses but it tends to be more of the newer phones because that's what you're upgrading to so without a doubt they're still selling boatloads of these phones but they're not growing nearly as much as they used to the iphone 6 like the first time that hit the market it was like crazy gangbusters i think they had the best quarterly profit of any company ever in history and we're just not seeing that type of situation anymore so it's also an expectations game that they were all the way up here before and now they're just kind of treading water a little bit so we'll see what happens come September when the iphone 8 comes out I mean yeah it's a date on that September we don't know yet within this Julie yeah it's usually in September they haven't announced anything they're getting even announced that that phone is coming but it's it's going to be coming at some point so yeah it's just like design wise and and I've heard from other people like people have commented that like it's a new processor it's a new camera you know it's waterproof like there are a number of changes that they've done however is that really gonna you know excite a lot of people to upgrade to the newest model especially when it's like the base price is 600 fifty dollars so I've continually argued that like probably not but now it's allowing a lot of the loyalists are always going to be there statistically the numbers will remain but for a long time now that's been the running joke with Apple is just like oh look they polish the turd a little more right um problem is i mean what's gonna replace them they know like thoughts have been underwhelming yeah but like okay from what I've got the little bar now so you know yeah I mean there's a lot to complain about but as far as innovation from Apple these days the issue is is like if you're not going to use an iphone what are you going to buy instead if you do have to upgrade and like the Google pixel is just getting started so it's Samsung's got its own problems yeah so what is going to steal the mantle from Apple nothing yet nothing that I consume so now I'm interested to see what comes of this like Renaissance of like cord cutting to the next degree kind of situation as someone who absolutely hates cables which is ironically why I got into the media production field as a career I don't get me wrong I make jokes about the headphone thing but there's a little piece of me that's like finally to get rid of more cords yeah more ya know core I want no cords in my life eventually but I think they may have pulled the ripcord a little soon that's my two cents my two cents on that and I can see where think a lot of people would agree with their wireless charging I love the idea of I like my headphones and right now there aren't enough wireless heads out there to satisfy their it's not the right ecosystem to go wireless right now is the thing yeah it's coming like a freight train yes but right now no you know I like there's so many like situations where i think i need my headphone jacks for this thing like all these road trips and i'm on with like in my friends cars that like don't have bluetooth or anything like that yeah it's just not ready yet yeah just like yeah I mean it's why i think it was so courageous of elavil to make this change when they do gotta go sit in the corner take about my gosh shut it down shut it down Reuben all right i believe all did yeah let's call it was grown right thanks for having us back everybody sorry again more kind of disappeared there for a while won't happen again thanks for thanks for watching everybody the 359 podcast is available on itunes tune and stitcher SoundCloud feedburner google play music and I think Cena com of course of course on cnet.com and thanks for watching everybody will be back tomorrow see you tomorrow