Tech Stock Slump, Staff Morale Down at the FTC, and Guest Tripp Mickle

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Hi, everyone.

This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network.

I'm Kara Swisher.

And I'm Scott Galloway.

So today we'll talk about Amazon's rough quarter, see what's coming for the market.

That's a big deal.

Also, the FTC could use some TLC.

And we'll speak with journalist Trip Mickel about his new book, After Steve, which charts the difficulties at Apple after its founder's passing.

I had an interesting short meeting with Lorraine Powell.

Jobs, we're going to do something really cool, hopefully, at Code.

So I was thinking about Apple quite a lot this week.

Give us the dish on the weekend.

You were fabulous this weekend.

Yeah, I did.

I had a great time.

I, of course, didn't dress up at all as everybody else did.

I did not go to the White House correspondence center because I did think it was a COVID zoop of a situation.

I hate it in normal times.

And so I did not want to go in these times because it's this sort of, it's the Washington Hilton ballroom.

And

I just don't like it.

I don't have anything.

I'm not going to to all the parties.

The bottom line is you'll take risks, but just, yeah, you won't risk the Hilton, but you'll go hang out with Trevor No at a bar.

No, I won't.

That was indoors.

It was like totally, utterly indoors.

And it's like, feels like you're inside of a Petri dish.

It just does in general times.

A lot of the stuff was outdoors, which is great by the waterfront in Georgetown.

There's one at the French residence that was fun.

There was one, oh, where was the other one?

I don't know.

I went to a lot of parties and they were, they were nice.

And I set myself out out on the patios and just had people greet me and stuff.

And I got to tell you, Scott.

I set myself out on the patio and had people greet me.

That is correct.

That is correct.

That is what I did.

And you received people.

I received people.

That's how you do it.

You know, I learned that from one of these, one of the big agents, I can't remember which one it was.

He said he sits in a place and he waits for people to come to him.

He doesn't mingle.

You know, there's a term for that, virgin.

Yeah.

Okay.

In any case, it works.

It's just a memo to all young men.

Don't do that.

Go up to people and start talking to them.

We have so many fans.

I can't even tell you.

It was crazy.

It was really kind of crazy.

It was like people.

Who's the most famous, interesting person that came up and asked about me?

Me.

Well, not you, us.

A pivot.

Diane Lane likes our show.

All these people.

Diane Lane?

Yeah, I know, right?

From A Little Romance.

Simone Sanders, who used to work for Kamal Aris, she was bowing and everything.

It was really quite just crawling.

Oh, I met Jen Saki.

That was interesting.

She's very impressive.

Is she going to MSNBC right now?

Is that right?

She is going, yes.

And then I ran into Kevin Sistram, was there, founder of Instagram.

Susan Wojski was there.

There were a lot of internet-type people there,

which was nice.

Senator Klobuchar was at some of the things, some of the parties.

Senator K.

Yeah,

everyone was loving on Pivot, I have to tell you.

No, Pivot, Pivot, Pivot.

We are famous in a very weird way, especially among like

TV personalities.

Hung out with Don Lemon a little bit, who looks good.

D.

Lemon.

He looked great.

We gated up, him and his husband and I and Amanda, we gated up.

So it was good.

It was very good.

Yeah, let's just hope we're famous and not infamous.

That's my fear.

Well, yeah, that's okay.

I think it's okay these days.

It doesn't really matter.

I met Tony Blinken, Secretary of State.

That was nice.

He's an impressive man.

He is an impressive man.

He's a very handsome man.

He's got very good hair.

I just was, I can't even remember now at this point.

Oh, and then Tammy had it, you know, had this white house

in her brunch.

Tammy didn't invite me.

That was Tammy pretends to like me, and then she didn't invite me.

You could have come.

You could have come.

This is the famous one that she's had every year, and it was great.

It was all outdoors, too.

It was at Mrs.

Graham's old house,

which was, you could be indoors, but I was there.

There's this beautiful outdoor area.

They had a tent in, open tent, and everything.

And it was,

it was, I had been there a million times when Mrs.

Graham was living, when I worked at the Washington Post in my 20s.

They actually have different events there.

And it was great.

It's this old house nobody lives in, and it's owned by this guy named Mark Ain, who owns the Washington City Paper.

And it was cool.

It was cool.

It was very, it was nice for chatting with everybody.

It was nice.

Do you want to do that?

No.

What did you do?

What do you do?

Yeah, you do.

You want to know what I did.

Yes.

What did you do?

So I hung out with my, it was just me and my youngest, my 11-year-old boy.

So it was literally, we did nonstop.

We watched soccer.

We took walks with the dogs and we ordered pizza and wings three times times from Anthony's coal-fired pizza.

Jeez, that's so nice.

That's not what we did.

We were fancy.

Amanda and I were fancy this weekend.

And we had babysitters.

We had babysitters.

What I haven't watched, I haven't watched any of it.

Was there a highlight?

How was Trevor Noah?

What is your take on it?

It was a bad look for much of official.

There wasn't a lot of Republicans there.

I'll tell you that.

There were very few.

Really?

Biden apparently went to the big one.

I saw him on the dais there.

I know there are questions about whether we should gather here tonight because of COVID.

Well, we're here to show the country that we're getting through this pandemic.

Plus, everyone had to prove they were fully vaccinated and boosted.

So if you're at home watching this and you're wondering how to do that, just contact your favorite Fox News reporter.

They're all here, vaccinated and boosted.

Yes.

All of them.

They were.

There were a lot.

There was.

I saw Brett Baer.

Hold a bunch of them.

I don't think Sean Hannity was there.

In any case, speaking of the White House, workers behind union drives at Amazon and Starbucks may be visiting the White House.

That, of course, was President Joe Biden.

He was very lively at the thing, and

this is a big move by him.

And it does, in weird ways, relate to Elon.

The reason he doesn't mention Elon is because it's not a unionized shop.

And I think that's wrong because Elon is clearly the pioneer in electric cars and autonomous.

I think it's really petty on their house, as I've said.

But in any case, they're bringing in

it's unconfirmed, but if it comes to pass, this would be a reversal from previous statements.

The Biden administration would not pick sides in the union efforts.

Of course, they are.

So they may be at the White House.

What do you think about that?

Well, it's interesting.

After

our guest last week, there was an interesting article in the New York Times saying that a lot of the union or the rejuvenation or new life that's been

breathed into the union movement is a function of college grads

who are making the money that they initially anticipated.

That they're sort of, it's not the working poor, but it's college grads who've ended up in jobs that they didn't expect to be in that they end up that there's just more college grads that are baristas than ever

and that this has kind of brought new life and organizational skills and into the union movement i'm still curious to see the numbers if you will but the numbers it's getting a lot of attention so our guests last week um you know i'm i'm looking at the data because i'm realizing as as is often the case i may be wrong here i i think this is a giant head fake but i'm open to the notion that there is something structural taking place here.

Yeah, we'll see.

That was an interesting story.

It is a, there is a lot of, listen, if you work at a media organization, whether it's the New York Times or Vox, you feel the strength of the union coming on.

Within, I've talked to lots of managers at lots of media organizations, and they are definitely,

I think it's been a difficult road for

in general to understand what's happening.

So I don't know.

We'll see where it goes.

And it's led by what this Times article talked about.

And so we'll see where it goes.

I think you could really breed life into, as you said, into the union.

Isn't Vox union now?

Yes, it is.

Yes, it is.

Yeah.

But some of it, not all of it yet, I think, or I forget.

Anyway,

we are not in the union, but I have been in unions before, SFU.

In any case, it's an interesting time.

We'll keep watching that with the White House, and especially if they focus in on Amazon and Starbucks workers, which I think are seeing the most activity.

Obviously, Apple worker, Apple store workers, too, and some others.

But Amazon is where the action is, really.

And Starbucks.

Well, I heard that Bezos got divorced solely because he realized his marriage was a union.

Get it?

A union?

Come on.

That's good labor humor.

That is bad labor humor.

Bad labor humor.

Also, Warren Buffett had some harsh words for investors looking to make a quick buck.

The Oracle of Omaha, he just had his meeting, said the stock market has become, quote, almost totally a casino.

Meanwhile, Charlie Munger lashed out at Robin Hood, which he said encouraged gambling mentality.

He also also had some words for Bitcoin, which then Elon Musk attacked him for being old.

I don't know why he's doing that.

What a surprise.

But that's not to say Buffett and company hate gaming per se.

He revealed that he had a

9.5% in Activision, which was interesting, which means he's done rather well.

He said the buys are his bet that Microsoft deal will close.

I guess he just did it.

Interesting.

I like when Warren Buffett, I like when people get mad at him.

I like his whole like grumpy man thing, older man thing.

So what do you think about this?

I think Warren Buffett is an an American hero.

I mean, let me be clear.

He's pulled off a little bit of a Houdini, and that is it's kind of a hedge.

It's an insurance company posing as an investment firm.

The majority of their profits come from reinsurance.

Insurance is

the business that keeps on giving.

I've said several times, find me, if you meet somebody who makes half a million dollars a year and is kind of likable, but not very smart, chances are they're in insurance.

It's just an unbelievable business that plays off of fear, has all sorts of regulatory regulatory capture.

And Berkshire Hathaway is essentially an insurance company.

Warren Buffett, though, he's nice.

He doesn't consume a lot.

He has very interesting perspectives.

You haven't had dinner with him.

Yes, he does.

You know what I mean?

He doesn't have a bit.

He's not on a bike.

He ate his meal, a giant plate of French fries potatoes and half of my meal.

But go ahead.

Fine.

I can't believe he hasn't.

It just hasn't exploded.

But go ahead.

Go ahead.

What I mean is he lives, I think he lives in the same house.

He's been married for 50.

50 years.

He just strikes me as a nice representative of America versus some of the other folks that are getting

a lot of attention.

And I think he's, my sense is he's a good man, and I think he's a good role model.

And I like his approach to investing.

He likes to say we only buy stuff that we want to be in for a long time.

He admits his mistakes.

Yeah.

I just like his approach.

He answers the phone.

It's very strange to call there.

I called there at the beginning, sort of early in the internet phase because he was very anti-internet, which I thought was a wrong call by him because he said he didn't understand it.

And I get that if he didn't understand it, he missed quite a lot of upside by not being as big an internet investor, obviously.

But he's an activision here.

So I was, I called him to ask, get a quote when I was at the journal at the time.

I was like, this guy should be in the internet space.

Like, he sort of didn't, he thought it was also a casino, much of it.

And much of it, some of it was.

And I called, said, I thought I was going to get a PR person, right?

So I called in.

I got his secretary directly.

And then he comes on the phone.

I he's like, hi, Kara.

And I'm like, hi, Warren Buffett.

It was so strange.

And that's happened several times.

How old is he now?

I think the guy's an inspiration.

I don't know.

This was many, many years ago, but I had dinner with him relatively recently before, just before.

But you could summarize this year's, you know, they call it Woodstock and Roads.

You could summarize it with one statement.

Told you so.

They're literally, oh my gosh, are those guys feeling their oats, like going after.

Yeah.

Also,

I think I don't like it when these, I think he deserves more deference than a lot of these new hedge fund managers and these libertarian weirdo takerists.

It's his record.

It's his record.

He doesn't like cryptocurrency.

I think he's wrong.

The crypto and Tesla Taliban come for anybody.

I mean, I'm not comparing myself to Warren Buffett, but when I talk about Ethereum being an interesting one and I could see a bull case for Ethereum because of NFTs, people are like, you know, he's not that bad.

But if I don't say Bitcoin, I don't understand how it's going to be worth $100.

Everyone's like, oh, he doesn't get it.

They're just so binary

in their assessment of everything.

And also, but at the same time, I don't think it makes any sense for Charlie Munger to call Bitcoin evil.

It's not evil.

I mean, it really is.

Yeah, I think they should consider it.

Both of them should consider it at least.

You know what I mean?

And not, it's a very, it's not similar to what they did around the internet, but like, you can, I'd like to hear what they think actually looking at it.

That's what instead of doing sort of a broad brush, I would have liked to hear their thoughts on it.

And their

problem

when you're a little bit older and you don't understand something, you have a tendency to want to dismiss it because it threatens your way of thinking, right?

It's a bit of a knee-jerk reaction.

Where I do think they get it right is basically the way they go after Robin Hood.

I just, they look at this thing and they go, okay, this is just bad for the world, you know, bad for the planet, a terrible investment.

I think they got it right there.

But this was their kind of like, I told you so meeting.

The last few years, everyone's like, oh, Kathy Wood at ARC, she's the new Warren Buffett.

And all these people saying, I'm the new Warren Buffett.

And no, no, Warren Buffett is still Warren Buffett.

Yep, I would agree.

It's a marathon, not a sprint.

Yeah, so good for him.

He's an inspiration.

Yeah, it was interesting.

I still think you should reconsider cryptocurrency.

Anyway, let's go to our first big story.

The 2022 Reaper has come for Amazon.

The commerce giant issued a disappointing earnings report last week.

Some lowlights.

Amazon missed its earnings target.

It reported a loss of nearly $4 billion for the quarter and had its slowest year-over-year growth in two decades, which is probably not a surprise coming out of the pandemic.

The market took notice.

On Friday, Amazon shares fell by 14%, wiping out over $200 billion off its market cap.

It did a Facebook face plant, essentially.

That's the stock's biggest one-day decline in 15 years.

And Amazon's not alone.

In April was NASDAQ's worst month since 2008.

And there could be more bad news for the stock market, which many people have been predicting a correction of a significant amount of amount.

The Fed is expected to raise rates because of inflation on Wednesday.

It's going to be doing a lot of raising of rates.

What do you think, Scott?

What do you think?

Give us some little Scott-ness.

I'm just going to give a couple more facts.

The NASDAQ composite, more than 45% of stocks are down 50%.

More than 22% of stocks are down 75%.

And more than 5% of stocks are down 90%.

This is from Scott Galloway.

So give us your pontificate, please, if you don't mind.

Well, we have an entire generation of entrepreneurs and investors that have never seen a recession and see it as something that is

worse than it's a crime against humanity.

And the reason why every fiat currency has ultimately failed is the central bank and governments can't resist the temptation to be loved and pump trillions of dollars of stimulus into the market to prop up the market, which just creates more underbrush that once you have a reckoning, you have a superfire.

And if you look at Amazon, okay, I think it's 30 or maybe 35 percent off its 52-week high, and it's down more than Apple, but basically everything's getting taken to the woodshed here.

Why?

Because I'm just going to look at Tesla today, but keep going.

Yep.

Well, you've never had, this is what we have.

It was stupid to call inflation transitory.

Now, it's of our own making.

There's no free lunch.

We took an obese patient, America, and we shoved 40,000 gallons of dryers down its throat and an overdone stimulus.

Europe has the same supply chain problems, but they aren't registering the inflation because they weren't as ridiculous with this stimulus.

So what do we have?

We're now starting to pay

some of the hangover.

And the only way you get your arms around inflation, unless there's some new invention invention in economic history, is by raising interest rates.

And the only

typically every time we've raised interest rates at what people, most people are predicting the rate we're going to have to raise them, is that you go into recession, which brings up a whole host of other things.

So what you have in the NASDAQ is we're having what I would call a healthy drawdown, especially among the growthier stuff, but no one's being spared here.

And the fact that Amazon's down 20 or 30 percent, everyone's looking for reason.

Granted, it did decline.

It's a lot of the pandemic bump is being taken out of stuff.

The core competence of any CEO right now is storytelling.

And I don't think Andy inspires people.

I think if Jeff Bezos had done that earnings call,

he would have pivoted to something else and his ability to say, yeah, we've taken a loss and positioned it as a positive because of our mass investments here.

The other thing is if this stock goes below $2,000 a share, it'll be, I think, at about a $1 trillion.

I think you'll see a spin of AWS.

I think AWS is now worth more than the entire company.

Andy has resisted, as you remember in an interview with me.

Nothing like a 40% decline in your stock price to get you to reconsider your strategy.

Yeah.

And if you look at,

I believe you're going to see a lot of people sharpen their pencils and go, you know what?

AWS on its own is worth a trillion dollars.

So when a company is trapped in a conglomerate structure, the market doesn't like pure plays.

I don't need Amazon to diversify for me.

It's really impactful on their actual business.

No, it doesn't make their actual business look a lot better.

It really helps it.

Well, the disposition of assets is accretive when it trades at the multiple of a business that's in decline.

AWS is still pumping on all 12,000 cylinders.

It is indeed.

One, I think my sense of Andy is he's an amazing operator.

Unfortunately, we're in an era where it's all about storytelling.

You know, he ran AWS.

For those who don't know that, he was the one who thought it up and ran it and created it.

I think he's a Tim Cook, Satchinadella-like operator.

I'm not worried about that.

There's a difference, though.

Steve Jobs can't come back.

Jeff Bezos can.

I think Jeff Bezos is going to pull a Howard Schultz.

And I think he's going to come back in a year to two years.

Do you think?

I mean, literally.

Being the CEO of Starbucks is like being second lieutenant in Vietnam.

You're just not going to likely last very long.

And when you see this stock for the first time, I mean, that actually is not there.

From 1999 to 2001, people forget what this is like.

This is like, we have never registered these types of declines except for 99 and 2007.

And it's playing out again.

And people are whistling past the graveyard or they're focused on this other weapon of mass distraction called all this Twitter bullshit.

So what's going on here is

really striking.

Yes.

Just the big tech companies have lost the GDP of Mexico.

They have.

They have indeed.

They have indeed.

Although I'm just noticing Tesla's down just a little bit today.

I thought it would go down more, but it has not.

But here we are.

Everyone,

I'm not making a prediction about Tesla.

I'll just say this.

Everyone is going to get their turn at the woodshed here.

Market dynamics, market dynamics always trump individual performance.

All right.

And this market, there has never been an economy that has been able to raise interest rates at the rates I think we're going to have to raise them to get our arms around inflation that has not gone into recession.

And to recalibrate supply and demand.

In other words, is what you're saying.

There's so much demand and little supply, et cetera, et cetera.

You have no choice, but we have no.

The only way we cool.

I am returning the oligarch's yacht I bought you as a present.

That's right.

Finally investing in our relationship.

And now you made me worried.

SSC Alice.

I'm on a boat.

Oddly, it came with a torture chamber below, but I thought you could use that and enjoy it.

I'm not into pain.

No, that's not me.

That's not my thing.

All right.

Well, you know my safe word, right?

No.

Maybe.

Maybe.

That's good.

That's good.

Okay, Scott, let's go on a quick break.

When we come back, low morale at the FTC will speak with a friend of Pivot, Trip Mickel.

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Scott, we're back.

The FTC could use a morale boost.

The survey found that employees' opinion of senior leaders dropped between 2020 and 2021, the year Lena Khan took over as chair.

And fewer than half of the FDC staffers who responded said they had a high level of respect for senior leaders.

In response, consent agency-wide email committing to facilitating positive change.

New leader, she was supposed to be an ambitious regulator,

has not been able to do what she has said she wants to do.

Lots of reasons.

So, what do you think?

What do you think?

Or is she just forcing them to do their jobs?

So, she's pursuing cases, but they haven't had this sort of big, you know, high-five win anywhere.

Yeah, so I forwarded the story to you because I'm one of the people that was really excited about Lena Kahn's appointment.

It's just a great story.

And I think she's an incredible legal mind.

Yeah.

I believe that she's in way over her head.

And it just seems so obvious.

I know a lot of academics.

And I take the most impressive academic you've met who's an, she's, she's an associate professor at the age of 31, kind of a few years out of law school, I think, was put in charge

of a bureaucratic organization with what, 1,200 employees and three.

It'd be like, I'm trying to think of an associate professor I've ever worked with.

I've worked at NYU for 22 years.

We have a very talented faculty.

It'd be like

all of a sudden dropping one of them into a 1,200-person company.

with a 300.

And I think I don't know a single person that could do that.

And we like to look at someone's attributes and someone's intellect.

And she's a high-character, incredibly impressive person.

She has little to no management experience.

Right.

And I think it has to do with them not having any wins or movement.

The movement

is slow and whether it's her.

Well, it could be hers.

It could be these.

They were pushed back on the Facebook deal

by a judge and they had to redo their homework.

She may be like, you did bad work before, which they did.

And it may be that they don't have any.

If they had a win, I think they'd be very happy.

It's just that there's not, these cases are going forward, but it's slow going.

The court cases are problematic for them the judges are problematic but one of the things that ftc employees complain about is lack of information they get from above uh it could be due to remote work it could be pandemic related like coming out of the pandemic i don't know i i um

there's it's it's there's so much demand for antitrust lawyers on the other side um maybe that they are leaving

um but the the rates are the same of people

i mean when people when they quote unquote say senior leaders it's really it's a proxy on error and yeah one of the most underrated attributes that people don't appreciate it's a it's a singular distinct competence is management your ability to manage an organization and people incorrectly assume this is a good person who's super smart which means they're a good manager no it doesn't no it doesn't management is like it's like saying this is a high character good person they must be a great designer No, they're not.

It's the same with management.

There are, this is a unique skill set.

And by the way, she has has absolutely no experience in a management role.

And you plump her into an agency.

What would you do if you were there?

If you were there, lots of people come into agencies with very little.

Look, Pete Buttigieg is running the Department of Transportation.

I'm sorry.

He was at one of these parties, by the way.

Yeah, he was giving an award to some veterans at Tammy's party.

You know, he's in charge of the infrastructure money.

As I was sitting there and someone was making a joke about South Bend, or I was like, oh my God, God, this guy, is this guy qualified to give away all that money?

I think about that all the time.

There's two types of managers

what I found that are effective.

And having, you know, I've never run big companies, but I've run mid-sized companies and I've coached and been on the board of

CEOs with big companies.

And there's two types of effective leaders or managers.

The first is what I call the inspiring leader.

They can stand up in front of a group of people, distill down to very basic, understandable things, the North Star.

This is what we're here to do.

This is why you are here to do it.

And this is why this is the right place and the right time for you to be here right now.

And gives people a sense of connective tissue and that they're working for something bigger and

says to them, when you show up here, you're appreciated.

And this was a smart decision to be here.

And look at the, and they can paint a really exciting future.

That's the inspiring leader.

Then there is what I call the player coach leader.

And that person is so good at what they do and takes such an invested interest in other people's success.

And my partner in my business, Catherine Dillon, is a player coach.

And that is, she takes her chair.

If someone is editing a document, she takes her chair.

She goes and she sits next to this person and she says,

this was good.

I'm going to show you how to edit a document.

I'm going to show you how to edit a video.

This is where you got it wrong here.

And she's kind, but very direct.

And she teaches people how to be much better players.

I'm, quote unquote,

what you would refer to as the inspiring leader.

I like getting up in front of a group of my employees and painting the vision.

The inspiring leader is effective over the short term, but not usually the long term unless their job is to pull forward the future by raising cheap capital.

It's the player coach.

You even reference this with like guys like Satya or guys like Tim Cook.

I, quite frankly, I don't mean to be harsh.

I think she's neither.

I don't think she's able to get up in front of FTC and get them excited and paint a vision.

And I don't know if she's a good player coach.

She's a world-class, like Tim Wu is in the right, he's in the right seat.

He's an inspiring, huge brain.

Think about all these people that the Trump people put in who are wholly incompetent.

Okay, you're making my point.

That's destiny.

You're making my point.

I think the federal government feels overwhelmed, and especially the FTC.

When I interview her, I felt, remember I said she seems exhausted already.

She seemed overwhelmed.

She seemed, she seemed, I would say over her head because she's intellectually rigorous.

It was, she seemed like she got in there and it's like, we can't do anything.

Like they, they're, they're inert.

And I think if you work at a place like that where you're not, you're not going to, they haven't gotten the funding because it got sucked up into one of the bills that didn't pass.

You're not getting any kind of wins.

You're not getting any, if they had a win, they'd feel better in safety.

But Kara, these are the same problems the FTC has faced for the last three decades.

Yes.

You've never seen this sort of decline in morale.

Well, I don't know.

I think people are feeling bad about working for the federal government.

I think, and also, let me just say, again, let me compare her to Pete Putajudge, which is a much bigger job.

I'm sorry.

If you're going to talk about qualified, then neither of them is qualified really in that in that regard.

And

by the way, I think they're both perfectly competent.

So I'm not sure there's a, there's sort of been a what is that's a good question.

What is that?

Do you know it would be interesting to see similar surveys at the Department of Transportation.

I don't know.

I don't know if they do those, but she should, she needs to step up.

She can be inspiring.

I still think part of it has to do with who is this young woman of color who just came in here and is telling us what to do.

Do you think there's a bias towards her by the race?

I have seen it myself in my own, in places I've worked.

I've watched it.

And it's really, it depends on who's saying it.

You know, if you Serena de Bergerak that and she looked like a certain woman, I don't know.

And I don't blame that for everything, but in this case, believe me, I don't.

There's bad managers of all kinds.

So anyway, she's got to get it around because they've got some real challenges and they need to get some wins on the board, period.

They need to.

Can you name anything the FTC has done?

done?

They have cleaned up some previous stuff.

That's what they've done.

Cleaning up is not enough and getting it moving forward, but a win.

No, no.

All right.

So now let's bring in our friend of Pivot.

Trip Mickel is a technology reporter at the New York Times and author of After Steve, a new book that charts the tensions between Tim Cook and Johnny Ive in the years before Ives' departure from Apple in 2019.

Welcome, Trip Mickel.

Hi, thanks so much for having me.

No problem.

So,

I've been thinking a lot about Apple this weekend.

I've been thinking a lot about my code conference, for example.

And I've been thinking about how to think about Steve after it's my 20th year of doing this.

And he was the very first speaker at our first code.

So, I want you to just give us an idea of what you're this is after Steve, the time after, which has been a long, long time, by the way.

He died a very long time ago in real terms and in terms of Apple, a very long time ago.

So, can you talk a a little bit about sort of your premise of the book?

It's designed to focus both on what Tim Cook has accomplished.

You know, he's turned Apple into this multi-trillion dollar company.

And then also at the same time, the company has lost Johnny Ive, who was considered a creative soulmate of Steve Jobs.

So the literal soul in a way of the company.

And then

more than that, and Johnny's departure, you know, his growing disillusionment was really rooted in this idea that Apple was once a place where art led to commerce.

And increasingly in the Tim Cook era, it became a place where commerce dictated art.

And some of that's a consequence of just the size and scale of the company and the expectations and demands of Wall Street.

So you felt that

I would point to what you just said.

Apple's never been bigger, never been more powerful, never, you could create a company out of, you know, the software and services.

It's been nothing short of a miracle what they've done there.

Never good at that.

AirPods, all kinds of things.

So this romantic idea of Apple, which I've covered since a very long time, I'm very old.

I always found a little twee, honestly.

So talk a little.

I did.

I was like, oh, stop.

Just make, you just make stuff.

So why is that?

Why was Johnny so important in that regard?

What is missing given the results are pretty damn good?

The results are tremendous, right?

But the results are largely rooted in the past.

You know,

The Twee era, if you will,

is really

the foundation of the success of today.

I mean,

it's taking the iPhone and saying, well, what can we bolt onto this?

and create more sales opportunities out of.

Now, whether that's services or whether that's the watch or whether that's the AirPods, they're all laid on this foundational device that was revolutionary.

and introduced in 2007.

But, I mean, to just poke back at the Twee idea, I mean, for people who worked there and for you, when you were covering it, there did feel like something magical was happening.

You know, if you go back and you look at the run of iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad, I mean, it's really, you know, this wasn't just a single revolutionary

device.

This was a series of just

cultural shaping devices that were introduced by Apple in that period.

So you think they aren't as creative.

You left out Ping.

I don't know why, their social network that lasted 14 minutes.

But you think that that has been missing here despite the financial success of everything else.

You could say the Model T is the foundation of the car industry and people have managed to figure out new and better ways to do it.

But you think that it's missing this and that's deadly for it or just the way you're doing it.

If you talk to, Karen, if you talk to people who work at the company,

they feel this more than people maybe externally feel it.

And if you talk to some of the people

who have worked

on designing some of these products that have been so influential in all of our lives, if you ask them, okay, well, what's Steve Jobs' legacy?

They'll say it was making amazing products that really changed the world.

And if you ask them, well, what's been the legacy of the past decade?

They'll say, making a fuck ton of money.

I think we can say that on this podcast.

Yes, you may.

Say fuck ton is money.

It's just

a different viewpoint on what they achieved.

And

they appreciate that that's a consequence of how big they were at the time that that transition happened between Steve Jobs and Tim Cook.

And nice to meet you, Trip.

I really enjoyed reading some of this.

So it's harder to go from zero to 300 billion, where Apple was when Steve Jobs passed away, but there hasn't been an individual who's created more shareholder value alive than Tim Cook or overseen it.

He's gone from 300 billion to 2.7 trillion.

So

if you use that as a metric, he's the most successful operator in history.

What struck me reading some of your thoughts was that doesn't this kind of indicate or isn't this a proxy for a larger shift in our economy?

And that is Apple's gone from being sort of a brand or creatively driven organization to a supply chain and operationally driven company.

And quite frankly,

that's where the juice is.

That's the story of Amazon.

And that this old era that we're nostalgic for of brand and creative, the sun is just past midday on that.

And that Tim Cook really is, he's the CO has added more value than any CO in history.

Doesn't this represent a shift from creatively driven companies to operationally driven companies?

And what's the negative in that, I think, also?

What is the negative part of Dim Cook?

I believe this shit trip.

She edits my questions.

She edits my questions.

What's the negative in that?

I mean, there's no negative in that.

I mean, but if you're working at the company, that experience is difficult to undergo.

I mean, for those of us who are getting their products,

there's a little less of a wow factor year to year, right?

There's almost an understanding that, you know, the new iPhone will come out and it will have, you know, another camera or more sophistication in the camera than the previous one.

And so that's a facet of it.

But Scott, I mean, the book, as you know, having read it, doesn't...

doesn't seek to diminish what Tim Cook has accomplished.

If anything, like it seeks to highlight it.

It seeks to accentuate it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, his ability to anticipate, okay, we're going to, we're going to introduce the watch.

That's going to unlock some new sales for us.

But we have to have that next step after that.

And to anticipate that

they needed that and to introduce services on the back end of the watch.

I mean,

that is a testament to what he was able to do as an operator.

And somebody, I mean, there's an art to that too, right?

There's an art being sensible enough to say, okay, well, we need to continue to grow.

What do we have?

And pulling that lever at the right moment.

You know this company as well as anyone.

What are your thoughts around the prospect of a car, of an Apple car?

Do you think they're headed there?

And do you think it's a good idea?

I think they're headed there.

I think the book highlights.

some of the challenges with why they're having a hard time getting there.

One of the things, Kara, to get back to what Steve was able to accomplish, and the book really goes into great depth on this, and Johnny kind of carried this on with the watch is inside Apple, someone needs to take on and drive a product forward.

Steve did that for years.

Johnny did that with the watch.

You know, the AirPods were born on the back end of the watch.

I know Scott's a huge fan of the AirPods.

Me too.

Me too.

Yeah, I think we all are.

We all depend on those.

But there hasn't been somebody as Johnny became wayward to kind of step in and lead that stuff forward.

And not to mention, as Johnny was adrift, as the book documents, you know, when he went to this kind of part-time arrangement, there was tension between his vision for what the car could be and some of the engineers' vision.

And so that's why the car never, it was never delivered in 2019 as they set an internal goal to do.

But

I do, you know, they're continuing to work on it.

And one of the most interesting things that I came across as I worked on the book and as the book highlights is what they did to change the construction industry with Apple Park.

Now, this seems like weird.

Why are we going from cars to construction?

But they wanted to do this amazing curved glass in the building.

Nobody made glass like that in the world.

But between their deep pockets, their engineering sophistication and their design demands, they were able to bring on a German company and get them to manufacture this glass at scale.

And it's opened up new opportunities for architects everywhere.

So if they can do that in the world of construction and architecture, you can only sit back and say, well, wow, if they brought that to bear in the world of auto manufacturing, we could really be seeing something incredible on the roads in the years ahead.

Yeah, one of the, we'll talk about the glasses then, because I think they're closer to that, the idea of the AR.

Because I've seen Tim in the interim, but one time, many, many years ago, all he could talk about was AR and Auburn football, which neither, I was interested in the first, not so much the second.

Can you talk a little bit about the glasses?

Because that seems to still be illuminating a lot of people there I talk to, this idea of

AR glasses, not VR glasses, but AR glasses and where that is.

According to the public reporting on that, they're certainly closer on AR glasses than they are on a car.

I mean, they've had less difficulty in developing that.

But again,

that has taken time.

And

if you look back at the watch and the way the watch was introduced, and I cover a lot of this in the book.

They introduced it early.

And it took some persistence to get acceptance for that watch because it didn't have some of the functionality that people would expect.

Like time, you know, telling the time constantly every time you looked at it, you know, you had to turn your wrist towards yourself in order for the time to show.

With the AR glasses, like, they yeah, there's an open question as to whether or not that's going to be another product that when they introduce it, it's going to take persistence to get acceptance.

The last specs I think I saw, Kara, were kind of a unit that looked akin to ski goggles.

And it's just hard to picture a lot of people adopting that.

I think Oculus has had trouble with that up to this point as well.

Well, where do you think, if you had to bet, these companies are running up against the law of big numbers, and that is they can't go after niche markets.

They have,

I think, if you look at Apple's stock and business, in order to maintain the kind of stock trajectory they've been on, they literally have to add like a quarter of a trillion dollars to their top line, which limits them.

As far as I can tell, it means that they either go into health care or the automobile market.

I just don't, I don't see where else they can go.

It feels like every person who makes over a certain amount of money has iOS, so they can continue to add to that.

And then they recast it as a recurring revenue firm.

That'll take their stock price up.

But they've got to find an enormous carcass, new carcass to feed off of.

Do you, if you had to bet on what they're going to try, where they're going to try and find that quarter of a trillion dollars, what would your bet be?

I would wager it's got to be audit, right?

I mean, if you go, if you go back and you look at it, it's very perceptive that you highlight this, Scott, because if you go back and you look at what they were wrestling with shortly after Steve Jobs' death, they recognized that they were getting the point where the law of large numbers were going to

create headaches for them.

So they were, see, Tim Cook literally said, like, we need $10 billion businesses.

And if it's not going to be a $10 billion business, we can't pursue it.

And internally, that created some of the frustration because

some of the product leaps that they could have made

in the years prior, in the decade prior, were foreclosed.

They just weren't going to be big enough to make a dent for them.

HomePod, for example, right?

Like,

is a speaker going to deliver enough sales for a company that large to satisfy investors in Wall Street?

No.

You're right, Scott, healthcare, but that's still rooted in the watch.

And it's been a slow and steady growth.

It is a, I mean, if you look at the

wearables business, which includes uh the watch and AirPods, it is a $38 billion business.

It's become quite sizable and it's immune from antitrust criticism at this point.

So they can still squeeze and build that.

It's just a question of will it will they ever turn medical records into something that's that's profitable for them?

They haven't quite shown that they're they're uh on that path yet.

Do you who is the Johnny Ive of that company then?

Is there one or do they need one?

Obviously, there's there's no right way of leaving a company.

He was such a legend there, no matter what.

And he's he's, you know, as a person, he's so interesting compared to most of the executives there um and tim goes out of his way to be dullish right trying to be sort of quiet and and and uh kind of brainy is there someone there that fulfills that role that's the open question i that's what that's what i'm eager to see unfold in the in the decade ahead if you look back at apple the real alchemy of it has been kind of this

series of peers.

Martin Commerce.

Yeah.

Well, the series of peers, right?

You had jobs and laws, then you had this decade that was really jobs and and johnny ive and then though though tim and johnny ive are less close like they were key to this most recent decade and i think the key to tim's success going forward is finding who he's going to team up with in the future anybody is there's somebody that you the early The early evidence suggests that Johnny Shruggy may be that person.

He's clearly brought forward a lot of innovation in the chip sector that's unlocked a lot of value for the company in its Mac business.

But nobody like a Johnny Ive character, correct?

What Johnny brought to bear, you could argue also is like a bit of a legacy, right?

I mean,

if you look at products in the world, they are already shaped by what Apple has done in terms of its minimalism.

And so, is physical design going to be industrial design going to be the way forward for in a world where we're increasingly interfacing and interacting with computers through voice or

augmented reality, it's going to probably be software-driven.

And so, so who is that person at this juncture?

I couldn't tell you, Kara.

I think that's the end of the question about Apple at this point.

I can't think.

I did have to buy someone like Snapchat or some, like bring in Evan Spiegel, who's quite creative, or, you know, they could have bought Instagram, Kevin Systrom.

Those are kind of more creative types of people.

Scott?

What do people not understand about Apple?

What is the biggest surprise for you writing writing this book?

I think the biggest surprise for me writing this book was just

getting such a deep appreciation for how after Steve Jobs died, the creative heart of the company wound up having the people who were on the outside, the operators, kind of come into the middle and just how confusing that was for everybody, both those on the outside who found themselves in the middle and were having to...

to adjust to

how do we build a product and

how do we make watch happen?

And for those in the middle, working with

the operators in a new way.

There was just this real period of adjustment in the wake of Steve Jobs' death.

And Apple managed to navigate that.

I think that's why we've seen this value unlocked, but

it was not an easy road.

No, no, it was everyone thought he was going to fail.

I remember at that time, they thought they couldn't do anything without Steve Jobs.

One time when those stories were going around, when he was sick, the one thing he did say to me, he's like, I'm not Willy Wonka.

Like he was, he was trying to sort of disabuse people from that he was the only factor that mattered here, which was unusual because he was also somewhat of a narcissist.

So

it was an interesting thing that they have managed to go on.

But is there a game-changing product

for them coming up?

Are any of these, the car, the glasses?

Do you imagine that there's something coming that's really, if you had to pick between those two, which is where they're headed,

would that be it for them?

All signs and all reporting indicate that glasses are first and car is second.

And that's that's largely because of the

challenges with each one and the technology that they have to bring along.

Not Hollywood, not Hollywood.

Is Hollywood a you know, is that a

new product?

I don't know.

I mean, I'm enjoying slow horses.

Yeah, I think it's been fantastic.

Oh, it's great.

That's great.

Agreed.

I've always felt that great companies have three or four people that could be the next CEO.

And you just don't hear a lot of names that, you know, the heir apparent.

Are there any heir apparents to Tim Cook?

There's a tremendous amount of respect within the company for Jeff Williams, the COO, who's now running the design team and has been really involved in product ever since the watch.

There's some other names, you know, that Tim has brought into the fold, fold, like Deirdre O'Brien, who also came from the operations side.

But do you hear these names often in the same way you say you heard like Jimmy Ives or Angela Ahrens?

No.

Even Philip Schiller, remember him?

Wait, is he still there?

He's still there.

Sure is.

He's a fellow.

They're all still there.

It's so fascinating with this group of people.

It's scary.

You'd appreciate that.

Somebody was telling me that they'll have to take some of these people out and a body bag.

They just love the company that much.

Well, they're also remarkable that they have been together for so long.

I'll never forget Walt was retiring and there was a little party with all of them.

And I was like, it was all like the old guys.

And I'm like, and they're still running everything and they're still there.

Like it was, they were remarkably resilient for a management group, despite all the tensions and various fighting that goes on at any company.

I have a last question, regulatory issues.

Apple's trying very hard to pretend it's not a monopoly or say it's not.

It's been declared not a monopoly by a judge.

And their argument being that Android is bigger and in the scheme of all phones, they aren't.

But they're certainly facing a lot of headwinds around the App Store and the marketplaces and the other things they compete in.

How much of a risk is that for the company?

They're playing a game of App Store Jenga right now.

Every once in a while, Europe or the U.S.

will kind of poke at a piece and put it on top.

And it's just a question of when that whole game of Jenga kind of collapses and what that means for their business, because the app store itself has been such a driving force for their explosive growth in the past decade.

Absolutely.

Everybody should read it.

It's called After Steve.

It's by New York Times reporter Trip Mickel.

How does Apple like it, Trip?

You know,

I don't.

I'll give you the answer.

They don't.

They don't.

Steve commented on it

on some of the thrust of the reporting that's at the back of this book and said that it distorts relationships and narratives and facts and so on and so forth.

So, that tends to be their

answer to you, and it's a good thing.

Probably means it's accurate.

That possibly, yeah.

Anyway, it was very funny.

Um, I said no comment when I was hearing some of the complaints.

Anyway, I just said, Oh, good, I can't wait to read it.

I'm so excited.

Anyway, it's a terrific book.

Again, After Steve by Trip Mickel.

Thank you so much for having me.

It's great to see you guys.

Thanks, Tripp.

All right, Scott, one more quick break.

We'll be back for predictions.

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All right, Scott, it's time for predictions.

I'd like you to make one.

Please do.

I think that, so as I was saying, everyone's getting their kind of turn at, you know, at the woodshed here, and that is it just doesn't seem like anyone gets out of this alive.

There's just very few companies that are going to go untouched from their

pretty significant drawdown.

And

I just think everyone's in this consensual hallucination that we can continue to avoid recessions recessions forever.

But anyways, the company that, because of this weapon of mass distraction called the shit show at Twitter, we're not talking about a lot of stuff that's really important, but I think that's a business story that a lot of people are missing is what Netflix did to the entire media ecosystem.

They basically sucked a quarter of a trillion dollars out of traditional media, whether it was movie theaters or the cable bundle.

And now they've lost a quarter of a trillion dollars.

But what no one's focused on is I think the company that is feeding off the Netflix carcass is a company that now commands more attention than Facebook and Instagram combined, but has a content budget of zero versus $17 billion at Netflix.

And that is

100%.

And

the company that has increased more in value than any company in the world over the last 12 months in the face of everyone going down 30, 40, 80%,

is TikTok.

And if you look at its metrics, if you look at it, it has the short-form, DOPA, ADHD

characteristics of this kind of new generation of people that need constant dopa.

And at the same time, it's managed to avoid some of the shit show that is Facebook.

It does have at least the perception of increased moderation.

And it's basically the most, we got to stop thinking of it as a social media platform.

It's basically streaming.

Entertainment.

Without

a content budget.

It's Netflix.

What would Netflix be worth if it didn't have to spend $17 billion a year on content?

That's what TikTok is.

One of the things that's interesting, this new antitrust bill that got out of committee, Amy Klobuchar's, the YouTubes of the world and others are all nervous because TikTok won't be under the $600 billion thing and they might, that these companies might have to, there's going to be a lot of pushback and they're using TikTok as the cudgel.

If we have to reveal things, why doesn't TikTok?

So it'll be interesting.

They're going to be in the crosshairs of a lot of this.

The fact that they don't get marked every day because their stock is not public has been such a huge benefit for them because this is what would have happened.

People are coming for them, though.

Meta has been cut in half.

Amazon's off 30%.

Apple's held its own.

Google is flat, maybe a little bit down.

I bet if TikTok was a public stock, it'd be up substantially.

And everybody would be up.

Let me just say people are coming for them.

That's my feeling.

That's my prediction.

And then just on an anecdotal level, I was vacationing with some friends a few weeks ago, and they, like me, have boys.

And the dad said, look at this.

And the kid said, can we be excused?

And he said, watch my 11-year-old.

And he went over and he takes, he says he does this every day after lunch.

He takes his phone.

He lies on his side.

He pulls up TikTok.

And it was so reminiscent.

Remember all those images of the monks in opium dens where they just lie on their side and love life?

It's true.

I can't watch TikTok because you get sucked in.

Oh, my God.

It's so interchangeable.

And you know what?

Don't do it.

You literally, I find if I go on TikTok, the algorithm, I can look up and it's an hour and a half later.

And it's the closest thing to a modern day opium den.

It's so fascinating, especially.

I'm telling you, I watched an hour of Air Fryer the other day and I was like, stop, Kara.

And I was happy.

I was very happy, more so than being on Twitter.

I was like, I'm getting off of Twitter.

I'm going on to TikTok.

I have a burner phone.

It was weird.

It was weird.

I agree.

But people are coming for them.

In any case, I could watch for hours.

What is yours?

Chiropractors adjusting people, who would have known.

Oh, nice.

Dogs, which I knew,

and then very attractive people talking about systemic racism who forgot to put their bra on.

I also find that just fascinating.

I find that really interesting.

There is our entire relationship.

I watch air fryer content and you watch that one.

Chiropractors adjusting people.

That one I could see.

I would like that one.

I would hope that.

There's a guy in Chicago that can literally make like your ankles and your hips.

I just had a chiropractor appointment.

Crazy noise.

I'm so happy.

I got cracked in the neck.

And even the chiropractor was such a deep crack.

It was such a deep crack that the chiropractor did this.

Oh, like that, which was disturbing.

But nonetheless, it was very pleasing.

Anyway, there we have it.

Send us your questions.

Go to nymag.com slash pivot to submit your question for us or call 855-51-PIVOT.

The link is also in our show notes.

Scott, that is the show.

We'll be back for more on Friday.

That was a relatively Elon-free thing.

I liked it.

It was very nice.

Thank God we talked about really important things.

We'll be back.

I'm sure there's something crazy that's going to happen by then, but we'll see what happens.

And we'll be back Friday for more.

Scott, read us out.

Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Evan Engel, and Taylor Griffin.

Ernie Injutatt engine in this episode.

Thanks also to Drew Burrows and Miles Severio.

Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts.

Thank you for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media.

We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business.

Kara, I will see you on Thursday.

Will you receive me?

Will you receive the dog?

This month on Explain It to Me, we're talking about all things wellness.

We spend nearly $2 trillion on things that are supposed to make us well.

Collagen smoothies and cold plunges, Pilates classes, and fitness trackers.

But what does it actually mean to be well?

Why do we want that so badly?

And is all this money really making us healthier and happier?

That's this month on Explain It to Me, presented by Pureleaf.