Tim Sweeney

`3:59:29`

after 25 years would come to an end because Apple would burn us down or I would burn the business down over this fight with Apple. But I think you also need that level of conviction to be able to even drive the day-to-day decisions. One of the other Apple examples, and I know we're racking on Apple a little bit here, and I don't actually hate them. I really don't. I am tremendously disappointed at the squandered relationship that did not need to be sold away for so little. Now I understand that the app store toll booth is actually a pretty big business. It's multiple billions, but Apple is a trillion dollar company. And I think in the lens of history, this is gonna come off as a tremendous mistake and I think it's already coming off as a tremendous mistake. The flop that was the Vision Pro was partly because Apple had pissed off every other developer. No one was eager to come build the kind of experiences for their new hardware that would perhaps have made it a success. So when you're on top and you have all the cards,

`4:00:31`

you can dilute yourself into thinking that you can dictate all terms at all times and there are no long term consequences. Apple is learning finally, the fact that there are long-term consequences and that developers actually are important to Apple's business. And the relationship is not entirely one sided. We don't owe our existence to Apple and Apple alone. We've built our own customer bases. Apple has been beneficial to the industry. I'm glad the iPhone exists, da da da da. It's not that it doesn't go both ways, but Apple wants it only one way. And I think that is a mistake, and it's a mistake that was avoidable. And A, that's disappointing. Certainly disappointing for me. I've literally spent 20 years evangelizing this shit, right? I've spent so much money buying Apple hardware, excusing a bunch of things they've done over the years. And then for what? For the fact that you wanted 30% of something

`4:01:31`

that I created in the most unreasonable way possible? Couldn't we have found a better way to do this? I think they're going to get forced to do a better way. But did you also have to go through the indignity of having a criminal contempt charge against you getting referred to prosecution? It just seems so beneath Apple, but it also seems so in line with what happens to huge companies who are run by, quote, unquote, "professional managers" rather than founders and unreasonable people. — Well, we should probably also say that the thing you love about Apple, the great spirit of Apple I think still persists and there's a case to be made that this 30% thing is a slice, a particular slice of a company, not a defining aspect of the company. And that it Apple is still on top in the hardware that it makes and a lot of things that it makes. And you know this is, that could be just a hiccup in a long story of a great company that does a lot of awesome stuff for humanity.

`4:02:33`

So like Apple is a truly special company. We mentioned Amazon, there is no company like Apple. — I agree, this is why the disappointment is all greater. Because we had such high aspirations and expectations to Apple that they were the shining city on the hill and they were guiding the industry in a million positive ways. I think as we talked about earlier, hardware is exciting again in large part because Apple bought PA Semi and pursued a against all odds mission to get ARM up to the level it is today. And we have these incredible M chips now because of it. And the design sensibilities that Apple bring to the table are unparalleled. No one has taste certainly at the hardware level like Apple does, even at the software level. I'd say there's a lot of taste left in Apple, but there's also some real sour taste now.

`4:03:34`

So they have to wash that off first I think before they find their wear back. But Apple's been in a mirage before, I mean Wozniak and Steve Jobs started this thing in the garage, has great success with the Apple II. He hands the company over to a sugar drink salesman who tanks the company into the '90s. He doesn't learn the lesson, spends the next 20 years building up this amazing company, then hands the company over again to a logistics person who presumably had more redeeming qualities than the first guy who put in charge, but still ends up leading the company astray. Now this is the norm. The norm is that great companies don't last forever. In the long arc of history, almost no company lasts forever. There are very few companies around that was here 100 years ago, even fewer 200 years ago. And virtually nothing that are 1000 years old outside of a handful of Japanese sorts makers