Apple

`3:43:01`

— Since you mentioned Apple, I have to ask somebody in the internet submitted the question. Does DHH still hate Apple? I believe the question is. So there was a time when Basecamp went to war with Apple over the 30%. Can you tell the saga of that battle? — Yes, but first I'll tell you, I fell in love with Apple, which was all the way back in also early 2000s when Microsoft was dominating the industry in a way we now see Apple and Google dominate mobile phones. Microsoft was just everything when it came to personal computers, and I really did not like the Microsoft of the '90s. The Microsoft of the '90s was the cutoff the air supply to Netscape kind of characters was the Bill Gates sitting defiant in an interview with the DOJ asking about what the definition of what is.

`3:44:03`

And just overall unpleasant, I think. You can have respect for what was achieved, but I certainly didn't like it. And as we've talked about, I came begrudgingly to the PC after Commodore fell apart and I couldn't continue to use the Amiga. So I already had a bit of a bone to pick with PCs just over the fact that I love my Amiga so much. But then in the early 2000s, Apple emerged as a credible alternative because they bet the new generation of Macs on Unix underpinnings. And that allowed me to escape from Microsoft, and suddenly I became one of the biggest boosters of Apple. I was in my graduating class at the Copenhagen Business School. I started with the first white iBook, first person using Mac. And by the time we were done in graduating, I had basically converted half the class to using Apple computers, 'cause I would evangelize them so hard and demonstrate them and do all the things that a super fan would do.

`3:45:03`

And I continued that work over many years. Jason or I actually in I think 2004, 2005, did an ad for Apple that they posted on the developer side where we were all about like Apple is so integral to everything that we do and we look up to them and we are inspired by them. And that love relationship actually continued for a very long time. I basically just became a Mac person for 20 years. I didn't even care about looking at PCs. It seemed irrelevant to me, whatever Microsoft was doing, which felt like such a relief. Because in the '90s, I felt like I couldn't escape Microsoft and suddenly I had found my escape. And now I was with Apple and it was glorious and they shared so many of my sensibilities and my aesthetics and they kept pushing the envelope, and there was so much to be proud of, so much to look up to. And then that sort of started to change with the iPhone, which is weird because the iPhone is what made modern Apple. It's what I lined up in 2007 together with Jason for five hours to stand in the line

`3:46:07`

to buy a first generation product where Apple staff would clap at you when you walked out the store. I don't know if you remember that. It was a whole ceremony and it was part of that myth and mystique and awe of Apple. So I wasn't in the market for other computers. I wasn't in the market for other computer ideas. I thought perhaps I'd be with the Mac until the end of days. But as Apple discovered the gold mine, it is to operate a toll booth where you don't have to innovate, where you don't actually even have to make anything, where you can just take 30% of other people's business. There was a rot that crept into the foundation of Apple and that started all the way back from the initial launch of the app store. But I don't think we saw at the time, I didn't see at the time just how critical the mobile phone would become to computing in general. I thought when the iPhone came out that like, oh, it's like a mobile phone. I've had a mobile phone since the early '90s.

`3:47:08`

Well, it wasn't a mobile phone. It was a mobile computer. And even more than that, it was the most important computer or it would become the most important computer for most people around the world. Which meant that if you liked to make software and wanted to sell it to people, you had to go through that computer. And if going through that computer meant going through Apple's toll booth and not just having to ask them permission, which in and of itself was just an dignity. When you're used to the internet where you don't have to ask anyone permission about anything, you buy a domain and you launch a business and if customers show up, boom, you're success. And if they don't, well you're a failure. Now suddenly before you could even launch, you'd have to ask Apple for permission. That always sat wrong with me. But it wasn't until we launched HEY in 2001 that I saw the full extent of the rot that has snug into Apple's apple. — For people who don't know and we'll talk about it, HEY is this amazing email