Every year in June, Apple hosts a huge conference in northern California called the Worldwide Developers Conference or ww d C. Goody good, this is one of the biggest moments of the year. This is Apple basically saying, hey, this is our big software roadmap for the next year or so, while also hinting at the hardware it's planning for the fall. Of course, it's also where developers learned to build new apps with the latest technologies, which drives Apple's growing services revenues. So, Mark, we're giving you an episode of Decrypted, the preview this year's w w DC. What do you have for us? Thanks Brad Well. Today I'm going to give you an even earlier peak into what's coming at the conference and take you inside the key app store approval process with Philip Schumacher. He used to run Apple's app store review department and play a role in some of the WWC conferences. He left Apple a few years ago and he's now the CEO of a security company called Identity dot Com m We reached out to Apple on a number of points in this interview and they declined to comment. I'm Brad Stone and Dim mark Erman, and you are listening to decrypted. Okay, Mark, I'll let you take it from here. I remember this must have been ten years ago. In a past life, they used to do some some app development. Oh I know ya back in the day. So we were in ninth grade or tenth grade, my friend Aaron and I. We saw there was an app called I Am Rich. It was a thousand dollars and I think that's uh, maybe before you started or a little bit after you started, and that app got removed, got from the App store after I think sixteen or eighteen people bought it. So we thought it would be funny to come up with a hundred dollar version called you Are Rich. That get that got pulled from the app store. And that's how I met you, because after I got pulled, I called to complaint again, before I did all the Apple News wanting to talk to you, demanding to talk to Philip Shoemaker's and then I got you. So what was that? Like? How often were you were you doing stuff like that? Well, you know, to be honest, you were one of the few developers that actually reached out and you were persistent about it. Right that you're doing what you're doing now. But at the time, there were a few developers that would reach out. Two thousand nine was really breakthrough year for Apple and learning a lot about the App Store, and we learned a lot about how approving the wrong app can actually make the stock price go down. And when that happens, you get calls like I did from Steve, from al Gore and folks like that that would just you know, be mad at you for for your team approving an app like that. Yeah, I know, that's interesting. I didn't realize it went literally all the way to the talk and beyond with Jobs and al Gore. What what was the interaction between app review and was actually you know, volume submission volume. In March two tho nine, we're just skyrocketing and they kept going anyway. We were doubling the size of the team every three to six months, so uh so it would it was very involved, this very involved process, and to put these questionable apps in front of the executives once a month was ridiculous to me. So I made that meeting weekly, which meant I got a beating weekly right when you'd miss your numbers or you to prove the wrong app, which you know, in the early days we did all of that. It was. It was a process we were trying to refine because we were we were inventing. However, when certain apps got to prove that they shouldn't have you know that three more three weeks into my job, Apple released, uh an Apple or approved an app called baby Shaker. I'm sure you know all about that. Yeah, take us through that. What take us start to finish? What happened there? Baby Shaker was was one of these really weird things because at the time, early early on in the app store, we were not certain as to what apps we should have proved and not approved. Early on, we really had eight uh seven or eight things that Steve gave us specifically to look out for, and things like I Am Rich weren't on there. Things like baby Shaker just really weren't there. So early on we were having three sets of eyes look at every app. It went to somebody that one of my peers, uh someone senior that I took the team over from, and two of his employees, and they all approved it. And what it was was it's a it's a drawing of a baby and when it would start to cry, just randomly, you would rock it to sleep, and that was great, but if you were getting frustrated, people would shake the heck out of that device, and then it put excess over the eyes of the baby. And it says never shake a baby, but it was I wouldn't say it was a a a good message, but it should never been approved. So when that app got approved, it was an interesting day. I got approved on a Monday or Tuesday, and we announced record earnings. We announced I think Eddie had announced something like a billion download for the app store. I mean, all these amazing numbers, and our stock price went down. And that's because of the bay, because of the baby Shaker. We had the shaking baby syndrome. Folks piketting outside of infinite loop for me baby shap. It was interesting because I saw my phone ring and it said Steve Job's office, and I picked up Reticent and I got as admin who said Steve would like to talk to you. And Steve just had simple word for me, You're stupid and you hire stupid people. This was one of the best conversations I had with Steven. Was just so succinct, to the point you hung at the phone. I knew I understood his gist right. It just was and I had nothing to do with this app. I didn't hire the people that reviewed it, I didn't review it myself, but I get it. The next phone call I got was from the office of Al Gore, and then that just blew my mind. And talking to Al, he he just wanted to know what the review process was and how we missed this and what were the mistakes, and he was very pleasant, unlike the Steve. Interesting. Is that common for board members to get involved with the senior executives at Apple across? They're not usually. Yeah, this is the first time and only time it ever happened to me at Apple. So tell me about the review process itself, how it started under you, and what it progressed too, because, like you said, I remember this was like a one two week thing. These days you can get an Apple proof within two hours, right, So how does it work? Someone submits an app to the app store, someone on the app review team downloads the file, puts on the phone, take us into the room. There's no secret. First of all, there's zero automation. Well you have to wrap your head around that, right. Every app has to see a set of eyes, and that's something that Phil was always Phil Schiller was always adamant. And that's the senior VP of marketing who now runs all the app store operations. That's correct. And Phil Wood was adamant that we needed a set of eyes because things slipped through. So you'd go there in the morning, and you're a good reviewer, you say, you know, I could review probably between fifty d apps a day. Now, that's high. Sounds like most reviewers could do about thirty, especially if it's like a game or something super involved. You know, it could take forever. That's right. Some of the some of the levels, some of the the other features unlock over time, so it's difficult to review every app. We don't have any special functionality to go in and look at a specific screen. We're using it just like users are. So a reviewer goes in, they aim say, let's just say it's a it's a basic reviewer. They claim thirty apps, and so they go and they claim up. Now, what that does is that downloads it from the server internally and then starts sinking it to your device. Once everything sinked, you have now thirty apps on your device. And you go, you you load up the tool on your Mac. You say okay, I'm gonna review this one first, and then you launch it on your on your device and you just start looking. Now, there's over a hundred and fifty guidelines. In the early days, it wasn't that defined, and so it's a little more nuanced than what you see in the guidelines. The guidelines are written up in a gray way for a very valid reason. Right, we want we don't know what we're going to see what you're talking about, the like the famous app review guidelines that are on apples Felt website. That's correct, but so developers would submit apps not knowing what's allowed and what's not allowed. And the way most developers in the early days would determine what's okay is they would look at the store. If it's on the store, clearly it's all right. But if you think about it, app reviewers are human, so in in in a case like this, I saw that as an absolute failure, and I've always always tried to fix it. That's why I think automation would be so so helpful. But you and I know a I can only get us so far. Now, then we relied heavily on this weekie, and this Weekie became hundreds of pages long. You expect a reviewer to review an app in about thirteen minutes, right for a new app thirteen minutes while looking at a hundred pages of a wiki. It's just it's untenable. So over time, we we just started refining these these wiki guidelines. We we started refining all of our processes to be able to make a little flow flow a little faster, and to be honest, to get it down under three weeks, which is what it was when I joined. We we had to make a lot of changes, and one of the first was over time, I got rid of the three eyes on every app and got it down to one set of eyes. But all these reviewers had to pass a lot of education that we did internally and then ultimately I sit down with me. So in order to be you know, the guy who can put the stamp down to push our guy or girls push the app out, they had to have a chat with you first. You had to approve them as a member of the team. Yeah, I sat down with everybody before they could push that final button and remind them about Baby Shaker, remind them about I am rich, and and talk to them about stock price going down based on just one bad decision that the team makes. And uh, look, that baby shaker incident was painful internally. So what's the room like? Is it like this big, you know, big room with a bunch of desks, a bunch of iPads, iPhones, etcetera, where everyone saying next to each other collaborating or is it very individualized? Yeah, tell me, pretend you're an opper viewer. Tell me what your days like. So I'll tell you about the first days. Right, the early days March two nine and most of two thousand nine, we were in infinite loop three, so I O three and we were scattered in conference rooms, so no rooms not bigger than this. In a room this big, we would probably put in five reviewers with you know, a foot and a half two ft of death space, and we're in a small room by the way, we're in a small room. We'd fit five folks in there. We'd black in all the windows, and we would card activate every door. Because this was you're dealing with developers secrets, right, they haven't released as publicly yet. You want to be able to hold onto these things and make sure that um um and make sure that nobody outside of the app review team sees these apps in advance because we have a we have a responsibility to the developers. So everything was locked down. We had black curtains everywhere and UH and the reviewer would sit in front of a MacBook and and one or two phones typically, you know. Obviously, after the iPad came out, we put an iPad and every UH, every UH reviewer had multiple iPads and multiple iPhones. And over time we added to the processes such as wiping out each device every morning, and we had a lot of a lot of crazy situation scenarios in in those rooms where people would be eating UH. So what one of the big ones was oatmeal every morning with fish sauce on it, and half the team would choke at that. The other half the team loved it. So just crazy things like that always happening. Now. The way it is now is it's an open I'm sure you've been to Facebook and other companies like that and you've seen their open floor plan. It's pretty much like that. Everybody gets about three ft now of death space. But it's all open and it's extremely collaborative. Now, how many people would you say are reviewing apps? And is it localized to Cupertino. Do places otherwhere, elsewhere in California, elsewhere in the world. How what's the setup like in in in a company where where you're representing over fifty three countries. We are fifty three languages that were represented by my team. You would be great to be able to hire people outside of Cupertino, but that's not the Apple way, right. The Apple way is this is an intellectual property. What we do on the review team and how we review apps is very new to the world. We didn't want anybody like Microsoft or Google or anybody learning our secrets, so we never hired contractors and we kept them all in Cupertino, and then ultimately we built a few buildings in Sunnyvale and that's where they're to this day. What do you think of the recent App store changes? There's been a lot, you know, to improve it on the consumer side, the interface, but also uh subscriptions, new ways for developers to create additional revenue. What are your thoughts. There's good and bad with all of it. You know. The thing that pained me as a I've I've always been a uh. You could look at my job at Apple is kind of a regulator to make allow what goes on the store, and what how they marketed all of that other stuff. I didn't really care about that. The thing that kind of got me a little nervous was when we started putting advertisements in the and when you would search for a certain game added the top. The search ads were painful like Google search results, and they would have to pay per click or pay for every hundred clicks or so or hundred downloads, so you could have the worst app ever that's always appearing at the top. And uh, and I talked about worst apps a lot, because there's a lot of stuff in the store that's that shouldn't be there in my opinion, right, So how do you think it should be? Do you think they should be more stringent? I remember were very early days, especially when the first iPad came out. Tell me about that with Steve Jobs involved personally, and what are the first styles and apps for the iPad, You're gonna be extra careful because I remember when I submitted iPad apps, those things were getting rejected left and right. Doesn't make stay that it doesn't make sense to have as one of the first bundle of apps. Talks about that, right, the the the iPad was was interesting. It was the first hardware release that my team got really involved in. For the most part, Apples super tight on on new equipment, new products, and they don't want to expose it to anybody. And my team was mostly a bunch of ex Apple genius Apple store folks, right, That's where we hired a majority of our of our people from, and so Apple didn't see them as the standard corporate folks, and therefore the team wasn't as as trustworthy as the others. And plus it's a large group. It grew over time. So so we typically weren't involved in new product releases and I understand that, but sometimes we have to get involved, like the watch and the iPad were two examples. The iPad we were involved pretty much about three weeks before launch, not much more than that, and that's when we started. Except this was the only time we allowed people to submit apps that were in alpha or beta state, just so we could start understanding what people were because people developers didn't have iPads yet, someone needed to test it out on hardware, obviously would be Apple, so they could be ready for day one when consumers get them. That's right, really good point right in the past, we don't. We never allow you to submit an app until the hardware has been released because we want to make sure you're trying it on actual hardware. You don't just do it based on a simulator build, because it's not it's never the same, never the same. But you and I you probably know this as well as I do. Most developers submit on a simulator build. So every night I'd send a bunch of apps off to the Exacts and say here's the issue we have, right it's tracking location or whatever the issue was, and trying to figure out if this was something that's appropriate or not. Everybody wanted to change the UI. They wanted to go to like a desktop UI for the iPad. So we are a lot of developers drawing these, uh these like desktop metaphors, which we rejected all of them, even though it's kind of interesting, it just didn't fit the iPad and iPhone model, the iOS model, So we rejected a bunch of those. But early on I grabbed a team about fifteen people. We put them in a special room from the app review team, and they were the only ones that were able to play with the hardware. We hadn't mounted uh you know, with the cable light like used to see in the Apple stores, mounted to the desk and uh, and we collected them every evening. So it was a very tight process and we rejected and rejected every day. We rejected apps, and developers resubmit every day those same apps to be able to be in that first block. So that leads me to my next question. And I know, I mean, you could easily just flatly deny this. Do some developers get you know, special attention or special policies? And in circumstances, what's the difference between you know, me as a developer back then in high school, uh, you know, a mom and pop shop development firm and Facebook. Because the idea was they would all be treated the same. But is that necessarily the case. Steve always argued that all developers should be treated equally. For me, it was all about I took Steve's word and I said, yes, all developers are created equally. I will not give one developer any allowance. And if you if you read some of the early stuff that I wrote on Twitter, etcetera, I was calling out Facebook all the time, even though they were one of these privileged few developers, they had some of the worst code at the time. I mean they uploaded remember the Wall Street Journal article the apps are Watching You. That radically fundamentally changed what we did at atter View because we realized that even big developers linked In and the facebooks that were taking your contacts and sending them to the cloud, you just couldn't trust them, right. They weren't notifying people that they were doing this yet Path and Facebook and LinkedIn and so many companies were doing this that you start giving this special allowances to these big guys because they're who they are, and you get burned. There is another app I did want to ask you about Google Voice. Obviously you know today ten years later this is Google's calling service. But Google wanted to do was launch Google Voice for iPhones. This was in the early days of the App store. But there's a whole back story. There was talk us through it. Well it actually you know, Google Voice for for online for the web came out long before before they tried to push through a Google Voice for the for the iPhone, and the third party developer was the first one on board. And what he did was he wrote an app for uh I forget what the name of it was, and for Google Voice Voice. I think I think it was with Sean. I don't good memory, good memory, Yeah, it's definitely g Voice. And I had weekly calls with him. I mean he and I had many conversations and it lasted eleven months, probably of me saying you're not going to get on the store. You're not getting on the store today, You're not getting on the store then, and it went on daily. Now let's take a look at why, right, what is Google Voice. Well, it replaces the telephone features of your It replaces that the calling features of your iPhone. That was kind of strike number one. Apple says, no, this this is for we don't want Google to take over the phone. We don't want there to be a Gmail client, a browser, a phone calling contacts, etcetera, etcetera. Right, because then it would become the g phone. Was the fear, right, just like they're afraid of the Facebook phone. So there was an actual fear inside Apple early days of the app store that if they allowed these different Google services on the phone, the phone could basically become a Google phone. That was a real thing, that was a real thing. And the fear that somebody would come along a Facebook and Google whomever and wipe off and remove all of our items, you know, the dialing, the contacts, and replace that with Facebook or Google variations of it. That was the number one fear because then suddenly you're kind of you're losing this this uh um, You're you're losing the cash of the phone. You're losing the people think more about Apple once they start using these other apps, they'd be thinking more about Google. Now is that a reason why still to this day, and I believe that will be the case for iOS thirteen, which we'll get to. You cannot set other third party apps as defaults for main functions. Yes, I would say that's absolutely the reason. Now, if if you look at it, if if if you look at historically what app was doing Apple Finally, you know, Scott Forstall, the VP of engineering at the time, uh said something really good. He says, look, I don't care if these other competing services come on the platform. It's actually good for us. We work harder to make a better product. And Scott was the was the wise man in the room. But but others always pushed back on that. Ultimately, we got Google Voice in, at which point I was able to to get g Voice on onto it and allow other voipe apps like line too and uh and other apps as well. So that takes me to my next point. What about this growing concern of competition between Apple and the app developers. You have this whole Supreme Court situation where they ruled that there can be lower court lawsuits in regards to the percentage that Apple takes from developers. There's also fear. There was a story in the New York Times recently that Apple was pulling a lot of apps that competed with screen Time. Apple said that was because of privacy concerns, which I totally believe, but that doesn't take away from the fact that there is that concern, especially now with these new iOS releases that are coming out with better and better core apps. Right, what do you think of that? I'm really worried about about the competition piece. You know, you see the like Spotify going to the EU regulators about breaking um and you have Elizabeth Warren talking about breaking up Facebook and apples, etcetera. And and I struggle with that. I recently wrote a Medium post on on this thing because I believe that that there is now a conflict as Apple goes into these spaces that are ripe with competition. You know, in the early days of the iPhone, everything Apple was doing was new, but once there started being competition, like Spotify was a big one. Right. Remember back in the day when Steve said nobody wants to rent their music. I was at Rhapsody at the time. I love the digital subscription music business and to hear that just kind of broke my heart. And now you have Apple Music, and now you have Apple Music. So when Apple Music comes out and they put it on the thing and on on the platform, and then they require Spotify or or let's say Netflix for a different business model, and they put them out there and say, oh, by the way, you still have to pay us. The margins are too thin. That's why we changed some of the guidelines in the early days about allowing for UH magazines and certain types of of content to to not have to use an app purchase. Right, they could get around that. Remember that because of the March was a shift. So originally you cannot build free to play apps and games, so if you wanted to offer in app purchases, you're app needed to be paid one. Two years later they switched it so you could do that's right, that's right. And Apple really was focusing on a few core things like like music, movies, uh, magazine subscriptions because the margins are just so thin there they can't spare the so Apple made a special allowance for that. But they're now in a position of of of dominance again. Right, we have the Apple Music, but Apple Music doesn't have to carve out and pay that to some other entity, but Spotify has to. I mean, this is where you can absolutely annihilate the competition. But so what do you think is going to happen? What do you think the outcome is going to be? Do you think Apple will lower the the split, the commission split? What's the solution there? This is a tough one because I don't know what the right answer is here. You know too, and I think it's gonna be status quo. So, speaking of developers, we are sitting here just two weeks ahead of the Annual Developers Conference, and given your background and your knowledge of apps and developers, I thought it would be great to talk about this upcoming w w DC with you. And We've reported a lot about what's to be expected, but I'm mostly curious from you. What was Apper views involvement or your involvement specifically in your more senior role on ww d C this big conference for thousands of developers. What were rehearsals like was the atmosphere for the company leading up to this big June launch Every year, it's, uh, it's chaos there right now, you know, it's just a few weeks away. Apple. Apple really starts diving digging into this in in January time frame, and they start focusing internally. Now, the venues and all of that's already been reserved, you know, so that gets handled a well in advance. But that January and we come back from the holiday break, Uh, it's it's crunch mode for for everything. And one of the first things is getting the tickets in the right developers hands. So as you know, it used to be we would make them available, we wouldn't tell people when we'd make them available, and people would buy them up quickly. Now it was always on us time zones. So we'd open in the door the first thing in the morning, ten a m. On Apple time in California, and we'd find that the Chinese developers were way under represented. The European ones were a little better represented because of the time zone. But people in the East, uh in Asia and stuff, they were not able to get um the tickets they needed to and that's when it really started selling out. You know, before the iPhone, we couldn't give away tickets, and now it's more of a lottery system. But you know, you have to use air quotes when you say that, because it's a lottery for for you and me, But it's not a lottery for the Epics and the Zingas in the ten cents right, they're guaranteed admission and it will always be that way because you need some of their products on board. So it starts out with just trying to get the tickets into people's hands, and then it's all about getting the right content. And there's a lot I was on all those planning meetings trying to figure out exactly what we're gonna do, who the band is going to be. This is all pretty much and right now it's in crunch mode for presentations. The developers are all getting during their rehearsals right now. Because you know, we always Apple always wanted at least a thousand developers to be in attendance at this, which is Apple Developers. Apple engineers. Yes, that's correct, Apple engineers. So they have their main keynote which is always on that Monday, typically on that Monday, but then throughout the week hundreds of sessions. You would say, Apple engineers a little going a little deeper on the new API s, new developer frameworks, the new applications. That's right, and so that's what they've been preparing for the last six months. That's what we're preparing for. And then after that they're expected to be in the lab for long periods of time because when you release a new feature, uh, you want to be able to come down and speak directly to some of the developers that are trying to use your APIs, etcetera, and be able to answer some of these questions. A lot of bugs get fixed. Developers learn Apple developers learn a lot about how people are trying to use the APIs and were able to fix them up before it goes to production. What was your involvement in new features, new iOS features or mac os features that were presented annually pretty much zero to be honest. It's these features was great about when Scott Forstall was run. It changed when when he left Scott became he helped us build out the app Store, and he saw all the pains we were going through when we were building it, and so Scott was very uh knowledgeable of what would impact app review, and so whenever they had a new feature that we were gonna have to review for, he'd always make his team figure out how is Apple, how is the app review going to review for this feature? How are they going to be able to tell if they're doing it right or if they're doing it wrong. And he was really good about that. When he left, everything changed. We had less visibility into engineering. Engineering never consulted us when they would submit a new feature or put a feature out that would greatly impact us. We just got notified a few weeks before the dub dub d C and then we'd have to kind of figure out how we were going to work with it. So how else do you think Apple software development changed From the transition from Scott Forstall, who was the first person in charge of iOS software, to Craig Federigo who now runs iOS and mac os software and all the underlying frameworks. It's it's it's tough to know how much was was the changing of the guard versus just the amount of code that people suddenly have to write. I mean, I think we're all pretty aware that that things are a little buggier than they used to be, right that the fit and finish of the software, and I'm not talking the hardware, the software, it's just not what it used to be now. I completely agree with you. We had a story last year that after a couple of years of people making comments like this, which is entirely valid and true, they sort of changed the development process so instead of focusing on one annual release, they would focus on the next couple of releases, and they could give and take software features between the two. And I think that's what we're going to see a little bit more this year, is new features, but with a big performance push. So I want to talk about some of the new things that they're going to be pushing on. On one hand, the Apple Watch is going to be getting more independent, so they're going to be adding for the first time, the App Store to the Apple Watch. That's something that you think developers have been asking for, anticipating what would the benefit be there? How would even look on such a small screen. Yeah, it's that that's a great question. It's uh, it's something we always expected when we released the watch. The expectation in the very first was that we were gonna have a watch store right on the watch. But it became embarrassing the number of apps that you would um that were submitted specifically for the watch. I mean, as you know right now when it's watch only apps, which if you think about in the in in or apps that support the watch, I want to say watch only apps, apps and support the watch only about versus two point two million. So it's always been kind of uh embarrassment for Apple there. They didn't get enough people understanding the design how to design for a watch, but also people just didn't gravitate towards it as much as they did the iPad, iPhone and Apple TV. The apps were super, super buggy, like the launch apps. They would take a very long time to load. It was like very It was remembering when the iPhone three G came out with the app store. Okay, so the phone cum July, then Steve jobs and bills this big software update in September, but within the three month period that thing was really bugging really But that's what the Apple Watch was like for like the first year or two. That's right, you know, and so so yeah, Apple was always kind of embarrassed by by the Watch submission numbers. I tracked him every week and I remember doing that for about six months. Finally the executive said, you know, we don't need that data anymore because it's just kind of a letdown when you see it. I mean, I always tracked data for me. Transparency is important, right, you want to be as open as you can with the executives on my team would make a mistake, et cetera. But we always included this data. We always wanted to see how it was trending up or down and submissions because I could allocate team resources differently, take people off the Watch team because I had different teams for everything. I had Chinese language team, I had to Watch team, and and the idea was to be able to to use allocate your resources appropriately. So I'm excited that the Watch is finally getting its own store. It's going to be difficult to navigate, and we know all of the issues that are in a constrained UI, but but I'm excited that finally the pushes there because the idea is that now you have a place to look watch only you be able to sit there and while you're sitting on the bus, you'll just be able to swipe through your watch and see what apps you want to download. I think it might have a little more engagement. I think it'll be good for them. And they're also doing a few new applications for the Apple Watch. There's going to be a voice memos out for the first time. There's going to be a woman's health app called Cycles, a pill reminder reminders app called Dose. What do you think of them adding? And there's this Apple Books out for listening to audiobooks that they're adding. Do you think that's gonna, you know, push developers to build their own competitive apps for the watch as well, or does it scare them away? That's the question. What do you think? I think it's it's it's a difficult one to me. Apple hasn't been getting the uptake on on watch submissions that they want. People love the watch, don't get me wrong. People love to watch for it's built in functionality for the most part. These apps are are are tertiary or secondary your tertiary. So I think it will probably drive more development if if they start getting more engagement, especially with these apps that that are needed. I mean, why haven't we had a voice memos app on the on the watch? It would have been helpful for this would have been very helpable. And and so for a long time you're you're wondering why had they're doing that. I'm glad Apple is finally doing a push to do more native apps, because yeah, I think absolutely will drive more engagement. A few other things here on This is on the iOS thirteen side, So the iPhone and iPad update. Obviously, the iPad is gonna get big updates for multitasking as they try to push away from the Mac in some respects Spring developers more towards the iPad. Will get into that in a second, but also some more functionality taking over some third pretty apps, like a way to create a second display by connecting your iPad to a Mac, a new reminders application that's pretty nifty, new stuff and messages, updated maps, and new find my Friends and find my iPhone combined app. Do you think this is going to present issues for developers whereas Apple was coming out with better versions in some respects of what app developers are doing, or do you think this is just going to make both sides better. It's it's a very valid point a question. It's it's tough. It's tough to know the answer here, right, Apple, Apple and App Review have been putting companies out of business since two thousand nine. Right that That's what I was like to say, because you know how many companies I had to call and destroy and say, look, your business model doesn't work anymore. We can't allow that type of app in the store. I've done that too many companies. Now, some of those people are still friends of mine, oddly enough, or they became friends in this process because they like the transparency and the openness of me saying, look, I'm sorry, we're entering into this business. And so that's happened too for you. I mean, I'm sure it was. What's the personal broke my heart? Broke my heart every time, because I would say to the reviewers almost every day, it's like, because remembers two thousand nine, uh, a lot of developers were submitting apps and we weren't in there. I wouldn't say it was a session, but the economy wasn't super strong. A lot of developers were out of jobs, and I would remind the review team every day that you are what's stopping an app from getting on the store and potentially making money for this developer to put food on the table and send their kids to school. But look, this is one of those cases where um, a developer can can take Scott four Stalls advice and say, look, I can do something better. Let me out think Apple here. Uh, not easy to do always. Apple's got a lot of money and they've got a lot of big brains. But at the same time, I think we're gonna always come and find another avenue at this same same type of technology. What about the Forgotten app Store, the t VUS App Store, What is going on there? Her are they getting a lot of submissions? It doesn't seem like new apps are getting added to that regularly or people are really taking advantage of the plot. It's it's sad to me past the iOS app store, the the TV app store. To me, it was going to be was was my fair of it, because I loved having the big screen. I love just being able to sit there and do that. But you know, it's not easy to enter your credentials. You don't have to get your app out and and uh on your iPhone and and so for me, it's just it's not still not a great user experience, and how many people enter the password by speaking it into the thing, And when you're surrounded by folks, you know you don't do that. So it's it's difficult to get into the TV app store um for a user to get in there and find interesting things. But I think there's still so much promise. We just need better ways of interacting with it. And I still love yet to see that, right And what about the home Pod. There's no official app store, but there is a way to tap iPhone apps into it. I think it's a huge, huge missed opportunity. Agree, I don't anticipate that being fixed this year. But do you would Do you think they would go up against the Alexa app? I think they should, absolutely should. It's just they need more right for right now, Alexa has got pretty you know. I I go into Alexa if if I want to get something new on that, I go to my phone. I find something interesting and I install it, and pretty much anything I want is there for the most part, and I enjoy that. When you can get to that point with the home Pot, when there's enough submissions, I just don't know how much there is there right now. Yeah, it seems like one of the weaker products in their lineup. But just one other thing here that I just wanted to, you know, to touch upon. Going back to w w d C. What was it like for you personally, like that week, that time that lead up to it. What was the drop off after those June introductions and does the process really ramp up for you in those three months between the new iPhone release and w w DC finishing. Yeah, w d d C was was difficult for my team. The first year I was there. We had no presence at at dub d C as far as my team was concerned. My team was back in Creuputino just trying to prove apps right to any review apps UH and I would walk the halls and I would talk to developers UH, and I realized that was a big missed opportunity for us for the app review organization to actually sit down and meet with developers. So was that that next one in two thousand and ten that I said, we need a room I need I need to be part of a marketing event or something so we can start talking to developers. And that became a big room full of my most senior app reviewers. These were typically the ones that would call developers. You got calls from these people. All of us got calls from these guys. They were the ones that would be able to represent the team well and be able to answer questions right, because developers love to record app review and try to put them on I remember there were some blog posts were posting the recordings. Hi, this is whoever from Apphole's right, And you know what I would do. I would download all those I would listen to them, and then I'd bring them to the person that was was talking and the rest of the team, and I'd say, Okay, here's how we should handle these calls. Now. It was embarrassing, but it was also a teaching moment. I wasn't doing that to out anyone and so you did a bad job, It's like, hey, let's learn from this, let's figure out how to make this better in the future. So it was great to have all these reviewers there and the and then I started getting iTunes connect folks in there, started getting app store marketing folks into this room, and so we basically had this big room full of If you were a developer and you want to come into our lab. You get answers to all your questions, how do I get featured? You know, why are you rejecting my app for sixteen point one or whatever the guideline was, And and we get everyone together to be able to help out developers. And so after that point two thousand ten on dubbed d C was hard. I was in the lab every day, but I get pulled into other meetings with bigger developers. But mostly I would spend all my time in the labs trying to solve people's problems. And we had laptops there. We could look up exactly what your problem was and be able to diagnose it and tell you specifically what you needed to change this screen right here right. Stuff that's difficult to do a remail or even over a phone call. We could sit down with the developer and let them know what the problems were. This is where it was in these meetings that some of these developers whose businesses I took down would come to me and talk to me, and we became friends over time. An amazing turn. Um, well, thank you so much. This was incredibly fascinating and eye opening. I feel like we have a real inside peek into you know the app store. Well, thank you, this is great, Thank you, thank you. Felt really appreciate it. And that's it for this week's episode of Decrypted. Thanks for listening. I want to know what you thought about this show right to us at Decrypted at Bloomberg dot net or I'm on Twitter at at Mark German and I'm at brad Stone And please help us spread the word about our show by leaving us a rating or review wherever you like to listen to podcasts. This episode was produced by Pia good Cary and Lindsay Kraditwill. Our story editor was Aki Ito. Thank you also to Ann vander May and Emily Us. Francesco Levie is head of Bloomberg Podcasts. We'll see you next week.