This week on Liftoff, we discuss recent interviews with Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. Rockets, AI, dying on Mars and more!
My thanks to our sponsor this week:
I’ve never been more proud to be operating a large podcast app that’s built on standard RSS, open access, and standard playback of podcasters’ original files directly from their servers, with no garbage ads being inserted, no behavioral tracking for advertisers, no proprietary lock-in, and absolutely no requirements that podcasters register with me, do anything differently, lose any control, agree to any terms, or even be aware of my app at all to be played, shared, and promoted in it.
I worry that it’s toxic to combine advertising sales with an exclusive app for playback. Advertisers want tracking? You got it — in Stitcher. The end goal here is lock-in, and so I think it’s worth fighting right from the start, even at the expense of a few thousand additional listeners for my show. Maybe they’ll never become dominant. Maybe even if they do, they won’t do anything to promote lock-in. But now is the only time to resist the possibility that they’ll grow dominant and abuse their position. It’s too late once it happens.
Media company E.W. Scripps Co. has continued its push into podcasting with the acquisition of Stitcher for $4.5 million in cash.
Stitcher is a free app that streams more than 65,000 podcasts from publishers ranging from NPR to MSNBC to The Wall Street Journal. It will operate under Midroll Media, the podcast advertising company that Scripps acquired last year for $50 million, plus $10 million more over three years if the company hits certain milestones.
The team catches up on pre-WWDC rumors concerning MacBook Pros, the Apple TV and Siri.
My thanks to our sponsor:
This week on Upgrade, I joined Myke and Jason to discuss the product that changed Apple’s fortunes: the original iMac.
We’re introducing a new show today on Relay FM, hosted by Jeffrey Veen:
The Presentable Podcast focuses on how we design and build the products that are shaping our digital future. We’ll track the tools, trends, and methods being used by teams from the biggest companies and latest startups. In each episode, Jeff will bring over two decades of experience as a designer, developer, entrepreneur, and investor as he chats with guests about the how design is changing the world.
I joined Clockwise this week to talk about Siri API integrations, no Overwatch on Mac, Apple missing the AI wave and the MacBook Pro’s rumored OLED touchbar. It was a good time.
Today on everyone’s favorite fortnightly space podcast:
Jason and Stephen catch up some news, talk about some weird ways stars end and are then joined by Loren Grush, science reporter at The Verge to talk about commercial crew, inflatable space hotels and more.
It was really great to talk with Loren. She does killer reporting at The Verge. My thanks to our sponsors for this episode:
On the latest episode of the Simple Beep podcast, Ed, Brian and I got real deep into the detailed history of the various revisions Apple made to the iMac. Think of it as an extended version of that YouTube video from the other day.
The boys talk about Google’s I/O announcements and Federico drops a bombshell.
My thanks to our sponsor this week: