Study warns Seattle over-relies on Big Tech; Seattle Times v. Microsoft; Apple's iPhone Duo echoes the past

0:00And the report said that three quarters of the payroll tax on large employers in that top tier comes from 10 companies, 10 companies, and nine of those 10 companies are tech-related companies. So obviously Amazon is the monster in there. And this doesn't impact Microsoft directly because Microsoft really doesn't have a presence in the city of Seattle anymore. They're over in Redmond, but Amazon. Nor will they be expanding here anytime soon. Hello, and welcome to Geekwire. I'm Geekwire co-founder Todd Bishop. And I'm Geekwire co-founder John Cook. We are coming to you from, well, I'm visiting California this week, but John's back in Seattle where we'd like to say what happens here matters everywhere. And every week on this show, we talk about some of the most interesting and important stories and trends in the news. John coming up this week, a study commissioned by the city says Seattle is not in decline,

1:01but it's in danger. And the researchers are looking to a surprising corner of the tech world to pull us out of it. Microsoft's hometown paper sues Microsoft over AI. I want to talk about the Seattle Times. That was one of the shoppers. That was an interesting story for sure. Very interesting. And Apple copies a failed Microsoft product yet again. It's happened enough times that we're going to make it the topic of this week's Geekwire trivia challenge. So stick around for all of that on this week's show. Hey, before we jump in this week, we want to invite you to join us for a live Geekwire podcast event coming up Wednesday, September 16th, featuring Toby Roberts, the senior vice president of engineering at Zillow. We're going to be talking all about the intersection of AI real estate, housing and tech. John, are you excited for this one? Yeah, Todd, it's going to be a fun conversation. It's going to be great to bring the Geekwire podcast community together. And we're looking forward to talking about everything going on in the housing market and

2:04the innovations taking place with AI in real estate. Geekwire is holding this event in partnership with real estate at work. Again, this is a live recording of the Geekwire podcast. Before PM September 16th, that's next Wednesday with Toby Roberts, the senior vice president of engineering at Zillow. And you can find a link to tickets in the show notes and on the related post with this episode on Geekwire. Again, join us Wednesday, September 16th at 4pm in Seattle for a special recording of the Geekwire podcast. All right, let's jump in with this week's show. John, I've actually got some bad news for you. I apologize to start things off on a negative foot, but did you see the news from the port of Seattle today about I'm devastated. I know you are. So the headline on their news release is saying goodbye to C spot saver. John, you introduced me to the magic of this program. And now they are taking it away.

3:06This is the thing where you basically reserved a time at TSA and thereby skipped the line almost entirely. It's so slick if you can be on time. And they're taking it away. What's going on here? I was really a little piece of me was torn away when I saw this service was going dormant. I mean, it's one of the few things I actually like about traveling through C-TAC airport. Now it's going away. Why would they do this? Now, they make the claim that they've improved the TSA congestion line so much with new concourses and new things open new lines, new security lines opening up that it's gotten so much better that people aren't using it as much or it's not needed. I still think it's needed. It was a little travel hack that you could get around the security lines. I'd still use it even if the line was the same same amount, you know? So yeah, I was bummed to see that.

4:06What a drag. To your point, they say that C-TAC has grown over the years. They're currently the 11th busiest airport in the country, yet the most space constrained major airport. I didn't know that. This led to some longer checkpoint wait times in the past and they developed and launched C-Spot Saber in 2021 to help manage that and they were waiting for long term solutions which are now in place to your point. Maybe we need to start a campaign to save C-Spot Saber and we'll get Rally the Geekwire community to save this. Now, a lot of people have TSA pre or clear and they have a service and which I likely will go get now one of those services but it's a bit of a rigour roll to sign up for those. It's a bit of a pain. With C-Spot Saber, you just logged in and got your time and frankly it was about the same as doing TSA pre. So I didn't see any need to go through that process with C-Spot Saber in my hometown.

5:08Now, I got to say, I went to the airport for the first time in several months on my way to California for this trip. The new Alaska check in area is incredible. I assume that must have been in place for the World Cup and then the C-Con course. Oh my gosh, I had no idea all that work was going on behind the scenes. Anyway, we're not going to turn this into a C-TAC podcast. Hopefully the lines actually diminish. I've got some travel coming up. My next couple of travel dates. I'm going to actually test this out and we'll report back on whether the lines that have actually diminished to a point that they have to get rid of C-Spot Saber. All right, moving on to topic number one. There's a new Seattle economic study out. It says the city is in danger, not in decline. It's titled Sea Wall, Building a Resilient Seattle Economy, 127 pages. I spent most of my Thursday night and Friday morning with this thing, John. So our geek wire readers didn't have to.

6:11It's from the economic consulting firm Formation, the Seattle Economic Development Office commissioned it back in 2025 under a prior administration. And basically, the whole idea here is that they were trying to assess where things are in terms of the economy and Seattle and where the tech industry is in particular. I mean, this was really a report about the state of tech in Seattle in many ways. And bottom line, their point is that the city is relying too heavily on a very small base of large technology companies, the whims of which could in the future completely undercut the city's budget. And it cuts both ways because on the one hand, you have these big tech companies, Amazon included saying, hey, you're penalizing us for simply hiring people. That's really what they say the jumpstart tax is about where the city imposes a tax on high wage earners through the companies.

7:13And at the same time, this report is saying, you know, that's kind of true. Seattle is pretty unique in this regard. And it's very risky for the city to take this kind of approach. There was a lot to this. I also want to talk about the clean tech takeaways. John, you also went to the greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce event that I know focused on parts of this. Are we seeing the Seattle administration finally open its eyes to the needs of the tech community and the business community here? Or is this window dressing or what's going on here? I mean, I wish I knew the answer to that. But correct me if I'm wrong here. But in reading, now Mayor Katie Wilson put out a proclamation of some sort, an executive order announcing that this study had been completed. And so our first foray into this was through essentially a press release from the mayor's office. So then I started, oh, it's like, oh, this must be a sanctioned report from the mayor's

8:18office. But as I understand it, it's not right. This is this was up, this was a report that started under the previous mayor, Mayor Harrell and has continued and now they've simply released it. And it's not like Mayor Katie Wilson is endorsing aspects of this report. At least that's how I took it. But it was, it was a bit unusual. The nuance and how this was released and how whether Katie Wilson is behind this proposal or supporting the thesis or not. I don't, to me, that was unclear. Yes, I think it was going to be released regardless. And in some ways Katie Wilson is getting on board. Her office said in releasing this report that the findings are independent and are not city policy. So it's an independent report commissioned to an outside consultant. But then I was listening to Mayor Wilson on Soundside, the KUW program. And she called it fantastic. She said it's super nuanced. And people out there who were listening should definitely read it. Now the big conflict here is that Katie Wilson, prior to becoming Mayor, was one of the

9:21architects of this jumpstart tax, this whole idea of the payroll expense tax that penalizes companies that hire high wage senior workers, tech companies in particular. And a very, very small pool of companies. I mean, we're talking less than 50, right? I mean, it's that, that are subject to the tax. Well, it sort of escalates. If you make a certain amount of revenue, you have to pay even more. And so you're in that top tier. And the report said that three quarters of the payroll tax on large employers in that top tier comes from 10 companies, 10 companies, three quarters of the payroll tax in that top tier. And nine of those 10 companies are tech related companies. So obviously Amazon is the monster in there. And this doesn't impact Microsoft directly because Microsoft really doesn't have a presence in the city of Seattle anymore. They're over in Redmond, but Amazon. Nor will they be expanding here anytime soon.

10:22Exactly. And that really is the question here for Seattle proper. And obviously we think about the region broadly and Bellevue is part of that. But it's very clear that when companies like Amazon are thinking about where to hire, they look at this cost and the incremental cost of hiring a high wage earner in Seattle for a company like Amazon is significantly higher. In fact, this report got into the details. Under Jumpstart, this tax program, hiring a software engineer at 650,000 in total compensation costs about $17,000 a year more in Seattle than in Bellevue. And so right there, if you were Amazon, why on earth would you hire anybody in Seattle if you had the option of putting people in Bellevue? It really illustrates what's happening economically behind the scenes and driving these decisions. Yeah. And I mean, I think this has been the age old debate on this is that to have Bellevue,

11:26which is a few miles across Lake Washington from Seattle with a different economic incentive policy that's so drastically different from Seattle, it just makes zero sense at all. I mean, we have to be aligned as a region. Otherwise, I mean, this is why you have seen, you know, there's over 15,000 people, I think, at this point working for Amazon in Bellevue, not in Seattle. And I think this is a big reason why. And the report I need to be clear, it was not just about taxes. That was something that I keyed in on because this is so interesting. And frankly, some behind the scenes conversations that I've been having with some decision-makers that one of these very large companies made it very clear that they have done this calculation themselves. This is not some hypothetical. This is something that big companies actually look at and consider when they're thinking about where to place employees. But beyond that, this report got into some very interesting prescriptions basically saying,

12:28here's what we think the city could do to try and pull itself out of it. And I was actually really surprised by one when I first read it, but then the more I saw it and read the report, the more it made sense to me, the notion that Seattle should bet on clean tech, not on AI. And the reason being that Seattle has more levers to pull in terms of clean tech, it can control the energy. It has Seattle City light as a utility. It has land use and permitting and access to the water. And all these things where with AI, certainly it's going to have a much bigger impact on the region long term, but it's kind of a crapshoot in terms of what happens in that sector from the city's perspective. I'm going to echo Geekwire columnist Charles Fitzgerald who's written about this topic. Oh, we need to talk about this. Yes. Very vocal opinions on this matter. And I think he's right, which is before the city starts betting on any industry or picking

13:33winners and losers in any business sector whatsoever, get the house in order. You know, do the basics. A crime and safety, homelessness, drug addiction, and take care of the basics. Because the basics also pointed out in some other reports and letters that were served to the city this week is just how far behind the city is. And we're talking about the city of Seattle proper in doing the basics. And I think that's the first job of a mayor and of the government services that we have here picking up the trash, taking care of the safety, making sure that the school system is strong. And there's just there is there are a host of things that the city can be doing that it's not doing well now, which I would say are kind of the base layer that this is what

14:38where there's a lot of anger in the city that we have these new taxes that are being thrust into the community at the same time that people feel these basic services are not getting taken care of even though new taxes have been levy to drive even more dollars into these programs where it's just not it doesn't seem like it's effective. And so there's a real disconnect there. John, you're referring to a letter that was sent on Thursday. This is from a report that our colleague Kirschlosser did on the site. Executives from major area employers, including Microsoft, Starbucks, Costco, F5, Alaska Airlines, Zillow and others, urged city leaders to protect and expand public safety funding and make growing skepticism that the city has an effective strategy to address crime and homelessness. I found this letter very interesting. Yes, because I think this is a business. This is the business community rallying and in my estimation going on offense a little

15:41bit. John, I'm going to stop you there. Let's save that for after the break. We will talk more about this this theory and this movement that you see related to the business community rallying to send a message to the city when we come back. Some of the world's biggest companies have brought jobs and wealth to the Seattle region. This growth has come with some real pains too. There are these hotspots. Seattle has the potential to be one of those tech people are getting replaced by AI and you can't replace us with AI yet. I'm Monica Nicholson and I'm Joshua McNichols. We host booming a podcast about the economic forces shaping our lives here in the Pacific Northwest. We get into the stories that hit your wallet and our region. Listen now on the KUW app or wherever you listen. Welcome back. It's Todd Bishop with John Cook. We are talking about some interesting policy reports and campaigns that came out this week related to the broader economy as it relates to the tech industry in the Seattle region.

16:41Specifically, I just mentioned to this letter that was sent by the CEOs and top executives from major area employers including many tech leaders calling on the city to get its house in order as you're saying. John, you sent something in an email about Nordstrom. This was actually really interesting. Where did that come from? That was in the letter. That was in the letter. They had a response time, 911 response times that they cited in the letter. They said data from Nordstrom's flagship store downtown shows that only 29% of their 911 calls yield a police officer to their store. Conversely calls that their South Center and Bellevue locations receive a 100% response to 911 calls. Only 29% of the time that they call police for the 911 at the Nordstrom flagship store in downtown Seattle to the police show up. That is crazy. That is crazy. That really stood out to me. That summarizes the problem. I think this is why the business community and the tech community as part of that has

17:47really kind of felt under attack for the last several years. Especially under this new administration and new city council, the business community feels like they're under attack. They really do. I think feel like they're getting blamed for the problems of the city. I think personally, I think that's an unfair characterization. There certainly is an economic imbalance and there's inequality as there are in many cities. That's something that we need to deal with. However, if the city government isn't taking care of the basic services as illustrated in that example of what happens at the downtown Seattle Nordstrom, we're 70% of calls to the police don't get reported on or they don't show up. That is just a real striking problem. I read this and I read the letter and one side note, Todd, it's interesting that Amazon

18:47is in a signatory on the letter, but that's not really that surprising because Amazon doesn't usually play ball with these business coalitions that get together. I don't tend to see them as engaged on that. They kind of do things their own way. I don't know what were you surprised that they weren't? You know, yes, but I've seen some changes lately, particularly as it relates to housing and you saw a situation a few months ago where both Amazon and Microsoft were co-signatories on an ad in the Seattle Times related to housing and policy. I was kind of surprised that Amazon was not. Yeah, well, as you said, they are the largest employer in downtown Seattle. It's that. Yeah. I mean, it would be impactful, perhaps, if they were signed onto this. Anyway, my theory here, and I think because of this perceived attack on the business and tech community for so many years, to me, this was almost an effort of the business

19:52and tech community going on offense because I think the business and tech community has been on their heels for a while, responding in this being perceived as the villain in creating the situation that has happened in Seattle. Again, I think that's kind of an unfair characterization, but that's the reality and that's a perception among some people in the city and certainly some people in government capacity. And I think this was an effort to say, hey, before you come start attacking us for creating jobs and paying people a lot of money for working at innovative companies in our region, before you do that, maybe you should show up at downtown Nordstrom and show up to the police. The police force should probably show up once in a while, maybe not once in a while, maybe a hundred percent of the time would be nice. And so to me, it was, I don't know if you took it that way, but I just thought as a real turning of the tables and trying to shift the narrative on what's happening in Seattle.

20:58To me, that found that just fascinating. Yeah, I totally agree with you about them going on offense and I understand that a lot of these basics have to be taken care of. And yet, you know, you look at this report and you still need to be thinking long term as well. And I thought the clean tech stuff was interesting and that whole trade off. And I have to say, Charles Fitzgerald made an appearance here and the message to Seattle don't be Cleveland story article that kicked off a whole round of articles for us over the past year. And a recent Cleveland, it made an appearance in this report. What should have? I think it was a provocative piece. I think the reporting from Cleveland that we did earlier this year should be read for this idea that regions shouldn't just sit still and sit on their laurels. They need to advance and move forward and progress. And what's here today doesn't necessarily have to be here tomorrow.

22:02And in fact, it won't be in many instances. And so you got to adapt and change. And so I'm glad that it was referenced. Now the report's authors, I think Todd said that. Yes. It was a little far fetched in hyperbolic. Yes, yes. But maybe not far fetched. I think they said it was hyperbolic, which I think it was. And that was part of the point. Well, I don't think it was hyperbolic in that Seattle needs to understand that long term success is not guaranteed. Past performance does not determine future results. Just like they say about investments. It's the same thing with a city like this. And to your point, yes, they did say that the narrative of Seattle becoming, quote, the next Cleveland is likely hyperbolic. But they said it caused quite the stir this past winter. And they added that they would actually point to Portland and Los Angeles as the more relevant warnings. They cited Portland's pile up of new business taxes and what they described as Los Angeles

23:06is failure to turn a deep talent pool into jobs. I get it. I get that. I'm going to push back a little bit on it, though, because I think the comparison was, and having grown up in Northeast Ohio and seeing what Cleveland was, you know, coming out of its boom time from the 40s to the 70s, it was kind of the center of the universe. It had billion, the equivalent of billionaires. It had massive amounts of wealth. It had just money pouring into the community in new ways. And it was the center of industry and innovation. And I think that's the comparison we're making. That's why I think the comparison to LA and Portland isn't as maybe from a tax standpoint or a talent standpoint. It makes a little bit more sense, but from an economic standing during a certain period of time, I think the comparison holds up pretty well.

24:06And I will say that the most important part of that exercise from my perspective was when you and Charles went to Cleveland and spoke with a couple dozen community and business leaders. And the clear message was that they were on the same page. And it's not a place where the business leaders have to write a letter to get the police chiefs and the mayor's attention to show up to 911 calls, let alone to work together in terms of business development. I mean, they are working together, not attacking each other and taking their long term success for granted. And that was the point of the Cleveland series. Not these little technical nuances over, well, LA is more comparable in terms of the talent pool and the lack of ability to turn it into economic activity and Portland is stacking taxes. I mean, that was very wonky and frankly, missed the point.

25:09Now I will say I had a very nice email exchange with Ryan Donahue who said he's done a lot of work. He's from a formation, the research firm that did this and it seems like a real nice guy and did a great job on the research report. But they missed the point on Cleveland. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's an interesting economic report. I don't know if it's going to have an impact though without the ability of these various pockets of our society to come together and as we did seeing Cleveland row in the same direction. And this, even my description of this idea that the business community is going on offense, that's a very adversarial way to look at it, right? But I think that's the way to describe it. It's like, hey, you've attacked us for five years. Now we're coming back at you. You're not holding up your end of the bargain. And now they'll fire back and say, and it's like you get into this, these ballies back and forth. But no one is coming to the table. And maybe I shouldn't say no one because maybe behind the scenes, this does spark some

26:12action that people do actually come together. And I think Mayor Wilson said she was going to form some sort of economic. Yes. The mayor released a report alongside an executive order convening a task force of business, labor, community, and civic leaders directed the city to improve permitting pathways, calling for a proposal to create a Seattle Strategic Initiatives Fund. Industry round tables are coming in the coming months. Now they did talk with business groups for this report, but as Charles pointed out on his blog. They did not talk, for example, with Amazon. And the researchers acknowledged that they did not go in and get the pulse of these companies that are so outsized in terms of their impact and their decision making. And they impacted that on the city. So it's, I think a real mixback. I hope this report makes some measurable change, but I am a little bit skeptical. It's a great read, at least as a baseline for where we are and potentially for where

27:16we could go. Yeah, I mean, the Sinek's will look at it and they'll say, oh, great. Yeah, another business coalition or another business committee gets formed or spun up by government. They put their grievances together and they put some action plan together and then nothing really happens. I think you got to hold out some bit of hope that we have a new mayor who is learning on the job and is going to potentially adapt as she goes and gets feedback. Now whether she can do it quickly enough in combination with the city council to actually make change to make the city more unified and to strive towards something great in the future. It's there. We're taking really, but I'm not certain that that will happen in this administration, but you got to hold out some hope and that that they start to turn the ship in the right

28:18direction. Okay, let's take one more break and I do want to talk about this crazy story that had on Friday afternoon. As I was putting together last week's podcast about the Seattle Times and Microsoft, I did not see this coming. That's coming up next. Can you really destroy a forever chemical? Spoiler alert, yes. What's the greenest thing you can do with your body after you die? And as limitless, clean energy finally within our reach? I'm Lisa Stiffler, and I'm Laura Scott. We host Positive Charge, a new podcast from GeekWire about the innovations and the people protecting our planet. Full, surprising stories about the technology taking on climate change. Positive Charge. Listen and subscribe now at GeekWire.com slash positive charge. Or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back. It's Todd Bishop and John Cook. So yeah, John, this happened on Friday evening, right before the long Labor Day holiday. And I've got some theories about exactly what's going on here that had not fully coalesced

29:22when I actually wrote the story or when you and I were chatting about it previously. The Seattle Times and News Day sued Microsoft and OpenAI, accusing them of scraping hundreds of thousands of their articles by passing paywalls, ignoring terms of service, to train their AI models. Now this very much echoes the lawsuit filed by the New York Times and other publishers against Microsoft and OpenAI. And I was trying to figure out what was going on here. This was filed on the same day that motions for summary judgment were filed in that larger case in the same district court, the Southern District of New York. I think the Seattle Times is just being extremely pragmatic here and effectively trying to join the class to get the payout. That seems to me what's really happening here. But it's so risky from a community standpoint for them because Microsoft will anthropize

30:27funds a pretty significant chunk of their journalism. It's just a fascinating situation. Yeah, I think it would be probably a bad move for Microsoft to pull that though. In the face of a lawsuit? Yeah, I don't think that's going to happen. So they probably made that calculation. It seemed like this, I mean, when was that New York Times OpenAI Microsoft lawsuit filed? 2023, 2023. So it's three years old. So gosh, it's like, where is this coming? It's a little out of the blue. It's the Seattle Times and News Day seems like two strange bedfellows there. Three years after the New York Times lawsuit, they filed, like I'm released Friday afternoon a Labor Day weekend where everybody in the news business knows that's where you bury your news that you don't want people to see, right? That's an age old PR tactic. Yeah, the Friday afternoon, we're always on the alert for layoffs and shutdowns and

31:30you know, CEOs stepping down and things like that. And that's when they release it. I don't, just there are a lot of weird things about the timing. But doesn't it make sense? I think they're just quietly lining up at the gravy train. And you know, hats off to them. If they see an opportunity for a significant payout, good for them in some ways. I mean, it's a calculated risk. Yeah. And you know, we've shared our views on this suit in the past. Oh, I can't remember. What do we say? I actually don't know how I feel about it these days. Oh, has that changed? I mean, if they indeed were scraping behind the paywall, New York Times content and using it to inform their models, I think that's a copyright issue. Yeah. That's my feeling. So Microsoft did send me a statement on the Seattle Times suit when I asked and they said, while we are surprised by the lawsuit, we appreciate the importance of the Seattle Times to our region. And we're always happy to sit down and explore solutions to this type of dispute.

32:31Now I read between the lines there and I have other reasons to believe this. I actually asked Alan Fisco via email, the Seattle Times CEO, whether they had partaken in any negotiations in advance. He did not respond. Now take that for what it's worth. But I read this Microsoft statement to imply at least that there were no talks that this surprised Microsoft. That's how I read it. And so again, you know, at this point, to survive in the media business, if you see an opportunity to have an inflow of cash from an unexpected source, that's clearly what they're doing here, you know? Or they truly feel they were wronged. And I'm sure they do. And maybe both. Maybe both. Yeah, maybe both. And it probably has to be both in order to take this risk. But I mean, a lot of media companies do feel as if they've been wronged by AI companies

33:35that have taken advantage of their content, same in the book publishing business. You know, it's not an uncommon position to have. So among the allegations in the complaint were examples of chat GPT reproducing Seattle Times content, including an 88 word verbatim stretch from the Seattle Times Pulitzer winning coverage of the Boeing 737 Max crashes generated when a user prompted the chatbot with just the articles headline and web address. So they're basically saying that there's evidence in chat GPT's responses that they were training on this content. It's going to be an interesting one to follow. Absolutely. I don't know if there will ever be any real pleadings in the Seattle Times Microsoft lawsuit. I think it'll all happen as part of this big consolidated case. And so in that way, it's a little bit anticlimactic, but still an interesting one to follow. Speaking of Microsoft, John, there was some big news from Apple this week that got me into

34:38a bit of a historic nostalgic mood. And so that is going to be the topic of this week's Geekwire trivia challenge. Pop Chris hot shot. This is Geekwire's trivia challenge. Wouldn't you prefer a good game? That's right. It's time for Geekwire's trivia challenge. It's Todd Bishop with John Cook here on the Geekwire podcast. John, did you see the news of the new iPhone duo this week from Apple? Are you going to get one? No. $2,000. I mean, that's worth it, right? This was September 9th Wednesday at Apple's surprise and shine event, the first fall event under its new CEO, John Ternis. And this is basically a foldable phone. As you said, is $1,999. It's the most expensive iPhone. It's got a 7.6 inch inner display when folded out and a 5.4 inch outer display. It basically allows you to flip from a tablet style device to something that's more like

35:42a phone. And of course, in Microsoft's circles, there were immediate comparisons to Microsoft's duo, the Surface Duo, which came out a few years ago, shipped in September 2020, six years ago this week. It had very similarly two rigid 5.6 OLEDs on a 360 hinge, a little bit different approach which Apple is adopting more of this sort of seamless screen that opens up. There was a crease and an actual bezel in the middle of the screens on the Surface Duo, but the same name, the same concept, all the Microsoft fans are going crazy over this and saying Apple has ripped off Microsoft yet again, which of course cuts both ways because they all accuse each other of stealing all each other's ideas. So. So, I think this is very limited in terms of the actual people who are going to use it. I think it's one of the reasons why the Surface Duo is no longer around.

36:47I don't think that phones are really the heart of the technology world anymore. I mean, I want to know what the new native AI devices are going to be like. That to me is a lot more interesting. Well, there was some new AI functionality. Yes. There was some new AI functionality that came with it like this ambient listening component. Did you see that in the new phone? Which was interesting. It was kind of like the granola note taking app is kind of how I read it, but not enough to move the needle. And the reviews I've read just seems like the device is so bulky and big that it's not going to fit in your pocket very well. And that's like, you know me, I don't like having a lot of extraneous things, jewelry, things in my pockets. I want to be streamlined and efficient on that. So I don't need a larger device that doesn't fit in my pocket. Yeah. To your point, foldables are still only less than 5% of the smartphone market.

37:47So this is kind of a niche product. And by the way, I hope that Apple folks out there are going to give us a little bit of leeway here. We're not gadget reviewers, but obviously caught our attention. And the reason I bring it up, John, is for this week's trivia question. So you ready for this? Hit me. Microsoft has a long history of getting somewhere first, failing, and then watching somebody else often Apple make it a category, just popularize it. So I'm going to read you five instances in which this happened. Five. Okay. Four of them are real. So your challenge on this week's Geekwire trivia challenge is to determine which one of these is made up out of the list of five. Are you ready? Yeah. Microsoft reader is a piece of software released in 2000 for a variety of devices later popularized as of course the Amazon Kindle on a device and then the iPad, the whole notion of ebooks

38:50on a device. Microsoft reader 2000. That is a. D, the tablet PC 2002 later popularized by Apple as the iPad. C, the spot smartwatch 2003 later of course popularized by Apple as the Apple watch. D, Microsoft tether 2006. This was a Microsoft research project basically like a little Bluetooth dongle and it was later popularized of course by Apple as the air tag. And HoloLens 2016 which was later popularized by Apple as the vision pro. So a Microsoft reader B tablet PC C spot smartwatch D Microsoft tether or E the HoloLens which of those were actually not products that Microsoft released or research projects that Microsoft had that were later copied by Apple.

39:51So I'm identifying one one I think was not a Microsoft product copied by Apple. Yes. Oh, I'm going to go with I think there those that's a good question Todd. I think all of these could be viable and of course four of them are. Yes. So I'm going to go with the spot watch. You're kidding. Don't you remember the spot watch? No. Oh, yeah. I don't. I'm pretty sure it worked on FM radio waves Bill Gates introduced it at CES. Yeah. Announced 2003 shipped 2004 dead by 2008. The whole idea was that you had whether stocks sports scores calendar alerts to your wrist over FM radio subcarriers. Wow. Yeah. Spot watch. Oh, yes. Spot watch was very real. I did not think you were going to go for that. I thought you were going to remember that one. I did not remember that one. Okay. Spot smart personal objects technology.

40:51And in fact, the whole idea was going to be I saw coming back to me now. This was going to be the first in a category. So this was the spot smart watch and then they were going to use these FM signals to create all sorts of other things. Yeah. Yeah. This was Bill Gates. Yes. This is right when I started covering. I think I might miss ever. I think I might get everyone wrong until the last one. So this is going to be a long program. The Microsoft reader sounds familiar, but I'm going to go there as my second guest. That was real as well. That was real. Okay. The tether just seemed like a research project that they would have done. The answer is D tether. Microsoft tether is not something. Not an air tag. Not an air. No, they don't. No, wait. And I would think they would have done. No, you know what? Somebody out there may correct me on this, but I will tell you I made that up. I made that up. I got help from perplexity finding the ones that were real and jogging my memory on what the ones were that were real. And there were actually many more than this. But then I made tether up.

41:52Now, if there was maybe... Did it at some point have a project that actually did that I'm sure they did? They could have. But it's never anything called tether. Not that I ever covered. They could have been like a tech-fest project. I mean, remember back in the day, Microsoft Research Techfest, that was like a cool thing that you got to see. Yeah. So, yeah, I was... I was... I was... Poor on that question. Well, hey. One of these days, I'll scoop you on... And get us... Give me a trivia question. You can't answer. If you ever want to turn the tables on me on the trivia, I would gladly hand over the reins. I'm usually throwing the trivia question again. What's your takeaway out of this other than it's just Microsoft innovates than Apple commercializes? Microsoft still is learning the fact that timing matters just as much as the innovation that you come up with. Time is so important. Here's the other takeaway. Yeah. All of these things were hardware oriented.

42:52And they've never really gotten hardware at Microsoft. They've never really nailed it. Is there an example of Xbox maybe, but that divisions in a world of hurt. I don't know. That's a good point. Somebody will probably come up with something that's like some multi-billion dollar pillar business of Microsoft. The mouse? You're holding up a mouse? I'm okay. I love my Microsoft mouse. My Microsoft ergonomic mobile mouse. There you go. This was the original. I mean, you know, the term for mouse with the green buttons. Yeah. Okay. Well, anyway. These are a couple of the takeaways out of it. All right. Hey. Thanks for tuning in, everybody. Our Milton edited this episode. Our music is by Daniel LK called well. Until next week, I'm Todd Bishop. And I'm John Cook. We'll talk to you next time on the Geekwire podcast.