120 - Apple's Qualcomm Truce, IPO Fever; with The Verge's Casey Newton

Let's talk money. Apple, the tech giant, the iPhone maker, this week launched … a credit card. That's right, Apple Card, linked to Apple Pay. Apple's pitch with the card? It starts with cash and goes deep with security and design. This week we're going to take a closer look at the card and the app … which I have seen up close. And we're going to compare it to the deals and features you can get elsewhere. Is it really a good deal?  With me this week: Sara Rathner from NerdWallet – a site that studies these kinds of things – and joining us a bit later, CNBC's Dierdre Bosa. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

11 Aug 201922min

The problem with the Monopoly board game is that only one person ends up happy in the last half hour of the game, and everyone else is miserable.  If you believe tech critics, some of the biggest companies in the industry have figured out a way around this unhappy ending in real life: Each one of these multi-billion-dollar juggernauts has its own mini-monopoly. Google gets to rule search engines, Facebook gets social networks, Amazon gets e-commerce and Apple gets expensive phones … made by Apple … or something. I really don't get any of the arguments that Apple has a monopoly on anything.  Why does this matter?   One could argue – and I know this because I'm about to – that the tech companies that are in the antitrust crosshairs are more central to our everyday lives than any group of accused monopolists in history. This isn't a bunch of railroads or oil companies. This is the app you use all day to talk to your friends and family. The phone you use to fire up that app. The service you use to search for the theme gift for a 10-year wedding anniversary, and the store you use to buy the gift.  If these companies are found to be monopolists ... and they're found to be abusing their monopoly power … they could get broken up or otherwise restricted.  Should that happen? We're going to help you decide. With me today to figure it out, some legal firepower:  Doug Melamed is a professor at Stanford Law School and before that was general counsel at Intel. A couple of decades ago he served at the U.S. Department of Justice as Acting Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division.  Dina Srinivasan is an antitrust Scholar and an author of the paper: “The Antitrust Case Against Facebook.” Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

3 Aug 201930min

Five billion dollars. That’s how much Facebook will have to fork over to the government under a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission. It’s the biggest fine for violating user privacy by a wide margin – 200 times bigger than the previous record, according to the FTC chair.   If I got hit with a 5 billion dollar speeding ticket, it would hurt. I’m not going to lie. But some are already saying the settlement doesn’t go far enough.   So. After this settlement, can Facebook say it has paid its debt to society? Or did Zuckerberg and company just make out like bandits?  And: What does this say about privacy regulators’ ability to effectively walk the beat in Silicon Valley? With me this week to shake me out of my vacation-induced stupor: Farhad Manjoo of the New York Times. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

27 Juli 201927min

Here’s the thing: It’s really hard to put a dollar value on the data that you or I deliver to internet platforms. What’s the value of a tweet? A Facebook profile that tells my birthday and links to my closest relatives?   It’s even hard to put a value on the data the platforms have on all of us. Sure, it’s probably worth billions of dollars. But how many billions? Does the value of data go up over time like a house, or down over time, like a car?  Our first topic is the value of data, because Democratic Senator Mark Warner and Republican Senator Josh Hawley want to require big tech companies to report the value of our data, like an asset, and would instruct the Securities and Exchange Commission to come up with a formula for calculating how much the data is worth.   Joining me to discuss that and a lot more: CNBC’s own Josh Lipton.   Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

29 Juni 201923min

Julie Sweet today leads the North American business at Accenture, a global consulting giant. Years ago, she was a high school sophomore with the gift of gab, entering various debate and speech competitions for the prize money, building her own scholarship fund. She wasn't doing it for kicks; at times growing up in Southern California she had just one pair of shoes, or one pair of pants that fit. Her father painted cars for a living, and her mother was a hairdresser.    One particular contest at the Lions Club had come down to a final showdown between Julie and another girl. Julie lost. Stung by the injustice of it – she felt her speech had been better – she griped to her father on the way home.    —  To say Tom Siebel has had an interesting life would be putting it mildly. He’s a billionaire entrepreneur, a tech visionary, and the survivor of an elephant attack eight years ago that, by the odds, should have killed him.    Several doctors told him he would never walk again, much less sail competitively. But he does.   So what do you learn about life when you’ve stared down death in the form of a five-ton elephant, been crushed by that elephant, and lived to tell the tale?    What do you learn when you’ve invented one of the first killer workplace apps of the PC era, and sold it for about 6 billion dollars?   —  When he was 14 years old growing up in West Philadelphia, Troy Carter started promoting parties at a neighbor's house and charging for entry. He did the DJing himself to save money.   Today he's one of the most respected visionaries at the intersection of two industries: Music and tech.    Carter wears a lot of hats. He's been a manager, working with the likes of John Legend, Lady Gaga and Meghan Trainor. He's an investor, a general partner at venture capital firm Cross Culture Ventures. And he's a connector.   Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

23 Juni 201926min

Amazon has three people who hold the title of CEO. There's Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO. Then there are two deputies: Andy Jassy, the CEO of Amazon Web Services, the cloud business. And Jeff Wilke, CEO of global consumer.  Jeff Wilke got the title CEO of global consumer three years ago, and hadn't done a broadcast interview since – until this week, when he sat down with me for CNBC. Wilke's been with Amazon for 20 years, and now runs the core business of e-commerce and physical retail. The massive global logistics operation, the billions of items shipped – all that reports up to him.  I talked to Jeff Wilke in Las Vegas at Amazon's first re:MARS event; MARS stands for machine learning, automation, robotics and space. Later on in his keynote, Wilke gave an update on Amazon's plan to deliver packages by drone. He didn't spill the beans on that plan in this interview, but he does talk about Amazon's ambition to keep delivering Prime packages faster and faster – in even less than a day.  Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

8 Juni 201922min

We’re past Memorial Day, and that means two things: barbecue season, and software season.    Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference, WWDC, kicks off Monday. It’s an event where Apple gathers engineers from everywhere to announce its vision for the future of software, and to answer their questions about how to make today’s apps work better.  Who cares? Well, if you use an iPhone, iPad, Mac, you’re probably getting new software, even if you don’t buy a new device. And if you’re a tech watcher, you get some hints about what’s coming in the next generations of iPhones and iPads.   Joining me to talk Apple, tech labor and more, I’ve got the father of tech reviews, a pioneer in tech journalism, Walt Mossberg. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

2 Juni 201929min

Ever get so mad in an argument that you forget what it’s about? Just so focused on the other person being wrong that you forget what your point was in the first place?  A couple of developments in tech this week bring exactly that to mind. The Trump Administration’s blacklisting of Huawei and the outcry over FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s blessing for the marriage of T-Mobile and Sprint.   Huawei is China’s biggest tech player, kind of like what Samsung is in South Korea. Huawei makes phones, they make networking equipment. The Trump Administration says they also make a security risk for U.S. 5G networks. Huawei’s leadership is too close to the Chinese government, they say, and so no U.S. companies should buy their equipment or otherwise do business with them. I say that’s a flawed security strategy and we’re going to talk about why.   Joining me to do exactly that: Kevin Delaney, Editor in Chief at Quartz.   Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

26 Maj 201929min