Jan 19, 2024 · 47m · more-or-less
#30: The Great App Store Debate, Layoffs, and Playoffs... Oh My! · More or Less Podcast
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In this episode of More or Less, co-hosts Jessica Lessin, Sam Lessin, Dave Morin, and Brit Morin debate Apple's controversial App Store policies, evaluate emerging AI hardware like the Rabbit R1 and Vision Pro, and analyze whether generative AI will reinforce or disrupt Big Tech moats. Combining sharp venture insights with lighthearted personal banter, the hosts examine the changing economics of software development and platform distribution.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. The hosts hold 99.4% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 5.2 Guest teaching 3.5 Guest disagreement 3.4 The hosts pushing back 3.6
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 40:50 Dave defends App Store trust model against monopoly accusations
Dave flatly rejects the premise that the App Store is anti-competitive, arguing it provides essential trust and telling Sam to buy an Android Pixel if he wants an open system.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 43:01 Sam calls out insider favoritism in App Store approvalsSam punctures Dave's even-handed trust framing by asking who hasn't called an Apple executive to force an app review, revealing his break-glass business card practice.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 29:41 Dave shares Facebook platform demographic strategyDave educates the panel on internal Comscore insights showing older users dominated by Yahoo Games, explaining how Facebook structured free distribution to attract those game developers.
The host holds their own ▶ 11:37 Sam dissects the 27 percent App Store fee mathSam uses sharp commercial logic to explain that Apple's new European policy proves payment processing is worth only 3 percent, effectively admitting the remaining 27 percent is pure distribution rent.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The hosts as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The hosts pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| More or Less Animated Title Sequence and Theme Song | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | Introductory banter and theme song. The hosts joke about who called themselves the Michael Jordan of the internet and do light housekeeping. | |
| The Information Gala, Dress Codes, and Seating Chart Tactics | 4 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Jessica describes her seating chart strategy for The Information's gala and shares an anecdote about introducing Yelp's Luther Lowe to an FTC commissioner. | |
| NFL Playoffs, Taylor Swift, and AI Sports Betting Legality | 3 | 2 | 2 | 2 | Brit mentions trying to use ChatGPT for NFL playoff betting on ESPN Bet. Sam riffs on legalities and betting against AI crowd sentiment. | |
| Big Tech Layoff Trends and YouTube's Lean Headcount Debate | 6 | 4 | 3 | 3 | Dave cites YouTube's reported 7,100 headcount, which Sam doubts. Sam analyzes Apple's new 27% fee structure, arguing it explicitly prices monopolistic distribution over payment processing. | |
| App Store Power, European Regulation, and Quality vs. Discovery | 6 | 5 | 3 | 4 | Dave defends Apple's App Store curation around quality and security, though he notes low-quality ChatGPT knockoffs still slip through. Sam counters that discovery value has declined while customer ownership has become critical. | |
| Rabbit R1, Teenage Engineering, and the AI Hardware Dilemma | 6 | 5 | 4 | 5 | Brit and Dave explain Rabbit R1 and its Large Action Model on the display layer designed by Teenage Engineering. Sam questions why anyone builds standalone hardware given the catastrophic failure rates. | |
| OpenAI's GPT Store vs. Facebook Platform Launch and Economics | 7 | 6 | 5 | 6 | Dave draws from leading the 2007 Facebook Platform launch to critique the GPT Store's lack of developer distribution. Sam pushes back, arguing both platforms ultimately suffered from broken developer economics. | |
| Big Tech AI Monopoly and the Grinding Tech Warfare | 6 | 5 | 4 | 4 | Brit suggests Google could win by unifying Android, Bard, and the Play Store. Sam characterizes the AI battle as grinding tech warfare where incumbent card decks eventually prevail. | |
| Consumer Software Wasteland and the Apple Vision Pro Rollout | 6 | 4 | 5 | 5 | Sam ridicules Apple's mandatory 45-minute in-store demo for Vision Pro, saying only fanboys will tolerate it. Dave defends it by arguing the device is explicitly a pro workstation truck for developers rather than a mass consumer gadget. | |
| The Great App Store Antitrust Debate | 7 | 5 | 7 | 7 | Dave rejects the assertion that the App Store is anti-competitive, insisting trust justifies curation. Sam forcefully pushes back, stating true fairness doesn't exist when insiders keep executive business cards in emergency boxes to push builds through. | |
| Defending Google's Sticky Ecosystem in the AI Era | 5 | 2 | 2 | 2 | Jessica defends Google against negative venture sentiment, citing how AI strengthens core apps like Docs and YouTube. The group agrees on Google's deep moat before wrapping up with casual parenting banter. |
Statements from this episode (22)
Sam Lessin Calls Forbes Midas Seed List the 'JV Capitalism Team'
“I called it Midas Seed List is the JV Capitalism team, and I'm a proud multi-time member of it.”
Jessica Lessin Introduced Yelp's Luther Lowe to FTC Commissioner at Cocktail Party
“And actually my best example of this was the information was having a cocktail party in DC. And I Introduced Luther Lowe, who at the time was working for Yelp and has been sort of the biggest antagonist trying to get Google sued and broken up on antitrust grou…”
Sam Lessin: AI Sports Betting Success Relies on Retail Coordination, Not Accuracy
“All that matters is enough people will be asking GBT exactly that question. You can make money betting with or against it. It's just a coordination game.”
Dave Morin: YouTube Has Roughly 7,100 Employees
“There's 7000 people, 7100 people working at YouTube.”
Sam Lessin Claims YouTube Hides Functional Headcount in Other Google Divisions
“They must be hiding a bunch of headcount, like in other places, like in the ads teams or things like that off the books.”
Sam Lessin: Apple's 27% fee implies payment processing is worth only 3%
“The answer is, three percent is for payment processing, which is about what you pay for payment processing.”
Lessin: Apple once rejected The Information's app over font color choices
“There's something about getting that email from Apple saying your price can't be in the color red. It has to be in the color blue. That just makes you realize how beholden you, like they were commenting on the colors of the fonts in our app, right?”
Lessin: App developers no longer own customer relationships due to Apple policies
“I don't think that apps anymore do that with the obscuring of email addresses and tokenization and a bunch of this other stuff. You don't really own your app customers the way you used to.”
Dave Morin: Teenage Engineering is one of the world's most innovative hardware companies
“Teenage Engineering, which is, I think, actually the most innovative, one of the most innovative hardware companies in the world right now.”
Sam Lessin: Building a Consumer Hardware Startup Is a Disaster That Always Fails
“The thing I don't get is why make a hardware device? It's such a disaster. They always fail.”
Dave Morin: Facebook Platform Attracted Nearly One Million Developers in First Year
“Once we put the distribution incentive in place, suddenly, you know, we had close to, I think a million developers in one year.”
Sam Lessin Predicts OpenAI's GPT Store Has No Chance of Platform Success
“The thing with the GPT's launch is the economics of it make absolutely no sense for a developer, which means that, like, ultimately there's no chance That this will be a successful platform.”
Dave Morin Declares He Will Not Invest in GPT App Store Startups
“Over here with my venture capital hat on, like what would I invest in that's building on top of these GPT app stores? Like nothing right now.”
Sam Lessin: Giving proprietary data to OpenAI is a losing developer strategy
“The worst idea in the world, right. If you're a developer to say, Hey, maybe I have some proprietary data. I'm going to like stick it in to open AI or one of these platforms for what in return. And then by the way, I'm just giving them all the interaction data…”
Brit Morin: The AI platform race will end with Apple and Google winning again
“I think it ends up being Apple and Google all over again, to be honest, at the end of the day.”
Sam Lessin: Incumbents like Meta and Adobe will win AI through grinding warfare
“And Meta and Adobe. And like, it's all the same people, right? And they're just going to do grinding warfare.”
Jessica Lessin: Consumer software is a wasteland, investment is in enterprise
“Consumer software is a wasteland, in case you guys haven't noticed. Like, I know people don't think that, like, it just seems like that, you know, particularly in investing all the actions kind of in the enterprise, right?”
Dave Morin: Apple Vision Pro will never be a $1,000 device
“This isn't a consumer product, and Apple literally named it the Apple Vision Pro. There's never been a 1000 dollar MacBook Pro. There's not going to be a 1000 dollar Apple Vision Pro. Whenever the Apple Vision comes out, we might have a 1000 dollar tool.”
Dave Morin: Vision Pro is a developer truck, not a consumer car
“To me, what, what's going on right now is that Apple is distributing a pro device. This is a truck, not a car. They're sending trucks out to... They're sending trucks out to developers... And the developers are, you know, they're just trying to get a bunch of …”
Dave Morin: Apple's App Store controls are not anti-competitive but driven by trust
“I think broadly the app store has shown a pretty even hand, and the point of the thing is trust, right? Like, when I pick this thing up and I download anything onto it, I trust it. Right. And to build that trust, you have to invest and build something like thi…”
Jessica Lessin: Apple does not enforce its App Store policies equally
“I just don't think they actually enforce them equally. I think there's the policies, and then there's the policies, right? And the strategy, and the negotiations, and the biz dev, and what's Shopify getting versus blah, blah, blah, right?”
Sam Lessin Kept an Apple Executive's Business Card in an Emergency Glass Box
“I had a business card of one in an Apple executive that worked in the app store, and I put it in a glass box that you would break in an emergency and left it in the office. So then I'd say like, look, when you're pushing bills and things come up, if you need t…”