Calculus of IT - Season 3 Episode 6 - Slack as an OS

So Mike and I set out to answer a simple question: What actually constitutes an operating system in 2026? Turns out, it depends on whether you're talking about computers or how people actually work. For a computer OS, you need hardware management and file I/O. For a business OS, you need the thing that, when it goes down, everyone goes home. By that definition, Slack is absolutely an operating system. Nobody in your company can tell you what OS version they're running, but everyone knows their Slack workspace name. The desktop is dead. Your actual "desktop" is just a browser, Slack, and some cloud storage shortcuts. For most users, you could swap Windows for Mac or Linux and they wouldn't even notice. The uncomfortable truth: if Slack is where you spend your entire workday, Slack IS your OS. The thing underneath it is just infrastructure. Mike thinks the computer OS should become invisible while the business OS (Slack, identity platforms, automation) becomes the focus. Nate thinks we're heading toward a world where everything runs in browsers and the OS is just a launcher, probably Linux-based, definitely not what we have now. We also proved you could recreate email using Box notes and @ mentions (terrible idea, technically possible), went full nostalgia on OS/2 and BeOS and Adium with the duck, and discovered Mike hasn't touched his Vision Pro in months but is still paying $29/month for AppleCare. Oh, and Nate will assume you hate him if you don't respond to Slack messages within 7 minutes. The autonomy problem looms: if Slack becomes your OS, you're locked in. Convenience breeds dependency. Next week we're diving into what has become of chat - the full timeline from IRC to Slack, and why instant messaging makes us hate each other.  Also, Flock is watching you.  Is that really ok?

Listen at thecalculusofit.com • Join our Slack board at thecoit.us • Leave five stars • The OS doesn't matter, the work matters.

—Nate & Mike

Transcript

Season 3 - Episode 6 - Final - Audio Only

Nate McBride: [00:00:00] Verizon, he a big 

Mike Crispin: fucking 

Nate McBride: dump on everybody in the world today. 

Mike Crispin: Did you, did you, were you affected by that? 

Nate McBride: Well, let me look on my phone. Oh, it's SOS again. 

Mike Crispin: Is it still, is it still down? Wow. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. Butthole, Massachusetts. So 

Mike Crispin: made the, uh, leap to T-Mobile a year or so ago. 

Nate McBride: The leap. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. Is 

Nate McBride: that what you call, are you calling a fucking leap?

Mike Crispin: Yeah, I was, well, I was on at t before that, so it's, uh, yeah. But, um, everyone has outages every once in a while, so, Hey, today's the Verizon, the unlucky day. It just, it happens. You know, 

Nate McBride: we done on your phone. Talk to your family. 

Mike Crispin: That's right. Touch some grass. People love it. People are loving it. People love touching [00:01:00] grass.

I miss the blackberry. Did you see that a, uh, a, a Blackberry like device was announced at CES? The uh, it's similar to the 

Nate McBride: Dingleberry. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah, the Dingleberry. There's a company that came out with a click keyboard for the iPhone and they created this little $120 companion device that just a keyboard on it.

I don't know how that's gonna do, but, uh, all the geeks were very excited about it. 

Nate McBride: You know what you should do, Mike, is you should vent a keyboard that has no monitor. It's a good idea. It's got a hard drive and wifi and everything. It has. That's a good 

Mike Crispin: idea, man. Oh man. 

Nate McBride: You put it in your pocket and all day long you play with it.

That'd 

Mike Crispin: great. Yeah, just. Don't they have those in the fidget stores? You can just get something to click and clack on. And 

Nate McBride: I'll tell you about an actual keyboard though. Like you have it in your pocket [00:02:00] and instead of a lapel camera, you have a lapel keyboard, but it's in your pocket and then you just sitting, you're walking around all day.

It's just typing like a cat, walking across the keyboard, just typing 

Mike Crispin: shit. Shit. 

Nate McBride: I promise you, if you saved your money from buying a rabbit R one and bought the new Yeah. Key pocket. Key pocket board R one, you'd have so much more fun because you have no idea what you're typing. And every day you get a digest of your typing.

Mike Crispin: Yeah. 

Nate McBride: Sent to you on your pocket keyboard os. And you can read the message you sent it yourself. 

Mike Crispin: Well, I made this amazing discovery on my Vision Pro this week when I finally put it on. I wanted to make sure I put it on once before our podcast. It was very important that I, I do that. I felt like, so I put it on and it's, uh, 

Nate McBride: yeah, 

Mike Crispin: I realized I'm paying like fucking [00:03:00] $29 a month for Apple Care, for my vision os headset canceled.

I, it's, it's like 29 bucks a month. 

Nate McBride: Did you get a refund for the last, 

Mike Crispin: I'm not even using the thing. I'm like, gosh, I, I don't know. I don't remember signing up for AppleCare, but I probably did 'cause I was so excited and I felt like I needed to protect it for some reason. 

Nate McBride: The frenzy of spending 30 or hundred bucks, 

Mike Crispin: I'm thinking to myself, what if, what if I break this?

And, uh, but I got on, so I was like, yeah, you know, I'll try, I'll put it back on and mess around with it. There was some cool stuff on YouTube that, you know, that you could download. I turned, put the thing on. It's sitting there. It's got, it is, I haven't turned it on a few months. It took like 45 minutes for it to like, bring down all my iMessages and my mail and every, it was just a hunk of crap.

45 minutes. I don't know how that's even possible. It's a, it's a MM two, M three Pro M two processor. It's got 16 gigs [00:04:00] of ram in it. It's got two terabytes of storage and it was like, just crap. It was, it still ran smoothly, but it was like, I'm sitting there like waiting and waiting and waiting. 

Nate McBride: You know, we have you on record saying how amazing it was to put that on and use it to like, 

Mike Crispin: oh yeah.

Well I do still love it. I mean, it just, it was a very bad experience getting it back up to speed as to where, I mean, I was disappointed that it took so long to get it, uh, back up and running where it was usable again. But, uh, I sat on the beach for a little while. I got on a beach after I got it all back up and running and, 

Nate McBride: wait, wait.

You were sitting, you were sitting on the beach wearing your Apple VR headset. 

Mike Crispin: No, I was in, uh, virtual reality on a beach. 

Nate McBride: Oh, you, you put your beach on in the headset? 

Mike Crispin: Yes. Yes. And, um, and then what 

Nate McBride: happened? Then what happened? 

Mike Crispin: They just sat there for about 15 minutes and I fell asleep. Actually, for you were, 

Nate McBride: you were actually sitting in your house.

Mike Crispin: I was, I was in my, uh, in my room, uh, just sitting [00:05:00] in a chair. Yeah, it was fun. 

Nate McBride: And, but then what happened? 

Mike Crispin: That's it, man. It's totally ambiance. It was beautiful. 

Nate McBride: That was 

Mike Crispin: a terrible story set. 

Nate McBride: Did you put, I mean, you could ended that story. 

Mike Crispin: Isn't that why you have me on this podcast? It's, it was very deep story you said, 

Nate McBride: like, and then Peter North walked in, you could have said, and then I pointed at a guy in the audience whose brother I killed in a rowboat.

Like, you could have ended this story. So many ways You chose the path Most traveled. 

Mike Crispin: Those VR experiences, they can be so surreal. I you just get lost in them. And I did. Could you, 

Nate McBride: could you, could you ask it or tell it or download it to be a drummer in a seventies, eighties alt rock band looking out at a whole arena of people?

Mike Crispin: Absolutely. Man. You can dream up anything. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: So I want to try out the, uh, what's the AI that, uh, [00:06:00] Google has that builds a 3D Worlds? Remember we were talking about that a few months ago? 

Nate McBride: Well, 

Mike Crispin: not vo builds. 

Nate McBride: Not vo, it's the 

Mike Crispin: other one. Not, not ve, not vo. What the hell? I'm raising my hand. Somebody the fucking zoom.

Yeah. I 

Nate McBride: don't know why 

Mike Crispin: you're raising your. I was just raised somebody. Yeah, I know that no one can see this, but

Trance Bot: the calculus of it.

Season three,

verifying this identity.

Sometimes you just have to take it.

Sometimes you just have to take it

because it's season three [00:07:00] divided autonomy,

verifying identity.

The calculus of it.

Mike Crispin: Oh crap. What a day. All right. So how are we doing? 

Nate McBride: I doing wonderful. Um, 

Mike Crispin: great, great. 

Nate McBride: Yep. Doing wonderful. Uh, doing all kinds of wonderful things at work. 

Mike Crispin: Okay. Oh yeah. Like what, 

Nate McBride: what are 

Mike Crispin: doing? [00:08:00] 

Nate McBride: Very few of which has to do with ai, um, doing a lot of like great workflow stuff in Airtable. 

Mike Crispin: Nice. 

Nate McBride: I really, I really turned a corner.

Especially my automation, uh, knowledge with Airtable. Um, 

Mike Crispin: awesome. 

Nate McBride: And there's, it's some pretty fucking powerful stuff. We'll actually talk about that in a bit because, well, that's sort of thematic to the discussion, but, um, no, it's good. I mean, we're, you know, that first two weeks and you're back from the new year.

It is just absolutely insanity. And we're coming out of that right now. Like today, I finally felt the pressure is coming off a little bit. 

Mike Crispin: Yep. 

Nate McBride: That end of year to New year transition period. Um, and then we entered that February lu where everyone's starting to think about vacation. And March is fantastic, and then April sucks again.

And, um, you know how it goes. But, um, yeah, no, I saw the sound of music last night again. [00:09:00] Oh, 

Mike Crispin: oh really? Where, where was that at Wilbur or in Boston, or No, 

Nate McBride: yeah, was in Boston. 

Mike Crispin: Nice. 

Nate McBride: I gotta tell you, like, it sounds corny, but I fucking love that show. Um, if you can see this, I know sound music on Broadway. It is.

And it's always just as equally terrifying to me now as 52-year-old as it was when I was like 15 about those Nazi fires coming down to the end and realizing that the whole thing is a setup for basically a nice, nice corollary to 2026. Um, but yeah, it was, uh, it was good to see that last night. I haven't been to Broadway in a bed, but we have a lot of great shows coming up this spring and summer back in June is coming back in June.

Can't wait for that again. Yeah, 

Mike Crispin: that's something I just learned about you when we started this podcast was that you were so into theater and into plays and that type of stuff. I didn't, I had no idea about that until I came over to your house that night. For the [00:10:00] first couple weeks we doing that podcast, I had no.

Nate McBride: Wicked. Yeah. Well, when Wicked first opened on Broadway ever. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. 

Nate McBride: Um, I went and saw the original cast for, and this was a gift for Sarah for like her 30th birthday or something. Sure. And, uh, so I didn't, I was just like, whatever, I don't care. But I, I walked outta that, that show with my mind exploding into little bits and forever, forever changed.

Um, so Anywho, uh, no, that was good. I, it's, you know, I'm, I'm like 52 now, which isn't necessarily that old, but I'm, I much more enjoy Broadway shows than concerts now, because at Broadway shows not everybody's holding up their fucking phone in front of their face to 

Mike Crispin: Yeah, you're right. Yeah. 

Nate McBride: On their phone.

Mike Crispin: Yeah. 

Nate McBride: And Broadway at least you don't have that problem, which I prefer. 

Mike Crispin: That's great. So, oh, so you went, you were, you were in Broadway in New York? 

Nate McBride: No, no, no. Uh, well, Broadway, Boston, but 

Mike Crispin: Oh, got, got, gotcha, gotcha. Got, okay. Yeah. 

Nate McBride: One, one 

Mike Crispin: I was [00:11:00] gonna ask you went. Did you go to, uh, centerfolds afterwards or Silver Slipper or what's, what's the other one that's in there?

What the hell is that? 

Nate McBride: The Centerfolds China John. 

Mike Crispin: Oh, centerfolds. What the hell am I, what did I just say? 

Nate McBride: Silver 

Mike Crispin: slippers? Yeah. No. What? Well, I can't fricking see that shit goes to China. I don't know much about it. You know,

such a poser 

Nate McBride: is the gla is the glass slipper adjacent to Centerfolds? 

Mike Crispin: The golden banana. 

Nate McBride: Golden banana. Which is up in what, Worcester or something? 

Mike Crispin: Uh, that's in route one, or is that even still there? That's gone. I think that's gone in cabaret and 

Nate McBride: there's 

Mike Crispin: one 

Nate McBride: province because, 

Mike Crispin: oh God, I don't even know. I don't know any of that stuff.

Nate McBride: Yeah. Um, I've only, I mean myself, I've only heard on radio announcements, so 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. I don't know 

Nate McBride: either. 

Mike Crispin: That's, that's about right. 

Nate McBride: I think most of what I've learned though, I've learned from listening to you talk to other [00:12:00] people. So it's amazing how you learn from other people too. I, I learned from you. Yeah.

Mike Crispin: And 

Nate McBride: now you're claiming that you learn from other people. Um, 

Mike Crispin: that's how it usually is. You just kind of hear about it from other people and 

Nate McBride: fascinating. 

Mike Crispin: You just take it and digest it and hold it for a time like this when you can pretend you know what you're talking about, but you don't to 

Nate McBride: give any, give any names as of who actually heard a from I think you're just maybe now lying to little it, because I, 

Mike Crispin: I 

Nate McBride: heard, I admit I heard it from you, but now 

Mike Crispin: I heard it from, uh, BA, Bobby Smith was his name, I think.

Bobby Smith. 

Nate McBride: Oh, Bobby Smith. Okay. Well, I'm, 

Mike Crispin: see tomorrow, you know Bobby Smith, right? You know Bobby Smith? You should talk to him. Bobby, 

Nate McBride: yeah. We're from the place. 

Mike Crispin: He's a good guy. Bobby, Bobby Smith. 

Nate McBride: Bobby 

Mike Crispin: Smith and, uh, 

Nate McBride: brother Jimmy Tinkles. And, and Billy Ponies. 

Mike Crispin: James Richardson as well. I've heard a little bit from him.

Nate McBride: James Richardson, ah, another 

Mike Crispin: one 

Nate McBride: of my [00:13:00] favorites. 

Mike Crispin: And Jim and EZ McDonald was another one of my friends back then. 

Nate McBride: Man, 

Mike Crispin: good guy. Great, great, great set of guys. Great set of guys. Good friends. 

Nate McBride: Friends, good guys. All of them. Good guys. 

Mike Crispin: Great guys. They helped me out. They helped me out. They, they really, I lived vicariously through them.

That's how I grew up. That's how I grew up with those three guys. 

Nate McBride: Good. Yep. And doing good young men things. 

Mike Crispin: Bobby Smith was a really nice guy and he was always there for me. 

Nate McBride: Yep. I hear you. 

Mike Crispin: Jim and EZ McDonald. He was, it was just kind of just on the side. Kinda a wingman type guy. 

Nate McBride: He's a silent one though, that you 

Mike Crispin: hear the 

Nate McBride: most.

Mike Crispin: Who's the other guy? Jim Richardson. I can't remember who I said. I can't remember. 

Nate McBride: Jim 

Trance Bot: Richardson. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. That was him. I remember him really well. 

Nate McBride: Jim Al, 

Mike Crispin: just like yesterday. It was just like y. 

Nate McBride: Is is has my audio sucked this whole time, by the way, because my microphone sound, [00:14:00] my microphone was over here.

Mike Crispin: You sound, you sound more rich. You sound rich right now. 

Nate McBride: Richer, 

Mike Crispin: like in, in sound. Uh, the tone is just full. 

Nate McBride: Okay. When you don't see this big, giant, fluffy thing in front of my face. Next time we do the episode, maybe perhaps remark on that, like, Hey Nate, it looks like you're talking in a space not in front of a microphone.

Mike Crispin: Yeah. Now you just sound incredibly loud, which is good. That's what you have a microphone for. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. To 

Nate McBride: make my point. To make my point. 

Mike Crispin: Yes, yes, yes. You sound, you sound wonderful. 

Nate McBride: Well, that's all I want to know, so 

Mike Crispin: you do you sound good? You sound great. 

Nate McBride: You sound good too, Mike. 

Mike Crispin: Thank you. Thank you. 

Nate McBride: And, and speaking of sounding good, welcome.

Welcome to to the Calculus of IT Podcast. This is welcome. Season three, episode six. And I want to quickly remark on the fact that I got a little note, uh, the other day. [00:15:00] Yeah. That last week's episode was our hundredth episode. 

Mike Crispin: Oh, did someone pass you that note? 

Nate McBride: Someone passed me that note that it was our hundredth episode.

Mike Crispin: Wow. 

Nate McBride: Last week we did not have a hundred Jagermeister shots anniversary celebration. So we'll just have to have that at a future episode. 

Mike Crispin: It wasn't Bobby Smith who told you, was it? 

Nate McBride: It was, uh, Timbo. I told me, 

Mike Crispin: oh, Tim. Oh, Timbo, I missed that guy. You gotta love Timbo. 

Nate McBride: Oh, the Intimidator Timbo, he told me. So this is our hundred 101.

Mike Crispin: This is the hundred one. Episode. Yeah, that's sounds good. 

Nate McBride: 101 episode of the Calculus of It Podcast, season three, episode six. 

Mike Crispin: Oh, Jesus. 

Nate McBride: We are wow. Flying through this season. Episode 6 0 40, my God. Yeah, it was like only yesterday. It was episode five [00:16:00] and now we're all holy crap. All the way at six. Um, we are the best episode, not episode.

Oh my God. We are the best episode at the moment, but we also are the best podcast on the internet. That's a fact. 

Mike Crispin: Yes, we are. Um, 

Nate McBride: I got some data analytics today from Gemini that verified this, uh, analysis and so that is that we are the best podcast on the internet. This is the best episode of that podcast, and we, I love it.

It's not even over yet. That's, that's how crazy generative AI is. It already knows. This is the best episode of the best podcast. Ever. 

Mike Crispin: Amazing. 

Nate McBride: So like, name, any other podcast. There's, they're at least if not more second place than us. There are other CIO leadership podcasts. All bullshit. All bullshit. This is the original og, [00:17:00] right?

Like we talked about last week. Yeah. This is where you get talked with, not about. You get talked four, not two.

Yeah. If you don't understand what I'm saying. That sounds good. Just go back and listen to the last week's episode if you don't get it. Um, but tonight we are doing something we have not yet done before. 

Mike Crispin: We 

Nate McBride: are, Mike and I are both, Mike and I are both gonna strip down. Oh wait, they don't have to see video anymore.

Mike Crispin: That's right. Now we can do it for real and not get in trouble. 

Nate McBride: I got a better idea. Let's talk about operating systems. That 

Mike Crispin: sounds like a great idea. People are much more excited about that. 

Nate McBride: It's not a bad plan B actually, uh, considering plan A is now out the window, um, incident. Incidentally, I have some new ideas for shirts, so we gotta plug those.

Oh, 

Mike Crispin: good 

Nate McBride: episode. Yep. I have a shirt that says [00:18:00] like a, a big middle finger on it.

Mike Crispin: That's a good one. That's sounds original. Good one. 

Nate McBride: Yep.

Mike Crispin: I had one that was like a, a picture of a ghost with a, a red circle and a line through it. That was, that was my idea that I had come up with. 

Nate McBride: We've gotta get this printed up before someone else tells the ideas. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. We don't want anyone to take these ideas. They're, uh, it's worth a lot of money. It's worth a lot of eyeballs.

Nate McBride: Is, uh, wait, the, i, I gotta tell you about some of my ideas For an, an ultra marathon that will be the ultra marathon of all ultra marathons. Um, I'll have to tell you about this one. It's gonna be, it's gonna be epic. Okay. Um, and then let's just say that there's, there's fire involved. Wow. So like, the actual fire.

Mike Crispin: That 

Nate McBride: sounds 

Mike Crispin: great. 

Nate McBride: Not like, not like fire on the side of [00:19:00] the course fire. Like 

Mike Crispin: do you have to run through the fire, like go like through it 

Nate McBride: or No, you have to lay in the fire. 

Mike Crispin: Oh, that sounds awesome. 

Nate McBride: Yep.

And yeah, there's a whole bunch of other details and like safety things I'm still working on. Um, and some permit and sample. Lot of 

Mike Crispin: safety. I think it'll work out. The safety details. Those will be needed. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. Well, I mean, I've been using Claude to develop it, so. Good, 

Mike Crispin: good. Claude will help. 

Nate McBride: I feel like I have it mostly solved.

This point, 

Mike Crispin: I don't think it'll let you, 'cause of the constitutional ai, it will not allow you to do harm. Right. And if we burn people 

Nate McBride: there matter. No, I told, it's 

Mike Crispin: out. 

Nate McBride: I told Claude's entirely theoretical, like I wouldn't actually do it. And I didn't say people, I didn't say people, I said imaginary people.

Mike Crispin: So. Got it. That makes sense 

Nate McBride: then it was, okay. 

Mike Crispin: That makes sense. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. It's all, it's all theoretical with fake people. Um, [00:20:00] but tonight we're talking about operating systems. By the way, as I said before, I'll just re mention again 'cause it's worth mentioning. This is the Calculus of IT podcast, episode six, season three, and our website is the coit.us.

That's the co.us. 

Mike Crispin: I love it. That's great. 

Nate McBride: Um, so tonight we were gonna cover Slack as an operating system, but I think I. Um, I was talking about this today with somebody. We were debating what constitutes an actual operating system going back and forth on the topic, both coming to agreement ultimately that if you have a way to organize files, if you have some means of getting email, some means of chatting and some means of launching a browser.

That is all you need to make an operating system [00:21:00] in 2026. 

Mike Crispin: I, I would go even lighter than that. I'd say anything you, all you need is a command line.

Right? 

Nate McBride: A command line would be fine, but you have to use like a links browser to get any kind of browsing with a command line interface. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah, but you don't, may not need, you may not need the, uh, browser, 

Nate McBride: so web one 1.0. 

Mike Crispin: Just, uh, ask. Just ask. And it will, it'll, it'll draw it for you. It'll bring you there. I don't know.

Nate McBride: Alright, well, we're talking about, we're talking about what you need. Let's, let's back up for a minute. What is, um, let's say I had a system, we won't call it operating yet. We'll call it a system that allowed me to talk to it and give it commands, change this, change that, increase the font, decrease the font, whatever.

Right? 

Mike Crispin: Yep. 

Nate McBride: It also allowed me to send a note through some mechanism. Take your [00:22:00] pick, put a note to you through, um, some chat function through some, um, like light terminal client something. Right? I could send a message to you. Mm-hmm. And the third thing was I could store files on it. I had directories in which to store files.

Mike Crispin: Sure. 

Nate McBride: That. Is an operating system, would you, would you? Yep. 

Mike Crispin: I can manage the, manage the hardware and manage the, uh, memory and processor. And can you go lower? 

Nate McBride: Can you go lighter than that or do you need those three things to constitute an os? 

Mike Crispin: I, I would argue you need is something to manage the hardware and a way to input output data.

That's it.

For an operating system, you're talking about bare Bare bones. Bare bones, 

Nate McBride: yeah, absolutely. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, 

Mike Crispin: yeah, yeah. 

Nate McBride: So it needs a way to re open and read files, edit files, and then 

Mike Crispin: Yep. [00:23:00] 

Nate McBride: Save files. 

Mike Crispin: Yep. 

Nate McBride: Okay. 

Mike Crispin: Sure. Yeah. Yep. You need some, uh, user land. User land that's gonna do store things and run commands.

Nate McBride: The communication piece. I mean, we can just rely on Telenet, split screen telenet for that functionality or an old fashioned BBS running terminal code. 

Mike Crispin: Sure. 

Nate McBride: I can now chat with you, I can send you messages. I can't send you very, very large attachments, but I can at least reference files that exist somewhere else that have those attachments.

Mike Crispin: Mm-hmm. 

Nate McBride: So that's what we need. Okay. So that's what makes an operating system, then the question becomes, what is not an operating system right now? Because if you use those three criteria 

Mike Crispin: Sure, 

Nate McBride: I can, that's 

Mike Crispin: why 

Nate McBride: name, name nearly anything and it's an operating system. 

Mike Crispin: That's right, that's right. I mean, that's why Docker gives us today, right?

Is uh, [00:24:00] it's essentially an application that runs an operating system. So, I mean, it's, it's, um, but yeah, operating system ultimately, I mean, I mean, you could, is your in input output and that's, that's what helps you to operate on a very, you know, very low level, simple level. 

Nate McBride: The problem is you're two, no matter what, you're always two layers removed from the bare metal.

You can't run something that's a software operating system on top of, on top of bare metal unless it knows how to sort of communicate with the hardware. Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: Yes. 

Nate McBride: So therefore, so therefore it requires both an operating system beneath it and the operating system's capability to communicate with the hardware.

So when we talk about operating systems, again, let's clarify that they also need to be able to natively speak to their hardware that is powering them. 

Mike Crispin: Yep. 

Nate McBride: Okay. Now if that's the case. Yeah. Hardware [00:25:00] then the discussion was around can we, can we, um, abstract this a little bit and get to the point where we're, we're talking about Slack itself and I picked Slack, or we picked Slack, uh, when we were at that bar because it has.

All the pieces to, to operate with. Yeah. The only, only exception being it can't speak to the hardware. It can speak, I, go ahead. 

Mike Crispin: I was just gonna say, I, I think of this more as, uh, when we talk about Slack as an operating system, we're talking about what we're talking about right now, previous to us getting into Slack is a computer operating system.

Yes. And when I think of Slack or any platform as a potential operating system, it's a, it's a system that operates a business based on an operating model or, uh, an objective, you know, the, the, of the company, how the company is going to operate. So I think that the abstraction [00:26:00] of software, as long as it's input, output, and communications and certain rules, um, it's pretty exciting that you could, you could think about having some sort of platform to help standardize the way you run your business.

Um, and a lot of people, well, I think we sometimes have looked at ERP as this, you know, this ERP suites as sort of an operating system for business, but largely leaves out connecting people and collaborating and 

Nate McBride: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: Um, you know, so yeah, it's, 

Nate McBride: well, I think if we back up though a little bit, let's take for instance, uh, the idea that you could take a PC or Mac off the shelf that's never been open before, turn it on, go through the quick little setup part.

Uh, don't install any software. In fact, remove all software that's on the machine. 

Mike Crispin: Mm-hmm. 

Nate McBride: Uh, insofar as it doesn't, uh, inhibit functionality of the machine. Remove it all, turn everything off that you need to turn off. [00:27:00] Uh, in the meantime, download and install Slack on that machine, uh, and then start using Slack only for all communications, all scheduling, all all file transfers.

Though you don't really have file management unless you use consider chat, um, arbitrage as a means of managing files and you're done. You could, you could, the, the theory that we put forward was that you could theoretically only ever operate inside of Slack. Uh, now with some catches that we acknowledged, one is that you'd have to have a diff, you'd have a difficult time having sort of external video conferencing.

You'd have a difficult, difficult time generating new files to share to people outside of the company. But certainly from an intercompany OS perspective, if it was very in super that way, it would work just fine. 

Mike Crispin: I think the benefits of Slack as an operating system are that you don't need to use Slack's [00:28:00] tools, as you know, it's the, it's the operating system.

You can use any number of other tools to collaborate externally as part of Slack. You can interact. Through them. And that's why I think of it as an operating system is because the amazing and huge list of applications in which it integrates with allows you to do, you know, collaborate externally or have an external file system.

And it being the, the central system that plugs you into all of those other ancillary systems, it's not as much of a walled garden approach. It opens up the garden, uh, which is, which is why I think it could be, is a potentially great business operating system. 

Nate McBride: So, so an operating system must have let, let back up.

So, sure. Effectively, if you think about whether or not Slack is an operating system, I mean there's a lot of evidence for that case that it's, it can manage all [00:29:00] comms. At least internally and you can even receive external email and then handle it internally. It's just the outbound emailing part. You have to set up some sort of SSB connection through Slack and, well, I'm pretty sure you can do it.

I haven't done it. Um, but handles all workflow and automation. 

Mike Crispin: Yep. 

Nate McBride: It's integration hub for any other tool you might have. So every other tool you have can report to it. It has its own app ecosystem, much like Apple has Safari. Mm-hmm. And it has canvas huddles, AI features, lists. Uh, so therefore if you have a company that's got Slack and they're using it at their most efficient level, 

Mike Crispin: really 

Nate McBride: every other application is a secondary app to Slack and is reporting into effectively the mothership for all things.

Um, but what it doesn't, I mean, obviously it doesn't manage hardware. 

Mike Crispin: It's just, yeah. 

Nate McBride: [00:30:00] Um, doesn't handle, like, doesn't handle process. It doesn't know that a new USB stick has been inserted or, you know, Nope. Um, it doesn't, it doesn't run as an OS basically. 

Mike Crispin: Right? 

Nate McBride: So that 

it 

Mike Crispin: doesn't run as a Yeah, it doesn't run as a, like a computer operating system.

It, it runs as a, an an operating model. An operating system for your business. As opposed to thinking of it from a computer perspective or a technology perspective. It's, it's ultimately operating your bus, all your business communications and all of your data transfers. Um, you can choose to use the apps that are in the Slack ecosystem, but much more likely you're gonna choose apps that integrate with Slack.

And like Nate said, you know, things are gonna be bogging into it. Not necessarily report. I don't, it could report back up to it, but you can have Slack, use hundreds of different data sources to get information. Right. The emergency of all this AI stuff we're seeing the [00:31:00] slack is like the first place. A lot of these chat bots and code interfaces and APIs get deployed even prior to them being released as products.

So it's, it's very, it's exciting. It's very capable. It's very data rich. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: Very capable. Um, I do think there's some things like, you know, that they, you, you, you really, in some respects to get the, the, the real security, you know, bump and boost is to need their expensive enterprise offering. But that's, 

Nate McBride: yeah.

Mike Crispin: That's, that's when you're really investing in it. It, it has to be you to look at it as, as an operating system to get the, to really get the most out of, especially when you spending that kind of money. So it's, it's, 

Nate McBride: go ahead. 

Mike Crispin: No, I was gonna say, I, I think it's definitely. Built more to scale as a true [00:32:00] communications and information platform more so than teams is, which I think is more just a glue application.

Uh, that's, 

Trance Bot: yeah. 

Mike Crispin: There for messaging and is kind of a, all everything in the kitchen sink type model with a pretty, just, in my opinion, sort of like a kind of weak app ecosystem. Um, and tries to do the same thing but is nowhere near as extensible. So I think that's one of the things that's really important in like a business operating system is if extensibility.

So if think of Slack in that respect, that's, uh, one of the things it's very good at is extensibility and I, and same with identity platforms. You could argue that, you know, your Okta type platforms, you know, they, they extend out. Um, or privilege access on the security and identity side. Similarly, how Slack does on the business operating model side.

So it's, well, it's really some good core systems that [00:33:00] can, you can build on to run your, your business. 

Nate McBride: Yep. Operate, um, all things that I think like from a notion Slack, obsidian type perspective, you know, looking outside in, their goal would be to get you to use that platform as much as possible for all things, which is why that's 

Mike Crispin: right.

Nate McBride: Number one, they, they just literally, um, pack in so many features, but also they'll to become the one stop shop that builds that dependency, which is dangerous as we know from an autonomy perspective, but that builds in that dependency. Mm-hmm. And so what happens when that os quote unquote goes down, you know?

Yeah. Who controls, who controls the work environment? You, or in this case, I guess Salesforce. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. I, uh, I think, I know we're on the slack topic, and I won't go too deep in with an obsidian, but I will say one thing about it is that it's ultimate Go ahead. Go ahead. It's, it's, it's ultimately [00:34:00] the, the king of not being locked in.

It's the, yeah. It's totally extensible. It's, you can believe it at any time and not get totally hamstrung and everything is based on standards and it's pretty much allows you to take something like Claude and turn into a superpower if you're on an obsidian type stack. So it's like there's really, that's another potential business op, like you mentioned notion, but, uh, obsidian is a very potential, like a business operating system for each individual, like a knowledge management system for each individual.

Nate McBride: Yes. 

Mike Crispin: And that, and that doesn't have to integrate with anything because it's just simple flat file. Um. So any tool that works with files, we'll be able to work with that. Um, so, 

Nate McBride: but you bring up an interesting question, which is, if, if something is a knowledge management type system, is that a [00:35:00] requirement for an operating system?

I mean, in other words, if you have data that you cannot access in a, that's, that could be potentially a very valuable knowledge source. Would, would it then become a dependency for an, an operating system to work? I guess what I'm saying is 

Mike Crispin: it depends on the culture of the company too, right? 

Nate McBride: Yeah. Well, all this 

Mike Crispin: in the 

Nate McBride: culture of the company.

Mike Crispin: Yeah. E email is the operating system for businesses still in a lot of places. Even no matter how good your, your, your data, data model is or your, your, your, um, EDMS or your content management or your metadata or whatever else is when the shit hits the fan, they're digging into their email. 

Nate McBride: Yep. Oh, because no one's, no one's holding them accountable for that.

I mean, but bottom line is that if you put it in a system like a Slack and you don't create that [00:36:00] data ecosystem underneath it, you don't attach it to sort of a bigger process. Then while it's great, great at doing what it does, it's going to fall very short when it comes time to, um, doing anything outside of the system itself.

And I don't know, I think about like the, my desktop. Okay. My desktop has my hard drive icon. Um, yeah, a shadow, a shadow link to my Google Drive and a shadow link to my box drive. There's nothing else on my desktop. And I have my apps and I live out of basically Chrome, brave and Island. Um, along with Slack.

That's the only things I open. And so to my thinking, the desktop is dead. Like I don't need an OS to do. Now granted Mac OS is probably quite powerful in a lot of ways. I haven't really paid attention over the years. Sure. [00:37:00] Windows probably has things that can do too, that are clever. But who gives a shit? I just need my browser to run.

Uh, I need my, my OS to run a browser and connect to my two data storage sources. Oh, also run Slack. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. 

Nate McBride: I don't need to do anything else. So maybe perhaps we think about our desktops as becoming a legacy artifact and the only reason that we continue to buy and invest in new software and even though we haven't paid for Windows and Mac OS in years and years and years, we are still effectively.

Buying all this extra superpower to run a browser with people that, people that have exceptions to run very high powered like graphics design, et cetera. No, I get that. No shade to them. But that would be a different class of person who can't live without an actual full blown os. We could probably do [00:38:00] with a os.

That was, 

Mike Crispin: yeah. 

Nate McBride: And I'm not trying to get Linux, Linux bandwagon here, but ultimately that's where the question becomes is if Slack is my ecosystem, we, we call it, we won't call it an os, call it an ecosystem. 

Mike Crispin: Okay. 

Nate McBride: And it needs a basic OS to run, then I'm done. I just need to come up. Yeah. Basically thing I can run Linux or run uh, slack.

Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: I think that's ultimately the, the brow, it's the browser and the, uh, and the terminal and the terminal will run in the browser. I think the, what Slack is becoming is the new terminal. And I think that's the, that's the, this can be really interesting because what's emerged I think in the last year is this re rebirth of, um, shelves, [00:39:00] you know, in, in terminal.

Like, you know, you've seen all this, you know, the codex and the cloud code and the, 

Nate McBride: yeah. 

Mike Crispin: All, all the tool sets that are all generally running based on terminals that are running off of the operating system on the local disc. So that brings back to, you know, these open source, you know, Linux and others.

Truly gonna be useful in the ways, be as much as I would like them to be without strong applications that a. An AI can, can call, take like the cowork announcement from philanthropic this last week, you know, where they are, are basically able to run applications on your computer and do a number of things.

Nate McBride: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: If you don't have a good operating system that has access to those apps, you, you're not, it's not gonna be able to be able to learn them. So I don't know. I, I, um, I think that the big experiment with Chromebooks, [00:40:00] it's, I think one of the things that'll be sort of interesting is to see where that goes.

But I really thought that had a chance to catch on and I think that's proof that, uh, perhaps we still need some sort of a thick operating system. I mean, I expected that some company would have made that work and no one has seen to do that outside of schools. Um, because the, you know, they get Google Classroom and everything's really in the Google Drive.

Nate McBride: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: That's, um. From, from your point around, you know, key applications, I think as time goes on, it won't matter what you use. You can let people use wherever they want, and you'll be able to encapsulate any of your businesses, applications or ecosystem within sort of, uh, glass box if you will. You know, and, and they can use whatever they want to use and, and move on.

But you do need to have a business [00:41:00] operating system. And I think that's where Slack and maybe a couple of the core systems in your ecosystem play, uh, slack can be the front door, the way that you call those applications, the way that you talk to those applications, um, the way that you talk to employees and contractors and everybody.

So it really is a center, kind of town square application that you can plug everything into. And there's a number of middlewares that are trying to play in the Slack space. They were kind of dying out when teams was all the rage and now they're all back. Yeah. And uh, 

Nate McBride: yeah, it's been an interesting ride for Slack with Salesforce and, and, uh, and everything else.

So, 

Mike Crispin: but huge, huge, huge platform. I think adoption's usually pretty good at most companies. It takes a year or so to get going and then, um, there's still people who will just work in their email and miss out on, [00:42:00] you know, probably 50 or 60% of everything that's going on outside of the core messaging that comes through email and Slack, you know, but it'ss a comradery and culture of a company that lives in Slack.

And if you're not in there, you miss it. You don't have a pulse on what's going on. 

Nate McBride: So, pre Slack or pre, I don't wanna say intranet, but um. It was the water cooler. Then you move to a, you know, email, and email is being used for pithy little conversations as a, Hey, are you going to the party? And then wait and email back.

Yes. And wait and go. Then Chad came into the corporate world, um, so on and so forth. Anyway, the point being that if we took chat away 

Mike Crispin: Yep. 

Nate McBride: And you went back to synchronous communication, would you still have an operating system? Is it now table stakes to have [00:43:00] something that allows in, like in basically on the spot at the moment, in the moment immediate chatting to, to, to become an, an operating system?

I mean, is that, what's the, what's the law is a brisky law that, that every single system will eventually evolve to having email. Um, 

Mike Crispin: yeah. 

Nate McBride: Would it be the same thing for chat? 

Mike Crispin: I think messaging important, whether it's synchronous or asynchronous, you're gonna have some have to have some form of messaging.

But I think, 

Nate McBride: I think more, even platforms that don't have messaging, like think box boxes, doesn't have messaging. However, you and I can carry a conversation in there by using the, at symbol in a document Yep. Uh, preview activity, uh, area. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. 

Nate McBride: So that's, he has comments 

Mike Crispin: and Yep. 

Nate McBride: That's chatting. 

Mike Crispin: Yes. Yes. I, I think any place you can leave a comment or albeit that it needs to be a good way of [00:44:00] doing it, and I think that's a box suffers, but I think, uh, there's, yeah.

You have to, a way to communicate that's, that's, especially in the world today. You can't have a, lemme 

Nate McBride: lemme, lemme super abstract this for you and just 

Mike Crispin: Sure. 

Nate McBride: Bear, bear with me one moment. 

Mike Crispin: Sure, sure. 

Nate McBride: I had this idea and 

Mike Crispin: yeah. Sure. 

Nate McBride: Let's suppose that you had, you didn't, you didn't, you couldn't afford email as a company, but you could afford box, I'm just saying.

Okay. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. 

Nate McBride: For whatever reason, you couldn't afford email, but you could afford box or a, a pro a platform like box. And then in that box platform, I created a folder called Mike. And Nate. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. 

Nate McBride: Okay. And in that folder I created a single document, uh, Mike and Nate talking 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. A 

Nate McBride: box note or something. I, I shared it with you.

Mike Crispin: Yeah. 

Nate McBride: And we could, we could basically do email through [00:45:00] that one document either by using the preview mode, activity screen, or using the document itself to send notes back and forth. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. 

Nate McBride: Um, I've basically recreated email or, and, and chat. Using a platform designed for neither because it has synchronous, uh, commenting capability and a lot of kids co-authoring.

Mike Crispin: So a lot of kids doing Google docs. Right. They make it so that Yeah. 

Nate McBride: In classrooms, that's what my kids did in high school. 

Mike Crispin: It can't, they can't, can't, yeah. And they can't, they can't be read. Right. So it's great. They can, they can delete them when they're done. Um, yeah, I, yeah, I mean, that definitely could be done.

Is that something that people would probably do? Probably not, but yeah. I mean, you could certainly do that and 

Nate McBride: No, but that brings, I mean, again, not to get too ultra philosophical on this point, but Okay, so then the only, only difference between, say you and I having a full blown conversation about a document that's shared between us, and I could do this with every employee.

I can have a document [00:46:00] between us or groups of employees, basically through group chat. 

Mike Crispin: Yep. 

Nate McBride: The only difference is it doesn't have a pretty email, ui, it doesn't have send 

Mike Crispin: Sure. 

Nate McBride: Steve BCC attached. None of that. 

Mike Crispin: Yep. 

Nate McBride: But, uh, based on that stipulation, if I had a box note in which I could attach files and give you links and things like that, the only difference is a ui.

Mike Crispin: Yes. Yeah. Yes. 

Nate McBride: Okay. 

Mike Crispin: And, and that people would need to type their name and, you know, make sure 

Nate McBride: that they, yeah. Let's just suppose I, I needed to send Mike a message. Well, I create a box note or we would already have one. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. 

Nate McBride: Mike and Mike and Nate talking on box. I would send you a message and at you, so you got dinged and then you come in out to the box note and so on, so forth.

And then let's suppose I need to bring in, uh, you know, Timmy, to our [00:47:00] conversation. Yep. I either invite Timmy, Timmy to the box note, or I create a new box note. Nate, Mike and Timmy. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. Yeah. 

Nate McBride: And I've, I've basically created Outlook folders. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah, that's, you could, you could do that if you wanted to. Sure. 

Nate McBride: Now I'm not making box my ecosystem anytime soon or my os my point being that there's ways to circumvent email and chat using not necessarily engineered functionality and apps that you have and platforms.

You have to do that same thing back to our original discussion about an os You need a way to communicate, well, I've solved that problem, I've solved that problem with any single system I had that's cloud-based. That allows me to chat or comment. So, so then back to the original question. Well, we, I think what we resolved is that you need something that communicates to the hardware layer we, that we've, that we've, uh, resolved.[00:48:00] 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. That's, that's a computer operating system. That's not a business operating system. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. And I think we agree that once you get to that point, you've established that link. Really what can happen is. Um, any platform that solves for the critical needs of an OS wins. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. And there's, I think, a difference between an, a platform operating system and an ecosystem.

Sure. And I think about this in terms of, um, tell me if I'm wrong, but a platform ecosystem requires multiple apps all talking to each other in concert, multiple sort of structures, whereas a software ecosystem just requires one platform to do everything. Am I thinking about that? Right? 

Mike Crispin: I think it as a software ecosystem, uh, yeah.

It's, it's kind of, it's, it's, or it's an orchestration layer that's gonna allow a number of different applications [00:49:00] to connect. It can be an open ecosystem or a closed ecosystem. So in a, in a closed ecosystem, you would be using applications that. Can only integrate or can only work within the closed ecosystem.

Nate McBride: Sure. 

Mike Crispin: Um, but, uh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. E ecosystem is, uh, it to totally makes sense to have one central system that's helping to manage that. Where people go, that's where the people go. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: Um, but yeah, I think for the most part, slack is a work operating system. The reason why I, I'm excited about this conversation is essentially, you know, what we've been, we've talked about a few times over the last years year or so, is it's just on the agent side, much of what's being built is based on commands that are sent through text that are sent, you know, structured commands, scripts that are sent through text, and what better place to [00:50:00] be able to do that than an inter, basically a platform that was built on IRC and text.

And that's, that's, um, or Slack is starting to brand it as more of an agentic platform and it's become the front door for all of your companies. If you can integrate it all of your company's workflows by simply typing a command, it's hugely valuable, uh, integrating all your apps and all the data as needed.

And, um, having, having the open ecosystem, and again, that's different from some of the others where it's like you've gotta build the integrations. If you want to integrate, slack has sort of an app store, if you will, and that you can plug many of these applications in and, um, yeah, it wants to do the help you do the work.

Whereas they think on the Microsoft side, it's very much positioned for their closed ecosystem of tools. Yes, there's a Microsoft workplace, uh, sorry, Microsoft [00:51:00] Marketplace, but a lot of these apps, I mean, they have like 40 or 50 downloads, you know, they're. Small, small shops, you're plugging these apps into your entire Microsoft ecosystem when you install them through the marketplace and giving them access.

Um, we, I think we would both agree co-pilot's a bit of a disappointment, and that's really your option. You can plug other models into copilot, but that's, that, that's your, that's really your option. Um, and it, it just, it feels like a direct line to Microsoft. It doesn't feel like an open ecosystem, it feels like.

Yep. We're using loops, we're using SharePoint. We're using, um, we're, we're using, um, TE Teams video and we used to be Skype, right? We're using all of the components. The, um, the Viva, um, you know, HR managements of social media system. It's all, their ecosystem is very closed, [00:52:00] so. I get, I get excited about the Slack ecosystem and work operating system.

'cause I think Salesforce has realize that's kinda what they have and their marketing as such. And the agentic ai component is what is turning heads. Now. We don't need to train someone to kick off a business process, to make a sales call, to do research, to do. You can just ask and, uh, slack will come back with secure and trustworthy response.

Uh, they just announced a Slack bot today. I haven't even looked at it, but it's, it's gonna come out in February where they've updated the Slack bot, slack bot to do a number of things. 

Nate McBride: Yeah, 

Mike Crispin: they're pretty, pretty basic. But for people who aren't AI power users might, that might be some glue that keeps them in the system.

Nate McBride: So I, well, I struggled for a while to get people to invest in Workflow Builder, even though they've really done Workflow Builder down to mm-hmm. Like the dumbest dumb, and people still don't want to do it. They'd [00:53:00] rather click seven times to achieve an effect. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. 

Nate McBride: And I'm just like, that's so funny. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah.

Nate McBride: And then with the new, the new workflow builder that came out last year and the update with the, um, decision forking in Q4, it was like, I didn't even need Zapier anymore for half of my applications. I, I literally turned it off and deprecated it for about 40 different things all moving directly to Slack's, forking, and connectivity with Airtable.

So now I can do everything through that direct connection. Um, I know you're a Smartsheet guy, but, um, I don't know if there's 

Mike Crispin: any No. Like, I, like I like both of them. No, I think they're, both platforms are good. No, there's, they're sort of similar api. I think Airtable is way more extensible. There's no question about it.

In terms of the ecosystem of tools and apps and 

Nate McBride: Oh, yeah. 

Mike Crispin: Uh, just the, the developer community and everything else. Airtable is, uh, you know, I think more of a database, central hub, [00:54:00] development rich environment, and Smartsheet's an app. I mean, it's just, there's just, they're very different. Uh, Airtable is much more of a scalable, and yeah, it's Datadriven and Smartsheet's like a Microsoft project with Excel on steroids.

So it's an application. 

Nate McBride: Oh, I'm not being that, my, my point was, um, well, any event, uh, 

Mike Crispin: yeah. 

Nate McBride: With Slack now and that Workflow builder functionality 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. 

Nate McBride: And it, the Wizard capability that they've really done a great job with. It's just, it's hard not to make things yet people won't, um Right. 'cause the thing that dabbles too, clo too closely into the coding development world, and most people stand far as, as far away from as they can.

I mean, they're afraid of 

Mike Crispin: Yep. 

Nate McBride: Making something new. 

Mike Crispin: Development is, uh, is scary for me. I think some of the, the, the same is true, um, with [00:55:00] ai. I think there is a lot of, uh, fear, fear about, you know, security and something data getting out so people don't use it or they've used it, you know, for something and it didn't do that good of a job and 

Nate McBride: Yeah.

Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: As we've, as we, as we've talked about, many a times, maybe took longer than it would've done just to be do it yourself. So there's, um, dis you know, au automatic sort of disqualification of certain tools because of that. But it's, it's similar to this development thing, right? We, we thought, I, I certainly thought and sounds like you did as well.

Like you, you get some very simple workflow builder tools out there and you, you show people how to use them and they. Either give it a shot or they don't have time, or they're not, they don't grasp it. I'll give you one example. It's really interesting just in terms of [00:56:00] AI component, like the AI search inbox.

Nate McBride: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: You create a hub with a bunch of files, it works pretty well. It's getting better and better. Nobody uses it. That, I mean, that I know, you know, do you build something up, you demo it, it looks great, and it's easier just for someone to call someone else on the phone and ask a question. So it's, 

Nate McBride: I'm surprised they still have that product.

I haven't, I've never used hubs. I, I, I'm always shocked when I hear that it's still being used. 

Mike Crispin: Oh, it's, it's, I mean, it works well for us in the replacement hubs are fine. It's the AI component that's like, it's disappointing that we don't seem to get a lot of mileage outta that because it, it can answer pretty much any question we get asked.

Nate McBride: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: You know, like we like. What's the process for bringing on an employee? Or where is this document or where do I find that? So just ask the AI and it'll tell you it's pretty good. Um, but it's just easier to slack us and ask us a question and we'll answer it for you. I mean that, [00:57:00] so that's another component of Slack is an operating system, is the dream is to say, when you message me, if you ask me question one through 125, my digital text twin will answer you like Mike Crispin would in his language.

The way that he would answer you. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: And then if, and, and it just, no one will know the difference. And that, and that can be a real, that's a real thing the operating system people actually use because they are used to just sending it to someone you know, that they, they know or a certain persona that they know.

So we're gotta get our 11 labs voices going, Nate, read our 30 minute passage. And, uh, I surprised how cheap it is now. What's that? 

Nate McBride: What mean 30 minute passage? What do you mean? 

Mike Crispin: So in order for 11 labs to train your voice, it does a pretty good job now is you need to read something for 30 [00:58:00] minutes. 

Nate McBride: Oh. 

Mike Crispin: So you literally sit and read for 30 minutes and, uh, it is pretty, pretty freaking scary.

How good is 

Nate McBride: it Connect connects with flock cameras and Palantir to, um, track you for the rest of your life? Is that what it does? 

Mike Crispin: Yes. Yes, it does. 

Nate McBride: It's a we, 

Mike Crispin: yeah. 

Nate McBride: I'm all in. I'm all in. I'm, I'm tired of being anonymous. 

Mike Crispin: They will find you, Nate. All they have to do is call Google. Right. So, I mean, it's like you and I are 

Nate McBride: so 

Mike Crispin: invested in that.

Nate McBride: Like he hasn't, he hasn't left his house for four days and he's only looking at it. That's 

Mike Crispin: right. 

Nate McBride: And if like inappropriate channels on, 

Mike Crispin: he's looking up the, uh, the golden banana.

Nate McBride: So 

Mike Crispin: full, full circle. 

Nate McBride: Well, full circle is last week we talked about Microsoft's push to go all web. And it's good [00:59:00] timing that we did that because the question is, if a, if a one of the three big, well, two big asterisk companies came out with a, what are you doing? 

Mike Crispin: Choking. 

Nate McBride: Are you done? 

Mike Crispin: Oh good. Sorry. 

Nate McBride: Hey, it's called a fucking mute button, dude.

Mike Crispin: Oh, sorry about did that hurt? 

Nate McBride: No, I just, now I gotta cut all this out. Maybe I just leave it in. 

Mike Crispin: I'll leave it in. Everyone 

Nate McBride: will think I'm in good health. How you're 

Mike Crispin: in good health. 

Nate McBride: So, um, the idea that and os would go to all web. Um, not a new idea, uh, in Google. So I kind of mastered this like forever ago.

But you know, Microsoft could the do that. Um, especially with uh, their copilot button. You have the [01:00:00] local files are pretty much, I mean except people when people are lazy or dunno what they're doing, the idea of local files is dead. Um, we didn't really talk about mobile os I guess I don't really care to anyway, but mobile os is that, who cares what the fuck flavor it is anymore?

It used to be cool to be on like Android or iOS, but now no one seems to really give a shit. And there was never like the same PC Mac war that happened with Android and iOS. Um, it was either you liked, liked to have people on MMS or you didn't. Um,

and then. We never, we didn't get into PowerPoint as an operating system, which I would argue is a full-blown operating system ecosystem, sewer system. Um, but ultimately, I guess the que the question is, is it, do we, do we agree [01:01:00] that if Slack is the place where you work, then Slack is your os, is it, is it the place where you work that is your operating system and then everything else is somewhat incidental to that point or no?

Mike Crispin: Gimme a little more on that. 

Nate McBride: Well, nine, like if you asked anybody in the company, 

Mike Crispin: yep. 

Nate McBride: Let's say you polled every employee, could they tell you what os version they were on? 

Mike Crispin: No. 

Nate McBride: Okay. Maybe, maybe someone would get like Windows 11. They, they with a question mark at the end, but 

Mike Crispin: yeah, 

Nate McBride: very few could tell you.

Right. Could they tell you what they use for chat and communication software? For sure. 

Mike Crispin: Probably. Yeah, definitely. 

Nate McBride: So [01:02:00] I don't know. That seems to be pretty telling. Like you don't know if you're running Windows 10 or Windows 11 or whatever you're running, but you know that you use Slack to talk, communicate, ideate, do all these other functions.

Mike Crispin: Sure. 

Nate McBride: Um, and, and potentially, you know, Smartsheet or you know, whatever else, but you know the thing in which you work, you do not know the operating system on which that system matters. And maybe there was a time, and I'm thinking back to N NT four, where everyone knew what NT four was. 'cause it was not only, of course, a glorified splash scheme when you started up, um, but to a degree, much of what you did relied on you knowing that you were on NT four for a lot of reasons, especially for drive mappings.

Yep, 

Mike Crispin: sure. 

Nate McBride: But I guess the point is that if it doesn't really matter anymore, then [01:03:00] perhaps we don't need to consider ourselves concerned about operating systems as we know them and really just be concerned about the next layer above that. 

Mike Crispin: Correct. Yeah, the operating system should not matter. I do think it's, it's now the device that matters to pe to people, not so much operationally.

Right. Um, but it's, um, you're right. Absolutely. It's, it's the interface and you know what human interface you are using, you using the keyboard. Are you using voice? Are you using. Vision, you know, using any, anything, right? Video. So the interface is what we're all going to care about. I, I don't think the system or the may even be some, at some point in the future, the application doesn't matter as much either.

But today, yes, the application is, I think the application stack is where it's at. Yeah. And the, the more that we can simplify that [01:04:00] and make that easy for people to use, the more it'll be useful for people, the more that they can do it, and without having to click around the, the better it will be for them.

Fewer clicks is, is always a good thing for all, for all generations, right? It's like you want to go fast and you want to be simple. You want it to be simple. Um, you should tell Apple that, but, uh. I have more clicks than ever. Now. I don't know what, what's going on. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. I mean I think, I think the user experience, which again, we didn't really get into 'cause I think it's so, I think it's too subjective, but I will say that user experience, when people now tell me that they're Mac users, I'm happy to give them a Mac laptop during my company.

Yeah. But what the fuck Does it matter anymore? I mean, unless you're a shortcut wizard. 

Mike Crispin: Yep. 

Nate McBride: There's no difference 

Mike Crispin: there. There isn't. You know, unless, and this is, [01:05:00] I don't only too down the rabbit hole here, but I, I think the fact that Apple hasn't an ecosystem of apps is what hurts this argument the most.

There are people that are used to having, yes, iMessage or having photos or having certain tool sets, that only app you can only have on a Mac. And I think that. Puts a wedge in sort of the open, the open model for, and this is more, more so I would say, you know, newer MAC users or employee, like people who don't have, don't have their setup app Mac apps that they've used like for 15 years that are probably not Apples apps.

Um, and it's like, apple Notes is a good example. There are a lot of people who like to use Apple Notes and they have to have a Mac to do that. And there's a data of secure who, people who come in say, I use Apple Notes. Just 

Nate McBride: kidding, 

Mike Crispin: just kidding. Yeah. It's just like OneNote on the PC side. Uh, at least you can use that on a Mac, but it's [01:06:00] the, you know, it's sort of the stickiness of their application.

iMessage is a great example, is ultimately the be the Blackberry messenger of, of today. But that, and that's the thing, like if you want to go all in the browser, apple doesn't want to do that. They're the only ones. The only ones who don't believe in the browser future and they wanna run thick applications and they want to tie you to the hardware and, uh, so be it.

So, 

Nate McBride: yeah, 

Mike Crispin: that's why I think just philosophical philosophically, I've been more prop, more proponent for Linux, more so, more than ever because it shouldn't matter. The operating system should not matter at all. But if you want final cut or you want logic or you, you can do anything creatively, you pretty much need to have a Mac because it's the driver sets the input output speed, [01:07:00] everything is gonna be better hardware.

Yeah. So you, you got, you're locked in. So, but again, I know that's outside the scope of probably a pharmaceutical scientist. No, I mean, the TCO 

Nate McBride: argument for this is. Is long been debated, and I think it's always still a good one to get into, which is if I give everyone in my company a Linux machine or repurposed an old PC that could run Linux, and then I create, I went and paid for and created virtual Windows machines that they could use for Windows type work.

Would I in the long run, say three years, have saved money or spent more money? Um, 

Mike Crispin: if you host 'em an AW WS you'll spend more. 

Nate McBride: Yeah, 

Mike Crispin: you definitely will, because it's a reoccurring cost. You'll see spend more. 

Nate McBride: Same thing with a Windows 365 vm. I mean, 70 bucks a month. 

Mike Crispin: Yep, yep. So, I mean, and that's, you know, we were, I know you and I were offline, we were [01:08:00] on, on Slack talking about, yep.

About the, the, the, the New Max that are gonna probably come out this year. It's like a $600 vac book air. It's like, who cares if someone breaks one of those? Go get another one. 

Nate McBride: Right, 

Mike Crispin: exactly. It's gonna, it's gonna be pretty. That's gonna be interesting to see if, but here's the thing my team likes to remind me of this is, you know, we have had certain instances at this company and in prior companies where someone's had to have a Mac and then they start and they have no idea how to use it.

Yeah. And to the, to your question, like around like, what, you know, it shouldn't matter, uh, if people can't close a window or they can't, you know, change their desktop resolution like they could in Windows or any of those things, it's pretty much a, uh, you know, a six month ordeal to get someone up to speed that's never used a Mac before.

And it, it's [01:09:00] hard to believe, but that's, that's seems to be the case. And 

Nate McBride: yeah, 

Mike Crispin: so it's almost like we, what we've had to do is. I mean, look, I think people are curious about Max and they want to u try one or they want to use one. Um, and they're lightweight and they're cool and everything, but, uh, so I have no problem with people asking.

It's just the overhead for the first few months. That's, that's the pain managing them is Easy's so simple and it's so simple. Um, so I think that the operating system shouldn't matter. You're right. You just, the, the operating system and the, and the hardware shouldn't matter. The computer operating system, the hardware shouldn't matter.

It's really the business operating system that will matter. The ecosystem of tools, the way you share data, the way you secure the data, um, the way that you can automate and make things happen on their own, and that you can verify and trace the data integrity, um, that's, that's gonna, that's the bread and butter, that's the stuff [01:10:00] that needs to be good.

And, uh, all the end points should be commodity. You know, hardware or cheap max or GPCs that lasts so they don't break when the, when the, you know, when the, the heat's on. That's the last thing you want. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: In terms of what someone's laptop update, you know, running for 45 minutes, you know, while they're trying to get ready for a presentation in front of the board that morning.

You know, stuff like that. Like you don't want that happening. But, um, yeah, I think the operating system, you think what you and I are trying to say maybe is like, it'd be great if there was an operating system that just got the hell out of the way. We just don't need it to be doing all the things it's doing.

We need to be able to print, we need to be able to work with the hardware. We need to be able to connect to the internet 

Nate McBride: printing. That's a good one too, 

Mike Crispin: if it needs to print, you know, even if it needs to do that. But the all I'm say the very basic [01:11:00] function, like you said, you have three folders on your Mac desktop and it's like.

There's no reason why that can't be a Linux machine, you know? Or it can't be a hardened PC or it can't be a really cheap Mac, you know? So it's, um, yeah, I think that's gonna be a little bit disruptive when that new Mac comes out and people are like, Hmm, I wonder if we should buy, you know, 10 or 20 of these things and just throw 'em in the closet.

Start handing 'em out to every contractor, you know, that comes in. 'cause they don't cost any, they're not gonna cost, cost anything. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: But if they don't know, use a Mac, you could spend a lot of time on the phone wrestling with them on how to open Word. You know, like, that's just not productive. So, 

Nate McBride: I mean, that, that's the, the whole rest of the debate, um, centers around.

Once you have a system, how many processes do you have require you [01:12:00] to step outside of that system? And then that's when kind of the theory begins to break. If you must go from Slack over to Microsoft Word, you now have stopped the chain of custody. Um, that's right. That's right. Re bridge it, re bridge it back by taking that file, saving it somewhere, sharing it, putting that link back in Slack.

But you've effectively lost it. It's no different than, um, if you and I are chatting and then I cut a part out of the podcast and then it's, it almost looks like we didn't even stop chatting. Like we picked up everything the top. That's right. There's a, that's right. There's a gap. There's a gap in time. So ultimately, yeah.

Um, and I think 

Mike Crispin: what, what, go ahead. Sorry. Go. 

Nate McBride: No, no, go ahead. 

Mike Crispin: I I was just gonna say like there's what might be the, in terms of our thin client. Thought process. Everyone's trying to get there somehow is. I think one of the benefits last thing I'll say about [01:13:00] Linux is that there are Linux distros that you can't tell.

I just sent you a, a link in Slack and maybe we could show it in the next podcast or talk about on the next podcast is that, you know, there, there, there's Linux Distros that look like Windows. They're almost impossible to tell the difference if you're, all you're doing is opening Island, right? And all you're doing is using the Windows file Explorer.

I mean, you could trick people. They don't even know the difference. Uh, and they're getting real close. There's a couple companies, a couple versions. The one I just sent you is the one that keeps coming up in my feed. Um, uh, deep Dip, deep in, I think it's called. Okay. And basically it. Looks like Windows 11.

I mean, uh, there's a couple others that are there that don't look as good, [01:14:00] but you can drop that on a machine and invisibly patch it, get your browser and Slack running in Zoom or whatever else that's agnostic to windows. Um, I, I have to look 

Nate McBride: into this tomorrow because I have some old, like carbon, um, like gen six, gen sevens, you know, that obviously can't be deployed into production anymore, but they might do well with this.

Mike Crispin: It's, uh, I'm running, just not running this, but I'm running Ubuntu on an I five Intel machine with eight gigs of ram. The machine is 4, 5, 5 years old. It's as fast as my new MacBook. 

Nate McBride: Yeah, 

Mike Crispin: I mean, boot time, the disc's encrypted, end to end. Um, it's rock solid. It's running home assistant right now and a few other things, but it's, 

Nate McBride: well, I mean, we [01:15:00] already know the raspberry.

Yeah, go ahead. 

Mike Crispin: Rasp. No raspberry pies. See, I, yeah, I mean, 

Nate McBride: principally the same thing. That's a minimalist extreme, but you wanna really get down to it. What does os actually need for hardware? It's not most of the flowery emotional shit that comes along with, say, an Intel or, um, a MD box that you have to build to install windows.

You can scrap, scrap most of that.

Mike Crispin: Yep. Scrap it. 

Nate McBride: Scrap it, dude. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah, it's, uh, it's, it's, you know, the, I guess the, this end here. I mean, we, we shouldn't, we're talking a lot about sort of the end points, but they sh they shouldn't. What we're both saying is they shouldn't matter that much. No. So even if they're Windows running, windows 11, who cares?

It's an OEM copy and like as long as you can make it work, [01:16:00] then maybe it doesn't matter so much and you're not paying for windows anyway. It's, you know, harden it in the respect that you can keep direct people to the correct applications and reduce certain risks, but make things run faster and keep things running longer then it, you know, maybe just doesn't matter that much at all if you're running open source or Windows or Mac or 

Nate McBride: if I was start a start out a new company, I think the next company I would work at, I would take the opposite direction of what I do today.

The actual 180 degree reverse option, which is right now I don't have a care in the world about giving everybody local admin to do work on their machines. Um, 'cause they're protecting the things I care about. But imagine a world where they couldn't do shit except the launch a browser. Um, or say launch the core office apps or something similar.

Mike Crispin: Yep. 

Nate McBride: That would, that would be all they could do. That would be pretty [01:17:00] extraordinary. I mean, 

Mike Crispin: we are, we are, we're running with no admin rights today and I, I, we did the same at Acaia though it at Acaia we and at Kerik as well. And, um, that, and it was a charact when we switched it was painful, but when I think what people realized is the machines run longer.

There's just so much stuff that can't be done. And even, even totally, um, you know, things, you know, basically stuff that. It doesn't have any issue at all. It just takes up memory. It's not so much that it's anything malicious. Yeah. Um, and the machines just run longer. And even my, on the, on the Mac, especially like we have Macs and Cardian, like they, they, they just never, they'll never die.

'cause they, all they're doing, all they can do is run the pre-installed applications through Cange and that's it. Yeah, that's, and they, they keep running and running Nice. From a security perspective too, because it's, [01:18:00] you just don't have to worry about, you know, popup if stuff can run in their user folder right on Windows and on a, not so much on the Mac, but things can run, you can install anything into your user folder just as a consolidated binary.

Um, but. It def it definitely makes life easier in the longer run. It's painful up front and it's painful when you have to type the password or something for people. But there are third, third party software that will help you get around that. But I don't think it's worth it for the amount of time you need to.

No, actually do it. Elevate permissions. So 

Nate McBride: I 

Mike Crispin: mean, it could be, unless you got, you've got a thousand endpoints, it's a different story. But if you got a hundred or 200, I think it's, yeah, I think it's manageable. 

Nate McBride: It's in the best interest of every company that develops, um, uh, sort of executable based, fat based software to [01:19:00] make sure this never happens.

Um, but it is in the interest of everyone that's web-based and web-based, only to do everything possible to ensure a web os future. I think. So 

Mike Crispin: that's it. You got, we gotta get out of the Windows Explorer in the finder. Those two things we gotta, we've gotta get away from. 

Nate McBride: I know, man. 

Mike Crispin: So there's so much, so many things that go wrong.

So much confusion, so much risk of just human error and things being done accidentally. It's, uh, we've got, we've gotta get away from that. It's, and a lot of it, I, you know what's, I think what's ing about it is that I think Ignite is the only one that I know of that Look, if you wanna be flexible, create two different interfaces.

Nate McBride: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: You got one interface with a tree of folders on the left side, the Norton Commander look, you know, that [01:20:00] people have loved for the last 30, 40 years. Right. People love that. Okay, great. One interface that looks like that where drag and drop works, and that's what Ignite did. And that's been immensely popular for them.

Right? 

Nate McBride: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: And then you, and then you've got, you've got Box and SharePoint and others and it's like, yeah. When be a flat. A flat file system. And if you want a nested view, you're gonna use the, the box drive. You're gonna use OneDrive, you're gonna use a connected SharePoint site and the Explorer. And like, none of the benefits of what they've developed in the web translate to the Explorer.

Nate McBride: Nope. 

Mike Crispin: So build, build a better web view, like build a classic web view and you'll, same with Veeva, like Viva's crazy not to do something like that. Like it's, it's like just have a, if you're gonna su you're gonna provide people thick applications. Why not just build one in the web? 

Nate McBride: Not do 

Mike Crispin: think is 

Nate McBride: a little busy right now trying to figure out how to make revenue, [01:21:00] um, after Salesforce fucking the altar.

Mike Crispin: Yeah. They're, they're, uh, it's interesting. That's a whole other can of worms, but 

Nate McBride: Viva viva os man. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. Yeah. That, I mean. 

Nate McBride: I bet I'd be curious to the calculus of it, os 

Mike Crispin: we probably could, we already have one 

Nate McBride: take, like, uh, some flavor of DB N and then just make some basic modifications and call it Crispin os.

Mike Crispin: Dude, we already have one. It's our Slack board. 

Nate McBride: You're absolutely right. And how does one get to our Slack board? That's 

Mike Crispin: through the co. It us, our substack. Go right to the top. Join Slack, drop in your email address. Let's go. We're on there chatting away for about nine and a half minutes here and 20 minutes there and 40 minutes there [01:22:00] and my phone goes off.

It's funny 

Nate McBride: because we could, you can also get to the, the Coit us or our Slack board from the footer of every single podcast episode. 

Mike Crispin: Oh, awesome. I don't think I even knew that. 

Nate McBride: Yeah, you can. 

And 

Mike Crispin: the, and the footer. Oh, cool. 

Nate McBride: I've created, um, I've used the M-C-P-A-O-L chat, instant messenger, API, to, um, integrate that synchronously digitally.

Mike Crispin: That's, that's, that's amazing You got that embedded in there. Let's, LFG 

Nate McBride: syn syn ly is what I did.

Listen, syn.com is already underway. I'm building it right now. Um, we're selling, we're selling strategies about synchronizing [01:23:00] your digital strategy. 

Mike Crispin: Can can I read you something about philanthropic real quick? It just popped up on my phone. I think it's, it's somewhat, somewhat ties to this episode. Sure, 

Nate McBride: sure.

Mike Crispin: All right. So Philanthropics new AI tool sparks two day selloff in software stocks. The enterprise software sector endured a second straight day of selling pressure on Wednesday. As investors continued to reassess the threat that autonomous AI agents post to traditional subscription software businesses, the turbulence began Monday when AR AI startup Andro unveiled cowork a new agent tool that can autonomously perform office tasks such as generating spreadsheets, organizing files, and drafting reports, and minimal human oversight.

Mm. Salesforce shares plunged 7% on Tuesday and down another 2% on Wednesday. Mm-hmm. [01:24:00] Interesting. So from an operating, you talked about kind of this. Application as the operating system. Right, right. I know it's, I know it's two days and, you know, sensationalized, I'm sure to some extent, right. But it's just the, the operating system is, is largely gonna be driven by input output, text generated, which is exactly what Slack is lined up to 

Nate McBride: be.

Maybe. 

Mike Crispin: But, 

Nate McBride: but hold on. I think just you are combining a tool that allows people to create, uh, mountains and mountains of garbage, um, with a tool that supports software. You need to make basic connections and decision making. Um, so 

Mike Crispin: no, I'm, I'm talking about, about being able to, just like you talked about workflows, being able to ask Slack to do something for you and be able to, oh, not, not build presentations and things, but actually run workflows and [01:25:00] do work on your behalf.

Nate McBride: Yeah, we're at that sort of fi, we're at that precipice now. Like I have to think about, do I want this to be an automation and workflow or do I want someone to actually click this because, um, once you create an automation, then you have something that you have to take care of for a very long time. If you teach somebody how to just do a workflow process manually, then they can adapt to change very fast.

Whereas it's not so easy to update, say, a workflow if something breaks. Um, I think that 

Mike Crispin: absolutely 

Nate McBride: every time I build a workflow, I think about this. Like, what am I creating here? And is it because it's clever, 'cause it's actually gonna save time, or is it something that can be used for a very long time in the future because it mimics our current process?

And if it's not the latter, generally that's probably gonna be a problem down the road. Yeah. Um, I should be able to mimic the process you have today in the event that we need to back out of it. [01:26:00] But yes, I can see a day where you are invoking a slash command from Claude, but at that point, I would ask the question, why not just invoke the slash command from from Slack?

Mike Crispin: That, that's what I'm saying. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. Why do I need 

Mike Crispin: Yeah, you're you're gonna in, you're gonna invoke it from Slack and it'll call Claude or any other tool. That's what I mean. It's, it's the interface. I think that's 

Nate McBride: what we are. Yeah. You're talking about going the other direction, but, but then the que then the question is, Mike, why would I not just enable an AI agent in Slack and do the exact same function?

Mike Crispin: That's exactly what I'm talking about. 

Nate McBride: Oh, okay. Okay. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah, yeah. I'm I'm saying that from Slack, you can call any one of these functions. 

Nate McBride: Oh, yeah, yeah, for 

Mike Crispin: sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that you, you could essentially call Claude Cowork to do one of these things for you if you wanted to. But that's where you just point everyone towards like, uh, yeah.

To call it whichever agent you think is best for your, for your business and the work that you're doing. So, 

Nate McBride: so perhaps the, perhaps the headline for the [01:27:00] articles should be who's going to be first in the chain of operations? Will it be the invoking platform or will it be the generative AI platform? And I can see that while cloud may have its strengths, it can be easily supplanted by an already embedded ecosystems type platform, like a Slack that will allow you to just do all the same work.

Mike Crispin: I think the point 

Nate McBride: it's no different than going, you'll going to box now and picking your, your flavor of choice for your agent. Uh, that's right. Which is say Claude, it's no difference. I I see the same thing happening with Slack. 

Mike Crispin: Yes. And I think that's, uh, what the point of the article was. I think more so is not.

That's the reason why Salesforce took a hit is I think that maybe pie in the sky belief that it's, you won't need that software anymore. You're just gonna go and you're [01:28:00] just gonna, and magic, magic, magic land, you're gonna have these agentic workflows doing everything for you. And we won't need to pay money for Slack anymore.

That's, that's the, you know, the, that's, that's the wall. 

Nate McBride: That's the walled garden, Mike. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. The, the, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow type mindset. Right? Everyone's jumping ship because of this. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. But then we go, right? 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. I think that's crazy. 

Nate McBride: The second you achieve that, you end up right back at the beginning, which is who should be creating versus who should be viewing.

You end up right back at the beginning. How do you actually populate an XLM that is using Ag agentic workflow. Uh, you need people that are creating stuff, curating it. You seeing it? You come all the way back to the beginning, which is, hey, we need an operating system that has, um, word processing apps on it.

And you're back at word five 

Mike Crispin: word, perfect 

Nate McBride: word. Perfect. 3.1. [01:29:00] Running on two slide. You eudora? No, first class. First class. Oh was I think the world's first graphical ecosystem. 

Mike Crispin: I loved Pine. 

Nate McBride: Pine was now graphical. 

Mike Crispin: No, it wasn't. But that was my favorite male client. 

Nate McBride: Well, Eudora, 

Mike Crispin: I knew all the 

Nate McBride: Eudora came out at the same time as first class.

I'm not sure which one actually came out first before the other. But Eudora and first class were kind of side by side. Eudora was pretty lightweight and client only, whereas first class required a little bit more beef, um, on the server side. But, uh, 

Mike Crispin: I love beef. I love beef. 

Nate McBride: Do you remember, remember with that beef, the apple, apple Fs for, uh, apple servers, file servers?

Mm-hmm. And how Oh yeah. I mean, basically you could do all the file shares [01:30:00] from a Apple server. You set up all your shares and they were all, um, using SMB share functionality. And, um, you'd map a drive on a Mac to your file share. But most things were gotten to via the finder. Mm-hmm. Uh, not the finder. The, uh, 

Mike Crispin: chooser.

Nate McBride: Chooser. Thank you. Chooser. 

Mike Crispin: Yep.

I love Apple. See, that was the best. The chooser, the, the finder. 

Nate McBride: Yeah, the chooser. It was like Mike's Mac Tower not available. 

Mike Crispin: Oh, yeah. 

Nate McBride: Mike, your max frozen again. Oh shit. Let me, let me reboot it. Okay, now I'll get to it. Okay, cool. I got it. 

Mike Crispin: You know IB remember B-O-S-B-E-O-S? 

Nate McBride: Yeah. Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: It was supposed to be Mac OS 10 and then they, 

Nate McBride: yeah, 

Mike Crispin: before, [01:31:00] because jobs was at next, right?

Nate McBride: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: BBOS was amazing. It was incredible. It was so fast. It was the first, I think it was the first 32 bid operating system prior to OS two. And, uh, and went and, um, actually I thinking about it after OS two, which was my favorite, os was a total geek. Yeah. 

Nate McBride: B became, that's 

Mike Crispin: before I met you. 

Nate McBride: B became OS 10, which remember when it launched, it broke, broke everything under the sun.

Um, 

Mike Crispin: that was, that was next. Next step became OS 10. 

Nate McBride: Next became OS 10. Yeah. B became. Nothing. Right. 

Mike Crispin: They got, yeah, it got bought, I think it got bought by Palm at one point and it, it died, but it was uh, it had, it 

Nate McBride: was next. It became oyster tenure n 

Mike Crispin: next step. Yeah. Which still is a lot of code that's still in there.

The kernel is still very still a mock kernel. That's what next, next step was. Yeah. Yeah. But I think that, uh, [01:32:00] one of the coolest operating systems ever since we're talking about operating systems was OS two, which basically ran Windows 3.1 before Windows 3.1 came out because it was an IBM window manager.

The 

Nate McBride: right, 

Mike Crispin: yeah. WIN Window S two, it was called, 

Nate McBride: remember going to my dad's at my dad's office to when I was in college to print a bunch of stuff. 'cause I ran outta toner at home on my laser writer two and uh, they were all running OS two and I was like, this is awesome. This is 

Mike Crispin: so ahead of its time. 

Nate McBride: Yeah.

Mike Crispin: It was awesome. So my, one of my, my high school physics teacher ran OS two and uh, we had a little weather station at the high school and it ran on, oh, the software ran on OS two and that's when I just fell in love with it. Like, I'm like, this is the coolest geeked out thing. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: And, and it was so, so neat.

And, um, that was another reason I got into [01:33:00] another thing that got me into computers was, was messing around with OS two. Uh, but it's, um, yeah, there's, that's sort of what Linux is now is just so much potential and I have some, some hope for it because of the investment STEAM is making in it and how much they've brought forward to run on Linux with the STEAM deck and everything else.

Nate McBride: Yeah. Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: But, 

Nate McBride: well, I mean, an operating system is required for video games to run, which is important. 

Mike Crispin: Yep. 

Nate McBride: It's required. It sucks to 

Mike Crispin: have to pay a Windows licenser. Yeah. 

Nate McBride: It's required for TV applications to run. Yep. So you need, you need an OS on your TV now? 

Mike Crispin: Yep. 

Nate McBride: Um, I mean, it's required. God, I wonder how many oss are in my kitchen right now.

I should look this up. But 

Mike Crispin: every 

Nate McBride: car 

Mike Crispin: runs on it. Every appliance, every server. 

Nate McBride: They running the most 

Mike Crispin: part that 

Nate McBride: operating systems that are largely based on, uh, [01:34:00] what? Posix, Liz, ux. UX Uni. Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: So all Linux. All Linux. It used to, I mean there used to be a lot of free BSD bumping around, which, um, 

Nate McBride: yeah, 

Mike Crispin: there's most of os ten's user land is, is based, is free.

B, s, D. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: So Apple, uh, next step shows it because there's no GPL license. BSD license is, uh, interesting because if you use a BSD license, you can just use it for free and sell it. You don't have to pay it forward and release a source code. So Apple's took, oh yes, this is a next step. I should say not Apple, but they took that.

Oh this is great. We'll just use BSD as a user land and build our own right. Build their own kernel. They built their own kernel. Actually, I don't know if they did or not, they used a mock kernel, but it's so interesting that whole OS 10 um, stack and what they did at next. It's a really cool story and now it's running on the most popular device in the world.

So 

Nate McBride: yeah, 

Mike Crispin: it's uh, [01:35:00] it's pretty wild where it's gone.

Nate McBride: You mean it's running on the rabbit? R one? 

Mike Crispin: Yeah, that was running Android. 

Nate McBride: It was running the shit Droid. Um, 

Mike Crispin: yeah, that was what it was. Did you ever hear like that that thing is running Android with one application running on it. That's all it is. And a microphone. 

Nate McBride: It was a piece of shit when I sold it for 40 bucks on eBay.

And the new version is the same. 

Mike Crispin: You did sell it. 

Nate McBride: I did sell it 40 bucks on eBay. 

Mike Crispin: Nice. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. Um, that's 

Mike Crispin: awesome. 

Nate McBride: So next week we're gonna, actually, this conversation is kind of presion because next week we will dive directly into chat. Okay. And what has become of it. Um, and so what I recommend you do, and I'll do the same as I'm gonna try and get an account back on the Isca BVS that I had in [01:36:00] 1992.

I think it's still up. Um, I'll see if I can get back on and you should try and think really about your timeline of chat, because we can both go through literally probably everything that we've used ever to chat from Hotline to aim to, um, I'm drawing a blank, but the one that lets you hook up to any one of your chat clients on the Mac.

Um, 

Mike Crispin: oh me. Oh. Uh, yeah, there was me. Remember Mebo? There's Mebo. 

Nate McBride: There was, yeah. No, it wasn't, wasn't Mebo Australian? Trillium was one. There was another one. Yeah. Now, now I'm gotta look it up. Hold on. 

Mike Crispin: This I plus was one I used. Um,

um, yeah, A-I-M-M-S-N. Uh, what else was it? Um,[01:37:00] 

yeah, there were so many, but yeah, we can, we can definitely talk about it next week, but that's gonna drive me nuts. Which, what the name of that? Well, it's 

Nate McBride: I-C-Q-I-C-Q was one. Remember 

Mike Crispin: that one? Yep. There's Comper and Prodigy had tra tra uh, chats. Uh, uh, what the heck was the name of that? I know what you're talking.

It was a Mac application, right? That had Yes. You could, you could use any, and it was, and you could change the skins so that it was like bubbles and it was, you change the 

Nate McBride: skins. Yep. 

Mike Crispin: It was, 

Nate McBride: uh, I, it had a duck, I wanna say, but it wasn't a duck. Um,

Mike Crispin: let's see.

Oh [01:38:00] boy. That's gonna drive me crazy. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. Now I gotta look it up. Adio 

Mike Crispin: Adio. Yes. 

Nate McBride: Yes. Adio. That was the one that was 

Mike Crispin: fucking with the duck on it. 

Nate McBride: Yes, with the duck adio. Oh man. 

Mike Crispin: It's still available. 

Nate McBride: Yeah, I know. 

Mike Crispin: You can still get it. It, it does Google talk. ICQ. Wow. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. That's why we should move our entire, our entire, um, slack board over to Adio to hotline.

So elite and exclusive. 

Mike Crispin: That's beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. We're going so old school. 

Nate McBride: So, so that's next week. Basically. Why do we still use chat? Given all the ways in which we could use chat? Is it productive? Blah, blah, blah. What have we broken by overlying on it? Are we able to even talk to each other anymore?

Has chat [01:39:00] improved communication? Um, these are some of the notes we had, but always the problem with chat is that if I chat you, I have an already predetermined amount of time. I'm going to allot you to respond that you don't even know about before I start judging you. Ultimately leading to me hating you.

And it only takes a number of times for you to be past my threshold of hate that I then want to kill you. And just so you know, for me, the magic number is four 

Mike Crispin: four. Oh boy. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. If you're, if you take too long to respond to me four times in a row, then I just assume that you hate me and you're a dick.

Ugh. I'm not, I'm not telling you what my magic threshold number is. Only that. It's less than seven minutes. 

Mike Crispin: So you need to be responded in an instant message before seven minutes 

Nate McBride: has elapsed. Yeah. Or, I hate you. 

Mike Crispin: Oh, boy. You must hate me, [01:40:00] 

Nate McBride: Mike. I go, th I go through a lot of, uh, existential periods of time where I ask, task that question about you, but then you respond to me with like an emoji and I'm like, okay, I wipe this slate clean.

So I think seven minutes is generous. I'm I'll be, 

Mike Crispin: yeah. Seven minutes is, it is generous. It is. It is. As long as you're at the computer. Yeah. You 

Nate McBride: get the notice, you're at the computer, not on the computer. I don't really care. It's just, uh, I, I, I send you a message. I want you to reply. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah, I know. That's the expectation of instant messages that you get back quickly, right?

Nate McBride: Yeah, 

Mike Crispin: boy. Just email me, I'll get back to you.

Nate McBride: Oh, you chatted me. No, you should have emailed me 'cause I don't respond to you with, uh, within less than three days. All right. Okay. Well, [01:41:00] that was good. I think we've, we've answered a few questions. Maybe We created a few, but we definitely answered a few. 

Mike Crispin: Oh, 

Nate McBride: definitely. And, uh, so with that in mind, um, thanks for listening to the episode.

Go out and, uh, spay and nudity your pets. Be nice to old people. Be nice people that work in it. Be nice to old people that work in it, especially them. 'cause they're having a hard time with Gen ai. 

Mike Crispin: Yes. 

Nate McBride: Um, 

Mike Crispin: they're struggling. 

Nate McBride: Give us all the stars. I don't even know what platforms are on anymore, but I, I still assume it's all of them.

Um, could be that all the links are broken. I just don't even know it. But I'm not checking right now. Uh, I'll have to check Apple Podcast tomorrow. And also, um, are you still 

Mike Crispin: sos? 

Nate McBride: [01:42:00] Uh, actually, lemme check. No, I'm not anymore. I'm back on the Verizon internet. 

Mike Crispin: Wow. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. Also, um, if, if you're not aware of what's happening with flock cameras, you should do your research.

It's terrible shit. 

Mike Crispin: Flock, cameras 

Nate McBride: flock. 

Mike Crispin: Oh, is this, oh, okay. I think I read about this. Was that on 4 0 4? 

Nate McBride: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. 

Nate McBride: Yeah, I think 

Mike Crispin: it's, uh, yeah, 

Nate McBride: fuck them. Even if they're old and even if they, they're it. Fuck them all. Um, all right, well, on a positive note, Mike, another great episode. Great to see you. 

Mike Crispin: Great to see you too, man.

Nate McBride: Two, two weeks into 26, only 50 weeks until lame duck season begins. And then, uh, we should be, we should be good to go. 

Mike Crispin: That's gonna be, uh, so how many, why do we get how many? We set another 30 this season. 

Nate McBride: 34. 

Mike Crispin: 30. 34. That's right. [01:43:00] 

Nate McBride: Don't, 34. Don't cut. Don't cut corners. We can make it more if you want. I, we can extend some of these episodes.

Mike Crispin: Yeah. Hey, I'm cool with that, man. I, what's LFG 

Nate McBride: Rad. All right, 

Mike Crispin: let's keep it going. We got plenty to talk about. 

Nate McBride: We do. We do. 

Mike Crispin: Plenty of good things next. The news cycles. 

Nate McBride: Sounds good. Me, man. Chats. We, we'll, lots of chats. Catch up on that. We'll catch up on the news next week too, 

Mike Crispin: and we'll get, we'll get the, uh, our historical chat timeline up and yeah, it would be cool to check in on a few new news items.

See, see what, what's going on in the world. 

Nate McBride: I'm gonna download Adio right now. All right. 

Mike Crispin: Do it up. 

Nate McBride: Good. I'll talk to you. 

Mike Crispin: All right, man. Be good. Thank you. 

Nate McBride: Later. Yeah, later. Bye.

Trance Bot: The calculus of it,[01:44:00] 

season three,

verifying this identity.

Sometimes you just have to take it.

Sometimes you just have to take it

because it's season three divided autonomy,

verifying identities.

The calculus of [01:45:00] it.