♪ taylor: this is the best of bloomberg technology, where we bring you all of our top interviews from this week in tech. coming up, disney plus, the company surpassed 10 million sign-ups in its first day. we will get details. goldman sachs controversy. we will hear from the cofounder on how he got caught up in the fray of gentrified accusations against goldman. we will bring you goldman's quick response. return of the mac.

apple introduced the 16 inch macbook pro, starting at $2400. we'll rate its function and design. disney was the big winner of the week, signing up 10 million customers in one day for its service. despite technical glitches upon launch. disney plus became available on tuesday in the u.s. and canada. the original goal was 90 million subscribers in five years. it is poised to reach that goal sooner. i got the latest from chris palmeri. >> to put this in perspective, hbo now, cbs all access, espn plus, a lot of these guys have been in business for a few years and none of them hit 10 million. disney did it in a day. go back to 1974, this is peak disney.

taylor: we can see the technical glitches. we can shrug those off. >> that is what disney was saying. if we knew how many people were trying to sign up, we could not plan this. they had an incredible deal with verizon communications where 19 million customers could access the service for a year for free. even the free customers, disney is getting paid a wholesale rate from verizon. taylor: we don't know where the demand is coming from. what is driving it? >> disney does a fantastic job of marketing. they have the biggest synergy campaign ever. they promoted it on monday night football. they promoted it on abc. they had advertisements at the theme park, disney radio, they had espn correspondents tweeting about it. everything from marvel to pixar

to star wars, they threw it all at this service. taylor: where does disney fit in the streaming wars? >> they are netflix's biggest rival. the stock market reaction has showed that. netflix took a fall. disney surged. that is what we are seeing. disney has become a tech stock. the company estimated subscriber counts could be 90 million in five years. they could get that number quite a lot sooner. taylor: that was chris palmeri. disney shares surged to an all-time high. meanwhile, netflix saw shares fall. disney's entering has consumers

tolerance for an array of choices. richard greenfield told me disney's launched the death of the cable bundle. >> i think about the world from a standpoint of the legacy cable bundle where people spend anywhere from the low end for $45 or $50 for one of these top cable services, upwards of $100 or more for comcast or charter spectrum. those bundles are going away. consumers are giving up on those bundles. cord cutting is at record paces. seeing all of this great content from disney plus, apple tv plus, netflix, amazon, soon peacock from nbc. it will make it easier to cut the cord. that frees up a tremendous amount of wallet. this is like adding fuel to a fire that has already started burning. it is going to make it that much easier to cut the cord going forward. i think this is the industry.

today is a watershed moment. this is disney saying look, the cable bundle is in the past. the future is streaming. we will put our best assets on streaming. whatever happens to the bundle, so be it. a tough place for espn and their future, but i think disney is clearly telling you that they know that the bundle is dead or certainly dying. they have got to move forward. taylor: you talk about the cannibalization of traditional cable subscriptions. dan said about 10% of netflix's base could be at risk with apple and disney. is there cannibalization going on? >> it is one of the more absurd comments i have heard. consumers want to stream. they want to stream lots of stuff. these are not replacement products. you are not choosing between netflix and disney plus. you are saying i don't need cable service anymore.

if you are not sports fan, you will give up on cable service. if you want to watch back episodes of friends, you will need hbo max. people have had hbo for years. hbo has been far more expensive than netflix. hbo has 34 million subscribers today. no one is saying oh my god, i have netflix. i don't need hbo anymore. these are going to coexist like hbo and showtime have coexisted. i think about it less in terms of price to value than what do you actually want? if you want this content, if you want stranger things, if you want dolomite is my name, you have to have netflix. you'llwant mandalorian, want disney plus. the loser will be the entertainment bundle where there is little flexibility. i think that is where people should be looking for where

these dollars and subscribers are coming from. taylor: that was richard greenfield. an array of current streaming services puts the consumer back in the driver seat as to which ones will ultimately succeed and falter over time. true optic, which measures audience intelligence, had a point of view on the disney plus lunch. true optic's ceo, andre swanson called it an early success. >> i think most people in the industry are looking at it incorrectly. they are looking at it as if disney plus is a competitor for netflix. disney has already shown over the past couple of years, with the ownership of hulu and the success of espn plus and disney plus, they have a winning strategy about how to attack that market. they are not really competing with netflix. disney has done a better job than anybody of getting a share of the wallet when it comes to media entertainment dollars, whether it was from theme parks or merchandising or theatrical releases.

now, with disney plus, they have more of a direct consumer relationship and data that they can leverage to monetize across other revenue streams in a way that netflix and others cannot. taylor: this is what i heard from rich greenfield at the top of this hour, where they are competing, not with netflix but just grabbing cable subscription declines. would you agree that it will take on the decline? >> i like rich a lot. he says some bright things. i would argue that the decline in cable is irrelevant to disney's strategy as well. in terms of disney plus, that impacts hulu and the growth of hulu with their live service. disney's game is bigger than tv. it is another way for them to engage with consumers. it is not a stand-alone entity in the way that other solutions are.

it is different from the strategy of the others, whether it is nbc with peacock or dish with sling tv. they have so many more avenues to the consumer, they don't have to monetize the solution the same way that others do in order for it to be considered a success. taylor: are they the clear winner, given they have the money to spend with original programming and that backlog and library of great videos from decades ago? >> it would be hard to argue that disney is not well-positioned. i am hesitant to say they are the winner because the game has not started yet. many of the other people competing for audience time are a quarter or more from launching. i will say that the biggest loser is absolutely netflix, which is more clear. so much of the most popular

content that has driven not only subscriptions but loyalties will be leaving between disney and at&t and nbc universal pulling content. netflix is not the same solution 12 months from now as it has historically been. taylor: this is an expensive business. investors will not tolerate losses for long. when do we start seeing a profit from these businesses? >> if you are looking solely at the streaming part of the revenue, i think it is going to be some time for some of these platforms until they are truly profitable. i think that companies that have a legacy library that they can lean on may profit first. when we look at disney, we cannot look at the streaming of the standalone because of the impact it has. i would argue that relative to that, disney is already profiting.

taylor: that was andre swanston. coming up, hidden likes. more on instagram's plan to hide likes to cut down on social media pressure. if you like bloomberg news, check us out on the radio. you can listen on the bloomberg app. this is bloomberg. ♪

taylor: welcome back to "the best of bloomberg technology." there is plenty of anxiety on social media. instagram wants to reduce the feeling of pressure. the facebook owned company says the key to that is removing like counts on posts. it began testing that measure on some users in the u.s. this week.

kurt wagoner talked to the head of instagram after he announced the change at the wire 25 tech conference in san francisco. >> what we are hoping to do is depressurize. we are focused on young people and wel-being broadly, think if we can make life private, it will help people focus on the people they care about. we will start with a small percentage of people in the u.s., next week. >> the idea being if i can't see how many likes your photo gets, that might decrease my pressure. >> you will be able to see how many likes your own photo gets but not how many likes other people's photos get. the idea is to try to reduce anxiety and social comparison. >> what are you seeing in the

other countries, is there a change in the way people interact with instagram? >> we want to understand how it changes how people use instagram. we want to understand how it changes how people feel. measuring how people feel is more tricky. it takes a long time. so, that is why it has been running for so long. that is why it will take time to get out the door. >> people are feeling better about instagram as a result of this. you wouldn't be rolling this out in other markets if not. >> we are seeing encouraging data which is why we are rolling it out further. >> are there other things you are thinking about on the same front, either around metrics or some other way around the way people share that might change the feelings people have? >> when you back up and think about integrity more broadly, i think there are three areas of

work that we do. one is acute issues, like hate speech, we try to address them. the second is we are trying to take issues that we can lean on. we also want to rethink the fundamentals of how instagram works. the combination of things i hope will change how people feel about what we do and the platform. none of this, there is no one silver bullet. it is a broader cultural shift in how we think about what we do. taylor: that was the head of instagram with bloomberg technology's kurt wagoner. facebook says they removed nearly 2 billion fake accounts last quarter. the social network added that in the last six months, they took

down 11.5 million posts of child exploitation, including child pornography. posts violated content policies across facebook and instagram. other posts removed included terrorism content, hate speech and drug sales. and from online real estate to commercial real estate, facebook also announced this week it had signed a lease at new york city's hudson yards. the lease was signed for more than 1.5 million square feet of space. it is part of the company's push to expand its presence in new york. coming up, perspective from two pioneers of the tech industry. we will hear from alibaba's co-founder. his thoughts on the u.s.-china trade spat is next. later, apple co-founder steve wozniak on the apple card. he was one of the first people to flag how the card issues credit limits when it comes to gender. that is coming up.

that is coming up. this is bloomberg. ♪

taylor: alibaba co-founder jack spoke to bloomberg while he was in togo. he was there to meet with young leaders and entrepreneurs. he discussed the ongoing trade

issues between the u.s. and china. >> to handle carefully, the trade war, the usa-china relationship might be in some turbulence. we have to be very careful. i think it is so important for china and the u.s. to work together. keeprting the economy, sharingrospering, technology together. for so many years, china and u.s. have been working together. there is a problem. that is natural. if there is no problem, that is unnatural. if there is a problem, we problems, wethe

should not create more problems. >> you said you love africa. it is a bridge between china and africa. what we see as the main thing that china can gain from africa and vice versa, the main thing that africa can gain from china? >> my first trip, i read a lot of things about africa. i am inspired by the young people. so many young people. by the origin of the cultures. i decided i would come every year to at least three or four countries. i will try to visit every country in 10 years. i will not say how china can help africa or how africa can benefit from china.

i come as a global citizen, and entrepreneur. i think a lot of our ideas, our know-how could enable and help african young people. meanwhile, these years, i start to think how can china help in a more efficient way? china putting a lot of efforts in africa. when i was very young, i heard a lot of doctors in my hometown had to go to africa for years to help. i think that today, china and africa, there are a lot of things that are similar. africa can learn a lot from china, how china developed in such a quick way.

i think the most important thing is not to rely on china or europe or u.s. it is to rely on the people of this continent. these young people, if they have the vision, if they have the know-how, if they want that change, that is the main driver. people like us, our job is to come here and support. >> if you had to pin it down to one thing that china can -- or that africa can learn, you said there is a lot to learn. what would be one lesson that we can take from the chinese example in lifting people out of poverty? >> i think first, the people

should have a real vision and real belief, for marketing reform. market economy, through making people rich is the way. >> you have stressed the power of technology to unlock growth in africa. what can technology do? and what can it not do? >> technology can enable every individual. in the early days, technology belonged to the rich people. but today, because of mobile phones, everyone can reach the know-how and how to communicate. it is simpler, easier. i think the difference between

i.t. and internet, i.t. is rich, powerful people. big companies. internet is inclusive. from the bottom to the top. there is nothing that we have seen in such a short time, billions of people started using the internet. it is power. technology, if you embrace it, if young people really want to try it, it will help you. of course. the most important is people. if you don't want to change, if you don't want to create a future, nobody can help you. >> i would like to know, is there still a plan to lift the financial?

>> we don't have a plan for that for the short term. we are very profitable. we grow very healthy. i think we have a lot of things that we want to do to make sure we have enough investment for the future. >> do you know what exchange she -- you would be looking at? >> like i said, we will not think about where, yet. taylor: that was alibaba's co-founder in an exclusive interview. apple co-founder steve wozniak took to twitter when it appeared his apple card discriminated against his wife. we will hear his story and how to remedy the issue next. this is bloomberg. ♪ taylor: welcome back to the best

of bloomberg technology. i am taylor riggs. goldman sachs was in hot water this week as accusations of gender discrimination over how the bank issued its apple card. the controversy started in -- when and entrepreneur tweeted that apple card discriminated against his wife, despite the pair sharing joint returns and tax accounts. steve wozniak joined the chorus , saying the same thing happened to him and his wife. he relayed what happened to kurt wegner on monday.

>> we don't go out and try to promote anything. i saw a post, a tweet by david about he and his wife having different limits. we encounter that months ago and found out through phone calls on the number on the card that we couldn't really get to anybody who would listen except they said maybe in three to six months. i just posted it to be like a little side feature of the article, i did not expect all of these results. funny thing, goldman sachs has been calling us and they are doing incredible things in a very short time. they just released this card, and that's very hard to do something in that amount of time. i have been there. you got to have everything in place, so they are going out of the way just like applewood. they were a lot of articles saying it was alleging gender bias as the explanation. my wife thought that at first. i did not think that.

i never said that. apple itself for example is the least biased of all the companies. we are the only big company in the united states that guarantees equal pay for equal work by gender. so that was out of the thing. it was goldman sachs. they have listened. maybe because i got involved. i don't like to be getting special privilege, but they got involved and thought about it and they will make the changes very soon that will allow you to get to a human. i do not believe looking into the algorithm is the solution. i don't believe changing is the solution. i think it is being able to get individual attention in cases the algorithm misses. >> you mentioned part of the problem was when you're trying to get someone on customer support for a company this size, it can be hard, we talking about goldman sachs or apple or a little bit of both? >> all of the big companies.

apple is very good because you got personal support, in the stores, with the employees, with the geniuses. apple does a really good job of making good support available. i decided a long time ago that having a good product is not as valuable as good support. >> obviously when you choose to weigh in on something like this, especially apple related, it's going to get a lot of attention. you said you were surprised by how much it got. did you hear from apple as well? >> i don't think we heard from apple directly. they were contacting my wife who contacted them way back months ago and called the phone number. i guess they had her number to call. they said they're going to have their standard number by the end of the week and now they are telling us by tomorrow i guess

it will go through to support people. you can't expect instant solutions. the idea is to get to people. but they are talking just exactly right, the way apple would something like this. we are going to support the customers heard i always believed in the customer getting respect over the company just having the power. they can be right when they're really wrong. >> you mentioned this isn't just the algorithm issue, that there might be other solutions. it starts with the algorithm. do you think this is the kind of thing that is reflective of the challenge that is in the tech industry right now? >> a lot of things that algorithms cannot handle, things that the dumbest human could easily look at and come up with the solutions including a lot of self-driving issues. >> what are some of the areas that you feel like are really a

problem at least in terms of starting some of these issues? >> everywhere that we have learned that we can apply computers, we call it ai, but we apply them to handle everything to avoid humans to be hired to do this job of supporting people. once i was getting a hundred calls a day from some door -- or -- i could not get to that company, there was no way to get to the company to explain the problem unless maybe i got a door -- account. i don't need another account. you just cannot get through to the cubans when -- to the humans when you need to to solve it. >> not specifically to apple, but telling some of these companies, if you're going to use ai to solve some of these problems, you're going to put new rules around that? >> i think it goes back to what i was saying that i always

favored the consumer over the producer, always want that to be respected and they will not get taken care of by the companies making decisions. the companies work for themselves. only government can step in to handle the masses, anything from road construction on. it's just not going to happen at the private company level. we will take care of the problems ourselves now. i do not buy that. taylor: that was steve wozniak. shortly after the interview goldman sachs announced a customer service line and issued the statement that they, quote, not and never will make decisions based on gender. the company announced that it would introduce the ability for household numbers to share a apple card credit line. the debate over the role of algorithms and consumer finance heated up with presidential candidates elizabeth warren blasting goldman sachs and their response.

other lawmakers said they intend to look into the ability of earlier claims. as for some apple product news, we got a glimpse of the new macbook pro this week, the first update to the device in three years. the new laptop comes with a slightly larger screen and an improved keyboard. >> it's all about the keyboard. the thing to me is that it really should not be all about the keyboard. the reason we are talking about the keyboard is because it was read designed after there were complaints on what is known as the butterfly mechanism keyboard. if they had not moved to that design we wouldn't be talking about it right now. the good news is the new model they are shipping has a big improvement. >> who was the audience here?

was it mostly software developers and video editors? >> this is their highest and laptop, and lots of people buy these things. it's the most popular other than the macbook air. there's really no limit on who will buy them but they are designed for video editors and gamers, anyone who wants to drop that much money on a computer. lots of students by these as well. quest software about that price point. you just mentioned about $2400, and that goes for almost double that. is there demand at that price point? >> absolutely. these macbook pros have the same pricing scheme for about eight -- a decade or more now. the first was launched in 2006, the powerbook was before that, so they've always been in that category. a lot of people thought this new model before its introduction would come in quite a bit higher, but apple has actually replaced it. so this is cheaper than some

expected it would actually come out to be. >> where does the macbook fit into their overall revenue strategy and product strategy? >> it represents about 10% of apple sales, generating between 23 and 27 billion a year annually for the last seven or so years. it has been a steady seller for apple. it has brought in 10% of revenue, that's a lot when you're talking about this company. in terms of its future, apple seems dedicated to it. this was not always the case. a couple of years ago it seemed like the mac was dying on its way out from being in the product line. lots of people complained, and people noticed it was taking a long time to be updated. in the last two or three years it seems like apple specifically its marketing head early took the issue head-on and turned around. it really appears to be more important than it has been

sometime. taylor: coming up, the ultimate backup drive, how and arctic bunker is preparing software for the end of the world. that is next. and one of the education technology companies want to provide a path to higher learning for working professionals. we will talk to a big voice behind the effort. this is bloomberg. ♪

taylor: by now you all know about the now famous arctic idea meant to save crops. did you know that there is also one meant to save the world's open source software? we got a peek inside the apocalyptic code bunker.

>> we are here at the 78 degrees north latitude at the site of the future get out arctic code fault. >> 6000 of the most popular open-source projects in an archive inside this mountain. >> open it. >> this is how it works, the data is stored on this film and the information can still be read by a computer, or if need be by a human by an defying class. >> along long will this last? >> we are aiming out for 2000 years. >> we collected the film inside these cases and headed into the darkness. we venture further into the abyss, and let me catch you up. this company is the main place go to write open source code.

millions of people hop on get hub and create the applications that make the world to, which is why it needs to be protected from terrorists hackers and other unforeseen disasters. ok, it's basically a tool shed. but it is cool. into the vault. vau;t,s the arctic code fault and we will put it here. i think 20 years ago, if you told someone that you are in the year 2020 all of human civilization will depend on open open source code written for free and put into almost every product in the world, i think people would say that is crazy. that will never happen. software is written by big

companies and yet here we are. >> how much of this is just making sure we can restore our way of life? >> i think you can bet humans will be thriving for a long time. another way is to think about is just like a time capsule, where the whole world is starting to run on software, and that software is as a result of open source. ashley joined me wednesday with mort on his arctic experience. >> this is way north of northway about as close as you can get to the north pole, so it is remote. there is a treaty in place in times of war that it remains neutral, and even on top of that, you are down in this cave so it is protected from whatever existential that you can think of.

it is just this idea putting it in the middle of nowhere. taylor: what are they preparing for, and apocalyptic scenario? >> that's part of it. open source code runs about everything these days, so it's good to have a backup but it was sort of marking this point in time, this idea that humans has gotten together to do this great collective effort, so part of it is just an archive like he would do for a library. taylor: what are they hoping to use it for? are they hoping 2000 years from now they will look back and be able to use we have done today? >> you could. if there was something horrible that happened, you don't actually need a computer to read it. you can just set there with a magnifying glass or analog technology and read it. a lot of it is just the symbolism of this moment in time when we did this thing.

taylor: i want to talk about this this fundamental idea of open source, so get hub championed this idea. there are owned by microsoft. where is that tension in your story? >> microsoft bought it last year 47 $.5 billion, so a lot of the people who were hard-core open sorcerers, they thought this was like the worst thing that could happen or the most surprising. but they have changed a lot, they operate with all kinds of things. they have embraced open-source in a cynical manner, this gives them access to all of the best and brightest developers, which is like an audience they did not tap before. >> in your article another writer came out and said they would consider himself successful if they created sort of a middle-class when it comes to this, what did he mean by that?

>> if you had a big open-source project, you would probably get paid by google or intel one of the companies that cares about it and you can do fine. but there is this whole group of coders who are making software that we all depend on and we just don't know about it. there's no real system in place to get them paid very well by companies or by like personal patrons. get hub is trying to move to this model to support the developer and let them do this full time. taylor: what is the feeling about open-source? you talk about everyone participating and yet you have big tech companies like google and facebook that a no use all of that to track us. it really isn't free. what is that tension? >> what i got into in my story, there's this great irony that open-source software started out as this rebellion against microsoft, about freedom of intellectual property put it

just so happens that whether it is google or amazon, their entire infrastructure runs on it and it has been flipped on its head to monitor people. it's kind of the underside of the story. taylor: coming up, we have a former american express ceo discussing his efforts to link with higher education programs with employers. his position on the board of the startup guild education, that is next. this is bloomberg. ♪

taylor: the education industry

appears to have given birth to its newest unicorn one that wants to connect to educational programs with the understanding that higher education can lead to economic mobility. education is a denver-based female lead unicorn crash off an infusion of cash taken into the unicorn said his part on thursday i spoke with its ceo and a member of its board of directors, who also happens to be the former ceo of american express. >> at guild we partner with leading employers to connect education for their employees with the corporate strategy. we have done it by building a technology platform that enables companies to offer education to their employees and in partnership with the leading universities around the country to offer programs to the employees. it is a win-win for employers and employees.

taylor: ken, you are leading and helping this funding round. what did you like at guild you couldn't get elsewhere? ken: what is really important to us, taylor, is, we want to work with companies and founders who really want to drive powerful, positive change for our society. what is incredibly attractive about guild is that, if one has a mission to empower the workforce of america through education, and very importantly, it has tremendous economics. this is a software platform that has very high margins, and has substantial growth opportunities. but i think what is absolutely exciting is this integration of a company that has very strong economics and growth potential,

and yet has the opportunity to transform workforce education in america. taylor: rachel, you hear ken talk about the tremendous economics of the company. what is your business model? how are you making money? rachel: sure. so at guild, we have taken a unique approach to aligning our margin and mission. it is very important. we are paid primarily by the universities, who replaced the large marketing budgets they used to have to spend on google and facebook to meet the frontline workforce of america and help them go back to school, and instead, when they save those dollars by meeting students through our employers, they pay for our technology and our services, and keep some of the savings themselves. taylor: ken, we talk about this being a company that is female led. i wonder, what has the pressure been in the last six months or 12 months to look at corporate

governance and being invested in female led companies? wework had an all-female board and that in part was one reason why they weren't able to go public. ken: i have had, i think, a very strong record of promoting and delivering on diversity. and general catalyst shares this philosophy very strongly. i think it is very important to that guild education is a female-led company. and rachel and her team have put together a very diverse team. it really is representative of what companies should be doing. and so from my standpoint, i believe that businesses and companies have to be more reflective of society overall, and we live in a very diverse society.

and we are absolutely very focused on driving technology through the technology industry, and business in general. taylor: so ken, you are joining the board. day one, what is the first change you make at the board meeting? ken: i have a high level of confidence in rachel and her management team, and what i want to do is help guild education grow and transform education in this country. and we can do that with companies working hand-in-hand, because we have in our roster, as rachel can go through, disney, walmart, discover, we have a range of companies i think are at the forefront of innovation, and trying to bring about change and succeeding in workforce education.

taylor: rachel carlson of guild education and ken chenault of general catalyst. that is it for this edition of the best of bloomberg technology. we will bring you all of the latest intact throughout the week. we are livestreaming on twitter, check us out at technology in be sure to follow our global breaking news network at tictoc on twitter. this is bloomberg. ♪

eñ francine: a diamond is forever. an iconic phrase made for de beers. a young female copywriter coined the phrase in 1947. it was named the best slogan of the 20th century. how have they used clever marketing to build demand around the globe? in august, i met bruce cleaver, the chief executive of de beers.