(techno music) - From Relay, this is Upgrade, episode 532. Today's show is brought to you by ExpressVPN, Factor and Notion. It is October 7th, 2024. My name is Mike Hurley and I'm joined by Jason Snell. Hi, Jason. - From my garage, it's me. Hi. - Hello. How are you? - Good, happy birthday. I have a small talk question for you. You had a birthday this weekend. Jason, how did you celebrate it? - I took it easy, I guess I would say. I mean, we had a nice breakfast. Lauren made me breakfast. It was the hottest day of the year yesterday, Mike. And so basically got to 100 degrees. And so we stayed inside, for the most part, although we did go out to dinner, which was very nice. That was my request, is why don't we go out to dinner? And we had a very nice dinner at a restaurant. We actually went to for our anniversary. It was really good. So we went back there and it was excellent. It was just really great. So nice treat, 'cause we don't go out to eat that much. And otherwise, I just sort of, you know, sat inside with the air conditioner running, 'cause we've got air conditioning now, which helps when it's over 90 degrees every day for a week. In October, which is how we roll here. That's how October works in the Bay Area, is it gets hot. Anyway, I turned my birthday into a discussion of weather. Anyway, I just, you know, I was just kind of chilling. We didn't have curling this week. And so I just said, you know what? We literally, Saturday, we had nothing on our calendar. I was like, what does it mean to have nothing on your calendar on a weekend? So I think we really took the week off from our curling calendar in my birthday and just kind of took it easy. And it was nice to have that. Talk to my mom, talk to my kids. Yeah, nice day, perfectly nice day. Would have been nice to spend a little more of it outside, but at most of the day, it was hovering about 98, 99 degrees and I did not want to do that. So it didn't do that. - Doesn't sound good. - Gave the dog a bath, decided to hose her down. We washed the cars on Saturday. And then I thought, oh, it's a hot day and there's a hose. So we hose down the dog and I think the dog did not appreciate the cold water. But, you know, so she was sad afterward, but then she was clean. So yeah, it was just a home weekend. That's good, that's good. - Well, I'm pleased that you relaxed. If you would like to send in a question to help us answer a future episode of the show, just go to upgradefeedback.com and send in your own snow talk question. Thank you to me for asking that one. It's time for some follow up. I would just like to give a final thank you for our St. Jude campaign this year, the final talk tool that the relay community raised to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital was $1,078,348 for the kids at St. Jude. - Amazing. - Thank you so much. - Amazing, amazing. - Thank you so much. - How? - An incredible achievement that we pulled off together and I'm so so proud of everyone. - Thank you. - Thank you. - Steve wrote in and said, one thing that you didn't mention in regards to AR glasses is the difficulty Apple would face in the glasses market with meta slash Luxotica quote unquote, owning many classic styles, having existing partnerships with essentially every glasses and sunglasses retailer. So, meta with their Ray bands are working with a company of a very long name that is just essentially known as Luxotica. Luxotica, they have an absolute monopoly on glasses. They own so many brands, huge. I'll put their Wikipedia page in the show notes and a lot of the styles of sunglasses that you, or glasses that you may know, Luxotica owns that design. And it's one of the reasons that meta has partnered with them because they get to benefit from Luxotica's design prowess and the IP that they own. So, it could be complicated for Apple to design what would be considered a quote unquote classic style or like any kind of like, oh, I've seen this style before because Luxotica own it. I think it could be complicated from them. - Yeah, could be. I mean, Apple's got a lot of money, but we also know that Apple can be cheap and doesn't want to pay for like oxygen sensor patents and things like that. I also, Luxotica, it's interesting, right? - That agreements with meta may be money might not attribute a thing. So, like, meta just signed a deal with them that is exclusive. - Okay, I think that's not what I was saying. - Okay. - What I'm saying is there are other brands. There is a giant number one, but there's money and there's other companies out there that are at least scrapping by. Now, I would also say, I hope meta is paying Luxotica really well because if Luxotica truly has an entirely exclusive arrangement with meta, when there's another big fish out there that might be interested in spending a lot of money, that exclusive deal, if it's exclusive to Luxotica and not exclusive to specific brands, I hope it gets real expensive for meta because Luxotica could realize that there are other tech companies that want to give them lots of money too. So, there's complexity here. I mean, we'll see. I think we can, so thank you, Steve. Now, we've mentioned it and now I will say, I don't think it's a barrier to entry. Like, if Apple wants to do this, they'll do it, but they will not be able to swoop in and say, oh, well, I mean, like meta. Meta was like literally, hey, Raybans, what could be more well-known and iconic? And they swooped in and made that essentially an adjunct to their product. That is smart and it's a coup and it's gonna be hard. But again, Apple has a lot of money and a lot of interest. And there's either competitors who are hungry who think that the only way for them to get a leg up against Luxotica is to partner with Apple. That kind of thing could happen. And also, I don't know the details, but I would say that either Luxotica will rethink the exclusivity of their partnership with meta if other expensive, you know, deppocketed tech companies come calling or is the exclusivity more limited? And I know that there's some people who are like, meta wants to buy Luxotica, which is interesting, right? Because most of meta's business is not eyeglasses. But even if that were the case, I think, if you're Luxotica, you look at that and say, is that the best way for us to run our business? If there are, if this is gonna be a future category and there are gonna be other deppocketed companies, it's something to watch. It's definitely something to watch. But meta gets the first move or advantage here. - Yeah, I think that they would love to buy them, but just it's too complicated now. Like I don't, I would be surprised if meta is ever allowed to buy another company ever again. Like I just, I think that that time may have, may have ended for meta. I think they've bought all the companies they could buy. It is so funny. Like there are all these really weird deals now, right? Where like a company doesn't buy another company. It just hires everyone from said company and gives everybody stock. Like I think Microsoft just did that, right? With recently with an AI company where they hired everybody, they made their CEO, the CEO of Microsoft AI. And was like, yeah, but we're not acquiring them. I was like, okay, whatever you say. Jason, I want to know what happened to your Mac Mini. - Oh, yes. - Mac Studio, Mac Studio, Mac Studio, not Mac Mini. - Sorry, yes, it's not a Mac Mini. You're getting ahead of yourself. You're very so excited about that company. - I can't stop thinking about it every day. - You can't. Everything looks like a Mac Mini to now. I got a new Mac Mini with, in my pocket, I got a Mac Mini hanging on a wall everywhere. Mike looks, it's just another Mac Mini. I watched TV on my Mac Mini. Mac Studio M1 that I've had since it came out. And I really love it. And I told the story when we were in Memphis of how I had a cascading series of events failed. Could not personalize was a software update. And the complication there was that I was having another issue where I had extensions that it wanted to resign every time, but would never resign or re-approve or whatever. And so I was getting these alerts every time I started up my Mac saying, oh, they're these things. You should restart, but the restart never fixed it. And the solution there is to do a software update or at least that has helped in the past. Software updates failed. All the different versions would not update. We got some anonymous feedback that this might be a good time for it if you wanna throw it in there. - Yep. So the personalization failure Jason experienced was the result of an issue Apple identified for many enterprise customers. There was an odd scenario recently where if an update had been installed between a specific date range, a device signature would not match when you went to install the next update. Apple has addressed this by modifying a check server side allowing these unexpected signatures. - Interesting. So a little tidbit there about what might've been going on, but I was in the, anyway, I ended up stuck. And so I decided to, when I looked this up, they said, well, here's what you can do. First thing is you can put your, you reinstall. So I just went into the recovery and tried to do reinstall from there failed, wouldn't do it. Did some more search and it said, well, you could do a revive using, so you put your Mac in DFU mode, which is like iPhone recovery mode for a Mac. It's an Apple Silicon thing. And you have to attach another Mac to it by a USB. And then from that other Mac, you say, okay, let's revive this computer. That didn't work. At which point what was left to me was restored. Now I cloned my drive every day. So it's not a problem. I didn't have any and I do a lot of stuff in iCloud and Dropbox. So I didn't have data on there that I needed to secure in any way. So I thought, okay, let's do a restore. And I tried to restore from 15 and 15 one beta and 15 oh one beta or whatever. I tried many different restores and from back on 14. No restore image would restore, they all failed. This is where I left it. When I came to Memphis is all the restores failed. What was it gonna do? It was in DFU mode where the light on the front of the Mac Studio helpfully blinks SOS in Morse code. You know, it's cute, it's cute, but also not great. So now experienced Mac tech people might have an inkling to what the solution was because I skipped a step here or I did. I skipped a step. So here's what I did. I went to a website called apple.com. - It's a good website. - And did text support and said I've tried all these things and they're like immediately fortunately did not try to make me go through many other steps. They're like, oh, you tried everything. How about an appointment in an Apple store with a Mac genius? I said, great. And then literally they said, how about in two hours at your local Mac store or Apple store? I'm like, yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. So I took my Mac Studio in a shopping bag to my local Apple store. And they set me at a table and a guy came over and he said, what seems to be the problem? And he's like, oh, okay. And somebody brought out a monitor and a keyboard and a trackpad and a cable. And then he came over and said, what seems to be the problem? What have you done? All of these things. - What did you do? What did you do? - What did you do? - That is far computer. - And so I told him and his response was something like, oh, okay, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna put it in recovery. And I said, all right. I'm trying to look up his name 'cause I got his name. He was great, whatever his name was. Now I'm not gonna, they sent me afterward. They're like, how was your visit with Jim or whatever his name was? And the answer was, it was great. And now I can't find his name. Anyway, he said, we're gonna go into recovery. And I said, well, I tried recovery and it didn't work. He said, well, let's just go in there. And I thought, this is the moment where I thought to myself, this guy has seen everything, right? This is like, he's seen it all. He's seen it all. He works at an Apple store doing Mac Genius. He's seen every possible failure mode there is. And this is the thing that I kicked myself after he said it, which is what I did was I went to recovery and tried to reinstall the OS and it failed. So I went to DFU and I tried to refresh. These are the steps you do when you're trying to save the contents of your hard drive. When refresh failed, I thought, well, everything is ruined now. So the next step in the DFU process is restore, which wipes the contents of your drive and then you move on with your life. And at least I think that's what it does. But here's the thing. What I didn't consider is if you're giving up on the contents of your drive, what you should do is what Dave or whatever his name was at the Apple store did, brilliant, which is you go back to recovery and you go to disutility and you wipe the drive in recovery. And then you reinstall Sonoma in this case, not even Sequoia, just reinstall. And I was like, I don't know, man, this seems pretty wild, it's refused everything. He's like, no, no, no, no, no, it's like. And he says, no, if we erase this, we should be able to install. And I was like, oh, you went back. I thought, I thought once you leave recovery and head to DFU mode, you never go back, right? Like you've blown past that barrier. Now you're in the really the serious stuff here, the weeds. You've ruined your computers. Unless you can get it back. And the answer is no, recovery is still there. You go back to recovery. So what I did is I leaped over this missing step, which is once I was moving into, it can't be salvaged, we need to nuke it from orbit, I didn't think, oh, I should just go back to recovery and wipe the drive and reinstall it from there. I instead was like, I gotta do a restore, an OS restore from a disk image from DFU mode. And I wasn't even sure if you could get out of DFU mode at that point and have a usable restore or recovery and you can. So in the end, we rebooted a recovery and wiped it. And then I stood there as he went off to help other people and I stood there at the Apple Store for 20 minutes while I watched Sonoma install on my Mac studio sitting at a table in the Apple Store. And then it installed and I shut it down and thanked him profusely and walked right out and came back home. And when I got back home, I updated to Sequoia, migrated from my clone and was up and running shortly thereafter with my complete system exactly as it was the day that was signed. - Oh, that's fantastic. What a great story into the story. Love that. Thank you to Mystery Apple Tech. - Thank you to, yes, to how was your experience with Jim or whatever it was, which I wish I could find it now. Oh, Jim, it was Jim. How did Jim do? That was the email I got from the Apple Store. How did Jim do? From one to five, one being poor, five being excellent. Jim is a five. You know, Jim is a six, but there's no six, so I had to do five. - Well, Jim is a five and a call out on the show, you know, like that's how you go the one extra. - Here's another little tip. I know there are people from my Apple Store who listen to this podcast. Somebody at the Corda Madeira, California Apple Store who listens to this podcast, tell Jim how awesome he is. - So many people know, no. - Jim, not only was I impressed because look, I've seen a lot too, and he jumped right over all the stuff I'd seen and he knew exactly what it was. And I was kicking myself afterward, but like, I just got the sense with Jim, he's super positive, but Jim has seen everything. I mean, he's, you know, he's one of those people who's like, "Oh boy." I mean, I was going to Mac IT professionals and asking them about this and they're like, "I don't know, man." Jim was just like, "Well, I know what step you skipped. Let's just go." And it all worked. So thumbs up to Jim. I'd like to imagine this is how Stephen Hackett was. - When he worked at the Apple Store? - Well, did Stephen fix this for you? - He was like, "Is there a part inside your thing that's broken? I can sense it from the outside. And I know how to take it." And in the dark, the line folded with one hand, I could remove that part, disassemble your entire Mac, reassemble it. Jim is like that. - Yeah, well, I mean, thumbs up to Jim. - Stephen's no Jim today, right? 'Cause Stephen didn't fix this, but-- - No, I bet he was like it. - Back in the day, back in the day. - You know he put that old Mac back together again, that Mac book that you painted, you did that. - Back when Stephen Hackett was in his prime? - Yes. - Yes. - Yes, he did, I was very impressed. He put the Mac that Casey Alyssa and I painted black back together and it booted. - Shocking, shocking. - He knows what he's doing. - He does. - With stuff from back in the day. - Deadline is reporting that the Brad Pitt George Clooney movie "Wolves" is the quote, most viewed Apple TV+ movie so far. No idea what that means, but because the good thing is, this movie has been successful for them when it seemed like Apple. - I guess. - It may be kind of given up on it. - Yeah, I don't know if they'd given up on it, but they did, you know. - A little bit. 'Cause it was gonna be in cinemas, right? And they changed that. - Yeah, I think that their strategy changed and they're like, "No, no, no, no, no, let's not do that." - Yeah. - I wonder what that means. I wonder if they view it as making the best of a bad situation or if they view that as adding a lot of value, it is, it came from somebody inside, clearly. 'Cause it was- - It was sourced. - I'm told the film boosted viewership by 30%. Which is the thing that Apple decided to get that. I also said executives are thrills or something like that. - Yeah, exactly. So this is an Apple leak saying positive things about wolves. So take it for what it is, but they did, you know, it's good enough for them to leak it and do some positivity about it for what it's worth. I believe it. - Yeah. I mean, I do too. - Big names. - Yeah. - Draw attention to your platform, sure. - Sigma Judge from Mac Stories is reporting that Ted Lasso season four will begin pre-production in January that he's seen some information. - Shooting sometime early next year. - Yeah. - It's pretty wild. You know, Sigmund is the one reporting this, which is interesting. There's nobody else reporting this. And all the reports about it that you find are quoting Sigmund. So we will see Sigmund who does the Magic Raise of Light podcast, which is about Apple TV Plus. - Sigmund has shared the information with me that he received and I will concur that the information that he has seen certainly looks like this is the case. - Okay. - But I don't think he can share his information. - I think the big thing that we don't know is what form will this take in terms of the story having ended with season three. What do they want to build a new season or set of seasons around? What story do they wanna tell? - Is it actually Ted Lasso, right? Like, is it actually, maybe like holding it that right now, but will it be called that, who's gonna be in it, really? - Right. - And how much? Like, these are the things we don't know. - Right. And is Jason Sudeikis appearing in a really limited way? Is he not appearing? - He's just giving it his blessing. - He's gonna be in it. Like, we don't know any of this. - Going to be in it, boy. Here's the thing that I think is funny. When I try to imagine another season of Ted Lasso, I think they could do it without Jason Sudeikis, the title character. - Yeah. - I don't think they can do it without Brett Goldstein. - I agree with you. - Given where the story ends up in season three, unless, unless, again, and I don't think this is the case, 'cause I don't think Jason Sudeikis wants to do this, unless Ted Lasso, season four, just follows Ted Lasso, in which case, spoilers for Ted Lasso, I guess, in which case it's a completely different setting and a completely different set of characters. And since the breaking news about this was that they were picking up the options for the British actors who are under the British contract system, which is different from the American contract system, that subjects strongly that the UK is a major component, if not the whole thing, for Ted Lasso, season four, in which case, I can't imagine like, I mean, good, it's good to be Brett Goldstein, 'cause I think not only was he one of the writers, and it feels to me like if they're gonna do this, it's the money truck. After the money truck backs up to Jason Sudeikis's house, it goes to Brett Goldstein's house. - Yeah, I agree. - And also backs up there. And he's gonna have, he was a writer before, he's probably gonna have a more exalted producer credit, and a maybe higher level, co-starring credit, because I don't think you can do that show without him. - I'd be surprised if he wasn't involved, 'cause he's now in the multiple projects at Apple TV family, right? Like that Apple seemed to be doing. Like if something works well, then you have another idea, they'll do it, right? Like he's involved in shrinking. And I think one more project may be in development, so it kind of feels like they would try. - Shrinking is his show. Shrinking is his, and he's gonna be in it this season, I guess, a little bit, but he and Bill Lawrence, the co-showrunner of Ted Lasso, they run shrinking. Like shrinking is a, is it Bill Lawrence Ted, no, I keep saying Ted Lasso. - You keep calling him Ted Lasso, which is funny. - Bill Lawrence, Brett Goldstein thing. And so yeah, he's got a strong tie with Apple TV, and, you know, but to say like, you're gonna do more in season four. I just, I can't imagine that show without Roy Kent, even more than I can. I literally can't imagine it without him more than with Ted Lasso, which is just a funny place to be. - And this is technically follow out. Jason's gonna be joining me and Federico on Connected This Week. So, if you've never listened to Connected and you enjoy this show, maybe you like that. What I expect is, imagine this show, but with more jokes, it's probably what you're gonna get. - Yeah, maybe so. I would say also, you could say, imagine this show, but with Federico. - But with an Italian, you know? - Yeah. - Imagine that. - Just as a bonus on top. - Sprinkling. - Yeah, just a little, little extra. So, it's the Me and Mike dynamic plus Federico Vitich. - Or the Me and Federico dynamic plus Jason. It depends on how you want it, really. I don't know if we could say, I don't know what it would be that like the Federico Jason dynamic with me. I don't know if people have that much of a, yeah, I know what that is, but we'll find out. - Federico's been on upgrade, but this is different 'cause now it's me on, I've been, I have actually been on Connected. - Many times. - Sitting in for one of you guys before. - It's been a little while. So, anyway, I'm looking forward to it. - Me too. - I'm happy to go in there 'cause Steven's, Steven's taken October off. And so I'm gonna fill in. I'm gonna help out, pitch in a little bit. - This episode is brought to you by ExpressVPN. You probably wouldn't take a call in a public place on a speaker phone because then anyone could hear anything you're talking about. That's your private information. Well, using the internet of ExpressVPN, it's a little bit like taking that call, knowing that somebody could eavesdrop if they wanted to because all of your traffic flows through servers of ISPs, including mobile network providers. They know every single website that you visit. ExpressVPN reroutes 100% of your traffic through secure encrypted servers, so your ISP can't see your browsing history. There are tons of reasons to choose ExpressVPN. It hides your IP address, making it extremely difficult for third parties to track you online. Plus, it's super easy to use. 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Protect your online privacy today by going to expressvpn.com/upgrade. That is expresvpn.com/upgrade and you can get an extra three months of ExpressVPN for free. That is expressvpn.com/upgrade thanks to ExpressVPN for the support of this show and all of Relay. Rumoround up time, Jason Snell. - Yee-haw, let's do it, let's ride out there. - This is one of the weirder, rumoround up stories that I think we've had in a while. - Yeah. - Russian YouTuber, I'm gonna say Will Zakom claims to have obtained a production unit of the base M4 MacBook Pro and is unboxed on his YouTube channel. - Yeah, I just wanna point out it's bananas that apparently this escaped from the supply chain. It's extra bananas that it's a Russian YouTuber. A place where Apple does not do business at present but I wonder if there is a, you know, from a Chinese distribution center to Russia. - That's the only way, right? - Pathway, right? That kind of makes more sense. And then the thing that made me laugh about this is, oh, they got one of the new Macs. This is gonna be really exciting. Oh, it's the base model MacBook Pro with the M4 processor processor that although it's only on the iPad, we've seen already, right? Like, so it's not the M4 Pro, it's not the new dynamic Mac Mini. It's literally the base model MacBook Pro updated to the M4. So it's still pretty cool that a product that has not been announced yet is somehow its box and computer are in the hands of a Russian YouTuber but it's like the most earth shattering least interesting thing ever. So it's like, I don't even know what to think about it but great, great. - And of course, we have no idea of knowing if this is real but it is just interesting. - No, if this person is faking it, that is interesting in and of itself like this is like a very elaborate thing to do. So according to this video. - And not that interesting. That's the other thing is this, it's an elaborate fake of something pedestrian. - Yeah, which is, which is, hey, maybe that's why it works. According to this video, the M4 chip that's in this Mac is 25% faster due to the 10 core CPU up from eight cores measured with a geek bench test, all these. And again, we knew this. - And we're faster. - Yep. - We knew this. There is a minimum 16 gigabytes of RAM 'cause it's the base model and it starts at 16. It has three Thunderbolt four ports instead of up from two. And there is an availability of space black. - Right, which the base model did not have in the last generation, the space black was reserved for more expensive MacBook Pros. - So weird, but maybe it's true. Maybe it's not, if it is true, this is fascinating. - Because all this product is gonna be is, what's gonna be interesting about this product is, how is the M4 on the Mac? Like, there are some details like Thunderbolt ports that we don't know how that chip, that base model chip plays in the concept of a Mac versus a one port iPad, right? So that's interesting. And yeah, we don't know, like thermal characteristics are different and all of that. But we have an idea of what M4 performance is already. What's more interesting are gonna be sort of like the computers that change their shape, like the Mac Mini, and what happens with a pro version of the chip. But I would say that this is the, you know, there's some tidbits here maybe, but like also maybe not. So sure, it feels like, I think Mark Gurman reported that like the M4 models were already being able to be made 'cause obviously the M4 chip exists, whereas the pro models were gonna be available a little bit later because they have to put the M4 pro chip into production. And so it's probably true that there are M4 MacBook Pros and Mac Mini's and iMacs sitting in boxes in a warehouse, right? Or on a boat going across the ocean. Something like that. - This is Mark Gurman reporting that Apple will be making a product announcement in late October that is focused on this first set of M4 Macs and a new iPad Mini, Mark reported that he expects these products to begin shipping on November 1st. - November 1st, so it feels very much like that last week, just as it was last year when they did the Halloween event. The last week of October, we're gonna have a lot of news, including new Macs and iPad Mini shipping on November 1st, right after that, right after it was called Thanksgiving. Halloween, also. You know what's really spooky, Mike? What's the scariest thing of all? - Another late night of October. - Money, woo! - I really don't want you to do the evening event again. Like if they're gonna do this, please don't do the evening event. - The financial results are coming out on Halloween. The financial results are going to be announced at 5 p.m. Eastern on Halloween. So trick or treat, I'm Apple and I'm a bag of money. That is apparently what's going to happen. So yes, and then Apple Intelligence, Mark Gurman says, is going to be released at 18.1 release. It's gonna happen on the 28th. It would seem to me that the 28th or the 29th will be the day that Apple announces this hardware and has it shipping on the 1st. It could be the week before or something, but like it feels to me like they'll do a video and they'll be a press event or something like that and it's all gonna happen that last week. 'Cause it's literally Apple Intelligence is happening that week, Gurman says the products are shipping that week. On Halloween, as everybody is eating candy and getting into their costumes, the results will come out 'cause who doesn't like, what do you have in that bag? Well, I got Snickers, Skittles, Jolly Ranchers and $20 billion in revenue. - Any economic headwinds, the scariest thing of all. - I got a cocktail of headwinds in here. Yeah, that is. What are you going at for Halloween this year? I am foreign exchange headwinds, that's who I am. - That's a real trick. - They're just terrifying. Anyway, so it's gotta be that week, right? Presumably that they'll make an announcement at some point in there, which is great. So that's three weeks away. - Yeah, I was wondering if they would do the event the week before, but I think if it's just maxed and they don't need to, right? They could just do it like, hey, you can buy 'em today. They'll ship at the end of the week. I know they've done that in the policy. I think that's a good call that either the 28th or the 29th for an Apple event, the product shipping on the Friday. - Yeah, and it'll literally just be a video and they'll give it a week's notice and say, spooky, whatever, and then it'll be that. Yeah, yeah. Actually, the 28th, if they're releasing Apple Intelligence on the 28th, I think the 28th actually makes sense for them to do a big thing 'cause they can also kind of like tooth or horn about Apple Intelligence while they also talk about new Macs and iPads, especially at that iPad Mini and those Macs all support Apple Intelligence, then that's part of the story, right? The question is that iPad Mini, but I had imagined that iPad Mini will either have an M series chip in it or a phone chip that's capable of running Apple Intelligence. I have to imagine they will. - I think it's either gonna be the A18 or the A17 Pro, they'll put in the, it's probably the A18, they'll put in the iPad Mini. I don't think they'll put the M chip in there. - It could be the M1, but it's like, I think what we're saying is whatever is cheapest that gets the Apple Intelligence is what they will do. - And also again, it's like M series iPads come with a separate set of features, including stage manager, that would be bad. That would be so bad on the iPad Mini. - So I could imagine them putting whatever is the most capable and available phone chip for them. - I think that's probably it. So the A18, which is in the base model iPhone 16, I think is a perfectly reasonable idea that they would just use that again and put it in the iPad Mini. 'Cause I am a believer that they're not gonna release any computing devices, right? Mac, iPad, phone, that are not Apple Intelligence capable now. I think that that chip has sailed. So if they're gonna launch Apple Intelligence on the 28th, it's a great day to do an event and do all of it and roll it all together and say here are some new, and that allows them to tell the Apple Intelligence story yet again. - Which we've seen that they will do it, right? - They're gonna do it, they're gonna do that. Like the September event proved it. They're gonna tell that story 'cause they want to appear to be at the cutting edge. - Yes, yes. - They're gonna keep reinforcing, you know, pay no attention. 'Cause they feel this is an area of weakness for them. So they're gonna keep on asserting it and pointing it out. And that's just, we're in the era where Apple's just not gonna shut up about Apple Intelligence and that's just how it's gonna be. So yeah, that would be my bet is that they'll do a video on the 28th and it'll have all of that stuff in there. - Speaking of new products with Apple Intelligence, a couple of stories on the next iPhone SE. Mark Gorman is reporting that it will have an edge-to-edge screen design with no home button and a notch, not a dynamic island. But then in the report, in the Bloomberg report, he references the iPhone 14 as a good product to look at, that it will support Apple Intelligence coming in the spring of 2025. And Felipe Esposito at 9-5 Mac is reporting that this iPhone SE will be the first device to feature. You guessed it, Apple's own 5G modem. Here we are again, another product, another first product to take the modem. Apparently though, this product will come with some benefits to the consumer if they can ship it, as it, this modem would reduce battery consumption, especially in low power mode. - Nice, 'cause it's Apple's own Silicon there that they've done to build this modem. I mean, we'll see, in this report, also say that it's gonna have a notch instead of a dynamic island. - Yeah, notch not a dynamic island, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, so that's, I love that it's like, what makes it the SE? What features is it not good enough to get? And it's like, we're not gonna do the little tiny cutouts and dynamic, you're just gonna get a notch at the top. Sorry, that's just-- - What is cheapest, right? Everything's what is cheapest. - Yeah, exactly what is. 'Cause that's the goal here is, so, you know, but Face ID, right? So that's-- - Face ID. - No home screen and Face ID is a big step. - Wow. - Yep. - Interesting, you know, they could've done, I wonder about the whatever is cheapest philosophy, that they do Face ID and not a touch ID button. - There is nothing to say that having that notch means it's Face ID. - Well, yeah, I guess not. I guess it could just be a front-facing camera and all of that, although the reason that you have that are, my guess is that it is. My guess is that that is the old iPhone 10 level Face ID stuff that is cheap enough now that they can put it in the SE. And maybe the answer is, either they want it to remain, well, I mean, the truth is that touch ID unlock button is for iPad and it would have to probably be re-engineered for the iPhone and they don't wanna do that. - Maybe. - But in the end, whatever is cheapest and most expedient is gonna be what's in the iPhone SE. - I think it will be Face ID, but it doesn't mean it has to be just because there's a notch, right? Like it doesn't, if they wanted to do that, they could, but I feel very confident that that would just be a Face ID system. You know, maybe like the first or second jam one that only works in portrait or whatever, you know, like it can be, they have the ability to make this thing as cheap. But the thing that, you know, some people will care about some people want, like this will be the last time that a home button is on a product, so. - You don't, you don't actually need a notch if you're not doing Face ID because the width of the notch is because of all the other stuff that's up there, the dot projector and all of that. I would say that if the report was that this was getting the dynamic island, it would be a question about like, is it Face ID or is it Touch ID? Because the dynamic island would suggest it was a little teeny tiny cut out. But given that it's the notch, I think it's almost certainly Face ID because they need all that space for the hardware to do it. And remember, that's old tech now. I mean, that's the funny thing is that as expensive and as complex as that tech is, that's iPhone 10 tech that, so like it's time to put that in the iPhone SE. So now it'll be there. - Yeah, all of this stuff while it is still like quote unquote, like the new stuff, it's not new anymore. Like it really doesn't do anymore. - I mean, it feels like the iPhone 10 was recent and it's not, it was a long time ago now. - It's a long time ago, what year was it? - Let me see. - Like six years ago now? - Yeah. - 'Cause it's iPhone 16 now, right? So. - Yeah, I just wanted to check the name. It launched in November 2017. - '17, yeah. - Yeah. I just wanted to see it. Like I know I could do the math, but I just wanted to know like what was the year? - Seven years ago. So seven years ago, the iPhone 10 hardware was amazing and would blow you away. And seven years later, seven plus years later, it'll get me iPhone SE. Like it's not new tech anymore. - No. - This episode is brought to you by Factor. Sweater weather pairs perfectly with savory fall food. But with your busy schedule, sometimes it can be hard to eat the way you'd like to. 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Jason, that's right, it's a very quick to get this food done. - Yeah, a couple minutes. - And it's also a high quality, right? - Yeah, you microwave it in a couple of minutes and then it tastes good. It doesn't taste like weird, kind of like, I don't know what magic they do. It must be the high quality ingredients, but even out of the microwave, when you're on your lunch hour, it tastes really good. It does not taste kind of weird and engineered, like some stuff does when it's microwaved or even like, even stuff that I cook myself when it comes out of the microwave, it can be strange, but never with factor, not at all. So, you know, I'm also really loving the rhyming in here. We're heating and eating. - Oh, so good, yeah. This came up, I think, I read this new, this is like New Air Coffee from No Read It last week and I spent like 35 seconds praising their marketing team, which is not necessary, but shopping and shopping and eating and eating. Oh, so good, I love it. 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The last thing you want in your submarine is water but it's in there so you're gonna be immersed. Of course, you're gonna be immersed in the submarine and the water. It's, you're going to be Submerged. Yeah, anyway, trailer looks great. The trailer is, it's more of like talking about the technology. And this is directed by Oscar winner Edward Berger who was previously known for All Quiet on the Western Front. Yeah, yeah. And so in it, you'll see Edward and he's talking about the production and you see him wearing his Vision Pro. You can kind of see how they have these like two weird circular screens, like for cameras, which is probably what they're using. I am assuming the, I would assume they're using the black magic cameras that they showed off at WWDC. That is what I would assume they're using. I know, I love that in the trailer it shows presumably the director watching like... Dailys? Looking at the monitors. Looking at the monitors and the monitors are a Vision Pro. Yeah, it's likely using a Vision Pro to see what they're capturing. It's wild. So yeah, it's a short film. I expect, I don't know how long it will be but I expect this probably like a 10, 15 minute Extang, but we'll see. It's going to be available on Thursday this week. Thursday, October 10th. Yeah, I'm looking forward. Yeah, it'll be interesting to see what storytelling is like on something like this because... Yeah, how, yeah, exactly. How do you do storytelling in this format? 'Cause remember our criticism of some of the sports highlights is that the quick cut format that works so well when you've got a screen in front of you does not work as well when you're in an immersive environment. So how does this director approach kind of creating that immersive experience? And it'll be interesting to see. I'll quiet on the western front, which was I think a past picture nominee, a very good movie, really well done. It's really interesting to see, I assume Apple came to him and said, "We want you to do this and we'll pay you "and your production company a lot of money to you." A big tech nerd, right? Almost like all this is a thing. I mean, it probably helps. Yeah. I think you kind of have to be, right? To want to take to do something like this, I think you've got to at least care about it. Yeah, I'm intrigued. 'Cause like, you would assume presumably it will be following something, someone or a group of people. But like, if they're on the left and something else is on the right, like you've got to consider all of that, right? That's right, how do you attract the viewer's attention? Whereas if you cut, you can point the viewer's attention wherever you want, if you're in an immersive space where it's more like you're there, how do you draw people's attention to it? And I don't know, right? It's a different grammar. It is more akin in some ways to an amusement park exhibit than it is to a film. And so how does that work? And like, I'm not sure anybody has the answer for that, but I'm sure a lot of smart filmmakers have thought about it and have looked at the technology and have thought of things to try. And so we will get another try at it that's not a nature documentary or sports highlights. And I'm looking forward to seeing how that goes. Who is the director of Wicked? John Chu, John M. Chu. I know that Apple featured him before he does watch his daily news on the Vision Pro, right? And loves it. He was even, he was on the town talking about it as well a while ago, I think. So yeah, interesting. I wanted to just follow up on the Vision Pro a little bit 'cause we don't talk about it very much. At least I don't really think we talk about what we like about it very much. 'Cause I mean, I think I can speak for both of us that like, don't use them as much as I thought I was gonna be using it. Because, you know, there just isn't enough happening. Like, stuff like this is exciting because this is something, right? Here's here's something. Give me reasons to go there. Yeah. But I wanted to just like, we touched on Spatial Personas a little bit and Spatial Persona calls. We have like a FaceTime call and you're talking to someone. Yeah. I've done a few more of these like from a business perspective. Me and Gray have been using it to talk. And I think that the Vision Pro is probably the best co-working telecommute and device that possibly has ever existed. It's fantastic. So like, why is it better than a Zoom call? Because I think I can speak for everyone and say that when you're on a Zoom call, I mean, I anyway, I feel like I spend too much time looking at myself in the corner. To like, how am I sitting, how am I posing, all that kind of stuff. Right, make sure am I in frame all of those things. And also that like, if you're having a call with someone you wanna be at least somewhat presentable. Well, that doesn't matter for these, right? Because it's a fixed in time 3D version of yourself, which the quality that they have been able to get to at these spatial personas cannot be overstated how incredibly lifelike they were. And I will say I was incredibly wrong. Like, I remember in the first demos and even in the beginning, I was like, the spatial, like the personas as they just were then, were gonna be a flop. And like, they would be the digital touch of this device. Like, I mean, I don't think we were wrong in saying that they were creepy and didn't work right. Yeah. I just didn't think it was gonna, I just, I thought that that was like, just they were gonna drop that. What happened is that they got way better. Yeah. And then the spatial aspect where they, which, I mean, it feels like a very weird hedge, right? Well, it's in a box. Like, well, why is it in a box? It's 'cause we can't get it out of the box right now, okay? And then finally, they got it out of the box where you've, you're just kind of like in a space with people's personas and the personas are also better. And it's really good. I mean, it's like, it's really, I try to explain it to people and they kinda don't get it. And you kinda need to experience it. But like, we do occasional calls and you've now done some with Grey too, where it's like you and me and maybe like Casey or maybe James Thompson and maybe Stephen Hackett. Like, there's a different set of people who will pop into that group from time to time. And 'cause you got a set of time to do it 'cause people otherwise are just on, who knows what device they're on. But if they're on the Vision Pro, and then all of a sudden like all of the artifice, all the window chrome and am I in the shot? And, you know, and even vanity of like is my hair messed up and all of that just goes away. And it's much more like you're just in a physical space with people. You know, when you're in a physical space with people, you don't take a mirror out and look at yourself. Right, you don't do, probably. I hope not, I hope you don't do that. And so it feels much more, just much more natural. It's just, it's really very good. And then, yeah, if you wanna do, this is where Share Play comes in too, is like, if you wanna bring in content, you know, everybody kinda like it's put in, instead of facing each other, like they're around a campfire, they're all, it moves you so that you're all kind of like aligned looking at whatever is being shown. But you can still look around and you're still hearing the people coming from where they're coming. It's just, it's very, it is really well done. The problem, the problems are all about like, nobody has them, what is the content, all of those other things. But like when, if you can find things to share and people who've got a Vision Pro and you can, and that you're remote from and you wanna talk to them, in that use case, it's pretty special. Are you talking about you and Gray using this? Is this gonna be a Cortex episode at some point I assume? But like-- - I don't know. - He was real skeptical about it and I'm excited to know that you guys actually tried it because I know that Meta has had some success and you guys use the Horizon Workroom's a little bit, but like in our calls with special persona, when I heard Gray's skepticism about this, I was like, he really needs to try this 'cause it is next level. - Yeah, I convinced him level. And he, okay, he blew his mind. - And so like when, if we do these calls now, that's how we do it, like one of the really important things is the spatialness of it. Like Apple uses spatial mostly to talk about sound, but with the spatial persona calls, you're all within relative space to each other. So like, for example, if I bring a window into the environment, I can point at something and you can follow where I'm pointing. Or like there was a moment when we were on our call last week, I had just my Mac display and it just for me 'cause I was going through notes. And like, Gray could see that I was reading it and he said something and I pointed at him and said, yes, right, like that's it. And like, but, and he said it worked so much for him because he could see like it was how I would do things. I mean, that's the other thing, the technology, especially with the facial scanning is so good that you see the facial expressions that you're used to seeing these people make in real life. The technology that they have created here is incredible. And I wanted to mention it again because I just feel like, understandably, there is a lot of negative about Division Pro, but this is truly the best experience I have had with it is in these calls. Now, I will say as a bunch of people asking, my mouth still doesn't move, but that's not my problem, and that's everybody else's problem. - It's true, it's true, it's okay, it's better now, it's not great, but it's better than it was. You were like stone face before and now sort of like your face moves and your mouth maybe moves a little bit. It knows that you're moving your mouth, but I can't see through your beard to do that. That's a thing that they're just gonna need to keep working on, but no, it's really, I just, again, it's hard to describe this, like the sound plus the hands, plus the face and the facial gestures and the facial expressions. If you roll it all together, it's enough to get it over the edge to being like, it feels like I'm in the room with that person. You put all of that stuff together. - It's good enough. - And it's not, it's good enough to cross this line where it feels more real, and it certainly feels more real than like a zoom does, which we've all gotten used to zoom, everybody's in a flat little box on your screen. This doesn't feel like that. This feels like I'm in a room or on a beach or wherever with the people that I'm talking to, and that it is a completely different kind of feeling. There's a lot of, it can be very impressive. - Yeah, it sounds so, it almost feels like embarrassing to say in a way, but like these calls, it genuinely is good at spending time with someone. Like the way it makes me feel, like I feel like I've actually spent time with the person. - Yeah, our little hour that we try to do every other week, and sometimes it comes off and sometimes it doesn't, but like I'm hanging out with my friends for an hour, and I don't get to do that a lot because I work in my garage, and my friends are all over the world. - Yeah. - But that hour feels like just in-person hangout time. - It really does. - Significantly better than a FaceTime, like significantly better. - Lastly, like hugely better. - I feel, a lot of times I have long FaceTimes, and I feel tired when I'm done. If I have long FaceTime, like long spatial persona calls, I feel energized, like it's incredible. And this is one of the things where like to me, it's a shame that it's locked behind such an expensive device. And I know that this is something that they're able to bring to different versions in the quality that they've done it, because I, genuinely, they have built something incredibly good, and yeah, it's just, this is like, it's so frustrating with the Vision Pro, right? That like, this is just such a good part of it, but then there are all these other bits that just have yet to come to much, but this is good. You linked to something on six colors that I thought was interesting. And it was linked to an article about an article. I wanna give it a back story so we can talk about it. So in iOS 18, Apple has created a new privacy prompt for sharing contacts with an app. So usually, like in the past, I should say you could, you know, an app could say, "Would you like to share your contacts?" You just say, "Okay, it's done." So it used to be incredibly easy. But now this privacy prompt is work similarly to the photos permission, where you get asked if you wanna share contacts, and then you get asked for which and you can either share everything or you can do that thing where you just choose some specific contacts. So basically, Apple has made it much harder for a developer to get that like blanket forever permission that they can scan and use all of your contacts for whatever they want. So this prompt will also, I'm sure, make people consider how they're sharing their contacts, or they'll just forget about it and not do it. Therefore, it will control how developers get to scrape contacts for bootstrapping apps, usually social apps. The New York Times, I think Kevin Russe at the New York Times wrote an article claiming that this process would mean kind of the end of new social apps because there have been many instances over the years of social apps being able to get started by using or abusing the contacts that people had on their phones, which I think the conceit of that, I actually agree with, but it seemed like that the article was kind of making these claims and trying to back them on information that they were not sharing, if that makes sense. It's like, oh, I spoke to a such and such person and they said this, but I feel like as an opinion piece, this maybe would have been better, but it doesn't really seem to have been positioned as such. This article prompted Nick here to write an article of their own basically defending users with this, rather than the startups trying to invade the privacy of those users, which the New York Times piece seems to, for some reason, lean more towards, which then made you link to this in six colors, talking about the idea of Apple being like Godzilla, which I liked, where Apple can kind of just, in its way, stomp on a building and change everything. - Right, everything, so yeah, there's all these layers here. So I think Kevin Russe's piece, I don't like it. I think that it is way too worried about a growth hacking startup bro who is sad that he can't quickly build a startup by strip mining everybody's contacts. And there's still apps that do this too, where it's like, if you want to join our, like remember Clubhouse, Clubhouse is like, if you want to join Clubhouse, you have to share all of your contacts with us so that we can spam all your contacts and we can build a social graph. And it's actually kind of amazing that Apple has taken this long to take its approach that it's done elsewhere and do it to this, which is selectively sharing. Instead of it being like, we empower you to not share anything. It's like, we empower you to share whatever you want to and nothing more, not your entire contacts list. And I'm even leaving out the other thing, which is the consent of the people who gave you their contact information. I'm sure they didn't give you, you personally, their contact information so that you could share it with everybody else, right? And yet that's what's going on here. I feel like users are not just protecting their own information, they're protecting their contacts information by doing this. So I think Kevin Ruse's piece exacerbated by a really bad headline, but even the piece is bad too, I think, which is it seems very worried about, who will speak for the startup bros? And not about the fact that they are building businesses and getting investments and making profits and selling out and getting rich by selling people's information, right? That they're gleaning from this, from an app permission. So Nick here's piece basically says, you got it backward, Apple makes this decision, we should look at it and say, wow, it's kind of crappy that the guys like this guy that's quoted in this article extensively have made a living starting up companies based on asking everybody to empty their address books and give all of their contacts away to this guy. And that it really should be the other way around. And so Nick here's piece is headlined, I do not care about impediments to a creepy growth hacking technique, which is like, I think he's right. They got it all backward and it shows you just how broken I think some writers on technologies minds are about the fact that they seem to be covering startups and not technology that impacts people and that perhaps you should be more user centric and a little less startup centric. I mean, TechCrunch, I kind of understand it, it's kind of their business, but the New York Times, maybe not so much. I don't know, maybe, maybe it is. But the point, and I was talking to Dan more in last Friday, I guess on the sixth college podcast about this too, I think the thing that's most interesting to walk away from this whole thing is take just the fact that Apple made this decision. Isn't it interesting that Apple at this point is so big and so powerful and the iPhone is so important that any decision Apple makes has the potential to close off whole lines of potential new business. We talked about this with the App Store and App Store policy saying there'll never be an app that does this because everybody knows it'll just get rejected and how Apple has that sort of power. But I'm saying even if Apple is literally just thinking, oh, we did photos and we did files and now we're gonna do contacts with our new system that has an API and the picker is separate from the app so the app can't see your contacts and then you can choose what to do just like you can with files and photos. This is a new approach Apple's taking that allows apps to ask for stuff without needing to be granted license, right? You pick, you share, the app only sees the stuff you share, it never gets access to your library. And this year they're like, we brought it to contacts and they do it at WWDC and you think, great, of course you did. Like why was it already there? - Yeah. - Exactly. But it's, and I'm not, I really am not making an argument here about this, I'm just saying it. When Apple does something like that, there are enormous ramifications, almost every time. And that's the Godzilla metaphor, which is, you know, maybe Godzilla just wants a sandwich, right? Godzilla's like, hey, little famished gonna walk down to my favorite sandwich shop because it was huge and Godzilla's gonna step on your car on the way there. And if you, if it's Godzilla stepped on your car, you're like, oh my God, I hope, I paid my insurance because I need a new car now Godzilla stepped on it. That is Apple. Like Apple sometimes makes tactical decisions to change the world, right? Other times though, and I think that they're aware, I think there's awareness there, but I think other times Apple's like, well, no, we just did this because it makes sense technically or it's a thing that we need to do because we wanted to protect users against this thing or we're rolling out our existing privacy framework to another part of the data store on the phone. It's not that big a deal, but like every move they make on the iPhone has potentially enormous ramifications to create markets, to destroy markets, to ruin people's companies, to make new companies. - For real companies, yeah. - And that, and in that, I think that the original Kevin Roos piece is interesting because the guy's attitude is basically like, well, I mean, again, a little more sympathetic to this guy than I would be, but his thought is like, well, I guess this one's run dry, I'll go on to the next opportunity. - Yeah. - And that is what Apple can do just at the drop of a hat, just set and foot on the street. They will close something off and create something else. And I just think as somebody who covered Apple back when it was irrelevant, it is interesting to think about that and think about what Apple thinks about it. Does Apple, every Apple move, presumably, they're like, what will this do? What are the ramifications of this? But like, everything they do is like this now. Literally, Apple cannot make a change without it having a substantial impact on people or businesses or, you know, or something out there because of their sheer scale. One that I always think of with this is at tracking transparency, where, you know, - Absolutely. - For whatever reason, Apple decided that they would make it much harder for developers, companies, advertisers, ad marketplaces that seem to be able to track users and serve them ads. And in doing that, I mean, for a lot of companies, in like, in tech and social media and that kind of stuff, there was the pre-ATT and the post-ATT. - Yeah. - I was hearing, I was listening to something recently where they were talking about Snapchat. And it's like, well, Snapchat, they made money, they made money in like one quarter, and then it all, then never again, because that's tracking transparency came in. Like they'd finally kind of nailed their advertising system and then gone away again. And it's one of these things where it's like, I agree with the idea around trying to give people a choice for their privacy, but it's just a peculiar thing where one company has the ability to change the fortunes of so many other businesses. Because like, you know, it's easier to focus on the Snapchat and Facebooks of the world, but there are lots of stories of like, companies that were building their businesses, selling ads on different platforms, and it's become much harder for them now, post this. - The challenge, and yeah, there's a lot of complexity here, but the challenge is, Apple didn't make it so that you can't track people. - No. - And Apple didn't make it so you can't share contacts with apps. What Apple did is make them ask, or give users more ability to choose what the scope of their sharing is. And we can argue that, and I actually would argue that I think Apple hasn't nailed that give user scope thing, and that it gets in my way more than I would like as a user. And maybe some of this is the way that individual apps handle this, but like when I try to share an image in Slack, and it's like, oh, currently you're sharing the last five images that you shared in Slack, do you wanna pick from those? It's like, well, of course I don't. I wanna pick from my library, and it makes me go and add it to the list and then add it through, and it's like, well, that's not how that should work. And I'm not quite sure who's at fault there. But the bigger point is, it's not like you can't build a business based on your social graph, but you've gotta convince the users that it's worth sharing your social graph, or part of your social graph with a random company, and you have to make the case. And you have to make the case in the case of ATT, you have to make the case that you wanna be tracked, and people don't. And I know that that can be self-serving for Apple, because Apple considers itself the first party, so it can track you on its devices for its purposes, and that's fine because they're not selling it to anybody else or using it themselves for anything other than their existing things, which is, you already agreed to, you're using an Apple phone, your knowledge is their knowledge, and it's like a whole thing. And arguably that's unfair, right? But, and I know it got brought up like, oh, but what about messages? Messages uses your contacts and mail uses your contacts, and are they gonna ask about that? I guess what I would say is, maybe they should, right? Maybe Apple, the first time, and it's gonna be annoying, but if you wanna be fair about it, maybe Apple, when you open messages for the first time, it should say, hey, do you want Apple, you're all your contacts to be available in messages? And here's what will happen is, people will say yes to that. People will say yes to that, because it's-- I am also believed that they should ask, because Apple is making assumptions about the trust people have in them. Like, why does a user, who, you know, why does somebody who buys an iPhone, why did they like, oh, they're inherently like, oh, I'll just give it to Apple and not WhatsApp, when WhatsApp might be what they trust and use implicitly, you know? The difference is, you are putting that information into your phone, which means that it's in your Apple, kind of system, and when you add somebody to messages, it's not leaving your phone, really, whereas what these apps are doing is saying, we would like to read your contacts and copy them off your device, arguably. And again, this is one of those cases where you could make a differentiation here, which is there's access to the contact information, and there's copying your contacts list and putting it on someone's server, right? And those could arguably be different, but once the apps got them, you know, anything goes. But, so I would say like, there's on-device, and there's also off-device, and there's implicit trust with Apple. And yeah, I guess my argument would be if people like really trust Snap or something, then like, should they have an address book in their app that's not the contacts and keep it there? And Google has its own contacts that are not Apple contacts, and they do it that way. - Yeah, I mean. - It's one of those things where the problem is sometimes I think Apple does this in very self-serving ways, because they are damaging competitors while they still have an advantage. But also, this is the complexity of it, and this is why whenever anybody says, "Oh, Apple just says that they care about user privacy," but they really just want them all to yourself. And I hate those arguments because it is not true. The reverse is also not true, right? This is when we talked about all the issues about Apple and its security and privacy stance, and how the EU says that some of it is bogus. It's like, look, it is part of Apple's corporate belief. It is also a place where Apple has an advantage, and that's what makes it muddy, is I don't believe Apple is limiting contacts to destroy tech bro startups so that they can control your social graph for their own nefarious purposes inside Apple. I don't think that's why. I think Apple literally is looking at that and saying, it's kind of gross that right now people are asked one thing and they get complete access to the contacts. That's too much. And so what you could argue is that the growth hacker guy, his whole business was based on Apple making a naive technical decision a few years ago, 'cause remember what it was they were siphoning all of the contacts out, and so Apple put in a permission to stop it, but it was a yes, no permission. And now Apple's saying, let's be a little more granular about this permission. So it used to be that the way your business model was to get people to say yes. So Clubhouse was like, you can't use Clubhouse unless you give us everybody you know, and then we'll let you in the door, right? So you say yes, and then we gotcha. Okay, now you can come in the door. And Apple said, well, that's not great. Maybe we need to make it so that like, if you wanna use Clubhouse, you can share like five people and or Clubhouse is gone, that idea. So you could argue that like growth hacker bro, like he was taking advantage of an inefficiency and a sort of a naivety about Apple that has now gone away. And so that's why his attitude I think is actually pretty good, which is okay, they close that loophole onto the next thing. What will I exploit next in order to make my businesses go? And again, I mean, I'm a little judgmental about that, but at the same time, like that's business. Like that's just how it goes. I don't think Apple is out to destroy him per se, especially for their own benefit. I think Apple looks at that and says, yeah, that's gross. We shouldn't, users shouldn't be forced to make that decision. We should give users more control of their data and choose where to use it. And I do think that's where they're coming from, but the fact that they benefit from things like app tracking transparency because they have personalized data in the app store based on what you do and they can use it because they're the first party. Muddies the waters, right? It makes you question every decision they make because are they doing this to gain an advantage or are they doing this to protect us? And the answer sometimes is yes to both and sometimes it's not. But in this case, it's funny. And this is why I think it's important. It's funny that it's gotten to the point where even if Apple makes what I would say is a fairly straightforward judgment about user control of their data and privacy, people are still going to say, I can't believe Apple is doing this. And that's the Godzilla thing, right? Like through no fault of their own necessarily trying to do something positive, they can still do a lot of damage and they may know that they're going to do it and not care, they may not know. - This episode is brought to you by Notion. There's so much to love about Notion. I love it. I use Notion every single day. I use it for multiple projects, but the majority of the time that I'm spending in Notion is working on my projects with Cortex brand. I keep everything in here including all the stuff for the Cortex podcast too. We plan out all of our shows there, but also all of the products that we have, all of the information goes in Notion because it enables us to actually share as a team. So when I start working with a new assistant and she wanted us to look at using Notion as like a good database store of everything and it's perfect because we get to share everything as a group. We get to collaborate together. We get to share stuff. We get to work on stuff. We get to keep notes and everybody gets access to everything. Notion also has some really interesting AI tools. Like one of the things that I've been using is if we have meetings and we're keeping our meeting notes, I'll ask Notion AI at the end to sum up the action items that are based on the notes. And it does a very good job of that. And I think it's really cool to make sure I'm keeping track of everything that we're talking about. The new Notion AI is single AI tool that does it all. You can search across Notion and other apps, generate documents in your own style, analyze PDFs and images and chat with about anything. Notion is a perfect place to organize your tasks, track your habits, write beautiful documents and collaborate with your team. And the more that you add to Notion, the more Notion AI can personalize its responses for you because unlike generic chat bots, Notion AI has the actual context of your work. Notion AI is connected to multiple knowledge sources. It uses AI knowledge from GPT4 and Claude to chat with you about any topic. It can search across thousands of Notion documents in seconds to quickly answer any question. And there are new AI connectors which are currently in beta. So Notion AI can actually search across your Slack discussions, Google documents, sheets and slides if you want it to and more tools like GitHub and Jira are coming soon. This is powerful stuff. Notion is used by over half of the Fortune 500 companies. You'll be in great company. Also me, I use it too, if that means anything to you, which I hope they should. Try Notion for free when you go to Notion.com/upgrade. That's all lowercase letters, of course. N-O-T-I-O-N.com/upgrade to try the powerful, easy to use Notion AI today. One last time when you use this link, you're supporting the show Notion.com/upgrade. I thank the Notion for the support of this show. And rely. Let's finish out today with some Ask Upgrade questions. (beatboxing) First is from Kevin. If Apple releases an Apple TV-sized Mac Mini, would you consider traveling with one plus a Vision Pro as a transportable workstation with a much bigger monitor than a laptop? - No. - It's an interesting idea though, right? Like, you'd have this tiny little box and your Vision Pro. - Yeah. - And then you would have a powerful machine potentially, depending on what you got inside of the Mac Mini. And you connect it to your Vision Pro? I think that that is an interesting idea. I don't know how you would, it might be difficult to do it without a monitor though, like, completely. - Right, no, so no battery, so you gotta have, you gotta have power that's consistent. - Sure, sure. - Which means you're not gonna be able to do it when you're traveling or something, but you could do it in like a hotel room or a conference room. And you're gonna need to be able to hook it up to a monitor presumably to set it up or unless they can do some sort of a quick, there's a lot that would have to go on for this to be a transportable workstation. I feel like at that point, you probably should just bring a laptop. - Yeah, as Zach points out in Discord, Federico could make it look. - I'm sure Federico could build and John, they could build a thing that's got a battery and an HDMI thingy on it and it comes with its own wifi and it's all just, you know, you pull the chain and start up the generator that gives it power and whatever, I'm sure there's a way there. But it seems too fiddly to me. It's like, it seems beyond what it would be useful for. But I mean, I guess, I guess what I would say is I could see a very specific scenario where it might be good, but probably more likely I would just have a laptop. - But this is the kind of thing that is interesting. Like that Mac Mini being small is interesting and you will, I believe, people are gonna, you're gonna see a lot of this kind of thing. Like people using this tiny Mac in like new and interesting ways. Like I look forward to that time. - But keep in mind with the Vision Pro, you're still gonna need a keyboard and probably a trackpad at that point. - Yeah. - And that's the thing. If you bring a laptop, you can still do all of this and it is your keyboard. - It has everything you need. - For the trackpad. It has all the things in one piece and battery power. And if you're not wearing your Vision Pro, you can still use it. Like there's just too much that like, get a MacBook Air really is the answer here. - Florian writes in and says, Jason recently mentioned that he listens to music while reading, what kind of music? Is it the same music, similar music? Is it with lyrics about lyrics? What do you use them to get to read? - It's, this is one of those questions and I knew when I said this that somebody would probably ask this question. I just have, I have a bunch of playlists and stuff that are on my phone that are downloaded to my phone for when I'm on a plane. And it's just, it's just music I like. It's mostly music that I know really well. I think that the one thing that is distracting when I'm reading or writing is if it's not music that I kind of know by heart. I have a specific playlist that I use a lot when I'm writing. When I'm reading, the music can be more broad than that. But if it's brand new, I'm not focused on what I'm reading. I'm listening to the music and all of that. So it needs to be something I'm familiar with. But that's it. And really nothing in particular. It's just the stuff that I like, that I've downloaded to my phone, so it's on my phone when I'm on a plane. There's nothing really more than that. I just, when I'm on a plane, there's nothing happier for me than AirPods Pro, Noise Cancelling, and playing music and while I'm reading a book, that's it. - But I think that is the interesting thing, right? I think sometimes people can, they have like specific needs when doing something like reading or writing. You know, like if I'm, if I'm ever writing or reading anything, I can't have lyrics playing. - Yeah, I know. - And like for me, the more I know music, the harder I find it to concentrate. - Interesting. - 'Cause then I'm trying to sing along. - It needs to be stuff, it needs to be stuff that I know by heart and it needs to be in a very specific range of things that I feel like are good fits. I have a couple of playlists that are my go-to. I don't always write with those playlists going. But if I need, if I am being distracted and I have a deadline and I need to write something right now, I have a couple of go-to playlists. But it's music with lyrics and I just shuffle through them. But they obviously, I know them so well and they give me whatever kind of like focus that I need that I'll use them. But generally, more generally than like extreme circumstances like that, I don't have a problem. I know people have a problem with lyrics. I don't have a problem with lyrics if it's something that I know by heart because then it's just all part of the background and then it doesn't bother me at all. If it's relatively new or it's a song that I haven't heard in a while and I really like, I will get distracted by it. But if it's a song that I play all the time and I know it by heart, like from those playlists, it's not an issue. And sometimes I'll shop too. Sometimes it'll absolutely be, again, for writing, for reading, it doesn't really bother me. Sometimes I'll be like, let's try this playlist and I'll sit there and I'll try to write and I'll be like, nope, and I'll move on to another playlist and try that one and see if I can get one that gets me in the mood. - Bronwyn has a question for the author of Take Control of Photos, which now is in its fourth edition available at takecontrolbooks.com. This question goes as following. I'm having-- - It's me. - It's you, yes, it's you. When I was asking a question to you, I'm having issues of iCloud Photo Library. I find it deeply slow to download photos. For many, it doesn't even keep the thumbnails on my phone, even though I have plenty of space. When I go to share a photo or insert it into an app, it hangs on downloading. I have fast internet. It feels like there shouldn't be an excuse for this. Do you have any suggestions or similar issues with iCloud? - Well, what I will say is I've seen this before. It's not most people's experience. So I would recommend that you restart your phone. Maybe you turn photosinking off, and then let it sit for a few minutes, and then turn it back on. You might even want to consider logging out and logging back into your iCloud account. - Put the day aside. - Yeah, I know, but it's the steps, right? You need to do the steps to do it, because what's happening is, it's got something wrong with its photosinking. And so the implication here is like, there should be no excuse for this. I mean, the answer is that it's a bug and it's not working, right? But that is not the experience that everybody has with it. It would be one thing. It was like, everybody agrees that it's slow to download photos and doesn't keep thumbnails on the phone, and it hangs on downloading, but that's not the case. Your library is in a kind of half broken sync state. The other thing you can do in the new version of photos is tap on your icon in the upper right corner, and that's where all of the cloud information, the iCloud stuff is now. So you also could look at the sync status and see if there are any issues there. But as usual, Apple doesn't really let you do a lot of troubleshooting. So my recommendation is, do the things, turn it off and back on, you know, turn syncing off and on, turn iCloud off and on, do the things to get it to get back to where it is. And also be sure that it's on Wi-Fi at night and sleeping so that it can download a lot of data and do analysis then. Sometimes this stuff just clears up over time, other times you need to give it a kick, but that's it, it's not the usual behavior. That's all I have. - And Sasha asks, do you use any cameras other than your iPhone's camera? - I don't really. - I have a Sony A6400 that I use for streaming, and I also use for taking pictures of products, even though I'm not very good at it, but if I ever need to do something like that, like photos or videos of a product, I'll use that just because it is just a much higher quality lens than what my iPhone produces. And I've had my eye on one of those Fuji cameras, the Fuji Film X, I think 100V, because every time I see somebody take photos of one of these, they're just like the most beautiful photos for my taste, but they're very, it's a very expensive camera. And so that's just the end of that really. - I also have an A6400, it's above me right now, it's primarily for video, it's my overhead shot or whatever. When Julian graduated from high school, I took it down and put the battery in it and put a card in and I shot pictures of his high school graduation with it. I'm not sure if I took it to Oregon for Jamie's college graduation though, because again, it's a whole other camera, but so I have occasionally done that for special occasions. I have to be honest, I used to take out my DSLR back in the day and shoot product photos with it for the website, and now I just use the iPhone 99% of the time for that stuff because it's good enough. So yeah. - There's some stuff I wanna get like detail, the iPhone is just, it doesn't have enough flexibility. But yeah, I agree. And I can imagine in a situation like that one that you would describe like in the graduation, like if you have a camera with like a big lens, you know, just like take that, but like it's not your everyday thing. But yeah, there you go. If you would like to send us in a question, go to upgradefeedback.com. You can also send in your follow up there as well. You can check out Jason over at sixcolors.com and hear him here on relay and at the incomparable.com. You can listen to my podcast here in relay too and check out my work, cortexbrand.com. You can find us online. Jason is @jsonow, J-S-N-E-L. I am @imike, I-M-Y-K-E. You can watch clips of this show on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, where we are at upgrade relay. Thank you to our members who support us at Upgrade Plus. You can get a longer ad-free version of the show each and every week. Just go to getupgradeplus.com to find out more. Thank you to Notion Factor and ExpressVPN for the support of this show. But most of all, thank you for listening. Until next time, say goodbye Jason Snow. Goodbye my curly. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) [MUSIC PLAYING]
We discuss how Apple is so influential that even its simplest moves can make or break companies and industries. Also: Apple plans a big Halloween week, and there's an immersive thriller coming to Vision Pro.
