[Music] From Relay, this is Upgrade. Episode 538 today's show is brought to you by Squarespace, Fitbod, Notion and Smarter World. My name is Mike Hurley and I am joined by Jason Sennell. Hi, Jason. Hi, Mike. How are you? I'm pretty good. Thank you. How are you? I'm pretty good. Very excited. It's big game week here. I know, but my beloved Cloud Bears are 5 and 5 at a 500 team. It doesn't matter. You throw the records out when you're playing against the hated Stanford Cardinal. Ooh, take off that red shirt. Take off that red shirt. You're right. Roll on U-Bears on the way to a probably really rainy and wet Saturday sitting in Berkeley, but that's okay. We do it because we love it. Anyway, good week. Fun week. I'll play some marching band music later. That'll be great. I have a snow talk question for you. Councillor Stewart, who asks, "Do you prefer to travel by planes, trains or automobiles?" I see what Stewart is doing here. Stewart's making a reference to the classic John Hughes film, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, starring John Candy and Steve Martin. Love that movie. "Certifiable Thanksgiving Day Classic." What do I prefer to travel on? Well, mostly I travel on automobiles because I prefer them because they're very convenient and there are no trains by my house and planes, there's a whole rigmarole. I love traveling on a train, but it happens to me so rarely. Planes, I don't know, I actually kind of enjoy the plane ride. I don't love the rest of it, but I actually kind of love the plane ride because I just put on my headphones and read my book and I'm very happy to just sit there and read for hours and there's nobody bugging me and there's nothing else I want to do. If I had to work on the plane, I'd be a little more grumpy, but I generally use it as a reading time and so it becomes kind of a refuge. But I like a good road trip too. I don't think I have a preference here. They're all different and they'll have their advantages, so sorry, Stewart. You just do them all. What you do is like the characters in plane trains and automobiles, you ride for several hours in the back of a refrigerated truck and you get very cold. No, the worst way to do it is to do all of them. Yes, that's true. That's true. Separated by various other people. People haven't seen plane trains or automobiles. We just did it for the incomparable. That episode will be out just in time for Thanksgiving and it is, I know right and it's a classic. It really is a great movie. There's so many things about it that are good and that'll be this week's episode. So people should check it out. I'll put a link in the description to be incomparable and then I can go subscribe and get it. Just another show. My preference is planes because of the destination. So if I'm getting on a plane, it's most likely the most exciting destination, right, is going to be when I get off on a plane. For sure. Somebody in the chat mentioned buses and I'll just say years of riding like a school bus and stuff like I hate buses. That said, I also was a bus commuter for like 15 years. Sure. I rode a bus every single day for 15 years and I didn't hate the bus but it's not my favorite. That's a draw the line of the bus. Yeah, I would go planes, trains, automobiles, bus. I love trains. I take trains happily every day. You know, well, when we haven't mentioned yet, for two years, I was a ferry commuter. Now that's an interesting way to live boats, yeah, ride a boat every day. And that was actually very great. That was really civilized. I enjoyed riding the boat. That was a fun time. So we'll get boats in there above buses for sure. Very fair. If you have a snow talk question you would like for us to answer in a future episode of the show, just go to upgradefeedback.com and you can send us your snow talk question. Thank you. Just do it for that one. I enjoyed it. You can give the gift of relay for every year, one time a year, you can get 20% of a new annual membership used to starting now until December the 18th. Now obviously we would recommend that you go to getupgradeplus.com and you can sign up for an annual plan, use the code 2024 holiday and you will get 20% of an annual membership. So you can get one year of upgrade plus 20% off. There will also be a link in the show notes that pre-fills all of this for you so you can click it and you will be able to subscribe and get a wonderful discount. You can also go to giverelay.com where you can learn more about this, where you can gift it for somebody else or where you can find out about how to save 20% on any of our membership shows here at Relay. Now let me tell you why you want to do this for upgrade plus because you will get longer ad free episodes every week. You will also get access to our relay members Discord, tons of bonus content including two monthly members only relay shows and even more bonus content that we've done over the years. You'll also be help supporting the show which we will appreciate greatly. This week on upgrade plus we're going to talk about our thoughts on the growth of blue sky. So you want to go and get this for yourself, go to getupgradeplus.com and you can sign up, use the code 2024, holiday and then annual membership. You will get 20% off or just please click the link in the show and it will be down for you. We really appreciate it. Why not get this for yourself for the holidays or send giverelay.com to a family member or a friend and they can help sign you up for one whole year of upgrade plus 20% off. Pretty great, right Jason? Yeah, pretty good. Pretty good. What a deal. Such a bargain. Give the gift of people you love of relay really. Why not? Why not? You know? Why not? Why? Why not? Exactly. Got some follow up, a lot of people wrote in, we mentioned this, you text me after last week's episode and you said that you really enjoyed our conversation that we had about in lawyer up which was fun. I enjoyed it too. It was a good time to return to the topic of Apple in the European Union and this spurred a lot of conversation from listeners. This comes from Chris, Chris says, rather than Apple dramatically pulling out of the European market, I think the most likely outcome of European Commission decision that Apple violated the DMA would be years of grinding litigation. What a beautiful way to put it. For comparison, the European Commission's decision and the Irish tax case came in 2016. The final appeal wasn't resolved until 2024. Okay. Here's the thing about this though. Here's the thing about this. They ended up having to pay it. Yes. The years of grinding litigation, if there's another fine, another fine, another fine, another fine and they keep accruing fines and they're like, "Oh yeah, but we're going to do this in grinding litigation." Five years from there, they're told, "No, you need to pay it all." They've now accumulated five years of fines that they're going to have to pay. I don't think it's a long-term strategy and remember they lost that case. It's a tough one. That's a tough strategy for ongoing fines to bank on you ultimately winning your case, especially given the track record. Well, because it's like, "Yeah, you can do this, but then not only will you eventually pay the fine that I told you you wanted to pay in the first place, but you'll also have to pay the legal fees for your lawyers to be in court." Presumably, all the further fines for your continuing, assuming you continue not complying, you would continue to be fined. That's how it works. It's not a single thing. They keep refining you. It's not great. Challenging it in court is a good strategy for individual fines. If the European Commission says, "Look, you did this thing with determining your location and all of that that they're talking about," and we think that you need to pay now because you were in violation of this for this amount of time. If it's a one-time deal, I don't know if that one is or not, but if it's a one-time deal, sure, of course, you're going to argue it. The danger is if it's an ongoing problem that is not going to be resolved for years, you still have to make a decision about whether you're going to continue to defy the rule or not because if you lose, guess what? You've just accrued years of that. I think there's a real danger there. An interesting clarification maybe from at least something I didn't really consider from a house who says, "The Commission is not the courts," and these are separate. A fine from the Commission is the same as a legal case in the US. Even if they issue a fine, it will still go through the courts. The Commission does not have the power to just find companies without them being able to defend themselves. Sure. There will always be some level of legal discussion, but it's if they will continue to appeal it or not, is there? It's like the FTC or the Justice Department in the US, it goes through the courts at that point. Again, that's the danger is you might lose in court. Anonymous writes in and says, "Apple doesn't have to walk away from the EU, but what they could do is send a shot across the EU lawmakers' bow by scaling back job numbers in countries like Germany and France. The EU powerhouses and move those roles to non-EU countries like the UK or the USA, which would cause massive pressure on these governments." Interesting thought. Maybe although again, I think the European Commission is controlled by the European Parliament, which would not be the individual countries' governments, so it would need to put pressure on voters or certainly make...we talked about this last week, diplomatic pressure. One of the games here is diplomatic pressure, which is, "Hey, maybe Europe needs to look at what the European Commission is doing and say, "Maybe we've gone too far here." That seems unlikely to me, but that would be one way you could play this is to put pressure on there. I know that there's other talk about how the incoming administration in the US might also try to put pressure on Europe and that Tim Cook apparently called Trump before the election. To complain, at least the story that is out there to complain about what Europe was making them do. It's possible, but again, you're still going to get fined, so there's that without walking away. You're still going to get fined. Then you're playing a different game of hardball and hoping that they crumble, and you have to be pretty confident that if you move some jobs out of Europe, that they're going to say, "Oh, oh, don't do that, we're sorry, please come back. You can do whatever you want." I mean, people in Europe can tell me if this is different, but my read from here, based on everything I've seen, is that there's very little appetite in Europe to give more free reign to US tech giants, so it seems like a bad play, but they could do it. They could try it. I just did a quick Google search and apparently Apple employs 1,500 engineers in Germany. It's logic. I don't know who else, definitely logic. That's a lot of engineers, 1,500 engineers, I wonder what else they're working on. Well, at least that's what Google's AI overview is telling me. Oh, well, so it's probably not. Right. Who knows? Who should tell? But it is an interesting idea, right, that they could threaten the threaten. They could exert pressure in different ways, right? Of course. Of course, but again, you're left with, see, this is the problem, though. Do I think that Apple, could Tim Cook go to Germany and say, "You're killing us here. What can we do? You know, we've got plants, we've got engineers. Let's work on this." But like, that's not where it is. It's in Brussels, it's at the E.C., is the commission in Brussels, I don't know. But, right, that's where the parliament is. It's the European Commission, and it's the European Parliament, and these are Europe-wide things that are part of the EU. So diplomacy with Germany doesn't really get you anywhere, and I think that's the challenge is like, diplomacy with the EU seems a lot harder to get your, you know, even get your arms around it, to just try to get any kind of purchase with it. These individual member states are part of the European Union, though, right? I think if they were to pressure some of the bigger countries in the European Union, it does, they do still work together, right? Pressure placed on Germany and France could assist in changing EU law. It could, but they can't do it alone. They would have to do it with everybody else, and again, I think that you've got your members of the European Parliament who pass these rules that are independently elected, right? They're not appointed by the governments, I don't believe. No, but they're so part of the political parties. Sure, sure, although sometimes the parties that are sent to Europe are not the parties that are in charge in the country. Correct. So I guess what I'm saying, though, is if this was just Germany's haven't regulated us, what do we do? The answer is talk to Germany, but it's like Europe is regulating us. What do we do? Talk to a bunch of European countries, and it's much slipperier to do. Definitely is. Possibly by design. From a different perspective now, Leroy mentions, if Apple makes the integrated smart glasses that you were talking about in last week's episode, could they work around the DMA by not selling them in the European Union? Well, sure. The couple of things going on here, I mean, they could do that. I don't think that that is an issue for them, though. This is not going to qualify as a gatekeeper product immediately, which is the problem with the DMA, and if the issue is around Apple opening up the iPhone for extra products, then making this is not going to change that rule. The EU wants this opened up no matter what, right? If you make an accessory product, you can communicate with the iPhone. So I don't think this would issue would affect that. I'm not sure whether the EU can mandate that there be smart glasses connectivity for third parties. Because Apple is making smart glasses, if Apple's not selling them in the EU, I'm not sure they can reach that far, say, elsewhere in the world you have this, but not here. I think the reality would be what's happening with Apple Intelligence, which is the EU will get them later, that Apple will ship them elsewhere, and then they'll be a software update six months or a year later that enables some of the things that are required by the DMA, and then they'll come to Europe. But to directly answer this question, sure, but I don't think that their goal is ever to invest in building a new product and then not have it be available in the EU. And remember what I said last week, which is, it's not just going to be the EU. You're in danger of turning your back on any group that regulates you, and that could be Japan, and it could be Korea, and it could be who knows where. That would say, "Oh, we like what Europe is doing, we're going to do it, too." And do you want to take that risk and lose those sales? Yeah, and I do think for the time being anything that Apple launches, the EU will be later in the stack. You know how they'll launch something and it'll be in such and such countries? I can see for the foreseeable future, the EU, or any other nation that wants to regulate Apple more heavily, they may just take more time before they launch these things, right? Apple intelligence is coming to the EU, but it's coming later. And I think that's going to start to occur, right, that those sell things in the US first, then UK and Canada, then maybe Japan, China, then they might start going to French and Germany. I think we might start seeing that where they just don't want to kind of get things out there and maybe work with the EU a little bit afterwards because they're obviously not going to give the EU advance notice of anything because that's something that actually works. It may be that things do roll out a little bit more slowly there now than they have done in the past. Yeah, I think that's exactly it, is that Apple's not going to share information. I think somebody actually complained about this at one point where Apple intelligence got announced and they're like, "Well, how dare they?" And it's like, "Guys, they're not going to share that with you in advance. First off, it would leak and they're not going to do it." And so if the game is, "Well, we have to see it before we can even do a ruling about whether we think it's acceptable or not, this is what will happen," is that it will be announced and not for them and then they'll work it out. And I think that's the model. I think that you're exactly right, that this will be available in Europe six months from now or a year from now. And Oliver wrote in to say, "There actually is a way with keyboard occlusion while using the Vision Pro Mac Virtual Display that the keyboard remains persistent, not just when you have your hands near the keyboard. If you go into settings and then awareness and safety, there is an option to turn off, well, bring hands near to reveal. If you turn that off, the keyboard should always remain occluded when using environments. So I got this from a few people and it entirely misses what I was saying, so I'm going to say it again, which is my bug in VisionOS is if you turn on an environment when you're not looking at your keyboard, the keyboard will never appear. Doesn't have anything to do with where your hands are. I think this is an interesting feature that you can have it disappear when your hands aren't over the keyboard or you can have it always be there. These are interesting decisions that they've made. I think that's great. What I'm saying is the only way I can use a keyboard and see it in VisionOS is if I dial up the environment while staring at the keyboard. Because if I'm not looking at the keyboard, I'm looking at a thing that I'm working on and I dial in an environment and then I look back down to my keyboard, it's not there and it never shows up. I found the feedback about it. I don't know whether the issue is that they, my guess is that they do their scan for the keyboard when the environment is entered and then they don't do it again and I think that's a mistake. I think they need to be looking for that keyboard object even when you're in the environment. What if you dial up an environment and then you put a keyboard in your lap afterward? Well, too bad. You won't see it because it's not persistent. It needs to know that the keyboard's there. I think that's a bug and if not, it's certainly a missing feature, but it's not this. Obviously, several people who know about this feature thought that this is what I was talking about. That's not it. It's that I literally can't get keyboards to show up if I'm not staring at them when I turn on the environment. I wanted to remind gradients that it is Upgrady's voting time. You can go to Upgrades.vote and fill out your nominations for the 11th annual Upgrades that are coming your way in December. Voting closes on December 13th, so do not forget to please go there. Many Upgradians have so far. Please go and fill out your nominations. Yes. Remember, it's not one of those like vote in a poll. It's very much like you make your nominations and that helps us understand the categories and that affects very positively the final choices for the Upgrades. Sure does. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one website platform for entrepreneurs to stand out and succeed online. Whether you're just starting out or managing a growing brand, you can stand out for a beautiful website, engage with your audience and sell anything, product services, even the content that you create, because Squarespace has everything you need all in one place and all on your terms. It's incredibly easy to get started with Squarespace. You can choose from one of their beautiful templates or you can use design intelligence, which is a new system that they have that combines their two decades of industry-leading design expertise, a cutting-edge AI technology to help you unlock your strongest creative potential. Design intelligence empowers anyone to build a beautiful, more personalized website tailored to your unique needs, crafting a bespoke digital identity, used across the web, and it will do this easier than ever before, but no matter how you start your site with Squarespace, it remains incredibly easy to tweak and move around the layout and change the colors and the fonts you can do this all in their web browser, you'll in their app. You'll make it super, super easy to get what you want online and then once it's online, once it's on the internet or online, as I was going to say, you can get discovered fast if it integrated SEO tools. Every Squarespace website is optimized to be indexed with meta descriptions and auto-generated site maps. If you don't know what this is, even better for you, because they do it for you. This makes sure that you'll be showing up more often to more people in global search engine results. I've been such a fan of Squarespace, I have used them for, like, 15 years of various projects. A couple of days ago, I thought to myself I wanted to refresh my kind of landing page on the web. I have MyCarly.net. It's been a Squarespace site for a long time and I thought I just wanted to make it a little bit more like a bio page and so I spent 30 minutes and I've read it on my entire website. Super easy. Go and check it out for yourself. Go to squarespace.com, you can sign up for a free trial there. When you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com/upgrade. You'll save 10% of your first purchase of a website or domain. That is squarespace.com/upgrade. When you decide to sign up, you'll get 10% of your first purchase and show your support for the show. Thanks to Squarespace for the support of this show and all of Relay. Get online. Online. Get on the line. It's time for Room Around Up. Yee-haw. Let's do it. Very home focused today, Apple Home Products. We're going to start out by talking about another Mark Gurman report where he shares even more details about Apple's upcoming smart home controlling product of a screen that we need a name for, I think. Without a robotic arm too. Without the robot. Without a robotic limb. I've seen, I think, 9 to 5 Mac or Mac Roomism, maybe both, calling it home bad as a kind of a short hand, but we need something because it's becoming more complicated to explain what this might be. It's also not really HomePod with a screen anymore, which is what we were calling it before. It seems slightly different to that. We can think about that. What was the name of their iPod speaker doc thing? What was that called? It was the iPod Hi-Fi. Okay. That's not going to work. That's not going to work. That's not going to work. I think I joked last week that it was that we could just call it HousePod, the terrible name. I love it. They're at HomePod and HousePod. They're totally different. Totally different. Yeah. Totally different. Totally different. This device is, I think, somewhat unexpectedly to me, expected to debut as early as March of next year, and Mark calls it competitively priced to products in the category. Yeah. That's really interesting. Again, this is where my rule comes into effect, where it's my classic, "Be prepared for disappointment rule," where you're like, "Oh, it's going to be competitively priced with a product that costs $200 or like the Echo Show is 150. The Echo Hub is 180. The Nest Hub Max costs $230. I'm like, "Okay. Well, again, so it's $230, but we're going to round it up to $250, and then we're going to increase it to $300, $350. I mean, still, it's not $1,000. We had a whole segment a few weeks ago where we were worried about the robotic limb product and it being $1,000 for a thing you put on your kitchen counter, and it seemed bananas. This, I love the idea of it being competitively priced, even if it's for Apple. That's a good thing. If they can make it 250 or 200, then amazing, right? Also, we have to say, Kerman's report suggests that it's got accessories. This is really interesting to me because we've been talking about a HomePod with a screen, and it sounds like it's what if it's a touchscreen device that's less than an iPad? It's not an iPad. It's definitely lesser than that, and it's got a simplified interface, but then there's like a wall mount that's probably got like a charger on it that you can attach it in various ways, and then there's a speaker mount which I would read that as being basically like a HomePod that it sits on and that gives it power that way. Those, right, so we're like, "Oh, competitively priced," but it's competitively priced with like an iPad speaker and $200, but you're really going to want, if you don't own HomePods, you're really going to want to buy the speaker attachment for another $250 or $300 or whatever. It will be a classic Apple move. It will get pricey fast, and I actually kind of love that as a move for Apple to sell this thing at a relatively competitive price, and then say, "Yeah, but you really want the accessories, don't you?" Yeah. That's a very Apple thing to do. Yeah, so you mentioned this wall mount speaker docks, but it has a battery of its own and speakers of its own, but I guess if you want to use it for certain things, you might put it on the kitchen counter speaker dock so you can watch movies while you're cooking, and then maybe you want to put it on the wall the rest of the time so it becomes like the thing that people go to look at. We got a little wood stand for an iPad for the kitchen. It's like a wood block thing, and it's nice, and I could see putting something like that in there and then plugging it into an outlet, and that's not a fancy dock. That's just free, but you could do that too, but yeah, having the battery in it means that it can also be portable, and who knows what the battery life will be on it, but you might have the ability to unplug it from wherever it lives and then bring it with you. And then, you know, use it in the kitchen or put it on the coffee table or whatever. It will also feature a sensor to determine how far away a user is from the device and adapt the on-screen UI to match that, just what was interesting. Could be interesting. Yeah, I mean, it's apparently going to support Apple Intelligence, right? Which means that it's going to have enough kind of like sensors and ability to run models on it that stuff like this. There are versions of this that happen for other devices, like even my Google Nest Home Mini Pro Max, whatever it's called, there's so many names in that product, I don't even remember what it is anymore. Nest Hub Home Mini, it's got, you can wave your hand at it to dismiss an alert, right? Like it's got some stuff like that, but I like this idea that like if you're far away, it's going to give you the big interface, and if you're right next to it, it's going to give you a smaller interface that's smart, that's really smart. I wanted to just, I just had a thought. Maybe they just call this thing Apple Home. I mean, it would be just as confusing as Apple TV, but that didn't stop in there. That's what made me think of it. Like, because I thought, no, they can't call it that because they have an app called the Home Map, and then I realized, oh, Apple TV Plus is part of Apple TV, which is an app that is on the Apple TV. So at this point, it's probably, I put my chips down on Apple Home as the name of this product. Okay. Yeah, quite from Morgan, the product has a touch interface that looks like a blend of the Apple Watch operating system, and the iPhones recently launched standby mode. That's unexpected and weird and I can't imagine it, like, I don't know what is going on there. That copy, right? Well, that's somebody who's describing it, who saw it, and it's describing it to Mark Herman. It's the parable of the men and the elephant, right, the blind men and the elephant. Everybody's got a different description of it, and then you're playing a game of telephone almost, or you're like, oh, it looks like this, like, oh, does it, but we don't really know. Apple Watch seems weird, but like simplified operating system, okay, like there are there are complications, and then there is the chain of like little mini little mini widgets that are basically dynamic island items that are on the Apple Watch now, and then there's standby mode on the iPhone, recently launched, like more than a year ago, but okay. But clearly, this is where they're going, is that they're going to have this small screen, but they've got a bunch of technology already in existence that lets them put widget-like things on a small screen or on a slightly larger screen, but seen from a distance, right? That's the other part of what they're doing here. I think that's, again, I don't know quite what form this is taking, and there's some challenges with things like standby mode as well, and standby mode is not an interactive mode, which is the other part of this is like, I assume that there's a standby mode-esque thing where you're not interacting with it, and then when you come closer, you touch it or whatever, then there's an interaction mode that's a completely different kind of interface. So as you mentioned, it will support Apple Intelligence, and Mark says it has apparently been designed for app-intense support, but some other details of his article suggest it won't have an app store of its own. Yeah. Apple will be making a suite of first-party apps, so the core apps you'd expect. So where are the app-intense coming from inside the house, I guess? My expectation is, and I saw Underscore was talking about this, too, in regards to widgets, that I might expect here that this device is pulling from other devices in the house, right? So you're using this thing, and it may be pulling widgets, app-intense information from your phone in the way that a Mac does now, or the way that an Apple Watch does, as a way to kind of bridge the gap, to not have another app store, another development point for developers to just pull some information from the other devices that are in the home. Yeah, so let's start with app-intense. My guess is that where that's starting, and it's just starting there, is Apple's own stuff. It's the idea that Apple's got some knowledge of your information that runs on this device, and that you can control the software using Siri. But I think this is a challenge, because you can't have it not be functional when your iPhone leaves the house, right? So it's got to be functional on that level, but we already see with the HomePod that they've got this personal requests kind of thing, where it allows it to tap into an iPhone that's on the network that is paired with the Apple ID. And then it'll also do voice recognition, and there are things they can do there about like, who's using this, and what data do I have access to? But yes, the idea of app-intense, really, is that you can extend the vocabulary of Siri and of Apple intelligence by tapping into the functionality of third-party apps, which aren't going to exist on this apparently. So you end up in this question of sort of like, well, what is this thing? And I love the idea that underscore had, that is, what if the Mac widget projection system that shipped, well, it's not used to ship last year, and then now it's more, and it's more integrated this year because they've got the iPhone mirroring and the notifications will launch the iPhone and things like that, but it shipped last year. What if that is a test run, and that, and obviously David Smith, underscore, is thinking about widget Smith, his app, third-party app, if it doesn't have access to the device, what does that mean, well, what if it does have access to the device? Because what if it is looking at your iPhone and knows that your iPhone has widget Smith on it and has that widget that can run and stand by, and it says, I can run that too. I can show that thing from your phone, which makes this thing much more of an iPhone accessory, which I think is interesting. Now, it's going to have to fall back because if you leave the house and you don't have your iPhone anymore and somebody else in the house is looking at that screen, it's got to have something on it, right? It's got to be useful in some way. The question is, how much infrastructure do they have to build on the iPhone to support this thing? Because that's a big deal. They have to do an OS update on the iPhone to project things onto this device or sync things with these devices. What we haven't seen with any device is Apple Intelligence working with another device's data store, because that's a thing you could do here, too, with all of the personal, the semantic index thing, is my Apple Home thing going to download all my email and index it? Or is it going to just talk to my iPhone about what email it knows about and what my personal context is? I think, however they do this, so my initial thought in saying, no, App Store, that's madness because, like, how would I watch YouTube videos? But then my second thought is, well, I think the Vision Pro has shown it's becoming harder and harder to get them to make developers want to make apps to new platforms. So if Apple is able to find a way, I don't know how, right, but find a way to benefit from the apps that you have installed on another device inside of your home, they should do that. But what I don't understand here is why they aren't supporting iPad apps or iPhone apps or TVOS apps, right, like that there isn't, like, an app compatibility, and I get it, it's a weird screen and it's not like the other screens and all of that, but especially if you're dealing with widgets and app intents. And look, Mike, for all we know, that is what they're going to do is there won't be an App Store, but you'll be able to sync over, like, I wouldn't put, I wouldn't put in past Apple for them to make this announcement and say, hey, developers, good news. There's a new set of APIs that allow you to sync over some level of code that drives widgets from your iPhone and then they reside on this device and they run on this device. It's like, whoa, that's wild, but they could do it. If they want to do, they could say, actually, there's no App Store because it runs apps from your iPhone. But in a certain mode and it just, it picks them up from your Apple ID and downloads the right thing and does the right thing and syncs it with your iPhone apps. And there may be no facility for that today, but there's nothing stopping them from saying, we just added it. Go, hey, developers, hey, David Smith, go add this thing in so that your widgets run on this. They could totally do that. So it does, David Shobb in our chat says, it feels like we're missing a piece of the puzzle here. When I agree, there is the fact that it is not as simple a story as, oh, and it's going to run iPad apps or it's going to run iPhone apps or it's going to run TVOS apps. Or it has its own app store, which is another thing to do, which is, I think, the wrong thing to do. It's not any of that. The simplest explanation is it's going to start with Apple stock stuff that it's built and then they'll see how it does and that they will then expand it later. But I would argue that that makes standby less interesting. It makes the full experience a little less interesting, but it's a lot less ambitious, but it's a lot simpler if you've got basically Safari and the Home app and the TV app and a very limited selection of stuff that you can do that they've already built. It makes this product way simpler at the very least. It is a mystery that there are all these details about app intents and no app store but widgets that the simple explanation is it will be way simpler than we think. But I wouldn't put a past Apple that there's a little added idea or a bit of complexity that we don't know about. And I think that's good because one of my big complaints about something like the HomePod is that it's not integrated enough with the contents of your phone. If Apple really views the iPhone as the repository for people's personal information, then if your iPhone is present in your house when you're there, your devices on the network, your Apple devices that are authenticated and also logged into your Apple ID should be able to leverage that device which has all that knowledge in the future, your semantic index to do stuff. And if you throw in also the apps that are on it and the standby widgets that are on it or a notification center or lock screen widgets that are on it, all of those things are already running on it, maybe the other Apple devices in the home should be smarter about using those. And then separately for multiple people, Apple already has the technology to recognize you based on your voice and different you from other people. So the other way you take this is, and this is going to have a camera, so maybe it would even be able to detect you by your face to just say, "Oh, this request came from this person, so I'm going to use their iPhone." And then you've got a device that adapts based on who's using it, which, again, sounds really good, but a little more complicated. And that brings me back to, like, how complicated is Apple going to make this? An allegory. Let's make this a little tangent to my thing about pricing, where the pricing is always going to disappoint you because it's going to be higher than you think. I would also say, the Apple products that ship are always going to be simpler than you think. There's all any number of things they could do, they won't do most of them. But they might do a little bit because I agree, I think the vanilla version of this is fine, but these reports suggest it's not quite that. So I think they're going to do something, but I don't think it's going to be a big chain of complexity in part because that would be very expensive and in part because they want to ship the product, right? Like, if it does well, then they're like, aha, now we have a plan of attack for how we add to this going forward. But I do think there's a missing piece here, it is a little bit confusing. I love my iPhone in standby mode, I leave it in the kitchen, and it's got a weather widget on it that I built in Scriptable, and it's got the time, and it's actually really nice. And I would love for that sort of thing to run on one of these devices. It would be disappointing if all I get anywhere is the very, very stock Apple experience, like you're using an iPhone with no third party apps, that would be a lot less exciting. Another little tidbit in this report, which is separated from the Apple Home device from Mark Gummens says Apple has explored building its own line of smart home accessories, including an indoor security camera that could double as a baby monitor. The idea would be to emphasize privacy controls, one of Apple's hallmarks. I will now also go to Mingchi Kuo, who is reporting that Apple is, Apple may make its own smart home camera in 2026. Kuo says Apple expects this to be a major accessory, with targets to ship tens of millions of units a year, to which I say, whoa buddy. That's aggressive, that's aggressive, tens of millions of units, that's a lot of units. Like maybe this is an interesting idea for them, but I don't, yeah, that would have to be really good to get people to either decide to do something they never wanted to do, or replace the products they've already bought because Apple hasn't done it, and then to ship tens of millions of units a year would be aggressive. Here's my reaction to this. My reaction to this is that I wonder how big the potential market for this category is versus what's out there now, and based on my exploration, and I bought a bunch of different internet connected cameras over the last few years, and I've been disappointed with every single one of them. Every single one of them is not very good, whether they're using their own cloud service, or they're recording to a memory card in a base station, or whether they're using home kit secure video. None of them are reliable. They're always like, oh, let's check on this camera. Oh, it's down. Why is it down? Don't know. No reason. Oh, it's back up now. Just I find them very unreliable. And so first off, I'm a little skeptical that even the market that's out there, how many people are actually using them, I'm sure there are very, they're the more expensive kinds and things that are hardwired and all this stuff that are better. But my based on my experience with this category, I would say, is there there's room for Apple in it. I'll put it that way. There's room for Apple here to make something that is pricey because it's Apple, but good. And if they could do that, if they can make a pricey, good, easy to set up for people in an Apple ecosystem set of cameras, have it be the baby monitor thing is interesting. It's the idea that like you can put this it's an indoor camera, and you can use it as a baby monitor and set it set it up to, you know, to do walk. They've got all the parts, right? They've got intercom and like, and they've got like alerts based on sound like they could build some stuff with this that would be perfectly fine. And you have an element of comfort with Apple in regards to that product of like, there's not going to be some privacy breach or something. And someone can't, you know, the boogie man come and watch the camera or whatever. It'll all be home kits, secure video, or you might have the ability to store it locally on another device. I think it's an interesting idea. And I think because of again, it's because of my experience with this category, I feel like there's probably a large unaddressed market of people who might want these things, but just don't either have tried it and have failed or have never even considered it. And if, you know, the fact is, I don't know, I'm sure there are people who are out there who say, well, you know, there's so many ring doorbells out there. So this must be fine. It's like, okay, yeah, maybe so. And remember how long ago was it that that there was drop cam? And now that's just a nest cam from Google. Like these cameras have been around for a long time, but that doesn't mean that Apple can't come in and say, well, ours is way better, more reliable. For something that's looking inside your home, you need to have trust in who's doing it. I think there are a lot of areas where when I saw this report, I thought I can see it. I could see Apple making a run here and having it be successful because of the way they sell it. And because if they can do it right, they're entering a market that's not great. It's like there are plenty of players. But again, my experiences, they're not very good. So I think it's an interesting idea. They do have a good play like they're obviously their understanding of cameras and video and their security. Like it would help them build a compelling story. It is one last thing I want to bring in now and then I want to make a level point. So Mark Gohman also mentioned in his power on newsletter that Apple is, quote, evaluating the idea of making a TV set again, actual TV. And that this would hinge on the success of Apple's other smart home devices. So, you know, this Apple home hub device, maybe this camera, I want Apple to make these kinds of products because I would like them. However, I am concerned about Apple making all these new products. Why are they doing this? Like, I worry that this is being done to fill an earnings report. I was going to say it's to bend the curve of the wearable's home and accessor is categorized into growth again. And I'm not sure that that is like all of these products, Apple should have done five years ago, 10 years ago, even so my I agree. I think that Apple abandoning the home market was a huge mistake on their part. I mean, they're doing fine. But like, I think they could have played in a bunch of these areas and they allowed competitors to get into those areas too. But does that mean they should never do it? I guess that's my take on it is like, yes, this is this is better late than never is my answer, right? That you should have done this five years ago. You should have done this in all sorts of different categories, not the low margin stuff, but like enough for you to make a line of products that are going to bring people into Apple stores over the holidays. And they're going to add them in because if this if today's Apple, this thing is a little baffling about the home category for me. If today's Apple is anything, it is a company that is designed to maximize the extraction of money from people in its ecosystem, right? You get an iPhone, but then you get an iPad because it's like an iPhone and you get a Mac because if you're going to get a computer, why not have it work with your iPhone really, really well. And then you're looking at a streamer box and it's like, yeah, well, I'm already in Apple's ecosystem and Apple TV is a little pricey, but it's nicer than the others and and doesn't any ads that are on Amazon. Okay, I'll buy that too. And like every and then I'm going to subscribe to Apple TV or maybe the Apple one bundle and you just it that is what Apple and Tim Cook's Apple in particular is great at is just building up this entire shell of Apple ecosystem and everything inside it. And you can go outside it, but there are reasons you might want to stay inside it, at least for many of the products. And I'm not saying this from a perspective of it being like against competition or anything. I'm just saying like, it's a good way, like you love our products by more of them. It's it's a brand relationship. It doesn't have to be sinister. And a lot of us feel this where it's like, yeah, wouldn't it like like when we talk about Wi-Fi, it was like, well, I mean, I've got I got an era, people have have the neck gear stuff, people have the ubiquity stuff. But like, there's a lot of nostalgia for like airport, where I was like, Oh, remember when Apple just sold you a Wi-Fi thing and you could forget about it? And like, we can talk about whether that's kind of a nostalgic rosy glow and that there weren't problems with airport based stations anyway, but like they abandoned that category. And and partly we look back and we're like, Oh, wouldn't that be simpler to just buy the Apple thing? So that's the thing that's perplexing about the last five years is that Apple didn't identify this as a place where they could sell a whole bunch of stuff to a whole bunch of people in their ecosystem and make even more revenue and tie it even further into your iPhone and your Mac and everything else because it does sound very much like them. So maybe the answer is they had leadership changes, their eyes were on other products, and now the people in charge at Apple of the home stuff are are have been charged to make that happen because you said, you know, it's about a balance sheet a little bit. I think it is. I think maybe though in modern Apple, that's what it took is for them to see wearables, home and accessories cooling and say, well, what do we do to warm it up? And somebody said, well, we have completely abandoned home accessories. And there are some high profile, high margin products that we could do in that category that would make us really successful. And so we should do those. And then somebody Tim Cook said, yeah, okay, let's put some effort into that. That's my best guess is that that's what they're doing here. Now the TV. My theory about the TV, by the way, because I don't understand it, I don't know why you would do that. I don't know why I just for everything I've just said, like buying a TV, it just doesn't seem to be a good match. The competition is not very high margin. It's not a place where Apple can add a whole lot because you could just buy a nice new TV and put an Apple TV box on it. Apple TV runs inside of most of these devices. My only guess about the TV Scuttlebutt is that they might be considering building their next line of displays with Apple TV brains in them, because that's what Samsung does. When I reviewed that Samsung equivalent of the studio display, it's a smart TV. It's not just a 27 inch monitor. It's a smart TV. And so maybe their argument is we're going to make some monitors and they're going to be TVs. And you can use them as either or both. And that's okay. I think that's fine. I think it's kind of dumb that Apple's displays can't do anything when the computer's not attached to them. Maybe that would be a thing that they could do. But it doesn't feel as much of a... It doesn't make as much sense to me as these other reports where I think, okay, they should have done this five years ago or 10 years ago, but the next best time is now. Right. So do it now. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Fitbot. If you're looking to make changes to your personal fitness, it can be hard to know how to get started or to know if you're doing it right. That is why I'm pleased to let you know that Fitbot is an easy and affordable way to build a fitness plan made for you, because everybody has their own path with fitness. Fitbot uses tons of data to make sure they're customizing things to suit you perfectly. They will adapt the exercises as you improve. So every workout remains challenging and interesting, but also pushes you to make the progress that you're looking for. Because if a workout program is tailored to you, that's when you're going to see the results that you're looking for. So Fitbot takes into account your body, your experience, your environment, and your goals. They save this in your Fitbot gym profile, which is used to track your muscle recovery, making sure that you're avoiding burnout and keeping up your momentum. Fitbot have analyzed billions of data points to make sure that they fine-tune your exercises to fit you perfectly. You also can be sure that you're going to learn these new exercises and movements the right way, because of their more than 1000 demonstration videos that are all within the Fitbot app. The Fitbot app is super easy to use. It has tracking charts, weekly reports, and sharing cards so you can keep track of your achievements and your personal best and share them with your family. It integrates with other apps that you use, like Strava Fitbit and Apple Health, along with your wearables, your Apple Watch, your Wearr Smartwatch, and more. Your muscles improve when they work together. So, overworking some while underworking others negatively impact your results, which is why Fitbot traction muscle or fatigue and recovery to design a well-balanced workout routine. Personalized training of this quality can be expensive. Fitbot is just 1299 a month or 7999 a year, but you can get yourself 25% off your membership by signing up today at fitbot.me/upgrade. That is FIT BOD.me/upgrade. So, go now and get your customized fitness plan. That is Fitbot.me/upgrade. FIT BOD.me/upgrade. Go there and get 25% off your membership, or thanks to Fitbot for their support of this show, and rely. So, Jason, you finally got your new Kindles. I think you got the new Kindle Carla Soft and the new Kindle Paper White, correct? I did. I did. They don't send them to me, so I have to buy them, so I did buy them. Yeah. Well, thank you for your service. That's okay. I'm going to return them. Oh, okay. There we go. We're not going to bury it late on this year. You're not happy with the new 2024 Kindle lineup? No. I mean, okay. It's complicated. So, the new Paper White. For years, the Paper White has been the best e-reader for most people, just because it's a good price, and it's a good piece of hardware. I think that's still true, even though I prefer what Kobo is doing, especially on the software side. I think that my generic recommendation, if people are looking for an e-reader, is get the Paper White, and they have three versions of it. There's a base model with or without ads, and then there's the signature edition that's got a light sensor, so it will auto-adjust the brightness based on where you are, which I think is a nice feature, and it doesn't have ads in it at all, but that's $200. If you want to spend $160, you can get a slightly less nice version that shows you ads, but it's still a good product. It's fine. I don't love it, but it's fine. And of course, I prefer readers with buttons to turn the page, and Kindle, Amazon doesn't believe in it. It doesn't believe in that as a concept. They're really into, like, you can write on it with a stylus, and you can make marks, and we've got a color version now, but buttons are too far. We can't do that, and so that's a little frustrating for me, but I don't have a lot to say about the Paper White. It's fine. I wish I had a kobo I could recommend instead, but kobo stopped building their black-and-white equivalent to the Paper White. They have a lower-end model, but the one with buttons, they were placed with a color model and aren't selling the black-and-white model anymore, and the color model doesn't have as good text clarity as the black-and-white one. There's an added kind of texture on the background of the color screen that is not there on the black-and-white screen, and so if all you're primarily doing is reading text, like, I'm not opposed to color on e-readers. I am opposed to color on e-readers making reading text on e-readers worse, because that's the number one thing by a very wide margin that I want an e-reader to be good at is the text. Do you think that buttons on e-readers is like small iPhones, where, like, there are people that really want them and really want them a lot and say it is important, but you've got to assume that the e-reader companies know that people are using the screens on the buttons, right? Otherwise, they would keep the buttons. Kobo has kept the buttons. I think Amazon has just decided that not enough people care about buttons for it to make a difference, because they had a high-end reader that had buttons, because they decided that with buttons are a high-end feature. It's like, they're buttons. What are you doing? So, yeah, I am at the point now where, as a critic of technology, I'm going to say, buttons on e-readers are good. You should give people choices. You don't have to put buttons on every e-reader, but buttons make an e-reader nicer. For reasons I've talked about a million times, but basically I can hold it in my hand and rest my finger on the button while I hold the e-reader, and then every time I turn the page, I just squeeze the e-reader, whereas with a touchscreen, you got to change your grip, and it's not as comfortable for me to hold, and I've got to use a little finger kickstand kind of thing, and then I got to move my finger over and then tap and then move it back. For me, ergonomically, it's just superior to have a button there. Obviously, most people don't care. I need to criticize it, because I think it's a bad decision while also accepting the fact that most people don't care, which is why I recommend that people buy the the paper white if they're looking for a generic e-reader, and not, which has no button, and not like the kobo color, because it's got buttons, but it's more expensive, and it doesn't look as good, and just don't, just don't bother. So, or there's a high-end kobo that's also nice, but again, it's expensive, and you don't need it, and the paper white's fine, even though I don't like it because it doesn't have buttons, most people do not care. The color thing, though, kills me, and this is my, so look, my post on six colors about this is as much an essay about how I feeling about the current state of e-readers as it is a review of these two products, because it feels to me like there was a time, this heady time, whenever it was like, oh, the future of books is e-readers. That's what it's going to be, e-books and e-readers, and what we found is maybe the future of books is the past of books. It's books, like on paper, and then they're also e-readers, but like they haven't destroyed the printing of books. A lot of people prefer to just read paper books. I don't, but a lot of people do, and that's fine, but as a result, Amazon and Rakuten, who makes Kobo and other companies that are trying to make e-readers are trying to pick up other technology that's floating around and stick it in e-readers and see if this is like, huh, how about this? Will this work? They all have styluses now, where you can do note-taking. Well, on a six or seven inch e-reader, note-taking is stupid. I just, I just, I think it's a waste, like, why is that even there? On a big one, like the Kindle scribe, where you could like have a big PDF and you mark it up, it makes more sense to me. I mean, also an iPad would do that, but sure, okay, I can see it, but they try, they're trying to shoehorn it in everywhere, because they're just like, will this move the needle if we add this feature in? And then the color is one where e-ink, the company that makes these displays, has done an amazing job of building a color screen. It really is remarkable, and the refresh rates are pretty fast. As a piece of technology, I can't believe we've gotten to the point where the e-ink stuff looks this good. But like I said, it actually makes the text worse. And ultimately, yes, it's impressive you put color in your e-reader, but why? And I don't want to come across this curmudgeonly here. I want to come across as being the person who's saying, what is the user benefit? Because just shoving new technology in a product and selling it to people as new is not good enough. You need to provide reasons why. And there are reasons for color like, but color, and that's not enough. Like, so what is it? Well, book covers, when you turn it off, that book cover, if you're not, you know, I guess the Amazon one doesn't come with ads at the color level. So that's fine. When you turn it off, the book covers in color. Well, yeah, but the backlighting goes off. So you can't really see the colors. It's too dim. Okay. Well, when you're shopping for books or looking at your library, you'll see little tiny thumbnails that are in color. Okay, I guess, honestly, I turn that feature off and I just have it be a list anyway. But all right, it's not really core to the experience. It's a nice to have. It's a little bit nicer. Oh, but you can you can highlight in a bunch of different colors. Okay, I guess if you're somebody who's a compulsive book highlighter who needs different colors in order to have it mean different things, I guess it's a nice to have feature, but it seems like a pretty niche feature like if it buttons or a niche feature, what is that? But and so then it's comics. Okay, but comics, most comics are in color. You want to read comics in color. And I know, I said on this podcast that, you know, the real test of the kindle color soft was going to be, do they do something like comics, I'll jigided view and go panel by panel and they do, it's called panel view you double tap right on a comic and you can read it panel by panel. Now, I would argue that panel by panel is not a great experience for reading a comic, I agree, but it's better than nothing. I mean, it was invented for phones because people have their phones and they want to read comics. You'd be better off using an iPad, but you could do it. I read a few comics on the Kindle color soft panel by panel. It's fine, although even there, you know, I did what read Watchmen, which is mostly, you know, square or vertical panels, but like lots of comics do vertical panels and I read the Star Trek comic that a lot of horizontal panels. And like, you know what the Kindle doesn't have, doesn't have an accelerometer and auto rotate. So like you get a wide panel, you can't just turn it on the side and see it wide on the screen, basically just like turning a book where nothing happens, right? Nothing happens. I mean, you can manually go to settings and change it to rotate, but then you go to the next panel and it's vertical and you're like, okay, uh, and it's all shrunk down and you can't read it. So like, it's missing a bunch of things. Is it doable? Sure. It's okay. There are better ways to read comics than on a Kindle one panel at a time and it's too small a screen to read it the whole page at once. It's just too small. So in the end, I can be impressed by the eating screen and glad that they built the panel view in and still say, I feel like these color e-readers are trying to sell people on something that doesn't actually add anything, which would be fine if it didn't take something away. But even on the Kindle color soft, which has apparently they did like extra tricks to the lighting and stuff because I think Amazon was not impressed by that eating panel that, uh, Kobo just slapped into their, in their, their, uh, labor color and we're done and called it a day. And as a result, the Kindle lighting is better and it looks better than the Kobo color. But it's still, you know, it's still not as good as a reader, as text on a page. And I think fundamentally you buy this thing for text on the page. If you don't, if you're buying it for pens and color and stuff, great. But I would think most people buying an e-reader really just want to read books and color again, color is a great idea, but it can't make the reading experience worse. Plus it makes it more expensive. So for me, color e-readers are a mistake for now and nobody should buy them. And you should just buy a reasonable black and white e-reader. And I wish Kobo still made their reasonable black and white e-reader, but they stopped. Um, it's still on their site and it just has sold out. So it makes me wonder if ultimately they might do a version three or bring the version two back into of the Libra back into production. But, um, you know, for now I updated my what e-reader should I buy story to say? It's the paper white, the latest paper white. It's, it's good. Don't buy the cheap Kindle because it doesn't have a flush screen and it's not waterproof. And I think that's dumb. I think, I think you should be able to read your e-book at the pool or in the bathtub and not worry about your, your, your book being destroyed and shorted out and whatever. Like, forget it, waterproof, I think is a, a much more useful feature than color at this point. So it was, it was a journey. And the answer to the, the overarching question about how I feel about this is sort of despairing because I feel like the stuff that, the stuff that I care about for e-readers, including not just niche things like buttons, but also things like text on a page and clarity is like going by the wayside a little bit as they try to find other features that will goose sales of this category. And I accept that this is a weird category. It's not as big as they, anybody hoped you're building these things in an era where you might be better off building a smartphone or a tablet or a computer or whatever, but instead you've got these e-readers. But like, I would love to see some innovation in e-readers. There's probably a story in this, although I've written about it before. Like, I would love to see innovation where I can do something like, like do RSS feeds or you know, like more content on them that's text might be interesting. There are ways you can get content on these things, but it's not very good. Or innovation in like Amazon, okay, you don't like, you don't want to put in a button. I get it. How about you put it in an accelerometer so that not only can your e-reader auto rotate, especially when you're trying to read a comic, but if you put an accelerometer in, you could probably do something like let me double tap the back of it to change the page. No, I don't need a button. I could just double tap on the back and the accelerometer would go, oh, I got tapped and advance the page. I love it. Let's do it. But instead, I feel like they're going down past, and this is the story of a lot of technology over the last 30 years, which is sometimes the suppliers come out with a new product. e-ink is perfectly reasonable to say, oh, man, color. Yeah, check it out. Look what we did. It is very impressive that they've made color e-ink displays. But it's incumbent on the company that's building the product, and this is what Apple has always been good at, to say, what's the use case? Why does somebody want this? And in all my days, in the early part of my career, when we were covering Mac versus PC, especially, the PC makers would put whatever was new in their product and then try to figure out a way to sell it. And a lot of times it made no sense. And Apple would be like, yeah, no, we're not going to do that until we until we can find a way to make this story make sense. We're not going to put it in our product. And a bunch of the color e-readers feels so much like that, which is, well, they gave us a color screen, so I guess we'll make a color e-reader with it. It's like, that's fine. But why? Like, who wants it? Who wants it other than it? But it's in color. It's like, yeah, but why? So I don't know. I wish more people liked this category. I wish the products and it were better. I wish Kobo made a better version of the black and white Libra. I expected that in the next few years, this will get resolved because the color screens from ink will get better, and they won't degrade the reading experience. But for now, and also people don't buy, you know, you buy a Kindle every eight years or 10 years or something. Like, really, you could just go on forever. So like, if you need one, you know, they're good, they're bright, they're waterproof, the paper white is like, it's there. One of the sad footnotes of this is that as a part of this review, I spent some time reading on the Kindle Oasis, which was Amazon's now just discontinued, high-end e-reader that has buttons on it. And that's the best, that's the best e-reader I own. It's great. The only problem is that it's got a micro USB port on it instead of USB-C. But it's great. It's black and white. It's got buttons. It's got a really bright side light display and a clear display, 300 DPI display. It's a great e-reader. But they don't make it anymore. My two favorite e-readers, they don't make them anymore because they're off gallivanting around with color displays and anyway. So I try not to be grumpy about it. I'm trying to understand why they're doing it. I think that they're trying to find more markets for this product category, and I get it. It's not a big category. But what they're trying right now, for me, I think goes against the whole purpose of the category. This episode is brought to you by Notion. There's so much to love about Notion. For me, I love that I have this one place where I can put everything about my business. I can put all of my ideas. I can put media. I can put meeting notes. It all goes in this one place. There are tons of ways to view that information and organize that information. I've known about Notion for years, but when I started working with my new assistants, she really understands how to make beautiful Notion databases. She was able to show me just some of the incredible tools that exist, and I have been so happy with having all of this information in one place. But one of the things about, if you really go in and put tons of information in, sometimes you think to yourself, you have a question. You know it's summer in Notion, but how do you find it? I've been using Notion AI as a way to find it. So if I have a question like, "What color is the notebook cover for this new product?" I can ask Notion AI that question, and it can go and look at the information I put in Notion and surface it to me. The new Notion AI is a 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 you can chat with it about anything you need. Notion is a perfect place to organize your tasks, track your habits, write beautiful documentation, and collaborate with your team. And the more content you add to Notion, the more Notion AI can personalize its responses for you because unlike generic chatbots, Notion AI is using the context of your own 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 your questions, and they have AI connectors that are now in beta. So Notion AI can search across a slack discussion, your Google documents, your sheets, and your slides, and more tools that GitHub and JIRA are coming soon. Notion is used by over half of the Fortune 500 companies, so you're going to be in great company. Try Notion for free when you go to Notion.com/upgrade, that is N-O-T-I-O-N dot com slash upgrade, and you'll be able to try the powerful, easy to use Notion AI today. So when you use that link, you'll also support in the show that is Notion.com/upgrade or lowercase, of course. Thanks to Notion for their support of this show and relay. So there's been some, we got a bunch of updates about Vision Pro stuff that we do over the last couple of weeks. So this week, there was another piece of immersive content. This was a music video from the weekend. I think called Love Hearts is the Open Hearts, man. That was in the same area, but completely wrong. It's called Open Hearts. I love that Apple calls it an immersive music experience. It's a music video. It's a music video. And it feels like a music video. It is. It's a music video. It's a classic, I would say classic style music video like me growing up watching MTV. It gave me kind of like thriller vibes at times where it was like, oh yeah, we spent a lot of money on a music video. That's what it is. I think what this shows, I think more than anything is that special effects, good special effects can have quite an impact, to be very impactful in immersive videos. So there are like a couple of moments where they really play around if you're perspective and stuff like that. And it's very interesting. I had the exact same reaction that you did, which is everything Apple has shown us up to now in immersive has at least seemed real. I know that that submerged movie has VFX in it, right? Shout out to our friend Todd Vasiri, but it's meant to be naturalistic. This is a surreal experience. Like you're flying and going through like portals and like it's not, you see a bunch of stuff that can't be real, right? So you know you're watching special effects. They look great. They really do. I'm very impressed with them. But what it does is it says very clearly, this is what an immersive VFX show can look like. And I liked seeing that. And there are a few moments where I need to watch it again, because one of the things I really like about it is a lot of immersive stuff. You know, when we were talking about the what if animation, one of the fun things about the what if stuff is if you notice, if you looked at the little sides, you can see like there's little Easter eggs here. And there's some of that in this where like if you look out the window of various points, like yeah, upfront is one thing. And out the window is a completely other thing. And that's really interesting, right? Like they're playing up the fact that you're in this very weird scenario. And it's surreal. And I liked that a lot. I thought that was yeah, it definitely felt to me like, you know, this is it's not a movie, you know, it's not even much of a narrative. No, I have no idea what's going on in this video. I have no idea what the point of it is. He's in a he's in an ambulance, but also like a flying machine. And and then hey, I guess spoiler alert for a thing that doesn't need spoilers because it doesn't make any sense. But I guess he dies at the end or doesn't. I don't know. It doesn't. Well, there's the over the end credits. There's like a flat line sound like he died in the ambulance or something. Anyway, it doesn't matter. It's ridiculous. But it's visually very interesting. And I like, I mean, the song is fun. The weekend is a is a charismatic performer. He was a good pick for this because he's very creative, right? Yeah. As that then. So like, I think that it fits out. And the weekend's music is good. I like his music. And so like, I like his music too. You can sit and like, this is a song I never heard before. And I'm like, I'm going to enjoy it because I know I like his style of music and it's like come to watch. And exactly. He is like, you know, love him or hate him. He is like one of these artist kind of performers. And so I think, you know, it makes sense to throw something like a project like this at him like in that he will he will go all in on that. And so yeah, this is interesting. Like, I would say, for me though, I want more stuff like submerged and I want this, right? Like, I don't want a bunch of music videos, right? Like, I do want more engaging narratives. But this was to me just an interesting idea of like, Oh, here's a completely different style of content. And it also really works. So yeah, an experiment, let them try some things that may not have been tried yet in immersive, because it doesn't matter because it's a music video and they just are throwing visuals at the wall. And I think that's fine. When you talk about music, I know they've got that concert that's coming up. Yep. And that is more in the context of what I would like to see. I want to see some live concert performances. And I suppose some more Alicia Keys style performances as well. Like, I'm really interested to see about on the music side what are the different options here? And I know that they've got this concert for one series that they're starting. Yeah. And I'm I'm that, you know, concert for one makes it sound very Alicia Keys-like. I think this is focused on the Alicia Keys thing. So that the first one is a new musician called Ray. And this is coming soon. However, so I asked contact an apple, but is this a series? Or is this just the one off? And they confirmed to me that it's a series and also that you can actually go and watch this in UK Apple stores now, even though it's not available. Yeah, because she's a British artist, right? And with this new series, concert for one, there will also be an accompanying spatial audio EP on Apple Music. So this reminds me of like, they did this in the past. It wasn't called like made for it, but they used to bring artists in and create EPs, right? Like the iTunes EPs. So it maybe feels a little bit like that. And so yeah, I think that this one is going to be very much in the vein of the Alicia Keys thing. I don't know, I didn't see I have maybe of everyone I know, I reacted very negatively to the Alicia Keys portion of the immersive video stuff. I found it really awkward to have someone singing at me. Yes. I wonder what this is going to be like. I would like to see concert-like performances, but I don't want to be making eye contact with the musician for the whole time. I know, I know. We should say Apple is apparently also letting people, like if you're a fan of the weekend, or you want to see this thing, and this is a smart way to market this, you can go into an Apple store apparently and say I would like to watch the weekend music video on the Vision Pro, and you can do that. They'll let you do that. So they're using content to drive people to try Vision Pro. I think that's very smart. That makes sense because otherwise there's not really a lot of points signing up these big names, right? Because essentially you want the weekend to be promoting this, but there's no point in the weekend promoting this if only then the people that can watch it are people that already own a Vision Pro. Right. And it gets them in the Apple store. Yes. And there's a long game aspect of it that they get to try it and maybe rave about, oh, so it was amazing. And it's all good. It's all to the better for Apple, I think. Also, they announced along with the weekend thing and the console one that they have new episodes in two of their series, Adventure and Wildlife in 2024. And there's more stuff coming 2025. I know that this has been a point maybe made too often at this point, but the thing about the slow rollout of this content is I think it's putting too much pressure on each piece of individual content. Like, if I wait a month and I'm not in, I haven't particularly been taken by the wildlife series, right? Like that they've been doing. I've watched some of it, but I haven't really, it's just not necessarily the stuff that I want. I don't know why I just haven't. But then it's like, oh, there's a wildlife episode this week. It's like, well, if there was lots of stuff, then I could kind of pick a choose where at the moment I kind of feel like I'm forcing myself to watch some of this content because it's like the only stuff available. It's like, okay, Mike, you got to watch the rhinos now. Yeah, it's like, I don't really want to. Like, I like nature documentaries. I don't know why they just haven't. Maybe I got to give them another go. But like, those ones, they haven't really grabbed me. I've liked the adventure stuff more. Yeah, but my point here is it just puts a lot of pressure on this, the content. I know, because there's not that much of it. And so you, yeah, I get that. I've really liked the wildlife stuff as somebody who's never been to Africa to see Africa and see rhinos or elephants. It's kind of amazing and feels more immersive as a travelogue. And so I kind of like that about it. But you're right, all of this stuff has way more pressure put on it, because there's this slow drip of content. But I will say this, at least there's a drip of content now. It feels like they are now getting this stuff out there at a pace where they weren't the first six months that the Vision Pro was out. You know what I realize now? I'm not talking about the wildlife. I'm talking about the dinosaur one. Oh, I don't like the dinosaur one. The dinosaur one made me feel motion sick. So I should go watch the wildlife stuff. I don't think I've watched enough of that. I'm thinking of the dinosaur. What's the rhinos and the elephants? They're amazing. Don't watch fake. I mean, they're not fake animals, but they're CGI. I didn't like that. The opening shots of the dinosaur one, you're kind of like moving like overhead. Yeah. And it made me feel motion sick. And I've never felt motion sick from VR before. I don't like the dinosaurs. Those are my least, the dinosaurs are my least favorite of all of the ones that they've done. They're not going to watch some of the wildlife stuff and just some tangential stuff. But I thought it was fun as that you would like and I sent you some screenshots today. BBC British brought us the channel for who are the proprietors of Taskmaster, I guess I'll say. They're like the home of Taskmaster in the UK. They are the UK home of Taskmaster, yes. Yeah. They have one of my favorite TV shows. Yeah. Exactly. They have made a Vision Pro app, Channel 4, and with it, a Taskmaster environment in which you can watch shows, which is like a fun thing, but they have, I think, committed a cardinal sin of environments. So when you're in the environment, you are sitting in the chair of the host of the TV show, Greg. But the way they have set it up, if you're sitting in his chair, you are not dead center with the screen that they're showing content to you on. So to watch the content, you're kind of off center, which is that's not great. So really, they've created a fun environment, but it's not one that you should be watching content in, which is not the way that, say, Disney have done it where they're fun, but they're also really good experiences for watching content. Plus the screen is too far away from you. It's a fun thing, but not a great use of this technology. Here's totally what they did. There's a Taskmaster VR game for Quest, and my guess is that the environment is a render of the space from the VR game. That's my guess. It's also not very high quality compared to some of the others I've seen. Yeah, and it's like a CD-ROM game a little bit. There's not a lot of lighting, but none of it is great. But yeah, look, it's a fun thing to do, and it's also a fun thing to get some headlines, which is part of the reason I'm sure they did it, because they want people to know that they got this thing. Yeah, and they went to the trouble of doing a Vision Pro app, and Apple did them a solid by saying, "Let's work with you to make an environment." They're like, "We've got this VR thing," and so they made the Taskmaster environment. You received two Vision Pro accessories from Belkin, some new stuff. I traveled back in a new headstrap. I did. I did. New Vision Pro accessories that feel very much like they're the Vision Pro accessories Apple should have shipped with when they shipped the Vision Pro, but they didn't. The headstrap works with the knit band, right? The one that goes around the baguette band. I was using solo top where there was a second band on top, but it's thicker than the basic strap, and it's got a Velcro attach. Basically, you take the two plastic pieces and put them on the band that's coming back from the Vision Pro that's got the speakers on it, and then this band runs over your head and you can adjust it with the Velcro, and then you still use the knit band. This is the setup that we had when we got our first preview of this in June of last year, and yet Apple didn't ship it. They shipped the two thin bands or the knit band by itself, and it's way better. This is how it should have been shipped. I don't know. I guess the reason Apple didn't sell this product themselves is because they would have to admit that it's the right configuration, and instead, everybody's going to have to pay $50 if they want this configuration, but I can endorse it. I think it's really comfortable. I think they did a really good job. There are some other products that do similar things, but it's solid. Yeah, I have a speaking one, which is nice, but I can't get it to go as tight as I would want, and this one looks like it is basically infinitely adjustable. So I have ordered yet another strap for the Vision Pro. Amazing. A strap like four at this point. I know. I know. Same, but it's a good one. I think they did a good job with it, and it's very clear. This is Apple going to a partner. If Mark Gurman wrote a thing this week about it where he basically said, "Look, Apple can't do this," but they went to their partner and said, "Please do this." I don't know why people said it. Why can't Apple do this? Apple can do this. I think maybe it would be a little embarrassing. I mean, I agree. I think two straps in the thing. They can have a third. That's a combo between the two. They could do this if they want to. They just don't want to. More than that, my theory is that they will, if they do a revised Vision Pro next year, that this will be what it'll have. We know that they thought it was a good idea because this is what we used in the original demos and some of the original shots. I know. I mean, it wasn't this exact one, but it looked like this. Again, I don't know behind the scenes, but so much of the Vision Pro detail does seem to be driven by designers who have this fantasy of how people use technology. And the knit strap, which is very beautiful, obviously, are expensive to make. And super comfortable and easy to adjust and all that sort of thing. So here's the thing is, my theory is that they're like, "Okay, we want to put this with the strap on top." And the designers are like, "Oh, no. That will ruin the entire experience of it." It's like, "Okay, fine." But it would be better. It would actually be nicer if you had that strap up there. And so they ship it with two straps. The nice one that doesn't fit and the ones that aren't as nice, come on. It's baffling. Anyway, it is $50 for a couple pieces of plastic and a strap. Yeah, I know. I'm just resigned to the fact that every Vision Pro accessory is going to be expensive. How many could they even ever possibly sell? I think this is the thing. The volumes must be so low that every single Vision Pro accessory has to be a high margin good like it has to be because they're never going to make any money on it. Exactly. But there's also a carrying case for the Vision Pro. And it's really good. It's so good. So I've been using the $20 basically Metacuest case that Casey Liss suggested. And it's just bad. It did the job of being a container for the Vision Pro. But it's just this one layer of material and it's not very good. This Belkin bag is so good. It's like half the price of Apple's Marshmallow. And it's also smaller. It's made to fit the Vision Pro so it fits it perfectly. It's got a little thing that you flip up after you put it in there to cover the eye part and the lenses so that they don't get messed up. It's got a little battery spot that you put the battery in and flip it down so it stays attached. And if you flip, if you put the battery the right way in, the USB charge port on the battery is accessible. So you can zip the case mostly up. You can have it all in there and still plug it in and charge it up when you're not using it and then unplug it. And it's so much smaller than the Apple case. It's a perfect fit. It's got an optional shoulder strap and a regular carrying handle. And it's got a zipper pocket in the front for some probably pretty thin things that you could put in there. And a non-zip pocket in the back where you can put stuff. It's just a nice little case. They did a good job. Again, it's like a hundred bucks or something. It's not cheap. But I look at it and I think, why did Apple not make this? And my only answer is because the same designers who thought that the knit strap by itself was the most elegant and that you couldn't muddy it up with that strap that goes over the top with the Velcro. Oh, who does Velcro anyway? Also designed this case. They're like, oh, but it's so big and puffy and it's so beautiful. And clearly those people were in the design driver's seat for Initial Vision Pro. And the number one thing that I'm looking forward to in another Vision Pro iteration is maybe all of that stuff starting to get cleared away. It might take multiple years for that. But again, this is such a practical case for the Vision Pro. And the Apple case is so impractical. So anyway, I think both of these accessories are great. I don't know how many people are going to buy them because you've got to have a Vision Pro and you've got to have the stomach to spend the money. But I will tell you, I think they're both really good. Thumbs up to Belkin. I guess thumbs up to whoever at Apple whispered at Belkin about this. But yeah, they're good. It's a much better scenario all along. And I'm looking forward to traveling with that strap and with that bag. I had already ordered the strap and that's not coming until the end of November for me. I don't know why it's pretty backwarded. But the bag I hadn't ordered and I just ordered the bag. And that will be here on Wednesday. So this might mean I might actually take my Vision Pro on my next vacation, which is coming up in a couple of weeks. I might take it with me. I might be the guy on the plane, Jason. I might do it. Oh, yeah, I'm, I'm, well, I'm excited about it, not just for all of this, which I'm absolutely going to travel with this thing to and I'm looking forward to it. But the other reason is the thing that we're going to talk about now, which is also with the point two latest betas on macOS and VisionOS. Guess what you get? You get wide and ultra wide views of Mac screen sharing. This is the big, this is in some ways the feature that everybody thought would be the big feature. But it was like promised later. And now we've reached kind of promise time. And it's, it's a lot. It's, it's, it's a lot of Mac in your face. Last week, we touched on it because you tried it and I haven't tried it. And today I installed the beta on my Mac. This is a spoiler for cortex. We talk about on cortex and gray. Like, okay, just says me, you have to do this. So I did it. It's, it's incredible. Like, it is the ultra wide is indeed very ultra wide. It is hilarious. It's massive. It's massive. Imagine that you're just surrounded by, I'm surprised it doesn't go further back. And it's just like a three, get a swivel chair and just zip around. It's so wide. It's, it's genuinely to the point where any window management that I do on a Mac is rendered pointless. Like, yeah, the windows are so far away from each other. Like, I know, for, for me, like, for actually, for using it, I would use the wide rather than the ultra wide. But if I ever needed the ultra wide, I have it. And yeah, like at this point, like, if I am going on a trip where I'm going to be working in a hotel, this has made the vision pro absolutely indispensable. Indisensible for me because I can actually really, truly have an improvement on my working rather than just like, Hey, look, I can make my Mac screen bigger, which is how it was before. Right. So, you know, whatever your laptop was, you could essentially project it and it would make that bigger. But it was still the resolution and size roughly of your screen that you were using, where now you can take that, but you can also make it bigger and even bigger. And I think I heard Ben Thompson say on shop tech that the ultra wide is the same resolution is putting two studio displays next to each other, which is massive. But you can also make it massive too. Well, and, and I think I might have mentioned this last week, but one of the things that I like to do in the vision pro is in terms of window management is putting things off to the side. Right. That's one of the great things about the spatial experience is around you. Yeah. I can take a music player, like albums or something, and I put it off way off to the right or a clock and I put it way up or off to the right or off to the left. And it's running and it's playing music, but it's out of sight and out of mind. And I like that. And then if I need to adjust it or look at it, I can either look over and grab it and bring it forward or I can just look over and interact with it and then go back to my task. Nice. Well, with the wide and the ultra wide, you can do that on the Mac, which if you are intensely on the Mac right now and you want the Mac stuff to be in your world, taking a window from the Mac that you might need to consult with, but is not part of your general focus. You put it all the way over on the right or on the left and leave it there. And now it's doing the same thing as those VisionOS apps that I did, which is, I don't need to see it. I just need to look at it when I need it. And then I turn and I look and it's there and I interact with it and then I go back. I also was playing around with really wide windows, which in something like logic or a final cut especially, it's really interesting to just say, what if this window was extremely wide? I want to see the entire podcast at once. Well, with logic, you've got a lot of stuff with logic, but a final cut especially, you've got a lot of stuff on the sides, you've got like your bins and your effects and all that stuff that's on the sides. And so it kind of works where if you've got the timeline and the video kind of right in front of you, and then you kind of turn to the really wide areas to grab something or click something. I can see that being a pretty good experience. I know some people look at the screen sharing stuff on Vision Pro and they say it's just not clear enough, it's just not good enough. I guess eyes will vary. I would say be very, I'm going to say, I think it works pretty well. I like it. It's not perfect, but I think it works really well. It's definitely better than me trying to window manage on my 13 inch laptop. I'll tell you that. Exactly. But somebody else might say it doesn't look clear to me and I'd rather window manage on my 13 inch laptop. Other hosts of other podcasts might even say that. That's a sub tweet. I'm sure they will. This is what I'm saying is I'm not going to say that the person who says that is wrong. I'm going to say that that is not my experience and that therefore I don't think that it is fundamentally true that everybody who uses this feature will find it clear or find it blurry. I think it's going to depend and you're going to have to try it and see if it works for you or not. And if you're thinking of buying a Vision Pro for something like this, go to the Apple Store. Well, I mean, you can return it if it doesn't work, but go to the Apple Store and try it out there because I think it works really well. I think it is a very impressive bit of technology. I'm not sure I would go as far as Mark Gurman, who says this is it, this is the killer app, but it's pretty good. This is a really, really good feature that is good in an area that Vision Pro has struggled with, which is actual productivity, that it can be a big Mac monitor, which was always the promise. Now they've delivered at it and I think they did a really good job. This episode is brought to you by Smarter World. If you're into podcasts, and I think you probably are, and you like podcasts that delve into how tech shapes your lives, this show is for you. Let's start with a couple of questions. How do you control a robotic forearm with your voice? What technology allows cars to communicate in real time as they drive? And what's inside that smart plug that reduces home fires and saves lives? What's inside of them? Then make sure that happens. If you're curious about the answers to these questions, you will want to listen to the Smarter World podcast, because they speak to some of the world's biggest brands and most exciting startups about how they use technology to change the world around us. The host Kyle Fox recently spoke to Honeywell about how smart energy is changing the buildings that we work in, while Applied EV shared how they were working to bring autonomous driving vehicles to delivery fleets and commercial products. And in another episode, Damon Motors explained how they're redefining the riding experience of their electric motorbike. The podcast features guests discussing technology topics from drones to software-defined vehicles to smart home innovations. They explore the stories behind the tech that we use every day. You can listen to these conversations by searching Smarter World where if you listen to podcasts, that's the Smarter World podcast, search for it now and take a listen. Our thanks to Smarter World for their support of this show and relay. We'll finish out today's episode of some Ask Upgrade Questions. Our first question is to eat comes from Jacob who says, "Thanks to you talking about home bridge, Jason, I've realized I can finally control all my smart devices from the home app and start using shortcuts to control and automate them. This means I need to get a home hub. Do you have a recommendation between a home pod mini and an Apple TV?" Okay, Mike, let him have it. I think Apple TV is the answer here. I think you could use a home pod mini and that's fine. You can also use an iPad to do this, but I don't recommend an iPad because then you're needing to think about the battery. With both the Apple TV and the home pod mini, you're not thinking about the battery and that's great. Both of these devices bring other things to your home and I think the Apple TV is a bigger benefit to your home entertainment experience than a home pod mini is. A home pod mini is great, but really, you're going to end up wanting a bunch of them if you get one of them. I think, oh, apparently I've been told that the iPad isn't a home hub anymore, so there you go. You need a home pod mini or an Apple TV that used to be. iPads used to be, but they must have changed that. Thank you, live chat for that, but still, I think the Apple TV is better. I think you'll get a nice experience. I think the Apple TV is a really good home entertainment device. It's where I watch basically all of my TV. The remote is really good. The apps are all there. This is unbelievably one device where Apple did get everybody to make an app for it. They don't all integrate in the way that Apple would like. Netflix and YouTube are in the TV app, for example, but you can still get really good Netflix experiences, really good YouTube experiences, as well as just a good way to watch all of your content and it's all available there. So I recommend an Apple TV. I like Apple TV. I think that that is a premium experience. Look, if you don't have a TV, if you have no use for a streamer box, then get a home pod mini, I guess. Maybe you can use that for something, but I think Apple TV is a nice thing to have. So yeah, I agree. David asks, "Can the new Mac mini be powered via the USB and Thunderbolt ports?" Nope. It's a shame, though, isn't it? Like it would have been nice. It would have been nice. No, I mean, I can see the appeal of having a bus powered thing so that you could potentially like take it from one room to another, let's say, and just plug it in with one cable and it would provide power and data. The problem is unlike a laptop where you can bus power it, it doesn't have a battery. So there's all sorts of, and I don't know how much power it draws at the high end, but like it would require a whole lot more circuitry to include a battery and the ability to charge it. And I think that it would be really dangerous if all it did was do bus power because if there's any power lag at any point, you're going to lose the device. And I think there was too much engineering for a non-laptop. Is the USB power more unreliable than mains power in that way? I don't know. I don't know all the details. I'm not an electrical engineer. It's just my gut feeling that you don't have the backup of a battery and that the, you know, a laptop's electrical system is very different from a desktop electrical system because it doesn't have that protection, as well as requiring the ability to charge and things like that. And I mean, it would be nice, but my guess is that there are some reasons involving complexity and stability that would not be ideal. Now, David Shaw in our chat says, "Well, some many PCs can happen, it's a great option." I think my answer would be, Apple looked at it and said it's not worth it. Like, it's not worth it. And I think there are probably some very specific things that they made the decision to not bother with. I love the idea of a bus powered Mac Mini. Literally, it's one cable instead of two because if I were to get a Mac Mini and take it back and forth between my two desks, I would need to plug in two things, right? Power and Thunderbolt. That sounds nice, but again, I can also see why Apple would say this is not a priority for us. I think it would be said, though. Give us power. I think it would be awesome. It would be pretty cool. It would be pretty cool. And you've got absolutely everything because you're daisy-chanding all of a dock. Let's put it on the to-do list and let's see if Apple can get there someday. You can do it. Get rid of that. That would give them more space on the back if they didn't have a power plug. Exactly. They could put, I don't know, but something else there. What do people want? What's the port that people want? SD card or something, for some reason? More Thunderbolt than the bolts. Hakon asks, "I'm pondering the purchase of an Apple Watch Series 10, but what would be the real world changes in my day-to-day of going with the cellular option? Is it worth the additional money?" Now, I know you use yours a lot. Do you find it to be worth it? Yes. Why? I still do it. So, the reason, in my opinion, that you do the cellular Apple Watch is because you go places without your phone. That's it. If you never go place without your phone and you're just using your watch with your phone, you don't need to worry about it. I think that's the use case. If you want to do what I do, which is leave my phone at home and go walk the dog or go for a run with just AirPods and my Apple Watch, you need cellular. Not that you can't listen to things with just a Wi-Fi watch, but if you fall, get hit by a car, whatever it is, it can't call for help if you don't have a cellular model, if your phone isn't there. So, I think that's it. I think the number one use case for cellular model of Apple Watch is you go places without your iPhone or you'd like to. I don't miss. I was walking the dog the other day and a woman ran past me and she's got an iPhone strapped to her arm. I don't like the iPhone in my pocket when I'm running or even walking the dog. I don't like it. I really like not having a big iPhone and they keep getting bigger in my pocket when I'm running or when I'm even walking the dog and it's just moving around in there and pulling down my pants and I just don't like it. For me, it's totally worth it because I'm free and if I fall and hurt myself, it can call for help. You take that one time. I did when I bruised my ribs. Absolutely. I just called Lauren and said I fell and bruised my ribs and I'm going to go to the ER, but I was able to do that because I have a cellular model. For me, that's it. Do you want to be phone free at points? If so, I think it's totally worth it and it's great. If you don't, then save your money. Save your money on the cellular model and save your money on your monthly bill. Peter Wright-Sina says, "I just got a base Mac Mini to use as a home server. It's going to be a great time with some RAID external enclosures and I'm intending to use it for a backup and media server, but I wondered if you guys had any suggestions or ideas to do more with this Mac Mini." My Mac Mini, I've written about it a lot, has changed over the years. I've done all sorts of stuff on that, but I've had a server for like 15 years, if not more, 20 years. Long time. Today, I am some of the stuff that Peter mentions I am doing. It's my Plex server. It's my channels server, which is a great app that records stuff and lets you play it back. It's running a bunch of Python scripts. It's running my weather station software. It's a web server, so it's got web pages that serve off of it. My entire Dropbox downloads to that, my entire Photos library downloads to that, all obviously onto an external RAID that I have attached. I use it for screen sharing. When I'm away from my network and I need a Mac, I was in Hawaii and just had my iPad and I needed to do something that required a Mac and I was able to just connect to it and do it on the Mac. All the stuff on the RAID gets backed up via backblaze on that system, so all of that stuff gets backed up an extra time. I'm using it as my time machine server for my network. My Mac here gets backed up to that Mac Mini every day. That's a good use because I don't have time machine on my MacBook Air. I've never set it up. I use backblaze and I deal with it because I don't have a machine that I would set up over the airtime machine too, but that would be a really good use for something like that. I once bought a Mac Mini to do all this stuff with and never did anything with it. These are all really good things. There's just so many of these things that I just don't it doesn't really appeal to me like the tinkeringiness of it, but having an always on computer like this, there is a lot of benefit to it. This machine will be always on because as we know, you can't get to the power button, so you got to leave it on. As Jacob mentioned earlier, HomeBridge is also running on it. I've got a bunch of cool on HomeKit stuff that runs that appears in my home app because I'm running HomeBridge on it, and that's just a thing that I'm able to do. I know there are a lot of different options, especially for home storage. One of the reasons that I choose a Mac and have always chosen a Mac is I'm really comfortable with Mac software and also the Mac will run Unix stuff on top of that, which gives you compatibility with lots of stuff that's out there. I've always been more comfortable with that than the idea of having a NAS box that is running some flavor of Unix or at one point there was one that I had that was running Windows. I really like having a Mac and I can set it up the way I want it and I can hang huge amounts of storage off of the 1.2. I have an OWC Thunder Bay, four drive, raid enclosure that sounds like a popcorn popper. It's got 25 terabytes of data or whatever, and I love it. I always find new reasons to keep a server around and currently it's an M2 base Mac mini and it's doing great in a closet. Very cool. If you would like to send in a question for us to answer on a future episode of the show, it's very easy to do that. Just go to upgradefeedback.com. This is where you can also send in any follow up or feedback that you may have for us. You can check out Jason's work at sixcolours.com. You can hear his podcasts at the incomparable.com and here on relay, where you can hear me too. You can check out my work at cortexbrand.com. You can find us online on many various social media platforms. Jason is at Jason's now or Jason's now or something, and I'm Mike, I-M-Y-K-E. You will find us somehow if you search for those handles. You can watch clips of this show on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. We're at Upgrade Relay. Thank you to our members who support us at Upgrade Plus. We are going to talk about Blue Sky and Upgrade Plus this week. Don't forget, you can get 20% off an annual plan by going to give relay.com. Thank you to our sponsors, SmarterWorld, Fitbod, Notion, and Squarespace. But most of all, thank you for listening. Until next time, say goodbye, Jason. Roll on, you bears. [Music]
Is Apple trying to boost revenue by truly embracing smart home products, or is it too late? Also, Jason reviews Kindles while lamenting the current state of e-readers, and the Vision Pro gets new accessories and a music video by The Weeknd!
