(line ringing) - From Relay, this is Upgrade, episode 539 for November 25th, 2024. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, Fitbod, and Data Citizen's Dialogues. My name is Mike Hurley, and I'm joined by Jason Snow. Hi, Jason Snow. - Hi, Mike Hurley, how are you? - Oh, I'm fine and dandy, my friend. Fine and dandy, indeed. - It's Thanksgiving week, it's Thanksgiving week. - It sure is, I was just about to say thank you. - You're in the US, eh? - For you, very thankful for our listeners. - Thank you, yes, same. - But I have a still talk question for you. Comes from Yoni, who wants to know, Jason, how did you celebrate Cals win over Stanford? And at what point in the game were you no longer nervous and knew they were gonna win? - Huh, I'll take the last part first. At the very end of the game after Cal went 98 yards to score the go ahead touchdown, very dramatic. Stanford got the ball, as one does, and they got them out four tries and out right away. And only then did I know that they were going to win. And even then they had to get a first down. But anyway, at that point, I felt pretty confident. But before that, Cal fans have learned, Yoni, you may not know this. - I don't. - Cal fans have learned that whatever is the worst possible thing to happen will happen. So you've got to just keep it. Like people are like, oh, you must have been devastated by the four devastating losses that come from behind losses and all that this year. I'm like, folks, that's what being a Cal fan is. I'm not only not surprised by it, I kind of expect it. It is that kind of a fandom, that kind of a relationship. They let you down a lot. We are a long suffering. So anyway, it was a, but here's the thing. Another little trivia about the rivalry between Cal and Stanford is it matters like the coach of the Cal football team was saying that, you know, every win only counts for one, but yet emotionally, it's just not true. That it means more. It just means more, as some college football people say, that it matters and the stadium was completely full. And this is a five and five team and like a three and seven team or something, three and six team playing each other, not great teams and the stadium was completely full. And everybody lost their minds after it was over. And it just, it is an amazing moment. It matters more than anything else. There was a, there was one of Cal's most successful coaches of all time, having the Cal's best season in 20 years lost the big game at the end of the season. And the reaction to it was so negative that he basically quit and went somewhere else because he didn't want to take it anymore, even though he had had an incredibly successful year. So it matters a lot. How do we celebrate? I mean, we just, you know, we stood there and did the cheers and we're really excited. And we didn't go down on the field because it was going to take forever to even get down on the field. The field was completely full. Everybody went on the field after the game. - And I see and that's like mayhem. - Yeah, that's true, it's amazing. There is a, there is a clip. People can find it. The quarterback, Cal, a kid named Fernando Mendoza was interviewed after the game. And it is a wonderful interview. - This is why I text you, right? - Yeah. - I text you and was like Bez Tada or whatever. - Yeah. - And it was because I had seen someone share this clip and was like, oh, he's so excited right now. - And I realize they must have won. And he's crying and he says, you know, this is why we do it. I went 98 yards with my boys, which is going to be a Cal thing for all eternity now, 98 yards with my boys. - I think that's just going to be a thing thing. Like I can just imagine Cal saying that to each other. - Oh man, it's so great. And he go bears forever. He says at one point, like it says, this is why we did all this work. But the other thing you can notice in that clip is like people just keep running up to him and taking pictures with him and patting him on the back and stuff because the students and everybody else are just running onto the field. - And he's just shaking people's hands while he's talking. It's really good. This is very heartwarming clip. - By the end of the interview, literally they're completely surrounded by people. They start and it's not quite that, but by the end he's completely surrounded 'cause the whole field is surrounded. And there's the axe, which is like the trophy that goes back and forth. And that was paraded around. Like there's a whole group of people that keeps their hands on it at all times. And that got paraded around it. It's just, it's madness. It's, again, it's a purity of joy that is rare. And that interview is an all time classic 'cause he's just so overwhelmed with him. - So this is college football, right? Like this, then all professionals. - This is what it's supposed to be. - Okay. - I mean, they are, they get money now a little bit. - Yeah, I know. This will not be the same. - But this isn't, they're not in the NFL, right? - That's absolutely. And this is, I think the passion of college football and then that shell is that interview encapsulates it. Like it's, this is a game with two teams that are, you know, one team is gonna not be over 500. And the other team, you know, might, is gonna play on like a various minor bowl game and that's it, but it doesn't matter. 'Cause it's rivalry and it's history and it's the fans and the alumni and the players. And it just, it's, that's one of the magical things about college football. - You don't, you don't have to care about it at all. I mean, I don't really, 'cause I don't understand it. - No, of course not. - But I recommend watching that interview 'cause it's like, it's just nice to see someone cast so much about something, you know? - I mean, that's, that's really it. There's no cynicism in it at all. And this isn't an era. The coach talked about it after the game. There was a great post-game press conference that I actually watched later on YouTube where he said, you know, we got people who, today in college football, there's free transfers. So basically people just show up and they haven't been there for, you know, before and they've never had it. And some of those players played in this game and we're like, whoa, like I had heard about it, but I didn't understand and you get there and everybody's intense and the stadium is full and loud. And it's very exciting. So yeah, it was a, yeah, the pure emotion of it. I do think that that's gonna be a long, an all time, all time classic that 98 yards with my boys. So anyway, we had a great time. There is no, there is no better drug than coming home after your team won a nail biting rivalry football game. I have walked out of that stadium with a gut, this year with a gut punch of like, oh my God, I can't believe we lost that game with a, but this was in the category of the, I can't believe we won that game, but it's just such a great feeling. - I wanna go 98 yards with my boys, Jason, you know? We can go 98 yards together. - Let's set it up sometime. We go 98 yards with the boys. - With the boys. If you would like to send in a question to help us open a future episode of upgrade, please go to upgradefeedback.com and thank you to a friend of the show, Yoni, for doing that. That was a great one. - Yeah. - I would like to remind you, the upgrade ends that you can give the gift of upgrade plus. You can get 20% off a new annual membership from now until December 18th. You can buy it for yourself. You can buy it for somebody else. You can go to getupgradeplus.com and use the code 2024 holiday and then annual membership and you'll get 20% off and there'll be a link in the show notes to subscribe this directly so you can just go to it right away. Or you can go to giverelay.com where you'll learn more and be able to gift to someone else. Or you can check out the other shows you can get 20% off all relay membership plans for now until December 18th. Why do you want to do this for upgrade plus? Well, let me tell you. You'll get longer ad-free episodes every week. You get access to the relay members discord, tons of our bonus content. In upgrade plus this week, we're going to talk about the fact that Jason went to a live podcast and also talk about some Thanksgiving plans. But let me just say more than anything, it supports the show. If you enjoy this show, it would mean a lot to us if you became a member. Because that is a level of certainty in the way that we make money, which is so much more comfortable than advertising. So I'm asking if you are interested, go and check it out now, go to getupgradeplus.com and use the code 2024 holiday. You can get 20% off an annual membership or go to giverelay.com where you can learn more and subscribe today. Thank you very much. And follow up, I got the Belkin accessories. Oh, yeah. They both ended up arriving. I bought the bag after your review last week. And like, you know, just hearing you talk so kindly about it. But the strap was back-ordered, but then it just arrived. I don't know why, like it was meant to arrive. Like at the end of the month and it just like showed up. It's like, great, thanks Apple, appreciate it. You weren't wrong, like, they're both perfect. Like why, why? I mean, that was my reaction was very much like, oh, right, this is what they should have shipped. Got it. Yeah. The bag. I was surprised at how much I liked the bag 'cause I was really skeptical about, oh yeah, great. Another Vision Pro bag and it's like, it's good. It's really well designed. It's, this bag is small enough that it fits in my tote pack. Like the bag that I use every day. I thought that was impossible, but I can get it in my daily bag now if I want to, which is wild. It's so much smaller than the Apple bag. I would not have expected that at all. And it's also just so well thought out of all the pockets. There is an unbelievable amount of pockets on this bag. It's like there's more pockets than I thought would be possible to put on this bag. It is great. They did a great job of that. And the strap is the exact amount of infinitely adjustable that I wanted. Where it's essentially an Apple watch band, like one of the sport loop or whatever they're called. The Velcro ones. Yeah, the Velcro's, yeah. It's just one of those. Choose it where you want. And it's soft, I think it's soft enough that it's not, it doesn't feel harsh, like digging into your head, but it does provide enough suspension to keep. And, you know, I like the solo top, but like the knit band is not made for that. And this is the right, this is the right thing. It's right, whoever built that up for the WWDC demos that we had last year. They knew what they were doing. And then they didn't ship it. It's weird, but good accessories for sure. Yep. We have a bunch of follow up related to the HomePod home with a screen device. So I haven't come up with a name, but maybe we'll get one by the end of this. We'll find out. A lot of people are calling it like Homepad, and I've seen some other things, but I don't like any of them. On your website, of which you are the proprietor, six colors, you linked to Jennifer, Patterson Tui's piece at the Verge about why Apple should get into the smart home, which is a very good article. I read a quote from it, but people should go check it out in full 'cause it's really good. Patterson Tui knows what they're talking about. When it comes to smart home, they do all of the stuff for the Verge. Oh, yeah. Yeah, this article is one of those articles where I read it, and I was like, okay, that article, I don't have to write because she literally covered everything that I would have covered. Yeah, it's really good. So this is just a quote from which you think it's a flavor. Apple needs to bring its signature simplicity through this space. It needs to make it all just work. To be successful, Apple needs to offer an intuitive user interface that effectively combines voice and touch in a way no other smart display has to date, which I agree with. They have the ability to do this. And another quote that you put on six dollars was, it's about downtime that Apple took the smart home seriously, having it let Apple Home and HomeKit largely languish in its decade since its launch. I mean, I agree so much with that. And I know you noticed I... So we talked last week briefly about that. I did the annuals, right? The annual Apple charts. And I think that the one that was the most interesting to me of all of them. And I reproduced it. In fact, I made a new version of it with just wearables, home and accessories. 'Cause it's this line that starts going up and then it just sort of like is now plateauing and going back down. And I think that's really telling that Apple built a lot of growth on the AirPods and the Apple Watch and it stalled out. And like we can debate, value of growth. You know, investors want growth. Does Apple need it to grow like that and all that? But I would say Apple wants it to grow. Apple wants everything to grow. And Home is... It would be very hard to find somebody to argue that Apple has nailed it perfectly with the Home, right? Like it feels like they've let a lot of opportunities go by and they've done tentative things. How many years did they lose by miscalibrating the original HomePod? And I'm not sure they've ever really gotten it back. But at least they've got it in a more viable place now than it was originally. And so if, you know, I don't do this a lot, but I'll just say like if I were an Apple executive right now, this would be one of my things that I would say, like we have to do a better job. And it feels like maybe that's what's happened is that somebody has been told, we actually need to make an effort in the Home because I would argue that what they've been doing is avoiding most of the Home stuff. And they're only place where they've been playing it all as in the speakers, which, you know, I don't know, 10 years ago, I think it was pretty clear that this was an opportunity for them and they missed the boat. But it's broken enough and early enough that there are more opportunities for them. - Kind of feels like one of these things where it's like, oh, if we build it, they will come kind of thing, but that, while that has happened, it's not been good enough. And I think this is one of the situations where, you know, I love things to be open. We're gonna talk about that later on in the show today quite a bit, but like, I do feel like there is, they should have the open framework that they have. But if Apple was able to create an Apple-like experience that these devices talking together, it would be superior than what we currently have, because they don't have to design for edge cases. They don't have to make a set of APRs like they are able to maybe make their own. And then I would expect as these things usually happen, if they do build their own stuff, they could actually take some of those learnings and put them back into home kit. Like they're actually dogfooding it in a way, which is a phrase that I don't like, but I said it anyway. - Or matter, right? I feel like that's the trick here is that the emergence of matter, which is still kind of like, you know, it exists, but it lets Apple build something on a framework that will integrate with other stuff. And they can just say, yeah, sure, we're integrated. And it makes, I can make the argument that if Apple executes this right, that what currently it seems like they kind of have wasted five years or whatever, which I think they have. But like, you could maybe, if they succeed, you could maybe make the argument that maybe the whole smart home market wasn't good enough. And if I were at Apple, again, I would probably make the argument that this is one of those categories that is sort of like classic Apple entering a category late, but waiting to a moment where there's actually an opportunity to drive more sales of this, 'cause that's gotta be their goal, right? Is that the biggest opportunity in the smart home market is not selling to people who have smart home devices. It's to everybody else who has not bothered. And, you know, a lot of nerds are like, oh, I've been doing this for 10 years or whatever, but it's like, yeah, but most people like, no, like super repelled from a lot of this stuff. And so there's an opportunity there for Apple. I'm not sure that they will succeed. I'm skeptical. I need to see it because they've been so lackluster in this category before, but I do think that there are opportunities for them to succeed, especially if they pick their spots and make really good products that will allow them to succeed, even if they're not the market leader to succeed with a product that will sell into their ecosystem and be seen as one of the better products in the category, right? I think that's the challenges they need to, they're gonna have high price tags 'cause it's Apple. So they also need to provide that. But when there was rumors about the camera, I like cameras mostly aren't very good. So there is an opportunity there. Even this late in the game, I think there's an opportunity for Apple here. Yeah. Yeah, as well, like, and it will open different opportunities. I can't imagine that Apple would create a home security system with monitoring, right? But the more that Apple push into this field, then if it's all home kit, like the system that I have, made by a company called Abode, which I like a lot, I can add that into the system and it would execute with Apple's cameras and all that kind of stuff, right? So like that's, you can bolt on these extra parts if you want a bit extra. If you imagine that screen, that new screen accessory thing, one of the things that has to presumably do or they're thinking of doing is security, right? And the thing is with matter and home kit, Apple doesn't need to make window sensors, right? They don't. They can make some cameras, maybe a doorbell, I don't know, up to them what they wanna do there. But there's lots of other products in that category. And maybe what they say is, look, what we're gonna do is we're gonna make this screen be the best place for you to do your home security settings and monitoring and notification at the heart of the ecosystem and have all those pieces out there. They could get there. I mean, there's lots of opportunity here. I just, I feel like when I hear people talking about entrenched smart home companies, like, hmm, I don't think that trench is very deep. Like I feel like there's a lot of space here, a lot of room to grow and redefine what these categories are and popularize it. Like, I mean, Amazon has been trying, and Google has been trying to popularize this for ages. And it's still not that great, not that great. There's opportunity here. - So we also got some listeners who wrote in with some thoughts and questions about this kind of space for Apple. Brian says, do you think the iPhone mirroring feature that was debuted on Mac OS this year could be a software tell that similar features are under development or consideration for the rumored home pod of a screen product? This could bring all the iOS apps while avoiding some of the platform adoption issues that have played platforms less popular than the iPhone. So we spoke about intents, we spoke about widgets, but just straight mirroring could be another one. Like, maybe it's not what's on the Mac, but maybe it's like, would you like to mirror YouTube? - It feels to me like, this feels too far to me. I think we talked about it last time. The idea of, David Smith's idea that the iPhone mirroring on the Mac has suggested some things about what they might, how they might approach some of a device like this, I think is right. I think that he's clocked it, which is, if you can show all your notifications from your phone on your Mac, you would presumably automatically be able to do that with this device. If you can display a widget that's running on your phone, on your Mac, you absolutely should be able to do that with this device. And that solves part of that problem of like, how do we, you know, how do you put widgets from Widget Smith on it if Widget Smith doesn't run? Because there's no app store. And the answer is, it runs from your iPhone. So I don't know, based on the shape of this thing and the size of the screen, I'm a little dubious about that, but who knows? I mean, AirPlay is a good example though, where like, you know, you could have it, I don't know. I mean, a lot of this stuff, it's gonna be able to do itself, right? YouTube playback and things like that. So I think you could say that this goes too far, but I do like the idea that Apple's been building technologies in plain sight, that allow it to project things from your iPhone onto other screens that I like, because I think that that is a very clever way. Right, 'cause, you know, here's the problem. We talk a lot about multiple devices and you get different notifications in different places, and if you have two different Macs, not everything syncs and all of that. Throwing this extra device into the mix, when your life is on your iPhone is a problem, because your life's not on this thing. So the more projection you can do from your iPhone and the more you can tie it into your iPhone, or iPhones, 'cause remember, Apple already in the HomePod has voice recognition where they can actually detect who's speaking. So if you have the idea that it knows who's speaking and it knows whose iPhone is whose. - Like, show me my email. - That's great. - Yeah, right. 'Cause again, it's like, it's not necessarily about, like, iPhone mirroring isn't just mirroring the iPhone, but we're assuming it's the same technology that they use to do the widget mirroring, right? Or the notification mirroring. Like, it's all, I would assume, much of the same kind of like making this secure connection. And maybe there is a thing that we haven't seen yet that would make the same kind of links together, I don't know. - Yeah. - Brian, a different Brian. We have a lot of Brian's who care about this. A second Brian says, "Do you think-- - There's so many Brian's. - Around the house with a screen could act as a bridge to bring Apple intelligence to other devices like the HomePod Mini that would probably not get a powerful enough chip for a long time." - I wrote a whole mackerel column about this 'cause this is the challenge is that you've got a lot of devices that are not likely to get Apple intelligence. Apple Watch is one of them. HomePod Mini is a good example. I don't think they would upgrade the HomePod Mini to process on device Apple intelligence, maybe. But boy, I just, mmm. So I think that there is a lot of this, which is how do you get Apple intelligence in other places? So HomePod with a screen that acts as a HomeHub and also can run Apple intelligence routines itself. Would that be a great way to control HomePods and give them some intelligence without it at them actually being intelligent? Of course. I mean, the iPhone is too, right? It would be kind of nice if you didn't need to use the HomePod with the screen. You could just also use your iPhone. I think they need to come up with a way in probably presumably the next product cycle. Although maybe it's tied to this product if this comes out sooner to have that sort of thing where like if I issue a command and one of the devices in my little personal cloud in my house has Apple intelligence on it, maybe it should feel that, like maybe it should, it should take that in and then choose the right thing to do. And they're probably not there yet, but I absolutely, this is a way to make those unintelligent devices theoretically more intelligent. And Calvin came up with my favorite name so far. Did you get your hold for a second? So Calvin says, what about HomePod Touch? Because it continues the iPod naming scheme. We have iPod, HomePod, iPod Mini, HomePod Mini, iPod Touch, HomePod Touch. - You can touch that HomePod already? - But it doesn't do anything. I mean, you could touch an iPod before. You did touch them, but they won't call that. - A little, almost sidebar. I know I wrote about this years ago when they came out, but I just moved a pair of second gen full size HomePods into my living room to replace, okay, so my last of my first gen HomePods died. In the classic way that they die, which is they just stop, and that's it. - I have two original gen HomePods that I'm still using. I feel like I'm a unicorn here, 'cause I was listening to MacPowell users and they were talking about that too. - I was using them as well in my living room, and then one died, and a friend said, oh, I have one that we're not using, I'll send it to you, and she did, and I used that for a while, and that one still works, but the other one, that was my other one that I had had from the beginning, it died, and we had a good run, but it's over now. So I moved, I also have a pair of second gen HomePods, so I moved those into the living room and plugged them in and set them up. And I know I wrote about this when I reviewed them, but it's been ages, and I haven't put them in this context. Those devices in the living room, I do adjust the volume by pressing the plus minus on them, and they don't light up anymore. The second gen doesn't light up the plus minus buttons, so you can't see them to change the volume. I'm tapping all over, and it's pausing it and playing it again, and what are you doing? What are you doing? Anyway, you could call it HomePod Touch. I think that's a very clever name. I don't know if they'll go that route or not, but I like it as an idea. - That's my favorite of the potential name options, where at first I was like, "Would they?" And I was like, "Oh, it does follow the iPod." So we'll say, "I look forward to HomePod shuffle." I don't know what that's gonna do though, I'm not sure. - Kelvin, you are now an honorary HomeBrian. Congratulations. - HomePod, HomePod Nano? Like it's just like, I don't know what that is. We'll find out. - HomePod, Brian. Yeah, I've got a great plus last week, we both spoke about Blue Sky, like in kind of our feelings about Blue Sky. So I wanted to mention here, in case any upgradings wanna follow us on Blue Sky, we're both on Blue Sky. You're a Snell.Zone, I'm mic.social, I'll put links in the show notes in case you wanna find us there. - Do you like that I extended the Snell Zone branding even further? - I'm so happy. - I got the domain, man. - There was a time. - I didn't wanna be SnellWorld.com, right? - There was a time where me and Stephen decided that your nickname was gonna be Snell Zone. And I remember you didn't like it. - I don't know. You said-- - You said-- - The Stell Zone is a, I am not the Stell Zone, the Stell Zone is a place. - The Snell Zone is a place, not a people, you know? That's what it says. - That's right, it's a place. When you're with me, you're in the Snell Zone. - And so when people come to Blue Sky and they go to your profile, they're in the Snell Zone. - They are, and when they receive the emanations from my social media presence on Blue Sky, they are receiving them straight from the Snell Zone. That's absolutely true. - I love it, and so yeah, you can call us-- - Also my fam, did you know that my family chat with my wife and my kids is named Snell Zone? - Yeah, I did not know that. I love that, though. - Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. - That makes me very excited. - Yeah, it makes me very excited. But yeah, I will say, look, maybe it's just like the new social media shine. Kinda like in Blue Sky. I kinda like it. We'll see how long that lasts. But right now, I do like it. I have some notes, like, they need a proper replies view. I don't need to see people following me. - It's a bit much, yeah. - They have a weird, there is a settings icon on their notifications view. And what it does is suppress all replies to you from people who aren't following you. So I guess it's like a celebrity view or something, or people you're not following. It's exactly the wrong setting. So they have some work to do on that score, and it's in the inflationary period of any social media, it gets kinda old. And we talked about it last week that as it settles down, we'll see how it goes. But also, in general, I don't think I need more social media in my life. But one of the approaches is use the different ones for different purposes. And one thing that is slowly happening is, I said for a long time, the only thing I'm using on Twitter anymore is my sports list, because the sports writers didn't move anywhere else. They're still breaking this. And that's still true. The Calgarism is there. All those people are still on X. Okay, but in the last two weeks, a substantial number of the people on my sports list have moved to blue sky, so that I now have a blue sky sports list. And that's exciting. I also wrote about a thing called Sill, which is a social media app like Nuzzle, where you can attach it to blue sky and Mastinon, and it will roll up all the links in your social media. It's early, it just went into public data. They need to add some stuff, including support for lists. But somebody's remaking Nuzzle for these other social media outlets too. - I mean, this guy even has an element of that, right? But I know it's about posts, but it's like things that are popular with your friends. - Yeah, I've not dug into a lot of the features that blue sky has, but like similar to you, right? Like there's just like a lot of content creators in different fields, especially in gaming, they didn't move to threads or mast, or they didn't move to Mastinon, they tried threads and didn't like it, but they seem to actually have moved to blue skies. So like, I'm getting a lot of the stuff that is just the things that I enjoy on that service. I feel like at the moment, I kind of have these like, they're like three different services, and I'm kind of trying to use them more differently, and we'll see how that goes. And let's be honest, three of them are not gonna win, right? There's not gonna be three. There's maybe gonna be two. I don't know who that's gonna be, but my first week of blue sky has been positive. - Sure. Yeah, I would say so. I, yeah, we'll see how it shakes out. - Exactly. - You never know. - I, it really depends on where it goes, but I do hope that this sports writer, Exodus, or cross post or whatever continues, because I would love to be able to just visit my blue sky sports list and get enough. Like the, there's a, I apologize, we've already talked about college football, but I'll just throw in here. There's a guy who does a, the baseball Hall of Fame vote tracker, Ryan Thibodeau. And so we're in the period where the, the baseball writers are turning in their ballots for who's gonna make the Hall of Fame. And he used to track that all on Twitter, and he left Twitter and is on blue sky now. And so every time I go to the blue sky sports list, at the very least, I'm getting some of my baseball writers and the Hall of Fame tracker and all that kind of stuff is there. It's a good start, right? It's not, I have been waiting for a while now for there to be any reason for me to create a sports list on blue sky and there wasn't any. And now it's starting to happen. And so I'm happy about that. That's a start. I hope that becomes functional. - Yeah. I also just wanted to mention, still just a couple of weeks left to get your nominations in for the 11th annual upgradeees. They're coming in December, voting is open. Go to upgradeees.vote. Thank you to the many of you that have. If you want to get your voice heard for the 11th annual upgradeees, which is being recorded on December 30th, you've got to get your nominations in by December 13th at upgradeees.vote and they'll be link in the show notes too. - Yeah, you'll help us out a lot. It's not just to make your voice heard and in what your preferences are. It's also to give us suggestions for things that we should look at that we maybe haven't considered 'cause that is very helpful to us 'cause we're just two little brains in the world. - Yep, we need the power of the upgradeees. - We're just a couple of boys going 98 yards. - 98 yards, man. - That's it. That's it. Help us get across the goal line. It's a long way down those 98 yards. - 98 yards for the upgradeees. Come be one of the boys of us. - Let's go. Let's go. - 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 getting started or you're managing a growing brand, you can stand out with a beautiful website, engage directly 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. With Squarespace, it's incredibly easy to get started by using their new tool design intelligence. This combines their two decades of industry-leading design expertise with cutting-edge AI technology to help you unlock your strongest creative potential. Design intelligence empowers anyone to build a beautiful, more personalized website tailored exactly to your unique needs so you can craft a digital identity to use across your entire online presence. What I love about Squarespace is their system is so easy to use. It's called Fluid Engine, which is like, that's what you use to customize stuff. That you can start out with one of the templates that you can use their design intelligence thing to really kind of help you fully understand what you want your site to look like, but then you're still able to go in and so easily tweak things. You can do it on the web, you can do it on their app, you can change the layouts, the colors, the fonts, the spacing, the content, everything. It's so easy to do. And then once you've got everything set up and your website's launched to the world, you can keep the track of the stats that matter with their analytics platform so you can measure your end-to-end online performance of powerful website and seller analytics. You can get insights on top traffic sources, understand how your reach is growing, track your sales metrics and learn where to focus new engagement. It's all the data you need to scale your brand or business fully integrated and clearly displayed. I've been using Squarespace for 15 years and what I love most about them is how they grow with me. So over time, as websites become more complicated, as websites need more features because that's just the way the web is, Squarespace finds a really great way to implement this stuff, right? So you're talking about analytics, talking about Squarespace payments, talking about Squarespace invoicing, we're talking about the commerce stuff, they've got it all. Go to squarespace.com and you can sign up for a free trial today. When you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com/upgrade and you will save 10% of your first purchase of a website, Automaine, that is squarespace.com/upgrade when you decide to sign up and you'll get 10% of your first purchase and show your support for the show, or thanks to Squarespace for their support of this show and all of Relay. It's time for the rumor roundup. Yeah. Got a couple of stories today. Mark German at Bloomberg is reporting on Apple's plans for a version of Siri that is more conversational and powered by their own large language model. This version of Siri would expect to be more human-like in conversation and be more capable of handling complex queries more quickly. So while this would be debuted as part of iOS 19 at WWDC, most likely, but like how Apple has been rolling out up intelligence so far, this would be part of a point release down the road, Mark German believes that it would ship in 2026, probably in the spring. So, that's a long time from now. It's like 18 months from now, 18 months from now. Maybe good Siri. Yeah. And separately, Mark German was talking on threads about how this is what we can expect from Apple going forward is to be rolling out their features over a longer period of time. Which, I think there is something good to that. There is merit to that. But this to me is like, there's been so much to in throwing the like, is Apple behind? Is everybody else truly behind? Did Apple get just the right features? Like to me, this it shows that they are behind. Like an LLM powered Siri is what should have shipped now. That should be shipping now. Yeah, I think that one of the advantages Apple has is that if it turns out that these gains in AI models are becoming more limited, which is one story that's out there, that the AI companies are struggling to make their models better now, that they've hit a wall or maybe at least it's harder. Okay. If that's true, then that's gonna be great for Apple because Apple will be able to catch up. And also if there are places where everybody realizes, oh, you know, AI models aren't good for this. Apple will be like, great, we're not just not gonna even do that. We never had to do that. We never pretended to do that. Great. So that's fine. You're right in the sense that I think when everybody thought about Apple doing AI, everybody, I don't know about everybody, lots of us thought, oh good, fix Siri. Now this was the logical thing. Like this was the obvious thing. It's like we were talking about Siri as a chat bot from months before WWE see this, yeah. Now, it's possible that with App Intense and your personal data being queried, your semantic index and all that, that Siri will get better this spring, but it won't be what we thought Siri would be, which is more conversational. And even if you use, I mean, I don't know, they may make it so that like, if you query chat GPT automatically, it'll give you some things back that are better, but like- Which it does. But I think you're right, which is this shows a place where Apple really does feel like it's way behind. If the first thing that a lot of us think of as being the benefit of large language models is you could make Siri more conversational and have knowledge of our history of our conversation and be able to give me answers in better ways. And what we're sort of getting is things that aren't that, things that feel like they come from the earlier days of the AI craze. And the thing that really seems the most obvious is not just shipping, you know, it's not just going to be announced next June, but even then we're not going to actually see it until more than a year from now. That's tough, that's rough. - So this LLM powered version of the Apple Assistant should be able to build on the work that was ship as part of iOS 18, so the Appintense, but this should be able to do better. - Sure, should we connect Appintense? Of course, great. - And even though Apple will continue to have their partnership with OpenAI and probably Google too, and maybe others, the expectation is over time that they will need to rely on them less and less with this LLM version of Siri. This is what it should be, but it isn't. And it's like, wow, that's going to be a long time, you know? - Yeah, yeah, that's, I do wonder if their term solution is to pipe these things through to the other LLMs, right? Also, it's really funny. We're still talking about maybe Google. Like, don't even know what's going on there, but it's really interesting that it may just be that Apple has decided they want to ship their integration with one partner and make sure it actually works. And then it actually kind of a classic move, right? Which is we're going to build our initial launch of how this works, and then we'll open it up to third parties. Thinking of OpenAI as it's weird, it is a third party, but it's like a first party implementation. It's an Apple implementation of how you work with an external chat bot in iOS or in Mac OS, right? Or either way. And so they, maybe their approach is really like, look, we're just going to launch this with OpenAI so that it makes sense and it works. And then we can use it with other providers and we'll get them in here. Maybe that's it, maybe their negotiations going on. I don't know, but I find it really funny that they're still talking about maybe Google, and there's just nothing that has come out about that or any other potential partner other than Apple's intent to have more partners than just OpenAI. But maybe you use that to prop it up a little bit and say, you know, allow Siri to relay my request to OpenAI, you know, and you log in and you say, don't ask me, and then maybe you could get something that is at least a little bit better than the existing Siri experience, but I don't know. I mean, it's not going to be based on your personal context. That's the whole point, right? Is that you want an intelligent Siri who knows all your personal context, and it sounds like it's going to be the kind of dumb Siri with a smart personal context backing instead for the next year. - Macromas is reporting on an analyst note from Jeff Poo who says that he expects the iPhone 17 air would be the thinnest iPhone Apple has ever made. So this is the thin version of the iPhone 17. The iPhone 6 currently holds this title coming in at 6.9 millimeters. This phone is expected to be just over 6 millimeters. So it will be the thinnest phone ever. And as the current thinnest iPhone that you can buy right now is the iPhone 16, which is 7.8 millimeters. - I can't wait for Bendgate 2025. It's going to be awesome. Bendgate. - Oh boy. - Yeah, baby. - Here we go. - Bring it back. - It's done. - Mm, it's fine. I think, so Mark Gurman had some color about this this week talking about how he put it firmly in the context of Apple trying to find another iPhone that isn't the iPhone base model. And there's the mini and then there was the plus. His narrative is fascinating because he suggests first off, he suggests that loud Mac podcasters bullied Apple into releasing the iPhone mini. This loud Mac podcast, if you'd call me that, said that they shouldn't. So yeah, I was like, big fun, let's go, big fun. - And I, look, do things we say sometimes have an impact on what Apple does? I guess, sure, but for the iPhone at this scale of like, I'm skeptical of that, but what I also think is funny is that he's like, oh, a podcaster, so they would get the mini and that didn't work. And then he's just like, and also then they tried the plus and that also didn't work. It's like, yeah, I mean, this is not a story about podcasters hoodwicking Apple into making a smaller phone. It's that Apple has some specific sales goals for what that alternate iPhone product should be. Like, if we're gonna go to the trouble of making it, it should sell at this level. And clearly making it smaller or bigger didn't satisfy. So what are they gonna do now? Thinner, they're trying a different dimension. And they're gonna see how this one works. And we'll see. I also saw some skepticism. I mean, German said, I don't think it's gonna make a difference. I mean, he's entering pundit territory there, right? Which is very different. He has the best sources. His punditry is, it's just punditry, it's fine. But he's like, I don't think anything's gonna move the needle here until the folding phone. And I think he's probably right on a large scale. But I think that thinness has a different kind of appeal than bigger or smaller. And I love that they're trying this because what they're trying is to redefine what table stakes are in an iPhone. And it's gonna be, like I saw somebody on some social media network who even knows anymore. Which one, who can tell who is like, I'm really skeptical about this stupid thin iPhone because you're gonna lose multiple zoom levels. And it's only gonna, the one that made me laugh is it's only gonna have one speaker. It's not gonna have stereo speakers. And I'm like, if there's something I don't care about on my iPhone, it's the stereo speakers. But okay, okay. But this is the point is I love the idea that Apple's gonna throw out a bunch of stuff in order to get, it's the ultimate Johnny Ive impulse, right? In order to get this thing to be as thin as possible. But what they're not gonna do is make it the main iPhone. At least not yet. They're going to make it this thin alternative. I like that idea because I wonder if some people will look at it and be like, ooh, I like that one in a way that without another object for size reference you couldn't do with the other phones, right? They're literally, oh, it's an iPhone. How is it different? Well, this one's slightly bigger or slightly smaller. This one should be much more visibly different. I think that's interesting. It's worth a try. Is it gonna create a huge spike in iPhone sales? I don't think so. - It will move people around. I don't think this one. I think a folding phone could. Like a folding iPhone could bring new people in. - I agree. I think what it might do is solve Apple's problem of how you have another phone in the line, right? That the Mini and the Plus didn't solve. I think maybe having a phone that is different in some ways and has different trade-offs, probably more expensive than you'd think, and different trade-offs is going to maybe entice some people and also move people around. But I also agree, I mean, a thing that we said here a few months ago is if you're making a folding phone, everything in the individual planes of that phone has to get way thinner. Making a thinner iPhone is a good waypoint on the way to making a folding iPhone. And preparing people for what the trade-offs might be of a folding iPhone. That we may not be able to get that 5X camera in there on a folding phone, get used to it. So I think this product, it's not gonna change the world. It's not gonna generate a giant spike in iPhone sales. This is all true. But I'm pretty positive about it being, I like that they're trying it and I think it's got a better chance of success than the Mini or the Plus do. But we'll see. - Jason we're gonna do some upstream. - Oh, that's nice. - Oh, that's nice. - That's nice. People should tune in to downstream, by the way, a podcast. I do with a rotating group of interesting people about the future, president and future of television. - There will be a link in the show notes, but you can also find downstream wherever you get your podcasts. Downstream is like a fun thing where I've never been part of a show that has had a spin-off, right? - Yeah. - It was manifested by the ghost of Federico Future too. But yeah, when we spun it right off. - But I think that's very fun and it's a great show. But anyway, what I wanna talk about here is there's two pieces of Apple TV news. The first is in speaking to Deadline, writer and director of Wolfs. That's the George Clooney and Brad Pitt movie. John Watts has shared that he does not want to continue working with an Apple for a potential sequel. Watts was very unhappy that Apple decided to change course on a theatrical release. They're originally gonna make a theatrical release. And then- - The last minute with one week's warning, they told the creative people involved that they weren't gonna bother. - Yep. And this was very upsetting to all of the people involved. - 'Cause movie people want their movies and movie theaters. They do, that's just you gotta deal with that. - Yep, just in case, if you don't know who John Watts is, like, he made the Spider-Man movies. - He did all the Spider-Man movies. - He's a big deal, director. - Yeah. - And he was gonna do the Fantastic Four movie, but didn't, and then one of the things he did was this instead. I think maybe, was she gonna make that decision? - I don't know. But anyway, so when this was going to be announced that they were gonna be canceling the theatrical release, Watts asked Apple to not mention that there was a sequel in development, which was something that, apparently during the development of Wolfs, Apple liked it so much that they said, "We wanna do another one." And Watts was like, "Okay." And they started work on that too. But then when they were gonna change coarseness, it's like, please don't say about this, but Apple did. And I actually heard some reporting, I saw some thoughts on this from Matt Bellany, who's the host of "The Town" and "Rights at Park," where he was saying when he heard about the sequel, he didn't think that sequel was ever gonna happen, because the movie didn't seem like it was gonna perform very well, especially if they took out the theaters. And he believed that this was Apple trying to kind of make Watts feel better, but now Watts has this alternate story, which I'm more inclined to believe, 'cause this is coming from here. It's just speculation from Bellany's part. - Exactly, exactly. It feels to me like Apple wanted to, Apple changed direction, and we're gonna get to the other story about this too. 'Cause this is all about Apple TV Plus, but it's really about the film division, which is really interesting because the TV division, I think, is doing a great job, and the film division is completely confused and lost. And in this scenario, what they're trying to do is save face. So they're like, "Yeah, we're not gonna do a theatrical release, but we love the movie, and we've already commissioned work on a sequel." And they're trying to do that to save face, and I do believe they're actually trying to save face for the creative partners of the movie, including the actors and the writer and director, saying we're not unhappy, even if they have no intent of actually funding the sequel. I think they mentioned the sequel because they wanted to soften the blow and make it seem like they were still very confident in these actors. - The reason we do this is not because the movie's bad. It's just the message they're trying to get across. - But they also wanna make it that people don't feel like the movie's gonna be a stinker, so it's also self-serving. But what it does do, if Watts asks you not to mention it, you gotta not mention it if you wanna have good relationships with people in Hollywood, 'cause this is the result. You gotta have, or you have a conversation saying John, we really like to mention it because it's like a boost to the release of this, but obviously he's so mad at this point. And this, we talked about this in the upstream segment before, and certainly on downstream, that a lot of people who make movies in Hollywood, they want theatrical releases, and they don't love the idea that the money that they're getting to make their movie, which is great, they love the money, that those companies aren't that into theatrical. Now, we could actually make an argument that a lot of this stuff probably should get a theatrical release because it's more, it's marketing for when it comes on streaming. But, opinions vary. Netflix doesn't want to do it. And also, the argument is, by the way, I think a strong argument that Wolfe was not gonna do well, and that Apple probably made the right business decision to do this, but the problem is they treated it like a product launch and not like a creative endeavor, where there are, the fact is, there are people who are very creative stars and writers and stuff, and they don't hurt their feelings because you do need to work with them and all of their colleagues, and it's a different dynamic than it is in the tech industry. Maybe it shouldn't be, either way, maybe you should be nicer to your tech workers. - I think that the way that Hollywood works is the way that a lot of things work, where it's about personalities. - And relationships. - Relationships. - Personalities and relationships. - 'Cause the problem is, when you don't, when you kind of like go against somebody's wishes, you end up with a quote like this, Apple didn't counsel the Wolfe sequel. I did, because I no longer trusted them as a creative partner. Now that's bad news for new directors that Apple wanna get on board. - That is. There will always be people who will take your money, and I think that there will be people who will take your money. Also, this is, I saw somebody who said, this is just devastating for Apple, and their reputation is ruined, and I'm like, every studio does stuff like this. And then they have to mend fences. Every studio does stuff like this. - 'Cause there's definitely a director that they're currently trying to sign on who just saw this headline, and now it's a bit like, and that's not what you want. - It's not what you want. It's, yeah, so part of this is, Apple seems to have really not handled, I mean, they didn't handle this situation well from a personal management standpoint, which in Hollywood is important, and it does smack a little bit of higher ups in the corporate structure saying, just do it. But at the same time, if you're the people in charge of Apple's films, and John Watts says, "Don't mention the sequel," and he's the one who's working on the sequel, you gotta not mention the sequel. I'm sorry, you gotta not mention it. That is like, you've already angered him. You've already betrayed him essentially by unilaterally pulling the theatrical release right before it's coming out, which is something that probably everybody working on the project hung their hats on. They're like, "Yeah, well, we're gonna give "a theatrical release, it's fine." And we can debate separately about what the theatrical makes sense or not for a movie like this, it's fine. - It doesn't matter, you said you would. - People want it to be in the cinema 'cause it makes them feel good. - Absolutely, and it's not a TV movie, it's just a movie, and then it's also on streaming, but they get that movie experience and they feel better about it. And again, we can debate the logic of that, but it doesn't matter, feelings matter, relationships matter, they had this situation, they made this decision where it basically feels like a betrayal. And then on top of that, when one of the people who feels betrayed says, "Don't mention this thing "in your press release," and you just go ahead and mention it anyway, it's a double betrayal. It's very bad, don't do this. So I mean, maybe there'll be an explanation at some point where they're like, "Oh, it's not," it didn't really kind of come down that way, but I think from John Watts' perspective, it certainly did, and if Apple blew this, I don't know whether they blew it because they miscommunicated or because they misunderstood, they might have an excuse, but they blew it, and it makes it harder for them to work with creative people in the future. And ultimately, basically, it means that either they're going to have to have more ironclad promises about theatrical, or they're gonna have to pay more money to outbid their competitors who are maybe more viewed as more trustworthy until they betray their people, too, 'cause again, studios betray people. - And the whole point of this is they're spending too much money, right? So like that doesn't even work. - Which brings us to our other story that we wanna talk about here, because what's going on at Apple in the film division is they have decided, and there is prior reporting about basically Tim Cook and Eddie Q sending the message down saying how we're doing films is broken and doesn't make any sense from business perspective when we're spending a lot way too much money, all of which I'd say is true, all of which is true, right? Like they, I mean, they got Academy Awards and all that, that's great, but like, their movie strategies never really made sense, other than viewing it as they wanna work with famous people and get award nominations, but from a business perspective, I don't think it's ever really made sense. I don't think spending all the money that they've done on Napoleon and stuff like that. Like I just don't think that it's made a lot of sense, and they are started to pivot. The challenge is I think that pivot is what caused them to treat wolves the way they did, right? The challenge is that the pipeline is so long for movies that you can change your whole strategy, but you still got movies. They still got that F1 movie. - That one's different. I do think that one's different. - Yeah, well, it's part, it's something that they've, that they can handle in their new strategy, but the point is they've changed and it doesn't matter that you've got these things going on. So I think the idea in the future that they need to do fewer movies and lower budget movies and occasional tent poles like the F1 movie is probably a better approach for them. And then this piece from Lucas Shaw at Bloomberg, an excellent reporter, great newsletter about the entertainment business. Talking about how Apple is now looking at licensing those original films to other streamers. And the idea there is that right now the lifespan of a movie like Napoleon is it's in theaters and then it's on Apple TV or it's in theaters and then there's a pay window where you can like rent it or buy it on iTunes and Amazon or wherever. But then it lives as a streamer on Apple TV plus. And what this report suggests is that they're gonna take those movies that they kind of have endless eternal streaming rights to and they're going to do what honestly every other company is doing, which is saying yeah, this movie is now worth more if it's on, it's worth more to us if it's also on Netflix than if it just stays on Apple TV plus because there comes a time where everybody who's on your service has seen it, who's going to watch it. And there's a whole audience at Netflix or wherever who has not seen it and it has value over there. And so you end up having this idea that, well, early days of the streaming wars was I'm gonna take my ball and go home. It's just gonna be me. You have to come to my service to get it. And then in this next era of the streaming wars it's like, oh, yeah, that doesn't actually, I need money. Let's license this out after all because our exclusive, and it's leading to a new concept which is that it's actually an old concept but they brought it back, which is they pay the money for it, they get it. They get it to premiere it, it's on their service, it's got their logos on it and all that. And then after some window of time, it goes other places and makes more money 'cause that's how you make money on TV shows and movies is continuing to sell them later. And there have been many successes where shows that have been on one streamer, TV shows, but movies are probably the case too. And then they go on Netflix and it's like it's a new show. And there's like, it becomes a hit. And it's because there's lots of people who have Netflix and they don't have your service and it's new to them. - Yeah, it's worth noting that at the moment, this licensing is for locations where Apple isn't with Apple TV Plus. - Sure. - But the expectation is from Luca Shaw and basically everybody else, that would just be the start of this. Like they can make money doing this, they should do this. And like there was, it makes sense, right? Like let's imagine you've got a new season of "For All Mankind" coming, you could put the first three seasons on Netflix and then maybe people will come to Apple TV Plus to watch the most recent one, right? This is what other people do. There's a reason you do it because Netflix is television. Why aren't you not gonna put your television show on television? Like sometimes you kinda gotta just deal with it. - I wanna correct you on something there though. This report does not say that Apple is planning on doing that with its TV shows. This is for movies. - Yeah, yeah, sorry, yeah. But you got my point though, yeah. In the long run it'd be all of it, right? In the long run or, here's the other thing though, in the long run Apple could do that. But Apple's priorities are a little bit different. It could take a season "For All Mankind" or whatever. Also those are, at some point they have to pay, it's like with Ted Lasso. The stuff that they don't produce themselves, they do have a license for. At some point that's why it goes on Blu-ray or DVD and stuff like that eventually is because they don't, they don't have that. At some point they have to say, we don't wanna keep paying to have C on Apple TV Plus. And then the studio that made C can go take it somewhere. - Man, I forgot about C. - C, Jason Momoa. - Jason Momoa. - I watched the season of that. It was okay, I never went back to it though. - Didn't like it. - But they spent a fortune on it, right? So they could do that. But there definitely is a scenario where Apple looks at this stuff and says, let's just put it on Netflix. There's also a scenario where Apple says, our fast, so for people who don't listen to downstream, free ad supported television. This is like Tooby and Pluto TV. - Tooby. - And Amazon had freebie, but they're just converting it to there's a free tier of stuff at Prime Video. Apple could do that, right? Like they've experimented with this a little bit, but like it wouldn't be hard for Apple to just say the entire first season of "For All Mankind" is free in the TV app, wherever you are, right? They could do some of that of granting of early seasons and just say they're out there for free, but you gotta watch them on Apple. They could do that, they could even do that with ads if they really wanted to, right? Which might be an alternative to building an ad, a paid ad tier is to put a bunch of stuff up on a free tier with ads. They could do that too. So we'll see what they do with that. But the movies is the start of this, which is, and again, I think this is just part of a grander plan, which is our movie strategy is totally broken. Let's recast it. And all of these things are feeding into that, which is, and I agree, I think the individual movies they made with wolves, bad moves. Like bad moves from a relationship perspective could have been handled better. Not saying that they weren't right business wise could have been handled better, but I think that they are coming from a place which is they flailed and were like, "Quick, movies, ah!" And made some bad decisions. And now that's the part of the business that the higher ups are like, "This is not working, we need to get better at this." And we'll see. I mean, we'll see. We'll see if Apple really, movies on streaming are a problem, right? I mean, movies on streaming are, I don't think people have cracked it like they have TV. I think that there are successes and also lots and lots of failures. And I think there's even an argument to be made that streaming is fundamentally better at TV and that making movie quality TV is what the movies are and that people like novels better than short stories and TV is novels and people like those better than short stories, so maybe more TV and fewer movies is really the future and that's just how it is. That's an argument, but whatever movies are and whatever blockbusters are and whatever small films are and also niche like your hallmarks of the world and horror movies and thrillers and stuff like that. Like, I feel like nobody's really cracked it with streaming. So we'll see what they do, but Apple's taken another crack at it. And we'll see, you know, we'll see if it works or not. Certainly I think their goal is for it to cost less than whatever they're doing now. - This episode is brought to you by FitBod. If you're looking to change your fitness level, getting started can be tough. That's why I'm pleased to let you know that FitBod is an easy and affordable way to build a fitness plan that is made for you because everybody has their own path to personal fitness. So FitBod makes sure to customize the experience to suit you. They want to adapt as you improve. This makes every workout challenging and also interesting pushing you to make the progress that you're looking for on your own fitness journey. You'll see the best results when a workout program is tailored to meet you with your body, your experience, your equipment you have, your environment, your goals. FitBod stores all of this in your FitBod gym profile, which it uses to track your muscle recovery. This makes sure that you avoid burnout and keep up your momentum. Your muscles improve when they work together. So overworking some more underworking others can negatively impact results, which is why FitBod tracks this and designs a well-balanced workout routine. You're not going to get bored because the app will mix up your workouts with new exercises, rep schemes, supersets and circuits. And every new exercise that you get, you get videos that show you how to do it. They have more than a thousand demonstration videos in the app. These videos are shot from multiple angles, gives you the confidence that you need to learn a new exercise. That's important to me. So I'd love it when FitBod suggests something new to me that I have the ability to actually learn it first. And so I feel confident in the exercises that I'm doing. The FitBod app is really easy to use. They have progress tracking charts, weekly reports and sharing cards. And it also integrates if you're an Apple Watch or where a smartwatch and other apps as well like Strava Fitbit and Apple Health. Personally, training of this quality can be expensive. FitBod is just 1299 a month or 7999 a year, but you can get a whole 25% of your membership by signing up at fitbod.me/upgrade. So go now and get your customized fitness plan at fitbod.me/upgrade. Once again, that is fitbod.me/upgrade for 25% of your membership. Thanks to FitBod for the support of this show and relay. So you wrote an article back world as part of your column that you do for them every week? - Every other week. - Every other week. - That's tough. - You wrote this column about essentially the App Store era must end is the kind of the line here which I love. - There I said it. - And you are in this article kind of outlying the fact that the way that the iPhone App Store works and is controlled isn't and shouldn't have to be the only model, we can also have the Mac model, right? Like that's kind of what you're laying out. - Yep, that's it. - Why did you wanna write this now? - It's funny 'cause I've had this, so I have a reminders list of story ideas. And it's funny 'cause sometimes there are lots and sometimes there are none. And when I'm reviewing and when I'm doing the OS updates and all of those things in the fall, that list gets long of ideas I have. Like literally this was me pressing the action button on my iPhone and saying the Mac is the model into it at one point and then it sat there for weeks because I was busy with so many other things. Also in that list, there's like, oh, here's a little blog post I could do. And then some of them are like, that is a Mac world pundit column. So some of those end up on six colors, but I always wanna have those in reserve. So I knew I had this one coming up and I was like, okay, now's the time to do this thing. And what's funny about it is the thought I had, I was listening probably to some podcasts like Connected or ATP or something like that, where people were talking about the EU and Apple's various things that they were doing and or you know, app getting rejected for this and they're gonna try to do this and all of that. And I just had a moment, I don't even remember what the conversation was, but I had a moment where I just got kind of mad and I thought, what are we doing here? Why is it that any of us accept that we spend $1,000 on a device that is basically a computer that runs software? That's what it is. Let's not pretend that it's something else. It's a computer that runs software, third party software written by other people, just like a personal computer was in 1980. It's literally somebody else wrote you a program and now you can run it. It's not any different functionally. We know people who write these programs, they write them, we run them on our devices. And how have we gotten to a point where so many people just accept that if the maker of the device doesn't want you to use that thing anymore or doesn't want it to have that particular feature or anything like that, there's no recourse and you just can't use it. And I just had that little flair of anger of sort of like, why are we, why, why? Why do we talk about this so much? Why do we go through all of these intricate details of well, it violated this rule and, but it's just, and then the press got hold of it and then they said it was okay because they didn't want the bad publicity but it shows you how much power that Apple has over its platform. So that's where it started, is just me feeling like, wait a second. Look, I was a kid when the first personal computers came out and so I do remember that moment that most people younger than me don't have, which is like the moment when computers became a thing, I was, I was young, but there was a moment where in my, I don't know, fourth grade classroom, there was a computer and I, and it was like, whoa. I mean, my life was changed in that moment. But until the app store, like we all knew how computers worked, which is you could put, you could get programs and run them. - For good and for us. - Yeah, and Apple, one of the things I mentioned in the article is Apple was trying to solve some very particular problems. First off, the iPhone happened so quickly that like, they were still putting it together. Even after they announced it, they were still putting it together. I, you know, when I used the original iPhone in the demo room on the day that they announced it at Mackerel Expo, the next day, I guess, I had one in my hand and I tapped on the Notes app and it was a screenshot of the Notes app. It was like, oh yeah, yeah, it's not done. It's not even close to them. It was gonna ship six months later, right? And so at the time we all asked like, what about third party apps? And they're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That was the sweet solution, which is you use Safari. But the real answer was like, they didn't even know how they were building their apps yet. They were still figuring it all out. The last thing they could do is that made that available to third parties. They did the App Store the next year. The App Store for people who don't know or remember this, the App Store is a hack. It is based on iTunes. They literally, if you ever wondered, I mean, it's actually a decision that completely distorted how the app market worked because it's a system designed to sell 99 cents singles. - Yep. - And for expediency's sake, they cloned that and turned it into the App Store. It's why iTunes Connect or App Store Connect was so bad for so long because they don't really care about the uploads from record labels or developers. - So why the store looked and looks like it does to this day. There are still elements of that. Why was driven by sales charts for so long? - Yeah. - Like, why would you even have charts? - Yeah, hit singles is the answer. - Yeah. - So a lot of Apple's early decisions were about expediency. So fair enough. But what happened is over time, Apple realized, I mean, even though the financial decisions to say, look, we've wired it so that you can just buy these apps right using your credit card that we've got. Again, iTunes, it's the whole idea. And they're like, well, okay. So there need to be an app purchases and subscriptions. It all kind of evolved from there. But it was all coming out of that original idea of like, we just want to make it easy. But there was also this aspect which was, I think coming from a place of, we barely started with this thing. We don't even know what it's going to be. We're going to make a vending machine for apps. And that's what we're going to do. But over time, Apple saw their control of the platform as a benefit and their control over the financial transactions in the platform as a benefit. And that has led to a decade or more of rent seeking and rejections and deciding, you know, creating arbitrary rules and say, we just don't want this kind of app in our platform. And there being no recourse. And one of the reasons that this makes me angry is, and we'll get to the Mac in a second, but like on the Mac, if you have an idea for an app that will run on the Mac, you just can make it. And you might want to put it in the Mac App Store, but if Apple looks at it and goes like, yeah, actually you're doing this thing that we have decided the Mac App Store apps can't do. So you can't be in the Mac App Store. You go, okay, and you put it somewhere else. You sell it yourself. You do whatever. It's not a problem. It's like, it's literally not a problem. On iOS, there's no step two. - Oh, like Apple changes a rule, right? Which is the thing that they have done over the time of the Mac App Store. - They have. Or in some cases, it turns out they changed a rule and then they changed it back. So that apps have to exit the App Store. That's happened recently, which is really interesting. They're like, they made it, they greased the skids to get somebody in the App Store. And then later they were like, no, that time is over. And you're like, okay, bye. - See ya. - But on iOS, you can't do it. On iOS, just think about this for a second. On iOS, if you have an idea for an app, that's a great idea. You can't just make it. You have to stop and say, will this get approved? And there's no pre-approval. You have to decide if you're gonna spend money or time in large amounts to make an app that if Apple decides it doesn't run in the store, can't be distributed to anyone forever. And it's not like you can turn around and run it on Windows or run it on Android. Like you built an iOS app. It's gone. As a result, it's not just the rejections. The rejections that we hear about are from people who thought it was fine. And they were doing the right thing and they were following the rules. Those are the rejections we hear about. What we don't hear about are the thousands of app ideas that died because somebody said, I don't trust that Apple will allow this. So we'll just not bother. And that makes the whole thing poor. And all of this is solved. If there's another option beyond the app store, it's not killing the app store, it's another option beyond the app store. So the Mac is the answer. And that's why I wrote the Mac as the model. That's why I shouted it into my phone when I had this thought. Mac is the model. It's because here's the thing. A lot of the stuff we criticize Apple about, there are people who are like Apple's biggest fans. And think Apple is the greatest. And yet there's this weird effect where if there's something Apple isn't doing, immediately Apple becomes completely incapable of solving the problem, right? They're the greatest company ever at everything they do, but the things they don't do, it's because they're completely just incapable of solving that problem. It's a weird kind of fandom that I see from some people. And with this one, though, Apple's already solved this problem. Apple solved this problem in, I think it's like 2017. There were abouts 2018. Apple introduced Notarization. Apple wanted to bring App Store level security to the Mac, which is an open platform, so they can't close it off. They could, but I don't think it would work. I think people would revolt if they did that. And there was an executive who stood on stage at WWDC in San Jose and said we will never prevent you from running software you wanna run on your Mac. So what they did was they built the Notarization system, which is a whole thing, right? Like it's a system where you are already a registered developer or you register as a developer and you get your developer keychain. And then you can sign your app and you send it into this automated system and Apple scans it from malware and Apple signs it, which has the effect of meaning that it can't be tampered with after the fact or the signature doesn't match and it breaks. So it adds a whole layer of security. And then there's a setting on the Mac that says, "Do I wanna run apps from just the App Store?" Or by default, App Store and authorized developers are authenticated developers, is trusted developers, or something like that. Well, I mean, first off, there you've got it. You've got a solution that's outside the App Store approved by Apple where Apple is checking for the worst stuff but it gives more flexibility beyond the App Store policies. It's right there. And then on top of that, there is still the, if you say, yeah, but Apple still has to be a part of the process, you can still run software that is notarized. It's harder than it used to be for some good reasons because if you view it as, these are the steps that a malware person, phone scammer is going to talk your parent, your elderly parent or grandparent into doing in a scam call. You want as many barriers up as possible. But in the end, if I wanna run make MKV on my Mac and it's not signed, it's not notarized, I can do it. It's just a bunch of steps. Okay. That's where we are with the Mac. There's the multiple circles of trust. The inner circle is the App Store. The next circle out is notarization. And then the furthest one out is good luck, you know? God be with you. - Just under notarization thing. Never not funny and awkward that it's gatekeeper on the Mac is the name of the system that can determine whether an app can run. It's like part of it, but it's like always funny to me. It is called gatekeeper. - And gatekeeper originated earlier, 'cause gatekeeper is the thing that was there from an earlier point where the first launch, it tells you, you downloaded this thing from this website at this time. Do you wanna launch this first time out of the box? That's gatekeeper. But now it's also doing the, no, it's not notarized. You can't run this at all kind of thing. That's all in there. - And also is the kill switch, right? Like there is the kill switch exists. Well, like if Apple can kind of kill off an app. - 'Cause the kill switch is after first launch, they can just kill it. - Yeah. - And there's X Protect and all, there's a bunch of different stuff in there. But it's the reason why if you can get through the security prompts and launch an app that's not signed for the first time, it'll run every time after that. Because gatekeeper is a first launch kind of thing. But they have other things that they can do to scan stuff. So this is, my point is, Apple's most recent model of app security is a multi-layered approach that begins with an curated app store and then expands. So the app store model is not Apple's most recent take. Apple's most recent take is the Mac. The Mac, and that's why the Mac is the model. The Mac is Apple's approach to how you have an open software platform that still has a level of curation from the platform owner and levels of security that are available. They built it because they had to figure out, well, they don't have to, but they wanted very badly to have some way to make the Mac have some of the positive effects of security and control that the app store on iOS had. And yet they knew that they couldn't stick everybody in the Mac app store for lots of reasons. So they built this other really clever thing. What's interesting is, as the DMA has come down on them in the EU, Apple has stolen pieces of the Mac model as needed to backfill. So there is a notarization system in the EU alternative app store's thing. Now, they had that one moment where they tried to deny somebody notarization because they didn't like the policies, which I believe the EC immediately said, no, that is not allowed. You cannot do that. You can only use this for security reasons. I find that deeply troubling because up till then, notarization has had a complete clean, I mean, when they introduced it for the Mac, we're all like, is this de facto authorization of apps on Mac OS? And it's turned out it isn't. But they have at least once in the EU for iOS, at least briefly tried to use notarization as a way to reject things outside the app store. But if we leave that aside, there is a model here that allows people freedom. It allows developers something that is a fallback that gets them on the platform, even if it's outside of Apple's good graces. And ultimately, if there's a user who really, really wants it that lets them execute arbitrary code, that comes from wherever, if they step through all the hoops. And to me, Apple solved, this is a solved problem. And when I look to the future, I feel like this is the future that every device should be like this, including the iPhone and the iPad. Because if you just wanna use apps from the app store, go ahead and use them. But we are all poorer when app developers are unable to write software that they wanna write, because it might not be approved. And separately, when they don't have the option of linking out to their website, because the web is a thing. And yet, Apple is so terrified of making things, linking to the web, because they're afraid that services will not give Apple a cut of that revenue. And I think this is all part of the same thing. Whereas Apple could compete. And I think Apple should compete. But when I've talked about this, I've had a bunch of people ask, well, why wouldn't Apple wanna compete? And the answer is something that we said, I think it was a title even, which is if you're the umpire and you own the field and the stadium and everything, right? Like, why compete if you don't have to? Like, bottom line is it's better to have no competition. It's, yeah, you don't have to work hard and all the money just keeps pouring in. But Apple should have to compete and still has a great advantaged position because they're the platform owner and they're Apple and they're trusted by the users. And there's lots of reasons to think that Apple would do just fine in this model. But the Mac is where they actually, it actually already works. And I've heard people say, well, yeah, but the Mac App Store is so bad, would you want the iOS App Store to be like that? And my thought to that is Mac App Store is so bad because Apple doesn't put a lot of effort into the Mac App Store. And I think Apple would put effort into the iOS App Store and want to keep as many of the apps in there as possible. - And so with developers, there are a lot of developers that would not want to leave the iOS App Store. It doesn't look like they just wouldn't. Like if you are a free app, like, why would you be anywhere else? - No, and that's the model. Again, the model is the best place to be is in the inner circle where everything works and even if your administrator locks down your phone and says like they do with Macs and say only App Store apps, it's fine, like you can live that way. And that's where you want to be. But if you're that developer with that great idea or a business model that's very different, to have the ability to say, okay, we didn't, it didn't work with Apple. So we're just going to release this on our own. It doesn't necessarily have to be like, you might want to be in the App Store, but it doesn't work out. Okay, right, Plan B, it's fine, it's fine, but there has to be a Plan B. And in the, I would actually argue that in the EU, my problem with the way the EU stuff is implemented right now is that it's through these App Mark places where you're just replacing one curator with another. - Yeah, it's not bad. - And I hate that, like in the end, if I'm a developer of software and I want it to be available, I don't want to have to work with a marketplace. I want to make it available however I choose. - There are a piece of the puzzle, not the solution, right? - Correct. - You can have other App Marketplace, this day, it's just in the Mac, like set app, right? It offers like a completely different business model, or maybe you want that model, or maybe you don't, or maybe you just want to offer your app on your website. Right, then that's the end of it. - Yeah, and you should be able to. So, I mean, in the end, this is where, this is the thing that made me kind of like angry and then also made me laugh, is that Apple solved this. They just, why have they not put that on iOS? And the answer is people will be like, "Oh, it's because it would be madness, "and there would be security and blah, blah, blah." Like, no, no. The reason it's not on iOS is that nobody's forcing them, except in the EU, nobody's forcing them to do any of this. Why compete if you don't have to? Why not just have complete control over your platform? Because Apple built a system that does this, that lets them have their App Store and a Notarization step, and then an open step beyond that that's hard to get to. They built the system for the Mac, and I would say, I think it works pretty well. So the only reason they're not doing it is because they don't have to, and why would they bother? Because they have complete control and huge financial leverage, and so it makes them a lot of money and it allows them to completely dictate what goes on their platform and treat, and this is an important point, and treat all third party app developers as if they were Apple employees. Because if you're an app developer, even our indie friends, okay, apologies for going on a rant here, but our indie app developer friends aren't indie. They work for Apple. They work for Apple because if Apple tells them to jump, they have to say how high, they have to, or they can't be on the platform. So essentially, Apple, they have to follow Apple's rules. They get paid by Apple, right, 'cause Apple takes the money. They get paid by Apple. Their customers aren't their customers. The only thing is that they don't get to charge Apple an hourly rate. Instead, Apple just takes their 15 or 30%, but they're essentially working for Apple, and that's how Apple wants it. But that's not how it should be. Bottom line is that's not how it should be. And I've already seen some people push back on this line of thinking and say, well, just go get Android. And they're like, first off, Google is not a saint here, but yes, you could do that. You could go to Android and there are some other options out there. Okay, but that doesn't really solve this point, which is the iPhone is an influential and important platform. And Apple has just decided to keep it locked down in a way that I think is wrong. Like bottom line, it's bad for everybody, except for some revenue and control at Apple. And I think it needs to end. I don't want the future to look like the iPhone. That's the bottom line is I, all my entire thought process about this is where do I want computers? And the iPhone is a computer and the iPad is a computer. Where do I want them to go in the 21st century? And where I don't want them to go is where the maker of the computer has complete control over what you do with it. I don't want that to be the future. I want it to be balanced. I don't want it to be like, man, desktop Linux, woo! Like I don't want that. I want it to be balanced. I want it to be safe. I want it to be secure. I want it to be good. But none of that requires the level of power and control that Apple exerts over iOS. None of it is required. It's just, we look at it and we think it's required because that's the way it's always been. That's not the case. And the Mac shows us why it's not. - This episode is brought to you by Data Citizens Dialogue. As a listener of upgrade, you know that data is shaping our world today. If you're ready for a deeper dive into the latest hot topics in data, you need to listen to the Data Citizens Dialogue podcast brought to you by Calibra, the leader in data intelligence. In every episode of Data Citizens Dialogue, industry leaders unpack data's impact on the world from big, quick, big picture questions like AI governance and data sharing to more nuanced questions, like how do we balance offense and defense in data management? You'll hear firsthand insights about the data conversations affecting all kinds of industries. And you can expect guests sharing unique stories from some of the world's largest companies, like Adobe, Fidelity Investments, Deloitte, Hewlett-Packard, McDonald's and even the US Coast Guard. I listened to an episode yesterday about how using data effectively and efficiently is improving healthcare and memorial care. I really enjoyed how the episode featured the people that are actually implementing the technologies that they've talked about because then they can bring practical examples of the work that they've done and the challenges that they've faced, as well as keeping the focus, I like to say about them specifically, keeping the focus on making sure that privacy is the highest level possible for their patients. The Data Citizens Dialogue's podcast is bringing the data conversation to you. So go check it out now. You can find and follow Data Citizens Dialogue on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks to Data Citizens Dialogue for their support of this show and all of Relay. Let's finish out with some Ask Upgrade questions. Choo, choo, choo, choo, choo. It was a little delay on the laser there today. I had to unmute myself because I was sparing you from my keyboard clearance, but I got there. I'm sure you needed a break because I went to say that I really enjoyed doing the segment on the App Store air thing and I appreciate you taking us on a little seminar there. I think I'll call it. I was just waiting for you to jump in and I left some pauses, but I don't know how you're feeling about that. How are you feeling about that before we get to Ask Upgrade? That segment? Okay, we're on a slight definition. I think you're completely right in what you're saying. I think that we've touched upon this stuff before in many ways over the lawyer up segment and I am in complete agreement with you. I am not one of these. I'm not of the, say, John Gruber School who thought that the iPhone is a console and Max are computers, right? Like iPhones and iPads are computers and I, as you say in one point, that you buy a $1,000 computer and you're told what you can put on it. No, it's a computer. This is more capable than most computers out there, my iPhone or my iPad, but they're hamstrung by the fact that people can't develop whatever software they want and we can't put whatever software we want on them. Like, I completely agree with you. - I actually don't have any time for the console argument anyway. - No, I never did, but-- - I believe that if you buy a Nintendo Switch or a PlayStation or an Xbox and I was a child of the Atari 2600 when Activision came out with their cartridges for it and Atari students said you can't make software for a platform and they lost. I don't like those gatekeepers either and I saw somebody who said, yeah, but you can't do that because they sell their consoles at a loss and then make it up and there's like, their business model is not my problem. Like, if you're somebody who doesn't get authorization from Sony or Microsoft or Nintendo and write software for their platforms, if they allow third party developers, I would say if they write it all themselves, it's one thing, but if they allow third party developers, like, I actually don't think that they should be able to stop it either. I am a radical about computer software. Like, there should be a way to put software on those devices too. But certainly the iPhone is not some kind of a cockamamie app console that's ludicrous, just ludicrous argument. No, I understand where you're saying, I don't disagree with it. I do think that they're, it's just different. I just think video game consoles and smartphones, they are fundamentally different thing. Completely different. And so, like, I don't think that, I mean, I just don't think that you can apply the rules of PlayStation to Microsoft in gaming to Apple or Microsoft in computers. I just don't think that they overlap because then it's like, what if I start talking about, like, a kitchen supply company? Like, can I overlay their business model over Apple? Like, it doesn't work like that. Like, just because they're both technological things. Like, the iPhone is a computer. Like, it is a computer. It is not a games console. It is. Computers can play games, right? Yeah. But anyway, so, like, yes, I completely agree with you. I talked about this on the Six Colors podcast last week, but I'll just mention really quickly here. Like, if people want an example, 'cause it's like, oh yeah, but what about the game emulators? Is this all about game emulators? Well, I'll tell you what. You could run Mac OS on the iPad today if Apple didn't control it. You could. Some one would have done it. Because Apple doesn't allow emulators on iPad OS. And if you like computer emulators. And the moment that if that was, if parallels or VMware could just sell it, then sell a version of their emulator themselves for iPad OS and you could install it, well, you get Linux up and running. You'd probably get Windows for ARM up and running. And at that point, like, you might as well have Mac OS up and running on there. And wouldn't that be great? And that would put, wouldn't that put pressure on Apple to maybe make a Mac mode in iPad OS a thing themselves? Or would they be like, no, actually this relieves the pressure 'cause you can just run an emulator version of Mac OS. But like, the hardware is the same. The hardware is literally the same at this point. The only reason that you can't do that is because of policy. Because Apple has decided they don't want to let you. And I hate it, I hate that. - Yep. - All right, given up ago with those lasers, this is the real time, there we go. - Awesome, I was gonna upgrade questions. Jonathan asks, does Jason know why John Cusack follows him on Blue Sky? I was scrolling Cusack's follow list and did a double take. Did you know this was the case? - I didn't even know that this was the case. - Yeah. - It's a mystery, my guess is that he clicked the wrong thing. - No, he also follows Joanna Stone. So like, I went and looked. - Okay. - So like, he must like, he must like tech stuff. I'm gonna have to post something on Blue Sky about my love of "Say Anything" and "Gris Point Blank" at some point, I'm just gonna have to do that. - You should just post the movie "Say Anything" and just see if he has anything to say about that, you know? - Yeah. Ironically enough, if he has anything to say, about saying anything. - Sure. (laughing) I went and checked it, it's true. It is, it's him and he follows you. So congratulations on that, it's pretty cool. - Sweet. - It's pretty cool. Mr. Cusack, if you're out there. Hello. - Yeah, love your stuff. - Love your world. - High fidelity, I didn't even mention high fidelity as one of my favorite movies too. - My favorite movies. - He's in a bunch of my favorite movies. He really is. He's an 80s icon and I mean that with, again, 80 out of 80 on the scale of 80s. John Cusack's an 80 out of 80. - Evan asks, how are you both feeling about MagSafe on Apple's notebooks now that it's been around for a few years? I find myself torn carrying only a MagSafe cable over a USB-C cable and on the go. - Well, I prefer the magnetic connector. It's hard to pass up on USB-C since I can choose to plug it in on either side. I'm curious which option you guys are using when you're not at your desk. When I read this question, I was like, oh Evan, you have seen into my soul. I think about this all the time. Like, I love MagSafe and I have a MagSafe cable in my charging bag, but I know I don't need it because I could just use a USB-C cable instead. And like, it's definitely a thing where it's like, I love that we have MagSafe, but I don't need it the same way that I used to, I feel like. And that is like a very funny thing. I was like, I'm so happy it's there, but it is also superfluous as much as I love it. - Well, back in the day, MagSafe was the only way to charge your computer. And now you can charge via USB-C. So it's a totally different scenario. I totally get what Evan's saying. My laptop use, like when I, at home, I have a Thunderbolt cable that has all of my stuff hanging off of it in the back bedroom. So I don't use MagSafe there because that's power and display and ethernet and like all of it, just one plug and it's great. When I travel, it's interesting. You're right, it is superfluous. When I travel, what I've come to realize is that I will bring a MagSafe cable if I'm bringing enough devices that I feel like I'm gonna need to charge. - Yes. - That I will also charge the Mac at the same time. - I'll have use for the USB-C cable, right? I'll have to use. - Exactly. You kind of do the math. And then I'll bring the MagSafe connector. But if I'm traveling light and I only am gonna bring a couple USB-C cables, then I don't need to bother with the MagSafe if I'm not, right? Like 'cause I can use that and it's all very versatile. And that's nice. What's great about MagSafe is to put it someplace where you're unhooking and re-hooking your computer all the time. But like Lauren right now is using my old M1 MacBook Air. No MagSafe. And it's a whole thing where it's like, I mean, the advantage of it is we have a plug there, we can plug our iPads into it, we can plug her computer into it and it charges. Great. But we used to have her on a computer with MagSafe and what was great about it is she had a little place she could put her computer and then put the MagSafe on and then you just pop it off and go and that's nicer. So MagSafe is not as essential as it used to be, but I'm very glad we have it. And I'm also very glad 'cause it means that you can. So here's a real world example. One of the reasons I started traveling again with MagSafe to visit my mom is that I realized I need all those ports on my MacBook Air. I need all the ports. I can't use a port for charging 'cause I need the ports for peripherals when I'm doing a podcast. I need to have a camera on there, I need to have a microphone on there. I could bring a hub, but like I don't need to bring a hub, I just need to bring the MagSafe cable 'cause then I can do power and have those ports open. And so that's another reason to like MagSafe is that it keeps your USB ports open. But the truth, Evan is absolutely right. MagSafe is never gonna be as essential as it was because it used to be the only way that you could charge your computer and now USB-C is there too and it's great. And I would never advocate for USB-C charging to go away because it's so great to have that one thunderbolt cable that attaches and powers my computer and also all of the stuff. So yeah, that's where we are. So I use MagSafe sometimes, but not as often as I expected because most of the context that I'm using it, I've got a USB-C cable there. And so I'll just use that. - And Jason asks, do you use iOS to send later feature messages? - I have never used that outside of testing. - I don't use it either. I did actually for the first time ever schedule an email to send last week. I just had something that I knew would be good if it landed with somebody in the morning. And so I just, I had the thought and I was like, I don't want to send this late. I'll send it and it would like 30 or whatever. And it would just go for me. The reason I never used the send later for messages thing is one, I mean, I just message people. Like I just message them. It'd be like that for one-on-one in some messaging, people in my life, they know my hours, like whatever. But I always feel like I would feel weird if I shared a message to you and then you sent me a message and then my one came in, like, and it was a thing. - Ah, yes. - You know, that's why I don't like it. Where it's like, what happened? - It's true, it's on present mind. - If like, you know, I'm like, oh, hey, Jason, LOL or whatever, I don't know why I sent you to have, but like, you know, you messaged me like, oh, like something terrible happened to me. And you know, and then like next message it's like, I'm like, uh-huh-huh-huh, LOL. - Congratulations, Cal one, yay. And then the next morning, so did Cal win? - Yeah, exactly. Or, you know, if I'm like, if I'm like, Jason, I don't even want to go 97 yards of my boys and you'd be like, no, it's 98 yards of the boys. - Oh, my yard, we gotta get that extra yard in there or it doesn't work. - Or it doesn't work the whole way, so yeah, I don't use this feature. - Yeah, yeah, I text you at times that many people would be asleep. - Yeah. - Here's what I know, I know, first off, you've got focus modes and whatever. I'm not gonna ding, ding you in the middle of the night. - That's my responsibility, not yours. - Yeah, and second, sometimes you're awake. - Yeah, yeah, sometimes you're awake. - And you get a response back. And I love that, I send you, this happens sometimes, where I send you a message and I'm like, yeah, he'll get it in the morning and then you respond and I'm like, oh, that's delightful. It's 12.30 or it's 1 a.m. or something like that. And you're still up and that's nice. I mean, James Thompson, I do that and he responds and I know it's like 2 a.m. And I'm like, James, go to bed. We all have that conversation with James. - Oh, you actually just stumbled into a thing which is one of my biggest pet peeves, which is people telling me to go to bed. - I know when to go to bed. You don't need to tell me when to go to bed. You know, like people message me and it's like 12, midnight, 1 a.m. to him and I'm still awake and I'm sending them a say, ah, I might go to bed, no, I'm a grown up. - Okay, I'm nearly four years old, I'm a adult. - It takes a village to take care of James and so sometimes when it's very, very, very late and we're worried about him, we will tell him to go to bed, but mostly not. - But you know, maybe James wants to be told, I never want to be told to go to bed. - Okay, so noted. - I just enjoy it, I just get a little, 'cause you've got your focus modes in so it'll say this is delivered silently or whatever. - Yeah. - And I'll be like, that's fine, get it when you get it and then I'll get a response and I'll be like, oh, I still want my attention at 1230. - My focus just turns on at 12, like, but I'm not done, you know, I've got time to go yet, you know? - I'm still rockin' and rollin' over here. - If you would like to send this. - I'm 40! - This is a pre-pre-pre-show joke, so I apologize. - I made it, you made it, we'll make it. - Oh, sorry. - But nobody can get it. If you would like to send in your question for a future episode, go to upgradefeedback.com and you can send us an ask upgrade question, a snow talk question, or any feedback and follow up. If I wanna find Jason's work, go to sixcolors.com. You can hear him on the incomparable.com and here on Relay, where you can also hear me too. You can check out my work at cortexbrand.com. You can follow us on Mastodon, Threads, and Blue Sky. Work it out yourself. - You can watch for us, we're there. Touch clips of the show on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. We're at Upgrade Relay. Thank you to our members who support us at Upgrade Plus. Don't forget, go to giverelay.com and you can get 20% off an annual membership. Thank you to our sponsors, Data Citizens Dialogues, Fitbod, and Squarespace. Thank you for listening. Jason, we'll be back next week. I'm on vacation, I'll see you in two weeks. Say goodbye, Jason Snow. - Please enjoy special guest Stephen Hackett next week. We'll see you then, happy Thanksgiving to all those who celebrate Gobble Gobble. - Gobble Gobble. - Bye, Mike. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
Apple might recommit to the smart home, Smart Siri feels a long way off, Apple's movie movies anger Hollywood creatives, and Jason's done with the era of App Store exclusivity.
