00:00:00 ◼ ► from relay this is upgrade episode number 558 recorded monday april the 7th 2025 this episode has been brought to you by oracle squarespace and delete me and it will be not just has been but will continue to be i am jason snell doing my best to hold the show together while mike hurley is on paternity
00:00:29 ◼ ► leave and joining me for this episode the latest in our cavalcade of guest stars it is developer
00:00:37 ◼ ► extraordinaire pedometer plus plus and many others and of course a co-host of under the radar here at
00:00:44 ◼ ► relay it is underscore david smith david welcome to upgrade again welcome back i guess you were on when
00:00:51 ◼ ► i was on in new zealand so welcome back i think yeah no it's it's good to be back it's a you know
00:00:56 ◼ ► upgrade is a one of my favorite shows and so it's a privilege to be able to be here and to try my best
00:01:02 ◼ ► to you know fulfill in the very large um uh shoes left behind by mike so it's i'll do my best i mean he
00:01:09 ◼ ► does have big feet uh all right uh we like to start every episode of as you know of upgrade with snell
00:01:16 ◼ ► talk this question comes from brance who said do you have a beloved or just favorite baseball cap that
00:01:22 ◼ ► you like to wear i assume it's a giants cap but i'd love to know and brance uh you you got me
00:01:30 ◼ ► it is a giants hat i was just i went to a baseball game yesterday uh first game of the season for us
00:01:37 ◼ ► it's opening weekend and uh i was talking to lauren as we were walking there because i was wearing a
00:01:44 ◼ ► different hat from the hat that i usually wear also a giants hat but in a different style
00:01:53 ◼ ► stave off slash uh prepare the way for the inevitable failure of my most beloved baseball hat of the
00:02:02 ◼ ► moment because you know i mean they don't last so so you have you have your time with any article of
00:02:07 ◼ ► clothing and you know that it's going to end and it's going to wear out and the more you wear it the
00:02:10 ◼ ► more it's going to wear out and so uh a few years ago for christmas she didn't even remember this
00:02:15 ◼ ► lauren bought me a and i should specify uh lauren uh we have there are lots of laurens uh there are
00:02:23 ◼ ► involved married to people involved in podcasts anyway my lauren snell uh bought me this hat for
00:02:29 ◼ ► christmas and it's an orange uh giants hat with a white sf logo on the front it's sort of connected to
00:02:34 ◼ ► their uh alternate city connect uniforms they used to have but um doesn't have like a golden gate bridge
00:02:40 ◼ ► on the side or anything like that it's just uh orange with a white sf and i really like it the
00:02:46 ◼ ► bright orange it's comfortable um but i wear it all the time and it is going to die at some point i'm
00:02:52 ◼ ► going to be sad but for now that is pretty much every time i leave the house um especially most of the
00:02:57 ◼ ► time i leave the house i'm walking the dog uh i put that hat on and so that is my favorite hat and
00:03:03 ◼ ► then the the hat i'm breaking in is a it is a little more fitted the fit is different you know
00:03:07 ◼ ► it'll my head will stretch it out and it'll become incredibly comfortable over time but
00:03:11 ◼ ► uh and it's it's what i call my classic uh giants hat when i was a kid i got a giants hat that was
00:03:15 ◼ ► um black with an orange brim which was not briefly in the 70s i think it was a standard hat uh now it's
00:03:23 ◼ ► like an alternate hat but um but that was my definitive hat as a kid uh i got it signed by a
00:03:28 ◼ ► giant at one point like so every i i make every effort to buy that hat and not the all black hat
00:03:34 ◼ ► because it's just it's just me it's from my history so i like to keep that up so um thank you to brands
00:03:40 ◼ ► for that david you have a favorite it doesn't have to be a hat do you have like a favorite uh clothing
00:03:45 ◼ ► item that i mean i do have i do have a favorite hat i have a hat that i actually um i so i had him
00:03:51 ◼ ► i had a hat embroidered with the widget smith logo which is extraordinarily simple because the
00:03:57 ◼ ► widget smith logo is a round rect that is in right like uh sort of the widget smith because it's every
00:04:03 ◼ ► widget and because it's every widget and so it's it works really well because i feel like it's kind of
00:04:08 ◼ ► a nice it works generally like i'm in it's like my app developer hat because i've been developing
00:04:13 ◼ ► apps in round recs for 17 years and so it fits well it's meaningful for widget smith and i when i had
00:04:20 ◼ ► it made because it was just custom made like i had a a closing clothing company make it for me before
00:04:24 ◼ ► wbc one year i just had them make like three or four of them so most of them are in the sort of sort of
00:04:29 ◼ ► pristine and you know in package in the back of my cupboard so that as i wear where the my current one
00:04:34 ◼ ► out it will i will have a replacement ready to go so that is but that is my favorite hat i i i take it
00:04:40 ◼ ► with me all over the place it's my hiking hat i just all right it's nice it's it's it's i like kind of
00:04:45 ◼ ► like that it's understated because it doesn't have any sort of obvious logos on it it's just
00:04:50 ◼ ► a blue round direct but it means a lot to me but it doesn't mean anything to anyone else i don't know
00:04:54 ◼ ► i i think if you know you know as well though the round exactly i think if somebody in this business
00:04:58 ◼ ► were to spot you uh it's fun so yes if if i'm out in the isle of sky and i see a guy in a round
00:05:04 ◼ ► wreck hat it's probably you it's probably me the i i realize now that your most popular app by far
00:05:10 ◼ ► is widget smith and i introduced you with pedometer plus plus but that's because um that's the one that
00:05:16 ◼ ► i use more often and uh you gave me some great hiking advice when lauren and i were in scotland
00:05:22 ◼ ► um nice kind of low impact hiking advice and uh we had a great time and we used pedometer plus plus
00:05:29 ◼ ► because you sent me like the track of where we were going and it was great so um available where all
00:05:34 ◼ ► apps are sold there's only the one place but um plus plus and widget smith of course all right let's
00:05:40 ◼ ► move on to the segment i introduced while mike is on paternity leave which is called fatherly advice
00:05:47 ◼ ► for parents to give advice to mike if they have any uh it could be deep it could be light david do you
00:05:54 ◼ ► have any words of wisdom to impart to our new father mike hurley sure so i am in the unique uh position
00:06:02 ◼ ► amongst your cavalcade of guest hosts who i have um i've met baby hurley i've held baby hurley i've
00:06:09 ◼ ► seen mike in this in action as as a father and so um breaking news everybody we've got a witness
00:06:17 ◼ ► yes so i i am in the unique position of actually seeing having seen mike uh take you know take the
00:06:23 ◼ ► advice he's been receiving over the past several weeks and putting it into practice um so the first
00:06:28 ◼ ► thing i would say is that if he is listening to this you're doing a great job i can say that with
00:06:32 ◼ ► actual confidence and um you know firsthand experience that you're doing a great job and
00:06:36 ◼ ► um things are you know it's it's wonderful to see the you know him and you know grow into this role
00:06:41 ◼ ► and it's been really cool and just a privilege to be a part of that and i think when i think of the
00:06:46 ◼ ► advice i'm obviously i'm coming to this you know coming to this segment late late late late into it and
00:06:52 ◼ ► so a lot of great advice has already been given and i think the thing that i was thinking about uh
00:06:59 ◼ ► is that i feel like it's one of the the important thing to make parenting a sustainable thing is to
00:07:06 ◼ ► be kind to yourself in this process and understand that while advice and information and these
00:07:13 ◼ ► instructions and things that you get are useful and helpful and it is clearly you know it allows
00:07:18 ◼ ► you to potentially to be a better parent uh being a parent is not some is not a like a lego kit where
00:07:24 ◼ ► if you get the right advice you get the right instructions and you do the things in the right
00:07:28 ◼ ► way you're going to get the outcome that you desire um it is very much like you could do everything right
00:07:33 ◼ ► according to the book and not get the outcome that you hope for or the situation that you want or
00:07:38 ◼ ► things like that and that is not a failing on you as a parent that is the reality of being a parent
00:07:44 ◼ ► is that it is not this thing that there is a a sort of a riddle to be solved and once you've solved
00:07:49 ◼ ► the riddle in the right way the key will turn and everything will be great it's that's just not the
00:07:53 ◼ ► way it is you can do everything right and it just won't turn out uh the way you hope and so you have
00:07:57 ◼ ► what in order for that to be sustainable is to understand that you need to be kind to yourself
00:08:00 ◼ ► and understand that it's that's not you being a bad parent when those situations come up when
00:08:05 ◼ ► inevitably the things aren't going the way you want them to be that's just part of the deal and i
00:08:10 ◼ ► think especially it's difficult because i feel like parenting is a multiplier on your emotions and your
00:08:16 ◼ ► feelings where some of the like my greatest joys and sort of deepest regrets have been related to
00:08:22 ◼ ► parenting not necessarily because the circumstances were so much more dramatic um to other parts of my
00:08:27 ◼ ► life but i feel like the way i feel about uh the way i interact with my kids is just is bigger it's
00:08:33 ◼ ► like there's a 10 times multiplier on the way that it makes me feel and so i've learned over you know
00:08:37 ◼ ► over the years of being a dad is being careful about being kind to myself in that and not beating
00:08:42 ◼ ► myself up when things um aren't going the way that i want them to be um i mean and certainly
00:08:47 ◼ ► it's lovely when things do you know you take take it you take advice and you work on it and it goes
00:08:51 ◼ ► great that's awesome but understand that in some ways that is less that is not as much you're doing
00:08:57 ◼ ► um than you perhaps wish or thought it might be and so be kind to yourself as a result yeah i've
00:09:03 ◼ ► noticed a lot of parents especially new parents who have this attitude it's actually more dangerous when
00:09:07 ◼ ► they're not new parents that they can control everything and you can't you just can't they're
00:09:14 ◼ ► people and they've got their own you cannot control them and i i sometimes think your your attempts to
00:09:19 ◼ ► try will frustrate everybody involved so you got to roll with the punches i think that's great advice
00:09:25 ◼ ► and thank you for the eyewitness report i hadn't considered that but yeah that is absolutely true
00:09:30 ◼ ► no okay can confirm baby hurley is very cute extraordinary you are you've beaten mike to be the
00:09:35 ◼ ► first-hand account of baby hurley which is true amazing on upgrade which is amazing uh and i thank
00:09:42 ◼ ► you for it i'll hold that over mike for a long time to come uh i've got a little follow out uh i've
00:09:49 ◼ ► decided to call this segment i'm enjoying the segments i press a button i call out a new segment it's a
00:09:55 ◼ ► it's a thing i'm trying out as as a as a interim driver of upgrade uh on downstream the downstream program
00:10:03 ◼ ► last week here on relay episode 92 i first off i was rejoined by julia alexander who was the original
00:10:11 ◼ ► co-host of that show and um got a job working for disney and couldn't do media anymore and decided
00:10:18 ◼ ► that she missed doing media and so now she's back full-time in the media actually working at puck
00:10:23 ◼ ► and hopefully it's unclear to me because puck is in first position to use the entertainment industry slang
00:10:36 ◼ ► i hope i i will be able to do some podcasts with her um and i would love to keep uh joe dalian and
00:10:43 ◼ ► will carol in the mix as well so it could be a fun uh kind of a new look downstream we'll see but
00:10:50 ◼ ► anyway on that episode which i encourage people to listen to because julia's brain is a marvel to
00:10:55 ◼ ► behold and i had forgotten quite what it's like to go on the ride of hosting a podcast where you feed
00:11:00 ◼ ► her a topic and she just goes it's amazing uh we i mentioned there a thing that i also wrote up on
00:11:06 ◼ ► six colors which is my unsuccessful return to netflix's ad tier so i tried to cancel netflix and realized i do
00:11:15 ◼ ► lots of podcasts about things on streaming including netflix and that i i realized i probably am gonna
00:11:22 ◼ ► i'm gonna need to be more flexible about turning it on and off uh i wasn't happy with paying for it every
00:11:27 ◼ ► month and paying 18 a month but uh i decided to go back and try the ad tier because it's ten dollars cheaper
00:11:32 ◼ ► and uh and i talked about this on downstream and i wrote about on six colors the uh how unpleasant it was
00:11:40 ◼ ► because one i bought a tivo in like the year 2000 and so i haven't watched ads outside of sporting events
00:11:46 ◼ ► on television all this time and to have unskippable ads as part of the experience is brutal and i'm not
00:11:52 ◼ ► wired for it anymore yeah but also as julia pointed out and joe adalian mentioned this joe adalian
00:11:59 ◼ ► mentioned this uh on blue sky when i posted this story too it's also just badly done by netflix like
00:12:05 ◼ ► there were ways that they could have placed the ads to make it a better experience and you distinctly
00:12:10 ◼ ► get the feeling that netflix didn't care and that's like that's the worst part is that is that you know
00:12:17 ◼ ► ads aren't inherently the worst right i know different people have different opinions about ads and some
00:12:24 ◼ ► people think that apple's marketing of their own products is ads which i i would argue marketing your
00:12:28 ◼ ► own stuff is not quite the same as ads unskippable commercial advertisements inserted in shows is pretty
00:12:34 ◼ ► strong but like even then there's a right way to do it in a wrong way to do it and my experience with
00:12:38 ◼ ► netflix was so bad and such the wrong way to do it that i literally just gave them 10 more dollars the
00:12:44 ◼ ► next morning so i didn't have to go through it no and i think i loved at the end of your we talked about
00:12:49 ◼ ► like the the way of thinking of ads as it's is there an amount of money you would sort of volunteer to
00:12:55 ◼ ► be paid to have that experience like if you know if someone came up to you and said i'll pay you 120
00:13:01 ◼ ► dollars a year to sit here and watch ads and ruin the moments of the media that you are in deeply in
00:13:08 ◼ ► you know you're in a really thrilling interesting engaging moment of something that you're in you're
00:13:13 ◼ ► watching and then you know being paid to have it interrupted and i think that is an useful framing for
00:13:19 ◼ ► that kind of a thing where there are some things where an ad is fine and works well and like this show
00:13:24 ◼ ► has ads and i don't think that is a bad thing um but i don't think it is the kind of media where that is
00:13:30 ◼ ► deeply disruptive to the you know your experience of listening to this show whereas so much of visual
00:13:36 ◼ ► media in particular you you like part of it is about being transported into a world and so you're you
00:13:43 ◼ ► know you're in that place and you're experiencing that thing and then suddenly you're being like
00:13:47 ◼ ► yoinked out of it is very disruptive in a way that like is just different and so i think i think what
00:13:54 ◼ ► you're doing makes a lot of sense and i'm very much the same way that i would not i would not prefer i
00:13:58 ◼ ► would not do the ad tier of something uh like like netflix i'd rather either have it or not have it
00:14:03 ◼ ► and if i'm trying to if we're trying to save money with netflix i'll have it for three months you know
00:14:06 ◼ ► it's three months and then cancel it for three months and then do something like that instead
00:14:09 ◼ ► yeah i the the intellectual exercise of mr netflix offering me 100 120 and honestly like
00:14:16 ◼ ► i think there are a lot of people who are not bothered by ads this bears out there are a lot
00:14:19 ◼ ► of people who are not bothered by ads or by certain kinds of ads and really would rather have i mean
00:14:25 ◼ ► that the balance is yes give me 120 back off my netflix subscription every year and i'll deal with
00:14:31 ◼ ► the ads and it'll be fine i think that's where you get into that whole sort of like what are your
00:14:36 ◼ ► priorities but also how what is the quality of the ad experience and that's the other thing that julia
00:14:41 ◼ ► and i uh touched on which is if i'm netflix i need to start as part of my show development process and
00:14:47 ◼ ► the ad tier happened so quickly that a lot of shows were already in development they couldn't do this but
00:14:51 ◼ ► you need to go to every show creator on netflix and say we're doing ads and you don't need to put
00:14:58 ◼ ► like network tv you know crescendo fade out fade in uh kind of like act breaks but like what i said on
00:15:08 ◼ ► downstream is um the incomparable has uh dynamic ads in it because for various reasons and i don't love
00:15:15 ◼ ► it but we offer a a very reasonably priced membership if you would like to not hear those ads
00:15:19 ◼ ► but my editor steven schapansky has a standing order to find natural breaks in the conversation
00:15:29 ◼ ► and in his edit he actually pushes those breaks out a little bit so that there's just enough of a pause
00:15:36 ◼ ► that i can reasonably drop a dynamic ad insertion point there and it's a break in the conversation and
00:15:43 ◼ ► and so netflix needs to do that with all its creators it needs to say you need to identify
00:15:48 ◼ ► and here are the specs here's where we want to put these ads roughly at 15 minutes and 30 minutes
00:15:53 ◼ ► whatever it is and say you need to identify and tell us where you think the reasonable breaks are
00:16:00 ◼ ► because otherwise there it's you're going to be sad because people are going to get disrupted from
00:16:06 ◼ ► your work and that's you know they don't necessarily have to go as far as just insert commercial breaks
00:16:11 ◼ ► like it's a network tv show but you got to do something uh and they they should already be
00:16:16 ◼ ► doing that and if they're not it's really malpractice and it's too bad because an ad product doesn't have
00:16:21 ◼ ► to be this terrible but you got to make some you got to do some work basically yeah um i also have one
00:16:28 ◼ ► little side note that i'm going to slide in here which is uh i wrote a piece last week because there was
00:16:34 ◼ ► a report about how apple tv apparently has a lot of apple tv plus apparently has a lot of churn
00:16:39 ◼ ► churn being uh industry term of art for the idea that people are dropping off of their subscription
00:16:44 ◼ ► like what you just described david about have it for three months turn it off again that's a churn rate
00:16:49 ◼ ► we get that for like our members memberful subscription rates i know that mike and steven have talked about
00:16:54 ◼ ► how like relay subscribers it's a very low churn rate and memberful has said that to us that
00:16:59 ◼ ► that people are loyal and they stay with the program and they're not dropping off and coming back on and
00:17:03 ◼ ► things like that that's awesome but this report said that apple actually has pretty big turn rates
00:17:08 ◼ ► for tv plus which surprised me a little bit but the theory is they don't have a very big catalog and so
00:17:14 ◼ ► people watch whatever they came to see and then they drop off because there's nothing else to watch and i
00:17:19 ◼ ► thought one of the great surprises of the last five years for me is that apple tv plus has actually done
00:17:24 ◼ ► a really great job making tv shows and i didn't think i mean i thought it would be okay but their betting
00:17:29 ◼ ► average is much higher than i thought so just using shows i watched and there are a few shows that
00:17:34 ◼ ► people keep mentioning that i didn't see a lot of the cases it's lauren watched it without me because
00:17:38 ◼ ► i do all these podcasts and so she's got time to watch tv shows um and once she watches it i kind of can't
00:17:44 ◼ ► watch it because i have very little time uh to watch tv when she's not around and so if she watches it i'm not
00:17:50 ◼ ► gonna make her watch it again um very rare shows that she'll say i'll watch that again and and but still
00:17:57 ◼ ► just with the stuff that i watched i did a top 10 list of apple tv plus shows so if you're somebody
00:18:02 ◼ ► who is apple tv plus curious and is going to come back for some other reason um check out my story
00:18:08 ◼ ► it'll be in the show notes because i i gave you 10 plus i ended up with three like honorable mentions
00:18:14 ◼ ► that i couldn't even get i decided to keep it to 10 but i think there's a lot of content plus there
00:18:19 ◼ ► there were a bunch of documentaries i put on there and some movies that i really enjoyed i think if
00:18:24 ◼ ► somebody's going to sign up for tv plus for a month uh you will be able to get your money's worth out of
00:18:29 ◼ ► it uh without a problem so i was i was just surprised at at how many shows i really really liked on apple
00:18:34 ◼ ► tv plus over the last five years yeah and i'd say apple tv feels very like a kind of service where you
00:18:40 ◼ ► may be able to subscribe for i mean i get it because i'm an apple one uh bundle subscriber yeah but i think
00:18:48 ◼ ► if you aren't and you are signing up to two you know you wanted to watch severance you wanted to watch
00:18:51 ◼ ► ted lasso whatever it was the show that got you in it's like there's enough there that it can keep
00:18:56 ◼ ► you busy for a few months it may not be a subscription that you would keep going forever because the pace
00:19:02 ◼ ► of new awesome stuff maybe isn't high enough for that but at this point there's plenty of back catalog
00:19:09 ◼ ► stuff that if you haven't been a subscriber before and you're coming in with something there's going to
00:19:13 ◼ ► be some really there's some very compelling good quality stuff in there and i think that works well if
00:19:18 ◼ ► you were you're just looking for something new and different i think a lot of it has a slightly
00:19:22 ◼ ► different feel to um to the kind of content you have on your prime or netflix or some of the other
00:19:27 ◼ ► options as well sure for sure okay this episode of upgrade is brought to you by oracle there's a
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00:20:43 ◼ ► and all of relay let's do some follow-up arthur wrote in and this is truly the magic of podcasting where every now
00:20:54 ◼ ► and then you talk about something and you get somebody who has a perspective on it that you
00:21:00 ◼ ► i mean that person you know that person exists but the fact that they listen to your show when you talked
00:21:05 ◼ ► about this particular topic is kind of mind-blowing so this is from arthur arthur says hey jason i was so
00:21:12 ◼ ► tickled to hear you have uh you have the franklin mints pewter model of the original starship enterprise
00:21:18 ◼ ► because i was the developer of this breakthrough product i vividly remember the brainstorming
00:21:25 ◼ ► session that birthed it somebody suggested we replicate the space shuttle and i said who would
00:21:29 ◼ ► want that it turns out lots of lego people how about the starship enterprise i was almost hooted down
00:21:35 ◼ ► but persevered it turned out to be a monster hit the first ever high-end star trek collectible
00:21:41 ◼ ► thank you arthur for writing in um it is you have to keep in mind that this is in early days of
00:21:49 ◼ ► everything is a collectible now but early days of the collectible and this thing is very much high-end
00:21:55 ◼ ► it's heavy it's not like a cheap plastic model or something like that in fact uh when i when i talked
00:22:00 ◼ ► about it with dan and i talked about how the the um stand snapped off inside i'm not sure i can even
00:22:06 ◼ ► get the thing that snapped out out of there so it may there may be no way to mount it but what i heard
00:22:10 ◼ ► from a lot of people was do you have this one do you have this one and it's all the successive
00:22:14 ◼ ► franklin mint models of various starship enterprises so that is the sign of a very successful product
00:22:21 ◼ ► so thank you arthur amazing that blew my mind it's amazing i mean uh you gotta it's it's the joy of
00:22:28 ◼ ► having a podcast i suppose you just never know who's listening like it's it's it could be anyone
00:22:32 ◼ ► anywhere in the world and they our lives could cross in all kinds of interesting ways i i know i know
00:22:37 ◼ ► for a fact that i don't know if this is still true but the the one of the hosts of one of my favorite
00:22:40 ◼ ► podcasts uh their dad listens to upgrade apparently or listened at some point and it's just like what
00:22:47 ◼ ► how anyway um connor wrote in uh because we mentioned uh mill valley there was a question from casey
00:22:56 ◼ ► about uh disclosing my location and somebody then followed that up this is like third generation
00:23:01 ◼ ► follow-up at this point all hail john syracuse um about bj honeycutt who is the character on mash
00:23:07 ◼ ► who was from mill valley and then we talked about how i've got like a mash streaming channel and i've
00:23:12 ◼ ► got it all on my plex and there are like streaming channels where you just watch mash and you can just
00:23:16 ◼ ► pull down your pants and slide on the ice it's just super comfortable to watch mash i got this from
00:23:21 ◼ ► connor follow-up on mash as a current military doctor it's hilarious how much of that show is
00:23:25 ◼ ► still 100 accurate particularly any joke related to bureaucratic administrivia a great show to rewatch
00:23:33 ◼ ► thank you connor i also heard from friend of the show todd vaziri about this one of these days todd and
00:23:38 ◼ ► i will do a mash rewatch podcast probably when we're retired um i i love mash um it is funny and kind-hearted
00:23:47 ◼ ► and and absurd and really does uh the bureaucracy stuff is pretty great um last time i watched it i
00:23:54 ◼ ► re i realized it's also super sexist although not as much as the movie um but you know anything that's
00:24:01 ◼ ► 50 plus years old you you watch any of that thinking this is the standards of the time and in fact a lot of
00:24:08 ◼ ► the shows that have survived from that were groundbreaking in their time and seem quaint or
00:24:12 ◼ ► even bad now because um things have moved on in part because of them so um i had that with the
00:24:20 ◼ ► original star trek too where people are like oh the original star trek and it's like you don't understand
00:24:24 ◼ ► like just having uhura and sulu in the crew was totally groundbreaking even if there are you know
00:24:33 ◼ ► there are some episodes where you're like oh did they really do that it's just part for the course
00:24:37 ◼ ► for the 60s or the 70s let's see a lot of people pointed out ipads are not all four by three anymore
00:24:44 ◼ ► that's fair they're not that's true they're not um i i mentioned this in the context of the foldable
00:24:50 ◼ ► iphone that's supposedly coming next year that mark german says will be kind of like a four by three
00:24:55 ◼ ► uh ipad when you open it up my point was really i feel like i feel a little like seth meyers doing
00:25:02 ◼ ► corrections here my point was that the canonical ipad aspect ratio i feel like historically is four by
00:25:09 ◼ ► three so that a four by three mode in a fold out iphone is going to be able to run ipad apps i would
00:25:18 ◼ ► say pretty comfortably because we all know kind of what a four by three ipad app looks like even though
00:25:23 ◼ ► the 11 inches 11 inches are a little bit wider screen and the mini since they took the button
00:25:30 ◼ ► off the bottom they use that space and it's a little bit wider screen and that's fine i mean they're not
00:25:35 ◼ ► all no so i i appreciate all all the pedants who wrote about this but my larger point is just i think
00:25:42 ◼ ► if if i said what is the canonical aspect ratio of the ipad four by three is close enough i think
00:25:49 ◼ ► yeah and i think four by three is a great sort of baseline of ipad size to in terms of i imagine when
00:25:57 ◼ ► you're designing a full foldable phone you're trying to balance the aspect two different sets of aspect
00:26:02 ◼ ► ratios in a way that you're trying to you know it's make it a good phone and a good tablet or a good
00:26:09 ◼ ► larger screen and if you can go standard iphone size to four by three you're you're doing well and i think
00:26:15 ◼ ► the sort of argument that oh well then your big screen isn't as good for watching movies or something
00:26:19 ◼ ► well it's still a bigger screen than you'd be watching otherwise and that's not what if that's
00:26:24 ◼ ► all you need is something to watch movies for i don't think a folding iphone is necessarily the
00:26:28 ◼ ► right device for you there's probably a better device for watching it so you're trying to you know
00:26:32 ◼ ► i think four by three is a great in my mind as someone who has made ipad apps since day one
00:26:36 ◼ ► i agree i think four by three is the canonical sort of aspect ratio of an ipad and if it if you're you
00:26:43 ◼ ► know if you're making an ipad app that is definitely an aspect ratio you're going to make sure it looks
00:26:46 ◼ ► good and works well as an app developer right right exactly yeah i i have to admit i'm a little bit
00:26:52 ◼ ► baffled by the argument that four by three is a bad thing because widescreen movies are going to not
00:27:00 ◼ ► look great on it because i mean i guess but just leave your phone unfolded or folded or whatever and
00:27:08 ◼ ► and watch it that way i mean yeah that's not the point the point is that that you you could carry a
00:27:14 ◼ ► phone that opens up to become an ipad like that's the point of it i feel like um so i think that
00:27:19 ◼ ► argument is kind of bizarre because the ipad has always been this way again within reason at four by
00:27:24 ◼ ► three and uh and again talking about mash shot in four by three right so just get in there watch a
00:27:31 ◼ ► lot of mash on your two thousand dollar iphone or three thousand dollar iphone whatever it ends up
00:27:35 ◼ ► costing um i had one other tiny bit of follow-up which is uh there is a new vision pro video that came
00:27:43 ◼ ► out which is the vip access yankee stadium i don't know if you saw this david i did after i saw it in
00:27:50 ◼ ► the show notes because a great a great amount of vision pro content knowing that it's there is part
00:27:56 ◼ ► part of the problem part of yes i'm not regularly i'm not regularly putting on my vision pro and so
00:28:00 ◼ ► yep i was like oh there's a new thing great i'll watch it before we record but and even that i thought
00:28:05 ◼ ► i'd try the new apple vision pro iphone app to do that that came out in 18.4 and i'd give it a try
00:28:11 ◼ ► and i was so confused with even in there because all you can do is add it to the watch list there's no
00:28:16 ◼ ► trailer there's no extra media it's just the short tiny sort of description that doesn't really tell
00:28:21 ◼ ► you what it is yeah and it seemed very strange that the iphone app like why is there no little
00:28:25 ◼ ► trailer here even i mean it's a short piece of content it's only 13 minutes of the thing so having
00:28:30 ◼ ► a trailer for a 13 minute piece of content but still like you can show something and give me some
00:28:35 ◼ ► sense of if this is going to be worth pulling out my vision pro for um so there just was a strange
00:28:39 ◼ ► interaction with this new uh the new iphone app that is supposed to make it you know more compelling
00:28:44 ◼ ► and easier to get into your vision pro and that was not necessarily my experience trying it out
00:28:49 ◼ ► it's a work in progress at least yeah it makes sense that they would they would have that in there i mean
00:28:53 ◼ ► it's nice i appreciate that that app exists but it is kind of bare bones at this point it's better
00:28:59 ◼ ► than nothing but it's also not exactly full featured but okay so yankee stadium um as with almost
00:29:07 ◼ ► everything that i've watched on the vision pro that's immersive i really am impressed with
00:29:12 ◼ ► a lot about it i loved i did feel like i was standing you know on that platform in the bronx
00:29:19 ◼ ► next to yankee stadium and you can see where the where the train platform is and where the stadium is and
00:29:24 ◼ ► then you're down the guys rolling up and down that his metal like uh thing that's got the picture of
00:29:28 ◼ ► babe ruth on it to open up his store in the morning and you're in the bronx you're on the sidewalk
00:29:31 ◼ ► right around the corner from yankee stadium and then you're inside and you're up you're up in the
00:29:36 ◼ ► stands and you're down on the field and you're talking to the guy who's raking the dirt and i'm
00:29:39 ◼ ► thinking they miked the guy who's raking the dirt and then there's a there's that moment where he's
00:29:44 ◼ ► like well i'm done with this i gotta go bye my bucket's full yep my bucket's full i'm gonna start
00:29:50 ◼ ► saying that my bucket's full everybody uh i you know i think immersive video is awesome but then
00:29:57 ◼ ► they show the the baseball stuff and i remember david you know when there were the demos of it
00:30:02 ◼ ► back yeah two junes ago now june 23 they had that one moment where you were in the camera well at
00:30:12 ◼ ► fenway park and there's a ground ball that gets thrown wide of the bag at first and i thought oh my
00:30:18 ◼ ► god this is amazing yeah and there there's been almost nothing since then that was uh baseball
00:30:25 ◼ ► related and i see all these clips and it's of a mostly of a yankees dodgers game during the regular
00:30:30 ◼ ► season last year they did for apple fortunately for apple that was also the world series matchup so it
00:30:35 ◼ ► got to seem a little more momentous than it otherwise would have um and joe buck did the narration which i
00:30:40 ◼ ► thought was really good to get a a well-known voice to do it um those moments whether you were down on
00:30:46 ◼ ► the field or behind home plate or up in the upper deck uh there's a a fly ball to the wall that you
00:30:55 ◼ ► know you can watch the arc of the ball like those individual moments i thought were again really
00:31:01 ◼ ► amazing but all it really makes me want to do is say can't you guys figure out how to do a game in
00:31:07 ◼ ► this format because these little tiny highlights from a year ago are really not cutting it as amazing
00:31:13 ◼ ► as they are no exactly i mean and i remember watching i was i was in one of those demos two
00:31:19 ◼ ► years ago as well and it's like oh this is cool wow this is that they're talking about baseball that
00:31:24 ◼ ► must be cool or same with basketball all these sports and it's been two years since that almost
00:31:30 ◼ ► and you know it's there's just nothing there and i and i don't it seemed would seem very surprising to
00:31:36 ◼ ► me that the reason they haven't done longer form sport content is because they don't they don't think
00:31:41 ◼ ► it's good that it's not compelling that it's not interesting that seems that it doesn't make sense it
00:31:46 ◼ ► seems weird that they just haven't done it that it hasn't been and whether that's single games whether
00:31:52 ◼ ► that's other leagues or other ways of doing it like it might be complicated with with rights and so
00:31:57 ◼ ► it's better to do with an all-star game or something the home run derby like any of these events that
00:32:02 ◼ ► you can imagine would be easier to get rights for there's none of it's happened it's unsurprising that
00:32:07 ◼ ► that fenway park uh shot that was in the original demo trailer was a friday night baseball game so it was
00:32:13 ◼ ► an apple tv plus game and that dodgers yankees game that they shot all that stuff at was a friday night
00:32:18 ◼ ► baseball game on apple tv plus sure so they that is how they got around the rights issue is they actually do i
00:32:25 ◼ ► mean even if they had to do additional deal with major league baseball or whatever it's like it's their game
00:32:29 ◼ ► they it's their announcer they have they have some latitude there but yeah i'm i'm sure there are horrendous
00:32:36 ◼ ► technical issues right but i and and for all we know they've tried stuff and said it's just not good
00:32:43 ◼ ► enough but i think an ongoing complaint about the the vision pro and i know that our pals on atp have
00:32:51 ◼ ► talked about this a bit but i think it is a really good point which is sometimes apple is too precious
00:32:58 ◼ ► and i feel like if there was ever a project to not be too precious about it's the vision pro the vision
00:33:04 ◼ ► pro is already the exception apple shipped a product that's not a mainstream consumer product at all it's a
00:33:09 ◼ ► tech demo and a developer kit and a point the way toward the future which is why when it came out i
00:33:14 ◼ ► likened it to like early personal computers it's like this is not the end product this is like
00:33:18 ◼ ► expensive step one on the way to something that might happen in five or ten years if you're lucky
00:33:22 ◼ ► and so don't be precious about it like you're like well we did a baseball thing and it was 3d but not
00:33:33 ◼ ► what are your standards for the apple vision pro because i think you could you got a lot of latitude
00:33:40 ◼ ► there that they're not they don't seem to be taking because what unless it was really bad and i have a
00:33:45 ◼ ► hard time believing it was really bad or that it was technically impossible which i could if somebody
00:33:52 ◼ ► wanted to come to me and say actually the immersive video was so enormous that there's no way we could
00:33:56 ◼ ► stream it live um i i'd be like okay but could you do a version of it that's a little less immersive
00:34:02 ◼ ► that you could stream live and we could try it like can we try this and i i that's my frustration is
00:34:07 ◼ ► i feel like they are letting uh the perfect be the enemy of the good as the saying goes yeah and it's if
00:34:14 ◼ ► that's if it's impossible that's one thing but it's if it's just being precious that doesn't make
00:34:19 ◼ ► make a lot of sense and as someone who bought one and doesn't i mean i you know i had other reasons
00:34:23 ◼ ► to buy a vision pro but it is not a compelling content device at this point there's just nothing
00:34:28 ◼ ► you know 13 minutes of baseball content over out of you know over a year later is just not much of
00:34:35 ◼ ► anything and so if you're into baseball that's not a reason to get a vision pro yeah for sure it's not
00:34:41 ◼ ► and that's i think one of the interesting arguments i know ben thompson made this argument there's like
00:34:44 ◼ ► there are people who would buy a vision pro if there were nba games you could watch immersive from uh
00:34:49 ◼ ► from the sideline from you know basically the front row people would be like yes i'll buy it i'll pay
00:34:55 ◼ ► for the subscription whatever and i think there are people who would do that for uh for theater
00:35:02 ◼ ► uh i think there were people who do that for concerts but the fact is we seem to be in the
00:35:08 ◼ ► era of little tasters as tech demos with this product and i mean fair enough but at some point
00:35:16 ◼ ► i'd really like to see something more and and i should say uh my colleague on mac break weekly alex lindsey
00:35:24 ◼ ► has been talking about how black magic has finally released uh and gotten to some customers hands this
00:35:31 ◼ ► immersive video uh camera that black magic is making and selling and that's a big step forward
00:35:37 ◼ ► and why alex is excited because everything up to now has sort of been these apple rigs that
00:35:41 ◼ ► apple has put together but now people who are not apple will be able to shoot immersive
00:35:46 ◼ ► and uh black magic also put out a press release i think last week that da vinci resolve has been updated
00:35:52 ◼ ► to support the format for it so we may yet get there but i feel like apple has had whatever a couple of
00:36:01 ◼ ► years to experiment with this content and are they going to really leave it to others to try and take
00:36:07 ◼ ► it across the goal line i i don't know i'm i'm surprised by that i'm surprised that yeah that there
00:36:13 ◼ ► hasn't been more there and then the longer they did the longer they don't lean into it too i think the
00:36:18 ◼ ► harder of a sell it is to a third party to want to be the one to do that work because the vision pro
00:36:25 ◼ ► becomes just nothing as it it doesn't have a user base it doesn't have an audience and if it doesn't
00:36:30 ◼ ► have a user base in an audience no third party is going to want to try and bootstrap that audience to
00:36:35 ◼ ► it yeah and so the longer apple waits though they may at some point be on sort of unrecoverable from
00:36:40 ◼ ► because it just becomes the oh that's the expensive toy that rich people get you know but it doesn't
00:36:45 ◼ ► actually have anything compelling or interesting on it yeah it's um it's very funny and i feel like
00:36:51 ◼ ► this way every time i talk about the vision pro where they do things and i'm impressed by them and i'm
00:36:55 ◼ ► excited by them and then that leads me to be disappointed because my disappointment is is about
00:37:01 ◼ ► unfulfilled potential and about showing me these incredible right it's like when are they going to get
00:37:07 ◼ ► to the fireworks factory that's essentially it or like okay you promised me this thing but all you're
00:37:13 ◼ ► giving me is tantalizing bits of what it could be without actually doing the thing that it could be
00:37:19 ◼ ► um yeah it's just it's just really frustrating but uh but i i'll keep watching the clips i just would
00:37:27 ◼ ► like to see i'd like to see more i just i would like to see more i'd like to try it i i i would rather
00:37:33 ◼ ► and this is to go back to ben thompson um because i don't agree with his put a camera somewhere and just
00:37:38 ◼ ► let it sit there all the time i think that you could do a little bit more than that but i am a
00:37:43 ◼ ► believer that if apple gets something and there are people inside apple who are like oh this isn't really
00:37:48 ◼ ► very good just put it out there we'll tell you right the audience will tell you if it's good or not
00:37:54 ◼ ► but i feel like they're just not even willing to do that like let be willing to to experiment and fail
00:38:01 ◼ ► that's okay that's okay i i'd honestly be willing to watch a not live sporting event that was mostly
00:38:11 ◼ ► intact just to see what the experience will be like in the future if we could stream it live but they
00:38:17 ◼ ► don't seem interested in showing it yeah and weirdly into to talk bring up another like media sort of
00:38:23 ◼ ► term it makes me weirdly the vision pro in this kind of way feels a bit like a chekhov's gun that like
00:38:28 ◼ ► they introduced all these possibilities or in the first act but none of them have come to anything and
00:38:34 ◼ ► it feels like as a as a as a part of the audience you're like well when is that going to pay off when
00:38:38 ◼ ► was that thing they brought up at the beginning you know two years ago at wbc that clip you know from
00:38:44 ◼ ► if of baseball like it's they put it out there where's the payoff if that if yeah where's the payoff
00:38:49 ◼ ► where is all these things that they keep putting out there but never actually paying off and that
00:38:53 ◼ ► at some point at some point that's exciting like it's like oh what's what's you know what's going to happen in
00:38:57 ◼ ► act two what's going to happen in act three but if at some point you feel like there's all these things
00:39:01 ◼ ► that just were introduced but never actually paid off on yeah frustrating story of the vision pro in a
00:39:07 ◼ ► lot of ways let's say it's time for rumor roundup yee-haw thank you thank you i don't know why that
00:39:16 ◼ ► became a thing but it became a thing um so when dan and i did upgrade last time we pre-recorded on a
00:39:21 ◼ ► friday because i went away for the weekend um so we missed two editions of mark german's newsletter
00:39:27 ◼ ► which you know is the premier source of rumors for this entire community and for rumor roundup
00:39:32 ◼ ► um last week's german you know rumors included the inevitable m5 ipad pro and m5 macbook pros that
00:39:41 ◼ ► will come this fall and he talked about an m6 ipad pro and a macbook pro eventually getting oled
00:39:47 ◼ ► probably around m6 and i think those have been talked about a lot um but and he also talked
00:39:54 ◼ ► about this was interesting uh new apple health plus service that might exist where they're trying to
00:39:59 ◼ ► create ai quote doctors yeah never like i never like quotes around the word doctor that's not good
00:40:08 ◼ ► no i'm a doc i'm not a doctor but i'm a doctor in quotes like not hmm i don't i don't like that at all
00:40:30 ◼ ► okay so let's step back and you actually are are a great example of this because you've got all that
00:40:37 ◼ ► pedometer data but like yeah we swim in personal data it's this life logging thing we swim in personal
00:40:43 ◼ ► data there is so much personal data the more health sensors you've got the more personal data you've got
00:40:48 ◼ ► and what does it mean does it mean anything and and i even now am overwhelmed in the health app where
00:40:54 ◼ ► it's trying to tell me all these various things so i can see some benefit in just trying to do a
00:41:01 ◼ ► better job of communicating when you when your system spots things good or bad out of the soup
00:41:07 ◼ ► of data because no human being can be expected to look at the soup of data so that that part's fair
00:41:13 ◼ ► you know what do you think about this yeah i mean i think i don't like the idea of an actual like
00:41:18 ◼ ► presenting it as an ai doctor like it being a doctor is not that's not that that is a different
00:41:23 ◼ ► thing that is a medical professional who's spent many many years being qualified to give you specific
00:41:29 ◼ ► medical advice yeah but on the on the positive side i feel like one of the biggest disconnects that apple
00:41:36 ◼ ► has on in this area is the way that they collect more and more detailed data about you and all the time
00:41:45 ◼ ► and they know your apple watch and your iphone know so much about you and i like i know this from
00:41:49 ◼ ► someone who's been making you know health-based apps for more than 12 years like there's tons of data
00:41:53 ◼ ► there but the challenge is actually making that useful and meaningful and helpful that it's easy to
00:42:02 ◼ ► show data to a user it's difficult to show useful data to a user and i think their history here is
00:42:09 ◼ ► complicated because so much of health the apple seems very reluctant to ever actually tell you
00:42:17 ◼ ► anything about your health they tell you information about you but they don't tell you what that means
00:42:23 ◼ ► is that a good thing is this a bad thing do you want more of this number do you want less of this number
00:42:27 ◼ ► i feel like they try very hard to not do that almost intentionally and at this point it feels
00:42:32 ◼ ► intentional and so i guess the optimistic version that i would have of something a story like this
00:42:37 ◼ ► is that apple would be trying to go beyond just giving lots of data to actually interpreting that
00:42:43 ◼ ► data for you and making that leap from being just a data collector to an actual like something a giving
00:42:50 ◼ ► you advice and that's certainly i can see why they have been reluctant to give you advice because when
00:42:56 ◼ ► you give someone advice if you give them bad advice then there you've given someone bad medical advice
00:43:00 ◼ ► and that could get really problematic but on the other side like i think of the uh the last year
00:43:05 ◼ ► we got training load um and vitals for the two big health features that were added um to watch os and
00:43:11 ◼ ► sleep sleep apnea detection too right oh sure you're right and sleep apnea protection in some ways is more
00:43:16 ◼ ► straightforward because it's a that's a good thing that they were able to sort of more buy in a binary
00:43:20 ◼ ► state give you information and say you have it or go see a doctor or don't like is to some degree what
00:43:25 ◼ ► they're saying but like i look at the training load thing and i've been making fitness apps for
00:43:29 ◼ ► years and i have no idea what this is trying to tell me i look at the graphs and it's like your
00:43:33 ◼ ► your 26 percent of your your last seven days or 26 percent above your 28 previous days it's like
00:43:40 ◼ ► okay is that is that good do i want that to be the case do i want that to be bad do i want
00:43:48 ◼ ► and like there are other fitness devices i've used which are much more prescriptive that they start to
00:43:52 ◼ ► to have these things to try and be like hey today it seems like you've been working too hard you're
00:43:56 ◼ ► working yourself down you have a sleep debt um you need to sleep an extra 30 minutes for the next two
00:44:02 ◼ ► nights to get back to sort of where you should be they're giving you some kind of advice and i think
00:44:07 ◼ ► they've seen apple has seemed so reluctant to ever give a any kind of prescription out of the data and i
00:44:13 ◼ ► would when i see a feature like this rumored it's like that would be the wonderful thing i think is
00:44:17 ◼ ► just taking one step across the threshold there and i hope that they're doing that kind of thing i
00:44:23 ◼ ► don't need an ai doctor to replace my actual doctor i it's wonderful that the apple watch is able to
00:44:28 ◼ ► very have these off ramps where they're like we're seeing something here that isn't healthy but they're
00:44:35 ◼ ► and go see a doctor but those tend to be these very severe or more profound conditions that they're
00:44:42 ◼ ► identifying and it would be great if rather than waiting until these massive off ramps like you have
00:44:47 ◼ ► arterial fibrillation or some really you know sort of meaningful problem they could be like hey it seems
00:44:52 ◼ ► like this is happening and you should potentially do something you try and sleep more or oh it seems like
00:44:58 ◼ ► you're doing less rather than it just being these numerical things that they tend to do now whereas
00:45:03 ◼ ► the fitness trends is just are you walking more now or less than you did before which that's could
00:45:09 ◼ ► the that doesn't help you if am i working walking enough right should i be walking more or less
00:45:15 ◼ ► there's it's just telling me you're walking less you get what i'm saying no i don't get what you're
00:45:20 ◼ ► saying what are you saying yeah and like you go on like my this drives me crazy you know you go on
00:45:24 ◼ ► holiday and you have a have a you know you you're walking a lot and so then that you know a week
00:45:29 ◼ ► later or two weeks later you get a trend update that says oh you're walking way less and it's like
00:45:33 ◼ ► yeah yes that is true that is numerically accurate but it is not helpful um to tell me something like
00:45:39 ◼ ► that and so i hope that they could be smarter about it yeah yeah no i agree that this is the
00:45:44 ◼ ► it's all the details i have this argument with people sometimes where where um something will get
00:45:50 ◼ ► announced whether it's a product or a movie or whatever and people are like oh that's going to be
00:45:54 ◼ ► terrible like well anything anything in human endeavor could be good or it could be bad
00:46:00 ◼ ► it could be a you know and so i look at this ai doctors thing and i think okay first off that's a
00:46:05 ◼ ► simplified thing and i think apple's team of health doctors that they have in the health team
00:46:11 ◼ ► are are not are like you're not gonna apple's so careful with this stuff it will never be called
00:46:15 ◼ ► anything like doctor right it won't be no but there's a question of like will it be too far
00:46:22 ◼ ► where it's like super aggressive and annoying will it be so restrained that it doesn't tell you
00:46:27 ◼ ► anything which is kind of where they are now or where do they put it in the middle and there's an
00:46:31 ◼ ► art to that like you said of like can you step over the threshold a little bit because algorithms are
00:46:37 ◼ ► going to do a better job of looking at that data than any person uh because there's too much data
00:46:42 ◼ ► even a doctor doesn't want to see all that data a doctor wants to see some specific data that they
00:46:46 ◼ ► will it be able to evaluate but if you can if you can do a better job of interpreting all that data
00:46:52 ◼ ► in order to provide actionable feedback to me and ideally intelligent about who i am and what my goals
00:47:01 ◼ ► are because i i when when that um training load thing was pitched to me at wwc last year by people on the
00:47:08 ◼ ► watch team um it was strongly pitched as being for people who are very serious athletes and i thought
00:47:18 ◼ ► okay but everybody gets asked to rate the strenuousness of their workout now yeah and if that's a feature that
00:47:30 ◼ ► most people don't want you should probably i mean i let them turn it off but you should probably like
00:47:37 ◼ ► intuit that that's not a feature for this 55 year old man who's just trying to get out and exercise
00:47:42 ◼ ► for 30 minutes a day right it may be too much for them and and it's just dumb stuff like that so like
00:47:47 ◼ ► it could it be smarter yes will this make it smarter i don't know it could be good it could be bad
00:47:51 ◼ ► um i think it's a little bit weird if they put some of this stuff behind uh a service i get why they
00:47:58 ◼ ► want to do services but at the same time it mutes the argument for the apple watch as a health device
00:48:02 ◼ ► um if if they you know they're talking about making a lot of video content i i have a question for that
00:48:07 ◼ ► um dan morin and i were talking about that last week on the six colors podcast the idea that
00:48:12 ◼ ► there's what's the line between fitness plus and health plus content and there is like i was thinking
00:48:19 ◼ ► about how kaiser my medical provider provides me with all these videos that are boring and dumb but useful
00:48:26 ◼ ► but boring that are like here's a stretch you can do right and i'm like okay maybe there is some
00:48:34 ◼ ► preventative some stretching some some like maybe there is content that be created that is more health
00:48:40 ◼ ► than fitness and that fitness is more like an exercise class and health is more broad than that
00:48:45 ◼ ► i don't i don't know it's a challenge and that may be why this product doesn't exist yet
00:48:50 ◼ ► is that it's kind of hard to quantify what it would be but um but i love that apple has made this device
00:48:56 ◼ ► that i wear every day that is monitoring me in all sorts of ways i i just i feel like in in a lot of
00:49:02 ◼ ► cases they like to use your metaphor they don't step over the threshold they're willing to tell me
00:49:08 ◼ ► that my sleep with the sleep apnea they'll say not elevated no evidence of sleep apnea or it's funny i
00:49:15 ◼ ► got this week i got a couple instances of elevated breathing disturbances and i thought well all the
00:49:23 ◼ ► pollen is out there so it's allergy season my breathing is disrupted from what it has been but like a lot of it
00:49:30 ◼ ► it's just like you said oh you walked a little more or a little less like okay so like your your
00:49:38 ◼ ► oxygen intake level has gone from uninterpretable figure to other uninterpretable figure i'm like
00:49:46 ◼ ► what is what are you doing here so definitely more could be done i just don't know what whether they
00:49:51 ◼ ► are going to be willing to do it to step through that door absolutely and i think a lot of it is very
00:49:56 ◼ ► much you have to have be able to have have a conversation with your device in the sense of
00:50:01 ◼ ► giving it goals giving an understanding of what it is you're actually trying to understand and if you
00:50:05 ◼ ► don't have that if all you have is the numbers and whether the number is good or bad depends on what
00:50:10 ◼ ► your goal is if you are training for a marathon you want your certain numbers to go up and certain
00:50:15 ◼ ► numbers to go down and if that's not what you're doing if you're recovering from an injury you potentially
00:50:20 ◼ ► want very different things and if those numbers were going in the same way as the person who was
00:50:23 ◼ ► training for a marathon it would be counterproductive and so you have to be able to tell it what you're
00:50:28 ◼ ► doing and what phase of fitness and health you're actually in yourself yeah for sure this episode of
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00:53:04 ◼ ► or as steven hackett coined it on connected last week i guess the details because it's not in
00:53:11 ◼ ► 18.4 is not in beta anymore really it's now it is out in the world it's just out in the world there
00:53:18 ◼ ► is an 18.5 ios beta now uh and all the 0.5s are out there they seem to have nothing in them
00:53:26 ◼ ► they seem to be like empty containers for bug fixes which is fine that's fine but um i was wondering uh
00:53:34 ◼ ► we should talk about 18.4 just being out there uh since we i just waved past 18.5 to call this the
00:53:39 ◼ ► details um i have realized now and so for 15.4 for mac os that uh when i do a full-on update
00:53:49 ◼ ► to a new version one of the things that happens is a whole host of permissions just get reset and so
00:53:58 ◼ ► all of my podcast animation on my mac automation on my mac that is involved with things like
00:54:04 ◼ ► um running a shortcut or running an apple script that that controls the finder or something like
00:54:11 ◼ ► that and they all break when i do an update and i found like that my apple script i literally it's
00:54:18 ◼ ► an applet it just runs and it throws an error and what i have to do is i have to open it up in script
00:54:22 ◼ ► editor and run it and then it asks me oh do you want to let this thing have permission to script the
00:54:29 ◼ ► finder and i'm like well yes i did before and shortcuts the same way i get this barrage every
00:54:34 ◼ ► time i run a shortcut for the first time it's like do you want to look at this folder and i'm like yeah
00:54:38 ◼ ► that's what it's for and it used to work fine but a bunch of those things just get reset
00:54:43 ◼ ► at and it breaks everything literally everything i'm doing until i eventually slowly go through and
00:54:57 ◼ ► the next update and you know it's not as bad as some of those huge rafts of permissions because it's
00:55:04 ◼ ► only portions of permissions to look like some of the scripting and automation stuff that are getting
00:55:08 ◼ ► hit by this but like it stinks like this should an upgrade should not throw should not ask you for
00:55:15 ◼ ► new permission for the same thing that you already gave permission for it's so frustrating
00:55:18 ◼ ► yeah and as a developer i can say that this is something that is a perennial problem that i run
00:55:24 ◼ ► into with my users where especially things around like health and fitness permissions where
00:55:29 ◼ ► every time that there's a big point update so you know last week um there's going to inevitably be a
00:55:36 ◼ ► collection of people who complain that suddenly it's not stopped working like suddenly pedometer
00:55:41 ◼ ► plus plus isn't counting their steps anymore and why is that and inevitably the answer is you
00:55:46 ◼ ► installed 18.4 it reset the permissions and often in a way that is not as obvious that it got a reset
00:55:53 ◼ ► like it isn't just like the first installation reset it's in this weird limbo state where bad things
00:55:59 ◼ ► happen or the watch has a different permission set now than the phone and it's just inevitably
00:56:04 ◼ ► trouble and so it's just one of these things i don't know what it is about this if there's some
00:56:08 ◼ ► way that they're doing security that if they make a change in this in the you know in the
00:56:12 ◼ ► core os of the system that touches some permission that was granted they need to reauthorize it or
00:56:18 ◼ ► some thing but it's from a user's perspective it is very infuriating when it's not it doesn't feel
00:56:23 ◼ ► like something that should be reset and it makes anything you can you do to your system that makes
00:56:29 ◼ ► a user not want to install the last update is setting yourself your future self up for a bad time
00:56:34 ◼ ► because you don't want to train your users that installing updates will hurt their productivity
00:56:39 ◼ ► hurt their experience make things bad you want updates to only ever be i installed the update
00:56:44 ◼ ► good things happened and that was great yeah yeah this goes back to as we're entering potentially
00:56:51 ◼ ► in ios redesign and in a all os redesign i'm reminded of ios 7 which got pushed out everywhere and i i still
00:57:00 ◼ ► have friends and family members who bear the scars of ios 7 completely changing their iphone
00:57:06 ◼ ► yeah they still to this day a lot of them won't update their devices until like i show up and i say
00:57:14 ◼ ► what are you doing update your device they won't do it because they're afraid of updates and that was
00:57:19 ◼ ► one event 10 years ago and it it's bad like you you want to get updates i say you want these updates
00:57:26 ◼ ► but they're like i don't know they do weird things and so yeah it's incumbent on apple to try and make
00:57:32 ◼ ► them as smooth as possible i remember um mike and i talked many years ago now about how awful the iphone
00:57:39 ◼ ► upgrade process was when you bought a new iphone and they've done a lot of work since then to make it
00:57:44 ◼ ► better but the the same principle applies which is this this stuff should not hurt right like you should
00:57:52 ◼ ► want to get a new iphone you should want to update your iphone or your mac and um i do think that a lot
00:58:00 ◼ ► of this has gotten better but boy one of the consequences of apple being so strict with its
00:58:07 ◼ ► permissions regime is that they miss some stuff and it gets reset and it breaks things and there are so
00:58:18 ◼ ► many different permissions now i've lost track of how many permissions especially on my mac like
00:58:23 ◼ ► is that a full disk access is that a folder permission is that a looking at the photo library
00:58:30 ◼ ► permission is that a looking at the you know it's like there are so many granular permissions
00:58:35 ◼ ► and you know when i write a script and i say you know look in this folder like i write a shortcut and
00:58:47 ◼ ► like i think it's pretty strongly implied that i'm i want to do something in that folder and it says are
00:58:53 ◼ ► you sure do you want to give me permission to use this folder and it's like of course i do never ask
00:59:00 ◼ ► me again but it asked me again which is just frustrating and makes it uh let makes something
00:59:06 ◼ ► that should be should be exciting less exciting and um you put a note in our show notes that we should
00:59:11 ◼ ► mention which is uh what version is this like this is the version that didn't have the ai things in it
00:59:16 ◼ ► but it does have like the extended mail features for ipad and and mac which it very kindly now just
00:59:23 ◼ ► when it slides down it's like you can just turn this off right now if you don't want to see
00:59:27 ◼ ► the switches uh but you you pointed out it's actually kind of hard to find out what's in what update
00:59:33 ◼ ► anymore yeah and and i think specifically i was like i mean i'm preparing for this show and want to
00:59:38 ◼ ► make sure if like there were particular things in 18.4 that i wanted to talk about and it's like
00:59:42 ◼ ► i don't even couldn't find a good place like you go to apple.com and there's no reference to 18.4 or
00:59:49 ◼ ► any of these updates anywhere like it seems like there should be in that like you know they have
00:59:53 ◼ ► the maybe not it's not like the hero image that these updates are out but somewhere on that page
00:59:57 ◼ ► a link to be like here's what's new and you go to even if you go to like ios 18's page there's no
01:00:02 ◼ ► indication of what's there and you go to the newsroom and there's nothing there's just the priority
01:00:07 ◼ ► applications apple intelligence thing left listed there but there's not like it's we like one of the
01:00:13 ◼ ► things apple recently shifted to was this system where they are sort of moving features into you know
01:00:20 ◼ ► 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 who knows maybe 0.5 and that is so that they can rather have these big monolithic
01:00:28 ◼ ► releases in 0.0 and that's great but i also feel like since they're doing this they've not then
01:00:35 ◼ ► realized that they also then need to communicate and market and understand communicate to their users
01:00:40 ◼ ► what's in what and i think that is a missed opportunity to communicate that in a way that
01:00:45 ◼ ► is clearer and sort of at this point other than if you happen to open the settings app and go to
01:00:52 ◼ ► general software update and look at the little description that they have there if you never see that
01:00:57 ◼ ► there's no place that that that sort of that is obviously um presented as far as i can tell in a
01:01:03 ◼ ► lot of apple's sort of marketing communications and that just i think increasingly apple seems to be in
01:01:08 ◼ ► this place where they are doing lots and lots of updates to ios and mac os and watch os and so having
01:01:14 ◼ ► a better and more robust system of communicating what's in what and when you know especially as things
01:01:19 ◼ ► are shifting around it's like well the 18.4 was supposed to have this feature and now it doesn't and now
01:01:23 ◼ ► i was like okay well yeah it's not my job to keep track of what's in which which feature is coming
01:01:28 ◼ ► in what thing if i was excited about it at wwdc last june it is not incumbent on me at this point
01:01:33 ◼ ► to try and work out when that feature is actually going to appear there are some support documents i
01:01:40 ◼ ► guess that have this sure like in the in the in the k base or somewhere you could find some thing
01:01:47 ◼ ► yeah although even there i i'm looking at about ios uh 18 yeah yeah i think this is it there there is
01:01:57 ◼ ► a k base article called about ios 18 updates that will show you the release notes for every ios update
01:02:06 ◼ ► uh or in 18 18 oh and all that um but you're right it also is only down in the k base it's it's a support
01:02:16 ◼ ► document yeah that is not a marketing document this is a document that you need to reference for other
01:02:22 ◼ ► reasons it is not something that a typical user should ever find right whereas whereas you could
01:02:26 ◼ ► have a friendly marketing document about ios 18 that says here's what's new yeah with pictures and
01:02:32 ◼ ► reasons why you might want these features exactly because because here you're going to get well like
01:02:39 ◼ ► cooking mode lets you easily follow step-by-step directions there's probably a more exciting version
01:02:44 ◼ ► of that that explains all the new recipes and cooking modes and all of that that could still be available
01:02:49 ◼ ► as part of it i think it's i think it's an interesting point let's move on and put on our suits and
01:02:57 ◼ ► lawyer up um you've been waiting for this one right i mean both of us are like oh boy i can't wait to
01:03:04 ◼ ► talk about tariffs who who wouldn't want the the week that you're on your you know one of your favorite
01:03:10 ◼ ► podcasts be the time that you have to talk about tariffs and trade imbalances and trade deficits and
01:03:15 ◼ ► all the percentages and this yeah no it's a oof and i think it's tough too to want to talk about
01:03:22 ◼ ► something that i feel like is going to change by the time we finish recording i'm sure if i open up
01:03:26 ◼ ► if i open a newspaper or no news website it's going to be something's going to be changed
01:03:30 ◼ ► something's going to be different and that is part of the um insanity of this whole situation
01:03:35 ◼ ► we did avoid talking about it for an hour so that's uh yay for us and i agree i i kind of want to keep
01:03:41 ◼ ► a light touch with it because i do think this situation is so dynamic we really don't know what
01:03:46 ◼ ► what's going to happen maybe nothing probably something could be good could be bad really don't know
01:03:51 ◼ ► um but i i like uh so in mark german's newsletter this week he he uh had a nice bit about what apple's
01:04:01 ◼ ► options are with tariffs and um and ben thompson wrote about it on stratechery today too and i just
01:04:06 ◼ ► wanted to walk through it because it's interesting we don't know right we don't know not only do we not
01:04:11 ◼ ► know the trade policy of the united states of america in a month or six months or a year or like
01:04:16 ◼ ► let's say in september when the iphones come out we don't know what apple's going to do but here are
01:04:23 ◼ ► some options because the idea and this is in the u.s because obviously this is going to affect americans
01:04:28 ◼ ► because of these tariffs um ironically one of the things that will happen is that apple will be fine
01:04:35 ◼ ► in all its other markets i guess because they'll be coming from china or or vietnam or india or you know
01:04:43 ◼ ► all the places they they make or brazil where they make products um it's just the tariffs are are in
01:04:49 ◼ ► the u.s so it's importing things into the u.s that's the issue so the questions are like what are apple's
01:04:53 ◼ ► options one of the things they could do is services are not affected by tariffs no so you could say yay
01:05:02 ◼ ► or you could say this will make apple more focused on services even more focused on ways of generating
01:05:07 ◼ ► money from services because services aren't affected by tariffs yeah and that is something that honestly
01:05:16 ◼ ► in all of this that's the thing that makes me the most nervous as an app developer is that that's apple
01:05:20 ◼ ► will be like well let's tighten the screws on service and try and pull that number higher and higher to offset
01:05:27 ◼ ► whatever we may need to do on pricing if they feel like oh our hardware margins are as high as we want
01:05:32 ◼ ► but if we can get a little bit you know get an extra a dollar a user a month or something suddenly
01:05:36 ◼ ► that very quickly pays for the reduced price that they would have to do and i think i mean they're
01:05:43 ◼ ► probably going to do it anyway i think apple has been you know tightening the screws on services for
01:05:46 ◼ ► years now years but it feels like they may be increasing the pace at which and the emphasis that
01:05:52 ◼ ► they place on that which is a way that they can soften the blow of a lot of this yeah i think this is
01:05:59 ◼ ► one of those cases where apple's growth of services is going to help them out at a time where like if
01:06:08 ◼ ► apple's business was composed like it was back before services was such a big part of it and it was all on
01:06:14 ◼ ► hardware margins this would be it's it's potentially a really tough situation for apple regardless but it
01:06:19 ◼ ► would be so much tougher if they did not have the impossibly high margins on services as a huge part of
01:06:25 ◼ ► their uh number so when they release numbers for next quarter or the quarter thereafter when tariffs
01:06:31 ◼ ► are hitting them they will be able to still point at some really nice numbers um yeah even if the u.s
01:06:40 ◼ ► segment is kind of been brutalized the other thing and keep in mind too u.s is apple's number one market
01:06:46 ◼ ► but apple has a lot of good markets out there so this is only one market that gets affected by this
01:06:51 ◼ ► at least for now because of the way that they can move things around and ship them to other uh other
01:06:56 ◼ ► markets one of their options as you mentioned is eating margin on hardware apple has very high margins
01:07:02 ◼ ► on hardware and actually one of the benefits that apple gets uh from this is that tariffs are not
01:07:11 ◼ ► charged my understanding again all of us are learning on the fly sure my belief is tariffs are charged on the
01:07:18 ◼ ► value of the good and not the retail price of the good which may mean that apple has some advantages
01:07:25 ◼ ► in that that iphone that they're importing isn't 9.99 when it's listed as a tariff uh tariffable object
01:07:32 ◼ ► uh it is it is less because they have a huge profit margin on it when they sell it in the in the u.s
01:07:39 ◼ ► so but anyway be that as it may um they could eat some of this just in the margins and let their u.s
01:07:46 ◼ ► hardware margins go down because unlike many companies that sell at super slim margins um
01:07:54 ◼ ► apple has very fat margins they're not services margins where it's in you know 75 percent 90 percent
01:07:59 ◼ ► whatever but they're they're really good and so they they can afford to um eat some of that if they
01:08:06 ◼ ► have to they they're not going to like it but they could do it in the u.s um they could change the
01:08:11 ◼ ► prices and there was a nice uh back and forth john gruber wrote something about this dan morin over at
01:08:18 ◼ ► six colors followed it up uh it is the immense desire by apple to keep its prices static dan pointed out that
01:08:27 ◼ ► the imac almost always starts at 12.99 and has forever since it first was introduced uh which was a long
01:08:35 ◼ ► time ago and yet it still costs 12.99 and um gruber mentioned like the mac pro gets introduced and it's
01:08:43 ◼ ► a joke after many years and it's going to be replaced and they've apologized for it and it's still the same
01:08:48 ◼ ► price right during that whole period it was still the same price and i wanted to bring up the macbook air
01:08:54 ◼ ► where you know with the m4 they got it back down to 9.99 and in the intervening years since they
01:08:59 ◼ ► released the m2 and it was 11.99 they have had to put older models on sale at 9.99 but it's very clear
01:09:06 ◼ ► that apple fundamentally wants a product at 9.99 that they can call macbook air and now the m4 is there
01:09:12 ◼ ► so they really don't want to raise prices but they might have to they just might have to oh sure
01:09:18 ◼ ► and i think it's very much tied into apple seems to believe view the price of a product as just as much
01:09:26 ◼ ► of a marketing feature as the processor in it or the screen technology or any of the aspects that are
01:09:32 ◼ ► more tangible and related to that product that it is something that is they are they don't they don't
01:09:38 ◼ ► want to change it because that is they've decided what is the sort of the marketing version of that thing
01:09:44 ◼ ► that this is a a macbook air is a 9.99 product and that is an attribute of that product they aren't
01:09:52 ◼ ► trying to they're trying to create that disconnect that it isn't the price of this product is the
01:09:57 ◼ ► sort of bill of goods plus 20 percent it's no that the the price of this thing is 9.99 because that's
01:10:04 ◼ ► what we have sort of determined is the best fit for that and i think that means that they have a great
01:10:10 ◼ ► margin as the price of the goods go down their margins increase that works out well for them but it
01:10:15 ◼ ► also means that they're much more reluctant i think to change or to be to do that in a quick
01:10:21 ◼ ► way that i don't expect it i'm sure there are some computer manufacturers who will be changing their
01:10:27 ◼ ► prices on a monthly weekly basis to adapt to changing tariff rules or other kind of cost things because
01:10:35 ◼ ► they're just the bill whatever the price that they imported it for plus 20 percent is their price to some
01:10:41 ◼ ► degree and whereas i think apple that is not they would rather have it be this thing that's going up
01:10:46 ◼ ► and down on internally to them that their their internal costs are shifting around but from a user's
01:10:51 ◼ ► perspective you don't have these weird tensions of is this a good time to buy it is the price going to
01:10:56 ◼ ► go up is the price going to go down it's like nope it's always you're one of the things that's lovely
01:11:01 ◼ ► with an apple product is you they don't really ever go on sale it's never going to be a different price
01:11:07 ◼ ► so you don't have that you have the risk of it's going to be replaced at some point you know so don't
01:11:13 ◼ ► buy an iphone at the end of august if you can avoid it because you could get a better one for the same
01:11:17 ◼ ► price but you're never going to get that like the prices themselves don't change beyond the kind of
01:11:23 ◼ ► things shifting down the down the ladder like they do now so that you could buy an iphone you know and
01:11:28 ◼ ► the iphone 17 will become the same price as the iphone 16 and it kind of works its way down but
01:11:34 ◼ ► their pricing buckets are very stable and i think that is something that they view as an important
01:11:39 ◼ ► part of the marketing of the product i i agree um you see we should say they do put things on sale but
01:11:45 ◼ ► they don't really they let their they let their channel partners put things on sale right so like
01:11:49 ◼ ► they have their deal with amazon amazon will put something on sale or best buy will put something
01:11:53 ◼ ► on sale but apple.com does not put things on sale which is kind of wild when you think about it but
01:11:59 ◼ ► that is part of the brand promise it's like it's 9.99 here and oh yeah there's a deal where you can
01:12:03 ◼ ► get it for 8.99 and amazon right now but um that that's how they that's how they do that they want
01:12:09 ◼ ► to do this now i know they're going to a lot of people outside the u.s are going to say well that's
01:12:13 ◼ ► not really true they do reprice yes apple has repriced in foreign markets but even there it tries really
01:12:19 ◼ ► hard not to there come moments where the dollar shifts or that local currency shifts and they will uh
01:12:27 ◼ ► they will reprice but they even then there is a threshold that gets met where they will do a
01:12:32 ◼ ► repricing but what i i know of no examples where apple is floating prices around every few months
01:12:39 ◼ ► in australia or in the uk or in japan i think what they like to do is put it at a price and they build
01:12:47 ◼ ► in a hedge against currency so that's one of the reasons why sometimes apple products cost way more
01:12:54 ◼ ► cheaper in canada than they do in the u.s or in again you can pick your market it's because
01:13:01 ◼ ► apple is trying to look at the you know ups and downs of currency and say well what's a nice price
01:13:08 ◼ ► that we can hold forever essentially unless there's something really unforeseen we can hold this forever
01:13:15 ◼ ► i remember when i i don't know how many years ago this was there was a whole controversy because apple
01:13:20 ◼ ► reprice i want to say in australia repriced a bunch of things and it was because the the two
01:13:25 ◼ ► currencies had gotten so far so divergent that apple did a big reprice but like that that feels like the
01:13:31 ◼ ► exception not the rule apple really does and and you're right david this is a customer friendly thing
01:13:36 ◼ ► which is they want to eliminate the whole idea of like is now a good time to buy that macbook air or will
01:13:42 ◼ ► the price go up next week or down next week and should i wait or should i buy now like they don't
01:13:47 ◼ ► want to do that and they may have to do that in the u.s but i i agree i think i think it's a last resort
01:13:54 ◼ ► and i think they'll do it if they have to but i i don't think i think that they will change prices if
01:13:59 ◼ ► they have to but they're going to eat some margins too um i haven't even mentioned another option that
01:14:04 ◼ ► they have that that they will look at as moving parts of the supply chain um it's hard because the
01:14:09 ◼ ► supply chain look the truth is they already did some of this they moved a lot of things to vietnam
01:14:16 ◼ ► and to india and vietnam vietnam was put there like everybody said invest in vietnam when you're moving
01:14:26 ◼ ► out of china because it will give you a access to the asian supply chain but you won't be dependent
01:14:32 ◼ ► on china and then this administration slaps a bigger tariff on well it's not a bigger tariff than china
01:14:39 ◼ ► but it's an enormous tariff on vietnam yeah so like they can move things around and i do think one thing
01:14:44 ◼ ► that will happen is like there are places where they manufacture products that previously didn't get
01:14:49 ◼ ► shipped to the united states that will now get shipped to the united states that there'll be this like
01:14:54 ◼ ► uh shell game where they they redirect the output of their various factories in order to find ways to
01:15:01 ◼ ► ship into the u.s for the lowest price and my last bullet point here about things they could do
01:15:06 ◼ ► is work the refs because i think that we can never discount the fact that this is why and we saw it in
01:15:12 ◼ ► the last trump administration this is why tim cook tries real hard to be talking to people in the white
01:15:21 ◼ ► house and also talking to people in in china honestly and in in the chinese government but talking to
01:15:27 ◼ ► people in the white house to be visible and yes this is why i went to the inauguration and all those
01:15:30 ◼ ► things is it look not only do i think persuasion is a thing that can work with this group that that
01:15:40 ◼ ► being having the ear of people who have the ear of trump or literally having the ear right well not
01:15:47 ◼ ► literally like i got his ear in a jar i didn't mean to say that but like literally being able to talk to
01:15:53 ◼ ► the guy and say let me explain what's going on here and knowing ways to give him the ability to declare
01:16:00 ◼ ► victory because that's very important is to be able to say well this is a victory because even if it's
01:16:06 ◼ ► actually not that same victory um that's important and tim cook has proven to be pretty good at that
01:16:11 ◼ ► so i think that's part of the the scenario here this is the famous oh we're cutting tariffs on all
01:16:16 ◼ ► these things that apple imports because they open a mac pro factory that kind of thing right where it's
01:16:21 ◼ ► like yeah is that really was that meaningful well no but it looks meaningful and sometimes that's what
01:16:28 ◼ ► you're what you're going for there and so i think don't underestimate apple's at least attempts i don't
01:16:33 ◼ ► know if they'll be successful this time because this is different from last time but like their
01:16:36 ◼ ► attempts to work the refs and i and i know i sound like a broken record on this point but i'm going
01:16:40 ◼ ► to mention it again which is apple is a great american company it is it's not to say that the president of
01:16:48 ◼ ► the united states whoever that person might be doesn't doesn't have to care about a great american
01:16:54 ◼ ► company but i would say it's not the best optics especially if you're trying to make america great
01:17:00 ◼ ► again to have american companies get really hit hard by your policies especially this is the
01:17:08 ◼ ► argument especially if non-american companies don't get hit hard by your policies which is why
01:17:13 ◼ ► the fact that uh samsung makes their stuff in korea where the tariffs are lower i mean i know they've
01:17:20 ◼ ► already used that before they will use it again tim cook will go to donald trump and say
01:17:23 ◼ ► why are you making the koreans a better deal than your american friends at apple and whether that'll
01:17:30 ◼ ► fall on deaf ears or whether it'll you know catch and he'll make a change who knows but i i would put
01:17:36 ◼ ► that up there honestly as i think the number one i don't know if it'll work but i think apple's number
01:17:40 ◼ ► one tariff strategy is work the refs is talk to the people in power and get them to change the policy
01:17:47 ◼ ► and in if it's not now in a month in two months because there's probably going to be i mean
01:17:52 ◼ ► anything could happen but it strikes me that this thing has gone so badly that the only way to turn
01:18:00 ◼ ► this narrative around is to um declare victory by making deals to solve the problem that you yourself
01:18:08 ◼ ► created but but getting a pat on the back for it and i feel like that's where this is headed
01:18:12 ◼ ► i don't know yeah and i think fundamentally the core of this problem is an operational problem
01:18:19 ◼ ► and who better to be navigating apple through that than tim cook like i know in the last few
01:18:26 ◼ ► weeks and months there's been a lot of discussion about you know leader apple's leadership and all of
01:18:31 ◼ ► the aspects that are challenging and how apple apple intelligence had its whole challenge and problem
01:18:37 ◼ ► those kinds of aspects and i think i am reminded that ultimately like tim tim cook's background is
01:18:42 ◼ ► in operations and i think he is likely very good at navigating the operational challenges of shifting
01:18:49 ◼ ► supply chains around and adjusting prices and dealing with this kind of a problem because it's not a
01:18:55 ◼ ► product problem it isn't that the iphone suddenly because it's uh because it terrace was applied to it that
01:19:01 ◼ ► is less of a good product or ios 19 is going to be less compelling because of this this is much
01:19:06 ◼ ► more of a manufacturing like logistics moving things around the world and i think apple in some ways
01:19:11 ◼ ► also has shown that they've they have strategies for doing this like i would not be at all in the
01:19:15 ◼ ► way that we hear about other markets outside the u.s where there are higher import duties or sales taxes or
01:19:22 ◼ ► things charged on these products and so apple adjusts their product lineup in those places like i would
01:19:27 ◼ ► not be at all surprised if apple does need to increase the pricing of some of their phones up that the iphone 15
01:19:33 ◼ ► sort of sticks around 100 cheaper or at the same price um again in a way that it would be the one
01:19:40 ◼ ► that this cycle theoretically would be sort of kicked out the bottom out in the u.s and maybe it sticks
01:19:45 ◼ ► around because at this point the sort of wholesale value of that phone is likely very very low and
01:19:51 ◼ ► apple's margin is very very high and so they have much more space uh to absorb that there and so i
01:19:55 ◼ ► would just wouldn't be at all surprised if apple has all these strategies that they'll use and they'll
01:19:59 ◼ ► make sure that they're being profitable and doing well and i mean the reality that's beneficial in some
01:20:05 ◼ ► ways is that this is applying to lots of sort of lots of manufacturers at the same time it isn't just
01:20:10 ◼ ► that if the tariffs were being applied unilaterally to apple in its very specific way that would be
01:20:18 ◼ ► very challenging and problematic and you know complicated in a whole variety of ways but their
01:20:22 ◼ ► competitors are dealing with the same thing and if someone wants to buy a phone and all the phones go up
01:20:27 ◼ ► by 10 as a result of these policies okay like i'm not sure many people are buying an iphone based on
01:20:34 ◼ ► its sticker price they're basing it on its utility and if it's the most important technical device that they
01:20:39 ◼ ► have in their life their ability to pay 10 more for it i think is pretty high especially if you're
01:20:44 ◼ ► paying for it on installment basis through your carrier like those kinds of things will make this
01:20:49 ◼ ► i think less of a fundamental problem and more of a something interesting on the earnings calls for the
01:20:55 ◼ ► next you know couple of quarters potentially and then i would hope and expect it would just sort of
01:21:00 ◼ ► settle out and be okay and it's not great but it's fine i should i should be clear we're talking
01:21:05 ◼ ► about like this in the context of apple's business in terms of everybody in the united states who has
01:21:10 ◼ ► to buy buy buy products yes is not necessarily going to be fine but no no but you're you make a good
01:21:19 ◼ ► point that like it's not the case like tariffs traditionally are used in in very targeted ways
01:21:25 ◼ ► which has not happened this time but uh the the truth is the kinds of supply chains that assemble
01:21:33 ◼ ► high-tech products don't exist in the u.s it would be a different story if three companies made smartphones
01:21:40 ◼ ► in the u.s or sold smartphones in the u.s company a and b were made in the usa and company c was selling
01:21:47 ◼ ► it cheaper because they were making it in china because then you erect a tariff and what happens is
01:21:54 ◼ ► you are encouraging people to buy the made in the usa product and not the product that was made cheaper
01:22:01 ◼ ► in china but you raise the tariff now that that advantage of making it in china is gone now you can
01:22:07 ◼ ► buy in the u.s there there are arguments that like some of that may go on with uh the auto industry for
01:22:12 ◼ ► example but for high-tech products there is no american supply chain for this stuff and if the
01:22:18 ◼ ► goal is to build it there are some great pieces out there on the internet ben thompson wrote one and
01:22:22 ◼ ► linked to a bunch of others like if the goal is to build an american tech high-tech supply chain like
01:22:28 ◼ ► on one level good luck and on another level i hope you've got 20 or 30 years of pain ready to go because
01:22:34 ◼ ► it will take decades to get the skills back because we don't have those skills anymore because we
01:22:41 ◼ ► changed our economy and china has built up incredible skills in that area so it's it's a different
01:22:46 ◼ ► situation uh where to your point where everybody is gonna who's making these kinds of products is
01:22:53 ◼ ► gonna have to deal with it and it's not it's not a single company being singled out by it yeah
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01:24:50 ◼ ► david before we get to ash up ask upgrade before the lasers come out before they come out i have a
01:25:00 ◼ ► little story if you'll let me tell okay i love stories last weekend we pre-recorded upgrade because
01:25:07 ◼ ► i was spent a three-day weekend uh in uh the foothills where my sister-in-law lives uh nice get together
01:25:14 ◼ ► uh my sister-in-law has three dogs we brought our dog uh my uh in-laws came so lots of dogs lots of
01:25:22 ◼ ► people nice to see family it was great uh there was a it was a rainy sunday i'm like well what are we
01:25:32 ◼ ► going to do today and my mother-in-law said that she'd finally given up on her phone and she needed to
01:25:39 ◼ ► get a new phone now she had it turns out an iphone se first generation excellent yep uh it is so running
01:25:50 ◼ ► several ios versions ago uh and she said there were she said the the uh southwest airlines app no longer
01:25:58 ◼ ► launched so she couldn't use an electronic boarding pass anymore and her battery at this point had died
01:26:03 ◼ ► she told me it was dead but it turned out that she could charge it and then it would run for you know
01:26:08 ◼ ► a good 20 minutes um and there was a great moment where that where we got to witness that and it's
01:26:13 ◼ ► like yeah okay you don't need a new battery you need a new phone so we go to the apple store at fashion
01:26:20 ◼ ► fair in fresno shout out to fresno california yes this is a story about you or it really takes place in
01:26:28 ◼ ► your in your uh your mall your indoor shopping mall perfect place to spend a rainy day in fresno
01:26:33 ◼ ► um my sister-in-law also said she wanted a new iphone so we ended up buying two iphones
01:26:42 ◼ ► and this is not a long story apple the apple store people did a pretty good job apple stores are chaotic
01:26:48 ◼ ► right i mean they're chaotic although we got there right when it was at peak chaos and then after we
01:26:54 ◼ ► were there for about 20 minutes the chaos was reduced but you expect sort of you walk in and
01:26:59 ◼ ► you say i want to buy an iphone they're like oh yes okay go over there we'll send somebody out to help
01:27:03 ◼ ► and personally like the reason they did this is because i was there like literally they did it
01:27:09 ◼ ► because they're like well you can answer my my questions and it led to a very funny moment where
01:27:14 ◼ ► my sister-in-law is in one part of the apple store my mother-in-law is in another part of the apple
01:27:18 ◼ ► store and i'm like helping my sister-in-law with something and i look across the store and my
01:27:23 ◼ ► mother-in-law is waving at me to come over there and help her so i'm like okay you do this i'm going
01:27:30 ◼ ► over there and i goes ping pong and back and forth between them it was hilarious um you were you were
01:27:36 ◼ ► the genius it was incredibly stressful david it was incredibly stressful um because like they're like
01:27:44 ◼ ► asking me all these questions and some of them are like do i need apple care and i'm like the apple store
01:27:51 ◼ ► they are so they have so much incentive to sell you add-ons they're like yeah do you do i need apple
01:27:59 ◼ ► care and i'm like well it's again it's your decision but um i don't get it and you are using a very old
01:28:10 ◼ ► iphone that's still entirely functional so you probably don't need it and also really if you drop your phone
01:28:18 ◼ ► you've got plenty of money to get a new phone you don't shouldn't be using an se1 but you are all
01:28:24 ◼ ► right just and i i told my mother-in-law i told her to get the uh iphone 16 standard sure yeah um she
01:28:31 ◼ ► was looking at the 16e and and and i again i thought you can afford the better phone you're gonna run it
01:28:36 ◼ ► get into the ground like you did this phone get the better phone get the 16 regular instead and i and
01:28:43 ◼ ► my uh my sister-in-law she uh her husband told me before we went because he didn't come smart man so
01:28:51 ◼ ► smart wily slippery man uh he said he said the the big reason that she needs an upgrade is because her
01:29:00 ◼ ► phone cameras weren't very good and that that um he was taking all the pictures because his phone
01:29:08 ◼ ► had a better camera and um and that she wanted a much better camera in her phone and so i told her
01:29:13 ◼ ► to get the iphone 16 pro i said you want that 5x zoom you want to you want to be able to zoom in
01:29:18 ◼ ► on the you know the the the raven's nest that is being built outside your window at work true story
01:29:24 ◼ ► we saw the raven's nest it's very impressive um little side note in fresno um watch for the ravens
01:29:31 ◼ ► so okay so they're buying these iphones and and the apple care thing comes up and i say okay
01:29:36 ◼ ► and then i go back to my sister-in-law to do the apple care question essentially and i and i i tell her
01:29:42 ◼ ► you probably don't need it either um and i see they've already sold her a a screen protector i'm like
01:29:49 ◼ ► okay i could have had that i i don't think you need a screen protector either but they've already
01:29:53 ◼ ► sold that to you uh and i said well you should look for a case because this is a good place to
01:29:57 ◼ ► get a case and she got a case a silicone case um my mother-in-law we looked at the cases with her
01:30:03 ◼ ► and and this is an interesting data point i hadn't thought about which is uh my mother-in-law wanted
01:30:09 ◼ ► a red iphone case she always gets a red iphone case and there were no red iphone cases from apple
01:30:15 ◼ ► yeah and the apple store person actually said yeah it's weird we used to always have red stuff
01:30:21 ◼ ► and apple has no red accessories right now yeah why i don't know i don't know red is the colors are
01:30:31 ◼ ► decreed no red get it out of red it's weird so she's gonna have to buy a third party case on amazon or
01:30:37 ◼ ► something and and do it that way and it's fine so i'm going back and forth trying to fight the upsell
01:30:42 ◼ ► in a lot of cases um and and do all of this and then the worst thing happens which is we get through
01:30:50 ◼ ► like is she iCloud backed up on that iphone se and the answer is yes amazingly it is backed wow it's
01:30:59 ◼ ► like that is that is amazing because she was really worried like i'm gonna lose all my stuff and i said
01:31:03 ◼ ► well not if it's backed up but if it's dead we don't know if it's backed up and then it turns out
01:31:07 ◼ ► it wasn't dead it was most only mostly dead um and the apple store again the person the apple store
01:31:14 ◼ ► really it was very funny because it was plugged in and he was like oh yeah i see it he said it was
01:31:19 ◼ ► he said it's like 85 percent and like five minutes ago it was at 100 or like 75 percent and five minutes
01:31:25 ◼ ► ago it was at 80 i'm like yeah that that battery is not going to last uh but but it allowed me to go
01:31:32 ◼ ► into iCloud and be like oh it is backed up so this is going to be fine she's going to get her stuff
01:31:36 ◼ ► and all that so that was good except they're on verizon and so you get to the transferring the
01:31:43 ◼ ► actual phone sim over yeah and verizon the apple store guy actually said uh oh yeah verizon's the
01:31:54 ◼ ► worst at this they needed a a pin for their for for their uh it's like a pin that you use to transfer
01:32:03 ◼ ► your verizon information well nobody remembered the pin of course sure so then how do you get a
01:32:11 ◼ ► new pin and the answer was log in on my father-in-law's phone as my mother-in-law to their verizon account
01:32:18 ◼ ► which she had to look up her verizon password which she had in one password great and verizon does let
01:32:25 ◼ ► you generate a new pin you can't find your old pin but you can just generate a new pin i was like
01:32:29 ◼ ► surely it can't be this easy they handed me the phone i'm like all right well i said generate a
01:32:33 ◼ ► new pin they're like okay good luck my lauren looked at me and she's like do whatever i'm like
01:32:39 ◼ ► all right tap generate a new pin it's like put in a pin i'm like okay i'm gonna make a fairly i'll
01:32:44 ◼ ► remember this pin if nobody else does and then i said okay let's try it and and it worked which was
01:32:51 ◼ ► amazing so super high security you really why do they even have a pin if you can just reset the pin with
01:32:56 ◼ ► the password of the account i don't really understand that um because there's you might
01:33:01 ◼ ► as well just let them log in and use the password but they have a pin for that okay at this point
01:33:08 ◼ ► though because the apple store people it's a very busy store when you hit the wall of verizon they leave
01:33:15 ◼ ► they're like good luck we'll we'll send somebody back here let us know when you get through to verizon
01:33:19 ◼ ► so then we're like waving our hands and and and like and the person who was helping is like with
01:33:25 ◼ ► another customer and might not come back my mother-in-law is sitting there and it's about at
01:33:29 ◼ ► this point that i take a picture which i'm not going to share with anybody publicly but i'm just going to
01:33:34 ◼ ► say picture five people sitting at one of those beautiful long light wood tables at an apple store
01:33:40 ◼ ► all looking completely miserable yes that that was about 45 minutes into the apple store iphone
01:33:51 ◼ ► buying experience and it was the low point it was the point where they finally got through we got the
01:33:55 ◼ ► giddy moment where we got through to verizon and we got to the things uh transferred only to find there
01:34:00 ◼ ► was nobody there anymore because they had abandoned us because they know that the verizon thing takes
01:34:16 ◼ ► friends of mine who work in apple retail that right now apple stores are apparently flooded
01:34:20 ◼ ► speaking of our previous topic because there are a lot of people who are apparently prompted to go
01:34:24 ◼ ► into apple stores and buy stuff before the tariffs hit even if we don't know if they're going to hit
01:34:28 ◼ ► in a particular way that will be meaningful to a a united states iphone buyer or mac buyer or whatever
01:34:34 ◼ ► but apparently apple stores are being flooded by people are like oh buy it now before the
01:34:38 ◼ ► so that's good for apple i guess i don't know i guess so so after like an hour we leave the apple
01:34:44 ◼ ► fashion fair location back out into the mall it's like one o'clock i am starving if there was a wetzels
01:34:52 ◼ ► wetzels pretzels on the way in if i knew going in what it was going to be like i would have bought a
01:34:59 ◼ ► pretzel like and just anyway so i'm starving uh everybody comes out and and they're all like well
01:35:06 ◼ ► that was a lot but we got new phones yay and david i was like the thousand yard stare i was like
01:35:13 ◼ ► that was seen some stuff the most traumatic experience i have had in a while where the stress level it was an
01:35:22 ◼ ► hour of pure stress because i like true or not as the tech person in the family yeah i feel responsible
01:35:32 ◼ ► for all tech failures even if i'm not responsible for them sure anyway they got iphones and they love
01:35:39 ◼ ► them great yay oh i mean i always think about those experiences a condolences i'm sorry that
01:35:46 ◼ ► that was your experience that's terrible um and b it's always i think about the people who don't have
01:35:51 ◼ ► the technical expertise to answer those questions and to know what to do and if you don't have the
01:35:56 ◼ ► pin what do you do and like it's got to be i mean as miserable as it can be for the people who have
01:36:03 ◼ ► some technological know-how it's got to be doubly miserable if you're just endlessly in the apple store
01:36:08 ◼ ► and they can't help you but they're saying that you need to do this thing you need this number it's like
01:36:12 ◼ ► well i don't have that number it's like well you need that number well i don't you i don't have the
01:36:15 ◼ ► number and it goes endlessly like around in a circle that's the insight that i had honestly more
01:36:20 ◼ ► than anything else is and i i've said on the show before like i had a problem with my mac
01:36:24 ◼ ► studio booting and i thought i tried everything and i took it up to my local apple store and they
01:36:30 ◼ ► brought over the guy uh who knows about this stuff and he was like oh let's try this and i was like
01:36:35 ◼ ► oh my god how did i not try that thing and he's like yeah don't don't feel bad about it like i've
01:36:40 ◼ ► seen he had seen it a million times before so he knew all the details and that's amazing but
01:36:45 ◼ ► like i realized that all that complexity on a on a regular person who doesn't think about this stuff
01:36:52 ◼ ► the is iCloud backup on or do you have your password or do you reset or if my phone isn't working how do i
01:37:01 ◼ ► log into verizon i mean you could just go over to a macbook air there and log in i guess and do it that
01:37:07 ◼ ► way if you really needed to but like i i will looked at my mother-in-law especially and i felt really bad
01:37:14 ◼ ► because like she's 80 and she's actually pretty pretty sharp with this stuff but she's 80 and she
01:37:21 ◼ ► was kind of overwhelmed she's like i don't know where that is why would i know where that is like
01:37:24 ◼ ► it's just i think anything whether she's 80 or 50 like it's it's not unreasonable and i i felt like
01:37:31 ◼ ► i i feel a lot of uh empathy for the people who work at apple stores because they have to be that
01:37:35 ◼ ► person that i was in a way they have to they've got their like you should sell apple care but they've
01:37:40 ◼ ► also got their like you need to decode very specific technical problems for people who don't understand
01:37:46 ◼ ► the technical stuff and it's got to be really hard and i feel bad for the customers because
01:37:52 ◼ ► these are complicated you know computers essentially and they're so necessary for modern life
01:38:03 ◼ ► i just want a new iphone and even apple is like sorry it's verizon's problem now which i understand
01:38:11 ◼ ► yeah and this is why you end up with a first gen iphone se that you've been using until it is
01:38:18 ◼ ► turning to dust in your hand because this process is something you do not want or do not want to face
01:38:24 ◼ ► and you'll just keep using it even if it's only working for 20 minutes at a time it's like well you
01:38:29 ◼ ► can you just try and get done what you need to do in those 20 minutes or carry a battery pack with you
01:38:33 ◼ ► everywhere you go yeah yeah that's no you're absolutely right and when we were at lunch afterward
01:38:37 ◼ ► there was definitely that moment of like you know well you're not gonna have to do this again for
01:38:43 ◼ ► another 10 years so good job everybody right like that was and and you know my father-in-law likes to
01:38:51 ◼ ► pay for meals when we go out and it's always the thing of like well thank you very much that's very
01:39:03 ◼ ► you'll pay for dinner too are you kidding me i'm not gonna even pretend that you're not paying for
01:39:09 ◼ ► this meal you are absolutely paying for this meal after what we just went through oh anyway that was
01:39:15 ◼ ► my day in fresno miserable people but we got two iphones out of it so it's okay let's wrap up with
01:39:20 ◼ ► some mask upgrade all right i was trying to do phasers rather than lasers all right uh this one
01:39:27 ◼ ► comes from you uh it says yeah jason you want to read it you read it read it i can read it i'm the
01:39:33 ◼ ► one asking the question listener listener listener david says jason everyone knows that you are the
01:39:38 ◼ ► firmest authority on running with only an apple watch leaving your iphone at home i do this sometimes
01:39:43 ◼ ► but find playing music while doing this completely infuriating is there some magical incantation that
01:39:49 ◼ ► you can tell me that while i'm standing at the threshold of my house with my iphone still in
01:39:54 ◼ ► range of my watch that i can start an apple music listening session on my watch such that when i head
01:40:00 ◼ ► out the door 50 50 feet down the street it's not going to stop because it was playing on my phone
01:40:06 ◼ ► like and the spotify app on my watch i have a button there's a big button that says like play from
01:40:10 ◼ ► your apple watch but i cannot work out how to do this on the apple watch as far as i can tell if i
01:40:14 ◼ ► pre-download music it doesn't help it always seems to want to start it on the iphone and it drives me
01:40:19 ◼ ► crazy so help me jason you're my only hope oh um so the challenge here okay and and you as a
01:40:28 ◼ ► developer of watch apps i find this amazing that you're asking me this question so i i so the problem
01:40:33 ◼ ► is that i don't listen to music when i run i listen to podcasts so i'm using overcast however i had
01:40:40 ◼ ► become a uh an apple watch user in this mode without the phone where i've realized some of
01:40:49 ◼ ► the quirks of the apple watch and i think maybe i can give you some strategies to try excellent the big
01:40:56 ◼ ► thing to know and this is a huge bug in the app in watch os that they it's always been there and
01:41:04 ◼ ► maybe it's better now but it's not fixed which is i can leave the house so so what i do and the dog
01:41:19 ◼ ► she can tell and it's things like i put on my sunglasses or i put on my my baseball cap we're
01:41:28 ◼ ► um or i'm putting in my air pods and she starts jumping around she's spinning and jumping she like
01:41:33 ◼ ► levitates it's amazing she's so excited to go on the walk but one of the things i'd always do as a
01:41:39 ◼ ► part of that is i open overcast on my watch and i press the reload button the sync button because i
01:41:44 ◼ ► want to make sure it's got the latest sync information so i don't end up having to forward
01:41:49 ◼ ► 20 minutes into a podcast because it failed to sync to the the latest i listened on the phone
01:41:55 ◼ ► to that podcast if that makes any sense yeah i do all this i i start play it plays in my air pods
01:42:03 ◼ ► that's great got the dog go out the door so even with all of that i am i am playing podcasts that are
01:42:12 ◼ ► on my watch and i've got a cellular watch i could stream them too but these are pre-downloaded
01:42:17 ◼ ► they're on my watch i'm listening i'm not using the internet and i've got my my uh bluetooth headphones
01:42:25 ◼ ► my airpods in with all of that it's completely self-contained we are an island it's just us
01:42:32 ◼ ► i walk out the door make a left walk down to the corner and when i'm five steps away from the corner
01:42:38 ◼ ► everything drops out for about a second and then comes back and that is the moment that i'm leaving
01:42:47 ◼ ► wi-fi range for my house yeah i'm not using the wi-fi i'm not connected to my iphone it doesn't matter
01:42:55 ◼ ► it the watch doesn't care the watch so objects to leaving home that it freaks out and drops temporarily
01:43:05 ◼ ► it comes back but it even drops the audio playing on my airpods because it's lost connection to wi-fi
01:43:13 ◼ ► so my and and previously that it's not true anymore with overcast but previously that moment would
01:43:24 ◼ ► sometimes just kill everything like the reason number one reason and you probably feel this way
01:43:31 ◼ ► the number one reason i try to start playing before i leave the house is that many has been
01:43:36 ◼ ► the time that i would walk all the way past the wi-fi range and start playing and it would just be like
01:43:43 ◼ ► nope nope not today not gonna do it and then i'm like well do i go back or do i just go without
01:43:48 ◼ ► what do i do now um so i i hate to say it because i don't have direct music experience here but i would
01:43:56 ◼ ► say you might want to try exiting wi-fi range and then starting a play session because that moment
01:44:06 ◼ ► where you lose the wi-fi where it finally i mean it's obviously it's attenuating the signal and it's
01:44:11 ◼ ► trying and it's trying and there's a piece where it's just like did i just lose it and it's going to
01:44:14 ◼ ► come back and then it gives up it times out and it says okay i think that does bad things in watch
01:44:21 ◼ ► os to apps and and and so that's the best guess i've got my other guess would be can you turn off wi-fi
01:44:29 ◼ ► before you leave the house and then see if and do it that way because i that's my guess is that is that
01:44:35 ◼ ► there's this really bad moment that happens when you're 50 feet away from your house that uh some apps
01:44:40 ◼ ► can't survive have you tried all that or i've done some of those and the one that really gets me is
01:44:45 ◼ ► when i'm doing like a workout where i'm like running 400 yards like i like run 200 yards away from my house
01:44:52 ◼ ► and then run back and i'm doing some kind of interval thing and every single time i have exactly the same
01:44:57 ◼ ► thing there's a corner like i know exactly the spot like i as i get to this spot it the audio will
01:45:03 ◼ ► just go weird and it hasn't it doesn't make any sense it's playing from a i downloaded the music to
01:45:08 ◼ ► my watch there's no reason why this seems like it should be the case but yeah so okay so it's i guess
01:45:14 ◼ ► the short version is it's not just me it sounds like this is just a bad situation yeah so you just
01:45:18 ◼ ► kind of have to mitigate it with different behaviors i've got the simple solution for you is when you
01:45:22 ◼ ► want to run intervals just unplug your wi-fi at home yeah done there you go perfect my family will
01:45:28 ◼ ► be very very pleased oh he's running okay he's doing intervals right now that's right the internet
01:45:33 ◼ ► will be back later or get to a hard line if you need to yeah or i just need to run with an ipod
01:45:37 ◼ ► shuffle and i'd be fine yeah also that would that would work um i do love it though i do love
01:45:44 ◼ ► not having a phone um in my pocket when i'm running or walking the dog it's just pulling down my pants
01:45:50 ◼ ► and jiggling and i i hate it so i'm so happy to finally that was always my dream when the apple watch
01:45:55 ◼ ► was announced and it took many years before i was able to actually live the dream but i have been
01:46:01 ◼ ► living the dream for a few years now it's great i love it that's great well we uh we'll do one more
01:46:06 ◼ ► ask upgrade this from adam who said do you know if the new ambient music features in control center
01:46:11 ◼ ► here's another uh 18 4 feature are ai generated they work without an apple music subscription i'm curious
01:46:18 ◼ ► what the origin is of the music and i'll put a link in the show notes to a nine to five max story about
01:46:22 ◼ ► this it is actually apple music playlists so if you can if you can use them without an apple music
01:46:29 ◼ ► subscription that's probably either different content or it's a carve out but when i try it
01:46:34 ◼ ► it's adding an apple music playlist and playing it and in fact you can if you if you add the control
01:46:44 ◼ ► center item and then you edit your control center items and tap on it you can choose different
01:46:50 ◼ ► playlists for each one of those ambient moods including ones they suggest or your own so
01:46:57 ◼ ► it's way more extensible than you might think and to answer a question i also saw about like is this ai
01:47:05 ◼ ► generated ambience it sounds like these are artists on apple music now maybe they're ai generated i don't
01:47:10 ◼ ► know that probably not but maybe but um it sounds like you can um for example and this is from the
01:47:17 ◼ ► nine to five mac article the productivity control by default plays a playlist called beatstrumentals which
01:47:23 ◼ ► dates from beats music era maybe i don't know but you can also choose from binaural frequencies pure
01:47:30 ◼ ► focus classical concentration or choose any other playlist from your library so this is a way more
01:47:37 ◼ ► more functional feature than i expected that it would be um and if it works at least to a certain extent
01:47:43 ◼ ► without apple music that's also pretty awesome so that's my answer and i and i think it's a lot of these
01:47:50 ◼ ► things apple music just has these playlists that like rather than it being some kind of bespoke
01:47:55 ◼ ► um audio experience that there's like there's these apps that do white noise or background music or these
01:48:01 ◼ ► kind of very specific you know procedurally generated music things apple just seems to just take a
01:48:06 ◼ ► playlist of a bunch of um you know about a bunch of tracks and put them together similarly like i'm
01:48:12 ◼ ► always amused by if you look sort of early in the morning at the sort of top playlists chart in
01:48:18 ◼ ► itunes it is always there's one that's just like their sleep playlist and it's just like sleepy songs that
01:48:25 ◼ ► clearly people are just searching for right before they go to bed and then hit play and it's not some
01:48:30 ◼ ► kind of deep complicated thing it's just like apple collected you know 40 sleepy songs and put it in a
01:48:36 ◼ ► list and you can hit play on the sleepy songs amazing all right well that brings us to the end of this
01:48:42 ◼ ► episode um as always you can send us our feedback follow-up and questions at upgrade feedback.com
01:48:48 ◼ ► thank you to our members who support us with upgrade plus this week we are going to be talking about some
01:48:52 ◼ ► of the stuff that david and marco have been talking about on under the radar i just want to get a little
01:48:57 ◼ ► read on that from david uh get upgrade plus dot com and of course mike says if you want to buy a gift for
01:49:03 ◼ ► mike and adina and their baby get yourself an upgrade plus membership you can also find us on youtube by
01:49:09 ◼ ► searching for upgrade podcast thanks to our sponsors they were oracle squarespace and delete me and
01:49:17 ◼ ► most of all in addition to all of you out there thank you to david smith for joining me today dave