Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [

00:00:08 ◼   ► "

00:00:24 ◼   ► so we don't have to say it ever again during this episode.

00:00:27 ◼   ► We're recording this episode a few days before we usually would.

00:00:30 ◼   ► It's being recorded on Friday the 28th of October,

00:00:34 ◼   ► just in case anything changes between now and episode release.

00:00:37 ◼   ► Probably one, but you're never sure.

00:00:39 ◼   ► I never like to record this far in advance for upgrade.

00:00:42 ◼   ► No, because news breaks, but we have so much news last week.

00:00:47 ◼   ► Oh, there he goes!

00:00:49 ◼   ► See? Professional.

00:00:51 ◼   ► That we figured we could do it, and there's some...

00:00:54 ◼   ► We couldn't record on Monday this week for personal reasons,

00:00:57 ◼   ► not business reasons.

00:00:58 ◼   ► And so here we are a couple of days early.

00:01:00 ◼   ► So yes, if you say, why didn't they mention

00:01:03 ◼   ► that terrible thing that happened on Sunday?

00:01:05 ◼   ► - Now you know why. - This is why.

00:01:07 ◼   ► - And you know, this was one of those things

00:01:09 ◼   ► we were talking about it in our discussions as we tend to.

00:01:12 ◼   ► And I was like, oh, I don't think I can make the episode

00:01:15 ◼   ► on the 31st and Jason very rightly pointed out

00:01:17 ◼   ► but Myke, it's results time.

00:01:19 ◼   ► And I was like, let's do it early, baby.

00:01:21 ◼   ► - Yeah. - I mean.

00:01:22 ◼   ► It's episode 4 31st.

00:01:26 ◼   ► So right, it's like the date.

00:01:29 ◼   ► And it's Halloween, so spooky.

00:01:30 ◼   ► Ooh. - Ooh.

00:01:31 ◼   ► I have a #snailtalk question for you.

00:01:36 ◼   ► Mark wants to know, Jason, do you use web bookmarks?

00:01:40 ◼   ► If you do, how often do you tidy them up,

00:01:42 ◼   ► getting rid of dead or changed links or whatever?

00:01:46 ◼   ► - I say bookmarks if there's a place that I'm going,

00:01:48 ◼   ► I know that I'm going to say, where is that bookmark?

00:01:51 ◼   ► or where is that site later and have forgotten about it.

00:01:54 ◼   ► Honestly, I haven't used a bookmarks menu

00:01:56 ◼   ► in a very long time.

00:01:57 ◼   ► I do have like a toolbar favorites

00:01:59 ◼   ► that I have like the stuff that I use every day.

00:02:01 ◼   ► But for other stuff, I literally, I save it

00:02:04 ◼   ► and then I type in the Safari bar,

00:02:05 ◼   ► like the word that I think is in the name of the bookmark

00:02:09 ◼   ► and find it that way.

00:02:10 ◼   ► And then I go down the menu looking for it.

00:02:12 ◼   ► I just type a word or two like that are the words,

00:02:15 ◼   ► essentially I search in the Safari bar for the name.

00:02:20 ◼   ► name the title tag.

00:02:22 ◼   ► - Why have the bookmarks?

00:02:24 ◼   ► 'Cause like all of these web browsers now,

00:02:26 ◼   ► they just auto complete based on your history, right?

00:02:28 ◼   ► So like that's what you're really doing.

00:02:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, but when you bookmark something,

00:02:33 ◼   ► you think I may need this in four months, right?

00:02:38 ◼   ► Or I need to get back to this

00:02:41 ◼   ► and I don't wanna remember it and I don't know,

00:02:43 ◼   ► but I'm, so I'm just gonna say that you're right.

00:02:45 ◼   ► If it's just history,

00:02:47 ◼   ► although I don't think history syncs across devices,

00:02:49 ◼   ► So there's some advantages of bookmarks there too.

00:02:51 ◼   ► But mostly I just do-

00:02:51 ◼   ► - iCloud actually does sync.

00:02:55 ◼   ► - Does sync history?

00:02:56 ◼   ► - Some level of history sometimes, you know, it's iCloud.

00:02:58 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:02:59 ◼   ► - My point is I basically toss it in a little pile.

00:03:02 ◼   ► That is, I probably am gonna wanna look at this again

00:03:05 ◼   ► someday and I'm not gonna be able to remember what it is.

00:03:08 ◼   ► So I'm gonna bookmark it and then I'm gonna type a word

00:03:12 ◼   ► that appears in its title and I'm gonna go,

00:03:14 ◼   ► that's the one and I'm gonna go there.

00:03:16 ◼   ► And to the answer the other question,

00:03:18 ◼   ► How often do I tidy them up?

00:03:19 ◼   ► Well, Mark, last year I edited my bookmarks file

00:03:24 ◼   ► and I deleted, I would say hundreds, if not thousands,

00:03:29 ◼   ► that had been there for over probably a decade.

00:03:32 ◼   ► So not very often, but I do, because again,

00:03:36 ◼   ► you're basically just cleaning out the coal bin

00:03:38 ◼   ► at that point, right?

00:03:39 ◼   ► Like I'm not saving that stuff

00:03:43 ◼   ► in a brilliantly curated list.

00:03:45 ◼   ► I'm literally, it's a save for later

00:03:47 ◼   ► in case I need this URL kind of thing.

00:03:51 ◼   ► 'Cause you know, I just, it's one of those things

00:03:53 ◼   ► where you see a product, like I guess I could have them open

00:03:55 ◼   ► in like tabs or something, but I don't really want them.

00:03:57 ◼   ► I don't really want them open because if I think I'm gonna

00:04:00 ◼   ► act on them soon, I might send them to a tab.

00:04:03 ◼   ► But a lot of this stuff is like, I might need this later.

00:04:06 ◼   ► I'm gonna save a bookmark so that I can find this site later

00:04:09 ◼   ► because otherwise I'm never gonna remember it and that's it.

00:04:12 ◼   ► - If you would like to send in a question

00:04:13 ◼   ► to help us open a future episode of the show,

00:04:15 ◼   ► just send out a tweet with the hashtag snow talk or use question mark snow talk in the

00:04:19 ◼   ► relay fan members discord.

00:04:21 ◼   ► I have installed ventura, it happened after the episode.

00:04:26 ◼   ► I wanted to install it and talk about it in upgrade plus but it didn't happen in time.

00:04:31 ◼   ► One of the things I just wanted to mention as a piece of follow up was my experience

00:04:34 ◼   ► of continuity camera.

00:04:37 ◼   ► It's exactly what I wanted because I now have a webcam that doesn't flicker like madness

00:04:43 ◼   ► because of my overhead lighting.

00:04:47 ◼   ► The way that I worked it out is, I don't have a mount for the studio display, there isn't

00:04:52 ◼   ► one yet.

00:04:54 ◼   ► I had an Elgato Flex Arm, which is like an arm system that you use.

00:04:59 ◼   ► I use it for some of my lights, I bought a few of them during podcastathon time one year,

00:05:03 ◼   ► and I had a spare one.

00:05:05 ◼   ► So I hooked that up to hover over the back of my desk and then I put a glyph from Studio

00:05:09 ◼   ► neat above it so I could just put my phone up there, clip it in, turn on and then the

00:05:14 ◼   ► camera comes on, fantastic.

00:05:16 ◼   ► And I took Jason's advice, I turned off center stage and it looked fantastic.

00:05:21 ◼   ► It's the best I've looked on a video call in a long time.

00:05:24 ◼   ► However, I want to add something in.

00:05:25 ◼   ► Now I knew it was going to happen and Apple tried to tell me they were super smart, not

00:05:29 ◼   ► they didn't tell me, they tried to tell everyone, "Oh there's no way we have algorithms."

00:05:33 ◼   ► I was on a call with Steven yesterday, I had my phone on the desk in front of me, camera

00:05:38 ◼   ► down, and it went ba-ding! And it connected. So not really that smart to be honest. As

00:05:47 ◼   ► I knew this was going to happen, it's going to keep happening, that's just life. But when

00:05:52 ◼   ► it works, and it does work, fantastic.

00:05:54 ◼   ► Yep, I agree. I agree.

00:05:57 ◼   ► Have you ever had it happen to you where it turns on when you didn't want it to?

00:06:01 ◼   ► So I did a live stream with Dan Morin after the Apple results came out last week, and

00:06:08 ◼   ► I opened Ecamm Live and I wasn't using it as the camera, but my phone was on my desk

00:06:14 ◼   ► and the moment I opened Ecamm Live it went "da-ding!"

00:06:17 ◼   ► It looks like essentially it looks like you're using cameras now.

00:06:21 ◼   ► I'm one.

00:06:22 ◼   ► I'm like okay, alright, fine.

00:06:27 ◼   ► Joanna Stern had an interview with Craig Viderighi and Greg Joswiak as part of the Wall Street

00:06:35 ◼   ► journal Tech Live event, which is pretty cool actually.

00:06:39 ◼   ► I still have it saved in my YouTube to watch the whole thing, but I've seen some clips.

00:06:42 ◼   ► I wanted to bring it up here because during this interview, Jaws confirmed that Apple

00:06:48 ◼   ► will be moving to USB-C, as they have to, but it's a confirmation.

00:06:53 ◼   ► There's a quote, this is like, the clip is longer.

00:06:55 ◼   ► I'm going to point in the show notes the full video, it's like a two minute thing.

00:06:59 ◼   ► And his answer is interesting.

00:07:00 ◼   ► I think it's very Appley, and honestly I could like, whatever.

00:07:04 ◼   ► what he said is we will have to comply with the law but it would have been better to not

00:07:08 ◼   ► have a government be that prescriptive. So Greg kind of like he talks about innovation

00:07:14 ◼   ► and all that kind of stuff and how governments standards can impede innovation. But I'm

00:07:20 ◼   ► not sure I fully agree with him when it comes to USB-C specifically like he brings up micro USB

00:07:26 ◼   ► but that was always bad. We never liked micro USB as a connector. Nobody wanted all phones

00:07:32 ◼   ► to go to micro USB, but people are more happy with USB-C because it is a much more universal,

00:07:38 ◼   ► convenient and good connector. So I still stand by it, but it's interesting to hear

00:07:42 ◼   ► and talk about it.

00:07:43 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, it's very much like a talk show, Jon Gruber talk show, WWDC interview, you've

00:07:48 ◼   ► got Apple execs, they're on point, they're not gonna like blurt out things that they

00:07:55 ◼   ► don't plan on saying, but they can provide a little more detail about their way of thinking

00:08:00 ◼   ► that we've, in this case, it's a perfect example actually of how we've got the rumors, we've

00:08:05 ◼   ► got the news reports about Europe, rumors that Apple's doing a USB-C iPhone. All that

00:08:10 ◼   ► is out there. So anybody who's observing knows what's going to happen. But it's different

00:08:18 ◼   ► at least to have the person from Apple say, "Well, yeah, I mean, yeah, we were going to

00:08:23 ◼   ► have to." That, and that's what we got.

00:08:28 ◼   ► Speaking of rumors…

00:08:29 ◼   ► How about a rumor roundup?

00:08:31 ◼   ► - Sounds great, let's do it.

00:08:33 ◼   ► - So there is a report from Wayne Marr at the information

00:08:38 ◼   ► that Apple is working on a 16 inch iPad Pro

00:08:42 ◼   ► to be released next year, could be released next year.

00:08:46 ◼   ► Probably 2024.

00:08:47 ◼   ► Anyway, quote, "A 16 inch iPad would likely be geared

00:08:51 ◼   ► "to all creative professionals such as graphic artists

00:08:53 ◼   ► "and designers who prefer a larger screen.

00:08:56 ◼   ► "We had previously discussed the rumor

00:08:58 ◼   ► of a 14 inch iPad Pro.

00:09:01 ◼   ► So here's my question to you, Tason.

00:09:04 ◼   ► 16 inch, 14 inch, do we get one of these or both of them?

00:09:09 ◼   ► - I wonder what the source,

00:09:12 ◼   ► it sounds like these are both pretty decent rumors.

00:09:15 ◼   ► And so this is a question is what,

00:09:16 ◼   ► is Apple really gonna just supersize the iPad Pro

00:09:20 ◼   ► or the supersize the iPad, right?

00:09:22 ◼   ► I assume they should be called iPad Pro.

00:09:24 ◼   ► There's that iPad studio idea right out there

00:09:27 ◼   ► that these are more arty kind of things,

00:09:30 ◼   ► but at the same time with stage manager,

00:09:32 ◼   ► you could also use them as laptops basically,

00:09:35 ◼   ► like a 14 and 16 inch MacBook Pros.

00:09:38 ◼   ► And so they 14 and 16 inch iPad Pro, MacBook Pro.

00:09:42 ◼   ► And then what happens to the rest of the product line?

00:09:45 ◼   ► I think it could happen.

00:09:46 ◼   ► I think it's entirely possible it will happen.

00:09:49 ◼   ► How many different iPad models does Apple wanna make

00:09:52 ◼   ► is the question, right?

00:09:52 ◼   ► Now, right now, the fact is that they make

00:09:55 ◼   ► an almost 11 inch iPad, an almost 11 inch iPad,

00:09:58 ◼   ► an 11 inch iPad, an 11 inch iPad,

00:10:01 ◼   ► and a 12.9 inch iPad, and the iPad mini, right?

00:10:05 ◼   ► So there's room for more variation than we have right now

00:10:08 ◼   ► in the product line.

00:10:10 ◼   ► But I would be surprised if Apple goes all in on big iPads

00:10:15 ◼   ► and comes out with two different size models,

00:10:17 ◼   ► instead of sort of testing the waters.

00:10:20 ◼   ► This is why these reports being in conflict

00:10:23 ◼   ► is kind of fascinating to me.

00:10:25 ◼   ► I also wonder if there's a detail we're missing here.

00:10:28 ◼   ► Like, are these iPads,

00:10:32 ◼   ► is there an accessory we don't understand

00:10:34 ◼   ► or don't know about, or are they kind of more,

00:10:36 ◼   ► I wanted to say, are they convertibles?

00:10:38 ◼   ► But I think the answer to,

00:10:39 ◼   ► Apple's answer to convertibles, like on the PC side,

00:10:42 ◼   ► is accessories, right, for the iPad.

00:10:44 ◼   ► I think their answer is,

00:10:45 ◼   ► if you want your iPad to also be a laptop,

00:10:48 ◼   ► you snap on a thing, and now it's a laptop.

00:10:52 ◼   ► You don't flip it around and pull it off

00:10:54 ◼   ► and stuff like that, it's a separate accessory that you buy.

00:10:59 ◼   ► It's interesting 'cause like, again,

00:11:00 ◼   ► I have just not felt like Apple's level of enthusiasm

00:11:04 ◼   ► for the high end of the iPad line would lead to them saying,

00:11:10 ◼   ► "Well, heck yeah, let's just go 14 and 16 like the laptops

00:11:13 ◼   ► and the artists will love it

00:11:15 ◼   ► and the people who use the keyboards will love it

00:11:17 ◼   ► 'cause it's basically the size of a MacBook Pro

00:11:19 ◼   ► at that point."

00:11:20 ◼   ► - People that use the iPad for work will probably love it.

00:11:24 ◼   ► I have my vision, Jason, is five or six iPads,

00:11:29 ◼   ► no size variations, all with their own unique name, right?

00:11:35 ◼   ► - Oh, that's the dream, right?

00:11:36 ◼   ► - This is what I could see here.

00:11:38 ◼   ► So you got iPad, right?

00:11:39 ◼   ► We know what the iPad is, we spoke about it.

00:11:40 ◼   ► iPad Air, right?

00:11:42 ◼   ► iPad Pro, and then iPad Studio, and/or iPad Ultra.

00:11:47 ◼   ► They can choose, right?

00:11:50 ◼   ► And so iPad we know, iPad Air we know.

00:11:52 ◼   ► No 11 inch iPad Pro anymore, get rid of that.

00:11:54 ◼   ► - You said all the same size.

00:11:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, all one size as in like each name has one iPad.

00:12:01 ◼   ► - See, okay, 'cause I thought you were saying

00:12:03 ◼   ► kind of as a joke. - There's five 16 inch iPads.

00:12:05 ◼   ► - It's like, what I think they need to do

00:12:07 ◼   ► is they need to release, are you getting it yet?

00:12:09 ◼   ► Five different 14 inch iPads. - These are all five iPads,

00:12:12 ◼   ► they're one iPad. - But technically not though,

00:12:14 ◼   ► it'll be the 13.9 inch iPad, the 14 inch iPad Air,

00:12:17 ◼   ► the 14.2 inch iPad Pro and the 14.25 inch iPad Studio.

00:12:22 ◼   ► Yeah, no, okay, I get what you mean,

00:12:27 ◼   ► which is the name means the size

00:12:28 ◼   ► instead of it being like what it is now

00:12:32 ◼   ► where there's three different names for products

00:12:34 ◼   ► that are almost exactly the same size.

00:12:35 ◼   ► - 'Cause I really think that the 11 inch iPad Pro

00:12:38 ◼   ► that we have now is the last we're gonna see.

00:12:41 ◼   ► Like, I think that Apple's put that writing on the wall.

00:12:43 ◼   ► - Absolutely, absolutely.

00:12:45 ◼   ► I think now the iPad Air is so good.

00:12:48 ◼   ► Like basically, I'm like imagining them like if okay, if the iPads are like the Max now,

00:12:54 ◼   ► how would that look and work?

00:12:57 ◼   ► And so I don't know if honestly if they would do a 14 inch and a 16 inch but if they do,

00:13:02 ◼   ► I think the iPad Pro just comes in 14 and then they have a bigger one, which is studio

00:13:08 ◼   ► or ultra and it's 16 and it's different in some way like, you know, like maybe the Pro

00:13:13 ◼   ► gets like the OLED screen or whatever,

00:13:16 ◼   ► and the 16 inch gets a LCD screen or whatever,

00:13:20 ◼   ► mini LED, or whatever it is, but it's like,

00:13:23 ◼   ► it's not necessarily the most specs,

00:13:26 ◼   ► even though it would be the most expensive

00:13:28 ◼   ► 'cause it's the biggest.

00:13:29 ◼   ► Like I think the line might get weird,

00:13:31 ◼   ► but the idea being like, these are your products,

00:13:35 ◼   ► and you choose which one you need based on your use case,

00:13:40 ◼   ► which I think is much more like how you pick a Mac.

00:13:43 ◼   ► - Right, and the idea, I mean, first off,

00:13:44 ◼   ► you could parallel the Mac line in a bunch of ways

00:13:46 ◼   ► with the names, right?

00:13:47 ◼   ► Where there's a MacBook Air,

00:13:49 ◼   ► and then there's a MacBook Pro 14 and 16.

00:13:51 ◼   ► - And then you've got the big beefy one

00:13:53 ◼   ► for specific use cases.

00:13:55 ◼   ► - Right, and then I start to think,

00:13:57 ◼   ► I mentioned that you wouldn't do a convertible

00:14:00 ◼   ► if you're Apple.

00:14:01 ◼   ► Like I wrote those articles way back when

00:14:03 ◼   ► about like they should do a laptop.

00:14:05 ◼   ► And the answer was, well, no, they did the Magic Keyboard.

00:14:09 ◼   ► And I think that's true.

00:14:10 ◼   ► And I think that this vision that Apple has

00:14:13 ◼   ► that I think Federico has done a really good job

00:14:15 ◼   ► of writing and speaking about and defining,

00:14:20 ◼   ► it's the idea that the iPad, the point of the iPad

00:14:22 ◼   ► is that it's what you want it to be at any given time.

00:14:26 ◼   ► And it starts with a touch tablet

00:14:28 ◼   ► and then it goes where you want.

00:14:29 ◼   ► You can add a pencil, you can add a keyboard,

00:14:32 ◼   ► you can plug it into a monitor,

00:14:34 ◼   ► you can sort of do, turn it into other things

00:14:37 ◼   ► and it's the same device.

00:14:38 ◼   ► And that's the point of it.

00:14:40 ◼   ► Whereas a Mac is a Mac, it does its thing,

00:14:42 ◼   ► and that's the thing it does.

00:14:43 ◼   ► It's not a transforming device like an iPad can be.

00:14:48 ◼   ► And the next step once you accept that about the iPad

00:14:52 ◼   ► is that the iPad is defined as much by its accessories

00:14:55 ◼   ► and as it is by itself as a product.

00:14:59 ◼   ► And so when we talk about a 14 or a 16 inch iPad,

00:15:01 ◼   ► I start to think, well, yeah, what are the accessories?

00:15:04 ◼   ► Like a keyboard thing that makes it a laptop,

00:15:09 ◼   ► a 14 or 16 inch laptop like the MacBook Pro

00:15:12 ◼   ► is one of those things.

00:15:13 ◼   ► But when you talk about like maybe the 16

00:15:16 ◼   ► would not be the ultra iPad,

00:15:19 ◼   ► but could be one thought that I had is

00:15:21 ◼   ► could be the iPad studio where the selling point is

00:15:26 ◼   ► that it is for artists.

00:15:28 ◼   ► - Big drawing canvas.

00:15:29 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:15:30 ◼   ► Well, you could see maybe there's a different setup for that

00:15:33 ◼   ► where there's a different ergonomics for the size

00:15:38 ◼   ► leads to a different kind of case for it, where you're using it on a lap or on a

00:15:44 ◼   ► table. With Stage Manager and external display support and all of that, I do

00:15:50 ◼   ► wonder if a larger iPad Pro might even have like a dock kind of thing, where you

00:15:57 ◼   ► put it on a desk and it docks with devices that are on a desk,

00:16:03 ◼   ► like a desktop dock. They could do that if they wanted to. And Apple

00:16:07 ◼   ► expresses its vision for the iPad as a platform

00:16:10 ◼   ► through the accessories.

00:16:13 ◼   ► It's not just that, you know,

00:16:14 ◼   ► I said the accessories define it,

00:16:15 ◼   ► but the other way to view it is it's also Apple,

00:16:18 ◼   ► like we over the years have attached all sorts

00:16:20 ◼   ► of weird things to the iPad,

00:16:21 ◼   ► where it's like Federico is running it in mirrored mode

00:16:24 ◼   ► and attaching a keyboard,

00:16:26 ◼   ► and you still have to use the touch screen

00:16:28 ◼   ► and stuff like that.

00:16:29 ◼   ► And over time, you know, there comes that moment

00:16:31 ◼   ► where Apple says, here's the magic keyboard.

00:16:33 ◼   ► This is okay now.

00:16:35 ◼   ► Like we now say, yes, the iPad is meant to be used

00:16:38 ◼   ► like a laptop with a pointing device and a keyboard.

00:16:41 ◼   ► That's one of its uses.

00:16:43 ◼   ► Or when everybody had the little rubber styluses

00:16:45 ◼   ► and then Apple said, "Hmm, Apple Pencil."

00:16:47 ◼   ► Like that was Apple saying,

00:16:48 ◼   ► "Yes, now our vision for this product includes that."

00:16:51 ◼   ► So what does that mean for a 14, 16,

00:16:55 ◼   ► a change at the upper end of the iPad?

00:17:00 ◼   ► I don't know, but it's really interesting to think about it

00:17:02 ◼   ► because probably the accessories are part of what defines it.

00:17:06 ◼   ► Also, not just on the high end, right?

00:17:08 ◼   ► Because I know that there's been a lot of discussion about,

00:17:11 ◼   ► I know you guys have talked about it on "Connected,"

00:17:13 ◼   ► the idea of that Google tablet that has a dock

00:17:16 ◼   ► that turns it into kind of like a--

00:17:17 ◼   ► - Home.

00:17:18 ◼   ► - Like an Amazon, what is that called?

00:17:21 ◼   ► - Show, Echo Show.

00:17:23 ◼   ► - Echo Show.

00:17:23 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:17:24 ◼   ► - Where we've been talking on this podcast

00:17:26 ◼   ► about the idea of what if Apple made a thing

00:17:29 ◼   ► that was kind of like an iPad, but kind of like a HomePod.

00:17:33 ◼   ► Well, one way for Apple to do that

00:17:34 ◼   ► is to literally make a dock for the iPad

00:17:39 ◼   ► that is a HomePod.

00:17:42 ◼   ► And so you could drop an iPad in

00:17:43 ◼   ► and now it's an iPad and a thing.

00:17:46 ◼   ► So it's got a screen and a speaker and all of that.

00:17:50 ◼   ► And you could also just lift it out and it's an iPad.

00:17:52 ◼   ► And that's interesting too.

00:17:53 ◼   ► So there are a lot of rumors, a lot of speculation.

00:17:57 ◼   ► These are baffling enough to me,

00:17:58 ◼   ► the idea that they will be working on a 16 and a 14,

00:18:01 ◼   ► that it obviously led me down this path

00:18:03 ◼   ► of kind of talking about all this stuff.

00:18:05 ◼   ► But it's because my instinct is, if they're doing this,

00:18:10 ◼   ► there's way more to this story

00:18:13 ◼   ► than is visible above the waterline right now.

00:18:15 ◼   ► Like there's something going on beyond just,

00:18:19 ◼   ► yeah, we're gonna make a couple bigger iPads, right?

00:18:22 ◼   ► It's not gonna be enough for that to be the story.

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00:19:44 ◼   ► at Capital One. Capital One, what's in your wallet?

00:19:49 ◼   ► Money time!

00:19:50 ◼   ► Oh boy, you know, first iPads, we could do a whole show about that, but we can't stop.

00:19:54 ◼   ► We can't stop because it's charts time. Money money money money money money money money

00:19:59 ◼   ► money money money money money money money money money money money money money money

00:20:00 ◼   ► money money money money money money money money money money money money money money

00:20:01 ◼   ► money money money money money money money money money money money money money money

00:20:02 ◼   ► money money money money money money money money money money money money money money

00:20:03 ◼   ► money money money money money money money money money money money money money money

00:20:04 ◼   ► money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money

00:20:05 ◼   ► money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money

00:20:06 ◼   ► money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money money

00:20:07 ◼   ► two results are out. If you remember, obviously, Apple has their financial year and it doesn't

00:20:12 ◼   ► match up completely with the calendar year. So the Q4 results end the end of September

00:20:20 ◼   ► and then the holiday season is Q1, right? So that's the next one.

00:20:25 ◼   ► Yeah, Q1 of 23.

00:20:26 ◼   ► Mm-hmm, which, you know, very confusing, but finances.

00:20:31 ◼   ► Think about it when they report—think about when they report it instead of when they have

00:20:34 ◼   ► it is the way to think about it.

00:20:35 ◼   ► Oh, look at you.

00:20:36 ◼   ► - In February 23, they'll report on Q123.

00:20:39 ◼   ► So it's, which happens in 22, but don't think that far,

00:20:42 ◼   ► just leave it when they talk about it, go on from there.

00:20:46 ◼   ► - Let me do some top line and then we can dig in.

00:20:48 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:20:49 ◼   ► - The revenue for the quarter was 90.1 billion.

00:20:54 ◼   ► - By a billion.

00:20:55 ◼   ► - Billion of a B dollars.

00:20:58 ◼   ► That is up 8% year over year,

00:21:00 ◼   ► making it a record Q4 for the company.

00:21:04 ◼   ► and they brought in $20.7 billion of profit.

00:21:07 ◼   ► The Mac was at 11.5 billion, up 25% year over year.

00:21:12 ◼   ► This was a record all time quarter for the Mac.

00:21:15 ◼   ► Is that right?

00:21:17 ◼   ► - Yes, the biggest Mac quarter ever.

00:21:18 ◼   ► - Incredible.

00:21:19 ◼   ► The iPad, $7.2 billion of revenue, down 13% year over year.

00:21:24 ◼   ► The iPhone, $42.6 billion of revenue,

00:21:29 ◼   ► up 10% year over year.

00:21:31 ◼   ► I believe this is a Q4 record for the iPhone.

00:21:34 ◼   ► - Would not surprise me.

00:21:35 ◼   ► I'm not 100% on that, but yeah, I think you're right.

00:21:37 ◼   ► - I did some digging and again,

00:21:39 ◼   ► it's hard 'cause of charts and stuff,

00:21:40 ◼   ► but like as far as I could tell, yes.

00:21:42 ◼   ► Because really, if it's bigger than any

00:21:46 ◼   ► when the iPhone 6 was around,

00:21:47 ◼   ► and if it beat that, it'd be everything.

00:21:49 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:21:51 ◼   ► - Services is $19.2 billion, which is up 5%,

00:21:56 ◼   ► but we'll get into this in a minute,

00:21:57 ◼   ► down again on the previous calendar quarter,

00:22:01 ◼   ► which is an interesting thing for services.

00:22:03 ◼   ► It's the thing I don't feel like you pay attention to

00:22:05 ◼   ► for anything else, but services is a little bit different

00:22:09 ◼   ► 'cause it's all just like in theory should be additive

00:22:11 ◼   ► if nobody's canceling, but maybe they are.

00:22:13 ◼   ► Wearable home and accessories, $9.7 billion, up 10%.

00:22:18 ◼   ► I believe this is also a Q4 record as well.

00:22:21 ◼   ► So you can see where they were shining,

00:22:24 ◼   ► but there were some places where they weren't,

00:22:25 ◼   ► but overall led to an increase year over year.

00:22:29 ◼   ► This was higher than they forecasted, right?

00:22:31 ◼   ► That 90.1?

00:22:32 ◼   ► - Well, they don't forecast anymore.

00:22:35 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, I forgot they stopped doing it, didn't they?

00:22:37 ◼   ► - It was more than was expected, I would say.

00:22:40 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:22:41 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:22:42 ◼   ► - Let's talk about,

00:22:43 ◼   ► oh, let me do just one last thing in numbers.

00:22:46 ◼   ► The revenue by category for the quarter,

00:22:48 ◼   ► iPhone 47%,

00:22:50 ◼   ► services 21%,

00:22:52 ◼   ► Mac 13%,

00:22:53 ◼   ► 11% for wearables,

00:22:55 ◼   ► 8% for iPad, pretty similar to other quarters frequently,

00:23:00 ◼   ► I feel like.

00:23:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's a little lower than like next time

00:23:04 ◼   ► iPhone will be 55 or 60%, but yeah, basically the same.

00:23:09 ◼   ► - So I think the services are interesting.

00:23:10 ◼   ► Remember on last week's episode,

00:23:12 ◼   ► there was some breaking news that they're putting up services

00:23:16 ◼   ► by like, they're putting up the bundles a little bit?

00:23:19 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:23:20 ◼   ► - Do you reckon this is related?

00:23:22 ◼   ► - Okay, it is related, but in a complicated way, right?

00:23:25 ◼   ► - I love it.

00:23:26 ◼   ► - So, well, I actually had to do math yesterday,

00:23:31 ◼   ► as sometimes happens, which is, think about,

00:23:34 ◼   ► so one of the things that affects services

00:23:36 ◼   ► more than other categories at Apple is exchange rates.

00:23:39 ◼   ► So they talk a lot about foreign exchange,

00:23:41 ◼   ► headwinds, that's their metaphor.

00:23:43 ◼   ► - Everyone's, this is the new,

00:23:45 ◼   ► headwinds is the new like business speak, it feels like.

00:23:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, every C-suite executive either owns a sailboat

00:23:53 ◼   ► or fancies that they own a sailboat.

00:23:55 ◼   ► everyone keeps talking about it, like headwinds,

00:23:57 ◼   ► as like, it's a way to say declining

00:24:00 ◼   ► without saying declining.

00:24:02 ◼   ► Just like, oh, we've got some headwinds.

00:24:03 ◼   ► You know the headwinds.

00:24:04 ◼   ► - I mean, what they mean is that the environment

00:24:06 ◼   ► is against them, right?

00:24:07 ◼   ► And I think that this is accurate.

00:24:09 ◼   ► So when we talk about foreign exchange,

00:24:11 ◼   ► and Apple will say that foreign exchange really hurts them,

00:24:13 ◼   ► and you might be saying to yourself, how does that happen?

00:24:15 ◼   ► Well, services is a great example of how it happens

00:24:17 ◼   ► because the dollar, as they said,

00:24:19 ◼   ► is stronger than it was against essentially

00:24:22 ◼   ► every currency right now.

00:24:24 ◼   ► The dollar is very strong.

00:24:25 ◼   ► And if you're an American, that's great,

00:24:27 ◼   ► 'cause it means that when you go to any other country,

00:24:31 ◼   ► your money goes further than it used to.

00:24:33 ◼   ► That's great.

00:24:34 ◼   ► It's bad if you're any other country

00:24:36 ◼   ► and you are buying products from America,

00:24:38 ◼   ► 'cause they're more expensive than they used to be.

00:24:40 ◼   ► Where it hits Apple and services is,

00:24:42 ◼   ► if you think about a product,

00:24:44 ◼   ► Apple doesn't shift their prices too often,

00:24:47 ◼   ► but they, until last week,

00:24:49 ◼   ► they didn't shift their services prices at all.

00:24:51 ◼   ► And more to the point,

00:24:52 ◼   ► your services prices every month or every year,

00:24:54 ◼   ► you just get charged for it.

00:24:55 ◼   ► And the price stays the same, right?

00:24:56 ◼   ► Until they raise it, the price stays the same.

00:24:58 ◼   ► So theoretically, if you go buy a Mac,

00:25:01 ◼   ► in two years from now,

00:25:02 ◼   ► they might raise the price of that Mac.

00:25:03 ◼   ► Apple tends to not do that, but they could.

00:25:06 ◼   ► - They do do it.

00:25:07 ◼   ► - And actually outside of the US, they do, right?

00:25:09 ◼   ► - Outside of the US, they do it all the time.

00:25:11 ◼   ► They adjust every time they release a new product,

00:25:14 ◼   ► they adjust the prices.

00:25:15 ◼   ► - Right, for this reason.

00:25:17 ◼   ► But services, they don't do that.

00:25:18 ◼   ► So you end up in a situation, I'll give you an example,

00:25:21 ◼   ► and you know this example, Myke,

00:25:23 ◼   ► Apple TV Plus debuted in the UK

00:25:26 ◼   ► at four pounds 99 per month, right?

00:25:30 ◼   ► At the time, that was 641 in American dollars every month,

00:25:35 ◼   ► coming back to Apple.

00:25:37 ◼   ► Today, because the dollar is stronger against the pound,

00:25:41 ◼   ► it would only be worth 573 per month for them.

00:25:44 ◼   ► And this is true everywhere in the world,

00:25:46 ◼   ► everywhere in the world where these services

00:25:49 ◼   ► are at a fixed cost,

00:25:51 ◼   ► over time as the dollar has gotten stronger,

00:25:53 ◼   ► all of them have generated less revenue.

00:25:55 ◼   ► Now what Apple will tell you is that services grew

00:25:59 ◼   ► double digits year over year.

00:26:01 ◼   ► So at least twice as the 5% that it grew overall

00:26:05 ◼   ► in local currency.

00:26:08 ◼   ► - Wait, what does that mean?

00:26:09 ◼   ► Can you explain, what does that mean?

00:26:11 ◼   ► Local currency?

00:26:12 ◼   ► - That means that if I look at how much money

00:26:14 ◼   ► I made on Apple services in the UK,

00:26:16 ◼   ► in Great British Pounds,

00:26:19 ◼   ► last year at this time, and then this year at this time,

00:26:21 ◼   ► it's up more than, you know, up 10 or more percent.

00:26:25 ◼   ► They didn't say, they just set up double digits.

00:26:27 ◼   ► But then you convert it to dollars,

00:26:30 ◼   ► and last year the exchange rate was better.

00:26:33 ◼   ► And so now it looks like it's down or flat,

00:26:37 ◼   ► even though it actually in Great Britain pounds is up.

00:26:41 ◼   ► So that's what they mean.

00:26:42 ◼   ► And I know it's esoteric,

00:26:44 ◼   ► but the services gets hit by it

00:26:46 ◼   ► more than a product here and there,

00:26:48 ◼   ► because they can adjust the product prices,

00:26:50 ◼   ► but they don't generally,

00:26:52 ◼   ► I know they just raise the price everywhere around the world

00:26:54 ◼   ► for their services,

00:26:56 ◼   ► but what they don't do and haven't done

00:26:59 ◼   ► is every six months change the Apple TV+ price

00:27:03 ◼   ► in all countries to be different

00:27:06 ◼   ► in order to fit with exchange rates.

00:27:08 ◼   ► They just eat it, right?

00:27:10 ◼   ► So anyway, they're saying,

00:27:12 ◼   ► if you're trying to see how we're doing on services money,

00:27:17 ◼   ► what you're seeing is being swamped

00:27:19 ◼   ► by weird foreign exchange things that are happening.

00:27:23 ◼   ► And there is absolutely truth in that.

00:27:25 ◼   ► So when they raise the prices,

00:27:28 ◼   ► is this one of the reasons why?

00:27:30 ◼   ► I think it is.

00:27:31 ◼   ► Although they, in their press release and on the call,

00:27:34 ◼   ► they both, Tim Cook made the point of saying,

00:27:37 ◼   ► basically they blame, as we said last week,

00:27:41 ◼   ► they blame the record companies for the Apple Music increase.

00:27:45 ◼   ► Their licensing fee went up.

00:27:46 ◼   ► And the way he said it,

00:27:47 ◼   ► 'cause we were laughing about it last week about the,

00:27:50 ◼   ► you know, it does mean your favorite artists

00:27:53 ◼   ► will be paid more, but you know,

00:27:55 ◼   ► it's the, our licensing fee went up

00:27:58 ◼   ► and that's why we're raising it.

00:27:59 ◼   ► So we blame the record companies,

00:28:00 ◼   ► but we appreciate that this money will be going

00:28:02 ◼   ► at least in part to your favorite artists.

00:28:04 ◼   ► On the call, what Tim Cook said is something like,

00:28:07 ◼   ► "At least artists will get paid more."

00:28:08 ◼   ► So that's something, I guess.

00:28:10 ◼   ► It was really reluctant.

00:28:11 ◼   ► - Okay, there you go.

00:28:12 ◼   ► So I mean, that's telling you what we were saying.

00:28:14 ◼   ► It's like, it happens, but we actually don't care.

00:28:17 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:28:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's like this,

00:28:19 ◼   ► them raising our licensing fee sucks,

00:28:21 ◼   ► but at least the, you know,

00:28:22 ◼   ► at least the artist will get more, so whatever.

00:28:25 ◼   ► Whereas the Apple TV+,

00:28:26 ◼   ► he gave an argument for raising Apple TV+,

00:28:28 ◼   ► and what he said was,

00:28:29 ◼   ► "Well, when we launched it, there wasn't anything on it,

00:28:33 ◼   ► so it was cheap.

00:28:34 ◼   ► But now we made a lot of stuff,

00:28:35 ◼   ► so now there's more stuff there.

00:28:36 ◼   ► So now we have to raise the price."

00:28:38 ◼   ► - Well, no, you see,

00:28:39 ◼   ► but that's the wrong argument though, isn't it?

00:28:40 ◼   ► Because the actual argument is when we launched it,

00:28:44 ◼   ► we gave it away for free because there was nothing on it. Because we knew that $5.99

00:28:48 ◼   ► a month was too expensive.

00:28:49 ◼   ► - Right, but then three months in or whatever, we charged you $5.99 because there wasn't

00:28:56 ◼   ► a big catalog, but we built up a big catalog.

00:28:58 ◼   ► - That was kind of strange, like that argument of like...

00:29:02 ◼   ► - I feel like their answer should really be, "We're making a bunch more stuff now, and

00:29:06 ◼   ► so we're gonna..." I mean, nobody's gonna say the truth, which is like the Disney+ thing,

00:29:10 ◼   ► right? Where they started it low and everybody knew they were gonna raise it and they did.

00:29:14 ◼   ► And the right answer is, well, we started low

00:29:16 ◼   ► 'cause we wanted to get people used to it

00:29:18 ◼   ► and now we wanna increase it so we get more money.

00:29:21 ◼   ► I mean, that's the answer, but they're not gonna say that.

00:29:23 ◼   ► - So, okay, that's a really good point in context to me

00:29:27 ◼   ► 'cause I was looking at the services thing,

00:29:29 ◼   ► was like, that doesn't look good, right?

00:29:31 ◼   ► 'Cause it's like, it keeps going down.

00:29:32 ◼   ► - Two quarters down sequentially, which is,

00:29:35 ◼   ► you know, again, it's up year over year,

00:29:38 ◼   ► but you can't keep that up, right?

00:29:39 ◼   ► You go down, once you go down four quarters sequentially,

00:29:43 ◼   ► guess what, you're not gonna be up year over year anymore,

00:29:45 ◼   ► right, you're gonna keep going down.

00:29:47 ◼   ► You can only do it so much.

00:29:49 ◼   ► - And services is the rare thing where like in theory,

00:29:52 ◼   ► if you're doing everything right,

00:29:53 ◼   ► it continues to go up forever because you're keeping

00:29:56 ◼   ► customers and acquiring new customers.

00:29:58 ◼   ► But at least it seems like what they're saying is

00:30:01 ◼   ► they're giving that rare piece of detail

00:30:02 ◼   ► 'cause it helps them, right,

00:30:04 ◼   ► 'cause they don't give these kinds of details.

00:30:05 ◼   ► So we definitely had user growth,

00:30:08 ◼   ► but the money has changed.

00:30:09 ◼   ► So now, I mean, we're probably gonna get

00:30:12 ◼   ► a real nice jump up for the next quarter, right?

00:30:14 ◼   ► As the prices go up or whatever, but that's interesting.

00:30:18 ◼   ► - I would think, it depends on foreign exchange.

00:30:20 ◼   ► I would imagine that in the long run,

00:30:22 ◼   ► I mean, there's this question of like, well,

00:30:23 ◼   ► what does this do for us? - Right, but all

00:30:24 ◼   ► of the US money is added.

00:30:26 ◼   ► - Yes, and everything else, it'll be padded

00:30:28 ◼   ► by the fact that there's an increase.

00:30:30 ◼   ► But I guess what I'm saying is in the long run,

00:30:32 ◼   ► there's also the fact that I think Apple expects

00:30:35 ◼   ► in the long run, a reversion to the mean, right?

00:30:39 ◼   ► that like when the dollar gets strong,

00:30:42 ◼   ► at some point the dollar's gonna get less strong

00:30:45 ◼   ► and it'll all kind of come back around.

00:30:47 ◼   ► But in the short term, that's not the case.

00:30:50 ◼   ► And so yes, adding as little as it seems it is

00:30:55 ◼   ► to go up a couple of dollars,

00:30:57 ◼   ► the fact is if you go from five to seven,

00:31:00 ◼   ► it's a 40% increase.

00:31:01 ◼   ► So yeah, I mean, I think it will have

00:31:04 ◼   ► a substantive benefit.

00:31:07 ◼   ► how much of the services piece is Apple Music,

00:31:11 ◼   ► Apple One, Apple TV Plus and the rest versus

00:31:15 ◼   ► like the App Store and App Store advertising and all that.

00:31:18 ◼   ► Although Tim Cook, we may talk about advertising

00:31:20 ◼   ► a little bit later, but Tim Cook sort of said,

00:31:23 ◼   ► our ad business is very small.

00:31:25 ◼   ► It's very small compared to everybody else's ad business.

00:31:27 ◼   ► But anyway, that's a question too.

00:31:29 ◼   ► - They're getting bigger all the time though, ain't they?

00:31:31 ◼   ► - They are, they do seem to be.

00:31:33 ◼   ► Actually, one of the things they also blamed

00:31:35 ◼   ► services revenue shortfalls on was softness

00:31:38 ◼   ► in the advertising market and in the gaming market,

00:31:43 ◼   ► which is something that they've said a few times,

00:31:45 ◼   ► which it sounds like in the height of the pandemic,

00:31:50 ◼   ► there was a lot more gameplay and go figure these days,

00:31:54 ◼   ► there's less of it.

00:31:55 ◼   ► And that means there's less game revenue coming

00:31:58 ◼   ► into the app store from all of those games

00:32:00 ◼   ► and all of those in-app purchases.

00:32:01 ◼   ► And that hurts them too.

00:32:03 ◼   ► Ben Thompson makes the argument, which I like,

00:32:06 ◼   ► he was talking about this in regards to,

00:32:10 ◼   ► I think Facebook, no probably not for Google,

00:32:12 ◼   ► I think it was, that guy's a bunch of companies,

00:32:13 ◼   ► earn his season's time, you know.

00:32:15 ◼   ► And he was saying that, yeah, like it does seem like

00:32:18 ◼   ► there is a softness in the gaming market now

00:32:20 ◼   ► because people are not spending money

00:32:22 ◼   ► on in-app purchase gems when they're struggling

00:32:25 ◼   ► to pay their energy bills, right?

00:32:26 ◼   ► Like that's happening more.

00:32:27 ◼   ► But I will say, 'cause he makes the other point,

00:32:29 ◼   ► which I do think could be a part of it, right?

00:32:31 ◼   ► Like, there is less advertising spend happening

00:32:36 ◼   ► post-AppTrack and transparency in gaming

00:32:41 ◼   ► because it can't be as targeted as much,

00:32:44 ◼   ► which could have brought down the amount

00:32:46 ◼   ► of new acquiring customers in gaming,

00:32:48 ◼   ► which Apple would feel on their cuts, right?

00:32:52 ◼   ► You following what I'm saying, right?

00:32:54 ◼   ► - Yes, right.

00:32:54 ◼   ► - Because less people now are downloading new games

00:32:58 ◼   ► for the first time because they're not being advertised

00:33:01 ◼   ► to them, it would reduce the amount of gems and whatever

00:33:06 ◼   ► that bought, which Apple would also feel

00:33:08 ◼   ► if that was happening, which is an interesting thing

00:33:10 ◼   ► to come back around again on.

00:33:12 ◼   ► But the difference between Apple and Meta and Google

00:33:17 ◼   ► and all these other companies or whatever,

00:33:19 ◼   ► they're gonna be hit harder

00:33:22 ◼   ► 'cause it's a bigger part of their revenue

00:33:23 ◼   ► than it is Apple's.

00:33:24 ◼   ► 'Cause Apple has all the hardware.

00:33:26 ◼   ► - Yep. - So super interesting.

00:33:28 ◼   ► And I wanna see how that all shakes out

00:33:30 ◼   ► 'cause this is the thing of like,

00:33:32 ◼   ► they're actually trying to understand the true impact

00:33:34 ◼   ► of either of these two things is too complicated.

00:33:37 ◼   ► Is it the economy?

00:33:38 ◼   ► Is it app tracking transparency and advertising stuff?

00:33:40 ◼   ► We actually don't know

00:33:41 ◼   ► 'cause it's all happening at the same time.

00:33:43 ◼   ► So we can't really work it out right now.

00:33:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, there's a lot going on here,

00:33:49 ◼   ► but that's one of the things.

00:33:51 ◼   ► - Apple noted a substantial expected drop

00:33:53 ◼   ► in Mac revenue next quarter.

00:33:56 ◼   ► Now it is a tough compare, right?

00:33:59 ◼   ► - That's what they said.

00:34:01 ◼   ► That's what they said.

00:34:01 ◼   ► Also, we have to say that the Mac quarter,

00:34:05 ◼   ► this quarter was high.

00:34:07 ◼   ► And Apple said there were the three reasons why, right?

00:34:10 ◼   ► One is demand, but two is fulfilling all the demand

00:34:14 ◼   ► from last quarter where they didn't have Macs to sell people

00:34:17 ◼   ► and then three was filling the channel.

00:34:19 ◼   ► And if you remember, they basically had a factory showdown.

00:34:22 ◼   ► - Factory showdown.

00:34:24 ◼   ► You and you fight.

00:34:25 ◼   ► The winner gets to make Macs.

00:34:28 ◼   ► - Gets to make Macs.

00:34:29 ◼   ► That's right, and they both shot each other and they died.

00:34:32 ◼   ► So that took a while to fix,

00:34:34 ◼   ► and they didn't have Macs for a while.

00:34:37 ◼   ► See, seamless.

00:34:38 ◼   ► So they spent this quarter

00:34:41 ◼   ► and part of last quarter catching up.

00:34:43 ◼   ► And the point is the reason the Mac quarter was so great

00:34:44 ◼   ► is because they didn't just sell a lot of Macs in a quarter.

00:34:47 ◼   ► They didn't just have the MacBook Air,

00:34:49 ◼   ► which is their most popular computer,

00:34:51 ◼   ► and there was a new one of it that people liked,

00:34:54 ◼   ► but also they fulfilled all those orders

00:34:56 ◼   ► that were outstanding from last quarter

00:34:57 ◼   ► and made a bunch to fill the channels

00:34:59 ◼   ► so that people could walk into stores and buy them.

00:35:02 ◼   ► So they said, look, that Mac number is a little bit inflated

00:35:07 ◼   ► because of that.

00:35:08 ◼   ► And then yes, next quarter will be a tough compare

00:35:10 ◼   ► because they had the, what, the MacBook Pros

00:35:13 ◼   ► and stuff coming out last year.

00:35:14 ◼   ► And so it's not gonna be the same.

00:35:17 ◼   ► - It seemed like from what Luca made this statement,

00:35:20 ◼   ► and then also something that Tim said,

00:35:22 ◼   ► seemed to hint that there weren't gonna be any more Macs

00:35:25 ◼   ► new this year, right?

00:35:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, they said that, you know, something about retail,

00:35:29 ◼   ► and they said, you know, our product line is set

00:35:31 ◼   ► going into the holidays, which strongly implies

00:35:33 ◼   ► that there aren't gonna be any new Macs this year.

00:35:38 ◼   ► I don't think it's 100%.

00:35:40 ◼   ► Like, you know-- - No.

00:35:41 ◼   ► It's just, these two pieces could maybe suggest that,

00:35:44 ◼   ► but it could also mean it is set, we have plans.

00:35:47 ◼   ► You know, like, we don't really know what set means,

00:35:50 ◼   ► I suppose?

00:35:51 ◼   ► - And it could mean that we don't think the products

00:35:53 ◼   ► we're gonna, I mean, look, we're wish casting here

00:35:56 ◼   ► a little bit, 'cause I think the most likely scenario

00:35:58 ◼   ► is there are no new announcements until next year.

00:36:00 ◼   ► But you could say, well, yeah, but what we're gonna do

00:36:02 ◼   ► is a speed bump Mac mini and MacBook Pro.

00:36:04 ◼   ► These are not part of our holiday lineup per se, right?

00:36:08 ◼   ► They're nerdy Macs that are great, but like, they're not,

00:36:12 ◼   ► and they're filling existing parts of the ecosystem

00:36:15 ◼   ► and we're not spending a lot of marketing on them

00:36:17 ◼   ► and they're coming out in the next couple of weeks

00:36:19 ◼   ► so they will be there for the holiday season.

00:36:21 ◼   ► You can rationalize it a lot.

00:36:22 ◼   ► I think if you take it on its face, what they're saying is,

00:36:25 ◼   ► no more product announcements until next year.

00:36:28 ◼   ► - And also as expected, Apple cannot meet demand

00:36:32 ◼   ► of the pro iPhones at the moment.

00:36:34 ◼   ► They are struggling to meet demand.

00:36:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, I thought that was interesting

00:36:38 ◼   ► that they are trying to get in balance

00:36:41 ◼   ► and hope to get in balance this quarter,

00:36:42 ◼   ► but it's one of those things where the pro phones

00:36:44 ◼   ► have done really well.

00:36:45 ◼   ► Please note they did not say

00:36:46 ◼   ► that the non-pro phones were doing that well,

00:36:49 ◼   ► but that the pro phones were doing that well.

00:36:51 ◼   ► And again, not ideal, right?

00:36:54 ◼   ► You wanna fulfill everybody, if they want an iPhone,

00:36:57 ◼   ► the platonic ideal of Apple's production process is,

00:37:02 ◼   ► if you want it, we have it.

00:37:03 ◼   ► And that's all we have.

00:37:04 ◼   ► We have one for you,

00:37:06 ◼   ► and one for everyone else who wants one today,

00:37:08 ◼   ► and then we have none.

00:37:10 ◼   ► And then tomorrow we get a new shipment

00:37:11 ◼   ► and we sell every single one of those.

00:37:12 ◼   ► That's the dream.

00:37:14 ◼   ► And right now they're not there.

00:37:15 ◼   ► - Did they give any kind of, aside from the Mac thing,

00:37:21 ◼   ► Did they give any kind of hint towards the holiday quarter,

00:37:25 ◼   ► what they think it's gonna look like?

00:37:26 ◼   ► 'Cause I know that they don't do forecasting,

00:37:28 ◼   ► but they have been making some statements, right,

00:37:31 ◼   ► in the past year or so, couple of years, I guess,

00:37:33 ◼   ► about like if they're, like with the Mac thing,

00:37:35 ◼   ► if they're expecting something good or bad,

00:37:38 ◼   ► did they give any kind of like,

00:37:39 ◼   ► we think the next quarter's gonna look good or bad

00:37:42 ◼   ► or anything like that?

00:37:43 ◼   ► - I don't think I have, okay, I mean,

00:37:49 ◼   ► I'll give you what he said, which is,

00:37:51 ◼   ► we're not providing revenue guidance.

00:37:54 ◼   ► We believe total company year over year

00:37:56 ◼   ► revenue performance will decelerate

00:37:58 ◼   ► during the December quarter

00:37:59 ◼   ► as compared to the September quarter.

00:38:01 ◼   ► And what that means is overall performance,

00:38:04 ◼   ► that means total revenue.

00:38:05 ◼   ► Total revenue was up 8% year over year.

00:38:09 ◼   ► It will be less than 8%.

00:38:11 ◼   ► Will it be above zero?

00:38:13 ◼   ► We didn't say.

00:38:15 ◼   ► My guess is if you were putting money down,

00:38:19 ◼   ► you'd say, yeah, 4%, 5% year over year,

00:38:23 ◼   ► which by the way, again, last holiday quarter

00:38:25 ◼   ► was the biggest holiday quarter for Apple ever.

00:38:27 ◼   ► But they're not saying that.

00:38:28 ◼   ► They're not saying they're gonna do that.

00:38:30 ◼   ► They're saying all they will say is it's gonna be less

00:38:33 ◼   ► than 8% year over year growth.

00:38:34 ◼   ► - I've forgotten, and 123 billion, I'd forgotten that.

00:38:38 ◼   ► My God, I'd, what?

00:38:40 ◼   ► What would they eat in that one?

00:38:43 ◼   ► Do you reckon they're gonna beat it?

00:38:45 ◼   ► you reckon they're gonna do like 125, 126,

00:38:48 ◼   ► something like that?

00:38:49 ◼   ► - I have learned not to underestimate Apple's capability

00:38:52 ◼   ► to break its own records.

00:38:53 ◼   ► So I would probably guess that it'll do,

00:38:56 ◼   ► you know, 4% year over year, 2% year over year,

00:38:59 ◼   ► something like that.

00:39:00 ◼   ► - I'm betting the iPhone's gonna do really well

00:39:02 ◼   ► for them this year.

00:39:03 ◼   ► - I think so, especially if they can get those pro models

00:39:07 ◼   ► out of the, you know, and into people's hands this quarter,

00:39:10 ◼   ► I think that they'll do pretty well.

00:39:11 ◼   ► And it is the iPhone quarter, but they have,

00:39:13 ◼   ► It's a tough compare, as they say.

00:39:16 ◼   ► Last quarter's growth was, for the Q3,

00:39:20 ◼   ► was 2% year over year, so.

00:39:21 ◼   ► And then this was eight,

00:39:23 ◼   ► and the previous quarters were like 11, nine, two, eight.

00:39:25 ◼   ► So saying it's gonna be two or four,

00:39:29 ◼   ► if it's above zero,

00:39:30 ◼   ► it will be their biggest quarter ever, regardless.

00:39:34 ◼   ► - 'Cause I'm thinking people are gonna treat this

00:39:36 ◼   ► like it was a new redesign.

00:39:37 ◼   ► That's where I'm kind of thinking.

00:39:40 ◼   ► - Could be.

00:39:41 ◼   ► - That's where I'm coming from.

00:39:42 ◼   ► Like the marketing really shows the dynamic island a lot

00:39:46 ◼   ► and I think that they might be betting on that as like,

00:39:48 ◼   ► hey, people will look at this and be like,

00:39:50 ◼   ► that's a brand new iPhone, you know?

00:39:53 ◼   ► And it sell like that would.

00:39:56 ◼   ► - Now, what they say about foreign exchange

00:39:58 ◼   ► is they think it will be nearly 10 percentage points

00:40:01 ◼   ► of negative year over year impact, right?

00:40:05 ◼   ► So what they're saying there is

00:40:06 ◼   ► in a neutral foreign exchange--

00:40:09 ◼   ► - Environment.

00:40:10 ◼   ► whatever number they hit in a neutral world,

00:40:12 ◼   ► it would be 10% higher than that of year over year growth.

00:40:16 ◼   ► So they're really setting the expectations there

00:40:18 ◼   ► that if they're up 2%, it would have been 12

00:40:22 ◼   ► if it weren't for foreign exchange headwinds,

00:40:23 ◼   ► or if they're down 2%, it would have been up eight.

00:40:26 ◼   ► And so they've laid that out there, we'll see what they say,

00:40:29 ◼   ► but they also cite the challenging compare

00:40:31 ◼   ► because they had the MacBook Pro with M1 last year,

00:40:36 ◼   ► which is why they made that decline substantially claim

00:40:38 ◼   ► about the Mac.

00:40:40 ◼   ► And they said services they expect to grow,

00:40:42 ◼   ► but again, they will continue to be impacted

00:40:45 ◼   ► by the macroeconomic environment,

00:40:46 ◼   ► which is all those things we talked about.

00:40:47 ◼   ► It's not just foreign exchange,

00:40:49 ◼   ► but soft digital advertising,

00:40:50 ◼   ► and also people not buying tokens for their game

00:40:54 ◼   ► because they're instead paying their heating bill.

00:40:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

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00:43:05 ◼   ► Money money money money money! Money? I want to talk about... you chapped... chapped... gave

00:43:14 ◼   ► the title for this chapter which I like. Yes. Apple does awful stuff. Yeah yeah

00:43:19 ◼   ► well we originally had two separate segments and I thought well I can lump

00:43:22 ◼   ► these together as stuff Apple does that we don't like right? I can do that. A

00:43:26 ◼   ► A little while ago we spoke about Apple adding some new ads to the App Store.

00:43:33 ◼   ► At the time we spoke about a new ad unit going to the Today page, which is the home page

00:43:41 ◼   ► of the App Store where it has Apple's editorial teams giving you recommendations.

00:43:47 ◼   ► If you go there now, usually the second block is an ad.

00:43:53 ◼   ► I didn't like this at the time and I really don't like it now because I have gotten used

00:43:59 ◼   ► to that homepage being a curated list of stuff that could be interesting for me to check

00:44:06 ◼   ► out but now...

00:44:09 ◼   ► Dragon Tail Hunter World is there.

00:44:14 ◼   ► Earlier it was Candy Crush for me.

00:44:17 ◼   ► And I don't feel like Apple should be selling their influence in this way.

00:44:27 ◼   ► I don't think that they really need to do that.

00:44:33 ◼   ► Well, look, there's a couple of things going on here, right?

00:44:39 ◼   ► There's the macro level and then there's the detail level for this.

00:44:42 ◼   ► So on the detail level, I think this is just bad technology, right? Like what they're really

00:44:49 ◼   ► doing is they've, and bad, I mean, it's everything, it's bad. It's bad technology, it's bad policy.

00:44:54 ◼   ► But on the detail level, I think the big objection is it's allowing advertisers of apps to now

00:45:03 ◼   ► enter into places where they're not relevant. They're like barging in. And for all we say

00:45:08 ◼   ► about ad personalization and ad tracking and all of those things, relevance is important

00:45:15 ◼   ► with ads. And if you don't have a lot of signals about who the person is, then the other signal

00:45:20 ◼   ► you have is where the ad is placed. So if you're on a kid's app, the signal you've got

00:45:28 ◼   ► is this is a kid's app, advertise kid stuff here because the person who's looking at this

00:45:33 ◼   ► is buying kids' apps.

00:45:35 ◼   ► And one of the issues that has come up here is

00:45:38 ◼   ► these apps are just barreling in like the Kool-Aid Man,

00:45:42 ◼   ► going like, "Oh yeah, kids, how about gambling ads?"

00:45:47 ◼   ► - Candy Crush.

00:45:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, right?

00:45:50 ◼   ► And that is, so that's a problem,

00:45:53 ◼   ► that part of the features of this ad unit

00:45:57 ◼   ► is as an advertiser,

00:45:59 ◼   ► you can basically press the Kool-Aid Man button

00:46:02 ◼   ► and say, I don't care, just put it everywhere.

00:46:05 ◼   ► And if you're an app developer or a user, I would say,

00:46:08 ◼   ► who is there, having a totally irrelevant thing

00:46:11 ◼   ► that also is probably, or has a strong possibility

00:46:15 ◼   ► of being something that's kind of unpleasant

00:46:17 ◼   ► and that is not related at all

00:46:19 ◼   ► to the experience that you want, that's bad, right?

00:46:22 ◼   ► Like that's bad.

00:46:23 ◼   ► The idea that, and people were using lots of examples

00:46:25 ◼   ► of like kid stuff with gambling ads.

00:46:27 ◼   ► - Can I just step in real quick

00:46:29 ◼   ► to add a little bit of context

00:46:30 ◼   ► 'cause I didn't say it earlier

00:46:31 ◼   ► and we are moving into it.

00:46:32 ◼   ► There was also a second ad unit that I think we missed

00:46:35 ◼   ► or I didn't notice or didn't realize

00:46:37 ◼   ► potential implication of, which is in, you might also like.

00:46:42 ◼   ► So if you go into any app page, there's like a, you know,

00:46:46 ◼   ► if you like this, you might like this, right?

00:46:48 ◼   ► Which is, I don't know, it's like a good information thing

00:46:51 ◼   ► to have, like people that downloaded this app

00:46:53 ◼   ► probably also downloaded these other apps.

00:46:54 ◼   ► - Relevant results, right? Relevant results.

00:46:57 ◼   ► - And so in the area of relevant results,

00:46:59 ◼   ► you now have irrelevant results,

00:47:01 ◼   ► which is the first of these, is an ad.

00:47:04 ◼   ► - Yes, and it's a bad ad.

00:47:06 ◼   ► I mean, a lot of the criticism was not only is it an ad,

00:47:09 ◼   ► but it's a bad ad because this is where you get,

00:47:12 ◼   ► in the gambling recovery app, you get ads for gambling,

00:47:16 ◼   ► or you did, Apple paused this program.

00:47:18 ◼   ► We'll just cut to the result of this, at least for now,

00:47:20 ◼   ► as they said, they paused this program.

00:47:22 ◼   ► But like, in the gambling,

00:47:23 ◼   ► trying to fight gambling addiction, there are gambling ads.

00:47:27 ◼   ► In podcast apps, there are gambling ads,

00:47:30 ◼   ► and programming apps that are gambling ads.

00:47:31 ◼   ► They're everywhere.

00:47:32 ◼   ► - And the reason there are gambling ads,

00:47:34 ◼   ► so like, and when we say gambling,

00:47:36 ◼   ► these are actual like gambling companies,

00:47:39 ◼   ► like sports betting companies,

00:47:41 ◼   ► and also games that feature these types of mechanics,

00:47:46 ◼   ► like casino games for kids, and stuff like that.

00:47:48 ◼   ► And the reason that these apps are so prolific

00:47:53 ◼   ► is that you can choose as an advertiser,

00:47:56 ◼   ► you can say, I want it to be targeted,

00:47:58 ◼   ► or just like just scattershot put me everywhere.

00:48:00 ◼   ► - That's the Kool-Aid man button.

00:48:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, the Kool-Aid man button.

00:48:03 ◼   ► And these kinds of where it's this kind of gambling,

00:48:06 ◼   ► they have the most money to play with.

00:48:08 ◼   ► They're gambling on it, but they have the most money

00:48:10 ◼   ► 'cause they make the most money.

00:48:11 ◼   ► And so they just put their ads everywhere.

00:48:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, right.

00:48:15 ◼   ► So that is the, so new ad units,

00:48:18 ◼   ► we can talk about that is the other issue here,

00:48:19 ◼   ► but like we can talk about Apple's ad unit strategy

00:48:22 ◼   ► in the app store, but this one in particular,

00:48:25 ◼   ► where it's like now, 'cause remember,

00:48:28 ◼   ► Apple already has a policy where like app developers

00:48:31 ◼   ► are very limited in their communication with their customers

00:48:34 ◼   ► because Apple considers them Apple's customers.

00:48:37 ◼   ► And so, you know, the developers app page

00:48:41 ◼   ► is kind of important, right?

00:48:43 ◼   ► It is the storefront that they're allotted by Apple.

00:48:47 ◼   ► And now this is an extra piece of junk on there

00:48:51 ◼   ► and it's not even relevant.

00:48:52 ◼   ► I think that's the part that like, I don't love,

00:48:56 ◼   ► I'm trying to parse this out here.

00:48:57 ◼   ► I don't love ads in the app store at all, honestly.

00:49:00 ◼   ► And that's the separate issue.

00:49:02 ◼   ► But like, if you're gonna do it,

00:49:04 ◼   ► I feel like you gotta do it right.

00:49:07 ◼   ► And that means you gotta have relevant ads.

00:49:10 ◼   ► Or you've got to have policies that,

00:49:12 ◼   ► that if some apps are allowed to push the Kool-Aid Man button

00:49:16 ◼   ► some apps in some categories can't,

00:49:19 ◼   ► or if they do push it, it's barred from certain areas.

00:49:23 ◼   ► But Apple seems to have just opened the doors wide and said,

00:49:27 ◼   ► "Mr. Kool-Aid man, please walk through this door."

00:49:30 ◼   ► And Kool-Aid man said, "Oh yeah,

00:49:32 ◼   ► 'cause that's all he ever says."

00:49:34 ◼   ► And we ended up where we are.

00:49:38 ◼   ► So that, I mean like there's nuance here,

00:49:40 ◼   ► which is could this ad unit have been done better?

00:49:44 ◼   ► And the answer is absolutely yes.

00:49:46 ◼   ► And then there's the larger issue,

00:49:49 ◼   ► which is ads in the App Store.

00:49:52 ◼   ► And the problem with me giving a nuanced take about this

00:49:57 ◼   ► is that somebody who wants to respond will say,

00:50:00 ◼   ► "Yeah, but you don't want ads in the App Store at all."

00:50:03 ◼   ► And my answer to that is, "Hmm, kinda yes."

00:50:05 ◼   ► - I don't want ads in the App Store.

00:50:07 ◼   ► I don't think ads need to be in the App Store.

00:50:08 ◼   ► I just don't think it needs to happen.

00:50:10 ◼   ► I really don't.

00:50:11 ◼   ► I don't think it needs to happen.

00:50:12 ◼   ► - Well, I agree.

00:50:13 ◼   ► I agree.

00:50:13 ◼   ► Here's the thing.

00:50:14 ◼   ► Apple is having its cake and eating it too here.

00:50:18 ◼   ► Apple has made the App Store a place that everybody has to go on iOS and iPadOS. It's

00:50:23 ◼   ► mandatory. It's the only one. They fought very hard to say, "Oh no, we need this experience

00:50:28 ◼   ► to be curated and whatever." But what they're also doing is they're building a platform

00:50:32 ◼   ► where they know everything that you've bought and everything that you've looked at. But

00:50:35 ◼   ► it's not tracking because it's Apple who knows.

00:50:38 ◼   ► That's first party data, Jason. Didn't you know?

00:50:40 ◼   ► Yes, it's first party data. It's not tracking if it's first party data. Everybody has to

00:50:45 ◼   ► to be there, there's no alternative.

00:50:47 ◼   ► And we've argued here on many occasions

00:50:50 ◼   ► about the positive aspects of Apple's policies

00:50:54 ◼   ► and good things about the App Store.

00:50:55 ◼   ► But Apple has built this system

00:50:58 ◼   ► that everybody has to be a part of

00:51:00 ◼   ► and that Apple has all the data of,

00:51:02 ◼   ► and then has said, "And what we're gonna do

00:51:04 ◼   ► "is we're gonna put ads in it too."

00:51:06 ◼   ► - And then also shut down the ability

00:51:09 ◼   ► for other people to do it, right,

00:51:10 ◼   ► with app tracking transparency.

00:51:12 ◼   ► - Yes, yeah.

00:51:12 ◼   ► So all of that is going on here.

00:51:14 ◼   ► And I think that's the challenge because what I always said, also forgive me, but like I

00:51:20 ◼   ► used to be an editorial person at a media company and my last few years where I was

00:51:25 ◼   ► very unhappy and didn't like my job, most of what I did was have fights with salespeople

00:51:35 ◼   ► who were trying to bring some other piece of garbage onto our website in order to generate

00:51:41 ◼   ► incremental revenue.

00:51:43 ◼   ► And one of the challenges with this,

00:51:47 ◼   ► and this brings me back to that.

00:51:49 ◼   ► And the reason is, what you want is somebody

00:51:53 ◼   ► in a position of leadership who is looking

00:51:55 ◼   ► at the big picture.

00:51:57 ◼   ► Because if a salesperson, if an ad person comes to you

00:52:02 ◼   ► and says, "I can bring you more money,"

00:52:05 ◼   ► you as a business that's a profit-making entity

00:52:08 ◼   ► are gonna say, great, more money is great.

00:52:13 ◼   ► And you need a leader who says,

00:52:16 ◼   ► what does this do to our product to get this money?

00:52:20 ◼   ► Does it make our product better?

00:52:22 ◼   ► Does it make our product worse?

00:52:24 ◼   ► Does it make our partners angry?

00:52:26 ◼   ► Does it make our partners happy?

00:52:28 ◼   ► You need somebody who is at that level.

00:52:30 ◼   ► Now, I had a lot of presidents and CEOs at my former job

00:52:35 ◼   ► who all but one of them came up through the sales side.

00:52:39 ◼   ► And I would say the good ones knew that the job

00:52:42 ◼   ► of being the boss was not a sales job.

00:52:45 ◼   ► And the bad ones never made that connection.

00:52:49 ◼   ► And I say all this to say,

00:52:52 ◼   ► a leader needs to look at possible new revenue and say,

00:52:57 ◼   ► we can't do that, it hurts our product too much, right?

00:53:02 ◼   ► A leader needs to say, this is too far, it's not worth it.

00:53:07 ◼   ► A bad leader says, I don't care how bad it makes our product

00:53:14 ◼   ► just give me the money.

00:53:16 ◼   ► And I spent the last few years of my career

00:53:18 ◼   ► in corporate media trying to convince my leaders

00:53:23 ◼   ► that the asinine things that were being proposed

00:53:26 ◼   ► by the sales staff made our website terrible

00:53:29 ◼   ► and that the true value of our company was the product

00:53:34 ◼   ► and the readers who cared about the product,

00:53:38 ◼   ► not our ad revenue. (laughs)

00:53:41 ◼   ► Ad revenue is a spinoff of the product.

00:53:44 ◼   ► It's not the product.

00:53:45 ◼   ► And so to wrap this up, what I'll say is,

00:53:49 ◼   ► it sure feels like there's nobody home at Apple

00:53:56 ◼   ► who is a leader in the app store

00:53:59 ◼   ► to say this degrades our product.

00:54:03 ◼   ► - Who has the power to at least, right?

00:54:06 ◼   ► - Well, yeah, no, I am sure there are people there

00:54:08 ◼   ► who are saying this is outrageous.

00:54:09 ◼   ► I mean, in fact, I know that, I'll just put it this way.

00:54:14 ◼   ► I know there are people at Apple who think this is outrageous

00:54:17 ◼   ► and who said so, how about that?

00:54:20 ◼   ► But whoever's in charge,

00:54:22 ◼   ► like, I don't know if the ad guy is just in charge

00:54:25 ◼   ► And he's been, 'cause they have a guy

00:54:27 ◼   ► who's like in charge of ads at Apple now.

00:54:28 ◼   ► He's like their ad maver.

00:54:30 ◼   ► - We were talking about him a while ago, right?

00:54:31 ◼   ► When he grew up by a thousand million percent

00:54:34 ◼   ► or whatever it was.

00:54:35 ◼   ► Yeah, that was a Mark Gumm and report.

00:54:37 ◼   ► - Right, exactly.

00:54:38 ◼   ► And at the time I was like, oh boy, okay,

00:54:39 ◼   ► what does that mean?

00:54:40 ◼   ► But here's the problem.

00:54:41 ◼   ► I don't know whether that guy just gets to put ads

00:54:43 ◼   ► wherever he wants and nobody cares.

00:54:45 ◼   ► Or whoever is enabling that guy doesn't care

00:54:48 ◼   ► or doesn't think it's a problem.

00:54:50 ◼   ► But personally, given that there's no alternative

00:54:55 ◼   ► alternative to the App Store, I hate the whole thing and I think the whole thing is rotten.

00:55:00 ◼   ► And the reason it started as being rotten is, remember where this started, which is,

00:55:05 ◼   ► "Oh, you've got Overcast, but I'm Spotify." And Apple says, "Guess what? Everybody who's

00:55:14 ◼   ► searching for Overcast, we're going to show an ad for Spotify." And Marco, the author

00:55:21 ◼   ► of Overcast goes, "Well, no, I don't want to." And Apple's like, "Well, then you gotta

00:55:25 ◼   ► outbid Spotify for your own product name." And who wins in that scenario? Apple wins.

00:55:31 ◼   ► Because you are now, because what's happening is Apple is creating this grand system where

00:55:36 ◼   ► they take a percentage from all transactions in the store and some places outside of it,

00:55:43 ◼   ► it turns out. And then what they do next is they come back to you and they say, "Of the

00:55:48 ◼   ► percentage that we allowed you to keep,

00:55:50 ◼   ► you now need to fund us even further with ads

00:55:54 ◼   ► so that you can do better.

00:55:55 ◼   ► And Apple sells it as being this great opportunity

00:55:58 ◼   ► for app developers to see new, reach new audiences.

00:56:02 ◼   ► But it's like Apple's algorithms could be good

00:56:04 ◼   ► and could do that.

00:56:05 ◼   ► They could surface apps that generate sales,

00:56:07 ◼   ► that generate more money for Apple,

00:56:09 ◼   ► but they've decided to weaponize advertising

00:56:11 ◼   ► as another way to extract revenue from app developers.

00:56:15 ◼   ► And this is so far down the slope from there,

00:56:19 ◼   ► but I think it is a core rot

00:56:22 ◼   ► at the center of Apple's App Store

00:56:25 ◼   ► that I would feel, again,

00:56:27 ◼   ► I would feel a little differently if there were alternatives

00:56:30 ◼   ► because then if Apple ruined the App Store,

00:56:33 ◼   ► everybody could go somewhere else,

00:56:34 ◼   ► but they can never go anywhere else.

00:56:38 ◼   ► They are stuck.

00:56:39 ◼   ► Apple has them under their complete control

00:56:42 ◼   ► and whoever is in charge of advertising

00:56:45 ◼   ► looks at it and goes, well,

00:56:46 ◼   ► they're not gonna tell me to stop

00:56:47 ◼   ► and they've got nowhere to go.

00:56:49 ◼   ► So I'm gonna make this as gross as possible.

00:56:51 ◼   ► That's what's happening.

00:56:52 ◼   ► - You know what they'll call that internally?

00:56:54 ◼   ► That's a competitive advantage, right?

00:56:56 ◼   ► That's their competitive advantage.

00:56:58 ◼   ► - Sure, sure.

00:56:58 ◼   ► And that's why, and I know that people,

00:57:00 ◼   ► probably there's some people out there like,

00:57:01 ◼   ► oh, editor types are so naive.

00:57:04 ◼   ► It's like, I'm a content person,

00:57:05 ◼   ► but I'm also, I would like to think,

00:57:07 ◼   ► I'm somebody who thinks about the bigger product.

00:57:10 ◼   ► And in all of my time at IDG,

00:57:14 ◼   ► What I found shocking was the bad leadership at times,

00:57:18 ◼   ► and I also had good leadership, I will say,

00:57:21 ◼   ► but the bad leadership at times,

00:57:23 ◼   ► where it felt like the CEO or president

00:57:26 ◼   ► didn't care about the product, I cared about the product.

00:57:30 ◼   ► And the only thing I could do was fight with my boss

00:57:33 ◼   ► about the quality of the product versus revenue.

00:57:36 ◼   ► And they were not there.

00:57:39 ◼   ► And dying media companies,

00:57:42 ◼   ► I get the pressure that they're under to hit their numbers.

00:57:45 ◼   ► IDG was very much, you know, you can do whatever you want

00:57:47 ◼   ► as long as you give us your money at the end of the year.

00:57:49 ◼   ► That was the way they worked.

00:57:51 ◼   ► But this is Apple, right?

00:57:53 ◼   ► Like, and if we wanna say, well, that's what Apple is now.

00:57:57 ◼   ► Apple doesn't care about product quality.

00:57:59 ◼   ► They care about money.

00:58:01 ◼   ► Okay, but like somebody at Apple

00:58:04 ◼   ► should probably look at this and say,

00:58:06 ◼   ► "Oh, this is too far.

00:58:09 ◼   ► "This is against our values."

00:58:11 ◼   ► And again, Apple takes great pride.

00:58:13 ◼   ► It has a huge ego about how they make the world

00:58:17 ◼   ► a better place.

00:58:18 ◼   ► We just heard, as we do every quarter,

00:58:19 ◼   ► Tim Cook talk about their vision for the future

00:58:22 ◼   ► and helping communities that are disadvantaged

00:58:26 ◼   ► and going green and all of these things.

00:58:28 ◼   ► They talk about Apple making the world a better place.

00:58:33 ◼   ► They talk about Apple caring about this stuff.

00:58:35 ◼   ► Only Apple can do this.

00:58:37 ◼   ► But actions matter.

00:58:39 ◼   ► And the actions on this front are not the actions

00:58:43 ◼   ► of a company that cares about that stuff.

00:58:44 ◼   ► They're the actions of a company

00:58:46 ◼   ► that cares about product quality

00:58:48 ◼   ► less than they care about incremental revenue.

00:58:50 ◼   ► Incremental by the way,

00:58:51 ◼   ► because how much money is this really throwing

00:58:54 ◼   ► to the bottom line versus the stuff that matters?

00:58:58 ◼   ► And I would argue it's probably not very much.

00:59:01 ◼   ► And so they're junking up their product and for what?

00:59:04 ◼   ► Like if the ad stream was like more than iPhone revenue,

00:59:07 ◼   ► we'd be like, okay,

00:59:08 ◼   ► - It's all for Wall Street, right?

00:59:10 ◼   ► Like they just need to pump the services revenues

00:59:12 ◼   ► so that the markets don't think that they're out of ideas.

00:59:16 ◼   ► - That's true, and I'm still not convinced,

00:59:18 ◼   ► as Tim Cook said-- - But I don't think

00:59:18 ◼   ► that's a good thing to do,

00:59:19 ◼   ► but like I think it's part of the reason they do it.

00:59:21 ◼   ► - But as Tim Cook said, their ad business compared to,

00:59:25 ◼   ► I think essentially Facebook and Google, is very small.

00:59:28 ◼   ► And he's right about that.

00:59:29 ◼   ► Maybe they dream of it being bigger,

00:59:31 ◼   ► but like in the end, is this the button you push?

00:59:34 ◼   ► Is this your choice about the lever that you can pull

00:59:37 ◼   ► in order to boost your services revenue.

00:59:41 ◼   ► - Speaking of boosting.

00:59:42 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:59:43 ◼   ► - There's another place they wanna make some money from

00:59:46 ◼   ► as other people's ads.

00:59:49 ◼   ► So Apple made a couple of changes

00:59:50 ◼   ► to the App Store guidelines.

00:59:51 ◼   ► One was banning NFTs from being able to unlock

00:59:56 ◼   ► experiences or content within applications.

00:59:58 ◼   ► NFTs, QR codes. - 'Cause that was happening.

01:00:00 ◼   ► - Any way that somebody could authenticate

01:00:05 ◼   ► to get some kind of digital good,

01:00:07 ◼   ► they ban that,

01:00:09 ◼   ► but straight up ban that. - Which I,

01:00:11 ◼   ► on one level I understand it because it's them saying,

01:00:14 ◼   ► I think people are getting around the in-app purchase system

01:00:19 ◼   ► by offering these other kind of confusing,

01:00:21 ◼   ► but ultimately other paths to unlock features in their apps.

01:00:25 ◼   ► But the problem is it runs into all of those

01:00:28 ◼   ► like reader apps and stuff where it's like,

01:00:30 ◼   ► yeah, but I can go buy Netflix on the outside

01:00:33 ◼   ► and watch it on the inside.

01:00:34 ◼   ► And it's like, well, yes, but not these, not these.

01:00:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, oh, not NFT readers, no, no, no, no.

01:00:38 ◼   ► But the thing that I think is the most egregious

01:00:41 ◼   ► is that, so say you're Instagram, Twitter, Facebook,

01:00:45 ◼   ► inside of these applications,

01:00:46 ◼   ► you as a user can pay to boost your posts.

01:00:50 ◼   ► So it will get more impressions,

01:00:51 ◼   ► more people will see it, and it's a sponsored thing

01:00:54 ◼   ► and ad thing, that kind of thing.

01:00:56 ◼   ► Apple has now said, any boosting that occurs

01:00:59 ◼   ► within the social media app,

01:01:02 ◼   ► so in the Twitter app, in the Instagram app,

01:01:04 ◼   ► Apple now wants, well, Apple now requires

01:01:07 ◼   ► that these transactions occur through

01:01:11 ◼   ► the in-app purchase model and they want their 30% for it.

01:01:14 ◼   ► - So I'm less offended by this one than the other one,

01:01:18 ◼   ► honestly, because this one, I mean, it's dumb,

01:01:21 ◼   ► but this one is basically like, well,

01:01:24 ◼   ► if you're in the, 'cause it's if you're in the app.

01:01:26 ◼   ► So if there's like a Twitter advertising app

01:01:29 ◼   ► and then there's the Twitter app

01:01:30 ◼   ► and you make posts over in the Twitter app

01:01:33 ◼   ► and then you go to the Twitter advertising app

01:01:35 ◼   ► and you boost the post.

01:01:37 ◼   ► I think that's allowed.

01:01:38 ◼   ► - It is allowed, but I just don't understand

01:01:41 ◼   ► what the difference is again.

01:01:43 ◼   ► Like they're just drawing these lines,

01:01:45 ◼   ► it's gerrymandering, right?

01:01:46 ◼   ► Like they're just like,

01:01:47 ◼   ► oh, you can do it here and it's fine

01:01:49 ◼   ► and you can use a credit card, but like, oh, no, no, no.

01:01:51 ◼   ► - This feels like somebody saw something

01:01:53 ◼   ► that they were getting away with

01:01:55 ◼   ► and they're like, well, we'll show them

01:01:56 ◼   ► and they made this new rule

01:01:58 ◼   ► because somebody was getting away with extra revenue

01:02:03 ◼   ► within like, "Hey, you made a social media post.

01:02:05 ◼   ► Would you like more people to see it?"

01:02:06 ◼   ► Right, like that's the thing about Facebook

01:02:07 ◼   ► that people don't remember.

01:02:08 ◼   ► And by the way, Facebook is evil for doing stuff like this.

01:02:12 ◼   ► Facebook encouraged everybody to create like pages

01:02:14 ◼   ► for their businesses and their personal stuff

01:02:16 ◼   ► and all of that.

01:02:17 ◼   ► And it used to be that your pages,

01:02:18 ◼   ► you posted a thing on a page

01:02:19 ◼   ► and everybody who followed your page saw it.

01:02:21 ◼   ► And the Facebook was like,

01:02:22 ◼   ► in a move very similar to Apple's moves in this space,

01:02:26 ◼   ► Facebook was like, "Yeah, now only 10% of the people

01:02:31 ◼   ► who follow your page are gonna see that unless you pay us.

01:02:34 ◼   ► That was the shift that they made.

01:02:35 ◼   ► - That was terrible.

01:02:37 ◼   ► - So this is the next part of that,

01:02:38 ◼   ► which is the next part of the grift is now pay us.

01:02:41 ◼   ► Just press this button and pay us,

01:02:43 ◼   ► and then everybody will see your post.

01:02:44 ◼   ► That's how we're gonna do it.

01:02:45 ◼   ► - It beats the algorithm basically, right?

01:02:48 ◼   ► Like their algorithm means that your stuff's

01:02:52 ◼   ► not gonna get shown to everyone,

01:02:53 ◼   ► so this way you circumvent the algorithm.

01:02:55 ◼   ► - Right, subscribe and click that bell icon, yeah.

01:02:58 ◼   ► - I wanna read two statements.

01:03:00 ◼   ► This is the first is from a meta spokesperson.

01:03:02 ◼   ► Apple continues to evolve its policies

01:03:04 ◼   ► to grow their own business while undercutting others

01:03:07 ◼   ► in the digital economy.

01:03:08 ◼   ► Apple previously said it didn't take a share

01:03:11 ◼   ► of developer advertising revenue

01:03:12 ◼   ► and now apparently changed its mind.

01:03:15 ◼   ► Apple spokesperson.

01:03:16 ◼   ► For many years now, the App Store guidelines

01:03:18 ◼   ► have been clear that the sale of digital goods and services

01:03:21 ◼   ► within an app must use in-app purchase.

01:03:23 ◼   ► Boosting, which allows an individual organization

01:03:26 ◼   ► to pay to increase the reach of a postal profile

01:03:28 ◼   ► is a digital service. So of course in-app purchase is required, emphasis mine. This

01:03:34 ◼   ► has always been, and I'll do it again, this has always been the case. And there are many

01:03:38 ◼   ► examples of apps that do it successfully. As you can tell, Apple's statement rubs me

01:03:43 ◼   ► the wrong way. Because I just think there are multiple issues with it, right? Where

01:03:46 ◼   ► it's like, again, what we were just saying, like they're saying, oh, it must have in-app

01:03:51 ◼   ► purchase. But if you use the meta ad manager to do the same thing, they don't require it

01:03:56 ◼   ► So that doesn't make any sense based on this rule.

01:03:58 ◼   ► And there's always this, this always been the case.

01:04:01 ◼   ► This has always been the case, but here you go.

01:04:02 ◼   ► We've just changed the rules.

01:04:04 ◼   ► So like, it obviously hasn't always been the case

01:04:07 ◼   ► because otherwise this wouldn't have been able to occur.

01:04:09 ◼   ► Would it?

01:04:10 ◼   ► - Which is clarifying what was always the case.

01:04:12 ◼   ► Now it's clear that it's still the case.

01:04:14 ◼   ► - This just frustrates me so much this one.

01:04:17 ◼   ► Like, cause it's pointless.

01:04:18 ◼   ► Why do they need to do this?

01:04:20 ◼   ► - And several people pointed out,

01:04:23 ◼   ► It is breathtaking to think that with all of the conversations that everybody's having

01:04:30 ◼   ► about tech companies overreaching, including Apple, that they would still be going down

01:04:37 ◼   ► this path.

01:04:38 ◼   ► And you know, I think it's only fair when we parse the words and behavior of Apple in

01:04:43 ◼   ► order to guess at product stuff that's going on.

01:04:46 ◼   ► I think we need to be fair and do it for other things.

01:04:50 ◼   ► I parse this behavior as Apple not being concerned

01:04:55 ◼   ► about this stuff hurting them.

01:05:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, they think they can just breeze right past it.

01:05:04 ◼   ► - I think they think that they're bulletproof

01:05:06 ◼   ► or that if a bullet is coming for them,

01:05:09 ◼   ► it's coming for them regardless.

01:05:10 ◼   ► And so they're just gonna continue on their path

01:05:12 ◼   ► and not back down until they're forced to.

01:05:15 ◼   ► I think they seem to not have a view

01:05:19 ◼   ► that every log on the fire, right?

01:05:22 ◼   ► Like makes it worse.

01:05:23 ◼   ► That perhaps they ought to be steering away

01:05:26 ◼   ► from stuff like this.

01:05:27 ◼   ► But again, my other view is what I said earlier

01:05:31 ◼   ► about the ad thing, which is,

01:05:33 ◼   ► it feels like a lack of leadership to me.

01:05:36 ◼   ► Either the leadership is very misguided

01:05:39 ◼   ► about what Apple should be doing strategically

01:05:41 ◼   ► and just doesn't care,

01:05:42 ◼   ► or the people in positions of leadership

01:05:45 ◼   ► are not paying attention to this stuff

01:05:48 ◼   ► and think it won't.

01:05:50 ◼   ► It's like they're either endorsing it

01:05:51 ◼   ► or they're not paying attention.

01:05:53 ◼   ► But either way, it's criminal as a leader of a company

01:05:58 ◼   ► to do this kind of thing,

01:05:59 ◼   ► because they're putting their company at risk

01:06:02 ◼   ► and they're also separately making those revenue decisions

01:06:05 ◼   ► that I think.

01:06:05 ◼   ► I think in both of these cases in the end,

01:06:07 ◼   ► it is about money and Apple not wanting

01:06:08 ◼   ► to leave every dollar on the table,

01:06:10 ◼   ► which I get why they are there culturally.

01:06:12 ◼   ► I get why, you know,

01:06:13 ◼   ► I think that there is strength in that on one perspective,

01:06:16 ◼   ► but on another perspective,

01:06:17 ◼   ► I think it goes back to,

01:06:18 ◼   ► and I know I've said this before,

01:06:20 ◼   ► a fundamental issue with the way Steve Jobs

01:06:23 ◼   ► thought of Apple,

01:06:24 ◼   ► which is that all value related to Apple

01:06:26 ◼   ► is created by Apple and should belong to Apple.

01:06:29 ◼   ► And every bit of value that's in any way related

01:06:33 ◼   ► to Apple's products and platforms

01:06:35 ◼   ► that doesn't go to Apple is theft.

01:06:37 ◼   ► That is fundamentally what Steve Jobs thought.

01:06:41 ◼   ► I can tell you stories,

01:06:43 ◼   ► some of which I probably can't tell you,

01:06:45 ◼   ► about things that he said.

01:06:46 ◼   ► I know for a fact that Steve Jobs never forgave Macworld

01:06:50 ◼   ► for being named Macworld without paying Apple

01:06:53 ◼   ► for the license to Mac as a name, right?

01:06:56 ◼   ► And he never forgave Macworld Expo

01:06:58 ◼   ► for building a conference business

01:07:01 ◼   ► on the backs of Apple's greatness.

01:07:03 ◼   ► And when the knives finally came out for Macworld Expo,

01:07:06 ◼   ► it was made very clear to everybody

01:07:08 ◼   ► that that was because Apple didn't want

01:07:11 ◼   ► the business relationship to continue

01:07:13 ◼   ► because why should anybody do that?

01:07:16 ◼   ► when it's our greatness and it's our money.

01:07:18 ◼   ► And the App Store has always felt exactly the same way.

01:07:22 ◼   ► Now, Steve Jobs' attitude really served Apple well

01:07:25 ◼   ► when Apple was about to go bankrupt.

01:07:27 ◼   ► But Apple is now one of the most popular

01:07:28 ◼   ► or one of the most successful companies

01:07:30 ◼   ► and one of the most profitable companies

01:07:31 ◼   ► and has one of the biggest cash hordes in the world.

01:07:35 ◼   ► And they still act like this.

01:07:36 ◼   ► And now they're just,

01:07:37 ◼   ► I don't even know what metaphor to use here

01:07:41 ◼   ► other than to say it's unseemly.

01:07:44 ◼   ► Like they don't need to play this level of hardball,

01:07:48 ◼   ► but their attitude is everybody else is a potential enemy.

01:07:51 ◼   ► They're getting away with theft and we gotta lock it down.

01:07:56 ◼   ► And on the side, we're also gonna add a bunch of ads in

01:08:00 ◼   ► 'cause we get more money that way.

01:08:02 ◼   ► And it's this whole enterprise that has been set up

01:08:06 ◼   ► to do revenue generation.

01:08:08 ◼   ► And either nobody understands how corrosive it is to Apple

01:08:12 ◼   ► and Apple's products and Apple's developers

01:08:15 ◼   ► and Apple's customers,

01:08:16 ◼   ► or the scariest part is nobody cares.

01:08:20 ◼   ► - Just disappoints me.

01:08:23 ◼   ► I love this company.

01:08:24 ◼   ► I have for the majority of my life.

01:08:27 ◼   ► I love the products that they make.

01:08:28 ◼   ► I love what they stand for.

01:08:30 ◼   ► This stuff upsets me.

01:08:34 ◼   ► It makes me mad because I feel like they're squandering

01:08:39 ◼   ► what makes them so good sometimes.

01:08:40 ◼   ► and I don't really know what for.

01:08:44 ◼   ► Other companies I would be more willing to forgive,

01:08:47 ◼   ► but we just spoke about how much money

01:08:49 ◼   ► they made in their hardware.

01:08:51 ◼   ► And I just don't, you know, I don't understand it.

01:08:54 ◼   ► You know, like social media companies,

01:08:57 ◼   ► I'm more willing to forgive these kinds of ad stuff for,

01:08:59 ◼   ► or whatever.

01:09:00 ◼   ► Like, you know, we're an ad supported company by and large.

01:09:03 ◼   ► We spend a lot of time trying to make sure

01:09:05 ◼   ► our advertising is the best that it can be

01:09:07 ◼   ► and is as relevant as possible.

01:09:09 ◼   ► and we work with advertisers that we like

01:09:11 ◼   ► and we turn down a lot that we don't,

01:09:13 ◼   ► blah, blah, blah, blah.

01:09:13 ◼   ► I don't have a problem with ads.

01:09:15 ◼   ► I have a problem with the way that Apple goes about it.

01:09:19 ◼   ► Like they could do it so much better

01:09:21 ◼   ► and they could just leave other companies alone.

01:09:23 ◼   ► I don't know why they need to do what they do.

01:09:27 ◼   ► I don't know why they feel like they need to reach inside

01:09:30 ◼   ► of the pockets of every single company

01:09:31 ◼   ► that they possibly can to extract 30% of the revenue.

01:09:35 ◼   ► So like, you know, you talk about like,

01:09:36 ◼   ► oh, we made this incredible economy

01:09:38 ◼   ► for all these developers and for us.

01:09:41 ◼   ► And I kind of just don't,

01:09:43 ◼   ► it just doesn't make sense to me.

01:09:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, it's, I mean, Apple,

01:09:47 ◼   ► having been very close up close to Apple for a long time,

01:09:52 ◼   ► I will say, I don't always appreciate Apple as a company.

01:09:55 ◼   ► I think there have always been great people

01:09:57 ◼   ► who work at Apple.

01:09:58 ◼   ► I think Apple's philosophy when it's going well,

01:10:01 ◼   ► especially they have made great products that I love

01:10:05 ◼   ► and that lots of people who've been using these products

01:10:07 ◼   ► for in some cases decades,

01:10:09 ◼   ► and in some cases only a few years, love.

01:10:12 ◼   ► The company itself has always been more complex than that,

01:10:15 ◼   ► sometimes for good, sometimes for ill.

01:10:19 ◼   ► Obviously as a journalist who works with Apple,

01:10:21 ◼   ► I've seen periods where they were the worst.

01:10:25 ◼   ► And a company like Microsoft was amazing and great.

01:10:31 ◼   ► Like they're not always connected to the products they make.

01:10:33 ◼   ► And so, when, like I have always loved Apple's products,

01:10:38 ◼   ► the company, you know, it's complex, it's complicated.

01:10:45 ◼   ► How about that?

01:10:46 ◼   ► And right now in this area,

01:10:49 ◼   ► I feel like they've completely lost their way.

01:10:52 ◼   ► But then again, somebody like those sales guys

01:10:54 ◼   ► I used to fight with who say, "No, no, no,

01:10:57 ◼   ► we gotta bring in the revenue."

01:10:59 ◼   ► It's like, it's different if the company's about

01:11:01 ◼   ► to go out of business than when they just need

01:11:03 ◼   ► another extra billion on the pile of hundred billion dollars that they brought in, right?

01:11:09 ◼   ► It's different and I, you can't tell me that it's not. You can't tell me that it's not

01:11:13 ◼   ► when a company is scraping to survive versus when a company is padding its already enormous

01:11:18 ◼   ► earnings at the cost of its users and its developers and the quality of its products.

01:11:23 ◼   ► You just can't. It's not the same.

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01:13:10 ◼   ► I would like to talk about Stage Manager.

01:13:12 ◼   ► Okay.

01:13:13 ◼   ► On the Mac.

01:13:14 ◼   ► Ah, yes. Okay. Great.

01:13:16 ◼   ► Because I've had my first experiences of it over the last week. And I was excited about

01:13:22 ◼   ► I've been talking about it the whole time.

01:13:24 ◼   ► I've been really excited about it.

01:13:25 ◼   ► I was like, I think stage manager might be for me.

01:13:28 ◼   ► I will say overall, I still believe that to be true.

01:13:34 ◼   ► Maybe I'm the only fan of stage manager on the Mac,

01:13:37 ◼   ► at least I think in maybe our circles.

01:13:40 ◼   ► It is flawed.

01:13:41 ◼   ► In some areas, I'm deeply flawed.

01:13:43 ◼   ► But the overall idea of it really works for me.

01:13:47 ◼   ► I want to talk you through what I'm thinking about.

01:13:49 ◼   ► So some things I really missed.

01:13:52 ◼   ► keyboard shortcuts, trackpad gestures,

01:13:54 ◼   ► as you mentioned on last week's episode.

01:13:57 ◼   ► I completely agree with you.

01:13:58 ◼   ► Completely, I miss them.

01:14:00 ◼   ► I'm finding myself swiping on my trackpad to switch spaces.

01:14:03 ◼   ► Nothing's happening, right?

01:14:05 ◼   ► Better Touch Tool,

01:14:08 ◼   ► and it seems to be adding some stuff for this.

01:14:11 ◼   ► What is the other app that the Better Touch Tool

01:14:14 ◼   ► developer makes?

01:14:15 ◼   ► Did I make another one?

01:14:17 ◼   ► - Oh, I don't know. - It's Better Touch Tool,

01:14:18 ◼   ► and anyway.

01:14:20 ◼   ► They're like kind of making a hacky way around it

01:14:23 ◼   ► of like assigning a swipe to an app that's in a stage.

01:14:27 ◼   ► So it would move between them.

01:14:28 ◼   ► It's kind of interesting.

01:14:29 ◼   ► I might play around with this, I'm not sure,

01:14:31 ◼   ► but Apple should definitely add keyboard shortcuts

01:14:35 ◼   ► and trackpad gestures to stage manager on the Mac.

01:14:39 ◼   ► Where, you know, it is wild to me

01:14:41 ◼   ► that iPadOS actually has more of them.

01:14:43 ◼   ► - More keyboard shortcuts, especially, it is wild.

01:14:46 ◼   ► Yeah, you know, that's, you, I mentioned this in my review,

01:14:49 ◼   ► but it's absolutely my frustration

01:14:51 ◼   ► and the things that they need to fix

01:14:52 ◼   ► at the top of my agenda are getting around.

01:14:55 ◼   ► I mean, it's like, yeah, keyboard shortcuts, gestures,

01:14:59 ◼   ► being able to customize that stuff,

01:15:01 ◼   ► being able to automate maybe some of that stuff,

01:15:03 ◼   ► get, you know, give it a shortcuts interface or something.

01:15:06 ◼   ► It's just, it is baffling that the iPad has that stuff

01:15:08 ◼   ► and the Mac doesn't.

01:15:09 ◼   ► And that's at the heart of my problem

01:15:11 ◼   ► with Stage Manager on the Mac right now

01:15:13 ◼   ► is that I don't feel like I can control it

01:15:16 ◼   ► like I would want to in order to use it effectively.

01:15:19 ◼   ► - There should be a shortcut of some description

01:15:24 ◼   ► to open an app or window

01:15:27 ◼   ► and have it remain in the current stage.

01:15:31 ◼   ► There's an awful lot of times like I click an app,

01:15:33 ◼   ► it just opens a new stage every single time, right?

01:15:35 ◼   ► I wanna be able to easily open something new

01:15:40 ◼   ► and have it appear in the stage that I'm in.

01:15:43 ◼   ► Like from the dock, for example, right?

01:15:45 ◼   ► I would love the ability to shift click on an app in the dock and it open in my current

01:15:50 ◼   ► stage.

01:15:52 ◼   ► The place where this is worse is finder.

01:15:54 ◼   ► So you're in a stage, you want to get a file, you click on the finder icon on the dock and

01:16:01 ◼   ► it takes you to a new stage and all that stage has in it is one finder window.

01:16:06 ◼   ► That is bad because usually when I'm opening finder I want a document to refer to something

01:16:11 ◼   ► or to open in or to drag into an app that I'm already using.

01:16:15 ◼   ► So I would love to be able to shift click

01:16:19 ◼   ► on the Finder icon in my dock

01:16:22 ◼   ► and open the Finder window right there.

01:16:24 ◼   ► That one feels really simple to me,

01:16:26 ◼   ► irrespective of any other kind of options,

01:16:29 ◼   ► that feels like an option that should 100% exist.

01:16:32 ◼   ► Because on the iPad, you could just drag an app

01:16:34 ◼   ► into the current stage from the dock.

01:16:37 ◼   ► Nothing like this exists on macOS.

01:16:40 ◼   ► But then there's this like, there are like these weird edge cases where like, in some

01:16:45 ◼   ► ways you can do this.

01:16:46 ◼   ► So this is where it gets even weirder.

01:16:49 ◼   ► So stick with me here.

01:16:51 ◼   ► You've got a stage and it has two Safari windows in it, right?

01:16:57 ◼   ► If you're in another stage, maybe you've got the notes app in it and you would like to

01:17:01 ◼   ► bring in one of those Safari windows.

01:17:03 ◼   ► What you do is you go over to the sidebar, what is it called?

01:17:07 ◼   ► The strip, right?

01:17:08 ◼   ► Where all the apps are.

01:17:09 ◼   ► If you click on the Safari icon, it opens up a separate view where it separates those two windows from each other, still in the strip.

01:17:21 ◼   ► It's like you go another level into the strip.

01:17:25 ◼   ► And then you can drag one window, one of these Safari windows that is separated, into your current stage.

01:17:31 ◼   ► Great, right? It's a good way to separate stuff out.

01:17:35 ◼   ► But if a pile within the strip has multiple apps in it, let's imagine it's Todoist and

01:17:48 ◼   ► Apple Mail, you can't do this. If you click on the icons, it gets rid of everything else

01:17:56 ◼   ► but keeps the grouping together so it doesn't separate them so you can drag one of those

01:17:59 ◼   ► apps in. What you can do is shift click on the pile in the strip and it will bring in

01:18:06 ◼   ► one of those apps but the one that is actually the foreground app. So if you want the second

01:18:12 ◼   ► app you now bring it in two of them. I don't understand why this shift clicking exists

01:18:17 ◼   ► at all if it only does that one thing. I don't know why if I click on the icons why doesn't

01:18:23 ◼   ► it separate all of the apps? Why does it only do this for windows? So I could be in a stage

01:18:29 ◼   ► and be like, oh, I would love it

01:18:30 ◼   ► if I could actually have Notes in here.

01:18:31 ◼   ► Notes is currently in with these other two applications.

01:18:35 ◼   ► Let me just click on the icons and then I can drag that,

01:18:38 ◼   ► but it doesn't do that.

01:18:40 ◼   ► - Or if there's something you could do,

01:18:41 ◼   ► I keep thinking about,

01:18:43 ◼   ► and maybe they need to rethink

01:18:44 ◼   ► all of their keyboard shortcuts,

01:18:45 ◼   ► but yeah, Option + Click on Notes in the Dock

01:18:48 ◼   ► and it brings it in, or Shift + Click on Notes in the Dock

01:18:49 ◼   ► and it brings it in, or something like that.

01:18:51 ◼   ► They just don't have that.

01:18:52 ◼   ► They just don't have it.

01:18:54 ◼   ► - Or when you do that icon clicking,

01:18:55 ◼   ► it separates them and then you can just drag stuff.

01:18:57 ◼   ► I don't know why it doesn't do that.

01:19:00 ◼   ► Something I found out today,

01:19:01 ◼   ► Stage Manager does not persist after a restart.

01:19:03 ◼   ► I had to restart my Mac and Stage Manager came back

01:19:08 ◼   ► but all of my apps were in single stages on their own again.

01:19:12 ◼   ► It's like, well, that doesn't make any sense.

01:19:13 ◼   ► Spaces doesn't do this.

01:19:15 ◼   ► Like Spaces remembers, Stage Manager did not remember.

01:19:18 ◼   ► So every time you will restart,

01:19:19 ◼   ► now luckily I don't do that in my MacBook very much,

01:19:22 ◼   ► but I had to, something was going weird with my computer

01:19:25 ◼   ► so I did a restart and it fixed it.

01:19:27 ◼   ► but that meant that I had to rebuild kind of my stages

01:19:29 ◼   ► the way that I wanted.

01:19:31 ◼   ► And the window placement is not remembered either.

01:19:34 ◼   ► So I had to do all that.

01:19:36 ◼   ► On a secondary note, it seems like now,

01:19:39 ◼   ► when I plug my studio display in after a restart,

01:19:43 ◼   ► I have to authenticate it.

01:19:45 ◼   ► I have to unlock my Mac first

01:19:48 ◼   ► before my studio display will work.

01:19:50 ◼   ► It says on my Mac screen, unlock Mac to use accessories.

01:19:54 ◼   ► Now, I'm just going to say Apple my studio display is not an accessory.

01:19:59 ◼   ► It's my display.

01:20:00 ◼   ► So now if you restart your Mac, you have to authenticate your Mac before your display will work.

01:20:05 ◼   ► If you've been wondering why your display isn't working, that might be why.

01:20:08 ◼   ► This is on Ventura.

01:20:11 ◼   ► The animation for switching between stages is maybe a bit much.

01:20:16 ◼   ► Like, I think I would like something that's a little less aggressive than this

01:20:23 ◼   ► because I have to see the animation. I've always liked the spaces animation. It's very

01:20:27 ◼   ► quick. This is a little slower than I'd want maybe. I would also like, when we're talking

01:20:33 ◼   ► about visual stuff, I wouldn't mind it if the strip was just app icons. I don't need

01:20:39 ◼   ► the windows. I know then it's kind of just like the dock, but whatever, leave me alone.

01:20:47 ◼   ► Overall I would say I really like this way of arranging windows on the Mac in general.

01:20:54 ◼   ► I find it easier to have five stages than having five spaces.

01:20:58 ◼   ► So I tried this for a while.

01:20:59 ◼   ► I've always used two spaces.

01:21:01 ◼   ► I have one where I have Safari and when I'm on recording or whatever where I might have

01:21:07 ◼   ► other recording things and then another space where all my other apps are and it was loads

01:21:11 ◼   ► of apps all layered on top of each other.

01:21:14 ◼   ► And I tried once splitting it out into a bunch of spaces that were like, this is where communication

01:21:21 ◼   ► is, this is where task management is, like this is where, like, but then I had five spaces.

01:21:25 ◼   ► And if I wanted, if I was on space one, and I wanted to go to space four, and I would

01:21:29 ◼   ► just naturally swipe, I'm like swiping forever.

01:21:31 ◼   ► And I hated that.

01:21:33 ◼   ► What I like about stage manager is those like stages, which are effectively spaces, right,

01:21:39 ◼   ► like just like different desktops.

01:21:41 ◼   ► They're just all there visually.

01:21:43 ◼   ► And I've come to learn that I think I am like a visual person when it comes to arranging

01:21:48 ◼   ► my windows.

01:21:49 ◼   ► It's like similarly, I like to have all my apps open and I can kind of see them peeking

01:21:54 ◼   ► around each other and I can click around.

01:21:56 ◼   ► And I know I can get there by using Alfred or Spotlight, which I do.

01:22:00 ◼   ► And I also sometimes will use Command-Tab and sometimes I use the dock.

01:22:05 ◼   ► But I also really like to just have everything visually available to me.

01:22:09 ◼   ► And so Stage Manager does that.

01:22:11 ◼   ► I can go over and I can see these applications are there.

01:22:15 ◼   ► And maybe for that reason, I do sometimes kind of like

01:22:18 ◼   ► that I can see the windows.

01:22:19 ◼   ► So I actually, I think it would be a nice option

01:22:23 ◼   ► to be able to minimize that.

01:22:25 ◼   ► It's a bit big, maybe shrink it down a bit.

01:22:27 ◼   ► But I do like that if you put an app over that area,

01:22:31 ◼   ► it kind of hides it and you can go over there

01:22:33 ◼   ► and it will come back, move the mouse over.

01:22:35 ◼   ► But I think the visual component of seeing them all there

01:22:39 ◼   ► and being able to just mouse over and quickly get to the fourth stage in my little list.

01:22:46 ◼   ► I really like that.

01:22:48 ◼   ► And so I can easily see what I have open, I can easily switch, I can have my apps be

01:22:52 ◼   ► bigger on the display now because I haven't got like 12 apps in one space, I've got like

01:22:57 ◼   ► three apps in one stage.

01:22:59 ◼   ► Like fundamentally I think this actually fits way more with how I want to work on my Mac,

01:23:05 ◼   ► having bunches of apps open and I can just go and get to them when I need them and they're

01:23:09 ◼   ► kind of like put together in what I consider to be logical pairings for those apps, I would

01:23:14 ◼   ► just really like to be able to deal with some of the edge cases easier. Like, I usually

01:23:19 ◼   ► have notes just on its own because I use notes like that, but sometimes I would like to quickly

01:23:24 ◼   ► bring notes and Safari together. I would like it to be easier to do that, to have quickly

01:23:30 ◼   ► just bring it in and quickly break it out into its own stage again. And a lot of that

01:23:35 ◼   ► would come with shortcuts which at the moment is a bit lacking. So I'm going to continue

01:23:41 ◼   ► using it and I'm also now pretty keen on upgrading my MacBook Pro that I do all my recording

01:23:47 ◼   ► on in my recording area of my studio. I want to update that to Ventura so I can put stage

01:23:52 ◼   ► manager on here. I'm really keen, I don't know how stage manager works on two monitors,

01:23:57 ◼   ► I haven't seen that yet, I don't know what that's like. I'm intrigued to see what that

01:24:02 ◼   ► is like. I think it might be a bit of a disaster, but we'll find out. But I really like Stage

01:24:06 ◼   ► Manager for the way that it helps me visually arrange the apps on my Mac. But it feels pretty

01:24:14 ◼   ► unfinished, especially when you compare it to iPadOS, which has more functionality, even

01:24:19 ◼   ► though it's like broken in a bunch of ways. But it has, it's the same feature. They announced

01:24:24 ◼   ► them at the same time, shipped them at the same time, but one version has more functionality

01:24:29 ◼   ► than the other and that's wild to me.

01:24:31 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

01:24:32 ◼   ► They're the same except they're not.

01:24:34 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:24:35 ◼   ► But I do like it.

01:24:36 ◼   ► Okay.

01:24:37 ◼   ► And it's more useful to me on the Mac than it is on iPadOS, honestly.

01:24:40 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, my review says it.

01:24:42 ◼   ► I just, I feel it's unfinished.

01:24:45 ◼   ► They need to keep working on it because it could be useful, not for everybody, but none

01:24:50 ◼   ► of their window managers are for everybody.

01:24:53 ◼   ► Everybody we learned already, everybody arranges windows differently, but you want to give

01:24:57 ◼   ► people tools so they can find a work system that works for them. And this one, for me,

01:25:06 ◼   ► I feel like it's just losing. It doesn't have enough of the niceties to make it, to give

01:25:11 ◼   ► you the control that at least that I feel it needs to have. And it has exposed to me

01:25:17 ◼   ► the fact that some of its other stuff like spaces also lacks a lot of those same sort

01:25:22 ◼   ► of niceties. And those have been there for a long time, but like spaces should get those

01:25:27 ◼   ► niceties too, right? Like this, it just, it feels like if you're gonna do this, you got

01:25:31 ◼   ► to do it properly and that they're not at that stage yet, which is why there needs to

01:25:35 ◼   ► be more.

01:25:36 ◼   ► We've run a little long today, tons of stuff to talk about. Do you want to finish out with

01:25:40 ◼   ► a couple of Ask Upgrade questions? Just for fun? Just for fun, you know?

01:25:44 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:25:45 ◼   ► Brant asks, do you think the touch bar would have gone over better if it had haptic feedback?

01:25:52 ◼   ► It's an interesting idea, I think, not just haptic feedback, right? It's haptic feedback,

01:25:59 ◼   ► you touch it and it does something. But the problem is, I think, with anything that's

01:26:05 ◼   ► in that plane down there with the keyboard is, if you have to do it by looking instead

01:26:10 ◼   ► of by feel, you kind of have lost. Because ideally you're not staring down at your keyboard.

01:26:16 ◼   ► The ideal would have been something which is like, feels like it wouldn't happen, which

01:26:21 ◼   ► is having little keys with LED screens in them.

01:26:25 ◼   ► Well there are a couple ways to go.

01:26:27 ◼   ► Would that be the touch bar?

01:26:28 ◼   ► I would say no, but yes, right, a programmable kind of set of keys that the keys change based

01:26:33 ◼   ► on time.

01:26:34 ◼   ► If you're going to do haptics, I would say you need to do pressure sensitivity too and

01:26:39 ◼   ► combine them because then you could move your finger over them and maybe even feel like

01:26:45 ◼   ► where your finger was based on the haptics and then press or something like that. But

01:26:49 ◼   ► I think the answer is probably no. Probably this was an idea that was not quite right.

01:26:57 ◼   ► And it also, the touch bar was never really going to be anything unless Apple really made

01:27:02 ◼   ► some effort to get the software to be good and to integrate with apps and all those things

01:27:06 ◼   ► and Apple never did any of that. So it starts and ends with the software, but sure, they

01:27:13 ◼   ► could have made the ergonomics different and it maybe would have gone better but

01:27:16 ◼   ► again only if the software had had when I haven't even mentioned this in this

01:27:22 ◼   ► context but when I talk about Apple shipping things and then not ever

01:27:25 ◼   ► improving them the touch bar is in that category too right where it's like they

01:27:29 ◼   ► shipped it and then it just sat there and could the touch bar have been

01:27:33 ◼   ► salvaged maybe if they had put some effort into updating it and spreading it

01:27:39 ◼   ► out and making it essential but they they literally they shipped it and

01:27:42 ◼   ► forgot about it. And that's my fear with Stage Manager

01:27:46 ◼   ► and some of the other features that they've shipped,

01:27:48 ◼   ► the system settings app and all that,

01:27:50 ◼   ► is that are they gonna really do the work?

01:27:52 ◼   ► Are they gonna take responsibility for their actions

01:27:54 ◼   ► and actually update these things?

01:27:56 ◼   ► Or are they gonna ship it and forget it?

01:27:58 ◼   ► Because, you know, don't ship something that's not done

01:28:01 ◼   ► and then forget about it.

01:28:02 ◼   ► And the touch bar is like that too.

01:28:03 ◼   ► The touch bar was not done.

01:28:04 ◼   ► Touch bar so clearly needed more work

01:28:07 ◼   ► and they never, ever gave it any.

01:28:10 ◼   ► Liv asks, "Is ProMotion a deal breaker for either of you?

01:28:13 ◼   ► With speculation of the 11-inch iPad Pro being axed,

01:28:16 ◼   ► I can't imagine myself buying another iPad

01:28:18 ◼   ► until ProMotion is added to the Air."

01:28:21 ◼   ► I will say for me, the smaller the screen,

01:28:26 ◼   ► the more I notice and the bigger impact that it has.

01:28:29 ◼   ► So my iPhone, it does make a big difference to me.

01:28:33 ◼   ► My MacBook Pro, don't notice it so much.

01:28:35 ◼   ► My iPad mini, I just wish it had a better screen in general.

01:28:38 ◼   ► But so that would maybe be where it starts

01:28:41 ◼   ► to tip over for me.

01:28:42 ◼   ► Like on the iPads, I forgot that feature existed.

01:28:45 ◼   ► Don't know why, I can't tell you why.

01:28:47 ◼   ► I've seen some other people say this too,

01:28:49 ◼   ► that like the smaller the screen,

01:28:50 ◼   ► the more likely they are to notice the higher refresh rate,

01:28:53 ◼   ► but that's kind of how it is for me.

01:28:55 ◼   ► Smaller the screen, the more I notice it.

01:28:58 ◼   ► I notice it maybe on really big screens,

01:29:00 ◼   ► like on my Windows PC,

01:29:03 ◼   ► I have a high refresh rate monitor and Windows supports that

01:29:06 ◼   ► And I do notice that like the mouse cursor

01:29:08 ◼   ► just looks way nicer than Apple's mouse cursor,

01:29:11 ◼   ► like on my non-promotion machines.

01:29:15 ◼   ► But for me, generally,

01:29:16 ◼   ► the smaller the device, the bigger the impact.

01:29:19 ◼   ► - Well, I have two thoughts.

01:29:20 ◼   ► One is having used the iPhone mini,

01:29:23 ◼   ► going to the iPhone Pro,

01:29:27 ◼   ► I definitely noticed the promotion and it was nice.

01:29:31 ◼   ► But I also know that I spent more than a year

01:29:35 ◼   ► or spent a year at least,

01:29:36 ◼   ► and I will go back to it at some point.

01:29:38 ◼   ► I'm still using the review unit for now

01:29:39 ◼   ► because dynamic island basically,

01:29:41 ◼   ► 'cause I want, not just because I love it,

01:29:43 ◼   ► but because I need to see how apps use it, right?

01:29:46 ◼   ► And the only way to be up on the dynamic island

01:29:49 ◼   ► is to have an iPhone Pro at this point.

01:29:52 ◼   ► But I didn't miss it when I didn't have it.

01:29:54 ◼   ► So on the iPad, the iPad,

01:30:00 ◼   ► when I'm not sitting at my desk,

01:30:01 ◼   ► I am, you know, the iPad is the computing device

01:30:04 ◼   ► for the rest of my life and the rest of the house.

01:30:06 ◼   ► And so it matters more to me.

01:30:10 ◼   ► It's the opposite of you.

01:30:11 ◼   ► The iPad matters more to me than the iPhone

01:30:13 ◼   ► for that reason and for lots of reasons.

01:30:16 ◼   ► That said, knowing what I know about the mini,

01:30:21 ◼   ► I would say it's not a deal breaker.

01:30:23 ◼   ► And in fact, when I was using the iPad,

01:30:25 ◼   ► regular old 10th generation iPad, like it's fine, right?

01:30:31 ◼   ► And so I think the truth is, is it nice?

01:30:34 ◼   ► Yes. Is it a deal breaker?

01:30:35 ◼   ► No. I think for anything, promotion is a nice to have,

01:30:39 ◼   ► but I don't consider it a deal breaker anywhere.

01:30:41 ◼   ► Yeah. For what it's worth.

01:30:45 ◼   ► - If you would like to send in a question

01:30:47 ◼   ► for us to answer on the show,

01:30:49 ◼   ► just send out a tweet with the hashtag #askupgrade

01:30:50 ◼   ► or use question mark #askupgrade

01:30:52 ◼   ► in the Relay FM members Discord

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01:30:57 ◼   ► $5 a month or $50 a year,

01:30:59 ◼   ► you will get longer ad free versions of every single episode of upgrade and a ton of other

01:31:04 ◼   ► benefits for being a relay FM member. Thank you so much to everybody that supports us

01:31:09 ◼   ► of an upgrade plus membership got to get upgrade plus.com and thank you to our fine sponsors

01:31:14 ◼   ► of this week's episode. Zocdoc, ClearMyMacX and Capital One. We much appreciate their

01:31:20 ◼   ► support to making this show possible. But of course, the most important support the

01:31:25 ◼   ► The most important reason for why this show is made is for every single one of our wonderful

01:31:29 ◼   ► upgradeans.

01:31:30 ◼   ► Thank you so much for tuning into this show.

01:31:32 ◼   ► Every week as you do.

01:31:34 ◼   ► If you'd like to find Jason in the meantime go to sixcolors.com where you'll find a bunch

01:31:38 ◼   ► of great writing and of course Jason hosts many shows here on Relay FM as do I. Go to

01:31:43 ◼   ► relay.fm/shows find something new for yourself and if you want even more Jason Snow in your

01:31:47 ◼   ► life go to the incomparable.com and find a ton of great pop culture podcasts there too.

01:31:54 ◼   ► We'll be back next week.

01:31:56 ◼   ► Who knows what wonders will await us.

01:31:58 ◼   ► Until then, say goodbye Jason Snow.

01:32:01 ◼   ► Goodbye, Myke Hurley.

01:32:02 ◼   ► [MUSIC]