PodSearch

Upgrade

395: This App May Kill You

 

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:08 ◼   ► From Real AFM, this is Upgrade, episode 395. Today's show is brought to you by

00:00:14 ◼   ► Electric, Capital One, and Memoform. My name is Myke Hurley, and I'm joined by

00:00:18 ◼   ► Jason Snow. Hi, Jason Snow.

00:00:19 ◼   ► Hi, Myke Hurley. US Route 395 runs on the back side of the Sierra Nevada

00:00:24 ◼   ► portion of California that people don't think of as California, because it's on

00:00:28 ◼   ► It's on the other side of the mountains.

00:00:29 ◼   ► Most borders are placed up at the peaks of mountains,

00:00:32 ◼   ► but when they formed California, there was no Nevada.

00:00:35 ◼   ► And California said, "We want all the mountains.

00:00:37 ◼   ► We want all the mountains 'cause there's gold,

00:00:39 ◼   ► gold in those mountains."

00:00:40 ◼   ► - Let me tell you, Jason Snell,

00:00:42 ◼   ► I've heard enough about American roads

00:00:44 ◼   ► to last me for a long while.

00:00:46 ◼   ► - Tell you about the numbering system now.

00:00:48 ◼   ► - That's what I'm talking about.

00:00:49 ◼   ► I was actually editing an episode of "Cortex"

00:00:51 ◼   ► before we started today, so.

00:00:52 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, yeah.

00:00:53 ◼   ► Anyway, 395, it's back there.

00:00:55 ◼   ► It's that, that's one of my things

00:00:56 ◼   ► that I actually really love about California

00:00:58 ◼   ► is that it's got this very weird thing

00:01:00 ◼   ► where there's the whole other part,

00:01:01 ◼   ► that's the dry, deserty part

00:01:03 ◼   ► that's on the other side of the mountains,

00:01:04 ◼   ► that like, why is that still California?

00:01:06 ◼   ► And the answer is, 'cause California got to pick first,

00:01:08 ◼   ► and they're like, I'll take all the mountains.

00:01:10 ◼   ► Like, if they're gold in the mountains,

00:01:12 ◼   ► we will take the mountains then.

00:01:14 ◼   ► And so, you can drive on 395, if you like.

00:01:17 ◼   ► - We are recording this episode a few days earlier

00:01:21 ◼   ► than we normally would.

00:01:21 ◼   ► We're recording on Thursday the 17th,

00:01:23 ◼   ► 'cause Jason's gonna be away.

00:01:25 ◼   ► Myke, did you read that Mark Gurman Sunday newsletter?

00:01:27 ◼   ► Woo, wow.

00:01:29 ◼   ► - But that's the thing.

00:01:29 ◼   ► - What revelations were in there?

00:01:31 ◼   ► Oh man, amazing.

00:01:33 ◼   ► - I don't know what could happen between now and Monday,

00:01:35 ◼   ► but things can happen.

00:01:36 ◼   ► - It's a little pre-record here.

00:01:38 ◼   ► - I have a hashtag snow talk question for you

00:01:40 ◼   ► from instantiate this who asks,

00:01:42 ◼   ► Jason, if you were in a car chase with the police,

00:01:45 ◼   ► what song do you put on to keep you going?

00:01:48 ◼   ► - Am I chasing the police?

00:01:50 ◼   ► Are we in a joint effort to chase someone else

00:01:53 ◼   ► or are they chasing me?

00:01:54 ◼   ► It's just her taste with the police.

00:01:55 ◼   ► - The interpretation is completely up to you.

00:01:58 ◼   ► Are you with them?

00:01:59 ◼   ► Are you against them?

00:02:00 ◼   ► You know, it doesn't matter.

00:02:00 ◼   ► - I'm choosing that I am with them

00:02:02 ◼   ► and we are in an 80s movie or TV show.

00:02:07 ◼   ► And so the montage as we chase is going to be

00:02:11 ◼   ► The Heat Is On by Glenn Frey.

00:02:14 ◼   ► - Ooh, that's good.

00:02:16 ◼   ► That is good.

00:02:17 ◼   ► (mimics music)

00:02:20 ◼   ► - That's gonna be it.

00:02:21 ◼   ► That's how I choose to answer this question.

00:02:23 ◼   ► - This is a good answer and also a good song.

00:02:25 ◼   ► - I mean, it is what it is,

00:02:27 ◼   ► but I think it fits the mood of the 80s car chase

00:02:31 ◼   ► that is going on there.

00:02:32 ◼   ► There'll be a lot of like peeling out

00:02:34 ◼   ► where like you'll go around the corner

00:02:36 ◼   ► and the car will slide a little bit and then keep going.

00:02:39 ◼   ► And there'll be like a pedestrian carrying up a sack,

00:02:44 ◼   ► like a grocery sack and they'll step into the intersection

00:02:48 ◼   ► and then have to step back and their bread will be ejected.

00:02:51 ◼   ► - And then there'll be two people

00:02:52 ◼   ► carrying a pane of glass. Always, and then of course it'll end in a smashed up

00:02:57 ◼   ► fruit cart because whenever you see a fruit cart it's gonna get smashed. It's

00:03:02 ◼   ► gonna get tumbled. If you'd like to send in a question to help us open the

00:03:05 ◼   ► show just send out a tweet with the hashtag #snelltalk or use question mark

00:03:08 ◼   ► #snelltalk in the Relay FM members discord. Jason Snell, pro sideloading.

00:03:14 ◼   ► I don't know if I'm ready to come out and say Apple should just allow

00:03:20 ◼   ► side loading, like anybody can just load any app onto their iOS device, I think it's worth

00:03:25 ◼   ► considering that as a possibility. What I wanted to do is, I wrote this Macworld article

00:03:29 ◼   ► that was basically trying to think of the App Store being better if the App Store doesn't

00:03:37 ◼   ► have to be the judge, jury, and executioner for everything on a platform. And that was

00:03:41 ◼   ► kind of the thought I had. And it led me to a place where basically I thought it was interesting,

00:03:50 ◼   ► is consider what the iOS app store might be like if a rejection didn't mean the app would

00:03:57 ◼   ► never be seen.

00:03:59 ◼   ► If Apple could, if there was always an alternative and how would that affect the iOS app store?

00:04:08 ◼   ► And I thought it might make it better.

00:04:12 ◼   ► I think it actually might be a better experience if you look at what they do with the Mac app

00:04:17 ◼   ► store and how the Mac works, that the iOS app store might actually be a better place

00:04:23 ◼   ► if it wasn't the, you know, the damn holding back every possible bit of software from coming

00:04:30 ◼   ► to the platform.

00:04:31 ◼   ► I found that an interesting take when I was reading your article because I hadn't really

00:04:35 ◼   ► considered it that way because like one of the things that you say is about like Apple

00:04:43 ◼   ► being able to be more of a curator again if they don't have to accept everything like

00:04:49 ◼   ► that there are types of applications that they have to accept but they're not really

00:04:56 ◼   ► the type of thing that they would want to accept or should.

00:05:00 ◼   ► And I don't want to get I was accused by a few people it's funny because everybody comes

00:05:05 ◼   ► with their own preconceptions so I heard from people who have written extensively about

00:05:11 ◼   ► Apple's failings in the App Store who wanted me, you know, to like, it was really funny

00:05:17 ◼   ► and I heard from angry developers who are like frustrated with Apple's rules on the

00:05:22 ◼   ► Mac App Store and so they don't like the fact that I suggest the Mac App Store was better

00:05:26 ◼   ► than the iOS App Store in some ways because they're like, "No, it's all a sham."

00:05:29 ◼   ► That's an interesting read because what you're saying is the Mac is better, not the Mac App

00:05:32 ◼   ► Store is better. The Mac is better because you have choice. One of those choices is the

00:05:36 ◼   ► App Store.

00:05:37 ◼   ► - The pressure on the Mac app,

00:05:39 ◼   ► the Mac app store does not have,

00:05:41 ◼   ► does not decide winners and losers on the Mac, right?

00:05:45 ◼   ► The Mac app store is a place

00:05:47 ◼   ► and it's a good place for marketing

00:05:49 ◼   ► and it may drive sales, although again,

00:05:52 ◼   ► it's not as powerful as the iOS app store at all,

00:05:54 ◼   ► but it is a place to be if you wanna be there,

00:05:58 ◼   ► but if you don't wanna be there, it's fine.

00:06:00 ◼   ► And on iOS, it's a different situation.

00:06:03 ◼   ► So when I hear from people who are like,

00:06:05 ◼   ► Like I said, sideloading is probably less secure

00:06:10 ◼   ► than what we have now,

00:06:12 ◼   ► but that Apple makes it seem like it's incredibly insecure

00:06:17 ◼   ► and Apple has already demonstrated on the Mac

00:06:19 ◼   ► that they can make it way more secure than that,

00:06:21 ◼   ► but they wanna make this extreme argument.

00:06:23 ◼   ► And I heard from some people

00:06:25 ◼   ► who are on the other side of that argument

00:06:26 ◼   ► who wanted to say, no, don't say it's less secure.

00:06:30 ◼   ► It could be just as secure.

00:06:32 ◼   ► And like, I don't actually agree with that.

00:06:36 ◼   ► I think that fundamentally it would be less secure,

00:06:39 ◼   ► but I don't think, but I think Apple overstates it.

00:06:42 ◼   ► And the truth is what the people I'm hearing from

00:06:44 ◼   ► are the people who want to counter Apple's extreme statement

00:06:47 ◼   ► with their own extreme statement

00:06:49 ◼   ► in order to have this kind of rhetorical battle.

00:06:52 ◼   ► And I'm not interested in playing that battle.

00:06:54 ◼   ► I'm not gonna do that.

00:06:56 ◼   ► I do think you have to acknowledge that

00:06:58 ◼   ► allowing random apps on the platform

00:07:01 ◼   ► is probably gonna be less secure than the App Store.

00:07:04 ◼   ► Although I'll also grant you the App Store

00:07:06 ◼   ► on iOS allows stuff that's bad, right?

00:07:09 ◼   ► That's part of the problem is--

00:07:10 ◼   ► - There are scams.

00:07:11 ◼   ► - There's scammy stuff and bad stuff

00:07:13 ◼   ► that doesn't get caught.

00:07:14 ◼   ► My point was though that Apple has built up

00:07:16 ◼   ► this whole infrastructure on the Mac side

00:07:18 ◼   ► involving you've gotta sign up with a developer ID

00:07:21 ◼   ► and it has to be notarized.

00:07:22 ◼   ► And like they can do stuff that's not App Store approval

00:07:25 ◼   ► that still is sort of a verification process

00:07:28 ◼   ► before the product is loaded onto their platform, right?

00:07:31 ◼   ► They could still do all of that, and they could still pull the plug if something is

00:07:36 ◼   ► bad, right?

00:07:37 ◼   ► And if something turns out to be malware, they can kill it.

00:07:39 ◼   ► They do that on the Mac now.

00:07:40 ◼   ► So it's, I think, disingenuous when Apple puts out these white papers about the dangers

00:07:44 ◼   ► of sideloading.

00:07:45 ◼   ► I think they overstate it.

00:07:47 ◼   ► And I think they also overstate the idea that this stuff would be popular, because I think

00:07:53 ◼   ► we've learned the lesson of what happened with Fortnite on Android, where they weren't

00:07:58 ◼   ► in the Play Store and they wanna be in the Play Store.

00:08:02 ◼   ► They do, they're gonna make more sales on the Play Store

00:08:04 ◼   ► than try to walk through somebody.

00:08:06 ◼   ► Or Facebook, if Facebook, I heard from some people who said,

00:08:10 ◼   ► "Oh, but if you do sideloading,

00:08:11 ◼   ► "then Facebook will just make their gross apps

00:08:13 ◼   ► "that spy on you, require for sideloading."

00:08:16 ◼   ► It's like, I don't know, Facebook is gonna lose

00:08:19 ◼   ► a lot of users if it's not in the App Store.

00:08:21 ◼   ► So I think Facebook, see that's Apple's leverage

00:08:25 ◼   ► is you really wanna be in the App Store.

00:08:28 ◼   ► but it's different if you don't have to be.

00:08:31 ◼   ► - 'Cause Facebook's in the Play Store.

00:08:33 ◼   ► Like they haven't set up their whole,

00:08:35 ◼   ► like they're not like,

00:08:36 ◼   ► oh, we have to be outside of the Play Store.

00:08:39 ◼   ► - And like we talked about last week,

00:08:40 ◼   ► Apple's gonna have their warnings that say,

00:08:42 ◼   ► if you do this, you'll die.

00:08:43 ◼   ► Basically, right?

00:08:45 ◼   ► Like don't, sideloading leads to death.

00:08:47 ◼   ► Don't do it.

00:08:48 ◼   ► And then you have to tap the button that says,

00:08:50 ◼   ► let me die.

00:08:51 ◼   ► And then it's like, okay, fine, sideload.

00:08:54 ◼   ► Jump off a bridge then.

00:08:54 ◼   ► - I'm a bus developer, not to kill me.

00:08:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:08:58 ◼   ► but they might kill you.

00:09:00 ◼   ► So that's just too bad for you.

00:09:02 ◼   ► So they're gonna do all of that and they're scare,

00:09:04 ◼   ► they're scare tactics and all of that to do it.

00:09:07 ◼   ► But my larger point about the App Store is,

00:09:08 ◼   ► I think once the App Store is not the judge

00:09:10 ◼   ► jury and executioner, it actually frees Apple up

00:09:13 ◼   ► if they want to be, and this is the question, right?

00:09:14 ◼   ► 'Cause they haven't stopped these scam apps.

00:09:16 ◼   ► But I'm choosing to be a little optimistic here

00:09:18 ◼   ► that an App Store that's freed

00:09:20 ◼   ► from being judge jury and executioner

00:09:22 ◼   ► could actually more freely reject things

00:09:26 ◼   ► and say, we don't want this kind of app,

00:09:27 ◼   ► or we don't want your app,

00:09:29 ◼   ► because they're not gonna get the bad publicity.

00:09:31 ◼   ► Oh no, App Store ruins app, this app will never be seen.

00:09:34 ◼   ► It's like, no, then it becomes a story that's more like,

00:09:36 ◼   ► Apple chooses what it wants to highlight

00:09:39 ◼   ► and put in its own storefront,

00:09:41 ◼   ► you're free to sell it elsewhere.

00:09:43 ◼   ► And I think that that is an actually important point,

00:09:48 ◼   ► that the App Store, I think some of the behavior

00:09:52 ◼   ► that Apple has in the App Store on iOS

00:09:54 ◼   ► is distorted by the fact that it's going to either be bad publicity if they reject it,

00:10:00 ◼   ► or it's something they don't like but they feel they need on the platform. And you know,

00:10:05 ◼   ► we talk a lot about things like the Xbox streaming service being kind of not allowed on the platform

00:10:12 ◼   ► because it doesn't fit with Apple's stand. But I would imagine there are some apps that Apple

00:10:17 ◼   ► allows on the platform even though it doesn't like it politically, because the alternative is that

00:10:22 ◼   ► it's not on their platform and Apple isn't just a curator of software. Apple's the maker

00:10:27 ◼   ► of the platform and sells the phones. And so sometimes they make decisions that are

00:10:31 ◼   ► more about the value of the platform. And maybe that calculation would change a little

00:10:34 ◼   ► bit if they were more free to say, just put this out yourself. It's not going to be in

00:10:40 ◼   ► our app store, but you can just put it out yourself. Even though I know you're behind

00:10:44 ◼   ► the scary dialogue box then, and you're not going to get the kind of impressions. And

00:10:48 ◼   ► And then my other point is also that interesting stuff

00:10:52 ◼   ► happens outside the App Store on the Mac.

00:10:54 ◼   ► And that makes the platform more valuable.

00:10:57 ◼   ► Like there's no emulators on Mac App Store,

00:11:02 ◼   ► but you can do emulators on the Mac.

00:11:04 ◼   ► And I mean like Windows emulators and all,

00:11:06 ◼   ► like all of that stuff, virtualization.

00:11:08 ◼   ► There's all sorts of stuff that just doesn't fit

00:11:09 ◼   ► in the Mac App Store that's out there.

00:11:12 ◼   ► And it adds value to the platform, right?

00:11:15 ◼   ► And Apple doesn't even have to have it in the App Store.

00:11:18 ◼   ► And then there's this other class,

00:11:19 ◼   ► and I did get some pushback about this too,

00:11:21 ◼   ► which is Apple also,

00:11:23 ◼   ► especially when Phil Schiller came back

00:11:24 ◼   ► and was in charge of the app store again,

00:11:28 ◼   ► he made an effort to get some larger developers

00:11:31 ◼   ► into the Mac app store,

00:11:33 ◼   ► and some high profile apps that were out

00:11:35 ◼   ► and to pull them back in and make changes or exceptions.

00:11:39 ◼   ► And I heard from developers who were like,

00:11:41 ◼   ► "That was all for show.

00:11:42 ◼   ► They showed favoritism and gave exceptions to these people

00:11:46 ◼   ► to get them in the store."

00:11:47 ◼   ► And I understand that that's frustrating

00:11:50 ◼   ► and that maybe I am being too optimistic

00:11:52 ◼   ► in saying Apple will change in order to make things better

00:11:55 ◼   ► if they observe that there are good things on the outside

00:11:58 ◼   ► that they want in.

00:11:59 ◼   ► But the fact remains, Apple did make an effort

00:12:02 ◼   ► to get things that were outside the App Store in.

00:12:05 ◼   ► And that I think there's a possibility

00:12:07 ◼   ► that Apple will look at something that is so popular

00:12:10 ◼   ► that people are turning off the,

00:12:12 ◼   ► or turning on the sideloading and you may die provision

00:12:15 ◼   ► in order to get it and say, interesting,

00:12:17 ◼   ► could that work in the App Store

00:12:19 ◼   ► and maybe change their mind about something

00:12:21 ◼   ► because they realize that it has some value?

00:12:24 ◼   ► Again, maybe I'm being too optimistic,

00:12:26 ◼   ► but what I'm trying to do is see beyond the argument

00:12:28 ◼   ► about like sideloading yes or no,

00:12:30 ◼   ► and sort of like imagine what would that be like?

00:12:33 ◼   ► And I really do think that the iOS App Store

00:12:36 ◼   ► would be better if it wasn't a death sentence

00:12:39 ◼   ► if they rejected your app, I really do.

00:12:42 ◼   ► - I'm completely in agreement with all of this.

00:12:44 ◼   ► I've been pro side loading for like a year now.

00:12:48 ◼   ► It just came to a point when all this antitrust stuff

00:12:50 ◼   ► started coming to a head where I was just like,

00:12:52 ◼   ► I don't understand why they don't just do this.

00:12:55 ◼   ► And I know they won't.

00:12:56 ◼   ► Like I feel very confident in that.

00:12:58 ◼   ► I feel like over the last few months,

00:13:00 ◼   ► a thing that I keep coming back to is,

00:13:03 ◼   ► I really want Apple to do something

00:13:06 ◼   ► before they're forced to.

00:13:07 ◼   ► My thinking for that is that what I would expect them to do

00:13:12 ◼   ► is maybe to make some changes to the 30%.

00:13:15 ◼   ► That is becoming less and less likely

00:13:17 ◼   ► after the Dutch thing to me,

00:13:19 ◼   ► like in my mind of like what they will and won't do.

00:13:22 ◼   ► But I feel like the one they are least likely to do

00:13:25 ◼   ► on their own now is sideloading,

00:13:27 ◼   ► just because of their rhetoric,

00:13:28 ◼   ► which is, as you say, like, if we allow sideloading,

00:13:32 ◼   ► all of our phones will just implode.

00:13:34 ◼   ► It's impossible, they will be destroyed, you know?

00:13:37 ◼   ► Like something will get inside of them

00:13:39 ◼   ► and kill all the phones.

00:13:40 ◼   ► Like this is a point what they're saying.

00:13:42 ◼   ► And I just, so to me, like I can't imagine them now

00:13:47 ◼   ► turning around, even in true Apple style and being like,

00:13:50 ◼   ► hey, we've worked out how to do this.

00:13:52 ◼   ► Because it's not gonna be, if they do,

00:13:54 ◼   ► if they are forced to do this,

00:13:56 ◼   ► which I think is actually becoming more likely,

00:13:59 ◼   ► like some of the laws that are in, I've been,

00:14:01 ◼   ► I pay attention to Ben Thompson,

00:14:04 ◼   ► most of this kind of stuff,

00:14:05 ◼   ► because he reads the things so I don't have to.

00:14:09 ◼   ► Those laws that we were talking about

00:14:10 ◼   ► that were passing through Senate committees

00:14:12 ◼   ► have been changing and seem to be getting better.

00:14:15 ◼   ► And like something might happen here,

00:14:17 ◼   ► which is odd and strange,

00:14:19 ◼   ► and it's not gonna go well if they're forced to do it.

00:14:21 ◼   ► Like it's just not good.

00:14:22 ◼   ► We've seen this, you know,

00:14:24 ◼   ► we're seeing this already around the world, right?

00:14:26 ◼   ► That they are,

00:14:27 ◼   ► Apple are not following the spirit of decisions, right?

00:14:33 ◼   ► They are trying to weasel their way through them instead.

00:14:38 ◼   ► And so I just, even though, as you said,

00:14:42 ◼   ► they have a proven model for this,

00:14:45 ◼   ► that they have run for how long?

00:14:48 ◼   ► 20 years, 30 years, which is the Mac, right?

00:14:51 ◼   ► - Right.

00:14:52 ◼   ► - The way Mac software works.

00:14:53 ◼   ► And then maybe for the last 10 years or whatever,

00:14:55 ◼   ► with the Mac App Store.

00:14:57 ◼   ► How long has the Mac App Store been around?

00:14:58 ◼   ► - 14 years.

00:14:59 ◼   ► - 14 years. - Oh, the Mac App Store.

00:15:00 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:15:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, 10 years, eight years. - Say 10 years.

00:15:04 ◼   ► And that system, and they've only made it stronger

00:15:06 ◼   ► and stronger over time, right?

00:15:08 ◼   ► in the way that they're doing things.

00:15:09 ◼   ► Where we have this app store,

00:15:11 ◼   ► you put it through here and it's all taken care of.

00:15:13 ◼   ► Or if you want to distribute outside,

00:15:14 ◼   ► you've got to do this,

00:15:15 ◼   ► and then you've got to do this,

00:15:16 ◼   ► and then you've got to do this, right?

00:15:17 ◼   ► And it's like, notarize this way,

00:15:19 ◼   ► and you've got to do this.

00:15:20 ◼   ► And then if you want to do a kernel extension,

00:15:22 ◼   ► well now it's going to be a whole big thing, right?

00:15:24 ◼   ► So they are actually continuing

00:15:26 ◼   ► to make Mac software distribution safer for consumers.

00:15:31 ◼   ► - Right, outside of the Mac App Store.

00:15:34 ◼   ► - Exactly, from outside of the Mac App Store.

00:15:36 ◼   ► at the same time that they're saying,

00:15:38 ◼   ► well, I mean, you can't do it on the phone.

00:15:39 ◼   ► I mean, what, just is, it's impossible.

00:15:42 ◼   ► There is no safe way to do it.

00:15:45 ◼   ► It's just such a, it's so strange.

00:15:46 ◼   ► It's like, are you familiar with the phrase,

00:15:48 ◼   ► like talking out two sides of your face?

00:15:50 ◼   ► - Yes, sure.

00:15:51 ◼   ► - This is what they're doing when it comes to sideloading

00:15:53 ◼   ► and I find it very peculiar.

00:15:55 ◼   ► - I don't know the truth of what's going on inside Apple,

00:15:59 ◼   ► but I believe that this entire Mac thing

00:16:05 ◼   ► is being done with an eye toward what they would have to do

00:16:09 ◼   ► if they did it on iOS, right?

00:16:11 ◼   ► - Oh, for sure, yeah.

00:16:12 ◼   ► - Right, I feel like they wanna make Mac OS more secure

00:16:16 ◼   ► and more like iOS, I get that,

00:16:19 ◼   ► but they gotta also be thinking,

00:16:21 ◼   ► what if we were forced to do this on iOS?

00:16:24 ◼   ► Because this is what they would do.

00:16:25 ◼   ► - Even though I have such little faith in them

00:16:28 ◼   ► for some of this stuff recently,

00:16:30 ◼   ► I know that there's smart people over there, obviously,

00:16:33 ◼   ► So I refuse to believe they do not have people

00:16:36 ◼   ► coming up with systems.

00:16:38 ◼   ► - It may be a wink, wink, nudge, nudge thing too.

00:16:40 ◼   ► It's like, yes, for the Mac, we're going to do,

00:16:43 ◼   ► you know, signed and we're gonna have it notarized

00:16:47 ◼   ► and like, yes, that is for the Mac, right?

00:16:51 ◼   ► The Mac.

00:16:52 ◼   ► But that in the background, they're like,

00:16:53 ◼   ► well, if we need to do this on iOS,

00:16:54 ◼   ► this is how we're gonna do it.

00:16:55 ◼   ► And so it's there.

00:16:57 ◼   ► And there are other tactics that are not yet on the Mac.

00:17:01 ◼   ► Like the Mac, you can do anything, right?

00:17:04 ◼   ► You can literally run anything.

00:17:06 ◼   ► Apple, it depends on what the laws are,

00:17:08 ◼   ► but Apple could say, you know, you can't run anything.

00:17:12 ◼   ► You have to have it signed.

00:17:13 ◼   ► Like we have to, for security reasons, have it signed.

00:17:16 ◼   ► And if the laws, - I would prefer that.

00:17:18 ◼   ► - If the laws that force them to do this say,

00:17:20 ◼   ► that's okay, like to stop malware and to whatever else,

00:17:23 ◼   ► we'll let you do this notarization system.

00:17:25 ◼   ► But if, but you know, basically you're gonna get sued

00:17:28 ◼   ► if you use it as a de facto approval process.

00:17:31 ◼   ► you need to just be looking at it for security reasons,

00:17:33 ◼   ► but they could do that

00:17:34 ◼   ► and then not have completely unsigned random things

00:17:38 ◼   ► able to run, they could do that.

00:17:40 ◼   ► - I guess they're moving that way

00:17:41 ◼   ► for the Mac now though, right?

00:17:43 ◼   ► Like, is it not coming?

00:17:46 ◼   ► - Well, no, so the Mac,

00:17:48 ◼   ► and I had somebody from Apple tell me,

00:17:51 ◼   ► or actually, no, it was in a session.

00:17:53 ◼   ► Somebody at Apple said,

00:17:54 ◼   ► you will never not be able to run software

00:17:57 ◼   ► you want to run on the Mac.

00:17:59 ◼   ► What you have to do is go through those dialogue boxes

00:18:02 ◼   ► that say, "You may die."

00:18:03 ◼   ► And then you click on that app and it goes,

00:18:05 ◼   ► "This app may kill you."

00:18:07 ◼   ► So we're not gonna let you,

00:18:08 ◼   ► you should probably put it in the trash.

00:18:11 ◼   ► Before it explodes, you should put it in the trashcan.

00:18:14 ◼   ► And then you go in and you have to set your settings

00:18:17 ◼   ► and you have to like right click and choose open

00:18:19 ◼   ► and get another thing that says,

00:18:20 ◼   ► "I told you this might explode and you may die.

00:18:23 ◼   ► "Do you want to die?"

00:18:25 ◼   ► And then you go, "Okay."

00:18:26 ◼   ► And then it runs, right?

00:18:28 ◼   ► So you can do it, but they put the barriers there,

00:18:30 ◼   ► but you can do it.

00:18:31 ◼   ► On iOS, depending on what the laws are forcing them to do,

00:18:35 ◼   ► they could say, "Well, we're not gonna do that.

00:18:37 ◼   ► It has to be signed.

00:18:39 ◼   ► It has to be notarized.

00:18:41 ◼   ► We're not gonna let it run

00:18:42 ◼   ► if we don't know anything about what it is."

00:18:45 ◼   ► And as a user, the fact is,

00:18:47 ◼   ► there are whole classes of apps that don't run on iOS,

00:18:49 ◼   ► that I would like to run on iOS.

00:18:51 ◼   ► I have an Apple II emulator on my Mac, right?

00:18:53 ◼   ► It's great.

00:18:54 ◼   ► And none of that stuff,

00:18:56 ◼   ► the dolphin emulator that you can put on iOS,

00:18:59 ◼   ► but it's really hard to do

00:19:01 ◼   ► and then play old Nintendo games and stuff.

00:19:04 ◼   ► Like, I understand legally why Apple

00:19:07 ◼   ► doesn't allow that stuff in the App Store,

00:19:09 ◼   ► but it makes the platform worse.

00:19:11 ◼   ► And, you know, so there's all sorts of stuff

00:19:14 ◼   ► that I think could function outside of the App Store

00:19:17 ◼   ► that would be worth it for some people to install.

00:19:20 ◼   ► And I'd like to see that.

00:19:21 ◼   ► But I also think that the App Store,

00:19:24 ◼   ► freed of the bad publicity of rejecting apps,

00:19:27 ◼   ► I actually kind of like the idea that the app store

00:19:30 ◼   ► might be a little bolder in rejecting apps.

00:19:33 ◼   ► 'Cause I know this is like a wild thing to say,

00:19:35 ◼   ► but like there's a lot of apps in the app store

00:19:37 ◼   ► that should have been rejected that are bad,

00:19:39 ◼   ► that are like bad.

00:19:40 ◼   ► Not, I'm not saying like apps that it's all

00:19:43 ◼   ► a misunderstanding, but like that are bad

00:19:45 ◼   ► that I believe really do get in

00:19:46 ◼   ► because Apple has this hands-off attitude.

00:19:49 ◼   ► I know all the indie developers get the hands on them

00:19:51 ◼   ► because they're trying to do interesting things,

00:19:53 ◼   ► but there's a lot of garbage that just goes through

00:19:55 ◼   ► that maybe in another scenario,

00:19:57 ◼   ► Apple would be like, "Bah, we're cleaning up."

00:19:59 ◼   ► Maybe I'm being that,

00:20:00 ◼   ► if I'm being too optimistic about anything,

00:20:02 ◼   ► that is the thing,

00:20:03 ◼   ► which is maybe that Apple would take more care

00:20:06 ◼   ► with the App Store

00:20:07 ◼   ► because it may be true based on the evidence

00:20:09 ◼   ► that we've seen so far

00:20:10 ◼   ► that Apple just doesn't want to exert any effort

00:20:12 ◼   ► on the App Store.

00:20:13 ◼   ► But I would hope that if the App Store had competition,

00:20:16 ◼   ► the App Store might actually need to get its act together

00:20:18 ◼   ► a little bit more.

00:20:19 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:20:20 ◼   ► I think it was a fun way of thinking of it,

00:20:24 ◼   ► to imagine that world where the App Store

00:20:26 ◼   ► is no longer the end all be all,

00:20:27 ◼   ► because it really does change how you view it.

00:20:30 ◼   ► If it's not, you know, an App Store rejection

00:20:33 ◼   ► is an inconvenience or a frustration,

00:20:35 ◼   ► but not a death sentence.

00:20:36 ◼   ► And that's really my final point is,

00:20:38 ◼   ► I have definitely heard some developers say

00:20:40 ◼   ► that they are reluctant to develop anything for iOS,

00:20:42 ◼   ► because if it gets rejected from the App Store,

00:20:45 ◼   ► there's literally nothing they can do.

00:20:47 ◼   ► They can't take that code and reuse it.

00:20:49 ◼   ► They can't move it.

00:20:50 ◼   ► I think they could probably put it on the Mac,

00:20:53 ◼   ► use a catalyst, but that's it.

00:20:56 ◼   ► And that suppresses development, right?

00:21:00 ◼   ► Like people who are afraid that they're gonna spend

00:21:03 ◼   ► two years and millions of dollars

00:21:05 ◼   ► or whatever the project is on a thing for iOS,

00:21:08 ◼   ► if it's like at all possible

00:21:10 ◼   ► that Apple's just gonna reject it, just don't do it.

00:21:13 ◼   ► And then the platform is worse.

00:21:15 ◼   ► - This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Electric.

00:21:18 ◼   ► When leading your small business, it's not all glamour all the time.

00:21:21 ◼   ► In fact, most of the time it's a matter of spending hours trying to find a laptop lost

00:21:25 ◼   ► in the mail that was meant for a new hire, or dealing with some other technical emergency

00:21:29 ◼   ► that you have to try and learn how to handle.

00:21:32 ◼   ► The team over at Electric know that small businesses, maybe like yours, face these challenges.

00:21:37 ◼   ► That's why they've solved this problem for you by operating as your IT department.

00:21:41 ◼   ► So instead of spending your time sorting through unused application licenses, setting up employee

00:21:46 ◼   ► laptops and answering never-ending IT questions from your team, you can just go ahead and do what

00:21:50 ◼   ► you are supposed to do, build your business. With electric acting as your IT department,

00:21:56 ◼   ► you can get back to doing what you're best at. Plus you get a really cool IT platform to see

00:22:01 ◼   ► and manage everything. When you are running a business, especially when you're growing it,

00:22:05 ◼   ► especially when it's small, it can be really easy to get sucked into a lot of the minutia

00:22:10 ◼   ► and you have not got your eyes where you need to be. And stuff like this, if you are not that type

00:22:15 ◼   ► type of person, that can be a steep learning curve to try and help people understand how

00:22:23 ◼   ► to manage their devices.

00:22:25 ◼   ► That's why Electric's amazing.

00:22:26 ◼   ► For upgrade listeners, Electric are offering a free pair of Beats Solo 3 headphones if

00:22:30 ◼   ► you take a qualified meeting.

00:22:32 ◼   ► Just go to electric.ai/upgradefm to set it up.

00:22:37 ◼   ► That's electric.ai/upgradefm to get your free pair of Beats Solo 3 headphones today

00:22:43 ◼   ► scheduling a meeting, there's a link in the show notes too. Our thanks to Electric for their support

00:22:47 ◼   ► of this show and Relay FM.

00:22:49 ◼   ► You wrote an iMac. I'm calling this the iMac Pro wish list. I think you were a little bit more

00:22:54 ◼   ► reserved than me. You just called it the next generation iMac wish list, but I'm calling this

00:22:58 ◼   ► an iMac Pro wish list because let's just call it what it is. It's the computer to replace your

00:23:04 ◼   ► computer. I don't know for sure that that's what it's going to be. And it doesn't, I mean,

00:23:10 ◼   ► in some ways it doesn't matter because it's just a name, right? So we can call it the iMac Pro if we

00:23:14 ◼   ► want to, but it's the big iMac. I really have been calling it the big iMac. Yeah, iMac Pro.

00:23:19 ◼   ► And I do genuinely stand by, I think they would do that.

00:23:22 ◼   ► I think it would be strange to me.

00:23:24 ◼   ► - I agree.

00:23:25 ◼   ► - To give it, especially if they give it a lot of the stuff

00:23:27 ◼   ► that you want it to have.

00:23:28 ◼   ► - So my only hesitation is there,

00:23:32 ◼   ► I think there's a scenario where they do,

00:23:34 ◼   ► they do a version of it with colors

00:23:37 ◼   ► and then there's the high end version that's black basically.

00:23:42 ◼   ► And that's the iMac Pro, where they split it.

00:23:44 ◼   ► And there's two versions of essentially the same computer,

00:23:47 ◼   ► but like the high-end model is like the super tricked out version.

00:23:51 ◼   ► It feels to me more likely.

00:23:53 ◼   ► The reason I say this is that if you look at that 24-inch iMac,

00:23:55 ◼   ► there are two of them, right?

00:23:57 ◼   ► There are really two of them.

00:23:59 ◼   ► There's the one with two ports.

00:24:01 ◼   ► That's, you know, it's the de-contented version of the 24.

00:24:04 ◼   ► Two ports, no ethernet on the cable.

00:24:07 ◼   ► Like it's the kind of like low-price leader

00:24:10 ◼   ► of the 24-inch iMac.

00:24:11 ◼   ► And then there's like the real one.

00:24:13 ◼   ► - Well, they've been doing this a little bit more now though,

00:24:14 ◼   ► right?

00:24:15 ◼   ► - There are the laptops which have the bin chips

00:24:18 ◼   ► in them and stuff.

00:24:19 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:24:20 ◼   ► Well, yeah, right.

00:24:21 ◼   ► I mean, chip variation, but like now there's literally

00:24:24 ◼   ► like port variation on the back, right?

00:24:27 ◼   ► Which is even more than the chip variation

00:24:31 ◼   ► that's just the internal.

00:24:32 ◼   ► So I think it's possible that there could be

00:24:35 ◼   ► multiple big iMacs and I'm not sure

00:24:39 ◼   ► whether they wouldn't call them all iMac Pro anyway,

00:24:42 ◼   ► but like I do think there's a scenario here

00:24:44 ◼   ► where there's sort of two variants

00:24:46 ◼   ► and there's the like regular one that is a big screen

00:24:49 ◼   ► but it's just got the M1 and it's got fewer ports

00:24:52 ◼   ► and it's just the iMac 27 inch or 30 inch or whatever it is.

00:24:56 ◼   ► And then there's the iMac Pro

00:24:58 ◼   ► which is the one with the Pro chips

00:25:00 ◼   ► and lots of ports and is much more expensive.

00:25:02 ◼   ► They could break it that way.

00:25:05 ◼   ► And I think my argument if I'm inside Apple working on this,

00:25:09 ◼   ► if I'm one of the people we've interviewed

00:25:12 ◼   ► over the years about this,

00:25:14 ◼   ► My argument would be lots of regular people

00:25:16 ◼   ► buy the Big iMac and like the Big iMac.

00:25:18 ◼   ► And so we should offer a cheaper version

00:25:22 ◼   ► that doesn't feel like a pro product for them

00:25:25 ◼   ► so that they have something to buy.

00:25:28 ◼   ► So I think it's a possibility.

00:25:30 ◼   ► - I agree with you, but on iPad,

00:25:33 ◼   ► do you want the biggest one?

00:25:34 ◼   ► Pro's the only option currently with the iPhone.

00:25:37 ◼   ► Want the biggest one?

00:25:39 ◼   ► Well, you gotta go pro.

00:25:40 ◼   ► - Pro. - You know?

00:25:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, I hear you.

00:25:42 ◼   ► So maybe that's the modern Apple take is like,

00:25:44 ◼   ► look, Pro doesn't mean anything really

00:25:47 ◼   ► other than it's the nice one.

00:25:48 ◼   ► And so let's just lean into it.

00:25:50 ◼   ► And that's fine.

00:25:52 ◼   ► I think that's the simplest solution.

00:25:53 ◼   ► And probably the simplest one is the best one.

00:25:55 ◼   ► But then again, my counter is there are two 24-inch iMacs

00:25:58 ◼   ► 'cause there's the one that just has two ports

00:26:00 ◼   ► and is kind of sad because they wanted a cheap one.

00:26:03 ◼   ► Maybe you don't need a cheap one of the big one.

00:26:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I actually kind of liked that they did that

00:26:08 ◼   ► because it meant that they didn't need

00:26:09 ◼   ► to keep the old iMac around.

00:26:11 ◼   ► - Oh yes, for sure.

00:26:13 ◼   ► - Which is what they do with all of their other products.

00:26:16 ◼   ► So I'm actually pleased that they have that model.

00:26:18 ◼   ► 'Cause also it's still a great computer,

00:26:19 ◼   ► it just has less ports.

00:26:20 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, I'm not displeased with it.

00:26:22 ◼   ► I just think that's an interesting example of them

00:26:25 ◼   ► taking the time to do a, you know,

00:26:29 ◼   ► the extra work to make this second variation of it,

00:26:33 ◼   ► even though we call it one product, it is actually two.

00:26:35 ◼   ► So they could play that game again, even, you know,

00:26:38 ◼   ► will they? I don't know, maybe.

00:26:40 ◼   ► And to your point, even if they play that game,

00:26:43 ◼   ► they might still call them both iMac Pro.

00:26:45 ◼   ► - So I'm gonna free you a list here and talk about it.

00:26:48 ◼   ► You don't want it to be too big, right?

00:26:50 ◼   ► Now I'm like in camp of big screen.

00:26:53 ◼   ► I want a 30 inch iMac, that's what I want.

00:26:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, I, you know, what I said in the article

00:26:59 ◼   ► is sometimes 27 inch feels too big for me.

00:27:03 ◼   ► And I say that because I see people

00:27:05 ◼   ► with these wide screen displays and multiple displays.

00:27:07 ◼   ► And it's like, there are times where I've got a window

00:27:09 ◼   ► in the upper corner of my iMac where it's like too far away

00:27:14 ◼   ► and I got to move it into the middle

00:27:16 ◼   ► so that I can work on it.

00:27:17 ◼   ► Like it's way up there.

00:27:19 ◼   ► - You need to put your distance lenses on.

00:27:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, I got to drive over there,

00:27:25 ◼   ► see what's going on, drive back,

00:27:26 ◼   ► move my keyboard over there.

00:27:28 ◼   ► So, and yet at the same time, there are times,

00:27:31 ◼   ► especially when I'm doing video stuff

00:27:33 ◼   ► where I like switch into more space mode,

00:27:36 ◼   ► try to shrink everything down

00:27:38 ◼   ► in order to get more stuff on that screen.

00:27:40 ◼   ► So where I came down to,

00:27:41 ◼   ► 'cause originally I was gonna be like,

00:27:43 ◼   ► I don't want it bigger, 27 inches is just fine.

00:27:46 ◼   ► And what turned me around is the argument

00:27:50 ◼   ► that the 24 inch iMac is packing a lot more display

00:27:55 ◼   ► in something, in a device that doesn't feel enormous,

00:28:00 ◼   ► doesn't feel like it got massively bigger

00:28:02 ◼   ► because they reduced the bezels and all of that.

00:28:04 ◼   ► - This iMac's tiny, really.

00:28:06 ◼   ► I think that is the strongest argument

00:28:09 ◼   ► for them going above 27 is that they've decided,

00:28:13 ◼   ► as they have with many other devices that they've done,

00:28:16 ◼   ► that what you do is you keep the size of the device similar,

00:28:20 ◼   ► but by shrinking all the bezels,

00:28:21 ◼   ► the screen just becomes bigger.

00:28:23 ◼   ► Like, I like that. That's a good idea.

00:28:25 ◼   ► - I will also add for myself,

00:28:27 ◼   ► if we're talking about screen,

00:28:29 ◼   ► ProMotion.

00:28:30 ◼   ► - Ah, sure. - I would like ProMotion.

00:28:34 ◼   ► - I mean, I think you mentioned mini LED, right?

00:28:36 ◼   ► That it would be nice if we could have that,

00:28:38 ◼   ► like why not if we're doing a wish list?

00:28:40 ◼   ► - I mean, those are less necessary for me,

00:28:42 ◼   ► but yeah, the dream would be ProMotion mini,

00:28:46 ◼   ► essentially the dream is the MacBook Pro display

00:28:50 ◼   ► on a big computer, which is I think a big request,

00:28:53 ◼   ► 'cause that's a spectacular display

00:28:55 ◼   ► and spreading that over 27 to 30 inches,

00:28:58 ◼   ► it would be amazing.

00:29:00 ◼   ► I won't be super disappointed if that doesn't happen,

00:29:02 ◼   ► but it would be great.

00:29:03 ◼   ► It would undeniably be great.

00:29:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I would also add in

00:29:07 ◼   ► nano texture display option.

00:29:08 ◼   ► - Sure.

00:29:09 ◼   ► - Because I mean, they've already done that on the iMac.

00:29:11 ◼   ► - I put that in there for you.

00:29:12 ◼   ► I put that in the story just for you.

00:29:14 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:29:15 ◼   ► It is there on the iMac now, so why not?

00:29:17 ◼   ► - Like I don't even know if I would want it.

00:29:19 ◼   ► Like I have seen a pro display with that

00:29:23 ◼   ► and I thought it looked really cool.

00:29:25 ◼   ► - You get a cloth, there's a polishing cloth.

00:29:28 ◼   ► - I have the polishing cloth anyway,

00:29:30 ◼   ► 'cause I'm one of those fools that bought one.

00:29:33 ◼   ► just, I don't even, I didn't even buy it when it was a meme.

00:29:35 ◼   ► I was just, when I bought my Mac Pro, I was like,

00:29:37 ◼   ► I don't know what this is, but I'll get it.

00:29:39 ◼   ► And it just sits here.

00:29:39 ◼   ► I don't ever do anything with it.

00:29:41 ◼   ► But I, so I would love just to look at that again

00:29:45 ◼   ► and maybe weigh that up.

00:29:46 ◼   ► It could be a cool addition and it's, you know,

00:29:49 ◼   ► a fun little thing that they could do.

00:29:51 ◼   ► You want more ports, including USB-A ports.

00:29:55 ◼   ► I agree with you, by the way.

00:29:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, there are USB-A ports

00:29:58 ◼   ► on the Apple Silicon Mac mini.

00:30:00 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:30:01 ◼   ► And I will remind everybody, my iMac Pro has four Thunderbolt

00:30:05 ◼   ► and four USB-C, and four USB-A on the back.

00:30:10 ◼   ► Eight USB ports on the back of this iMac Pro.

00:30:14 ◼   ► And you know what?

00:30:15 ◼   ► I use them.

00:30:16 ◼   ► I use them.

00:30:17 ◼   ► It's really nice to not need a dongle

00:30:19 ◼   ► to plug in a USB-A device.

00:30:21 ◼   ► This is a Pro system.

00:30:22 ◼   ► It's big.

00:30:23 ◼   ► It's got lots of room back there.

00:30:25 ◼   ► So I think, yeah, I think lots, lots, lots of ports.

00:30:30 ◼   ► That's what I'm asking for.

00:30:31 ◼   ► I want an SD card slot like I have on the iMac Pro.

00:30:34 ◼   ► I want that.

00:30:35 ◼   ► And I want, you know, ideally I'd like four and four

00:30:39 ◼   ► of USB-C style and USB-A style.

00:30:43 ◼   ► And you know, it's not unreasonable.

00:30:46 ◼   ► There are a bunch of ports.

00:30:48 ◼   ► Even the M1 Mac mini has USB-A and USB-C ports.

00:30:53 ◼   ► So I think, and there are four, for the record,

00:30:56 ◼   ► the 24 inch has four USB Thunderbolt ports on the back,

00:31:01 ◼   ► other than the two port model,

00:31:02 ◼   ► but the bigger one has four.

00:31:05 ◼   ► Whether there will be eight or not, it seems unlikely.

00:31:07 ◼   ► And yet I'm gonna advocate to keep some USB-A back there

00:31:10 ◼   ► because really why not?

00:31:12 ◼   ► It adds compatibility. - Even if that was like two.

00:31:14 ◼   ► - There's no cost, yeah, two USB-A.

00:31:17 ◼   ► It adds compatibility.

00:31:18 ◼   ► There's no cost appreciably to it.

00:31:21 ◼   ► You did it on the Mac mini.

00:31:23 ◼   ► There's value in a pro desktop

00:31:25 ◼   ► of having port flexibility.

00:31:27 ◼   ► So why not do it?

00:31:29 ◼   ► - It's like Apple, what if we promise you

00:31:31 ◼   ► this is the last time you'll need to do it?

00:31:32 ◼   ► Will you do it?

00:31:33 ◼   ► - Right now on the back of my iMac Pro,

00:31:36 ◼   ► right at this moment,

00:31:38 ◼   ► I have two USB-C plugged in and two USB-A plugged in.

00:31:42 ◼   ► And I could convert those, but I didn't have to.

00:31:46 ◼   ► - Last time, just put two on there, last time.

00:31:49 ◼   ► The next time you redesign the iMac,

00:31:50 ◼   ► you'll probably have moved on to something else

00:31:52 ◼   ► of it in USB-C, right?

00:31:54 ◼   ► but like, we're probably okay by then.

00:31:56 ◼   ► - But like, I like the practicality of it,

00:31:58 ◼   ► and it's something that, remember,

00:31:59 ◼   ► Apple didn't do on their laptops, this practicality,

00:32:01 ◼   ► but they did with that Mac Mini, which is,

00:32:04 ◼   ► yeah, let's just put some USB-A on there.

00:32:05 ◼   ► Like, let's just do it. - I wouldn't expect

00:32:07 ◼   ► or ask for USB-A on a laptop now.

00:32:10 ◼   ► - No, no, but on a desktop where you've got all that room,

00:32:13 ◼   ► and even on the Mac Mini where they didn't have

00:32:14 ◼   ► all that room, like, just the flexibility

00:32:16 ◼   ► of having that stuff that's laying around,

00:32:18 ◼   ► and it really is as simple as, I have this thing,

00:32:21 ◼   ► I can plug it in instead of I have this thing,

00:32:24 ◼   ► oh, let me go get an adapter.

00:32:26 ◼   ► Now I've got my adapter, now I'll plug it in.

00:32:28 ◼   ► And that happens to me all the time.

00:32:30 ◼   ► - Like look, if they announced this computer without USB-A,

00:32:33 ◼   ► I'm not gonna be mad.

00:32:34 ◼   ► Like I've already moved away.

00:32:35 ◼   ► I've got docks and dongles and all sorts.

00:32:37 ◼   ► - But this is my wishlist, right?

00:32:38 ◼   ► I would like them to just embrace it, embrace it.

00:32:40 ◼   ► Maybe it's three and two or four and two

00:32:44 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:32:45 ◼   ► That's fine.

00:32:46 ◼   ► The Mac Mini has two USB-A, but like, I think it's worth it.

00:32:50 ◼   ► - You even mentioned like put them on the power brick, right?

00:32:52 ◼   ► We got our friend the ethernet power brick,

00:32:54 ◼   ► put them on there, I don't know.

00:32:55 ◼   ► - I doubt this is gonna happen this time,

00:32:57 ◼   ► but like for the iMac, and I know people are like,

00:32:59 ◼   ► "Oh, you can't put USB on the power brick

00:33:01 ◼   ► because what if it unplugs?"

00:33:04 ◼   ► It's like, well, what if your computer unplugs?

00:33:07 ◼   ► - If your computer unplugs, your computer's off.

00:33:09 ◼   ► - Your computer's off anyway and it's bad, whatever.

00:33:12 ◼   ► So unlike MagSafe on the laptops

00:33:15 ◼   ► where you probably don't wanna put USB ports

00:33:18 ◼   ► on the brick because then the thing pops off

00:33:22 ◼   ► and you lose your USB devices.

00:33:23 ◼   ► Okay, but on a desktop,

00:33:26 ◼   ► I just want them to push that concept forward.

00:33:28 ◼   ► It probably won't happen this time, but it's a wishlist.

00:33:31 ◼   ► I want them to push the concept forward.

00:33:33 ◼   ► I have a USB hub velcroed to the bottom of my desk,

00:33:36 ◼   ► to the underside of my desk, because I need some ports.

00:33:39 ◼   ► I need to attach things to,

00:33:42 ◼   ► like my keyboard runs under there

00:33:44 ◼   ► and my UPS that's got a USB port on it

00:33:48 ◼   ► so that if the power goes out, my computer stays on,

00:33:51 ◼   ► like it's got a USB umbilical

00:33:54 ◼   ► that goes back to the computer.

00:33:55 ◼   ► It's under there.

00:33:56 ◼   ► Like having, taking the ethernet outboard

00:34:00 ◼   ► and getting it off your desktop is a great idea,

00:34:02 ◼   ► but really I would like some ports on that thing too.

00:34:06 ◼   ► I really would because like I said,

00:34:08 ◼   ► I got a USB hub under my desk.

00:34:10 ◼   ► It's dumb.

00:34:11 ◼   ► I would really rather attach that little brick

00:34:14 ◼   ► and have stuff coming off of it.

00:34:15 ◼   ► So for an iMac Pro or a big iMac,

00:34:18 ◼   ► however you wanna call it, yeah,

00:34:20 ◼   ► I want even more than just ethernet on there.

00:34:22 ◼   ► I want it to be multi-use

00:34:25 ◼   ► because that's the truth of it, right?

00:34:26 ◼   ► Is we got lots of devices

00:34:28 ◼   ► that we plug into these desktop computers.

00:34:30 ◼   ► And so, you know, embrace it.

00:34:32 ◼   ► And we don't want the,

00:34:32 ◼   ► I mean, the argument is the same as the ethernet,

00:34:35 ◼   ► which is I don't need this clutter.

00:34:37 ◼   ► I don't need, I have some stuff that I need to plug in

00:34:40 ◼   ► that I do not need on my desktop.

00:34:41 ◼   ► So I'd rather have one nice braided cable

00:34:45 ◼   ► going down onto the desk,

00:34:48 ◼   ► and then what happens down there, stays down there.

00:34:51 ◼   ► - And obviously you'd want it to be color matched,

00:34:54 ◼   ► but will that be color?

00:34:55 ◼   ► - I think that goes without saying, right?

00:34:57 ◼   ► Whatever color or lack of color or boringness that they do,

00:35:00 ◼   ► I expect it all to match.

00:35:02 ◼   ► I would like, color is my item.

00:35:06 ◼   ► I would like not just to have black or space gray or silver.

00:35:10 ◼   ► I would like some color.

00:35:11 ◼   ► I'm kind of resigned to the fact that they'll probably be

00:35:14 ◼   ► dark, not bright eye popping colors like the 24 inch model.

00:35:19 ◼   ► But you know what, if it's a dark blue or something like

00:35:23 ◼   ► that, that would be cool.

00:35:24 ◼   ► I would love to be able to pick a color of iMac

00:35:27 ◼   ► and not have it just be entirely neutral.

00:35:31 ◼   ► And this is the moment where everybody was like,

00:35:32 ◼   ► "Oh, but designers need to be neutral."

00:35:34 ◼   ► It's like, they're never gonna not offer it

00:35:36 ◼   ► as a neutral color.

00:35:37 ◼   ► There will always be a neutral color offered.

00:35:40 ◼   ► but not all of us want that.

00:35:42 ◼   ► So I would like colors, please.

00:35:44 ◼   ► - I don't think I would, if it was like a pro machine,

00:35:50 ◼   ► I don't think I would want the exact color options

00:35:52 ◼   ► that are on the M1, but a variety of interesting colors

00:35:57 ◼   ► is what I would want.

00:35:58 ◼   ► Like I do like the kind of reserved color palette,

00:36:01 ◼   ► provided there is a color palette, you know?

00:36:05 ◼   ► - I think you're right.

00:36:07 ◼   ► I expect that instead of that very light gray bezel

00:36:11 ◼   ► that goes around the 24-inch iMacs,

00:36:13 ◼   ► my guess is that it will be a dark bezel

00:36:16 ◼   ► that goes around these larger iMacs

00:36:18 ◼   ► because they're gonna be for pro use.

00:36:20 ◼   ► And so the bright colors wouldn't really go with it anyway.

00:36:25 ◼   ► And that's okay.

00:36:26 ◼   ► Like, that's okay.

00:36:28 ◼   ► I just want some personality injected into it.

00:36:30 ◼   ► I think it would be a shame if--

00:36:32 ◼   ► - Like more than one, you know?

00:36:33 ◼   ► Like with the iPhones, they have the standard ones

00:36:36 ◼   ► and in one color.

00:36:37 ◼   ► "No, no, why don't we do five colors,

00:36:39 ◼   ► "but they can be like Safari green, whatever it was called."

00:36:44 ◼   ► And like Pacific blue. - Midnight blue.

00:36:47 ◼   ► - But like, you know, option.

00:36:49 ◼   ► Not like if you want color, you can get one color,

00:36:52 ◼   ► or you can get three different grays.

00:36:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, right.

00:36:56 ◼   ► - That's not what I'm looking for here,

00:36:57 ◼   ► but like variation fun.

00:36:58 ◼   ► - There's a good wishlist item, yeah.

00:37:00 ◼   ► - Lot of fun.

00:37:01 ◼   ► Webcam, gotta be good, right?

00:37:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm tired of the excuses.

00:37:07 ◼   ► I'm tired of the,

00:37:08 ◼   ► this is the best webcam we've ever put in a Mac.

00:37:10 ◼   ► It's 1080, but it's got a processor on it, so it's fine.

00:37:13 ◼   ► Like that's where they are right now.

00:37:14 ◼   ► And like, it's gotta stop.

00:37:15 ◼   ► It's gotta stop.

00:37:16 ◼   ► The iMac needs to have what the iPad has,

00:37:21 ◼   ► which is the iPad has a 12 megapixel camera.

00:37:24 ◼   ► That's a wide angle with center stage.

00:37:26 ◼   ► And you know,

00:37:27 ◼   ► I should be able to do very high quality video

00:37:31 ◼   ► from this thing and I should have it auto track.

00:37:33 ◼   ► all of that stuff needs to be there.

00:37:36 ◼   ► Like I'm tired of the excuses.

00:37:38 ◼   ► The iMac 24 came out the same time

00:37:41 ◼   ► as the iPad with center stage.

00:37:43 ◼   ► And the iMac is the perfect product for that.

00:37:46 ◼   ► Like I would like it to do face ID.

00:37:48 ◼   ► I would really like that.

00:37:50 ◼   ► - I mean, we're talking wishlist.

00:37:51 ◼   ► That would be a lot of wishlist.

00:37:53 ◼   ► - But at the very least it needs to be that proper

00:37:57 ◼   ► high quality front facing camera with center stage.

00:38:01 ◼   ► - Big one for me is the ergonomics.

00:38:03 ◼   ► - My dream would be the Pro Display's stand, you know?

00:38:08 ◼   ► - That's half the price of the iMac right there.

00:38:12 ◼   ► - Right, but something akin to that, you know,

00:38:14 ◼   ► like obviously not a thousand dollar stand,

00:38:17 ◼   ► but the flexibility of it.

00:38:19 ◼   ► - The Pro Display rotates, right?

00:38:22 ◼   ► And I don't think Apple needs to make a base stand

00:38:24 ◼   ► for the iMac that will let you lift it up and turn it

00:38:27 ◼   ► and put it in portrait orientation.

00:38:29 ◼   ► I mean, imagine that, but they don't need to do that.

00:38:33 ◼   ► but adjustable height stand.

00:38:36 ◼   ► Like I think the 24 inch iMac's a little short, right?

00:38:38 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, I have mine on one of those little riser things,

00:38:42 ◼   ► you know? - Yeah.

00:38:43 ◼   ► - It's too low down.

00:38:44 ◼   ► - I asked them about it and they said,

00:38:46 ◼   ► "Oh no, we did our research

00:38:47 ◼   ► and we think this is the right thing."

00:38:48 ◼   ► But I think that, but I just, I don't agree.

00:38:51 ◼   ► I don't believe it.

00:38:52 ◼   ► I think that they took their best shot

00:38:56 ◼   ► and maybe they think it's the right height.

00:38:58 ◼   ► It feels a little short to me.

00:38:59 ◼   ► And then you've got this beautiful, fun,

00:39:00 ◼   ► cute, colorful thing.

00:39:02 ◼   ► and then you stick like a dictionary under it or something

00:39:04 ◼   ► in order to get it to height, it just seems,

00:39:06 ◼   ► it seems like a mistake.

00:39:08 ◼   ► And so if they're gonna make a high-end iMac,

00:39:10 ◼   ► please spring for height adjustment.

00:39:14 ◼   ► Like displays have height adjustment.

00:39:16 ◼   ► The iMac is a display.

00:39:18 ◼   ► It should be adjustable.

00:39:19 ◼   ► It's important.

00:39:20 ◼   ► It's ergonomics.

00:39:21 ◼   ► It's accessibility, essentially.

00:39:24 ◼   ► They really, really need to do it right.

00:39:27 ◼   ► - And then also what have we got?

00:39:29 ◼   ► M1 Pro and M1 Mac specs.

00:39:31 ◼   ► - So when you say that, is you talking like just the chips?

00:39:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, well the chips and the RAM limits

00:39:37 ◼   ► that come with them, right?

00:39:37 ◼   ► So that you can have, so you can choose to go up to 32 or 64

00:39:41 ◼   ► and then ideally, if they've got the dual M1 Macs

00:39:46 ◼   ► ready to go for the Mac Pro,

00:39:50 ◼   ► they could do that for this too.

00:39:51 ◼   ► - Oh, I mean, wishlist, right?

00:39:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know.

00:39:55 ◼   ► Like the Mac Pro is coming eventually

00:40:00 ◼   ► and the rumors are that they're gonna be dual

00:40:01 ◼   ► and quad configurations, it would be interesting

00:40:03 ◼   ► if they rolled out like a dual max configuration

00:40:05 ◼   ► at the high end of this.

00:40:06 ◼   ► I don't know if that's likely, but I'll throw it in there.

00:40:09 ◼   ► But at the very least, you know, the M1 max and an iMac,

00:40:13 ◼   ► yeah, bring it to me.

00:40:16 ◼   ► - I guess the thing I don't know if I considered this,

00:40:18 ◼   ► but as you're saying it, it was like,

00:40:20 ◼   ► if they do this double M1 max chip or whatever,

00:40:24 ◼   ► would they only do it for the Mac Pro?

00:40:26 ◼   ► Like that's the only place it's gonna be?

00:40:29 ◼   ► Maybe, I think in the long run,

00:40:31 ◼   ► if they've got other pro desktop Macs,

00:40:35 ◼   ► why not put it in there?

00:40:36 ◼   ► That's my argument to them is,

00:40:38 ◼   ► if you've got an iMac Pro,

00:40:39 ◼   ► put a dual M1 Macs option in there, why not?

00:40:42 ◼   ► Just see it, but it may not be ready.

00:40:43 ◼   ► It may really be waiting for the Mac Pro

00:40:45 ◼   ► to do something like a dual or a quad.

00:40:47 ◼   ► But down the road, perhaps,

00:40:49 ◼   ► some things like Mac Mini and iMac Pro might get those too.

00:40:54 ◼   ► But really, honestly, that's dreaming a magical dream.

00:40:58 ◼   ► but M1 Macs and an iMac, yes please.

00:41:02 ◼   ► - My favorite though is your last one.

00:41:04 ◼   ► Announced March 8th, all those,

00:41:06 ◼   ► all those March 11 shipping March 18th.

00:41:08 ◼   ► It's like, we don't even have an idea

00:41:10 ◼   ► if there's even gonna be an iMac.

00:41:11 ◼   ► You're like, no, I want it in a week.

00:41:13 ◼   ► - It's my list, Myke, it's my list, I want it now.

00:41:16 ◼   ► And what's the point of a wishlist

00:41:17 ◼   ► if you can't demand the product to be made available for you.

00:41:21 ◼   ► So that's my last item is announced March 8th,

00:41:25 ◼   ► orders on the Friday shipping the next Friday please. Thank you.

00:41:29 ◼   ► This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by our friends over at Member4, the easiest

00:41:33 ◼   ► way to sell memberships to your audience used by the biggest creators on the web. You can

00:41:37 ◼   ► generate sustainable recurring income while diversifying your revenue stream. You may

00:41:42 ◼   ► have heard us talking about the Relay FM membership program and Upgrade Plus. That we use Member4

00:41:48 ◼   ► to power all of that for us. They make it super easy for us to generate the extra revenue

00:41:52 ◼   ► you stream and deliver great bonus content to our members.

00:42:19 ◼   ► you're already producing content and relying on advertising or other means of income or

00:42:23 ◼   ► none at all, Member4 can make it easy to diversify that income or get you started with everything

00:42:28 ◼   ► that you need to run your own membership program.

00:42:31 ◼   ► This could include custom branding, gift subscriptions, Apple Pay, free trials, private podcast feeds

00:42:35 ◼   ► and tons more, while still leaving you with full control and ownership of everything that

00:42:39 ◼   ► relates to your audience, brand and membership.

00:42:42 ◼   ► And you can also send paid email newsletters now directly through Member4 without needing

00:42:46 ◼   ► to connect to a third-party email provider. You can even publish your paid newsletter content to

00:42:51 ◼   ► a Memberful hosted members only website. There's no additional fee when you sign up for one of their

00:42:56 ◼   ► pro or premium plans and you're going to save money compared to popular hosted newsletter platforms.

00:43:01 ◼   ► If you're a content creator, Memberful can help you monetise that passion.

00:43:05 ◼   ► Get started for free at memberful.com/upgrade with no credit card required.

00:43:11 ◼   ► Go there now, check it out, it could be the start of something exciting.

00:43:15 ◼   ► Our thanks to Membafool for their support of this show and Real AFM.

00:43:19 ◼   ► I want to talk about comics a little bit.

00:43:21 ◼   ► Okay.

00:43:22 ◼   ► So I feel like a couple of times in my life I've been a comics person.

00:43:27 ◼   ► So going back many, many years, this is actually fun.

00:43:30 ◼   ► When I used to work at my bank, one of the things that I did was help people open business accounts.

00:43:38 ◼   ► And there was once, this is probably like 15 years ago now, which is a horrible thing for me to

00:43:45 ◼   ► consider. I have stories in my life that are 15 years old, but nevertheless.

00:43:50 ◼   ► One of the accounts that I opened was for somebody starting a comic book shop,

00:43:54 ◼   ► like a comic book store. And I went down to visit their store once and looked around and picked up

00:44:01 ◼   ► some stuff. And I had some interesting superheroes, but I hadn't really read comics and I bought a

00:44:04 ◼   ► a bunch of stuff and enjoyed it.

00:44:06 ◼   ► And one of the things that I bought was "Civil War"

00:44:08 ◼   ► that was recommended to me.

00:44:09 ◼   ► Absolutely love "Marvel Civil War."

00:44:11 ◼   ► It turned it into a great movie,

00:44:12 ◼   ► but the comic book is still excellent in its own way.

00:44:16 ◼   ► And then over time as well,

00:44:17 ◼   ► like I've got moved in and out of paper comics

00:44:19 ◼   ► and then some years ago I was reading some digital comics.

00:44:23 ◼   ► I think probably when Comixology launched.

00:44:26 ◼   ► And recently I've been watching a YouTube recap series

00:44:31 ◼   ► of like Marvel and superhero movies.

00:44:34 ◼   ► And it's just been like a fun thing that I've been watching

00:44:36 ◼   ► and they keep referencing comic stories

00:44:38 ◼   ► that are influencing some of the stories

00:44:41 ◼   ► in the movies, of course.

00:44:42 ◼   ► So it's made me think, I want to read more of them.

00:44:45 ◼   ► Especially X-Men.

00:44:47 ◼   ► I've never really, my only real X-Men knowledge

00:44:51 ◼   ► comes from the Saturday Morning Cartoon show.

00:44:53 ◼   ► Like I never read any comics.

00:44:55 ◼   ► And I saw some of the X-Men movies,

00:44:57 ◼   ► but like I wanted to know more about the X-Men

00:44:59 ◼   ► for reasons that I think will be important in the future.

00:45:02 ◼   ► So I've been digging back in again and we're kind of,

00:45:06 ◼   ► the landscape has changed a bit, I think,

00:45:09 ◼   ► since I last looked at comics.

00:45:10 ◼   ► And it's actually pretty time because it's changing again.

00:45:13 ◼   ► Like, comixology was a big thing.

00:45:15 ◼   ► Amazon bought comixology.

00:45:17 ◼   ► It seems like Amazon are making a bunch of changes

00:45:19 ◼   ► to comixology, which I think some people

00:45:21 ◼   ► were not happy about.

00:45:22 ◼   ► Like they're doing some weird stuff.

00:45:25 ◼   ► But I kind of wanted to know,

00:45:26 ◼   ► like what are you doing right now?

00:45:28 ◼   ► Do you have any recommendations?

00:45:30 ◼   ► And I want to talk about some other stuff

00:45:31 ◼   ► that I've been doing.

00:45:32 ◼   ► - I haven't been reading comics as much the last,

00:45:35 ◼   ► I don't know, six months as I was for a while there.

00:45:38 ◼   ► I've been, I've just been reading a lot of novels lately.

00:45:42 ◼   ► So I still have Marvel Unlimited,

00:45:44 ◼   ► which I feel like is still getting better.

00:45:47 ◼   ► DC apparently now has their version of that,

00:45:49 ◼   ► that lets you like dive into their archive.

00:45:51 ◼   ► I want to check that out someday,

00:45:53 ◼   ► but I haven't done that yet.

00:45:54 ◼   ► But so for Marvel, I, the nice thing about going,

00:45:58 ◼   ► you know, a few months without reading any Marvel comics

00:46:00 ◼   ► is that they just kind of all queue up on Marvel Unlimited

00:46:03 ◼   ► and I can get to them whenever I want.

00:46:05 ◼   ► I buy some comics, mostly independent comics,

00:46:08 ◼   ► on Comixology and some other stuff

00:46:11 ◼   ► that's like the non-Marvel stuff.

00:46:14 ◼   ► Comixology, you know, Amazon bought them

00:46:17 ◼   ► and everybody wants to portray it

00:46:19 ◼   ► as like Amazon ate Comixology.

00:46:21 ◼   ► It's not quite right.

00:46:23 ◼   ► I mean, it's sort of true,

00:46:24 ◼   ► but the truth is that Amazon did not have

00:46:26 ◼   ► a lot of comics expertise

00:46:29 ◼   ► And they installed the guy who founded Comixology,

00:46:33 ◼   ► the CEO, as the head of comics,

00:46:35 ◼   ► like immediately for all of Amazon,

00:46:38 ◼   ► like not just for Comixology, but for Amazon proper.

00:46:41 ◼   ► 'Cause they knew that the Amazon comics approach

00:46:43 ◼   ► wasn't quite right.

00:46:44 ◼   ► And so over the last few years,

00:46:46 ◼   ► like they've made a lot of changes to the Kindle app

00:46:50 ◼   ► to make it better for comics and all of that.

00:46:55 ◼   ► And I think their plan all along was to converge

00:46:59 ◼   ► Comixology and Amazon.

00:47:01 ◼   ► - That's coming.

00:47:04 ◼   ► They're doing that.

00:47:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, and if you go, they are doing that.

00:47:06 ◼   ► And if you go to the Comixology app now,

00:47:09 ◼   ► it is a comics reading app, but it's not the old one.

00:47:14 ◼   ► And it really is the Kindle app.

00:47:18 ◼   ► It feels very much like it's just the Kindle app

00:47:21 ◼   ► with a comic reading storefront on the front or front,

00:47:24 ◼   ► I guess list front because it's iOS you can't actually sell the comics there.

00:47:30 ◼   ► So I think they're unifying all of that.

00:47:32 ◼   ► I don't think that's a bad idea in the end.

00:47:34 ◼   ► They're going to want to make one comic reading app.

00:47:35 ◼   ► The Comixology website now here in the UK.

00:47:38 ◼   ► I think in the UK and the US is that part of the problem is they're doing this thing

00:47:42 ◼   ► but they're not doing it everywhere which means it's kind of shutting down in some places

00:47:47 ◼   ► but in the UK Comixology.co.uk now takes me to Amazon.co.uk.

00:47:52 ◼   ► lot of people signed up for subscriptions where they get the next issue automatically.

00:47:57 ◼   ► And my understanding is that as part of this merger thing, they basically told everybody

00:48:02 ◼   ► outside of the US, "You can't have that feature anymore." Just like, what are you doing? I don't

00:48:06 ◼   ► know. There's a lot of stuff going on there that's kind of weird. But anyway, it is still,

00:48:10 ◼   ► at least especially for me in the US, a convenient place to buy. I don't really want to buy comics

00:48:15 ◼   ► from Amazon. I think, you know, we mentioned before that Apple bought that company that does

00:48:21 ◼   ► classical music stuff, and they're gonna roll out

00:48:24 ◼   ► an Apple Music classical basically at some point,

00:48:28 ◼   ► or Apple classical.

00:48:29 ◼   ► And this is a little like that,

00:48:33 ◼   ► where comics are different enough

00:48:36 ◼   ► that what Amazon seems to wanna do

00:48:37 ◼   ► is have a brand that has comics

00:48:41 ◼   ► that is dedicated to the comic reading experience.

00:48:46 ◼   ► 'Cause like, I have a Kindle app,

00:48:50 ◼   ► but I don't want to read comics on the Kindle app.

00:48:51 ◼   ► I want to read them in the ComiXology app.

00:48:53 ◼   ► I want to read them in an app that's actually dedicated,

00:48:55 ◼   ► even if the reading experience is the same,

00:48:57 ◼   ► I don't want to go through the whole Kindle thing

00:48:59 ◼   ► and see my Kindle books.

00:49:00 ◼   ► I just want to see my comics.

00:49:01 ◼   ► - Honestly, it's like having podcasts in your music app.

00:49:04 ◼   ► It doesn't always make sense to do that.

00:49:07 ◼   ► - No, no, thank you.

00:49:07 ◼   ► So that's sort of what they're doing there.

00:49:11 ◼   ► It's fine.

00:49:12 ◼   ► I know people are up in arms about it.

00:49:14 ◼   ► Like this is, on one level, it's not as big a deal

00:49:18 ◼   ► as I think people are making it out to be.

00:49:19 ◼   ► on another level, Amazon bought them.

00:49:21 ◼   ► What did you expect?

00:49:22 ◼   ► Of course this was gonna happen to some degree.

00:49:25 ◼   ► I think it's gonna be okay.

00:49:27 ◼   ► The truth though is that I also am not, I'm just not,

00:49:31 ◼   ► I wish I had comics to recommend to you,

00:49:33 ◼   ► but I just have not been reading a lot of new stuff

00:49:35 ◼   ► the last few years.

00:49:36 ◼   ► Saga just started up again, so I think I need to go,

00:49:38 ◼   ► or announce that they're starting up again,

00:49:40 ◼   ► so I'm gonna need to get back on the Saga train.

00:49:44 ◼   ► But I have not been reading new comics the last six months.

00:49:47 ◼   ► For me at the moment, I'm really only that interested in Marvel comics.

00:49:52 ◼   ► This is just what I know and it's what I like and there's so much stuff I haven't

00:49:56 ◼   ► read that I'm good with that.

00:49:57 ◼   ► Partly because I bought Adina a Marvel Unlimited subscription a couple of years ago and so

00:50:02 ◼   ► I'm just signed into that account on my iPad as well and I'm just reading some stuff

00:50:07 ◼   ► that she's not reading.

00:50:08 ◼   ► Like we're reading completely different types of things.

00:50:11 ◼   ► And the Marvel Unlimited, I actually kind of like that experience and I think it's

00:50:14 ◼   ► pretty cool.

00:50:15 ◼   ► How long do you know roughly like how long do you have to wait for new comics to come

00:50:20 ◼   ► to Marvel on the way?

00:50:21 ◼   ► Oh last time I checked I think it was three months.

00:50:24 ◼   ► Right.

00:50:25 ◼   ► I mean.

00:50:26 ◼   ► That makes sense.

00:50:27 ◼   ► I think it was six.

00:50:28 ◼   ► I think it might be three now, four.

00:50:30 ◼   ► But the truth is like if you're if you're behind and you stay behind then new comics

00:50:35 ◼   ► are being released every week.

00:50:36 ◼   ► It's just that you're behind the rest of it.

00:50:38 ◼   ► There's so much stuff that I could and want to read I don't really care about being up

00:50:42 ◼   ► today right?

00:50:43 ◼   ► So like I'm reading through House of M, Powers of M right now.

00:50:48 ◼   ► Oh wow, that's way back there.

00:50:49 ◼   ► Yeah, because there's a bunch of stuff, there's that classic stuff I've just never read and

00:50:52 ◼   ► would like to read and it's a fascinating series.

00:50:55 ◼   ► Yeah, there's so much X-Men stuff and it's so confusing.

00:50:58 ◼   ► What I like, they have these like curated lists and starting points in the Marvel Unlimited

00:51:04 ◼   ► app and I've been like going through that.

00:51:07 ◼   ► You said House of M, but do you mean House of X, Powers of X, Powers of X?

00:51:12 ◼   ► of 10. Is that what it is powers of 10? Yeah it's a well it's a play on it's like a very

00:51:18 ◼   ► for Apple people it's even extra confusing. Yeah that's really interesting that's from

00:51:21 ◼   ► a couple years ago where they basically reset the whole X-Men scenario and and put them

00:51:26 ◼   ► in a new place yeah I love I love that that was a that was a really fun intertwined series

00:51:31 ◼   ► I like that one a lot. It was two comics and they have like a weird reading order and in

00:51:35 ◼   ► a great way that like in the back of the issues they show you the suggested reading order

00:51:40 ◼   ► which is like it's like a very funny thing but I like it it's like I read some of this stuff like

00:51:44 ◼   ► and it's so incredible it's like these people just build these entire worlds and all these walls.

00:51:48 ◼   ► Jonathan Hickman who wrote that he has a very particular style I really like his work he is

00:51:55 ◼   ► he's a sci-fi oriented I would say comic book writer and so his stories tend to be a little

00:52:04 ◼   ► more sci-fi than some of the other superhero titles that are out there. I really liked,

00:52:10 ◼   ► he did a run on new Avengers and Avengers that led to Secret Wars. Okay, Secret Wars is one that I

00:52:19 ◼   ► also have in my... again, because what I like is there are some big comic events, right, where it's

00:52:25 ◼   ► spread across like six series. Right, but there's a reading list. They create the reading lists,

00:52:30 ◼   ► And so like I've saved some of those reading lists as well.

00:52:32 ◼   ► - I recommend looking at Hickman's Avengers

00:52:36 ◼   ► and New Avengers as part of that.

00:52:37 ◼   ► And they probably have that in a reading list too,

00:52:39 ◼   ► 'cause it really does sort of start there

00:52:41 ◼   ► and then build to this event.

00:52:43 ◼   ► And the idea is that all the parallel universes

00:52:47 ◼   ► are colliding and annihilating each other

00:52:49 ◼   ► and that goes on in New Avengers,

00:52:50 ◼   ► especially for quite a while.

00:52:53 ◼   ► And like I love those kind of widescreen,

00:52:56 ◼   ► wild idea, sci-fi kind of thing.

00:52:59 ◼   ► So that was a fun thing.

00:53:00 ◼   ► And then Hickman coming off of that went and did this,

00:53:02 ◼   ► let's reinvent the X-Men as having their own country

00:53:06 ◼   ► and building up this whole new system.

00:53:09 ◼   ► And they have like the ability to clone themselves.

00:53:11 ◼   ► And it's just these wild ideas

00:53:13 ◼   ► and told in a chopped up narrative

00:53:15 ◼   ► 'cause the powers of 10, the whole idea is you're shifting

00:53:17 ◼   ► from like now to one year from now to 10 years from now

00:53:20 ◼   ► to a hundred years from now to a thousand years from now.

00:53:23 ◼   ► And like what's going on in all those different timelines.

00:53:25 ◼   ► And yeah, that's good stuff.

00:53:26 ◼   ► I like that a lot. - My secret invasion

00:53:28 ◼   ► Uh, uh, reading this starts with New Avengers 31.

00:53:32 ◼   ► That's the reading order.

00:53:35 ◼   ► So it's definitely in there, which is cool.

00:53:37 ◼   ► Yep.

00:53:37 ◼   ► But, and like, I kind of just like this thing that Marvel's doing.

00:53:42 ◼   ► Like just this, it's effective like a Netflix thing, right?

00:53:45 ◼   ► It's just like, here's your streaming service for comic books.

00:53:48 ◼   ► Just give us an amount of money every year and you can just go

00:53:52 ◼   ► in and read whatever you want.

00:53:53 ◼   ► And if DC does it, like maybe I'll get it, like I'll check

00:53:56 ◼   ► out the DC one eventually too.

00:53:57 ◼   ► Like, I think it's a smart move because there's so much back catalog stuff.

00:54:03 ◼   ► Like the idea of the comicsology for me now doesn't really make so much sense, especially

00:54:09 ◼   ► like the need to own it.

00:54:10 ◼   ► Like I don't need, I actually, I don't need to own digital comics.

00:54:13 ◼   ► Like I'm good, you know, like my, my kind of mental model for that stuff has changed

00:54:18 ◼   ► a lot now where I don't really feel like I need any ownership over it all.

00:54:25 ◼   ► Like it's just streaming content to me now.

00:54:27 ◼   ► - I agree, and I don't know what their financial model is,

00:54:30 ◼   ► right, and I want them to,

00:54:32 ◼   ► I want the people who make comics to succeed,

00:54:34 ◼   ► and I do buy comics that are like,

00:54:37 ◼   ► I'm not buying Marvel comics,

00:54:38 ◼   ► but I am buying from like more indie publishers,

00:54:40 ◼   ► because that's how you get that stuff,

00:54:42 ◼   ► and I know that it matters to them.

00:54:44 ◼   ► And a lot of the, even the indie publishers,

00:54:47 ◼   ► you know, week one, it might cost 4.99,

00:54:49 ◼   ► and week two, it costs 2.99, right,

00:54:51 ◼   ► where they're like, they're trying to get the people

00:54:53 ◼   ► who are super into it and wanna buy it immediately,

00:54:56 ◼   ► and they charge them extra.

00:54:57 ◼   ► And then sometimes they discount it after a few weeks

00:55:00 ◼   ► for everybody else.

00:55:00 ◼   ► So it's a lot cheaper to get caught up.

00:55:04 ◼   ► So I want them to do well, I don't know,

00:55:05 ◼   ► but I agree that the Netflix model

00:55:07 ◼   ► of paying a subscription fee

00:55:08 ◼   ► and just having access to a comic library is pretty great.

00:55:11 ◼   ► When you finish, by the way, House of X Powers of 10,

00:55:15 ◼   ► The Incomparable, 502, 100 episodes ago,

00:55:18 ◼   ► was all about those.

00:55:20 ◼   ► - Oh, amazing.

00:55:21 ◼   ► I guess that's the fun thing.

00:55:22 ◼   ► I'll be able to go and listen to some old episodes

00:55:25 ◼   ► of the incomparable, which I've skipped.

00:55:27 ◼   ► It's funny, I just Googled, I was like,

00:55:29 ◼   ► "Oh, what about the DC one?"

00:55:30 ◼   ► Yeah, no, it's in the US only.

00:55:32 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:55:32 ◼   ► - You own it, it's yours!

00:55:34 ◼   ► I don't understand it. - I know.

00:55:35 ◼   ► - I don't get it. - I don't know.

00:55:36 ◼   ► - Nobody else is doing it.

00:55:37 ◼   ► It's not like there's another company

00:55:39 ◼   ► who has your streaming comic rights or whatever, you know?

00:55:42 ◼   ► Just like, just make it available, DC.

00:55:44 ◼   ► Like, this is your, or Warner, I guess.

00:55:48 ◼   ► I don't even know who it is anymore,

00:55:49 ◼   ► but this is your content, you know?

00:55:51 ◼   ► Come on, just make it available to me.

00:55:54 ◼   ► You know, I'm into it.

00:55:55 ◼   ► It's like, and then I want to do a bunch of Spider-Man stuff.

00:55:57 ◼   ► Love Spider-Man.

00:55:58 ◼   ► Do you have any Spider-Man recommendations for me?

00:56:00 ◼   ► - I say start from Ultimate Spider-Man number one.

00:56:07 ◼   ► It's great.

00:56:09 ◼   ► That's my favorite comic,

00:56:10 ◼   ► favorite Marvel comic of the last 20 years

00:56:13 ◼   ► is Ultimate Spider-Man by Brian Michael Bendis.

00:56:16 ◼   ► - Oh, I've read Ultimate.

00:56:17 ◼   ► I've read some of it before, but a long, long time ago.

00:56:20 ◼   ► - Read the whole, the whole thing is there

00:56:22 ◼   ► and it comes to builds to a climax

00:56:24 ◼   ► and it introduces Miles Morales.

00:56:26 ◼   ► And then there's the more then then it becomes

00:56:28 ◼   ► the Miles Morales Spider-Man comic after that.

00:56:31 ◼   ► So there's a lot of good stuff in that.

00:56:35 ◼   ► It's like a hundred and.

00:56:36 ◼   ► - A hundred and thirty three issues for ultimate.

00:56:39 ◼   ► - And then one of my favorite comics of all time

00:56:40 ◼   ► is Invincible which is from Image.

00:56:43 ◼   ► So you can you can buy those.

00:56:45 ◼   ► - Yeah I read a lot of that.

00:56:46 ◼   ► - I love that too.

00:56:47 ◼   ► - On comic solitaire.

00:56:48 ◼   ► - But I have nothing super recent.

00:56:50 ◼   ► There's a lot of Brian K. Vaughan stuff, Paper Girls,

00:56:54 ◼   ► I read a while ago, that was really good.

00:56:56 ◼   ► Has some good Apple references in it, believe it or not.

00:57:00 ◼   ► It does.

00:57:01 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:57:02 ◼   ► - So the part of me talking about this

00:57:04 ◼   ► is I want recommendations from the Upgradients.

00:57:08 ◼   ► Like I want people to give me this stuff that they've got.

00:57:12 ◼   ► Like, I'm just, I don't know, I feel like this is a,

00:57:16 ◼   ► I made lots of references before on the show

00:57:18 ◼   ► that like I don't really enjoy reading.

00:57:21 ◼   ► Which is true, I just don't,

00:57:22 ◼   ► I don't really enjoy reading novels, that kind of stuff.

00:57:25 ◼   ► 'Cause I kind of find it hard to keep my attention.

00:57:28 ◼   ► I do not have this problem with comics.

00:57:30 ◼   ► And it is kind of funny 'cause reading through the,

00:57:33 ◼   ► like the powers of 10,

00:57:35 ◼   ► there's like, there are these pages of text.

00:57:38 ◼   ► I was like, I have to read them like three times.

00:57:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, he does the whole thing

00:57:41 ◼   ► where he's got like little readouts of stuff, yeah.

00:57:44 ◼   ► - Which is cool information, but like I have to sit there

00:57:47 ◼   ► and I have to read that three times.

00:57:48 ◼   ► But the comic part, I'm like, no problem.

00:57:50 ◼   ► I'm like going through, I'm on top of it.

00:57:52 ◼   ► But as soon as you give me a paragraph of text,

00:57:54 ◼   ► I'm like, oh man.

00:57:55 ◼   ► I don't know what it is.

00:57:56 ◼   ► It just like, it takes a while for me

00:57:58 ◼   ► to have to go over it a couple of times.

00:57:59 ◼   ► Like, right, I'm on it.

00:58:00 ◼   ► Now I can continue.

00:58:02 ◼   ► So it's fun.

00:58:03 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm enjoying it.

00:58:04 ◼   ► It's like, I don't know.

00:58:05 ◼   ► I'm just-- it feels like just a fun thing

00:58:07 ◼   ► to get back into again.

00:58:09 ◼   ► And the iPad Mini, so good.

00:58:12 ◼   ► So good.

00:58:13 ◼   ► The only thing it's not great for is the landscape.

00:58:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause it's a little too small.

00:58:19 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:58:19 ◼   ► - But you gotta zoom in and pan around for that.

00:58:22 ◼   ► - By and large, it's great.

00:58:23 ◼   ► Like the iPad mini is really, really good.

00:58:25 ◼   ► Like I remember when, even on like the regular,

00:58:28 ◼   ► like I remember on previous iPad minis,

00:58:30 ◼   ► do you kind of have to use the zooming in

00:58:32 ◼   ► on the panels features, 'cause it just wasn't good enough.

00:58:37 ◼   ► - Right.

00:58:38 ◼   ► - But now I can read all of that.

00:58:40 ◼   ► Catherine is asking if I read Matt Fractions.

00:58:43 ◼   ► - Matt Fractions. - I have read that.

00:58:44 ◼   ► I read that back in the day.

00:58:46 ◼   ► I have a hard copy of that one.

00:58:48 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Sent me up nicely

00:58:49 ◼   ► for Hawkeye, which I enjoyed a lot.

00:58:51 ◼   ► So yeah, comics.

00:58:53 ◼   ► - Comics, it's fun.

00:58:55 ◼   ► Look at us having fun

00:58:56 ◼   ► and not talking about legislation and regulation.

00:59:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, see, we can talk about sideloading,

00:59:02 ◼   ► but we can also talk about comic books.

00:59:05 ◼   ► - Look, we have lots of shades here.

00:59:07 ◼   ► Lots of colors.

00:59:09 ◼   ► Lots of, hopefully, iMac colors, maybe.

00:59:13 ◼   ► - This episode is brought to you by Capital One.

00:59:15 ◼   ► Have you ever hit a technical snafu while shopping online?

00:59:18 ◼   ► It's filling out payment fields, giving you a headache.

00:59:21 ◼   ► Has a mobile banking app ever been down when you wanted to use it?

00:59:24 ◼   ► Capital One believes everyone deserves better banking, and this means easier access to money

00:59:29 ◼   ► and more security.

00:59:30 ◼   ► That's why Capital One is investing in machine learning.

00:59:33 ◼   ► Machine learning allows Capital One to do things like fight fraud with random forests,

00:59:37 ◼   ► with models that quickly detect suspicious activity and then make it faster to alert

00:59:41 ◼   ► federal investigators.

00:59:43 ◼   ► and they identify how mobile app outages happen with causal models. This keeps their mobile

00:59:47 ◼   ► app up and running. An anomaly detection and incident response help determine why app outages

00:59:57 ◼   ► happen so engineers can quickly remedy them.

01:00:00 ◼   ► Capital One speed up online shopping with machine learning at the edge. They make shopping

01:00:04 ◼   ► with virtual card numbers smoother and more secure. This technology is based on logistic

01:00:09 ◼   ► regression models and running inference in the browser. It identifies payment fields,

01:00:13 ◼   ► which helps making using virtual card numbers easier and faster. The potential of machine

01:00:18 ◼   ► learning is so big. See how Capital One is using machine learning to create the future

01:00:22 ◼   ► of banking. Search "machine learning" at Capital One. Capital One, what's in your wallet?

01:00:27 ◼   ► We have some #askupgrade questions.

01:00:31 ◼   ► Matt asks, I feel like I'd quite like to own a retro Mac having listened to Jason talk

01:00:36 ◼   ► about it but I have a limited amount of space available. What do you think is the smallest

01:00:40 ◼   ► retro Mac that I could get?

01:00:42 ◼   ► I'm gonna say that practically, it depends on what you want from your retro Mac. Practically

01:00:48 ◼   ► speaking one of the compact Macs from the early days is probably best. Whether it's

01:00:54 ◼   ► an SE or a classic or a color classic, something that is classic 2, something that has its

01:01:01 ◼   ► own screen built into it and I know that means it's bulkier in a way but it also means

01:01:05 ◼   ► you don't have to have an external monitor. And the problem with a lot of early Macs is

01:01:09 ◼   ► that it's actually hard to get external video out to a modern display that you might have

01:01:14 ◼   ► hanging around. You know, if you find a 2ci with a monitor sitting on it at a garage sale,

01:01:19 ◼   ► you could do that. That would work too. But I would say one of the nice things about those

01:01:23 ◼   ► classic compact Macs is that they are compact. And so when I, I've been struggling to get

01:01:29 ◼   ► video out of a bunch of old Macs, but it's not a problem with the classic Mac. You could

01:01:35 ◼   ► look for a power book, the problem there is that the hard drives die and then you're trying

01:01:41 ◼   ► to take it apart. There are a lot of issues there. But again, a Mac with its own screen

01:01:48 ◼   ► is nice. That helps keep the size down. If you want to go a little more modern than that,

01:01:56 ◼   ► I don't know, you got the G4 Cube, you can find those. Or an iMac. Again, some of those

01:02:04 ◼   ► The G3 iMacs are big, the G4 iMacs are smaller,

01:02:07 ◼   ► but like if you have an old all-in-one

01:02:10 ◼   ► that brings its own screen, especially, that's helpful.

01:02:14 ◼   ► Otherwise you're gonna need to find like a screen.

01:02:17 ◼   ► Like I got a G4 Cube and a screen and they came together

01:02:21 ◼   ► where it's got ADC on it, so you just plug it in

01:02:25 ◼   ► and the screen works and the G4 works.

01:02:27 ◼   ► So that's my advice though, is avoid having to adapt

01:02:33 ◼   ► to an external monitor because you might be saying,

01:02:37 ◼   ► I'm gonna save space by having it be an external monitor

01:02:39 ◼   ► that I already own, but you may not be able to get there.

01:02:43 ◼   ► So that's my best advice for now for Matt.

01:02:46 ◼   ► - Sekou asks, Jason, do you use any form of spell

01:02:51 ◼   ► or grammar checker prior to posting an article?

01:02:54 ◼   ► - I try to run a spell check

01:02:56 ◼   ► and sometimes I will run Grammarly.

01:03:02 ◼   ► I signed up for a year of Grammarly just to try it out

01:03:04 ◼   ► because I, you know, writing on six colors,

01:03:08 ◼   ► you don't have a safety net.

01:03:11 ◼   ► I don't have a copy editor who's gonna go through my pieces.

01:03:14 ◼   ► And I also am not gonna wait to post them until, you know,

01:03:18 ◼   ► two days later because somebody has read it through.

01:03:21 ◼   ► So I, Grammarly is interesting because it finds,

01:03:26 ◼   ► it's better than a spell checker at finding words

01:03:30 ◼   ► that are typos contextually, which I'm very impressed by.

01:03:35 ◼   ► So it'll say, well, this is not the word

01:03:39 ◼   ► you wanna use here.

01:03:40 ◼   ► And it turns out it's a typo

01:03:42 ◼   ► and a spell checker won't do that.

01:03:43 ◼   ► And it will occasionally flag something that I'll agree with

01:03:46 ◼   ► in terms of there should be a comma here,

01:03:48 ◼   ► or you should remove this phrase.

01:03:49 ◼   ► The challenge I have with Grammarly

01:03:51 ◼   ► is that it flags a lot of stuff that I just,

01:03:54 ◼   ► it's trying to have me write a business letter

01:03:57 ◼   ► and that's not what I'm writing.

01:03:58 ◼   ► And so there's a lot of stuff that it flags as,

01:04:00 ◼   ► you might, you want to rephrase this or change this.

01:04:03 ◼   ► And I'm like, nope, that's what I,

01:04:05 ◼   ► that's exactly what I meant.

01:04:06 ◼   ► And that's frustrating,

01:04:07 ◼   ► but I do try to run longer pieces through Grammarly

01:04:11 ◼   ► just because it provides a little bit better safety net

01:04:14 ◼   ► than a straight up spell check.

01:04:16 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:04:17 ◼   ► - Even though I find it frustrating

01:04:18 ◼   ► because it catches so much more stuff

01:04:21 ◼   ► that I don't consider wrong.

01:04:23 ◼   ► - I guess it's trying to remove your voice a little bit.

01:04:26 ◼   ► - It is because like I said,

01:04:27 ◼   ► And it's got, they've tried, they've got settings to like,

01:04:30 ◼   ► it's more informal and not a business letter and all that.

01:04:32 ◼   ► But the fact is that, yeah,

01:04:34 ◼   ► it still throws up a whole bunch of stuff

01:04:36 ◼   ► that I just don't agree with.

01:04:38 ◼   ► And it gets confused by some technical terms

01:04:41 ◼   ► and things like that.

01:04:42 ◼   ► But the real goal there, and I don't use,

01:04:44 ◼   ► I don't write in apps with a grammar checker.

01:04:47 ◼   ► So I can't tell you, I'm not in Microsoft Word or whatever,

01:04:49 ◼   ► but so I can't compare.

01:04:52 ◼   ► But I do like the idea that Grammarly is,

01:04:56 ◼   ► is looking at things a little more holistically.

01:05:00 ◼   ► And so it can find those dumb mistakes

01:05:02 ◼   ► where I have typed the wrong word,

01:05:04 ◼   ► or I've made a typo into a word that is in the dictionary,

01:05:07 ◼   ► but is totally the wrong use.

01:05:09 ◼   ► Or if I don't have a piece of punctuation,

01:05:12 ◼   ► or if I left a fragment in that I meant to change,

01:05:14 ◼   ► and now it doesn't make sense,

01:05:16 ◼   ► all that stuff gets flagged

01:05:18 ◼   ► in a way that a spelling checker wouldn't.

01:05:19 ◼   ► So I have been experimenting with that,

01:05:22 ◼   ► and I probably will keep paying for it

01:05:24 ◼   ► because it's a nice last sort of sanity check

01:05:28 ◼   ► before I get it posted.

01:05:30 ◼   ► - Google started doing a thing recently

01:05:32 ◼   ► which is equal parts funny and annoying for me

01:05:35 ◼   ► in Google Docs, where it's flagging the differences

01:05:40 ◼   ► between English spelling and American spelling

01:05:43 ◼   ► and is asking me if I mean it.

01:05:46 ◼   ► Do you wanna have this you taken out of here

01:05:49 ◼   ► or do you wanna change to American English?

01:05:52 ◼   ► Like it's just like a funny thing

01:05:53 ◼   ► 'cause it's like either I'm putting it in

01:05:55 ◼   ► or somebody else is putting it in.

01:05:56 ◼   ► And it's like, are you sure about this one?

01:06:00 ◼   ► And they ask me, do you wanna change?

01:06:02 ◼   ► Do you wanna change the sentence to American English?

01:06:04 ◼   ► - I honestly wonder about that.

01:06:06 ◼   ► And sometimes in our docs,

01:06:07 ◼   ► you write something in British English

01:06:09 ◼   ► and it underlines it for me.

01:06:11 ◼   ► And I wonder, does it underline it for you?

01:06:13 ◼   ► Or does it know that it's okay for you

01:06:16 ◼   ► and it's not okay for me?

01:06:18 ◼   ► And then we end up having these kind of,

01:06:20 ◼   ► potentially we could go back and forth

01:06:21 ◼   ► and we have to keep changing things back and forth

01:06:23 ◼   ► and back and forth

01:06:24 ◼   ► 'cause we're both auto-correcting to our own local language.

01:06:27 ◼   ► - I think that is happening now.

01:06:28 ◼   ► This is the thing that Google loves to do.

01:06:29 ◼   ► - That probably is happening.

01:06:32 ◼   ► - Michael asks, "Do you think that Apple's upcoming headset

01:06:35 ◼   ► could be thought of in the way that the HomePod is?

01:06:39 ◼   ► Too expensive, too high-end version of something

01:06:42 ◼   ► that exists from others

01:06:43 ◼   ► that's in an otherwise good enough form?"

01:06:46 ◼   ► So how we would say the HomePod is just an over-engineered,

01:06:50 ◼   ► over-expensive version of an Amazon Echo or whatever.

01:06:54 ◼   ► - I feel like we covered this in our episode recently

01:06:57 ◼   ► where we talked about this product.

01:06:58 ◼   ► I think I addressed this question directly,

01:07:02 ◼   ► which is sure it's possible.

01:07:05 ◼   ► The difference is that Apple is going,

01:07:07 ◼   ► it seems to be committed to this for the long haul

01:07:10 ◼   ► as a product category.

01:07:12 ◼   ► And they risk it being perceived as being too expensive,

01:07:16 ◼   ► but you know, if they keep at it

01:07:17 ◼   ► and they keep building new versions of it,

01:07:19 ◼   ► I think their thought is that they will wear people down over time.

01:07:22 ◼   ► I don't think it's going to be...

01:07:23 ◼   ► I do think it's possible that the first one will be way too expensive and it will be kind

01:07:27 ◼   ► of rejected by people, but that may be okay because Apple is thinking about this for the

01:07:35 ◼   ► long term.

01:07:36 ◼   ► My hope is they will have learned something from the HomePod, and if they still are planning

01:07:41 ◼   ► on going down this route of it being really expensive, to make sure that they market it

01:07:46 ◼   ► with that in mind.

01:07:48 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:07:49 ◼   ► that just like, this is better?

01:07:51 ◼   ► It's like, okay, but it's three times more expensive.

01:07:55 ◼   ► You know, like is that?

01:07:58 ◼   ► - I think the difference here is that,

01:08:00 ◼   ► is that Apple can probably come out and say,

01:08:02 ◼   ► this is the best experience ever.

01:08:04 ◼   ► And any experience below this isn't good enough.

01:08:06 ◼   ► And we can debate that,

01:08:07 ◼   ► but I think that they will be able to say that.

01:08:10 ◼   ► Whereas HomePod, it's not as if,

01:08:12 ◼   ► I mean, I know they said a lot of superlatives

01:08:13 ◼   ► about the HomePod, but like,

01:08:15 ◼   ► but the truth is the market they were going into

01:08:18 ◼   ► is every speaker ever made.

01:08:20 ◼   ► - Or that it's just like the HomePod sounds nice,

01:08:22 ◼   ► but like to the level that it's nicer than an Amazon Echo,

01:08:27 ◼   ► so it's not that much of a difference.

01:08:29 ◼   ► They do have the opportunity here to really,

01:08:31 ◼   ► like you put it on and you're like, oh my God, you know.

01:08:34 ◼   ► - Right, to blow people away and also to say,

01:08:37 ◼   ► all of those other things that you can buy

01:08:38 ◼   ► for 300 bucks are garbage.

01:08:41 ◼   ► This is the stuff, this is the thing

01:08:42 ◼   ► that's gonna change the world.

01:08:43 ◼   ► And again, it will still be very expensive

01:08:46 ◼   ► and a lot of people won't buy it,

01:08:47 ◼   ► but it's not the same as the HomePod.

01:08:49 ◼   ► - The iPhone was really expensive when it came out.

01:08:52 ◼   ► Phones were free, right?

01:08:53 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:08:54 ◼   ► - Smartphones were free before that.

01:08:56 ◼   ► You just got them as part of your contract,

01:08:57 ◼   ► but the iPhone, you also had to give them $600 for it.

01:09:00 ◼   ► And it's like, oh, hang on a minute.

01:09:01 ◼   ► This is a lot of money.

01:09:02 ◼   ► So this has not never worked.

01:09:07 ◼   ► It just hasn't worked maybe recently.

01:09:10 ◼   ► The Apple Watch maybe is another example.

01:09:12 ◼   ► Apple Watches, you know,

01:09:13 ◼   ► it's much more expensive than a regular watch.

01:09:16 ◼   ► Chris asks, "What are some of your favorite all-time TV show theme songs?"

01:09:22 ◼   ► So I wanted to have this question because we just started re-watching Mandalorian again

01:09:28 ◼   ► because we just watched Boba Fett.

01:09:30 ◼   ► I like the song for Boba Fett, but I love the Mandalorian theme song.

01:09:35 ◼   ► The Mandalorian theme song is one of my favorite TV show theme songs.

01:09:38 ◼   ► It's just so good.

01:09:39 ◼   ► I just love it.

01:09:40 ◼   ► It's just a fantastic piece of music.

01:09:41 ◼   ► It gets me so hyped up for the show.

01:09:45 ◼   ► I will also throw in Succession, which is a recent one.

01:09:48 ◼   ► Love the Succession theme song.

01:09:49 ◼   ► I know I'm not alone in that.

01:09:51 ◼   ► And then because I picked two that were very recent,

01:09:55 ◼   ► I wanted to pick some that were older.

01:09:58 ◼   ► The West Wing, love the West Wing.

01:09:59 ◼   ► Just definitely get the West Wing's theme song

01:10:02 ◼   ► gets me in the mood for the West Wing.

01:10:04 ◼   ► Like I'm in it.

01:10:05 ◼   ► Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, it's just superb.

01:10:08 ◼   ► And Curb Your Enthusiasm.

01:10:10 ◼   ► - Sure.

01:10:12 ◼   ► - So good.

01:10:13 ◼   ► It's just like perfect, right?

01:10:14 ◼   ► It's perfect for its thing.

01:10:15 ◼   ► It's ended up like just that song,

01:10:18 ◼   ► like the "Curb Your Enthusiasm" theme song

01:10:20 ◼   ► is played so well that now just hearing it

01:10:23 ◼   ► makes you feel awkward, you know?

01:10:25 ◼   ► It's just like, yes, they nailed it.

01:10:26 ◼   ► - I will point people to the incomparable episodes,

01:10:30 ◼   ► 388 and 515, both of which are TV theme song drafts.

01:10:34 ◼   ► - Of course.

01:10:35 ◼   ► - But just mining that Spider-Man, Spider-Man.

01:10:40 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, that's a good one.

01:10:43 ◼   ► I picked the Friday Night Lights theme song,

01:10:47 ◼   ► which is really nice.

01:10:48 ◼   ► And that's in a style like Explosions in the Sky,

01:10:52 ◼   ► which is a great band,

01:10:53 ◼   ► even though it's not Explosions in the Sky,

01:10:54 ◼   ► it's that post-punk.

01:10:56 ◼   ► It's really nice.

01:10:57 ◼   ► Let's see, what else do I want to throw in there?

01:11:02 ◼   ► Magnum P.I.?

01:11:03 ◼   ► Love that, classic '80s Magnum P.I. theme, can't be beat.

01:11:08 ◼   ► Tectorus has a really good theme song.

01:11:12 ◼   ► I like that a lot.

01:11:13 ◼   ► And I don't know, Hawaii Five-O is great.

01:11:18 ◼   ► I always used to love that as a kid.

01:11:20 ◼   ► I used to love the Taxi theme song

01:11:22 ◼   ► and Taxi was on late and my brother watched it,

01:11:25 ◼   ► but I wasn't allowed to stay up.

01:11:27 ◼   ► It was my bedtime, nine o'clock or whenever it was on

01:11:29 ◼   ► when I was a little kid.

01:11:30 ◼   ► And so I would stay up to listen to the theme song

01:11:33 ◼   ► and then I was allowed to go to bed,

01:11:34 ◼   ► but I could listen to the theme song first before I went.

01:11:37 ◼   ► So I'll throw that in there.

01:11:38 ◼   ► A lot of great TV theme songs out there.

01:11:41 ◼   ► If you would like to send in a question for us to answer on the show, you can send in

01:11:45 ◼   ► a tweet with the hashtag #AskUpgrade or you can use ?AskUpgrade in the Relay FM members

01:11:51 ◼   ► discord, which you can get access to by signing up for Upgrade Plus. Go to GetUpgradePlus.com

01:11:57 ◼   ► and you will get longer, ad-free versions of the show each and every week.

01:12:03 ◼   ► Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode of Upgrade. If you want to find Jason

01:12:06 ◼   ► on the channel.

01:12:24 ◼   ► [MUSIC PLAYING]

01:12:28 ◼   ► [MUSIC PLAYING]