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Upgrade

351: Long Hair Is In, Disco Is Back

 

00:00:00   [Music]

00:00:08   From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 351. Today's show is brought to you by Fitbod,

00:00:15   Hello, and TextExpander. My name is Myke Hurley, I am joined by Jason Snell. Hello, Jason Snell.

00:00:20   Hello, Myke Hurley, how are you? I'm fine and dandy, my friend. We have a #SnellTalk question

00:00:25   from Ivan, and Ivan wants to know, Jason, how do you wake your Mac from sleep? Do you press

00:00:30   a specific key on the keyboard? Do you click a mouse key? What do you do? It's the one and

00:00:35   only Ivan. I feel like I've gotten this question before. I feel like I've gotten this before. At

00:00:40   a certain point, we will answer all of the same questions more than once. I suppose so. The answer

00:00:46   is I don't. I guess I do have a laptop now, I have a MacBook Air, and I press the space bar.

00:00:52   I think that's what I do. I'm pretty sure that's what I do. And on my iPad Pro, when it's in the

00:00:57   smart keyboard case, I will press the space bar to wake it up, usually. Yeah, space bar is a good

00:01:03   one. My iMac I don't put to sleep, although it does have a screensaver, so eventually I will wake

00:01:08   it up, and that's generally the space bar. Space bar is my go-to, but I don't generally sleep my

00:01:13   iMac. I start it up every morning and I shut it down at night. Right. It's a thing I do,

00:01:19   that apparently lots of people don't do. Although I was thinking about this, if my next Mac here at

00:01:25   my desk is Apple Silicon, I was thinking about the fact that Apple Silicon Macs, because they've got

00:01:31   the efficiency cores, there's basically no like power nap anymore. They are just capable of running

00:01:39   with their efficiency cores as needed and doing stuff in the background. And I thought,

00:01:45   maybe when I get an Apple Silicon Mac at my desk here, I will consider not shutting it down,

00:01:51   but instead putting it to sleep and seeing how that is. But so many years of dealing with laptops

00:01:57   that would not wake from sleep and having to reboot when things got weird, having a desktop,

00:02:03   again, as my primary, I just really enjoyed the idea that every day it was fresh and not running

00:02:10   for 40 days in a row and weird things start to happen and I have to reboot. And I have to say,

00:02:15   it's pretty stable. I very rarely have to restart my computer during the day unless there's a

00:02:19   software update or something. What about the potential M1 would maybe change your mind? Is

00:02:24   it because of the lower power draw or something? I think, well, partly, but it's also just the idea

00:02:30   that it's designed to run like without, because power nap, the idea behind power nap was it wakes

00:02:36   up occasionally a little bit, does some stuff and goes back to sleep. And my understanding is that

00:02:40   with the M1 Macs, it can just always be aware. Well, I guess like an iPad. Right. Exactly. You

00:02:49   don't turn it off, do you? You just don't turn it off. Right. And I think the trick is it's got the

00:02:54   low power cores. So it's designed to be in a mode. The iPhone and the iPad were always designed to be

00:02:59   in a mode where they're on, but only a little bit. And I'm intrigued by that feature on my desktop

00:03:10   Mac that I might just put it to sleep and see how it goes. But I don't normally do that now,

00:03:17   just laptops and iPads and things. But space bar is the answer to Ivan's question. The space bar,

00:03:22   it's the universal symbol for waking up, the space bar. If you'd like to send in a question to help

00:03:27   us open an episode of Upgrade, just send out a tweet with the hashtag #snowtalk or use question

00:03:32   mark snow talk in the Relay FM members Discord. We have some follow up on Magic Keyboards,

00:03:37   don't we, Jason? Yeah, it's good news. Now, I feel like we got this right. We nailed it in the last

00:03:43   show, which was there was a report that the 12.9 inch Magic Keyboard for the iPad Pro fifth

00:03:49   generation was coming into existence because they wouldn't support the old model. The idea was that

00:03:58   all the ones that have been bought for the 12.9 iPad Pro for the last year aren't listed as being

00:04:03   supported by the fifth generation. And there was this whole kind of, I think rightfully so,

00:04:09   hubbub about the idea that that just makes your already pretty expensive iPad Pro that much more

00:04:14   expensive because you're going to have to buy another one of these things that you just bought

00:04:17   because it doesn't work. And it seemed weird because the new iPad Pro is not particularly

00:04:24   large. We said it's half a millimeter thicker is all. And so what I said, I think, and I think you

00:04:31   agree with me was this sounds very much like it fits, but it doesn't really meet Apple's exacting

00:04:39   specifications. Like it would be a little awkward or it wouldn't close quite right, or it wouldn't

00:04:44   look quite right. And therefore Apple's going to say that it's not supported even though it might

00:04:51   be fine. And it turns out that's exactly the case. Apple put out a tech note last week that said,

00:04:55   it may not precisely fit when closed, especially when screen protectors are applied. And so really

00:05:02   it's more that Apple thought it was awkward enough that they made an iteration of the Magic Keyboard

00:05:07   that's a little bit more loose fitting, which is probably the case with the Folio case that I got

00:05:15   that doesn't look any bigger, but it probably has a little bit more give in it for the bigger iPad.

00:05:20   And so if you've got a 12.9 inch iPad Pro Magic Keyboard for your 2018 or 2020 iPad Pro,

00:05:29   and you are thinking of getting this one, it sounds like it's going to be fine. You're going

00:05:34   to be able to use that case and that keyboard and it'll work fine. It'll just be not quite up to

00:05:41   Apple's perfect standards. It may be awkward, especially if you've got like a thick screen

00:05:45   protector on it or something like that. - We had a smart keyboard show up today. I actually

00:05:50   hadn't thought to unbox it, but it's the newest one. So it's for the fifth generation iPad,

00:05:57   because we would have wanted a new iPad. So I should actually try that out too, to see if it's

00:06:03   any bigger, because they did update that one as well. They updated all of them. So I will give it

00:06:08   a go on one of the older iPads, it makes a difference. This whole thing though to me is like,

00:06:12   why did they wait so long to publish this information? - Yeah, this looks like a goof,

00:06:17   honestly. - I know, but like still it took them the best part of a week to put the tech note together.

00:06:23   - Yeah, no, I do wonder that. I think they figured this wasn't an issue because they didn't

00:06:28   specifically say it didn't. It seemed like they just updated the database with a new set of

00:06:33   compatibilities. And it's one of those things where everybody's sort of doing their job,

00:06:39   but nobody was really thinking of the higher level thing. And you're right,

00:06:42   this is the kind of thing where maybe there should have been like a PR statement that was like,

00:06:46   no, it'll work, it's fine. And then the tech note gets updated. But instead it was sort of like,

00:06:50   we just found the tech note and said, I mean, who knows? I don't know who found the tech note.

00:06:55   Maybe the person who found the tech note was pointed at it by Apple PR. I don't honestly know.

00:06:58   - I would assume so. - I don't know. There are people who just

00:07:01   cruise the tech notes. - Yeah, well, like Steven.

00:07:04   - Steven Hackett, yeah. - I don't really know though why they didn't just

00:07:07   clear this up when the stories came out last week. - Yeah.

00:07:10   - Right? Like they could have just given a statement to The Verge and said, no, it will work.

00:07:15   It's just not as like, as tolerances aren't exactly what we'd like, so we updated it, but you can use

00:07:20   your old one. I mean, we only bought the new Magic Keyboard. So yeah, so I ordered an iPad for,

00:07:27   and like I said, 12.9, and she was using a 2018. And she prefers the smart keyboard to the Magic

00:07:34   Keyboard. And so I had to order a new one because the 2018 had a different camera cut out. So it

00:07:41   won't fit the 2021 iPad. - Right. They're backward compatible,

00:07:46   but not forward compatible. - Exactly. Because if you remember, that was just, it had the one camera,

00:07:51   and then the 2020 iPad had the big square one. - Right. It's either that or you take like scissors

00:07:57   and try to cut a hole. - I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I mean, you know,

00:08:00   that keyboard, you know, we've had that for many years at this point. It was my original one that

00:08:06   I got when I got that 2018 iPad Pro. We're fine to update it. - Yeah. I wanted to mention, I was

00:08:11   looking at pricing. I didn't order one. I did that thing where it's like, oh, but the 16 gigs of RAM

00:08:16   we know about now, and that's in the one terabyte and two terabyte models. And, you know, do I want

00:08:21   that? We don't really know. Is WWDC going to make me more motivated to have one with more RAM or not?

00:08:26   I don't really know. And then I priced the one terabyte cellular model. It's $2,000. - Is that

00:08:35   without the keyboard? - Yeah, that's just the iPad. That's a $2,000 iPad. And that's not the

00:08:41   most expensive one. That's the one terabyte cellular model. It's $19.99. - That is, yep, okay.

00:08:47   - And the thing is the 256 model is not that. It's like $13.99. It's appreciably cheaper. And I

00:08:53   thought, wow, this is a lot of money. And I don't know if I want that. And like, how much do you

00:08:58   really want a theoretical 16 gigs of RAM? I mean, the RAM is real, but what you do with it is still

00:09:03   a little bit theoretical. And is this going to be sort of like me paying a lot of money for spec

00:09:11   that will never, ever, ever actually be used? I don't know. But what cured me of my dilemma here

00:09:17   is that the ship dates for all this stuff was June, like late June. And because I didn't get

00:09:25   up at five in the morning because I wasn't sure I really wanted to buy this. And I thought, one,

00:09:31   well, by then we'll know what is going on with iPad OS and that'll give me some information about it.

00:09:37   - Yeah, but then you'd be waiting till August. - Right. And then two, the supply chain,

00:09:44   like the Apple's distribution channels are such that I know for a fact that when it says that

00:09:51   you can get an iPad Pro in late June by mail, I would bet you serious money that by the end of

00:10:00   May, I could just literally walk into my local Apple store and pick one up. - You have this

00:10:04   every time, don't you? I feel like recently we keep having these stories where you don't go for-

00:10:09   - For me once, shame on me. - Yeah, exactly. You don't go for the launch

00:10:12   day and then just order one for pickup in your local store. I think you're right there, actually,

00:10:16   for those products. I think that makes a lot of sense. - There's nothing wrong with ordering one

00:10:20   that's way out, but I would say anybody out there listening who has ordered one and their ship date

00:10:23   is way, way out, keep your order 'cause you can cancel. 'Cause one of two things will probably

00:10:31   happen. One, it may contract, right? It may come closer and you may discover that your ship date

00:10:38   is closer than they originally said. But two, if you live near an Apple store, once these ship,

00:10:45   Apple doesn't put 100% of the models in the online order shipping channel. They don't. They put them

00:10:51   in Apple stores. And if you've got Apple stores around, you may very well find yourself able to

00:10:56   pick one up in an Apple store. So just something to keep in mind. - So the products are on sale now,

00:11:03   as we were mentioning. We ordered an iPad and an Apple TV. The iPad is not for me. I am not

00:11:12   ordering one. I will do what you're doing in the sense of like, I'm not gonna get anything and

00:11:18   I'll wait for WWDC. And then if it seems like there is a benefit for me ordering one of these,

00:11:23   then I'll try and get my hands on one. But it's really intriguing. So like most of the ship dates

00:11:28   for all of the products have slipped to June and to late June, which is not particularly outside

00:11:34   of the realm of normality, like after a day or two that you could be looking at three or four weeks

00:11:39   of some of the items being pushed out. The thing that's really interesting to me, I can't remember

00:11:44   a time when this was the case, when a new product come out and the delivery date is like 21st to

00:11:50   28th of May. Like that's the delivery date. Like there's like a week window in there. And I just

00:11:56   found that really intriguing. And we're gonna talk about some of this stuff later, but I guess this

00:12:00   is Apple kind of hedging against potential supply issues that they might still be having for these

00:12:05   products. - Yeah, Apple, we will talk about it. There are definitely going to be issues and Apple

00:12:11   has said that they aren't gonna have enough to meet demand. So it's definitely gonna be a challenge.

00:12:17   - Stephen Hackett noted in the press release for when they put all the information about the

00:12:23   pre-orders that the green, pink, blue and silver will be the only IMAX available in retail stores.

00:12:30   The rest of the colors have to be ordered online. - Yeah. And those are the same colors that are in

00:12:34   the low end model, which is interesting. And I'm sure the low end model isn't the only model that

00:12:39   will be in Apple stores, but this is an interesting example of them simplifying their product line

00:12:45   in terms of distribution. I just talked about their retail channel, right? Like if you pre-ordered

00:12:51   an orange IMAX, you can't hope that it will show up at your local Apple store 'cause they're not

00:12:55   gonna ship them there at all. At least for now, you never know by the holidays, I wouldn't be

00:13:00   surprised, but this is a sales technique, right? It's a .com exclusive, essentially online exclusive.

00:13:07   We're not gonna ship these out to the stores because that's seven different sets of everything

00:13:14   instead of four different sets of everything. I wonder if you need a new power adapter or

00:13:20   you have a broken keyboard or something, if your local Apple store will have that in orange,

00:13:24   or if you'll have to also do that remotely. - It is not abnormal. I mean, it's actually,

00:13:31   it's the way that Apple do it. They only ever have certain specs in the stores anyway. So you can,

00:13:36   and it's not always just the base. Like I've gone to a store before and was able to just buy in the

00:13:42   store a higher spec model. They keep a few different specs around, but it doesn't surprise

00:13:46   me that they're not planning on having all of the colors with multiple spec tiers in all the stores

00:13:53   all the time. It's just too much stock to hold. - It's a lot. I think that they do,

00:13:58   they take their shots, right? They have, and this has always been the case, they have

00:14:05   configurations that are available. And some of them are even sort of sold as like a build

00:14:09   to order, a configure to order configuration. But sometimes those configurations that are popular

00:14:15   are available in retail stores because they do want to serve their business customers or to upsell

00:14:19   somebody on a high-end system, right? They don't want to get somebody in the store saying,

00:14:22   "I want an iMac today," and saying, "Well, yeah, the one that you have,

00:14:25   you want, which is more expensive and will make us more money is not here. So go on the web and

00:14:30   leave our store or buy a cheaper one." Like they don't want to do that. So they want to have a

00:14:34   variety of configurations available in the store for you to buy. But there are limits to that. I

00:14:40   mean, they're physical limits. These are iMacs, so they're fairly large and you got to keep them

00:14:44   in the back, right? Like there's only so many iMacs you can store back there. - Air tags, we got them.

00:14:50   It's not a lot to say that you haven't already heard. Setup is really simple. I got some of the

00:14:56   Apple accessories. I think they look really nice. I got the key ring and I've got it on my keys.

00:15:02   All of those accessories are very... I've got the key ring and I've got a couple of the different

00:15:08   straps and they are... The leather stuff, unsurprisingly for Apple, is very well made.

00:15:14   Very well made. - They're all so expensive. I was looking at like Belkin having like a $12

00:15:20   key ring and all that and I thought, "Well, that's more reasonable." It's a little bit ridiculous

00:15:25   that the AirTag doesn't have its own little hole for putting a key ring in, but at least there are

00:15:30   going to be some more low cost accessories like the Belkin thing because the Apple stuff,

00:15:36   while very nicely made, it's just like that's a lot of money for an AirTag. - They're expensive,

00:15:42   but I think it's like a fashion thing. I think they look nice. I have one of the Belkin ones

00:15:48   and it's fine, but it looks... So what I'll say about the AirTag, the AirTag, I have it in the

00:15:56   leather key ring and the brown. It looks to me like a really nice key ring. - Yes. - But the

00:16:02   Belkin one looks like I have a Bluetooth tracker on my keys. And I'm not saying that that's bad,

00:16:10   but it's just not what I want. - Yeah, no, and I think that's the rationale is that Apple stuff's

00:16:16   going to be expensive, but it's going to be nice. I think that's their goal anyway, right? Yes,

00:16:20   it's expensive and I'm glad there are other options because some people are going to look

00:16:25   at that and go, "Are you kidding me?" And other people are going to say, "Yeah, it's expensive,

00:16:28   but it's nice." And this is part of the thing that Apple does, right? You get somebody in a store and

00:16:34   they buy an AirTag and they're like, "Oh, well, we've got a key ring here." And they're like,

00:16:38   "All right, let's do it." And it costs a lot of money, but it does look good. And because there's

00:16:43   no doubt, I didn't pick up the key ring and think this is ridiculous. Well, I did. I thought the

00:16:50   price was ridiculous, but I didn't pick it up and go, "This is a bad value." It's like, no, it's

00:16:55   nice. It's just, I don't know if I would spend this money on something. It doesn't necessarily

00:17:01   feel like I need that level of niceness. I have a lot of crappy plastic key rings and they're fine.

00:17:08   But everybody gets to make their own decisions. - If you haven't bought AirTags yet, you're still

00:17:14   making a decision or whatever, please do yourself a favor and get them engraved.

00:17:18   - Yes, it's a must. - It's the right move.

00:17:22   - So Apple sent me for evaluation a bunch of AirTags. And the sad thing about them is that

00:17:29   all of mine are blank. And they're not interesting. - It's boring.

00:17:35   - I know that there's a lot of skepticism about engraving Apple products because it really is,

00:17:41   Apple offers free engraving and it's nice and all, but it also essentially means that it's a

00:17:44   lot harder for you to sell it to someone else because it's got your name on it. And so it

00:17:48   suppresses your resale value if you're somebody who resells your Apple products and all of that.

00:17:53   AirTags are not like that. AirTags need personalities. - It's a $29 tracker.

00:17:59   - And it's not your name. It's a symbol. - Or you can buy one of my initials on it.

00:18:06   The one on my keys with my initials on it. And I think it looks really nice.

00:18:10   - A-H-M-H. - Grimace. Ghost.

00:18:14   - Grimace. Yeah. - Yep, that's what I went with.

00:18:16   Then I had the Grimace in one on my backpack. - Yeah. And then you know it and it's like,

00:18:21   "Oh, that's my unicorn one," or whatever, right? You know what it is. And so do that

00:18:26   if you're gonna buy AirTags. - But Apple need to have

00:18:28   way more options for the engraving. I think they probably know this now. I mean,

00:18:32   this is something they have been adding to it over time. I hope that they keep adding to it.

00:18:36   I understand why at the same time you can't just do any emoji ever, possibly ever. I understand why

00:18:43   they gotta put some kind of limits on it, but I want them to keep opening it up.

00:18:47   For some reason, I thought you could share AirTags with families, but you can't do that.

00:18:52   It seems like all you can do if you're in a family is turn off the privacy protection thing.

00:18:58   So if you had a shared key, it's not gonna say, "Hey, you're being stalked," basically,

00:19:05   to the other person in your family. And I think that that's a misstep, and I would like to see

00:19:09   them add that. And I've seen some references. I think Steve Mosler was tweeting about this,

00:19:13   that there was some references to them adding this. But for example, I can, in Find My,

00:19:19   see where all of Adina's Apple products are because we're in a family, but I can't see

00:19:24   where her AirTag is. And honestly, that feels more important to me, like to find her bag,

00:19:30   her keys or whatever, than her AirPods. Yeah, she's somewhere else, and she says,

00:19:35   "Oh, I left my thing at home. Can you find it?" And I'm like, "I don't know."

00:19:38   I can't. Like, "Just keep playing the noise, please, for an hour."

00:19:40   It seems like a feature that they probably omitted while trying to get it ready to ship.

00:19:45   Yeah, but Jason, come on. They had two years to ship these things.

00:19:49   Yeah, they did, but who knows about the software, right?

00:19:52   No, I know, I know. It's entirely possible that they got the software to a point where it was

00:19:56   shippable and they said, "Stop working on AirTags now," and that was two years ago. But yes,

00:20:01   it is an oversight because they should absolutely have at least an option to say,

00:20:08   "Share this in the family." That symbol. It is super funny that in the packaging,

00:20:15   there are references to 2020 and in some cases, 2019.

00:20:18   2019. Unbelievable.

00:20:20   Like, I know that this has been the two-year rumor, and it's really showing it. I mean,

00:20:25   and this is one of those to me where I just think they just lost an entire year, really.

00:20:31   Like, 2020 was just not the right time for this product, and I think that they held it for that

00:20:35   reason. They also had antitrust stuff that they were battling. I think they just waited it out,

00:20:39   and that's kind of where we are with it. But I like them.

00:20:43   Yeah. Yeah, they're, again, so much time spent on such a minor product, but they're fine.

00:20:53   And the Find My Network is cool, and having the ability to use it, because it's like every iPhone.

00:20:59   It's incredible. Yeah, it really will make a difference.

00:21:04   And the U1 support is excellent, the way that you do the little thing, and you, like, follow the

00:21:10   arrow around, and it starts buzzing when you get close. It's really clever.

00:21:13   Which is why the U1 chip was introduced in the fall of 2019.

00:21:18   Yep. But the product didn't exist until now, but it is a good thing. Yeah.

00:21:24   Well, I'm going to Arizona. I'm going to take my first flight that I've taken in more than a year,

00:21:33   and so I'm air tagging it. I got an air tag key. I got an air tag on my bag. I'm going to try not

00:21:42   to lose my possessions, but if I do... Are you checking a bag?

00:21:45   Air tag. Probably not.

00:21:47   Okay. If you do, that would be interesting, because you could watch where the air tag was

00:21:51   going inside of the airport or whatever. I was actually thinking, you know, if these

00:21:55   things really become popular, if you would have, like, you encourage your employees in the sorting

00:22:04   area to have iPhones so that they can track Find My Tags or something, do you mount, like, an iPhone

00:22:10   in your sorting room so that it can scan all of the little tags that come through and identify

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00:24:29   Out of nowhere, like a flash of lightning, completely surprised I was, Jason Snell,

00:24:34   that Apple published their Q2 results a couple of days ago. This is something where

00:24:39   I remember them saying, "It's coming." And it was like a week or two before the Apple event.

00:24:45   Then the Apple event happened and I completely forgot that there was going to be the results.

00:24:51   Luckily, I don't have to do charts or listen live like you do. I just wait for you to do the work

00:24:56   for me. I check their little thing and put a calendar item in my calendar that says Apple

00:25:02   results. And then I know that that's the day. So yeah, yeah, they did. And they were interesting.

00:25:09   Shocking, I think. Probably the right phrase. Seriously, and I wrote about this, but I was not

00:25:17   using exaggeration. I think this is the first time that I've ever been covering Apple's results

00:25:24   that I literally was wondering if somebody at Apple had typed the numbers wrong.

00:25:29   Yeah, it's probably a Mac Club piece. You say, "This is the first time I've ever looked at the

00:25:33   numbers and thought some sort of clerical error had been made." I love that. I really love that.

00:25:39   It was like, yeah, like a little, like one of their guys with the green eye shade,

00:25:42   one of their accountants is like on their little numpad and they're like, "Oh, no, we made a mistake."

00:25:51   But no, it was really like this. And it was a ridiculous quarter across the board. It's a

00:25:59   holiday quarter. That was really my takeaway is that a holiday quarter is safe. But it looks like

00:26:07   a holiday quarter. Apple's business is seasonal. The holiday quarters are their biggest quarters

00:26:11   ever. This quarter was almost as big as the 2019 calendar holiday quarter and bigger than any other

00:26:17   previous holiday quarter to 2019. It's the third best quarter Apple has had in its history.

00:26:23   Yeah, behind the calendar 2019 and calendar 2020 holidays. This is number three. Yeah.

00:26:29   I think Ben Thompson said in a Stretachery that he thinks this is, from his perspective,

00:26:35   Apple's best quarter ever because it's so good and unexpected. It's so aberrant from what we expect,

00:26:43   right? Because it's seasonal, this is why you do year over year comparisons instead of sequential

00:26:49   comparisons because sequential comparisons are always going to look bad in the second quarter,

00:26:53   except for this year, because the first quarter is the holiday quarter. And it's so great.

00:26:59   And this is, I know I've said this before, but this was the thing where I always had to convince

00:27:03   and explain to my bosses at IDG why Macworld's traffic was always down and disappointing.

00:27:10   Like every year they'd be like, wow, what's going on with your traffic going down? And I would have

00:27:14   to say, well, January is Macworld Expo. That's where Apple makes all of its product announcements.

00:27:21   It's the biggest month of the year. And we chart it. If you chart your chart starting in January,

00:27:28   we always look like we're going down, but we're not. That's the big month, January. And it's a

00:27:35   little like that. It's like, don't do it that way. You can't compare it when it's seasonal.

00:27:39   So this is arguably their best quarter ever when you view it as like up 54% in revenue over the

00:27:46   year ago quarter, because it's, yeah, it's their third biggest ever. And it's not a holiday quarter.

00:27:51   It's pretty well, it actually, I think also punctuates when we talk about how the Apple's,

00:27:57   size of Apple under Tim Cook versus the size of Apple under Steve Jobs.

00:28:00   Like it's really easy to lose sight of the fact that Apple is not remotely the company it was

00:28:06   when Steve Jobs was the CEO. It has grown so much, especially in its revenue that it's generating

00:28:12   in the last decade. And this is a great example of that where they now have a 90,

00:28:18   a run of the mill quarter that is a $90 billion revenue quarter, which even two years ago

00:28:25   was the holiday quarter. And now it's just a quarter that happened a three month span

00:28:32   after the holidays. And there are reasons for it. And, you know, it's not necessarily repeatable,

00:28:37   but, um, it's shocking. And, and some of the details product by product are shocking.

00:28:42   So yeah, that, that is the other part of the story. So I want to give some stats to try and

00:28:48   put some of this in perspective because we have just some wild numbers. So the overall revenue is

00:28:54   89.6 billion, which is up 54% year over year, which is bananas. The iPhone is 47.9 billion,

00:29:04   which is up 66% year over year, but this was expected. Yeah, this is, uh, that theory that

00:29:11   started with the iPhone six, really that, you know, what really drives iPhone sales is a new

00:29:16   design and that the S years, the, the interim years, the gap years are not as impressive because

00:29:22   a lot of people wait for the new look iPhone. And here we had a new iPhone, the iPhone 12.

00:29:27   And I think that this shows that theory being correct, that you create this cycle when you

00:29:34   change the look that drives a lot of sales. Um, and they, it also launched a little bit later,

00:29:40   which means that this, not all the sales fit in the holiday quarter. So some of them pushed into

00:29:44   the, uh, the March quarter. Yeah. And, uh, and that's why, you know, it was more than half of

00:29:51   their revenue for the, for the quarter. So 54% of overall revenue, and this is a stat that we've

00:29:56   been paying attention to more recently for, for a couple of reasons. We started paying attention to

00:30:00   it when it was going down and when, because it was going down because iPhone revenue was going down.

00:30:07   But now that that's mostly calmed down a bit, the 54% of revenue numbers still shows that like,

00:30:14   you know, Apple is the iPhone business, but that 54% revenue number when they've had such a good

00:30:21   for the iPhone, I think really says a lot about boosting their other products. Right. For sure.

00:30:27   Um, I also want to mention a little tidbit that Tim Cook had in the, uh, in the analyst call after

00:30:33   the results came out, which was that, um, he said the best selling model is the iPhone 12. He listed

00:30:39   a bunch of markets where Apple has the two big best-selling phones or the five best-selling phones,

00:30:44   like very much you, you make this kind of money because your product is a hit. However, um, he

00:30:50   said also the pro line is selling really well. And they talked a lot about mix, um, which suggests

00:30:55   that's like the mix of the product that it helped their margins, which I read as being like, we did

00:31:00   sell a lot of pros and the pros are more expensive. And so we made, you know, we, we made more money

00:31:06   because the mix was good. That one product that he didn't talk about was the, um, uh, 12 mini. Yeah.

00:31:11   So I think I'm going to have to buy the mini this fall because it might be the last one. I'm a

00:31:17   little worried about that. And I love it so much. The, the, all the rumor reports, the supply chain

00:31:22   reports suggest there'll be a mini this year and won't be one the year after. And that's that.

00:31:27   I reckon they'll keep it around on a multi-year refresh. It will replace the se. That's what I

00:31:32   reckon is going to happen. Yeah, I hope so. I hope so. Or, or at least that they'll just,

00:31:35   every couple of years, they'll throw a mini in, but, um, but yeah, I love the size. I was, um,

00:31:41   uh, moving some phones around in our house and rolling an older phone that I wasn't using down

00:31:46   and all of that stuff. And I was holding the standard size phones and thinking, I don't want

00:31:51   this. I really liked the mini size. So I guess it's me and a few of us, but not as many as maybe

00:31:58   Apple would like, but this is where it gets really interesting for me. The Mac $9.1 billion in

00:32:04   revenue that is up 70% year over year, making this the best Mac quarter ever of all time.

00:32:13   And the last three quarters are the three best Mac quarters of all time. Yeah. Up 70%. This and the

00:32:21   iPad growth year over year were the ones where I was like, surely this is a mistake. Up 70% year

00:32:28   over year. You know, the Mac has been doing pretty well and they've been showing some pretty good

00:32:33   growth on the Mac business, but 70% is not a number that has come out of that product line.

00:32:39   Up 70% is just not a thing that has been happening there. That is a huge outlier.

00:32:44   But that's how many Macs they sold. I assume that a lot of this is pandemic related and that has

00:32:50   driven sales of computers and iPads too. But I have to think that there's also some pent up

00:32:56   demand for the M1 happening here. I think it's pent up demand and also just that they've been

00:33:01   reviewed so universally well that I think people may be making purchasing decisions now that they

00:33:07   otherwise wouldn't have made. Just to be clear, the last three quarters the Mac has been up year

00:33:11   over year in the 20s. 22%, 29%, 21%. 70%. It's a lot. See, this is why I don't think that this

00:33:22   could be, could just surely be just like a pandemic related thing. Surely that purchasing's happened

00:33:28   by now. Like by and large. Like the majority of people that needed computers for the pandemic have

00:33:35   probably made that decision before now. I don't know. I don't know. They talked about it on the

00:33:40   call and I think that they said that certainly some amount of that is probably continues to be

00:33:44   this, which is like, you know, it's not everybody buys right away and maybe it's like, oh, as this

00:33:50   is worn on, we've been using this older PC or older Mac and we're going to update it and get a

00:33:58   new one now. But yeah, it's only part of the story here. It doesn't explain this on its own, I think.

00:34:04   And then the iPad 7.8 billion dollars, which is up 79%.

00:34:10   Yeah. Again, if you look at the year over year changes that we've been seeing in the iPad,

00:34:15   it's been pretty good this year, this past four quarters, but it's been like 31%, 46%, 41%

00:34:20   year over year growth. And the previous cycle is sort of 17%, 22. It's been kicking around.

00:34:25   And then you get a seven up 79% year over year. It's just, it is a spectacular outlier as well.

00:34:32   And, however, we've been talking about records. We actually can't talk about iPad records because

00:34:37   the iPad early in the iPad era, when everybody thought, oh my God, this is going to be this huge

00:34:42   product for Apple. It's a whole new category. They were regularly doing, I mean, they did like

00:34:47   10 billion several times with the iPad. So it's heights not seen since the early days of the iPad.

00:34:53   And then it went kind of like sloped down and then kind of flattened out and then it was come back up,

00:34:58   but it's not quite at the, at the sort of rolling four quarter average level of where it was at its

00:35:03   height, but it's actually kind of close. So this is another kind of hot, not quite high watermark,

00:35:08   but I guess recent high watermark for the iPad. I believe looking at the chart that you put in

00:35:13   Macworld, it is the second highest Q2. Yeah. I mean, it is, it is pretty remarkable. And all

00:35:22   of the records for the iPad are way back, right? They're all in the old way back. Different,

00:35:27   different. I had to do that on six colors. I just have this rolling timeline. That's like

00:35:31   four years, I think. And so for Macworld, I, I, I did the, the life of the iPad timeline

00:35:38   because that's how far you have to go back to see those, those big sales numbers.

00:35:42   But as we mentioned, uh, Apple very specifically warning against supply shortages for the iMac and

00:35:49   iPad. And this is because of the global semiconductor shortage. People were wondering,

00:35:53   are Apple going to be affected by this? Maybe, maybe not. No, it doesn't matter. You can have

00:35:58   all the money in the world. You can't get around this. Yeah. Tim Cook made the point in fact that,

00:36:03   uh, that this is what do you call it? Legacy nodes. I don't know. It's here's what it sounds

00:36:11   like. It sounds like there are a lot of, a lot of stuff that goes into a Mac or an iPad and less,

00:36:19   maybe to an iPhone. Um, and a lot of it is high tech cutting edge and one chip stuff like that.

00:36:27   Right. But there's some stuff that sort of Apple buys and everybody else buys every,

00:36:34   literally everybody else in the world buys for their products. And those are the ones that are

00:36:39   in short supply. That's where Apple is bitten by this global shortage is that, um, as what Tim

00:36:46   Cook said was, um, Apple knows what its demand is, but Apple has no idea what all the other

00:36:57   industry's demand is. And so they can, Apple can do its planning, but this is a case where obviously,

00:37:03   despite having kind of all the money, Apple can't buy its way out of this one that there,

00:37:08   these components are in short supply and I'm sure Apple is spending what it feels like it,

00:37:12   it needs to, to try to get what it can from this, but there's, there's parts that they need

00:37:18   that to build their systems that they can't get. And so their, their Mac and iPad specifically will

00:37:25   be supply constraint. Now it might be that the iPhone also uses some of these things,

00:37:29   but that they've got enough iPhone inventory, uh, that it doesn't matter. One of the things that an

00:37:34   analyst asked Tim Cook is how did you manage to ship so many of these given the shortages?

00:37:39   And the answer was something like, we basically blew through all of our contingency margins,

00:37:44   all of our buffer. We crushed it in order to ship these. So that's great. But now they're saying,

00:37:50   essentially it's gone. And so we're not going to be able to fulfill, fulfill demand. It's also an

00:37:55   important message for them to send to the, the financial people. Cause the whole point here is

00:37:59   that as a public company, they're trying to give some sort of sense of how the business is doing

00:38:03   and where it's going. So it's important for them to say, we don't actually see demand lagging for

00:38:09   the Mac and the iPad so much as we can't make enough. Now demand might not be at the level that

00:38:15   it was this quarter because it's a remarkably high level, but whatever the level of demand

00:38:19   Apple anticipates for the iMac and the, or for the Mac and the iPad in general, it's, uh, it's,

00:38:27   it's not enough. They can't fulfill that demand. So it's out of balance. They can't make enough.

00:38:32   And so they said our iPad and Mac sales figures will be lower next quarter, just because if,

00:38:39   if for no other reason, it will be suppressed by the fact that we can't make enough people want to

00:38:44   buy them and we can't make enough of them. It's not a terrible problem to have, but it's not great.

00:38:50   You really, if somebody wants to give you money for a product, you want to be able to give you,

00:38:53   give them the product. Talking about components, I'll get, I'll get back around to that. I'll

00:38:59   explain margin changes. So one of the things that's been made quite, uh, quite the to do of,

00:39:06   and a lot of business press, especially is that Apple's gross margin has changed for their

00:39:12   products, um, in this quarter. So Apple's gross margin has been steady around 38% for a very,

00:39:21   very long time, multiple years, multiple quarters, multiple years. It's kind of just been known

00:39:25   Apple's gross margin is 38%. That's just what it is. However, in the last couple of quarters,

00:39:31   it started to creep above 40 now hitting 42.5% this quarter, which is a significant difference.

00:39:38   You know, it's been 38% for such a long time, and now we're up to 42.5. And this has been attributed

00:39:44   in part to cost savings, which I think quite clearly is going from Intel to the M1, right?

00:39:51   Especially in the Mac. Yeah, it's gotta be at least partly ascribable to the fact that they're

00:39:59   not paying Intel. I mean, it's not like the M1 doesn't have costs. They're like, oh, it's Apple's

00:40:04   processor. It's free. It's not. They have to pay a Taiwan semiconductor to make it. They have to

00:40:09   amortize the cost of their chip development. Although there they get to amortize their chip

00:40:14   development over the Mac and the right, like the Mac is now part of that calculation. When

00:40:20   previously the Mac was straight up just like Intel and Apple's chip design team, like they could

00:40:26   ascribe like the T2 or something to it, but really it was not something you could do.

00:40:31   So there is cost there, but what is not there is Intel and Intel's whatever, you know,

00:40:38   price Apple is paying for all those Intel processors and Intel's markup, like that's gone.

00:40:44   So it's presumably a lot cheaper for Apple to make its own processors than it was to buy Intel's.

00:40:50   And that's got, that's going to roll into into margin given that they didn't really change the

00:40:54   prices of the products. That's got to just roll into profit margin. Services is $16.9 billion,

00:41:03   which is up 27%. Yeah. This is a more in line figure for services. Services has been growing

00:41:10   at 20 plus percent for a while now. It's kind of wild, but that's just what it is. It looks

00:41:18   less this quarter because of these gaudy numbers put out by the Mac and the iPad, but it's still

00:41:23   just, you know, that services business is chugging along. It's almost 17 billion a quarter now.

00:41:27   And as I like to remind people, keep in mind the services business doesn't have 42% profit margin.

00:41:34   It has in the seventies profit margin. It's just all profit for Apple. Like it's Apple spends very

00:41:41   little to make enormous amounts of money on services, relatively speaking. And that's one

00:41:45   reason you want to grow a services business is it's vastly more profitable. Like every dollar

00:41:50   you make in services, you, you, you take away more profit than you do from every dollar you make

00:41:54   selling iPhones. It's bottom line. So, um, and then Zach has one in the discord still up 27%

00:42:02   after the, uh, small business developer, small business plans come into effect.

00:42:06   Yeah. Well, remember all the, all the reports that we had about that was really great for

00:42:10   any developers, but it hits a very small percentage of the overall revenue of the app

00:42:14   store, which is in those big companies. It's just proving that point, right? Yeah. Yeah.

00:42:19   And wearable home and accessories is $7.8 billion up 25% year over year.

00:42:25   Yeah. And they said a bunch of positive things about Apple watch that a lot of the people coming

00:42:28   to Apple watch are still new people who've never bought an Apple watch before that that's a large

00:42:33   component of the Apple watch sales and that AirPods are doing well. And they, they didn't,

00:42:37   they didn't really give it a lot of color, which makes me want to peer at it a little bit and say,

00:42:42   well, what does that mean? But the fact is it was up 25%. And I think they had so much else going on

00:42:46   that they really just sort of said, yeah, it's, it's doing great. And the other thing they said

00:42:50   is, and AirTags are now part of this family. I'm like, all right. Okay. Yeah, that's true. All

00:42:54   right. And Tim was asked a question by one of the analysts about regulatory issues being a potential

00:43:01   risk to Apple in the future. Tim said that like Apple and their rules and all that kind of stuff

00:43:07   is not casting concrete and it moves with the times. Yep. Apple's just out there moving with

00:43:14   the times. They're not casting concrete at all. They're, they're, they're moving with the times.

00:43:20   This seemed to me like you and I have talked about the fact that it's funny, Apple makes that change

00:43:26   with the small business program. And you're like, oh, this is interesting. And then when Tim talks

00:43:31   to Kara Swisher or something, he says, he says, oh, you know, that's not true about us at all.

00:43:35   Just look at what we did with the small business program. And you're like, yeah,

00:43:37   that's why you did it. This is, this seems very much like a message being sent by Tim Cook,

00:43:44   because the question here that I thought was really good was one of these analysts who,

00:43:48   you know, they're so focused on the details of supply chain and, you know, and, and gross margin

00:43:54   and how many basis points and OPEX and foreign exchange and all of these things about like big

00:43:59   business. And sometimes you, you think, are they thinking larger about regulatory environment and

00:44:07   the fact that Apple's business might be dramatically changed if a court or regulator or something

00:44:13   forces them to change their business model. And this question was about that. It was framed as

00:44:17   like a big philosophical question and got this answer out of Tim Cook, which is, I think not

00:44:22   what the question wanted, but, wanted to get out of him, but it was something really interesting.

00:44:26   And I thought it sent a message, basically Apple saying, look, we've already changed

00:44:31   with that program. We're willing essentially to make more concessions.

00:44:36   When he says move with the times, I mean, what, what are the times? It's not like there's just

00:44:41   the zeitgeist it's like, oh yeah, in the spirit of the age, now you take less, yeah, larger companies

00:44:47   will take less money from the people who are filling its app stores. No, that's not it.

00:44:51   The spirit of the age is that all the politicians in all the major economies are talking about

00:44:57   big tech being a problem. And when Apple comes up, it comes up in the context of it being a

00:45:02   gatekeeper of the app store and demanding to take a 30% cut or 15% cut from people.

00:45:08   And that that makes them in, in cases where they have an unfair advantage and like,

00:45:12   that's the spirit of the age. That's why Apple needs to move with the times is it's really him

00:45:16   saying we'll make changes if we have to because everything is, you know, the walls are closing in.

00:45:22   Multiple concurrent high profile legal cases that good money bet on would suggest they're not going

00:45:29   to win. We're going to talk about one of them in a minute, but like, that's the time that we're in,

00:45:34   right? So like, yeah, it probably is going to make a difference. How much of a difference?

00:45:39   Dunno. Depends how much of a difference is pushed on them. And that's, that's what they're moving

00:45:43   with. What they're moving with is what will the courts of the world tell them they have to do?

00:45:48   And they'll go with that. Yeah. Yeah. You know, we're just not casting concrete. Like if they

00:45:53   force us to change, we'll change. Well, and I actually think it's, it's the truth, right? Is,

00:45:58   is that this is what's going on. And also the truth is you never want to be, this is like when

00:46:05   any company or industry sees that the jig is up and like, Oh, they're going to regulate us. Right?

00:46:09   Like we spent 20 years saying, don't regulate us. This isn't an issue. And finally, and that wasn't

00:46:16   true. It was an issue. And finally, the, the spirit of the age, the, the, the courts and the

00:46:23   politicians and all that have decided they're going to do something about it. That's when you

00:46:27   as a company or an industry come to the table and say, you know, you're right. Something should be

00:46:31   done. Here's what we propose because what you want to do is control how your business changes

00:46:38   and, and, and offer things of like, what can we do that will satisfy you so that you will go away

00:46:43   and not bug us and ruin our business. What you don't want. Is it's like a, like a contract

00:46:50   negotiation or any other legal kind of like negotiation. It's like, you want to come to

00:46:55   an agreement because failing that the judge is just going to make a, is going to sentence. You

00:46:59   want a plea bargain or something like that. This is kind of the plea bargain, which is

00:47:03   Apple wants to change with the times and, and take itself out of the concrete, just enough to get

00:47:09   everybody off their backs. And, and just enough that when the, the legislatures or the, or the

00:47:16   regulators look at what they're doing, they're like, yeah, it's not so bad. It's fine. And like,

00:47:21   it just removes enough wind from their sales that Apple is able to escape without being

00:47:27   told something told to do something that they feel is more catastrophic to their business.

00:47:33   So that's why, you know, I immediately start to think about the Spotify thing,

00:47:38   which we're going to talk about in a little bit, a little bit more, but like,

00:47:41   I start to look at stuff like that and think Apple's going to have a response here. And it's

00:47:46   probably going to be something like what they did with Amazon, right? They're going to say,

00:47:50   Oh, new program. This is from music services. Music services. Now we've got a new program

00:47:56   where they can use their own in-app purchasing. We're, we're allowing that now, like they did

00:48:01   with Amazon for, cause you can buy movies and rent movies in the Amazon app on iOS and TVOS, right?

00:48:06   Like that's, that that's a break, but no, no, no, it's a special program, but Apple will be able to

00:48:12   do special programs for a lot of these things that are like the big pain points and get enough heat

00:48:20   off of them. At least that's their hope that they can, they can escape without having to have bigger

00:48:26   issues. I do think that they've also got like, there's, they've got other trap doors that they

00:48:32   can use, but like, and so we should talk about this more in the next segment, but like Tim Cook's

00:48:37   statement there, I don't know. It just really hit me that like, it's such without saying much,

00:48:44   he is laying it out there that Apple will make changes when it has to and already has started.

00:48:53   Because they know they're not going to, they're not going to get away with it, right? They're

00:48:59   not going to get away with it. They can't, they spent a lot of time saying basically like, look,

00:49:04   we don't make the rules when they made the rules and make a lot of money. And now they realize that

00:49:11   the business as usual isn't going to work for them anymore, probably. And so they're probably

00:49:14   going to have to make some concessions or they're going to be forced to change. And I think the real

00:49:18   question is, is it too late or not? Have they pushed this too far or is there still time for

00:49:25   them to sort of make concessions that will get the scrutiny off of them? This episode is brought to

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00:51:53   So I think, Jason, it might be too late for Apple to try and squirm out some of this stuff.

00:51:59   - The wall's closing in, yeah. Yeah, it might be. It might be. I mean, you never know. They're a big

00:52:05   company with lots of money, but it does feel a little bit like they waited a little too long,

00:52:10   though, doesn't it? - Well, I mean, the judgments have begun. The European Commission,

00:52:17   it has been going...Spotify raised a case with the European Commission back in 2019. It was their

00:52:24   time to play fair campaign that they started. It feels like a million years ago, but now we're

00:52:29   actually getting the ruling of this kind of legal proceeding. So the European Commission is issuing

00:52:36   charges of antitrust against Apple, in Spotify's case, for unfair practices in the streaming music

00:52:43   business. The European Commission says Apple has a dominant position in the market for the

00:52:48   distribution of music streaming apps through its app store, and Apple's rules distort competition

00:52:54   in the market for music streaming services by raising the costs of competing streaming app

00:52:59   developers. Apple have said that Spotify wants all the benefits of the app store,

00:53:04   but don't think they should have to pay for anything for it. Spotify has become the largest

00:53:10   music subscription service in the world, and we are proud of the role we played in that.

00:53:15   That makes me so mad to read stuff like that. And Apple has argued that the revenue contributes

00:53:21   towards the cost of maintaining the app store and enforcing its various content,

00:53:25   privacy, and security policies. - Yeah, Apple's argument, which I think is...I mean, there's some

00:53:34   truth in it, but I think it's an incredibly self-serving argument. Apple's basically like

00:53:38   patting itself on the back saying, "We're responsible for Spotify being successful."

00:53:42   And you think, "Well, wait a second. What?" And Apple's response would be, "Well,

00:53:47   everybody loves their iPhone. What if Spotify wasn't on the iPhone?" We, through our great

00:53:52   largesse as a company, built a software development kit and an app store and all of these developer

00:54:00   tools that allowed Spotify to make an app on our wonderful phone so that they could build

00:54:05   their business. And of course, missing from that is that the value accrues to the iPhone

00:54:10   from third-party apps and that if you couldn't use Spotify on your iPhone, it's less valuable.

00:54:15   - Yeah, and also, without Spotify doing what it did, Apple may have never created

00:54:19   Apple Music in the first place. - Indeed, indeed. So I get... Again,

00:54:27   are there truths in what Apple is saying? Yes. Apple does...

00:54:33   You could argue anyway that Apple deserves some amount of compensation for supporting

00:54:40   third-party developers and building the app store, right? But Apple has also made it mandatory.

00:54:46   And so it's not just supporting the app store, it's supporting the thing that we force you to use.

00:54:51   And there's a lot of complexity here. And I don't... - Well, you see, Jason, I agree with you.

00:54:57   - I don't think that Apple... - I agree with you. But the point

00:54:59   where it becomes a problem is why it's in the European Union, like in the European Commission,

00:55:04   is because then Apple launched their own music streaming service, which they priced the same

00:55:08   amount of Spotify, and Apple doesn't pay 30% to anybody else. - Yes. And this is the core

00:55:14   issue with a lot of the stuff where Apple has built a competitor, is Apple has built a competitor

00:55:20   on its platform where the rules don't apply to it. Because there's no... The rules don't apply

00:55:24   to Apple that it needs to share 15 or 30% to a third party, right? It's the third party,

00:55:31   it pays itself. Whereas everybody else who's competing with it has to pay Apple or has to

00:55:36   degrade its user experience and kick people out of the app and have people go somewhere else and

00:55:41   sign up and then log in, which is doable. - Well, they wish they could kick somebody out,

00:55:44   but they're not even allowed to do that, right? Like they're not actually allowed to say go

00:55:48   somewhere else. - Functionally, they kick you out because you can't do it there and you have to go

00:55:52   somewhere else and you have to figure that out, right? But that's the thing is that Apple...

00:55:56   And this is not the first time, right? Because the Kindle books and iBook store are a good example

00:56:00   of this. Like these examples continue to exist where Apple has built a service that competes

00:56:06   with other services, but with one key difference that Apple doesn't have to pay the middleman

00:56:14   because it is the middleman. And that distorts as the EU said, that distorts competition

00:56:21   because of the App Store rules or, alternately, the degraded user experience. Because the App

00:56:26   Store rules functionally bar you from using Apple's payment methods, depending on the margins of your

00:56:32   business. Essentially, you take all your profit has disappeared into Apple's pocket. And so,

00:56:37   therefore, you degrade the user experience and you push people away and say, "You've got to go

00:56:42   to the web in order to pay for our thing because we're not going to charge you in app because we

00:56:47   would have to give 30% to Apple." So this is the preliminary conclusion. Apple now has a 12-week

00:56:56   period to respond to this preliminary conclusion before then a judgment will be given. If the

00:57:04   judgment is found, like if the judgment matches the preliminary conclusion, Apple will face a couple

00:57:11   of things. One would be a potential fine. This fine for antitrust in the European Union could

00:57:18   be for up to 10% of Apple's revenue from the previous year, which could be a fine of $27

00:57:24   billion, which is a lot of money. But the bigger hit, honestly, could be a requirement for Apple

00:57:31   to change the way they conduct their business in at least the European Union. Now, I wanted to say

00:57:37   to you, you were mentioning a minute ago about you expect Apple to suggest some change to their

00:57:45   business like the way they did with Amazon. Are you expecting that they would do this within that

00:57:51   12-week period to get the conclusion to be changed? Is that what you're thinking?

00:57:57   - I don't know about the timing of it at all, but it just struck me that what the European

00:58:06   Commission may want and what Spotify may want and what a lot of other parties want is Apple to drop

00:58:13   the demand that all financial transactions for digital goods be processed through Apple.

00:58:17   - Well, I'm sure the European Commission would like the fine, but that's...

00:58:20   If Apple changes their business, that kind of isn't so much of a case anymore.

00:58:26   - Well, 27 billion is a lot of dollars. If it's a one-time payment, Apple can handle it, right?

00:58:30   The real threat to Apple is long-term change of their business model. So changing everything

00:58:37   is probably the easy way out that everybody wants except Apple, right? But it would be very

00:58:43   interesting, I guess, if Apple were to take a targeted approach to deal with this issue.

00:58:52   And so my example is the Amazon, the video store program that they did, which is like,

00:58:58   "Why is that only video? Why is it not Amazon's books? Why is it not Amazon Music? Why is it only

00:59:05   video?" And I don't know. I think the answer may be because they had a partner somewhere in some

00:59:10   country and they wanted to make this deal, but they created a special program. And it means that

00:59:13   Amazon will charge your credit card to buy or rent a digital good in the app store. And that is

00:59:19   really weird because nobody gets to do that, but Amazon can do it with video.

00:59:25   So I look at this and I think it really wouldn't be other than the principle of the thing. But

00:59:30   if Apple's lawyers are like, "This is not going our way," right? It would not be inconsistent with

00:59:36   their past behavior to say, "What if we make an exception for streaming services?" Or, "What if

00:59:43   we make an exception for any service in a category that competes with Apple's own services that allows

00:59:51   them to have some different rules?" And would that resolve this? Would that get them off their back

00:59:58   or not? I don't know. But it is in the list of things that I think in terms of Apple moving with

01:00:04   the times, long hair is in, disco is back, whatever the times are, I don't know, for them to offer

01:00:12   stuff like that. That's not wholesale. We give up. Because what does the small business program tell

01:00:17   us? In addition to the video program with Amazon, what does the small business program tell us?

01:00:23   Small business program tells us that Apple doesn't want to give it all away, but is willing to give

01:00:30   a little part of it away in order to keep the bigger part, to lose the battle but win the war.

01:00:35   And so I look at the Spotify thing and I think, "Well, they could do that." That would be a way

01:00:42   for them to get this off their back completely and potentially in other categories too, to just

01:00:48   be like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. If we do it, you can do it. If you have a fitness service, you can be

01:00:54   in this program. If you have a bookstore, you can be in this program." Anything that we do a service

01:00:58   about, "All right, you can be in this program and then you don't have to pay us." Or you have to

01:01:03   offer in-app purchase or whatever the rules are. Can we get away with something that gets...

01:01:10   Because that's their goal. Their goal is to get away with as little change as possible,

01:01:14   but release all the pressure on them. And I don't know if they can do it in time. I don't know if

01:01:19   they're inclined to. I don't know if it will allow them to escape. But it seems to me that there are

01:01:23   ways for Apple to kind of like try to finesse this in order to avoid the hammer. The hammer may hit

01:01:29   them anyway, but I feel like there are ways that they could do it. That would be one of them,

01:01:33   would be like, "Oh, Spotify, Tidal, Amazon Music, you all can now use your own thing because we have

01:01:39   a new program. Isn't it great? Aren't we benevolent?" Unrelated.

01:01:43   During this 12-week period in which Apple needs to respond to the European Commission in regards to

01:01:49   the case of Spotify, they're also going to be in court with Epic. That starts when this episode is

01:01:55   released. Today, it'd be about a three-week period of time. This is a much more exciting case from

01:02:03   the sense of everyone's involved. The witness list is a who's who, and it's full of people.

01:02:10   I saw that Phil Schiller is going to be there the entire time along with Tim Sweeney.

01:02:16   Then they're going to be bringing in a bunch of the most high-profile people possible. Everyone's

01:02:24   a witness. This one is going to be fascinating. The amount of stuff and details we're going to

01:02:30   find out is going to be so exciting. I can't wait. Yeah, it's going to be interesting to watch.

01:02:36   This one, again, not a lawyer, but when I look at the details of this case, I remain skeptical.

01:02:41   A judge can decide whatever. I feel like Epic... I don't know. I'm skeptical of Epic's case here,

01:02:50   but Epic will make some interesting points. I think that even if Epic loses this case,

01:02:54   all the dirty laundry is going to be out there. To mix metaphors, blood will be in the water,

01:03:00   right? Apple is losing somehow. Even if they win. Even if Apple wins the case,

01:03:05   it's going to be not a good thing for Apple. Yes, I agree. I think it's going to be tough,

01:03:10   because it's going to be more ammunition, more evidence for whatever politicians want to talk

01:03:17   about regulating Apple. It's funny, because a lot of the conversations about big tech being

01:03:22   too powerful are about things that really aren't about Apple at all. Apple has done enough to make

01:03:29   enough people angry about these issues that Apple gets rolled in with the rest and all those other

01:03:35   conversations. Then they come to Tim Cook and it's like, "We don't want to talk to you about

01:03:39   social media. We just want to talk to you about the App Store." Apple's good on the things that

01:03:46   a lot of the other companies are bad on. They're good on the social good issues, right? Part of

01:03:51   this is also just because they don't have a social network, right? If Apple ran their own social

01:03:56   network, they would probably be in some of the same problems that Twitter and Facebook are in,

01:03:59   around speech and all that kind of stuff. The only argument that Apple gets there is that,

01:04:03   with the curation of the App Store, they're accused of kicking Parler out of the App Store and things

01:04:08   like that, because the argument there would be their complete control of the App Store means

01:04:13   that if you're not in Apple's good graces, you are lost in the platform and there's nothing you

01:04:17   can do about that. One of my other conspiracy theories while I'm getting them out here

01:04:22   is, in addition to the Spotify program, essentially, that allows music services to bypass Apple, and

01:04:30   isn't that nice that Apple's doing that, I wonder if there are other things like that.

01:04:38   Apple spent the last few years building Gatekeeper and Notarization and all of these other things in

01:04:44   the Mac App Store, and the context has been, "How do you provide App Store-level control and curation

01:04:50   without having a 'you must use the App Store' approach that they have on iOS?" And the way

01:04:56   that's always been pitched is, "Well, the Mac doesn't have that model. The Mac lets you download

01:05:02   and run anything, and so how can Apple make the default more like the App Store without it actually

01:05:07   being everybody has to be in the App Store?" And that's all true. And to Apple's credit, they have

01:05:14   said publicly that if you want to run software on your Mac, you can. You just sort of have to go

01:05:19   through some hoops, but you can. However, as a part of all this, I've started to wonder,

01:05:25   "Is that also Apple having a trapdoor for sideloading on iOS?" Because if Apple were forced

01:05:35   to sideload on iOS, forced to allow apps that are not in the App Store to be installed on iOS,

01:05:39   I wonder if this would be the way that they would do it, right? That they would say, "Okay, well,

01:05:44   here's what we're going to do, is we're going to do what we do on the Mac, which is an open platform,

01:05:48   and we've got all this technology already. You've got to have a membership, and you have to

01:05:52   notarize, and then there's a setting you have to turn off, and you have to go through a warning

01:05:59   screen," and all of those things that are barriers. And I'm not sure they will get to that point,

01:06:05   or they will even be allowed to get to that point. But I start to wonder, is that all in play, too,

01:06:12   in terms of Apple kind of bargaining to try and keep as much control as it can

01:06:16   when the threat is that all of its control will be taken away?

01:06:19   If I was going to give a fun upgrade, conspiracy theory, I would not be surprised if a couple of

01:06:28   days before WWDC, they announced massive changes to the App Store. Yeah. Yeah. Which is, you know,

01:06:35   what they've done before, when they did the subscription changeover and all that,

01:06:39   they did it a couple of days before, which was really smart, because they didn't make the whole

01:06:42   presentation about that one thing. You kind of get it out there. It's around the time people

01:06:46   are thinking about it. I just think that the wagons are circling, the bloods in the water,

01:06:52   the sharks are coming in, whatever metaphor you want to use. I just don't think,

01:06:56   if they make it out of these two cases somewhat intact, I just think that you cannot be as smart

01:07:05   as those people are in that building and not realize that you just don't have a lot of legs

01:07:10   to stand on anymore. Even if you think you're right, it's very clear now that there is a lot

01:07:16   of money in trying to prove you wrong. Well, Apple's take on this was always, if it ain't

01:07:22   broke, don't fix it. It's also why they didn't address some really obvious problems with the

01:07:27   App Store, including the fact that it's built on iTunes and it's a hit single model. So,

01:07:31   like, you can't sell upgrades, you still can't sell upgrades. And they've got this subscription

01:07:35   model that they're doing now and apps are adopting that, not necessarily because they want to,

01:07:40   but because that's how they have to do it, because that's what Apple has decreed, right?

01:07:44   Apple has, for a long time, I would actually argue until Phil Schiller kind of took over the App

01:07:50   Store, there was a period there where Apple literally had no introspection of the App Store.

01:07:55   They never thought about what could be better, because why? Winning is, as the saying goes,

01:08:02   a great deodorant. They were making so much money that it didn't matter. And that arrogance

01:08:08   has continued, right? Like, they're so successful, they make so much money, we just talked about it,

01:08:13   that, like, who's going to stop us? It's really the attitude. It's like, we have this great

01:08:17   platform, people love it, the users love it, the users love the apps, the developers will go along

01:08:21   and do what we say, who's going to stop us? And I imagine there was a little voice inside Apple,

01:08:28   somebody saying, "The courts will stop you, the EU is going to stop you, the politicians are going

01:08:33   to stop you, somebody's going to stop you." And it probably took too long for that voice to be heard

01:08:38   enough for them to realize it. But when Tim Cook says, "We're going to move with the times,"

01:08:43   I feel like that voice has been heard now, right? But as we said, is it too late? But yeah,

01:08:48   yeah, they've gotten to the point now where they realize who's going to stop us is the courts and

01:08:53   the law and the governments are going to stop us. And we are going to need, like I said, to scramble

01:09:01   to try to make it look like we're responding to criticism in a benevolent way. We've listened

01:09:07   to your questions about this. And so we've got an exciting new program that allows more freedom,

01:09:13   isn't it great? And, you know, gritted teeth, they don't want to do it. But I do think we've

01:09:18   reached the point where Apple's going to start rolling a bunch of things out that they hate,

01:09:22   but they know that they have to do it because the alternative is worse, right? The alternative is,

01:09:26   you can't run an app store anymore, or you can't write apps for your own platform anymore,

01:09:30   or something that's really bad, like really, really, really bad to their, you know, future

01:09:36   as a company. And so they will make concessions. And yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if it happens

01:09:41   soon, given what's going on here. But yeah, we'll see. And I want to be clear, although I

01:09:48   appreciate Apple talking about the importance of iOS and the App Store and curation and security

01:09:55   and all of those things. One, Apple hasn't done a really great job with curation on the App Store.

01:09:59   There's a lot of garbage and scams and stuff in there. So they don't really have as strong

01:10:03   an argument as they would have if they had to get back to the, "It doesn't matter if we're making

01:10:08   so much money" argument, that they could have made a better argument if they had policed the

01:10:13   App Store better, but they didn't. And two, I appreciate that on the Mac, I can run any software

01:10:19   I want. I don't like the fact that there are, you know, emulators and stuff that run on iOS that you

01:10:24   can't use unless you jailbreak or use other weird means of exploiting iOS bugs in order to install

01:10:30   software. Like, it's not for everybody. Of course, there will be abuse. There's abuse on the Mac now.

01:10:35   That's how malware spreads on the Mac, is they tell you how to turn off all the security while

01:10:40   you're installing the app. Like, I get it. It's not a great situation in terms of that. At the same time,

01:10:46   do I think that iPad and iPhone might be, you know, better if you had, you know, the ability to install

01:10:56   third-party apps on it that didn't go through Apple? Yeah. Yeah, it would be more dangerous, yes.

01:11:02   It would also be better. And Apple would have to compete. That's the other thing. Apple would have

01:11:08   to compete on user experience and say, "Well, you know, it's better to do it our way because it's

01:11:15   easier and faster." It's like, "Yeah, okay, but you have to compete now." Talking about subscriptions and

01:11:23   revenue splits and all that kind of stuff, let's check back in with Apple Podcast subscriptions.

01:11:29   Yeah. This is something we spoke about a couple of weeks ago. And, you know, the dust has kind of settled

01:11:33   on this. I think that by this point, we both kind of feel pretty similarly. Like, this is a somewhat

01:11:40   decent, in some instances, pretty good arrangement for certain types of podcasters. Yeah. I wrote a

01:11:47   piece about it on Six Colors. I think it's a 1.0 product, essentially. There's a lot of good stuff

01:11:52   in there. Anybody who's been through what we've been through in launching subscription services,

01:11:58   you know, for podcast support, it's hard. And there are a lot of people out there who are

01:12:02   podcasters who are not going to do the technical work. It's just too much who can do this program

01:12:07   and allow their listeners who are, you know, presumably a lot of them on Apple Podcasts in

01:12:13   order to get money from them in an easy way. There's stuff that it should do that it doesn't

01:12:19   currently do that we covered. But, you know, I don't want to make the mistake of saying sort of

01:12:25   like, "Well, it's not for me and therefore it's irrelevant," because that's not right. Like, it

01:12:28   has some interesting aspects, although I think it could be better. What struck me, though, when I

01:12:35   was writing that piece, and the piece is very much like, "Here's what's good about it. Here's what

01:12:38   needs to change." And then the last section is, but here's why it really actually kind of makes me

01:12:42   angry, is all the other things we just talked about, which is App Store rules mean that nobody

01:12:51   can ever compete with this product on iOS. Because no podcast app can put a feature—first off,

01:13:00   there's some technical issues regarding in-app purchases and how those are handled that are very

01:13:04   complicated and would be very hard to overcome. But assuming you could overcome them, if you're

01:13:09   Overcast or Castro or PocketCasts or anybody else, to make it as easy as an in-app purchase,

01:13:16   you have to hand all the money to Apple. And at that point, one of two things happens. Either

01:13:21   you've put a lot of money into a subscription product that you can make no money from,

01:13:25   because you're competing with Apple, who's paying itself. Or you have to change the pricing,

01:13:30   and that means you are more expensive than Apple, and that's not great. Or you take your cut out of

01:13:38   what you give to the podcaster, and now the podcaster is joining your program but making

01:13:42   less money if they're in your podcast app. And it just—fundamentally, the App Store rules lead

01:13:48   to a situation where Apple is able to launch features and services on iOS that cannot be

01:13:56   competed with directly because of the App Store rules. And that—this is the same argument, right?

01:14:05   It's the same argument, which is Apple has created a method where they take a percentage. Anybody

01:14:10   else who could implement it would have to pay Apple the same percentage, as if Apple's work

01:14:15   on that was the same as Apple's work on their own product. And as a result, Apple has built a barrier

01:14:20   there where basically only Apple can do it in a way that makes any sense. Now, the way we make it

01:14:26   work is like an interesting gray area where we put a link in our show notes that go in every single

01:14:34   podcast client, which you can click, and it could take you to a checkout page, and you sign up,

01:14:38   and then you get given an RSS feed, and you go back to your app and put it in. Now, Apple's not

01:14:43   taking any of that because it's not going through the App Store. It's nothing to do with the

01:14:49   application. It is an outside transaction, right? So like if you're listening in Pocket Casts right

01:14:55   now and you click the link, Pocket Cast is not involved in this transaction at all, so no money

01:14:59   is owed to Apple, right? Now, this is like an interesting kind of gray area, but like Pocket

01:15:07   Cast can't do it themselves, right? They can't say, "Hey, we're going to handle these subscriptions

01:15:12   for you now," because if they did that, they wouldn't make any money out of it because they'd

01:15:16   have to pay Apple 30% and then they'd have to give us the rest basically to remain competitive.

01:15:21   And, you know, some apps, including Overcast, used to have a little button that you could tap,

01:15:28   and it would sense for a tag that was attached to any kind of subscription field, which we used to

01:15:35   do, but that's since gone away because it just wasn't used. It wasn't standardized, so we never

01:15:41   mentioned it. Nobody ever mentioned it. It was just a thing that was there. Well, and the truth

01:15:44   is also, when Marco put that in, he knew that if Apple called him on it, he'd have to remove it

01:15:50   because technically, even though it's not his money, like it's one of those things where fear

01:15:56   of app review leads to, and this is a put it on the list, fear of app review rejecting your app

01:16:04   and destroying your business leads to a level of timidity in development because everybody's afraid

01:16:11   that Apple's going to kill their product if they try to do something, even if the rules, even if

01:16:16   you went through the process and Apple was like, "Oh, no, this is great. Who's going to put in all

01:16:21   that work and then roll the dice and see if Apple will be convinced that it's a good idea?" So this

01:16:28   was always a case where it felt like it was on the edge of what the App Store rules even would

01:16:34   allow. And yeah, it's so quiet and nobody noticed it and it just wasn't a thing. It's the story of

01:16:40   the App Store, right, which is there's a way to pay, but you have to do it in a web browser.

01:16:44   You can't do it in an app, except for Apple. You can do it in an app for Apple, but nobody else

01:16:48   can do that. So this is also interesting when looking at Spotify. So Spotify just announced

01:16:54   their plans for podcast descriptions as well, and it's all being run through Anchor if you want to

01:17:00   go with them, which is the tool that they're using for this. I believe that it's also working through

01:17:07   a kind of a different tool as well, but for most podcasters, they'll use Anchor. Spotify are taking

01:17:12   no cut at all until 2023, where the cut will be 5%, but you do have to arrange your own Stripe

01:17:20   account so you're going to be paying the card processing fees. So actually, once Spotify's cut

01:17:26   comes in, the difference in money between them and Apple is actually not that much, but the good thing

01:17:32   about Spotify's system is it's the content that you go through with them, it's not locked to

01:17:39   Spotify because it's going through Anchor. They give you an R, like if you subscribe, you get an

01:17:44   RSS feed as well. So it will show up in Spotify once you're subscribed because it's all tied

01:17:48   together, but you can take the RSS feed with that exclusive content that somebody's using through

01:17:52   Spotify's platform and you can use that to subscribe in any application that you want.

01:17:57   Now, Spotify are doing the thing, they can't tell you, like it's that frustrating thing again, right?

01:18:04   So you see that there's exclusive content and they kind of say like, this is subscriber only content,

01:18:09   but they don't tell you how to get it. Spotify is telling podcasters, you have to put the links in

01:18:15   the notes yourself so people can go out and get it. But I'm assuming on the back end, once you've paid,

01:18:20   it then just shows up in your Spotify account. Yeah, the magic here of what they're going to do

01:18:25   with Anchor is that first off, unlike Apple Podcasts, which will only work in the Apple

01:18:29   Podcasts app on Apple's platforms, unlike Apple Podcasts, Spotify using Anchor, you can create this

01:18:35   subscription feed. And how is that different from what we do? The answer is because it's Anchor,

01:18:41   Spotify is tied into Anchor and Spotify, when you subscribe to one of those podcasts that's on

01:18:48   Anchor, it will just appear, like you said, in your Spotify app because it has connected you to

01:18:54   that, right? It knows that it's you. You're authorized with Spotify, you've linked your

01:18:58   account. And keep in mind, you can't add an external URL podcast in the Spotify app right now.

01:19:05   That's not a thing you can do. So this is a way that it'll still be listenable inside of Spotify,

01:19:12   where our per user member feed URL thing doesn't work in Spotify right now. Not right now.

01:19:20   But Spotify, I think surprising everybody, have said that they want to also allow for companies

01:19:29   like ours, companies like Jason's, who have their own memberships that are serviced through another

01:19:35   platform or from a platform of their own. They want to try and get this content into Spotify.

01:19:41   They don't want to do the arbitrary RSS adding thing because it doesn't work with the way that

01:19:46   Spotify's infrastructure works. The ins and outs of that are not necessarily important to get into

01:19:53   right now. So they are creating an OAuth based system. So an existing platform would create a

01:19:59   hook that you can then basically use your login information in the Spotify app and then you can

01:20:05   get the content straight into Spotify. I think this is fantastic. And Spotify take nothing and

01:20:10   they're not asking for anything. They just want the content because Spotify, their business now is,

01:20:16   they want to be where you listen to all of your podcasts. So if that includes these,

01:20:22   they want to have them as well. And this is a case where this is something that, you know,

01:20:26   Apple's not interested in doing something like this, but this is, yeah, I'm really interested in

01:20:30   this. But Apple still allow the arbitrary RSS feed thing, right? Right. That's true. Whereas

01:20:35   Spotify had built a complete wall and then this is a way to get in where you use OAuth. So assuming

01:20:42   that Memberful, which is our provider of membership services, supported the OAuth system that Spotify

01:20:51   is using to verify somebody is a subscriber, at that point, we would be able to offer membership

01:20:59   podcast content inside of Spotify. Which I'm very excited about. I want to take a quick side note

01:21:05   here now and just say that I don't think Spotify, I think it's pretty clear actually, are not going

01:21:11   to be as bad for the podcast industry as everybody had originally feared. It does seem a little less

01:21:14   absolutist than we were led to believe early on. So they're embracing openness. I love that that's

01:21:21   on both sides because membership content can be listened to anywhere, right? That's more open than

01:21:28   Apple podcast subscriptions are. I feel like that this OAuth system is very creative first in saying

01:21:36   like, "Hey, we don't necessarily want your money, right? We don't want all your money. If you want

01:21:41   to do your own thing, fine. And you can still get to your listeners. You just have to do this little

01:21:45   bit of extra work." It's like, "Okay, fine." And their other thing is, and everyone says, "Oh,

01:21:53   they're just getting ready to do ads and they're going to make their own ad platform and it's going

01:21:56   to kill the industry." I don't think this is true at all in the sense of killing the industry.

01:22:01   They, Spotify are very clearly building a large user base so they can create their own ads

01:22:07   to be inserted into podcasts. And it will probably be a thing that you will say, "Hey,

01:22:12   I want to be a part of this program. I want Spotify's ads. So I will now use either Anchor

01:22:17   or Megaphone, which is the two hosting platforms that they use. And then I can get Spotify's ads

01:22:24   put in." But the thing that I just want to mention for this, I think a lot of people forget is

01:22:28   YouTube. YouTube's ads are not the only ads on YouTube videos. And YouTube's ads, creators make

01:22:36   less money because they're not as well made. Most of the high paying, effective ads on YouTube are

01:22:43   the ones that are inside the videos. Our ads are inside of our podcasts. And then they are more

01:22:49   targeted. They are bred by the hosts, which are better. And it requires that if any good hosts

01:22:56   will have done the due diligence and make sure that they're happy with the sponsor or whatever.

01:22:59   So I think that those two things can continue to exist on Spotify. It's the same way that they do

01:23:06   on YouTube. That Spotify can have their ads, but creators can have their ads as well. And whichever

01:23:11   wins, wins, right? So I just think that the cards that Spotify are playing now, they're kind of like

01:23:17   putting it all on the table. And I really just don't think it's as bad as I'd originally feared.

01:23:23   And honestly, they're making decisions I wish Apple would make. Yeah. Other than the fact

01:23:28   that Spotify, I mean, I think the problem was this idea that Spotify structured their podcast stuff

01:23:35   so that you had to submit to them, but also that you couldn't do a custom RSS feed, which was the

01:23:39   only way that we had to do members only content, right? Like that wall that has turned out to be a

01:23:44   little more porous than we maybe thought. And that helps, right? Because Spotify isn't open quite,

01:23:51   but it's like Spotify, it seems now wants to be part of a larger podcast ecosystem instead of,

01:23:59   it's like, I don't know, this is a bad metaphor, but like, if I talk about that wall,

01:24:03   they opened a window or they opened the door. It's still its own thing, but there are pathways

01:24:10   in and out and there's circulation that's allowed to happen. Whereas it seemed when they first did

01:24:15   this that they're like, we don't get it. We're just going to build podcast stuff into Spotify,

01:24:20   where you submit your podcast and they appear in here and like, we're our own thing. And we're

01:24:24   going to take podcasting and we're going to go home. And with their purchases and some of their

01:24:29   announcements that they made, I don't know whether this was their original intent. I suspect not,

01:24:33   but they seem to be more open to it now. I don't love Spotify, but a lot of people use them.

01:24:40   And their approach seems to have been tempered from what their original approach that was very

01:24:46   much like the world happens inside the Spotify app and nowhere else. I mean, just for me personally,

01:24:52   as a listener, I don't want my music and podcasts inside of the same app. And also the Spotify

01:24:57   podcast listening experience I think is inferior, but some people do. Some people do. And that's,

01:25:03   and that's fine. Right. In the end, this is the biggest problem with Apple's podcast thing,

01:25:08   honestly, is that only works in Apple's app and like, that's fine. Lots of people use Apple's app,

01:25:13   but if you're a podcaster and you want to make money by having people support you,

01:25:18   being in having a program that only works in one place is not as good as having a program that

01:25:25   works in all places. Right? Like that is a problem. And so being on the other side of it and being

01:25:31   like, yeah, we're just part of the whole, and you can listen in Spotify too. I want to be there. I

01:25:36   want our, there are probably people who listen to our members only podcasts who mostly listen

01:25:43   to podcasts in Spotify, but have to not for us. Right. Probably not that many. The other thing

01:25:48   is that we have listeners in Spotify that don't become members because they can't get the content.

01:25:55   Right. Same, same point. Yeah, exactly. So sure. I would love for, for our stuff to come to where

01:26:02   they listen. Right. That in the end, that's the goal of somebody who's making content in a medium

01:26:09   or in a, in a something like podcasting. Right. The goal is I want anybody to be able to hear it

01:26:14   wherever they want to hear it. Like I don't want my, I don't get a bonus for the number of people

01:26:20   who listen in Overcast or listen in Apple podcasts. Right. It's like, I don't have a horse

01:26:25   in this race. I don't, it is, I want to be everywhere. I want everybody to have an

01:26:30   opportunity to listen wherever they feel comfortable because I just want the most people

01:26:34   to be able to listen. And then fundamentally, yes, I want the most people to be able to

01:26:38   become a member and support the show. And so it sounds like Spotify's approach is going to allow

01:26:43   us to do that. And that's great because Apple already lets you do that with their approach.

01:26:49   Apple's subscription thing is a new thing, but you can already listen to our members podcasts in

01:26:54   there. Spotify is the one where you can't. And so I'm encouraged by that. This episode is brought

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01:28:43   show and RealAFM. Let's do some #AskUpgradeQuestions. Dan asks, "If you only had $1600 to spend on new

01:28:53   hardware and had to pick one, would you go with the 24-inch iMac or the 12.9-inch iPad Pro for

01:28:59   Magic Keyboard?" So I like this because it's sort of like a shopping spree. Yeah. Right, you have

01:29:05   you have to buy one. So what would you buy and you can't buy anything else. I'd get the iPad Pro,

01:29:13   because I want a new iPad Pro because I love the 12.9-inch iPad Pro and I've got MacBook Air and

01:29:19   my iMac Pro would not, I don't, the 24-inch iMac isn't the right replacement for it. It

01:29:27   wouldn't actually be faster in a lot of ways than my iMac Pro. So this one's actually pretty easy

01:29:32   for me. It would be the iPad Pro. As of today, right now, I would get the iMac

01:29:39   because one, I want it the most because it's beautiful and I like to look at it.

01:29:45   For my kind of work setups right now, the iMac would actually be of the most benefit to me. Like,

01:29:52   I don't feel the requirement to change out my iPad right now, but the Mac Mini that I'm recording on

01:30:00   and editing on at the studio right now feels so much slower than my M1 MacBook Pro. So I have an

01:30:06   Intel Mac Mini and when I'm editing in Logic, this thing, it's like just chugging. It's not enjoying

01:30:14   it and things are moving slowly and it's a bit of a mess considering as well. It's upsetting really,

01:30:21   because this is a six-core Intel i7 with 32 gigabytes of RAM and my M1 MacBook Pro with

01:30:31   16 gigabytes of RAM just runs circles around this iMac, around this Mac Mini. So for me right now,

01:30:38   I would go with that. That's just for my own work preferences right now. I can see for a lot of

01:30:44   people that the iPad would be the right thing to go for. I think it really depends what you do. I

01:30:50   think for most people with that budget, the iPad Pro with Magic Keyboard would be the better option,

01:30:57   but it kind of depends. Are there specific Mac apps you need to get your work done?

01:31:01   If there are, well that's your answer, but if you're just doing typical regular

01:31:06   kinds of work or home-based computing, the iPad Pro is probably the most fun.

01:31:11   Eric asked, "Should Apple add more software power to the iPad Pros and still keep iPadOS the same

01:31:21   across the iPad line or should they break it up?"

01:31:24   I think one iPadOS makes sense, but remember Apple often will roll out features that have

01:31:29   hardware requirements, right? So it wouldn't surprise me at all if Apple,

01:31:33   at the developer conference, said, "Here's a new feature, but this requires the M1. This requires,

01:31:42   you know, whatever it is, this much RAM." Now that they're listing RAM, they could do that.

01:31:47   All the iPads can do this, but you can do more of this on this iPad. So like with some of the

01:31:53   multitasking stuff, it was like, you know, you could have two apps side by side, but you can't

01:31:58   do slide over or whatever with some of the older iPads when they first introduced that. It was some

01:32:02   element of that. Yeah, right. So I don't think it would be unreasonable at all. Let's say that

01:32:10   the thing Federico keeps talking about, like Hypervisor framework, like the ability to run

01:32:14   a Linux VM in an iPad, right? I could see Apple just saying M1 only. And right now that's iPad Pro

01:32:27   2021 only, right? But here's the thing. Eventually the iPad Air will have an M1 in it, right? In two

01:32:36   years. And then eventually after that, maybe the iPad has an M1 in it and the iPad mini has an M1

01:32:44   in it. Maybe. Eventually. That's what I think that they can do. I don't think they're going to

01:32:50   break it apart and say, "Well, now there's iPad Pro OS," and all that. But I think that they will

01:32:55   feel free to release features as they have on the Mac that require specific hardware. And, you know,

01:33:01   below that point, you just don't get it. And that's okay. And that did happen with multitasking,

01:33:07   where originally only like the iPad Air 2 or something had the ability to do multitasking when

01:33:12   the beta came out, because it was the only one capable enough with processor and RAM to do it.

01:33:18   And then by the time the fall rolled around, I think then had some new iPads that better supported

01:33:24   it. I think that was when the iPad Pro came out. So, yeah, that's my answer, Eric, is that I think

01:33:30   Apple will feel free to introduce some features that are, for example, M1 only. And over time,

01:33:37   more devices will support the M1 and therefore get those features. But originally, it might just be

01:33:43   limited to, for example, today's iPad Pros. Matthew, who was the originator, suggestion,

01:33:52   suggestioner, that's a terrible word I just made up, of SnellTalk asks, "Do you think Apple's new

01:33:58   podcast description model will encourage them to improve or develop their software offering for

01:34:02   recording, editing, and publishing podcasts?" No. I don't think so either. I like the idea of this

01:34:09   question. It's like, yeah, will they now offer more tools? So they have offered more tools for

01:34:15   publishing, right? So Apple Podcast Connect, which is a thing that has existed before, now has

01:34:20   additional features that it needs to have for subscriptions to work. But then because of that,

01:34:23   there are some additional things that people can do, whether you like that or not or whatever,

01:34:28   there are now new tools. I don't think that this will push them to do more things, which, I mean,

01:34:35   and the main thing would be to really improve iPadOS. I mean, if you've listened to this show

01:34:40   for more than a couple of years, you would have had to talk about this. Well, I think they could

01:34:44   put podcast-friendly features in Logic, for example. They could do that, or GarageBand,

01:34:49   which they did at one point, and then they took them back out. I could see a scenario where they

01:34:54   would say, "Oh, well, we're adding some features to Logic or GarageBand that will automatically

01:34:59   upload your podcast to the backend of Podcast Connect," or whatever they're calling it.

01:35:03   - Yeah, I mean, I'm not thinking that the features would be tied to subscriptions. Just the idea of

01:35:10   like Apple now kind of taking a bigger hand in podcasting again, would that maybe have them say,

01:35:18   "Hey, we now have these new features for podcasters in our software tools"?

01:35:22   - It's not impossible that what will happen or has happened is somebody... Like, I've been beating on

01:35:30   the drum of Logic and GarageBand being better for podcasters forever, right? And maybe there's a

01:35:35   meeting where they're like, "No, no, no, we're a music tool. No, no, no, we're a music tool." And

01:35:39   then this podcast initiative happens, then somebody's like, "But what about podcasts?"

01:35:42   And a manager's like, "Oh, yeah, right. Okay." Right? So it's possible, but I wouldn't count on

01:35:50   it. I feel like Apple's sort of like decided... Their tools aren't required for any of this stuff,

01:35:56   it's just podcasts. And it's been so long that they have not been participants in this actively,

01:36:02   so I don't know what they would do. There are a handful of things that I wish they'd

01:36:06   had to GarageBand that would make it much more suitable for editing podcasts than it is.

01:36:09   And I'd love to see their stuff as we've talked about on iOS, like the pro stuff,

01:36:14   because GarageBand on iOS is not suitable for podcast editing. But there are other tools too,

01:36:19   so I don't know. I don't expect it. It's possible. It's always possible, but I think it's unlikely

01:36:25   that this initiative is suddenly going to transform their software strategy regarding audio software.

01:36:31   I don't think that's going to happen. - And Ben asks, "Did tvOS 14.5 fix Myke's

01:36:36   Apple TV and HomePod issues? I had four days of being able to use my HomePod pair with my Apple

01:36:43   TV again until this morning when the failures began again. So I updated and I was like,

01:36:50   "Alright, I'm going to try this out. I'm going to give it a go." So I've been looking for the

01:36:55   last lot, best part of this week. I've been using it. It's been great. Love it. And then we were

01:36:59   watching Netflix today. All of this with Netflix was perfectly fine. And then today, every five

01:37:04   minutes, it was pausing. And I have to play again. And then every five minutes, pause again.

01:37:11   I have yet to do the full factory restore of my Apple TV that I said I was going to do. I haven't

01:37:17   done it yet. I'm going to give it a little bit longer with tvOS 14.5. And then I'm going to do

01:37:25   that too. It's just one of those things where I know it's going to be a pain and it's going to be

01:37:29   a bunch of time and I don't want to do it. But I will eventually do it. One thing I don't know,

01:37:38   how does tvOS back up? Does it? Like if I do a restore, will everything come back?

01:37:46   I think so. Because I know you can do the home screen sharing. I mean, does it also work with

01:37:53   restoring an Apple TV? So I don't know. I'll find out. I think everyone in the discourse is now

01:37:59   telling me it syncs. Now that I know that, I will just do this at some point in the not too

01:38:04   distant future just to see if it improves my experience. Just because I've had a couple of

01:38:08   people who wrote in that were having the same problem with me and they did do this and it fixed

01:38:12   it. Now I've also heard from other people who fixed it in other ways and that didn't work for me.

01:38:16   But maybe this one will. I think that's it for today's episode, Jason Snow. If you would like

01:38:22   to send in a question to help us close out an episode of Upgrade, it could be about anything

01:38:26   you want. Mostly tech focused, so of course send in a tweet with the hashtag #askupgrade or use

01:38:31   question mark #askupgrade in the relay FM members discord, which you can get access to if you

01:38:37   subscribe for the show. We talk a lot about subscriptions this episode. You're like, hey,

01:38:40   what is that subscription thing they keep talking about? They're talking about their own content.

01:38:44   Well, Upgrade Plus is what it is. Go to getupgradeplus.com and you will get longer episodes

01:38:49   of every single release of Upgrade. Even when we do the bonus ones, when we have drafts, you get a

01:38:54   longer episode even. And also every episode has no ads as well. In Upgrade Plus this time, we're

01:39:00   going to talk about Jason's experiences of driving a Tesla for a very, very long journey. So if you

01:39:05   want to hear about that, go to getupgradeplus.com. Thank you to Tax Expander, Fitbod and Hello for

01:39:11   their support of this episode. Thank you for listening. Let me tell you about another show

01:39:16   here on Relay FM called Automators. If you want to learn how to make your devices do more for you,

01:39:21   join David Sparks and Rosemary Orchard. They cover a huge number of programs, apps, and ways that you

01:39:26   can automate things in your life. Find it at relay.fm/automators or search for Automators

01:39:31   wherever you get your podcasts. If you've been thinking, "Hey, all these cool kids are using

01:39:36   their Streamdex these days," they just did an episode about Streamdex so you can find out

01:39:40   why people are using those things and go check it out. If you want to find Jason online,

01:39:44   you can go to sixcolors.com and he is @jsnell on Twitter, J-S-N-E-L-L-L. And I am @imike,

01:39:51   I-M-Y-K-E. Thanks so much for listening to this week's episode of Upgrade. We'll be back next time.

01:39:56   Until then, say goodbye Jason Snow. Goodbye, Myke Lilly.