00:00:32 ◼ ► "Do you use your AirPods for phone calls, Jason? If you do, do you use the left, the right,
00:00:48 ◼ ► I don't want to have my phone against my face, I don't like it. I don't want a speaker phone.
00:00:53 ◼ ► So if somebody's calling me, if I'm like, "Oh, Apple's calling to give you a briefing in a minute."
00:00:58 ◼ ► I will put in- well, it happens, it's my job. I put my AirPods in and I'll actually even, like,
00:01:02 ◼ ► play music or something so I know that they're connected to my iPhone and then I'll wait for
00:01:06 ◼ ► the call because I want to get that call. And if I'm placing an outgoing call, same thing. So,
00:01:14 ◼ ► I do both when I use it, but I do also, uh, I do speaker phone sometimes. Like, if I'm just
00:01:25 ◼ ► Especially if I'm, like, calling and I have to use the number pad thing, you know, like,
00:01:40 ◼ ► It's very easy to do this if you'd like to send in a question to help us start an episode of Upgrade.
00:01:44 ◼ ► You send out a tweet with the hashtag #snowtalk or use the question mark snowtalk command in
00:01:49 ◼ ► the Relay FM members Discord. They get included on a sheet and it may be put in to a future episode.
00:01:54 ◼ ► Snowtalk began as a way to stop us from talking about the weather every week because people don't
00:02:01 ◼ ► want to hear us talk about the weather, but I need to talk about the weather right now, Jason Snow.
00:02:04 ◼ ► Okay, sure. I mean, if it's you wanting to talk about the weather, I guess it's okay. Fine.
00:02:08 ◼ ► It is 92 degrees Fahrenheit right now in London. Very similar temperature inside of my office where
00:02:17 ◼ ► I am right now at home. So, I do have a fan in the background. I've put it on a very minimal setting.
00:02:25 ◼ ► And I'm going to try and take it all out with sound removal, but I just wanted to apologize
00:02:29 ◼ ► to Upgrade and see if they can hear it. But otherwise, I would melt by the end of the episode.
00:02:38 ◼ ► I find stories of London being very hot now. It's now very nostalgic to me because, of course,
00:02:43 ◼ ► when we were all in London for your wedding, it was similarly miserably hot. The whole week we
00:02:50 ◼ ► were there was absolutely scorching on my wedding day painfully hot. So now it's like, oh, riding
00:02:58 ◼ ► on the top of a double decker bus packed with people and it was murderously hot. Oh, good times,
00:03:03 ◼ ► good times. I will always have great love for my friends who dressed up in suits on an absolutely
00:03:09 ◼ ► boiling day. James Thompson is in the chat room was in a wall killed with the whole garb. He looked
00:03:16 ◼ ► incredible, but was a very, I'm sure, sweaty person. I was very pleased that the reception
00:03:22 ◼ ► venue had incredible air conditioning. Everything up to that point did not. The chapel wasn't too
00:03:29 ◼ ► hot because it was a big stone building, but like all of the movements in between, very sweaty day.
00:03:34 ◼ ► I was in a three-piece suit that day. It was a hot day. That's true. Dan Morin got married
00:03:39 ◼ ► in Massachusetts in the summer and it was similarly hot. So, it's like, we Americans know
00:03:45 ◼ ► about hot summer weddings, but you're not supposed to, it's not supposed to be like that in London,
00:03:50 ◼ ► but it was. So anyway, good times. You're having wedding weather is what I'm saying. Wedding
00:03:54 ◼ ► weather, Myke. I know, look at me. Literally any person right now who is going to Twitter or to
00:03:58 ◼ ► email to tell me, that's not hot. We get a hundred, like wherever you're writing to me from, I
00:04:05 ◼ ► guarantee that everything around you is built for that heat, right? Like we do not have air
00:04:10 ◼ ► conditioning here, for example. Nobody has it because that's not what our homes were built for.
00:04:16 ◼ ► We don't have it here either. And people will say, oh, it's not so bad. And it's like, yeah,
00:04:21 ◼ ► we don't have air conditioning. I have like a window fan. That's the best. That's my air
00:04:26 ◼ ► conditioning. So it's, by the way, just for the record, 60 degrees and foggy here. So yeah.
00:04:34 ◼ ► We should be much better midweek. We just got a hot few days here. All right. So that's enough
00:04:38 ◼ ► weather talk. Let's do some upstream headlines. I've got a bunch of stuff because we didn't do any
00:04:43 ◼ ► last week because of the iMac, which we're going to be talking about again in a little bit,
00:04:46 ◼ ► but I have some Apple TV Plus related news for you. So there is a trailer for Ted Lasso,
00:04:56 ◼ ► this is the Jason Sudeikis, um, comedy show of a NFL coach who is hired by a British football team
00:05:11 ◼ ► the trailer looks good. I'm actually excited for this. I love Jason Sudeikis and this looks very
00:05:16 ◼ ► funny and it holds up to the promise of the initial character, um, which of, of Ted Lasso,
00:05:24 ◼ ► which was created by, I believe, NBC to promote NBC getting the premier league football.
00:05:34 ◼ ► And Apple bought the rights to this character from a TV ad to create a show out of, which by the way,
00:05:41 ◼ ► I think is pretty inspired because it's a great character. It's almost like if somebody,
00:05:49 ◼ ► Like it sure looks like they made this, like they made it in England and everybody else in it seems
00:05:57 ◼ ► I know so many places where they're filming this. I'm looking, I'm like, I know where that is. I
00:06:01 ◼ ► know where that is. So yeah, they look like they've treated it well. Uh, and it looks really funny.
00:06:06 ◼ ► And, uh, I'm, I'm actually really excited about this. I think this could be a sleeper hit for,
00:06:10 ◼ ► for Apple TV. The trailer was great. It pushed all my buttons too. Cause it's, it's like,
00:06:14 ◼ ► it's a funny premise. Uh, because I like, uh, I like football, uh, American and British English
00:06:21 ◼ ► football. I like them both. I like, and I know the cliches. Um, I like England and, and, you know,
00:06:29 ◼ ► having watched a lot of British TV and stuff like that. So that's all, all of these contrasts
00:06:33 ◼ ► between the two cultures are, are very funny. I think that there's potential there. And also
00:06:36 ◼ ► it seems to be a, uh, you know, scrappy underdog learns life lessons along the way kind of sports
00:06:46 ◼ ► movie style story too. And I'm kind of a sucker for that too. So, uh, yeah, I'm looking forward to it.
00:06:52 ◼ ► Matt Walter There is a new show on Apple TV+ debuted on July 30th. The Oprah conversation is
00:07:00 ◼ ► an interview series, which is a probably a pretty, a pretty thick, great thing that they could be
00:07:04 ◼ ► doing right now because these can be conducted, uh, when you're apart, which is what they're
00:07:08 ◼ ► doing. Um, the first few episodes, I think there's one out and there's a couple more coming out.
00:07:13 ◼ ► The first few episodes are focusing on racial issues. So the first, um, is with Eran X. Kendi,
00:07:18 ◼ ► who is, uh, who did this episode was called how to be an anti-racist. And then there is a two
00:07:24 ◼ ► part conversation with Emmanuelle Eco, um, along similar lines, um, looking at a lot of racial
00:07:30 ◼ ► injustice issues and stuff like that and how to address them. Um, so that's, it's a timely thing.
00:07:35 ◼ ► And Oprah is a great voice, right? So if you're going to talk about issues like this, so it makes
00:07:41 ◼ ► a lot of sense that they would push this button right now, if you remember, uh, Apple and Oprah
00:07:46 ◼ ► have an overall deal. So yeah, this is the great Apple Oprah relationship, uh, in another,
00:07:52 ◼ ► another tentacle, another, uh, another example of that, that connection that they've got. Yep.
00:07:57 ◼ ► Makes a lot of sense. This is clearly what would have just been a podcast, but now they can make
00:08:01 ◼ ► it into a TV show because this is how TV looks right now. It's like two people in their own homes
00:08:07 ◼ ► and cameras with them. Uh, Apple have signed a new thriller starring Elizabeth Moss of the
00:08:13 ◼ ► Handmaid's Tale, Mad Men. It's called Shining Girls based on the novel by Lauren Buekes about
00:08:19 ◼ ► a time traveling killer. That's right. He kills the shining girls. That's who the shining girls
00:08:26 ◼ ► are. The, the, the targets of the time traveling killer. And this is a, I haven't read this. I
00:08:31 ◼ ► have it on my Kindle. It's apparently a very good book. And, uh, I was surprised to see that, uh,
00:08:35 ◼ ► it's, uh, here it is. It's a going to Apple TV plus, uh, the new detective drama starring Robert
00:08:42 ◼ ► Downey Jr on the way. It's produced by the production company, Team Downey, which is owned
00:08:47 ◼ ► by Robert and Susan Downey. Um, I, Downey, it's Downey by Downey starring Downey. Yeah.
00:08:53 ◼ ► They produced by Downey and Downey. Uh, I just think that it's wild like this, the names that
00:09:02 ◼ ► keep getting added to Apple slate. Right. Iron Man now is here. So yeah, another big one. Sure.
00:09:10 ◼ ► Why not? Everybody, everybody wants that. The question is, and this is the classic question is,
00:09:15 ◼ ► is this a, is this a project that is good or is this one of those quibby kind of projects
00:09:21 ◼ ► that sort of like, eh, we have the wall take, I'll take their money. Right. Kind of thing. But,
00:09:26 ◼ ► um, but still it's, you know, big movie stars doing, doing, uh, streaming TV. That's where
00:09:37 ◼ ► A PAC 12 is a college conference on the West coast, uh, that features, uh, many different
00:09:43 ◼ ► college sports, uh, organizations and colleges, uh, including, you know, USC and UCLA and Washington
00:09:52 ◼ ► and Oregon, uh, the Oregon ducks. My, my daughter is an Oregon duck. And of course the most important
00:09:56 ◼ ► of all the university of California golden bears, as we all know. So go bears, by the way,
00:10:01 ◼ ► the winner of the U S open in Gulf this weekend, uh, was a cow guy. Go bears roll on you bears.
00:10:06 ◼ ► I'm going to do it, Myke. You can't stop me. You could edit it out though. I don't even know what
00:10:10 ◼ ► it means. It's a roll on your bears. It's a, it's a thing. It's college. Anyway. Um, we talked here
00:10:15 ◼ ► about the possibility of Apple sniffing around a bunch of different life life sports kind of
00:10:19 ◼ ► options and sports deals for the future. And there was a report that said that although Apple is
00:10:24 ◼ ► still interested in, uh, in getting sports rights, they are likely to not bid on PAC 12 rights and,
00:10:31 ◼ ► and their perception here, and this may also be a broader issue is that, you know, or maybe they're
00:10:37 ◼ ► just letting them down easy. I don't know. They're saying that, that, you know, a, a college deal like
00:10:40 ◼ ► this is unlikely to have international appeal that, you know, in Australia, they're not going
00:10:44 ◼ ► to be really excited about seeing, you know, the university of Washington play USC and football.
00:10:49 ◼ ► Um, but, uh, I still think that there's a lot of money to be made in, uh, live sports for streamers,
00:11:02 ◼ ► if it's thinking international, then Apple is going to be bidding on some very different things
00:11:06 ◼ ► than if it's thinking about getting something that's going to have a lot of viewership in the
00:11:09 ◼ ► U S because world sport is different than sports in the U S in terms of priority. There are, there's
00:11:15 ◼ ► some overlap, like there's international appeal for some sports, but college football, especially
00:11:21 ◼ ► is not really one of them. So, uh, we'll see what happens. But anyway, this report is that the Apple,
00:11:27 ◼ ► Apple did talk to the PAC 12 about sports rights, but, uh, is, is kind of moving on and is unlikely
00:11:32 ◼ ► to bid. But, uh, the bigger issue here to watch for upstream purposes is really what are the,
00:11:38 ◼ ► what are the deals being made by streamers? As we mentioned a couple of weeks ago, CBS bought the,
00:11:44 ◼ ► uh, the champions league and they put it on CBS all access, uh, which is an interesting decision.
00:11:52 ◼ ► Another, another interesting note is the FA cup was last weekend, not this just passed,
00:12:06 ◼ ► I'm just plugging all my team. Um, one by arsenal beating the hated, uh, evil Chelsea. So
00:12:16 ◼ ► anyway, um, that aired ESPN had the rights to that in the U S and they put it on ESPN plus
00:12:22 ◼ ► they were showing like billiards or something. Cornhole. I don't know what it was. They were
00:12:29 ◼ ► showing nothing on one on ESPN too at that moment, but they chose to keep the FA cup final off of
00:12:38 ◼ ► their linear cable channel and put it on there for pay streaming service. Right. Shows you where the
00:12:43 ◼ ► money is. Doesn't it? Interesting data point, right? Where they're like, well, we could put
00:12:47 ◼ ► this on ESPN too. Yes, we could do that. Or we could force everybody to buy ESPN plus in order
00:12:52 ◼ ► to see it. And this is again, we're going to, this is just the beginning of fans, especially
00:12:58 ◼ ► of various sporting events getting irate because they have to buy a streaming service in order to
00:13:02 ◼ ► see their thing, but it's going to happen just like fans got irate when they move things off
00:13:06 ◼ ► of broadcast in the U S to cable. And everybody got really angry about that. I'm like, I have to
00:13:11 ◼ ► pay to see this. I can't just get this with my antenna. Well, this is the next frontier of that,
00:13:16 ◼ ► which is you're going to have to pay a streaming service subscription in order to get access to
00:13:21 ◼ ► this stuff. It's inevitable. I think that there is a potential upper part to this pack 12 thing,
00:13:29 ◼ ► or just Apple sport in general, maybe they've just realized that 2020 is just a bad time to be
00:13:41 ◼ ► feeling about it. I would imagine that everybody involved in sports imagines that sports will
00:13:47 ◼ ► bounce back and that anybody who can get a deal buying it for a slight discount is probably getting
00:13:54 ◼ ► a deal because it will bounce back. And I think it will. Right. I think that there's no doubt that
00:13:59 ◼ ► sports is going to bounce back, but, um, there will be a rough patch here. It's also possible
00:14:06 ◼ ► that a lot of the owners here looking at their, uh, lack of fans in the stands, lack of ticket
00:14:10 ◼ ► sales are going to want another revenue stream. Right. And they're going to want to sell some
00:14:14 ◼ ► rights right now so they can get some cash in their pocket. Right. But I guess for, for a
00:14:20 ◼ ► company like Apple, it's about the right deal at the right time. Right. Like, you know, you can,
00:14:26 ◼ ► they might want sports, but not PAC 12, you know, like, like we said, for sure. I think that that's
00:14:32 ◼ ► a good example of that. And the PAC 12 stuff wasn't going to come up for another like two
00:14:35 ◼ ► or three years. And I think that's another factor here is that a lot of these sports rights go out
00:14:40 ◼ ► for years and years, and then there's a big moment where the bids happen. And so, um, this is going
00:14:46 ◼ ► to be slow moving as with so many of the rights things we talk about on upstream, it's going to
00:14:51 ◼ ► be slow moving, but there will be mark my words, like there will be that moment and we'll all know
00:14:56 ◼ ► it when we see it, when something comes up for bid that has always been on traditional TV. And one of
00:15:03 ◼ ► the bidders is a streaming service. And even if they don't get it, if like, it's a serious
00:15:08 ◼ ► possibility that they're going to get it. That's going to be that moment where people are like,
00:15:12 ◼ ► Oh, what? Like I thought the NFL was always going to be on my local CBS TV station and now it's on
00:15:18 ◼ ► Amazon. How do I, what? Right. And that's going to happen. It's, it's something like that will happen.
00:15:23 ◼ ► Mark Duplass who played Chip on the morning show has told Deadline that season two is actually
00:15:30 ◼ ► being rewritten to reflect the pandemic. So the funny thing, if you'd call it funny, the
00:15:36 ◼ ► interesting thing, uh, that is to be thought on about this is they rewrote the first season to
00:15:42 ◼ ► include, uh, the me too movement as one of the main, really the main plot point of the show.
00:15:49 ◼ ► And now they're doing it again, uh, to reflect the plan for the pandemic, which is it an interesting
00:15:56 ◼ ► thing to do? I was wondering, Jason, if this may allow them to resume shooting some way for them
00:16:02 ◼ ► to find ways to do this remotely, if that's the route they want to go down, uh, do plus also
00:16:08 ◼ ► confirmed the deadline. They'd only shot two episodes of the show before being closed down.
00:16:15 ◼ ► I had the same thought, which is, I wonder if there's something to be done here about the,
00:16:23 ◼ ► you know, we've seen different TV productions try to grapple with the pandemic and have people
00:16:31 ◼ ► recording from home and reporting from home and all of that. And then you get a skeleton crew back
00:16:34 ◼ ► in a studio, but you've got like, I could see them trying to emulate that and sort of tell that story.
00:16:40 ◼ ► The problem I've got with it is, is anybody going to want to see that in a year? I don't know.
00:16:45 ◼ ► Right. Like, Oh, Hey, Hey everybody, we just got out. Remember the pain. It's like, yeah,
00:16:50 ◼ ► I do remember. There's that thing. I think we talked about it here. Somebody was pointing out
00:16:54 ◼ ► that, um, there is very little art about the, um, the flu pandemic a hundred years ago. There's like
00:17:02 ◼ ► very little in the way of like novels or any art influenced by it. And there is a thought that
00:17:10 ◼ ► everybody lived through it and no one wanted to relive it. And so nobody talked about it
00:17:14 ◼ ► and nobody made art about it. And it just kind of, because nobody wanted to hear that. Like we all,
00:17:20 ◼ ► we all get it. There was a pandemic. We get it. And I wonder about something like this too,
00:17:35 ◼ ► So there's, there's some risk there too. But, um, then again, if they're really trying to
00:17:40 ◼ ► shoot their season and they don't know how they're going to be able to do it, um, you know,
00:17:45 ◼ ► it's also possible that they'll do it for like a couple episodes and then kind of break out of it,
00:17:50 ◼ ► but I don't know. I, I, it's a tough position to be in, to be wanting to produce your show and
00:17:55 ◼ ► having shut down mid season and feeling like it's timely and feeling like you want to be current.
00:18:09 ◼ ► but with a catch it's coming out on September 4th, but it will be a $30 purchase for Disney
00:18:15 ◼ ► plus subscribers on top of your subscription. It will act like a purchase. So it stays in your
00:18:21 ◼ ► account. It's not like you're not paying $30 to rent it is my understanding. Um, it seems a little
00:18:26 ◼ ► unclear right now, if they're going to also be selling Mulan, right? Like, will you be able to
00:18:31 ◼ ► pay $35 and buy it on iTunes? For example, I don't see how you will. Um, it doesn't seem
00:18:37 ◼ ► not originally right. Because it's tied to Disney plus you have to be paying them already
00:18:42 ◼ ► for the right to pay them more. Yeah. So I agree with you, but just in the reports that I read it,
00:18:47 ◼ ► they're basically saying we've asked and haven't got confirmation. So, but why would they specify
00:18:52 ◼ ► Disney plus what if they sold it for $40 outside? Right. But nevertheless, right. But I agree with
00:18:57 ◼ ► you. I'm sure it's going to be Disney plus only, but like, for example, they're still putting it
00:19:01 ◼ ► in theaters in places where Disney plus isn't available. So it kind of seems like Disney is
00:19:06 ◼ ► flying by the seat of their pants at this one, which makes sense. Uh, I think that this is
00:19:11 ◼ ► not good for Mulan. Honestly. Uh, I think that $30 is a lot. I will push back on that a little bit
00:19:26 ◼ ► you pay more than $30. No, I understand. So like the idea of putting them iTunes and stuff like
00:19:31 ◼ ► that $30, I think $30 is a lot when you're already paying $6 a month. I've seen some people say that
00:19:36 ◼ ► maybe this is the, this is actually a new way that Disney, uh, justifies keeping their Disney
00:19:42 ◼ ► plus monthly subscription artificially low is by having it be an artificially low gateway into
00:19:54 ◼ ► Interesting thought. Yeah. So I can, would I pay it? Yeah, probably. Am I going to get it? I
00:19:59 ◼ ► reckon I am. Um, I, I think it's just like, I did have an initial sticker shock on this one
00:20:05 ◼ ► because I saw, Oh, great. Disney plus Oh, what $30. Right. And I think that surprised me.
00:20:10 ◼ ► And, and you and Adina could go see it in the movie theater and you wouldn't pay $30 probably.
00:20:15 ◼ ► No, but I, I took the last time we went to see a movie. I can't even remember what movie it was,
00:20:21 ◼ ► but I remember all four of us went to see it and it cost, it cost a lot of money. Like I was like,
00:20:29 ◼ ► Oh my God. And I thought I need to remember this moment. Although obviously not the movie.
00:20:34 ◼ ► It's probably a Marvel movie or a star Wars movie. I remember this moment because when they try to
00:20:39 ◼ ► get you to pay for this at home, this is what they're going to ask you to pay is something
00:20:43 ◼ ► like this, because this is what a family of four going to the movies pays, which is, you know,
00:20:49 ◼ ► 35, $40, depending on where you live, it's going to vary, but you know, it's in the ballpark.
00:20:55 ◼ ► Yeah. And, uh, I think what's interesting is it's not a rental. So as long as you stay on Disney,
00:21:00 ◼ ► plus you have access to watch it so you can watch it again and again and again, which is good.
00:21:05 ◼ ► A lot of these kids have been rentals. Um, so the idea, so I actually I'm coming around to this a
00:21:11 ◼ ► little bit more like that. If you know, like the fact that you paid at $30 and it's like quote
00:21:15 ◼ ► unquote a purchase for as long as you're a Disney plus subscriber, that's pretty good too. I think,
00:21:19 ◼ ► we have Matt right in with a question, but Matt said, do you think Apple will get their cut
00:21:30 ◼ ► Well, you can, you can rent and buy movies on Amazon now, um, on Apple TV and, uh, is Apple
00:21:38 ◼ ► giving a cut of that? Maybe they are behind the scenes, but they're not using in-app purchase.
00:21:41 ◼ ► Oh, uh, interesting. I think Apple coming from those documents that we were talking about last
00:21:46 ◼ ► time, that would be if, uh, some with Amazon, if somebody has come to it and they were already a
00:22:04 ◼ ► on at least on Apple TV, you should be able to buy Mulan in Disney plus app and, you know,
00:22:12 ◼ ► Apple. We'll talk about this later on, but I think at the moment, Apple care about this stuff quite
00:22:20 ◼ ► a lot in fact. So you can sign up like there is in-app purchases and at least on the website,
00:22:27 ◼ ► I can see it. I don't know how obfuscated they are and some apps do that, but you can sign up
00:22:31 ◼ ► for Disney plus, um, in app. So I guess it might be a similar thing. Yeah. No, that, that may be the
00:22:39 ◼ ► scenario there. I would like to know, by the way, if any of our listeners, uh, did sign up through
00:22:45 ◼ ► the app store, uh, I signed up on the web cause I got the discount deal. Right. If you signed up in
00:22:52 ◼ ► the app store and you get Mulan, I would love to know, uh, if you went through the IAP process.
00:22:59 ◼ ► So we'll find out September 4th, but I want to mention, I know that we have a bumper crop of,
00:23:04 ◼ ► of upstream stuff here, but I want to mention one other big story that we haven't didn't even have
00:23:08 ◼ ► on our list, but I want to throw it in with this Mulan thing, because I think they're all related,
00:23:12 ◼ ► which is, um, a federal judge is ending the dis the consent decree against paramount for movie
00:23:18 ◼ ► theaters. And this sounds very dry, but the point here is in the U S for a long time, it has been
00:23:24 ◼ ► illegal for movie studios to create this vertical integration where they also run, uh, movie theaters.
00:23:33 ◼ ► And this has been happening since the late 1940s, there was a Supreme court decision in 1948,
00:23:40 ◼ ► U S versus paramount pictures and the, um, a federal judge in New York granted a motion
00:23:48 ◼ ► by the U S department of justice to terminate that. And what this means is that between the
00:23:56 ◼ ► pandemic and the consent, consent degree going away, the theater business is never going to be
00:24:03 ◼ ► the same because, and I saw some speculation about this and we don't know how this is going to go,
00:24:09 ◼ ► but I saw somebody make a really smart point, which is imagine a chain of Disney theaters,
00:24:23 ◼ ► but it's more magical because it's Disney and Disney can like, it is just, it's full on. It's
00:24:35 ◼ ► except it's the, your local Disney showcase theater in major markets. What does the removal
00:24:42 ◼ ► of the consent decree allow? It means that movie studios can own movie theaters. So that means that
00:24:47 ◼ ► in theory, Disney doesn't have to supply their movies to theaters that they don't want to give
00:24:53 ◼ ► them to. And theater chains would probably say, well, we're not going to take your movies anywhere.
00:24:57 ◼ ► If you open your own movie theaters, I would imagine that what will happen is that Disney
00:25:05 ◼ ► if you'd like it in the minor markets, there's an audience there and somebody's going to take it.
00:25:14 ◼ ► they'll rent it on Disney plus. Right. Like, I don't know who knows how this is all going
00:25:22 ◼ ► to play out, but a lot of the decades long, um, control systems in the U S at least have been
00:25:32 ◼ ► removed while streaming now has become more prominent because of the pandemic. And then
00:25:38 ◼ ► let's just throw in also technology is way better. Like the sound and picture on my TV set in my
00:25:44 ◼ ► house is also of a, of a quality now where I wouldn't mind just watching all new releases on
00:25:50 ◼ ► it. I don't feel like I even need to go to a movie theater. It's not true for everybody, but it's
00:25:54 ◼ ► true for some portion of the audience. So like you throw all this together, things are going to get
00:25:59 ◼ ► weird. That's what I'm saying. Things are going to get really weird once, once there are movie
00:26:03 ◼ ► theaters and back in the U S and like over the next decade, how does this all work out? But I
00:26:08 ◼ ► don't think we're going to be going back to what we had before. I think those days are over.
00:26:12 ◼ ► **Bes McElhaney** One last piece on this while we're talking about it, AMC just did that deal
00:26:16 ◼ ► with universal and they're offering it to other studios too, where a movie can come out on
00:26:21 ◼ ► streaming or well for rental 17 days after the theatrical release. Like, um, uh, I know this
00:26:33 ◼ ► **Matt Stauffer** Well, and, and that, that actually fits with what movie theaters are for now,
00:26:37 ◼ ► right? Cause movie theaters now are for big blockbusters and they want you to see it in
00:26:41 ◼ ► the theater. And if you think about Disney, you know, Disney, Marvel, Star Wars, Disney is, is
00:26:46 ◼ ► the biggest movie studio out there. **Bes McElhaney** You want to see them in the theater.
00:26:49 ◼ ► You want to. **Matt Stauffer** Yeah. Could they schedule their releases so that there's,
00:26:53 ◼ ► that every Disney theater near you is like, it's a handful of screens, but they're big screens.
00:26:58 ◼ ► And it's always some movie that's come out in the last two weeks or three weeks that everybody
00:27:01 ◼ ► wants to see. And then as soon as that's done two, three weeks after that, it's on Disney plus
00:27:10 ◼ ► like if Disney owned the theater, then every theater screen and sound system would be perfectly
00:27:15 ◼ ► tuned for that movie. You know, that would be a great, that would be actually pretty nice.
00:27:19 ◼ ► **Matt Stauffer** It's their product. Right. Right. I mean, it's got, there are a lot of knock-on
00:27:23 ◼ ► effects and it's, it's a complicated thing, but yeah, this is, this is the kind of strange world
00:27:28 ◼ ► that we're living in now. Yeah. The idea that the theatrical window, the exclusive theatrical
00:27:31 ◼ ► window is less than three weeks is a pretty big thing. Right. But that's where we're headed. And
00:27:37 ◼ ► honestly, you know, that's sort of also where we were going because people go mostly go to see
00:27:44 ◼ ► movies now because they want to see something big and popular that is just in theaters and they want
00:27:49 ◼ ► to do it right when it comes out. And then they move on to the next thing for years. And it's
00:27:53 ◼ ► closed now, but because the pandemic, and I think it's never going to reopen, we have this one screen
00:27:58 ◼ ► movie theater near our house. And what I, what fascinated me about it was the choices they made
00:28:04 ◼ ► about what movies they got in there. And I thought it was really emblematic of the fact
00:28:07 ◼ ► that you could have a single screen for a movie theater and almost always have a blockbuster.
00:28:14 ◼ ► You could almost always do it because there's always another big movie that people want to see.
00:28:18 ◼ ► And if it's not that big, it's there for a week and then it's gone. And then there's another one
00:28:22 ◼ ► in there. And that, that's sort of like, that's the future of all movie theaters. Cause all the
00:28:25 ◼ ► smaller movies are going off onto streaming and people aren't going to see them in theaters. And
00:28:30 ◼ ► we can talk about how tragic that is and all those things, but it's just sort of a reality
00:28:34 ◼ ► of where we are right now. This episode is brought to you in part by our friends over at Hover,
00:28:40 ◼ ► which is one of Relay FM's longest running sponsors. They've been with us since the very
00:28:44 ◼ ► beginning, which is very nearly six years now, actually. So it's I think next week. Yeah. Next
00:28:49 ◼ ► week. Uh, when you have a big idea, that great idea, where do you go first? For a ton of
00:28:54 ◼ ► entrepreneurs, Hover is that first big leap because your business starts with a great domain name.
00:29:00 ◼ ► Hover has over 300 domain name extensions to choose from. So no matter what you want to build,
00:29:06 ◼ ► there is a great domain waiting for it. They have excellent technical support to answer any
00:29:11 ◼ ► questions you may have, and they are dedicated to getting you online and not upselling you.
00:29:15 ◼ ► Hover has free Whois privacy. So the bad guys don't get your info, a clean user experience in
00:29:20 ◼ ► UI, making it super easy to manage your domains. And they also have monthly sales on popular top
00:29:25 ◼ ► level domains. So you're going to get great prices too. It is so easy to see why Hover is the popular
00:29:30 ◼ ► choice for people starting businesses. Whenever I have an idea for a new project, I immediately
00:29:35 ◼ ► go to Hover to see what's available. And when I come up with that great domain, because they have
00:29:40 ◼ ► wonderful search options, you can type in some words, type in a full domain, and it will show
00:29:44 ◼ ► you what's available and then show you a bunch of options for stuff that you maybe didn't think
00:29:48 ◼ ► about, but could be a better fit, could be better price too. Dot coms can be expensive, but they have
00:29:52 ◼ ► loads of other options that you might be able to use instead. So that's a really great thing that
00:29:57 ◼ ► I love about Hover is you get to see all of those options on one page. And then when you have signed
00:30:01 ◼ ► up, it's so easy to manage that domain. If you just want to forward it somewhere else, couple of
00:30:05 ◼ ► clicks and it's done. And I love that. I know that you love great user experiences. You're a
00:30:10 ◼ ► listener to this show, you love stuff that works straight out of the box. So you're going to
00:30:13 ◼ ► appreciate Hover because it's so simple, clean and easy to navigate. Buy your domain and start using
00:30:19 ◼ ► it today by going to hover.com/upgrade. And there is a 10% discount available on all new purchases.
00:30:25 ◼ ► That is hover.com/upgrade. Make a name for yourself with Hover. Thanks to Hover for their
00:30:31 ◼ ► support of this show and Relay FM. Summer fun time. Summer fun. What's fun this week? The fact
00:30:44 ◼ ► I only really want to know myself one thing, which is the nano texture because you got one of the
00:30:52 ◼ ► nano texture iMacs. That is the thing I am most interested about. How does that look? How does
00:30:59 ◼ ► that work? And then we can talk a little bit more in detail, but that's the thing I care the most
00:31:03 ◼ ► about myself. I think it's the most interesting thing about the product. Okay. So for 500,
00:31:08 ◼ ► you can get your iMac where the glass is etched in the same way that the Pro Display XDR had an
00:31:13 ◼ ► option for a, has an option for a thousand dollar etched nano texture display. And it's these micro
00:31:20 ◼ ► etchings and what they're doing is they're reducing glare. So for $500, you can get that on a 5k iMac
00:31:28 ◼ ► now. And it's really, really, really good. And I'm starting to feel like, so writing this review,
00:31:37 ◼ ► I was thinking like, who buys this with the era coming to an end, this may be the last,
00:31:42 ◼ ► at least major update of an Intel Mac ever. Who buys this? And yes, I think one group, I know,
00:31:49 ◼ ► I know multiple people who have bought one because they feel like they keep an iMac for five or six
00:31:54 ◼ ► years and they're going to get this one and it's going to be a big upgrade over the one they got
00:31:57 ◼ ► five or six years ago. And then they can wait and their first Apple Silicon Mac, you know,
00:32:01 ◼ ► all the bugs will have been shaken out. Everybody will know they don't need to be on the cutting
00:32:05 ◼ ► edge. I think that is a strong point that at this point, you know, you could get this and you're
00:32:11 ◼ ► going to, you're not on the cutting edge. And most of our listeners aren't going to feel that way,
00:32:14 ◼ ► but like, it's going to be tried and true and very good at what it does. And it's got a bunch
00:32:18 ◼ ► of extra features that we can talk about. But the other audience for this is people who want
00:32:25 ◼ ► a real anti-glare iMac, and they're going to be able to get it on this thing for $500 over the
00:32:32 ◼ ► iMac cost. And when you look at the Pro Display XDR, which costs a fortune, like this is a better
00:32:36 ◼ ► option. You get the very good unchanged, but very good wide color gamut Apple 5K iMac display.
00:32:44 ◼ ► And now for $500 extra, you get the nano texture, which comes with a little cloth that you're
00:32:49 ◼ ► supposed to use to clean it a little, and you can buy extras at the Apple store for $10 if you want
00:32:53 ◼ ► more little, little cloths, but it looks great. It is, it actually does a thing with my brain
00:33:00 ◼ ► that I look at it, especially at the bezels. I'll look over there and I'll be like that.
00:33:05 ◼ ► That can't like it, it seems wrong because it's this black glass on the bezels and there should
00:33:14 ◼ ► be a reflection there and there's nothing there. And it just seems like it's wrong and it looks
00:33:20 ◼ ► really good. It doesn't feel all textury, like so many anti-glare like screen skins and screen
00:33:28 ◼ ► covers do where you end up with this thing that looks slightly foggy. You know, I've had displays
00:33:33 ◼ ► like that before that were anti-glare displays and they just, they're not, the blacks aren't
00:33:39 ◼ ► crisp or anything like that. It's not like that. Everything looks really good and the glare is
00:33:46 ◼ ► incredibly diffuse. I tried to take a picture of it. It's very hard to take a picture of it and
00:33:50 ◼ ► make it clear. Cause I was, I took a picture with my iPhone camera and my iPhone camera automatically
00:33:56 ◼ ► adjusted the brightness up. And so my picture, you could very clearly see the lamp in the background
00:34:02 ◼ ► that was shining on it. But when I looked at the display, I could not see even a glow, a barest
00:34:09 ◼ ► hint of a glow. So I had to like step down the exposure on my camera to get something that
00:34:14 ◼ ► approximated what my eye was seeing. It's very good is what I'm saying. And if you're somebody
00:34:18 ◼ ► who has glare issues in your office environment, I think people are going to buy that for that
00:34:25 ◼ ► feature. And it's really, really nice. You mentioned when you started talking about this,
00:34:30 ◼ ► it was like the idea of somebody buying this machine cause they're had it for five years.
00:34:35 ◼ ► I actually think that's a really interesting point where if that's what you want to do,
00:34:39 ◼ ► it might be best to buy this machine instead of the next one. Because you could be coming in at
00:34:45 ◼ ► a time, which might be a little tumultuous for a while. We don't know yet what the Apple Silicon
00:34:50 ◼ ► transition is going to be like. We don't know how many apps we're going to lose, right. Or like,
00:34:55 ◼ ► or how many apps are going to run poorly, right? Like this is stuff that we feel confident about.
00:35:00 ◼ ► We don't know if they're quirks, you know, where there's like, Oh, it turns out this thing,
00:35:04 ◼ ► Apple didn't really get it right. And we've got to wait around and there's some bugs and then it's
00:35:07 ◼ ► going to take six months or, or it turns out this feature just didn't work right. Or, I mean,
00:35:11 ◼ ► there's always are things like that that can happen, especially with an initial version of
00:35:15 ◼ ► a product. Like I think back to those initial Intel, Intel max. And although that transition
00:35:19 ◼ ► was pretty seamless also the first round of like core solo and core duo IMAX were, were not very
00:35:28 ◼ ► good. And the core two duos that followed them were good. And that was sort of the upward.
00:35:34 ◼ ► So, so you look at first generation like, yeah, they're okay. But then there were way better
00:35:38 ◼ ► max to come. So that's the other argument there is not only like, is it buggy, but also like
00:35:42 ◼ ► first tentative steps versus buying a Mac that is Apple in stride, having figured out every issue
00:35:49 ◼ ► regarding Apple Silicon max, like there are, there are counter arguments. And if you're somebody who
00:35:52 ◼ ► doesn't care about the cutting edge features, but what if the next iMac has Apple pencil support and
00:35:58 ◼ ► all of this stuff like, but if you're like, no, I just want another iMac to be in my face while I'm
00:36:02 ◼ ► writing for the next five years, like a couple of my friends, like, yeah, this is, this is going to
00:36:08 ◼ ► do you way better than that iMac you bought five or six years ago when the, when the first maybe
00:36:12 ◼ ► 5k iMac came out, this is a huge update for that. It's faster. It's faster than my poor little eight
00:36:19 ◼ ► core Mac pro iMac pro, right? Like my eight core iMac pro, which was discontinued last week, because
00:36:24 ◼ ► why even sell that? And it's, it's way faster than that at everything, at least the high end
00:36:31 ◼ ► configuration is. So, you know, I don't know, like there are lots of arguments to be made. And I know
00:36:38 ◼ ► that most of the people listening to this podcast are not these people because people who listen to
00:36:44 ◼ ► this podcast presumably are really into what's on the cutting edge. But I know that there are some
00:36:48 ◼ ► people who even who listen to this podcast, who are interested in the cutting edge stuff,
00:36:52 ◼ ► but when it comes to their buying decisions or their computer use decisions, they're a little
00:36:57 ◼ ► more conservative and they're like, you know what, maybe I'll get this really good iMac that's built
00:37:03 ◼ ► on all of this technology Apple's been testing for the last five years. And I'll keep that while you
00:37:10 ◼ ► all have fun storming the castle with this Apple Silicon stuff. I'm just going to do my job for the
00:37:15 ◼ ► next four years or five years or whatever. So I think that is a strong argument, but there will
00:37:21 ◼ ► be this other element of it, which is like somebody who really, really, really, really wants that
00:37:24 ◼ ► nanotexture display. And I won't blame them because I think it's really good. And if you want an
00:37:29 ◼ ► anti-glare display on an Apple device, I think you're not going to get a much better deal than
00:37:35 ◼ ► the $500 nanotexture option on the iMac. - Would you be concerned about taking care of it properly?
00:37:42 ◼ ► - I don't think I am. So I talked to Apple about this. I actually, I'm not sure what I'm supposed
00:37:50 ◼ ► to admit to seeing, but I talked to our friends who we've talked to on the show before about the
00:37:57 ◼ ► iMac. I'm just not going to name any names, but my understanding, I asked about the nanotexture
00:38:03 ◼ ► display and I asked about the care of it. So they have this cloth. You're supposed to use the cloth.
00:38:08 ◼ ► You can get more cloths. You can get them online or you can get them at your Apple store. They
00:38:13 ◼ ► really want you to use this cloth and not another method. It sounds like you can also use maybe
00:38:19 ◼ ► water, just plain water if you need to with this cloth. It doesn't sound like this is the kind of
00:38:26 ◼ ► thing where if you use some Windex on it, it's going to melt. It's not going to have an iMac
00:38:30 ◼ ► anymore. My understanding though, is that if you use chemicals on the screen, their concern is that
00:38:36 ◼ ► what it's going to do is it's going to wear down the glass and you're going to lose the magic of
00:38:42 ◼ ► the etching that is going into the nanotexture. So I walked away thinking it doesn't feel like
00:38:49 ◼ ► it's fragile. You just need to be aware that if you want this thing to hold up and be this magical
00:38:56 ◼ ► non-glare display, you need to follow the care instructions, which is not, I think it's not
00:39:01 ◼ ► unreasonable. I have a larger point, which you may have thought of, Myke, which is, okay, Apple's
00:39:07 ◼ ► really into this nanotexture thing. That's great. What does this mean about our conjecture that
00:39:12 ◼ ► maybe Apple will do Apple pencil or touch screen or both Macs in the future? Because I'm not
00:39:19 ◼ ► clear on how resilient nanotexture is to somebody sticking their, you know, their oily fingers all
00:39:28 ◼ ► over it all the time. That I'm not entirely clear on. And I wonder, is this a last hurrah where
00:39:35 ◼ ► they're like, well, let's get nanotexture into the iMac now, cause we're not going to be able to do
00:39:39 ◼ ► it on those touch screen iMacs. That would have been a bold and wrong choice to make, I think,
00:39:43 ◼ ► if that, you know, like if the, if new iMac models cannot have this, that would have been very weird
00:39:51 ◼ ► to put it on there in my opinion. We'll see. Or is it that the geniuses at Apple are all like,
00:39:57 ◼ ► ah, we got it. We got it. We got a touch screen nanotexture in the lab. It'll be fine. I don't
00:40:01 ◼ ► know. I think we have one of two options here. I mean, one, I do believe that at some point in
00:40:07 ◼ ► the future, there will be a combination where you can have nanotexture and touch on the same panel.
00:40:12 ◼ ► I don't know how they'll do it, but I believe they will do it at some point. Right? Like,
00:40:16 ◼ ► I understand that people will say that like, this doesn't work. I would expect that they will find
00:40:22 ◼ ► a way to do it because people are clever and they find ways to do it. Like nanotexture even
00:40:29 ◼ ► existing is something that we thought wouldn't have been able to exist a few years ago. Right?
00:40:33 ◼ ► Like the, what they've been able to do here with glass etching. So I'm sure there will be a way
00:40:38 ◼ ► to do it at some point in the future. We just don't know what that is yet. The other thing I
00:40:42 ◼ ► would expect is if they do want to offer nanotexture and they do want to offer touch screens, you have
00:40:46 ◼ ► to choose. Could be, could be, um, there could be a division on what Macs get touch screens and what
00:40:55 ◼ ► Macs get a nanotexture, or it could be a choice. Like I could totally see them saying, you know,
00:41:01 ◼ ► our new 30 inch iMac with Apple Silicon is here and you can, you know, by default it comes with
00:41:08 ◼ ► touch screen and Apple pencil support, but do they say, or nanotexture traditional? I don't know. Or,
00:41:16 ◼ ► or, or do they, it depends on what their approach, assuming they do touch at all. It depends on what
00:41:21 ◼ ► their approach to touch is. Is it laptop only? Um, I hope not because I would really like that 24
00:41:26 ◼ ► inch iMac to be something that could be, you know, pivoted and turned into something kind of like a
00:41:31 ◼ ► surface studio or like a G4 iMac where you could grab the screen. As much as I would love to see
00:41:35 ◼ ► Apple do that, I don't know. I don't know if they will. I don't know if they can see it. Yeah. And,
00:41:41 ◼ ► and so that's a possibility too. So I think it's all there. I do think you're right though, that
00:41:45 ◼ ► if there's any way physically for Apple to bring etched glass that reduces glare into every single
00:41:54 ◼ ► product they make, they will. And if, if, and that means the iPad and the iPhone, which means they
00:42:01 ◼ ► may have to figure out how to solve the problem of how do you do this, but also have oily fingers on
00:42:08 ◼ ► the screen. And if there's any possible way for them to do it, they'll do it right. Because that's
00:42:13 ◼ ► a way for them to push their glass on their devices forward and make a better experience
00:42:19 ◼ ► for everybody, at least as an option. So it's worth watching and you know, you would need to be
00:42:26 ◼ ► an expert at nano texture, glass etching, and how oils deposit on a screen and all of that. And
00:42:34 ◼ ► we're not that. So I look forward to hearing what the experts say or seeing what they do about that.
00:42:39 ◼ ► But you know, it's in the meantime, this thing is real. Like it's really nice. And I would buy one.
00:42:50 ◼ ► I've got it positioned opposite my existing iMac, which means it is facing toward the window in my
00:42:58 ◼ ► office. And I've been editing video. I've actually been editing my 20 Max for 2020 videos on it
00:43:04 ◼ ► this past week because it's way faster than my iMac. And until I send it back, then my iMac Pro,
00:43:10 ◼ ► until I send it back, I kind of want to use that power and it lets me use the nano texture display
00:43:15 ◼ ► and the glare is just not an issue. It's just not. It's amazing. So like I'm a real nano texture
00:43:21 ◼ ► believer. I think it is the banner product or feature of this. It is also the only feature of
00:43:27 ◼ ► the iMac that hasn't been seen on another Mac before. It was on the Pro display XDR, but like
00:43:34 ◼ ► everything else in the iMac is I had somebody on Twitter who was trying to tell me like, oh,
00:43:39 ◼ ► you know, this is a, it's something positive about the iMac having, you know, having picked up all
00:43:43 ◼ ► this stuff. And my, my, my thought was, I don't want to give it too much credit. This is a little
00:43:47 ◼ ► bit like that argument about do you give Apple credit for finally doing something it should have
00:43:50 ◼ ► done five years before it's a little like that because it's like, do we credit the iMac for
00:43:55 ◼ ► adding the T2 processor that was in the 2007 iMac Pro or 2017 iMac Pro? Like do we give it credit
00:44:03 ◼ ► for that or 20, 2017, 2016? I can look, let me look. I'm going to just look. Hmm. 2017, December,
00:44:12 ◼ ► 2017. All right. Do we give it credit for being the T2 Mac when we already had one almost three
00:44:18 ◼ ► years ago in an iMac? Like I don't and the T2 is great and the T2 adds a bunch of stuff,
00:44:24 ◼ ► but it's not new to the Mac. The new three, three microphone system that with, you know,
00:44:31 ◼ ► quote unquote studio quality audio is the MacBook Pro 16 system. It's not new. It's new to the iMac,
00:44:39 ◼ ► but it's not new. Like what's nice about this computer is that it integrates finally to the iMac
00:44:44 ◼ ► the 27 inch model, not the 21.5 inch model that was completely untouched. It integrates this new
00:44:50 ◼ ► stuff. That's great. And that's why I think people who are looking for a new iMac and don't want to
00:44:54 ◼ ► be on the cutting edge of all this Apple Silicon business can get this thing and they're going to
00:44:59 ◼ ► get arguably the state of the art, the final state of the art Intel iMac before the switch, right?
00:45:05 ◼ ► Like the final state of the art Intel Mac with all of this tech that Apple's been working on the last
00:45:10 ◼ ► few years packed into it. But in terms of like newness to the Mac, other than the nanotexture
00:45:18 ◼ ► thing, there's kind of nothing here, right? Like this is all stuff that we've seen somewhere else
00:45:22 ◼ ► and they're just kind of rolling it into the iMac. It's great that they're doing it. I wish they had
00:45:25 ◼ ► done it a couple of years ago, but it's great that they finally did it here at the end so that the
00:45:29 ◼ ► 27 inch iMac has that T2 and all of that. By the way, as a note, because people have been asking me
00:45:34 ◼ ► about it, I'm running my benchmark tests. So I'm running these tests that really stress out the CPU
00:45:39 ◼ ► and the GPU. And I'll tell you the one thing that they, they apparently they tweaked it a little bit
00:45:49 ◼ ► basically the cooling system in the iMac is the cooling system in the iMac, not the cooling system
00:45:55 ◼ ► in the iMac Pro. And that was readily apparent when I ran my benchmark tests and my little iMac
00:46:02 ◼ ► Pro just silently with a very, like a stream of warm air silently blowing out the back of it,
00:46:08 ◼ ► just kept on chugging away. And the moment I pressed the button, all the fans on the iMac
00:46:14 ◼ ► cranked up audibly and stayed up for the entire time that it was working on it. So if you're,
00:46:20 ◼ ► if you're, if you're sound sensitive and not a lot of people are that sound sensitive, but I know like
00:46:25 ◼ ► talking to Steven Hackett about, you know, he, he went, now he has a Mac Pro, but he went from an
00:46:30 ◼ ► iMac to an iMac Pro. And one of the reasons was he records podcasts and a loud blowing fan is not
00:46:37 ◼ ► great for that. So, um, it's still that loud blowing fan. So it's fast, but it's also noisy.
00:46:43 ◼ ► I will say like, so, uh, I'm recording from my home office today, but I've been recording a lot
00:46:49 ◼ ► from my studio recently and I'm using my Mac mini there. Oh boy, did those fans go. Uh-huh. And I
00:46:56 ◼ ► hear it like randomly a lot and I'm reminded that's what computers used to be like and are like,
00:47:06 ◼ ► but I am blessed with this professional Macintosh in front of me here that doesn't, you know,
00:47:11 ◼ ► the only time I ever hear the fans on my iMac Pro is when I absolutely expect to, right? Like
00:47:20 ◼ ► when I'm doing something like, um, forecast, which is Marco's, uh, tool for encoding, right? MP3s.
00:47:41 ◼ ► but other than now, I never hear the fans on my iMac Pro, but on my Mac mini, I could just be like
00:47:47 ◼ ► in Safari and all of a sudden it's like screaming at me. I'm like, what are you doing? What's wrong
00:47:52 ◼ ► with you? You know, I go to activity monitor and everything seems fine, but something's kicking off
00:47:57 ◼ ► the fans because that's just what happens. And so, yeah, that's, that's going to be a thing here too,
00:48:01 ◼ ► right? With that 27 inch iMac is it's going to be really good, but it will kick up the fans and make
00:48:08 ◼ ► noise more if that's the thing that bothers you because either A, your work requires silence or B,
00:48:14 ◼ ► you just don't like it, then fine. You know, that that's going to be a problem for you,
00:48:20 ◼ ► which is a difference with the Mac Pro. But I would wonder anyway, if like, you know, in our
00:48:27 ◼ ► Apple Silicon future, it might not be so much of a problem anyway, because I mean, we have really
00:48:33 ◼ ► powerful ARM chips with no fans now. Yeah. You know, maybe that runs better. So I would say,
00:48:38 ◼ ► you know, you've mentioned, as you mentioned it in your article about Last Hurrah, this really does
00:48:43 ◼ ► feel like a Last Hurrah because of the fact that they integrated so many technologies that are in
00:48:49 ◼ ► the Mac line into this Mac, right? Like, you know, they, all the T2 stuff, right? Like the web, they
00:48:56 ◼ ► upgraded the webcam. It's essentially the iMac Pro webcam, right? It's a 1080 webcam and the digital
00:49:01 ◼ ► signal processing is being done on the T2 so they can do, you know, more dynamic alteration of the,
00:49:07 ◼ ► of the brightness and the contrast. And they do some face detection to try to figure out who is
00:49:11 ◼ ► supposed to be at the, you know, the best lighting and then focus on that and light for that. Like
00:49:17 ◼ ► that's in there. Like great. Like finally the iMac Pro or the iMac webcam is better, but like, again,
00:49:23 ◼ ► nothing new, but it is the, I want to, I want to not praise it for being last to the party,
00:49:30 ◼ ► but I do want to praise it as a product for having everything that Apple has been working for
00:49:37 ◼ ► over the last few years to make the Mac better while still having an Intel processor in it.
00:49:46 ◼ ► I think so. I mean, again, like I said at the beginning, you know who you are if you're
00:49:52 ◼ ► thinking of buying one. And like I can say it's good. It is, while it's not super exciting, it is
00:50:00 ◼ ► the final form of the Intel iMac and it will serve you well if you need an iMac right now and you're
00:50:10 ◼ ► not worried about what comes next because you just want a good iMac. It's gonna, it's gonna serve you
00:50:14 ◼ ► well. The fact that it goes all the way up to a 10 core i9, that it blows my iMac Pro out of the
00:50:20 ◼ ► water, like it's got power to spare. So, and the only other thing I would say is don't buy the 21
00:50:27 ◼ ► and a half inch iMac in any form. They changed the base configuration to have SSDs, but otherwise
00:50:34 ◼ ► it's unchanged. And I'll remind you last year when they updated it, they didn't give it the eighth,
00:50:38 ◼ ► the ninth generation Intel processors. They gave it the eighth generation Intel processors.
00:50:43 ◼ ► So it was already kind of a step behind and now it's another step behind. And if we look into the
00:50:49 ◼ ► tea leaves a little bit and we think about that Ming-Chi Kuo report about what's coming for the
00:50:55 ◼ ► Apple Silicon Macs late this year or early next year, it sounds like a 24 inch iMac is in the
00:51:01 ◼ ► works, which feels very much to me like Apple is not bothering to do any updates to the 21 and a
00:51:06 ◼ ► half inch iMac because the small iMac is going to be where they start the remake of the iMac.
00:51:13 ◼ ► And so I know it's, I know it's the cheap iMac. Don't get it. Like that's, that's one where I
00:51:20 ◼ ► can just say stop, do not get the small iMac. But if you want a 27 inch iMac and you're not worried
00:51:26 ◼ ► about that cutting edge and you're happy to avoid the cutting edge, you will get all of the tech
00:51:32 ◼ ► that Apple has sort of perfected over the last three or four years rolled into this iMac at last
00:51:37 ◼ ► and it's fast and it's Intel. You can bootcamp it. You can do all those things that you won't be able
00:51:42 ◼ ► to do on Apple Silicon and nanotexture. It's, I want to say it's shiny, but it's not. It's the
00:51:49 ◼ ► opposite of shiny. New and dull, but in a good way. The best kind of dull. With this also came,
00:51:58 ◼ ► the macOS Big Sur public beta. I think it was the same day that both the reviews of your,
00:52:05 ◼ ► of the iMac and the public beta came out, right? And you had an article kind of wrapping up a lot
00:52:11 ◼ ► of some of your thoughts on Big Sur. Why do you think it's taken this long for the Big Sur public
00:52:18 ◼ ► beta to come out? I don't know. I think my, I don't know. I don't know. I can speculate and say that
00:52:26 ◼ ► maybe they just weren't happy with the qualities of the betas that they had or, and they wanted
00:52:31 ◼ ► to get it to be stable. Like I know they were tweaking like APFS so that they could get it so
00:52:36 ◼ ► that if you installed it on a drive with another, it wouldn't get inserted in Catalina and say,
00:52:42 ◼ ► I don't know what this is, right? Like stuff like that, which they fixed and like there have been
00:52:46 ◼ ► tweaks to it. I think maybe there's a standard there of what is supposed to go out to the public
00:52:52 ◼ ► that they felt they hadn't reached yet. So that's my best guess is that they just, they really didn't
00:53:00 ◼ ► think it was good enough. And the nice thing about Big Sur is it's not tied to a release like iOS is,
00:53:09 ◼ ► which is so tied to the iPhone. And as we've seen in the past, Apple seems to have no problem
00:53:15 ◼ ► releasing amazing new features for iPhone and iPad and saying, and the Mac will get these features
00:53:20 ◼ ► too with the new Mac OS whenever it shows up and then letting it just kind of show up whenever it
00:53:26 ◼ ► needs to. So if, if iOS and iPad OS are coming in September, would it be surprising if Big Sur came
00:53:32 ◼ ► in October or November? I don't think so. The only reason, the only reason to press forward with Big
00:53:41 ◼ ► Sur for Apple is if Apple Silicon Macs are tied to it. But even then, do they have to, do they have
00:53:48 ◼ ► to, yeah, I assume they are. Do they have to release Big Sur and Apple Silicon Macs in October?
00:53:57 ◼ ► They don't, they could do it in November or December or whatever. And maybe that is one of
00:54:00 ◼ ► the reasons Apple is hedging about, you know, it's like by the end of the year for Apple Silicon is,
00:54:06 ◼ ► is it's tied to Big Sur. I don't know. I don't know why Big Sur is late, but Apple can afford for it
00:54:14 ◼ ► to be late. Yeah. We spent a lot of time on this show, uh, breaking down certain parts of Big Sur,
00:54:20 ◼ ► like the icons and the sounds. Um, do you have, having spent more time of it, do you have like
00:54:27 ◼ ► big thoughts about like things that you like, things that you don't like, like where are you
00:54:31 ◼ ► kind of sitting with Big Sur right now? Um, I like it more than most podcasts hosts you may have heard
00:54:41 ◼ ► about. I, you know, it's, it's early yet. I'm inclined to say that I, that I, it makes me
00:54:49 ◼ ► enthusiastic about the future of the Mac. I likened it in my review to like Good Cop, Bad Cop,
00:54:58 ◼ ► like Catalina was the bad cop Catalina was like, no, no compatibility with old apps. No, get out.
00:55:04 ◼ ► No, lots of security warnings. Get your security in line people. And Big Sur is like, Hey everybody,
00:55:11 ◼ ► new OS shiny and bright and new icons. And, and you know, and it's still all the things
00:55:22 ◼ ► review by a year. And I've talked to people who are like, Oh, you know, maybe I'll go to Big Sur,
00:55:27 ◼ ► but I didn't like Catalina. It's like, well, Big Sur has all the issues in a way that Catalina had
00:55:31 ◼ ► in that it's going to make all your old stuff incompatible. If it's a 32 bit app that hasn't
00:55:35 ◼ ► been updated to 64 bit, but you know, by putting the, and I'm, I'm not really a believer that Apple
00:55:42 ◼ ► structured it this way. So people would just hate Catalina and then bless, uh, Apple Silicon and Big
00:55:48 ◼ ► Sur. Um, but that is sort of the net effect about stuff like this, where I do believe that Apple,
00:55:54 ◼ ► um, make decisions in advance in that way. Uh, I, I think Apple wanted the transition to go smoothly
00:56:03 ◼ ► and that's why they did it with Catalina and not because they wanted people to, uh, it's, it's,
00:56:11 ◼ ► you could see it either way, right? Do a transition to go smoothly also means not going into a
00:56:17 ◼ ► transition with a whole bunch of broken apps. So breaking them a year before helps the transition
00:56:22 ◼ ► go smoothly and also helps people not hate on your new Apple Silicon max because they're the
00:56:27 ◼ ► thing that broke the software because instead it's big, bad Catalina that broke it last year.
00:56:31 ◼ ► And, you know, I think yes, to a certain extent, those are both probably true. So fair enough,
00:56:37 ◼ ► fair enough. Um, but you know, the, the look of it, like it takes some getting used to,
00:56:47 ◼ ► Once I looked at big Sur, I started to think about how so many design decisions on Mac OS are based
00:56:54 ◼ ► on a real lack of screen space, like wanting to be super dense and that you look at big Sur and
00:57:07 ◼ ► And yes, a lot of us think that that means touch is coming, but I think also it is Apple saying,
00:57:16 ◼ ► yeah, big screens are good. We like big screens. We're not going to make teeny tiny screen max
00:57:20 ◼ ► anymore. Ever again, you know, maybe they'll have a 12 inch screen someday, but otherwise like,
00:57:26 ◼ ► no, like that the 13 inch might be the base. Like let's take some space to air this whole thing out.
00:57:45 ◼ ► stuff in current Mac OS is going to feel, uh, real old, like brushed metal, kind of old,
00:57:52 ◼ ► really fast because not only is it a kind of a design trend kind of thing, but it's just,
00:57:58 ◼ ► I think it's nice. I think it looks good. I think there are lots of things they need to fix.
00:58:01 ◼ ► Um, I don't, we, we went over the icons and how I think that they're not trying with some of those
00:58:06 ◼ ► icons, but the fact is every icon on the Mac is going to be around direct and all the apps that
00:58:11 ◼ ► don't support the round direct icon are going to feel old. So they're going to have to update all
00:58:15 ◼ ► of those too. And, uh, so yeah, I mean, it's, it's radical and they're going to walk some of it back
00:58:19 ◼ ► and there are things about it that I don't like. I think the translucency in the menu bar is a mistake
00:58:24 ◼ ► and it makes it very hard to read and it's bad. But, um, overall I'm actually kind of encouraged
00:58:30 ◼ ► about big Sur. And again, I'm probably one of the people who is also reacting to it versus Catalina
00:58:37 ◼ ► and saying, you know, Catalina brought the bad news and big Sur is sort of like trying to be
00:58:42 ◼ ► about the future and what the Mac is going to be going forward. And I'm much more receptive to that
00:58:47 ◼ ► message than the message that Catalina brought, which is I'm going to enforce a lot of security
00:58:56 ◼ ► I like one thing that you said, which is I'm open to the possibility that Apple just thinks
00:59:01 ◼ ► that our displays are big enough now that they can afford to look a little less cramped. And this is
00:59:06 ◼ ► in reference to, you know, lots of people have been saying that a lot of the spacing in big Sur
00:59:11 ◼ ► might be for touch, but it's actually a thing where maybe they just decided that the UI needed
00:59:19 ◼ ► to be more spread apart. No, I think it's very, once you look at big Sur and then you go back to
00:59:25 ◼ ► Catalina, you look at it and you realize, wow, like there are a lot of places where it's as if
00:59:31 ◼ ► this was designed by somebody who's just desperate to shave off pixels. Like let's get this element
00:59:36 ◼ ► as close to the edge of the window or the screen as possible. And you know, when you're in an
00:59:44 ◼ ► environment with, as somebody who had an 11 inch, I still do, it's right here, 11 inch MacBook Air,
00:59:49 ◼ ► that's true. But Apple sort of saying, nah, not so much anymore. We think big screens are where
00:59:57 ◼ ► it's at. We're going to give everything a little bit of room and it's nicer. It's nicer. I know
01:00:03 ◼ ► that it's waste, quote unquote, wasted space and all, but once you see it, you realize that some
01:00:14 ◼ ► that so close to the edge? Like, can we, can we pad that a little bit? Like it shouldn't be that
01:00:18 ◼ ► close. It shouldn't be crammed in there like that. It's crammed in there because a lot of Mac design
01:00:24 ◼ ► is desperately trying to stick as many things in as small a space as possible in order to fit it
01:00:28 ◼ ► on the screen. You mentioned a bunch of improvements to Catalyst as well. How is that feeling in Big
01:00:37 ◼ ► Sur? They've introduced new applications, they've added new APIs. You seem pretty positive about
01:00:43 ◼ ► Catalyst going forward. Well, I've talked to some developers who say that Catalyst going forward
01:00:49 ◼ ► has a lot of things that Catalyst last year didn't have. So that they're really encouraged to be able
01:00:54 ◼ ► to use Catalyst and because Apple has brought so many different apps over, including Messages and
01:00:59 ◼ ► Maps to Catalyst, Apple is motivated in making Catalyst better. And so last year we were like,
01:01:04 ◼ ► well, Mac Catalyst, we were really excited about it, but this is it. And this year it feels like
01:01:09 ◼ ► this is really it and Apple is really using it to build apps. And also we now sort of see Apple's
01:01:15 ◼ ► grand plan here to unify these platforms. And we're going to enter a situation where your iPad
01:01:22 ◼ ► app will run on the Mac on Apple Silicon unmodified, but if you do a little extra work,
01:01:29 ◼ ► it'll be much better on the Mac. And I'm encouraged that a lot of app developers will take that extra
01:01:34 ◼ ► step, especially now that Catalyst is giving them more tools to do it. A lot of my positivity about
01:01:41 ◼ ► it is that Messages is a bad app on Catalina. Like it's bad. I don't know if this has happened to
01:01:48 ◼ ► you. Have you had this where you click on a tab in the Messages view when you start to type a
01:01:52 ◼ ► message and for some reason it flips to a different message and now you're typing a text message to
01:01:56 ◼ ► the wrong person? Happens to me all the time. It's infuriating. It's really bad, right? And that has
01:02:02 ◼ ► been happening to me for years and it just keeps happening. It's sort of random. I don't know why.
01:02:08 ◼ ► And so now every time I send a message in Messages, I have to double check. I like copy out to the
01:02:15 ◼ ► message text just in case. And then I look and see, is this going to the right person? And then
01:02:20 ◼ ► I'll send it. And the new version of Messages that's written with Catalyst, it's coming from
01:02:25 ◼ ► iOS and it's in Catalyst on Big Sur, feels like Messages. Plus it has every feature that the Mac
01:02:32 ◼ ► never got from Messages. You can open pop-open conversations in other windows and stuff. And
01:02:37 ◼ ► yeah, if you look very, very closely, you can detect that it's probably a Catalyst app,
01:02:42 ◼ ► which it is, but it feels like a Mac app. And I think that that's, I'm really encouraged by that.
01:02:48 ◼ ► Plus the fact that they like change the date pickers and stuff. So it's the super saddest
01:02:52 ◼ ► things about like the spinning wheel for the date picker that they left there for a couple of years.
01:02:59 ◼ ► Like those are gone now and that's good. You mentioned something about Safari that was a
01:03:05 ◼ ► surprise to me because I know that Apple were talking about the extensions, like people could
01:03:08 ◼ ► bring over their extensions and that would be great. But I just assumed that Apple was doing
01:03:13 ◼ ► something to make those work in the backend, but it seems like developers would actually need to
01:03:18 ◼ ► submit them for Xcode and stuff, which wasn't what I expected. Yeah. So one of the things that I did
01:03:22 ◼ ► is in the review, I expressed some skepticism about this thing that I actually am excited about,
01:03:26 ◼ ► which is the fact that they're using the extension API that was there, that's there in Firefox and
01:03:31 ◼ ► Chrome to do browser extensions. But of course it's Apple. And so it ends up being this question
01:03:37 ◼ ► of like what app extension or browser extension developers are going to want to be in Safari
01:03:44 ◼ ► because it's not just a case where I can go to a website where there's a Chrome extension
01:03:49 ◼ ► and download it and run it in Safari. It's not that way. They changed some of the security things.
01:03:54 ◼ ► So you have to basically, as a developer, you have to bring it, you have to have a Mac.
01:03:59 ◼ ► First off, you have to bring it into Xcode. You have to make sure that you're following
01:04:09 ◼ ► to be more secure or support privacy better. And then you have to submit it to the app store.
01:04:14 ◼ ► And then it shows up in the Safari extensions section of the app store. So you can do it and
01:04:20 ◼ ► that's great. And if you're the developer of a major browser extension that you built for Chrome
01:04:26 ◼ ► and you want access to Safari, you can get it now. But what if you don't have a Mac? Well,
01:04:32 ◼ ► you're going to need to get one. You're going to need to investigate all the ways that Safari
01:04:39 ◼ ► clamps down on security and privacy that maybe you didn't need to worry about on Chrome. And then
01:04:45 ◼ ► you're going to need to submit it to the app store and learn that process and then get it in the app
01:04:49 ◼ ► store. And then it'll be on Safari. So I think it's a real question about whether people will
01:04:53 ◼ ► do that. So while it's potentially a big win for Safari users because that web extension
01:05:01 ◼ ► technology is coming to Safari, the workflow for it still is going to require a lot of developers.
01:05:13 ◼ ► They've made it easier, not easy. Yeah. And my answer would probably be the moment that it runs
01:05:18 ◼ ► on the iPad and the iPhone, they'll care about it. Yeah. Okay. Good point. Good point. Which may
01:05:23 ◼ ► happen, right? Like especially with the iPad, I guess, at least I would, who should install the
01:05:30 ◼ ► public beta Jason of big Sur? Should anybody? I don't know. I'm going to, I'm going to go back
01:05:36 ◼ ► to what I said about the iMac, which is, you know, who you are like, I would wait it's early in the
01:05:41 ◼ ► cycle, even though it's August it's early in the cycle. I don't know what you're going to get out
01:05:45 ◼ ► of it. I mean, you could install it in an external drive or something and see, but like, I would
01:05:50 ◼ ► wait, I would wait until the they've until they've got it locked down. It's, you know, using a beta,
01:05:57 ◼ ► I have to do it, but you don't have to do it. So if you're not a developer or somebody who really
01:06:04 ◼ ► needs to be in big Sur, I would wait it out because that's what public beta processes are
01:06:08 ◼ ► all about is people finding bugs. And if you want to be a bug hunter and live with the frustration
01:06:12 ◼ ► of it, then go ahead. But like as a, your software, some of your software is going to break all the
01:06:18 ◼ ► audio software that we use breaks in big Sur right now, and has not been updated yet. Although, um,
01:06:24 ◼ ► rogue Amoeba stuff just doesn't work yet. So I don't know it's, uh, right now I'm just sort of
01:06:30 ◼ ► skeptical about this. You run a beta because you're curious and that's great or because you
01:06:34 ◼ ► want to help or because you have to, but, uh, be well aware that although big Sur seems to work
01:06:41 ◼ ► pretty well for me and I didn't really have any problems. You are subjecting yourself to beta
01:06:45 ◼ ► software in your operating system and it's not great. And just in general, because there will
01:06:51 ◼ ► be bugs and weirdness. And so, you know, I think big service for the people who install big Sur
01:06:57 ◼ ► this fall and the public beta, you know who you are. Otherwise I would wait. For me, like I
01:07:03 ◼ ► install the iOS public, the iOS developer beta and stuff like that. And I would do that even if I
01:07:09 ◼ ► wasn't reporting on them and talking about them because I'm would be excited the same way that I
01:07:14 ◼ ► am excited, but I would not install the beta of Mac OS on it on like my main computer. Like I put
01:07:23 ◼ ► iOS on my iPhone because I just feel like for me, I feel like there is more potential disruption and
01:07:30 ◼ ► damage that could be done to my Mac computing life than could be done with my iOS computing life.
01:07:37 ◼ ► Even though I am a primarily iOS person, I just feel like it could be way worse for me to use
01:07:43 ◼ ► a beta on my Mac than on my iOS devices. If something went wrong, the things that could go
01:07:49 ◼ ► wrong on my Mac feel worse to me, but that's just my own kind of like internal bromance for beta
01:07:56 ◼ ► software, especially in software. And it's your feeling about like, yeah, where, where are you
01:08:02 ◼ ► willing to get benefit of beta stuff and where are you not willing to get the negative part of beta
01:08:08 ◼ ► stuff? Those both happen. This episode is brought to you by our friends over at KiwiCo, a science
01:08:17 ◼ ► and art subscription box for kids of all ages. Hey parents, you might feel like your kids summer
01:08:22 ◼ ► vacation started early. If you've been home together for a while now, actual summer vacation
01:08:27 ◼ ► is happening for many people. You might be struggling to think of ways to keep them busy,
01:08:31 ◼ ► but KiwiCo can deliver science fairs and art classes right to your door. It can be hard to
01:08:41 ◼ ► allowing you to spend quality time tackling projects together at home so you can do your
01:08:48 ◼ ► part to encourage your children to be innovators and creative thinkers. The KiwiCo boxes are
01:08:53 ◼ ► excellent. The materials are really great. I love how easy to understand the instructions are,
01:08:58 ◼ ► especially for younger kids because it will allow them to be able to get their head around
01:09:03 ◼ ► the instructions without a ton of interference from the adult that's helping them. If it's an
01:09:07 ◼ ► adult helping them out, everything's done really easily. They include everything that you're going
01:09:11 ◼ ► to need right in the box, but if there's anything you do need, any small household items like
01:09:15 ◼ ► scissors or whatever, they're all labeled out very easily. So you know what you're getting into
01:09:19 ◼ ► before you start. So you're not going to be halfway through the project and then having to run around
01:09:23 ◼ ► and try and scramble to find something. I really like that. No surprises. It's super great. KiwiCo
01:09:28 ◼ ► is redefining play with hands-on projects that build confidence, creativity and critical thinking
01:09:33 ◼ ► skills. There's something for every kid or kid at heart with KiwiCo. You can get 30% of your first
01:09:40 ◼ ► month on select crates over at kiwico.com/upgrade. That's kiwico.com/upgrade. Our thanks to KiwiCo
01:09:49 ◼ ► for their support of this show and relay FM. So there's been some stories, a lot of reports
01:09:56 ◼ ► about Apple and game streaming services over the last week, especially with Microsoft. They
01:10:03 ◼ ► confirmed that their xCloud service would not be coming to iOS. xCloud is a game streaming service.
01:10:11 ◼ ► So there's games being played from the cloud. It's not like a great game subscription service
01:10:19 ◼ ► like Apple Arcade where you pay one fee and you get access to a bunch of games. xCloud is part of
01:10:28 ◼ ► Xbox's Game Pass service where it basically works in a couple of different ways, which makes this
01:10:34 ◼ ► confusing. But the xCloud part of Game Pass is you can stream games to devices that are not Xboxes.
01:10:44 ◼ ► So Apple have made some statements, Microsoft have made some statements. Apple are basically saying
01:10:52 ◼ ► that a service like this can't exist on iOS because they cannot review each title individually.
01:10:58 ◼ ► This is a statement that they gave to, I believe, Insider and they also gave a similar statement in
01:11:04 ◼ ► March to Bloomberg. I believe this is in reference to Stadia and other things. So they're basically
01:11:10 ◼ ► saying that they want to be able to review every game and a service like xCloud means that they
01:11:16 ◼ ► can't review every game. That's Apple's line, right? Because there are games and etc. Like
01:11:21 ◼ ► it's one app. They want things to be there and they also want all kind of games to show up in
01:11:26 ◼ ► search and in charts standalone. They don't like the idea of one application with like a hundred
01:11:34 ◼ ► of games in it or whatever and Apple doesn't get to see all of them listed out for their customers.
01:11:39 ◼ ► Microsoft are unhappy. They have said Apple stands alone as the only general purpose platform
01:11:49 ◼ ► Now there's a lot of people making lots of arguments about this online about different,
01:11:55 ◼ ► you know, saying are Apple right or Apple wrong? Is Microsoft right? Is Microsoft wrong?
01:11:59 ◼ ► I want to give my take on all of this, Jason, if that's okay. And then I'm sure you will have your
01:12:04 ◼ ► own as well. I think that this is all a load of BS from Apple. I think that this is madness from them.
01:12:11 ◼ ► This idea of the individual review of content doesn't hold up to any logical test in my mind.
01:12:17 ◼ ► People like look, this is an often made thing now, like an often made argument about this about
01:12:23 ◼ ► they don't review all of the content on Netflix. But I think that that makes a lot of sense,
01:12:28 ◼ ► right? Like I don't understand why because it's a game. Apple needs to one review every title and
01:12:35 ◼ ► then two, they need to show up in charts. Doesn't make sense to me why this is the case for game
01:12:40 ◼ ► streaming services. And frankly, the games that Xbox sell, the games that are part of Game Pass
01:12:47 ◼ ► are reviewed much more stringently than Apple, right? So a quote from Microsoft and this is true.
01:12:53 ◼ ► All games available in Xbox Game Pass catalog are rated by content for content by independent
01:12:58 ◼ ► industry ratings bodies, such as the ESRB and regional equivalents, right? So console games
01:13:03 ◼ ► go through this external review to age rate them, right? This doesn't happen on the App Store. Apple
01:13:12 ◼ ► decided. And also, there are way less games allowed and available in the Xbox Store, let
01:13:19 ◼ ► alone Game Pass. Game Pass is like a heavily curated system. It's kind of more like Apple
01:13:25 ◼ ► Arcade in that regard in that there is a store and then there's also a Game Pass. Most Xbox Game Pass
01:13:30 ◼ ► games are games made by Microsoft and their own studios. I think it can be very well argued that
01:13:36 ◼ ► the quality barrier for a game on Xbox is vastly higher than what Apple says for the App Store.
01:13:43 ◼ ► Because you get a ton of crap in the App Store, right? Just like bad games. There aren't bad,
01:13:50 ◼ ► quote unquote, bad games or games that don't work in Game Pass, because that's just not how that
01:13:55 ◼ ► works, right? Like that's just not how that system is. It is a very different system. You can get
01:14:00 ◼ ► games with bugs, of course. You can get games that crash, of course. But the idea of this like,
01:14:06 ◼ ► oh, Apple's review system is like way, but it's just not true. Like in my opinion, and I think
01:14:12 ◼ ► I genuinely think this is true, that the level, the quality barrier for what can be approved into
01:14:18 ◼ ► the Game Pass is higher than Apple. But let's just call this what it is. Apple wants a cut,
01:14:23 ◼ ► right? Like I cannot see this any other way. Apple is saying one thing, but I think it's pretty clear
01:14:31 ◼ ► that Apple doesn't want to allow another category of services into the App Store that can be these
01:14:39 ◼ ► reader apps, because that's what Microsoft will submit to them, right? They will create an
01:14:44 ◼ ► application where you just sign in. They don't want to give Apple a cut, right? So they will
01:14:49 ◼ ► create one of these applications that would have to be classed as reader apps in the App Store,
01:14:56 ◼ ► right? So Apple won't be able to get their cut of it. I think that recent history makes me feel very
01:15:01 ◼ ► confident about this idea that the issue is that Apple wants to take their 30% or their 15%,
01:15:06 ◼ ► and Microsoft don't want to give it to them. If that is wrong to assume that, fine. But I think
01:15:12 ◼ ► that this year has shown that Apple super care about this. So I feel pretty justified in saying
01:15:19 ◼ ► that's what's really going on here. Because if Apple really want to review all the games,
01:15:24 ◼ ► Microsoft can let them, right? They can say, "Here you go. It is all 100 games. We've created a demo
01:15:30 ◼ ► account for you. Go ahead and review them." So then that's why they also say, "Oh, we also want
01:15:34 ◼ ► them to show up individually." But why would Apple care about this? In what way is that a good
01:15:39 ◼ ► experience to the customer? That every Xbox Game Pass game would show up individually on the App
01:15:45 ◼ ► Store? Who cares about that? That's not how the model for this service works. You pay a flat fee
01:15:54 ◼ ► subscriber. I just want the Xbox Game Pass app or the X-Cloud app." This is another example,
01:16:04 ◼ ► And I think Apple likes to do this these days, right? And you could say, "Oh, this is Microsoft
01:16:09 ◼ ► telling Apple how to run their business." I don't think that's the case because the iOS App Store
01:16:15 ◼ ► and iOS devices very clearly are made and sent out to run applications like this one, right? Like,
01:16:22 ◼ ► this is a multimedia experience made by a third party. In my opinion, there is absolutely no
01:16:28 ◼ ► difference to a streaming TV service to a streaming game service. And my main issue with all of this
01:16:37 ◼ ► is that if Apple continues this line, iOS users are missing out on something that Android users
01:16:43 ◼ ► can get. Apple is making a worse experience for the App Store and users of the iOS platform if
01:16:49 ◼ ► they continue to make these wild rules that they make people sign up for. Because cloud gaming,
01:16:56 ◼ ► it's becoming a real thing. The X-Cloud service is awesome, right? Like, it works. Stadia works.
01:17:04 ◼ ► Stadia is less awesome because of the game catalog and the pricing. But the pricing and game catalog
01:17:09 ◼ ► for X-Cloud, I am telling you, if you are not aware, this is going to be a thing that you will
01:17:15 ◼ ► miss out on big time at being an iOS customer. Because you would be able to play high quality,
01:17:23 ◼ ► top tier games. We're talking Halo. You would be able to play Halo on your iPad if Apple allowed
01:17:29 ◼ ► this, but they won't. And at the moment, Android will be getting this. Samsung just did a deal with
01:17:36 ◼ ► Microsoft to include three months of this service for free if you buy one of the new Samsung phones.
01:17:41 ◼ ► Like, I really am disappointed that this continues to occur. I think that it is just a bad look for
01:17:51 ◼ ► Apple now. And they need to find ways to work better with companies. Like, we have seen that
01:17:57 ◼ ► they can work if it's in their interest. They'll do the deal that Amazon wants to do if they also
01:18:02 ◼ ► get the right, like, they get that. But they're putting up a wall with Microsoft. They're putting
01:18:06 ◼ ► up a wall with Google. And ultimately, no matter what Apple thinks, their customers lose. And I
01:18:14 ◼ ► think that's wrong. That is my statement on this, Jason. Would you like to say how you feel?
01:18:20 ◼ ► - Thank you for your statement. Thank you. Thank you, the chairman, for yielding the rest of his time.
01:18:33 ◼ ► You know, Microsoft wants to create a new gaming product that uses Apple's hardware as a console,
01:18:40 ◼ ► right? Like, they want to say, "Hey, we can now sell all of our console stuff without actually
01:18:46 ◼ ► having to sell you a console. And we get the money." And I can see the argument that if you're
01:18:51 ◼ ► building your business on Apple's hardware, that they should be able to benefit from it in some
01:18:55 ◼ ► ways. And I can see that Apple looks at this and says it makes your iPhone or your iPad a dumb
01:19:00 ◼ ► console. Like, it's a whole dumb pipe argument again. And I get why Apple would be like, "Oh, no,
01:19:05 ◼ ► that doesn't use the unique Apple secret sauce. You're just piping in content from some other
01:19:11 ◼ ► device platform using our amazing software and hardware as a dumb display." And that Apple
01:19:19 ◼ ► wouldn't like that, like, culturally. So I get all of that. But I have to come back to the argument
01:19:23 ◼ ► that we've talked about before about other issues recently, which is, does Apple recognize that it
01:19:31 ◼ ► accrues value from having apps and services on its platforms? Or does it really believe that an iPhone
01:19:37 ◼ ► that was completely empty and devoid of anything except Apple apps would still have the same appeal?
01:19:43 ◼ ► Now, that's an extreme example. And of course, they wouldn't agree with that. They love the
01:19:46 ◼ ► App Store. And they love talking about the App Store. But I think this is one of the things
01:19:50 ◼ ► that's missing when you get in an issue like, "Hey," where they said Basecamp has been able to
01:19:56 ◼ ► run a whole business for free on our platform. And the strong implication there is that they were
01:19:59 ◼ ► ripping off Apple in some way by doing that and not viewing the other part of it, which is, yeah,
01:20:05 ◼ ► millions of business users rely on Basecamp and they can use your product. And if they couldn't,
01:20:10 ◼ ► then they would use somebody else's product, right? Like, Apple has this real tension between
01:20:15 ◼ ► believing that Apple's the reason everybody's there and wanting to promote the App Store
01:20:20 ◼ ► and all these great apps that make you want to be there. Because I think, in its heart of hearts,
01:20:24 ◼ ► Apple really wants to believe that no individual app is important. That in the end, the greatness
01:20:32 ◼ ► of Apple will win out over any individual app or service. That, like, push comes to shove,
01:20:39 ◼ ► and this app that you want to use isn't on Apple's platforms, what are you going to do?
01:20:43 ◼ ► Get the app's competitor that is or switch to another platform. And Apple, in its heart of
01:20:48 ◼ ► hearts, believes you'll stay because Apple's so great. And sometimes you will. But you also might
01:20:55 ◼ ► devalue your platform if a major thing isn't there, right? Like, that is the back and forth
01:21:00 ◼ ► here. Obviously, Apple can do what it wants. But it does feel like so many of these clashes
01:21:06 ◼ ► are rooted in this philosophy where, you know, they simultaneously believe that iOS is a place
01:21:12 ◼ ► where third parties can bring apps to enhance the platform, and they have this fear that they're
01:21:17 ◼ ► being taken advantage of, or that somebody is making a big profit building a business that
01:21:21 ◼ ► doesn't have any direct benefit to them. And there's a tension between these two things,
01:21:26 ◼ ► and I think it's the core of all of these kinds of stories. And where you see it at its worst
01:21:34 ◼ ► is that Apple builds a whole bunch of tools to protect customers, to make sure that the app
01:21:41 ◼ ► store and that the platform is safe and secure in a bunch of different ways. Although, again,
01:21:48 ◼ ► sidebar, there are also lots of scammy, crummy things on the app store that they don't protect
01:21:53 ◼ ► consumers from. But they do have some of these rules that are, you know, they built this system.
01:21:58 ◼ ► The theory is they built the system to protect users and make a better experience. And then they
01:22:03 ◼ ► use those tools to collect rent or keep competitors off their platform. I think in the end, you know,
01:22:16 ◼ ► Apple's platforms are better when interesting things like streaming gaming services are on it
01:22:24 ◼ ► than they are when they're not on it. And Apple Arcade is its own thing and is not related to
01:22:30 ◼ ► this. Like, this is an improvement for the platform. Find a way to work it out and let it
01:22:35 ◼ ► be there. Because philosophically, we think Apple should err on the side of letting its platform be
01:22:42 ◼ ► open because in the end, Apple sells more iPhones, Apple sells more iPads because Microsoft has
01:22:48 ◼ ► created this. Even if they don't benefit at all financially from it, I would also argue,
01:22:54 ◼ ► come on, of course they could make a deal and benefit financially from it. Of course they could.
01:23:00 ◼ ► Of course they could. And I think it's entirely possible that this is just a lag issue. And at
01:23:05 ◼ ► some point, somebody at Apple, an executive somewhere is going to say, "Oh, there's money
01:23:10 ◼ ► to be made here. We should just make a deal and we should make this happen." And they're going to
01:23:13 ◼ ► take the rules that exist and they're going to, instead of saying, "Well, we have to enforce our
01:23:17 ◼ ► rules," they'll actually change the rules. But I can see the other side of it, which is that Apple
01:23:25 ◼ ► says, "No, we're not, we don't want, this is not our vision for our platform." To have Microsoft
01:23:30 ◼ ► roll in with something that they're taking all the money from and using our platform as a dumb
01:23:35 ◼ ► terminal, a dumb display box, and it doesn't accrue a lot of value to our platform. And if
01:23:41 ◼ ► somebody's really into it on the iPad, it doesn't provide any reason why they should stay on the
01:23:45 ◼ ► iPad and not just buy an Android box next time, an Android device of some kind. So it doesn't really
01:23:51 ◼ ► help us. And so if you're not really helping us, why should we help you? Like, I get it.
01:23:56 ◼ ► Sure. I don't agree with that, but I can see somebody at Apple saying that. And that is,
01:24:02 ◼ ► like, I get that as a philosophy, even if I don't agree with it. I think it's mistaken,
01:24:08 ◼ ► but I don't think it's provably wrong as much as it is, that's not how I view their platforms.
01:24:18 ◼ ► but I think there's a fundamental issue in that thinking, which is, if you believe that's the case,
01:24:34 ◼ ► all it's doing is pushing people towards that if that's what they want from their tablet.
01:24:41 ◼ ► Right? Like, it pushes people to get a Surface Go next time, because they get whatever they get
01:24:48 ◼ ► from there, and they also get to play Game Pass games from X Cloud. Right? Like, if, and I think
01:24:55 ◼ ► that it is a fundamental misunderstanding of what Apple's platforms are. Like, fundamental
01:25:03 ◼ ► misunderstanding. Because the iPhone and the iPad, for many people, are their main computers.
01:25:11 ◼ ► And they just do whatever computers do. Right? Like, Apple love their web browser. Right?
01:25:26 ◼ ► They have no control over that, and they shouldn't. And I believe that they should allow
01:25:33 ◼ ► for applications like this one. Yeah, sure, it might not be your vision for what iOS can do,
01:25:40 ◼ ► but games are important to a lot of people. And if this is one of the future points of gaming,
01:25:47 ◼ ► and it is, because they're all doing it. Right? Sony's gonna have it, Microsoft has it,
01:25:55 ◼ ► You will be leaving your users out in the cold, and to assume that for some reason your tablet is
01:26:01 ◼ ► so special that it shouldn't have, like, you know what you should say, Apple? You should say,
01:26:06 ◼ ► our screens are the best screens to play these games on. Exactly. And you work with Microsoft
01:26:11 ◼ ► to make this HDR or whatever. Like, our device is the best device on there to play games,
01:26:16 ◼ ► to play our games, to play their games, to play Netflix, to play our shows. Right? You compete
01:26:22 ◼ ► on the fact that you think that your hardware and your larger experience is better, right?
01:26:25 ◼ ► Which comes back to what I was saying about, is this all about the greatness of your platform,
01:26:29 ◼ ► or is it about the apps, or is it both? And the answer needs to be, it all goes together.
01:26:33 ◼ ► But you're right. And this is the thing, is this clash is, like I said, it's rooted in these two
01:26:43 ◼ ► views that Apple holds as culturally relevant inside of Apple simultaneously. And one of them
01:26:49 ◼ ► is, we love our developers, we love the App Store, the App Store enhances iOS, it makes it what it
01:26:55 ◼ ► is. And the other one is, give us our money, you owe us, any business that's built on Apple's
01:27:00 ◼ ► greatness, I want money. What I find fascinating about this story in particular is, Apple seems to
01:27:08 ◼ ► be hiding behind App Store policies saying, "Well, philosophically, this kind of app shouldn't be on
01:27:14 ◼ ► our platform." And as you described, I think very well at the beginning of this segment,
01:27:19 ◼ ► come on, it's not about that. In the end, I think it really is about the money. If it's not about
01:27:26 ◼ ► the money, I'm baffled because they should allow these kinds of apps on there, and they should find
01:27:31 ◼ ► a way to make it worth their while. Like Microsoft, I am sure Microsoft, well, I should say, I'm not
01:27:37 ◼ ► sure. Maybe Microsoft is being a jerk here and saying, "No, no, no, Apple, we're not giving you
01:27:41 ◼ ► any of our money." But surely there is an agreement to be reached where Apple allows them to sign up
01:27:54 ◼ ► - Surely there's a way for Apple to wet its beak a little bit on this, right? But also let Microsoft
01:28:00 ◼ ► run its business in a way that makes sense for Microsoft because it does accrue value to the
01:28:05 ◼ ► platform to have these kinds of things on there. And if they're not there, it makes it a little
01:28:11 ◼ ► bit less for somebody who's looking for a cheap iPad for their kid and their kid's like, "No,
01:28:16 ◼ ► you can't get an iPad because I can't do xCloud on the iPad." Like that, you don't want that.
01:28:21 ◼ ► You don't want that. You're not gonna kill your business to get this service, but I don't think
01:28:26 ◼ ► this service is gonna kill your business. So yeah, in the end, I think it's gonna take some executive
01:28:32 ◼ ► at Apple to break through. When you have an internal culture disparity like this, you have
01:28:40 ◼ ► to have somebody in a position of power to say who wins. And right now, there may be somebody in a
01:28:48 ◼ ► position of power saying who wins, or it may be that it has not elevated to the point where
01:28:52 ◼ ► somebody who's got both of those things in mind and can arbitrate between them. It may be that
01:28:57 ◼ ► it's the people who hold the lever are the people who think one thing and the people who think the
01:29:04 ◼ ► other thing don't hold that lever. But it might escalate to Tim Cook or whoever who says, "No,
01:29:09 ◼ ► no, no, no. We gotta do this differently." And that's what we don't know right now is I'm unclear
01:29:16 ◼ ► how far this has escalated and whether Apple has really thought this through. We don't know if
01:29:20 ◼ ► there are some details in the negotiations that we don't understand. It would be really sad if
01:29:24 ◼ ► this has gone all the way to the top and they've just decided that game streaming services are
01:29:28 ◼ ► never gonna be a thing on Apple's platforms, period. Because although I understand why they
01:29:33 ◼ ► might make a decision like that, I'm disappointed because I think that they should be more open
01:29:38 ◼ ► and less defensive and that they're still going to get value out of it. Plus, yeah, they seem
01:29:44 ◼ ► like cool and new. And as somebody who uses Apple's devices, I would like to try cool and new things
01:29:49 ◼ ► and not be barred from them because Apple doesn't think I should have them. I feel like I'm doing
01:29:55 ◼ ► this a lot recently, but I will again recommend that people listen to or sign up for Dithering,
01:30:00 ◼ ► which is Jon Gruber and Ben Thompson's podcast. And I'll actually put a link in the show notes.
01:30:06 ◼ ► They made like a preview thing on iTunes, like a preview feed. I'll put that in the show notes as
01:30:13 ◼ ► well if you want to get an idea for it. I'll just mention it here because they've been having really
01:30:17 ◼ ► interesting discussions. Like I fundamentally disagree of absolutely every point that Jon
01:30:21 ◼ ► Gruber is making on this on Dithering. But it is really interesting to hear. I mean, I understand
01:30:28 ◼ ► what he's saying. I get his points that he's making. I won't go through them all here, but
01:30:32 ◼ ► I disagree with them. But I mention it here because it's really fun, I think, to listen to
01:30:41 ◼ ► Jon and Ben arguing the way that they argue on the show. I just think that it's like a really
01:30:48 ◼ ► interesting thing to listen to. So I just wanted to mention it here. And they're talking about
01:30:53 ◼ ► high-level sort of strategic issues and business issues. And what's a great thing about them as
01:31:00 ◼ ► a pairing is that if I had to categorize them, I'd say Gruber is an Apple-focused guy, but he's also a
01:31:07 ◼ ► product guy in a way. And Ben is a not... He's got a lot of Apple focus, but it's not just Apple.
01:31:21 ◼ ► Yeah, they fit so well together. It's why I love the show so much. And I want to recommend it again
01:31:27 ◼ ► here, even though I really disagree with everything Jon was saying. I know. I listen to Dithering while
01:31:35 ◼ ► I'm running, and it's amazing. For 15 minutes while I'm running, I am hearing those guys
01:31:40 ◼ ► sometimes agree and sometimes argue and sometimes joke. And yeah, among your paid podcasts,
01:31:55 ◼ ► Smile. TextExpander removes the repetition out of work so you can focus on what matters most. You
01:32:01 ◼ ► can say goodbye to repetitive text entry, spelling and message errors, and trying to remember the
01:32:05 ◼ ► right thing to say. Because when you use TextExpander, you can say the right thing every time
01:32:10 ◼ ► in just a few keystrokes. It's better than copy and paste. It's better than scripts, better than
01:32:14 ◼ ► templates, because TextExpander snippets allow you to maximize your time by getting rid of repetitive
01:32:19 ◼ ► things that you type while customizing, while still allowing you to customize and personalize
01:32:23 ◼ ► your messages. I love that for TextExpander. You can have blocks and blocks of text that you say
01:32:28 ◼ ► all the time, but you need to pick the right words to show to the right person or type a few things
01:32:33 ◼ ► in. Or maybe you need something to be appended with the correct date, like which is today.
01:32:37 ◼ ► You can do all of that stuff really easily in TextExpander. And one of the things I also love
01:32:42 ◼ ► about it is we use TextExpander for Teams here at Real AFM so we can share things. We remain
01:32:47 ◼ ► consistent when we're talking to people. And it also means that we're not all coming up with new
01:32:52 ◼ ► stuff to say every time because one person had a great idea. We put it into a snippet and then
01:32:56 ◼ ► everyone can use it. Fantastic. TextExpander can be used in any platform, any app, anywhere you type.
01:33:02 ◼ ► Take your time back and increase your productivity. Upgrade listeners get 20% of their first year. Go
01:33:08 ◼ ► to textexpander.com/podcast to learn more about TextExpander today. That's textexpander.com/podcast
01:33:14 ◼ ► and you can get 20% off your first year. Our thanks to TextExpander from Smile for their support
01:33:20 ◼ ► of this show and Real AFM. #AskUpgradeTime. Jimmy asks, "Is there a preferred order of article,
01:33:29 ◼ ► podcast, and video for 20 max for 2020?" This is a fun and flattering question. And what I would say
01:33:37 ◼ ► is I could see how you might think so or that you... I also had some people ask like, "Are ones
01:33:44 ◼ ► disposable or do they overlap?" And one of the maybe dumber things that I did in this project
01:33:50 ◼ ► is all three of them are totally different and the amount of content recycled between them is
01:33:55 ◼ ► extremely low. Like, it's all about the same subject every week. But, you know, I wrote the
01:34:02 ◼ ► essays and did the research for that and some of the essay content is reflected in the script for
01:34:07 ◼ ► the podcast, but most of the podcast is other people talking about it, not me. And the video is
01:34:12 ◼ ► me with Stephen Hackett having a conversation about the choice and sometimes he will dispute
01:34:20 ◼ ► my reasoning, which is fun, actually. So he's sort of like interrogating me about my choice and we
01:34:24 ◼ ► talk about each old Mac that we're talking about. So they're all very different and I don't think
01:34:29 ◼ ► that there's any particular order. So consume the ones you like. They're all different. They all
01:34:34 ◼ ► have different things to say about the same subject. And if you want to do them in order
01:34:39 ◼ ► of time, I would say it is article and then podcast and then video because that's the order
01:34:44 ◼ ► in which they were sort of recorded or created. But there's no actual sequence. There's no machete
01:34:51 ◼ ► order. There's just whatever makes you feel good, but they're all different. It's not one of those
01:34:56 ◼ ► things where the podcast is the audio of, you know, of the video and the video is me reading
01:35:01 ◼ ► the essay. They're not like that at all. That's good to know though that they're all different
01:35:11 ◼ ► - Yeah. And I tried to make them all like the podcast is I got a bunch of people to talk about
01:35:15 ◼ ► these things in a way that is good on a podcast. In the video, I wanted to show the things
01:35:20 ◼ ► and I thought, well, I can't just show them. That's kind of boring. And I was like, well, Steven,
01:35:24 ◼ ► actually the thought process was Steven has most of these. So why don't Steven and I, since he cares
01:35:28 ◼ ► about old Macs too, we'll have a little conversation and also we'll have like his video and photos of
01:35:33 ◼ ► the ones that he's got and we'll post it on 512 pixels. And so that is itself a totally different
01:36:14 ◼ ► - Macintosh performer. Zach, none of them. I don't like them. I don't like the performer.
01:36:36 ◼ ► a lot of them. There were a lot of different numbers of the same one because they modeled
01:36:39 ◼ ► different software or sold them at a different store. That was from the dark, dark days of Apple.
01:36:46 ◼ ► - I think that was Scully who actually started that. And then it went over into the Spindler era.
01:37:00 ◼ ► mention a few times that you listen to podcasts in the shower. I've tried, but I find it hard to
01:37:05 ◼ ► understand what people are saying over the sound of running water. - We'll talk louder, Jack. Jack!
01:37:21 ◼ ► - Yeah, I actually got mine recommended to me by Marco Arment. So it's a Marco approved
01:37:28 ◼ ► technique. It's a speaker from Soundbot. That's the company. You can just search for it in Amazon.
01:37:35 ◼ ► They make a Bluetooth or several different kinds of Bluetooth speakers with suction cups on them.
01:37:42 ◼ ► And you stick them in the shower. I only bring mine into the shower for the shower, and then I
01:37:47 ◼ ► take it back out. I don't leave it hanging there because I'm deathly afraid it will lose suction
01:37:51 ◼ ► and smash on the floor of the shower. Not that it has, but that it could do that. So I actually take
01:37:57 ◼ ► it in and out. But I suction it to the glass of my shower. You may have tile, something else,
01:38:02 ◼ ► that's fine. And the clever thing about it is the speaker is on the underside. So the speaker
01:38:07 ◼ ► blasts downward onto your hard shower surface, and then that flies back in your face. And I put it at
01:38:15 ◼ ► kind of ear level, and it's very clear. It's bad for music. I wouldn't recommend it for music.
01:38:21 ◼ ► If you listen to music in the shower as well, I would recommend getting one of those nicer
01:38:24 ◼ ► kind of Bluetooth, waterproof Bluetooth speakers. Like, my daughter has one of those. And you can
01:38:28 ◼ ► like take them into a swimming pool or whatever. Like, it really doesn't matter. But for me,
01:38:46 ◼ ► - But if you search, because I looked when Jack asked this question, I looked for my model,
01:38:53 ◼ ► and my model is not for sale on Amazon right now. But there are others, and I'm sure that they're
01:38:59 ◼ ► all the same in being not very good quality, but good enough for podcasts, and they live with you
01:39:05 ◼ ► in the shower, which is nice. So, you know, mine is the SB 517, but it's not currently for sale.
01:39:19 ◼ ► - So I used to use one of the Soundbot speakers, but ended up not liking it because I had to keep
01:39:34 ◼ ► - There you go. I had enough of that. So you know what I do? I bring my phone into the shower,
01:40:06 ◼ ► - So I've done that in a hotel shower before, for sure. I've also done that when the Soundbot
01:40:12 ◼ ► starts beeping at me that it doesn't have any battery anymore. And, you know, then I'm kind
01:40:16 ◼ ► of like reaching outside for the towel and then drying off my hands enough to take the leather
01:40:19 ◼ ► case off of my phone. And then I'll bring the phone in, and I'll put it on the little tile,
01:40:24 ◼ ► and then it echoes that back out. So that would be another way to go because these phones are
01:40:29 ◼ ► water-resistant. I wouldn't put it right under the shower or anything, but getting a little damp is
01:40:33 ◼ ► not a big deal. But I just have taken to every week or so, I just recharge the Soundbot and avoid that
01:40:41 ◼ ► annoying beeping thing because that's no good. I wish it would beep once every like five minutes
01:40:46 ◼ ► or something, but it's every 30 seconds, and it makes the podcast unlistenable. That's a bad day
01:40:55 ◼ ► - Matt asks, "Do you think that any non-pro iPads will have USB-C ports instead of lightning
01:41:16 ◼ ► which is to at some point have no charging port on the iPhone, which I think is a possibility for
01:41:21 ◼ ► at some point in the future, I think at that point, all iPads go USB-C, so they don't end up with
01:41:28 ◼ ► some iPads being lightning and some being USB-C, because I don't imagine in the near to medium
01:41:35 ◼ ► future the iPad going like Qi charging. It's too big, right? So even the small iPads, they're too
01:41:45 ◼ ► big for that. It would be weird. It would be difficult to make that work properly. So I would
01:41:50 ◼ ► imagine it happening then, but honestly, I could see them doing it at any point now. Honestly,
01:42:06 ◼ ► eventually, yeah, all of them, right? Or almost all of them. I feel like this is going to be the
01:42:10 ◼ ► same thing, which is just eventually as the iPad evolves now, it's going to be slow, right? I'm not
01:42:17 ◼ ► convinced that the iPad could get a redesign to look more like the iPad Pro, or it could not,
01:42:23 ◼ ► and they could just keep on doing that Tim Cook thing where they keep it exactly the same shape,
01:42:28 ◼ ► but just very slowly integrate new features, very slowly. But I think eventually it's inevitable
01:42:44 ◼ ► "If the next iPhone does have flat sides like the iPad, do you think Apple would bring back
01:42:49 ◼ ► the bumper case?" I wish. - Why not? I hadn't really thought about it, but why not? That was
01:43:00 ◼ ► a great little case, and Steve Jobs said, "Yeah, you can have one." - Begrudgingly gave them away
01:43:07 ◼ ► for free. - Yeah. - Yeah. I loved that case. That was a good case. It was basically just a case that
01:43:15 ◼ ► went around the outside of the iPhone 4 and had no back on it. Really nice. - Yep. - So you could
01:43:24 ◼ ► still, it was still like, you kept the phone feeling thin, you still got to appreciate the
01:43:29 ◼ ► glass back. Yeah, I would like that a lot personally. - But we'll see. - People make them,
01:43:37 ◼ ► you know, like people make them for every iPhone, you know, but I would like to see one made by
01:43:44 ◼ ► Apple again if they went with that flat sides. You know, I was thinking like I am a case person,
01:43:48 ◼ ► but if that design of the new iPhone is as that people think it's going to be, or, you know, I
01:43:55 ◼ ► would, I feel like I would really hate to have a case on it because, you know, if it's anything
01:44:00 ◼ ► like the iPad design, I really love how that feels. It would be a shame, I think, to put a case on that
01:44:06 ◼ ► phone. - The beauty of having a bumper case is your, Apple has struggled with the iPhone 11,
01:44:16 ◼ ► right? That the, because Jamie's got one of these, the, the, she's got a purple iPhone, it looks great,
01:44:24 ◼ ► but she's got the clear case on it. The clear case is fine, but it's, I think, no, I think it's,
01:44:30 ◼ ► you're trading the niceness of seeing the color of the phone for the ugliness of having a big
01:44:35 ◼ ► case on it, and I think, I think the case is ugly, but the, the purple color is nice. A bumper design,
01:44:43 ◼ ► you know, of a case shows you the beauty of the color while still making it grippable, which is
01:44:50 ◼ ► one of the reasons you do it. Like, it's not super protective, but it, it, it's protective in the
01:44:55 ◼ ► sense that you can hold it in your hand without feeling like it's going to slip out. - It protects
01:44:59 ◼ ► the, the, the parts that are the most, uh, damage prone, which are the corners, like the corners
01:45:04 ◼ ► hitting. And also it keeps the screen in the back away from the ground. So if it does hit,
01:45:10 ◼ ► it doesn't like hit the ground, right? Um, if it's landing on a flat, flat surface, even if it went
01:45:16 ◼ ► straight down, because there's like a little lip that it creates. So it would be cool. I would like
01:45:21 ◼ ► it. I would like it. I mean, but there is that thing about like, well, if the flat sides are a
01:45:25 ◼ ► thing and you are still covering, might feel really nice. We'll see. At the end of the day,
01:45:30 ◼ ► like maybe I'll just throw a pop socket on the back and just leave it at that. Right. Like,
01:45:34 ◼ ► less of a risk of breaking my phone when I don't go out as much. So we'll see. All right. That is
01:45:41 ◼ ► it for this week's episode. If you would like to send in a question for a future episode of the
01:45:45 ◼ ► show, you can send out a tweet with the hashtag ask upgrade or in the Relay FM members Discord
01:45:50 ◼ ► question mark ask upgrade. You can get in the Relay FM members Discord if you're a member. And,
01:45:55 ◼ ► uh, one of the ways you become a member of Relay FM while also supporting upgrade is to go to
01:46:00 ◼ ► get upgrade plus dot com. If you're an upgrade plus subscriber, you get more upgrade. There'll
01:46:05 ◼ ► be more upgrade after the theme tune is over. Um, and, uh, you then also get no ads. It's $5
01:46:12 ◼ ► a month or $50 a year. You can go to get upgrade plus.com to sign up or you can find out more on
01:46:17 ◼ ► the Relay FM website. And also don't forget upgrade plus members also get a. Advanced version of 20
01:46:24 ◼ ► max of 2020. You get the podcast a few days early than the public feeds, which is an extra bonus.
01:46:30 ◼ ► For upgrade plus subscribers. There's a get upgrade plus.com. Thanks so much to smile KiwiCo and hover
01:46:37 ◼ ► for their support of this show. And we'll be back next time until then. Oh, you can find this in a
01:46:43 ◼ ► bunch of places, six colors.com at J Snell. Uh, you can go to relay.fm/shows. If you want more