00:00:08 ◼ ► From relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 283. Today's show is brought to you by Pingdom,
00:00:14 ◼ ► Squarespace, and KiwiCo. My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by Jason Snow. Hello, Jason Snow.
00:00:20 ◼ ► Hello, Myke Hurley. How are you? I am fine and dandy, my friend. Fine and dandy indeed,
00:00:37 ◼ ► Um, that's a fun question. I'm not on my own traveling in a new city very often. I'm generally
00:00:44 ◼ ► with my family or I'm with friends doing like an event of some kind, but it does occasionally
00:00:50 ◼ ► happen. I did especially when I was working at IDG. I'd have to go to some thing like IDG thing
00:00:58 ◼ ► somewhere and it's like, okay, I'm in Copenhagen. What will I do? And so my historical answer is,
00:01:20 ◼ ► Yeah, sure. It was in Dublin. Yeah, in Dublin. There's the microbrewery there where like
00:01:26 ◼ ► everything is just Guinness everywhere, but you could go to the Porter house in a temple bar,
00:01:33 ◼ ► I think is where we went. And they have like microbrews from Ireland and elsewhere. And it
00:01:39 ◼ ► was recommended to me by a waiter from the Guinness storehouse, which is, oh, the irony of that. It's
00:01:44 ◼ ► like, if you like beer, you should try it. Beers that are not Guinness. Don't go to this place.
00:01:49 ◼ ► Yeah, this is fine. But that was good. And yeah, and I did that. I went to, I don't know where I
00:01:54 ◼ ► went, but I had in Copenhagen, I had a, like a Mickler beer that was really good. Yeah. And now,
00:02:00 ◼ ► of course I'm not allowed to drink a regular beer. So sad, but that's my answer is that was,
00:02:22 ◼ ► sort of down by where we were staying. And I discovered that place when I was there with IDG,
00:02:28 ◼ ► cause it was just down the road from the place we were staying for the IDG meeting in Dublin. And I
00:02:32 ◼ ► thought, I thought, oh my God, this is like, perfect. This is exactly what I imagine an Irish
00:02:37 ◼ ► pub to be in that it was very small, completely packed, everybody talking. And then you and James
00:02:43 ◼ ► and I did the same and it was exactly the same, which I loved it. That was great. It was one of
00:02:48 ◼ ► those places where you walk in and the music stops kind of thing. Right. And everyone looks at you,
00:02:54 ◼ ► right. That was kind of what this place was like. Well, I ordered a Guinness. I remember the first
00:03:00 ◼ ► time I was there and they're like, oh, American. And they said from, you know, from looking at you,
00:03:04 ◼ ► you might as well be Irish. And it's like, well, it is genetically that's about right. So, uh,
00:03:09 ◼ ► but I thought that was a funny moment of like, yeah, I fit, I fit in. It's like, I had not opened
00:03:14 ◼ ► my dumb American mouth. Uh, no one would have known. Whereas you an Englishman in Ireland would
00:03:19 ◼ ► have, uh, you're lucky that you, you left with your life. On that note, if you would like to
00:03:25 ◼ ► send in a Snell Talk question to open a future episode of the show, just send out a tweet with
00:03:29 ◼ ► the hashtag Snell Talk and it may be included. Thank you to other James for sending that in.
00:03:38 ◼ ► people who killed English people. It's amazing. Anyway, uh, should we, should we do just, just
00:03:46 ◼ ► watch your back when you're there. Don't try to, don't try to take over when you're in Ireland.
00:03:54 ◼ ► to have to, you're going to have to show, you know, do your proper entry procedures now,
00:03:58 ◼ ► but we don't want to talk now. We really don't want to talk about that. Not now, but maybe at
00:04:02 ◼ ► some point. Um, we have a packed show today, um, but we want to talk a little bit about
00:04:09 ◼ ► Fantastic Cal three, right? You want to start on that today? It's kind of like follow up. We
00:04:13 ◼ ► got an email from a listener that I thought was, uh, that he made a nice point. Uh, and I wanted
00:04:19 ◼ ► to just mention, so Fantastic Cal three came out last week. I wrote about it. Federico Viticci
00:04:22 ◼ ► wrote about it. Other people wrote about it. They did a, you know, they prepped us. We got the beta
00:04:26 ◼ ► and advanced and all of that. Yep. Got a lot of nice new features. Um, I'm very impressed with
00:04:30 ◼ ► the new features. It also adds really great. Yeah. It also adds a subscription model, which,
00:04:40 ◼ ► a subscription model, people are angry because a lot of people don't like subscription software.
00:04:46 ◼ ► Um, and so it's, uh, the way they did is really interesting. They released it. The new, the new
00:04:50 ◼ ► app is an update for version two. It, uh, so if you paid for version two, you get all the features
00:04:59 ◼ ► of version two for free. Um, and the new features are under the subscription model, which is $40 a
00:05:06 ◼ ► year. Yep. Um, now I have some criticisms about this. Like, first off, a lot of people are like,
00:05:12 ◼ ► well, why didn't they release it as a new app and leave the old app there? And they could have done
00:05:18 ◼ ► that. I'm not sure that would have been better because what it would have meant is that that
00:05:23 ◼ ► old app was just going to sit there and rot and you know, they could have like pushed a notification
00:05:30 ◼ ► or something that there's a new version and going to get it. I think there would have been a lot of
00:05:33 ◼ ► problems with like allowing the upgrades from the previous version. It would have been a choice they
00:05:39 ◼ ► could have made. I, I don't know why they didn't make that choice, but I think it's complicated.
00:05:44 ◼ ► It's more complicated than like, Oh, well they just could have done that and they didn't. That
00:05:47 ◼ ► was dumb. I think as a maintaining thing, that's an issue, right? Like, yeah, with this model that
00:05:52 ◼ ► they have right now, because of the way they've developed and implemented it, they can still
00:05:56 ◼ ► maintain an update. What is effectively the free version, right? For people. So you can still get
00:06:03 ◼ ► updates. It will still work with future versions of iOS where if you'd stayed on two, maybe it
00:06:10 ◼ ► wouldn't. Right. Also, uh, sipping a fruit cider in the chat room, James Thompson points out that,
00:06:16 ◼ ► uh, uh, you lose your search visibility when you have a brand new app. Um, you break, you break
00:06:21 ◼ ► continuity. Um, and then you've got your existing app that's still floating around unless you hide
00:06:26 ◼ ► it. And then you've lost it too. It's my point is it's complicated. And there are a lot of people
00:06:31 ◼ ► who are very easily like, well, they should have just done this. And like, they're not really
00:06:34 ◼ ► necessarily considering all of the issues involved. Cause the thing is with it, with a situation like
00:06:40 ◼ ► this, with the market that we're in right now, I will tell you, there is literally no good option.
00:06:45 ◼ ► There is just options with varying levels of bad and you choose your bad. That's the bottom
00:06:51 ◼ ► line here is all of this is precipitated by Apple's policies being bad, right? Like this is Apple not
00:06:56 ◼ ► allowing a sensible upgrade policy for software. And it has driven everybody to subscriptions
00:07:11 ◼ ► it is something that the developers are trying to find a way to build a sustainable business
00:07:16 ◼ ► with their software and releasing a single app for a single purchase. Um, and then you walk away
00:07:22 ◼ ► forever is not sustainable, especially if you've been paying attention to iOS releases, how every
00:07:28 ◼ ► iOS release like breaks apps and apps have to. So like, you can't just take the money and walk away
00:07:35 ◼ ► and never update the app. Imagine you buy an app and then Apple releases a new version of iOS and
00:07:39 ◼ ► the app breaks, are you going to be mad at Apple or are you going to be mad at the developer? Well,
00:07:43 ◼ ► you're probably going to be bad at the developer. And at that point you have an expectation that the
00:07:52 ◼ ► except you haven't given them any more money and they still have to eat. So I, you know, I think,
00:07:58 ◼ ► I think it's, it's a, it's a difficult situation that Apple has made largely itself, but that
00:08:06 ◼ ► developers are trying to find ways through now, you know, so what fantastic I'll decide to do was
00:08:11 ◼ ► release a new version with a new code and give everybody who bought fantastic L2 the features
00:08:16 ◼ ► for the new code. And this is Mac and iOS and Apple watch actually. Um, I would say, you know,
00:08:26 ◼ ► they have a little too, they're a little too pushy in terms of sort of nagging you and saying,
00:08:33 ◼ ► Oh, that's a thing you can't do unless you pay us, uh, for a new feature. I feel like a way to
00:08:38 ◼ ► silence that a way to say, yes, I get it. Don't show this to me again. Like there's literally
00:08:43 ◼ ► some views on iOS where if you tap or slide a divider, it throws up a thing that says, Oh,
00:08:48 ◼ ► this is a premium feature. You can't do that. It's like, that's, it's a bit, it's a bit much.
00:08:52 ◼ ► You should just be able to say, okay. And then don't show that to me again. So it's a little
00:08:56 ◼ ► overzealous. They didn't come out with a family plan. So basically if you've got to, let's say a
00:09:01 ◼ ► couple who wants to use fantastic Cal they're, they're like, well, that's $80 a year, which
00:09:05 ◼ ► I don't know. I mean, if they want to do that, that it's fine, but that seems more like a,
00:09:13 ◼ ► you know, you, you could share calendars using a different app, but it just seems like maybe
00:09:16 ◼ ► there's a missed opportunity there to be, to sort of like for your existing customers to allow them
00:09:21 ◼ ► to add users or team plan, not just family plan. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's just, uh, so, so that's,
00:09:27 ◼ ► that's, I know, and I know that's complicated, but it seems like that's something that they, they
00:09:32 ◼ ► could have given more time to before launch. They have a new account system, which led to a lot of
00:09:38 ◼ ► confusion. And basically what they're trying to do is be able to pass, uh, your like metadata around
00:09:45 ◼ ► and also be able to create kind of helper services. So things like they do meeting scheduling and the
00:09:50 ◼ ► meeting scheduling is in the cloud. So you need to be logged into the FlexiBits account to do your
00:09:55 ◼ ► meeting scheduling in the cloud and the problem. And it's, and it's good. And that like, they
00:09:59 ◼ ► promised that part of this whole subscription thing is they're going to roll out new cloud enabled
00:10:03 ◼ ► features to users as well. Like they're, they're able to do app development and cloud development.
00:10:07 ◼ ► Now that they're going to have a subscription base, um, the challenge is the confusion,
00:10:12 ◼ ► which is first off, people are like, well, wait a second. Um, why can't I use this app unless I
00:10:18 ◼ ► subscribe? And the answer is, well, signing into making a new account is not subscribing. They're
00:10:23 ◼ ► separate, but that's complicated. Right? Like, and then there's another confusion, which is
00:10:28 ◼ ► wait a second. They have a cloud account now. Well, I have my work accounts in my calendar.
00:10:37 ◼ ► insecure. So I can't use this product, which is not true because the calendar stuff still happens
00:10:43 ◼ ► on device on the app. It has nothing to do with the cloud service, but that's complicated. So
00:10:48 ◼ ► it's one of those things where I know why they did it. And I'm not sure how much better they
00:10:52 ◼ ► could have done it, but it is extra layers of confusion with people who are already kind of on
00:10:57 ◼ ► edge. Um, I also noticed this week, a lot of people complaining about, cause people were going,
00:11:03 ◼ ► if you wrote about fantastic out, like I did in Federico did people were like doing Twitter
00:11:07 ◼ ► searches and finding you and then just replying the same reply to everybody. It was just this
00:11:11 ◼ ► outrage machine that cracked up, which, you know, I get being outraged. I'm not interested in your
00:11:16 ◼ ► spam. Um, but, and I did things like, wow, this seems like a nice update. And somebody's like,
00:11:21 ◼ ► the subscription is so right. I said, well, you know, my story says you have to decide if this
00:11:27 ◼ ► is worth it for you. It's right there. But I think the features are nice. Um, I did notice a trend
00:11:31 ◼ ► where a lot of people remember having features that they didn't actually have before. This is
00:11:34 ◼ ► outrageous. I, I, you know, I used to rely on calendar, calendar sets on my iPad, and now it's a
00:11:40 ◼ ► premium feature. I was like, I don't think there were calendar sets on the iPad before. Um, so
00:11:46 ◼ ► that's interesting. So, uh, here's what listener Nathan said, listener, Nathan wrote in and that
00:11:52 ◼ ► was prompted this mini topic. Follow-up is I'm passionate about tech and I want to use the best
00:11:56 ◼ ► possible apps and tools in my personal life, but I don't feel like getting enough value out of
00:12:00 ◼ ► subscriptions like this for what I see as quite limited use. And I think that's a perfectly valid
00:12:05 ◼ ► feeling. This is what listening, Nathan is describing is I like nice things, but sometimes
00:12:11 ◼ ► like nice things count cost more than I would like to pay. Yeah. And I think if I'm thinking
00:12:16 ◼ ► it's the same person, Nathan was saying that they would love to use this stuff for work,
00:12:22 ◼ ► but they can't like, this is just not the type of thing that they're allowed to do because of
00:12:27 ◼ ► all these security procedures. And I know that there's like, well, you don't have to give them
00:12:31 ◼ ► the account stuff, but then you also don't benefit from some of the features that you're now paying
00:12:35 ◼ ► for. Sure. Sure. But I think Flexibix could be more clear about that, but again, all the calendar
00:12:41 ◼ ► data stays on device unless you give them, cause you can now choose to give them API access to
00:12:50 ◼ ► calendars. Yeah. But you it's, you have to do very specific things in the cloud that are not required.
00:12:54 ◼ ► Yep. So again, there's nothing groundbreaking about this comment that I like nice things,
00:13:01 ◼ ► but some of them are too expensive for me. That's life. And I guess what I would say is I get not,
00:13:06 ◼ ► I want a Tesla and it's too expensive, so I can't buy it. Right. And it's like, I'm not mad at Tesla
00:13:11 ◼ ► for not making their car cheaper. I want a nice thing, but ultimately look, if Flexibix
00:13:19 ◼ ► price this wrong, their business will not work, will not succeed. If they overpriced this and
00:13:24 ◼ ► they lose all their customers to other products, they, they made a mistake and they priced it too
00:13:29 ◼ ► high. That said, if they price it right and some people opt out because it's too rich for their
00:13:34 ◼ ► blood, that's fine. That's okay. That's an okay outcome. Not every product is going to be bought
00:13:39 ◼ ► by everybody. Sometimes the product is too expensive. Serving the largest number of users
00:13:45 ◼ ► is not Flexibix goal. Their goal is not the person with the most users wins. Making their business
00:13:52 ◼ ► sustainable is the goal. And we've seen this time and again with software development on Apple's
00:13:58 ◼ ► platforms, especially, which is there are always people who are up in arms who think the customer
00:14:03 ◼ ► is always right. And the solution is you should please everybody. And the truth is pleasing
00:14:08 ◼ ► everybody cannot be the goal. And it most, you know, there's some business models where it's
00:14:12 ◼ ► all about scale, but for the most part pleasing, everybody's not the goal. Getting a customer base
00:14:17 ◼ ► willing to pay you an amount of money where the customer base is large enough and the amount of
00:14:20 ◼ ► money is large enough and that it's sustainable, which means it needs to happen over time.
00:14:24 ◼ ► That's the goal. And sometimes, because especially because of the way Apple structured the app store,
00:14:36 ◼ ► yeah, like that, that looks like a fun app. And I wouldn't mind having it around like this just
00:14:41 ◼ ► happened to me for the tool I make, we're going to talk about the Apple quarterly results in a
00:14:50 ◼ ► subscription model. And so I used to pay like 15 or $20 per quarter to do that transcript.
00:14:56 ◼ ► As of later this year, I'm going to have to pay $60 to do it because they've switched to
00:15:03 ◼ ► a subscription model. Their lowest price is $60 a month. So I'll have to sign up for a month,
00:15:09 ◼ ► do all the transcripts and then cancel. I don't love it. I will consider alternatives. I will
00:15:15 ◼ ► consider the value that it provides to my business. And you know, if I abandon it, then so be it.
00:15:26 ◼ ► I've had that for apps like Ulysses, which is an interesting app that I try from time to time. But
00:15:31 ◼ ► I came to the realization that I probably shouldn't subscribe to it because I don't think I would use
00:15:36 ◼ ► it. I've had that same thought about drafts. I did actually buy a year of drafts, but I may not renew
00:15:42 ◼ ► that. Like everybody has to make their own decisions here. And Flexibits could have done
00:15:45 ◼ ► some things better. But in the end, while I have sympathy for people who are upset that this app
00:15:52 ◼ ► that they like is going to a place that they don't want to go, calendaring is standard. Every Apple
00:16:00 ◼ ► device comes with a calendar app. If you paid them for Fantastic Cal 2, you get those features
00:16:06 ◼ ► on version 3. Hopefully they'll make the nags go away. Like in the end, if you want nice things,
00:16:14 ◼ ► you should be willing to pay for them. Otherwise you'll just have to make a decision about whether
00:16:17 ◼ ► it's nice enough for you to pay. And it's okay for you to say no. And if enough people say no,
00:16:23 ◼ ► the business will hear it and realize they made a mistake. But there is a situation here where
00:16:29 ◼ ► you leave, some people stay, and the business is happy because again, their goal is to be
00:16:34 ◼ ► sustainable, not to have the maximum number of customers possible. And it stinks to be on the
00:16:39 ◼ ► outside of that, but sometimes that's how it has to be because everybody has different priorities.
00:16:49 ◼ ► Yeah. So I forcibly added upstream to this episode just to say Hulu's CEO is out. A guy named Randy
00:16:57 ◼ ► Freer, he's the CEO of Hulu and he's out. And the reason that this is news is mostly because he's
00:17:01 ◼ ► not being replaced. Hulu's senior staff will report to Disney. And this is the most... Hulu's in a
00:17:08 ◼ ► weird place because it's technically still not entirely owned by Disney, although it will be,
00:17:14 ◼ ► but it is operated by Disney. And eventually the other partners will drop out and it will be
00:17:19 ◼ ► completely subsumed by Disney. But for now at least, Hulu still is kind of Disney, kind of not.
00:17:25 ◼ ► But this is the final shoe, essentially dropping of Disney taking control. The CEO has left,
00:17:33 ◼ ► he's not being replaced, Hulu will report inside Disney. So I just think that that's worth noting
00:17:40 ◼ ► that our conversations about Disney Plus and ESPN Plus, and now we've got Hulu as the third leg of
00:17:50 ◼ ► that sort of streaming strategy and Hulu is where they can place content that maybe is a little more
00:17:54 ◼ ► edgy and outside of the bounds of the Disney brand in Disney Plus. Well, that's what's happening.
00:18:01 ◼ ► Also this company that's got a little streaming service named Apple had a pretty good quarter.
00:18:06 ◼ ► - Apple's Q1 2020 results. So remember Q1 2020, that means, well, you would think it would mean
00:18:14 ◼ ► calendar, but it doesn't mean that. It means the sales of the fourth quarter of 2019. This is the
00:18:21 ◼ ► holiday quarter, the big quarter. Not only is it a big quarter, it is the biggest quarter ever in
00:18:29 ◼ ► both revenue and profit. I'm just gonna say, I think that slightly came out of nowhere.
00:18:33 ◼ ► If you just think about the way that the last year or so has gone, I know that we had guidance,
00:18:46 ◼ ► - Well, they beat their guidance. I mean, that's the thing is they talk about being conservative
00:18:58 ◼ ► Their previous record quarter was two years ago, actually. Last year was down a little bit.
00:19:03 ◼ ► But if you look at their growth rate the last four quarters, year over year, it was like down 5%,
00:19:10 ◼ ► down 5%, up 1%, up 2%. Apple's revenue has been kind of, this year has been kind of same as last
00:19:17 ◼ ► year. And they were up 9% year over year, the holiday quarter. And obviously they were up a
00:19:25 ◼ ► little bit from two years ago where they had that record quarter. So it's a little bit out of nowhere.
00:19:32 ◼ ► It's sort of like they beat expectations to have their best quarter ever, which I feel like there
00:19:36 ◼ ► was a period there where we were doing that every year and then we skipped a year, but here we are
00:19:40 ◼ ► again, the holiday quarter, we're back to... And also I'll just point out there, $91.8 billion
00:19:45 ◼ ► quarter means that probably in the next few years, we are going to see Apple have a $100 billion
00:19:50 ◼ ► quarter, which is bananas. - I'm just gonna say it's gonna be Q1 2021. - Maybe. - Who knows?
00:19:58 ◼ ► Well, it's either 2021, 2022, but I reckon it will happen. - I think so. I think you're right.
00:20:02 ◼ ► - Profit was 22.2 billion. The big story here is that the iPhone's back on top and back on top in a
00:20:10 ◼ ► big way, $56 billion of revenue. It's up 4 billion year over year. This is the second largest quarter
00:20:19 ◼ ► for the iPhone ever, which is a, again, big surprise, I think, because the big story from
00:20:25 ◼ ► Q4 2019 results was that the iPhone dipped below 50% of Apple's overall business. And we were
00:20:34 ◼ ► talking about it. There were lots of articles about it. We were entering this new world where
00:20:38 ◼ ► this is gonna be the way that Apple's gonna be, but now it's 61% again. So we can forget that new
00:20:44 ◼ ► world. - Well, if you look at the percentage numbers, the holiday quarter always tips toward
00:20:50 ◼ ► iPhone. People buy iPhones in that quarter because that's the new iPhone quarter. It's not just the
00:20:54 ◼ ► holiday. We focus on the holiday, but it's October, November, December. It's the new iPhone quarter,
00:21:08 ◼ ► 11 outsold the iPhone 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max every single week of the holiday quarter. So the plan
00:21:13 ◼ ► worked. Rebranding the XR to become 11 was a clear strategy from Apple to drive the price
00:21:21 ◼ ► of what seemed to be the standard flagship phone down when really what they were doing is making a
00:21:28 ◼ ► cheaper version of the phone. So if you had the X, for example, the X10S, you could see that the
00:21:36 ◼ ► XR was the cheaper version of that because it came afterwards. It had fewer features, but then with
00:21:42 ◼ ► the 11, they introduced them as like, "Here's the 11, and then we have these other ones as well."
00:21:47 ◼ ► They have very similar features across the board. It was a very different pitch that Apple gave.
00:21:53 ◼ ► So what they ended up was to create a strategy where the 11 was the entry point, where I think
00:22:00 ◼ ► previously the XS was the entry point, and then maybe you would go down to the XR. But I think
00:22:05 ◼ ► Apple put together a really compelling strategy for this holiday season, which has ended up working
00:22:11 ◼ ► in their favor. You pointed out in the article that you wrote, which I will definitely agree
00:22:16 ◼ ► with, that if you combined the Pro lines, it probably beat the 11. But just from APO handset
00:22:23 ◼ ► sales, the iPhone 11 was the most successful. I know that the XR had had previous great success,
00:22:33 ◼ ► but I think it was considered differently. I feel like the iPhone 11 was really just considered
00:22:39 ◼ ► differently, shown to be different. There's been less conversation, I think, about it being the
00:22:44 ◼ ► cheaper phone. It just is the standard phone. Lots and lots and lots of the reviews for these models
00:22:52 ◼ ► were just saying that there isn't really much need to go to the Pro. You don't have to do that.
00:23:02 ◼ ► Yeah, if you view this as a multi-year kind of repositioning of the entire iPhone line,
00:23:06 ◼ ► which we're probably not done with even now, it's probably going to continue next year or this fall.
00:23:29 ◼ ► Then they added the 10 and then there was this kind of like, well, 10 plus the 10 Pro Max,
00:23:33 ◼ ► but also the 10 R and like, how are we going to all do this? And this year we got it like,
00:23:37 ◼ ► no, no, no, no. Now we've redefined it again. Like that 10 that was high-end and yet was also
00:23:43 ◼ ► kind of mainstream is now firmly high-end. And it's fascinating to see them do this because this
00:23:48 ◼ ► is a high wire act right there. This iPhone is everything, so you don't want to mess it up,
00:24:05 ◼ ► especially around the way that Apple positioned it in the lineup. You know, we often make the joke
00:24:10 ◼ ► about like, remember the iPhone 8, right? It's just like the forgotten iPhone, right? Which
00:24:15 ◼ ► was just because we have a new iPhone, but you don't care about this one because we have that
00:24:19 ◼ ► other one, but by the way, that's too expensive. They sold a lot of 10s though, and that was the
00:24:24 ◼ ► record quarter. So I think, I don't know if I would say it was a misstep. I think, I think it
00:24:29 ◼ ► was a gamble and it didn't, you know, and it kind of paid off, but it did require them to do a lot
00:24:35 ◼ ► of cleanup afterward. And we're still kind of in the cleanup now. Yeah. I think they reeled a bit
00:24:39 ◼ ► though, right? Which is like, they had that big quarter. I agree because people were excited about
00:24:43 ◼ ► that, but I think it didn't do so well for them after. But anyway, we don't need to get into that
00:24:47 ◼ ► now and then I'll just speak for themselves. Mac and iPad saw the clients year over year,
00:24:52 ◼ ► from an article, I'm reading some quotes out from some articles that you wrote on Six Colors
00:24:57 ◼ ► and Macworld. Both products had a difficult year over year comparison due to the launches of Mac
00:25:01 ◼ ► Book Air, Mac Mini and iPad Pro during the December quarter a year ago, which is what Apple said is
00:25:06 ◼ ► the reason for this. That's the tough, that's the old tough compare argument. Tough compare.
00:25:10 ◼ ► Tough compare. I don't. Yes, tough. The compare was very tough. I feel like this tough compare is
00:25:14 ◼ ► a tough compare, honestly, because we had a 16 inch MacBook Pro and a Mac Pro, like, and I feel like
00:25:20 ◼ ► that should have helped balance out a little bit. I think Mac Pro is insubstantial because it shipped
00:25:26 ◼ ► very late, if at all, in the quarter and is a low volume product. I do think 16 inch MacBook Pro,
00:25:31 ◼ ► there's at least a little bit of an argument there. But that said, huge pent up demand for
00:25:37 ◼ ► the Mac Mini and enormous pent up demand for a retina MacBook Pro. And I do, I do, so I do buy
00:25:43 ◼ ► a certain degree of this tough compare, but it's an excuse. And on the iPad side, I actually do
00:25:48 ◼ ► agree that that new iPad Pro came out and people were really waiting for it and everybody loved it
00:25:52 ◼ ► and they sold a lot of them. And this year, kind of nothing happened. I get that. I see it with the
00:25:56 ◼ ► iPad for sure. I mean, because there was a lot of movement in iPad last year. There was a new iPad
00:26:02 ◼ ► Mini, there was a new, like the iPad Air and the new iPad, right? All of those products came out
00:26:10 ◼ ► in that year. So they would have been focused on the holiday quarter to replace some of those.
00:26:16 ◼ ► There was nothing. There was barely anything that we got, especially around the Pro line in 2019,
00:26:23 ◼ ► that could have pushed that. So I see it with the iPad more than I see it with the Mac.
00:26:27 ◼ ► But there is a thing where it's like, whilst the MacBook Pro is a highly desired machine,
00:26:33 ◼ ► it's probably Apple's best selling laptop at this point. Maybe, maybe Apple's best selling laptop. I
00:26:39 ◼ ► think it could vary between the Air, right? But we know it sells well. But the thing is,
00:26:51 ◼ ► They're mostly going into business, right? And I assume people had already made purchasing
00:26:56 ◼ ► decisions. Like it's going to take a while to move back to the 16. Like that's going to
00:27:01 ◼ ► slowly turn over. Wearables up 37% year over year to $10 billion. This is the now 12th straight
00:27:12 ◼ ► quarter of over 20% year over year growth, which is just absolutely bananas, right? Like,
00:27:22 ◼ ► I know we spoke about it like last week, we've been speaking about it in the weeks before,
00:27:26 ◼ ► both wearables and services. It is easy to pay attention to what we always think about,
00:27:33 ◼ ► right? iPhone, Mac, iPad. But these growth levels are absolutely insane and are going to continue
00:27:41 ◼ ► to significantly change Apple's product mix. Because when you are seeing areas of your company
00:27:49 ◼ ► growing 37% year over year, you are onto something. So you have to keep focusing on it.
00:28:05 ◼ ► that there's another Apple over your headphones coming out. And we talked about that. Like,
00:28:11 ◼ ► how could you not look at this category and say, because Tim Cook said AirPods were a record,
00:28:18 ◼ ► Apple watch was a record in terms of revenue. And I think two interesting points. One is,
00:28:24 ◼ ► they couldn't make enough AirPods Pro. And they asked him as the analysts always do, I love it.
00:28:31 ◼ ► They're like, when do you think you're going to get in balance with the AirPods Pro? And Tim said,
00:28:41 ◼ ► other thing that was an interesting tidbit is also in this quarter, they couldn't make enough
00:28:45 ◼ ► series three Apple watches. Because it turns out you sell an Apple watch for $199. People get
00:28:52 ◼ ► really interested in that Apple watch who maybe didn't do it before, which is probably one of the
00:28:56 ◼ ► reasons why 75% of Apple watch purchases in the quarter were to people who had never had an Apple
00:29:01 ◼ ► watch before. So that's pretty good for them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty good. Pretty good.
00:29:08 ◼ ► Keep in mind, they're almost certainly in the Apple ecosystem because you can't buy an Apple
00:29:12 ◼ ► watch without an iPhone. Although Tim Cook did say he has some suspicion that at least some of
00:29:16 ◼ ► the people who are buying into the Apple watch, they're doing it as a, I want to get an iPhone
00:29:22 ◼ ► so that I can get an Apple watch. I'm sure there is a little bit of that, but there are so many
00:29:26 ◼ ► iPhones out there that there's a huge group of iPhone users who Apple can still kind of
00:29:30 ◼ ► finally break down the barriers and sell them an Apple watch. And the fact that I'm sure the Apple
00:29:36 ◼ ► watch series five did well, but the fact that the series three, that they did not anticipate
00:29:40 ◼ ► its demand, they said, he said that one is back in balance, or they think it will be back in
00:29:45 ◼ ► balance this quarter. They'll make enough of them. But what a great sign that is, right? That Apple
00:29:50 ◼ ► didn't expect the demand and, you know, $199 or $299 for cellular, but let's, I mean, I imagine
00:29:55 ◼ ► the bulk of it is the $199. Having a cheap Apple watch, it's a big deal. I would also say, well,
00:30:02 ◼ ► I don't think this would be such a huge driver, but I bet there was definitely a difference
00:30:06 ◼ ► because of the amount of variance Apple offered in the series five with the different materials,
00:30:19 ◼ ► - Yeah, no, that's it. That's exactly it. This is the Tim Cook strategy, right? Which is let's
00:30:24 ◼ ► leave that older model around at a low price so that people have a way in. And I think it works.
00:30:30 ◼ ► And honestly, that series three Apple watch is great. Like what you're missing is you're missing
00:30:34 ◼ ► the wider, the bigger display and the always on, you know, and yeah, there's some other things,
00:30:40 ◼ ► but like, it's really great. And for $199, like, yeah, that's actually a great deal. And that's,
00:30:47 ◼ ► you're in Fitbit territory then, which is, it's good for Apple to be down there. So it's no
00:30:52 ◼ ► wonder that it did well. - But then for people that want it, you know, you can go up to a thousand
00:30:57 ◼ ► or more dollars and they have more options there now than they did before. - Totally. And then on
00:31:03 ◼ ► the AirPod side, what we said before, like, yeah, if you're Apple and you're looking at this, how
00:31:07 ◼ ► could you not be like, let's pour as much, this is hot. Let's do as much as we possibly can because
00:31:12 ◼ ► we have struck on something with this stuff. And people make, you know, sometimes people roll their
00:31:18 ◼ ► eyes about services, which we're gonna get to because services is sort of not traditionally
00:31:22 ◼ ► Apple and it's sort of like selling more things into existing Apple customers. But I think
00:31:27 ◼ ► wearables, which has actually been growing faster than services because it's starting from a lower
00:31:32 ◼ ► point, but growing faster than services for the last two plus three almost years. These are Apple
00:31:39 ◼ ► products, right? These are core Apple products, Apple doing what it does well and having them
00:31:43 ◼ ► be received well in the market. - Yeah. And you gotta, you gotta, right, we all have our fiefdoms,
00:31:48 ◼ ► right? You know, you're a Mac person or iPad person or whatever your fiefdom ends up being,
00:31:53 ◼ ► but both services and wearables made significantly more money this quarter than both of those
00:32:00 ◼ ► products, right? Like Apple probably made more money in wearables than they did in iPads,
00:32:06 ◼ ► like, sorry, in AirPods than they did in iPads, right? Like $10 billion they made and they made
00:32:12 ◼ ► like six on the iPad and seven on the Mac. Like these are not just growth areas, they are areas
00:32:20 ◼ ► that are actually making them more money. Like, you know, and if you're thinking about like a
00:32:29 ◼ ► keep doing it because as well, we're gonna talk about the Apple report card later on as well.
00:32:41 ◼ ► people that are really tied to their fiefdoms, the areas that are scoring like the highest on the
00:32:47 ◼ ► report card is like wearables because the products are so good. So why would you not continue to pull
00:32:54 ◼ ► money into that? So I think we're going to obviously going to continue to see that plus
00:32:58 ◼ ► services up 17% to $12.7 billion. It now accounts for 14% of Apple's overall business, which is more
00:33:07 ◼ ► than any other product line, except for the iPhone, of course, it's twice the size of the iPad, almost
00:33:14 ◼ ► twice the size of the Mac. Apple's gross margin on products, so their physical products they sell is
00:33:19 ◼ ► 34.2%, its gross margin on services is 64.4%. So they actually make more profit on services as well.
00:33:30 ◼ ► A dollar for dollar. Yeah, which is, you know, look, you got to think about what this company
00:33:36 ◼ ► is now. This company is an iPhone company that wants to give you headphones and have you watch
00:33:41 ◼ ► their TV shows. This is primarily who Apple is now. And that's totally good, right? Like totally
00:33:48 ◼ ► good, but it's just worth remembering. There were, this is a wild one to me, all this growth, it came
00:33:55 ◼ ► from outside of Asia, which is not what we've seen when Apple's had big growth in the past. You know,
00:34:02 ◼ ► big growth in the past, you can tie it to Asia, but they were actually flat year over year in the
00:34:07 ◼ ► Asian territories. A lot of growth in America, growth in Europe and elsewhere. But that was
00:34:13 ◼ ► a surprise to me when I was looking through the results. And I think probably Apple's pretty happy
00:34:19 ◼ ► about that because they've been able to show that they can turn growth, they can turn the key
00:34:24 ◼ ► to make their products better, to make people want them, not just because they tap into markets where
00:34:33 ◼ ► this is probably a good shackle for them to shed in this quarter. - And then, I mean, they did turn
00:34:39 ◼ ► around, they actually showed growth in China, which is, they were down the last few, like last year
00:34:48 ◼ ► plus they were down. They were down in Japan, which is weird, 'cause that's one of their
00:34:52 ◼ ► stronger markets. There was a question in the analyst call about that. And it sounds like
00:34:55 ◼ ► Japan just went through a big phone unbundling like the US did a few years ago, where you can't,
00:35:03 ◼ ► there's only so much the carriers can embed and then beyond that you have to buy it. And
00:35:07 ◼ ► what Tim Cook basically said was, that means that there's sticker shock and we have to put in the
00:35:13 ◼ ► trade-in programs and people are gonna hold their phones longer and then it's all gonna work out.
00:35:17 ◼ ► But he said, Japan's a great market for us. And then like China, not only did the iPhone
00:35:23 ◼ ► kind of come back in China, but Apple is, we talked about in the early days of the iPhone,
00:35:27 ◼ ► the halo effect from first off the iPod, but the iPhone about people getting into Apple
00:35:37 ◼ ► Like he said that they are selling a huge number of Macs and iPads, like records in China.
00:35:43 ◼ ► And that's because Apple is there with the iPhone and that iPhones were all among the top six
00:35:52 ◼ ► sellers in China in the quarter of phones that it's benefiting their other products. So they
00:35:59 ◼ ► have lots of positive stories in a bunch of places, but yeah, Japan, they definitely took
00:36:06 ◼ ► kind of a whack, but yeah, US and Europe, this was by far just like a way, way better quarter
00:36:13 ◼ ► than they've had in a while. - Estimates for Q2 are between 63 to 67 billion, which would be the
00:36:21 ◼ ► largest ever Q2 in revenue. - Be another record if they did it. Now it's a wider guidance than
00:36:31 ◼ ► given their operations in China, they decided to be a little more conservative there and provide
00:36:38 ◼ ► wider guidance, but they're guiding, and this is, I've said it before, every three months we say
00:36:42 ◼ ► this, this is what the Wall Street people look at. Like the Wall Street people are good to have
00:36:46 ◼ ► their confirmations or to find out if Apple over or undershot for the holidays, but what they really
00:36:51 ◼ ► want to know, because the stock prices are all based on the future, is what does Apple think
00:36:55 ◼ ► they're going to do in the current quarter when they report it in three months? And they said,
00:37:00 ◼ ► yeah, it's going to be a record and they're going to grow again. They're going to have another
00:37:03 ◼ ► growth quarter after this one, and that's a big deal. - All right, this episode is brought to you
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00:38:35 ◼ ► from SolarWinds for their support of this show and RelayFM. So it has happened again, Jason Snell
00:38:42 ◼ ► has compiled and published the Six Colors report card for what is, I was surprised to see, the
00:38:48 ◼ ► fifth year that you've been doing this. Is that right? Yeah, well, that was the surprise. The
00:38:53 ◼ ► fifth year we've been doing this too. I know but I didn't remember, I knew that but I didn't remember
00:38:57 ◼ ► that the report card has been going for this period for that amount of time too. So this was a really
00:39:01 ◼ ► great idea that you had. It wasn't my idea, it's Koi Vin, the designer who said I've been looking
00:39:08 ◼ ► for a sucker who thinks that this is a good idea and would do it every year and I was like, well,
00:39:12 ◼ ► I just started my site, let's try it. And so now I have to do it every year, which is fine, it's good.
00:39:17 ◼ ► Well, I would say you were a smart man for taking it because it's just one of those things that now
00:39:22 ◼ ► people look forward to it and it always generates, I think probably quite, it's quite successful. I
00:39:29 ◼ ► always see people talking about it in publishing. Yeah, people talk about it, it was on Techmeme,
00:39:33 ◼ ► which is kind of fun and there's always at least one person who thinks all of the quotes in it are
00:39:37 ◼ ► me. So they send me their comments about the things that I said that I didn't say because it's not me.
00:39:46 ◼ ► I tried to intersperse, my panelists said some funny things so there are some laugh out loud
00:39:50 ◼ ► moments in there. I laughed many, many times in the compiling of it and thank you to CGP Grey for
00:39:57 ◼ ► the funniest moment in the entire thing. Maybe we'll go read it if they want to find out which
00:40:01 ◼ ► one that is. So you send out this survey to a vast group of individuals and commenters in the Apple
00:40:06 ◼ ► community. You ask them to grade Apple in a series of areas on a one to five scale, then you take in
00:40:12 ◼ ► all of that. So as we do, we typically will go through the report card, well, we have gone through
00:40:17 ◼ ► the report card every year on the show, so it's also become like a little tradition here too.
00:40:20 ◼ ► I broke from tradition this time in the past. I have never given you quotes for the report card.
00:40:28 ◼ ► This time I did. You didn't do anything with them, but I will now read them all to you on the show.
00:40:33 ◼ ► MATT: I got to reword the thing. I put a thing in about whether you wanted to be quoted or not,
00:40:38 ◼ ► and you checked the box of "Don't quote me," so I didn't quote you. So yeah, we'll have to work on
00:40:43 ◼ ► IAN: Well, that was my fault then, wasn't it? Because I did not want that to be the case. But what I did was, I knew
00:40:50 ◼ ► that no matter what, you're not going to use everything I say verbatim. That's hilarious that I
00:40:55 ◼ ► take that box. Because I will read them to you along with giving my personal scores, and I want
00:41:07 ◼ ► IAN So that's why I want to get the raw Jason Snell scores on this episode. So we'll go
00:41:12 ◼ ► through each category. I've picked out a few of the comments that I think sum up a lot of the
00:41:18 ◼ ► views that people had, and/or I just thought were interesting. So we can talk through any of those
00:41:23 ◼ ► if you want to, and then I will get your scores, your comments, and then I'll give my score and my
00:41:28 ◼ ► comment as well for each category. So we'll start with the Mac. It scored 3.6 out of 5 overall,
00:41:35 ◼ ► which is up 0.2 from last year. The new keyboard in the 16" was praised, I think. People are happy,
00:41:48 ◼ ► Christina Warren said they should have sorted the keyboard out faster, and also should have been
00:41:52 ◼ ► more transparent about the issue itself. And John Maltz, I think, put it quite nicely. You shouldn't
00:41:57 ◼ ► get that much credit simply for fixing your long-term mistakes. I just thought that it was
00:42:03 ◼ ► very succinct there, and it made a lot of sense to me. There were a lot of people, a lot of people,
00:42:08 ◼ ► in the hardware category, which we'll get to. This was a theme, which is a lot of my panelists were
00:42:13 ◼ ► like, "I'm glad that they fixed the butterfly keyboard on that one MacBook Pro, but do I really
00:42:19 ◼ ► want to grade them up for fixing a problem that they should have fixed several years ago, and
00:42:24 ◼ ► it's still in the other laptops?" So it's like everybody's optimistic about it and saw it as a
00:42:28 ◼ ► good sign, but is not sure they want to give them a lot of credit for it because it was lingering the
00:42:33 ◼ ► whole year. I do give them credit, but we'll get to that in a bit. John Siracusa says, "The Mac Pro
00:42:39 ◼ ► is a bright spot in Apple's 2019, a long-expected party for high-end Mac users. Apple has listened
00:42:46 ◼ ► to its customers, they can always use more power and expandability, and are willing to pay for it."
00:42:51 ◼ ► And John Gruber says, "I don't know a single expert Mac user who is not seriously annoyed by the heavy
00:42:56 ◼ ► handy security design of macOS Catalina." So Jason, I would like to know your score out of five for the
00:43:02 ◼ ► Mac and any comments that you have for it. Well, I'm just making it up now because I literally don't
00:43:07 ◼ ► vote. I want your score now, I want you to give it to me now. Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna give it a three.
00:43:15 ◼ ► So I'm gonna score it lower than the average. Wow. So here are the reasons. The MacBook Air
00:43:24 ◼ ► and the 13-inch MacBook Pro continue to ship with the butterfly keyboard. Yeah. It's great that they
00:43:29 ◼ ► fixed it on the one. I am not going to give Apple credit for fixing something that was a mistake
00:43:33 ◼ ► they made more than two years ago and that have failed to rectify over all of this time.
00:43:37 ◼ ► That has tarnished the brand of the MacBook and Apple and made a lot of users really unhappy.
00:43:44 ◼ ► We're going to come to it later with software, but like Catalina, difficult beta. When it ships,
00:44:04 ◼ ► but I can't give them credit for turning it around in the last couple of months. The Mac Pro is
00:44:10 ◼ ► great. I'll also point out that although John Siracusa is right, there's a party for high-end
00:44:15 ◼ ► Mac users, he's also right when he says it's long expected. Apple promised that Mac Pro more than
00:44:20 ◼ ► two years ago and they shipped it on, you know, the last month of 2019. So I'm not going to give
00:44:26 ◼ ► them a lot of credit for that. I'm glad they finally did it, but that took forever to come out
00:44:30 ◼ ► too. So yeah, that's, I give it a three. I'm going to be harsher than the panel, I think.
00:44:36 ◼ ► I'm kinder than you and the panel at large. I give the Mac a four this year. Honestly, for me,
00:44:42 ◼ ► if Catalina wasn't what Catalina was, I think I would have scored it. Well, I definitely would
00:44:48 ◼ ► have scored it higher than a four because, you know, I feel like that this wasn't good. Like,
00:44:54 ◼ ► Catalina overall wasn't good. There were a lot of issues with it. And again, we will actually touch
00:44:58 ◼ ► on these again in a little bit. But, and I just feel like it really kind of sucked the air out
00:45:02 ◼ ► of the room with the Mac this year. I agree. I think that Apple have done a really great job
00:45:07 ◼ ► with Mac hardware this year. I will give them credit for fixing the laptops. I mean, I'm not
00:45:12 ◼ ► going to punish them for not fixing them, but I'm also not going to give them credit for fixing them
00:45:16 ◼ ► quite yet because they're not all fixed. That's the other problem is they're not all fixed. We
00:45:20 ◼ ► make some assumptions, but like, I really want to see that keyboard out of all of the laptops.
00:45:28 ◼ ► I would not have been surprised if Apple never fixed it because they may have never considered it
00:45:37 ◼ ► quote unquote broken. Well, that's why they get a three. And if they don't fix it next year,
00:45:46 ◼ ► And I also do rate them for the Mac Pro. I think that that is really incredible hardware. And I
00:45:50 ◼ ► know that they, you know, I know what you're saying about it was promised a long time ago,
00:45:56 ◼ ► but that was, but I also feel like they deserve credit for that even because they told us
00:46:01 ◼ ► basically when they started the project. So that was like a good thing to have done then. And I
00:46:06 ◼ ► think honestly, like I know people don't like the price and I get it, but people that are interested
00:46:12 ◼ ► and are and or willing to pay the money for this machine, they're getting like one of the best Macs
00:46:18 ◼ ► maybe ever made for what it does. Right. Like it's incredibly powerful and incredibly expandable.
00:46:24 ◼ ► Like I am genuinely very excited about that computer. Like it maybe, maybe like if I wasn't
00:46:31 ◼ ► such an iPad person now, there may be a Mac Pro sitting under my desk. Like if I was as heavy into
00:46:35 ◼ ► the Mac as I used to be, I think that I would struggle to have resisted it. Right. Like in the
00:46:40 ◼ ► same way, basically what happened to Steven Hackett. Let's talk about the iPhone overall
00:46:46 ◼ ► 4 up 0.1. Federico Vittucci says the iPhone 11 Pro camera has made me fall in love with taking
00:46:52 ◼ ► pictures on my iPhone all over again. Carolina Milanese says the strongest portfolio yet. I
00:46:58 ◼ ► particularly liked the iPhone 11 being their mass market option aimed at younger users as well as
00:47:03 ◼ ► more price conscious ones. And Steven Hackett says, I'm not sure what lessons Apple needs to
00:47:08 ◼ ► learn over the release of iOS 13, but I hope that we won't see another cycle like this one.
00:47:29 ◼ ► the camera stuff was really great. They did what they needed to do to upgrade the camera
00:47:38 ◼ ► Matt Walter Yeah. I'm a four and basically for the same reasons. This is the most compelling
00:47:42 ◼ ► lineup of iPhones since they changed to the design model. And I say this in such a way,
00:47:48 ◼ ► it's like, well, yeah, of course it is. But I don't, you know, looking back, like the 10 S
00:47:52 ◼ ► wasn't really that much more over the 10 really, you know, but like the 11, I think has really
00:47:58 ◼ ► stepped up. Like whilst looking the same, I think as like maybe more than many phones in a long time
00:48:04 ◼ ► has actually really earned its number change. Like I understand that people think of these designs as
00:48:10 ◼ ► incremental changes, but the increment quote unquote incremental changes that they made to
00:48:15 ◼ ► the camera and the battery this year were huge, like really big changes. The way I use my phone
00:48:28 ◼ ► the way that it changes how I use my phone is really amazing for me. So I give it a four.
00:48:35 ◼ ► It would have got four marks if iOS 13 wouldn't have been so buggy. If iOS 13 would have just
00:48:40 ◼ ► come out and was as stable as it should have been, this would have been a four marks from me.
00:48:45 ◼ ► But because iOS 13 itself, I don't have any problems with, I had problems with how bad it was
00:48:50 ◼ ► right from a quality perspective when released. So move on to the iPad. Overall 3.9 down 0.1 year
00:48:58 ◼ ► over year. Davindra Harduwa says the new iPad is a tremendous deal. It's getting to a point where
00:49:04 ◼ ► every gadget geek should own one. This is like the regular iPad. Casey List says iPadOS is definitely
00:49:10 ◼ ► a step in the right direction. And David Sparks says we just need Apple to keep the gas down on
00:49:15 ◼ ► iPadOS improvements. John Gruber says to say that I am not a fan of iPadOS is an understatement.
00:49:21 ◼ ► Getting the split screen and slide over stuff to work is utterly unintuitive. It's madness.
00:49:26 ◼ ► And Federico Viticci says there's still plenty left to address from refinements to multi window
00:49:31 ◼ ► and the files app to bigger questions that are looming large over the iPad's role in Apple's
00:49:35 ◼ ► ecosystem. What have you got, Jason? - I'm gonna say four again for a lot of the same reasons.
00:49:41 ◼ ► By the way, John Gruber over the 10th anniversary of the iPad, he wrote a lot about the iPad stuff.
00:49:52 ◼ ► And then he kind of like riffed on it. And I ended up coming up with this after the fact.
00:49:57 ◼ ► And I put those two quotes from Gruber and Viticci together because there's somebody who doesn't get
00:50:05 ◼ ► the iPad and doesn't like it. And there's somebody there who loves the iPad and uses it all the time.
00:50:13 ◼ ► well, did John and Federico not basically agree? Federico puts a more positive spin on it,
00:50:23 ◼ ► you named this thing iPadOS. So now are you gonna keep the improvements coming rather than taking
00:50:29 ◼ ► another year off? And that's my concern. But this year they did add a bunch of improvements that I
00:50:35 ◼ ► wanted. I think it could be better. I'm looking forward to a new iPad Pro. Their hardware lineup
00:50:41 ◼ ► for the iPad is spectacular. We talked about the Apple Watch and having a low-end product and a
00:50:48 ◼ ► high-end product and having a little bit of a range. The iPad has a better range than any
00:50:58 ◼ ► I didn't put it in the story, but one of my panelists says, "We bought a couple of iPads,
00:51:04 ◼ ► low-model iPads for cheap at Costco." And it's like, that should be an option, right? You should
00:51:10 ◼ ► be able to go from that, an iPad at Costco, all the way up to the iPad Pro. So four, almost five.
00:51:17 ◼ ► I feel like iOS 13 and the fact that some of the iPadOS quirks are still there. There were some
00:51:25 ◼ ► letdowns. The file stuff that got introduced is still not really consistent, which is frustrating.
00:51:33 ◼ ► I was just trying to connect to my local server via SMB today, which is a feature of iOS 13.
00:51:38 ◼ ► It just didn't work. It just didn't work. So there's more work to be done. But otherwise,
00:51:43 ◼ ► generally, super positive and four out of five. >> Yeah, I give it a four too. I'm happy that
00:51:49 ◼ ► iPadOS exists and cursor support has been huge for me this year. I'm really, really excited about it.
00:51:53 ◼ ► I'm so happy they added that feature. That's something I've wanted for a while and it's made
00:51:58 ◼ ► big changes for me this year. I think multi-window is the worst part of iPadOS because it just isn't
00:52:05 ◼ ► implemented properly. And I want to see them do the tweaks to that that they have done to
00:52:09 ◼ ► multitasking. I understand that people don't like multitasking, but I kind of disagree with a lot of
00:52:16 ◼ ► the criticism. I feel like all computer systems are unintuitive until you learn them. And it's
00:52:23 ◼ ► just like a general feeling about how you learn them and what works for you and what doesn't.
00:52:27 ◼ ► Honestly, I think it is a little harsh to just blanket call it unintuitive. I don't think that's
00:52:34 ◼ ► accurate to just say it as a fact. I feel like it's better when these things are placed as opinion
00:52:41 ◼ ► because I use my iPad to great effect every day and find it so much easier to use than the Mac.
00:52:48 ◼ ► I'll give you an example, Jason, just like in a general, how frustrating is this to use? I'm using
00:52:53 ◼ ► my MacBook Pro today and I wanted to have two Chrome windows side by side and I had to sit and
00:52:59 ◼ ► drag each one of them until I could get them at the right sizes to fill up half of the screen,
00:53:03 ◼ ► right? Because it's just like window management stuff. You should use Moom, by the way,
00:53:07 ◼ ► for many tricks. Right, but that's the thing. So I have to install third-party software to
00:53:10 ◼ ► get split screen to work properly. This is just a... I feel like this is a... You either comment it
00:53:16 ◼ ► one way or another. Yeah. And you have different... Because everybody understands things, uses things
00:53:22 ◼ ► differently, but I have not enjoyed the rhetoric of the last week where there is just iPad is a
00:53:29 ◼ ► failure, you're an idiot for using it, and everything they do is wrong. And I just feel
00:53:34 ◼ ► like that this is the perception that is then whipped up, right? And I just don't agree with it,
00:53:40 ◼ ► is basically what I want to say. Yeah. I think that's... I don't entirely agree with it,
00:53:44 ◼ ► but I think there's plenty to criticize. I agree that there is plenty to criticize. And as you
00:53:48 ◼ ► said, I think it's also true that if you've ever looked at somebody who's a novice computer user
00:53:52 ◼ ► using Mac, you'll see just how unintuitive the Mac is too. Everything's got their issues. I had
00:53:58 ◼ ► a back and forth with Dave Naney, a software developer yesterday where he basically said,
00:54:06 ◼ ► "If I had all my Apple devices, the one I'd give up is the iPad." And I said, "That's funny. I did
00:54:09 ◼ ► give up my laptop." But the point was that I thought was good that came out of that was
00:54:15 ◼ ► the Mac is built around multi-window, lots of things floating in your face multitasking,
00:54:26 ◼ ► and really since they had multi-window from the beginning. And the iPad is... fundamentally,
00:54:33 ◼ ► its default is a full screen. And I think Mac full screen is actually really weird and bad.
00:54:51 ◼ ► >> Yeah, I think that the bones of multi-window are there, but they need to do a better job
00:55:02 ◼ ► But multitasking, the bones of iPad multitasking, I think are there and all they need to do is just
00:55:08 ◼ ► refine on it. It is by no means a solved issue, like all of the multi-app stuff on iPad, but I
00:55:17 ◼ ► think that where they are right now is more than usable. And the reason I know this is because I
00:55:25 ◼ ► >> Anyway, Apple Watch, overall 4.1, down 0.2. Lex Freebens says, "I love the Apple Watch Series
00:55:38 ◼ ► Which is just a very great Lex quote, but just really perfectly says why. The best feature of
00:55:44 ◼ ► the Apple Watch Series 5 is the Always-On Display. And as Dan Provost says, "The significance of the
00:55:49 ◼ ► Always-On Display cannot be overstated." Steven Hackett says, "The Always-On Display has brought
00:55:54 ◼ ► me back to the Apple Watch. It fundamentally changed the way I think about the Apple Watch
00:55:58 ◼ ► for the better." Carolina Milanese says, "Apple owns the smartwatch category. Apple Watch is no
00:56:04 ◼ ► accessory." That is very true. I mean, and Carolina, very smart analyst, has said that.
00:56:10 ◼ ► And then you come to the earnings report, and then Tim Cook saying, "Yeah, people buy iPhones
00:56:14 ◼ ► because of Apple Watches." So she nailed that one completely, right? Like, it is not an accessory.
00:56:19 ◼ ► It's actually a driver for them for some people now. And CGP Grey says about the Apple Watch,
00:56:24 ◼ ► "Let's not even talk about Apple Watch faces five years on, and nothing really actionable is being
00:56:28 ◼ ► done with all the health data that it has as well." So Grey is complaining about watch faces
00:56:34 ◼ ► and health data. Where are you with this, Jason? - Apple Watch. I never give the top rating to
00:56:46 ◼ ► anything because you can always be better, and you've seen that because I keep giving things
00:56:50 ◼ ► fours. So I'll say four again. I really like Apple Watch Series 5. I think they ticked the last box
00:56:59 ◼ ► in terms of the features that they needed to do that fundamentally make this product what it needs
00:57:05 ◼ ► to be. Plus, the Series 3 is still available at 199, which is pretty good. WatchOS update. All
00:57:11 ◼ ► the OS updates were a little bit shaky, and we'll see where it goes from here. But I think it was a
00:57:18 ◼ ► good year for the Apple Watch. - The Apple Watch achieves one of my lower ratings. I give it a 3.
00:57:22 ◼ ► The Apple Watch hardware is incredible. So the Series 5 hardware is absolutely fantastic
00:57:30 ◼ ► in the way it is built, the options that they have for it now. And I have the white ceramic,
00:57:35 ◼ ► which I love that thing just to look at it. And the always-on screen is the only reason that I
00:57:40 ◼ ► would consider ever wearing an Apple Watch. And just as an update, I wear it. So I tend to rotate
00:57:46 ◼ ► my watches that I own. I own four watches now, including the Apple Watch. And I wear them like
00:57:52 ◼ ► a week at a time. I just will leave one on for a week unless I want one for a specific reason.
00:57:57 ◼ ► And my Apple Watch is still in that rotation. I will wear it, and I'm very happy to wear it.
00:58:01 ◼ ► But the watch faces are just poor still. I'm not happy with the customization ability of the Apple
00:58:09 ◼ ► Watch face when it is a computer. In theory, I should be able to do a million things with it.
00:58:16 ◼ ► I feel like they are not giving enough customization to what could be very customizable.
00:58:21 ◼ ► Notification preferences are still a nightmare to the point that I think Apple's never going to do
00:58:26 ◼ ► anything to really make the best that they can of granularity of notification on that device.
00:58:33 ◼ ► And they should have added sleep tracking by now. And I honestly can't believe they haven't done
00:58:37 ◼ ► that. So I think watchOS is pulling, and it has pulled the Apple Watch down for me. I think they
00:58:44 ◼ ► haven't done enough on watchOS. I think they're putting a lot of really great resources and time
00:58:49 ◼ ► into the hardware. And the major watchOS features that are being added are necessary for their
00:58:54 ◼ ► hardware improvements. I don't think they're doing enough about the actual operating system itself
00:59:06 ◼ ► Wearables is a 4.6 overall, and you added wearables as a new category this year, right?
00:59:11 ◼ ► You split it out from just Apple Watch. Yeah, well, wearables is now a category in a way that
00:59:16 ◼ ► it wasn't when I started the survey. And I have never changed a survey category before. But what
00:59:21 ◼ ► I decided to do is add in wearables with an eye toward possibly removing Apple Watch at some point
00:59:33 ◼ ► I need to kind of have them both live there for a while. So I think it makes sense to have them
00:59:38 ◼ ► separate, honestly, because I don't think of the Apple Watch as wearables in the way that Apple
00:59:43 ◼ ► does. I know that's how they count it. But I do think of it as different because none of the other
00:59:49 ◼ ► wearable products have an operating system that developers can make apps for yet, right? So I feel
01:00:03 ◼ ► "I think it's impressive that Apple is selling out of the $250 wireless earbuds that they make."
01:00:08 ◼ ► Steven Aquino says that AirPods Pro are without a doubt his favorite Apple product of the year.
01:00:13 ◼ ► And Christina Warren says the AirPods Pro are an incredible upgrade in almost every single way
01:00:19 ◼ ► and are a great example of quintessential Apple refinement. What is your score for wearables?
01:00:29 ◼ ► I'll say I gave a four to the Apple Watch and you throw in the AirPods and let's just round it all
01:00:35 ◼ ► the way up to five because the AirPods are great. And we have talked about them at length here. The
01:00:39 ◼ ► original AirPods were the most kind of quintessentially Apple product, as Christina said,
01:00:46 ◼ ► in a long time. And the AirPods Pro kind of continue that. And the fact that they're both
01:00:50 ◼ ► out there and so they've got, again, a range. You can get the cheap product, you can get the
01:00:53 ◼ ► kind of higher end product with the noise canceling, more please, right? Like for people
01:00:58 ◼ ► who want over-ear headphones, let's do that. Let's see what that product looks like. But they're
01:01:02 ◼ ► firing on all cylinders. They're really good at this. It makes me really curious and a little bit
01:01:06 ◼ ► trepidatious about what they are thinking about augmented reality because that's a wearable too.
01:01:10 ◼ ► And part of me thinks I don't entirely understand what that product is going to be and how it would
01:01:16 ◼ ► be rolled out whenever it might be rolled out. And part of me thinks, well, they are doing a
01:01:33 ◼ ► "Talk about ignored technology." Mark O'Arment says, "The TV app changed, but still an unintuitive,
01:01:39 ◼ ► buggy mess designed like a magazine instead of usable software, fitting in nicely with the
01:01:44 ◼ ► rest of TV OS." And Benjamin Mayo says, "Apple TV hardware is too expensive for what it offers
01:01:49 ◼ ► in 2019." Yeah, I'm going to give it a three, but that's because I like what happened this year
01:01:58 ◼ ► where Apple rolled out the TV app on other platforms. I feel like I'm starting to define
01:02:03 ◼ ► what the Apple TV category is a little differently and have it include not just the hardware.
01:02:08 ◼ ► I think looking at the results, there are two ways to view this, and one is to view it as a
01:02:13 ◼ ► question about that little black box, and another is a question about sort of like Apple as a TV
01:02:18 ◼ ► platform. And Apple as a TV platform came a long way because they're on other devices for the first
01:02:24 ◼ ► time because you can get access to your Apple streaming service, but also like your iTunes
01:02:28 ◼ ► movies and like all of that stuff is available on all sorts of TVs and other streaming boxes,
01:02:32 ◼ ► and I think it's a big deal. The Apple TV itself is fine, but it's not great. The remote is not
01:02:40 ◼ ► great. I don't have as big a problem with some of the interface stuff as other people do. I think
01:02:45 ◼ ► it's a perfectly fine thing. Somebody in the survey said it's the Apple product I use the most
01:02:51 ◼ ► and I hate it, basically. I had two panelists who said the Apple TV feels like something Amazon
01:02:59 ◼ ► would have shipped because it's all about selling you other things, which is I think a really good
01:03:03 ◼ ► burn that both Rob Griffiths and Josh centers came up with. So, you know, it's mixed and it's
01:03:10 ◼ ► overpriced. Like that's the other thing, the hardware, the Apple TV hardware. I understand
01:03:14 ◼ ► maybe having a premium product like that that provides premium features if you want to spend
01:03:18 ◼ ► more money. I'm unclear on how premium it really is. It doesn't seem like it does a whole lot more
01:03:30 ◼ ► Amazon Fire Stick for like 25 bucks for my daughter's room for the TV that we put in there
01:03:37 ◼ ► now that she's not in there most of the time. And, you know, 20, 25 bucks. And is it as good
01:03:43 ◼ ► as the Apple TV 4K? No, but it was 25 bucks and it has an Apple TV app on it. So, yeah, yeah,
01:03:51 ◼ ► it's a tough one. I think the hardware I'd rate a lot lower, but I do like what they did with
01:03:56 ◼ ► their approach to apps with getting them on other platforms. I gave it a three and I had no comment.
01:04:02 ◼ ► It's just like, it's like what it is what it is. A three with great reservations and yeah, this is
01:04:08 ◼ ► one of those categories that's very much like everybody kind of went like just yeah. I should
01:04:15 ◼ ► have graded it lower, but I kind of was just apathetic to it rather than annoyed. If they
01:04:19 ◼ ► hadn't rolled out those apps on other platforms, I probably would have called this two, but,
01:04:24 ◼ ► or one. But I like that. I like that Apple broke out right now. This was a year where Apple said
01:04:30 ◼ ► Apple TV is not just going to be inside that little black box. Yeah, and I am happy that they
01:04:36 ◼ ► made that decision because it would have been ridiculously stupid to do this any other way.
01:04:42 ◼ ► Like Apple TV+ will not work if Apple locked it down to their hardware. It will never succeed
01:04:50 ◼ ► that way. And I was pleased that they had the forethought to break from their traditional
01:05:08 ◼ ► right? They put iTunes on Windows because they want to sell iPods. They put the TV app on TVs
01:05:14 ◼ ► and other devices because they want people to watch their content. And it's the only way they
01:05:18 ◼ ► can get the world to watch their content is by making it available to everyone in theory.
01:05:24 ◼ ► So I'm pleased that they did it. All right, let's take a break and we'll continue with the report
01:05:29 ◼ ► card. This episode is also brought to you by KiwiCo. If you have kids, you know how great it
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01:07:53 ◼ ► to KiwiCo for their support of upgrade and all of Relay FM. So we now move into services.
01:08:07 ◼ ► services portfolio is Apple News Plus. John Gruber says that they mostly nailed Apple TV Plus. The
01:08:13 ◼ ► one year free promotion is just what the doctor ordered for a new service with a very limited
01:08:17 ◼ ► library of content. James Thompson says Apple Arcade is an aggressively priced service with
01:08:22 ◼ ► significantly more good games on it than I have time to play. And Dan Morris says Apple Card has
01:08:28 ◼ ► been fine, not as revolutionary as could have been hoped, but also about what was expected.
01:08:33 ◼ ► Jason, where are you on services? >>So Apple Pay and Apple Card, yes. Apple TV Plus, yes.
01:08:56 ◼ ► So I don't know. I'm going to say four. Four? I feel like they're doing a good job with most
01:09:04 ◼ ► of their services, with the exceptions of free five gigabytes of iCloud backup and Apple News
01:09:13 ◼ ► Plus, which was a joke. >>Yeah, for me, I actually give it a five because I'm ignoring Apple News
01:09:20 ◼ ► Plus. I'm just ignoring it. Honestly, I just don't even think that it counts. >>Okay. >>I know that's
01:09:27 ◼ ► a peculiar thing to say, but it's just like the rest of their portfolio is so good that I feel
01:09:34 ◼ ► like it outbalances Apple News Plus, in my opinion, because TV Plus has delivered two of my favorite
01:09:42 ◼ ► TV shows in the last year, and Apple Arcade has an incredible lineup for such a low price.
01:09:57 ◼ ► thought that Apple services overall lineup this year is one of the most compelling things that
01:10:02 ◼ ► they've done, and I think is going to set them up really well. So I was very, very proud. I'm very,
01:10:07 ◼ ► very pleased, I should say, with what happened there, and so I would rate it that highly.
01:10:11 ◼ ► >>All right. >>So going to HomeKit and Home. >>Oh, everybody's favorite category. >>This is not good,
01:10:21 ◼ ► this one. It's overall down 0.1, it's at 2.8. So 2.8 out of five. Marco Ahmet says the Home app is
01:10:31 ◼ ► still an over-designed, form-over-function, unintuitive mess. Marco's not pulling these
01:10:36 ◼ ► punches on this one. And Stephen Hackett says HomeKit continues to move at a glacial pace.
01:10:42 ◼ ► I tried HomeKit Secure Video, and it is nowhere near ready. >>Yep, yep. I mean, I think Apple has
01:10:51 ◼ ► progressed with HomeKit, but they're doing it incredibly slowly. Glacial Place is about right.
01:10:56 ◼ ► They are finally opening it up. They've got the new standards body that they're trying to build
01:11:01 ◼ ► with their competitors. >>Home, was it Chip? >>Chip, Chip. >>Connected Home over IP, Chip and Chop? >>Yeah,
01:11:07 ◼ ► Chip Chop. So yeah, that's good. The Home app is a mess. There are incredible inconsistencies if you
01:11:18 ◼ ► try to use it. There are features it has, but they're really inconsistent. It's very weird.
01:11:23 ◼ ► There's just, it's like, I want to like it and I use it, but using it makes me like it less and
01:11:31 ◼ ► less through time. So I think there's some signs that they may have finally figured out the right
01:11:35 ◼ ► way forward here, but this feels like one of those areas where Apple had big plans and then just had
01:11:40 ◼ ► no follow through and we're all left kind of hanging. So two. >>I give it a two as well.
01:11:47 ◼ ► Poor design, poor device offerings overall. Adoption is super slow. Nothing significant
01:11:53 ◼ ► has been added and anything that has been added this year has not worked out very well.
01:11:58 ◼ ► And we've like, we passed the year with without like any router companies adopting the secure
01:12:05 ◼ ► router project, even though multiple companies said that they would, like we went the entire year
01:12:09 ◼ ► and none of that happened. And the secure video stuff seems to have been a bit of a disaster,
01:12:20 ◼ ► Choi will change that for them in the future. >>But they're also going to need to upgrade their
01:12:25 ◼ ► HomeKit game. I've gone into it, I think on this podcast, but like I've spent some time the last
01:12:31 ◼ ► couple of weeks tinkering around with my HomeKit to try and make it smarter. And all I'm finding
01:12:35 ◼ ► is that it is super inconsistent and frustrating and things that it says that it does, it kind of
01:12:41 ◼ ► doesn't do. And you know, it's yeah, I want it to be better than it is, but they're going to need to
01:12:54 ◼ ► that's the real mystery is are they really committed to doing that or do they think it's
01:12:59 ◼ ► good enough? Because it's not. >>Overall hardware reliability gets to 3.9, which is up 0.1 from the
01:13:07 ◼ ► year before. Steve Trout Smith says, "With the Mac keyboard issues addressed properly, I hope
01:13:13 ◼ ► things are going to trend upwards." And Alex Cox says, "There are still going to be butterflies
01:13:19 ◼ ► flying around for far too long." >>Yeah, another place where people are pointing out that although
01:13:27 ◼ ► it's great that Apple fixed this, that they still ship two laptops with the butterfly keyboard,
01:13:31 ◼ ► it's not really fixed. And they're going to sell those laptops through at least part of 2020,
01:13:35 ◼ ► because they're already out there. I think Apple's hardware in general is really good across the
01:13:41 ◼ ► line. That's a black mark, the keyboard on an otherwise, I think, pretty solid set of hardware.
01:13:48 ◼ ► So I'm going to give them four out of five, mostly out of spite for the keyboard. But I'm pretty
01:13:55 ◼ ► happy with the hardware. Or to put it in another way, hardware is not Apple's problem right now.
01:14:00 ◼ ► >>I gave it a five. >>Sure. >>I don't think about the keyboards as much as everybody else. >>Is
01:14:10 ◼ ► what? No, I don't know what you're talking about. >>My feeling is, my feeling is they've,
01:14:17 ◼ ► they've shown that they have it in them to fix it. We haven't heard of any significant,
01:14:23 ◼ ► I don't think there's significantly widespread problems with the last version of the butterfly
01:14:27 ◼ ► keyboard. >>Well, I mean, didn't Steven Hackett lose his Delicke? >>He had problems, yes. But I
01:14:34 ◼ ► said widespread. Like Steven's the only person that I've seen that has had issues with that.
01:14:38 ◼ ► >>The fact that we know somebody who had problems with the new materials butterfly keyboard makes me
01:14:43 ◼ ► really worried about that. >>But maybe I just don't trust Steven's like laptop eating situation. >>He
01:14:47 ◼ ► needs to stop eating saltines right over his laptop. >>I feel like that's what he's doing.
01:14:52 ◼ ► But let me tell you why I come from, where I come from with my five. I'm thinking of the products
01:14:56 ◼ ► Apple released this year, right? So of the stuff that they released in 2019, I feel was very good.
01:15:05 ◼ ► That's how I feel, right? Like the iPhones were fantastic. The Mac Pro seems to have like
01:15:13 ◼ ► been great. The 16 inch MacBook Pro seems to have been great. Like they released a series of products
01:15:18 ◼ ► this year, which were all solid. So that's kind of where I'm coming from with this one. People take
01:15:25 ◼ ► it differently, right? They look at the overall category, but like, they didn't release any new
01:15:31 ◼ ► laptops this year other than the 16 inch MacBook Pro, right? >>New materials, MacBook Pros in the
01:15:39 ◼ ► spring. >>Yeah, but I mean like new, new, but anyway, yeah. So get your point. But I, I, I,
01:15:45 ◼ ► >>The iMac, the speed bump of the iMacs, the new Mac Pro. >>Yeah, I feel like, I feel like of the
01:15:52 ◼ ► stuff that was released in 2019, it was excellent. >>Also it's hardware, reliability is hardware. So
01:15:57 ◼ ► it's like, also it's the iPhone and the iPad and the Apple watch and like they're killing it on
01:16:01 ◼ ► all of those fronts. Yeah. >>Yeah. And that's, that's where I'm coming to it from. Like my
01:16:05 ◼ ► personal outlook is like, no, I think they did a really good job this year. So, because there was
01:16:11 ◼ ► no like widespread issues with the iPhones, right? People are always looking for them and there
01:16:15 ◼ ► wasn't one this year, which is a big surprise. Uh, overall software quality is 2.7 down 0.7.
01:16:23 ◼ ► CGP Grey says it's been a brutally buggy year. Renee Ritchie says iOS 12 should be the new normal.
01:16:30 ◼ ► Laurie Gill says this year shows an example of how it's better to ship late and ship right than
01:16:35 ◼ ► to ship on time with the risk of a poor user experience. And James Thompson says something
01:16:40 ◼ ► failed significantly in Apple software engineering process this year. And I hope lessons have been
01:16:45 ◼ ► learned. Jason? >>Yeah. I mean, it's hard not to argue. This is the, this is my feeling is,
01:16:59 ◼ ► appears to be incredibly well optimized and organized. They buy, they buy components in
01:17:12 ◼ ► factories that they've got a shipping set up. They, they are so their supply chain for hardware,
01:17:27 ◼ ► Um, but like so much of Apple, we look at it and we think this is a really well-run company
01:17:33 ◼ ► making great products. And that's why it makes a huge amount of money. The software group,
01:17:38 ◼ ► as anybody who's a keen observer of Apple will tell you, seems like it's a complete mess. And
01:17:47 ◼ ► I know it's hard and, and, and we've talked about like reasons why I suspect that at its core,
01:18:01 ◼ ► they're understaffed. One of the other lines in the story was, um, Dr. Drang who said from the
01:18:10 ◼ ► an understaffed group, barely able to take a breath between crises. And that rings true to me.
01:18:15 ◼ ► Um, anybody who knows people who've been approached to be hired by Apple or has gone through an Apple
01:18:20 ◼ ► hiring process, like it seems super long and inefficient and slow and confusing. And I think
01:18:28 ◼ ► Apple is still running itself. Like it's got the ambitions of 2009. And, um, and what we said
01:18:37 ◼ ► earlier about home kit, that line about how it's a question about like, did they just kind of build
01:18:42 ◼ ► something and then think it's good enough and run off to the next fire is really, I think,
01:18:47 ◼ ► endemic within a lot of Apple software where it feels like there's nobody, they build something,
01:18:52 ◼ ► it's, it's buggy, it's, uh, it's got problems and then they just walk away for a year or longer.
01:18:56 ◼ ► And it's hard to tell when you're, when you're on the outside looking in, cause it is kind of
01:19:02 ◼ ► a black box, which is why I like James's quote, which is something failed significantly. And I
01:19:07 ◼ ► hope they learned their lesson. And that's kind of all you can say. I don't want to provide a
01:19:10 ◼ ► prescription cause I don't know the details, but I will say that if I had to list like all of the
01:19:16 ◼ ► portions of Apple's business that I can view from afar, one of them seems to be broken and it's
01:19:25 ◼ ► software and it's all software. It's operating systems. Um, it's, it's the APIs for developers.
01:19:33 ◼ ► It's the user features. It's the beta process. It's their third-party apps. There's something
01:19:39 ◼ ► really wrong there and whatever it is, I hope they fix it. But more than that, I hope they
01:19:45 ◼ ► don't fix it for a year and then break it again because one of the most mind boggling statistics
01:19:51 ◼ ► in this entire thing is software quality over time by my panel, because they got a 3.4 in 2016
01:19:59 ◼ ► and it dropped precipitously to a 2.7 in 2017. And then it went up to a 3.4 in 2018 and then dropped
01:20:07 ◼ ► back down to 2.7 for 2019, which means we've done this twice now where they've had a good year and
01:20:13 ◼ ► then a terrible year and there's been a huge swing. And the lesson here is giving us a good year is
01:20:20 ◼ ► not good enough. You need to be consistent and Apple is unable to be consistent with software
01:20:24 ◼ ► quality. So two. Yeah, I completely agree with everything that you said. I give it a two as well.
01:20:35 ◼ ► It has been, it's been a very bad year. I feel like it has been plagued with problems and what
01:20:42 ◼ ► has actually been shipped, you know, by and large, even if there weren't problems, wouldn't have been
01:20:47 ◼ ► that incredible. Like you look at Catalina. Catalina's problem was not that it was full
01:20:52 ◼ ► of bugs. It's problem was that like that some of the steps that Apple had taken, it's just not good,
01:20:58 ◼ ► right? Like a lot of the security stuff is just like really frustrating and very difficult, right?
01:21:03 ◼ ► And it's not been great for users. And it seems like it's very good for some of the stuff Apple
01:21:08 ◼ ► wants to do in the future. But that doesn't always translate to being a very nice user experience.
01:21:14 ◼ ► And iOS 13 on the iPhone didn't really get a lot. I mean, dark mode's great. I'm happy to have it.
01:21:21 ◼ ► Like I really love it. But in regards to like new features for iOS, there wasn't a ton.
01:21:26 ◼ ► And they didn't really deliver on any of them in a stable way. So, you know, I can't help but agree
01:21:42 ◼ ► but really Apple should have a better fallback mechanism. You know, it's not that famous thing
01:21:49 ◼ ► about like you can have it like you can have a cheaper good or fast and you can choose to. Yeah.
01:21:54 ◼ ► Because I mentioned, I don't think they have enough developers. And some of that is also
01:21:59 ◼ ► their policy of like so many things they want core and Cupertino and it's very expensive to
01:22:04 ◼ ► live in the Bay Area and like their cultural issues that I think that they could address to have
01:22:08 ◼ ► a bigger and perhaps more distributed set of teams working on their software that Apple
01:22:13 ◼ ► culturally has been reluctant to do. It's not that they don't do it. Steve Jobs was very reluctant to
01:22:18 ◼ ► do it as we know from him telling James Thompson to move to California or leave. But it's not just
01:22:26 ◼ ► that. And I think there's probably some management and some processes. But the third part of that,
01:22:31 ◼ ► of the choose to is time, right? And that's what Laurie's quote is about, which is part of the
01:22:37 ◼ ► problem here is Apple's annual schedule where everything has to happen announced in June betas
01:22:43 ◼ ► over the summer ship in September with the iPhone and then Mac and ship a little bit later, but not
01:22:47 ◼ ► too much later because the features are all tied together. And that's the other part of this is like
01:22:52 ◼ ► can we blame the developers who might know exactly how buggy their software is for their management
01:23:00 ◼ ► saying it doesn't matter. You have to ship it like I don't think you can. So it's all of these things.
01:23:07 ◼ ► And I don't know like what's easier for Apple to do change their entire shipping concept,
01:23:14 ◼ ► change what they put in releases and slow down the pace of releases, which requires them to really
01:23:18 ◼ ► swallow their pride about rolling out new features that are going to blow people away. So like hire
01:23:24 ◼ ► more people, slow down the releases, uncouple themselves from this annual calendar that they
01:23:30 ◼ ► built up for themselves. They can do these things, but what do they choose to do? Or what I fear is
01:23:36 ◼ ► the case, do they choose to just kind of fake it and apologize and slow down for a year and then
01:23:42 ◼ ► everybody forgets that they slowed down and say, well, geez, it's been two years now. We need to
01:23:47 ◼ ► push it again. And then we have another bad year because that's the cycle they're in now is good
01:23:51 ◼ ► year bad year TikTok. It's not appropriate. It's bad. Yeah, it's just like maybe if they had a way
01:23:59 ◼ ► to somehow release iOS 13 like three or four weeks later, things would have been way better, but
01:24:11 ◼ ► should there have been a better contingency plan than the one they had, which was release a buggy
01:24:18 ◼ ► version of iOS 13, which was so buggy that they actually didn't release it to everybody, right?
01:24:22 ◼ ► Like we're not going to release the one that shipped on the iPhone and then didn't alert
01:24:27 ◼ ► people to some of the updates or accident or people to install them. It's like, if that is your
01:24:31 ◼ ► contingency plan, I'm sure you have seen now that you probably need a more full contingency plan,
01:24:39 ◼ ► right? Like maybe when this wasn't a problem before that your contingency plan, which is the
01:24:44 ◼ ► one that they seem to roll out this year would be fine. But then when you actually put that
01:24:49 ◼ ► contingency plan into effect, you realize that it's not great. So maybe you need something more.
01:24:54 ◼ ► Developer relations 3.4. It's the same, didn't change. Casey List says Apple's documentation
01:25:02 ◼ ► is exultingly bad and non-existent. If Apple wants third-party developers like myself to embrace new
01:25:08 ◼ ► technologies, the answer can't be watch a WWDC video, then get out a divining rod and hope for
01:25:13 ◼ ► the best. They need to provide documentation for all of these new APIs. No excuses. And Paul
01:25:19 ◼ ► Cofasas says, "Notarization of macOS apps has thus far worked out better than I would have expected.
01:25:25 ◼ ► So long as Apple uses a very light touch with this, it can be a win for users and developers.
01:25:30 ◼ ► Nevertheless, I live in fear of a capricious use of this to kill something legitimate that Apple
01:25:37 ◼ ► simply dislikes." Yeah, this, when we launched the survey, there were a lot of really big app store
01:25:44 ◼ ► and app review complaints, which got addressed. And so the survey started at its low, which was
01:25:49 ◼ ► a 2.2. And the average has gone up to 3.1 and then 3.6. And now it's been sort of leveled out at 3.4
01:25:55 ◼ ► for the last couple of years. So this is one of those things that I'm not sure I would have put
01:25:58 ◼ ► on the survey if I was creating it this year, but it was a real pain point back in 2015. And I think
01:26:05 ◼ ► the answer is Apple's doing better at this, but there are still issues. Like it's not quite the
01:26:12 ◼ ► house is on fire like it was, but there are still a bunch of issues. Casey's thing about documentation.
01:26:18 ◼ ► Steve Trotton-Smith talked about how perhaps governing bodies really do need to regulate
01:26:24 ◼ ► the app store and set the rules so that Apple has to change its behavior in times of killing apps or
01:26:32 ◼ ► categories of apps. Yeah, I think I'll give it a, I'm not a developer, so I should probably even not
01:26:39 ◼ ► answer, but from the outside, I would say I'll give this a three. Like there are issues, but also
01:26:44 ◼ ► it's not a mess like it was a few years ago. I gave this a four. I feel like I maybe graded it
01:26:51 ◼ ► too highly. The reason I gave it a four is because I don't have any personal attachment to this one.
01:26:57 ◼ ► Right? Like I don't get frustrated because of my lack of relations with my developer rep,
01:27:01 ◼ ► because I don't have one, because I don't need one. And I kind of based it on the fact that like,
01:27:07 ◼ ► I can't recall any scandals in 2019. Right? Like that there are these, as we have, you mentioned,
01:27:14 ◼ ► as seen in the past, right? Like these big problems that had occurred, that sort of stuff
01:27:19 ◼ ► has mostly gone away and it's frustrations now. I would maybe, if I look like thinking about it now,
01:27:25 ◼ ► reading the comments from the report, I would maybe grade it a three after getting like information
01:27:29 ◼ ► from people that care, right? Like after reading the opinions of others. But I originally graded
01:27:34 ◼ ► it a four, but I would amend that to a three, I think. Just because it's like, things seem fine,
01:27:39 ◼ ► but there's still work to be done. And the work that needs to be done seems to not be being done
01:27:44 ◼ ► and is only causing more issues, stuff like the documentation. They've been talking a lot about
01:27:48 ◼ ► that on ATP over the last month or so. And I kind of didn't really know how bad of a situation that
01:27:54 ◼ ► was until I heard people talking about it. So. And we're at the final category now, which is
01:28:00 ◼ ► societal impact. This is overall 3.3 down 0.4. I have quite a lot of comments here because there's
01:28:07 ◼ ► a lot of areas that this touches on. So, Philip Michael says, "I hope Tim Cook likes being featured
01:28:12 ◼ ► in Donald Trump re-election ads because footage of him standing next to Trump in an Apple factory
01:28:17 ◼ ► heaping praise on the economy is going to get replayed roughly a billion times between now and
01:28:22 ◼ ► November." Carolina Milanese says, "I really expect more from Tim Cook than letting himself
01:28:27 ◼ ► be manipulated into an election campaign photo moment." Christina Warren says, "I was personally
01:28:32 ◼ ► disappointed by Apple's decisions to bow to China a few times this year, especially in regards to
01:28:37 ◼ ► the Hong Kong protests." Steven Aquino says, "In terms of accessibility, Apple continues to push
01:28:43 ◼ ► forward both product-wise and in general advocacy. The introduction of C is at the forefront of this.
01:28:48 ◼ ► It is very much representative of the company's institutional love for accessibility and the
01:28:52 ◼ ► disabled community." Aline Sims says, "Apple is, as always, stellar at accessibility. Voice
01:28:58 ◼ ► control introduced by iOS 13 enables people with disabilities to do more than ever before.
01:29:03 ◼ ► I'm still not impressive to diversity and inclusion statistics." Jim McDonald says, "I'm glad to see
01:29:08 ◼ ► Apple promoting its second year of Entrepreneur Camp for companies with women founders,
01:29:12 ◼ ► CEOs, and lead developers." This is a category that has, it's an empty vessel into which the
01:29:19 ◼ ► panelists pour their sentiment about whether Apple is lifting up to its own lofty goals as
01:29:24 ◼ ► a corporation, its ideals, right? And what it's about changes every year. I think when we started,
01:29:30 ◼ ► it was about environmentalism and also the conditions in factories in China. That was a
01:29:36 ◼ ► hot topic. And it's been about green power. It's been about diversity and inclusion. It's been
01:29:43 ◼ ► about accessibility. It's about anything. It really is. And this year, it's about politics.
01:29:48 ◼ ► Yeah. And this year, it's not just about that, but that was the one that bubbled to the surface.
01:29:57 ◼ ► because Apple says it is a company and promotes that it is a company that wants to be good and
01:30:01 ◼ ► change the world and leave the world a better place. And so this is sort of holding them to
01:30:05 ◼ ► that. And the two trends in the comments this year were, first off, working with Donald Trump
01:30:12 ◼ ► and the American government and, or as what James Thompson said, "Authoritarian and corrupt
01:30:19 ◼ ► governments," read that to refer to whatever governments you prefer. That was part of it.
01:30:25 ◼ ► And Trump going to that factory that wasn't actually an Apple factory and having that photo op
01:30:30 ◼ ► with Tim Apple, that was a thing that came up again and again, and working with China and
01:30:36 ◼ ► suppressing that app in Hong Kong. And then the other thing that came up was privacy and security
01:30:43 ◼ ► and things like encryption and being an advocate for user privacy and user encryption and things
01:30:51 ◼ ► that will allow people to keep their phones as a relatively private space that they can use to
01:30:57 ◼ ► communicate with other people and not be viewed by their government or other governments and have
01:31:03 ◼ ► their private things brought out into public knowledge or at least into government knowledge.
01:31:08 ◼ ► And Apple is generally seen positively in the one light, the last one, and in the first one,
01:31:14 ◼ ► it took a hit this year. I'm going to give it down the road. My score would be probably a three
01:31:20 ◼ ► because I think there are areas where Apple is living up to its promise and there are areas where
01:31:23 ◼ ► it's falling down. And so just sticking it in the middle is probably the right way to do it.
01:31:28 ◼ ► I think, as we've said on this show, Tim Cook basically has to be a diplomat. He has to deal
01:31:35 ◼ ► with the government of China and the government of the United States. He literally has to be a
01:31:39 ◼ ► diplomat to the two most powerful governments in the world who have their own desires and he has to
01:31:48 ◼ ► try to walk a line so that he can continue to have his company stay in business. And the challenge is
01:31:58 ◼ ► like he's letting us down and he's letting Apple's overall values down. And this is the,
01:32:03 ◼ ► I think, inherent contradiction in any corporation talking about their idealism is that it's great
01:32:09 ◼ ► for corporations to have idealism and belief and want to leave the world a better place,
01:32:15 ◼ ► but they're also publicly held profit-driven corporations owned by shareholders and the
01:32:19 ◼ ► shareholders want profit and growth. And it's easy to have ideals when they don't conflict with
01:32:28 ◼ ► profit and growth, but when there's that moment where it's like, "Oh, no, what happens if we
01:32:32 ◼ ► are cut off from the Chinese market?" The answer is they will make decisions to not do that and
01:32:40 ◼ ► those will not necessarily be in line with their ideals. Tim Cook has talked about it. He said,
01:32:57 ◼ ► - I gave it a three. I would usually want to give it much higher. And I've really struggled
01:33:08 ◼ ► show have definitely heard over the last few months. But I struggled to grade it much lower
01:33:16 ◼ ► because Apple is... Their environmental stuff is so good compared to a lot of other companies.
01:33:35 ◼ ► the prime ministers, the presidents of countries, in his importance to the world as it stands right
01:33:41 ◼ ► now because Apple is so vast. Their influence is so great. But the way that he has had to handle
01:33:51 ◼ ► himself this year has been embarrassing. The Mac Pro and Trump thing, it's very embarrassing.
01:33:58 ◼ ► The Hong Kong-China stuff is just really out of the character that he seems to have set for himself.
01:34:05 ◼ ► He appears to be a very principled person, but has the importance of world leaders. But I feel
01:34:16 ◼ ► like he is letting some of his political standing win out in favor of his principles. And that is
01:34:27 ◼ ► changing a lot of the way that we see him. And it's for the sake of the shareholders, right? Because
01:34:34 ◼ ► he seems to have... He is very outspoken in places that he can be, where it's not going to have too
01:34:40 ◼ ► much of an impact on the company. But there are places where he could be more out... He could have
01:34:45 ◼ ► been way more outspoken in regards to the Donald Trump stuff, which would make sense for his,
01:34:54 ◼ ► what seems to be his political views to be more outspoken. But he is not being because of how
01:34:59 ◼ ► difficult it will make the tariff stuff for him. Where it's like, well, Apple also could have taken
01:35:04 ◼ ► a smaller profit margin, right? And just ate the cost of the tariffs if they wanted to. But that
01:35:11 ◼ ► affects the shareholder stuff, it affects the stock price, it affects revenue and profit.
01:35:17 ◼ ► So they didn't do that. It's like, well, okay, so where are the lines drawn for Tim Cook and
01:35:24 ◼ ► his principles? And I think this is the thing that we're all struggling with this year and I
01:35:27 ◼ ► am struggling with, because it's this duality that I can't reconcile myself with properly yet. So
01:35:42 ◼ ► No, I think that there's lots of frustrations. There's nothing hugely monumental this year.
01:36:03 ◼ ► Well, in terms of this survey, it is. The survey doesn't change by... And I'll say services up by
01:36:09 ◼ ► half a point is on average is actually also a fairly large thing. Moving by five to seven
01:36:14 ◼ ► tenths of a point is big in terms of the survey. So the software quality going down is big and the
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01:38:12 ◼ ► Graham says, "If you had Apple's money, is there a company that you would buy just for the fun of it?"
01:38:18 ◼ ► Um, well for the fun of it, like, and if I had Apple's money is a real great question. Does that
01:38:26 ◼ ► mean what would I like Apple to buy or what would I buy as a person with Apple's money? I don't know.
01:38:30 ◼ ► I'm expecting it's like you are in charge of the money at Apple. What would you do with that money?
01:38:34 ◼ ► I'm Jason Apple at that point. Jason Apple, yeah. Okay, all right. Well, I mean, first,
01:38:39 ◼ ► and this is kind of breaks the entire premises, I'd spend like a billion dollars on the
01:38:42 ◼ ► Incomparable Incorporated and pay myself that. And then I would, but if that's not allowed,
01:38:48 ◼ ► because I'm already working at Apple apparently. But when I came up with this ViacomCBS, I think
01:38:59 ◼ ► to be more than just their originals. Now they seem to be going down a direction where they're
01:39:04 ◼ ► happy to be HBO because HBO isn't anymore or isn't going to be anymore and just do like premium
01:39:10 ◼ ► originals. But I feel like one of the challenges is that they don't have franchises. So they could
01:39:16 ◼ ► buy like MGM, maybe they could buy ViacomCBS. There's some, they could get some stuff. And not
01:39:22 ◼ ► only would they have catalog for their streaming service, but they would have franchise stuff that
01:39:27 ◼ ► they could build out. So imagine having the Daily Show and having Star Trek and having, if they buy
01:39:35 ◼ ► it at the MGM, having James Bond and not just the archives, but maybe there's a James Bond
01:39:41 ◼ ► series on Apple TV+. To do that stuff, they're probably going to have to buy some of these
01:39:48 ◼ ► smaller companies that are going to get swallowed up by one of the big companies in the media space.
01:39:54 ◼ ► And the nice thing is that Apple is not Disney or Comcast or Warner Media. It doesn't have
01:40:01 ◼ ► an existing equivalent of this. So we could probably collect some of these small players
01:40:10 ◼ ► I've seen people say, "Oh, or you could just buy Netflix." I'm like, "Yeah, I don't think Apple
01:40:14 ◼ ► wants to do that or would do that." Although that would be interesting if they had the money to do
01:40:18 ◼ ► that. But I think they could buy ViacomCBS and MGM and Sony Entertainment maybe and make themselves
01:40:28 ◼ ► a media giant by doing that. Put Spider-Man on Apple TV+. Yeah, well, I mean, but Disney.
01:40:36 ◼ ► Disney, so they'd have Sony, but not Disney. And so would they? I don't know. We'll see.
01:40:46 ◼ ► Dropbox to be better at what I want it to do. So I would like to see Apple buy Dropbox and
01:40:53 ◼ ► use all of their good technology and integrate it better and get rid of the stuff that I don't
01:40:58 ◼ ► care about. Okay. For fun. For fun and for my own usefulness. Sure. Sarah asked a question,
01:41:06 ◼ ► building on a question from last week's episode. So Sarah says, "May I ask, what is the benefit
01:41:12 ◼ ► of using 1Password over Keychain built into iOS and macOS? I've used Keychain for a while and I'm
01:41:19 ◼ ► wondering if it would benefit me to switch to 1Password." So I feel that Keychain has gotten
01:41:25 ◼ ► way better, right? Yes. On iOS especially, a lot of the stuff like the recommended password stuff,
01:41:31 ◼ ► and that's been really great. Actually, one of my favorite features of iOS 13 is all of the...
01:41:36 ◼ ► where 12 and 13 is all of the improvements they're doing to password stuff, especially with Keychain.
01:41:41 ◼ ► But I know I'm speaking for you too, in that my 1Password usage predates these improvements.
01:41:47 ◼ ► So I have years and years of information in there that's not in Keychain, but also you can save more
01:41:53 ◼ ► information. So notes, but I also have banking info and stuff and you can't... you can save cards in
01:41:58 ◼ ► Keychain, but you can't save the verification numbers. So you still need those, right? But
01:42:03 ◼ ► Dropbox, you can save all that stuff and pre-fill it and have it filled for you. But you can also
01:42:08 ◼ ► save bank account numbers and stuff like that. 1Password is also cross-platform. So when I use
01:42:15 ◼ ► Windows or Android, I can also get to 1Password, which I can't with Keychain. And I also find
01:42:21 ◼ ► 1Password nicer to navigate. I've heard many say this before and I agree, Apple should make a
01:42:26 ◼ ► Keychain app now. It's becoming more and more useful to be able to look at Keychain and you
01:42:34 ◼ ► have to go into multi-levels of settings. They should just make their own version of 1Password
01:42:39 ◼ ► at this point, I feel like, but... So you could save more information into it if you wanted to,
01:42:51 ◼ ► - Yeah, I think that's solid. Right, I've always got that question, like, would I use 1Password now
01:42:56 ◼ ► if Keychain was as full featured as it is now? I think you should start with Keychain, but
01:43:00 ◼ ► 1Password does have some other stuff and if you're cross-platform, you need to use 1Password.
01:43:04 ◼ ► But Keychain has gotten so much better that yes, I have had those questions myself. Of course, now
01:43:08 ◼ ► you can set 1Password to use the autofill API and turn off Keychain so you can get those features
01:43:20 ◼ ► you know, I know some of the people on that team, so I feel like I can say this from a place of
01:43:25 ◼ ► authority, like, that was built by people who care about people's security more than how good their
01:43:31 ◼ ► own features are, right? Because like, that is such a good feature set, right, to be able to
01:43:37 ◼ ► just pre-fill all those passwords. Like, Apple could have just kept it for themselves, but opening
01:43:41 ◼ ► it up so other companies can do that with the QuickType keyboard thing is really awesome and
01:43:46 ◼ ► I'm so pleased that they did that because it does promote better security. Like, I have more secure
01:43:54 ◼ ► passwords now than I ever have before because I can just pre-fill them with Keychain and it's easy
01:43:59 ◼ ► for me to get to them that way, right? Like, for like, if I buy something from some website that
01:44:05 ◼ ► I've never used before and may never use again but I set up an account, usually I'll just throw in
01:44:09 ◼ ► some like, standard password or whatever, but now I just have randomized huge passwords for them all
01:44:14 ◼ ► because it's so easy to do, but then I can also very easily, using the same system, pull up on
01:44:18 ◼ ► my 1Password stuff. So I'm very happy that they implemented it that way. Yep. Fuzan says, "If you
01:44:24 ◼ ► could bring any Apple product feature to the entire 2020 lineup from watch to Mac Pro, what would you
01:44:31 ◼ ► choose and why?" This can be new feature, old feature, whatever you want. I have so many things
01:44:37 ◼ ► that I want to do, so I came, I'm going to do the classic technique of talking about three things
01:44:46 ◼ ► but only picking one of them. That's good, that's good. So you cover all your bases. Yeah, so OLED
01:44:51 ◼ ► on the iPad Pro, that would be beautiful. Yep, because then it would, and then I guess the Mac as
01:44:58 ◼ ► well, right, would be also what you'd be getting out of that. If you're bringing it to the entire
01:45:01 ◼ ► lineup because it would be nice to get all those screens on the Mac, why not? I guess, yeah, I
01:45:05 ◼ ► guess entire lineup is the tricky thing here. Multi-touch because it would go on the Mac. Okay.
01:45:15 ◼ ► Apple Pencil, I'm thinking more about iPhone, but why not Apple Pencil on anything, whatever.
01:45:21 ◼ ► Apple Pencil on a big trackpad or on the screen, right, would be nice. And Scissor Keyboard,
01:45:30 ◼ ► and that, yes, that means the iPad Pro, yes, yes it does. And the iPhone? Not just all,
01:45:36 ◼ ► Scissor Keyboard on the Mac, well, it would be an option, you can get a Scissor Keyboard and attach
01:45:41 ◼ ► it to the iPhone, but I wouldn't recommend it. But if I had to go across the entire line instead of
01:45:47 ◼ ► tactically, yeah, I might say OLED, I might say Apple Pencil, yeah. I would like high refresh rate
01:45:54 ◼ ► displays. That's a great answer. ProMotion, yeah, everywhere, all the things. I really desperately
01:46:01 ◼ ► want that for the 2020 iPhone, that'd be super. I was willing to let it go with the 2019 phone,
01:46:07 ◼ ► but like, that iPad ProMotion display is so good. Yeah, I'll be so disappointed if they do not put
01:46:13 ◼ ► that in the iPhone this year. And finally today, Tude asks, which Apple executives tell-all book
01:46:20 ◼ ► are you most excited to read? And this is assuming that they will obviously write them, but let's just
01:46:24 ◼ ► assume that from this question that every Apple executive ever is going to write a tell-all book,
01:46:30 ◼ ► which book do you want to read most? You go first. I want Johnny Ive's book. I think he has the most
01:46:38 ◼ ► interesting story to tell, right? Like, we still want stories about Steve and we know he has
01:46:44 ◼ ► stories that nobody else has, right? Like, you just know that because he was his closest collaborator,
01:46:49 ◼ ► right? Like, he has stories about Steve Jobs that I want to hear, but nobody, you know, has had the
01:46:58 ◼ ► kind of history at Apple that Johnny's had, you know? Like, he's been there for so long and he was
01:47:04 ◼ ► there since it was failing. And I know you've got people like Phil Schiller, right, who have been
01:47:08 ◼ ► there for the same period of time, but the impact that Johnny Ive had, you know, like the way that,
01:47:14 ◼ ► you know, you could tie so many of, well, you can tie like basically pretty much all of Apple's
01:47:20 ◼ ► success to him in some way, right? Because people love Apple's design and he did it. I want to hear
01:47:26 ◼ ► the story of iOS 7, right? Like, what was that like from his perspective, from being given the
01:47:33 ◼ ► task to do it, doing it and how it went? Like, what was it like building the campus? Like,
01:47:44 ◼ ► I want to know what he has to say about all that stuff. Like, I would love, love to read his book.
01:47:52 ◼ ► I'm going to say Phil Schiller just because, I mean, Johnny Ive, I absolutely agree. I would
01:47:57 ◼ ► love that. Although you know what Johnny Ive's tell-all book will be. It's just going to be
01:48:00 ◼ ► pictures with no captions. Hey, as long as the pictures are detailed enough, as long as these
01:48:05 ◼ ► pictures can tell all, I have no problem on that. Yeah, it's like that Apple history book that they
01:48:09 ◼ ► released. That's just pictures. But I'll go with Schiller because Phil Schiller's been at Apple a
01:48:15 ◼ ► long time. He's seen it all, right? Phil Schiller was very close to Steve Jobs. He's a marketing
01:48:20 ◼ ► guy, but he's more than a marketing guy. But he is, he is at the heart of everything that Apple
01:48:27 ◼ ► has done over the last 20 years. I would want to read Schiller's book to find out why his actual
01:48:33 ◼ ► job is, right? Because his job title at this point doesn't make sense, but it feels like it's never
01:48:40 ◼ ► really made sense. Like you say, like, it feels like he is involved with everything. Well,
01:48:45 ◼ ► marketing means something different at Apple. It does. It was embedded into their entire company,
01:48:50 ◼ ► right? They are a marketing company. I do have one additional one to throw in here. Scott Forstall.
01:48:57 ◼ ► Oh, sure. Yeah, I mean, I think Scott Forstall's tell-all book would be fascinating and we might
01:49:03 ◼ ► get that if he wants to do it since, you know, at some point he'll be presumably contractually
01:49:08 ◼ ► free to say whatever he wants. I really want them all to write books one day, like, please. I agree.
01:49:14 ◼ ► For the sake, for history's sake, right? It would be nice to know what actually happened at Apple.
01:49:19 ◼ ► I was going to mention, like, maybe Johnny Srouji or somebody, somebody involved. I want somebody
01:49:26 ◼ ► involved in the chip thing. I would love to hear the story of PA Semi being bought by Apple and how
01:49:32 ◼ ► Apple became the preeminent mobile chip maker in the world. I, I would love to hear that story. And
01:49:40 ◼ ► again, that, these don't have to be tell-all books, but those are the best chances to get
01:49:43 ◼ ► them right. Because otherwise you can have a journalistic book about it, but you're going to
01:49:46 ◼ ► need lots of people to talk who are your sources and that's always hard. And so that would be the
01:49:51 ◼ ► other way to view this is I don't necessarily need it to be a tell-all book, but I would,
01:49:54 ◼ ► I want more views into the history of a lot of different things that Apple has done over the last
01:49:59 ◼ ► 25 years. And we've only gotten a handful so far, but you got to think there will be more at some
01:50:04 ◼ ► point. We could throw like John Rubenstein in there too. I think his, his book would be
01:50:08 ◼ ► fascinating because then he went to Palm and that all kind of fell apart. And like, I think that
01:50:13 ◼ ► would be, I think Ruby's book would be an interesting one too. I want autobiographies of
01:50:18 ◼ ► all of these people. Like I want, I want autobiographies. I don't want biographies, right?
01:50:24 ◼ ► Like, or like official Isaacson books. Like I want Johnny Ive for as much as it is him writing his
01:50:32 ◼ ► own book and telling me everything. Like that's what I want. I'm probably, of everyone, I don't
01:50:37 ◼ ► think he would do it. I feel like there are many other executives that would be more likely to do
01:50:41 ◼ ► it. I don't think he would do it because he seems so private, right? Like I just can't imagine him
01:50:45 ◼ ► doing it, although I would love it. So. All right, that wraps up this week's bumper episode
01:50:51 ◼ ► of Upgrade. If you want to catch our show notes, go to relay.fm/upgrade/283. You can find Jason
01:50:57 ◼ ► online at sixcolors.com, the incomparable.com. He helps many shows here at relay.fm as I do.
01:51:02 ◼ ► You can go to relay.fm/shows to find out more about the product offering that we have for you.
01:51:08 ◼ ► Uh, we'll all score five out of five, um, on the, uh, relay.fm report card. Uh, Jason is
01:51:16 ◼ ► @jsnell on Twitter. I am @imike, I M Y K E. Thanks so much to Pingdom, KiwiCo, and Squarespace for
01:51:23 ◼ ► the support of this episode. Most of all, thank you for listening and we'll be back next time.