Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:08 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade episode 445.

00:00:13 ◼   ► Today's show is brought to you by Rocket Money Electric in Capital One.

00:00:18 ◼   ► My name is Mike Hurley, I'm joined by Jason Snell.

00:00:20 ◼   ► Hi, Jason Snell.

00:00:22 ◼   ► Hi, Mike Hurley.

00:00:23 ◼   ► I have a Snell Talk question for you. It comes from Wes.

00:00:26 ◼   ► Wes wants to know, Jason, are you on Mastodon?

00:00:29 ◼   ► And which of the six accounts is Jason?

00:00:31 ◼   ► - I don't know why search on Mastodon works the way it does

00:00:36 ◼   ► where like your accounts that are redirected

00:00:38 ◼   ► to other accounts still show up in search.

00:00:41 ◼   ► You'd think that they would like say, no, no, no,

00:00:43 ◼   ► you can't find me here, I don't know.

00:00:45 ◼   ► And I don't need to be written, nobody write in

00:00:47 ◼   ► with an explanation of why this is good actually.

00:00:50 ◼   ► Anyway, as it says on all the pages that refer to me now,

00:00:56 ◼   ► basically it's jsnell@zeppelin.flights.

00:01:00 ◼   ► I brought it back yesterday or Saturday,

00:01:04 ◼   ► inspired by Stephen Hackett,

00:01:05 ◼   ► who created eWorld.social.

00:01:07 ◼   ► Jerk, so good, so good.

00:01:10 ◼   ► - All these good server names, I'm like,

00:01:12 ◼   ► "Ooh, do I wanna, do I have a good, you know?"

00:01:15 ◼   ► And like, I like the joke of it all.

00:01:16 ◼   ► So it's like, it's tempting me, but.

00:01:18 ◼   ► - You might have to get on social media.

00:01:20 ◼   ► Well, you could also do, I will say,

00:01:21 ◼   ► you could also get on and make your own little novelty

00:01:24 ◼   ► domain and all of that, and then just set up automation

00:01:27 ◼   ► to auto-post for you and you wouldn't actually be there.

00:01:31 ◼   ► That would be some YouTube bots.

00:01:33 ◼   ► But anyway, I'm there.

00:01:34 ◼   ► I was on maston.social.

00:01:35 ◼   ► I decided that I was gonna revive zeppelin.flights,

00:01:37 ◼   ► which was in a weird, I shut it down,

00:01:40 ◼   ► but the Fediverse doesn't seem to know that you're dead.

00:01:44 ◼   ► So it still listed zeppelin.flights,

00:01:49 ◼   ► even though it had been shut down since 2018.

00:01:51 ◼   ► So when I turned it back on and created my account,

00:01:54 ◼   ► and hadn't redirected anything for mastodon.social yet,

00:01:57 ◼   ► I started picking up all these followers.

00:01:59 ◼   ► And it was literally, I think,

00:02:01 ◼   ► servers had been asking Zeppelin.flights

00:02:06 ◼   ► to talk to it since 2018.

00:02:08 ◼   ► Mike, I didn't just shut it down,

00:02:11 ◼   ► 'cause it was running on Masto Host, which it is again.

00:02:14 ◼   ► I didn't just shut it down.

00:02:15 ◼   ► I shut it down, I let the domain expire.

00:02:18 ◼   ► - Whoa.

00:02:19 ◼   ► - I repurchased the domain like a month ago.

00:02:23 ◼   ► - Uh-huh.

00:02:24 ◼   ► - I turned on Masto Host again

00:02:26 ◼   ► for zeppelin.flights on Saturday.

00:02:28 ◼   ► It's, and remember they nuke the configuration.

00:02:30 ◼   ► So it's like a completely empty server.

00:02:31 ◼   ► I create a new user with my name

00:02:33 ◼   ► and suddenly the Fediverse is like,

00:02:37 ◼   ► you have 73 followers.

00:02:39 ◼   ► Like what?

00:02:40 ◼   ► Amazing.

00:02:41 ◼   ► So I guess that's how resilient it is,

00:02:43 ◼   ► but also pretty funny.

00:02:44 ◼   ► - There is a iMike on zeppelin.social

00:02:49 ◼   ► or zeppelin.flights I should say.

00:02:51 ◼   ► - Zeppelin.flights, is there?

00:02:52 ◼   ► - I must've signed up at some point on zipline.flights.

00:02:55 ◼   ► I don't know when that was, August, 2018, apparently.

00:02:59 ◼   ► - Well, what you should do, I'll say,

00:03:00 ◼   ► I can send you an invite link.

00:03:02 ◼   ► What you should do is reclaim that name.

00:03:04 ◼   ► And then if you ever set up a Mastodon,

00:03:08 ◼   ► something somewhere else, you can then forward that.

00:03:10 ◼   ► Because right now it's, those are all like ghost users

00:03:13 ◼   ► because they have to be recreated.

00:03:15 ◼   ► Ooh, ghost users.

00:03:18 ◼   ► Anyway, it's super easy to use this Mastodon.

00:03:21 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:03:24 ◼   ► Not complicated at all.

00:03:25 ◼   ► Also, I will say the process of transferring,

00:03:27 ◼   ► people are like, oh yeah, you transfer your followers

00:03:30 ◼   ► and it's not a problem.

00:03:31 ◼   ► Like, okay, well, when you've got whatever,

00:03:32 ◼   ► I had 10, 11, 12,000 followers, I don't know.

00:03:35 ◼   ► It's not so easy 'cause I do the transfer

00:03:38 ◼   ► and it's like, you have a thousand followers.

00:03:40 ◼   ► And I'm like, what?

00:03:41 ◼   ► And then I spend the weekend watching the activity view

00:03:45 ◼   ► and it's like a whole bunch,

00:03:47 ◼   ► like everybody at this server is now following you.

00:03:50 ◼   ► Everybody at this server is now following you.

00:03:51 ◼   ► So obviously the way a transfer works

00:03:53 ◼   ► is the server checks Mastodon.social.

00:03:56 ◼   ► Mastodon.social says, "Oh, Jason moved."

00:03:58 ◼   ► And then it looks for Zeblon.flights, an asset.

00:04:01 ◼   ► And so then the server got real slow

00:04:03 ◼   ► because although I'm not paying for the cheapest Masto host,

00:04:05 ◼   ► I'm not paying for the most expensive Masto host either.

00:04:09 ◼   ► And it got slow.

00:04:12 ◼   ► And then, but I kept checking and it was like,

00:04:14 ◼   ► now you've got 3000 followers.

00:04:15 ◼   ► Now you've got 7000 followers.

00:04:16 ◼   ► Now I've got about 10.

00:04:18 ◼   ► So it's sort of caught up.

00:04:19 ◼   ► But in the meantime, Dan also transferred his stuff.

00:04:22 ◼   ► Dan Morin transferred his stuff,

00:04:23 ◼   ► and that slowed the server down again.

00:04:25 ◼   ► So we're going through it again, but it's working.

00:04:28 ◼   ► And in the long run, I decided that, yeah,

00:04:31 ◼   ► it feels to me, and this is what Steven Hackett told me,

00:04:34 ◼   ► it feels to me like our community,

00:04:36 ◼   ► generally just sort of this community of Apple and tech

00:04:40 ◼   ► and stuff like that,

00:04:41 ◼   ► that stuff seems to have moved to Mastodon.

00:04:44 ◼   ► All our engagement on Twitter has dropped to nothing,

00:04:46 ◼   ► and people seem to be on Mastodon.

00:04:48 ◼   ► it's funny because there are other aspects of stuff

00:04:51 ◼   ► that I follow on Twitter like that sports list

00:04:53 ◼   ► I talk about that it's just going on

00:04:55 ◼   ► like nothing happened to Twitter, seriously.

00:04:57 ◼   ► It's kind of amazing.

00:04:58 ◼   ► - But they don't care, why would they care?

00:05:01 ◼   ► It's just us that cares 'cause we care.

00:05:02 ◼   ► - But our community cares and has moved

00:05:04 ◼   ► and I thought, well, you know what?

00:05:06 ◼   ► Steven's right, I think our community is here.

00:05:10 ◼   ► I do kind of wanna own my own place in this,

00:05:16 ◼   ► universe of alternate socials. I already had Zeppelin flights.

00:05:23 ◼   ► It still appears as a ghost. I'll just bring it back. So I brought it back.

00:05:27 ◼   ► So it's for any of my collaborators at The Incomparable and Six Colors, which

00:05:34 ◼   ► are all part of the same corporation, we have a Zeppelin. It's Zeppelin.flights.

00:05:39 ◼   ► And that's where I am.

00:05:42 ◼   ► Yeah, it was over the weekend, like, seeing Stevens and seeing you.

00:05:45 ◼   ► I was like, oh, this looks like fun, but.

00:05:49 ◼   ► - Right.

00:05:49 ◼   ► - I don't really know how realistically

00:05:51 ◼   ► how fun it is to move it.

00:05:54 ◼   ► - The bots, I mean,

00:05:55 ◼   ► Steven's using a different method than me.

00:05:56 ◼   ► I'm using make.com.

00:05:57 ◼   ► He's, I forget if he's using if this, then that,

00:06:00 ◼   ► or something else.

00:06:02 ◼   ► We were using make.com for a bunch of automations

00:06:04 ◼   ► on the incomparable and six colors,

00:06:07 ◼   ► and adding Mastodon to those automations was really easy.

00:06:11 ◼   ► And that's why I suggested if you really wanted to,

00:06:14 ◼   ► you could set up an instance and a user

00:06:16 ◼   ► and just create an auto-post thing that posts the,

00:06:20 ◼   ► it's essentially like,

00:06:21 ◼   ► if you'd like to see what I'm doing,

00:06:23 ◼   ► follow this account, and it's not you really,

00:06:27 ◼   ► it's your podcast, when your podcast goes live,

00:06:30 ◼   ► and when your podcast posts, and when you're, right?

00:06:33 ◼   ► It would be that stuff, when you're selling a new something,

00:06:36 ◼   ► and it wouldn't be so much interactive

00:06:38 ◼   ► as sort of a live stream for Mike Hurley.

00:06:40 ◼   ► You could do that if you wanted to.

00:06:41 ◼   ► - Do people want that though?

00:06:43 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:06:44 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:06:45 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:06:46 ◼   ► People want that, to be honest.

00:06:47 ◼   ► Well, I mean, they wouldn't follow you if they didn't want that, but I guess that's

00:06:50 ◼   ► the question is would they follow you?

00:06:52 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:06:53 ◼   ► But the issue for me, though, is if I have an active presence like that, I am going to

00:07:00 ◼   ► be reading it more and stuff, and that's kind of what I'm trying to not do right now because

00:07:04 ◼   ► I just get sucked in forever.

00:07:06 ◼   ► So I don't know.

00:07:07 ◼   ► I need to think about it, but where I am right now, I'm happy where I am right now.

00:07:12 ◼   ► I don't have an active presence on any text-based social media.

00:07:16 ◼   ► - Sure. - Maybe it will change

00:07:17 ◼   ► because I'm starting to get like, I don't know,

00:07:20 ◼   ► I'm like looking, you guys are doing listening to app stories,

00:07:23 ◼   ► they're talking about all these cool new apps

00:07:25 ◼   ► and it's just like feeling a little bit left out,

00:07:27 ◼   ► but one way or another there's something I'm not gonna like,

00:07:30 ◼   ► I just haven't decided which one it is yet.

00:07:32 ◼   ► - That's okay, I mean, it's all part of a process, right?

00:07:35 ◼   ► And there's no right or wrong process.

00:07:38 ◼   ► I am using Mastodon, but way less than I use Twitter,

00:07:41 ◼   ► and I'm almost, I'm not essentially posting

00:07:44 ◼   ► on Twitter anymore, but I am reading mostly that sports list

00:07:47 ◼   ► and that's about it, maybe occasionally a mention

00:07:50 ◼   ► or something, so I'd say my net brain space

00:07:54 ◼   ► devoted to social media has gone way down,

00:07:57 ◼   ► which I think is a good thing.

00:07:59 ◼   ► - If you would like to send in a snow talk of your own

00:08:01 ◼   ► to help us open an episode of Upgrade,

00:08:04 ◼   ► just go to upgradefeedback.com and submit it,

00:08:06 ◼   ► or you can click the link in your show notes to do so.

00:08:10 ◼   ► I have some follow up for you, Jason Snell.

00:08:12 ◼   ► Most of this, as usual, coming from the wonderful upgrade-ians

00:08:16 ◼   ► who write in to upgradefeedback.com,

00:08:19 ◼   ► which I very much appreciate.

00:08:21 ◼   ► We get so much great follow up these days,

00:08:23 ◼   ► more than we used to.

00:08:24 ◼   ► So I'm very thankful for people sending that stuff in.

00:08:27 ◼   ► Anthony wrote in to say, regarding the entry level Sonos

00:08:30 ◼   ► speaker recommendation from Ask Upgrade last week,

00:08:35 ◼   ► Anthony says, I got started with the $119 symphonisk that

00:08:40 ◼   ► is a Sonos and IKEA collaboration I had forgotten about these products.

00:08:45 ◼   ► Anthony says they sound great and work with the Sonos app, though I just use them via

00:08:50 ◼   ► Airplay.

00:08:51 ◼   ► So IKEA and Sonos have a selection of products.

00:08:54 ◼   ► Some are lamps, some are speakers, some are picture frames with speakers inside them.

00:08:59 ◼   ► It all works with Sonos and it's kind of maybe to try and make these products a little bit

00:09:03 ◼   ► more integrated into your home stuff.

00:09:06 ◼   ► So I haven't used these but it's a good recommendation if you're looking to get

00:09:10 ◼   ► started with Sonos.

00:09:11 ◼   ► This is an even easier, cheaper and maybe less intrusive way to bring Sonos into your

00:09:17 ◼   ► home.

00:09:19 ◼   ► Steve wrote in regards to the AR headset and controllers and says a lack of controllers

00:09:26 ◼   ► would limit the headset but also keep developers focused on the end goal of glasses worn in

00:09:31 ◼   ► public throughout the day, not a gaming device.

00:09:34 ◼   ► What do you think about that as like a reason to not have controllers?

00:09:38 ◼   ► Okay, so what I would say is you don't buy a product for the end goal.

00:09:44 ◼   ► And one of the things that we know that actually is good about VR and AR right now is gaming.

00:09:52 ◼   ► So if the goal is everybody keep your eyes on the prize of what it's going to be like

00:09:59 ◼   ► in five or 10 years and nobody do anything

00:10:02 ◼   ► that would work today, I mean, that won't work, right?

00:10:06 ◼   ► That won't work.

00:10:07 ◼   ► And what you need to do is make a product that appeals

00:10:09 ◼   ► and then evolve it over time

00:10:11 ◼   ► and let the appeal evolve over time.

00:10:14 ◼   ► But what you can't do is say,

00:10:16 ◼   ► we're gonna make this as bad a gaming device as we can

00:10:20 ◼   ► because we want people to be using,

00:10:23 ◼   ► toning the right muscles for where we wanna be in 10 years.

00:10:26 ◼   ► Like you can't do that.

00:10:28 ◼   ► So that's why when we talk about controllers,

00:10:30 ◼   ► they don't have to be in the box necessarily,

00:10:32 ◼   ► although that might not be bad.

00:10:34 ◼   ► There's a lot of things you can do with controllers

00:10:36 ◼   ► that are very precise in ways that I am skeptical

00:10:39 ◼   ► that camera-based hand tracking is gonna be as good at.

00:10:43 ◼   ► Ready to be proven wrong?

00:10:44 ◼   ► I'm sure Apple's implementation of this

00:10:46 ◼   ► will be very impressive,

00:10:47 ◼   ► but you can't keep developers focused on the end goal.

00:10:52 ◼   ► Developers don't get paid by the end goal,

00:10:56 ◼   ► they get paid now.

00:10:57 ◼   ► And to convince developers to work on something

00:11:00 ◼   ► for what's gonna be in five or 10 years is not good enough.

00:11:03 ◼   ► So that's why we talk about it.

00:11:07 ◼   ► It would limit the headset, limiting the headset,

00:11:09 ◼   ► which Steve says would limit the headset.

00:11:12 ◼   ► That means it's gonna limit sales of the headset,

00:11:14 ◼   ► which is gonna limit motivation developers have

00:11:16 ◼   ► to develop for the headset.

00:11:17 ◼   ► That's exactly what Apple doesn't want.

00:11:19 ◼   ► - Like ultimately it would be incredible, right?

00:11:22 ◼   ► Like if the hand tracking was flawless, right?

00:11:24 ◼   ► It's gonna be unbelievable.

00:11:25 ◼   ► It's gonna open and unlock so many new things.

00:11:27 ◼   ► it would be amazing. - Absolutely.

00:11:29 ◼   ► - But it's still not, even if it was flawless,

00:11:32 ◼   ► it's still not gonna be good for all types of video games,

00:11:35 ◼   ► for example, right?

00:11:36 ◼   ► So just having controllers is an additional good thing.

00:11:41 ◼   ► Like prioritize hand tracking for everything else

00:11:44 ◼   ► if you want to, and you'll still get to that end result.

00:11:47 ◼   ► Like if, you know, you're not gonna necessarily

00:11:49 ◼   ► need a hand tracking, sorry, a game controller

00:11:53 ◼   ► for your calendar app, like just use hand tracking for that.

00:11:55 ◼   ► and people can then advance that for apps, utilities,

00:11:58 ◼   ► that kind of things.

00:11:59 ◼   ► But for some games, controllers will always be

00:12:02 ◼   ► really helpful.

00:12:04 ◼   ► So why not do both, I guess?

00:12:07 ◼   ► - Right.

00:12:08 ◼   ► - And we spoke on last episode about a potential

00:12:12 ◼   ► of a folding iPad that Ming-Chi Kuo was talking about

00:12:16 ◼   ► in 2024.

00:12:17 ◼   ► There were a few stories that came up afterwards.

00:12:19 ◼   ► Mark Gurman and Ross Young said they hadn't heard anything

00:12:22 ◼   ► about folding iPad in 2024. - They're like,

00:12:23 ◼   ► "No, whoa, whoa."

00:12:24 ◼   ► - This was the rumor reporting equivalent

00:12:27 ◼   ► of somebody saying, "I hear it a thing,"

00:12:28 ◼   ► and everybody else being like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait,

00:12:30 ◼   ► wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

00:12:31 ◼   ► No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

00:12:33 ◼   ► We didn't hear that thing.

00:12:34 ◼   ► We didn't hear about that thing."

00:12:35 ◼   ► Fascinating to see that in action, right?

00:12:37 ◼   ► Mark Herman's like, "Nope, haven't heard a word about this."

00:12:39 ◼   ► Which doesn't mean it isn't gonna happen,

00:12:41 ◼   ► but I think the implication there is that

00:12:43 ◼   ► if he hasn't heard a word about it,

00:12:45 ◼   ► it's probably not quite right.

00:12:48 ◼   ► - And Ross Young says that he heard

00:12:49 ◼   ► that there was a 20.5 inch screen being prepared

00:12:53 ◼   ► for a foldable notebook on the cards for 2025.

00:12:57 ◼   ► - I just pedantically like to point out

00:12:59 ◼   ► every notebook is foldable.

00:13:01 ◼   ► - Yes, Jason.

00:13:03 ◼   ► - Every notebook folds.

00:13:07 ◼   ► - A folding screen notebook, how about that?

00:13:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think that's the idea here.

00:13:12 ◼   ► So his idea is it's a 20 inch screen that folds up into,

00:13:16 ◼   ► and I haven't done the math of exactly what that would be

00:13:20 ◼   ► when you folded it, but imagine folding it into something

00:13:22 ◼   ► that looks like a laptop configuration.

00:13:24 ◼   ► What would that be like?

00:13:26 ◼   ► And I had that same thought,

00:13:30 ◼   ► which was like, I had a moment where I'm like,

00:13:33 ◼   ► oh, this is a Mac, not an iPad.

00:13:36 ◼   ► And I wonder if that's what Ming-Chi Kuo has gotten wrong

00:13:38 ◼   ► is assuming based on his supply chain sources

00:13:41 ◼   ► that this product is being tested.

00:13:43 ◼   ► And that's what's going on here, right?

00:13:45 ◼   ► Is this product's being tested?

00:13:46 ◼   ► And you might have some guesses based on like

00:13:49 ◼   ► when they're expecting to ramp up production

00:13:51 ◼   ► that that suggests late 24 and Gherman's like,

00:13:53 ◼   ► "That's not gonna happen."

00:13:55 ◼   ► But right now what's going on is that Apple is getting tests

00:13:58 ◼   ► from manufacturers to try things

00:14:01 ◼   ► and see if they wanna do it.

00:14:02 ◼   ► And so maybe he just saw this screen and was like,

00:14:06 ◼   ► "Well, that's an iPad."

00:14:07 ◼   ► Whereas Ross Young says,

00:14:10 ◼   ► "No, it's gonna be a laptop

00:14:12 ◼   ► and it's gonna be later than that."

00:14:14 ◼   ► Would Apple make a weird convertible laptop thing,

00:14:19 ◼   ► tablet thing?

00:14:21 ◼   ► Well, a couple of weeks ago, we talked about this idea

00:14:23 ◼   ► that one, if Apple does touchscreen Macs,

00:14:26 ◼   ► it gives them the ability, if they choose, to get weird.

00:14:29 ◼   ► And this would certainly be a weird product, right?

00:14:32 ◼   ► And I was talking at the time about like convertibility

00:14:35 ◼   ► and how you could create, essentially,

00:14:37 ◼   ► call it an iPad mode, but it's a tablet mode for macOS.

00:14:40 ◼   ► There's so much work that they've done

00:14:42 ◼   ► on the iPad side here that I think it's something

00:14:46 ◼   ► that they could do if they really wanted to do it.

00:14:49 ◼   ► and there are lots of arguments against it.

00:14:51 ◼   ► And I've heard a lot of arguments that are like,

00:14:53 ◼   ► well, but how would it work?

00:14:55 ◼   ► I was like, well, yes, I'm not saying it wouldn't be hard,

00:14:59 ◼   ► but I'm saying that I don't appreciate the arguments

00:15:04 ◼   ► that are, oh, it's too hard, Apple will never do it.

00:15:07 ◼   ► Because if Apple wants to do it and thinks it's important,

00:15:09 ◼   ► Apple will do it.

00:15:11 ◼   ► And most of the people who say, oh, it's too hard

00:15:14 ◼   ► are the same people who think that Apple

00:15:15 ◼   ► never makes a wrong step.

00:15:17 ◼   ► It's like, well, what are they?

00:15:18 ◼   ► Are they the greatest company ever

00:15:19 ◼   ► that can do whatever they want?

00:15:21 ◼   ► Or are they incapable of solving a problem?

00:15:23 ◼   ► Which one is it?

00:15:24 ◼   ► So, you know, maybe this is evidence

00:15:27 ◼   ► that Apple's gonna get weird,

00:15:28 ◼   ► because honestly, if that's an iPad or a laptop,

00:15:30 ◼   ► - Still would. - If it's iPad OS

00:15:32 ◼   ► or Mac OS, it's still a weird product, right?

00:15:33 ◼   ► It's weird either way. - Still would.

00:15:35 ◼   ► - It's weird either way.

00:15:36 ◼   ► So, and then Mark Gurman was like,

00:15:38 ◼   ► "I don't know what they're talking about."

00:15:40 ◼   ► Like, nope.

00:15:41 ◼   ► So, 'cause the report I think Mark Gurman made

00:15:44 ◼   ► was that touchscreen MacBook Pro

00:15:47 ◼   ► just a more conventional thing in 2025.

00:15:51 ◼   ► So it's all kind of out there,

00:15:53 ◼   ► but I love the idea that Apple's maybe

00:15:57 ◼   ► essentially thinking of getting weird.

00:15:59 ◼   ► Like, yeah, let's do it.

00:16:00 ◼   ► Let's honestly, like I like Apple.

00:16:03 ◼   ► Apple's in a great product place right now.

00:16:04 ◼   ► They don't need to destroy the products they've got.

00:16:06 ◼   ► The products they've got are very successful,

00:16:08 ◼   ► but it's been a while since Apple did something

00:16:11 ◼   ► really different.

00:16:13 ◼   ► And I would love to see them try to reinvent

00:16:16 ◼   ► some category in the next few years.

00:16:19 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, they're gonna do it with a headset.

00:16:21 ◼   ► It's the plan, right?

00:16:22 ◼   ► Like that's-- - It's true, that's true.

00:16:24 ◼   ► - That's the expectation.

00:16:26 ◼   ► That's obviously what they're going for.

00:16:28 ◼   ► Otherwise, don't bother, so.

00:16:29 ◼   ► - Maybe this is just like a hat set you wear,

00:16:32 ◼   ► like a hat, like a hat set.

00:16:33 ◼   ► - A hat set.

00:16:34 ◼   ► - You just fold it up and put it on your head.

00:16:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, notebook hat.

00:16:37 ◼   ► - And walk around.

00:16:38 ◼   ► Yeah, hat book.

00:16:40 ◼   ► - In Upgrade Plus today, we're gonna be talking

00:16:42 ◼   ► about our results on the latest Upgrade Plus challenge.

00:16:45 ◼   ► Jason and I have been using the Arc browser

00:16:48 ◼   ► from the browser company for the past week.

00:16:51 ◼   ► We're gonna be giving our thoughts on that.

00:16:53 ◼   ► If you are not a member supporting Upgrade Plus,

00:16:55 ◼   ► go to getupgradeplus.com

00:16:57 ◼   ► and you will get longer ad-free versions of the show

00:17:00 ◼   ► and you will hear all about our experiences

00:17:03 ◼   ► with the Arc browser.

00:17:04 ◼   ► And also, probably by the time you're hearing this,

00:17:08 ◼   ► sometime on Monday, the Six Colors Report Card for 2022

00:17:12 ◼   ► will be published.

00:17:13 ◼   ► This is where Jason goes out

00:17:15 ◼   ► and talks to a bunch of people in the community and asks them to grade Apple's year in various

00:17:21 ◼   ► categories.

00:17:22 ◼   ► We're going to be talking about this on next week's episode.

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00:19:30 ◼   ► Room around uptime, saddle up Jason Snell, we're going to go back to our friend Mark

00:19:36 ◼   ► Germin over at Bloomberg who is reporting that Apple has decided they will not be continuing

00:19:43 ◼   ► with the role of industrial design chief after Evans Hankey departs the company.

00:19:48 ◼   ► This is something we spoke about last year that Evans Hankey was going to be leaving

00:19:52 ◼   ► Apple and there was a conversation of like, well what's going to happen?

00:19:56 ◼   ► A quote from Bloomberg, "Instead, the company's core group of about 20 industrial designers

00:20:02 ◼   ► will report directly to Jeff Williams, Apple's chief operating officer.

00:20:07 ◼   ► The company will also give larger roles to a group of Apple's longest-tenured designers."

00:20:12 ◼   ► So this will ultimately be linking design, industrial design and operations even further.

00:20:20 ◼   ► Alan Dye is going to remain as head of software design.

00:20:25 ◼   ► Do you have any, like, I mean, a lot of people will say,

00:20:27 ◼   ► "This is doom and gloom."

00:20:29 ◼   ► Like, "This is a big change."

00:20:31 ◼   ► "This is bad."

00:20:32 ◼   ► Like, what do you think about this when you hear this news?

00:20:34 ◼   ► - "I will sold its soul, sold its soul."

00:20:37 ◼   ► Look, it's a black box, right?

00:20:40 ◼   ► We don't know what's going on in there.

00:20:42 ◼   ► Unless you're one of those small number of people

00:20:43 ◼   ► who understand the situation,

00:20:45 ◼   ► you don't know what's going on.

00:20:47 ◼   ► My read on this,

00:20:49 ◼   ► putting on my,

00:20:51 ◼   ► taking off my rumor roundup cowboy hat for a moment

00:20:53 ◼   ► putting on my senior vice president and editorial director hat that I wore for a little while,

00:21:02 ◼   ► my corporate hat, I would say my best guess is Johnny Ive and a bunch of his people leaving

00:21:10 ◼   ► with Johnny Ive left a bit of a vacuum, right? A bit of a vacuum in terms of leadership.

00:21:18 ◼   ► And they ended up with a situation where they have Evan Tanki and she seemed like a good

00:21:22 ◼   ► choice to run this group, but that clearly when she said she was going to leave, it looks

00:21:27 ◼   ► to me like what's going on here is that they didn't have anybody.

00:21:31 ◼   ► And Mark Gurman, in fact, in his newsletter, we referred to this as a failure of succession

00:21:37 ◼   ► planning.

00:21:38 ◼   ► Maybe?

00:21:39 ◼   ► I mean, he's got sources inside who might tell him that.

00:21:44 ◼   ► I do wonder if some of the succession planning involved lieutenants of Johnny Ive who left

00:21:48 ◼   ► with Johnny Ive, right?

00:21:49 ◼   ► Which they were a lot.

00:21:50 ◼   ► - There's a situation where you've got like a bunch

00:21:52 ◼   ► of people who like Johnny want to do something different

00:21:55 ◼   ► and Evans Hankey agrees to or decides to stay for a while,

00:21:59 ◼   ► but she decides to leave too.

00:22:01 ◼   ► And you haven't necessarily had time

00:22:03 ◼   ► to cultivate somebody who steps up.

00:22:05 ◼   ► So that's my initial read on this is that

00:22:07 ◼   ► there was no clear choice as a successor

00:22:09 ◼   ► or that there were multiple sort of shaky choices

00:22:14 ◼   ► as a successor.

00:22:15 ◼   ► And maybe they decided,

00:22:17 ◼   ► 'cause this line about also give larger roles

00:22:19 ◼   ► to a group of Apple's longest tenured designers,

00:22:23 ◼   ► sounds to me like maybe there was a group of people

00:22:26 ◼   ► who were kind of qualified,

00:22:29 ◼   ► but none of them at the level where management thought

00:22:33 ◼   ► we could put this person in charge,

00:22:35 ◼   ► or potentially we could put this person in charge

00:22:37 ◼   ► without losing all the rest of them, right?

00:22:40 ◼   ► 'Cause that also happens.

00:22:41 ◼   ► That's a dynamic where you've got peers

00:22:43 ◼   ► and then one of them gets promoted

00:22:44 ◼   ► and the other ones get out.

00:22:46 ◼   ► So, and this is super important, critical to Apple.

00:22:49 ◼   ► So, you know, my guess, yeah,

00:22:51 ◼   ► people talk about them reporting to Jeff Williams.

00:22:53 ◼   ► Reporting to Jeff Williams is primarily

00:22:55 ◼   ► because there's nobody, they can't elevate somebody.

00:22:58 ◼   ► I think this is less about an operations control thing

00:23:03 ◼   ► than it is about personnel.

00:23:07 ◼   ► Like, bottom line, this reads to me as personnel,

00:23:10 ◼   ► which is there are a lot of personal dynamics there,

00:23:12 ◼   ► and maybe it's true that they have not been training up,

00:23:16 ◼   ► you know, Evans-Hankey didn't train up her replacement,

00:23:19 ◼   ► or none of them, or tried and they were found wanting,

00:23:23 ◼   ► or all of them seem to be about equal,

00:23:25 ◼   ► but that seems to be, to me, what's going on here.

00:23:28 ◼   ► Now, my guess is that as a part of this process,

00:23:33 ◼   ► those larger roles people are going to be prompted

00:23:38 ◼   ► and watched as potential leaders of the design group.

00:23:44 ◼   ► This also doesn't read to me as necessarily a group

00:23:47 ◼   ► that will never go without a leader,

00:23:49 ◼   ► but, you know, and if this is the case,

00:23:53 ◼   ► I think it's actually, I hope this is the case,

00:23:55 ◼   ► 'cause that's the good management scenario, right?

00:23:57 ◼   ► The good management scenario is nobody gonna step up,

00:24:00 ◼   ► best thing for the organization is to put more power

00:24:03 ◼   ► into these individual teams

00:24:04 ◼   ► that have these long-tenured designers as their leaders

00:24:07 ◼   ► and let them continue to do their jobs

00:24:09 ◼   ► without a person at the top level.

00:24:12 ◼   ► And sorry, Jeff, you're gonna have to, you know,

00:24:17 ◼   ► you're gonna have to check in with a bunch of people

00:24:20 ◼   ► instead of one person now.

00:24:22 ◼   ► The thing about this that makes me tilt my head a little

00:24:25 ◼   ► is not, oh, operations has taken over design,

00:24:28 ◼   ► it's how many people are reporting directly

00:24:32 ◼   ► to Jeff Williams at this point?

00:24:33 ◼   ► It's not 20, right?

00:24:35 ◼   ► But it's the, presumably the larger roles

00:24:38 ◼   ► people are gonna report to Jeff Williams directly.

00:24:40 ◼   ► It's like, is Jeff Williams really gonna supervise them?

00:24:44 ◼   ► How's that gonna work?

00:24:45 ◼   ► Are they giving free reign?

00:24:47 ◼   ► Are they trying to deal with a boss who's being,

00:24:49 ◼   ► I mean, I've had that where I've reported to a boss

00:24:51 ◼   ► who has a bazillion reports,

00:24:53 ◼   ► and that can go two ways, right?

00:24:56 ◼   ► Actually, even with the same boss, this happened with me,

00:24:58 ◼   ► where he put tremendous amounts of authority in my hands

00:25:03 ◼   ► and let me do, make decisions.

00:25:06 ◼   ► He was like, he didn't wanna sweat the small stuff at all.

00:25:09 ◼   ► But when he rolled in and wanted to have an opinion,

00:25:14 ◼   ► he had to get up to speed, I had to manage him

00:25:17 ◼   ► because he didn't really know the context of it.

00:25:19 ◼   ► And like, that's the problem with that situation

00:25:24 ◼   ► is you get autonomy, but you still have a boss

00:25:26 ◼   ► and the boss doesn't understand what you're doing.

00:25:28 ◼   ► And so when the boss decides that they wanna roll in

00:25:31 ◼   ► and do something, you've gotta get them up to speed,

00:25:34 ◼   ► which can be really hard and they can make,

00:25:35 ◼   ► they can have an incomplete understanding

00:25:38 ◼   ► of what you do because of it.

00:25:40 ◼   ► So that part is a little bit of a red flag here,

00:25:43 ◼   ► but I think the answer is that, yeah,

00:25:46 ◼   ► we can ding Apple for lacking succession planning here,

00:25:49 ◼   ► but this is a group that had a very longstanding leader

00:25:52 ◼   ► who left with a lot of his lieutenants.

00:25:55 ◼   ► I'm not surprised that they're in this situation,

00:25:59 ◼   ► especially since Evans Hanke was identified as this,

00:26:03 ◼   ► and then she has left fairly quickly,

00:26:06 ◼   ► leaving them presumably with a solid design group

00:26:10 ◼   ► that doesn't have anybody who looks like the manager

00:26:12 ◼   ► or anybody who looks so clearly like the manager

00:26:15 ◼   ► that they aren't gonna suffer even more loss of people

00:26:18 ◼   ► if they promote them.

00:26:20 ◼   ► That's my take on it.

00:26:21 ◼   ► - It is, I think, worth considering,

00:26:24 ◼   ► like what I was thinking about when I read this,

00:26:26 ◼   ► is these roles, the industrial design chief

00:26:29 ◼   ► and the software design chief,

00:26:30 ◼   ► where Alan Dyer's remaining in,

00:26:32 ◼   ► these roles were created when Johnny was on his way out,

00:26:36 ◼   ► when they were trying to keep him,

00:26:37 ◼   ► but he didn't wanna work there anymore, right?

00:26:40 ◼   ► - Right.

00:26:40 ◼   ► And so they created these two job roles

00:26:43 ◼   ► to basically be him.

00:26:46 ◼   ► Maybe Apple just doesn't want these job roles anymore.

00:26:48 ◼   ► They would create for a specific purpose

00:26:50 ◼   ► and they're not gonna remove Alan Dye from the position

00:26:53 ◼   ► because he's doing a good job, they feel.

00:26:55 ◼   ► But maybe when Alan Dye does move on,

00:26:58 ◼   ► he wouldn't be replaced either.

00:27:00 ◼   ► - Maybe, I mean, it's possible.

00:27:03 ◼   ► My guess is that if you've got somebody

00:27:06 ◼   ► who's capable of running the design group

00:27:09 ◼   ► and reporting to Jeff Williams,

00:27:10 ◼   ► rather than having a group of people

00:27:13 ◼   ► reporting to Jeff Williams, everybody would prefer that.

00:27:18 ◼   ► I would think.

00:27:19 ◼   ► I would think that you would not,

00:27:23 ◼   ► unless the goal is, I mean,

00:27:25 ◼   ► for the people who are out there

00:27:26 ◼   ► who are convinced that this is the case,

00:27:28 ◼   ► unless the goal really is to sort of like

00:27:29 ◼   ► depower the design group

00:27:30 ◼   ► and make them all just sort of like individual groups

00:27:34 ◼   ► that all report separately to Jeff Williams

00:27:36 ◼   ► and they don't have any power

00:27:38 ◼   ► because they're all just sort of like down in the trenches

00:27:41 ◼   ► and there's nobody speaking up for design in general.

00:27:43 ◼   ► And maybe that's the plan,

00:27:44 ◼   ► but my guess is it's more about the people.

00:27:46 ◼   ► It's that, and we should say,

00:27:48 ◼   ► because I don't think it's come up today,

00:27:51 ◼   ► you don't hire outside for somebody like this.

00:27:54 ◼   ► You don't, you don't.

00:27:55 ◼   ► Like it or not, Apple is not a company that's capable

00:27:59 ◼   ► of bringing in somebody from the outside

00:28:02 ◼   ► for a role like this.

00:28:03 ◼   ► They just aren't.

00:28:04 ◼   ► We've seen it time and again,

00:28:06 ◼   ► bringing in senior people who are not from Apple to Apple

00:28:10 ◼   ► doesn't work well.

00:28:11 ◼   ► The only exception would be if there was somebody

00:28:12 ◼   ► who had worked in this group and then left

00:28:15 ◼   ► and wanted to come back in that role.

00:28:17 ◼   ► And who knows, maybe they talked to people about that too,

00:28:19 ◼   ► but that obviously didn't happen.

00:28:21 ◼   ► So it's hard, all speculation, right?

00:28:24 ◼   ► We don't know more than these basic reports,

00:28:26 ◼   ► but I would think personally, I would,

00:28:30 ◼   ► if I were Jeff Williams,

00:28:31 ◼   ► I would prefer to have a head of industrial design

00:28:33 ◼   ► instead of having a whole bunch of the former lieutenants

00:28:36 ◼   ► now reporting to me directly, right?

00:28:37 ◼   ► Like that's happened before, right?

00:28:39 ◼   ► A senior person leaves and suddenly you're like,

00:28:41 ◼   ► "Okay, I guess all their reports are my reports

00:28:44 ◼   ► until we hire a replacement."

00:28:45 ◼   ► Well, this is them saying,

00:28:47 ◼   ► "All of Evan Sankey's reports

00:28:48 ◼   ► are now Jeff Williams' reports, I guess?"

00:28:50 ◼   ► Like that's not ideal.

00:28:52 ◼   ► So there must be a real, like, again,

00:28:54 ◼   ► either they're trying to eradicate all the strength

00:28:56 ◼   ► of the design group, which I doubt,

00:28:58 ◼   ► or they just don't have that person

00:29:00 ◼   ► and maybe they will someday.

00:29:01 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:29:02 ◼   ► I mean, most likely scenario there, Mike,

00:29:05 ◼   ► is that they tried this way and they're like, "Oh God,

00:29:07 ◼   ► we can't do it this way."

00:29:11 ◼   ► And somebody steps up,

00:29:13 ◼   ► and that may even be the implication right now, right?

00:29:15 ◼   ► It's like one of the people in this group

00:29:17 ◼   ► who are getting the larger roles,

00:29:19 ◼   ► like somebody steps up and Jeff's like, "You know what?

00:29:21 ◼   ► I like the cut of your jib, you're now in charge of this."

00:29:25 ◼   ► And that may happen, who knows?

00:29:27 ◼   ► If you know something about this, let us know.

00:29:31 ◼   ► If you're inside an Apple, send us the skinny.

00:29:35 ◼   ► - You can send in feedback via the anonymous feedback form

00:29:39 ◼   ► or upgradefeedback.com and you can let us know.

00:29:42 ◼   ► Somebody did actually send something in

00:29:44 ◼   ► and it was under anonymous and they were like,

00:29:46 ◼   ► I'm an Apple engineer and I really like listening

00:29:49 ◼   ► to the show because I can talk back to you

00:29:51 ◼   ► and tell you if you're right, wrong, or.

00:29:53 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:29:55 ◼   ► - I'd rather be right.

00:29:56 ◼   ► I'd rather be right.

00:29:58 ◼   ► I had somebody say, I need to send you a message

00:30:01 ◼   ► on Signal.

00:30:02 ◼   ► It was good, it was like background,

00:30:05 ◼   ► it was a former Apple employee,

00:30:06 ◼   ► but it was on background,

00:30:08 ◼   ► and in that case it was very much a,

00:30:11 ◼   ► you guys are pretty right,

00:30:14 ◼   ► given that you don't know anything, so that's cool.

00:30:16 ◼   ► - You don't know what we don't know.

00:30:17 ◼   ► - I like that too.

00:30:18 ◼   ► - No, we don't know anything.

00:30:19 ◼   ► - Oh.

00:30:20 ◼   ► - You can send in completely anonymous to that form.

00:30:22 ◼   ► It is also, as well as the feedback,

00:30:24 ◼   ► it is a tips line.

00:30:25 ◼   ► - What if, what if, Rumor Roundup,

00:30:27 ◼   ► what if we start breaking things on Rumor Roundup?

00:30:29 ◼   ► could you imagine? It's going to happen at some point I'd hope.

00:30:32 ◼   ► No I don't think so. I doubt it.

00:30:33 ◼   ► Mark Gurman is also reporting that Apple is considering adding an Ultra phone to the iPhone

00:30:38 ◼   ► lineup in 2025 starting with the iPhone 16. The iPhone 15 Pro Max will be named that.

00:30:46 ◼   ► It will not be renamed to Ultra as some believed it would, including me. But the 15 Pro Max

00:30:54 ◼   ► will start this trend of further differentiating the product line with features like the periscope

00:30:59 ◼   ► lens.

00:31:02 ◼   ► Mark says Apple will also further differentiate the product's tiers of a range of materials,

00:31:07 ◼   ► processors and cameras.

00:31:25 ◼   ► is reporting that Apple is considering adding the ultra as another phone at the top end.

00:31:32 ◼   ► The pro max remaining. Now I found this fascinating because what it says is Apple

00:31:38 ◼   ► really thinks that having four phones or whatever is the right way to go, five phones, whatever it's

00:31:44 ◼   ► going to be, my expectation here is they just drop the plus. Yeah, right. And so they still have four

00:31:52 ◼   ► but they have iPhone, iPhone Pro, iPhone Pro Max, iPhone Ultra, because I think

00:31:58 ◼   ► what they've maybe come to realize is cutting features in the mid-range is not

00:32:05 ◼   ► as exciting to people as adding features at the high end.

00:32:10 ◼   ► Yeah, also I would say they seem to have learned that there is a finite number of

00:32:14 ◼   ► people who want to buy the iPhone model, and splitting it into two models

00:32:21 ◼   ► doesn't really net them more sales.

00:32:24 ◼   ► So why would you not take that effort

00:32:26 ◼   ► and then push it up to the highest of the high end?

00:32:28 ◼   ► I would say, Mike, that although the rumors are

00:32:31 ◼   ► that this is not the case, this is the kind of place

00:32:34 ◼   ► where you would do a folding phone eventually,

00:32:37 ◼   ► would be ultra, it is the cutting edge,

00:32:41 ◼   ► the super expensive,

00:32:43 ◼   ► just like those Samsung folding phones are expensive,

00:32:46 ◼   ► but at the highest of the high end.

00:32:50 ◼   ► interesting idea, right? Because, and we're gonna get to the, we're gonna get to the the

00:32:56 ◼   ► earnings report in a little bit, but one of the things, and Mark Gurman noticed it, which is good,

00:33:01 ◼   ► somebody asked Tim Cook about the ability for the market to bear increases in iPhone price,

00:33:08 ◼   ► and what that says about their possibilities. And Tim Cook was like, "We haven't seen any trouble."

00:33:15 ◼   ► Like, he, essentially what Tim Cook said is, "Look, we raise the price on these iPhones and

00:33:19 ◼   ► and people keep buying them.

00:33:20 ◼   ► - Doesn't matter what they cost.

00:33:22 ◼   ► - And if you're a business person,

00:33:24 ◼   ► the next step is raise them again,

00:33:28 ◼   ► or come out with another one that's even more expensive.

00:33:30 ◼   ► Because I think there is truth,

00:33:32 ◼   ► and we don't like to hear it.

00:33:33 ◼   ► I'm the guy who always says,

00:33:34 ◼   ► you gotta find the price you want

00:33:35 ◼   ► and then raise it and then round it up, right?

00:33:37 ◼   ► Like none of us love it,

00:33:40 ◼   ► but clearly in Apple's customer base,

00:33:43 ◼   ► and it's not everybody, it's not even,

00:33:46 ◼   ► It's a smallish maybe portion of Apple's customer base.

00:33:50 ◼   ► But what Tim Cook said was,

00:33:52 ◼   ► "This is the most important device that they own."

00:33:55 ◼   ► And they rely on it for everything, for payment.

00:33:57 ◼   ► I mean, this is also actually a great way

00:34:00 ◼   ► of detailing Apple's whole philosophy about the iPhone

00:34:03 ◼   ► and services around it.

00:34:04 ◼   ► It's like, it's the most important device they've got.

00:34:07 ◼   ► It does their payments.

00:34:09 ◼   ► It keeps their calendar.

00:34:10 ◼   ► It does their email.

00:34:11 ◼   ► It does, it literally does.

00:34:12 ◼   ► It opens their car door.

00:34:13 ◼   ► It opens their front door.

00:34:14 ◼   ► It does everything.

00:34:16 ◼   ► And so people are willing to spend a lot of money

00:34:21 ◼   ► on this device that is the most important device for them.

00:34:25 ◼   ► And the message is clear, and it makes sense, right?

00:34:29 ◼   ► Which is, if you keep raising the price

00:34:31 ◼   ► of the highest end iPhone

00:34:32 ◼   ► and sales just keep percolating along,

00:34:35 ◼   ► clearly there are people out there

00:34:37 ◼   ► who are probably willing to buy

00:34:38 ◼   ► an even more expensive iPhone if you let them.

00:34:40 ◼   ► Which is not the same as saying

00:34:41 ◼   ► we're gonna take the existing iPhone and raise its price.

00:34:44 ◼   ► And so we're gonna keep that there,

00:34:45 ◼   ► and then we're gonna put another one above it.

00:34:47 ◼   ► And you know what?

00:34:48 ◼   ► Some percentage of those people

00:34:49 ◼   ► are just gonna buy the more expensive phone.

00:34:51 ◼   ► And that is why there will be an iPhone Ultra,

00:34:54 ◼   ► no doubt about it.

00:34:55 ◼   ► - Ming-Chi Kuo is reporting that the periscope lens

00:35:01 ◼   ► that would allow for better optical zoom

00:35:03 ◼   ► will be exclusive to the Pro Max until at least 2025.

00:35:07 ◼   ► You know, assumedly, if there was a Ultra in 24,

00:35:10 ◼   ► this would also get that,

00:35:11 ◼   ► but it's like Pro Max and above.

00:35:14 ◼   ► This is interesting, this is clearly a feature

00:35:16 ◼   ► that will give another jump in camera performance,

00:35:19 ◼   ► but it's something that requires physical space, right?

00:35:23 ◼   ► - Yes, yeah.

00:35:24 ◼   ► - So putting it in the Pro Max instance.

00:35:25 ◼   ► - Having it on a big phone is logical, yeah, totally.

00:35:29 ◼   ► - Also in his Power On newsletter,

00:35:30 ◼   ► Mark Gorman suggested that it may be some time

00:35:33 ◼   ► until we see an update to the Max Studio.

00:35:35 ◼   ► I wanna read this quote in full.

00:35:37 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:35:38 ◼   ► - I wouldn't appreciate,

00:35:40 ◼   ► I appreciate that, Mark said I wouldn't anticipate the introduction of a max studio in the near

00:35:47 ◼   ► future. The upcoming Mac Pro is very similar in functionality to the max studio and adds

00:35:52 ◼   ► the M2 Ultra chip rather than the M1 Ultra, so it wouldn't make sense for Apple to offer

00:35:57 ◼   ► an M2 Ultra Max Studio and an M2 Ultra Mac Pro at the same time. It's more likely that

00:36:04 ◼   ► Apple either never updates to Mac Studio or holds off

00:36:08 ◼   ► until the M3 or M4 generation.

00:36:10 ◼   ► At that point, the company may be able

00:36:12 ◼   ► to better differentiate between the Mac Studio

00:36:14 ◼   ► and the Mac Pro.

00:36:16 ◼   ► This is unclear to me as to whether this is speculation

00:36:19 ◼   ► or information. - Yeah.

00:36:21 ◼   ► Yeah, it's hard to say.

00:36:22 ◼   ► He doesn't, he doesn't, right?

00:36:24 ◼   ► 'Cause Mark does some plundered stuff too.

00:36:26 ◼   ► And he says, "I wouldn't anticipate."

00:36:27 ◼   ► I mean, I think what is going on is a little bit of both,

00:36:29 ◼   ► right, where he hasn't heard about it.

00:36:32 ◼   ► So therefore it probably doesn't exist.

00:36:34 ◼   ► and then he speculates a little bit about it.

00:36:36 ◼   ► I'm a little, I don't know, I'm a little skeptical.

00:36:40 ◼   ► I could see that it happens,

00:36:42 ◼   ► but I'm a little skeptical about the idea

00:36:44 ◼   ► that Apple is afraid that if they do an M2 Ultra Mac Studio

00:36:49 ◼   ► and an M2 Ultra Mac Pro at the same time,

00:36:52 ◼   ► that they're cannibalizing sales from the M2 Ultra Mac Pro.

00:36:55 ◼   ► I guess I can see it,

00:36:56 ◼   ► but like, why are we building a Mac Pro then, right?

00:36:59 ◼   ► Like they are actually very different products.

00:37:02 ◼   ► I think more likely is a scenario,

00:37:05 ◼   ► and I'll be clear here, I have a Mac Studio.

00:37:07 ◼   ► I want to believe in the Mac Studio,

00:37:09 ◼   ► and they made a new Mac, they should keep making it.

00:37:12 ◼   ► I'm wondering if what we're seeing here,

00:37:14 ◼   ► and this goes to the iMac as well,

00:37:16 ◼   ► is we're starting to see the shape

00:37:17 ◼   ► of Apple's Apple Silicon strategy for the Mac,

00:37:20 ◼   ► which is some products get every generation and some don't.

00:37:24 ◼   ► Right?

00:37:25 ◼   ► So M1 iMac, M3 iMac, no M2 iMac.

00:37:28 ◼   ► Why not? - Yep.

00:37:29 ◼   ► They're just, it's not an every 18 month

00:37:32 ◼   ► or every year priority.

00:37:34 ◼   ► So they're just not gonna do it.

00:37:35 ◼   ► - I think it's just like desktop laptop.

00:37:37 ◼   ► Like I think that's gonna be what we see.

00:37:39 ◼   ► Like desktops get an update every couple of years,

00:37:41 ◼   ► laptops every year.

00:37:42 ◼   ► - Laptops get it every year.

00:37:44 ◼   ► I think that's perfectly reasonable in fact.

00:37:46 ◼   ► Mac Pro and Mac Studio,

00:37:49 ◼   ► maybe the answer is to alternate, right?

00:37:51 ◼   ► - I think so.

00:37:52 ◼   ► - Maybe it's M2 Ultra Mac Pro and an M3 Mac Studio.

00:37:58 ◼   ► Also, I think what Mark is dangling here is the idea that for the M3 or M4 generation,

00:38:02 ◼   ► they will eventually go back and do that quad, you know, whatever it's called, M4 Extreme,

00:38:09 ◼   ► whatever it is, chip that will really push the Mac Pro out in terms of performance.

00:38:15 ◼   ► Because I actually think that having the Mac Pro out there and then still having the Mac

00:38:18 ◼   ► Studio is a good thing.

00:38:20 ◼   ► Otherwise we're gonna get in a situation

00:38:23 ◼   ► where we don't have an M2 Max on the desktop, right?

00:38:28 ◼   ► 'Cause the desktop only has the M2 and the M2 Pro

00:38:33 ◼   ► and the Mac Mini.

00:38:35 ◼   ► And then I don't think they're gonna make

00:38:37 ◼   ► an M2 Max version of the Mac Pro.

00:38:39 ◼   ► To me, that would be really sad, right?

00:38:41 ◼   ► Because that would be a very expensive computer

00:38:43 ◼   ► that's not very fast 'cause it's just the M2 Max.

00:38:46 ◼   ► It's not even the Ultra.

00:38:48 ◼   ► We'll see about that.

00:38:49 ◼   ► And that's also why I think that the Mac Studio is viable

00:38:51 ◼   ► because it's a good place to put the Macs

00:38:53 ◼   ► or the Macs and the Ultra.

00:38:54 ◼   ► It makes most sense if there's an Ultra

00:38:56 ◼   ► and then something above Ultra.

00:38:57 ◼   ► 'Cause then it's like, well,

00:38:58 ◼   ► Mac Studio will do Macs and Ultra,

00:39:00 ◼   ► Mac Pro will do Ultra and beyond, right?

00:39:04 ◼   ► But maybe this is the answer is that these are desktops,

00:39:07 ◼   ► the volumes aren't worth redesigning them,

00:39:10 ◼   ► or even revving them every 18 months,

00:39:13 ◼   ► and that they're gonna do some alternation.

00:39:15 ◼   ► And so the iMac goes every other,

00:39:17 ◼   ► the Mac Studio goes every other.

00:39:19 ◼   ► The Mac Mini got an update faster,

00:39:22 ◼   ► but I wouldn't put money down on the Mac Mini

00:39:25 ◼   ► getting an M3 version now that they've got

00:39:26 ◼   ► the higher end version. - They had to tidy

00:39:27 ◼   ► that up, like the Mac Mini was messy

00:39:30 ◼   ► and they were dragging along the Intel.

00:39:33 ◼   ► They had to take care of that.

00:39:35 ◼   ► - Exactly, but now that business is settled,

00:39:37 ◼   ► so maybe no Mac Mini until M4.

00:39:39 ◼   ► I think it's not an unreasonable scenario

00:39:41 ◼   ► to say that, especially since three quarters of the Macs

00:39:44 ◼   ► that they sell are laptops,

00:39:45 ◼   ► that that should be their priority.

00:39:47 ◼   ► Every time there's a new chip generation,

00:39:49 ◼   ► there should be a new MacBook Air and a new MacBook Pro,

00:39:52 ◼   ► and if you do other laptops, great.

00:39:54 ◼   ► That's what should be the priority,

00:39:57 ◼   ► and then the desktops will take care of themselves

00:39:59 ◼   ► every other year or so.

00:40:01 ◼   ► - I mean, if you think about it,

00:40:02 ◼   ► so if we're saying that the desktops are 25% of Macs, right?

00:40:06 ◼   ► There are more desktop models

00:40:08 ◼   ► than there are laptops right now.

00:40:11 ◼   ► - Right.

00:40:11 ◼   ► - Which is, that is a very strange balance.

00:40:14 ◼   ► That to me feels like the balance of a company

00:40:19 ◼   ► who the people inside it really care about Desktop Max,

00:40:23 ◼   ► so they keep making new Desktop Max, which is great.

00:40:26 ◼   ► I care about Desktop Max, we all do, right?

00:40:28 ◼   ► It's good to have, but you've gotta be sensible

00:40:33 ◼   ► about the amount of R&D and development

00:40:36 ◼   ► that goes into these products, and so it means that,

00:40:39 ◼   ► all right, we'll have a bunch of options in these things.

00:40:41 ◼   ► They do different things,

00:40:43 ◼   ► They're made for different use cases,

00:40:45 ◼   ► but we can't rev them every year,

00:40:47 ◼   ► or in some cases every two years.

00:40:49 ◼   ► But with some of these, especially at the higher end,

00:40:52 ◼   ► even the iMac where it is placed,

00:40:55 ◼   ► it actually, you know, obviously all the desktop Macs

00:40:57 ◼   ► can handle it based on where they fit.

00:41:01 ◼   ► So like the iMac, the M1 iMac,

00:41:05 ◼   ► doesn't need a new base chip every year

00:41:08 ◼   ► because of where it's gonna be used.

00:41:11 ◼   ► Similarly, something like the Mac Studio and the Mac Pro,

00:41:13 ◼   ► those chips are so powerful

00:41:15 ◼   ► that you don't need to do one every time.

00:41:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, I agree.

00:41:19 ◼   ► And nobody's replacing them right after 18 months

00:41:22 ◼   ► or anything either. - 'Cause it's expensive.

00:41:24 ◼   ► - It depends on how you look at it, by the way.

00:41:26 ◼   ► It's four and four.

00:41:27 ◼   ► There are four laptops and four desktops.

00:41:31 ◼   ► But again, it's 75, 25, laptop to desktop.

00:41:34 ◼   ► So it's still too much, right,

00:41:37 ◼   ► to take these four and those four.

00:41:40 ◼   ► The four desktops should probably not require anything compared to the attention of the

00:41:44 ◼   ► laptops.

00:41:45 ◼   ► And we also know that the rumors are that there are more laptops.

00:41:47 ◼   ► How would you go four on four?

00:41:49 ◼   ► Is he doing it by size?

00:41:51 ◼   ► There are 13 MacBook Pros and a... there are three MacBook Pros and a MacBook Air.

00:41:55 ◼   ► Oh, okay.

00:41:56 ◼   ► See, I was just thinking, like, brands.

00:41:58 ◼   ► But sure, I get you by, like, models, right?

00:42:00 ◼   ► You got MacBook Air, MacBook Pros, too.

00:42:02 ◼   ► If we leave the chips out of it, the physical hardware, there are four laptops.

00:42:06 ◼   ► - And there are four desktops, Mac Mini, iMac,

00:42:10 ◼   ► Mac Studio and Mac Pro.

00:42:12 ◼   ► It's still there and it will be there presumably.

00:42:15 ◼   ► So it's four and four, but still, I mean, again,

00:42:17 ◼   ► and that leaves aside that engineering that Mac Pro

00:42:20 ◼   ► is a huge amount of work because it has to do things

00:42:22 ◼   ► Apple Silicon's never done.

00:42:23 ◼   ► And while that may have some nice spinoff benefits

00:42:26 ◼   ► for the Mac and maybe even the iPhone, who knows, right?

00:42:28 ◼   ► Who knows?

00:42:29 ◼   ► With the iPad, I don't know.

00:42:31 ◼   ► But in the short term, they're spending a lot of money

00:42:34 ◼   ► on a product that very few people are gonna buy.

00:42:35 ◼   ► So yeah, I think that they feel responsible

00:42:40 ◼   ► to curate and keep the desktops alive,

00:42:43 ◼   ► but it does kind of make,

00:42:45 ◼   ► as a person who uses a Mac desktop,

00:42:47 ◼   ► it makes me sad to say this,

00:42:48 ◼   ► but it's absolutely the case

00:42:50 ◼   ► that they should be spending more time on their laptops.

00:42:53 ◼   ► And this is why when there are all those rumors

00:42:55 ◼   ► of the larger MacBook Air coming out,

00:42:56 ◼   ► it's like, please, Apple should be devoting

00:43:00 ◼   ► even more time and thought to laptops,

00:43:04 ◼   ► because the Mac, the definitive Mac is a MacBook Air, right?

00:43:09 ◼   ► It's not a MacBook Pro, it's not an iMac,

00:43:12 ◼   ► it's not a Mac Mini, it's not a Mac Pro,

00:43:16 ◼   ► it's the MacBook Air.

00:43:17 ◼   ► That is the definitive Mac

00:43:18 ◼   ► and has been for more than a decade now.

00:43:20 ◼   ► That is the best-selling Mac model.

00:43:22 ◼   ► It's still the best-selling Mac model.

00:43:24 ◼   ► It doesn't mean that the only Mac is a MacBook Air,

00:43:27 ◼   ► but like, if you're starting to think about the MacBook Air

00:43:30 ◼   ► and you're like, well, could they do more with that?

00:43:32 ◼   ► Maybe they are, maybe they're making a bigger one, but like absolutely their focus should

00:43:37 ◼   ► be on the 75% of the market and not the 25%.

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00:45:27 ◼   ► Money, money, money, money, money, money, money.

00:45:32 ◼   ► It's that time again.

00:45:34 ◼   ► - Money.

00:45:35 ◼   ► - Apple's Q1 2023 earnings.

00:45:39 ◼   ► The one we were waiting for because of--

00:45:40 ◼   ► - You love it.

00:45:42 ◼   ► - The bloodbath that was going to occur

00:45:45 ◼   ► that we knew about in advance where Apple had put out

00:45:48 ◼   ► a kind of investor press release, I guess,

00:45:52 ◼   ► to say that they were expecting a big decline

00:45:55 ◼   ► because of shutdowns in China and their factories.

00:45:59 ◼   ► We spoke about this some time ago.

00:46:01 ◼   ► It was going to restrict iPhone sales.

00:46:05 ◼   ► And if your Apple and iPhone sales are restricted,

00:46:08 ◼   ► things are gonna be bad for you.

00:46:09 ◼   ► So, it turns out this wasn't all that was bad.

00:46:12 ◼   ► And also there was some good.

00:46:14 ◼   ► So let's do the top line and then we'll dig in

00:46:16 ◼   ► kind of product by product as well.

00:46:18 ◼   ► Revenue, $117.2 billion, down 5% year over year,

00:46:24 ◼   ► Just as a note, can you imagine $117 billion

00:46:28 ◼   ► in a quarter and it's a bad quarter?

00:46:31 ◼   ► I know we talk about these things a lot,

00:46:32 ◼   ► but when you tether these things back to reality.

00:46:36 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:46:38 ◼   ► - $30 billion profit, $30 billion profit, what a disaster.

00:46:42 ◼   ► Also, I'll also point out, 'cause again,

00:46:44 ◼   ► it does get distorted by Wall Street

00:46:46 ◼   ► and the search for growth,

00:46:48 ◼   ► Apple's second biggest quarter of all time.

00:46:53 ◼   ► only last year's holiday quarter was bigger.

00:46:55 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:46:56 ◼   ► iPhone, here it is, $65.8 billion down 8% year over year.

00:47:02 ◼   ► The Mac, 7.7 billion down 29% year over year.

00:47:09 ◼   ► But don't worry everyone, here comes the iPad

00:47:13 ◼   ► at $9.5 billion up 30% year over year.

00:47:19 ◼   ► Services at 20.8% up 6% and wearables, home and accessories 13.5 billion down 8% year

00:47:28 ◼   ► over year.

00:47:29 ◼   ► I'll read a quote from Jason's Macworld column.

00:47:32 ◼   ► During Apple's hour long quarterly conference call with Wall Street analysts, the word "headwinds"

00:47:37 ◼   ► was used 11 times, slightly edging out the 10 times we heard the word "macroeconomic".

00:47:45 ◼   ► Can you explain a little bit, this is very helpful to me, again, to get this like recontextualization

00:47:51 ◼   ► of why these numbers are even worse than they would have been otherwise?

00:47:56 ◼   ► Sure, I'll give you an example.

00:48:02 ◼   ► So you're selling iPhones in China, and you look at these numbers and the iPhone is down,

00:48:08 ◼   ► and the iPhone is down in China.

00:48:09 ◼   ► And you say, "Oh, they sold fewer iPhones in China.

00:48:12 ◼   ► They made less money in China."

00:48:13 ◼   ► They didn't.

00:48:14 ◼   ► make less money in China.

00:48:16 ◼   ► If you counted up all the Chinese money last quarter

00:48:18 ◼   ► and counted up all the Chinese money

00:48:21 ◼   ► at the year ago last quarter,

00:48:23 ◼   ► this year's was more.

00:48:27 ◼   ► So how could it have gone down?

00:48:28 ◼   ► Well, the answer was the way these earnings reports work

00:48:33 ◼   ► is you convert it to US dollars.

00:48:35 ◼   ► So year ago quarter converted to more dollars

00:48:39 ◼   ► than the current quarter did

00:48:42 ◼   ► because of foreign exchange headwinds, as they call it,

00:48:45 ◼   ► because of a strong dollar.

00:48:46 ◼   ► And that happened all over the world.

00:48:49 ◼   ► They said, you know, it's like basically 8% of everything

00:48:51 ◼   ► got eaten by foreign exchange.

00:48:54 ◼   ► Now, I don't believe Apple brings all the money

00:48:58 ◼   ► back to the US, right?

00:48:59 ◼   ► Like I think that part of the game is they keep,

00:49:02 ◼   ► if it's an unfavorable foreign exchange environment,

00:49:07 ◼   ► they might keep it in the local currency

00:49:10 ◼   ► until there's a better time to move it back to the US.

00:49:13 ◼   ► I don't know all the details there.

00:49:15 ◼   ► - Of course, I mean, especially,

00:49:16 ◼   ► they don't need the cash, right?

00:49:18 ◼   ► Like it's not like they're like,

00:49:19 ◼   ► "Oh, we're gonna bring it back

00:49:20 ◼   ► 'cause we need it." (laughs)

00:49:22 ◼   ► - In fact, famously, they didn't bring the cash back

00:49:24 ◼   ► because they were gonna pay taxes on it for a while

00:49:26 ◼   ► until there was sort of a tax deal

00:49:27 ◼   ► and then they brought the cash back.

00:49:29 ◼   ► So this is all about the reports, right?

00:49:33 ◼   ► So what they say is, look, actually the sales were strong.

00:49:35 ◼   ► Ironically, they stopped reporting unit sales

00:49:38 ◼   ► a few years ago, and that would allow them

00:49:40 ◼   ► to make that clear, but they hid that,

00:49:43 ◼   ► and now it's all in revenue.

00:49:45 ◼   ► And so the US dollar revenue is a shortfall,

00:49:49 ◼   ► even though they say that this was hugely impacted

00:49:52 ◼   ► by the foreign exchange headwinds.

00:49:55 ◼   ► And then the other issues they said is like,

00:49:57 ◼   ► obviously COVID shutdowns affected them,

00:49:59 ◼   ► and generally the global macroeconomic climate,

00:50:03 ◼   ► which is sort of like people really worried

00:50:06 ◼   ► about a recession and not spending money,

00:50:08 ◼   ► and the war in Ukraine having all sorts of follow on impacts.

00:50:13 ◼   ► They threw out a bunch of other stuff there.

00:50:17 ◼   ► But I think there is truth in the fact

00:50:19 ◼   ► that foreign exchange makes their business.

00:50:21 ◼   ► Look, I saw somebody on CNBC,

00:50:24 ◼   ► 'cause I watch CNBC for half an hour every quarter,

00:50:27 ◼   ► just because it's fun and weird and another world.

00:50:30 ◼   ► And I saw somebody there say,

00:50:32 ◼   ► "Everybody's got foreign exchange problems.

00:50:33 ◼   ► They should stop talking about foreign exchange."

00:50:36 ◼   ► It's like, okay, here's what I think.

00:50:39 ◼   ► If the goal, what do we get out of these things?

00:50:45 ◼   ► One of the things we get out of this

00:50:46 ◼   ► is to understand Apple's business.

00:50:48 ◼   ► But what Wall Street types want is they want to get a view

00:50:53 ◼   ► of where Apple's business is going, right?

00:50:55 ◼   ► For Wall Street types, it's all about

00:50:57 ◼   ► where's the growth coming from.

00:50:58 ◼   ► They want signs that wearables is slow

00:51:01 ◼   ► or services is slow or something like that.

00:51:04 ◼   ► or whether iPad is as a one-time and why,

00:51:07 ◼   ► and we can go into that

00:51:09 ◼   ► because it is kind of a one-time bump for reasons.

00:51:12 ◼   ► But the goal of Wall Street is like to look at these facts

00:51:16 ◼   ► and get a better idea of where Apple's business is going.

00:51:20 ◼   ► I would argue that if you're freaking out about the numbers

00:51:24 ◼   ► and not taking into account the foreign exchange

00:51:27 ◼   ► and going, "Ah, everybody's got foreign exchange problems,"

00:51:29 ◼   ► you're like losing information

00:51:31 ◼   ► about where Apple's business is going

00:51:34 ◼   ► because it is super relevant about whether a drop

00:51:38 ◼   ► in iPhone sales is, instead of it being flat,

00:51:42 ◼   ► it wasn't gonna be up, but instead of it being flat,

00:51:44 ◼   ► is because of foreign exchange

00:51:47 ◼   ► or is because people don't want the iPhone anymore, right?

00:51:50 ◼   ► Those seem like really different scenarios.

00:51:53 ◼   ► And if you're a Wall Street analyst,

00:51:54 ◼   ► you kinda wanna care about which one of those it is.

00:51:58 ◼   ► But I think maybe some Wall Street analysts don't care

00:52:01 ◼   ► 'cause they've got their,

00:52:03 ◼   ► I don't know what they're doing, but they're like,

00:52:05 ◼   ► they're obviously the people who are in the bag for Apple

00:52:07 ◼   ► and the people who are out to get Apple.

00:52:08 ◼   ► And that seems to be part of the game that everybody plays.

00:52:12 ◼   ► Anyway, I think the foreign exchange thing is interesting

00:52:14 ◼   ► because what it suggests is that it would be,

00:52:17 ◼   ► I actually would find it really valuable

00:52:18 ◼   ► if we could take the foreign exchange out

00:52:21 ◼   ► and look at the pure sales figures,

00:52:23 ◼   ► but they don't show us those anymore.

00:52:24 ◼   ► We have to kind of rely on them to use,

00:52:27 ◼   ► to mention it when it serves them,

00:52:29 ◼   ► which in this case it did to say,

00:52:31 ◼   ► iPhone sales would be flat,

00:52:33 ◼   ► which is okay.

00:52:34 ◼   ► It's not, you know, the iPhone has been sort of flat-ish

00:52:37 ◼   ► for a while now.

00:52:39 ◼   ► Also, as we've talked about on Upgrade a lot,

00:52:41 ◼   ► they go in macro cycles where there's a new, new iPhone,

00:52:45 ◼   ► and then there's a huge sales spike.

00:52:46 ◼   ► And then there's a couple of years where it's kind of quiet

00:52:49 ◼   ► because the iPhones are out there

00:52:50 ◼   ► and they're still selling a lot of them,

00:52:52 ◼   ► but they don't get that growth spike that happens

00:52:55 ◼   ► and has happened the last like two or three times

00:52:57 ◼   ► they've done this, where there's a new, new iPhone,

00:53:00 ◼   ► and then there's a huge spike of growth.

00:53:02 ◼   ► - Which is probably this year.

00:53:05 ◼   ► - This fall.

00:53:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, will be one of those.

00:53:07 ◼   ► - Quite possibly.

00:53:08 ◼   ► Because the iPhone, what was it?

00:53:11 ◼   ► The iPhone 6 that had the larger?

00:53:14 ◼   ► - That's the classic.

00:53:15 ◼   ► - And then the iPhone 10.

00:53:16 ◼   ► And then the iPhone 12.

00:53:19 ◼   ► - 12 or 13, one of those two.

00:53:22 ◼   ► And you may think to yourself, right?

00:53:24 ◼   ► 'Cause we've mentioned it a couple of times,

00:53:25 ◼   ► well, to solve the issue of Wall Street,

00:53:28 ◼   ► why don't they just for this time,

00:53:30 ◼   ► say what the unit sales were, right?

00:53:32 ◼   ► But the reason they won't do that

00:53:34 ◼   ► is the reason they got rid of them

00:53:35 ◼   ► is they don't actually want people to know

00:53:37 ◼   ► how much money they're making per product.

00:53:40 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:53:40 ◼   ► - This is the thing that Apple just don't want.

00:53:41 ◼   ► - That would give away the average selling price

00:53:44 ◼   ► and they consider that, you know,

00:53:45 ◼   ► that's information that other people could know

00:53:47 ◼   ► and they don't want them to know that.

00:53:48 ◼   ► But when it serves them, they will say,

00:53:50 ◼   ► "Oh well, iPhone sales were actually flat."

00:53:53 ◼   ► That's all they're gonna say.

00:53:54 ◼   ► But they'll say it because it serves them

00:53:56 ◼   ► 'cause it makes their business look better.

00:53:58 ◼   ► But in this case, so there's a lot of headwinds,

00:54:00 ◼   ► there's a lot of macroeconomic,

00:54:02 ◼   ► one analyst used the phrase soft macro,

00:54:05 ◼   ► which I never wanna hear again.

00:54:07 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:54:10 ◼   ► Anyway, yeah, there was a lot of talk about that.

00:54:12 ◼   ► The fact is it was a weird quarter.

00:54:14 ◼   ► I actually, I mean, my overall feeling is that

00:54:17 ◼   ► given what we were warned about them not,

00:54:20 ◼   ► for those who don't remember, the bottom line was,

00:54:24 ◼   ► Apple came out in November and basically said,

00:54:26 ◼   ► "We have a factory that makes iPhone Pros

00:54:29 ◼   ► and it's shut down and we're not gonna be able

00:54:31 ◼   ► to fulfill demand for the iPhone Pro

00:54:33 ◼   ► during our most important quarter of iPhone sales."

00:54:36 ◼   ► Given that, I think they did okay, right?

00:54:38 ◼   ► I mean, given that, revenue down 8% when sales were flat,

00:54:43 ◼   ► flat from their best quarter ever,

00:54:46 ◼   ► if you take foreign exchange out of it,

00:54:50 ◼   ► given the lack of supply,

00:54:55 ◼   ► And Tim Cook said they're back

00:54:56 ◼   ► and they've got the supply now.

00:54:58 ◼   ► And we cited how all the ads came back, right?

00:55:03 ◼   ► As the sign where it's like, aha, they have iPhones again,

00:55:06 ◼   ► because they're advertising the iPhone Pro again.

00:55:09 ◼   ► When they had switched to the iPhone

00:55:10 ◼   ► and not the iPhone Pro.

00:55:12 ◼   ► So, you know, I look at this and I think

00:55:15 ◼   ► it's a weird quarter, it's an unusual quarter,

00:55:18 ◼   ► but I wouldn't, I mean, I wouldn't overreact anyway,

00:55:23 ◼   ► but like it's their second best quarter ever.

00:55:26 ◼   ► And there were positive signs and there were negative signs.

00:55:29 ◼   ► And I think their business is incredibly healthy.

00:55:31 ◼   ► And I do think that we're seeing a little bit of,

00:55:34 ◼   ► in the Mac, especially,

00:55:36 ◼   ► there may be a little bit of a hangover

00:55:38 ◼   ► from people buying Macs during the pandemic.

00:55:41 ◼   ► But at the same time,

00:55:42 ◼   ► a lot of this stuff is more about what they did last year

00:55:47 ◼   ► at the same time, right?

00:55:48 ◼   ► 'Cause the iPad figures are up so much

00:55:51 ◼   ► because the iPad was, they couldn't make enough iPads

00:55:54 ◼   ► last holiday quarter, if people remember that.

00:55:57 ◼   ► And this holiday quarter, not only could they make enough,

00:56:00 ◼   ► but they had the new low-cost iPad

00:56:02 ◼   ► and they had the new iPad Pro, the M2 iPad Pro.

00:56:05 ◼   ► And anecdotally, I feel like I've heard from a lot of people

00:56:09 ◼   ► who bought that 2018 iPad Pro,

00:56:11 ◼   ► who updated to the M2 iPad Pro,

00:56:13 ◼   ► that that was enough of a time.

00:56:14 ◼   ► - It's always just natural updates,

00:56:16 ◼   ► no matter what we say about the year over year, right?

00:56:19 ◼   ► like the people will always do it.

00:56:21 ◼   ► - Right, but that's the best compare, as they say, right?

00:56:25 ◼   ► Which is, it was a really lousy iPad quarter,

00:56:28 ◼   ► and now there's been a great one.

00:56:30 ◼   ► And the Mac went the other way,

00:56:31 ◼   ► where the Mac didn't have anything, right?

00:56:33 ◼   ► They obviously, they deferred the announcement

00:56:36 ◼   ► of those MacBook Pros and the Mac Mini until January,

00:56:40 ◼   ► and they had the quietest Mac quarter

00:56:43 ◼   ► in terms of announcements, and the sales were down,

00:56:47 ◼   ► which is unsurprising 'cause new models

00:56:49 ◼   ► definitely help drive sales.

00:56:51 ◼   ► So that's not that surprising.

00:56:53 ◼   ► And I don't think necessarily,

00:56:54 ◼   ► whereas the year ago quarter, they had new MacBook Pros.

00:56:56 ◼   ► So I don't know if this,

00:57:00 ◼   ► sometimes I think that the black line in my charts,

00:57:02 ◼   ► which is that four quarter moving average

00:57:04 ◼   ► is the best line to look at.

00:57:07 ◼   ► 'Cause it smooths out a lot of the drama

00:57:11 ◼   ► of year over year change and seasonality

00:57:15 ◼   ► and just kind of flattens it out.

00:57:16 ◼   ► So yeah, it was the worst Mac quarter in quite a while,

00:57:20 ◼   ► but it mostly, it was still, again,

00:57:23 ◼   ► if you had gone back a couple of years,

00:57:25 ◼   ► it would have been the best Mac quarter ever.

00:57:26 ◼   ► It's just that then they had a run during the,

00:57:31 ◼   ► right after the pandemic started,

00:57:32 ◼   ► they had an Apple Silicon came out.

00:57:34 ◼   ► They had a huge run of Mac sales.

00:57:36 ◼   ► And it's not unreasonable to say that some of those sales

00:57:41 ◼   ► were to people who are now,

00:57:45 ◼   ► you would have waited longer.

00:57:47 ◼   ► And that there's a little bit of a hangover

00:57:49 ◼   ► after they do that big blob of sales.

00:57:52 ◼   ► And the good thing is people don't buy a Mac

00:57:55 ◼   ► and then never buy a Mac again.

00:57:56 ◼   ► It's just that we may have like a bulge.

00:57:58 ◼   ► There may be some weird kind of mega seasonality now

00:58:01 ◼   ► where due to 2020, there's gonna be every three years or so

00:58:06 ◼   ► there's gonna be a bulge in Mac buying

00:58:08 ◼   ► because everybody bought a new Mac in 2020 and 2021.

00:58:12 ◼   ► And now, you know, that we might see an echo of that

00:58:16 ◼   ► down the road too.

00:58:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, I would expect that their Q2

00:58:21 ◼   ► will probably be their biggest Q2 ever by a nice chunk

00:58:26 ◼   ► because the laptops slipped into it, right?

00:58:28 ◼   ► Which otherwise wouldn't have happened.

00:58:30 ◼   ► One of the reasons that this quarter's Mac sales were down

00:58:34 ◼   ► and if you say there was a bunch of reasons,

00:58:36 ◼   ► like one of them is that there weren't any laptops,

00:58:38 ◼   ► like the MacBook Pros missed 22.

00:58:41 ◼   ► - They missed it, yep.

00:58:42 ◼   ► So they're into the 2023 Q1 and there will be,

00:58:45 ◼   ► you know, there will be a lot of people

00:58:46 ◼   ► whose iPhone sales are lost forever,

00:58:49 ◼   ► you know, are lost for years, right?

00:58:51 ◼   ► Because they went with somebody else over the holidays.

00:58:53 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:58:54 ◼   ► - But there'll be a large selection of people

00:58:56 ◼   ► that will have waited to buy their iPhone

00:58:58 ◼   ► so they could get it and they can get it now.

00:59:00 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:59:01 ◼   ► Yeah, they'll put up their order and wait

00:59:02 ◼   ► and they got it in January and that'll show up

00:59:04 ◼   ► and it'll be, yeah, I think you're probably right.

00:59:06 ◼   ► I think that that's the,

00:59:08 ◼   ► Apple said that they thought that the next quarter

00:59:11 ◼   ► would be kind of in line with this quarter.

00:59:14 ◼   ► But right, like, look, sometimes I feel like

00:59:19 ◼   ► we overread this stuff.

00:59:21 ◼   ► I think clearly the biggest value we have

00:59:23 ◼   ► in looking at this stuff is to understand

00:59:25 ◼   ► sort of like the shape of Apple's business

00:59:26 ◼   ► and how it drives them and how it affects

00:59:29 ◼   ► the decisions they make and can be an early warning sign

00:59:32 ◼   ► of something going wrong.

00:59:34 ◼   ► This isn't it, right?

00:59:35 ◼   ► Like this is a company that can throw it away

00:59:40 ◼   ► can throw out a 30 billion dollar profit and have people think that it's not a

00:59:46 ◼   ► very good quarter. This is a machine built to make enormous sums of money. All

00:59:51 ◼   ► of their businesses look in pretty good shape. You know, the Mac is

00:59:57 ◼   ► shaping up to be a, what, 36-ish billion dollar a year business? That's the, you

01:00:05 ◼   ► know, the Mac is at a level it's never been before. The iPad seems to have

01:00:09 ◼   ► settled in. A few years ago, we were thinking that the iPad was going to settle in at 5

01:00:13 ◼   ► billion a quarter, essentially, so a 20 billion a year business. Now they're more like a 32-ish

01:00:21 ◼   ► billion dollars a year business. So the iPad is the best it's ever been. And that iPad

01:00:28 ◼   ► quarter, by the way, I had to look it up. It's like seven years since the iPad sold

01:00:33 ◼   ► more revenue than the Mac and nine years since the iPad had a quarter this big.

01:00:38 ◼   ► This is, I believe the second largest revenue quarter the iPad has ever had.

01:00:42 ◼   ► Only that one huge quarter that they had very early on that was over 10 billion.

01:00:48 ◼   ► So the iPad's got the best business it's ever had.

01:00:50 ◼   ► The iPhone is, you know, honestly, you know, when after it's not throwing off

01:00:57 ◼   ► those, um, those 66, 50, 47% year over year growth, but like the following

01:01:03 ◼   ► "Quiet year" was 9, 5, 3, 10, and then this is down 8%.

01:01:08 ◼   ► I think it's fair to say,

01:01:09 ◼   ► because even smaller growth is still growth,

01:01:12 ◼   ► that that little black line

01:01:13 ◼   ► that shows me the four-quarter moving average,

01:01:15 ◼   ► like this is about the best the iPhone has ever been.

01:01:18 ◼   ► Services, and this is where I think

01:01:22 ◼   ► it is a little more debatable about Apple's future,

01:01:25 ◼   ► services revenue seems to have slowed,

01:01:27 ◼   ► although again, Apple would say

01:01:29 ◼   ► it's really affected by foreign exchange,

01:01:32 ◼   ► because they don't change what you pay.

01:01:36 ◼   ► You know, they don't charge all their customers worldwide

01:01:39 ◼   ► in US dollars, right?

01:01:42 ◼   ► And so if you're paying X amount a month

01:01:45 ◼   ► and the dollar gets strong, you know,

01:01:48 ◼   ► you're still just paying that in whatever country you're in.

01:01:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know about that one.

01:01:52 ◼   ► I think they might be hiding a little bit there personally.

01:01:55 ◼   ► - Well, no, I just, like services clearly

01:01:58 ◼   ► need some attention, I think, from them

01:02:00 ◼   ► because the days of the 30% growth are over.

01:02:03 ◼   ► But I guess what I wanna say is that when we see five

01:02:06 ◼   ► and 6%, it's probably more in line with what we saw

01:02:09 ◼   ► the two previous quarters, which is in the teens

01:02:11 ◼   ► in terms of the actual like services

01:02:13 ◼   ► with the financial taken out of it.

01:02:15 ◼   ► But it certainly is the case.

01:02:17 ◼   ► It certainly is the case that they're not

01:02:20 ◼   ► in the 25% every quarter growth.

01:02:22 ◼   ► I think they're more in the 10% ish

01:02:25 ◼   ► in terms of what did they say?

01:02:27 ◼   ► The constant currency.

01:02:28 ◼   ► It's probably that's what it is, 10, 15%.

01:02:30 ◼   ► And so that's where you point and say,

01:02:33 ◼   ► maybe not as dramatic as it looks on the charts,

01:02:35 ◼   ► but services growth has slowed.

01:02:37 ◼   ► And then wearable home accessories

01:02:39 ◼   ► is another one of those examples where they,

01:02:41 ◼   ► it was kicking off 20, 30, 40% growth year over year.

01:02:46 ◼   ► And then it slowed down to in the teens.

01:02:50 ◼   ► And we've had two out of the last three quarters

01:02:52 ◼   ► where the growth has been down 8%.

01:02:55 ◼   ► So some questions about wearables.

01:02:59 ◼   ► They said that the Apple Watch Ultra did really well,

01:03:03 ◼   ► AirPods Pro did really well,

01:03:05 ◼   ► but this feels a little bit like a category

01:03:10 ◼   ► where they did, again, maybe because of pandemic sales

01:03:14 ◼   ► or something like that,

01:03:15 ◼   ► that maybe they had some explosive growth

01:03:19 ◼   ► and now there's not as much room for them to grow.

01:03:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, the wearables one is the biggest question mark

01:03:23 ◼   ► for me because the Ultra is more expensive and it's new and AirPods Pro are more expensive

01:03:30 ◼   ► than the regular AirPods and they're new both in the quarter leading up to the holidays

01:03:35 ◼   ► right? That's a surprise to me I would have expected that those two products would have

01:03:41 ◼   ► been quite hot ticket items like I understand that we've got the you know the many reasons

01:03:47 ◼   ► why things can go down I just wasn't expecting a year over year decline on wearables with

01:03:52 ◼   ► those two products. Let's say that maybe it was flat, but still, I mean, I, the counter

01:03:57 ◼   ► argument would be maybe it was flat and it's still the second highest wearables home accessories

01:04:02 ◼   ► quarter ever. And one of the, not to bring out the old tough compare, but their last

01:04:07 ◼   ► holiday quarter, they blew it out. And so you, that can hide a very good quarter. That's

01:04:12 ◼   ► just not the, but the fact is the holiday quarter grew 1920, 21, 22, and then in 23

01:04:19 ◼   ► didn't grow. And so it's one of those things where again, I think you can overreact to

01:04:25 ◼   ► this, but what it does suggest is that they're certainly, they seem to have exited their

01:04:33 ◼   ► big inflationary growth period of 30%. And why is that? And that's hard to say, because

01:04:41 ◼   ► like you said, the Apple Watch Ultra seemed to do pretty well and is an expensive product.

01:04:46 ◼   ► presumably also very profitable, but definitely going to generate a lot of revenue. You know,

01:04:52 ◼   ► they also talk about like how they brought in a lot of people who, you know, a huge number

01:04:56 ◼   ► of the Apple Watch sales they got were to people who've never had a smartwatch before.

01:05:01 ◼   ► So that's a good sign, you know, that is a tidbit that they're sharing with Wall Street

01:05:06 ◼   ► because it is a good sign. I don't know. I think if I was somebody who was only concerned

01:05:12 ◼   ► And with growth in these categories, I would be looking at this saying, the days of the

01:05:21 ◼   ► 40% growth are over and now these are going to be more incremental categories from here

01:05:24 ◼   ► on out.

01:05:25 ◼   ► Unless Apple rolls out a wearable that can drive revenue and different services offerings.

01:05:35 ◼   ► Those are the places where they could goose this more.

01:05:39 ◼   ► This episode is brought to you by Capital One. At Capital One, technology makes direct

01:05:45 ◼   ► deposits available up to two days sooner, improves fraud defense with machine learning,

01:05:51 ◼   ► and helps businesses manage data challenges in the cloud with Slingshot, the first solution

01:05:57 ◼   ► from Capital One software. Search technology at Capital One to learn more. Our thanks to

01:06:02 ◼   ► Capital One for their support of this show and Relay FM. Capital One, what's in your

01:06:07 ◼   ► wallet?

01:06:09 ◼   ► Let's finish out today's episode with some Ask Upgrade questions.

01:06:15 ◼   ► Matthew wants to know, do you frequently use universal control?

01:06:20 ◼   ► I have an iPad Pro sitting out here on my desk and I guess I would say yes because I

01:06:28 ◼   ► have this iPad Pro out here.

01:06:29 ◼   ► I will open it up.

01:06:32 ◼   ► Sometimes I'm controlling it directly but a lot of times if it's sitting next to my

01:06:37 ◼   ► studio display, I will just control it using universal control. So yeah, I would say sure,

01:06:43 ◼   ► frequently, not all the time, but frequently. - Yeah, I don't. The status board iPad that I had,

01:06:50 ◼   ► you know, like I spoke about on the show, I had widgets and stuff on it. This iPad has actually

01:06:55 ◼   ► gone back home. It is now a media iPad, 'cause in our new house, in our old apartment, you know,

01:07:04 ◼   ► sometimes we, most days we want to eat and watch TV right at the same time and

01:07:10 ◼   ► we could do that very easily in our old place but in a new place the way the TV

01:07:15 ◼   ► is and where our dining table is that just doesn't match up so I was like well

01:07:20 ◼   ► an iPad would be really good for this to like watch something for 10-15 minutes

01:07:24 ◼   ► before we go sit on the sofa. I have an iPad at the studio it's 11 inches the

01:07:30 ◼   ► iPad air I'm just gonna bring it home so it is now a media iPad it's now just

01:07:34 ◼   ► full of media apps and we use it for that

01:07:36 ◼   ► when we're sitting at the dining table,

01:07:39 ◼   ► catching up on an episode of something while we eat dinner.

01:07:41 ◼   ► So I also now don't have an iPad here at the studio,

01:07:46 ◼   ► which is interesting to me.

01:07:49 ◼   ► I did today have a thing where I wanted to mark something up

01:07:52 ◼   ► and I was like, an Apple Pencil would be great for this.

01:07:55 ◼   ► I don't have one here.

01:07:57 ◼   ► So I had to do it in text.

01:07:59 ◼   ► I had to annotate something

01:08:01 ◼   ► and we're using just a different color.

01:08:03 ◼   ► It was just like, this is not the way I want to do this,

01:08:08 ◼   ► but I didn't really have another way to do it.

01:08:12 ◼   ► But yeah, just again, I don't have one here now.

01:08:15 ◼   ► This isn't like a thing.

01:08:17 ◼   ► I use my iPad mini, I adore my iPad mini,

01:08:20 ◼   ► use it all the time, love that thing.

01:08:22 ◼   ► But I just keep it on and it wouldn't do

01:08:25 ◼   ► for what I wanted anyway.

01:08:26 ◼   ► But yeah, just an interesting thought.

01:08:28 ◼   ► But universal control, I wasn't a super big fan of it anyway

01:08:32 ◼   ► Mark asks, Regarding Phil Schiller on Mastodon, do you think Apple should have their own Mastodon

01:08:51 ◼   ► instance? Should any large tech company that could have more control over their content

01:08:56 ◼   ► and it would also serve as a sort of

01:08:58 ◼   ► automatic verification as well.

01:09:00 ◼   ► What do you think?

01:09:01 ◼   ► - I'm surprisingly going to say yes.

01:09:06 ◼   ► - Okay, that's not what I thought.

01:09:07 ◼   ► All right, go on.

01:09:08 ◼   ► - That's why I said surprisingly.

01:09:10 ◼   ► Here's why.

01:09:11 ◼   ► If you as a business decide that Mastodon

01:09:15 ◼   ► is worth supporting, which I think is an open question,

01:09:19 ◼   ► right, but let's just say it,

01:09:21 ◼   ► that if like in addition to Twitter and Instagram

01:09:23 ◼   ► or whatever, like, oh, well, we've got people on Mastodon,

01:09:24 ◼   ► let's try that.

01:09:25 ◼   ► and you're using it for your corporate voice,

01:09:30 ◼   ► I think you should own your own instance

01:09:33 ◼   ► because then you control your own instance.

01:09:36 ◼   ► And it's clear to anything that gets posted on there

01:09:39 ◼   ► that it is in the voice of you as the corporation

01:09:42 ◼   ► as an authorized representative of the corporation.

01:09:45 ◼   ► Now, there are people who have those, you know,

01:09:49 ◼   ► opinions are my own accounts,

01:09:51 ◼   ► and those should not be on,

01:09:52 ◼   ► if you have an account like that,

01:09:54 ◼   ► you should not have that on your corporate instance, right?

01:09:57 ◼   ► But there are also those accounts

01:09:58 ◼   ► like JAWS's Twitter account

01:10:00 ◼   ► and Colleen Novielli's Twitter account, right?

01:10:03 ◼   ► Where it's just like,

01:10:04 ◼   ► the only posts are really about Apple products.

01:10:07 ◼   ► And it's very much a, I work at Apple

01:10:09 ◼   ► and this is a very friendly, you know,

01:10:12 ◼   ► here's the thing that we're working on at Apple thing.

01:10:14 ◼   ► Like if you find from a PR and marketing perspective

01:10:17 ◼   ► that having that sort of thing is valuable,

01:10:20 ◼   ► I would say you should own it, right?

01:10:23 ◼   ► you shouldn't be relying on somebody else.

01:10:25 ◼   ► If you're gonna have an official-ish presence of employees

01:10:30 ◼   ► on Mastodon, own it.

01:10:34 ◼   ► And that makes it clear that it is the business of Apple,

01:10:39 ◼   ► let's say, and that if you're posting there,

01:10:44 ◼   ► it's very clearly you're under the aegis.

01:10:47 ◼   ► Otherwise, it shouldn't be there.

01:10:48 ◼   ► I'm not sure any company would want this,

01:10:51 ◼   ► But if I as a company decided it was strategic,

01:10:54 ◼   ► that we wanted to do marketing on social media

01:10:56 ◼   ► that included Mastodon, I would want my own instance,

01:11:00 ◼   ► I think, because it would be mine.

01:11:03 ◼   ► - I agree with that.

01:11:04 ◼   ► I think the issue is where the line is drawn

01:11:07 ◼   ► as to who gets to use that instance, right?

01:11:09 ◼   ► Like, if Apple set up an instance,

01:11:12 ◼   ► and well, they only let C-level executives

01:11:14 ◼   ► sign up on that instance, right?

01:11:15 ◼   ► 'Cause like, what if like an engineer

01:11:17 ◼   ► wants to sign up on that instance,

01:11:18 ◼   ► but now you're responsible for anything

01:11:20 ◼   ► this person says in public, right?

01:11:22 ◼   ► Like there is more of a link to it there.

01:11:25 ◼   ► So I think it's complicated.

01:11:26 ◼   ► - But if you're, so again, I am James Thompson

01:11:31 ◼   ► in the discourse, this is a rank and file employee,

01:11:34 ◼   ► it's a bad deal.

01:11:35 ◼   ► It is, but as a company, right?

01:11:37 ◼   ► Which is the question here, as a company,

01:11:39 ◼   ► I would, Mike, I would like that engineer to know

01:11:44 ◼   ► that if they get an account on this service,

01:11:48 ◼   ► that they gotta keep it to business.

01:11:49 ◼   ► and they gotta follow the social media rules

01:11:52 ◼   ► and social media policy and say like,

01:11:54 ◼   ► we'll let you tweet about the work you're doing

01:11:56 ◼   ► under this, like you do on Twitter,

01:12:00 ◼   ► we'll let you post about it on Mastodon,

01:12:02 ◼   ► but you gotta follow the rules.

01:12:04 ◼   ► Or maybe, yeah, maybe it's just an instance

01:12:07 ◼   ► that has a C-level account on it or not.

01:12:09 ◼   ► Or maybe you say, oh, no, no, no,

01:12:11 ◼   ► we're part of the community, we're on mastodon.social.

01:12:14 ◼   ► You could do that.

01:12:15 ◼   ► But I guess what I'm really saying is,

01:12:18 ◼   ► whatever it would be, it's not what you're thinking, right?

01:12:21 ◼   ► It would just be a PR vehicle.

01:12:22 ◼   ► It's not gonna be a thing that they set up

01:12:24 ◼   ► and they're like, "Hey, everybody join

01:12:26 ◼   ► and talk about whatever."

01:12:27 ◼   ► And again, if you're an employee

01:12:29 ◼   ► and you wanna talk about whatever, really whatever,

01:12:32 ◼   ► then the last thing you wanna do

01:12:33 ◼   ► is have it tied to your employment

01:12:34 ◼   ► because then if you leave that company,

01:12:36 ◼   ► you are going to lose your social media identity.

01:12:40 ◼   ► So as a personal account, I would not recommend it,

01:12:43 ◼   ► but as a PR strategy by a company,

01:12:45 ◼   ► I would absolutely recommend it

01:12:47 ◼   ► because it gives you complete control over it.

01:12:49 ◼   ► - Do you think they are going to join Masterbahn?

01:12:52 ◼   ► - I doubt it.

01:12:56 ◼   ► If it happens, it will be because the Apple

01:13:01 ◼   ► or another company, Microsoft,

01:13:03 ◼   ► developer-focused companies,

01:13:05 ◼   ► if their audience is among the people

01:13:10 ◼   ► who have sort of left Twitter

01:13:11 ◼   ► or a big chunk of them have left Twitter

01:13:13 ◼   ► and gone to Mastodon,

01:13:16 ◼   ► I would put a presence there. I'm not sure that there's anybody. Like, I think it's more

01:13:21 ◼   ► likely that there'd be an official Apple Mastodon account for developer relations than for selling

01:13:29 ◼   ► iPhones, right?

01:13:30 ◼   ► Tim Cook or whatever.

01:13:31 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:13:32 ◼   ► Yeah. Because here's the thing.

01:13:33 ◼   ► No, that's what Twitter's left with. That's what, what is Twitter for today, if anything,

01:13:37 ◼   ► is broadcast pronouncements from Jaws and from Tim Cook and all of that. Absolutely.

01:13:43 ◼   ► Not, you know, the conversational stuff necessarily, but like, and a lot of us have turned the

01:13:50 ◼   ► dial down or off, but for those broadcast elements of Tim Cook saying, "It's great to

01:13:56 ◼   ► be in London today.

01:13:58 ◼   ► We visited with people at the Battersea Apple offices."

01:14:04 ◼   ► Like, that's a Twitter thing, right?

01:14:06 ◼   ► That's where that goes.

01:14:07 ◼   ► I think all of the main accounts,

01:14:10 ◼   ► it doesn't necessarily make logical sense right now

01:14:13 ◼   ► to just bring them to Mastodon, right?

01:14:15 ◼   ► Like, yeah, that's who the community is,

01:14:17 ◼   ► but Tim is not like tweeting John Syracuse.

01:14:21 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

01:14:23 ◼   ► That's not happening.

01:14:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, and that's actually different with Phil Schiller,

01:14:26 ◼   ► right, 'cause I feel like Phil Schiller actually used Twitter.

01:14:28 ◼   ► - Exactly, yes, he did, right?

01:14:30 ◼   ► So Phil is making that choice, right, as an individual.

01:14:34 ◼   ► that is a pure, 'cause he would tweet people

01:14:37 ◼   ► in our community, right?

01:14:38 ◼   ► It's a thing Phil would do, right?

01:14:40 ◼   ► 'Cause he was maybe the most engaged in that way,

01:14:45 ◼   ► or is most engaged in that way.

01:14:47 ◼   ► And I just feel like Tim Cook's big tweets

01:14:49 ◼   ► and the Apple account is basically just used

01:14:52 ◼   ► for Twitter advertising, well that's not on Mastodon.

01:14:54 ◼   ► You know, all of these things,

01:14:57 ◼   ► and they're not going for the people in our community.

01:15:00 ◼   ► They're going for the every person, right?

01:15:04 ◼   ► Who's not on Mastodon also?

01:15:06 ◼   ► I don't know, right?

01:15:08 ◼   ► I think as things as they are right now, I would say no, they probably don't have some corporate presence on Mastodon.

01:15:18 ◼   ► But I couldn't have imagined what the last three months were, so who knows what the next three months will be.

01:15:26 ◼   ► will be.

01:15:27 ◼   ► Rob asks, do you use photographic styles

01:15:32 ◼   ► with your iPhone camera?

01:15:33 ◼   ► And if so, which one?

01:15:34 ◼   ► So this is where you can make choices

01:15:36 ◼   ► as to how you want your images to look

01:15:38 ◼   ► just as they straight come out of the camera.

01:15:40 ◼   ► Do you use a photographic style on your iPhone?

01:15:44 ◼   ► - I believe I have it turned on and it's,

01:15:48 ◼   ► I don't remember which one it is,

01:15:50 ◼   ► worm, something warm, VibrantWarm?

01:15:53 ◼   ► - I use VibrantWarm, which VibrantWarm for me

01:15:56 ◼   ► is I adapted the Vibrant style and it named it Vibrant Warm.

01:16:01 ◼   ► So I think it does that sometimes too,

01:16:04 ◼   ► 'cause you can change the style.

01:16:06 ◼   ► So I started with Vibrant and I changed the warmth.

01:16:10 ◼   ► And so I use Vibrant Warm.

01:16:12 ◼   ► And it's always turned on to that one

01:16:13 ◼   ► because I like my images to be a little more vibrant

01:16:16 ◼   ► and a little more warm.

01:16:17 ◼   ► - There you go.

01:16:20 ◼   ► - And Carl asks, "What do you think the chances are

01:16:23 ◼   ► that the next iPad mini has an M series chip,

01:16:26 ◼   ► so it could gain features like full external display support.

01:16:30 ◼   ► It seems like the iPad mini has the potential

01:16:32 ◼   ► to be the Mac mini of the iPad lineup.

01:16:34 ◼   ► Bring your own display, keyboard, and mouse

01:16:35 ◼   ► for a full desktop experience.

01:16:38 ◼   ► - I don't think the chances are, I'm gonna say 72%.

01:16:43 ◼   ► - That's good, so you're feeling pretty positive on it.

01:16:49 ◼   ► I am mostly because all attempts to make the iPad mini

01:16:54 ◼   ► a low-end iPad have failed.

01:16:57 ◼   ► It's not that, it's a small iPad mid range.

01:16:59 ◼   ► It's a small iPad air essentially.

01:17:02 ◼   ► And if that's the case,

01:17:03 ◼   ► it would have an M series chip on it, wouldn't it?

01:17:05 ◼   ► - Yep.

01:17:07 ◼   ► - So that's why, you know, 72%, those are the chances.

01:17:12 ◼   ► - I think they'll do it because I think eventually

01:17:15 ◼   ► all of the iPads will be M series chips.

01:17:18 ◼   ► Will they do it?

01:17:19 ◼   ► don't think they will necessarily do it for this, the idea of external display

01:17:23 ◼   ► supports being the thing. I just think that like M series is coming for the iPad

01:17:28 ◼   ► in general. I don't know, I mean if the A series is cheaper and you can put it in a

01:17:33 ◼   ► low-end iPad why wouldn't you do it? The whole goal there of that thing is to make

01:17:36 ◼   ► it as cheap as possible, but the iPad mini has never been the goal to make it

01:17:40 ◼   ► cheap as possible. I don't know, I mean the the additional percentage there is

01:17:44 ◼   ► that they decide that the iPad mini going forward is just the low-end iPad

01:17:48 ◼   ► and that's just how it's gonna be.

01:17:50 ◼   ► But I just don't, I don't feel like they view it that way.

01:17:52 ◼   ► I kind of feel like they view it as being a smaller iPad Air.

01:17:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, I mean, it got that design

01:17:58 ◼   ► and all of those kinds of aesthetics way before the iPad did,

01:18:02 ◼   ► which is just the way it looked.

01:18:04 ◼   ► I just, for me, I don't care.

01:18:05 ◼   ► I just want them to keep doing things.

01:18:07 ◼   ► Like I don't care what they do.

01:18:08 ◼   ► With the iPad mini, just keep doing something,

01:18:10 ◼   ► keep it around.

01:18:11 ◼   ► I want a better screen more than I want

01:18:13 ◼   ► external display support.

01:18:14 ◼   ► make the internal display better before we move

01:18:19 ◼   ► to the external display.

01:18:20 ◼   ► Thank you so much to everybody who sent in a question.

01:18:24 ◼   ► You can send in your own by going to upgradefeedback.com

01:18:27 ◼   ► and you can send in an Ask Upgrade question

01:18:29 ◼   ► for us to feature on a future episode.

01:18:31 ◼   ► And that was this episode of Upgrade.

01:18:34 ◼   ► You can check out Jason's work, including the report card.

01:18:38 ◼   ► Big thing, I've already skimmed through it.

01:18:40 ◼   ► I'm looking forward to reading it in full

01:18:41 ◼   ► over at sixcolors.com.

01:18:43 ◼   ► So many words, so many words.

01:18:46 ◼   ► You can also hear Jason's podcast here on Relay FM

01:18:49 ◼   ► and at the incomparable.com as well.

01:18:51 ◼   ► You can hear me here on Relay FM

01:18:54 ◼   ► and you can go check out my work at cortexbrand.com.

01:18:57 ◼   ► You can send us your feedback, follow up and questions

01:19:00 ◼   ► by going to upgradefeedback.com.

01:19:02 ◼   ► Thank you to our members who support us with Upgrade Plus.

01:19:05 ◼   ► Thank you to our sponsors to find folk over at Camp 1,

01:19:08 ◼   ► Electric and Rocket Money for their support of this episode.

01:19:12 ◼   ► But most of all, as always, thank you for listening, and we'll be back next time.

01:19:17 ◼   ► Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snow.

01:19:20 ◼   ► Goodbye, everybody.

01:19:21 ◼   ► [MUSIC]