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Connected

436: Satya Nadella, He's a Stone-Cold Killa

 

00:00:00   (upbeat music)

00:00:02   - Hello and welcome to Connected episode 436.

00:00:12   It's made possible by our sponsors,

00:00:14   Indeed Electric and CleanMyMac X.

00:00:17   My name is Steven Hackett and I'm joined by Mr. Myke Hurley.

00:00:20   - Hello, Fedi friend.

00:00:21   - Hello, Fedi buddy.

00:00:24   - Fedi buddy, we'll get to that a little later on.

00:00:26   No Federico, no actual Fedi today.

00:00:28   Fede's not here. Where is Federico today? Should we make up a story about where he is

00:00:33   today? He was running Ethernet through his apartment and attacked by a snake.

00:00:39   Attacked by a snake. An internet snake. Which was on fire. All of these things

00:00:46   have happened in Federico's life. Snakes and fires. But he has fast

00:00:51   internet but unfortunately is dealing with snake bites so. It's a bummer.

00:00:55   Mm-hmm. Hopefully he'll be back next time, but we'll find out.

00:00:58   On Connected episode 432, I asked people to send me nice letters to the P.O. Box.

00:01:04   Haven't gotten any in a couple weeks, just saying, putting that out there. But we then joked about

00:01:10   ice sculptures. I had to go back and find this and listen to it where I was like, "Send a nice

00:01:14   letter," and then you're like, "Send an ice letter!" Well... And then we talked about ice sculptures,

00:01:22   I think. Yeah, because then you were trying to encourage an ice swan and then we were saying,

00:01:27   well I was saying to you, please don't do that because then we will lose the PO box. Yeah,

00:01:32   because it's dripping on the on the PO box below us. Well no, just because the person would get

00:01:36   angry at you for doing that. I just renewed it. I just uh, I just paid for it again. But someone

00:01:42   sent me a 3D printed swan with an ice letter engraved in the base of it. I got a picture of

00:01:50   of it in the show notes. It's here on my desk. I love it.

00:01:54   It's an all time great. This is an all time great. This is like,

00:01:59   fantastic. Do you have a name for this person?

00:02:00   So I was not given permission to share their name. I wasn't

00:02:04   first name. I wasn't told not to share their name. And this is

00:02:08   just a first name. Well, so here's the thing on the label.

00:02:11   It was just a Twitter handle. Oh, and that Twitter handle, I

00:02:14   don't think has a name associated with it either. So I

00:02:16   would say, oh, that's not good. An amazing listener. I opened

00:02:20   it and I squealed with the light like a child on Christmas. I was so excited.

00:02:24   So good. This is so good. This is super good. I'm very proud of this person.

00:02:28   It's sitting right next to my tricky on my desk.

00:02:33   It's fitting.

00:02:34   It is. So thank you very much dear listener. You know, the rest of you, come on. I need

00:02:41   some letters.

00:02:42   Nice sculptures.

00:02:43   Myke, you have made a decision about the Fediverse.

00:02:47   So have you.

00:02:49   So have I, but we're talking about you first.

00:02:51   Oh, no, we need to talk about you first, I think, because my decision was informed by you.

00:02:57   So it makes most sense for you to go first.

00:03:00   Okay.

00:03:00   So I had, uh, I'd set up a Macedon social account like in 2018 and I kind of been reading a little bit, like dipping my toe in the water.

00:03:08   We talked a lot about this.

00:03:10   I don't necessarily want to rehash the whole history, but in a nutshell, I think both of us wanted to take a break from that form of social media.

00:03:19   But over the last couple of weeks, I sort of,

00:03:21   my mind has started to change about that a little bit

00:03:23   and I wanted to be more involved in the community there.

00:03:27   But I wanted, I didn't want to stay

00:03:30   on the large server I was on.

00:03:32   Nothing against mastodon.social,

00:03:33   like I don't really know much about it,

00:03:35   which honestly was part of the problem.

00:03:37   And so over the weekend, I set up eWorld.social

00:03:42   using a service called Masto Host.

00:03:45   Jason spoke about this on Upgrade.

00:03:48   You can pay them monthly and basically it's like

00:03:50   Mastodon server as a service.

00:03:53   And you know, I could run my own on Linode

00:03:55   or various other places, but at least for getting started

00:03:58   as like willing to pay a service to make this work.

00:04:02   And then migrated my account over, which is,

00:04:06   I would compare moving a Mastodon account between instances

00:04:10   like swinging through the jungle.

00:04:12   Like you have to let go of the vine you're on

00:04:14   to catch the next vine sometimes.

00:04:16   Yeah, it's really weird.

00:04:19   Like, you sent me a great article

00:04:21   and it was very clear about the way you did it.

00:04:24   And so like following that article, it was easy.

00:04:27   But it's strange.

00:04:28   Like, it is very strange to me.

00:04:31   So one of the things, you may not know this,

00:04:33   if you move from server to server,

00:04:35   you can export the people,

00:04:38   like you can export a bunch of data,

00:04:40   but you can also, in making the transfer,

00:04:42   you kind of force everyone to follow the new account.

00:04:46   Like there's kind of nothing you can do about it as a person,

00:04:50   which is very helpful, right?

00:04:51   Like for me and you moving from instance to instance.

00:04:55   But it is also like one of these things where it's like

00:04:57   that feels like it is a technology decision made

00:05:02   with like rose tinted glasses on,

00:05:06   because I could amass a huge following

00:05:10   and then just like sell it.

00:05:12   You know what I mean?

00:05:14   And like just transfer it to someone else.

00:05:16   So now you're all following scrub daddy, like in their social media presence, right?

00:05:21   Scrub daddy needs a...

00:05:22   I don't want to hear from scrub daddy's lawyers.

00:05:23   scrubdaddy.social

00:05:24   scrub... wait did you say scrub at daddy.social?

00:05:30   I said scrubdaddy.social but...

00:05:31   scrubdaddy.social

00:05:32   scrubdaddy.social

00:05:33   I'm just gonna, in a new tab, daddy.

00:05:35   There's no way daddy is a TLD.

00:05:39   Daddy.social

00:05:40   If you do not understand why we're talking about this right now, I'm gonna put an episode

00:05:43   of Ungeniused in the show notes for you.

00:05:46   Scrub Daddy has become like an important part of mine and Steven's shared relationship.

00:05:52   Also, if you don't know what Scrub Daddy is, this episode of UnGenius will also help you

00:05:57   with that.

00:05:59   Daddy Dot Social is not for sale.

00:06:03   Daddy Online is $720.

00:06:05   Oh, I thought you were looking for like Scrub Dot Daddy.

00:06:09   Daddy Dot Fun is $1400.

00:06:12   Robdaddy.social is available, by the way, as Myke is pointing out.

00:06:16   We're off course.

00:06:17   Can we come back?

00:06:18   Okay.

00:06:19   Yes.

00:06:20   Yes.

00:06:21   The migration is weird.

00:06:22   People get notification that you're following them again, because when you do it, your followers

00:06:27   come with you, and then you export the list of people you follow and import that to your

00:06:33   new server.

00:06:34   And it takes a little while.

00:06:35   You know, mine took, I don't know, a day or so to kind of sync back up.

00:06:40   At the end of it, I have my account with everyone I was following and I thank everyone who was

00:06:45   following me just at ismh@eworld.social.

00:06:49   And I wanted to run my own server for a couple of reasons.

00:06:51   One, like I should probably understand this better in terms of the company, which we'll

00:06:55   get to in a minute.

00:06:57   But also, I like having a domain for something that you know, that I'm on that I don't control

00:07:03   the service, right?

00:07:04   I'm paying someone to run the service, but the domain is mine.

00:07:06   And I don't know, I mean, Mastodon Social is like the official one, I think, like run

00:07:10   by the Mastodon people.

00:07:12   But if that server does something that I don't agree with or like becomes poisoned in the

00:07:18   eye of the community or something, I was like, well, if I run my own, I kind of avoid all

00:07:23   of that complication.

00:07:24   And that was attractive to me.

00:07:26   So but you have also just decided to be on Mastodon, though, right?

00:07:31   Like, it's not just about running.

00:07:32   'Cause you-- I think last time we spoke on the show,

00:07:35   like, we-- neither of us were using it.

00:07:37   -Yeah. -Just like, like, actively.

00:07:39   Yeah, like I said, my mind has changed a little bit on that

00:07:43   over the, um... over the next--

00:07:46   or over the last couple of weeks,

00:07:49   really just feeling like I want to be more plugged in

00:07:53   to the community that's there.

00:07:55   -Mm-hmm. -I was really unsure,

00:07:58   like, let's say two months ago,

00:07:59   that Macedon was gonna, like, be the thing.

00:08:02   And to be clear, it's not the thing in the wider world, right?

00:08:06   Like sports, Twitter, entertainment, Twitter,

00:08:09   all that's going along like nothing ever happened, right?

00:08:12   But the community that we are a part of

00:08:14   and that amazingly Relay is like a pillar of the community,

00:08:18   at least, at least I hope so,

00:08:20   that community has moved basically to Mastodon.

00:08:27   There's still people on both and still people on Twitter

00:08:29   and I'm not judging anyone's decisions about any of that.

00:08:32   But it became clear to me over the last couple of weeks,

00:08:34   like this is where sort of our community is.

00:08:38   And I kind of made the decision

00:08:41   that I did want to be a part of it.

00:08:43   Now I'm still, as I think you are, being very,

00:08:48   not careful, but very restrained in my use of it.

00:08:52   So like really not reading my timeline

00:08:55   all that much currently.

00:08:57   Sending a few replies,

00:08:58   but mostly just kind of tweeting funny Apple stuff

00:09:01   or posting or tooting, posting fun Apple weird stuff.

00:09:05   So yeah, that's where I am with it.

00:09:07   Like my mind has changed a little bit

00:09:08   and honestly being able to manage it myself

00:09:13   with like a funny domain that I pay for,

00:09:16   helped with that a little bit, I think.

00:09:19   - So you are now on eWorld.social.

00:09:21   - That's right, yeah, it's me and five12pixels are there.

00:09:25   So I am now i-mic on mike.social.

00:09:29   - Nice.

00:09:30   - I went with that because I know me

00:09:33   and if I tried to come up with a joke,

00:09:36   I would change it every three months.

00:09:38   So I decided to just go with mike.social.

00:09:41   I think what you had done is great,

00:09:43   but if I would have gone down that route

00:09:44   and picked something that I thought was funny

00:09:46   or entertaining in some way,

00:09:47   it would only last until the time

00:09:49   that I'd come up with a new one

00:09:50   and I don't wanna keep moving from server to server.

00:09:53   - Yeah.

00:09:54   What I also wanted to do was restrain myself from wanting to create more accounts or whatever

00:10:00   on this server that I'm running. So it's just me, right? Myke.social, that's what I'm doing.

00:10:05   I set up, I did what you did, went with master host, the whole thing. And similarly to you,

00:10:12   I did this because if I can own my own domain for something, I'll do it. It's also easier to

00:10:17   to tell people where to find my Mastodon account

00:10:21   rather than the absolutely, abjectly, unequivocally

00:10:25   horrible way that Mastodon domains are formatted.

00:10:28   Like, why is there an app in the domain?

00:10:31   Like, I don't understand why that needs to be there.

00:10:34   Don't tell me.

00:10:35   I just don't think, I just don't understand

00:10:37   why it needs to be there.

00:10:38   So it's just easier for me if I say go to mike.social

00:10:41   and it's just me, right?

00:10:43   It's like easier to find is my expectation.

00:10:47   But yeah, I find it's much more complicated to tell someone where to find your Mastodon

00:10:53   than it is on other social networks.

00:10:54   I mean, I understand that because of the nature of there being multiple servers.

00:10:59   But I think it would just be, if I was like Myke.social/imike would just be like, that's

00:11:04   just neater.

00:11:05   Why does the @ need to be there?

00:11:07   Anyway, I was planning not to join Mastodon, right?

00:11:10   I spoke about this very publicly, like wasn't going to do it, not interested.

00:11:14   And there was over the last couple of months, there has been something which I felt like

00:11:20   was missing where I didn't really have a comfortable place to talk about the work that I'm doing,

00:11:26   which I think was an important part of me being on Twitter.

00:11:30   I tried to reference some things and some shows as like follow out and stuff, but it

00:11:34   just never felt like it fit right.

00:11:37   It felt to, um, it felt like I was kind of just like squeezing a bit of promotion for

00:11:42   me inside of a show which I did not enjoy. And so that had been bouncing around in my brain.

00:11:48   I was also feeling like the community was embracing Mastodon in a way that I did not expect.

00:11:55   Like the follower numbers that some of our friends have got right now, like are quite large,

00:12:01   like way larger than I expected them to be. So it's making me realize that like more than I

00:12:06   expected our community is there and like wants people to be there and I would say

00:12:13   that in the last 24 hours I have felt that feeling like people seem to be very

00:12:19   appreciative of me joining Mastodon which is a very lovely feeling actually

00:12:25   yeah it's kind of been a nice reset point considering I got quite jaded with

00:12:29   Twitter right and so like I don't know it's just nice to feel that kind of

00:12:33   But basically you said to me, we have a call every Monday, and you said to me on

00:12:39   the call, I think it is a responsibility for us to be on the platform. And that

00:12:44   was really bouncing around in my brain and I was like, okay, like I can find a

00:12:48   way to make this work and to hopefully share things that people want to see

00:12:53   from me, what they're interested in, and what I'm up to. And I'm just, one of

00:12:59   my biggest issues with Twitter is me, right? It's like how I use the service

00:13:03   and I don't think I was using it in a healthy way.

00:13:06   ♪ It's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me ♪

00:13:11   And so I've cut the ways that I've used Twitter.

00:13:14   I'm gonna keep my following list very small.

00:13:16   I was following over a thousand accounts on Twitter.

00:13:19   - Ooh.

00:13:20   - And I'm probably gonna, I'm following like 40 people now

00:13:24   and I wanna keep it that low.

00:13:26   And I'm also setting some time limits.

00:13:28   Like I have a 15 minute app time limit

00:13:32   at the moment per day to use ivory.

00:13:35   And I'm probably gonna try and keep it to that.

00:13:37   And so that gives me enough time to just pop in,

00:13:40   read my timeline, look at any mentions that I've got

00:13:44   and leave and like that's kind of what I'm planning to do.

00:13:48   And I'm also like, for me, like I've come to really love

00:13:51   and appreciate our feedback forms.

00:13:53   And so I'm gonna keep like pushing people.

00:13:56   That is the best place to give feedback for my shows.

00:13:59   Like if you wanna send me follow up links, whatever,

00:14:01   just send it to the appropriate show feedback form.

00:14:05   It's way better.

00:14:06   It's better for you and better for me, right?

00:14:08   And I'm gonna keep asking for that.

00:14:10   But Twitter's there for like, I'm gonna, if you,

00:14:13   Twitter, Mastodon's there if you wanna see what I'm up to.

00:14:16   And I hope, something I genuinely hope is that like,

00:14:20   I will be able to again get to a point

00:14:25   where I feel like I can just share fun little quips.

00:14:28   'Cause I felt like I couldn't do that anymore on Twitter.

00:14:31   I don't know why but you know, I just felt like it wasn't something that I was able to do anymore

00:14:35   Yeah, and I'm hoping that like I can maybe try and reset that a little bit because you know

00:14:40   I I see you do it and I'm kind of like oh man that looks like fun, you know

00:14:44   So yeah, like the thing about how I was seven is ten years old this year

00:14:48   Exactly. Just a nice thought it's horrifying is what it is. That's ten years since our first I've been to BC, right?

00:14:56   Yes, it is. That was our first one. Wow

00:14:58   That's horrible. Thank you

00:15:00   you. That makes me feel worse than it being Iowa Seven's decade anniversary, but the decade

00:15:09   anniversary of my first and your first. It was your first, right? You've been to Macworld

00:15:13   but not WBC. That's right. Yeah, I went to Macworld 2012 and then WBC 2013. So yeah,

00:15:23   we're both on Mastodon. We're like, we're trying to like make this work for our lives

00:15:27   and stuff, you know, and I speak for both of us to say like thank you to everybody

00:15:31   that has been so kind in welcoming us to the Don. I would like to, I would like to

00:15:37   at this point offer a formal apology to One True John, who I found out

00:15:43   listening to the App Stories Pro Show that I stole the Don from him. That a few

00:15:49   days earlier in our group text he had been calling it the Don and then I

00:15:53   rolled in to connect it and start referencing the Don, so I would like to

00:15:56   apologize to one true john for stealing the don however he said i can use it and keep it so i am

00:16:02   uh thank you john that's good one true don that's good and so yeah we're we're both now on the don

00:16:09   thank you to everybody that has been so kind in welcoming us to the don and uh you can find our

00:16:14   accounts i guess in uh in the show notes if you want to follow us this leads to an inevitable

00:16:21   question about what we're gonna do with the network i don't have the answer to that yet

00:16:26   My thought is that if Masto host works well for both of us for a little while

00:16:31   and Jason's using it with many more users than we are.

00:16:35   And I've got two accounts. You have one, right?

00:16:37   It's not really pushing it.

00:16:39   Looking at creating a relay instance

00:16:43   just for the shows and the network.

00:16:46   I don't want to have humans there in terms of.

00:16:51   I don't want my account to be on the real instance, for example, because it's,

00:16:55   you know, my thoughts are not those of my employer, you know what I mean?

00:16:58   And like I'm making a joke, but like I actually do feel that way.

00:17:00   It's like it feels, I don't know, there's just something about it.

00:17:03   Like we're both individuals as well as we are part of the company.

00:17:06   I think it makes more sense for us to have our own places

00:17:10   and then also Relay can have like a more official place for itself.

00:17:15   Yeah. So we made up doing that.

00:17:16   Doing our own was definitely is a bit of an experiment on how that would work.

00:17:21   But yeah, it would be the show, you know, shows that wanted to use it

00:17:24   because you know, we don't very rarely do we like have an edict for all of our

00:17:27   shows. It's like, Hey, we built this. Like if you want to use it, it's awesome.

00:17:30   If not, that's cool too. Like the feedback form, right?

00:17:32   Like not all shows are using the feedback form and that's fine.

00:17:34   Relay's a confederation of podcasts in a lot of ways.

00:17:38   And so we'll see how that goes and we'll keep people posted. I mean, for now,

00:17:42   connected and relay are both on mastodon.social.

00:17:45   Some of the other shows are various places. And so, yeah, that's, uh,

00:17:50   that's kind of where we are with it.

00:17:51   Yeah. We don't have an answer for that part right now.

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00:19:28   and relay FM so Google and Mozilla are both rumored by nine to five the nine to

00:19:35   five properties they've been some reporting going on it's like across nine

00:19:39   to five Mac Google etc that they are both making new versions of their iOS

00:19:44   browsers that use their own web engines so all browsers on iOS have to use web

00:19:51   kit so Chrome uses WebKit like it's all people are allowed to use but it seems

00:19:57   that these iOS that these companies are making versions putting resources into

00:20:02   making versions of their iOS apps that use their own browsers so what's the new

00:20:08   chromium one what is it called I just jumped out of my mind blink yeah blink I

00:20:13   think yeah and gecko for Mozilla right they're doing this in anticipation of

00:20:19   Apple either being forced to or deciding to drop the WebKit requirement. This is

00:20:25   because of antitrust pressure in the US and in Europe it's like

00:20:29   continuing to mount. Specifically in the UK this has been called out by the

00:20:35   Competition of Markets Authority. I want to read a quote because I actually, I

00:20:38   don't know, this felt like one of those things where I was like, where I feel

00:20:41   like it's quite rare where something that comes from a legislative body

00:20:45   actually feels informed. Like you know like a lot of times you read these

00:20:48   things in tech and it's like do these people have any idea right? Very famous

00:20:52   famously right a congressperson asked Mark Zuckerberg how Facebook makes money

00:20:57   he's like sir we run ads like okay let's... Or like when people ask him how to like

00:21:03   turn off their iPhone or whatever yeah so it says Apple bans alternatives to

00:21:10   its own browser engine on its mobile devices a restriction that is unique to

00:21:14   Apple. The CMA is concerned this severely limits the potential for rival browsers

00:21:20   to differentiate themselves from Safari, for example on features such as speed

00:21:24   and functionality, and limits Apple's incentives to invest in its browser

00:21:28   engine. The restriction also seriously inhibits the capability of web apps,

00:21:33   depriving consumers and businesses of the full benefits of innovative

00:21:37   technology. Just like it makes put it is that they're right right like you know

00:21:42   like it feels like it stops some PWAs from being as effective as they could

00:21:49   potentially be which is obviously something Apple would want right yeah

00:21:53   come to our app store and it does stop like Google for example to be able to

00:21:58   tout some benefit of blink on on Iowa on like on all of the platforms that it's

00:22:05   available on yeah and it's such a weird thing to think about like this is what

00:22:09   Microsoft got in trouble for, right? In a way. I know that they were like, it was browser

00:22:14   related but they were like defaulting the browsers, right? You had to use Internet Explorer.

00:22:19   This is like weird to me, like all of the things that Apple does, like why do they care

00:22:24   about this part so specifically? You know what I mean? Like it's very strange. But this

00:22:30   is just part of the million things that they're probably going to have to do. I think, you

00:22:34   have to remind me, was this part of that report, I think from Mark Gurman, where he was talking

00:22:41   about like Apple needing, like considering like opening up at this WWDC? Was browsers

00:22:49   part of that? It was. Okay. And if you go back in time, when Apple first had this, you

00:22:55   know, it's been part of iOS from the beginning, right? From the beginning of the App Store,

00:22:59   you could not have your own browser engine there.

00:23:06   They said it was about security, right?

00:23:09   That browser engines run code and you don't want to have someone else's code running on

00:23:19   the device.

00:23:20   But in the, what, how many years has it been since the App Store, say 23, 15 years since

00:23:28   the App Store, there's been a lot of progress in terms of browser security.

00:23:32   And I think they are at a point now where it does very much feel like an anti-competitive

00:23:36   move.

00:23:38   I think it's very exciting.

00:23:41   I think in particular what I'm going to be looking for if this happens is, does this

00:23:46   allow Chrome or Firefox or the Arc browser?

00:23:51   There's a lot of innovation happening on the desktop browser space, which is a weird thing

00:23:57   to say in 2023, but it's true. You and Jason spoke about the Arc browser on Upgrade Plus

00:24:02   this week in particular, but it is not happening on the iPhone. It's not happening on the iPad,

00:24:10   right? You have some interesting things like Chrome is there and I use Chrome on the desktop

00:24:15   and I've got Chrome on the phone for like my history and tabs to be there, but it'll

00:24:19   be using Safari because of the browser extensions because I do run a content blocker and I have

00:24:24   like one that like forces websites into a dark mode if they don't have their own and

00:24:30   you know, various things.

00:24:32   One password, you know, it's a great Safari plugin on the iPhone and iPad.

00:24:37   But those aren't available in third party browsers.

00:24:40   So what I'm hopeful is not only can they bring their rendering engines, but maybe they can

00:24:45   also bring some of these other features and really be competitive because I think on the

00:24:50   desktop, Apple really pushes Safari.

00:24:54   I mean, every single WWDC going back to the first one

00:24:58   that Safari was introduced,

00:25:00   they talk about how fast it is,

00:25:02   all the features they're bringing.

00:25:04   It's a core part of their messaging every single year.

00:25:08   And it's in part because they're going up against Chrome

00:25:13   and others who are also doing a lot of innovative things.

00:25:17   But again, on the iPhone and iPad, it's not just there.

00:25:19   And so I'm hopeful that if this happens

00:25:22   and you can get like the full Chrome experience

00:25:24   on the iPhone, on the iPad,

00:25:26   or the full Firefox experience,

00:25:27   whatever your browser choice is,

00:25:29   that it will continue to push Apple

00:25:31   to make Safari better and better,

00:25:33   where they really haven't had,

00:25:35   I mean, honestly, they really haven't had real competition

00:25:38   on the iPhone, not really,

00:25:39   because of all these limitations.

00:25:42   And so I really hope that we see this come to pass

00:25:45   in this WWDC, and I think it'd be good for them

00:25:49   from this legal perspective too, right?

00:25:51   Apple loves to die on certain hills and okay,

00:25:55   this is a hill they probably shouldn't die on.

00:25:57   And so if they're willing to give in

00:25:58   and make this a policy change, that's all it is.

00:26:02   It's just a policy, right?

00:26:03   There's nothing, I almost said physically,

00:26:05   but that's not really right.

00:26:06   There's nothing that I'm aware of like on a technical level,

00:26:09   why you couldn't run another browser engine on iOS.

00:26:12   - Like they can still, okay, so few companies, right?

00:26:15   Like they can still work with them and be like,

00:26:17   all right, we're gonna allow this,

00:26:20   but these are the security rules.

00:26:22   - Yeah, but I think they should do that.

00:26:24   And my guess is they probably will.

00:26:25   Maybe it'll be like CarPlay.

00:26:29   You can't just write a CarPlay app.

00:26:30   You have to have an entitlement for it.

00:26:32   I could see them going that route.

00:26:34   And yeah, that's probably good.

00:26:35   So like random person on the internet

00:26:38   doesn't make a browser that's actually like

00:26:39   taking all my information and selling it

00:26:41   to some nefarious group.

00:26:44   That's probably a good thing to do here.

00:26:46   But clearly the time has come for them to do something.

00:26:50   and I'm cautiously optimistic that that will go well.

00:26:54   - 'Cause there are what, like three companies

00:26:57   that have their own engines now probably?

00:26:59   Like Opera, does Opera still have its own engine?

00:27:01   I think it does.

00:27:02   - I think so. - And then Mozilla and Google.

00:27:05   'Cause Microsoft uses Blink or Chromium, right?

00:27:10   For Edge.

00:27:11   Like, so there's so few,

00:27:13   they could just get all these companies in a room, right?

00:27:16   Like apparently, Ryan says Opera is Chromium as well.

00:27:20   So it's like there's three companies

00:27:23   and Apple's one of them, like they can work this out.

00:27:26   - Yeah.

00:27:27   - Realistically, they could just work with Google.

00:27:29   So right, sorry, sorry, Mozilla.

00:27:31   This may be being time for a new version of Edge

00:27:36   to come to iOS featuring chat GPT.

00:27:40   - Oh, I see what you did there.

00:27:42   We were on one topic, now we're on another topic.

00:27:45   - In the next one, this is a segue.

00:27:47   - Yes, this is super interesting.

00:27:50   I'm on the wait list, I think you are too.

00:27:52   I don't think you've gotten to play with it yet.

00:27:54   But I spent the morning watching and listening

00:27:56   to a bunch of stuff about this.

00:27:58   There's an excellent interview that Nilay Patel did

00:28:01   with Satya Nadella on the "Decoder" podcast,

00:28:04   which is just great.

00:28:06   But it's so, "Decoder" is great.

00:28:08   I really, I mean, honestly, like Apple, Google,

00:28:12   and Microsoft all have three incredibly impressive CEOs

00:28:17   to me, like I like all three of them.

00:28:18   And I think all three of them are doing interesting things

00:28:20   in their own way.

00:28:22   But what Microsoft has done,

00:28:23   they made this big investment into open AI,

00:28:26   and they are basically bringing chat,

00:28:29   GT, GPT, GTP, CGP, chat, CGP gray,

00:28:34   as a, like a parallel track in the Bing search engine.

00:28:39   So you can go to Bing and you could search,

00:28:43   what year did the 20th anniversary Mac come out?

00:28:45   it will, you know, probably leave you something on Wikipedia or something on 512 pixels.

00:28:49   And then, in addition to that, you'll be able to chat with the AI to for further information.

00:28:57   And what they're doing is, they're still using the basis that we know as the service as the

00:29:03   services now, but they're infusing it with information from their search engine.

00:29:08   And they're what they are saying, this will be able to do is provide even better answers

00:29:15   to queries, it will allow you to explore that information while still making sure that publishers

00:29:23   are still getting traffic.

00:29:25   Because this is a very sticky point in search engine land, especially when it comes to Google,

00:29:32   right?

00:29:33   If you search Google for certain things, they have these information boxes that come up,

00:29:37   and Bing does it too, to a degree, of, "Oh, I don't actually need to go to a website to

00:29:42   to read when the 20th anniversary mat came out

00:29:44   'cause it just puts it in a box and tells me.

00:29:46   And maybe there's a little hyperlink at the bottom

00:29:48   that says source and I can click on that

00:29:50   then I can go and Steven's article.

00:29:51   But 99.9% of the time people are just gonna read

00:29:54   the information and leave.

00:29:56   And Yelp in particular, I think it's sort of led the charge

00:30:00   against Google in this.

00:30:01   I'm like, look, don't just scrape our data

00:30:03   and portray it as your own, right?

00:30:06   So Microsoft is saying, we are being very intentional

00:30:10   about when the AI or when the search engine surfaces data,

00:30:15   you're gonna know where it came from

00:30:18   and it's gonna be easy to go back to the source.

00:30:21   And I think that's very important.

00:30:24   - And I'm intrigued to see,

00:30:26   like in the interview with Nilay,

00:30:28   he's like, we're gonna have like a KPI on this, right?

00:30:31   Like about how much traffic we're sending.

00:30:33   So he seems like, at least they seem,

00:30:36   of all the companies doing this kind of stuff,

00:30:39   this feels like from the top down the most focused on trying to make sure that where the information

00:30:45   is coming from is still given some kind of credit and and revenue right you go through go to ads

00:30:52   and then ads are generated on the website everyone's happy but i think we have to wait and see how that

00:31:00   goes because i don't know what you do when you google things but if i google something and gives

00:31:06   me the answer at the top of the page, I don't click the website. I've got the answer and

00:31:12   this just feels like it's going to do that even more, like way more detailed. So I'm

00:31:17   intrigued to see how that's going to shake out seriously, you know. And he was saying

00:31:23   that like, oh, if traffic's going down, we're going to tweak the way that we, I mean, I

00:31:27   believe him, but at the same time, I want to see how that actually goes. Like this is,

00:31:36   All of this stuff is like such sticky territory right now.

00:31:41   It is.

00:31:42   But for me personally, and you know, if you've listened to episodes of Cortex in the last

00:31:47   few months, you'll understand that I'm very skeptical of this technology.

00:31:52   However, if I'm gonna trust a company to do this, I think it actually might be Microsoft.

00:32:00   I don't know why, but I feel like it kind of makes sense.

00:32:05   - Yeah, and they're incentivized to do it correctly

00:32:09   because they're so far behind.

00:32:11   And I think they're incentivized

00:32:14   to take this really seriously.

00:32:15   And if you listen to the interview,

00:32:17   or I mean, he did a bunch,

00:32:18   he's done a bunch of press stuff over the last 24 hours,

00:32:20   like go consume any of it.

00:32:22   They're deadly serious about this.

00:32:25   And they're really serious about taking market share

00:32:29   from Google search.

00:32:30   And is this the way they do that?

00:32:32   I don't know.

00:32:33   Like is, is the chat bot revolution going to change everything computing?

00:32:39   I don't think so.

00:32:40   Probably not.

00:32:41   No.

00:32:42   But they have to try.

00:32:43   And I think out of the various things that have come and gone over the years, this is

00:32:50   potentially the most interesting and combining it with a search engine.

00:32:53   Yeah, there's obvious downsides.

00:32:55   The biggest one, we've talked about it before.

00:32:57   These services are very confident even when they're completely wrong and they're hoping

00:33:01   to by infusing it with search engine information, giving it better data so it can be confident

00:33:08   and right instead of confident like talking about nonsense.

00:33:12   And so we'll see how it goes.

00:33:13   I'm excited to get in on the waitlist and see how this goes.

00:33:18   They're also bringing it to edge the browser and so it can help you in various places around

00:33:24   the web to to get certain tasks done.

00:33:28   Now that, at least from what I've read and listened to, is a little more hand-wavy in

00:33:32   terms of exactly what that's going to look like and what it will be able to do.

00:33:35   I think the focus, I think the important thing is bringing it to Bing.

00:33:40   But it is very interesting and it clearly has Google spooked because they rushed out

00:33:45   this announcement about their version of this that they've been working on internally and

00:33:48   they rushed that out the day before the Microsoft announcement.

00:33:56   feels like a move out of weakness or out of fear and that was very interesting to

00:34:00   me. They didn't really have a choice though. No. Right because Microsoft... okay so two

00:34:06   things Satya Nadella, love him, he is a stone-cold killer. Like this guy, like

00:34:12   some of the stuff that he says in this interview, I was going oh my god

00:34:17   like there's one I think he says like I was just trying to find it but

00:34:22   - But, Neil says something along the lines of

00:34:25   fighting with Google about this and if they think

00:34:30   he's gonna beat Google and he references how

00:34:34   they're bringing Google to the dance on this one.

00:34:39   - Yeah.

00:34:40   - And if what you remember afterwards is they did that.

00:34:42   Like I was like, "Oh my God."

00:34:43   And I just loved the way it's like,

00:34:46   "We have a great relationship with Google.

00:34:48   We have a great partnership with them.

00:34:49   We wanna take some of their market share."

00:34:51   It's just like, ah, he is like, he is unbelievable.

00:34:56   This guy is unbelievable, right?

00:34:57   Like in general, I think he is overlooked,

00:34:59   at least in our community a lot of the times,

00:35:01   because Microsoft isn't necessarily doing things

00:35:04   that are interesting to the type of stuff

00:35:06   that we talk about.

00:35:07   But like you think about what he has done to that company,

00:35:10   he has completely changed the company

00:35:11   and everything that it does and everything it's focused on.

00:35:14   And this is perfect because they did this partnership

00:35:16   OpenAI, basically gave them Azure for free. They then used OpenAI and what they needed

00:35:24   for OpenAI to build their own Azure AI product, which they will sell you. Then instead of

00:35:29   buying OpenAI, which they probably could have done, but they knew, this is so smart, that

00:35:36   it wouldn't get through antitrust, they've basically just locked them in. They gave them

00:35:41   a huge investment, which has got all of these weird, like, you know, like, once the money's

00:35:48   paid off, which OpenAI may never do, right? Because it's complicated for that company

00:35:54   to try and make money, I think, over time. But they probably will, but who knows? But

00:35:58   even then, like, it converts to a large share that Microsoft then have in it. Like, and

00:36:03   this way, he can just go ahead and do this now, where if they tried to buy them, it would

00:36:08   get locked up in antitrust regulation and then Google would be able to come in with

00:36:13   their thing. But this way he's like, "I know what we'll do." And now immediately here it

00:36:18   is and Google is now backed into a corner because everything was being said that Google

00:36:24   didn't want to do this because they're scared. They're worried about what their reputation

00:36:30   will be like if their AI starts doing strange things or gives wrong information. Both of

00:36:37   them it will do. But this kind of stuff is not going to hurt Bing because nobody trusts

00:36:40   Bing anyway. So this is genius. This is a checkmate move on Google and I have no idea.

00:36:49   This is interesting to me because I have no idea what's going to come next after this.

00:36:53   But it feels like if they can get this out quick enough, the situation is going to change.

00:36:59   Because if you can go to Bing to talk to the AI, that is going to really upset Google and

00:37:05   and it's going to upset open AI in general, right?

00:37:07   Because everyone likes to go to the open AI website for this.

00:37:11   But like you just go to Bing,

00:37:13   you just start talking to the AI

00:37:14   and also you can have this,

00:37:15   like as you say in the Edge browser,

00:37:17   it's just like they call it a co-pilot,

00:37:19   which is a thing they also have in GitHub

00:37:21   for like AI of helping you write code.

00:37:23   This has been around for a little while,

00:37:24   but they have it in Edge and it will just pop up

00:37:27   and it will give you more context

00:37:28   for the websites that you're on.

00:37:30   Man, it's very smart.

00:37:33   He's a smart guy.

00:37:34   Here's what he's doing.

00:37:35   - Yeah, he's really,

00:37:36   and it comes up in the decoder interview,

00:37:38   but he has taken Microsoft from a Windows centric,

00:37:44   basically the Windows company, Windows and Office, right?

00:37:46   Which is what they were under Gates,

00:37:48   but in particular, Balmer.

00:37:51   And they tried mobile and they,

00:37:52   remember they bought Nokia

00:37:54   and then sold it for like 10 cents on the dollar?

00:37:57   Wild times.

00:37:59   But he has really taken Microsoft to a place

00:38:02   where they are an application and services company.

00:38:06   I think you mentioned this,

00:38:07   but basically all of these AI tools

00:38:08   that we've all been playing with,

00:38:10   basically all of them run on Azure services, right?

00:38:14   That is a huge business for them.

00:38:16   It's like we build Office,

00:38:18   it's on every single platform, right?

00:38:21   Teams is everywhere.

00:38:22   We haven't even mentioned it.

00:38:23   They've also building this into a new version of Teams

00:38:26   where it can do things like help you schedule a meeting.

00:38:29   - I missed that part.

00:38:30   But if I could just give one very slight,

00:38:32   I'm not saying you're wrong, but like,

00:38:34   it's a big business for them, the Open AI stuff,

00:38:39   because they've been able to do it,

00:38:40   but Open AI has not given Microsoft a penny.

00:38:42   Like it's, all of this has been free to them,

00:38:44   which is another Galaxy Brain move, right?

00:38:48   Just like, oh no, don't worry about it.

00:38:50   Here's some credits, it's fine.

00:38:52   - Yeah.

00:38:53   - And now what are you gonna do?

00:38:53   It's just like, this is next level stuff.

00:38:56   - But it really just means they're looking at,

00:38:58   they're gonna be on their own platforms, right?

00:39:01   there's a version of the timeline

00:39:03   where this is like a Windows 11 feature,

00:39:07   and that's it, right?

00:39:08   But like, no, we have these other businesses

00:39:10   outside of Windows, outside of the PC,

00:39:13   that are the browser, right?

00:39:14   Edge runs everywhere.

00:39:16   Teams runs, I mean, you can get a toaster

00:39:18   that runs Microsoft Teams, I think.

00:39:20   Like, it's everywhere.

00:39:21   And that is really what he's been able to do,

00:39:23   and one reason I really respect the job he's done

00:39:26   at Microsoft because he has totally redefined

00:39:30   what Microsoft does and if this is successful,

00:39:35   then it's like a cherry on top of everything

00:39:37   they've been able to do the last few years.

00:39:39   - Yeah, this is an arms race now.

00:39:42   Like, and it's, it felt like it was going that way anyway.

00:39:46   Like, oh, clearly all these companies

00:39:48   are gonna start focusing on this now.

00:39:50   But it seems to have accelerated at a breakneck pace

00:39:53   in like the last four days.

00:39:56   because this was like a surprise event

00:39:58   that Microsoft did, right?

00:40:00   Like they were just like,

00:40:01   "We're doing this event about AI."

00:40:02   And then Google's like, "Oh no!"

00:40:04   Right?

00:40:05   'Cause everyone knew this was going to happen.

00:40:07   Like it was obvious that it was going to happen.

00:40:09   My assumption though is that Microsoft would move slowly.

00:40:13   Like I thought this was gonna be months

00:40:16   until they announced something,

00:40:18   like after the open AI investment,

00:40:21   but it seems like they had already been working on it.

00:40:23   So they were ready to go.

00:40:25   And so now Google's had to be like, well, we're

00:40:28   also doing this.

00:40:30   Yeah, I believe that Google has the best chance

00:40:35   at being the best version of this,

00:40:37   because of the amount of data that they have.

00:40:40   But it's whether they are willing to let the reins off

00:40:45   in a way that OpenAI does, I think, sometimes.

00:40:49   And I don't know that they will.

00:40:51   So yeah, it's fascinating.

00:40:53   So everything is gonna have an AI,

00:40:54   but also everything is a computer.

00:40:57   This is what I've learned this week.

00:40:59   So I was scrolling through RSS the other day,

00:41:02   came across this MacRumors article.

00:41:04   I was gonna read the headline to you.

00:41:06   Apple releases new MagSafe Duo firmware.

00:41:11   Remember the MagSafe Duo charger?

00:41:12   It was the, it's the white one that like folds open

00:41:15   like a clam and you can put your phone,

00:41:17   as long as it's a certain size phone on one side

00:41:19   and an Apple Watch on the other,

00:41:21   as long as it's a certain size Apple Watch.

00:41:23   and charges them both.

00:41:24   And you have to have like a 30 watt adapter,

00:41:26   not the 29, 'cause 29 won't do it.

00:41:28   - It's the product with the most asterisks ever, right?

00:41:31   - I know, yeah.

00:41:32   - You have to have the right product and the right charger

00:41:35   to get the charger to work.

00:41:36   - Mm-hmm.

00:41:37   We own one of these.

00:41:39   I got it 'cause Mary would have something like really compact

00:41:41   to like leave in a, like her backpack.

00:41:44   And so I got her one and it's not great.

00:41:47   I regret spending the money on it

00:41:49   and it just lives in our house and in her backpack, I guess.

00:41:54   But yes, so it has firmware in there,

00:41:57   has some sort of little tiny computer in there.

00:42:00   I'm gonna again read from this MacRumors piece.

00:42:04   There is no clear method

00:42:05   for updating the MacSafe Duo's firmware,

00:42:07   but it needs to be plugged in and connected

00:42:09   to an Apple device for a firmware update to initiate.

00:42:13   - I don't know how it's doing it.

00:42:14   How's it doing it?

00:42:16   - I don't know.

00:42:16   And apparently you can check the firmware version.

00:42:20   They linked to this other article

00:42:22   that explains how this works.

00:42:26   The regular-- - Where's the data going?

00:42:29   - Over the USB-C cable into the tiny computer, you know?

00:42:34   Little baby-- - From where though?

00:42:37   - From the other Apple device, I don't know.

00:42:39   - But you're not connecting it physically, right?

00:42:43   - So this, to update this,

00:42:45   it seems like you have to plug the charger

00:42:47   into like your laptop or maybe an iPad

00:42:49   with something with a USB-C port on it.

00:42:51   - Really?

00:42:52   - It's what it seems like.

00:42:54   - Who's gonna do that?

00:42:55   No one's gonna do that.

00:42:56   - No one. - Nobody's gonna do that.

00:42:58   - No one.

00:42:59   The existing, like the regular plain MagSafe charging puck

00:43:04   apparently also has firmware you can update this way.

00:43:07   I mean, it's probably not a huge surprise.

00:43:08   I remember this article years and years ago,

00:43:12   I'm gonna see if I can find it.

00:43:15   It was like about the 30 pin to HDMI adapter,

00:43:20   maybe they used to sell for like the iPad

00:43:23   and how it, someone like took it apart.

00:43:26   Yes, in 2013, here we go, I found it.

00:43:29   Panic did it.

00:43:30   Okay, so Panic cracked one of these open

00:43:32   and did a blog post explaining the tiny computer

00:43:37   inside the, okay, it was the lightning digital AV adapter.

00:43:42   Just, just amazing.

00:43:44   Tiny computers and everything.

00:43:46   That's what we've learned.

00:43:48   So go update your Mac safe duo charger.

00:43:50   I should try it and report back.

00:43:54   - I feel like it's got to do it somehow

00:43:57   without a computer being involved in the middle.

00:44:00   I don't know how it's doing that,

00:44:02   but I feel like it has to do that

00:44:06   because otherwise, yeah, I don't know.

00:44:08   It's never going to work.

00:44:09   Who's going to do it?

00:44:10   It's like, oh, let me plug my charger into my MacBook.

00:44:12   Like why would anybody do that?

00:44:14   You know, I don't know.

00:44:16   - Zach points out the real problem is the MacSafe Duo

00:44:18   is not a cube.

00:44:19   That's true.

00:44:21   This episode of Connected is made possible by Electric.

00:44:25   When you're leading a small business,

00:44:26   it's not all glamorous.

00:44:27   In fact, sometimes it's a matter of spending hours

00:44:30   trying to find a laptop that got lost in the mail

00:44:33   or dealing with some other technical emergency,

00:44:35   which honestly you're probably well equipped to deal with,

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00:45:41   So Jason published the Six Colors report card for 2022.

00:45:47   We're going to talk about it in detail on Upgrade on Monday.

00:45:51   We're not going to talk about everybody's responses

00:45:53   unless you want to dig into them.

00:45:55   What I wanted to talk to you about today

00:45:57   was your full answers to the report card

00:46:01   because you published them on your website.

00:46:03   And so I know that you put a lot of time into these.

00:46:07   I think much to Jason's chagrin.

00:46:10   - Yeah, he was like, "What are you doing?"

00:46:12   - How much did you, it was like 2000 words or something?

00:46:15   - Let me see, let me open the post, I can tell you.

00:46:18   - I think he literally said in the email,

00:46:20   "Please don't write an essay."

00:46:22   And then you not only did it, you then in Slack were like,

00:46:25   "Ha, send you thousands of words."

00:46:28   - 2100 words.

00:46:29   - Great, I'm sure he was super happy

00:46:30   to receive those from you.

00:46:32   - I'm sorry, Jason.

00:46:32   - And so I thought we could maybe dig into

00:46:35   these a little bit and you can explain yourself

00:46:39   if you want to. - Okay.

00:46:41   - So we'll start out with the Mac.

00:46:43   You went five out of five.

00:46:44   I kind of summed it up as hardware,

00:46:47   the goodness of hardware,

00:46:48   trumping some of the weird parts of software.

00:46:51   - Yeah, I mean, I think the Apple Silicon transition

00:46:53   has been incredibly successful so far,

00:46:57   even with some of the weirdness, right?

00:46:59   Like, where's the Mac Pro, Apple?

00:47:02   What's going on with the big iMac?

00:47:03   You know, why is the small iMac still only in one?

00:47:05   Like, there's weirdness there.

00:47:07   But despite that, the hardware they've been able to put out,

00:47:12   I think the M2 MacBook Air is the highlight of the year.

00:47:15   And maybe honestly, the high point in the transition so far,

00:47:19   it's such a good notebook and--

00:47:22   - 100%, I think that's the case.

00:47:24   Like for me, I mean, I've said this,

00:47:26   it's my favorite Mac of all time.

00:47:28   But I think maybe the high points would be the Mac Studio

00:47:32   or the M2 MacBook Air, right?

00:47:34   Of like, this is what they can do.

00:47:36   and I think the MacBook Air is just a banana's good computer.

00:47:40   - Yeah, it's so awesome.

00:47:42   And so yeah, I think on the hardware front,

00:47:45   they have definitely been doing very well.

00:47:48   Now, it's probably taking longer than they wanted,

00:47:50   but the products that end up on the shelves

00:47:54   have been all really impressive in their own ways,

00:47:57   and I've just been very pleased

00:48:00   with how the transition has gone so far

00:48:02   and what they've been able to do with this platform change.

00:48:05   You know, I know that there have been some interesting things in Mac OS this year, like

00:48:10   some good, some weird, like, but you don't feel that they affect the overall score? Or were you

00:48:16   not thinking of Mac OS too much in your score? No, I think that the weirdest thing in Ventura

00:48:21   is Stage Manager. And like on iPad OS, it's a mode that you can turn on or off. And so you can live

00:48:28   your life never knowing that Stage Manager exists. And look, a lot of people do like it, right? I

00:48:33   I heard from some people after I published this, like, "Stage Manager's awesome!

00:48:37   If it fits the way you work, that's great.

00:48:38   I'm genuinely glad that you have found something that works for you."

00:48:43   But clearly, I think everyone would agree that the Stage Manager, at the very least,

00:48:47   is a bit odd in places.

00:48:49   And but, you know, every version of Mac OS, it feels like, has something weird that doesn't

00:48:53   really go anywhere and kind of sticks around.

00:48:56   And that's fine, because you can just keep working the way that you have always worked.

00:49:01   So I don't look at Stage Manager and Ventura as like a big mistake that they're forcing

00:49:08   everyone into.

00:49:09   I kind of view it like I view Launchpad.

00:49:10   Like I personally think Launchpad is silly, but I'm sure the people out there who love

00:49:14   it and use it every day.

00:49:15   And so Apple giving people options is never a bad thing.

00:49:19   So with the iPhone, we went four out of five.

00:49:24   You referenced the Dynamic Island, the Always On Display and Lock Screen widgets as like

00:49:29   a big thing but you would like to see some some work done in them too? Yeah I

00:49:33   think all of those are a good 1.0. I think there are times that where if you

00:49:39   have a lot of things going on the dynamic island it's kind of a bit

00:49:43   confusing right so if you have like a podcast playing and you have a timer

00:49:47   going and maybe you're using an app to like keep up with a basketball game

00:49:51   score right things that I do all the time it's like oh why are these two up

00:49:57   there. Where did the third one go? How do I find it again? Right, some of that feels

00:50:01   a bit a bit weird. I think in terms of the the lock screen, I think adding the

00:50:07   option to to get rid of the wallpaper altogether is good. I think a lot of

00:50:12   people including myself like that. But the lock screen widgets feel just

00:50:17   unnecessarily restrictive in the number you can have and the layout. So for

00:50:22   instance, if you use a large one and two small ones, the large one has to be on

00:50:28   the left, it won't put it on the right. Why? Like, why is that the decision that

00:50:34   Apple is forcing on me? What if I want it on the other side? So I'm just hopeful

00:50:38   that they continue to improve it, but I think as a first stab at a always-on

00:50:42   display, I really like it. And like, I'm using the widgets, and yeah, I've got

00:50:46   annoyances about how many I can have and where I can put them, but they have made

00:50:50   my iPhone genuinely more useful in day-to-day life. The only way it didn't

00:50:56   get a 5 out of 5 for me is I don't think the iPhone 14 strategy, in particularly

00:51:02   the iPhone 14 Plus, is painting out the way that Apple and we thought it would. I

00:51:08   think it's weird they held on to an older system on a chip. You know Apple

00:51:15   will say you know the the pros are the most popular ones right and they don't

00:51:18   release specifics anymore but I'd imagine the average selling prices it's

00:51:23   pretty high on the iPhone but it feels like they sort of kneecapped the

00:51:29   traditional iPhone line and I don't like that I hope that they next time around

00:51:34   which my gosh is only in like what like six months seven months that we will see

00:51:39   a more balanced iPhone line that yeah the pros are always gonna have better

00:51:46   stuff but I feel like the system on a chip and the size stuff like that just

00:51:51   it was kind of a swing and a miss this year. That's interesting so when you do

00:51:55   your rankings you're thinking about the whole the whole thing. Yeah because he

00:52:02   doesn't call out like iOS and iPad OS and Mac OS right so I kind of know I

00:52:06   mean like your your your rate in the whole iPhone lineup not just your

00:52:10   experiences with the iPhone yeah yeah I think that's fair interesting I always

00:52:16   when I do mine I'm ranking my personal experiences with the products that I'm

00:52:21   using hmm so like I wouldn't even think about the iPhone plus be a drink I mean

00:52:28   I'll probably throw in stuff like well like how you know like you mention it I

00:52:33   guess we can mention it now the iPad the lineup being a mess I think I would

00:52:38   think of that too but because that's I think of how that affects me as well like

00:52:43   I take it more as like a personal thing if it's like aside from the I love the

00:52:48   iPad mini but everything else just doesn't make any sense to me right hmm

00:52:52   interesting yeah well Jason leaves it open to interpretation right I think

00:52:56   that's one of the really smart things about the design of the report card is

00:53:00   he asked all of us basically pretty simple questions like what would you

00:53:05   rate the iPhone out of five and give me your thoughts about it and so

00:53:09   people come from different directions that's one reason I love reading it

00:53:13   every year like every single year comes out like that afternoon I pull my iPad

00:53:16   out and read it because it's it's interesting the way different people

00:53:19   approach it. Also like we still have lightning come on come on USB C you can

00:53:26   do it. The always on display like calling that out like I think that is that a

00:53:32   controversial thing to say that you like? I don't know, like, I mean, I also feel like you,

00:53:37   you did the thing, right? You turned it off. I turned off the wallpaper. So like,

00:53:43   my phone right now is on the MagSafe charger. I see the time and some widgets. I see my timer-y

00:53:50   live activity going and Carrot Weather sent me notification because it's pouring down rain.

00:53:54   I don't see the picture of my wife, but if I pick it up or tap it or, you know, it comes to life,

00:54:01   then her photo fades in. That feels like a good balance to me.

00:54:04   Yeah, I have the photos. I like the photos.

00:54:08   Again, options are good and not always something that Apple's great at offering.

00:54:13   So I mentioned that you said about the iPad lineup being weird and you gave the iPad a 3 out of 5?

00:54:19   Yeah.

00:54:20   Well, where's the bright spots then to get it a 3 out of 5?

00:54:24   I think the iPad is like a, from like a philosophical standpoint is in an interesting place, right?

00:54:32   They've made it more powerful. The hardware is really good. Stage manager

00:54:36   I think is a miss and not really delivering the promises Apple made about it.

00:54:41   But I feel like

00:54:44   out in the real world

00:54:46   people are pretty happy with iPads and people keep their iPads for a long time and

00:54:51   And it seems to be pretty well liked.

00:54:54   And most iPad users, kind of like the other stuff we've talked about, don't really care

00:54:59   or about the consternation over stage manager, because they probably don't have an iPad that

00:55:04   can even run it yet.

00:55:06   Right.

00:55:07   Not to open that argument again, not sidestepping that argument for today.

00:55:11   But I feel like if we're looking at the iPad in 2022, individually, they're all pretty

00:55:18   good products. But as a collective, I don't know what's going on. You have the 10th Gen

00:55:25   iPad, which is probably the best iPad for the money, but has very weird product decisions

00:55:33   within that iPad like the pencil and the camera being on the landscape side has a very different

00:55:38   keyboard and trackpad setup than the others. And then you have the M2 iPad Pro and the

00:55:47   one iPad Air and all three of those are basically the same size 11 ish inches in size. It reminds

00:55:56   me of the problem the Mac had, you know, go back to 2015 2016. And we talked about it

00:56:03   a lot then of like, if you have $1,200 to spend on a Mac laptop, what do you buy? You

00:56:08   have the old, you know, pre retina MacBook Air, you have the one port MacBook, and you

00:56:14   of the 13-inch MacBook Pro.

00:56:15   As like, I don't know, like the differences between those

00:56:19   are in some ways important,

00:56:20   in other ways not important at all.

00:56:22   And the iPad feels like it's swimming in those same waters.

00:56:27   Like there may be something really specific

00:56:29   that draws you to the 11-inch iPad Pro.

00:56:31   Maybe it's the faster refresh rate.

00:56:34   Maybe something really pulls you to the 10th generation iPad,

00:56:38   probably the price.

00:56:39   But collectively looking at it from a strategy perspective,

00:56:44   it just feels like something didn't land

00:56:48   the way Apple wanted it to.

00:56:49   But when you walk into an Apple store, it's confusing.

00:56:53   And I think that that hurts its score.

00:56:55   I mean, if you had to buy a new iPad today,

00:56:57   I know you and I are both iPad mini fans,

00:56:59   but like if you had to buy a new full size iPad today,

00:57:01   what would you buy and why?

00:57:03   - All right, so this is a very interesting question.

00:57:05   - Exactly, it should be an easy question, but it's not.

00:57:09   I mean I guess the only other iPad that I use is probably the one that I will buy which is the iPad Air.

00:57:15   Like, for me, I don't need the iPad Pro, what the iPad Pro does, I don't need it particularly.

00:57:25   Which is what, it's faster at things.

00:57:28   Faster, it has like Pencil Hover, the big one has the Mini LED display which is nice but it's too big.

00:57:36   Yeah, it's huge.

00:57:37   And it has what like more capabilities via like Thunderbolt or whatever, you know, like yeah

00:57:44   Yeah, and need I don't need any of that. Yeah. No one's using that

00:57:48   No, so I can so that they would that would go out for me

00:57:53   You know, I would maybe get the iPad I would get the smaller iPad Pro if it had the screen technology, right?

00:58:00   Because then I would get a really good screen in the form factor that I like

00:58:06   But it doesn't have that so it feels kind of pointless so I would just I would go iPad air

00:58:11   because I

00:58:14   Like the design I think it's nice. I mean it's not super different from the original iPad

00:58:19   It's a little bit bigger

00:58:22   Because I use the iPad I use the iPad at home now

00:58:26   We watch like video and stuff on it if we're cooking or whatever nice eating dinner, you know where it was here at the studio

00:58:31   I've taken it home and reused it for that now and it's it's doing a great job at that stuff

00:58:36   But that's probably the one I would go for I would go for the iPad air. What would you do?

00:58:40   Probably probably the the air because I like that keyboard and trackpad now

00:58:46   I don't have experience with the 10th gen its keyboard case

00:58:49   You know, I'm not sure my thighs are long enough for the the kickstand life is anybody's really it's hard to say

00:58:56   but it should be clearer I think and

00:59:00   I'm willing to lay most of that the feet of like they haven't been able to do what they wanted to do because you know

00:59:07   state of the world

00:59:08   but

00:59:09   I feel like at some point they need to bring some some clarity to the iPad line in terms of hardware

00:59:16   while also continuing to improve iPad OS and like Federico's talked a lot about this but like

00:59:22   Apple just needs to make a decision about what iPad OS is and

00:59:27   They haven't done it like they keep punting it down the road of like oh, it's Mac like in these ways

00:59:31   but it's iPhone like in these other ways and I

00:59:33   Don't think it's really

00:59:36   Clear like where they view the iPad

00:59:40   now let alone ten years in the future and so

00:59:44   It is you know that if I shake the magic eight ball

00:59:47   Asking about the future of the iPad like it comes back

00:59:50   The answer is hazy and I think that hurts it as a as an overall platform

00:59:55   form. Last, no not last, Watch and Wearables? You went four out of five on

01:00:02   both of those. Yeah. You seem like obviously a big fan of the Apple Watch

01:00:07   Ultra. Right. Wearing it right now. Still wearing it, still loving it and I guess

01:00:11   that would put it up for you. Yeah. And I'd forgotten but obviously you are using

01:00:16   and a fan of the AirPods Pro too. Yeah. Where you hadn't been able to use AirPods Pro

01:00:21   before. Yeah the first ones didn't really work for me, the second ones do

01:00:24   they're still not as good of a fit as the AirPods 2,

01:00:29   I feel like, like yesterday I went for a long walk

01:00:32   after lunch and like, you know,

01:00:34   every once in a while I got to reach up

01:00:35   and like kind of reseat it,

01:00:36   but they're not falling out of my ear,

01:00:37   so I'm willing to put up with it

01:00:40   because the sound quality is so good.

01:00:42   And I've been really just impressed with them as a product.

01:00:47   Honestly, the biggest thing coming from the AirPods 2

01:00:50   is that when I open the case, my phone sees it immediately.

01:00:54   The old ones is like, is it gonna connect?

01:00:55   And overcast will connect for a second

01:00:57   and then drop it or YouTube or whatever

01:00:59   I was trying to listen to.

01:01:01   So all the wireless stuff is a lot better

01:01:03   in the newer ones.

01:01:04   And I think it's no doubt in anyone's mind

01:01:07   that the AirPod family has been extremely successful.

01:01:11   I really feel like as the world has kind of opened back up

01:01:16   after the last couple of years,

01:01:17   like if I could just see AirPods everywhere.

01:01:20   The Apple Watch is there too.

01:01:22   I feel like I feel like the Apple Watch is pretty ubiquitous,

01:01:26   at least amongst, you know, people who carry iPhones,

01:01:30   like obviously, but the AirPods have been really successful

01:01:35   and I've really enjoyed both my new watch

01:01:38   and my new AirPods in the months since I've had them.

01:01:40   I would like to see Apple spend some time on watchOS.

01:01:46   I don't have any specific advice there,

01:01:50   but watchOS on the Apple Watch Ultra

01:01:55   feels a bit silly at times

01:01:58   because it's the same UI just scaled up.

01:02:01   And my wife has, what's the small size now?

01:02:04   Is it 42, 40?

01:02:06   Whatever the smaller of the series eight is.

01:02:10   Mary's wearing one of those.

01:02:11   - I always think of it as 38 in my brain,

01:02:13   but that's so wrong now.

01:02:14   - Yeah.

01:02:16   But if she wants me to do something on her watch

01:02:19   or something or change a setting and I use it,

01:02:22   it's like, oh, this is just like mine,

01:02:24   just a smaller window into it.

01:02:26   - It's 41.

01:02:28   - 41, thank you.

01:02:30   And so I would like to see them do a better job at that.

01:02:33   But honestly, like Mac OS is the same way, iOS,

01:02:35   like Apple doesn't really seem to change its UIs

01:02:40   based on screen size.

01:02:42   They did it for a minute with the first plus size phones.

01:02:46   Remember that like, oh, you can see faces and messages

01:02:49   and you can turn it.

01:02:50   - And landscape?

01:02:51   - Yeah, on the home screen.

01:02:52   Do you remember that?

01:02:53   - Landscape home screen?

01:02:54   - Weird times.

01:02:55   - I don't remember that.

01:02:56   I remember apps being in landscape.

01:02:59   - Yeah, for a minute.

01:03:00   - It's a thing you can only do.

01:03:01   - The lock screen would turn as well.

01:03:03   I think that's gone too, but it's fine.

01:03:06   The other Apple watches are like, they're fine.

01:03:09   The Apple Watch is at a point now

01:03:11   where you don't have to upgrade year over year.

01:03:14   I think that was a much bigger deal early on.

01:03:15   But again, that's just how these things go.

01:03:18   the iPhone's the same way, right? The average lifespan of an iPhone and

01:03:21   especially an iPad has gotten longer over time as these devices have gotten

01:03:25   better. So yeah, the 8 is kind of a boring update over the 7, but if you have a 4 or

01:03:30   5, the Series 8 is awesome. It adds all this stuff you don't have. And so I think

01:03:36   I think it's time that we change our thinking about the Apple Watch. This

01:03:41   is a buy it every three to four year type product for most consumers, and I

01:03:47   I think that's totally fine.

01:03:49   - You know, you're saying about the small watch

01:03:51   being like a small window and the same thing.

01:03:54   It's like funny to me that they didn't really do anything

01:03:57   to take advantage of the huge screen size

01:03:59   that you have on yours, right?

01:04:00   Like it's just bigger.

01:04:02   Like it is really weird that they added some functionality,

01:04:06   but there wasn't really any work put into

01:04:08   the overall operating system to make it feel like

01:04:10   it was a home on the larger display, as you're saying.

01:04:14   Like they used to, they don't really do that anymore.

01:04:17   but they could and they should

01:04:19   because there are experiences that could be unlocked.

01:04:21   I guess you do get a slightly roomier keyboard, you know,

01:04:25   it's nice for you, I suppose.

01:04:27   - Yeah, the keyboard is probably the best,

01:04:31   the best use of the bigger size.

01:04:33   It's actually usable on the Ultra.

01:04:35   The only thing I would just wrap up in this section

01:04:39   is the question over the future of the AirPods Max.

01:04:43   I didn't write about this

01:04:44   'cause honestly I didn't think about it when doing it,

01:04:46   I thought about it after the fact. There's no wireless Apple audio product that supports

01:04:52   their higher end codec. And we thought that AirPods Max maybe it and it go get lossless

01:04:58   with it. Maybe that's still coming. There. There are pods Max also has Apple's one of their worst

01:05:05   cases ever designed. I compared it to the first generation iPad case. Remember that thing had like

01:05:11   sharp edges it was terrible. Oh my god yeah yeah yeah yeah so I hope that that

01:05:18   product even though I don't use it I don't that work for me. Was that the one

01:05:22   where you had to remove it from the case like it or it was really hard to get off?

01:05:29   It was very hard to take it out of the case I'm gonna try to find a I don't know if

01:05:35   I believe I'll find it. It starts first-generation iPad case and that's a lot of

01:05:39   things but it was not good and that you they remediate it with the smart cover

01:05:47   which is basically what we still have today because that was a genius idea man

01:05:51   and that's so good when that came out you know I was reminded of the other day

01:05:54   do you remember the Evernote peak feature oh yeah it was like for studying

01:06:00   or something you could have it as like flashcards and you would you'd have the

01:06:05   app open and you'd close the smart cover and you'd pull down the top part and you

01:06:09   could see the question and you pull it apart and you get the answer.

01:06:13   Yeah. Man that was clever. That was when Evernote were like doing cool stuff

01:06:18   before they did all the like, like all the business card app and their

01:06:24   cooking app and all that kind of stuff. Do you think Evernote will add chat GPT?

01:06:30   I expect they probably have already tried to do some. Yeah. Well they did. I remember

01:06:36   remember people got mad, including me, where at the bottom of your note, it would include

01:06:41   links to like media sources, based on the contents of your notes, like if your note

01:06:46   was about car repair, like so I have a note of like maintenance on my truck, right? So

01:06:50   like, if I change the oil, I go in there and put the mileage in and the day and all that

01:06:54   sort of stuff. If there were an Evernote, then at the bottom would be like a New York

01:06:56   Times article about cart maintenance. It's like, that's not cool. But you know, now we

01:07:01   just accept it because AI is here to stay, potentially.

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01:08:55   connected and relay FM. You gave the Apple TV a 3 out of 5. Mm-hmm. How dare

01:09:02   you? I'm sorry Mr. TV OS. Why? What's wrong with it? I don't understand. The box is

01:09:10   expensive and overkill. There's also a bug going on right now that like your

01:09:15   Apple TV remote would just stop talking to your Apple TV sometimes, which I have

01:09:19   that problem and you can like reboot everything and it comes back to life.

01:09:22   Everyone needs private space sometimes you know even TV remotes. You should take a

01:09:26   little break from people. Yeah you're stuck using your... The TV remote is an introvert

01:09:30   all right what do you want? I know I'm sorry I'm an introvert too I'm sorry.

01:09:34   TV OS itself just feels really stagnant it just it's much more about the content

01:09:42   than the OS but Apple can't land the content stuff either right because like

01:09:46   Netflix and others don't play ball with Apple's user interface and the result of

01:09:52   that is sort of a disjointed experience on tvOS where some content some content

01:10:00   providers feel like they have special treatment because they're in the TV app

01:10:03   and others are siloed off into their own you know applications and it's not just

01:10:10   Netflix I think that's the biggest example but there's others that that

01:10:13   also don't play with the system. Yeah it's really just Netflix. I know what you mean

01:10:18   but like... That's the one that matters. It's the one that matters. Yeah it's the

01:10:22   it's the big one. And so I don't know how Apple solves that. Clearly they haven't

01:10:27   been able to but I am hopeful they still can. I think it would improve the

01:10:33   experience if all content kind of worked the same way. Now I did not include

01:10:40   Apple TV plus in this I included in services so we can talk about that in a minute I guess

01:10:44   but from a hardware software perspective the Apple TV just still feels like too little for

01:10:51   too much money and look I've got one I've got a 4k one I have the new Siri remote and like it is TV

01:10:57   in our house like that's how we watch anything is through Apple the Apple TV and while I would

01:11:03   would replace it if it died, I would be cranky about how much it cost. So let's

01:11:09   talk about services. Yes. Tell me about your TV Plus experience. I am so

01:11:16   both surprised but also really pleased at honestly how good TV Plus is. There's

01:11:21   there's a lot of good content there. They've hired good people and I know

01:11:24   they're not making all the content like very famously Ted Lasso isn't an Apple

01:11:29   TV production, right?

01:11:30   Is it WB? Who does Ted Lasso?

01:11:33   Yeah, Ted Lasso is a very weird duck.

01:11:38   It's like, everyone's got a hand on this one.

01:11:41   It's a very strange

01:11:42   relationship.

01:11:45   But let's just say for the for the sake of it, yes, it's Warner Brothers.

01:11:48   Yeah, it's not an Apple original

01:11:52   original like some of the others are.

01:11:55   And there's some duds, right?

01:11:56   There's some stuff that I think

01:11:58   I definitely haven't sampled it all but there's definitely some stuff that's better than others

01:12:01   But overall if if you asked three years ago Steven like do you think apples gonna be good at making their own TV content?

01:12:08   I'd be like, I don't know about that

01:12:10   But they've done a good job and they've they've clearly spent the money with the right people to make that make that possible

01:12:17   I think I might be right in saying this no TV shows that they are currently airing are actually

01:12:25   quote-unquote Apple original content.

01:12:28   - Okay.

01:12:29   - Like that is a thing that they are working on, right?

01:12:31   That they set up like Apple Studios

01:12:33   and they will be producing their own,

01:12:36   but like it's all got some production company tied into it.

01:12:40   That's not them.

01:12:41   So they, you know, and that will always be a mix of that,

01:12:44   but they will also want to be able to like

01:12:46   completely home grow a thing.

01:12:48   So they have ultimate control over it

01:12:50   rather than just green lighting something.

01:12:53   - Okay.

01:12:54   In terms of the other services, the other highlight for 2022,

01:12:58   I think, was iCloud Photo for families, right?

01:13:02   The shared photo library stuff.

01:13:04   Mary and I are all in on that.

01:13:06   There's definitely some details that I don't like

01:13:08   about how it works, mostly the lack of albums.

01:13:12   I love my wife.

01:13:13   She won't hear this, but I love her very much.

01:13:16   She just has it on all the time.

01:13:19   So I've got open photos, and it'll be a bunch of photos

01:13:22   that she's taken like,

01:13:23   that shouldn't be in the family photo library, right?

01:13:25   They're like stuff for school or, you know,

01:13:28   'cause she's a teacher, like stuff that--

01:13:29   - And I forget though too, right?

01:13:31   I am guilty of this.

01:13:34   - Oh, I do too.

01:13:34   - I've been taking product photography recently

01:13:36   and saying, "Oh, you know, does not need all of this."

01:13:38   - Yeah.

01:13:39   You know how many photos I have of iPods?

01:13:41   Thousands.

01:13:42   - That's true.

01:13:43   - And there's a, I think it's a good limitation,

01:13:46   but I would like to have it lifted

01:13:48   where I can't force something back

01:13:51   into her personal library, only she can.

01:13:53   So like once a week I just like find her iPad

01:13:55   around the house and like select a bunch of photos

01:13:57   and move them back to her personal library.

01:13:59   - So, 'cause I know there's a thing,

01:14:01   but I can only move mine, huh?

01:14:03   I can only remove my photos from the shared library.

01:14:05   I can't remove, oh, interesting.

01:14:07   - You can delete them, but you can't push them back

01:14:09   into her personal library.

01:14:11   - Right, interesting.

01:14:12   - The big miss for me in the services

01:14:14   continues to be Apple News.

01:14:16   I pay for Apple One because for the iCloud storage we need

01:14:20   and paying for like TV and music,

01:14:22   Apple One is the same cost, so I just pay for Apple One.

01:14:25   About every three months I'd look at that and like,

01:14:26   "Is that right?"

01:14:27   And sure enough it is.

01:14:28   I don't really use Apple News very much

01:14:30   unless someone sends me an Apple News link.

01:14:31   I got people in my life who are big Apple News users,

01:14:34   so I do get sent links there pretty often.

01:14:37   But they have the worst ads on the web.

01:14:40   It's not as bad as like,

01:14:42   you see sometimes at the bottom of like local news stories

01:14:45   And it's like, I ate blueberries for a year

01:14:46   and lost a hundred pounds, right?

01:14:48   It's not that sort of garbagey ads,

01:14:50   but I pay for Apple One.

01:14:52   Like it should be either ad free

01:14:55   or it should be ads that don't interrupt the stories

01:14:59   the way they do and just higher quality stuff.

01:15:01   And that's frustrating to me.

01:15:03   I know there are people out there

01:15:04   who really do love Apple News,

01:15:07   but out of everything they offer,

01:15:09   it feels like the weakest spot.

01:15:11   And it feels like it's been the weak spot for a long time.

01:15:13   Where are these ads coming from though?

01:15:15   Who's ads are they?

01:15:17   - I don't know.

01:15:18   - 'Cause I reckon these are the publishers ads,

01:15:20   but your ad blocker doesn't work.

01:15:22   So your, this isn't something that you're used to seeing,

01:15:25   but this is just what the web looks like, Steven.

01:15:27   Yes, it is.

01:15:28   - Yeah, but like even in like the news plus section, right?

01:15:32   Where you can go in and you can get magazines and stuff.

01:15:35   Like it's just, none of it feels as solid

01:15:38   as it should, I think.

01:15:39   - No, I mean, I don't understand

01:15:40   why it needs to exist personally.

01:15:42   Like I don't use it.

01:15:44   I think I uninstall it from one of the devices

01:15:46   'cause I just don't want it.

01:15:47   And I never want to be accidentally taken there

01:15:50   when I go to a link.

01:15:51   I just want it to open in the web somewhere.

01:15:53   - But the rest of the services seem pretty solid.

01:15:55   And so I felt like a four out of five

01:15:58   was pretty reasonable.

01:16:01   - Home, you gave it a three out of five.

01:16:03   - Part of this is the weirdness

01:16:05   over the architecture update, which I ran

01:16:08   because I was like, oh, new home architecture, let's do it.

01:16:11   I've had no problems, like things still work.

01:16:13   So I don't know what the issues were there.

01:16:15   But I feel like all in all,

01:16:18   it's been, HomeKit continues to be sort of

01:16:21   in a wait and see mode.

01:16:23   Now I use it exclusively,

01:16:25   like all my smart home stuff is in HomeKit.

01:16:28   Matter is slowly rolling out.

01:16:31   I feel like every week or two,

01:16:32   there's an article out there

01:16:34   that some company moving to matter.

01:16:36   But we don't really,

01:16:38   that's a promise not yet fulfilled, is what I would say.

01:16:40   We don't really know what that's gonna be like. Yeah, and

01:16:42   The home app is better

01:16:45   But not as useful as it could be it just feels like there's a lot of stuff in home kit or the home app

01:16:50   That you just don't really have

01:16:52   Insight into what's actually happening. Like if something doesn't do what you expect

01:16:57   Remedying that is really difficult to understand like maybe you just reboot it or like our friend dancey for the verge

01:17:06   Had a post this morning on Mastodon about

01:17:09   Like his home kit stuff works as long as the Apple TV's on wireless and not plugged into Ethernet is like

01:17:14   Why why is that the case and like the leaps and the things he had to go through to figure that out?

01:17:21   It just is just silly and so I hope that as smart home stuff becomes

01:17:25   more and more the norm that Apple can

01:17:31   Continue to flesh out the home app and home kit to be more useful in situations where things don't work as expected

01:17:37   I

01:17:39   Mean would you have any thoughts on?

01:17:43   like or did

01:17:45   Hardware or home hardware like factor into the score or did you not?

01:17:50   bother with that not really because Apple doesn't make any of their own like

01:17:56   You can get almost anything that works with homekit now, which is fantastic. I mean the last year

01:18:02   I added a garage door opener you help me with it. Thank you and a gate opener and like there's more and more stuff

01:18:07   in there, but I really was kind of looking at like what Apple itself has done over the last year.

01:18:12   Okay, that's fair enough.

01:18:15   Yeah.

01:18:15   You're not grading it on things that they didn't do necessarily.

01:18:18   Right, like could they do more to make it easier for other types of manufacturers to bring stuff to home?

01:18:23   Yeah, I'm sure they could.

01:18:24   Five out of five on hardware reliability.

01:18:25   I mean look, there's no butterfly keyboard. Apple's really good with aluminum and glass.

01:18:30   Like you can get parts for the self-service repair program. Like I got no complaints. I mean,

01:18:37   When's the last time I had a hardware issue with an Apple product that wasn't caused on me dropping it?

01:18:41   I don't even know. It's been a long time.

01:18:43   And software?

01:18:44   Not that I drop things. That's unusual for me.

01:18:47   The hardware is reliable as long as you can keep it in your hands.

01:18:50   That's right, yeah.

01:18:51   Software quality, 3 out of 5.

01:18:55   This is sort of a death by a thousand cuts for me.

01:18:59   I opened my comments to Jason and was like, I haven't had a kernel panic or like an Apple application crash on a regular basis in a long time.

01:19:06   Freeform is a very 1.0, you know, we've talked about that other places. For me,

01:19:11   it's really the score of this is in the details, like the example I quoted was

01:19:17   the mismatch of features found in Mac and iOS versions of reminders. Or when

01:19:23   you open your Mac, you know, your notebook after a weekend and messages still

01:19:28   struggles to catch up with iCloud, right? It's like, they said they fixed that, but

01:19:33   but they still fall out of sync.

01:19:35   The one I'm currently seeing,

01:19:36   so the group text that we have with Federico

01:19:39   and One True John,

01:19:40   we change the name of it every once in a while.

01:19:42   And my iPhone in the share sheet refuses to see

01:19:45   the new name that we have it set to.

01:19:47   It sees the old one.

01:19:48   I don't know why, I can't seem to fix it.

01:19:51   It just seems stuck.

01:19:52   It's those little things that none of them are showstoppers.

01:19:57   None of them are all that bad in and of themselves.

01:20:01   but as Apple has spread its software organization

01:20:04   to be bigger and to move faster,

01:20:06   I feel like a lot of the details get missed

01:20:10   or get just the bare minimum of attention,

01:20:12   and that's a bit frustrating.

01:20:14   - You also referenced system settings here,

01:20:18   which you did not reference in the Mac part.

01:20:21   - Yeah.

01:20:22   - When it came to software.

01:20:23   - Yeah, and I really put it here

01:20:26   because I used it as an example of SwiftUI

01:20:31   not really being where it needs to be yet.

01:20:34   And Apple is pushing on that

01:20:36   and they want developers to use it.

01:20:38   And a lot of our developer friends

01:20:39   are using a lot of it now.

01:20:40   But the overall messiness, especially on the Mac,

01:20:43   of you have Cocoa apps, you have Catalyst apps,

01:20:46   you have SwiftUI apps, they look and run differently

01:20:50   and do different things.

01:20:52   I just don't, it's one of the only transitions

01:20:56   I feel like Apple's ever had

01:20:58   where we don't know what their plan is.

01:21:01   There were some of this in the carbon to cocoa thing back in the day where the carbon was

01:21:05   going to go 64 bit and then it didn't and people freaked out.

01:21:09   But outside of that, like with the Apple Silicon transition, the hardware transitions, we know

01:21:13   where they're going, right?

01:21:15   Okay, we're putting an M one in the MacBook Air, and in two years, we're going to be done.

01:21:20   And with this, it's very open ended.

01:21:23   And at WBC in 22, they did say like the best way to make apps is with Swift and Swift UI,

01:21:29   putting their flag in the ground, this is what you should be doing, but we don't

01:21:34   know how long that's gonna take. And the tools and the UIs move so slowly that if

01:21:41   you have like a big bad bug in SwiftUI, you're lucky if it gets fixed within

01:21:47   the year cycle. Usually it takes the next full version of the OS, and that

01:21:54   messiness and confusion muddies the water when it comes to Mac software and

01:21:59   And Apple really needs to bring some clarification to that.

01:22:02   And so I didn't, that was sort of a bigger thing than just system settings.

01:22:07   So I put it here, but who knows.

01:22:09   Developer relations in a two out of five.

01:22:11   Yeah.

01:22:12   You know, the app store ads issue, the kind of vice grip on the 30%, but it was bumped

01:22:19   up by the being a WWDC.

01:22:22   I think having people back was a big deal for the developer community.

01:22:26   Apple's developer center is like a physical promise to communicate better.

01:22:30   Again, like, we don't know how well that's going.

01:22:33   Because I assume if you go there, you're under NDA is like, I don't know what they're actually

01:22:37   doing in that building.

01:22:38   I know it's a beautiful building.

01:22:39   I enjoyed getting a tour of it.

01:22:41   But at the very least, they're making efforts there.

01:22:42   They've also done the ask Apple q&a's and slack and are they are communicating better

01:22:50   with developers.

01:22:52   If it comes between a better business deal and better communication, I think developers

01:22:56   would be pretty divided on what they would prefer.

01:22:59   There's still obviously the issue I didn't quoted here by now our friend Casey has talked

01:23:01   about it a lot in terms of the documentation and the lack of documentation around a lot

01:23:07   of their API's and frameworks like that's still an ongoing issue.

01:23:11   Apple needs developers on their team, right?

01:23:13   Like the App Store is extremely successful in the iPhone and iPad.

01:23:16   But moving forward, if we're talking about a new platform, you know, entering the scene

01:23:22   this year, like Apple needs to incentivize developers to build for it.

01:23:27   And Apple, especially the App Store ad thing, burned so much goodwill with developers over

01:23:34   something so stupid, and ultimately relatively meaningless when it comes to their bottom

01:23:40   line.

01:23:41   It was sort of shocking to me that that it went down the way that it did.

01:23:46   And they can't make those boneheaded decisions when it comes to developers forever.

01:23:50   When it comes to like, hey, you got to move your code base to Swift UI, or we really like

01:23:54   you to write something for our headset or, you know, whatever it is, like they need developers

01:24:00   to be on the same team.

01:24:02   And Apple seems to take them as a rough, large community to take them for granted more than

01:24:07   I think they should.

01:24:08   And that's a bummer.

01:24:09   It is.

01:24:10   You also referenced the social impact as a three out of five.

01:24:16   Yeah, I think the environmental stuff is a big deal and they seem to be doing really

01:24:24   remarkable work there and like using recycled materials and moving to green energy and all

01:24:29   of those things.

01:24:31   I feel like some of the more nitty gritty stuff, especially the back and forth they've

01:24:36   had over return to work plans.

01:24:39   Knowing people at Apple who got caught up in that is terrible.

01:24:43   And Apple changed their minds a bunch of times and different teams do it different ways.

01:24:48   And it seems like a lot of people who work at Apple feel like their voices haven't been

01:24:52   heard when it comes to return to work.

01:24:56   And that's been really hard, I think, for the organization.

01:25:00   Apple's situation in China is more complicated than ever.

01:25:06   Right?

01:25:07   And I'm definitely not an expert on it.

01:25:08   I would say that people like Ben Thompson are, but they seem willing to make concessions

01:25:15   in areas so they can continue to keep their manufacturing moving forward.

01:25:22   And we saw at the very end of the year, we've seen it some in this calendar year as well,

01:25:26   them looking to move some manufacturing out of China.

01:25:30   But the reality is that's going to be the base of it for a long time.

01:25:35   And the rest of the supply chain, right, like you may manufacture the Mac Pro in Texas,

01:25:39   but all of its parts come from factories in China.

01:25:43   If Apple can even unwind that, it would take a long time.

01:25:47   I don't know if they want to unwind it.

01:25:49   I think that's just a very complicated, like, in a way, Apple in China feels like a ticking

01:25:55   time bomb, like something is going to happen.

01:25:57   Tim Cook very deftly managed that under the Trump administration.

01:26:01   But there are bigger issues that need to be addressed.

01:26:04   And again, I'm not an expert there, but it just feels like,

01:26:08   and it seems like from reading smarter people than me

01:26:10   on this, that their position is not the strongest there.

01:26:15   And what they say about certain societal impacts

01:26:22   and privacy and human rights and all that stuff,

01:26:24   that they're willing to maybe look the other way

01:26:27   when it comes to China.

01:26:28   And that is something they need to address.

01:26:31   And I think that at the end of the day,

01:26:33   when Tim Cook steps down, right, whenever he retires,

01:26:36   that all of the growth he brought to Apple,

01:26:39   and honestly, a lot of the good that has come out of Apple

01:26:42   in this social and societal impact stuff,

01:26:45   they've made great strides,

01:26:47   things that never would have happened before Tim Cook.

01:26:49   But I can't help but think that his relationship,

01:26:53   deep relationship with China will be a stain on that.

01:26:57   - If you can't work it out first.

01:26:58   - If you can't work it out first.

01:27:00   - 'Cause it is one of those like weird situations

01:27:02   where Apple would not be where it is without China.

01:27:05   They wouldn't have been able to do it.

01:27:07   So he's benefited from it so far,

01:27:12   but is he gonna do anything about it

01:27:14   to try and balance that better?

01:27:16   Like that's the trillion dollar question for them

01:27:21   going into the next few years.

01:27:23   It's interesting that you put the return to work stuff

01:27:26   in here, I didn't really consider it,

01:27:29   I didn't think about it, but that's a really good,

01:27:31   I think that's a really good place

01:27:33   to put a comment on that here.

01:27:35   That it felt like Apple were not doing

01:27:40   what a lot of other tech companies were.

01:27:43   And even though it seems like a lot of them

01:27:44   have actually rolled those plans back now,

01:27:47   they at least weren't willing to even try it, right?

01:27:52   - Yeah, and I think a lot of it is the back and forth.

01:27:56   And look, I get it.

01:27:57   I don't envy making those decisions in any company.

01:28:00   If there's anything I've been thankful for,

01:28:01   over the last three years,

01:28:03   it's that Relay was 100% remote,

01:28:05   that we didn't have to deal with these issues, right?

01:28:07   Because we all do our own thing.

01:28:10   We didn't have to have the conversations like,

01:28:11   when do we have our hosts come back to the studio, right?

01:28:13   We don't have any of that stuff.

01:28:15   So I appreciate that it's difficult.

01:28:17   I appreciate that, especially Apple's culture

01:28:20   being what it is.

01:28:22   You know, Craig Foderge said it,

01:28:23   I think with Gruber at WBC,

01:28:25   he said at some point of like, we're better together,

01:28:27   that we work together, we wanna be together.

01:28:31   That is, I can tell you for a fact,

01:28:33   not reflected by everybody who works at Apple.

01:28:36   And the people who don't agree with that

01:28:38   have had a really hard time with it.

01:28:40   And that's tough.

01:28:42   And I think that it undermines

01:28:45   some of the other things they do.

01:28:46   So that's 2022, baby.

01:28:48   - All done.

01:28:49   - All done.

01:28:50   Do it again next year, Jason.

01:28:51   It's a lot of fun to be a part of.

01:28:53   - Maybe then I'll speak for Jason and say,

01:28:56   don't send 2000 words next year.

01:28:57   - Okay.

01:28:58   (laughs)

01:28:59   He caught me on a good day, you know, this came pouring out of me

01:29:02   Maybe I'll write all all high cues next year. I think that would be nice

01:29:09   You know be fun

01:29:11   especially if you did it in a way where it wasn't obvious right that you want you didn't make a thing out of it and

01:29:16   Just see if see how many of them will be printed and how many people would notice

01:29:20   Jason is talking to us in slack. He said I'll just cut them and you have a free blog post

01:29:27   That's true, too. I'll be given my my scores on upgrade looking forward to that and I keep my I keep my list

01:29:34   Yeah, and Federico did too. In fact, he and I published ours at the same time on

01:29:38   Yeah, knowingly I published mine and then I opened reader and the first thing was his like oh whoops

01:29:44   Like we did at the same time, but go read Federico's as well and considering Jason's

01:29:48   Listening right now. I will tell him the thing that I was gonna send him in slack after today

01:29:54   which is Jason think about your scores because I'm going to be asking what your scores would be to do it an upgrade

01:30:00   Well, I think that I think that does it this week if you want to find links to the stuff

01:30:05   We spoke about head on over to relay.fm

01:30:08   connected

01:30:10   436 there's a submit feedback button there. So if you have feedback or follow up for the show, please submit it there

01:30:16   you can also file a feedback.com or

01:30:19   Long thigh social that's what I should have used on

01:30:23   Macedon dang it

01:30:25   You see but this is what I was saying earlier, right?

01:30:27   Like I didn't want to come up with a fun thing and then like six months later now

01:30:32   I need another fun thing and then just go on forever and ever and ever

01:30:35   Mm-hmm. You can also become a member if you join connected pro you get longer ad-free

01:30:41   versions of the show each and every week you get access to relays member only discord a

01:30:46   couple of members only podcast lots of awesome stuff for relay FM members

01:30:52   So go join connected pro a lot of people really enjoy it. I think you would too

01:30:56   You can find us online Federico is not here, but he's the editor-in-chief of max stories net

01:31:02   He should be back next week. You can find venom, you know, the unless the ISP snake the ISP snake

01:31:09   Got him just possible

01:31:12   It's terrible Federico's fine, he'll be back next week. Well, I mean we don't know

01:31:18   We don't know if he's fine. We'll really never promise tomorrow anyways

01:31:22   Exactly any episode could be the last episode we should yeah, so thanks for listening

01:31:27   We'll be back next week yeah, you can find Myke online he's on the Don at Myke

01:31:36   Come on come on down to the done Myke's also the co-founder of cortex brand you can learn more at cortex merch calm

01:31:46   You can find me on the Don at eWorld social

01:31:49   More importantly I write five fill pixels dotnet and co-host Mac power users here on relay FM every Sunday afternoon

01:31:56   Do you ever think that like let's imagine that the dawn lasts right?

01:32:00   You know the dawn is still done in you know in like 10 years. Yeah, Megadon that play really at that point

01:32:07   Well more people know of know of you as a world then Apple maybe

01:32:12   right like

01:32:14   Real realistically how many people remembered that or they know what that is now that you've done it

01:32:20   And so like a certain point when a you eat world and then what happens?

01:32:25   I don't know where I'm in the ending. I just think our sponsors

01:32:28   They are indeed electric and clean my Mac X links to all those fine companies are in the show notes

01:32:34   And until next week Myke say goodbye. Bye. Bye. Bye y'all