00:00:09 ◼ ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 467. Today's show is brought to you by Express,
00:00:21 ◼ ► Hi, Mike Hurley. It's good to be here. As always, I have a snow talk question for you. It comes from
00:00:26 ◼ ► John. John wants to know, "Jason, how long have you enjoyed football, and when did you realize or
00:00:31 ◼ ► decide you were an Arsenal fan?" You know, in our document it says football/soccer and you decided not to.
00:00:37 ◼ ► I wouldn't allow myself to say it. I figured you would do it, like you just did, when I decided not to do it.
00:00:46 ◼ ► Therefore, a perfectly valid word that you could use to describe this sport. Yep, decided not to.
00:00:51 ◼ ► Un-American football. The answer is lost in the midst of time, but I would say... Well, you know, Jason,
00:01:01 ◼ ► Yes, well, as bestowed upon by me. Uh-huh, so go to getupgreatplus.com. I could tell you that
00:01:09 ◼ ► the... So Nick Hornby is one of my favorite writers. He wrote High Fidelity, but he's not a one-hit
00:01:17 ◼ ► wonder. He's written lots of other great books, including Fever Pitch, a... Yes. Basically, a non-fiction...
00:01:27 ◼ ► It's like an autobiography. It is, I'm sure I've mentioned it here before, it is the single best
00:01:31 ◼ ► explanation of the psychology of a sports fan I think you'll ever read. It's a wonderful book.
00:01:38 ◼ ► Nick Hornby is an obsessed Arsenal fan, and the book, which is the most unlikely book to have ever
00:01:46 ◼ ► been made into a movie, it's been made into two? What? The American version is about the Boston Red Sox,
00:01:54 ◼ ► but the book is great, and he's an Arsenal fan, and I was listening... You know, I'm reading along,
00:02:04 ◼ ► and I'm just like, "Oh, this is very interesting. I'm learning things about soccer." And then, if I'm
00:02:09 ◼ ► going to be exposed to the Premier League at that point, which was coming on TV more and more in the
00:02:14 ◼ ► US in the late 20... Late 2000s, I want to say? Mid to late 2000s, more and more on TV? Well,
00:02:22 ◼ ► one team I've heard about, and I know some of their history, and I know about their long-suffering fans,
00:02:28 ◼ ► so I started to pay attention to Arsenal. That's the only reason. So it's Nick... Blame Nick Hornby.
00:02:35 ◼ ► He lives in North London. I've walked past his house. My friend Simon lives right across the
00:02:40 ◼ ► street from the Arsenal stadium, and right around the block from Nick Hornby's house. When I walked
00:02:46 ◼ ► by, somebody was delivering a pizza. I guess Nick Hornby wanted a pizza. Anyway, he's a great writer.
00:02:50 ◼ ► His fiction is amazing. His music essays are great, and Fever Pitch is a wonderful book. So really,
00:02:57 ◼ ► that was it. It's Nick Hornby's fault that I'm a fan of Arsenal, which I came in right after they
00:03:02 ◼ ► were incredibly successful, and have watched them, you know, finish various places between second and
00:03:09 ◼ ► eighth over the course of 15 years. But they had a great season this season. I loved it. I had a good
00:03:16 ◼ ► time. In the... in the... they famously, for those who don't care about sports, they famously led
00:03:21 ◼ ► the longest... led the league for the longest of any team to ever not win the league. But
00:03:25 ◼ ► Manchester City was behind them the whole time, and everybody knew what was going to happen,
00:03:29 ◼ ► and then it happened, because everybody knew Manchester City was going to win, because they're
00:03:34 ◼ ► a team made up entirely of Frankenstein monsters. And it was a great season, and it was a fun ride,
00:03:39 ◼ ► because I think in the end, sport is entertainment. And people who get really angry about their team
00:03:46 ◼ ► not winning the championship every year, I think, are deeply misguided, and that what you need to do
00:03:50 ◼ ► is have a little bit of perspective. Like my team and your team, Mike, the San Francisco Giants
00:03:55 ◼ ► baseball team. They won 107 games a couple years ago, which is... that's a lot, Mike. That's a very
00:04:01 ◼ ► lot. And they won their division, and then they lost in the playoffs. And you know what? Losing
00:04:04 ◼ ► the playoffs was sad, but it doesn't take away from what a wonderful year that was. That was the
00:04:08 ◼ ► most fun full-on baseball season I'd had in a long time. And I'm just looking to be entertained. I
00:04:14 ◼ ► don't have to become a monster who's like, "If they didn't win everything, it's a failure." It's like,
00:04:18 ◼ ► Arsenal had a great year too. So anyway, long story short, blame Nick Hornby, or order a pizza
00:04:25 ◼ ► and have it sent to his house. It's like, you know, I would give you on the sport thing, I'm a
00:04:29 ◼ ► Mercedes fan, I'm a McLaren fan, Formula One, mostly Mercedes. It's tough times to be a Mercedes fan.
00:04:35 ◼ ► You know, things are rough right now. I had a moment there where I was wondering why you liked
00:04:39 ◼ ► German cars. Well, they're British teams. But that's not what you mean. You meant Formula One.
00:04:45 ◼ ► Okay. And so I'm a Mercedes fan. I got there. And it's a tough time to be a Mercedes fan,
00:04:50 ◼ ► but that's just how it is. And now I will revel in when they can just get on the podium, or they can
00:04:54 ◼ ► get even midway. It's like, "Oh, this is fantastic. This is exciting to me as when they would win." So
00:05:05 ◼ ► Lauren and I went to a Giants game. Yes. When you were out here. And we had a great time. And
00:05:09 ◼ ► you guys are now Giants fans. Go Giants. We saw a great game. The Giants scored like 13 runs. There
00:05:14 ◼ ► was a splash hit. It was amazing. The next game we went to, Lauren and I went on the 4th of July.
00:05:19 ◼ ► It was a terrible game. The Giants got like a couple of hits. The pitcher on the other team
00:05:28 ◼ ► basically pitched the entire game and shut out the Giants. And it was awful. And then we just went
00:05:34 ◼ ► yesterday, and it was 1-0, and the Giants won. And they hit a home run, and their best pitcher
00:05:39 ◼ ► pitched his best game maybe of his career. And it was very exciting. The fact is, buying a ticket
00:05:44 ◼ ► and going, you never know what you're going to get. Sometimes it's good. Sometimes it's bad.
00:05:58 ◼ ► just go to upgradefeedback.com and send in a Snell Talk question of your own right there.
00:06:09 ◼ ► "Regarding fitness apps on the Vision Pro, do you think that only a restricted set of kinds
00:06:14 ◼ ► of exercises could be approved via App Store review, or do you think that any common VR
00:06:21 ◼ ► fitness app would be? For example, something like stationary biking or stretching could be okay,
00:06:26 ◼ ► but what about something more active like boxing? I see Apple being concerned about videos or
00:06:32 ◼ ► reports of the headset flying off and breaking, then people seeking replacements is something
00:06:39 ◼ ► I don't know what to say to this. What Apple does, it's like asking me what the App Store
00:06:53 ◼ ► Apple could do whatever they want. I think it's possible that Apple will say that certain kinds
00:07:00 ◼ ► of movements are not advised and if they do that, then they would reject apps that try to do those
00:07:06 ◼ ► things. It's possible. It's possible that they won't care. We'll see. The confabulating is sort
00:07:18 ◼ ► of like videos of the headset flying off and breaking, well that's going to happen anyway.
00:07:25 ◼ ► If they were really concerned, and honestly, I don't think it saves them to reject an app that
00:07:30 ◼ ► would have helped the headset fly off and break because if Apple's headsets are flying off and
00:07:34 ◼ ► breaking, it's always going to be Apple's fault. It's always going to be Apple's fault.
00:07:38 ◼ ► Apple needs to make sure that that doesn't happen regardless because of moving things around.
00:07:48 ◼ ► I am not willing to go down the path of a hypothetical where Apple ends up in a situation
00:07:54 ◼ ► where everybody's downloading this app that is making people make motions that break the headset.
00:08:00 ◼ ► Oh no, what do we do? I don't know. That seems unlikely. I think it is possible that there will
00:08:05 ◼ ► be certain features or types of apps that Apple will say we're not comfortable with that on our
00:08:11 ◼ ► platform because they do that. I have a hard time imagining to take the other extreme that Apple's
00:08:16 ◼ ► going to say no, anything that could even a little bit raise your heart rate is not going to be
00:08:22 ◼ ► allowed on this device. I have a hard time believing that too. I don't know where it'll end
00:08:28 ◼ ► up. I think it's more likely that it will be things in the operating system that preclude this stuff.
00:08:32 ◼ ► We know that there are pure virtual environments. They want you to be still and not move around.
00:08:48 ◼ ► Well, I don't know. Probably, I would think. I'm not quite sure of a scenario where AR boxing gets
00:08:55 ◼ ► the headset thrown off of you because it's not a real boxer hitting you in the headset.
00:09:10 ◼ ► These aren't the rules. These are just the best practices. One thing that they've said is avoid
00:09:16 ◼ ► displaying motion that is overwhelming, jarring, too fast, and prioritizing comfort, helping people
00:09:23 ◼ ► stay comfortable and physically relaxed. They're focusing a lot on that kind of thing. I feel like
00:09:29 ◼ ► they're really encouraging you to maybe not move around too much, but I have yet to find
00:09:35 ◼ ► a particular rule of we will allow this but not this. Maybe, but I'm not sure. I think really they
00:09:45 ◼ ► would have to come out sooner rather than later if there are going to be no fitness applications
00:09:50 ◼ ► on this device. Even if they're not the ones to do it, people are still going to want to make them.
00:10:05 ◼ ► If your Apple, short of what you just described, a version of that, which is essentially
00:10:11 ◼ ► "don't get excited. This is a calming product. It's not meant to be exciting." Movies that raise
00:10:17 ◼ ► your heart rate will also be banned. They're not going to do that. I'm not too worried about it,
00:10:22 ◼ ► but yeah, it is definitely… They have some level of control of what goes on the device because they
00:10:27 ◼ ► control the app store. I get it. I feel like they're going to probably take a light touch with that.
00:10:33 ◼ ► Yeah, I feel like that there will be types of apps that they won't allow, right? That's just going
00:10:38 ◼ ► to be natural. But like you, I don't imagine them not allowing some kind of application because they
00:10:47 ◼ ► think that people might drop their devices or whatever. I think if they're going to try and
00:10:52 ◼ ► restrict in any way apps that require some kind of movement, it's just about non-confidence in
00:10:59 ◼ ► the technology's ability to handle that more than anything else. Exactly. Whatever imagery is going
00:11:05 ◼ ► on and moving in the AR space, they're uncomfortable with the ability of the device to keep up.
00:11:11 ◼ ► Apple is going to be streaming the first episode of Foundation for free on YouTube ahead of the
00:11:19 ◼ ► season two premiere. I'm trying to add this in as follow up for last time with the silo on Twitter,
00:11:24 ◼ ► where now Foundation is going to be free on YouTube. On YouTube. And then this is the… I
00:11:29 ◼ ► mentioned that Paramount had put the whole first season of Strange New Worlds on YouTube for a
00:11:34 ◼ ► limited time. It's the same idea. Give you a little taste, hope you get intrigued, and then
00:11:39 ◼ ► follow on, and then you get the whole first season and then season two. I'm looking forward… I think
00:11:45 ◼ ► Foundation has gotten beaten up because it's so expensive. Which, I mean, who cares, honestly,
00:11:55 ◼ ► on one level. It is… I hear people describing it like it's terrible. First off, it's beautiful.
00:12:02 ◼ ► You actually can see every dollar that they spent. It looks great. And I liked it. I didn't love it,
00:12:07 ◼ ► but like, is that the bar that if you don't absolutely love it, you should destroy it? I
00:12:12 ◼ ► don't know. I don't understand the hate for that show. I think it's actually good. Not great,
00:12:16 ◼ ► but good. And I will absolutely watch season two. So. Yeah, I've avoided it. Not like actively,
00:12:28 ◼ ► I mean, I don't think it is, actually. But it definitely has, you know, big… It has some big
00:12:35 ◼ ► sci-fi ideas in it. But as always, they're really trying to make it about the characters, right?
00:12:47 ◼ ► VisionOS apps, which is just a very funny thing that has occurred. Like, it's interesting this
00:12:52 ◼ ► year. Test flight seems much more together than normal. You know, like I know from previous years,
00:12:58 ◼ ► like developers have things they want to submit so people can test on the beta, and it's like
00:13:02 ◼ ► months into the cycle when they allow for that to occur. It started basically immediately with iOS,
00:13:08 ◼ ► and probably macOS too, that like you could submit as a developer for test flights so people could
00:13:13 ◼ ► test things. It is very funny to me the idea of people being able to submit test flights for
00:13:18 ◼ ► VisionOS apps when no one can try them. Now, my question would be, are they maybe getting ahead of
00:13:25 ◼ ► the suggested July dates for developer kits and also for allowing maybe for the developer sessions
00:13:34 ◼ ► that they're doing where people can go to Apple? Maybe if you have it in test flight, it's just an
00:13:38 ◼ ► easier way to get the app onto that hardware? Yeah, you might even be asked to provide a test
00:13:44 ◼ ► flight invitation so that your app can be on the device. Yeah. So maybe this is why they're doing
00:13:50 ◼ ► that rather than making it like a thing where they have to manage builds directly, like to and throw,
00:13:56 ◼ ► especially if they're going to be trying to scale these things up. But yeah, also if developer kits
00:14:01 ◼ ► are going to start rolling out soon, test flights needed. Yeah, and that would allow different
00:14:06 ◼ ► developers to look at different developers' apps, which is interesting too. Oh yeah, that could be
00:14:11 ◼ ► interesting, right? Like if I was a developer and you were a developer, I could give you a test
00:14:14 ◼ ► flight for my app and you could try it. That would be really great. Sure. Thank you, Mike. That's very
00:14:19 ◼ ► kind of you to say that you would share your app with me. Oh, and I want to see your app. We're
00:14:23 ◼ ► just trying to build good apps. I mean, it's just, I'm not really, okay. All right. No, you can see
00:14:28 ◼ ► it. It's fine. Oh, you got some trade secrets? Be gentle. I'm a little reluctant. I don't want to know,
00:14:33 ◼ ► I just, I don't know how good it is. I'm just down on myself as a vision OS developer right now,
00:14:38 ◼ ► but no, I want your feedback. I do. Okay. Speaking of feedback, you have some follow-out?
00:14:43 ◼ ► I do have some follow-out. A couple of things. I listened to ATP 542 last week. I had some comments
00:14:52 ◼ ► there. And of course, Monica Chen at the Verge wrote a story about like the Apple Mac Pro M2
00:14:57 ◼ ► Ultra, who is using it? They're all using laptops instead. And I just, as I was listening to,
00:15:03 ◼ ► and it's not just this episode of ATP, but it's lots of conversation about the Mac Pro. I wanted,
00:15:21 ◼ ► The Mac Pro for Apple Silicon was intended to have a quad chip M2. For whatever reason,
00:15:30 ◼ ► Mark Gurman reported on this, they couldn't make it work, or they decided not to make it work,
00:15:34 ◼ ► or they decided to kick it down the road. And so they really want, they didn't have the chip they
00:15:40 ◼ ► were going to put in it, and they really wanted to complete the Apple Silicon transition. So they put
00:15:44 ◼ ► the same chip that's in the Ultra in the Mac Pro. I don't think it says anything about the future of
00:15:49 ◼ ► the Mac Pro. I think it's a product that they didn't really choose to ship, but they felt they
00:15:53 ◼ ► needed to ship something. I would actually be very surprised if there weren't a quad chip in the M3
00:16:00 ◼ ► or M4 generation. I think that that was always the plan, is to have this be something more than
00:16:05 ◼ ► the Mac Studio. And I think that's still the plan. So I wouldn't get too caught up in the rest of it,
00:16:11 ◼ ► because I think the most important thing, based on the reporting of Mark Bloomberg, which is not
00:16:16 ◼ ► his name, Mark Gurman at Bloomberg, we've shortened it to M. Bloomberg now, according to MB,
00:16:22 ◼ ► the chip didn't go, the chip didn't work. And so they pushed, they kicked it down the road,
00:16:30 ◼ ► but they had to ship something, because they really wanted to get that Intel Mac Pro off
00:16:33 ◼ ► the price list. That's it. I feel like that answers lots of questions about why this product exists,
00:16:57 ◼ ► - I mean, a little sub note to that would be, Apple doesn't have to have every product for
00:17:05 ◼ ► every person. And if Apple decides that there are certain areas of the market that they don't
00:17:14 ◼ ► And as a critic of Apple, you can say, "I think that this sub market is important and they
00:17:20 ◼ ► shouldn't abandon it." But I have over the last, whatever, 20 years, definitely seen that happen,
00:17:26 ◼ ► where Apple just turns their back on the market. And people in the market are very upset about it,
00:17:31 ◼ ► understandably. But Apple as a company is doing pretty well, right? And a lot of these markets
00:17:37 ◼ ► are very niche markets. And it's not unreasonable from a business standpoint to look at it and say,
00:17:42 ◼ ► "I understand why they might not prioritize that." I think it's actually a good sign for the future
00:17:48 ◼ ► of Mac Pro for people who care about it, that they're still making it. And that they still
00:17:52 ◼ ► shipped it, even though, according to Sheriff Gurman, they didn't have the chip that they
00:17:59 ◼ ► were going to put in it. But I choose to believe that they actually do want to do a quad chip
00:18:08 ◼ ► M series processor, because think of all the cores and think of all the GPU cores and CPU cores and
00:18:15 ◼ ► memory and like, wow, wouldn't that be something? I think that that's probably still something that
00:18:20 ◼ ► they want to do, unless we hear reports otherwise, and that the Mac Pro is the place to put it,
00:18:26 ◼ ► but they couldn't get it there this time. And so what we end up with is something that's a compromise.
00:18:32 ◼ ► And I get that it's disappointing, but I think that the simplest... It's that Sherlock Holmes
00:18:36 ◼ ► thing. You eliminate all the other things and the simplest answer, no matter how unreasonable...
00:18:41 ◼ ► Okay, let's say Occam's Razor instead. Forget about Sherlock Holmes. It's Occam's Razor. The
00:18:44 ◼ ► simplest example is it was made for the quad chip. They didn't have it. So they shipped it with
00:18:48 ◼ ► a dual chip and shrug and move on and come back to it later. So I think that's pretty simple,
00:18:54 ◼ ► but that's my answer. It's like the short version, I think, is the real version, which is
00:18:58 ◼ ► they didn't get that chip, so they made do. I mean, I have a shorter, less charitable version.
00:19:07 ◼ ► Which I know will upset people, which is just like, the Mac Pro is not important anymore. It
00:19:11 ◼ ► just isn't. And you gotta let go. You just gotta let go. Please let go. It's true. It's the least
00:19:17 ◼ ► important Mac. And there are people out there who will argue it's the most important Mac. It's the
00:19:21 ◼ ► least important Mac. It really is. I understand the dream idea, right? I understand the idea,
00:19:28 ◼ ► but at this point, the Mac was pushed forward by the iPhone, right? So can we argue maybe the
00:19:35 ◼ ► iPhone is the most important thing, which then led to the current Apple Silicon chips that we have?
00:19:40 ◼ ► The Mac Pro is not leading anything for Apple anymore, no matter what you do to it. Everything
00:19:47 ◼ ► funnels up, not down. Yeah. And the bottom line is the Mac Pro that everybody's dreaming about
00:19:54 ◼ ► will never exist. It will never exist. Even if they do the quad version of the M series chip,
00:20:06 ◼ ► and Apple Silicon, sorry, this is becoming something, it's a TLDR with like 90 footnotes,
00:20:10 ◼ ► but all of Apple's success on the Mac recently with Apple Silicon is based on the fact that
00:20:14 ◼ ► they're using chips that evolved out of the iPhone chip. And it gets them all of that power efficiency.
00:20:20 ◼ ► It gets them power, but low battery life, low power usage, you don't have to cool it as much.
00:20:25 ◼ ► All of these things, the memory is integrated, the GPUs are integrated, all of those things
00:20:32 ◼ ► are advantages that make the Mac better than it's ever been. One of the trade-offs is that strategy
00:20:39 ◼ ► doesn't work at the extreme high end. The best you can hope for is put four of them together
00:20:45 ◼ ► interconnected. And maybe they'll do that sometime, but if that isn't enough, they're not gonna do
00:20:51 ◼ ► more than that. They're just not. There's no reason, arguably there's no reason for the Mac Pro to exist
00:20:56 ◼ ► at all, but I think the reason it still exists is because they do want to make that quad version
00:21:07 ◼ ► If they do that quad chip, would they put it in the Mac studio too? I don't think they can. I don't
00:21:13 ◼ ► think it would fit. I don't think it could be cooled. I think it's huge. I think the Mac studio
00:21:17 ◼ ► was not made for that. And that would be, again, a reason to have a giant Mac Pro case is that
00:21:23 ◼ ► it would be, yeah, I'm not convinced it would fit in there. I mean, maybe, but my initial thought
00:21:28 ◼ ► was like, it's not made for that. Second little bit of follow-up, and this is more, I should say
00:21:34 ◼ ► Monica Chin's article is fun. It's basically anecdotes, but it's good anecdotes from people.
00:21:38 ◼ ► And you will not be surprised to know that the answer to the story is basically Apple's laptops
00:21:44 ◼ ► are so good. The MacBook Pro is so good. The MacBook Pro 16 especially is so great that a lot
00:21:51 ◼ ► of the pros who used to use Mac Pros don't need to because they have a laptop that does everything
00:21:56 ◼ ► they need. And it's a laptop, so they can take it with them wherever they need to go. And that's the
00:22:01 ◼ ► true story here. Well, so you said a Mac Pro in your backpack, right? Yeah. That's what I said.
00:22:05 ◼ ► That's what it is. So yeah. Marco did a little thing about scrolling on the Vision Pro, and he
00:22:15 ◼ ► and how does that gesture feel? Because we have all gotten, I think, really used to the fact that
00:22:21 ◼ ► you're holding a device, a phone or an iPad, and you kind of scroll with your thumb idly. And on
00:22:25 ◼ ► the Vision Pro, you're not resting your thumb against a surface and scrolling it. You don't
00:22:29 ◼ ► have that gesture. Instead, you're just sitting with your hand in your lap, and you put the
00:22:35 ◼ ► finger and thumb together, and then you move to scroll. And there's this question of will that
00:22:40 ◼ ► gesture be as comfortable? And having used it, and you've used it, my thought was it probably
00:22:48 ◼ ► will be fine, but it's all down to how subtle the gesture can be detected by the cameras on the
00:22:54 ◼ ► Vision Pro. Because it's not that different if you've got your two fingers together and it's
00:22:59 ◼ ► sitting in your lap or next to you, and you're just kind of like rotating your wrist as if you're
00:23:04 ◼ ► scrolling. If it can pick up that level of subtle detail, it's not really any different from
00:23:10 ◼ ► scrolling something on an iPhone or an iPad. If you've got to make some larger physical gestures
00:23:17 ◼ ► in order to get the scrolling right, I could see how scrolling on a Vision Pro might be less
00:23:24 ◼ ► delightful than it is on an iPhone or an iPad, but I've got to think that it's a high priority
00:23:33 ◼ ► I would think that they might even have some sort of other shortcut that lets you scroll or page
00:23:39 ◼ ► down. But I think that they're going to be able to solve it just in watching your hand making a
00:23:45 ◼ ► fairly subtle gesture. And I don't think that there's a... John went on ATP, went on a whole
00:23:52 ◼ ► level of the chain of complexity of like, "Oh, and then if it's too big and too small and you can't..."
00:23:57 ◼ ► And I honestly, I love John, but I think he's overthinking it. We scroll on a track pad in a
00:24:02 ◼ ► very small space and it works just fine. And if they can get that same kind of gesture to work
00:24:07 ◼ ► with your hand that's in your lap or next to you, it'll be fine. So my impression was that it worked
00:24:14 ◼ ► okay. And that the only question is if you try to do something subtle and it just can't pick that up
00:24:21 ◼ ► because for whatever reason, the camera just can't detect that level of subtlety and turn it into a
00:24:31 ◼ ► The jury is out for me on the comfortability of that gesture, but realistically, if I'm going to
00:24:37 ◼ ► be scrolling on web pages, I'm probably not going to be doing that anyway. You're maybe more likely
00:24:42 ◼ ► to do it with a track pad at my desk or something than to just scroll, scroll, scroll. I would say
00:24:48 ◼ ► that the subtlety is maybe not as important because the windows are so large. That a small
00:24:58 ◼ ► That this idea of if I want to move a little bit, I think that it's not going to be a tiny movement
00:25:08 ◼ ► Right. But if you want to do a precision movement, that might be a different kind of gesture too,
00:25:11 ◼ ► where you're making a very precise movement to move it just a little tiny bit versus just sort
00:25:19 ◼ ► Right. Yeah. We'll see. We'll see. I'm not worried about the subtlety of it. All I'm worried about
00:25:32 ◼ ► Over time too, right? Because you end up, we've all ended up with, I think, a natural hand position
00:25:37 ◼ ► for scrolling on an iPhone or an iPad that you can get in a very comfortable position where all
00:25:42 ◼ ► you're really doing is just sort of like moving that thumb or whatever and scrolling. And when
00:25:48 ◼ ► you don't have that device in your hand and it's just your hand all by itself, can you get it in a
00:25:54 ◼ ► position ergonomically that allows you to very gently scroll through content without having it
00:26:02 ◼ ► be that you're holding your arm out or up or whatever, right? That's the question. And we only
00:26:07 ◼ ► had half an hour with it. I would certainly hope that everybody at Apple has been spending years
00:26:12 ◼ ► already thinking about this and thinking about getting that, nailing that good ergonomic gesture
00:26:23 ◼ ► bit more of an arm movement, right? Like in general. And so I just wonder what that comfort
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00:28:15 ◼ ► of Relay FM. That is expressvpn.com/upgrade. Room around uptime. E-ha. Got a couple of things from
00:28:25 ◼ ► Mark Bloomberg. No, no, it's just, he just goes by MB now. Sheriff MB. Sheriff MB had a report.
00:28:40 ◼ ► Mr. Gorman had a report last week on how Apple is going to be managing the purchasing experience
00:28:46 ◼ ► for the Vision Pro. Many of these things are stuff we would have assumed to be the case,
00:28:50 ◼ ► but Mark says he's spoken to sources. I'm assuming inside of Apple retail, we've been able to confirm
00:28:56 ◼ ► some of this to him. Apple is planning to sell the device in all of their stores, but some select
00:29:03 ◼ ► stores will get special areas created to handle the fitting process and appointments will be
00:29:08 ◼ ► required for this. This is all very reminiscent of the Apple Watch as you remember. You could,
00:29:13 ◼ ► I think, get an Apple Watch from basically any Apple store, but if you wanted to go and try it
00:29:18 ◼ ► on, you had to book appointments and at first appointments were limited to, I think, their
00:29:23 ◼ ► bigger stores or their flagship stores, places where they maybe thought they would sell more
00:29:28 ◼ ► or places where they had the space to dedicate a corner of the store to let you try on Apple
00:29:34 ◼ ► Watches. There will be very limited number of demo units where there are demo units because there are
00:29:39 ◼ ► going to be so few Vision Pros sold. You know, it's like every Vision Pro that is a demo unit
00:29:46 ◼ ► is three and a half thousand dollars Apple is not making, right? So they are going to be selling as
00:29:52 ◼ ► many of these as they can. Online sales are still going to be a thing and there'll be some kind of
00:29:58 ◼ ► face scanning feature probably I reckon in the Apple Store app. This is what me and you
00:30:09 ◼ ► Marc is saying that international rollout is likely to not occur until the end of 2024,
00:30:16 ◼ ► starting in Canada and the UK. Tough times for me. Marc appears to indicate in his report that Apple
00:30:26 ◼ ► stores will actually be carrying prescription lens options that you'll be able to buy from them.
00:30:36 ◼ ► thousands of them in order to keep the stock if they're going to do it that way. But I get why
00:30:48 ◼ ► They don't want you going to their vision partner and having a crappy experience, right?
00:30:54 ◼ ► They want you to be able to, you've gotten the experience that they want for this whole thing.
00:31:02 ◼ ► And I wonder what they will do to make that happen legally in terms of, I don't know exactly what is
00:31:07 ◼ ► required. If they will have a machine or if they'll have you bring a prescription with you, or if they
00:31:12 ◼ ► have like registered opticians on call so that they can, you know, look at your results, you know,
00:31:19 ◼ ► from some remote location, look at your results and approve it and put it through whatever they
00:31:23 ◼ ► have to do to go through that. I'll also point out, we are a very long way from these things
00:31:28 ◼ ► being sold. So while this is the report of what they're planning right now, things can change,
00:31:33 ◼ ► right? I mean, the product is still in development, so it's possible that they will get down the road
00:31:37 ◼ ► here and they got to start working on it, right? Because it's going to happen. But they've, they
00:31:46 ◼ ► And it's probably going to change a ton, right? Like they might be like, oh, actually we can't
00:31:52 ◼ ► do the prescription lenses or, oh, you know what? We're going to do this. We're going to do that.
00:32:02 ◼ ► Yeah. Well, like in the, in the short term, I mean, that's one of the interesting things about this
00:32:10 ◼ ► like, are they really going to want to drive people into Apple stores? How many stores will
00:32:14 ◼ ► that be? How confident? I think their level of confidence about the quality of the online
00:32:18 ◼ ► ordering system will go a long way here, right? Because if they think that the online ordering
00:32:23 ◼ ► system is not going to be a great experience, they're going to try to push people into stores.
00:32:27 ◼ ► If they think it's good enough, they'll probably only have limited supply in stores and they'll
00:32:33 ◼ ► And also if they don't have enough at them, they may not have them available in all 200 or
00:32:40 ◼ ► Certainly. I think that that's part of the story is depending on the amount that they've got,
00:32:46 ◼ ► one way you can gate that and control that is just have it available in a few stores and then
00:32:53 ◼ ► everything else is online. The only challenge there is you got to be confident that your
00:32:56 ◼ ► online ordering process will be good enough. And if it's not, and you really need to get it fit
00:33:00 ◼ ► in the store, then, you know, they're going to have to make that decision. But it is a weird
00:33:05 ◼ ► thing because they're going to be so limited that they, you know, not everybody who wants one of
00:33:11 ◼ ► these, even if you think that not very many people are going to want them, the number of people who
00:33:15 ◼ ► are going to want them is going to outnumber the number they can make. So they're going to have
00:33:23 ◼ ► Mark Herman has also reported that Apple is indeed testing a 32-inch iMac. It's a story that will
00:33:29 ◼ ► Yeah. And he says it's around 32 inches. So, you know, maybe it's 31.9, 32.3, who knows,
00:33:36 ◼ ► but around 32. So that's the idea. Very interesting. You know, what is that and who wants
00:33:43 ◼ ► that? And, you know, it's a story that goes back to the, you know, original iMac and even before
00:33:51 ◼ ► the idea of an all-in-one Mac. The downside of it is that the display is made with the computer
00:33:57 ◼ ► and the display will not age as quickly as the computer does. So there's always this concern
00:34:03 ◼ ► that it's, you know, the iMacs are potentially wasteful because you're sort of wasting the
00:34:09 ◼ ► display. It would have a longer life without the computer attached to it. And they've got a Mac
00:34:13 ◼ ► Mini and a Mac Studio. But what we know from when Apple does revise the iMac is that people
00:34:19 ◼ ► like iMacs. They do. And they must think that there's a market for this. I think it's really
00:34:29 ◼ ► I still think whatever this computer is, it's also tied to a display that they're going to make.
00:34:35 ◼ ► That would be my feeling on this. So if they have a 32-inch iMac, there'll be some kind of
00:35:00 ◼ ► The public beta, yeah. Almost certainly. Unless there's a late... It's funny because the public
00:35:06 ◼ ► beta thing is really, you know, Apple releases a beta that they think will be the public
00:35:14 ◼ ► Could it? Is it? And my experience in the past has been very much like they wait and watch
00:35:19 ◼ ► and you get to that point where they're like... Sometimes they're like, "Oh, it's okay." And
00:35:23 ◼ ► they roll it out. And other times they go, "Mmm, there's something in there we don't like."
00:35:28 ◼ ► And they do another build. And sometimes that's another beta build that is developer and then
00:35:33 ◼ ► public. And sometimes it's just that the public beta comes out and it's a slightly different
00:35:42 ◼ ► like we're... Historically, we're very close to when they usually release a public beta.
00:35:47 ◼ ► So beta 3, I think, is the odds on favorite to be, if not the public beta, close to the
00:35:58 ◼ ► I am now on everything. I am. I have iPad, iPhone, Watch, and Mac are all on the betas.
00:36:28 ◼ ► this and to talk to you. And then separately, sitting in front of my monitor, it's in a
00:36:38 ◼ ► can write about it. Bottom line, I have people say to me, "You should really install it
00:37:02 ◼ ► Yeah, exactly. I have a system that is running release software that I can use. It's just
00:37:15 ◼ ► iPad too. So if something catastrophic happened, I could pull back to that. But for the Mac,
00:37:21 ◼ ► it's the most important thing. And my MacBook Air is solid. It's just staying on Ventura.
00:37:39 ◼ ► Steven put it on and he was complaining about battery life on his phone. And I don't really
00:38:09 ◼ ► it. I'll put it that way. The worst problem I had was I had a bug where music would crash
00:38:15 ◼ ► sometimes. So I ended up, I think it was music would crash, especially if I was attached
00:38:20 ◼ ► to a Bluetooth device. But I could play music by using the music app on my watch. It would
00:38:28 ◼ ► work. It was something in the UI, but only some of the time. That's like about the worst
00:38:33 ◼ ► thing that I've run into so far. But I mean, what are you getting out of it? You're going
00:38:42 ◼ ► So I'll tell you the things that I'm intrigued about. There are a bunch of widgets that I
00:38:46 ◼ ► want to try. So from Apple's widgets and also third-party widgets that have interactivity
00:38:51 ◼ ► in them. I'm really keen to see what the autocorrect is all about and to understand what that
00:39:04 ◼ ► Well, some of the messages features aren't there yet. And the interactive, well, I have
00:39:20 ◼ ► been able to do. And what was the other thing? There's, it's not all there is what I'm saying.
00:39:54 ◼ ► Uh, all right. I'm going to do it right now. I'm going to do it right now. I, I've actually,
00:40:10 ◼ ► You're doing it live. Well, good luck. Anyway, anybody else there who doesn't want to be
00:40:15 ◼ ► on the developer list, uh, hopefully there'll be public beta soon and you can try it out
00:40:22 ◼ ► If I do it, I always go do a public beta. I just, if I'm going to do it, I might as well
00:40:28 ◼ ► Yeah. It's like, don't just dip your toe in, go all the way or, you know, I'll don't do
00:40:33 ◼ ► Nothing worse than running a beta that you know, there's already a new beta and you don't
00:40:37 ◼ ► Exactly. Okay. Well, what's the point of doing it? That's how I feel. I'm not recommending
00:40:40 ◼ ► other people for me. It's like, if I'm going to do it, I want to be like on the edge. Otherwise,
00:40:59 ◼ ► it can be hard to know where to get started. That's why I'm so happy to let you know that
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00:43:06 ◼ ► Do you know what's super fun in the summer? In fact, something that is more fun than anything
00:43:14 ◼ ► else? What? A new social network. That's fun, right? Let's have a new social network. Summer of
00:43:28 ◼ ► Since the last episode, we have gone from there being no Facebook Twitter competitor to there
00:43:35 ◼ ► being one. And oh boy is there one. I think yesterday, 100 million users have signed up
00:43:43 ◼ ► for threads by meta which is quite an achievement. I think it's the fastest app to ever get there. I
00:43:51 ◼ ► mean obviously it makes sense right? Like if anyone's going to do it, go to the place that
00:43:56 ◼ ► has the largest networks and spiral something off. What is your initial impressions here? You've
00:44:02 ◼ ► signed up? Yeah, I mean this is the thing is that there's like more than a billion Instagram
00:44:08 ◼ ► users. And you just say I'm in Instagram. In fact, I think it even knows. It's like you're already
00:44:14 ◼ ► on Instagram. So are you here too? And you go yep. And it goes all right. Very easy. It's the only
00:44:19 ◼ ► way to sign up right now. You have to have an Instagram account. That's the way to do it right
00:44:23 ◼ ► now. Yeah so you know it is I don't know. I hate that it only has an iPhone app and that there's
00:44:29 ◼ ► no web version. I mean I would like a Mac app obviously. And if they do end up federating with
00:44:35 ◼ ► Mastodon, it won't matter. But right now the only way to look at it is to be logged in and they only
00:44:43 ◼ ► have an iPhone app. And my iPhone as people here know my iPhone is my third most important Apple
00:44:49 ◼ ► device. Maybe fourth depending. It's just you know and so I'll read it sometimes on my iPad but then
00:44:57 ◼ ► it's in stupid iPhone compatibility mode. This is not great. And so like Blue Sky, I don't love Blue
00:45:03 ◼ ► Sky's app. Blue Sky's app is also an iPhone only app. But Blue Sky has a website that you can log
00:45:08 ◼ ► into and use. For those who don't know it's staging. Right staging.bsky.app. Oh geez. And
00:45:17 ◼ ► it works. Sounds like you're supposed to be able to use that. Definitely. That is their website.
00:45:24 ◼ ► So that I don't like because the truth is that I check into social media on my Mac because I work
00:45:29 ◼ ► on my Mac all day. And so for me I hate that there's only the iPhone app and then you know
00:45:35 ◼ ► of course you can't use an iPhone only app on a Mac. Anyway so I don't love that. I don't love
00:45:44 ◼ ► look they launched they obviously launched it fast because they sensed an opportunity when Twitter was
00:45:48 ◼ ► having all of its problems last weekend right. So there's a lot of missing features that I'm
00:45:57 ◼ ► supporting federations so that you can follow accounts on threads from Mastodon and vice versa.
00:46:03 ◼ ► It doesn't let you control reposts you know retweets which I posted about this in fact.
00:46:18 ◼ ► who are compulsive reposters retweeters whatever you want to call it. And I end up seeing in my
00:46:25 ◼ ► timeline a bazillion things that I don't care about that are being boosted by this person.
00:46:31 ◼ ► And all I really care about is what they have to say. There are other people who will judiciously
00:46:36 ◼ ► repost things and it doesn't bother me. But some people I care about them but I don't care about
00:46:42 ◼ ► the stuff that they think they should pass on. And you know on some services you can say I don't want
00:46:49 ◼ ► to see their reposts. I only want to see their posts. And threads doesn't do that yet and it is
00:46:55 ◼ ► a killer because I had to just unfollow people. It's just like I can't I can't even right. So
00:47:01 ◼ ► that that's an issue. But you know and I you know everybody's talking about how but it's meta and
00:47:07 ◼ ► meta is a bad company. It's like yeah they are. I mean yeah. However I'll point out that lots of
00:47:13 ◼ ► people use Instagram who think meta is bad but they use Instagram because they like Instagram.
00:47:17 ◼ ► And also there were some posts that were again misinterpreted I think willfully by people from
00:47:25 ◼ ► the guy who's in charge of Instagram who basically they said oh because I think he said something
00:47:32 ◼ ► like we're not gonna chase like news traffic. Yeah like we're not gonna optimize for news traffic.
00:47:40 ◼ ► And he actually said something like because Facebook has made meta has made mistakes in
00:47:46 ◼ ► the past about dealing with news. It's like no kidding but yeah good good that they're aware
00:47:51 ◼ ► of it. And they're like we're not saying you can't post news which people were saying that they were
00:47:54 ◼ ► saying. That's not what they were saying. They were saying we're not gonna optimize our service
00:48:00 ◼ ► to boost news and to promote news and to make it like we're not gonna do that because we did that
00:48:07 ◼ ► in the past and it was a bad idea. That's great. Mike Hurley says that's great because the worst
00:48:13 ◼ ► thing about Twitter is it was all news all the time whether you wanted it or not. Yeah and like
00:48:18 ◼ ► it was too much not everybody wants that. Which I will also say and this is a little bit like me
00:48:24 ◼ ► saying like not Apple doesn't have to make a Mac to serve every audience. We are entering an era
00:48:30 ◼ ► if we have entered an era not every social media product needs to serve every vertical of everything
00:48:40 ◼ ► like we are entering an era. I feel like what what meta is saying with threads what Instagram is
00:48:45 ◼ ► saying with threads is essentially you know there'll be new stuff on it but we're not focused on
00:48:50 ◼ ► making it a news thing and maybe where we end up is that's what is remaining of Twitter is it's
00:48:56 ◼ ► much more newsy and news source because Twitter cares about it and threads doesn't care about it
00:49:10 ◼ ► really invest in a lot of news algorithms for it's like no it's okay. I think there are a million
00:49:18 ◼ ► things for this obviously meta as a company has a not great relationship with news organizations
00:49:24 ◼ ► for many reasons in both directions right like news organizations don't like meta meta doesn't
00:49:29 ◼ ► like news organizations governments don't like when meta deals with news they make them pay right
00:49:35 ◼ ► like it's like a whole thing. Why would you why would you even go down that route and I would
00:49:40 ◼ ► argue even though yes meta is the owner of Instagram Instagram is you know Instagram has
00:49:48 ◼ ► its own sensibility it is ultimately the same company but it does have its own sensibility
00:49:52 ◼ ► that Facebook doesn't have and I think threads is coming because like there's a reason it's attached
00:49:57 ◼ ► to Instagram it's not attached to Facebook they want it to be kind of a child product from
00:50:03 ◼ ► Instagram I think it brings that approach which is a little bit of a different approach now also
00:50:08 ◼ ► I saw a lot of people complaining about the fact that it has an algorithmic timeline. Masari has
00:50:13 ◼ ► said that they they absolutely want to have both kinds of timelines but again they launch with one
00:50:19 ◼ ► but what I did learn is the same lesson I learned on Instagram and I hate it but this is the lesson
00:50:26 ◼ ► you learn on Instagram which is if you if you haven't read all the posts that you currently have
00:50:34 ◼ ► don't reload because the act of reloading tells it that you want to see something new and that's
00:50:41 ◼ ► for me on threads that's when my list goes from being mostly people I follow to being random crap
00:50:48 ◼ ► it's their fault but it's their fault because they built it this way but but when you hit that
00:50:55 ◼ ► reload thing if at the top if you pull to refresh what you're telling it is I'm done with this
00:51:02 ◼ ► timeline give me a whole new timeline and that's gonna be an algorithmic nonsense generator right
00:51:08 ◼ ► like but if you're very careful with like don't don't do it just very gently scroll down don't
00:51:15 ◼ ► reload I think that the timeline is okay but yeah obviously there should be there should be a
00:51:24 ◼ ► non-algorithmic timeline option as well and they've said that they will do it so like I don't know I
00:51:30 ◼ ► mean on one on one level I think it's okay that this product exists because if you're if you're
00:51:35 ◼ ► an idealist and you're like well these are both run by and you know blue sky too is kind of
00:51:41 ◼ ► problematic like okay mastodon is for me it's like okay like that's fine a lot of my people are on
00:51:46 ◼ ► mastodon I find mastodon the most fulfilling of all of the social media sites that are out there
00:51:51 ◼ ► right now but if you're a twitter person who's getting increasingly unhappy with how unstable and
00:51:57 ◼ ► weird twitter is getting I think we it's gotten to the point in my opinion where jumping from twitter
00:52:05 ◼ ► to instagram while choosing between the lesser of two evils let's be clear I think it's the lesser
00:52:12 ◼ ► of two evils so okay I mean it's it's it's fine I I don't know I I don't want to keep up with
00:52:21 ◼ ► multiple social media timelines I hate it I'm really hoping that we get to the point where
00:52:27 ◼ ► I can see people who are on threads from ivory and there's a there's that blue sky thing that
00:52:36 ◼ ► sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't but it's a blue sky bridge for for for mastodon for
00:52:42 ◼ ► the fetaverse I would love that I hate the blue sky which is kind of interesting just decided
00:52:48 ◼ ► they're gonna do their own thing and be in their own silo and I I wonder if if the reds goes really
00:52:53 ◼ ► well if they're gonna have to like backtrack on I think blue sky's over like I know that's gonna
00:52:59 ◼ ► upset but blue sky's done like there's only space for one right like there really is I think I think
00:53:05 ◼ ► you're probably right I think most people are not going to check five timelines right and so unless
00:53:10 ◼ ► blue sky has carved out a niche that works for for a particular audience right like I think it's okay
00:53:17 ◼ ► if mastodon look if threads became dominant twitter faded away blue sky faded away all the others
00:53:22 ◼ ► faded away and mastodon remained where all my tech people are I'd be okay with that right like I
00:53:28 ◼ ► think that would be fine but um but yeah it's it's this is meta going for the jugular right that's
00:53:35 ◼ ► what this is this is I'm gonna launch this thing so fast yeah it feels so satisfying to me don't
00:53:42 ◼ ► forget that instagram built its social graph on twitter right you linked your twitter account it
00:53:46 ◼ ► pulled over all your follows and now they've they years passed they cut off they cut them off very
00:53:52 ◼ ► quickly because they realized what was happening and now they are just taking the instagram social
00:53:56 ◼ ► graph and turning it into a new twitter yeah it's yeah yeah I'm very excited about threads like I
00:54:04 ◼ ► love instagram it's my favorite social network and has been for a long time uh I like the vibes of
00:54:11 ◼ ► instagram and I'm hoping that those vibes will be able to carry over to to a text-based social
00:54:16 ◼ ► network it's not going to be perfect but I'm hoping it will be less like twitter to be honest
00:54:22 ◼ ► like I I I have like that mastodon doesn't feel like twitter to me either and I think that all
00:54:27 ◼ ► of that's good right um I am excited about the possibility of the um like them supporting
00:54:35 ◼ ► activity pub and maybe that means that we can have some different experiences and still read
00:54:39 ◼ ► all the timelines that we want to read and like I know there's a lot of conjecture about all of
00:54:43 ◼ ► about all of this stuff I'm just choosing to believe what they're saying because they're saying
00:54:48 ◼ ► it so I will just believe it unless it changes right like there's a lot of people like oh you
00:54:53 ◼ ► can't trust them they're not gonna do it but they're saying they're gonna do it so if they're
00:54:56 ◼ ► telling you they're gonna do it just believe them and if they don't do it then you can say ah
00:55:00 ◼ ► you lied right like let's do a great interview on a podcast that I like called hard fork which is
00:55:06 ◼ ► kevin roose and casey newton the platformer they had um the mausi area on the show and he was
00:55:11 ◼ ► talking very earnestly about why they want to support activity pub now I think the fact that
00:55:16 ◼ ► they've got 100 million users in four days is going to make this significantly more complicated
00:55:21 ◼ ► but I don't think that that's changed their plan personally it saves them a lot right this is the
00:55:25 ◼ ► brilliant thing and this is what he said in that interview is it's different if you own everything
00:55:32 ◼ ► versus if you you have these release valves yeah so they can say like if you don't like our policies
00:55:40 ◼ ► about whatever it's fine you can go somewhere else and it's all interconnected and like that's the
00:55:50 ◼ ► part that I think people miss when they're like oh they're never gonna do it okay maybe maybe they're
00:55:54 ◼ ► lying or whatever but I think what what they're trying to do is find a way to make the fact that
00:56:00 ◼ ► they're federated with other social services serve them not that they're trying to take them over
00:56:06 ◼ ► but because it it means they don't have to control the entire it's also and then I have 100 million
00:56:12 ◼ ► users they know probably 99 million will say using the threads app and they have like a million
00:56:18 ◼ ► people that they might use threads in a federated app or whatever but then what it does is it allows
00:56:24 ◼ ► them with legislators to say hey we're open I don't know what you're talking about right like
00:56:29 ◼ ► and there's nothing but benefit for them exactly we're we're using open standards it doesn't people
00:56:35 ◼ ► don't have to be here yeah no we've this is one of those areas it's funny because on downstream
00:56:40 ◼ ► Julia and I talk about how the whole streaming era flipped from everything has to be on our
00:56:45 ◼ ► service that we own to being like oh no no no let's sell our stuff to other people and for
00:56:49 ◼ ► money because we also like money that's a little bit of what I think is going on here which is
00:56:55 ◼ ► these monolithic standardized services where it's like you can only be in our app you can only be on
00:57:00 ◼ ► our website there are advantages to that in terms of your power and control there are also
00:57:05 ◼ ► disadvantages to that and I feel like I almost feel like threads is a good example of meta
00:57:10 ◼ ► showing that it has learned about learned from all the things it did that burned that burned it
00:57:18 ◼ ► or at least some of the things that it did that burned it and trying to do this in a different way
00:57:24 ◼ ► in order to and and sure I mean from their perspective yeah in the end they're going to
00:57:28 ◼ ► want to make money on ads and they're gonna and you know I get that it's meta and ads and data
00:57:34 ◼ ► and things like that but I think they yeah they're going to approach this from a standpoint of like
00:57:40 ◼ ► we actually don't want this to be a completely monolithic thing because it I mean you talk about
00:57:47 ◼ ► like being criticized if you I was saying this about the app store a while ago that one of the
00:57:53 ◼ ► advantages of if sideloading becomes a thing on iOS is it actually makes Apple running the app
00:58:01 ◼ ► store a lot easier for Apple because right now an app store rejection is the kiss of death for that
00:58:06 ◼ ► code it literally can't go anywhere else but if they have a sideloading option Apple can just say
00:58:13 ◼ ► well you know we don't want it but you can just just sell it yourself we don't care we're not
00:58:19 ◼ ► going to put in our store but it's okay we're not destroying your product we're just saying
00:58:23 ◼ ► it doesn't fit in our retail store essentially and there's a little bit of that with the Fediverse
00:58:28 ◼ ► right there's a little bit of that saying look we're not the only game in town we're the biggest
00:58:34 ◼ ► game but we're not the only game in town we interoperate if you don't like what we're doing
00:58:39 ◼ ► but you still want to follow this news service that is on our platform you can follow it from
00:58:44 ◼ ► somewhere else it's fine and and and they're like they're okay with the level of like not controlling
00:58:50 ◼ ► everything because it gets them some other benefits in saying we're not the whole thing
00:58:56 ◼ ► we're just a big player I think whether it's true or not threads is like part of a facebook's trying
00:59:03 ◼ ► to adapt its public image you know like they've done all the things that they've done they've
00:59:09 ◼ ► taken the beatings that they've taken you know both in the press or for whatever it might be
00:59:16 ◼ ► and they've set a new landscape for themselves that they now have to try and fit within like
00:59:21 ◼ ► look at the you know the fact this thing can't launch in Europe because they're saying they need
00:59:24 ◼ ► to do a bunch of work to make that happen like they're deciding it seems like to not just charge
00:59:28 ◼ ► in right right and I think that people have in general I think people have good vibes about this
00:59:36 ◼ ► and bad vibes about their competitors like more bad vibes right about Twitter than this
00:59:43 ◼ ► and I think that they are taking this as an opportunity to be like hey people like us right
00:59:48 ◼ ► now why don't we try and just like carry on going down that route you know like and so I'd be
00:59:55 ◼ ► intrigued to see how this ends up turning out as a long time big proponent fan of Instagram I am
01:00:02 ◼ ► happy that this thing exists it makes sense for me personally it makes sense for my businesses I
01:00:08 ◼ ► think to like look at this as like you know you have this it's kind of like one network of two
01:00:13 ◼ ► sides which I think is really cool right that like you have a lot of Instagram followers you might
01:00:18 ◼ ► then get more threads followers and like vice versa and then it's like one handle and it's like
01:00:23 ◼ ► these both places I think just makes sense to me and I actually really like that it's its own thing
01:00:28 ◼ ► but there's still that link there so people can choose to get one or the other or both if they
01:00:33 ◼ ► want to like I think that this is cool I'm excited about it and I'm it also feels fun to see this
01:00:41 ◼ ► thing growing and evolving in front of our eyes like they did kind of launch it in a half-baked
01:00:47 ◼ ► state and now we're going to get to see how they adapt it I think this I think this is fun and I'm
01:00:52 ◼ ► happy that it exists because there are a lot of people who I followed on Twitter that were never
01:00:58 ◼ ► coming to Mastodon but they're on they're on threads and they're posting on threads and I'm
01:01:02 ◼ ► that makes me happy because there are people that I want that content from I want to see them
01:01:07 ◼ ► and I have missed them for months now and now they're back in my life again and I think that's
01:01:12 ◼ ► fun this episode is supported by Upgrade Plus and the people that support us with Upgrade Plus if
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01:01:42 ◼ ► and every week I will say last week's Upgrade Plus we mentioned it earlier on was a classic I it was
01:01:49 ◼ ► so fantastic Jason surprised me by giving me the US citizenship test it was brilliant I if you if
01:01:58 ◼ ► you've been maybe wanting to try like hey what can this be like sometimes this is a really good
01:02:04 ◼ ► episode to try Upgrade Plus on you can if you want to go try it go try it's five dollars right you
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01:02:18 ◼ ► could get more content no ads and support the show it is time for Ask Upgrade we have questions from
01:02:30 ◼ ► Upgradients as we always do starts with Jorgen who asks with the iPhone 15 switching to USB-C
01:02:38 ◼ ► according to the rumors what do you think would happen to the SE will that simply see no change
01:02:43 ◼ ► into a new model is perhaps released sometime in the future yeah I think that's it if you're
01:02:50 ◼ ► worried about like EU regulations they're for new phones not for existing models so existing models
01:02:56 ◼ ► will be untouched and the SE will be untouched and I expect that they'll probably update the SE
01:03:02 ◼ ► to USB-C the next time they update it yeah because I think this is something that people are going to
01:03:06 ◼ ► miss right like it's new phones and the SE is not a new phone and so it can just consist out there
01:03:12 ◼ ► it can just exist out there in the ether Apple will probably want to change it sure sure but
01:03:18 ◼ ► the yeah so the old phones because Apple still sells old phones they'll still be there yeah with
01:03:22 ◼ ► lightning but the new phones will have USB-C and the SE I assume will come along otherwise they
01:03:28 ◼ ► wouldn't be able to sell in Europe after they update it Brianna asks I don't have a Mac but
01:03:34 ◼ ► I've been thinking about getting one for a couple of years I've been watching the refurbished market
01:03:38 ◼ ► on Apple's website and the price range of my ideal setup would be around three thousand dollars
01:03:42 ◼ ► I'm in Canada but I wondered if you could see the vision pro replacing your max completely
01:03:49 ◼ ► or at least personal usage I think Brianna's trying to gauge from us as to whether they should
01:03:54 ◼ ► wait or not I can't see the vision pro replacing my max completely at all because the Mac is a key
01:04:02 ◼ ► part of my workflow and you have to it doesn't run Mac software you can screen share a Mac on it but
01:04:08 ◼ ► you have to have a Mac so could could the vision pro replace the Mac completely for somebody like
01:04:14 ◼ ► us down the road maybe eventually but no time soon I don't know if it could do it like because
01:04:25 ◼ ► there's just going to be types of apps that I don't expect to exist right like yeah audio hijack is
01:04:34 ◼ ► I don't imagine it existing on the vision pro who knows maybe honestly maybe vision os is the thing
01:04:41 ◼ ► that makes them fully like unlock the power of ios right like maybe this is the one but I'd I don't
01:04:48 ◼ ► I don't feel it right now in a way that I think I could tell you yes honestly I think the more
01:04:54 ◼ ► likely scenario is that in a version or two the vision pro will just run a vm of mac os and you
01:05:00 ◼ ► won't need the the physical computer to screen share it'll just run it in a virtual machine
01:05:13 ◼ ► likely scenario is that I because I do think the rest of the apps will be locked down but you could
01:05:19 ◼ ► potentially do that but it's going to be years it's going to be years yeah it's just you know
01:05:23 ◼ ► it's just not if you could do all of your work on an iphone and an ipad you could probably do it on
01:05:29 ◼ ► this but I've tried that and I can't really do it and so I think this is going to be a nice
01:05:35 ◼ ► companion to the mac potentially but it's going to be a long time before you can just say I'm not
01:05:40 ◼ ► going to spend on a mac I'm just going to get a vision pro instead it's going to be a while
01:05:44 ◼ ► yeah I don't it makes me sad but I don't envision it you know I I will replace I could replace a lot
01:05:52 ◼ ► of my work like similar to what I did for many years with the ipad right like there's a bunch
01:05:57 ◼ ► of things I could do on here it would be very comfortable and nice to do I'm sure there will
01:06:01 ◼ ► be a bunch of experiences which will be even better than any other device that I have right
01:06:05 ◼ ► I'm very convinced of that and so I will maybe prefer to use my vision pro over those but it
01:06:11 ◼ ► couldn't be a whole replacement like Brianna if you're saying like I have a pc and I want another
01:06:16 ◼ ► pc but I maybe want it to be a mac now instead of windows yeah that's probably what you should go
01:06:20 ◼ ► for I don't think that you would be able to replace maybe like a windows laptop or a linux
01:06:25 ◼ ► laptop that you have with the vision pro and be satisfied completely by the way refurbished
01:06:32 ◼ ► macs are a great way to get a deal on a mac and I have bought multiple refurbished macs over the
01:06:36 ◼ ► years and they're good because you get the whole warranty and everything and really generally what
01:06:41 ◼ ► it is is somebody bought a mac and then returned it because they decided they didn't want it and
01:06:45 ◼ ► they might not have even powered it on or if they did they you know they plug it they're they're
01:06:49 ◼ ► generally very safe and apple supports them so if something is bad about them they'll just replace it
01:06:54 ◼ ► yeah so I definitely recommend looking for refurbished um macs and other apple products
01:07:00 ◼ ► on apple's website yeah it's like it's like all these things it's not going to be the best deal
01:07:03 ◼ ► you can get but you'll be taken care of there's a problem right hank asks when is apple going to
01:07:09 ◼ ► make apple silicon chips that do not prioritize energy efficiency power power is not as important
01:07:15 ◼ ► for desktop users and could this push the graphics performance beyond what is capable from dedicated
01:07:29 ◼ ► philosophically is what apple's chip organization is all about and what are okay what's the most
01:07:36 ◼ ► important product apple sells it's the iphone power is always going to be prioritized there
01:07:40 ◼ ► because of battery life what's the next important product apple makes I don't know maybe it's the
01:07:45 ◼ ► mac maybe it's the ipad but uh what mac model is it well somewhere two thirds to three quarters
01:07:52 ◼ ► probably three quarters of all macs sold are laptops what matters there yeah battery life
01:07:57 ◼ ► matters power to energy um it matters the ipad it matters the apple watch it matters the only place
01:08:05 ◼ ► that it doesn't matter is in this thin sliver of max that are plugged in all the time uh the and
01:08:13 ◼ ► so you're talking about a fraction of a fraction of apple's business it's never going to be a
01:08:18 ◼ ► priority which doesn't mean that they won't try to do things they have already tried to do things to
01:08:23 ◼ ► make good higher end mac models but they are happy to use the power per watt you know standard that
01:08:33 ◼ ► they've been building toward because it does end up making great laptops and other powerful
01:08:38 ◼ ► computers and as long as they can do that they're they're not going to change their philosophy
01:08:42 ◼ ► just to serve certain um tiny portions of the market i just you know it will take a very
01:08:49 ◼ ► different environment for apple's chip design group and apple's shape of apple's business
01:08:56 ◼ ► for them to um stop doing what they're doing it's priorities man that's just all it is right and
01:09:04 ◼ ► like apple's priorities of the chips that rely on batteries yeah you're not going to believe this
01:09:11 ◼ ► in amid all the mac pro discourse but let me tell you mac os not having enough gpu performance
01:09:18 ◼ ► is not an issue anyone to a small degree of error cares about it's just not in fact when you talk
01:09:26 ◼ ► to apple execs like at the talk show they were talking about this at wwc when gruber was
01:09:31 ◼ ► interviewing apple executives like they're much more interested in the fact that their whole
01:09:36 ◼ ► mac line now has a decent has decent gpu's in them so that you can play games even on uh on an m1
01:09:41 ◼ ► macbook air you can play games and the graphics performance is vastly better than back in the day
01:09:46 ◼ ► when the only max that could play games at all were high-end pro max that's not true anymore
01:09:52 ◼ ► that's what they care about and if you're if you're thinking about how can they push it super
01:09:57 ◼ ► high at the high end i don't think they care and i honestly from a business perspective i don't
01:10:06 ◼ ► think they should i think they got it right and i know there are follow-on effects from that and it
01:10:11 ◼ ► makes people in certain areas grumpy but like this is this is how they got here and this is how they
01:10:17 ◼ ► remain here is following this approach so unless something dramatic happens that requires them to
01:10:23 ◼ ► change their approach for some reason they're still going to do this and then yeah throwing
01:10:26 ◼ ► the vision pro guess what power matters there too so like most all of apple's most important
01:10:32 ◼ ► products let me put it this way have a battery in them so yep here we are you can get a lot of
01:10:38 ◼ ► podcasts that have a focus on apple and the mac you can find many of them this one agrees with
01:10:45 ◼ ► this stance other ones might not this podcast is 100 agreement that apple's going down the right
01:10:52 ◼ ► path look i already i already came briefly for my good friend john syracuse in this episode i don't
01:10:58 ◼ ► want to go there again i just like oh there i'm not just talking about i'm talking about i know
01:11:02 ◼ ► oh i know i'm just saying like you know podcasts out there if you're out there and you're like
01:11:06 ◼ ► oh man i've been looking for someone who would agree with with apple this is the one and if
01:11:11 ◼ ► you're out there and you're like i can't stand that you two agree i can tell you there's a bunch
01:11:15 ◼ ► of shows that are out there for you and they're going to be able to provide you what you need
01:11:19 ◼ ► but we are very much like this is not a problem i have a lot of empathy for people who feel like
01:11:24 ◼ ► apple's not giving them what they want but because we've all been there and we've all been there but
01:11:30 ◼ ► if you look at the grand sweep of apple's business um it hurts it hurts when apple isn't that into you
01:11:38 ◼ ► but it happens and it's not apple's i mean like hey apple i know your philosophy is taking you to
01:11:45 ◼ ► this you're the you're the first what three trillion or trillion dollar valuation company
01:11:50 ◼ ► one trillion dollars or whatever it is some enormous amount but you know it all comes from
01:11:56 ◼ ► that philosophy that they've built around these mobile products they're essentially a mobile
01:12:01 ◼ ► product company and they're not going to change that they're just right they're just not this is
01:12:07 ◼ ► the question i've always had about the sort of like could they uncouple ram and gpu's from the
01:12:10 ◼ ► processors and like i think the answer is no not that they couldn't do it they could try it but it
01:12:15 ◼ ► would require them to to basically ditch their whole philosophy of all the chips they make that
01:12:21 ◼ ► are a huge advantage for them so why would you ever spend the time on that when you could just
01:12:26 ◼ ► keep doing what you're doing and have some pretty good computers including the bulk of the max that
01:12:30 ◼ ► you sell yeah but i'll look i'll just say i like the poke fun i am the same as you i understand
01:12:37 ◼ ► that it's like it's frustrating when you feel like you're underserved right like it's terrible i've
01:12:42 ◼ ► been there with the ipad you know and oh uh various creative professional markets that apple has
01:12:47 ◼ ► basically turned their backs on because they didn't fit with their priorities and i get it
01:12:52 ◼ ► i mean i get the frustration i've been in those markets i've seen those professionals be
01:12:57 ◼ ► frustrated like i totally get it the frustration you feel is real the frustration that people
01:13:03 ◼ ► have about this like i get it but i also look at what apple is like it's not it's not apple's duty
01:13:11 ◼ ► to serve all markets and they made a choice a long time ago about their chip design and the choice to
01:13:17 ◼ ► go to apple silicon all the benefits that we reap as mac users from that choice this is the other
01:13:23 ◼ ► part of it which is they're not going to stop prioritizing energy efficiency and that's the
01:13:28 ◼ ► thing right when apple was not serving the mac pro but was also not serving any mac right go back to
01:13:36 ◼ ► the trash can right then okay that was bad we have a problem and you could look at the mac pro as like
01:13:43 ◼ ► a beacon of the problem right like you went too far right with the trash can and you thought you
01:13:50 ◼ ► were going to be super cool and you put all this engineering into the fact that the lights turned
01:13:55 ◼ ► on when you turned it around you know what i mean right which is just like realistically was not a
01:13:59 ◼ ► thing that anybody could do because as soon as you turn the computer around all the ports popped out
01:14:04 ◼ ► and i will say this is someone that you may not you may have forgotten i owned one of those
01:14:09 ◼ ► i had a trash can mac pro this is a part of my history that i like to forget because that thing
01:14:17 ◼ ► do you remember the problems it used to cause us jason when we'd be recording upgrade and my mac
01:14:21 ◼ ► just crashed would just crash completely you'd be gone and we would have to do things to try and
01:14:26 ◼ ► recover my audio like it was a nightmare for months because i thought i would get a mac and i
01:14:32 ◼ ► would have it for years and years and years and years and it would be awesome be powerful i'd get
01:14:35 ◼ ► speed because at that time i think i think i may have still been working at the bank so i was like
01:14:40 ◼ ► trying to like you know we i did not really like comes from the i did not have mike comes for the
01:14:47 ◼ ► trash can on my bingo card today but so to come back around to what i was saying okay back then
01:14:53 ◼ ► the mac pro was a beacon of what was wrong right and then all the macs were bad the laptops were
01:14:59 ◼ ► bad the imac everything was bad but now with a mac pro that is maybe under serving the people that
01:15:05 ◼ ► want it that's happening because every other mac is the best it has ever been all of them all of
01:15:12 ◼ ► them and from a market share perspective apple is i think actually almost gleeful i mean and they're
01:15:20 ◼ ► probably a little deluded because they talk about game stuff and we know about apple's history with
01:15:24 ◼ ► game stuff but i think what you can read into their glee about like every mac can play games now
01:15:29 ◼ ► what they're really sort of saying there or revealing there is apple thinks that it is so
01:15:36 ◼ ► competitive with the macbook air essentially and even more so now that there's a 15-inch model
01:15:43 ◼ ► so competitive that they have a real opportunity to gain market share and market share games are
01:15:50 ◼ ► going to happen with the macbook air market share gains are because it's the biggest it's the
01:15:57 ◼ ► biggest market consumer general use laptop that costs a thousand bucks is an enormous market so
01:16:05 ◼ ► if they're ever going to prioritize anything it's going to be to areas where they have enormous
01:16:10 ◼ ► market share gain possible because they're going to you know if they could increase their their
01:16:14 ◼ ► user base and and they are i mean i think they're more mac users now than ever um that that's where
01:16:19 ◼ ► they're going to find the success so they're going to they're going to lean that way anyway and and
01:16:23 ◼ ► that that stinks it i've heard people say this is just you know it's leading to a place where apple
01:16:29 ◼ ► doesn't care about uh high-end users they only care about low-end users it's like well i think
01:16:35 ◼ ► that's miss a misstatement in a sense so i'm i'm straw manning it a little bit here in the sense
01:16:40 ◼ ► that 16-inch macbook pro is a very powerful impressive system right it's not like they've
01:16:45 ◼ ► turned their back they created the mac studio yes if that's not enough for you there are certain
01:16:52 ◼ ► markets above above that where apple's priorities seem misaligned but but apple's apple's game
01:16:58 ◼ ► is good enough that it even reaches which was a mystery before apple silicon it even reaches to
01:17:05 ◼ ► that level what we now see for the m2 macbook pro where it's like that's pretty good even just
01:17:11 ◼ ► scaling apple's existing philosophy from iphone chips to the macbook pro it gets there it doesn't
01:17:17 ◼ ► get much beyond there but it gets there but yeah if apple has to turn their back on certain use
01:17:23 ◼ ► cases up at the high end in order to fulfill its you know the mac success everywhere else
01:17:29 ◼ ► it will make that choice and you are right to decry it and i'm we're not all piling this on hank
01:17:35 ◼ ► there's a lot of people saying this sorry hank uh but it is you know they're making i think good
01:17:43 ◼ ► decisions that make the mac better than it ever was before and the tough part about it is those
01:17:48 ◼ ► decisions fundamentally leave out some people because of the choices they've made but the net
01:17:55 ◼ ► result is success so it sucks if you're on the outside looking in but i don't i don't anticipate
01:18:02 ◼ ► them changing their strategy at all because it's working and it's working incredibly well for them
01:18:07 ◼ ► if you would like to send us in your questions for a future episode of the show or if you have
01:18:13 ◼ ► follow-up or feedback go to upgrade feedback.com until next time you can check out jason's work over
01:18:20 ◼ ► at six colors.com and hear his podcast at the incomparable.com and here on relay fm you can
01:18:25 ◼ ► listen to my shows here on relay fm too and check out my work at cortexbrand.com you can find us on
01:18:30 ◼ ► mastodon and threads jason is at j snell j s n e double l and i am at i mike i m y k e you can also
01:18:39 ◼ ► find the show on mastodon we are at upgrade on relay fm social where you'll be able to find
01:18:45 ◼ ► video clips of the show along with on tik tok and instagram where we are at upgrade relay on both
01:18:52 ◼ ► thank you to our members who support us of upgrade plus thank you to express vpn and fitpod for their