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486: On the Side of Reality

 

00:00:00   [Music]

00:00:08   From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 486 for November 13th, 2023.

00:00:16   This episode is brought to you by ExpressVPN, Zocdoc, Factor, and Oracle.

00:00:22   My name is Mike Hurley and I'm joined by Jason Snell. Hello, Jason.

00:00:26   You know, Mike, Upgrade 486 is good, but wait until we get to Upgrade Pentium.

00:00:32   Oh man, it's going to be fast.

00:00:34   Is that a PowerPC joke?

00:00:35   No, it's an Intel joke.

00:00:38   The PC list, all of our Windows users know what I'm talking about, huh?

00:00:43   Woo! Windows!

00:00:45   Yeah, okay.

00:00:47   All of those four people got the joke.

00:00:50   It was a chip. That was the chip from Intel before the Pentium was a 486.

00:00:56   I have a Snell Talk question for you.

00:00:59   It comes from Tom, who wants to know,

00:01:01   when you put your iPhone into a MagSafe stand for using standby,

00:01:05   so you have it on the whole horizontal,

00:01:08   which orientation is it?

00:01:10   Volume buttons up or volume buttons down?

00:01:14   I think it's...

00:01:16   So what I do is I take it out of my hand and I rotate it counterclockwise.

00:01:21   So I guess the answer there is that side button up, volume buttons down

00:01:26   camera bump up, but it's mostly just a...

00:01:31   I mean, it's really, I think ergonomically, I'm walking over to the stand,

00:01:36   which is in my kitchen, and my hand, I'm holding it.

00:01:41   I think even though I'm usually a left-hander,

00:01:43   I think I put it in the stand with my right hand and I rotate it counterclockwise.

00:01:47   So yeah, I guess I never really think about it, honestly.

00:01:50   I'm using it more though. Here's the funny thing, Mike.

00:01:53   I have the Studio Neat little wooden, very nice wooden thing that holds a MagSafe puck.

00:01:59   It's beautiful. I forget the name of it.

00:02:01   Material dock?

00:02:02   Yeah, but it's just a little tiny one.

00:02:04   It's just a little...

00:02:05   They're all Material dock and then they have different ones.

00:02:07   I see.

00:02:08   Here's the problem. The camera pump on the iPhone 15 is so big

00:02:12   that in order to get it on the charger, you basically need to put it on the charger

00:02:15   and then just slide it until it hits the camera bump.

00:02:17   And that's pretty much where the MagSafe charge is.

00:02:20   Yeah.

00:02:21   Yeah, it's huge.

00:02:22   Because this is the thing with the Apple one, right?

00:02:25   The little fold-out travel guy?

00:02:28   That like, it doesn't sit completely flat anymore because the camera bump is so big.

00:02:33   Yeah, so that I have occasionally not set it properly and my phone has not had battery.

00:02:38   So I'm using that and also for standby, I'm using the stand a little bit more

00:02:45   because standby is cool.

00:02:46   And in fact, my standby started doing a thing I hadn't ever noticed it doing before this weekend.

00:02:52   Came out on Saturday morning to make the tea.

00:02:56   And there was on the phone, instead of what it usually is, which is the time and the weather,

00:03:05   it was a live activity that had started from the TV app telling me that Arsenal was playing

00:03:12   and that it was currently nil-nil with like 30 minutes or 20 minutes in.

00:03:18   I haven't seen a live activity on...

00:03:20   I've realized that now because I remember that was the thing that they announced.

00:03:23   I have not seen one.

00:03:24   I think it's enabled in the beta.

00:03:27   I think this must be enabled in the beta because I'm on the beta on my phone.

00:03:31   And I don't think I've ever seen a completely unbitten live activity start for a sports team.

00:03:37   And I saw it all weekend.

00:03:39   I also saw it at times that I didn't want to see it and you kind of have to manage that.

00:03:42   But where they're like, "Hey, the Warriors are starting."

00:03:45   I'm like, "You know, I like the Warriors, but I also like to see the time."

00:03:48   But for Arsenal, it was great because I, as an American middling fan of soccer,

00:03:56   I never remember when they're playing.

00:03:58   And when they're playing at six in the morning, I don't really try very hard to get up.

00:04:01   But because of our time change and all that, I've been getting up earlier lately.

00:04:04   And I was like, "Oh, I'll turn it on."

00:04:06   While I drink my tea in bed in the morning at 6.30 in the morning, I'll turn on Arsenal.

00:04:11   So I did.

00:04:12   Anyway, so live activity fired off.

00:04:13   That was kind of fun too.

00:04:14   So I enjoy being able to explore this feature.

00:04:19   And so I've been trying to use Standby more.

00:04:21   So it's been fun.

00:04:22   I love Standby.

00:04:24   I'm following you in buttons on the top.

00:04:26   I have no reason why.

00:04:27   That's just how I put it in every time.

00:04:29   I have no opinion or reason and everything wants to be like, "Fight me.

00:04:32   This is what the right way is to do it."

00:04:34   And I just, I don't have any reason and don't care.

00:04:37   But that is, I'm just reporting the facts here.

00:04:39   That seems to be how I'm doing it for now.

00:04:43   If you would like to send in a question to help us open an episode of Upgrade,

00:04:46   just go to upgradefeedback.com and you can send in a Snow Talk question of your own.

00:04:52   I have a reminder for you, Upgradians.

00:04:54   Oh.

00:04:55   The Upgradies, the 10th annual Upgradies are coming soon.

00:05:00   Within just a couple of weeks time, the nominations will close on December 5th.

00:05:05   Please go to upgradeies.vote and make your nominations for the 10th annual Upgradies Awards.

00:05:11   This is your duty as an Upgradient to make these nominations to help Jason and I award our favorites

00:05:18   in many categories in early December.

00:05:21   Please go to upgradeies.vote and enter your nominations.

00:05:26   There's a whole compilation process that happens, but I did a little automation I showed you last week

00:05:31   that I think is going to help speed things up a little bit, which is great.

00:05:34   Because it usually takes a really long time.

00:05:36   So I'm excited about it.

00:05:37   It does.

00:05:37   It still does, but it'll be a little bit faster.

00:05:40   But yeah, get those in now.

00:05:41   We want to hear from you.

00:05:42   While we're in this portion of the show, I will also remind you if you would like longer ad-free

00:05:49   version of the show each and every week along with tons of other benefits for being a Relay FM member,

00:05:55   like access to the Relay FM members Discord, which is a cool place to hang out,

00:05:58   and where all the live discussion happens when we record live every week,

00:06:02   go to getupgradeplus.com.

00:06:04   It's just $5 a month or $50 a year.

00:06:06   A bargain, I would say, to get no ads

00:06:09   and longer episodes each and every week.

00:06:11   On this week's Upgrade Plus segment, we're going to be talking about a selection of homekit updates

00:06:16   that Jason has for me, which I'm very excited to hear all about.

00:06:19   It's true.

00:06:19   It's true.

00:06:20   And we have some follow-up.

00:06:22   So I wanted to know from you, Jason, right?

00:06:25   So when we recorded last time, you just published the reviews of the MacBook Pro.

00:06:29   And I feel like--

00:06:31   And the iMac.

00:06:31   And the iMac, of course.

00:06:33   And I feel like over the last couple of years, every time Apple releases a new laptop

00:06:38   or a new-- actually, any of the Apple Silicon products,

00:06:41   there is the review process.

00:06:43   They go out in the world.

00:06:45   And we talk about it.

00:06:47   People make-- the reviewers make their assumptions.

00:06:49   Then it feels like the conversation shifts.

00:06:54   Yes.

00:06:55   In a way that always makes me feel uncomfortable,

00:06:57   because it's like we talk about these things,

00:07:01   we have our opinions, or, you know, I'll talk to you,

00:07:04   you have your opinion, it helps form my opinion,

00:07:05   and that's the conversation that we have.

00:07:07   But then there tends to be this like, "But what about the thermals?"

00:07:11   Or like there was a question that we had on last week's episode,

00:07:14   which is like, we had no experience or information about the Pro chip, for example.

00:07:18   That was just like a nebulous thing out there.

00:07:20   Or like I think back to the Ultra,

00:07:23   when it was like, "Oh, the Ultra is really powerful, super cool."

00:07:26   And then it's like, "But the Mac Pro has no graphics cards!"

00:07:28   Right?

00:07:29   And so like then this like conversation kind of like moves.

00:07:32   And so I just wanted to ask you,

00:07:35   have you had any further opinions

00:07:39   based on how the conversation has gone over the last week?

00:07:41   It's an interesting effect, and I think it's a combination of things.

00:07:44   First off, it's like, you know, we have our opinions,

00:07:47   and I have, you know, done my due diligence as a reviewer,

00:07:51   and I have opinions.

00:07:52   And then it gets done to a wider world,

00:07:54   and naturally different people are going to get different systems,

00:07:56   they're going to have different needs,

00:07:57   they're going to have different perspectives.

00:07:58   I think that's all great.

00:07:59   I do also think there's a tendency though for the internet

00:08:02   to have a discourse that happens

00:08:04   that includes people grinding all the axes that they want to grind.

00:08:07   And it's, you know, it's not, I don't love it,

00:08:10   but like it's, that's what it is.

00:08:12   That's the internet.

00:08:13   It's going to do that, and people are going to do that,

00:08:15   and websites are going to write clickbaity articles

00:08:17   to try and create new gates and new anger

00:08:20   because it is, you know, better than a shrug, right?

00:08:24   And honestly, I feel like my reviews were kind of shrugs,

00:08:26   and a lot of the reviews were kind of shrugs.

00:08:28   And in that kind of environment where it's just like it's a speed boost,

00:08:31   and here's the deal,

00:08:32   and otherwise these things are unchanged,

00:08:34   and you know, it basically is a vacuum into which hot takes

00:08:39   and gripes and things can fill that void,

00:08:42   and there are a lot of people who want to fill them.

00:08:44   And again, I don't love them personally,

00:08:47   but it is a natural part of the process, I think.

00:08:51   The part of the discourse that I don't particularly love in the last week

00:08:59   has been about that base model M3 MacBook Pro.

00:09:02   And the reason I don't, I understand it even though I don't love it.

00:09:07   What I don't love about it is it's very idealistic,

00:09:11   and like, you know, idealism, good on you,

00:09:15   but I've heard a lot of "but it's called MacBook Pro."

00:09:18   And if it's called MacBook Pro, with the word Pro in it,

00:09:22   it should insert what you think is the pro-defining,

00:09:26   category-defining feature.

00:09:28   It should have 16 gigs of RAM.

00:09:30   It should have a bigger SSD.

00:09:32   It should have more ports.

00:09:33   It should support two external displays.

00:09:36   There's a whole lot of "it shoulds."

00:09:38   And the challenge with that is that it doesn't mean anything.

00:09:42   Pro doesn't mean anything.

00:09:44   There's an iPad Pro, right?

00:09:47   There's a Pro chip now for the iPhone, you know,

00:09:52   because there's a Pro iPhone.

00:09:55   What does it all mean?

00:09:56   And the answer is it means what you want it to mean,

00:09:58   it means what Apple wants it to mean.

00:09:59   Apple generally has meant it's nicer.

00:10:01   You know, there is no definition of what a Pro laptop is.

00:10:05   So it's all in the eye of the beholder.

00:10:06   And so if you have a particularly idealistic view,

00:10:10   I mean, first off, you're a pretty hardcore computer nerd

00:10:13   at that point, to have an idealistic view

00:10:14   of what a computer spec should be.

00:10:16   Doesn't, I'm just saying, you know,

00:10:19   it is coming from a very particular perspective.

00:10:22   Not saying it's right or wrong,

00:10:23   just saying it's a particular perspective.

00:10:25   What I would say though, is that what frustrates me

00:10:27   about that discourse, because it's very much strongly implied

00:10:30   that like Apple is making a huge mistake

00:10:32   because they call this system Pro,

00:10:34   but they don't dare to make it a properly Pro system

00:10:37   because it doesn't meet my standards.

00:10:39   And then there's the reality, right?

00:10:41   And the reality, again, and I'm trying to not take this

00:10:45   as like I'm taking Apple's side, 'cause that's not it,

00:10:48   but I am on the side of reality.

00:10:50   I do think it's worth pondering reality

00:10:52   and not just living in idealism.

00:10:54   And in reality, that base 14-inch MacBook Pro

00:10:59   with the M3 chip instead of the M3 Pro

00:11:01   and with eight gigs of RAM, exists for the exact same reason

00:11:06   that the dumb 13-inch Touch Bar MacBook Pro

00:11:08   that we all complained about,

00:11:11   because it was so inferior to the actual MacBook Pro models.

00:11:15   It's the same reason that that thing existed.

00:11:17   And it's an ugly reason, but it's the truth.

00:11:20   It's filthy commerce, right?

00:11:23   Apple isn't gonna compromise on its margins.

00:11:27   Apple knows that there is a market

00:11:30   for a sub-$2,000 MacBook Pro that they need to hit

00:11:34   because there are people who insist on buying something

00:11:37   with the label Pro, but won't spend two grand on it.

00:11:42   And this isn't somebody who's a legitimate Pro

00:11:45   who spends 1800.

00:11:47   This is a corporate buyer or somebody

00:11:49   who wants something nice and is willing to buy something

00:11:53   with terrible specs or with a Touch Bar.

00:11:56   But they're not gonna spend $2,000 on that laptop.

00:12:00   It's gonna be 1300 or now maybe 1600.

00:12:03   That's it.

00:12:04   So these products are completely not,

00:12:10   I mean, I don't know how to put it.

00:12:13   These products are not what we would ideally call

00:12:17   a Pro-level system.

00:12:19   The Touch Bar MacBook Pro certainly wasn't that,

00:12:21   and yet it existed for two chip generations.

00:12:24   Why is it?

00:12:25   Because Apple knows that people wanna buy something

00:12:27   called MacBook Pro, and Apple is not willing

00:12:30   to compromise on its margins.

00:12:31   Remember also that the new design for the M1 MacBook Pro,

00:12:35   every time you iterate as Apple an existing product,

00:12:39   the margins go up.

00:12:41   So after two iterations with M3,

00:12:43   they were able to get something with that screen

00:12:47   and that beautiful 14-inch screen

00:12:49   down to still only 1599,

00:12:53   not down to 13, 1299 or whatever, 1599.

00:12:57   So it's still a price increase.

00:12:59   But clearly they are fighting margin,

00:13:02   and they're not willing to give up their margin.

00:13:04   And we could argue like,

00:13:05   oh, in order to service the word Pro,

00:13:09   Apple should give up its margins and sell computers at cost

00:13:12   because you can't use the word Pro.

00:13:13   And like, okay, again, I'm not gonna say they're wrong.

00:13:16   I'm gonna say that that's not a realistic view

00:13:18   of how the world works.

00:13:19   And if you wanna believe that yes,

00:13:20   Apple should not call it Pro, okay.

00:13:23   Or Apple should not, should include more RAM in it

00:13:26   at the same price which is gonna hurt their margins.

00:13:28   Or, I mean, my problem is that I don't know

00:13:32   what the answer is that those people are seeking.

00:13:35   Is it Apple gives up their margins?

00:13:36   Is it Apple, because that's not realistic, again.

00:13:39   Is it Apple should not call any laptop under $2,000 Pro?

00:13:44   Anything without 16 gigs of RAM or more and a Pro processor?

00:13:48   Is that the answer?

00:13:49   That feels very let them eat cake to me.

00:13:52   It does it as a Pro user, does it make you feel better

00:13:57   that there isn't some substandard computer

00:13:59   that somebody buys that they can call Pro

00:14:01   like your computer is Pro

00:14:02   and they've sort of let the rabble in the door?

00:14:04   I mean, it frustrates me

00:14:06   when I hear some of these arguments.

00:14:07   Or should Apple eat its margins

00:14:10   because there is some group of users

00:14:12   who thinks that 16 gigs of RAM should be the minimum

00:14:16   and that nobody should ever be forced, I guess,

00:14:19   to buy a computer with less than that?

00:14:21   Or should these computers just be priced out

00:14:25   of what some group of people can afford?

00:14:26   Also keep in mind, Apple will probably lose sales.

00:14:29   I think Apple will lose some sales

00:14:31   by making the base model $1599 instead of $1299.

00:14:34   They will get some new sales

00:14:37   and they'll convert some to MacBook Air sales,

00:14:39   but they'll also lose some sales from whoever,

00:14:42   whatever corporations are like,

00:14:44   "No, we're not gonna go down that loan.

00:14:46   "We're not gonna buy a MacBook Air."

00:14:48   Anyway, I hear the idealism, I get it.

00:14:52   We all agree more RAM is better, more storage is better,

00:14:56   more external monitors are better,

00:14:59   but we also live in the real world

00:15:01   and I think understanding why Apple does what it does

00:15:03   and I think the attack here is not on that model

00:15:08   for being, that base model for being underpowered.

00:15:14   I think it exists because of the people who are buying it

00:15:19   and Apple knows that.

00:15:20   Apple knows exactly who's buying it.

00:15:22   The truth is Apple always, I would say,

00:15:28   prices their products with a base model that is poor

00:15:32   (laughs)

00:15:33   because they wanna hit a price point, right?

00:15:36   They wanna hit $999 or $1099 or $1599

00:15:40   and they know that somebody's gonna upgrade the RAM

00:15:43   and we all know that that RAM upgrade for $200

00:15:47   is way overpriced for what it should be in our opinions

00:15:51   given the rest of the RAM market.

00:15:54   I get the raging, I guess, but it frustrates me

00:15:59   because it strikes me as that a lot of it

00:16:01   is sort of naively idealistic and it's like,

00:16:04   "Well, sure, I want an M3 Max for $1,000."

00:16:09   But that's not gonna happen.

00:16:11   So I understand the frustration here,

00:16:13   but it's also, just to wrap it up, it's not new.

00:16:16   I'll just say that again.

00:16:17   This is the exact same thing

00:16:19   as the dumb 13-inch Touch Bar MacBook Pro.

00:16:21   It's the exact same reason.

00:16:22   It is a substandard computer for what's on the label

00:16:26   because some people buy the label.

00:16:28   That's what it is.

00:16:29   It's not great.

00:16:30   My review, I really don't think that most people

00:16:35   who care enough to be concerned about the eight gigs of RAM

00:16:38   should buy it regardless.

00:16:40   I think they should buy the base model of the M3 Pro

00:16:43   because it's not that much more money.

00:16:45   And if you've got a few hundred dollars more,

00:16:47   you're gonna get more RAM

00:16:49   and you're gonna get the better chip.

00:16:51   But I know why this product exists.

00:16:53   This product, I mean, honestly,

00:16:54   this product isn't for nerds who care about specs.

00:16:56   It's not.

00:16:57   It's for corporate buyers and other people

00:16:59   who refuse to buy a MacBook Air

00:17:00   because it's a baby computer, even though it's not.

00:17:03   And because this is a pro computer,

00:17:05   because it's called pro.

00:17:06   Even though, yes, I think we can all agree

00:17:10   that in an ideal world,

00:17:11   a computer spec like this shouldn't be called MacBook Pro.

00:17:14   I get it.

00:17:15   But it frustrates me

00:17:17   because I don't think those arguments

00:17:21   are living in the real world.

00:17:23   - Very well put.

00:17:24   I think the only thing that I would add

00:17:26   is kind of like building on what you were saying

00:17:28   about like being realistic and the product naming.

00:17:31   I feel like pro for Apple lives on this kind of scale now

00:17:35   of mentality to branding.

00:17:37   And so I've kind of listed down all of the products

00:17:40   that I can think of that Apple's called pro in recent memory

00:17:44   from like at the very beginning of this list,

00:17:47   this is pro by mentality to the end of this list.

00:17:51   This is pro by branding.

00:17:52   So you've got Mac Pro, iMac Pro, MacBook Pro,

00:17:56   iPad Pro, iPhone Pro, AirPods Pro.

00:18:00   When you get down to that very end, the AirPods Pro,

00:18:02   that is not a professional product.

00:18:04   Like a professional would not use AirPods in their work.

00:18:08   Because there are Bluetooth headphones,

00:18:11   they have latency and/or they don't sound as good

00:18:13   as other products on the market.

00:18:15   - And you can't plug them into a lossless source

00:18:17   and all those things.

00:18:18   - Mac Pros are literally only bought by professionals

00:18:21   'cause you would be out of your mind to do it otherwise.

00:18:25   Especially now.

00:18:26   And then in the middle--

00:18:27   - I would question that iMac Pro.

00:18:28   Remember when the iMac Pro came out and people said,

00:18:30   "How can this be considered pro?

00:18:31   "It doesn't have slots."

00:18:33   But it was though.

00:18:34   Over its life we learned--

00:18:35   - Let's see how our processors repeat for you.

00:18:37   - It was for professionals.

00:18:38   And then when you get into the middle,

00:18:40   the MacBook Pro and the iPad Pro,

00:18:42   they are products that professionals in the class

00:18:46   that would buy this product would buy.

00:18:49   So you get the expensive MacBook Pros,

00:18:51   the expensive iPad Pros used by people

00:18:53   doing professional work.

00:18:54   Whether it's artists for the iPad Pro

00:18:57   or it's coders for the MacBook Pro.

00:18:59   But both the MacBook Pro and the iPad Pro

00:19:02   is where things start to shift.

00:19:03   Where these products are bought by people

00:19:05   who are doing consumer level work on them.

00:19:08   - That's why they're game demos about the MacBook Pro.

00:19:12   And you think to yourself,

00:19:13   "Well, you're buying a $7,000 MacBook Pro to play games."

00:19:15   And the answer is, "No, you're not."

00:19:17   You're buying a 1599 MacBook Pro to play games.

00:19:20   Or maybe a $2,000 MacBook Pro to play games.

00:19:22   And people do.

00:19:23   And they're allowed to.

00:19:25   They don't have to show their Pro card and say,

00:19:26   "Yes, I realize that eight gigs of RAM is not enough."

00:19:29   They don't have to do that.

00:19:31   They can just buy it because they want it.

00:19:33   'Cause it's nice.

00:19:34   Because that is definitely...

00:19:35   One of our listeners did their whole thesis on this

00:19:37   and sent it to me.

00:19:38   I actually have a copy of his thesis.

00:19:39   I forget his name now.

00:19:40   But it was absolutely...

00:19:45   It means that it's nice.

00:19:46   It was Taylor.

00:19:46   Listener Taylor.

00:19:47   - Is that the one we would quote it in?

00:19:49   - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, that was cool.

00:19:50   - Yeah.

00:19:51   But it's a signifier.

00:19:52   It doesn't always mean what you...

00:19:54   Even, and this is the thing about branding, right?

00:19:57   All of us get to decide what the brand means to us.

00:20:00   All of us do, right?

00:20:02   The mistake is when you believe that that is what it means

00:20:05   or should mean to everyone.

00:20:07   Because a good chance it doesn't, right?

00:20:09   MacBook Pro and iPad Pro are great examples, Mike,

00:20:12   of...

00:20:13   I know it says Pro on it.

00:20:15   And you may be a pro who uses it for professional reasons.

00:20:18   But that's not always what it means.

00:20:22   - And also, the other part of this,

00:20:24   like this scale of branding versus mentality

00:20:27   that I'm thinking about.

00:20:29   People know where they sit in this.

00:20:32   And then you make the decisions, right?

00:20:33   So if you want MacBook Pro for the branding,

00:20:37   then you'll get the entry level.

00:20:39   But if you're a professional,

00:20:40   you know what you're buying, right?

00:20:43   If you are a...

00:20:44   You need professional scale computer,

00:20:48   you do not buy the entry level MacBook Pro.

00:20:50   You're not buying it, right?

00:20:52   'Cause you should know what you need to do your work.

00:20:55   You're not gonna be like, "Oh, it says Pro on it.

00:20:57   It's definitely gonna be okay for me."

00:20:59   Like, you're a professional, right?

00:21:01   That you understand what you need from your tools.

00:21:05   You're a professional.

00:21:07   - Right.

00:21:08   One of the problems that I've had in the last week

00:21:10   is hearing and reading professionals

00:21:15   who are expert computer users,

00:21:18   who are probably going to buy,

00:21:19   if they buy in this generation,

00:21:21   the M3 Macs MacBook Pro,

00:21:26   saying essentially,

00:21:29   I know they didn't say it this way,

00:21:30   but this is how I read it.

00:21:31   Essentially, Apple shouldn't sell

00:21:35   eight gigs of RAM as the base model,

00:21:38   because some people are too dumb

00:21:40   to know that that's not enough.

00:21:43   That's how I read it.

00:21:44   And it's like, you know what?

00:21:45   They're not too dumb.

00:21:46   They have a budget or they don't care.

00:21:49   And will it mean that their computer runs a little slower

00:21:52   when they've got lots of Chrome tabs?

00:21:53   Yes, it will.

00:21:55   It's not ideal,

00:21:57   but we don't live in that ideal world.

00:22:00   We just don't.

00:22:02   And the alternative, I don't like the alternative,

00:22:05   which is no, no, no, no, no.

00:22:06   If you don't have $2,000 to buy a MacBook Pro,

00:22:08   you shouldn't buy a MacBook Pro.

00:22:10   Shouldn't be labeled that way.

00:22:11   It's like, yeah, well, no.

00:22:13   Apple's decided no, the market has decided no.

00:22:16   It's not gonna happen.

00:22:17   And like I said,

00:22:18   Apple's not gonna sell 16 gigs of RAM for 1599.

00:22:22   They're not.

00:22:23   Maybe 1699 or 1799.

00:22:25   Like if they made it the base, it would probably be 1699.

00:22:29   I'm sure they looked at that.

00:22:30   And they decided like, no,

00:22:32   that kills too much of our market

00:22:33   because there's a market down there

00:22:34   that doesn't wanna spend a lot of money,

00:22:36   but once pro is the label.

00:22:38   And they're gonna get it one way or another.

00:22:41   At least the touch bar is gone.

00:22:43   - This is way too big of a conversation for today.

00:22:48   I feel like, and I'm just gonna say this and move on.

00:22:50   I feel like too much discourse today online

00:22:53   is focused around fake people

00:22:56   that people create in their minds.

00:22:58   - Oh yeah, sure. - And then make arguments

00:23:00   for that person that doesn't exist.

00:23:03   - Right.

00:23:04   - Brock wrote in to say,

00:23:05   to further add to the confirmation

00:23:07   that the plans for the bigger iMac is likely dead,

00:23:10   the text for the iMac shown in the banner

00:23:12   of Apple's Mac page on their website

00:23:15   was updated to say, from iMac 24 to simply iMac.

00:23:20   - Yeah, the URL changed too.

00:23:22   It's apple.com/mac/imac.

00:23:26   And it used to be iMac-24.

00:23:28   It's not anymore.

00:23:30   - Not anymore.

00:23:31   It's just the iMac.

00:23:32   That's the whole problem.

00:23:33   - How many ways can we tell you that we are never,

00:23:37   ever getting back together?

00:23:41   Yeah.

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00:25:25   It's time for the details.

00:25:29   So we're gonna spend more time in a future episode

00:25:34   actually looking at 17.2 'cause there's a lot in there.

00:25:37   I've said for weeks now that we were gonna do this

00:25:41   and things keep happening that's putting it off.

00:25:42   - Things keep happening.

00:25:43   Yeah, those live activities I think.

00:25:45   - Indeed. - Those live activities

00:25:46   in standby, I think that's gotta be a 17.2 thing.

00:25:49   I wasn't getting those before.

00:25:50   So there's stuff happening, things are happening.

00:25:52   - And we can keep pushing it because 17.2 isn't out yet.

00:25:56   So it's like this is a thing we can get to

00:25:58   when there isn't other more important things to talk about.

00:26:01   But this week Apple not only dropped in the beta

00:26:06   the ability this past week to record spatial videos

00:26:09   on the iPhone, so now on the iPhone

00:26:10   you can scroll to one of the many, many, many things

00:26:13   you can scroll through now in the camera app.

00:26:15   - Well, it's not a scroll, it's a button you turn on.

00:26:18   So there's a setting in photos that allows you to do

00:26:21   in the photo settings of the settings app.

00:26:25   - The camera? - That lets you

00:26:27   do advanced, it's like where you set

00:26:31   all that kind of advanced features of like,

00:26:33   you wanna capture raw and all those things.

00:26:36   And one of the switches down there is capture 3D video,

00:26:39   capture spatial video.

00:26:40   - Then how do you actually make the capture?

00:26:42   - You're in the video tab and there's a little button

00:26:46   that is a picture of a Vision Pro.

00:26:48   And if you tap it and it lights up yellow

00:26:50   and then you are recording only horizontally,

00:26:53   only in 1080p 30.

00:26:56   And that's how you do it.

00:26:58   So it's just a mode of video capture.

00:27:00   It's not a special spatial video thing you swipe to.

00:27:03   - That's cool actually.

00:27:04   'Cause my hope is that in the future

00:27:07   this will work like a live photo works in that,

00:27:11   like once they've gotten better at this,

00:27:13   that like you can just record video,

00:27:15   but it will also capture the data

00:27:16   or like will also capture a second video or something.

00:27:19   That's my hope for the future.

00:27:20   - Well, you could always leave this on.

00:27:22   You're just gonna only get 1080p 30.

00:27:25   - Yeah, which is not. - And the reason for that is--

00:27:26   - And you can only record horizontally too.

00:27:29   - And you can only record horizontally.

00:27:30   And the reason for that is you've gotta have two cameras

00:27:33   next to each other so that you can do the parallax effect.

00:27:36   And that means it has to be horizontal.

00:27:38   And then they moved it so that it's the ultra wide

00:27:42   and the wide that are together

00:27:44   and that the telephoto is elsewhere.

00:27:47   And the reason to do that is that they can crop

00:27:50   the ultra wide to have it match the wide

00:27:53   and you end up with a usable set pair of images

00:27:56   that are offset to generate a 3D video.

00:27:59   But once you crop the ultra wide

00:28:01   to the same field of view as the wide, guess what?

00:28:04   You can't do the resolution, the beautiful resolution

00:28:07   that you would normally get in the wide.

00:28:09   And you're down to, essentially they were not happy

00:28:13   with anything other than 1080p 30.

00:28:16   So that's where we are for now.

00:28:18   I would put money on the fact that Apple is working

00:28:22   on their camera stack to make it more capable

00:28:26   of shooting 3D video.

00:28:28   And I would also not be surprised if the long run,

00:28:31   not only are they focused on having the higher quality

00:28:34   on the cameras so that their 3D video

00:28:36   is of a higher resolution, but that they make it

00:28:38   so that their camera stack works 90 degrees from each other

00:28:43   so that they can do vertical as well as horizontal.

00:28:46   - I didn't know this until I read some of these stories

00:28:50   that with the new iPhone, they rearranged

00:28:53   where the cameras were placed so that this would work.

00:28:57   - Yeah, yeah, that was part of the agenda.

00:28:59   Yeah, it feels like this was a, nothing's a quick swap,

00:29:02   but it feels like this was, this is not a complete

00:29:06   rethinking of the iPhone's camera system

00:29:08   so far as I can tell, as it is, we're gonna need

00:29:10   to do 3D capture on the iPhone and they made it work.

00:29:14   But what I'm saying is I would probably put money

00:29:17   on a future camera stack design that is more specifically

00:29:22   designed to be capable of shooting spatial video.

00:29:27   - So they introduced spatial video recording on the iPhone

00:29:31   and then in conjunction with that, Apple brought in

00:29:33   a selection of journalists who experience some of these

00:29:36   spatial videos recorded on iPhones on a Vision Pro.

00:29:40   So more people got in to go in, try on Vision Pros again,

00:29:44   it seemed like quite a select group.

00:29:45   The response to this overall was once again very positive

00:29:49   from everyone about kind of the experience

00:29:50   of using the Vision Pro.

00:29:52   And I particularly liked this quote from Joanna Stern

00:29:54   because Joanna kind of sums up my initial feelings

00:29:58   of the demo that we had of seeing these spatial videos.

00:30:02   So Stern says, "Apple showed me some other spatial videos

00:30:05   and one, a dad was telling his young kids a story

00:30:07   in the back of an RV.

00:30:08   It was so lifelike and cozy that it almost creeped me out.

00:30:11   Why am I spying on this random family?"

00:30:13   That's obviously the big appeal here, spatial videos

00:30:15   create intimacy in ways 2D videos and photos don't.

00:30:19   So like the technology is really cool, but if it's not

00:30:21   your videos, it makes you feel kind of weird

00:30:23   'cause it's so good.

00:30:24   So I thought that this is interesting as a way

00:30:28   of getting like a new renewed focus on the product again

00:30:31   and then having these like smaller experiences

00:30:34   for people to talk about ahead of kind of, I guess,

00:30:36   a re-reveal of the product next year.

00:30:38   I thought this was very clever from Apple to kind of like

00:30:41   keep throwing the breadcrumbs out there for now.

00:30:44   - And they didn't get to, you know,

00:30:45   they're gonna release that capture feature.

00:30:46   They did release that capture feature in beta.

00:30:49   And so people are gonna talk about it.

00:30:51   People are gonna reverse engineer the file format.

00:30:55   All those things are gonna happen.

00:30:56   I actually am, I haven't looked, but I'm assuming

00:30:59   that at some point I'm gonna be able to look the stuff

00:31:01   that I've captured already.

00:31:02   Look at that in, on my quest, right?

00:31:07   'Cause somebody will reverse engineer it

00:31:09   or find a way to play it or something

00:31:11   and have it be like a 3D, you know, thing

00:31:16   in other video players.

00:31:17   I imagine that will happen.

00:31:19   It's just a heath package, right?

00:31:23   With two videos in it.

00:31:24   And when you play it back, you only see one of them.

00:31:26   Anyway, I did capture some this weekend,

00:31:29   just thinking this is gonna, you know,

00:31:33   build up a library now for when the Vision Pro comes out.

00:31:36   - The 17.2 betas are also showing indication

00:31:39   that 3D movies are finding their way to the Apple TV app

00:31:43   with a new icon that shows an outline of a Vision Pro

00:31:46   with the word, well, the character's 3D overlaid on top.

00:31:50   MacRumors are reporting that quote,

00:31:52   "3D titles seen in the Apple TV app include

00:31:55   "Jurassic World Domination, Pacific Rim, Uprising,

00:31:57   "Shrek, Trolls, Warcraft, Minions, The Rise of Gru,

00:32:02   "Mortal Engines, Everest, Kung Fu Panda 3, and more."

00:32:05   What a ragtag selection of movies there.

00:32:10   They're just loading them in, they're loading them in.

00:32:11   - People are, they're loading them in, that's it.

00:32:13   I expect that at launch, I think somebody said

00:32:16   that they saw Hugo in there, and that's a really good 3D movie.

00:32:21   But yeah, I would imagine since Hollywood generally

00:32:24   has 3D versions of most of their movies,

00:32:25   that they will put them in there,

00:32:27   because this is an opportunity for them to be seen.

00:32:30   And the 3D TV market didn't really take off.

00:32:32   So having 3D titles available in Vision Pro

00:32:36   seems like a pretty, like, absolutely makes sense to me.

00:32:41   - This is making it all feel like the Vision Pro

00:32:44   is in fact very close, right?

00:32:46   That like, there are now these other bits of the system

00:32:49   that need to be put in place.

00:32:51   - Yeah, so I said something on Mastodon this weekend.

00:32:54   I said that I went to, at the Cal game this weekend,

00:32:57   I captured, like I captured, which for me is like,

00:33:00   even from when I was a kid, is like the moment,

00:33:02   which is when you come through the tunnel

00:33:04   and out into the stands, and this field opens up to you,

00:33:07   and you're in the canyon, and the hills are in the background

00:33:09   and all of those things.

00:33:11   And so I captured that in Spatial.

00:33:14   And then I did some, like the band and stuff like that.

00:33:17   I just did a few, and my whole thought process

00:33:19   was capture it now while this is happening.

00:33:22   And in the winter, you know,

00:33:24   when there are no football games to capture,

00:33:26   I will be able to relive this moment

00:33:28   and see how it makes me feel and all those things, right?

00:33:30   I was like, I like thinking ahead.

00:33:32   And somebody on Mastodon replied and said,

00:33:34   "You wish winter."

00:33:36   And I said, okay, first off, I don't wish anything.

00:33:38   I don't care.

00:33:39   It's not my job to ship the product.

00:33:41   And they backed off and said something like,

00:33:43   "Oh, I meant everybody."

00:33:44   I'm like, well, that's not what you said.

00:33:45   You said you wish.

00:33:46   But I am, despite that person,

00:33:51   I am actually pretty confident that this is a winter thing.

00:33:55   I just, I think it's gonna come sooner than people think.

00:33:59   I don't have anything to back that up

00:34:00   other than that Apple seems to be continuing to say

00:34:03   early next year.

00:34:04   And my understanding is the hardware

00:34:05   has been done a long time

00:34:07   and that they're working real hard on the software.

00:34:09   And I would be surprised if it lingers

00:34:12   into spring, into the second quarter.

00:34:15   I think it'll be earlier than that.

00:34:17   Maybe a lot earlier than that.

00:34:18   - The thing that surprises me is,

00:34:20   I have not seen any indication

00:34:23   that developer kits have ever been shipped.

00:34:27   - Yeah, that's true.

00:34:28   That's true.

00:34:29   I mean, if there have been,

00:34:30   there haven't been leaks and nobody's talking about it.

00:34:32   - And I just don't believe that there is any way

00:34:35   that they could be shipping them

00:34:36   to individual developers or small companies.

00:34:40   And at least the existence of that fact

00:34:42   would not have gotten out there.

00:34:44   And I have not seen that or heard that from anyone.

00:34:48   And so like, that's the surprising thing to me,

00:34:51   just because they made people submit those forms

00:34:54   so long ago now, right?

00:34:56   Like within a couple of weeks after it was announced.

00:34:59   - We know they're bringing retail employees into Cupertino.

00:35:03   I think that's early next year.

00:35:04   - And they're doing more like the developer labs

00:35:06   are expanding them across different territories,

00:35:09   which is good, like they're doing that, right?

00:35:11   But yeah, that has been the surprising thing to me.

00:35:14   I still believe it's on track for early,

00:35:15   but I'm kind of wondering why they bothered

00:35:18   with the developer kit thing.

00:35:20   - I mean, maybe they shifted directions

00:35:22   and they've focused on expanding

00:35:23   those developer kitchen sessions instead.

00:35:25   - And maybe the developer kits just come out

00:35:27   when the product comes out,

00:35:28   because they're being realistic.

00:35:29   - Well, that's what I was thinking,

00:35:30   is it may just get to the point where they're like,

00:35:32   you know what, let's just ship this.

00:35:35   Why are we going through this other process?

00:35:36   I don't know.

00:35:37   And it's possible that it is delayed.

00:35:38   I just, I don't get those vibes.

00:35:40   I just don't feel like it's gonna be,

00:35:42   Tim Cook is still real,

00:35:45   sounds real confident about it.

00:35:47   - No, I still think it's coming like in January, February.

00:35:50   Like I feel very confident.

00:35:51   - Early next year.

00:35:53   I don't think May is early next year, right?

00:35:57   I don't think April is early next year.

00:35:59   I think it will be- - I think it's before

00:36:00   the spring, like I'm on your board here.

00:36:01   - I agree.

00:36:03   Yeah, thank you.

00:36:03   - Anytime.

00:36:05   - Welcome to the board.

00:36:08   You're on the Jason board now.

00:36:09   That's great.

00:36:10   I'm the chairman, but you can be on it.

00:36:11   - I'm happy for that.

00:36:12   That's no problem with me.

00:36:13   - Okay, thank you.

00:36:15   It's a diving board though.

00:36:16   Bad news.

00:36:17   - Sure, okay.

00:36:19   It is rumor roundup time.

00:36:21   - Woo, yee-haw.

00:36:22   - We have so much rumor roundup

00:36:26   that we are going to be breaking rumor roundup today

00:36:29   into a selection of different products.

00:36:34   - Okay.

00:36:35   - Is what we're gonna be doing.

00:36:36   I'm going to start- - Many rumors roundup.

00:36:38   - Many rumors to be rounded.

00:36:39   I'm going to start today with iPad and Mac.

00:36:43   That's where we're gonna begin.

00:36:45   So the Elec has some details about the OLED displays

00:36:50   that will power future iPads and Macs.

00:36:54   - Okay.

00:36:55   - Apple are going to be working with LG display

00:36:57   to put together an OLED package,

00:36:59   which is custom for them, for Apple,

00:37:01   to sit in both the 11 and 13 inch iPad Pros

00:37:05   on schedule for next year

00:37:07   with a MacBook for 2027.

00:37:10   - Just another report of what we've heard before.

00:37:12   - Yep. - Really?

00:37:13   - Yep.

00:37:14   This is like more confirmation stuff, right?

00:37:16   This is the interesting part to me.

00:37:18   This is new.

00:37:20   Is it, I don't know, it's not wall breaking,

00:37:21   but the panels that Apple would be using

00:37:24   will feature what's called a two stack tandem structure,

00:37:26   which features two light emitting layers on the display

00:37:30   so that brightness levels are maintained

00:37:32   from the like LCD and micro LED.

00:37:35   Is it micro LED that's in the iPad Pro now?

00:37:39   Or is it mini LED? - Mini.

00:37:40   - Mini LED? - Mini LED, yeah.

00:37:42   - So they will retain the brightness levels from OLED

00:37:45   'cause typically OLED is not as bright.

00:37:48   I found out from this

00:37:49   that the iPhone uses a single stack OLED.

00:37:52   So this must be a harder problem with larger displays

00:37:55   to keep the brightness level up.

00:37:56   - I think that's right.

00:37:57   And the stack, I mean, the LCD panels,

00:38:00   what you've got is you've got a screen

00:38:02   and then behind it, you've got these individual arrays,

00:38:05   these arrays of individual LCDs that are coming on

00:38:09   or LEDs that are coming on, not LCDs,

00:38:13   LEDs that are behind the LCD panel.

00:38:16   And that's how you get the brightness

00:38:18   is that they light up more or less.

00:38:20   And the more of them, if you had a one-to-one,

00:38:21   you'd basically have OLED, right?

00:38:23   And that's what micro LED is sort of supposed to be

00:38:26   as a technology.

00:38:28   So I don't know what they're doing here,

00:38:29   but it sounds like maybe they're doing something like this

00:38:31   where there's an OLED layer

00:38:33   and then below it, there is another light layer,

00:38:36   whether it's OLED or whether it's some other LED layer

00:38:41   to give it that boost.

00:38:42   This is a big deal because maybe, I mean, the iPad,

00:38:46   it's important that the iPad be bright,

00:38:49   taken outside and taken in all sorts of bright environments

00:38:52   is really important.

00:38:53   How many times have I said that big, bright,

00:38:56   beautiful screen about the MacBook Pro since it came out?

00:38:59   If they replaced that with OLED in 25, 26, 27,

00:39:03   whenever it is, they can't regress, right?

00:39:06   Like you can't go back to being like,

00:39:08   "Oh, well, it's OLED,

00:39:09   "but it's much dimmer than it was before."

00:39:11   I don't think they can do that.

00:39:12   And so- - I don't think people

00:39:13   would appreciate the benefit of OLED in that case.

00:39:16   - Yeah, and OLEDs are dark generally.

00:39:19   OLEDs don't get super bright.

00:39:20   One of the reasons I don't have an OLED TV

00:39:22   in my living room is that my living room has a giant set

00:39:25   of windows and French doors on one side

00:39:28   and modern OLEDs would probably not be bright enough

00:39:33   for me to watch like a football game during the day.

00:39:36   So that's a challenge for Apple to solve here.

00:39:38   - One of the things I found interesting from this report

00:39:43   is like, if this is based on facts, right?

00:39:47   Not just, there's not speculation in this part

00:39:49   that it is referencing an 11 and 13,

00:39:51   because we had wondered like,

00:39:53   "Is this time to get rid of the 11 on the iPad Pro

00:39:56   "and maybe go bigger?"

00:39:57   Especially with something else

00:39:58   I'm gonna talk about in a minute.

00:39:59   So this is the case, the 11 inch iPad Pro sticking around.

00:40:02   I do think that an 11 inch OLED iPad Pro

00:40:05   would be a very nice product, right?

00:40:07   Like that.

00:40:07   It's why I was so disappointed

00:40:09   that they never put the new screen technology,

00:40:13   the mini LED in the 11, right?

00:40:15   'Cause that just felt like it would be so good

00:40:17   and would give it differentiation to the air.

00:40:20   But while talking about that,

00:40:22   let me talk about our next thing.

00:40:23   We could talk about differentiation.

00:40:24   Okay.

00:40:25   - So I did a quick Google and it sounds like

00:40:28   the dual stack, two stack OLEDs are really two layers of OLED

00:40:33   and that dramatically increases,

00:40:38   well, it doubles the brightness of an OLED panel

00:40:40   by having two different layers of OLEDs,

00:40:43   which is again, light emitting diodes.

00:40:45   They are light emitting dots, basically.

00:40:49   Two layers of them, you get more light,

00:40:52   which means that it gets to be brighter.

00:40:54   - It seems hard work to make work.

00:40:56   - Yeah, and expensive.

00:40:57   - Mark Gurman, yes, Mark Gurman and Ming-Chi Kuo

00:41:00   are reporting that it is Apple's plan

00:41:02   to overhaul the entire iPad line next year.

00:41:05   - Makes sense, makes sense.

00:41:07   - Ming-Chi Kuo gave some scheduled details for the products.

00:41:10   So Kuo was expecting the iPad Air in Q1.

00:41:13   So, and that would update the existing 10.9 model

00:41:18   and introduce a 12.9 inch iPad Air.

00:41:20   - Right.

00:41:21   - The iPad Pro would come in Q2

00:41:24   and would feature the OLED displays in an 11 and 13

00:41:27   and an M3 chip.

00:41:29   The iPad and the iPad mini in the second half of the year,

00:41:33   but no details.

00:41:34   And with that, the ninth gen iPad

00:41:37   that features the lightning port would be removed from sale

00:41:40   so that every iPad is USB-C.

00:41:42   - Right, so they may be,

00:41:44   depending on what's in the 11th generation iPad,

00:41:47   that might be cheaper

00:41:50   and they get rid of the ninth and the 10th.

00:41:52   - More likely the 10th will then kick down the price list

00:41:55   and the 11th will be a little bit better

00:41:57   and we'll continue to have an old iPad in the mix.

00:42:00   - But just the thing that I find interesting

00:42:02   is like 11 and 13 inch iPad Air, 11 and 13 inch iPad Pro.

00:42:07   Okay, you remember those rumors before

00:42:11   that the iPad Pro was gonna get incredibly expensive?

00:42:14   - Yeah.

00:42:15   - I wonder if this is how they mitigate that.

00:42:17   It's like, well, we have a big iPad now.

00:42:20   - Yes.

00:42:21   - You have to spend the most expensive iPad

00:42:24   in order to get a big iPad screen if that's what you want.

00:42:27   - Yeah. - Yeah.

00:42:29   And it uses, this is something that,

00:42:31   when we were talking about iPad a few weeks ago,

00:42:33   I talked about the idea that iPads

00:42:35   are made by their accessories, right?

00:42:37   Like iPads are devices that have that core

00:42:40   and then it's all the accessories that go around it.

00:42:42   And the reason that you make iPads the same size

00:42:45   is not just like, it's so confusing, there's two 12.9s.

00:42:48   Well, one of the reasons you do it

00:42:49   is that you don't have to make two separate everything

00:42:53   for that, right?

00:42:54   Oh, this is a new 12.5 inch Air.

00:42:58   And like, you can't, like Apple can't, I mean, they can,

00:43:01   but they don't wanna make that many different accessories.

00:43:03   So if you do a 12.9 Air,

00:43:04   guess what it's gonna use for a Magic Keyboard?

00:43:07   The existing iPad Pro 12.9 Magic Keyboard.

00:43:11   So keeping those things in sync is important for accessories.

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00:45:17   So we're gonna continue our rumor roundup,

00:45:21   and now we're gonna talk about the Apple Watch.

00:45:24   - Okay.

00:45:25   - So Mark Gurman had a really big story

00:45:28   that was also like history.

00:45:30   - That's a great story.

00:45:31   - It's like really detailed, really interesting.

00:45:34   It's good reporting, but as well as looking backwards,

00:45:36   it looks forwards.

00:45:38   - With Drake Bennett, we should say,

00:45:40   that was a co-buy line.

00:45:41   - Thank you very much, I missed that.

00:45:42   So I appreciate that.

00:45:44   So this is talking about health in Apple's products,

00:45:49   but mostly focused on the Apple Watch

00:45:51   because it's the product that they focus on most.

00:45:52   So I'm gonna get a quote from the article.

00:45:54   Apple has an enticing roadmap for 2024,

00:45:57   including hypertension and sleep apnea detection

00:46:00   for the watch and hearing aid capabilities for AirPods.

00:46:03   There are plans to turn its forthcoming Vision Pro

00:46:06   into a health and fitness device,

00:46:08   and work continues on a paid health coach service

00:46:12   that uses AI.

00:46:14   So I wanna dig into a couple of these things

00:46:16   a little bit more.

00:46:17   So hypertension detection is enabled

00:46:21   via a blood pressure monitoring system

00:46:23   that would be found in the 2024 Apple Watch.

00:46:26   I'll go back to another quote from the report.

00:46:28   The system is designed to just tell a user

00:46:30   if their blood pressure is trending upward

00:46:32   and to offer a journal for the user to jot down

00:46:34   what was happening when hypertension occurred,

00:46:36   to avoid potentially giving a misdiagnosis,

00:46:39   the feature will then direct the user to talk to their doctor

00:46:42   or check their blood pressure with a traditional cuff,

00:46:44   which can provide exact systolic and diastolic measurements.

00:46:49   - I love this idea that, you know, there's the proverbial,

00:46:51   not to make light of this, but the proverbial like,

00:46:55   that really raised my blood pressure moment.

00:46:57   And your watch goes, yes, it did.

00:47:00   And you're like, yeah, okay, really raised my blood pressure.

00:47:03   And I say that as somebody with high blood pressure,

00:47:05   I will say that.

00:47:05   I am a person who takes medication for high blood pressure.

00:47:09   So I get it, I get it.

00:47:11   But it's still funny to, I mean,

00:47:13   it's a little like the noise thing, right?

00:47:15   Where I'm at a football game and it's fourth down

00:47:18   and they're going for it.

00:47:19   And we're all yelling 'cause our team's on defense.

00:47:22   And I get a little thing on my watch that says,

00:47:24   it's a little bit loud right now.

00:47:26   I'm like, yeah, it is.

00:47:28   It's okay, watch, it's okay.

00:47:30   So now it's like, somebody said something

00:47:32   that really (beep) you up, didn't they?

00:47:35   Your blood pressure, maybe check it, yeah.

00:47:38   - So I had the other day, my first high heart rate thing.

00:47:43   You know where it's like, your heart rate's a little high.

00:47:47   I've never had one before.

00:47:49   I was watching the Marvels in the cinema

00:47:53   and there was a big tense moment, I guess,

00:47:55   'cause my heart rate shot up.

00:47:56   I'd been to the gym before, so maybe I was like,

00:48:00   you know, a little high anyway.

00:48:02   But yeah, I've never had one of those before.

00:48:03   - That's amazing.

00:48:04   - Hey, your heart rate's too high.

00:48:05   And I was like, oh my God, Captain Marvel, no, you know?

00:48:09   I was obviously very upset.

00:48:11   Fun movie, by the way.

00:48:13   - I wanna see it tonight.

00:48:14   - I had a great time.

00:48:15   - See, talk about discourse.

00:48:16   There's a lot of discourse out there about,

00:48:17   oh, Marvel people are getting tired of Marvel

00:48:18   and I guess it didn't open well

00:48:20   and there's some negative reviews of it.

00:48:22   Every human being I know who I've talked to,

00:48:25   who has seen it, has liked it.

00:48:27   So I don't know. - It honestly, to me,

00:48:29   felt like a return to form, like from a movie perspective.

00:48:32   I was like, I had a really good time watching that movie

00:48:35   and I cared about what happened, you know?

00:48:37   I will also say on a side note,

00:48:39   low key season two, fantastic.

00:48:42   - Same story there.

00:48:43   - Yeah, between these two. - I've heard a lot

00:48:44   of discourse about it.

00:48:45   And then I talked to my friends about it

00:48:46   and they're all like, I really enjoyed it.

00:48:47   I haven't watched it yet.

00:48:48   - Between these two,

00:48:49   I feel like they're getting their groove back, but.

00:48:52   - This is a little sub-segment we call the Marvel moment.

00:48:54   - Marvel moment inside of "Rouba Round Up."

00:48:56   - Inside of "Rouba Round Up," there's a Marvel moment.

00:48:59   - This very Marvel too, to actually just,

00:49:01   everything's alliterated, you know?

00:49:04   - Of course.

00:49:04   - In the future with the hypertension,

00:49:10   they would want to expand it to provide

00:49:13   actual exact numbers.

00:49:14   'Cause what this would do is it says,

00:49:15   it says that you are trending up,

00:49:16   but you're not gonna be able to take a blood pressure reading

00:49:20   with this initial technology.

00:49:22   - We talked about this with the temping

00:49:24   and then it turned out that they use the temperature

00:49:26   for cycle tracking.

00:49:27   But it's this idea that you can build sensors

00:49:30   that do this stuff on the watch

00:49:32   and it's very impressive when they do.

00:49:35   But the problem is that they can't be as exact.

00:49:39   They can't be as precise as a purpose-built device

00:49:44   because they just, the shape, the place on your wrist,

00:49:48   all of those things feed into it.

00:49:50   So instead what you, I think you're gonna see

00:49:52   for a lot of the stuff they add to the Apple Watch over time

00:49:54   is it's gonna be like trends without details

00:49:58   and saying you should look at this

00:49:59   with a purpose-built device.

00:50:00   If you have high blood pressure,

00:50:02   you should have a high blood pressure cuff

00:50:03   and you should check that out.

00:50:05   And what we can tell you is you're trending up,

00:50:07   which can be really valuable.

00:50:09   If I'm on my medication

00:50:11   and I need to go on a different medication

00:50:13   'cause it's not doing its job anymore,

00:50:14   if I was told actually your blood pressure is trending up,

00:50:17   you should look into that.

00:50:19   That is useful, but it's not a replacement

00:50:22   for the little thing that is gonna go on your arm

00:50:25   and squeeze it or not if you're Johnny Ive.

00:50:28   - Or early signs for someone who doesn't.

00:50:32   - Yeah, yeah.

00:50:33   - Who has not had an issue before.

00:50:35   - Yeah, and then your blood pressure is up.

00:50:36   That was a reference by the way, apparently in this story

00:50:38   that Johnny Ive developed like a squeeze proof

00:50:41   hypertension like cuff, weird.

00:50:45   Okay, but that never came to fruition.

00:50:50   - Not yet.

00:50:50   - Yeah, that's right. - You know?

00:50:52   - It's just on the shelf,

00:50:53   it's on the Johnny shelf in the white room.

00:50:55   - They're gonna be like, oh, you can get the Apple blood.

00:50:58   - Apple Cuff.

00:50:59   - Apple Cuff in case you want it.

00:51:00   - No, you know what they'll do is they'll be like,

00:51:01   yeah, you know, Belkin makes a blood pressure cuff.

00:51:05   - Oh, of course.

00:51:05   - It's totally designed by Apple.

00:51:06   Oh no, no, you can get it from them.

00:51:08   - Look at this, look at this.

00:51:09   It came out at the same time, you know?

00:51:11   Incredible.

00:51:13   - Amazing.

00:51:14   - These things like that idea of being able

00:51:16   to give those early warnings

00:51:18   and we're gonna talk about some other stuff like that

00:51:19   in a minute too.

00:51:20   It is kind of incredible how they are building

00:51:27   this product to make it that you would feel

00:51:32   like you need to wear it every day, right?

00:51:35   Because if it's going to be there in the background,

00:51:40   monitoring your body for signs of an issue

00:51:44   that you would otherwise not know about

00:51:45   until it's too late or until it's like too far down the path,

00:51:50   I mean, who doesn't wanna wear that product, right?

00:51:52   Like if I'm like, oh, my blood pressure is fine,

00:51:56   I expect at some point in my life, it won't be.

00:52:00   If I know that sooner based on something

00:52:03   that's continually monitoring my body

00:52:06   and could then take the path,

00:52:09   like the steps to making a better life choices,

00:52:13   like why would you not wanna put that on your arm every day

00:52:16   when it's also a watch?

00:52:18   Like it's not just like this extra thing I have to wear.

00:52:20   Like I don't need to get a cuff

00:52:22   and take my blood pressure every day, you know?

00:52:25   - I have seen some, this is related, I guess,

00:52:29   to that last thing that I said,

00:52:31   some discourse about this story that said,

00:52:34   because the story points out quite rightly

00:52:36   that Apple, when they talk about health, they face a choice.

00:52:40   And one of the choices that they faced is,

00:52:44   are you focused on well people who may need diagnoses

00:52:49   of either they're maintaining their health

00:52:52   or they're warned that there's a problem,

00:52:55   or do you focus on taking care of the sick?

00:52:58   And so the discourse is like, well,

00:53:00   of course Apple doesn't wanna take care of sick people.

00:53:04   That's all a lie.

00:53:06   They just wanna have healthy people

00:53:08   feel better about themselves.

00:53:10   However, again, I'm gonna say idealism versus reality here.

00:53:14   Just pay attention to the history of the Apple Watch,

00:53:17   not just from these reports, but like from observing it.

00:53:21   It's incredibly difficult.

00:53:22   One of the huge reasons that the Apple Watch

00:53:24   can't do lots of things is because

00:53:26   once you become a medical device,

00:53:28   the rules are incredibly specific.

00:53:31   And the Apple Watch is meant to be a general use device.

00:53:36   When you're sick, you have specific needs

00:53:41   and you probably need a specific medical device for it.

00:53:45   And they make a lot of medical devices

00:53:46   that like connect to the Apple Watch and stuff.

00:53:48   But I don't think it's unreasonable

00:53:50   for any company like Apple making a product

00:53:52   like the Apple Watch to say, look,

00:53:54   our goal here is to monitor you

00:53:56   and warn you when there's a problem

00:53:57   so that you can enter the medical system and get treatment,

00:54:02   which might include other devices,

00:54:04   including maybe devices that work with the Apple Watch.

00:54:06   That's fine.

00:54:07   I've got a blood pressure cup that does health kit.

00:54:10   Great.

00:54:11   But it is, I just, I don't think it's like some conspiracy.

00:54:18   I think it's like realism that Apple is not,

00:54:21   although they put their toe in the water

00:54:23   and the story talks about them thinking about doing

00:54:26   like healthcare clinics and trying that

00:54:27   and realizing how expensive it is

00:54:29   and they can't really do it that way.

00:54:30   And they're doing something very similar

00:54:31   to what Amazon is trying with their healthcare clinics.

00:54:34   I think the truth is Apple is a maker

00:54:36   of mass market products.

00:54:38   And the Apple Watch is a great example

00:54:39   of a product that is on the periphery of medical,

00:54:44   but like is never gonna go too far down medical

00:54:48   for a few reasons.

00:54:49   One of which is because I don't think there's enough space

00:54:52   in there to make it a detailed medical device

00:54:55   for all sorts of different conditions in one place.

00:54:58   And two, the amount of regulation that would be required

00:55:00   would be enormous.

00:55:01   And three, you can see here,

00:55:02   a lot of what they're able to get in that watch shape

00:55:05   is not as precise as you'd want for something

00:55:09   that is actually actively detailing a medical condition.

00:55:12   So I think that explains why the Apple Watch

00:55:17   is always gonna be, I think like this,

00:55:19   which is they're gonna try their best

00:55:22   to do things that will be able to read your wrist

00:55:26   and give you a sign,

00:55:28   but it's probably never going to be as precise

00:55:31   as anybody would want it to be.

00:55:32   There will always be a better medical device

00:55:36   than the Apple Watch.

00:55:37   The Apple Watch is like a leading indicator,

00:55:39   a warning light.

00:55:41   It's able to track you 'cause you wear it all the time

00:55:43   or can wear it all the time.

00:55:45   That's really valuable,

00:55:46   but it's not a replacement for a sleep study

00:55:50   or a heart monitor that you tape to your chest

00:55:53   and wear for a week or like any other medical device.

00:55:57   Or a proper multi-lead EKG, right?

00:56:02   It's never gonna be those things.

00:56:03   It is always gonna be like trying to do what it can

00:56:08   to give you warnings and information

00:56:10   in a limited way on your wrist.

00:56:13   - So the sleep apnea detection that you mentioned

00:56:16   is enabled via, I guess this is just smarts, right?

00:56:20   So it's using sleep tracking and breathing patterns.

00:56:23   'Cause there will be things that they will add over time

00:56:25   that don't need sensors, right?

00:56:26   It's just like we're able to use data.

00:56:30   And that's how I imagine that even something

00:56:32   like the blood pressure system could get better over time.

00:56:35   If you have enough of them out there

00:56:37   and you can build a model.

00:56:38   - You built a better machine learning model, right?

00:56:40   That's exactly what it is.

00:56:41   And the sleep apnea detection,

00:56:42   I mean, sleep detection is already using

00:56:45   a machine learning model.

00:56:46   'Cause what does it have?

00:56:47   It doesn't have like a sleep sensor.

00:56:49   It's got motion sensors and maybe sound.

00:56:53   I don't know if it's using sound or not

00:56:54   to hear snoring or breathing or whatever, but like motion.

00:56:57   And you do machine learning training

00:57:00   on these very minute motions

00:57:03   and you are able to pull patterns out of that data

00:57:08   and see your breathing patterns

00:57:10   and see your sleep patterns at it.

00:57:11   But it's limited 'cause all it has

00:57:16   is those sensors in the Apple Watch.

00:57:18   That's it.

00:57:19   - What continues on the blood glucose monitoring system?

00:57:23   When I was reading about this in this report,

00:57:25   like we spoken about it before,

00:57:26   this feels like the white whale for them.

00:57:30   They're like, if they can get this working,

00:57:33   'cause it also sounds like it will be

00:57:35   like this hypertension system initially

00:57:36   where it's about trends, not readings.

00:57:38   But even then, if they can get that

00:57:40   and if they can get up and down working, right?

00:57:43   You're trending up or trending down,

00:57:45   my word, it's gonna be huge

00:57:50   if they can get this to work.

00:57:52   - Well, again, they're trying to do things like,

00:57:54   yeah, monitor your blood sugar.

00:57:55   And it may, again, it may not be something

00:57:58   that's useful for full on diabetics,

00:58:01   but it may be useful for people who are pre-diabetic

00:58:04   or might not know that they're pre-diabetic

00:58:06   to make changes and understand how their blood sugar

00:58:08   is affecting them.

00:58:09   - Also just for people to understand their diet more.

00:58:12   - Yeah, absolutely, right?

00:58:14   Oh, why is my blood sugar up?

00:58:15   I just had a bunch of carbs.

00:58:17   - Yeah, and everybody reacts differently

00:58:19   to different types of foods, right?

00:58:20   So it may help you better plan what you're eating

00:58:24   and when you're eating it based on you being able to see

00:58:26   when your blood pressure's going up and down,

00:58:28   sorry, when your blood glucose is going up and down.

00:58:30   - Yeah, and again, this is one of those cases

00:58:33   where I think that there was some initial idealism

00:58:37   inside Apple when the Apple Watch was being developed

00:58:39   that they were gonna be like a medical device

00:58:41   that just could tell everything.

00:58:43   And they've had in the last 10 years,

00:58:45   a lot of reality about what is capable,

00:58:47   even with the amazing things that they're able to pack

00:58:49   in that watch, what they're really capable of doing

00:58:52   when all they have is a little tiny window

00:58:54   onto a person's wrist.

00:58:56   There are incredible limitations to that.

00:58:59   And that's just how it's gonna be.

00:59:03   So in this case, they're like,

00:59:04   are we gonna be able to be a full-on blood glucose monitor?

00:59:09   And it's like, well, maybe not, but we're gonna,

00:59:12   there's value in what we can do,

00:59:14   I think is what they're trying to do.

00:59:15   There's a lot of that with the Apple Watch now.

00:59:16   - I can't imagine any computer-based system

00:59:19   that could be sticking the little thread

00:59:22   inside of your arm, right?

00:59:23   Like that's, it's in there.

00:59:26   - Maybe, that would be quite a breakthrough,

00:59:27   but it's always gonna be like,

00:59:29   you're looking through skin and a blood vessel exterior

00:59:33   to make some judgments about what's going on in the blood.

00:59:36   And then there's looking at the blood.

00:59:37   And those are, one of them is harder, but again,

00:59:42   I'm not, I think that there will be sensor

00:59:44   and machine learning breakthroughs that will be amazing.

00:59:48   But they're probably not saying,

00:59:50   but like there's also a good chance that there are things

00:59:52   that you literally can't measure

00:59:54   no matter how intelligent you are

00:59:56   from sitting on the back of someone's wrist.

00:59:59   - But I mean, even with like the models

01:00:00   and that kind of stuff,

01:00:01   you're still just gonna go and have somebody

01:00:04   check your real, check the blood, right?

01:00:05   Like you'll get to a point and be like,

01:00:07   this doesn't seem right or something's going wrong here.

01:00:10   You would go to the doctor

01:00:11   and you'd have a blood test done or something, right?

01:00:13   Like there's, I think there's something there.

01:00:18   And also to round out this,

01:00:21   'cause basically I read the quote

01:00:22   with touching all the things.

01:00:24   The AirPods thing, so AirPods would essentially

01:00:27   get the functionality to work as a replacement

01:00:30   for an over the counter hearing aid.

01:00:31   So they'll build in the functionality to make it like,

01:00:34   it could work like a hearing aid,

01:00:35   as well as being able to use AirPods

01:00:38   to perform hearing tests.

01:00:40   - So we talked about this a while ago,

01:00:42   the idea that they've changed the way

01:00:43   that hearing aids are licensed in the US

01:00:45   and it should, at the time it was sort of like,

01:00:47   this should open the door for companies like Apple

01:00:50   to be able to make things like AirPods work as hearing aids,

01:00:54   instead of having to sort of like not do certain things

01:00:58   or not make claims or have to sell them as a medical device.

01:01:02   Like they can do this.

01:01:03   And this was an interesting report

01:01:05   because it suggests that that is happening.

01:01:07   I hadn't heard before that it was definitely happening

01:01:10   within Apple, just that it opened the door

01:01:12   for Apple to go in there.

01:01:13   And any of us who've used like AirPods and AirPods Pro

01:01:16   and all the different processing, like,

01:01:18   it's hard not to think about how it could probably

01:01:23   have different modes that would be more

01:01:26   like a traditional hearing aid.

01:01:28   So here we are.

01:01:30   And also I'll point out, there are a lot of people

01:01:33   who resist hearing aids and there are people

01:01:35   who can't afford them, that's an issue,

01:01:38   but there are also people who resist them

01:01:40   and don't think they need them.

01:01:42   And even though they totally need them,

01:01:46   they don't think they need them.

01:01:48   I've had some relatives like that.

01:01:50   This is really interesting, I think, for those edge cases,

01:01:53   where it's somebody who doesn't think they need

01:01:55   a hearing boost, like, oh, I don't need a hearing aid.

01:01:58   But then they say, oh, but Apple's got this thing

01:01:59   that makes conversations clearer.

01:02:00   And you're like, oh, that sounds like a good idea.

01:02:02   Don't tell them it's a hearing aid,

01:02:04   it's just making conversations clearer, right?

01:02:07   Like, that's great, that's awesome.

01:02:10   - And on a separate note, Ming-Chi Kuo is reporting

01:02:13   that there are currently no signs

01:02:15   that an Apple Watch Ultra 3 is in development.

01:02:18   Kuo believes that the likelihood of a new version

01:02:21   in 2024 is decreasing and feels

01:02:25   that it's maybe because of production issues

01:02:27   with the micro LED display that Apple wants to bring

01:02:30   to the product within the next couple of years.

01:02:33   This is whatever, right, this report, I feel like.

01:02:36   The reason I wanted to bring it in

01:02:37   is 'cause the question I wanted to ask you is,

01:02:40   I wonder if it's all focused on this Apple Watch X instead.

01:02:45   And so they're like, here's one watch next year

01:02:48   and it's like the brand new watch, I don't know.

01:02:51   Or this is nothing.

01:02:53   - Or they're taking a year off

01:02:55   and there'll be a minor increment to the Apple Watch in '24

01:02:58   and then the big watch updates

01:02:59   will happen simultaneously in '25.

01:03:01   I think they're, look, it's great

01:03:04   that the Apple Watch Ultra 2 came into being.

01:03:06   You've got one, right?

01:03:07   - And I love it, that if you want my long-term review,

01:03:11   I adore it.

01:03:12   - Yeah, I don't feel like the Apple Watch Ultra

01:03:14   needs to be updated every year.

01:03:16   It's nice if it is, but I don't feel like it needs to be.

01:03:19   And if they skip a year with it,

01:03:20   like, Ultra 2 is gonna be fine.

01:03:23   It's gonna be fine.

01:03:24   And I don't think it says anything

01:03:27   about the future of the Apple Watch Ultra.

01:03:29   I'm actually pretty convinced

01:03:30   that the Apple Watch Ultra is a winner

01:03:32   and it's gonna stick around.

01:03:33   But yeah, it's possible that this is also like,

01:03:35   they're saving up and, you know,

01:03:41   2025 might be the big Apple Watch year, who knows?

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01:04:34   Do you enjoy them?

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01:04:37   but yeah, it was the chicken.

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01:06:33   The final rumor roundup for today is about iOS,

01:06:39   some stuff going on on iOS.

01:06:42   So first up, we go back to the sheriff, Mark Gurman,

01:06:46   who has been, had a couple of reports

01:06:48   over the last couple of weeks

01:06:50   about the development of iOS 18 and Mac OS as well,

01:06:54   of course, but obviously most of this stuff

01:06:56   is focused around iOS these days,

01:06:59   and kind of what Apple's doing

01:07:01   and a little bit of what they're focusing on.

01:07:03   So last week in his Power On newsletter,

01:07:06   Mark detailed that Craig Federighi ordered a freeze

01:07:08   on all new development to focus on bugs and issues

01:07:12   in the current internal builds of iOS 18.

01:07:15   So they were unhappy at Apple with the quality, I think,

01:07:20   of what was being produced, and it was really buggy,

01:07:25   which is funny that they're like,

01:07:26   how buggy could it be this early?

01:07:29   You know what I mean?

01:07:29   Like if it's bad, right?

01:07:30   Like you'd expect it to be buggy.

01:07:32   It must've been pretty bad for them, right, to do this.

01:07:36   - And there was that in his newsletter,

01:07:38   he mentioned that these, there are usually four milestones.

01:07:41   I didn't know any of this, right?

01:07:42   We don't get to see much inside the black box at Apple.

01:07:45   Nice to know that also in this report, it's very clear,

01:07:48   like these are described as being changes

01:07:50   that Craig Federighi has made to try to address issues.

01:07:53   And I like hearing about-

01:07:54   - Since 2019.

01:07:56   - That he's been working,

01:07:58   'cause he's in charge of software, right?

01:07:59   He's been working to try to address some issues

01:08:01   that we've all seen on the outside internally,

01:08:04   and that's great.

01:08:05   So Mark said in his newsletter,

01:08:06   like there's these four milestones,

01:08:08   and that they tend to be sort of like development

01:08:11   and then sort of like fixing the regressions

01:08:12   and integration, and then, and they kind of alternate.

01:08:15   And it sounds like this was one of those where it was like,

01:08:17   wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

01:08:18   We can't move on to the next milestone.

01:08:21   It's not good enough.

01:08:22   So let's spend another week on this milestone

01:08:26   addressing all the issues.

01:08:27   And so it's not like a big, like press the stop button

01:08:32   and cease and all of that.

01:08:34   It's more, the way it came across to me is it's more like

01:08:37   he wasn't satisfied with it going to the next stage.

01:08:41   It didn't feel like they were ready to go there.

01:08:44   And like, I am never gonna say, no, no, move on.

01:08:49   Don't fix the bugs, right?

01:08:51   Like so many, Apple's platforms are so mature right now,

01:08:55   and they need, and we all rely on them,

01:08:57   and they need to be stable, and they need to work well,

01:09:01   and they need to not be full of bugs.

01:09:03   - There was a part in this report that I really liked.

01:09:06   It says in 2019, Federighi adopted a policy

01:09:09   that its division calls the pact.

01:09:12   And the pact is we will never knowingly allow regressions

01:09:16   in the build.

01:09:16   And when we find them, we will fix them quickly.

01:09:20   - Yeah.

01:09:21   - I like that.

01:09:22   - I like it.

01:09:23   - Just to think of something.

01:09:24   So Mark Herman saying that iOS 18, this is interesting.

01:09:29   This seemed weird to me.

01:09:30   iOS 18 is gonna be used to sell the iPhone 16

01:09:33   because the iPhone 16 is not gonna have a lot of changes.

01:09:36   And so they want iOS 18 to be really good.

01:09:38   And I kind of, I don't know what I think about that.

01:09:42   Like, what is it?

01:09:43   Is it gonna be like a bunch of iOS 18 features

01:09:45   that are only in the iPhone 16?

01:09:48   - Yeah, I mean, maybe.

01:09:49   I also don't know how much of this linkage is real

01:09:52   and how much of it is Mark Herman's analysis

01:09:55   based on his knowledge of the iPhone 16

01:09:57   not being particularly anything.

01:09:59   I'm not sure if somebody said,

01:10:01   "Oh, they want this to be good

01:10:04   "because there's nothing in the iPhone 16."

01:10:07   Or if he sees they want this to be good

01:10:09   and he looks at the iPhone 16

01:10:10   and doesn't think that there's anything in it

01:10:12   and makes a connection.

01:10:13   I don't know that, but that does seem weird.

01:10:15   And it does, I mean, lends credence

01:10:17   to some of our vibes sometimes where it's like,

01:10:19   why is this feature only on this model

01:10:22   when it could have been on a previous model?

01:10:24   And, you know, although, I mean,

01:10:26   it doesn't have to be that, right?

01:10:28   Like it could be, and I'm sure it is every cycle

01:10:31   that there are new hardware in the 16 that they know about

01:10:34   that they're building features for.

01:10:36   And that, you know, but it is an interesting note of like,

01:10:39   we really gotta sell this because I guess,

01:10:43   does Apple feel like one of the biggest selling points

01:10:45   of iPhone hardware is the new OS

01:10:47   that you can get on your old hardware?

01:10:49   I don't know, I don't know.

01:10:50   - Well, apparently iOS 18 is being positioned

01:10:54   with a focus on AI and machine learning, quote,

01:10:57   internally Apple senior management

01:11:00   has described its upcoming systems as ambitious

01:11:02   and compelling with major new features and designs

01:11:05   in addition to security and performance updates.

01:11:08   So iOS 18 feels like a big one,

01:11:10   there's no real detail in it.

01:11:11   But like, if it's meant to be a focus on AI,

01:11:13   is it like the chip is needed, right?

01:11:18   Like they need more machine learning like cores?

01:11:22   - I can't imagine that they're gonna make an ambitious

01:11:25   and compelling update that only has features

01:11:27   for the iPhone 16, I don't see that.

01:11:31   - So this is why I think that I'm not convinced

01:11:34   that these two are linked as such.

01:11:37   But I like the idea that this is the machine learning

01:11:41   and AI release because it does give us all hope

01:11:43   that that means they're going to do some things

01:11:46   of an intelligent assistant variety,

01:11:50   which I think would be great, right?

01:11:53   Like Siri needs to be replaced throughout, right?

01:11:58   Yeah.

01:11:59   - And there was just one other quote that I wanted to read

01:12:02   'cause I just, it made me feel bad for Apple engineers

01:12:06   for like how confusing their life must be.

01:12:08   So last month, the company completed

01:12:10   the first internal versions of the updates,

01:12:12   including the biggest new features.

01:12:14   When Apple gets to that stage known as M1,

01:12:17   it usually embarks on work for the next milestone, M2.

01:12:21   In this case, the debugging break delayed the start

01:12:23   of M2 development by a week.

01:12:25   So inside of Apple, they have things called M1 and M2

01:12:29   and I guess M3 and M4, and that just must make their lives

01:12:33   so complicated sometimes now.

01:12:35   - These are the M1 Macs.

01:12:37   - They're in M2 stage.

01:12:39   - M2, M1, Macs, Macs.

01:12:42   Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

01:12:47   Going back to the ML thing, like last week,

01:12:49   there was that AI pin event thing.

01:12:53   - Oh, the humane?

01:12:54   - Yeah, humane, yeah, which was not a good marketing video.

01:12:58   I would say everybody should watch that video

01:13:00   as a good example of how good Apple is at marketing videos

01:13:02   because I think it made it a bad job.

01:13:05   I think the presentation wasn't very good.

01:13:07   It has mistakes in it, but it's more than that.

01:13:09   They also, I think they mis-prioritized

01:13:12   the way they described the product.

01:13:13   And one of the first things they talk about

01:13:16   is the color ways of the product.

01:13:18   And nobody cares, dude.

01:13:20   That's at the end.

01:13:21   Why are you saying that first

01:13:23   and using those terms in that way

01:13:24   and having your cutie names for colors

01:13:27   that are just white and black and silver, whatever.

01:13:30   But what I, so that's my nutshell of the humane thing

01:13:34   is like, I don't think it was,

01:13:36   I think the product was let down by the presentation.

01:13:38   I think the product is a weird

01:13:40   and probably should be part of a larger ecosystem

01:13:42   of products, but they got funding to ship a product.

01:13:45   So it's a standalone product with its own phone number.

01:13:49   Like, all right, whatever.

01:13:50   - I will say on this pin, like I watched a video

01:13:53   and the whole time I was like, if Apple made this,

01:13:55   I would buy this.

01:13:57   - Yeah, well, this is the thing is

01:13:58   as part of a constellation of devices,

01:14:00   having a device that is, I mean, a lot of it,

01:14:04   you don't need if you've got an iPhone or AirPods

01:14:07   and all that, but like they do also have the thing

01:14:08   where it's like an Apple watch,

01:14:11   but they also have a camera looking out, which has value

01:14:14   and Apple's ecosystem sort of doesn't have something

01:14:16   like that that can see around you.

01:14:18   But really what I took away from it

01:14:20   and the thing that I really wish Apple had

01:14:22   and that other platforms had as well

01:14:25   is they are basically saying, look, our entire interface

01:14:29   is basically a GPT AI.

01:14:31   Like that is the whole interface.

01:14:33   And we don't even do apps.

01:14:34   You just tell it what you want and we get what it is back.

01:14:37   I think there's a fundamental mistake that they're making

01:14:39   that I understand because they, again,

01:14:41   they had to make a product and this is the product,

01:14:43   but like their attitude is that people don't like

01:14:46   their smartphones, which is bananas

01:14:48   because people love their smartphones.

01:14:49   Like, ah, smartphones, who has time for them?

01:14:52   Like, well, everybody in the human race seems to have time

01:14:54   for smartphones friends, but oh my goodness,

01:14:58   the attitude they have toward machine learning,

01:15:01   AI, chat, talk, information source,

01:15:06   that's what I took away and said, I want it, right?

01:15:10   Like that's what it's supposed to be like.

01:15:12   Alexa isn't like that.

01:15:14   Google assistant isn't like that.

01:15:16   Siri is certainly not like that.

01:15:18   Like that's the dream.

01:15:20   And yeah, it hallucinated.

01:15:21   It got a bunch of stuff wrong.

01:15:22   It got the Eclipse location wrong

01:15:24   and they kept it in the video,

01:15:25   which is like, what are you doing?

01:15:27   But the potential of being able to say,

01:15:32   what do I know about this?

01:15:34   And it's looked at your,

01:15:35   think about it from an Apple perspective,

01:15:37   it's got your notes, it's got your contacts,

01:15:40   it's got your email, it knows everything about you.

01:15:44   It is a personal assistant that you can use to find things

01:15:48   that you have in your personal data cloud,

01:15:50   but that you don't have in your brain.

01:15:52   It doesn't make the connection in your brain.

01:15:53   And it can make that connection.

01:15:56   That is huge.

01:15:58   The potential there is enormous to make our devices better.

01:16:02   I don't think it makes the smartphone obsolete,

01:16:05   which is sort of what humane is trying to say here.

01:16:07   But when we're talking about Apple trying to focus more

01:16:10   on machine learning and AI stuff,

01:16:12   and I know everybody is trying to do this right now.

01:16:14   Like that's what I want.

01:16:16   I want these assistants to be so much better.

01:16:19   One of the benefits of Apple having this enormous ecosystem

01:16:22   that they've built is that their machine learning

01:16:25   technologies could consume the content in the ecosystem,

01:16:28   in your personal ecosystem and know it.

01:16:32   And that would be incredibly valuable

01:16:34   if you could act on that.

01:16:35   So I don't know how realistic those humane demos even are,

01:16:38   and there were a lot of mistakes in them,

01:16:39   but like it showed the potential of something like a Siri 2

01:16:44   to do this if it works right.

01:16:48   And that's the big question is,

01:16:49   is this something that happens this year or in five years?

01:16:52   Before it's good enough.

01:16:54   And Apple's limitations and its conservatism about like,

01:16:56   well, if Apple's got a thing that tells you the eclipse

01:17:00   is in Australia when it's in America, guess what?

01:17:02   Not only they're not gonna put that in their demo,

01:17:04   they're not gonna ship it

01:17:05   because they don't wanna be embarrassed.

01:17:07   So there's lots of challenges going on here.

01:17:10   - I just can't believe they didn't check the video.

01:17:13   Is this happened in every AI focused product video?

01:17:16   - Yeah.

01:17:17   - It feels like the obvious thing to do,

01:17:21   like check it. - Fact checker.

01:17:23   Fact checker.

01:17:24   - And also why would you ask questions in a product video

01:17:27   that you don't know it can give correct answers to?

01:17:31   - I know, never ask a question you don't know the answer to

01:17:34   in a marketing video.

01:17:35   That is for sure. - Very strange.

01:17:37   - Very strange.

01:17:38   Anyway, but the potential is enormous.

01:17:39   Like again, I don't know if a pin is the right way to go.

01:17:44   It does make me feel like that,

01:17:46   eventually having something you wear, maybe glasses,

01:17:49   even if all there is on them are some sensors

01:17:52   as a part of the kind of broader picture.

01:17:54   - Realistically, any product like this

01:17:56   that's going to succeed needs to have a camera on it.

01:17:59   And that camera needs to be able to see what you can see.

01:18:02   So it's either physical, like a pin or it's glasses,

01:18:05   right, like the Ray-Bans.

01:18:07   Because it seems like if you're able to look at something,

01:18:10   but what is that?

01:18:12   Who does, that's just like, that's cool.

01:18:14   - Your phone's in your pocket,

01:18:17   so your phone's not looking around

01:18:19   and having, and somebody on Mastodon was like,

01:18:22   oh yeah, that's gonna be really good video, right?

01:18:24   Like it's all, and it's like, well, that's not the point.

01:18:26   First off, you are totally underestimating

01:18:28   how good stabilization is these days,

01:18:30   based on machine learning.

01:18:32   You take a wide field and even though it's jumpy,

01:18:35   you can stabilize that thing.

01:18:37   And it's so valuable for it to see what's around you.

01:18:41   It can already hear what's around you with your Apple Watch

01:18:44   or your headphones or whatever, but it's an extra layer

01:18:48   and it's a piece of sensory information

01:18:50   that the iPhone doesn't have if it's in your pocket.

01:18:53   So that part is cool.

01:18:55   The rest of it I could take or leave

01:18:56   because I have an Apple Watch and it's got a speaker on it.

01:19:00   And some of their demos where it's like,

01:19:02   oh, you can play music to yourself

01:19:03   on a thing that's hanging on your pocket.

01:19:05   - A sonic speaker.

01:19:07   I did like the fact that it required physical interaction

01:19:12   to invoke things.

01:19:14   - Sure.

01:19:15   - 'Cause that is like, there needs to be visuals

01:19:19   to the world, right?

01:19:20   That like you're doing something.

01:19:22   Like I think that's gonna be really important, but.

01:19:24   - I do that all the time by pressing the digital crown

01:19:26   on my watch.

01:19:28   I don't do a lot of hey activations.

01:19:31   I do a lot of press the crown and say something

01:19:33   'cause I don't like those mistaken activations.

01:19:36   I like being able to make a physical thing.

01:19:38   But I feel like if you're looking at everything

01:19:40   that the humane AI pen is purportedly doing,

01:19:44   most of them are covered by a product

01:19:45   in Apple's product constellation, but some are not.

01:19:50   And that I find that interesting.

01:19:52   And then there's the whole machine learning thing,

01:19:54   which is like, again, if you buy into the premise

01:19:56   and I think this is the beauty of these ML models

01:20:00   is like where their secret sauce is.

01:20:03   First off being able to search the internet

01:20:04   and get good answers to you that are correct

01:20:06   is a good one, right?

01:20:07   But like so much of it,

01:20:09   I was talking to Dan Morin about this last week

01:20:11   on the, I think on the Six Colors podcast.

01:20:13   Like he's written, what is it?

01:20:15   Five novels in the same universe now?

01:20:18   And when he's writing those books,

01:20:19   he doesn't remember every word that he's written.

01:20:21   He's got like a Wiki that he built

01:20:23   that I think he's got in Obsidian now.

01:20:26   But he was saying, the dream here,

01:20:29   and I think he could do that with GPT now.

01:20:31   The dream is to upload the contents of his novels

01:20:34   and then say things like,

01:20:37   what's the color of this character's eyes?

01:20:41   And for it to know they're blue

01:20:43   or I don't know it, you've never said that.

01:20:45   Or he example he gave is,

01:20:47   when's the last time this character fired a gun?

01:20:52   And Dan doesn't know the answer.

01:20:56   And how do you find that even in a Wiki?

01:20:59   How do you search for it in manuscripts?

01:21:01   You can't find it,

01:21:02   but the model may be able to know the answer to that.

01:21:07   That's the potential of all of this

01:21:08   is looking through all of your Apple Notes notes

01:21:11   and all your reminders and all your calendar items

01:21:13   and all your contacts and all your email

01:21:15   and all your documents that are in files

01:21:18   and or are in an API that is connected.

01:21:21   And it knows everything.

01:21:23   And it's your life, but you may not know the answer,

01:21:27   but it knows the answer.

01:21:28   That's the promise here.

01:21:30   That is amazing if you could get there.

01:21:33   - It's like on the GPTs thing,

01:21:34   like I saw on Mastodon last night,

01:21:36   Matt Burchler built one of those GPTs

01:21:39   for writing alt text images.

01:21:41   It's like, "That's really smart."

01:21:42   - Oh, wow.

01:21:43   - So you just in the app, you just upload an image

01:21:47   and it just describes it in a way

01:21:49   in which the language is good for alt text.

01:21:52   And I just thought it was super cool.

01:21:53   - Dr. Wave did a thing where he uploaded all the books

01:21:58   about the programming language LISP

01:22:01   and made a GPT that he can consult

01:22:05   about how to program, about programming problems in LISP.

01:22:09   - That's cool.

01:22:10   Imagine that, right?

01:22:11   You're just like, I just put all the books in there.

01:22:13   And then all I do is ask, "Hey, how do I do this?"

01:22:17   And it knows 'cause it's read all the books.

01:22:20   And yes, I mean, there are limitations.

01:22:22   It's not gonna be creative.

01:22:23   It's gonna be derivative.

01:22:24   But the idea is you bought all the books,

01:22:26   you own all the books.

01:22:27   Maybe you've even read or looked through all the books,

01:22:29   but like your puny human brain doesn't know.

01:22:32   And you could look at the indexes

01:22:35   and you've got eight books and are they well-indexed?

01:22:38   And how do you find the problem?

01:22:39   Or if you've got them, you could do a search,

01:22:41   but then you're searching for terms in PDFs.

01:22:44   Like there's just a lot of these very specific things.

01:22:47   Like again, for Dan, it's literally just,

01:22:51   you've read my novels and made all the connections.

01:22:55   You tell me the answer.

01:22:56   That's so powerful.

01:22:57   That's amazing.

01:22:58   I would do that for "Six Colors," honestly.

01:23:00   That might be a thing I do is give it an entire,

01:23:02   give a GPT, the "Six Colors" archive.

01:23:04   'Cause then I'll know like, when did I write about this?

01:23:06   Or "Six Colors," stuff that I've written

01:23:09   and upgrade podcast transcripts and stuff.

01:23:12   And so then I can say like, when did I talk about this?

01:23:16   And get an answer that's a lot clearer.

01:23:19   That would be awesome. - Apparently the Discord

01:23:21   is letting you know, maybe you need a GPT of your own.

01:23:23   Leo Laporte did that.

01:23:24   - Oh, that was not Dr. Wave.

01:23:25   It was Leo Laporte, you're right.

01:23:27   LISP.

01:23:28   I think old- - If you had a GPT, Jason,

01:23:29   you could have said who made that.

01:23:30   - Yes, it would know that it was Leo and not Dr. Wave.

01:23:33   You're right.

01:23:34   It was late, it was masted on.

01:23:35   I don't know what I was doing.

01:23:36   - It is super interesting to me, right?

01:23:38   Like this idea of, what I like about some of these models

01:23:41   is taking your information and giving it to something.

01:23:46   And then you can search your information.

01:23:48   And so like the idea of me saying,

01:23:52   here is the RSS feed for upgrade.

01:23:55   Go and get all of it, like an event, eventually.

01:23:58   Here's every episode, put it through whisper,

01:24:00   put the text into the system.

01:24:03   And then I can say, I could just ask it questions

01:24:06   about things that we spoken about on the show.

01:24:08   Like that is, that's awesome, right?

01:24:12   That is very powerful.

01:24:13   - Oh, that would let us also do like,

01:24:16   has the smell talk question been used before?

01:24:18   - Yes, yes.

01:24:20   - No, this is the thing.

01:24:21   And that's the, okay,

01:24:23   I know we're blabbering it a little bit,

01:24:25   but like that's the magic here is like,

01:24:26   it's not, the value is if you,

01:24:31   all the information is out there, right?

01:24:33   But our tools to search for it now are so limited.

01:24:37   And because you can't keep it all in your brain, you can't.

01:24:41   So you have the AI do it and it's what they're good at.

01:24:46   I mean, all this talk about AI

01:24:48   is taking over the world and things like that.

01:24:49   I mean, there are interesting questions

01:24:51   about what happens to a lot of human labor and all that.

01:24:53   But the brilliant thing about them is,

01:24:55   they can do things that our brains can't do.

01:24:59   And is that not fundamentally what computers are all about,

01:25:02   is doing things that are hard for us to do,

01:25:05   but easy for them to do?

01:25:06   That's why we use them.

01:25:07   That's why we use computers.

01:25:09   - Going back to the rumor roundup.

01:25:12   - All right, thank you, sorry.

01:25:13   - I was really happy we spoke about that.

01:25:15   - That was like the AI atrium.

01:25:18   - Sure, we can watch that one.

01:25:22   - AI alcove.

01:25:23   We have to, well, it's gotta be,

01:25:25   again, all of our little sidebars

01:25:26   have to be alliterative now.

01:25:28   So the AI alcove.

01:25:30   - No, I know, but we'll work that out.

01:25:33   Mark Gurman is also reporting that in the first half of 2024,

01:25:37   Apple will have a way to comply with EU laws

01:25:40   on sideloading of apps.

01:25:42   It will be a quote, highly controlled system.

01:25:45   And there will also be changes made to both messages

01:25:48   and payments apps as a way to comply

01:25:52   with further regulation from the European Union.

01:25:55   - There's been some code spelunking going on.

01:25:57   It looks like what they're doing

01:25:58   is that they are putting,

01:25:59   and this is the things that Gurman reported earlier this year

01:26:01   about how Apple was building things into iOS

01:26:03   that would allow them to comply with those EU laws.

01:26:07   It sounds like it's very specific,

01:26:08   like in a specific region like the EU,

01:26:12   and there will be certain APIs

01:26:14   that will feed into the system

01:26:15   where certain apps will be granted privileges

01:26:19   to do things like install apps.

01:26:21   And so we don't know all the details,

01:26:24   but it looks like they are building a system

01:26:26   that they can turn on in places where they have to turn it on

01:26:29   that will allow,

01:26:31   it's unclear to me whether it's pure sideloading

01:26:33   or if they will allow very specific apps

01:26:36   to be put in the app store

01:26:38   that can be their own app stores.

01:26:42   I'm unclear on that part of it, right?

01:26:43   Like it sounds like it might be that their approach is

01:26:46   in the EU you can apply to Apple to be an app store,

01:26:51   and then you need to follow these things,

01:26:53   whatever the rules are,

01:26:55   and then you can be an app store in the EU only,

01:26:59   and then your app has the privilege

01:27:01   of installing other apps in the system,

01:27:03   versus it just being kind of open the doors to sideloading.

01:27:05   Unclear exactly what all is going on here,

01:27:08   but with this report,

01:27:11   I am more confident that they're gonna open apps

01:27:16   to come in by a means that is not the app store,

01:27:20   and it's gonna be locked to the EU

01:27:23   until other places make this demand,

01:27:25   in which case they'll have to put it

01:27:27   in all those other places.

01:27:28   - I just don't understand why you would go through the work

01:27:32   to make things more complicated

01:27:34   when you could just open it up everywhere.

01:27:37   - Well, because Apple doesn't wanna do it.

01:27:40   - I understand, 'cause they want their money

01:27:42   at the end of the day.

01:27:43   - And I'm a real Pandora's box believer too,

01:27:46   that once this is in the system,

01:27:49   people are gonna subvert it,

01:27:51   people are gonna figure out a ways around it.

01:27:54   And also, it's what we were talking about

01:27:57   when we were talking about different encryption regulations

01:27:59   too, once this works in the EU, it will be a model,

01:28:03   and other locations will pass the same ruling,

01:28:06   because Apple will no longer be able to say,

01:28:08   "Oh no, we can't do it," because they did it.

01:28:11   And then on top of that, the real test,

01:28:13   and this, I don't know what's gonna happen,

01:28:15   although I think it's gonna be fine, is my guess.

01:28:18   Apple has also said, "Sideloading is dangerous,

01:28:22   and it will destroy everybody's lives,

01:28:24   and it's bad, and you can't do it."

01:28:26   Well, we'll see, right?

01:28:27   I mean, we'll see.

01:28:28   In the EU, it'll be a grand experiment.

01:28:30   And if they're, and I'm sure Apple, let me tell you,

01:28:33   I'm sure Apple will make hay with any bad examples

01:28:36   that happen in the EU of sideloading

01:28:38   leading to bad outcomes,

01:28:40   but it may be that there aren't that many,

01:28:43   and it's pretty lean, and they can't really,

01:28:46   at which point their stance on sideloading will be exposed.

01:28:49   So it'll be interesting to watch,

01:28:51   but it won't be the end of the story.

01:28:53   It's just gonna, I think, continue from here.

01:28:55   - Well, it's gonna be a mess, but you know what, though?

01:28:59   It'll be a great episode when it happens,

01:29:01   and we can talk about it. - Oh, that's gonna be

01:29:02   real interesting. - That's gonna be great.

01:29:03   - Should we do an episode from in the EU? (laughs)

01:29:08   - Guess we might have to. - Go over there?

01:29:10   The Amsterdam episode or something?

01:29:12   I don't know.

01:29:13   Or maybe, is there an EU?

01:29:14   I could go to a Caribbean island

01:29:16   that is part of the Netherlands,

01:29:17   and that would probably count.

01:29:19   I'd probably be in the EU then.

01:29:20   - I don't know if that counts.

01:29:23   - I think so, or I could go to French,

01:29:24   like French Guiana is France,

01:29:26   so I could totally go to French Guiana.

01:29:28   - Okay.

01:29:29   - If I could get there.

01:29:30   - The thing that I'm interested in understanding

01:29:32   is if they're gonna try and do that thing again

01:29:33   where they're like, we're gonna make you

01:29:35   submit your account into us so we can get our 30%.

01:29:38   - Yeah, right?

01:29:39   As long as it's not outlawed, yeah, it's entirely possible.

01:29:42   And again, I brought up the App Store thing

01:29:44   because that's an interesting angle, right?

01:29:46   Which is like, well, look, they said

01:29:47   we need to do this in the law,

01:29:48   but it doesn't mean that we can't regulate app stores, huh?

01:29:51   And then here are all the rules

01:29:53   if you wanna run an app store in the EU

01:29:55   in order to submit your app, right?

01:29:58   They will not do anything that isn't required by the law.

01:30:04   They will make it as unpleasant,

01:30:05   and just like with those Dutch dating apps,

01:30:08   they will make it as unpleasant as possible.

01:30:10   - Jambo Hov in the live chat says,

01:30:11   "Mike and Jason go to Oktoberfest."

01:30:14   - We just missed it, but we could do it next time.

01:30:16   Maybe we'll see Eddie and Tim there.

01:30:18   - There you go, two of us.

01:30:19   We can do our own tour of the year.

01:30:21   - I love it.

01:30:22   Oh, wouldn't that be something?

01:30:23   - Different app in every different country.

01:30:24   We'll do a Kickstarter, easy.

01:30:26   This episode is brought to you by Oracle.

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01:31:40   Our thanks to Oracle for their support

01:31:42   of this show and Relay FM.

01:31:44   Let's finish out with some Ask Upgrade questions.

01:31:49   First one comes from Sasha who says,

01:31:55   "I like the style of the charts that Jason makes

01:31:59   "on six colors for the earnings reports.

01:32:01   "How do you make them?"

01:32:03   - Numbers.

01:32:06   - Is that like a numbers template though?

01:32:09   - No, numbers makes pretty charts.

01:32:12   That's why I use numbers.

01:32:13   They make the prettiest charts.

01:32:15   And so I have a giant numbers spreadsheet

01:32:18   with multiple tabs and I've got a charts tab in it.

01:32:21   And I built those to use the colors in the six colors logo

01:32:25   and each of them represents a particular category

01:32:28   except for the money.

01:32:29   I just made that dark green 'cause money.

01:32:32   Money, money, money, charts, charts, charts.

01:32:34   So that's it.

01:32:35   And I have now built up some automations around there.

01:32:38   So I've got a, I now have a script

01:32:42   that has worked for the last few quarters

01:32:43   which is great.

01:32:44   I have a script that actually looks at the PDF

01:32:47   that Apple puts up of their results

01:32:50   and pulls the right numbers out of it

01:32:52   and puts it on the clipboard

01:32:53   and I just paste it into the number spreadsheet.

01:32:55   That's awesome.

01:32:56   And I have to retype those and risk getting them wrong.

01:32:59   That's happened.

01:33:00   I typed it in wrong and had to go back

01:33:01   and change all my charts later.

01:33:03   Like it just does it.

01:33:04   That part's great.

01:33:05   And then I have another script that outputs them.

01:33:08   And the way that works is it generates a PDF

01:33:13   and I have this for a shortcut for iOS as well

01:33:17   but mostly I do it at the Mac.

01:33:19   It generates a PDF out of numbers

01:33:21   and it goes to the page that the charts are on.

01:33:23   And the beauty thing about the PDF

01:33:25   is that it's resolution independent.

01:33:26   And so it looks at that page of the PDF

01:33:29   and carves it up into,

01:33:31   or I think it converts it into an image

01:33:32   and then carves it up into little individual images

01:33:34   for each of the charts.

01:33:36   And so they're all the exact right size

01:33:40   and they're saved as pings

01:33:41   and they're uploaded to the script,

01:33:43   uploads them to six colors

01:33:45   and takes the HTML of all of them

01:33:47   and puts it on my clipboard

01:33:48   so that I can put it in my story.

01:33:50   It is, so I've saved myself a lot of time there

01:33:54   which is really nice.

01:33:55   The one thing that bugs me about it

01:33:57   is that images on the web of charts are not accessible.

01:34:02   And I don't like that.

01:34:04   But the problem is the putting that kind of stuff

01:34:09   on the web in an embed

01:34:12   or something that is a little more dynamic,

01:34:15   those are bad and they just don't work really well.

01:34:19   And so I don't love that the charts aren't accessible,

01:34:22   but I have not seen any web technology

01:34:25   that would make me wanna change how I do the charts

01:34:28   into something that would be maybe

01:34:30   more dynamically generated and accessible.

01:34:32   So I'm always keeping my eye out for that.

01:34:35   But for now, anyway,

01:34:37   I'm just sort of like willing to go with the fact

01:34:40   that I've got a bunch of images

01:34:41   and they are what they are.

01:34:44   - Do you find it to be a lot of work?

01:34:47   Like, are you at least happy

01:34:49   with the process you've got down?

01:34:52   - It's a lot less work than it used to be.

01:34:53   I mean, it used to be,

01:34:54   and I did this back at Macworld too.

01:34:56   In fact, when I started at six colors,

01:34:58   I had to make a new template with new charts

01:35:01   'cause those were the Macworld style charts.

01:35:03   And I built new charts for the new site.

01:35:06   And that took a lot of time

01:35:07   and it's taken a lot of tweaking

01:35:09   and changed the fonts and changed the colors

01:35:11   and changed it.

01:35:11   Like I did a lot of things

01:35:13   over the course of the last nine years

01:35:15   in terms of tweaking them to be more of what I like

01:35:18   and got feedback from people

01:35:21   about the right ways to do it.

01:35:23   I go to Dr. Drang a lot,

01:35:25   and Karen Healy.

01:35:28   I've talked to both of them

01:35:29   about the right ways to present data on the internet.

01:35:32   'Cause you know people who are good at this,

01:35:36   you talk to them about this stuff.

01:35:38   It's pretty well, a well-oiled machine now.

01:35:43   I actually added a chart after the earnings this time

01:35:47   for next time.

01:35:48   There was a chart that I wasn't doing that I wanted to add.

01:35:50   So I'm gonna have to make some tweaks to my export.

01:35:53   But I'm pretty happy with how it is now

01:35:58   because it's so automated.

01:35:59   'Cause I don't have to type those numbers in anymore

01:36:01   because I don't have to.

01:36:02   I used to have to take screenshots.

01:36:03   I had to get the exact right zoom for the window

01:36:07   and then go through and take screenshots

01:36:08   of every single chart.

01:36:10   Huh, that was terrible.

01:36:12   I don't have to do any of that stuff anymore.

01:36:13   So it's a lot easier now.

01:36:14   - Mark asks, given the status quo

01:36:18   of prerecorded Apple events,

01:36:20   do you think they have dedicated filming studios

01:36:22   at Apple Park?

01:36:23   - I don't know.

01:36:27   I don't think so. - It doesn't seem like it.

01:36:28   At least some of the places are just like the outside.

01:36:32   - Right, there are a lot of things that are just the outside

01:36:34   or Steve Jobs Theater.

01:36:36   I think that it's probably stuff that they've got.

01:36:40   The other reason that I think

01:36:41   they probably don't have dedicated studios for shooting is,

01:36:46   I mean, podcasts are not as important as marketing videos.

01:36:49   But what we've discovered with our podcast studio,

01:36:52   and we say we're recording live sometimes

01:36:55   from the podcast studio at Apple,

01:36:59   I will reveal, if you didn't already know, dear listener,

01:37:02   every time, I think every time we've done that,

01:37:04   it's been a different place.

01:37:05   Maybe one of them repeated.

01:37:07   - They just build a new place.

01:37:09   - All of them were existing things converted

01:37:12   into being a podcast studio for the event.

01:37:15   So they reuse, I think, some of the equipment

01:37:17   and furniture and stuff,

01:37:19   but then they just go back into storage.

01:37:21   They're not keeping that stuff standing.

01:37:23   It gets turned back into whatever it was.

01:37:26   So I think no, I think no to that.

01:37:30   I think it's a lot less dedicated than you would think.

01:37:33   And we think of Apple as monolithic,

01:37:36   but I also think that they use a lot of freelance.

01:37:38   I don't think they use a lot of,

01:37:40   I don't think they keep a marketing video production team

01:37:44   on standby 24/7, right?

01:37:45   Like, I don't think that happens.

01:37:47   I think they work with production companies.

01:37:49   I think they've got some level of in-house,

01:37:51   but when it comes time for the big event,

01:37:53   they're hiring somebody to do a lot of that work.

01:37:56   I think.

01:37:56   - I was thinking about this

01:37:58   when I saw this question come in,

01:38:00   and I just assumed how incredibly disruptive it must be

01:38:04   when they're filming.

01:38:05   'Cause you never see people in the background.

01:38:09   So like, what, do they just say like,

01:38:11   no one can come to the office today

01:38:13   or no one can be in this section of the building today

01:38:15   or something like that?

01:38:17   And also the days preceding it

01:38:19   where they need to like, prettify the environment?

01:38:22   - I do think it's probably weekends.

01:38:24   David Schaub in the chat suggested that.

01:38:26   I think that there may be some CGI involved.

01:38:29   - Working at Apple seven days a week?

01:38:31   - Well, yeah, but there's fewer of them.

01:38:32   And then I think it's easier to say, stay away.

01:38:36   And then I think there's VFX.

01:38:37   I think there's probably VFX to keep people out,

01:38:40   to make it seem pristine.

01:38:42   And they do often use places that are like,

01:38:45   the Steve Jobs Theater, right?

01:38:46   That's not being used.

01:38:47   So that's an area where they can use it.

01:38:50   That home set, that might be a set somewhere,

01:38:52   but I don't think it's a set at Apple Park.

01:38:53   I think it's a set somewhere that they built.

01:38:56   And maybe they keep standing or maybe they folded it

01:38:58   and they can bring it back from time to time.

01:38:59   - They literally own sound stages, so.

01:39:02   - Yeah, so there are other possibilities there,

01:39:06   but yeah, it's probably very disruptive,

01:39:08   especially if they're in,

01:39:09   I don't know where that space is that they call the chip lab,

01:39:12   but it feels to me like it's an actual working space.

01:39:14   It might not be the chip lab.

01:39:17   It might not be the center of the chip lab, right?

01:39:20   But I think it's probably a real workspace.

01:39:23   - I've heard that it's real,

01:39:24   but I don't know if I believe that.

01:39:26   Like I do, but I'm not convinced.

01:39:29   - Well, and like I said,

01:39:30   it may be in the area that the chip team uses,

01:39:33   but it's an area that they know is photogenic

01:39:36   and it gets used in these things.

01:39:38   And so it's not like where the real work

01:39:41   necessarily gets done or the core work gets done.

01:39:43   But I do think that they, yeah,

01:39:46   then they set up in there for a week

01:39:47   and you just have to not be around or be on the sides

01:39:52   and not in the main space.

01:39:53   Like I think that they do that.

01:39:54   I think it's probably disruptive.

01:39:55   If you are somebody who works at Apple Park

01:39:59   and has been disrupted or seen the disruptions

01:40:01   of shooting these things, let us know, upgradefeedback.com.

01:40:05   - You can submit anonymously.

01:40:06   That was going into that direction that I enjoyed.

01:40:10   It sounded like you were about to give

01:40:11   some kind of like legal thing.

01:40:13   You know, like if you have been disrupted at Apple Park,

01:40:15   we can make a claim on your behalf.

01:40:17   Call Snellen Hurley, you know, and we'll take care of it.

01:40:20   - That's right, not attorneys and not law.

01:40:23   - Last week, Adam Merton says,

01:40:25   "Last week you discussed the trend away from all-in-ones

01:40:28   towards standalone monitors and computers,

01:40:30   but it got me thinking.

01:40:31   Do you think that the inclusion of the A-series chips

01:40:34   in the studio display and the fact that it is running

01:40:36   an operating system will prematurely limit the lifespan

01:40:40   of this display versus a typical 5K monitor?

01:40:43   Seems like a situation where the screen panel

01:40:45   will be perfectly fine over time,

01:40:47   but the supporting software or processor

01:40:49   might render the display obsolete."

01:40:51   I will also just state,

01:40:52   we got multiple questions about this

01:40:55   where Adam was the only person who did not use the phrase,

01:41:00   like, what is it, like when,

01:41:03   when you, when Apple were like apparently

01:41:06   a killing products, like--

01:41:07   - Planned obsolescence?

01:41:08   - Planned obsolescence or artificial obsolescence

01:41:10   people were saying that they were doing

01:41:12   to the studio displays by doing this.

01:41:14   So I just wanted to get your opinion on that.

01:41:15   What do you think?

01:41:16   - No.

01:41:18   - Okay.

01:41:19   - Let me expand.

01:41:21   The, look, it's not doing anything.

01:41:25   Like the A-series chip in the studio display

01:41:27   is managing stuff that it can manage in 20 years

01:41:30   because the software, not having a software update

01:41:33   for the A-series chip is not gonna affect that.

01:41:36   It's putting something on a screen.

01:41:38   There's no UI.

01:41:40   It's doing center stage.

01:41:43   You know, it's doing camera processing.

01:41:46   That's basically all it's doing.

01:41:49   And that doesn't require it to be up to date

01:41:52   with the latest and greatest.

01:41:53   So no, I just, it's not an iOS device

01:41:58   and the work that it's doing,

01:42:01   'cause this is the truth of any device.

01:42:02   Like if you don't update the software

01:42:03   and you keep using it, a computer from the nineties

01:42:07   that's still running OS 8 and Microsoft Word 5

01:42:12   is just as fast today as it was then

01:42:16   because it's just doing what it was doing then.

01:42:18   Physics haven't changed.

01:42:20   It's the same.

01:42:21   That's the deal with the studio display.

01:42:24   It's just gonna be the same.

01:42:26   It will stop getting iOS updates eventually.

01:42:29   And all that means is that if there were any tweaks

01:42:31   they were gonna do to like the camera or whatever,

01:42:33   they'll stop.

01:42:34   But I don't like, no, that's a high confidence,

01:42:38   no, it's not an issue.

01:42:39   - Okay.

01:42:41   Yeah, that's a good point that you make

01:42:42   that like it's been doing it,

01:42:46   like the device has been doing

01:42:48   what it's supposed to be doing.

01:42:50   It's not like receiving a video signal

01:42:54   is going to change in a meaningful way frequently.

01:42:59   Like if we go to like 8K 120, right?

01:43:02   Like maybe it's gonna need something else,

01:43:05   but to just continue doing what you've, yeah.

01:43:07   But to continue doing- - It's a new panel,

01:43:08   but this, the conversation here,

01:43:11   I mean, 'cause in the chat they're saying like,

01:43:12   oh, but they would still need to make A13s.

01:43:14   Yeah, but that's not the conversation.

01:43:15   The conversation is I buy one of these,

01:43:17   is it gonna be obsolete faster

01:43:19   'cause it's got an A13 in it or whatever?

01:43:21   And the answer is no, 'cause it's got it.

01:43:23   And it's doing what it's gonna do.

01:43:24   The panel's not gonna change,

01:43:25   panel's not gonna get upgraded.

01:43:27   Maybe they'll tweak some of the center stage stuff.

01:43:30   Maybe they won't, but like it's irrelevant.

01:43:32   And I'll also point out something that came up in the chat,

01:43:34   which is all of these things have embedded systems.

01:43:38   This one's just a different kind of embedded system.

01:43:40   And this goes back, I think a little bit

01:43:42   to all of us who are tech nerds

01:43:45   who know about the inner dealings of Apple and its chips

01:43:48   and what it's embedding in its monitors and all of that.

01:43:51   But like all these displays have stuff in them.

01:43:54   This is just a little bit weirder and more forward,

01:43:56   but like in the end, they're gonna last forever

01:43:59   because the panel, and if the electronics fail, sure.

01:44:02   But the, I had a TV where the electronics fail,

01:44:05   like that does happen,

01:44:07   but it's not gonna change the lifespan at all.

01:44:11   It's a display, that's it.

01:44:13   It's all it ever will be is what it is now.

01:44:16   They could stop updating the software now

01:44:19   and that would be fine.

01:44:20   - All right, next question.

01:44:23   And I'll ask a great segment today.

01:44:25   Comes from Elliot, last name withheld.

01:44:29   - Kalen, probably.

01:44:31   - Well, I don't know because I doubt it

01:44:33   because of the way that this is about to go.

01:44:34   So Elliot, last name withheld says,

01:44:37   I've been working my way

01:44:39   through the flophouse back catalog.

01:44:41   And tonight I was on episode number 264,

01:44:44   the emoji movie live from five years ago.

01:44:47   - Live from San Francisco.

01:44:49   - Maybe, I don't know, we'll find out.

01:44:50   At the end of the show,

01:44:52   the hosts were taking questions from the audience

01:44:54   when a person identifies himself as Jason,

01:44:57   last name withheld,

01:44:58   and starts asking a question about movie sequels.

01:45:00   I do a double take.

01:45:01   The voice sounds familiar.

01:45:03   I rewind to hear the name again.

01:45:04   Could it be?

01:45:05   Is that my podcast buddy, Jason Snell?

01:45:08   - Elliot, you got me.

01:45:10   - I'm Jason, last name withheld

01:45:12   from the emoji movie live episode of the flophouse,

01:45:14   my favorite podcast of all time.

01:45:16   Recorded live in San Francisco.

01:45:17   And we went and I asked a question

01:45:20   that I don't remember the answer to.

01:45:22   I should go back and listen.

01:45:23   It was basically about sequels.

01:45:25   And I wanted to know what was a great movie

01:45:27   that you loved that never got a sequel,

01:45:28   but you felt like it could have had one.

01:45:30   I thought that was a clever question.

01:45:32   I don't know if they had answers or not.

01:45:34   They didn't seem to understand my question.

01:45:35   I was very excited to talk to them.

01:45:38   I got to meet them afterward and it was great.

01:45:42   But yeah, that's me.

01:45:43   That's me.

01:45:44   Love the flophouse and I got to go see them live.

01:45:46   And I hope when they come back to San Francisco

01:45:49   again real soon guys, right?

01:45:51   Right?

01:45:52   That I will get to go again.

01:45:54   - Are they doing tours again?

01:45:56   'Cause I know they were doing like.

01:45:58   - Yeah, they just did two shows in LA.

01:46:00   So they're back on the road.

01:46:01   - Live podcasts, quite the thing.

01:46:05   - It's happening.

01:46:06   - If you would like to send in a question of your own

01:46:09   for Ask Upgrade on a future episode,

01:46:11   just go to upgradefeedback.com

01:46:13   and you can send us in your questions there,

01:46:15   but we'll see your feedback and your follow up.

01:46:17   If you want to find Jason's work, go to sixcolors.com.

01:46:20   You can hear his shows here on Relay FM

01:46:21   and at the incomparable.com.

01:46:23   You can hear me on Relay FM too

01:46:25   and check out my work at cortexbrand.com.

01:46:27   We're on Mastodon.

01:46:28   Jason is @jsnell on zeppelin.flights.

01:46:31   I am iMike on mike.social.

01:46:33   You can also find the show as upgrade@relayfm.social.

01:46:37   You can watch video clips of the show on TikTok,

01:46:39   Instagram, YouTube, and also full length video episodes

01:46:44   published to YouTube as well.

01:46:45   We are @upgraderelay and all of those.

01:46:48   We're on Threads.

01:46:49   I am @iMike, I-M-Y-K-E.

01:46:52   Jason is @jsnell, J-S-N-E-L-L.

01:46:55   Thank you to our members who support us of Upgrade Plus.

01:46:58   Thank you to our sponsors,

01:46:59   the fine people over at Oracle, Factor,

01:47:02   ZocDoc, and ExpressVPN

01:47:04   for their support of this week's episode.

01:47:05   But most of all, thank you for listening.

01:47:08   Until next week, say goodbye, Jason Snow.

01:47:12   Come on, petty 'em.

01:47:13   (upbeat music)

01:47:16   (upbeat music)