00:00:27 ◼ ► I heard from some people who said it wasn't as fun as they hoped, so we're gonna amp up the fun here in August.
00:00:37 ◼ ► You may have noticed, potentially, depending on how close a listener you are, that the intro may have sounded a little bit different this episode.
00:00:55 ◼ ► I was thinking, I had this in my notes from at least one summer ago, that I remember listening to the radio and everything had a jingle when I was a kid.
00:01:06 ◼ ► They had people singing little jingles for different shows and different hosts, and this was just a thing in radio.
00:01:16 ◼ ► And I thought, why do podcasts not have more jingles? And maybe that could be a summer of fun thing, is that we get the show some jingles.
00:01:26 ◼ ► So, we got lots of segments, we got a lot of verticals, we got a lot of things going on. Maybe we could have some jingles. That was all.
00:01:41 ◼ ► So, the other thing that you mentioned to me when you were talking about this is, we have artwork for every segment.
00:01:48 ◼ ► And if you're not looking, then you maybe don't get the benefits. So, what if we brought the artwork into audio?
00:01:57 ◼ ► This is podcast artwork that you can, you know, it's an important lesson you learn, is that the number one thing that you can guarantee about podcast listeners is that they listen.
00:02:05 ◼ ► You can't guarantee anything else. They aren't in your Discord, they aren't on your social media, and they may not even be looking at your show artwork, but they are listening to the podcast.
00:02:16 ◼ ► Jason, if there's one thing I know, though, is that sometimes podcast listeners also don't listen.
00:02:22 ◼ ► Sometimes they should be listening and they think they're listening, but they're not listening.
00:02:27 ◼ ► What are the chances that this episode is going to get us an email from somebody who says, "I don't understand why there were these weird jingles in this," when we just explained it?
00:02:34 ◼ ► Very possible. Very possible. For the people that think, "Oh, I'm smart, I'll cut out the first 10 seconds of the episode," or whatever it is they do, I'll jump to another segment.
00:02:47 ◼ ► Oh, Lex Friedman made the jingles. Our friend, Lex, who is on a cruise right now, so he will not get your feet wet. Well, maybe he will.
00:02:54 ◼ ► You and I found a company that made, literally made the jingles that I listened to when I was a kid.
00:03:02 ◼ ► And we sent them an email and it was going to be expensive and I was like, "But I want to do it."
00:03:05 ◼ ► And I think maybe that company has gone out of business and the people involved have all died of old age, but their website is still up.
00:03:11 ◼ ► They never got back to me. So, instead I went to Lex and I said, "Here's what I'm thinking. Can you do this?"
00:03:17 ◼ ► And he said, "This may be beyond me, but I've tried my best." And then later what he also told me was, "I wish I could do this for a living."
00:03:25 ◼ ► Okay, so that's two very different, "I don't think I can do this. Now I only want to do this."
00:03:32 ◼ ► I think he's not, no, I think it's more like he's not, he doesn't think that he can measure up to the standards of the professional radio jingles, but he, boy, did he have fun, I think is the answer.
00:03:41 ◼ ► He sure started. I will use this as an opportunity to recommend that people go and check out Lex.Games. Go and check that out.
00:03:50 ◼ ► If you like games that feel similar to some games that you may have experienced in other places and some originals, go to Lex.Games and try them out.
00:04:16 ◼ ► I've forgotten these, honestly. I'd forgotten about them. I listened to these quite a while ago, we've been planning this.
00:04:37 ◼ ► Jason, multiple Upgradients wrote in to ask if you were proud of your namesake, Blake Snell.
00:04:43 ◼ ► Ah yes, as far as I can tell, I'm not related in any way to Blake Snell, the two-time Cy Young Award winner, Giants pitcher.
00:04:50 ◼ ► And earlier this week, they were thinking, there were people suggesting they should give up for the season and trade him, which I didn't agree with.
00:04:59 ◼ ► And I thought, you know, I'm going to have a lot of explaining to do. I'm not going to regret that Lauren and I bought Giants jerseys with Snell on the back.
00:05:05 ◼ ► Because again, the stadium was full of personalized jerseys for my favorite team. Of course I was going to buy one.
00:05:13 ◼ ► But I might have to explain why you would buy a Blake Snell. He was here for half a year.
00:05:17 ◼ ► Anyway, never going to have to explain it again because he threw a no-hitter this week in Cincinnati for the Giants.
00:05:25 ◼ ► He pitched the entire game. It's the first time that he's ever pitched the entire game.
00:05:29 ◼ ► And he allowed no hits to the opposition. He walked a couple of guys, but he allowed no hits. It's a very special thing for baseball pitchers to do.
00:05:42 ◼ ► Nine innings. So 27 outs. And so he faced, I think he had three walks, but he threw a double play.
00:06:07 ◼ ► And when I was growing up, they had a no-hitter in the 70s and then they didn't have another one until like 2008 or something.
00:06:15 ◼ ► So my whole sort of like falling in love with baseball and my favorite team and all that, and they just never had a no-hitter.
00:06:21 ◼ ► And since 2008, they've had a perfect game, which is when nobody reaches base at all, 27 up, 27 down, and a bunch of no-hitters too.
00:06:32 ◼ ► The other thing is that when the Giants finally broke through and Jonathan Sanchez threw a no-hitter,
00:06:47 ◼ ► And there were several moments where the announcers were like, "Wow, he's really got it."
00:06:52 ◼ ► They said, "This is special. He's really playing incredibly well and doing all sorts of code to not say out loud that it was a no-hitter."
00:07:06 ◼ ► She goes, "Oh, because it was…" And then we got to watch the last part of it. It was great.
00:07:19 ◼ ► And then in the seventh inning, he looked up and saw that it was no-hits and he was like, "Oh."
00:07:23 ◼ ► And he says, "Then I was like, 'Okay, no more messing around. We're going to finish this up.'"
00:07:32 ◼ ► And then they dumped a nice bucket over his head at the end of the game, but the lid hit him in the back of the head.
00:07:39 ◼ ► And then they did the big post-game interview and he said, "Come on, guys. Get the lid off. What are you doing?"
00:07:47 ◼ ► He was talking about criticizing the dumping technique that was going on there. Anyway, it was great.
00:07:53 ◼ ► It was awesome. Snell, no-hitter for the Giants. My namesake, even though I don't think we're related.
00:08:06 ◼ ► Thanks to everybody who sent in that question. If you would like to send in a question to open a future episode of the show, just go to upgradefeedback.com and it's time for some follow-up.
00:08:28 ◼ ► And also, I should have paid attention to our show notes because you put a little indicator by every segment.
00:08:34 ◼ ► But I did get Stephen to send me the follow-up sound effect from the prompt so I could toss that in.
00:08:46 ◼ ► Roly asks, "The parallel betas for iOS 18 and 18.1 may be, like Jason said, to support the new iPhone earlier on in the year since Apple wants to ship products by C for better environmental impacts.
00:08:58 ◼ ► It means they would have to ship their products earlier in the year if they did want to do this.
00:09:12 ◼ ► And that potentially you threw out the idea that I received some messages from our developer friends who were very scared about the fact that maybe 18 comes out sooner to support maybe the iPhone being shipped sooner.
00:09:27 ◼ ► Now, I actually found an article from tradewindsnews.com, which I thought was like the best place to talk about shipping.
00:09:35 ◼ ► Apple have spoken about committing to shipping more products by C as a way to reduce their carbon emissions.
00:09:42 ◼ ► But they are talking about at least currently older phones, that the new phones will still be shipped by air.
00:09:49 ◼ ► Now, of course, this could amend over time, but I see that as unlikely that they're going to shift their production time that much sooner.
00:09:57 ◼ ► But nevertheless, even if they did do this, they could ship these phones sooner if they wanted to get them done sooner and put them on a boat for a month.
00:10:10 ◼ ► I do wonder if they are going to try to GM, or I guess we don't use that term anymore, they're going to try to do final version iOS 18 earlier, with 18.1 running a little later, knowing that they've got this Apple intelligence update that they're going to want to get out there as soon as possible.
00:10:38 ◼ ► I don't think they're going to ship it in August, right? I don't think that's going to happen.
00:10:42 ◼ ► But it wouldn't surprise me if the goal is to get that done on the sooner side, so that it can be loaded on all those new iPhones, and so that they can do the work of getting to 18.1 as quickly as possible, because that's the one that they're going to want to ship as soon as possible.
00:11:10 ◼ ► And Julian wrote in to say, "I wanted to enforce the idea of phased rollouts," which is what you were describing with Apple intelligence in 18.1, "It's exactly why what happened at CrowdStrike was so terrible. Their update got pushed to everyone at once, which meant that everything was broken all at the same time."
00:11:27 ◼ ► I'm not saying that anything in Apple intelligence was brick phones, but I mean, why risk it, especially with something so new?
00:11:39 ◼ ► What is especially interesting about 18.1 is it will be a double phased rollout, because Apple already phases the rollouts of the operating system updates, right?
00:11:48 ◼ ► Like, if you don't opt into it, you will get it at some point, and they actually push that out a little bit to make sure, because it's happened countless times that an OS releases brick phones and has brick new phones.
00:12:05 ◼ ► We may not know that, because we're all sitting there with the settings app reloading and swiping and pulling and doing all the things to get the update to come to us immediately.
00:12:13 ◼ ► But if you don't do that, it's a lot more kind of lazy about eventually getting the update.
00:12:43 ◼ ► Taylor writes in and says, "Apple intelligence is available in the EU after all, but on the Mac. Mac OS isn't declared a gatekeeper by the DMA, and the patch notes for 15.1 beta 1 only say that Apple intelligence won't be available in China, whereas for iOS and iPadOS they explicitly say China and the EU.
00:13:02 ◼ ► So seemingly it'll be available on the Mac when it launches, assuming it doesn't become a gatekeeper by then."
00:13:18 ◼ ► So if you want to use Apple intelligence features, you'll be able to use them on the Mac.
00:13:35 ◼ ► And Apple has filed their motion to dismiss the Department of Justice lawsuit. That one's creeping back around again.
00:13:42 ◼ ► So Apple has argued, I think in a way that we all expected, that the case that the Department of Justice has levied against them does not meet the current law around antitrust.
00:13:53 ◼ ► And that the Department of Justice is trying to reframe it to meet their ends in case you need a refresher.
00:13:58 ◼ ► The idea that it's all about interoperability and the Department of Justice basically created their own categories to say that Apple was a monopoly player in those.
00:14:12 ◼ ► Apple also says that this case would result in harming the security and user experience of their customers, which is the often used phrases by Apple.
00:14:22 ◼ ► Now with this being, now that they have filed this motion, we will wait for the judge to decide whether they will be throwing out the case or whether the case will proceed.
00:14:47 ◼ ► I think we spoke about it at the time, I support what the Department of Justice is like.
00:14:53 ◼ ► Some of the things that they're getting at, but if we're going by the legal ground, I don't think they have legal ground.
00:15:05 ◼ ► So we'll see what the judge thinks of the argument that they've carved out this very specific sub-sub category of a market that Apple dominates.
00:15:14 ◼ ► But not really. Remember, it's not just a sub-sub category of the market that Apple dominates.
00:15:21 ◼ ► The number that they use to get to the big scary number is by adding Apple and Samsung together.
00:15:37 ◼ ► So they go, well, it's not worldwide, it's in the U.S. and it's just premium smartphones.
00:15:40 ◼ ► And then if you look at that and you look at Samsung and Apple sales together, wow, that's a big number, which is, you know, again, not looking at Apple's sales and cutting it two different ways.
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00:18:07 ◼ ► That is squarespace.com/upgrade and when you decide to sign up, you'll get 10% off your first purchase and show your support for the show.
00:19:29 ◼ ► But I feel like I'm, this may be the week that I cut over to using the beta all the time.
00:19:39 ◼ ► I was, we did an episode of Connected where we had Jon Voorhees on the show and Jon is writing the macOS review for Mac stories.
00:19:51 ◼ ► What beta will you go on though? If you go on .1, that's not going to be the beta that you'll be writing reviews about, right?
00:19:58 ◼ ► Yeah, I think maybe the answer is that I'm going to put my main system on 18.0 and leave the test system on .1.
00:20:08 ◼ ► And I'm fortunate because I've got an extra Mac, because I still have, I'm still holding on to a review unit.
00:20:16 ◼ ► I can have, because this is the problem is you've got to have an older system to refer to when you're writing about changes.
00:20:41 ◼ ► Oh, sorry, 15.0, right. Right, Sequoia. Because they haven't synced those numbers up, which is stupid.
00:20:50 ◼ ► So, I don't know if I mentioned it on this show, but I have two iPad Pros now. So, I got the 11 inch M4 and fell in love with that computer.
00:21:07 ◼ ► Yes, basically. And then I started doing, I started working on some new design stuff with Cortex brand and realized I would really like to both A, have an iPad that's always at my studio.
00:21:21 ◼ ► So, I'm not taking it backwards and forwards all the time because I don't want to do that.
00:21:25 ◼ ► And also having a bigger screen is more helpful for that kind of work. So, I also have an iPad at my studio now too.
00:21:43 ◼ ► Some of the features in 18.1 are genuinely fantastic. And I am faced with an interesting conundrum in which I now think I may switch to the Mail app.
00:22:01 ◼ ► The AI summaries are so useful. So useful. So, this is both the summaries in the, like the inbox taking place of a preview and also the fact that there is a summarize button at the top of every email which I find really good for, I get lots of very long email and also email newsletters.
00:22:33 ◼ ► So, it was a, we'll maybe talk about this next week because you got this email too. I got an email asking if I wanted to try out an app under an embargo from a PR person. I don't know.
00:22:46 ◼ ► And I pressed reply to the email and it popped up with the little like shiny color thing to suggest that it had like a tapper and it would fill it out for me.
00:22:57 ◼ ► And it basically did exactly what I wanted and then I added one more line. And there was a couple of emails sent back and forth and I decided to just go into it, like press what it response.
00:23:07 ◼ ► And it was doing kind of what I wanted and like for me in this scenario, it's like, huh, this is almost the perfect thing for this type of email where it's like I don't know this person so I have no personal relationship to them.
00:23:21 ◼ ► I want to use all the niceties. Isn't it easier to just have the computer to create the blanket niceties that I would otherwise create for like that don't have any personality?
00:23:33 ◼ ► You know, like nice to meet you. Thanks for the in touch. Like all that kind of nonsense stuff that I don't usually put into emails of people that I work with because I don't communicate like that.
00:23:44 ◼ ► But in a professional setting like this, it's kind of best to put these things in. So I just let Apple Mail do it for me and then added in the stuff that I wanted to add in myself.
00:23:53 ◼ ► So all of this stuff together makes it so good. Like the fact that I can now like look at my email and see like, oh, this brand has given you me a coupon code.
00:24:06 ◼ ► This brand is like telling me about their new release. Like it's very good at picking that stuff out.
00:24:11 ◼ ► And my tip is, by the way, if you're trying this out to increase the preview size in the inbox to like three lines because then you get most of what you want.
00:24:25 ◼ ► Just to be clear, so the email you and I both got basically said there's a new thing coming out. Here's an embargo. Will you accept it? And would you like to learn more? Let me know basically.
00:24:36 ◼ ► And you had AI write back a very polite email that said, yes, I would like to do all that. And I accept the embargo time and all that.
00:24:45 ◼ ► I wrote a human written email that was as follows. O comma, would love to learn more and happy to accept an embargo. No punctuation. End of message.
00:25:05 ◼ ► And this summarization stuff extends to iMessages. So giving you the preview of a group thread is amazing.
00:25:15 ◼ ► So this is very much the pinnacle of I'm happy for you or sorry that happened but I ain't reading all that.
00:25:24 ◼ ► I would say by and large it does a really good job. I've had it do some weird stuff but in a scenario where I can't blame the computer.
00:25:37 ◼ ► But I know the context. And so like in a scenario like that, fine. But a lot of the time I've been getting the messages, they're coming through.
00:25:43 ◼ ► I'm using the new focus mode, the reduce interruptions focus mode which also I think is doing a good job.
00:25:49 ◼ ► I'm not really sure how it's working but it's interesting like sometimes it's surfacing a message rather than like but it doesn't always surface that person.
00:25:59 ◼ ► But maybe it's doing some kind of sentiment analysis on a message that maybe like indicating that it might be important to me.
00:26:09 ◼ ► This focus mode as well does also have the all of the manual overriding that other focus modes have.
00:26:23 ◼ ► Right. But instead of a blanket controlling it, it's using the machine learning to judge each one and say does this seem like it's important enough to go through.
00:26:35 ◼ ► But I'm using the sort of like you know the messages are all kind of collecting up in there.
00:26:39 ◼ ► I really like it but there are a couple of scenarios where I'm not really sure what the intention is or I think it might be kind of falling down.
00:26:46 ◼ ► So like you know it's reading the messages and the notifications and it bunches them together and gives you the little preview.
00:26:52 ◼ ► These previews also show in the messages window itself right in the little preview on the side like the inbox essentially.
00:27:11 ◼ ► And also I think if you have messages pinned or the threads pinned it also doesn't give you the summary.
00:27:20 ◼ ► Yeah I have this problem because my big text chat is pinned and has notifications turned off.
00:27:31 ◼ ► I'll try again on the betas where I took my unpinned my family chat and turned notifications back on and then there were eight messages and there was no summary of any kind which I was disappointed by.
00:27:56 ◼ ► But what I would like is honestly like if I you know you can do like I don't know what it's called anymore.
00:28:16 ◼ ► And also I think the busiest group threads are the ones you turn the notifications off for which are also the ones you would most likely want the summary for.
00:28:26 ◼ ► So I think I think this is all really interesting and you got more of it to work than I've gotten it to work thus far.
00:28:43 ◼ ► But I wanted to mention here Tim Cook talked a lot about AI stuff and the analysts are falling over themselves about AI you know and it's great.
00:28:51 ◼ ► But the narrative that Apple is pushing about Apple intelligence is not like I would argue that it's misleading.
00:28:59 ◼ ► Because so they release this as a developer beta and they and Tim Cook says on the call you know we rolled this out for developers to look at and we can't you know wait to see what they think and all of that.
00:29:10 ◼ ► But the fundamental purpose of a developer beta is supposed to be for developers to use new features in order to plan their release for when that version comes out.
00:29:41 ◼ ► What Apple hasn't done is make a maybe this is why it's not going to be available in the EU.
00:29:47 ◼ ► What they haven't done is make an API so that if you're the developer of let's say MimeStream.
00:29:55 ◼ ► Or yeah or anybody that there's not like I'm going to hand a message to Apple's LLM and ask for a summary.
00:30:04 ◼ ► I'm going to go to summary kit or whatever hand them this information get a summary back and put it in my UI.
00:30:13 ◼ ► And so I think that that's one of the frustrations that I've got with the way that Apple is sort of like saying well for developers and all of that.
00:30:24 ◼ ► But Apple intelligence a lot of these features are only going to be useful if you're using the stock Apple apps and I don't love it.
00:30:31 ◼ ► And I'm sure that in the fullness of time there will be APIs for third party developers to use that will give them access to the same kind of model and summation and all of that that Apple uses.
00:30:53 ◼ ► Now text you can select text and summarize it but that's because you're using the text tools which are available if you use standard controls.
00:31:05 ◼ ► It's not like a special thing but something like the email summary like if you're not Apple mail.
00:31:10 ◼ ► If MimeStream wanted to implement this they would basically need to roll in their own machine learning model and then feed it data because Apple's is not available to them.
00:31:31 ◼ ► So you know you select a bunch of text and you get some options right so you can change the tone of a message right so you can be like oh give me this in a professional tone.
00:31:44 ◼ ► And so like I find that's pretty helpful and you can do this from kind of anywhere you can select text and in some scenarios it will show it in the quick type.
00:31:55 ◼ ► You can press the little icon or you can just it shows up also in the little popover like the copy paste popover which now is like 17 miles long because they just keep adding things to it.
00:32:06 ◼ ► But you can proofread and rewrite which is helpful you can change the tone but you can also make a summary of text like take text and put it into bullet points to key bullet points.
00:32:21 ◼ ► So I like these options instead of me trying to craft a prompt to a chatbot to do this in a certain way right.
00:32:32 ◼ ► So is a simplified list so it is more limited than if you were to ask a chat GPT to do this for you.
00:32:39 ◼ ► But I like the UI of it and then also you can have it once it gives you an answer you can have it rewrite it but you can't give it any guidance right.
00:32:48 ◼ ► So you can't be like oh yeah be friendly as if this is my mom not friendly as if this is my friend.
00:32:58 ◼ ► I tried this out on an article because I often use Grammarly for that just to give it another pair of eyes that are not before I post something because I'm posting things just straight to the internet most of the time.
00:33:18 ◼ ► Apple's advantage is gonna be that they're built in that you don't have to pay any extra.
00:33:37 ◼ ► I mean it got confused like sometimes it was showing me a correction but not moving the text display to show it to me.
00:33:47 ◼ ► It's supposed to when you're going sort of next next next it's supposed to move the selection so that you can see what you're what you're previewing.
00:33:56 ◼ ► And I thought that was kind of unclear but I think there's a huge amount of potential there for the system to make some smart suggestions about things.
00:34:05 ◼ ► Also unlike Grammarly believe it or not the system seems to not understand about markdown.
00:34:14 ◼ ► I was like no no no no no that's part of what I wrote is that URL with the brackets around it.
00:34:26 ◼ ► It's useful for me like you know I'm quite frequently just giving something to chatgpt to improve my grammar.
00:34:33 ◼ ► And just having it built into iOS is just a Mac which is better for me which is easier.
00:34:52 ◼ ► I was basically selecting some text from a Patreon sign up for a podcast called Into the Aether.
00:34:59 ◼ ► And I've included a link in the show notes but basically it's talking about you know you'll get behind the scenes database which shows every game that we played.
00:35:08 ◼ ► And the Apple intelligence summed it up as oh and guess what you'll also get access to a special members area called BEH.
00:35:19 ◼ ► This doesn't feature anywhere I don't know why it's gotten that there isn't even a special members area.
00:35:42 ◼ ► So the original text was we might also throw some videos in here every once in a while.
00:35:56 ◼ ► It's just changing the words as if you were trying to make it not seem like plagiarism to copy it.
00:36:22 ◼ ► I knew it was going to do it eventually but I don't really feel like I threw a hard problem at it.
00:36:48 ◼ ► It's not smarter other than that they've got the part of the model hooked up now where if you like stumble around and then correct yourself and all of that.
00:37:02 ◼ ► And like I've been able to ask it a bunch of stuff and it's still giving me as terrible answers as it's ever given me before right.
00:37:10 ◼ ► And I for me now having access to these other tools and not being able to have a conversation with Siri I think is a problem.
00:37:49 ◼ ► I think that in a lot of people's minds they're just going to go well this thing's as bad as it's always been.
00:37:57 ◼ ► I do wonder if they might even reconsider the Siri interface changes and roll that out.
00:38:09 ◼ ► And what Cook said in the call is very specifically restating something they've said before but I thought it was good to get the clarity.
00:38:17 ◼ ► Which is our models on device are for and in the private cloud are for understanding your context and giving you answers based and performing tasks.
00:38:40 ◼ ► World knowledge that phrase that they kept using at WWDC looking up facts on the internet is not what Apple's stuff is for.
00:38:49 ◼ ► So when we said back then it sounds like ChatGPT and other plugins you know down the road are going to be the replacement for I found a web page for you that answers this question essentially.
00:39:02 ◼ ► And that seems to be the case that Apple wants to kick out to someone else's model at least for now if it's about world knowledge and that gives them distance.
00:39:12 ◼ ► And if they find other partners it allows them to hold it at arm's length and just say look you choose who you trust but it's not us we're not giving you that information.
00:39:29 ◼ ► They said to me that there was some degree of context that is remaining but all the people everybody who's tried this context have failed.
00:39:40 ◼ ► The great example I have is you can use Siri to say where is this person I know who you've got on Find Friends and it will tell you oh Jamie's in Portland.
00:39:48 ◼ ► And then the next thing I say is what's the weather like there and it gives me my weather.
00:39:56 ◼ ► I said where is Steven it told me what's the weather there and it told me what my weather was.
00:40:01 ◼ ► And that's like there's no context and you're right that is one of the key things they need to do with Siri is have it be a conversation.
00:40:18 ◼ ► Yes and that's why I would argue and I think you're right that until you've there's a certain bar beyond which you can change the Siri UI.
00:40:38 ◼ ► Anyone and then and then I would also say I hope I assume that if you don't have a device capable of Apple intelligence that it will use the old Siri UI.
00:40:46 ◼ ► Because nobody should see the new Siri UI unless it's Apple intelligence at a certain level.
00:40:51 ◼ ► That's that's what new Siri should be and and I agree with you this beta it's not at that level yet.
00:41:02 ◼ ► This will change this is actually I think Mark Gorman reported like October is probably when this is coming out.
00:41:18 ◼ ► I'm not sure how I feel about this being like a compelling enough AI release just these features like to say like hey we're here we're on the scene.
00:41:34 ◼ ► This is something that Gorman mentioned in his newsletter this weekend and I think I agree to a certain point.
00:42:10 ◼ ► It's a little and it's okay but there's a whole bunch of stuff that's not here yet that they're promising and they're already kind of behind.
00:42:18 ◼ ► And it's going to take them this whole year to catch up where with where everybody else already is.
00:42:23 ◼ ► And there's some truth in that like I think that I think that that is part of what's going on here at the same time.
00:42:30 ◼ ► I mean the alternative is to not ship anything because clearly they're behind and they're trying to do this as quickly as they can.
00:42:36 ◼ ► So I think releasing features first off if you listen to the analysts on the call and you look at Apple stock.
00:42:45 ◼ ► It's almost as if what they wanted from Apple was acknowledgement that Apple was adding AI features over time.
00:42:56 ◼ ► And that's not just for the people in the tech industry and in the financial community who are looking at this and going oh I hope Apple isn't behind.
00:43:05 ◼ ► It's also for consumers in the sense that if Apple can say hey Apple intelligence doesn't that make you feel good.
00:43:17 ◼ ► The argument is we are putting these features in that make your iPhone better and make your Mac better.
00:43:22 ◼ ► And there's more to come because we've already announced these other features that are coming later.
00:43:26 ◼ ► And then these other features that are coming after that and it's just going to keep on rolling.
00:43:29 ◼ ► I think first off that's what it is and I think that that will be a lot of people will say okay that's great.
00:43:35 ◼ ► Now will it mean that everybody's going to buy a new iPhone this fall because oh my god Apple intelligence.
00:43:46 ◼ ► And Apple knows they've got another release with more features and then another release with more features.
00:43:52 ◼ ► Like Apple doesn't need to convert everybody to a new iPhone that supports Apple intelligence in September.
00:44:03 ◼ ► So I guess what I would say is yeah it's a small amount of stuff but they pointed a direction.
00:44:10 ◼ ► They've got time and I think that beyond that a lot of it becomes people who are just impatient because they want to get to the next thing.
00:44:18 ◼ ► And then there's a lot of bad analysis that happens because the analysts are just bored and they want to see more stuff now because they're bored.
00:44:48 ◼ ► Like I think more people will buy an iPhone this year than they would have otherwise because they either want these features or think they're going to get them all.
00:45:00 ◼ ► And so they're going to get a new phone now and know that over the next couple of years Apple is going to keep on stuffing new AI features into it.
00:45:08 ◼ ► I reckon I'm probably, from the features I've spoken about, going to be I think amongst our group the person most excited about them.
00:45:24 ◼ ► It's like here's a couple of machine learning features that have been added to iOS which I really like.
00:45:29 ◼ ► But I do believe that once we get to the end of all of the stuff they've spoken about, yes it will feel like that.
00:45:38 ◼ ► I would say actually if the summary stuff works well and if the adjusting your tone in an email or doing your grammar check in your email works well,
00:45:54 ◼ ► Because yes, you've been able to do that in ChatGBT or Grammarly or all these other places but there are a lot of people who just never do stuff like that.
00:46:01 ◼ ► And if they have the ability to be like, "Oh my God, I can just select this paragraph and say 'fix the grammar' and it does it."
00:46:06 ◼ ► Yeah, you could have done that in something else but for a lot of people it's just going to be, "Oh, this is amazing," right?
00:46:12 ◼ ► Because it's been given to them for free with their device and so that's worth keeping in mind.
00:46:29 ◼ ► And I guess what I would say, I think they will sell models and I think that Apple's got a good track record.
00:46:35 ◼ ► But what I would say to a more savvy iPhone buyer is remember the classic warning, which is never buy new hardware because of the promise of a software update.
00:46:52 ◼ ► So if you're really excited about a thing that Apple is supposedly doing sometime this year but it's not out yet,
00:47:10 ◼ ► But if you don't need a new iPhone, I would wait until there's something that's compelling and you never know.
00:47:15 ◼ ► I mean it's possible that next June at WWDC they'll announce a bunch of stuff and you'll realize,
00:47:21 ◼ ► "Oh, I actually want next year's iPhone because it's going to be that much better for those features that we don't even know about now."
00:47:32 ◼ ► If Apple Intelligence kicks off an upgrade cycle a little bit early but it takes two years instead of all happening in the holiday quarter this year,
00:47:42 ◼ ► I think Apple actually kind of must accept that that's probably what's going to happen because they can't ship a whole boatload of features on day one.
00:47:51 ◼ ► So they'll do their best, right? They're branding it all as Apple Intelligence compatible.
00:47:55 ◼ ► But I think even Apple would probably admit that it's going to take time and probably not kick off a super cycle right away.
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00:50:40 ◼ ► You know I'm so pleased there was no bad news this week. We need to talk about something really sad. Can you imagine?
00:50:56 ◼ ► Revenue of $85.8 billion for their fiscal third quarter in 2024. That is up 5% year over year. The Mac was at $7 billion of revenue up 2%. The iPad 7.2 billion up 24%.
00:51:18 ◼ ► The iPhone 39.3 billion down 1% year over year. Services at 24.2 billion up 14%. We'll talk about that in a minute.
00:51:35 ◼ ► My standard line is it is the most boring quarter possible that sets a quarterly revenue record and throws off more than $20 billion in profit. But that's Apple right now. It is a mostly boring report where they made huge sums of money, bought a lot of stock back, did a big dividend, set a Q3 record which they set it by a little tiny bit and Q3 is not a very interesting quarter for them.
00:52:02 ◼ ► But still, it's a record. It's the most revenue they've ever had in the third fiscal quarter. Most of their product line was just sort of up a little tiny bit or down a little tiny bit.
00:52:14 ◼ ► And Apple would even tell you that the iPhone being down 1% actually in constant currency it grew. It was just the strong dollar met. Some of that went down.
00:52:34 ◼ ► Well, this is the thing though. You've got to find your story, right? There's always a story in the earnings somewhere. And you found it, I think. You wrote just an excellent article about services.
00:52:48 ◼ ► It's actually an article where, really to talk about it, I just have to quote big chunks of it because you make a lot of good points.
00:53:08 ◼ ► So, if a quarter of the services revenue that Apple receives is just payments from Google and a further portion is Apple taking its cut from App Store transactions, there's still a lot more going on here.
00:53:19 ◼ ► Apple is building an enormous business that's based on Apple customers giving the company their credit cards and charging them regularly.
00:53:27 ◼ ► And that business is incredibly profitable and is expected to continue growing at double digit percentages.
00:53:33 ◼ ► So, what I found interesting here is that you made a point and then made its counterpoint in the article. You're talking about the fact that a ton of this money is from Google.
00:53:42 ◼ ► A ton of this money is from App Store stuff. And Apple is making its TV shows. But if you took those out, there's still a huge amount of money. So, they are kind of doing all of it and doing well.
00:53:57 ◼ ► Yeah, I mean they're building this business where what they want is to make more ongoing money on their existing customer base. That's the goal.
00:54:09 ◼ ► Is they're going to offer additional services and then also they're making money via, again, the Google licensing deal and via a cut of App Store transactions.
00:54:17 ◼ ► Although, you could argue that the App Store transactions fit in because it's a service Apple is providing, an App Store, and then they get a cut of that too.
00:54:27 ◼ ► And leaving aside the monopoly questions there, it's still, I think, even if there could be other App Stores, Apple would still do pretty well offering its own App Store as the platform owner.
00:54:38 ◼ ► And I also here wanted to, I didn't want people reading this article to spend the length of the article going, "But what about Google?" Right? Like, yes. Google generates whatever it is. It's a very large number of, you know, amount of money.
00:54:59 ◼ ► I think it's like 20 billion a year. But regardless, it's a lot. It's a lot. But there's a whole bunch of other stuff too. And Apple rolls it all together.
00:55:10 ◼ ► Yeah. So it's like less than a quarter of Apple's overall services revenue at this point, which probably when it started, it was almost all of it. But now it's not. It's less than a quarter of Apple because this was 25 billion in one quarter.
00:55:26 ◼ ► And it's about 20 billion a year from Google. So a fraction. An important fraction that's 100% profit, but still a fraction.
00:55:34 ◼ ► Yeah. And the key thing being, the services revenue grows quarter to quarter. It's not just year on year. And like you look at that chart and it just goes up. It just keeps going up.
00:55:48 ◼ ► I think Apple has set a services revenue record, something like 15 out of the last 16 quarters or 15 out of the last 17 quarters. There was a little bump where they kind of came back down a little bit.
00:56:01 ◼ ► Q3 and Q4 of 2022 went down a little, other than that. It was basically up the whole time.
00:56:07 ◼ ► It's been up for like five years, I think probably. So, yeah. So it's profitable. It's growing. And Apple said on the call, they expect it to continue growing at double digit percentages like that for next quarter.
00:56:18 ◼ ► So, yeah, it's a huge business and it's not just Google and it's not just App Store. It is a whole big lump of money. And of course, the other part of this, so there's two bits of, I had a little buzzing in my head. I was like, what's going on here?
00:56:35 ◼ ► I'm looking at this, I'm thinking I'm going to write something about the Apple results. It was a really boring quarter in the most, again, I would love to have a boring quarter like that where I generate $20 billion in profit and set a record.
00:56:46 ◼ ► But still for Apple, kind of a boring quarter. And I was thinking like, well, what is in here? And two things hit me. And one of them was the basic math of $24.4 billion in services revenue is more than the Mac, iPad and wearables, home and accessories categories.
00:57:04 ◼ ► Generated. Right? So already, if you look at the pie chart, like there's iPhone, which is big, and then there's services, and then there's everything else, wearables, Mac and iPad, and they're not as big as services.
00:57:18 ◼ ► So services is now eclipsed all but the iPhone of Apple's product category. It's just a huge business for them. And that's revenue.
00:57:34 ◼ ► Yes, that's the other penny that dropped then. I'm like, okay. All right. So that's impressive. It's bigger than Mac, iPad and wearables put together.
00:57:44 ◼ ► But keep in mind, Apple's profit margin on services revenue. I did the math over the last three years. It's 72%. And, you know, Apple Apple makes really good profit on its hardware, but it's nothing like that because it can't be because hardware costs.
00:58:01 ◼ ► It has fixed costs. You know, every iPhone cost to manufacture costs, all the parts and all of that services is a lot lighter because it's sort of intangible. And there, there are costs, but 72% profit margin.
00:58:15 ◼ ► And if you do the math based on the profit margins in the last quarter, what you end up getting is how much profit did Apple's products make, including the iPhone, and how much profit, the bottom line here, we're not talking the top line, we're talking the bottom line, profit from products versus product profit from services.
00:58:36 ◼ ► And the answer is I did a little chart, 22 billion in profit from products and 18 billion from services. So products still more profitable for Apple than services, but it's close.
00:58:48 ◼ ► And I would guess that in the next year, there will be at least one quarter where Apple makes more of its profit from the services line than from all of its products, including the iPhone.
00:59:06 ◼ ► Two or three, right? Cause it's not going to be the holiday quarter. There's a huge spike in product revenue. It's on the chart. You can see it, but we're getting, we're getting to that point.
00:59:15 ◼ ► So it's just an interesting thing to think about. And again, a lot of people leapt to conclusions based on this. It was very interesting to see it was like a little Rorschach test where some people are saying, Oh, uh, you're saying that Apple shouldn't make money on services.
00:59:27 ◼ ► And there are other people who are like, yes, this is why Apple is doomed and has sold its soul because of this. It's like, I'm not saying either of those things I'm saying, isn't this an interesting fact that colors how we think about how Apple's business is put together.
00:59:41 ◼ ► That's that's really, I'm, I'm really not going beyond that. In fact, in the story, one of the things I said, trying to reason this out is the truth is anyone who has a runaway services narrative.
00:59:53 ◼ ► I think is probably wrong. The danger is that there, there ends up being people at Apple who don't understand and have misunderstood the business. And I hope they're never put in positions of authority because it's obvious that services is revenue stream built on the back of Apple's hardware.
01:00:08 ◼ ► And that if there is no iPhone, there is no services revenue. You can't, you can't have one without the other. Uh, it, the, it starts with the hardware. The hardware matters. The hardware and software bundled together in that device.
01:00:22 ◼ ► It matters. What Apple has done though, is said, when we sell you an iPhone or a Mac or an iPad, we're not just selling you that product and making a profit on it.
01:00:34 ◼ ► We are also then selling you services that make you even more to the point where I don't think there's necessarily an existential crisis going on, but I think it's very quickly becoming true that, you know, when somebody buys an iPhone, Apple makes a lot of money,
01:00:50 ◼ ► but maybe not as much money as they make over the life of that iPhone on the services sold to that person.
01:00:56 ◼ ► I think services, like if we're being, if we're just being completely kind to Apple services makes so much sense to them as a company because they have spent the last 25 years, especially building an ecosystem, right?
01:01:12 ◼ ► That you are, that you want to have four products of theirs and you're going to have a great time. Services is the glue between all of them, right?
01:01:22 ◼ ► That actually connects the multiple products that you have of theirs together. So really like services, the idea of things in the cloud and you know, the connection of these devices, like that's kind of the proposition, right?
01:01:37 ◼ ► That you can have four things of theirs and they all kind of work similarly and you get the same service and the same features across all of these devices.
01:01:47 ◼ ► So like if you just take it at its face value of what we like about Apple and the way that Apple products work, services makes a lot of sense.
01:01:54 ◼ ► The problem is everything gets dumped into services, right? Some of that stuff, not so good.
01:01:59 ◼ ► Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I think what Apple has tried to do with services is say, I mean, when they say hardware and software and services now instead of just hardware and software, I think what they're getting at is what you said.
01:02:11 ◼ ► It's the glue. It's the idea that look, one advantage is that our hardware is great and the software that runs on it.
01:02:18 ◼ ► Another advantage is then we build services that improve your usage of those products, make them work better together, improve, you know, these are key products in your life and we can build services that elevate it further.
01:02:33 ◼ ► And let's be honest, are also easier. Like the thing I always think about like Apple retail, like Apple retail is incredibly profitable.
01:02:41 ◼ ► There are other retail outlets. This is why I'm not super enthusiastic about the idea of, oh, everything when Apple does a thing, it's a monopoly play.
01:02:51 ◼ ► It's like there are other retail outlets, but it's sure convenient to go to the Apple store because you know that it's Apple, it's nice.
01:02:58 ◼ ► They're going to have everything. They're going to have people there. And even if that's not entirely true, like I think that's the vibe you get.
01:03:04 ◼ ► I'm going to Apple. I hear a lot of people say I'm going to Apple. When I say I'm going to Apple, I mean I'm driving to Cupertino, but a lot of people just I'm going to Apple means I'm going to the mall, right?
01:03:14 ◼ ► I'm going to Apple and Apple has everything. And if they don't have it, they can get it. And they're the experts and they know all about it.
01:03:22 ◼ ► And it's convenient and there's third party products in the Apple store and they're not cheap, but it's certainly easy. And again, could you save money by doing this elsewhere and buying different products that aren't in the Apple retail store and all that?
01:03:38 ◼ ► Yes, but it's super convenient to just be in the Apple retail store. So they make a lot of money from it. And I think services is the same kind of story where, you know, like we have on these podcasts, we talk about this and on my website and all that like, okay, cloud storage.
01:03:56 ◼ ► Google makes cloud storage, Microsoft does cloud storage. There's Dropbox, there's Box, there's all of these things. And there's iCloud. Does iCloud have issues?
01:04:04 ◼ ► Yeah, not as many as it used to. Does iCloud have all the features of those other things? No, it doesn't. Is iCloud easy because it's built into the operating system and you're already giving Apple money for something else?
01:04:17 ◼ ► Yeah, it really is. And that goes for all of this stuff. So I think that's ultimately their game. And I don't think it's fundamentally evil. I think it's actually perfectly reasonable, which is we're going to make this thing that is a little pricey and very profitable for us, but it's going to make our products nicer and it's easy for you to do it.
01:04:37 ◼ ► And you know what? There are always going to be coupon clippers out there. And there are always people who are going to be like, no, no, no, I've cobbled together a system that saves me $8 a month and take that Apple. It's like, okay, that's fine.
01:04:49 ◼ ► In fact, I would argue that's where Apple's anti-competitive nature is. Like, let those people do that. Just let them do that. That's fine. Because most people, it goes back to like when Steve Jobs said we're going to start selling music on iTunes, right?
01:05:02 ◼ ► It's like, people are downloading music for free. Like you can get Napster and get music for free. But you know what? Just pay 99 cents for a song. It's easy. It's right there. It's convenient. And a lot of people are like, that's fine. I'll do that.
01:05:17 ◼ ► So convenience goes a long way. Having it be from Apple and deeply integrated goes a long way. I know there are anti-competitive arguments that can be made there. But in the big picture, I think that's really what's going on with services.
01:05:28 ◼ ► It's like, they just want, like, they've got these products and then there's this big, warm, fuzzy cloud around all of them that is Apple services. And they're just, they're nice and they're easy. And before you know it, Apple is extracting huge amounts of money out of your bank account every month. It happens to all of us.
01:05:55 ◼ ► Yeah, I looked it up. It was seven or eight years ago that they did the services narrative thing, right? Where they're like, okay, hey, everybody, we are announcing today that we're going to make a big bet on our services revenue. We're going to double it in the next, I forget what it was, five years or whatever.
01:06:09 ◼ ► They doubled it so much faster than that. And they knew they were going to do that. But it was the launching of the services narrative, which is we as a company. So this is not new, right? This is eight years since they announced it. So probably longer that they were workshopping and internally.
01:06:24 ◼ ► We are going to grow our services business. We are not going to stand. And I think some of this is Apple wanting all the money and it's on its platform. I think that's a thing that is a not great bit of Apple's personality as a corporation.
01:06:37 ◼ ► But it's this idea of like, well, wait a second. Why are other people building businesses on connecting all these things and offering services to our users? Why don't we do that? And so they set about building an enormous services business.
01:06:48 ◼ ► And as you said, the funny thing is it worked. I think beyond their wildest expectations, it worked.
01:06:56 ◼ ► Yep. Because then also the industry moved in such a way that they were able to collect up more pieces and put them into services. When they started this, they didn't think they were going to make a TV show with Jennifer Aniston in it.
01:07:19 ◼ ► But I think, again, it's got some other benefits that we talked about. They really like being nominated for awards and things like that. It adds a sheen to it.
01:07:26 ◼ ► I would also say it adds a sheen to the services line because it's much more glamorous to talk about services and say, you know, we got a lot of Emmy nominations than it is to say, you know, we got another big check from Google.
01:07:42 ◼ ► If you enjoy this show and would like more of this show, you should subscribe to Upgrade Plus. Not only do you get no ads, you get bonus content every single week. You get access to the Relay FM members Discord and just general bonus content for being a Relay FM member.
01:07:58 ◼ ► We have monthly shows that talk about the behind the scenes or the bear at Relay, I guess, as well as a great show that Kathy Campbell puts on for us called Spotlight, where Kathy asks questions to a Relay FM host each and every month.
01:08:13 ◼ ► I just did one recently talking about some questions that the audience have for me and talking about Relay 10, so you get that. But on Upgrade Plus this week, we're going to talk in a little bit more detail about Jason's solar experience.
01:08:34 ◼ ► Okay. Go to GetUpgradePlus.com. You'll get longer ad-free listening every week and you'll be helping to support the show too. Saddle up, Jason. It's Ruma Roundup time.
01:09:13 ◼ ► The things he's able to do. I especially like that I said saddle up and then Lex said saddle up. That was good. That means you really know me, Jason.
01:09:25 ◼ ► Well, the future is that the colors are upon us. We're starting to see some supposed case leaks of this year's iPhone line.
01:09:34 ◼ ► So the iPhone 16, and I guess it will still be the 16 Plus, will come in a white, black, blue, pink, and green. These colors, very saturated.
01:09:46 ◼ ► They look great. And they have what we're expecting to see, the stacked cameras on top of each other in the new vertical layout, which I like. I think it looks cool.
01:09:58 ◼ ► It makes the bump way smaller, right? And then the flash is just out on the flush on the case. So that's actually a really good look. And the colors, yeah, that blue, that green. Oh, so nice.
01:10:07 ◼ ► They're good. I like the pink too. I like all of them. The white and black, whatever. It's white and black.
01:10:17 ◼ ► Real good. And luckily, in the pro world, for those of us who gets pro funds, there's going to be a kind of bronze looking titanium option called Rose is the name right now.
01:10:33 ◼ ► I don't know why it would be rose. Why don't you call it bronze? However, there might be some good news for people who like the most boring of funds that could exist.
01:10:44 ◼ ► There are also some leaks of the other, like the white, the natural and the black titanium. And the images that have leaked from these show a very dark black fund. Like very dark, which could be fun for people that like that.
01:11:04 ◼ ► I'll take it. Yep. I have the blue right now. Natural is really good though. Natural is really good, but I have the blue and I like it.
01:11:16 ◼ ► I would personally be interested in maybe what this rose or bronze could be because I think it could just be a warmer natural titanium is probably what we're going to end up with.
01:11:29 ◼ ► Because what I want is just go gold again, but I don't think they're going to do that, but this would be the closest to that. But yeah, it is going to be funny when they get rid of the only colour and now we have white, black and two essentially greys.
01:11:52 ◼ ► Again, if you don't want a colour full of foam, that's fine, but I don't understand why people who want to buy an iPhone Pro can't have a nice colour. I just don't understand it.
01:12:00 ◼ ► I don't. It's so frustrating to me that they don't. They go, "Oh, no, no. The iPhone 16 isn't a fun colour. 16 Pro? No. No colour for you."
01:12:13 ◼ ► It is a shame. I would love some colour, but I will say, nearly a year in or however long we are, I really like the natural titanium.
01:12:20 ◼ ► I think it looks so, so, so good. And just for all the people that, whenever we talk about these inevitably say, "What's the point? People just put them in cases." I don't.
01:12:41 ◼ ► It's just a little fine woven up to, it's a disaster. It's so battered and smashed and terrible and she's had leather cases in the past and they've all looked good.
01:12:51 ◼ ► And this thing, it's so ratty that I finally just went ahead and bought her a leather case, a proper case for it because it's so bad.
01:13:08 ◼ ► I think if Apple has any ability to build a different case, they will, but I'm not convinced how long their lead time is for this.
01:13:21 ◼ ► My thinking is, I think kind of going on what you're saying, fine woven, they will make one this year. I expect next year, all silicon.
01:13:32 ◼ ► And that they might make some premium feeling silicon. Like they will be all silicon, maybe a texture on one of them or something.
01:13:40 ◼ ► I think they're just going to go all silicon because that's what they can do. They know they can do it well and they've just found some way to make one of them more expensive.
01:13:55 ◼ ► There's a lot of pushback about, oh, people are critical of fine woven. It's just because it's new. It'll be fine. It's not fine. It's bad.
01:14:09 ◼ ► Sometimes you just don't know the answer. You don't know what to do. Your friends Mike and Jason might have some advice for you. Just ask upgrade.
01:14:38 ◼ ► That one continued in every possible way that I thought it could continue. Like even the end of the song, I think, when the final note was further. No lasers?
01:15:03 ◼ ► We don't have that kind of time. Matthew asks, given the rumors of a folding phone, there were more rumors of the folding phone, which we'll talk about next week.
01:15:12 ◼ ► Is it possible that Apple may implement some sort of dual screen usage or multitasking mode in preparation for something like that on a folding phone?
01:15:21 ◼ ► So the age old classic here was size classes being introduced to the iPad to get ready for multitasking.
01:15:36 ◼ ► Yeah. If I had to predict, I would say that sometime in the next couple of years, Apple will introduce split view for the iPhone.
01:15:44 ◼ ► And it'll be top and bottom. And people will be like, why? And Apple will say, why not?
01:15:53 ◼ ► And then basically make it small because not only is it if you've got a folding phone that's open, but halfway, but also if it's closed and you've got that back screen.
01:16:05 ◼ ► The other possibility would be that they're not going to do it, that they view that it's either open or closed and the app just runs and you don't have two apps on those two different halves of the screen.
01:16:16 ◼ ► They might do it where they just have to be a regular screen on the inside and on the outside, they instead adapt kind of like a widget model, right?
01:16:23 ◼ ► So they use their widgets or their standby. And so it's standby on that other screen or widgets.
01:16:31 ◼ ► We'll say, I mean, I want to congratulate Samsung for an absolutely incredible integration into the Olympics, which I'm sure you've seen.
01:16:40 ◼ ► Every time there is a medal ceremony, there is a Z Flip given to somebody and they take a selfie with it with the phone closed.
01:16:47 ◼ ► That kind of thing. Yeah. That kind of thing they will want, right? The having the camera on the front screen.
01:16:58 ◼ ► It is funny to me every time to see the phone held and then given back to somebody, which is very funny.
01:17:06 ◼ ► I got to touch a Z Flip this weekend because I was on the last studio twit from Petaluma with and Jason Howell was sitting next to me and he had, oh no, it was actually it wasn't Jason Howell.
01:17:17 ◼ ► Even though he's got, he had a weird Android phone too. Leo had the Z Flip and having not put my hands on one of those folding phones in a while.
01:17:26 ◼ ► First off the Z Flip, like, oh Samsung, like the, when it's open, the industrial industrial design of it, it is just an iPhone.
01:17:47 ◼ ► It's weird to me because that's not how they've been in the past. Like they've felt a little bit more unique, but now it just looks like a folding iPhone.
01:17:56 ◼ ► So when it's open, yeah, I mean, if you angle it, there's a little, you can see the little bump, the little bend, but it's otherwise it's a pretty nice big iPhone like phone.
01:18:11 ◼ ► And like, I can see it, I can see an iPhone that folds and the rumor is, you know, that'll be like year after next, but I totally can see it.
01:18:19 ◼ ► If Apple is confident enough in the hardware and the quality and all of that to stand by it, I think that that is one of the things.
01:18:27 ◼ ► They're not willing to be as quite as far out on the edge as some other phone makers are, but I totally can see it being a thing that, and they've got, like I said, with widgets and standby and stuff like that,
01:18:38 ◼ ► they're already kind of building an infrastructure for this. And remember what Apple always does is reuse parts, right?
01:18:43 ◼ ► So they'll build that home pod with the screen and it'll be reusing parts, including widgets and standby and tvOS and whatever.
01:18:50 ◼ ► And if they do a folding phone with a little screen on the outside, will it not be a standby-esque kind of thing? Of course it will be, of course.
01:18:57 ◼ ► Yeah, that Z Flip 6 is very good. Like this is the first time that a Z Flip has gotten the most up-to-date camera and processor. It's usually been one behind.
01:19:11 ◼ ► The phone has gotten a little bit more expensive because of that, but I think that they have actually this time made, like this is just a very good phone and it also folds.
01:19:20 ◼ ► And I think this integration with the Olympics, I think, is going to really help them sell a lot of those. I think they've done it very naturally.
01:19:27 ◼ ► And also, I know it looks like a folding iPhone. The phone also does just look cool at the same time.
01:19:34 ◼ ► Like I think the industrial design is great, obviously, because it looks like an iPhone. I like the way iPhones look.
01:19:39 ◼ ► But I just think it also has the two cameras and the screen on the front. It's massive now. It's a cool-looking product.
01:19:46 ◼ ► Jack wants to know, "How has your editing process been affected now that you offer videos of these episodes on YouTube?"
01:19:54 ◼ ► Oh, that's a good question. Not at all in the sense that we have our good editor, Jim Metzendorf, who's been working on this for a while.
01:20:04 ◼ ► Since Mike handed over the audio edit. And Jim continues to do an audio edit. We do not have a unified process. Jim edits the audio. That is the primary of the show.
01:20:17 ◼ ► What we do is our videos go to Chip Sutterth and our audio files, obviously, as well. And he puts them all together in a video project.
01:20:26 ◼ ► He gets the same editing notes that go to Jim. I think he doesn't do the detailed audio edit, nor should he, that Jim does.
01:20:46 ◼ ► It's weird. I think Chip might do some things where I say something and he takes it out. Because you're talking. Chip does that.
01:20:57 ◼ ► We have two streams, basically, where we're doing an edit that is going to do the best audio.
01:21:03 ◼ ► And then we're doing a video version that will take into account, like we did the other week because of the embargo.
01:21:10 ◼ ► We had a segment that we recorded at the end of the show that moved to the middle of the show. Because literally the embargo dropped about Apple Intelligence while we were recording.
01:21:19 ◼ ► And we already, I'd been prepped on it. I'd been briefed. But we couldn't talk about it live on the internet until it had come out.
01:21:27 ◼ ► And so that note goes to Jim and Chip. And so Chip took that segment and pulled it back, just like Jim did.
01:21:33 ◼ ► But I'd say there's less editing going on. Chip is giving an eye to the cuts. There's a plugin called Autopod for Premiere that is entirely, this is what it's meant for.
01:21:45 ◼ ► Is that you give multiple podcaster streams and then it generates a cut where it's cutting back and forth. And so that helps that.
01:21:56 ◼ ► Chip is doing his own different stuff though, right? So like, Jim is looking for imperfections in the audio, background noises.
01:22:06 ◼ ► If maybe me and you have spoken over each other and I didn't make a note of that, like he's doing those kinds of things. Chip is making sure that our frames look good.
01:22:15 ◼ ► And Chip is very patient with me. Like for example, he told me last week that I move around a lot when I record and so he has to try and level me out.
01:22:26 ◼ ► Because I am a bit of a fidget when we record. Like I move a lot. Anybody that watches the YouTube version will see that I move a lot when I record.
01:22:35 ◼ ► And so I cause him a lot of problems that way I think. But that's the difference. Jim is editing to make the audio the best it can sound.
01:22:45 ◼ ► And Chip is making sure that the video looks as good as it possibly can. Which is quite interesting that we have these two things going on.
01:22:54 ◼ ► And I think it's particularly interesting for us because I'm just not used to the visual part. And I'm still trying to get used to that. It's interesting.
01:23:06 ◼ ► Yeah, and Chip does some things too where he'll drop in some images. Like this episode probably will have some of those charts that we were referring to.
01:23:14 ◼ ► And he does chapter art sometimes. So there's a bunch of stuff that goes in there from him. Again, we want to do a nice version for YouTube because we think that there's an audience on YouTube.
01:23:29 ◼ ► And that there are people who prefer YouTube. Hi YouTube. But we also want our primary audience is audio. And so we want to do the best version of the audio podcast.
01:23:41 ◼ ► So philosophically we basically have kept our audio production identical. And then added a video production separately. And sometimes there's collaboration.
01:23:50 ◼ ► Like sometimes we'll have noise and Jim will do a denoise. And Chip will say, "Jim, can I have the denoise of Jason's track because there was a bad sound in the background?"
01:24:00 ◼ ► Or whatever. And they'll exchange the files behind the scenes. But basically we've got two processes. So the editing process has not been affected, but it's been doubled.
01:24:10 ◼ ► And then of course there are the shorts, which is the whole reason that this started in the first place. So Chip will cut out some shorts, identify those, and then Jamie will post them.
01:24:23 ◼ ► And then Chip also, the other thing we're doing if people don't know is we've been pulling some segments out, one or two segments a week.
01:24:28 ◼ ► So instead of people clicking on a thing on YouTube and getting a 90 minute long podcast, they'll get a 15 minute long discussion of this topic.
01:24:37 ◼ ► And that's a good way, I think, to get people introduced to who we are, who might not know or who might not want to spend 90 minutes with us every week, but still get something out of it.
01:24:46 ◼ ► So, and again, it's just an experiment. I fundamentally believe there are lots of different ways to consume this kind of content that we're creating.
01:24:53 ◼ ► And that if we just do podcast, we will reach the people for whom that works. And we have, and that's great. But I know that there are people out there who would rather consume it in a different way.
01:25:04 ◼ ► And if that broadens the scope of upgrade, great. But it's not, you know, that's what it's for, is just to try to reach people who don't think about podcast apps, but might think about YouTube.
01:25:15 ◼ ► And we love them too. We love them. I'm giving them a thumbs up, but you can only see that on YouTube.
01:25:24 ◼ ► We got a team. We got a team. We're coming up on 10 years and it's going to be that thing. We talked about this when I was in London, that when we started, it was just you and me and we hung together.
01:25:34 ◼ ► And now we got a whole upgrade crew that puts the show together. So it's great. Shout out to all of them.
01:26:18 ◼ ► I feel like that one's going to be in my head a lot. I think I'm going to be singing that one to myself for a bit.
01:26:23 ◼ ► Okay. I'm going to give you a little bit and I won't play the whole thing, but I think this is the true earworm of the whole batch.
01:26:29 ◼ ► It's the little doot doot doot doot doot doot doot doot. It's like a little xylophone kind of in the background there.
01:26:46 ◼ ► So like you can imagine like my problem with earworms is when they become another song, that's when I can never get rid of them.
01:26:59 ◼ ► Unfortunately, it doesn't pay very well. We're going to have to give him a thank you gift of some sort for doing all of that.
01:27:04 ◼ ► But I have fulfilled my summer of fun dream of doing an episode that is like AM radio in the 1970s and 80s, full of jingles.
01:27:15 ◼ ► If you would like to send us in your feedback, maybe go to, or your follow up or questions, go to upgradefeedback.com.
01:27:24 ◼ ► You can check out Jason's work at sixcolors.com and hear his podcasts on the incomparable.com and here on Relay, where you can hear me too.