00:00:27 ◼ ► Yeah, we'll get to that in a minute. I have a snow talk question for you to begin today's episode.
00:00:31 ◼ ► It comes from me and I would like to know, Jason, how was your flight home from London?
00:00:36 ◼ ► Oh, it was great. I mean, it was sitting on a plane for a long time. It wasn't great. I read a lot and that was fine.
00:00:43 ◼ ► It was uneventful. We got home. I didn't hallucinate anything on the drive home, which is important because, you know,
00:00:49 ◼ ► that's flying this direction, that's the long day. You know, you leave in the morning and then a long time passes and it's still daytime.
00:00:56 ◼ ► That was weird. But made it home. I was going to take the Elizabeth line, the very exciting...
00:01:11 ◼ ► And this is Crossrail. It's super fast and air conditioned and smooth ride and it's great.
00:01:32 ◼ ► I don't know why, but I have a theory. I have a conspiracy theory, which is a conspiracy theory by the Heathrow Express.
00:01:46 ◼ ► They just put barriers up and then they position their salespeople because their train is right there, like right next to where it is.
00:01:53 ◼ ► And they had a conveniently located salesperson there to sell us two tickets to go on the Heathrow Express instead for twice the price.
00:02:01 ◼ ► But at that point we got to get to the airport. Right. So we went on the Heathrow Express instead of the Elizabeth line to the airport.
00:02:06 ◼ ► It's too bad. I was looking forward to sticking it to the man by just riding the Elizabeth line,
00:02:12 ◼ ► which also another thing I noticed before we even talk about London, just as part of this journeys thing,
00:02:18 ◼ ► I noticed on all the signs and the maps and the website that the Elizabeth line is not part of the London underground.
00:02:34 ◼ ► There are the overground lines, which are going to get names as we talked about this weekend.
00:02:40 ◼ ► They're going to get names. And then there's the Elizabeth line, which is part of the transit system, but not officially part of...
00:02:50 ◼ ► Well, and it has no other name, so it's just its own thing. It's the Elizabeth line. It is what it is.
00:02:57 ◼ ► Yeah. It's like, it's all TFL, right? And like TFL and underground and tube, these are all used interchangeably.
00:03:04 ◼ ► Because ostensibly it works the same. Like if it's part of TFL, you use the Oyster card, it's all, everything works together.
00:03:25 ◼ ► Also, I have another transit related update, which was the first tube station we went to.
00:03:34 ◼ ► And so we're like, I guess we're going to have to get our Oyster cards. Cause I was like, well, wait a second. Why?
00:03:40 ◼ ► So we went to the Oyster card machine and we bought two Oyster cards of which one was delivered.
00:03:45 ◼ ► And then there was a sign that put up saying, we don't have any more cards. Contact somebody.
00:03:51 ◼ ► Yeah. Right. So then we go back and we, we tried every turnstile and one of the turnstiles took my Apple pay.
00:03:59 ◼ ► And so Lauren used all the credit on that Oyster card and then she used hers and I used mine.
00:04:05 ◼ ► That was fine. But like, it was just the luck of the draw that the first gate I went to did not want to let me enter.
00:04:14 ◼ ► It could have been like a weird thing with the car being approved with a bank. Like who knows how that stuff works.
00:04:23 ◼ ► I don't know, but I'm glad it did finally work because we were in a position there where we had, if we couldn't use our card and our credit card, you know, Apple pay to get in the tube.
00:04:39 ◼ ► I'm not quite sure. I mean, we would have taken a cab to wherever we were going. I think it was with our, it was with our bag. So it was to the hotel, but it was fine.
00:04:47 ◼ ► Probably you could have bought a paper ticket from the machine is probably what you would have done.
00:04:53 ◼ ► Anyway, it didn't, it didn't end up mattering because, uh, then it worked and then it was great. Cause there's nothing, nothing like tapping with your watch and going right on.
00:05:04 ◼ ► So that was my snow talk question, but if you would like to send in a snow talk question dealer, so please go to upgrade feedback.com and you can send that in.
00:05:13 ◼ ► So we obviously spoke about this. I expect most people know, but Jason has just returned from London because we just had the relay 10 event in London at the historic Hackney empire in front of a over a thousand relay listeners.
00:05:28 ◼ ► Uh, which it was an absolutely incredible event. We have audio available, so that's available now in the departures feed, which is where we put, uh, all of our live stuff.
00:05:38 ◼ ► So I'll put a link to that in the show notes. If you want to listen, uh, it was a great time. It, you know, I wanted this to happen for so long and we worked really, really hard to make it work.
00:05:52 ◼ ► And this event excelled in every possible way for me. Uh, it was just a wonderful celebration of relay and everyone involved from all of the hosts that were there.
00:06:07 ◼ ► The host that couldn't be there even, and all of the listeners that could be there and all the listeners that maybe couldn't make it was just unforgettable.
00:06:15 ◼ ► And to have that many hosts together again in this kind of way, it felt like something that has been so long and it really felt like the family again, which it hasn't felt like for me in a long time.
00:06:30 ◼ ► Like WWDC 2023 was the last time we had that many people together, but it's still not the same because it's people were still spread out.
00:06:38 ◼ ► And like, really, it hasn't felt this way for me for like five years since relay five in San Francisco. And it was so incredible.
00:06:45 ◼ ► And Jason, you did such an incredible job as the host again. And I am so grateful that you did it.
00:06:54 ◼ ► You're the one who made me do it. You were, you were, you were going to host it and then you're like, no, you just do it.
00:07:02 ◼ ► Yeah. And we got to do the thing that we do, which I love. You know, we got to, uh, we got to be a double act, which is always such a great joy for me.
00:07:19 ◼ ► And don't forget, we asked him to do a job and he didn't do it. Do you remember that? We won't spoil it, but you know, he was asked.
00:07:28 ◼ ► And then when came time for him to reveal what he was going to tell us, he said, I didn't do it.
00:07:39 ◼ ► And I'm sure that Kate will know. Kate knows the answer to that question and has taken the actual, because that's really the truth is if you want precision counting, what you really want is a listener, not one of the hosts.
00:07:54 ◼ ► No. We also were honored, surprisingly, with Relay has received the St. Jude Creator Achievement Award, which is such an incredible honor.
00:08:07 ◼ ► And I've put some links in the show notes to some pictures of mine and also a picture Steven took, which shows the award.
00:08:13 ◼ ► St. Jude came, we had some representatives from AllSack, which is the fundraising organization of St. Jude to come and speak to our audience.
00:08:22 ◼ ► They wanted to come and be able to tell our audience how much this partnership has meant to them over the last five years.
00:08:36 ◼ ► And that is truly one of the great honors of my life to receive an award like that, to get that kind of recognition.
00:08:52 ◼ ► Yeah, I had never heard of Dr. Lupo. And then we went to Memphis for the fundraising Creator Summit earlier this year.
00:09:00 ◼ ► And I had never heard of Dr. Lupo, but I was rapidly told of Dr. Lupo because his fundraising skills for St. Jude are legendary.
00:09:21 ◼ ► And so Dr. Lupo is a game streamer. And so we're connected with the gaming kind of fundraising St. Jude Play Live.
00:09:29 ◼ ► They honored us with that award, but it's for all of us. It's for the community. It's for everyone.
00:09:40 ◼ ► One of the things we announced at the live show, and this is a rolling thing most likely.
00:09:46 ◼ ► We're changing the name of Relay FM to just Relay. And we have some branding stuff that's going to be happening.
00:09:54 ◼ ► We announced it in the live show and it's going to be happening hopefully over the coming weeks.
00:10:06 ◼ ► But I think the thing we're pretty set on is we're dropping the FM from the name of the company.
00:10:23 ◼ ► As we enter our 10th year, it's time for some simplification when it comes to our branding.
00:10:37 ◼ ► It was something that me and Steven really tried to hold on to for a long time and then just let it go.
00:10:43 ◼ ► Steven had a very telling comment where he said that he's wanted to change the Relay logo for nine and a half years, basically.
00:11:11 ◼ ► Oh, can I shout out? I want to shout out listener Marley's who appeared and not only did I identify her on site, I said, "That's Marley's, isn't it?"
00:11:21 ◼ ► But she was wearing a bootleg or shall we say semi-unwittingly authorized by me, but it doesn't matter.
00:11:48 ◼ ► Nobody wants that t-shirt except Marley's. There'd be one person that will buy it. They already have it.
00:11:56 ◼ ► So, yeah, it was just like, you know, I don't really have the words to explain how I'm feeling right now. I'm exhausted.
00:12:03 ◼ ► It has been a very difficult couple of weeks, but this, I could not have asked for any better than how the event went.
00:12:17 ◼ ► We'll talk more about some of my excitement of things that I did on my trip in Upgrade Plus.
00:12:28 ◼ ► I just will mention here that among the other things that we did, we got a boat ride from the inventor of emojis himself, Jeremy Burge.
00:12:44 ◼ ► That was amazing. If you look on Instagram, you will find, and TikTok, because Jeremy, you will find lots of pictures of me and Casey and Aaron Liss cranking locks up and down in central London so that Jeremy's boat could pass through various places.
00:13:02 ◼ ► And of course, the best place to learn how to use locks is in the middle of Camden, where there's the huge shopping and dining and people-watching area that the people they're watching are you while you try to figure out how boats work.
00:13:18 ◼ ► So we had a great time. The weather was great. Jeremy was a wonderful host and I could not have spent a more pleasant sort of half day than cruising central London with the Liss's and Jeremy.
00:13:34 ◼ ► And then at one point I turned around and James Thompson appeared on the boat. Ah, where'd he come from?
00:13:41 ◼ ► Well, originally, yeah. I know that because he came down, him and his wife came down with me and Lauren on the train. They were right there. I saw him come down.
00:13:51 ◼ ► But suddenly you're just on a boat ride with people and then you turn around and there's more people on the boat. Yeah. Tricky. He's tricky.
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00:16:22 ◼ ► Mike, while you introduce the next segment, I'm just going to, I'm a, there's a little local color. Okay. You ready?
00:16:34 ◼ ► One of those things that I like to, right, like a little souvenir. They're available here too at various stores, but no, no, no. These I bought at a, like a Tesco.
00:16:48 ◼ ► So we've been gone for a couple of weeks, I think. And so there's been a, there's been a bit of news that I wanted to cover.
00:16:55 ◼ ► First off is some vision pro stuff. So Apple has released some more details about a selection of immersive content coming to vision pro.
00:17:03 ◼ ► The first new content, which is available now asterisk is a series called boundless and it depicts a hot air balloon ride in the first episode.
00:17:12 ◼ ► Weirdly, this content is not available in the UK until the fall, even though it's available in the US right now, which is a thing I can't fully fathom because surely they own this content.
00:17:26 ◼ ► They, they don't, they want to, um, they want to wait till more people have the vision pro in the UK so they can blow their minds.
00:17:32 ◼ ► I just don't understand. I mean that while weird is like the only logical thing to me, but that doesn't, it doesn't make any sense. Like very, very strange.
00:17:42 ◼ ► It's a very strange decision. But anyway, they also detail in this, in a press release I've got in the show notes, some of the upcoming content that we'd saw a little bit about WWDC.
00:17:51 ◼ ► There's a film from the weekend. It's a couple of new short films and footage from the NBA all star weekend.
00:17:57 ◼ ► They're all coming later on this year, which means maybe they'll come next year to the UK. I don't know. I don't know what's going on there. And I find it really peculiar.
00:18:04 ◼ ► The final coming soon vision pro environment has now arrived. It's called Lake Vrangla. Vrangla? I'm definitely saying that wrong.
00:18:19 ◼ ► This is the, this is your moody, moody, foggy lake. Yeah. Yeah. This is the Twin Peaks environment. Yeah.
00:18:24 ◼ ► It seems to have been, the availability for it has been, seems to be pushed out over the air. You go to the environments tab and download it.
00:18:30 ◼ ► You don't need to do a software update to get it. And it's downloadable from the environments tab itself.
00:18:37 ◼ ► I find this really interesting that this is the second thing that I can remember with the vision pro where they're just like, oh, hey, you can do this now.
00:18:46 ◼ ► And there hasn't been like a point update. So we had spatial personas was one of them. Like it was like, hey, reboot your device.
00:18:53 ◼ ► And now we have this. I find that really interesting. This is the kind of, this is a way that I would like Apple to be doing more software updates.
00:19:01 ◼ ► I think people said this for a long time of like, you can, you don't have to do this all at once, right?
00:19:06 ◼ ► Like you can only do your feature updates when they're all paired with a much larger set of feature updates.
00:19:13 ◼ ► You could do little bits here and there. But the thing that makes me hopeful is that this mechanic of pushing environments over the air
00:19:22 ◼ ► maybe could lead to more in the future. Like they've clearly built for the ability to, I guess, to just download them.
00:19:29 ◼ ► So since they're down, they were already, they were already downloadable, right? Like you, they weren't all on device.
00:19:37 ◼ ► Exactly. Because they're like big assets. They're, they're large. And so if you're doing, I think they're anticipating having storage management issues and that they built it to be modular.
00:19:47 ◼ ► If that's the case and there isn't any new operating system feature that's required, right? This should be totally modular.
00:19:55 ◼ ► There should be like a, a roster in a file that the OS looks at that says, what are the available environments?
00:20:05 ◼ ► And it can update dynamically to add other environments and they just show up because they're downloads, right?
00:20:11 ◼ ► They should be able to be this dynamic. So I hope they will be, and I hope there are more of them.
00:20:17 ◼ ► And as we've said before, I also hope that developers get a way to contribute environments at some point here, because there are some really nice immersive environments in other apps that it would be nice to use.
00:20:30 ◼ ► Right? Like you could, then you could really hang out at the top of Avengers Tower and that would be fun.
00:20:36 ◼ ► Someone asked me recently, I think it's on Mastodon, like do you know, if you think about these two things together, like third party watch faces and third party environments, like are we, are we in the same boat with this wish?
00:20:47 ◼ ► And my kind of feeling on that is Apple has never encouraged the development of watch faces for the Apple watch.
00:20:55 ◼ ► But with the Vision Pro, they have the ability for you to create an immersive environment inside of an application and it's like a thing that is what it's called, like you can do it and then, then have your apps sit on top of it.
00:21:14 ◼ ► I would be shocked if the Disney+ app environments were really any different from what Apple's building. They're just walled off in the app. And so I think it's a, it's, there may be some technical details, but I don't know why you would, you would build it differently.
00:21:30 ◼ ► You'd want it to be using the same kind of process. And if that's the case, it would seem to be like the next step would be to let apps contribute those to the system.
00:21:40 ◼ ► And it's really interesting, like weird in a way that there were two coming soon environments. There was this one and there was Bora Bora. Bora Bora is part of Vision OS 2, but this one is just available now.
00:21:50 ◼ ► I love the Vision Pro and Vision OS team because they do things in ways that I just can't expect.
00:21:56 ◼ ► There's some strange, strange forking, strange dichotomy going on here, but wait, wait, wait till you hear about what's happening with the iOS betas, but that's later.
00:22:08 ◼ ► During Comic-Con, Ron Moore gave more details about Star City, the For All Mankind spinoff series set in the Soviet Union with parallel timing to the beginning of For All Mankind.
00:22:25 ◼ ► The show will debut after the next season of For All Mankind, which is currently in production.
00:22:32 ◼ ► They're planning a multiple season arc for Star City, like For All Mankind, and it will feature time jumps.
00:22:38 ◼ ► So I would hope that we're going to basically go back to the beginning and tell every season.
00:22:44 ◼ ► The show is currently being written and they are planning on some, but not all of it to be in Russian.
00:22:51 ◼ ► Yeah, it sounds like somebody asked, is this just going to all be in Russian and Ron Moore said, I don't see how we can do that.
00:22:55 ◼ ► So my guess is that they'll either like Hunt for Red October it, where they'll like start it in Russian and have everybody speak English,
00:23:03 ◼ ► or they'll do a thing that a lot of movies do where they have everybody speaking with Russian accents in English, but the writing will all be in Cyrillic Russian.
00:23:12 ◼ ► And maybe when there are scenes with people speaking other languages, they might drop back to actually speaking Russian so that you can have that kind of disconnect between the languages.
00:23:24 ◼ ► That other people are speaking, but that's my guess. I don't think Apple TV Plus really wants a show that's entirely in Russian.
00:23:42 ◼ ► That's a show that's almost entirely in Japanese. The difference there is that Japan is a market for Disney Plus and Hulu.
00:23:54 ◼ ► Also, it's part of the real history of Japan and it works better in Japanese and there's very little English, whereas Apple's not really concerned about the Russian market.
00:24:02 ◼ ► But the reason I brought it up is like it's such a mind-bending thing. So all of the Japanese characters are speaking Japanese to each other.
00:24:10 ◼ ► But there is an English character who most of the time you hear him, he's speaking Portuguese.
00:24:18 ◼ ► But that's English. But he also speaks English sometimes and you never know. I just wonder if they might try and maybe do something like that. I don't know.
00:24:30 ◼ ► I can't conceive of... No, I don't think they will. I think almost everybody will speak English with a Russian accent except for when maybe they're interacting with other people.
00:24:38 ◼ ► But yes, Shogun is brilliant and there's a whole... Like the fact that they wrote it in English and then they had it translated into Japanese
00:24:46 ◼ ► and then they went to Japanese playwrights and had them write that Japanese in the style of Japanese Shogun dramas.
00:24:56 ◼ ► So it's more flowery and more... They said a little more Shakespearean, right? Like it's period language, not modern Japanese.
00:25:08 ◼ ► And then they based... I think they based the captions then for English on that translated and then wordsmith version to bring it back to English.
00:25:20 ◼ ► I love it. I could make an argument that one of the very first truly global TV shows ever is Shogun because it's an American TV show except a lot of the producers are Japanese.
00:25:33 ◼ ► Most of the actors are Japanese. The writing started in English but went to Japanese and they used experts. It's a real collaboration.
00:25:44 ◼ ► And shot in Canada. Well, I mean, they're like, "We need something to double for a feudal Japan."
00:25:48 ◼ ► And they're like, "There's a lot of coastline in British Columbia that is just empty with trees that will do the job."
00:25:56 ◼ ► So it's wonderful. Highly recommended. Everybody out there. Shogun. It's great. Disney+ everywhere but the US where it's Hulu.
00:26:12 ◼ ► The retro PC emulator, UTM SE, has now been approved by Apple. It is now available in both the App Store and the Alt Store.
00:26:22 ◼ ► This is one of the two retro PC emulators we were talking about multiple weeks ago. This and Eidos.
00:26:33 ◼ ► So this app had been previously rejected and rejected in notarization after being held up in notarization.
00:26:39 ◼ ► It got spoken about publicly. The app has now been what is being referred to as adapted but not really sure how exactly.
00:26:47 ◼ ► Like maybe some changes have been made to the app. Then it was approved by Apple. And it's in the Alt Store too.
00:26:54 ◼ ► We don't have a lot of details here about how much of this is Apple changing its policies because of attention.
00:27:00 ◼ ► And how much of this is that there was a lot of attention but the truth was that what was holding it up was something very specific.
00:27:08 ◼ ► I think the problem there is that I could give Apple some benefit of the doubt that maybe it was being held up for a reason that was not the reason we thought.
00:27:16 ◼ ► The problem is that as far as anyone can tell it was never properly communicated what was going on.
00:27:22 ◼ ► And that's often a problem with this stuff is that Apple makes decisions and they just don't talk about it.
00:27:33 ◼ ► So now that UTM SE is out there, I've seen screenshots of people running like Windows 95 on their iPads which is wild.
00:27:40 ◼ ► And like great, I'm glad that this got through. I think it's very funny that Apple's strategy for Alt Store seems to be
00:27:48 ◼ ► if we can co-opt as much of the Alt Store as possible and just put it in the App Store maybe we should do that.
00:27:53 ◼ ► But I think it's good for users. I did note that Steve Trout and Smith tried to get old versions of Mac OS running on it.
00:27:59 ◼ ► And there are some things that make it not like done by Apple but just things that make that less difficult or more difficult that he couldn't, I think he couldn't get it to work.
00:28:13 ◼ ► But if you want to run Internet Explorer and Windows 95 or whatever, I guess you can, which is also kind of cool.
00:28:20 ◼ ► That actually means that my baseball game that I love, Diamond Find, which is a Windows only game, it's so, it uses no, I don't want to insult it,
00:28:31 ◼ ► but I'll say it uses no modern features of Windows. I think it could probably just run in UTMSE as a retro game even though it's a current game.
00:28:40 ◼ ► So yeah, this is cool, but it's also very frustrating that Apple is both seemingly kind of undercutting.
00:28:47 ◼ ► I mean, the good news is it's in the App Store worldwide, which means Alt Store's existence in Europe is forcing Apple to make changes that it's rolling out worldwide,
00:28:54 ◼ ► which means it benefits way more people. That's great. It's frustrating that this is what it took.
00:28:59 ◼ ► And it's frustrating that it went through the whole rejection dance with apparently very little conversation and communication with the people involved.
00:29:08 ◼ ► Because that's the thing that really, we talk about Apple doing a lot of this stuff to itself.
00:29:13 ◼ ► This is one of those areas, right, where if you treat your partners, your business partners, with some respect and communicate with them,
00:29:23 ◼ ► then these things wouldn't necessarily blow up in the press because they would understand what was going on.
00:29:29 ◼ ► Unfortunately, what seems to happen is there's a weird chain of command inside Apple where the people who decree, "Let's reject that," are not the people communicating.
00:29:47 ◼ ► And they can't, like, this is the problem, that if they were clearer with their business partners,
00:29:54 ◼ ► the business partners would not necessarily have to run to the press if there was a real back and forth.
00:30:00 ◼ ► But what ends up happening is they're opaque, they're making just clear, just like, "No, you're rejected," arguments.
00:30:11 ◼ ► And then you end up with people like us talking about it and people writing stories about it and then people at Apple seeing those stories and saying,
00:30:19 ◼ ► "Wait a second, why did we do it that way?" And then they fix it and it's like, this could all have been avoided.
00:30:24 ◼ ► You mentioned that it seems like Apple keep putting apps in the App Store that are being submitted to Alt Store.
00:30:33 ◼ ► Alt Store has announced that they will be bringing Fortnite to Alt Store Hal in the EU, which is wild, wild.
00:30:44 ◼ ► So Epic is going ahead and Epic's like, "You don't need our game store. You can go to some other game store, some other app store.
00:30:52 ◼ ► So they're going to be, yeah, so the Epic game store for iOS is still coming and now it seems like they'll put it in other places too.
00:31:01 ◼ ► So this is huge news for Alt Store. And I think it actually makes sense for Epic because I reckon Alt Store has a pretty good install base because of Delta.
00:31:14 ◼ ► If I'm Epic, I mean, they could be like, "No, no, the whole plan here is to build our own store."
00:31:19 ◼ ► I don't think that's it. I think they're going to build their own store, but the whole plan is to get Fortnite to people in the EU.
00:31:25 ◼ ► And if Alt Store has an existing audience and they can say, "Sure, you can get Fortnite in Alt Store and not have to install a different app marketplace, great, do it."
00:31:34 ◼ ► It's also a good political move for Epic, right? Like, it makes them look good to developers, which they want to do.
00:31:42 ◼ ► And also this will be like a thing that they can go to the European Commission and be like, "Hey, look, we love to play ball, but Apple, we just can't."
00:31:53 ◼ ► You know, Alt Store's terms are really good for us and we can now look where everyone's successful.
00:32:00 ◼ ► And speaking of Alt Store, Alt Store 2.1 is now available and it features the first third-party apps.
00:32:06 ◼ ► So as well as Delta and Clips, which were from Alt Store, there's now UTMSC, which we mentioned earlier.
00:32:18 ◼ ► That's the best example of an app category. I mean, it's the best example left now that emulators are in there, of an app category that Apple has just decided they don't want on their platforms, right?
00:32:29 ◼ ► BitTorrent clients, they just don't want them because even though there are legitimate uses of BitTorrent, there are far more illegitimate uses of BitTorrent.
00:32:37 ◼ ► And so Apple is just like, "We're not going to bother. We're just going to say this is a place we don't want to go as a matter of policy."
00:32:42 ◼ ► And so in the EU, policy like that can't determine what gets notarized. So obviously, BitTorrent apps are being notarized by Apple and put in Alt Store in the EU.
00:32:54 ◼ ► There's also an application which is reminiscent to 3DF StreetPass, if people know what that means.
00:33:01 ◼ ► It's basically you can run this application and if you pass people in the real world, your devices can communicate with each other if you want that as the thing in your life.
00:33:10 ◼ ► And finally, Apple is partnering with Taboola to bring advertising to Apple News and stocks.
00:33:18 ◼ ► So if you are on the web and you see a grid of boxes as an ad with absolutely wild things in those boxes, that is Taboola.
00:33:32 ◼ ► However, they're going to be bringing a more tailored experience to Apple's platforms, utilizing what Taboola calls "native ads," which are expected to be more relevant to the content that they appear on.
00:33:44 ◼ ► And Taboola's CEO told The Verge that they're giving Apple some control over what kinds of content could appear.
00:33:51 ◼ ► I mean, okay, a couple of things. So there's an easy joke here, right? Taboola, maker of garbage ads, is going to bring garbage ads to Apple's News and stocks apps. That's the simple, easy...
00:34:03 ◼ ► And, you know, is it entirely wrong? No, there's enough truth in it that it's good, and that's certainly what I felt.
00:34:09 ◼ ► But there's a couple of things here. One is, there are good ads and there are bad ads. And there are good ad platforms and bad ad platforms.
00:34:17 ◼ ► And I would say, is the existence of a deal between Apple and Taboola a sign that what Apple wants is for more of Taboola's lousy ad boxes to be stuck in Apple's interface?
00:34:30 ◼ ► I think not. I think they have probably a range of ads and clients and they want to re-
00:34:38 ◼ ► If you're Taboola, you don't want to say, "Our business is garbage," right? You don't want to say that. You want to say, "Our business is an ad business, and we cover the gamut.
00:34:46 ◼ ► And we've got garbage." They won't say that, but let's just say, "We've got garbage and we've got really classy stuff.
00:34:53 ◼ ► And it's a whole range. It's like, who do you want to reach? Where do you want to reach it? What kind of ads do you want to buy? How much do you want to pay? We gotcha!"
00:35:00 ◼ ► We got the whole range. So it could be that Apple is going to use them for garbage. It could be that Apple is actually going to use them for kind of like a higher level thing.
00:35:10 ◼ ► I will also point out, and this is the other point that makes this story a little less easy to rip on them, which is Apple has always allowed its content providers to stick ads in their content, right?
00:35:25 ◼ ► And so, you know, when you get- News Plus is not an ad-free experience, right? If you read Wall Street Journal in News Plus, as I do, first off, you'll always get a pop-up asking you to sign up for a newsletter.
00:35:38 ◼ ► And second, you will get their ads, many of which are kind of garbage-y and might even be taboola. So there's already garbage ads throughout Apple News. They're brought by Apple's partners.
00:35:51 ◼ ► And this is not necessarily going to change any of that. This is the stuff that Apple is placing in News and having a new partner.
00:35:59 ◼ ► And so I don't like it because they make really lousy ads and have kind of polluted the web. And I had many, many arguments 10 years ago at IDG where somebody would come and say, "Look, it's free money. We just stick this thing on."
00:36:12 ◼ ► It's like, well, it's not free. There's a cost. The cost is those terrible things are on every one of our pages showing terrible things.
00:36:19 ◼ ► Initially, Taboola's pitch, by the way, was they used their technology to intuit from your website which of your content was the most clickable. And then they would build an ad unit with like four links.
00:36:31 ◼ ► And one or two or three of those links would actually be to your content. And the idea was we know what the real clickbait is.
00:36:40 ◼ ► So let us drive your users to more content on your site. But also by placing your content in this ad unit alongside the ads that we're selling to other people's content, we're making that ad unit more visible to readers, which makes those other pieces of content more clickable, which makes the ad unit more effective, which makes more money for everybody involved.
00:37:06 ◼ ► It's not bad. But as with so many ad products, and you know this, you've seen this, as with so many ad products, it just degrades over time as everybody tries to push direct revenue maximization.
00:37:17 ◼ ► And I think that element everywhere I see it now is just all ads. They're not using the initial idea, which was a pretty clever idea of like three of these things are from Macworld and the fourth is a random thing.
00:37:32 ◼ ► And I think they even had a deal where like part of it was that your content went in their algorithm so relevant, like your readers, I think even because they were following you, your readers on other sites would get ads for your content on those sites because they knew you would be into it.
00:37:53 ◼ ► Like there was a whole technology pitch there, but in the end, it's just sort of like boxes full of garbage.
00:37:58 ◼ ► So anyway, it's a more complicated story, but this does fit into the narrative that we've talked about where there's an SVP at Apple who's in charge of, or maybe it's just a VP, who's in charge of ad revenue.
00:38:11 ◼ ► And my immediate thought when I saw this was this is my message to everybody who has told me that when I wrote that column saying an ad version of Apple TV Plus is inevitable because literally everybody has it.
00:38:23 ◼ ► This is why it's inevitable because at some point they will say, oh, not enough people are watching TV Plus.
00:38:34 ◼ ► So you mentioned that the ads that exist in partner content, like they're there already and they're from the publisher.
00:39:09 ◼ ► Maybe they don't insert ads in content, but these will go, cause I don't think I see their ads in my content on their site, but they could insert great.
00:39:17 ◼ ► Cause they've got like today and news plus and sports and puzzles and shared with you and they've got special coverage sections.
00:39:44 ◼ ► So maybe Apple's also doing deals with the wall street journal to put ads in on their behalf or something.
00:39:49 ◼ ► Could be also when I scroll down to a six colors post in news plus or news below the story, there are, there's a grid of currently it's news.
00:40:02 ◼ ► For me, it's news plus recommended reads and then more from six colors and then people also read and then more to read, which is more six colors posts.
00:40:12 ◼ ► So they could also put taboola units down below where there's currently just currently they're trying to push you to other content in news.
00:40:37 ◼ ► It's bulgur and it's it's like from from the Easter this we made that the deli in college is to bully taboola taboola.
00:40:50 ◼ ► It's a cold salad that that was one of the things that we sold at the deli that I worked out when I was in as according to Wikipedia taboola also transcribed to Bula to bully to bully to Bula.
00:41:03 ◼ ► It's an event in salad most made mostly finely chopped parsley with tomatoes, men onion bulgur and others.
00:41:15 ◼ ► I always thought was funny because it's also like a taboo like our ads are so bad that you shouldn't use them, but you will all of those things can I here's my here's my aside for people have not heard the story before the deli I worked out in college is my hometown just summers work there.
00:41:31 ◼ ► Family friends Hungarian couple owned it Hungarian immigrants went to school with their kids and and the the guy who ran it his hit well his wife.
00:42:11 ◼ ► So you go across the street for lunch because you're visiting this gold rush town and first off if you were bringing your kids, he would see you coming with your kids and he'd say oh no kids which was great in his Hungarian accent.
00:42:22 ◼ ► But the best one was people would come in and they'd order a sandwich and they'd say what kind it can I could I have the sandwich on the ham sandwich and be like, okay, what kind of what kind of bread you want you would say and they would say just the regular bread and he'd say is no regular bread Kaiser roll French roll wheat right pumpernickel.
00:43:10 ◼ ► Interactor, but it was a mom and pop business and so that's how it was and and and roja was making most of the she was the the the chef she was making was the other the other thing is roja had a one of her fingers was was partially truncated.
00:43:29 ◼ ► But when we when she showed me how to use the meat cutter for the first time, she held up her hand with one of her fingers too short and said don't put your hand in the meat cutter.
00:43:42 ◼ ► I really hope that like that maybe she was born with that but like just loved to let people think it was from the I don't I don't know but it was it's terrifying anyway those are my stories but but but he had the he had the real Dracula accent and so it was it was and was super grumpy so what kind of the Dracula accent.
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00:46:24 ◼ ► There's been some corralling of a certain type of round up horse in the shape of the SE. Over the last couple of weeks there has been a flurry of rumours from various supply chain sources about the iPhone SE4.
00:46:42 ◼ ► 9to5Mac reporting on a source from Weibo gave the following spec list for this rumoured device. A 6.06 inch OLED screen with a notch of a 60hz refresh rate featuring an A18 processor, 6 or 8GB of RAM.
00:47:01 ◼ ► A single 48 megapixel camera, aluminium frame, face ID, USB-C looking to launch in spring of 2025 with a somewhere in the region of $499-$549 price tag.
00:47:23 ◼ ► Another Weibo source is reporting that it would use the same frame as the iPhone 16 which casts a little doubt on the idea of the single camera.
00:47:33 ◼ ► Because you would expect if they are using the exact same frame they would need to adopt the two camera system that you would find in the 16 but who knows.
00:47:41 ◼ ► Let's just use that. Either it's going to have one camera or two cameras but it will be built on the platform of the current smallest iPhone.
00:47:50 ◼ ► The Ming-Chi Kuo is reporting that Apple is planning once again to debut their own 5G modem and that the SE4 would be one of the first devices to get it.
00:48:00 ◼ ► What do you think about this? I think overall, here's what I'll say I know there's people already lamenting in the chat.
00:48:08 ◼ ► This is clearly the moving on from the iPhone SE as being the "small phone" and that they are now bringing it into line with what would be considered in 2024 as the base specs of an iPhone.
00:48:22 ◼ ► I think it's just inevitable. I think the SE has always represented old models and not size. Even though the old models, the rule, it's like the law of iPhones that the further back in the past you go the smaller they are but it's not what the SE is for.
00:48:41 ◼ ► The SE is to build Tim Cook's plan. Let's go through here. Tim Cook's plan is to sell old phones for cheaper. That's their goal. Old phones for cheaper and not cheap phones but old phones for cheaper.
00:48:54 ◼ ► That's how they get more affordable iPhones in their product line. They keep selling that phone from two years ago or three years ago.
00:49:01 ◼ ► The problem is that after a while old phones for cheaper doesn't work because the specs are so bad that first off even if they can get the parts because the parts will stop being available and the specs are bad.
00:49:13 ◼ ► The specs are so bad that you end up in a situation where you either can't run the current OS or you're forced to maintain compatibility with old models much longer than you'd like to if you're Apple because you're still selling that thing or you only sold it a year ago.
00:49:32 ◼ ► The SE exists to hold down that bottom of the product line more or less with something that's got, it feels kind of like an old phone but it has modern enough specs that Apple will support it for a while.
00:49:51 ◼ ► Then it also doesn't get updated every year and so it needs to last a while. That's the purpose of the SE. All the rest of it, the size, the fact that it's a smaller phone is beside the point.
00:50:02 ◼ ► It seems reasonable. I'm actually a little surprised at some of the decisions that they've made that apparently will make this thing affordable because obviously OLEDs now are at such volumes that they can do that with a notch and everything.
00:50:17 ◼ ► They consider that a baseline iPhone thing. It's been there since the iPhone X but still. Face ID is in it. They skimped on Face ID for most iPads but on iPhone it's the modern currency.
00:50:33 ◼ ► Rather than build a Touch ID button for iPhone, they're like, "Nah, we'll just put Face ID in there. It's fine." Presumably, there's so much volume of Face ID sensor for the iPhone that they're like, "We can do that. It's not a problem. We can get that price down."
00:50:49 ◼ ► I think it shows that in the future that iPads will all have Face ID too. It's just a case of getting there.
00:50:55 ◼ ► There's some complication probably because of the thinness of the iPad versus the iPhone. In the end, one of the advantages that they have is if they're reusing parts, they're making volume orders for parts and those parts get cheaper over time.
00:51:19 ◼ ► I know what you mean about the thinness but the iPad Pro is the thinnest ever and they've got it in that.
00:51:27 ◼ ► Definitely. I imagine it a longer timeframe than the SE but I think it shows eventually.
00:51:45 ◼ ► I would not have expected OLED. If they do that, I actually pull off an OLED screen in here. That's fantastic.
00:52:05 ◼ ► I feel like in the past, when new SE models have been introduced, they have rarely felt state of the art where I feel like even if this comes in 2025, this will feel modern.
00:52:29 ◼ ► You can keep your old models around for a while but one of the advantages of the fact that they kind of fall off after a while is that then you've got the SE down there.
00:52:44 ◼ ► This is a trick, right? It's got a bunch of cheap parts but it's got enough RAM and processor to do what Apple wants.
00:52:56 ◼ ► Apple is fine with that but that's the downfall of the Tim Cook sell old phones model is that at some point you have to update the processor in there.
00:53:16 ◼ ► Speaking of $1000 iPhones, Ming-Chi Kuo has shared some details of the previously mentioned ultra-thin iPhone Air or whatever it's going to be.
00:53:27 ◼ ► Yeah, in the iPhone 17 line. So as a refresher, the Plus will go away and in its place will be a new designed iPhone that is really thin.
00:53:40 ◼ ► So it would feature, this is what Ming-Chi Kuo is currently saying, this would be in iPhone 17 so 2025.
00:54:03 ◼ ► And a "titanium aluminium frame" so it will be aluminium with some titanium, less titanium in it than the Pro phones.
00:54:15 ◼ ► And again this would mean the end of the Plus phone for the 17 line but Kuo is stressing that this phone is not expected to replace the Plus.
00:54:24 ◼ ► It would be a fourth distinct product and the main selling point will be its design, not its specs.
00:54:47 ◼ ► One of the big criticisms when they do a nice internals update is but it doesn't look any different.
00:54:53 ◼ ► And for some people it's often characterized as being like people want to be seen with a new iPhone.
00:55:02 ◼ ► Also I think if you can see a change you feel motivated because it's a different phone.
00:55:07 ◼ ► And it's less motivating to get an incredible internal upgrade on your iPhone but it looks exactly like your old one.
00:55:16 ◼ ► There's real buying psychology going on here that is not "I want to be seen with the latest iPhone."
00:55:23 ◼ ► So this is a really smart idea. Apple has obviously never found success with the mini and the plus in getting their lower end model but bigger or smaller to be a thing that satisfies them.
00:55:48 ◼ ► The idea that they might have one really good camera on there but it's like we're going to get rid of all those other cameras that people know.
00:56:05 ◼ ► So you do all of that stuff and maybe you create something that's like an aspirational high-end product that points the way to the future.
00:56:14 ◼ ► It points the way to the future but for now it also is like for the people who are looking at high design and they want to buy the future today and they're willing to spend more than they would on an iPhone Pro.
00:56:26 ◼ ► They're reaching a different market and they're able to extend that price that people are willing to pay.
00:56:34 ◼ ► Because while it's important to have a $500 iPhone out there like the SE, I think what Apple has learned over time is there's a certain portion of their audience that if you keep selling more,
00:56:53 ◼ ► And not everybody has to buy that one but if there's a portion of your audience that's currently giving you $1,400 who could now give you $2,000, you probably should let them, right?
00:57:26 ◼ ► But, but Mike, what I just said about the future of the iPhone and what we said the last time we were talking about this is one of the things about doing a thinner, thinner,
00:57:41 ◼ ► One of the things about building a thinner iPhone, people are like, "Why does it need to be thinner?"
00:57:53 ◼ ► Possibly in part because the thinner you make a single plain iPhone, the thinner a folded iPhone is when it's folded.
00:58:08 ◼ ► This sounds really familiar, but it feels like maybe this iPhone thin for 2025 is like the technology test bed for their foldable iPhone in 2026, right?
00:58:26 ◼ ► Now you're a folding phone person, so I'm curious what you think about this report about actually having a foldable iPhone.
00:58:45 ◼ ► And with the way the Z Flip works, it also has that screen on the front which you can use for a lot of things.
00:59:44 ◼ ► building some of them into the thin phone the year before gives them more runway to build out that whole thing.
01:00:05 ◼ ► They do so much of this work for themselves that they need to have a multi-year strategy of,
01:00:14 ◼ ► "We're going to do this and that enables this, and then we can move that technology to this other product."
01:00:21 ◼ ► but more like the only way to get to that product in two years is to do some of the work the year before
01:00:46 ◼ ► That could mean the 2026 iPhone line, the new ones, the iPhone 7, 18 line would be the iPhone 18 Pro,
01:01:10 ◼ ► Unless maybe they could swap them out. They have four, but some phones come every two years.
01:01:27 ◼ ► What if it's the iPhone 18, 18 Pro, 18 Max, and 18 Flip, and 18 Pro and Max are the thin phone?
01:01:54 ◼ ► But then the next year, they have enhanced that technology, taken it a step further, given it the three cameras.
01:02:11 ◼ ► There's also an argument that they don't need to necessarily simplify the product line.
01:02:29 ◼ ► They have the two folding phones, and they announced them at different times of the year.
01:02:54 ◼ ► The idea of this year and next year, brand new iPhones that have no previous comparison.
01:03:11 ◼ ► Let's be real. We all have a tendency to put some things off until the very last minute.
01:03:16 ◼ ► Whether that's going to the DMV, arranging my next dental checkup, or getting to that home improvement project.
01:03:31 ◼ ► While most of the time it works out, the one thing in life that you cannot afford to wait on is setting up term coverage life insurance.
01:03:38 ◼ ► You've probably seen insurance, life insurance commercials on TV and thought, "I'll get to that later."
01:03:51 ◼ ► When you apply for $3 million in coverage or less, you just answer a few questions about your health in their easy application.
01:04:32 ◼ ► And since life insurance costs more as you age, now is the time to get it crossed off your list.
01:05:03 ◼ ► iOS 18.1 Beta 1, iPadOS 18.1 Beta 1 and Sequoia 15.1 are available as we are recording.
01:05:26 ◼ ► Basically, Apple has decided that they are going to do a parallel beta process for Apple Intelligence.
01:10:02 ◼ ► It's intended for this developer beta, at least, to be something that is granted fairly quickly.
01:10:20 ◼ ► because that is honestly, for me, a very strange thing for a company of Apple's size to be doing,
01:10:43 ◼ ► I think they're worried about a spike in demand they can't handle that they did not properly account for.
01:10:58 ◼ ► I guess it's like when Underscore talks about that phase releasing you can do in the App Store, right?
01:11:48 ◼ ► You've only destroyed a small random sample of them, which is not great, but it's better.
01:12:11 ◼ ► a writing tool sheet that has all those, you know, summarize or make this more businesslike or, you know, whatever,
01:12:27 ◼ ► So you can type a little and then talk a little and then type a little, and that will apparently work, which is wild.
01:12:36 ◼ ► It's like it's in there, including activating type to Siri by double tapping on the bottom of the screen.
01:12:50 ◼ ► So they did this thing where their model has learned everything that's in Apple's documentation.
01:13:14 ◼ ► it follows along with that and it will be able to maintain some context across multiple statements.
01:13:29 ◼ ► that I will be able to just teach people in my life that that's what you do to find something.