00:00:09 ◼ ► From Relay, this is Upgrade, episode 524 for August 12th, 2024. This episode is brought to you by Unipizza Ovens and DeleteMe. My name is Mike Hurley and I am joined by Jason Snow. Hi Jason.
00:00:23 ◼ ► Hi Mike. How are you? I'm doing alright. Nice weekend. Had a nice weekend. Got some good stuff.
00:00:34 ◼ ► We haven't got time for that. No, we haven't got time for that. It's not time for Snow Talk.
00:00:39 ◼ ► We've been watching a lot of the Olympics is the answer to your question. All Olympics all the time in the Hurley household.
00:00:45 ◼ ► And this Snow Talk comes from Ann who wants to know if you could be good enough to perform in any summer Olympics event, what would it be?
00:00:55 ◼ ► Yeah, I see. I got you. I knew. I knew what you'd say. Yeah, because I just say curling because I do play in a little sport and I'm not very good at it. So that would be it.
00:01:03 ◼ ► The closing ceremonies. Now let me tell you. I'll be up there with Phoenix. I'll be up there with Phoenix. I've got to say, I might be in the minority here.
00:01:17 ◼ ► I hated the opening ceremonies. I did not like it at all. I enjoyed how strange it was. That was fun for the first 20 minutes.
00:01:27 ◼ ► And then that guy, they showed a montage of it, uh, right before the closing ceremonies. And there was that guy who was running on the, on the water.
00:01:34 ◼ ► Yes. And Lauren said, Oh yeah, that guy who was running on the water for a very long time. And I'm like, yeah, that was really boring.
00:01:40 ◼ ► So here's my thing about the opening ceremonies. It took too long. Uh, the boats didn't look good enough. They should have done something to actually make the boats look like something.
00:01:48 ◼ ► Um, all of the sound was terrible. The lighting was bad because it was outside and uncontrollable. Uh, and because of their requirements to move things up and down the Seine, things that should have been impactful took too long.
00:02:04 ◼ ► Like the Joan of Arc, like horse thing took ages. And like then when they took the flame from the Eiffel tower to the Tokodero, I think it was, where the, everything took too long.
00:02:17 ◼ ► And so I think that, I think that their decision to do everything on the Seine made everything a little bit worse because the closing ceremonies were fantastic because it was a performance that people, you could hear people.
00:02:33 ◼ ► They could enjoy it and the music was good. And I love the closing ceremonies. There was a dystopia where they couldn't find the Olympic rings. And so therefore earth was terrible and then they found them and then everything was fine. And then Phoenix played.
00:02:45 ◼ ► Do you know that, I don't know, cause we get different, um, commentary, like what, what the impetus for that was. No. So do you know the, I think it's on the, the Voyager, right? As a golden record.
00:02:59 ◼ ► Yes. So that was produced in France, the golden record. And so the, the opening ceremonies started with them playing a piece of music that's on the record.
00:03:10 ◼ ► And then that was an alien that came to earth after earth was quote, a archeological remnant.
00:03:19 ◼ ► And then like, that's kind of, I think that's why that alien was golden. It also was referencing a statue in France. And so yeah, that, that's kind of what that was about.
00:03:29 ◼ ► Yeah. The American announcers basically said, ah, now we're going to go tell, this is a story about a future dystopia where the Olympics do not exist, which made me laugh.
00:03:40 ◼ ► Well, unfortunately there was no earth left. I don't, uh, so other than, other than up with Phoenix, you know, can I just say how fun it was to have one of my favorite bands have a concert in the middle of the Olympics closing ceremony.
00:03:59 ◼ ► Yeah. Yeah. And so, so on, um, the U S there were a bunch of different commentators, but, um, for that part, uh, it was Jimmy Fallon and Mike Torico, who is the host of the Olympics on NBC and Mike Torico was like, Jimmy, they, they, these guys and Jimmy Fallon's like, Oh, Phoenix.
00:04:14 ◼ ► I love them. This is so great. They've been on my show a bunch of times. They're so great. And it was like appropriate amounts of enthusiasm. Um, and, and he was like, ah, list of mania. Yeah.
00:04:22 ◼ ► And then they get to 1901 and, uh, Mike Torico says, no, Jimmy, you're the music guy, but even I know this one. It was really cool. It was like, they were enjoying that it was Phoenix and I love Phoenix. They're a great band.
00:04:36 ◼ ► That was, that was really fun. And then all the extras. And I, I honestly, I did love, um, the, uh, the bit with Tom cruise.
00:04:43 ◼ ► I'm sorry. It was my favorite part. It was my favorite part. Yeah. Lauren was out and she came back and I said, no, if I told you that Tom cruise stood on the top of the stadium, jumped off of it, repelled to the floor, uh, got the flag, put it on a motorbike, rode out and flew to LA.
00:04:58 ◼ ► Would you believe it? Cause that's what happened. I was like, yeah, I was already excited about the prospect of the LA Olympics and seeing that whole section was like, yeah, it's going to rule.
00:05:10 ◼ ► It's going to be so good. My favorite part about the Tom cruise thing is what I assume was his dictated camera shot where the camera goes above his head and looks into the camera as he jumps. So no one could doubt that it was him.
00:05:24 ◼ ► Yeah, absolutely. He's looking up there like, yeah, it's me. I'm here. Here I go. I can't wait for the LA Olympics, man. But this one was fun. Overall, the games. Brilliant. I watched so much of it. Loved it.
00:05:36 ◼ ► My many upstream here, I'll just say is NBC who has had the almost every Olympics in modern memory in the U S um, after a lot of experimentation this year, they, they, they nailed it. They nailed all of it.
00:05:51 ◼ ► They showed all the events live and then showed them in prime time. They used to hide events. They used to like, not like the ones people wanted to see. They wouldn't show them live.
00:05:59 ◼ ► They would hold onto them because they were afraid people didn't want to watch a prime time. It wouldn't want to watch in prime time. They'd have already heard about it or seen about it while the world has changed. And they gave that up so you could watch them live.
00:06:11 ◼ ► Their streaming was really great. You could watch anything you wanted live or on a replay. And they had this gold zone channel, which is literally, um, the Olympic equivalent of the NFL red zone where they literally had the host of that on it.
00:06:25 ◼ ► And that was basically, you just tuned to that channel and they take you around to whatever is going on. That's interesting. And that was on for like eight hours a day.
00:06:32 ◼ ► It sounded like that experience was really, really good. Ours was like, okay. Like it didn't have anything special, but it sounded like peacock really went all out this time.
00:06:41 ◼ ► Yeah. The peacocks of, oh, and I should say the Kevin Hart, uh, Kenan Thompson, uh, comedy highlights show that they did. I mean, we watched one last night. It reduced me to tears. It was so funny. Uh, just so funny. Those guys.
00:06:55 ◼ ► So, and that was a case where it's like, NBC is not so uptight that they can't, they were like, we're going to just make a comedy show. I mean, it's like a streaming comedy show. They there's the bad, there's bad words and stuff. Like they don't care.
00:07:09 ◼ ► And it's the Olympics and they just don't care because that's, that's if you want that it's there and it was really funny. So I think they got it.
00:07:19 ◼ ► And making Snoop Dogg like the international Olympics ambassador. I don't know why that works so well, but it really does work very well. Like so good.
00:07:29 ◼ ► But I love both the basketball games. Both basketball finals were just fantastic. Two of my favorite.
00:08:01 ◼ ► I think, oh, well, that would be cool. I thought of archery because, um, I saw some video of that and it's amazing. Cause like they're, they're, they're these tight closeup shots.
00:08:10 ◼ ► They don't show like the arrow flying. So it's like somebody very carefully looking, looking, looking poop. They shoot cut to the target.
00:08:19 ◼ ► And then several seconds pass before the arrow comes in. You're like, oh my God, wow. How far away are they?
00:08:25 ◼ ► And the answer is they're extremely far away. If they cut and showed that they're like 10 feet away, it would be really disappointing. No, they're not. They're very, very far away. So I'll say that it seems low impact.
00:08:35 ◼ ► If you would like to send in a question to help us open a future episode of the show, please go to upgrade feedback.com and send in your snow talk. Thank you to Ann for giving us an excuse to talk about the Olympics.
00:08:50 ◼ ► So this is kind of lawyer up and follow up. Thank you. It's like lawyer up and follow up kind of in one. So we were talking a bit about the streaming.
00:09:00 ◼ ► Yeah, for lawyer up, but it's not all of that. Some of it is, is new stuff. Um, so we were talking about Apple and streaming, uh, like revenues and stuff like that services. I should say, sorry.
00:09:12 ◼ ► Well, a US federal district court judge Amit Mehta has ruled that Google is a monopolist and has used its power to its gain in violation of US antitrust law.
00:09:29 ◼ ► Well, one of the key things that has been brought up in this monopoly case is Google's deals with browser companies and firm manufacturers to become, to basically pay for placement of the default search engine.
00:09:43 ◼ ► Uh, this basically this further entrenches their power and you know, et cetera, et cetera.
00:09:48 ◼ ► If there's still a lot to go here, right? Like there's actually for as much as I can understand, cause it is, this stuff is quite complicated. There hasn't been any, anything to say that they will block this stuff from happening.
00:10:03 ◼ ► Yeah. We can assume that this will be the case. Um, and so if we get to a point where Google is no longer paying Apple around $20 billion a year, that is going to affect Apple services revenue.
00:10:20 ◼ ► So this could be, this could be quite a problematic for Apple where actually might not be that problematic for Google.
00:10:30 ◼ ► Yeah. Well, yeah. Good. Congratulations, Google. You just saved $20 billion. I do wonder. I mean, so here's the thing. A lot of these antitrust remedies are, I mean, first off it's going to take a long time and a lot of them are weird.
00:10:42 ◼ ► A lot of them can be very, very strange. We think of like simple, like don't do that anymore, but it may be a much more complex negotiated regime.
00:10:52 ◼ ► Like do they take Google search and force Google to spin it off or follow certain rules? And you think, well, that seems impossible, but I mean, they could, they could do it.
00:11:04 ◼ ► They could say, um, what if Google has to make search available to other parties so that advertising in a Google search is separated from the search business, right?
00:11:21 ◼ ► Because I think one of the problems with antitrust is, um, that monopolies aren't illegal. It's using monopoly power to exert your authority in other places or, or to maintain your monopoly. Right?
00:11:34 ◼ ► These are the parts that are illegal. So is there a solution where like different companies can put ads on Google search, including Google, but that other people can too.
00:11:44 ◼ ► And then there are different versions of Google search and you can choose them or they're chosen for you or whatever. Like it could get weird.
00:11:51 ◼ ► And, and that means it could get to the point and what I think Apple would probably come in as a potentially harmed subject here and say, you know, we, cause it's Apple, of course, uh, we think that every search from our apps should, um, kick money back to us.
00:12:10 ◼ ► And you're saying that if you, you know, you materially hurt our business, if, if you disallow this and could that eat, could money to Apple even be part of the remedy?
00:12:19 ◼ ► I don't know. Right. But like, it's not impossible. I know a lot of people talked about this. There's so many, it's like infinite possibilities.
00:12:26 ◼ ► I will just say the one that I keep coming back to is Apple going, Apple going its own way in some places and surfacing their search engine more prominently in, in more places.
00:12:47 ◼ ► And also potentially putting ads on it is not beyond the realm of possibility. I think it's unlikely that Apple would entirely override, like all searches now go to Apple bot.
00:13:02 ◼ ► Like, I don't think so, but there, they could take a lot of stuff and divert it into places where Apple would make the money off of advertising. And I, I wouldn't put it past them to do that.
00:13:17 ◼ ► We also don't know what the impact of kind of like AI stuff is on all of this, because, you know, it could it be like with, with Apple intelligence, the strong implication.
00:13:28 ◼ ► And we heard this on the call, the strong implication is that if you want to search with Siri for world knowledge, you'll go to chat GPT or another AI provider.
00:13:41 ◼ ► Well, if that's the case, like, is that where search is going? And the, this, and, and the, the U S is stopping the last thing when the new thing is already here, that's going to replace the old thing.
00:13:55 ◼ ► I don't know, but I just, I think, I think Apple is going to be okay either way. Cause it's not like they earned that money. They just, I mean, they, they earned it by being in existence and asking for it.
00:14:04 ◼ ► But like, it's not like they, they invest that's a, that's a 99%, 98% profit category, right? They may amortize. They may like say, well, Safari development is covered by this or something, but like really it's, it's just free money.
00:14:17 ◼ ► And it's free money to help Google prop up its monopoly. So if it goes away, it's not the end of the world, but I have a hard time imagining that the Apple we know that we cover in this segment is going to just go, oh, well, easy come easy go and not find another way to get money out of somebody.
00:14:38 ◼ ► Right. I mean, I think there's a possibility where they just say, um, we have a new affiliate system and, uh,
00:14:44 ◼ ► I believe that it pays Apple for whatever Bing searches go. Yeah. Like if you choose Bing as your default app, Apple get money from Microsoft.
00:14:56 ◼ ► I think so. I think it's very much like kind of an affiliate search engine arrangement.
00:15:01 ◼ ► Apple will just put up a choice and people, everyone will just continue choosing Google and nothing changed.
00:15:07 ◼ ► And Google will keep paying Apple because they're paying for use and not for exclusive payment, which I think honestly,
00:15:12 ◼ ► I think is the way to go. Yeah. I think honestly, that is the, that is the truth is that it's not, it shouldn't be necessarily legal under this ruling for Google to pay to be the default.
00:15:24 ◼ ► But that doesn't mean that it's illegal for Google to cut in Apple for searches on its platform. Right.
00:15:30 ◼ ► Because that's not necessarily the same. So I don't, I don't know. But like, again, you know, could Apple shrug and say like, you know, it's fine. Uh, sure. But nothing we see in Apple's behavior suggests that it's a company that's willing to leave a dollar on the table that is owed.
00:15:50 ◼ ► Speaking of which, yeah, Apple has found another new and exciting way to charge developers 30%. So last week, Apple announced a new set of rules for external linking in the European Union.
00:16:06 ◼ ► So this is what gives the, uh, and will give developers the ability to direct customers inside of their iOS apps to purchasing options on the web that don't need to go through Apple's in-app purchases. But you can have as many links as you want.
00:16:21 ◼ ► Now, it's not just this one link. They can be as many as you want, and they can go wherever you want. And apps that opt into this new system, they have no restrictions. They can have tracking parameters on the links and the links can be opened in an in-app web view.
00:16:37 ◼ ► So this is essentially, it's like, oh great, this is exactly everything that you would want. It's enabled via Apple store kit entitlements. And this is also available to customers who have accepted the new EU business terms and also ones who have not.
00:16:56 ◼ ► So again, like all of this is like, this sounds great. But then you get to the fee structures. There are two different fee structures. I'm just going to preface this by saying this is very complicated, but we'll get through it together.
00:17:11 ◼ ► There is an end point to this, which is the same either way. But just for completeness sake, if you are on the new business terms, so this is where you're paying the core technology fee and all that kind of stuff. If somebody clicks a link inside of your app and then goes and makes a purchase, you give Apple a 5% initial acquisition fee of the price of the purchase and a 5 to 10% store services fee.
00:17:36 ◼ ► Whether you pay 5 or 10 depends on your app size, like the size of your app, because that changes some of the fees that you pay otherwise. So you pay a 5 to 10% store services fee plus the CTF.
00:17:48 ◼ ► And this store services fee is on any purchase within a 12 month period. This would result for Apple in a 10 to 15% commission plus a 3% payment fee if you use Apple's tools, because you can still use Apple's purchasing tools even with the outside linking.
00:18:05 ◼ ► Plus the CTF on top. If you're on the regular terms, you have not opted into the business terms, you pay the 5% initial acquisition fee for the price of the thing. So you pay 5% of whatever that is, plus a 7 to 20% store services fee that results in a 12 to 27% commission plus the 3% fee for payments.
00:18:26 ◼ ► I'm going to now read how Apple describes these two fees. Again, for completeness sake.
00:18:41 ◼ ► You'll pay Apple a fee on all sales of digital goods and services the customer makes on any platform that occur over a 12 month period after initial install. This fee does not apply to transactions made by customers that had an initial install before you make your app available with the entitlement profile to link out.
00:19:00 ◼ ► The fee reflects the value the App Store provides when connecting developers with customers in the EU.
00:19:05 ◼ ► And then the store services fee. In addition to the initial acquisition fee, you'll pay Apple a fee on all sales of digital goods and services the customer makes on any platform that occur within a fixed 12 month period from the date of an install, including app updates and reinstalls after you make your app available with the entitlement profile to link out.
00:19:24 ◼ ► This reflects the ongoing services and capabilities that Apple provides developers, including app distribution and management, app review, App Store trust and safety, rediscovery, reengagement and promotional tools and services, anti-fraud checks, recommendations, ratings and reviews, customer support and more.
00:19:46 ◼ ► So, essentially, again, like with the other stuff, Apple will reserve the right to audit any company. So you have to collect up all of the transactions from a specific customer who initially went through Apple, no matter what platform they're buying on, which is an incredible overreach, in my opinion, aside from everything else that they're doing.
00:20:08 ◼ ► And essentially, the result of all of this, Apple's getting its money. It's just going to get it in a different way. But they don't care. They're getting their money.
00:20:24 ◼ ► I mean, honestly, Jason, okay, I've been a bit annoyed about this today, just talking about this. Like, I want to cover these things because I think they're important, but I didn't feel the need to do an insane amount of research on this like I've done in the past, because this is just another attempt at doing the same thing that won't pass.
00:20:42 ◼ ► And in six months time, I'll be telling you about their new way that they're going to try and get their thought episode.
00:20:46 ◼ ► So here's the simplified version of this, which is Apple believes that if you have an app on Apple's platforms, Apple is the source of your success and that Apple wants a cut.
00:21:07 ◼ ► Let's be honest. If Apple could say, if you have a corporation and your corporation has an app, you owe us 10% of your global revenue. They would do that if they could.
00:21:21 ◼ ► Just like literally, you built your business on us, on our greatness, and therefore, we want our cut.
00:21:28 ◼ ► Now, I'll point out again, Apple doesn't cut developers in on iPhone sales and apps are a huge contributor to the success of the iPhone as a platform, the existence of third-party apps.
00:21:39 ◼ ► When Apple tells the App Store story, they like to talk about that it's a partnership between developers and Apple, but they also like this whole mythology of, oh, Apple invented buying software on the internet, which isn't true.
00:21:51 ◼ ► It is this idea that Apple and the developers are partners, but Apple takes 100% of iPhone revenue for itself. It doesn't share that with developers. Doesn't do that.
00:22:08 ◼ ► But developers have to share with Apple, which says something about how Apple really feels about developers.
00:22:15 ◼ ► This is the icing on the cake. Not only is it ridiculous that Apple doesn't want links and things in apps and says it's because of safety and privacy.
00:22:27 ◼ ► This is that little thin privacy shield that they put up. Like, oh, oh, going to the internet, buying things on the internet, that's dangerous.
00:22:36 ◼ ► Everybody does it. We've done it forever. Have you heard of Cyber Monday? I mean, what are you talking about?
00:22:45 ◼ ► This is the mask coming off, which is Apple doesn't actually think that the internet and links are bad, except in the sense that they prevent Apple from being the gatekeeper and taking a cut.
00:22:59 ◼ ► And so what they're saying here is, once they leave our app, anything your customers do is because of us give us money.
00:23:14 ◼ ► Well, because it's a poison pill. Because they don't want anybody to use these terms, which is why they will, you're right, which is why they will be found to be unacceptable by the EC at some point here.
00:23:24 ◼ ► But I just think, just the gall of saying we own everything, like, I would be okay. I actually would be okay with the idea of like, if you have a link, it's like an affiliate deal, right?
00:23:34 ◼ ► It's like an Amazon affiliate deal. If you have a link in your app that directly results in a purchase, cut us in. Okay.
00:23:42 ◼ ► But they're like, no, no, no, no, no. If you have a link that goes out, then everything forever, because it's a 12 month purchase, a 12 month period except if you update your app.
00:23:53 ◼ ► Everything else thereafter, just pay us money because it came from our app and therefore we are the one who brought that customer to you, which is hilarious because of course, it again suggests a world where there's no other way to find an app.
00:24:08 ◼ ► That there aren't brands out there that are saying find our app on the App Store, download our app, and it's coming in from their greatness.
00:24:16 ◼ ► Apple's scenario is basically no, no, no, apps are only discovered by the App Store, which is hilarious if you think I've ever tried to discover apps in the App Store, right?
00:24:25 ◼ ► So come on. I mean, like, I know that this sort of versions of this do happen, but I'm just saying, if let's say Federico writes about an app on Mac stories and it drives thousands of app sales.
00:24:40 ◼ ► Should Federico say, no, you got to pay me 20% of your revenue because that link came from Mac stories.
00:24:46 ◼ ► And the incredible thing is there was a scenario like this once, but Apple took that away.
00:24:51 ◼ ► There was an affiliate marketing thing where you got like 2% if you link to it and they're converted and all that and they took it away because they just don't want to do that anymore.
00:24:59 ◼ ► And from Federico standpoint, you know, there's a lot of things it's like with Wirecutter where if you're making your money on the referrals, you know, you have to distance yourself and say, no, no, we make our selections regardless of the referral revenue instead of targeting the referral revenue and creating a business that's basically advertising and marketing of apps.
00:25:18 ◼ ► But what I'm saying is Apple really thinks that it's a partnership that they should be a participant in when it benefits them.
00:25:28 ◼ ► And I'll just come back to again, if this was a partnership, why doesn't Apple share 30% of iPhone revenues with developers?
00:25:37 ◼ ► So anyway, the idea that they would reach their claws and even further here and say, basically, if you have a relationship with a customer, it's because of us.
00:25:49 ◼ ► I think on its face, it's very hard to see because it's designed in a way to be so unpalatable, it's hard to imagine that the regulators aren't going to look at this and go, no, that's not going to work.
00:26:07 ◼ ► I feel like the last two years, they've been making some really, really good stuff because if we were in a period right now where the products were bad and this was happening, I would be struggling.
00:26:25 ◼ ► Let's imagine we were in the real bad Mac time that was many years ago, I would be struggling right now a lot because this stuff just makes me so angry and disappointed that if the products weren't good, I would be really struggling.
00:26:48 ◼ ► I keep going back to the ebook thing where you can buy a book in the US, you can buy a book in iBooks, but not in the Kindle app or the Kobo app for that matter.
00:27:07 ◼ ► In fact, there's a story today about how Patreon now is going to have to finally do 30% in app.
00:27:14 ◼ ► We have to get into that next week, but yeah, we should talk about it a little bit now, but I really want to do some reading about it. I think that would be a good big thing next week.
00:27:28 ◼ ► And it's this, I don't know, it is frustrating because I don't disagree that there is something there.
00:27:41 ◼ ► And you're saying, well, yeah, but they're using Apple's in-app purchase, but Apple makes it illegal.
00:27:45 ◼ ► This is the thing is that a lot of the but this, but that kind of things are only because of Apple's rules.
00:27:56 ◼ ► When I'm logged into the Kindle app, it knows who I am and it knows how I can buy things.
00:28:08 ◼ ► And what Apple is saying is, well, you think, oh, well, why don't you link out to Amazon.com and buy them there?
00:28:19 ◼ ► Because it thinks that if you buy a Kindle book on an iPhone, you're doing it because of value that Apple has added.
00:28:32 ◼ ► Ooni is the world's number one pizza oven company letting you make restaurant quality pizza in your own home.
00:28:38 ◼ ► Ooni Pizza Ovens can reach up to nine hundred and fifty degrees Fahrenheit and cook pizza in as little as 60 seconds.
00:28:48 ◼ ► This is also like that heat and especially that's on the speed that you can cook pizza in when you get to those temperatures.
00:29:13 ◼ ► whether you would like the option to cook with wood, charcoal, gas or even electricity,
00:29:21 ◼ ► If you're looking for maximum portability, they have the wood pellet fueled Fira 12 and the multi fuel Karu 12G.
00:29:28 ◼ ► This is made for people who like cooking on the go. Maybe you want to get out into the wilderness, do some camping and also be able to cook some great food.
00:29:37 ◼ ► Whether you want to make pizzas indoors or outdoors, they have Ooni's electric Vault 12 pizza oven, which is the one that I own and love.
00:29:50 ◼ ► then you want to check out Ooni's Karu line because you can use wood or charcoal right out of the box.
00:29:59 ◼ ► Ooni have all of the accessories you're going to want to take your pizza cooking to the next level.
00:30:08 ◼ ► They have pizza peels, thermometers, loads of accessories to help you level up your cooking.
00:30:12 ◼ ► You can buy your groceries from them too. You can buy your dough and some toppings and you can rest assured that they've done the work so you don't have to.
00:30:25 ◼ ► And also their YouTube channel. So when we got our Ooni Vault, we watched a few of the videos that they have on their YouTube channel
00:30:37 ◼ ► They have done a really great job of making lots of instructional videos for all of their products.
00:30:41 ◼ ► Ooni's ovens are for more than just pizza. You can also cook juicy burgers, sizzling fajitas, buffalo wings.
00:30:48 ◼ ► If you can cook it in an oven, you can cook it in an Ooni and your results are going to be fantastic.
00:31:24 ◼ ► Jason, I've been thinking today's episode when I was planning out the subjects is kind of like a trifle.
00:31:37 ◼ ► This isn't that... I was flashing to that Romanian Christmas thing, but that's a different thing.
00:31:47 ◼ ► A trifle is a dessert, right? And there's layers in a trifle and maybe some things in the trifle you don't like, but some you do.
00:32:00 ◼ ► So that's how today's episode is where there's some good stuff and there's some bad stuff and some good stuff and bad stuff.
00:32:12 ◼ ► Al Gorman is reporting that the first Macs with M4 chips are on track to launch this year.
00:32:21 ◼ ► Followed up by a refresh to the MacBook Air, the Mac Pro and the Mac Studio by mid-2025.
00:33:16 ◼ ► Apparently, Apple have been testing a version of this product with three USB-C ports and HDMI.
00:34:01 ◼ ► Because this design is actually from an era where they still had an optical drive and spinning hard drive.
00:34:10 ◼ ► And then they dropped the optical drive and then they got rid of the spinning hard drive.
00:34:43 ◼ ► And I think it just says how Apple feels about the Mac Mini, which is that it's not a high priority.
00:34:56 ◼ ► I wrote columns about it seven years ago saying, "Wouldn't it be nice if we had an Apple TV-ish sized Mac Mini instead?"
00:35:05 ◼ ► And people always are like, "Oh, does it matter the size of a desktop computer? Does it really matter?"
00:35:23 ◼ ► And it's also not necessary for it to be as big as it is now because there's very little inside.
00:35:57 ◼ ► That I feel like they went on this big resurgence because they made these computers that were really interesting and people wanted to buy them.
00:36:09 ◼ ► Let's make a computer from Apple that can be used in places that a Mac would maybe not have been used before because of its physical dimensions.
00:37:20 ◼ ► Because that would stink if you have a little tiny box with another box on the outside of it.
00:37:50 ◼ ► And that the ideal situation is for it to be one surface without a lot of messy extra blocks somewhere.
00:38:05 ◼ ► I will say the Mac Mini was designed in an era where Apple didn't put ports on the front of anything.
00:38:16 ◼ ► So the Intel NUCs that are of this sort of class of computer that I had one for a while running as a Hackintosh server.
00:38:34 ◼ ► And keep in mind that the base M2 Mac Mini today has two USB-A, two Thunderbolt 4, so USB-C, HDMI and ethernet.
00:39:25 ◼ ► Yeah, so that's my guess, is that it's going to be fewer ports because it's not going to have the USB-A ports anymore.
00:39:38 ◼ ► I'll just point out that at least with the M2-123, there's actually a limit to the number of ports they can put on there.
00:39:44 ◼ ► And the reason the Mac Mini has the USB-A is because you can put more USB-A ports on it.
00:40:21 ◼ ► I think three USB-C ports, an HDMI port, and ethernet on the power brick would be pretty sweet.
00:41:06 ◼ ► I'm always happy to get that information whenever I receive it, which is really your uncle.
00:41:20 ◼ ► So new privacy and security prompts in the latest betas of macOS require weekly reauthorization
00:41:44 ◼ ► So you wrote a great article about this in Six Colors, but I would like to go talk about why.
00:42:02 ◼ ► So one of the things that I tried to do in my article, which is called "Apple's Permissions Features Are Out of Balance,"
00:42:09 ◼ ► is I didn't want to write what I kind of desired to write, which was an angry screed about Apple getting in my way
00:42:35 ◼ ► And if somebody can either talk you into authenticating, which is, that's how malware spreads.
00:42:44 ◼ ► The number one way malware spreads is that it's social engineering, at least Mac malware.
00:42:52 ◼ ► It is a very common way where somebody calls you or you are told to call, you text them or whatever.
00:43:13 ◼ ► A person who is an abuser in a relationship might choose to, or for whatever reason in a relationship.
00:43:30 ◼ ► So the problem is, if it happens once and then it's there forever, that's really dangerous.
00:43:52 ◼ ► if you get a prompt that says, "Did you know that this thing can see everything you do?
00:44:10 ◼ ► it's an opportunity for Apple to say, "Hey, you might not want to keep giving this permission."
00:44:24 ◼ ► But I am very tired of being randomly prompted if my weather app should know where I am,
00:44:52 ◼ ► The problem is that in macOS Sequoia, they're literally saying, "Approve for one week."
00:45:22 ◼ ► My problem is, it seems to be that in this cut of beta, I'll grant them beta of macOS Sequoia,
00:45:29 ◼ ► the only power they're giving the user ever is to just kick the can down the road for a week,
00:46:40 ◼ ► It gets in your way, and often it gets in your way when you're trying to do something on your device,
00:46:49 ◼ ► Or if you're trying to do screen sharing in your office meeting, in your company meeting,
00:47:18 ◼ ► Like, "Well, I'm trying to do something right now, and if I say no, I know it's just going to break
00:47:27 ◼ ► So you just overwhelm people, and they don't want to break their stride for what they're doing.
00:47:32 ◼ ► And then I would say not given enough focus is I think Apple, whether intentionally or not,
00:47:55 ◼ ► Well, we can't stop you, but every week we're going to warn you that you shouldn't, essentially.
00:48:19 ◼ ► I don't like that it is Apple programming its operating system to get to bug users and basically say,
00:48:28 ◼ ► Hey, don't run that program that uses that API that's useful, but we don't want you to run it anymore.
00:48:52 ◼ ► but that Apple has weaponized in the EU for iOS makes me feel much less charitable toward Gatekeeper
00:49:05 ◼ ► and you have to approve the idea that you could possibly open software that is notarized by Apple.
00:49:15 ◼ ► and then you have to authenticate, and then it will finally launch this app that is a program you installed
00:49:23 ◼ ► But worse than that is the language they use, because the language they use is scary language.
00:49:35 ◼ ► And again, I think the attitude that Apple has with this is attempting, intentionally or not,
00:50:09 ◼ ► so they scan it for malware on the server, but it's also got a cryptographic signature on it,
00:50:22 ◼ ► So they have to see it for that. You're right, they could potentially do some of the scans that they're doing.
00:50:47 ◼ ► And I think what they want to do is they want to verify that the one on the server that they're signing
00:51:11 ◼ ► If you offer a piece of software, people are going to be emailing you and be like, "I can't launch it."
00:51:15 ◼ ► Yeah, but that's because of a barrier that was erected by Apple in order to get people to notarize their software.
00:51:42 ◼ ► or feeling like Apple might reject them for content, which I don't think they would actually do.
00:51:58 ◼ ► But anyway, so this is my issue here, is it's the same thing we've talked about over the last few years,
00:52:05 ◼ ► which is people at Apple who say, "Oh, God, we got to add this privacy thing, this security thing,
00:52:30 ◼ ► I went into this when I was talking about migrations, which seem that they may have been fixed now,
00:52:34 ◼ ► but you migrate to a new computer, and then you have to approve every single app on your system.
00:52:47 ◼ ► that I have to click through one at a time. I expect Apple to build something better that says,
00:52:56 ◼ ► there should be a better UI for this. I saw some people on Mastodon this week talking about
00:53:01 ◼ ► the idea that you should be able to look both by permission and see apps and by app and see permissions,
00:53:17 ◼ ► I'll grant you it's a beta, but that should never have been put in an operating system.
00:53:38 ◼ ► and anybody who speaks up and says, "This is bad for the user, and ultimately probably bad for security,"
00:53:53 ◼ ► and there's nobody there to fight for the user and say, "This is the wrong way to do it."
00:54:30 ◼ ► So the issue that I see here, it reminds me of something that I experienced quite a lot
00:54:49 ◼ ► I was responsible for sending out email campaigns and mailing campaigns and stuff like that.
00:55:07 ◼ ► where every decision is met by, "Well, what about the one person who might get this who X?"
00:55:46 ◼ ► And the reason I bring that up is like, one of the things that you mentioned as a reason to do this
00:55:58 ◼ ► Because if that is considered to be important enough, and I'm not saying it is or isn't,
00:56:15 ◼ ► Because if you have started down the process of, "We need to have this because people may be abused,"
00:56:21 ◼ ► you can never create in any scenario any kind of setting that turns off those security prompts.
00:56:43 ◼ ► I would argue that Apple's made some decisions on the iPad and the iPhone that are also questionable.
00:57:00 ◼ ► And so you keep saying, "I'm not gonna say it's right or it's wrong, but I'm gonna say it's wrong.
00:57:06 ◼ ► Saying, "We're not gonna put up a sign that says 'Happy Mother's Day' because what if they don't have a mother?"
00:57:29 ◼ ► Am I willing to have the Mac be a little more complicated so that gullible people and vulnerable people are a little bit better protected?
00:57:43 ◼ ► Am I willing to give up the ability on my Mac to do what I want, which means install software Apple hasn't seen?
00:57:52 ◼ ► It means give permission for utilities to monitor my screen, even though Apple thinks that's not smart.
00:58:03 ◼ ► And this is the bottom line here, which is I'm willing to be inconvenienced a little bit for the general safety of the platform.
00:58:11 ◼ ► I am not willing for Apple to take my agency away and say, "This isn't your Mac anymore.
00:58:26 ◼ ► And it is, I'm just going to say it, Apple has spent so much time on iOS and iPadOS now,
00:58:38 ◼ ► For some good reasons, again, I'm not saying that they're bad reasons, that it's seeping into the Mac.
00:58:46 ◼ ► And I've had people say to me, "Why are you guys making such a big deal about this? It's just a beta."
00:58:52 ◼ ► And the answer is, because if we don't scream bloody murder about it right now, they'll just do it.
00:58:59 ◼ ► The reason this will change if it changes this summer, the reason it will change is because a whole bunch of us complained.
00:59:15 ◼ ► and have some manager who didn't care and didn't think it was a big deal because users are stupid
00:59:21 ◼ ► and we should just not let them do things, say, "Okay, you're right. I guess that was too far," and fix it.
00:59:28 ◼ ► I should also mention, as a footnote here, I've also heard from people, including some people inside Apple,
00:59:33 ◼ ► who say, "I think there's actually a new API that does this stuff that doesn't trigger this thing."
00:59:38 ◼ ► The problem is, one, I've heard other people, other developers say it actually does trigger this thing.
00:59:54 ◼ ► They have no idea. Is there a special approval, a special entitlement that Apple can provide?
01:00:05 ◼ ► "So who's up on this?" The security and privacy people, clearly, can do whatever they want,
01:00:25 ◼ ► And if you're making changes that developers have to build, you need to tell the developers,
01:00:32 ◼ ► If only there were some sort of developer conference that they could hold at the beginning of the summer
01:00:42 ◼ ► And this God sack says, "It's a shame they have nowhere to tell all developers worldwide."
01:01:06 ◼ ► But if you complain to people that are talking about this, this is part of the feedback process.
01:01:22 ◼ ► We talk about them on our shows, and it helps drive some people to make different decisions.
01:01:40 ◼ ► I think in general they have done a really good job with iOS prompts in the last few years.
01:02:01 ◼ ► So for example, you get these prompts on the home screen when you're not doing the thing.
01:02:06 ◼ ► It's like, "Hey, WhatsApp has access to your photos, and it shows me my photos. Do you want to continue?"
01:02:15 ◼ ► So for example, every now and again on the Mac, it pops up, and it shows a little screenshot of my desktop.
01:02:37 ◼ ► And I would say also, ultimately, I need to be able to go somewhere at some point, not right away, and say,
01:02:52 ◼ ► which is my frustration on iOS and iPadOS is also there are certain apps that I want it to stop asking me.
01:03:10 ◼ ► and then there's the sort of like "when I use it" or "all the time" that you get eventually,
01:03:18 ◼ ► They still check in after a while, though. It is a progressive thing when you're like, "No, this is fine."
01:03:31 ◼ ► When they put up the map that says, "Oh, your weather app showed you your weather where you were."
01:03:40 ◼ ► I know they think of it as disclosure, but this is them saying "Carrot weather is spying on you."
01:03:53 ◼ ► at some point I need to be able to say, "Never tell me this again. My weather app knows where I am."
01:04:18 ◼ ► especially since there are data brokers who can make their business selling your information.
01:04:23 ◼ ► But the good thing is, we actually have the right to stay private and protect our privacy,
01:04:33 ◼ ► But it's really hard. Do you even know who all these data brokers are? How would you even find them?
01:04:57 ◼ ► You don't need to give them everything. You just say, "This is the information I do not want to be out there."
01:05:12 ◼ ► constantly monitoring and removing the personal information you don't want on the internet.
01:05:16 ◼ ► A couple of weeks ago, was it maybe last week, I got my most recent DeleteMe report, and I love it.
01:05:21 ◼ ► I love that I could see all of the services and all the brokers that they've removed me from in the past.
01:05:26 ◼ ► I really like that. They're like, "Hey, look, we've done this before, and they're still gone."
01:05:57 ◼ ► Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for DeleteMe
01:06:25 ◼ ► and the promo code upgrade20. Our thanks to DeleteMe for their support of this show and Relay.
01:06:44 ◼ ► Me and Steven were talking with you last night, and we both ended up posting this to social media,
01:06:53 ◼ ► Yes, announcement post kind of saying, "Hey, we're coming in a week, and these are the shows."
01:06:59 ◼ ► And Steven, we thought we'd lost this multiple years ago, and we ended up finding it again,
01:07:14 ◼ ► Our launch was tenuous. We barely got this thing together, and so I'm happy we found that.
01:07:29 ◼ ► So I have a list of things here that occurred in the year of 2014 that we could maybe reflect on a little bit.
01:07:43 ◼ ► The majority of the stuff that I'm talking about, we would have actually covered on the show,
01:08:22 ◼ ► So this is at the same event that they introduced the Apple Watch, and I guess I should just get it out here.
01:08:30 ◼ ► Literally the executives at IDG came to me and said, "We would like to lay everybody off on September 9th."
01:08:35 ◼ ► And I said, "Well, large numbers of the editorial staff will be at or covering remotely the Apple event.
01:08:45 ◼ ► And of course, famously, this turned out it was because one senior executive had a kid's soccer game that they didn't want to miss.
01:09:19 ◼ ► And the PR person was like, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It was very nice. I'm not going to be there."
01:09:29 ◼ ► And I think I ended up making a deal with Macworld where I would write the reviews for them. They couldn't pay me because I had been laid off.
01:09:41 ◼ ► But they had to link back to a reviewer's notebook piece that I was going to write on Six Colors when I launched Six Colors,
01:09:56 ◼ ► I went to Seattle afterward for a day, and walking through parks with these two phones taking pictures,
01:10:03 ◼ ► because the cameras were upgraded and all of that, and then writing my review and all of that stuff going on here.
01:10:08 ◼ ► That was my little teeny tiny interregnum between my two jobs, was literally that weekend, and the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus review.
01:10:26 ◼ ► So we were getting ready for episode one of Upgrade just around then too, which is an incredible thing for me to consider.
01:10:33 ◼ ► And one of the reasons I wanted to talk about this is because me, you, and Dan had a very good, long conversation in a pub a couple of weeks ago,
01:10:41 ◼ ► talking about these exact two weeks of everything happening, everything kind of falling apart and being built back up again.
01:10:55 ◼ ► I told you, I don't know if I mentioned this to you before, but the email that you sent to me to tell me you wanted to start this show,
01:11:36 ◼ ► Us being able to bring you on and bring over Clockwise and bring on Upgrade was an incredibly important moment in Relay FM's success.
01:11:46 ◼ ► Because it was a, you know, we had a very, very successful launch and I could not have been happy with the way that it went.
01:11:54 ◼ ► And we ended up with like all of the shows that we launched had bigger audiences than they had a 5x5 when they started.
01:12:02 ◼ ► I don't know why. I think we were able to, I think, cash in a bunch of favors and we had a lot of goodwill from people online.
01:12:13 ◼ ► But then when you joined us too, it was a bit like, oh wow, because you could just sign your own thing, you know.
01:12:44 ◼ ► It's not Ben-gay, which is the stuff that you rub on your arm to make it feel better and warmer.
01:13:06 ◼ ► And then apparently it didn't happen very much, but they changed the internals to be stronger.
01:13:11 ◼ ► I saw a phone and I forget where, because there was so much going on when we were in London,
01:13:46 ◼ ► They didn't release it until the next spring, but they showed it with that classic, what doesn't it do?
01:14:01 ◼ ► Was it this event or the next event where they had like marathon runners and people coming on stage?
01:14:37 ◼ ► But of course the most infamous thing, which I cannot believe this happened at this iPhone event,
01:14:43 ◼ ► but it did when Apple created their own malware in the form of a U2 album that they infected every Apple device with.
01:15:37 ◼ ► Where like, also just the whole idea of it was just in hindsight very poorly thought out.
01:16:05 ◼ ► I'm also going through my head, all the stress of knowing that this is the end for my job.
01:16:34 ◼ ► So, because I'm sure there are people that maybe aren't completely familiar with what happened here.
01:16:42 ◼ ► And they did a deal with Apple where for some reason they would distribute this album to everybody that owned an iPhone.
01:16:55 ◼ ► It was this thing where they got paid a blanket fee or a very low fee, but it was to everybody.
01:17:08 ◼ ► And then they would have gone to number one on the charts probably because of it for this album.
01:17:17 ◼ ► And they had done the YouTube iPod and they had performed at the California Theater for Steve Jobs at that event.
01:17:25 ◼ ► I think ironically, or maybe not, as a long time YouTube fan, it's not a very good album.
01:17:41 ◼ ► I believe, so somebody wrote about this a while ago, I think, that there is a tool to remove it?
01:17:52 ◼ ► You can go to, there was, I don't know if it still works, but there was a URL they would send people to.
01:18:35 ◼ ► Do you remember? This was a moment in upgrade history because I got to report firsthand using Apple Pay to buy peanut butter and-
01:18:56 ◼ ► To celebrate the 10th, I ought to go get some grind, ground up peanut butter and some Manchego cheese.
01:19:07 ◼ ► And also like Apple Pay just rolled out significantly easier here, I think, than it did in the U.S.
01:19:17 ◼ ► I feel like we need to do some 10th anniversary things on upgrade once we reach our 10th anniversary.
01:19:23 ◼ ► And one of them is we should cover this Apple Pay launch in a little more detail because I'll just say now,
01:19:28 ◼ ► Apple Pay, like everybody else had tried this, Samsung and Google had tried this, didn't work.
01:19:34 ◼ ► Apple did it and it like, it really set off a huge change in U.S. transactions because the U.S.
01:19:42 ◼ ► was so far behind and this was a major driver in getting uptake of contactless payments in general in the U.S.
01:19:51 ◼ ► Where here everybody was using contactless cards, like their debit card had a chip in it and you just used them.
01:19:59 ◼ ► I know I've said it before, but like I got a card with a chip in it and then like eight months later,
01:20:13 ◼ ► used to be as an American when you travel overseas, you'd be like, "Whoa, they really got it together.
01:20:40 ◼ ► So this was the combination of Beats Music, which had launched a few months earlier, which is an app, right?
01:20:54 ◼ ► And that started, I think, Apple's dominance in headphones, I think probably came from this.
01:21:00 ◼ ► I'm sure they got some really good talent for helping them build things like AirPods and stuff like that.
01:21:07 ◼ ► But then it also gave them the underpinnings to create a music streaming service in Apple Music.
01:21:23 ◼ ► Like, bigger phones, the first Apple Watch, Apple Pay, Beats, Swift was announced for WWDC.
01:21:47 ◼ ► But as somebody who is not a developer, this is one of the times where the WWDC keynote kind of went over my head.
01:22:07 ◼ ► Also in 2014, the European Union launches a formal investigation into Apple's tax arrangements with Ireland.
01:22:39 ◼ ► And the last thing I had was Tim Cook published an op-ed piece in Bloomberg Businessweek where he comes out as gay.
01:23:56 ◼ ► And then that is a very funny episode of Friends where Rachel is serving the trifle and everyone thinks it's disgusting, but of course, Joey loves it.
01:24:08 ◼ ► I think I remember that shot where he's like, they got him and he's got the spoon and the bowl and he's like, "Oh, this is great."
01:24:19 ◼ ► But Great British Bake Off, as an aside, is amazing in part as an American because there are the things that they make that we're like, yes, okay.
01:24:38 ◼ ► It's not a thing that happened in England for whatever reason, or at least it happened in America.
01:24:44 ◼ ► And then there are the things that they say that as normal and as an American, you go, "What? A what now?"
01:24:54 ◼ ► Because it's a very common English thing that – or a thing that English people know about.
01:25:07 ◼ ► Sometimes they show the Swedish cakes and I'm like, "I have no idea what that Swedish cake is."
01:25:12 ◼ ► Yeah, they'd sometimes surprise the people and they're like, "I've never heard of this."
01:25:29 ◼ ► Because they announced, Paul Hollywood announced that everybody was going to be making,
01:25:49 ◼ ► As an American watching, everybody starts saying, "Tartata, tartata, tartata, tartata, tartata."
01:26:07 ◼ ► That is actually a joke in our household because Indian likes tartata, and I always got tartata.
01:26:36 ◼ ► "I rarely see out in the world brightly colored cars, premium phones, or other big ticket
01:26:42 ◼ ► Do you think Apple could push the market in a more color-friendly direction, or does their
01:27:27 ◼ ► They could, they really, with the, the anodization and the coatings they use and all that, that
01:27:36 ◼ ► I, I'm not sure that they even have the data to say, oh, we definitely can't make one option
01:27:47 ◼ ► I just, I feel like I think Apple has enough sway and we've seen it with, you know, even
01:27:53 ◼ ► back in the iMac days, Apple can make something that people really like, and I think they
01:27:59 ◼ ► So I think they, the colors are, could push things in that direction if they wanted to.
01:28:02 ◼ ► But again, I do think it's, you know, in the end, if they're going to choose a great premium
01:28:06 ◼ ► material or they're going to choose a, something that's a bright color, they're going to choose
01:28:28 ◼ ► And I think that the thing that I keep coming back to, we come back to a bunch of times
01:28:54 ◼ ► Yeah, I think choice is good and that if they have the ability to offer a choice that's
01:29:01 ◼ ► fun, even if it's just one, I wish they would do it because I would probably choose it.
01:29:12 ◼ ► And again, I always hear from people who are like, "Oh, I don't want to do color phones."
01:29:34 ◼ ► I do think that Apple could be influential here if it tried to push things a little bit.
01:29:53 ◼ ► Or maybe they know that some people like pastels and some people like bright colors and so
01:30:01 ◼ ► I wish I had a, had the ability to get a more brightly colored phone or, or laptop for that matter.
01:30:12 ◼ ► It comes in from Brad who says, "My wife and I live in a busy house with our three young children.
01:30:20 ◼ ► We currently transcribe this calendar onto a pair of whiteboards this week and next week
01:30:28 ◼ ► And I'm thinking an e-ink display would be good, giving there is no power on the front of the fridge.
01:30:42 ◼ ► So I've got a, I've got a post that we'll put in the show notes about my e-ink calendar that I built.
01:30:51 ◼ ► I used a bunch of Python scripts from a German guy and his 3D model, I got a 3D printed model.
01:31:09 ◼ ► So the only difference is that I leave it by the side of my microwave and it's, so it's plugged in all the time
01:31:51 ◼ ► There are other things that use different technologies that I haven't liked as much that have like,
01:32:04 ◼ ► Dan Morin's using one of those in one of his, he made an on-air display using a battery operated e-ink device.
01:32:31 ◼ ► And at some point I should probably put a version of my modified version of the German guys.
01:32:54 ◼ ► It's got a little symbol on the night for the trash to go out about whether we're taking out our paper or our glass and plastic.
01:33:09 ◼ ► So, and if you know Python, especially you can play around with it and make it do anything you want really.
01:33:14 ◼ ► So I think e-ink is fun and it's a great way to do it, but you do need power at least to update the display.
01:33:20 ◼ ► So if you've got a way to, you know, if you can, if you can get something that just displays your calendar, you know, yeah, for a week or whatever, you can plug it in on Sunday, have it reload and then stick it on the, on the fridge.
01:33:33 ◼ ► If you would like to send us in your questions for Ask Upgrade or your feedback or follow up, you can always go to upgradefeedback.com.
01:33:41 ◼ ► You can check out Jason's work over at sixcolors.com and you can hear him over the incomparable.com and here on Relay where you can hear me too.
01:33:58 ◼ ► You can watch video clips of the show on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube or @upgraderelay.