00:00:36 ◼ ► -Yeah, this is a weird one because we're just doing a little draft later on in the episode,
00:00:48 ◼ ► -But we still think something is going to be announced, and so we're going to predict it.
00:00:59 ◼ ► "I was a huge fan of Jason's TV Talk Machine podcast with the one and only Tim Goodman,
00:01:07 ◼ ► I would like to know where does Jason get TV recommendations and reviews from these days?
00:01:21 ◼ ► When Tim stopped being forcibly required by his job to review TV shows, we stopped the podcast.
00:01:28 ◼ ► He went off and wrote he had a development deal with FX for a little while, and now he's back,
00:01:49 ◼ ► I read various, I don't know, I just kind of look around and I hear what people are talking about,
00:01:57 ◼ ► It was really nice to talk every week to somebody who was forced by their job to watch as many TV
00:02:16 ◼ ► but it is really nice to hear from a trusted source that this thing or this other thing is
00:02:21 ◼ ► worth a shot, and I will follow this up by just saying, my recommendation of the moment that we
00:02:32 ◼ ► just discussed last week, it is entirely there, the entire season is available on Apple TV Plus,
00:02:50 ◼ ► It has that Florida noir vibe where it's funny, but also there's a mystery and everything is a
00:03:00 ◼ ► little bit shabby and shady, and there's scenery, and there's, again, jokes, and I don't know,
00:03:09 ◼ ► I loved it. Plus, it's a Bill Lawrence show, so it's also got that vibe that's a little bit like
00:03:21 ◼ ► recommendation for that too. I watched the first episode of the second season, and it's just as
00:03:26 ◼ ► good, so I'm very happy about that. That show's so good. This show is so well written. So well
00:03:31 ◼ ► written, that show. I agree completely. So anyway, I'll throw Bad Monkey on the list. If you're like,
00:03:37 ◼ ► I don't know, some show about a monkey, well, there's a monkey in it, but it's not about the
00:03:42 ◼ ► monkey at all, really, at this point. I mean, I have only seen half of it. Probably it becomes
00:03:46 ◼ ► very monkey-centric later. No, I'm sure it doesn't. But look, it's just part of the vibe, right?
00:03:52 ◼ ► There's a guy with a monkey, and there's a lady who does curses, and there's a shady land developer,
00:03:58 ◼ ► and there's a severed body part that is found, and, you know, it's a thing. It's great. It's
00:04:11 ◼ ► without having... It was really nice. What I'm saying is, it's really nice to know a TV critic,
00:04:15 ◼ ► because then you can just say, "Hey, what are we watching?" But I don't have that anymore.
00:04:27 ◼ ► of recommendations. I think we may have spoken about it, but for me at least, I watched it all
00:04:32 ◼ ► ages ago, because I do have early access to it, which I'm very happy about. Slow Horses,
00:04:35 ◼ ► the season is superb. Superbly good. Really, really good. Do you know they just greenlit season six,
00:04:48 ◼ ► you know? Just keep doing it. Do it forever. Love it. So good. The characters are fantastic.
00:05:12 ◼ ► Anyway, she suggested, which I love, that he should be the next James Bond, which I 100% agree with.
00:05:18 ◼ ► I would like him to be James Bond. I think he would be a good James Bond. I don't think
00:05:21 ◼ ► it will be him, but I think it should be. A little mini Apple TV+ news here, by the way.
00:05:29 ◼ ► So they're going ahead with that, which is great. And this is like a little asterisk on the whole,
00:05:34 ◼ ► like, Apple adding TV+ as a channel on Prime Video. Like, this is why I think it's a great move,
00:05:42 ◼ ► is their catalog is really good now. They started with nothing and have built a catalog. And at this
00:05:48 ◼ ► point, like, even if you, you know, if you just never paid any attention, I mean, even for one
00:05:53 ◼ ► month, you could get, you could watch your fill for $10 for one month with Prime Video buying it
00:06:01 ◼ ► as a channel. So I hope these shows find other audiences because they're doing some great work
00:06:21 ◼ ► marketing machine for Amazon, which is a big deal for them. So thank you, James. And I guess,
00:06:26 ◼ ► in addition to being the world's foremost Kindle podcast, maybe we'll occasionally recommend a TV
00:06:30 ◼ ► show for you here. But that's it. Sorry. Oh, I did. I want to make one final recommendation
00:06:35 ◼ ► for, because I think people have started to stay away from these shows, but Agatha All Along on
00:06:40 ◼ ► Disney+ is excellent. It's really good. It's excellent. It's really good. Because the cast is
00:06:44 ◼ ► brilliant and it's weird and fun and it's spooky. It is not a Marvel, it is not a Marvel show in,
00:06:50 ◼ ► I would say, any appreciable way, even though it is, well, yeah, I know, but it is not, it's going
00:06:56 ◼ ► to have tie-ins because it does have tie-ins. It is in some ways sort of a direct sequel to
00:07:00 ◼ ► WandaVision, which, by the way, is the first and still maybe the best of all Marvel TV shows in
00:07:07 ◼ ► this run that's been done by Marvel Studios. And it's the same showrunner as WandaVision,
00:07:13 ◼ ► which I think is super important. And it is, yeah, it's really good. It's not what you expect. It is
00:07:20 ◼ ► kind of a character drama with action and it's using witchcraft tropes, so magic stuff.
00:07:27 ◼ ► So it's a different vibe than you're going to get from your more superhero-y kind of Marvel show.
00:07:33 ◼ ► Yeah, I agree. High recommendation. Really, really good. Really good. Yeah, the first episode is
00:07:39 ◼ ► just superb. Like, it's just, like, superb. They did a great job with that show. I've enjoyed it
00:07:43 ◼ ► a lot. And Kathryn Hahn is just, like, incredible. Good supporting cast in that one, too. Aubrey Plaza,
00:07:49 ◼ ► I mean, are you kidding me? Like, it's just great. It's really, really good. Did you see what Aubrey
00:07:53 ◼ ► Plaza, the bit that Aubrey Plaza did the other day? She was at the finals of the WNBA in New York.
00:07:59 ◼ ► Not Game 5, which they just had, where the New York Liberty won. We were excited by that, because
00:08:05 ◼ ► one of their players is Sabrina Yanescu, who went to Oregon and is from the Bay Area. So
00:08:17 ◼ ► with Steph Curry at the NBA All-Star Game, which I watched a clip of because there was a Vision Pro
00:08:22 ◼ ► Immersive NBA All-Star Game thing that dropped last Friday. Spectacular, by the way. Like the
00:08:30 ◼ ► Super Bowl one, they took their time a little bit. I wish it had been three times as long,
00:08:35 ◼ ► because I would have liked to watch, like, more of it. It was more like, and this happened,
00:08:40 ◼ ► spectacular visuals, and now we move on to this thing that happened, spectacular visuals.
00:08:44 ◼ ► I wish I would have loved to watch the whole three-point contest and the whole Steph versus
00:08:49 ◼ ► Sabrina showdown in Immersive. It was great. Also, a little sad moment, they're showing
00:08:53 ◼ ► these amazing shots of the slam dunk contest and you're courtside. And I was really sad,
00:08:58 ◼ ► because you're courtside next to Bill Walton, the great basketball player who died about three
00:09:03 ◼ ► months after the NBA All-Star Game. But he was there, and he was cheering and all, and that was
00:09:09 ◼ ► pretty awesome. So anyway, Aubrey Plaza, they showed her on the big screen at the basketball
00:09:16 ◼ ► game, and what was she doing? She had a book, and she was reading a book. So she was at the finals
00:09:21 ◼ ► last night, because I saw a clip of her today. They went to her, she just double flipping the
00:09:26 ◼ ► bird to everyone. Yeah, she's incredible. Amazing, amazing. Anyway, thank you to James from The
00:09:34 ◼ ► Plus 4/4 for the Snell Talk question. If you'd like to send in a question of your own, just go
00:09:38 ◼ ► to upgradefeedback.com and send us a Snell Talk. I have a couple of follow-up items, Jason Snell.
00:09:49 ◼ ► do you think there is a future for filmmakers using the immersive recording during feature-length
00:09:54 ◼ ► movies, but only in certain scenes, similar to how Christopher Nolan uses IMAX for specific scenes
00:09:59 ◼ ► and then drops back to standard shots? The bulk of the movie could be viewed in a standard way,
00:10:03 ◼ ► but then for specific scenes, it could benefit from being in an immersive view and could
00:10:08 ◼ ► transition in and then back out again. I mean, it's possible. It would be a gimmick, but Nolan
00:10:16 ◼ ► flipping you into IMAX is also a gimmick. I saw one of the Batman movies that Nolan directed
00:10:26 ◼ ► now we're not anymore." So you could do it that way. That would be interesting. I still think
00:10:41 ◼ ► a different vantage point in immersive might be a more fun kind of extra. Obviously, to do this,
00:10:47 ◼ ► Apple's going to have to spend a lot of money because the audience on Vision Pro is so small
00:10:57 ◼ ► what is it, John M. Chu is super into the Vision Pro, he loves it, and it wouldn't surprise me if
00:11:03 ◼ ► he's like, "Apple, what can we do with my next movie? What can we do with this?" So, I mean,
00:11:07 ◼ ► I think people will still experiment, whether it's an alternate scene that gets, when you watch it on
00:11:13 ◼ ► Vision Pro, it gets spliced in or just an alternate scene in immersive that you can watch as a
00:11:17 ◼ ► standalone or something. I definitely think there are going to be some filmmakers who are really
00:11:23 ◼ ► into this and looked at Submerged and said, like we did, like, "Huh, he had an interesting
00:11:30 ◼ ► approach to that." And my favorite thing about Submerged, and I liked it, but my favorite thing
00:11:34 ◼ ► about it is watching, really, you can watch a very intelligent, talented director trying to
00:11:40 ◼ ► figure out the best approach to use artistically in a different version of a medium that he knows
00:11:48 ◼ ► pretty well. I would love to see other people do it. And I'm sure some directors were out there
00:11:54 ◼ ► who were like, "Oh man, I want to do this too." So I hope we see more of this. But, you know,
00:11:59 ◼ ► maybe if there's a director with clout who has a good relationship with Apple and they're making
00:12:04 ◼ ► a movie and they say, "Look, you know, we want to do this immersive thing attached to this movie in
00:12:09 ◼ ► some way." I'm sure it could happen, but we'll just have to see that's a real confluence of events
00:12:15 ◼ ► there. And it depends on how much Apple wants to make it happen. Yeah, it feels like something that
00:12:19 ◼ ► they could do for one of their movies, you know, like an Apple TV movie and maybe you could do it
00:12:26 ◼ ► as a separate thing. They also have a really good relationship with Disney, right? So, you know,
00:12:31 ◼ ► if they were willing to take a Disney or Marvel or, you know, or Star Wars movie and put money
00:12:54 ◼ ► about meta showing Orion from a place of weakness and that Apple hasn't done this for a long time.
00:12:59 ◼ ► I think Apple Intelligence was Apple showing AI features while they're not ready yet. It's
00:13:12 ◼ ► Yeah, 100% true. And we also talked about that last week, right? We talked about the fact that
00:13:22 ◼ ► shouldn't buy an iPhone because of features that don't exist yet. But, you know, the conversation
00:13:27 ◼ ► last week was really about pre-announcing hardware. And I would say the other difference
00:13:32 ◼ ► is that Apple actually, I think, intends to ship Apple Intelligence between now and next June
00:13:53 ◼ ► They showed hardware that will never go to customers and anything like it won't ship for,
00:13:58 ◼ ► they said, years. They were vague, but it's years. And so for me, that seems like a very
00:14:04 ◼ ► different thing than, I mean, like Apple Showvision Pro and Apple Watch months before they shipped,
00:14:10 ◼ ► but they did ship exactly in that form and it was months. This is a product that nobody's
00:14:13 ◼ ► ever going to get. And I think that that is, that was my point is a lot of tech companies like to
00:14:19 ◼ ► show off tech demos of things that don't exist. Like they're not, you will never be able to buy
00:14:28 ◼ ► Oh, man. Right. So, so let's anyway, the, I don't have enough time to tell you all the things that
00:14:37 ◼ ► are, that are wrong with the strategic direction of that company right now. The, so the thing about
00:14:45 ◼ ► this is I was pointing out that like, when was the last time that Apple showed hardware that they
00:14:50 ◼ ► didn't intend to ship and just, and just did it to show off their technical prowess and where they
00:14:56 ◼ ► were going with their research lab. And that in that context, like I can't remember, like you
00:15:01 ◼ ► pointed out, I think the last time they really talked about hardware that didn't exist, that they
00:15:06 ◼ ► were promising on shipping was that Mac Pro thing, which is legendary. We talk about it to this day,
00:15:10 ◼ ► the round table, where they brought in a bunch of journalists and said, we love the Mac Pro. We're
00:15:15 ◼ ► going to make a new one eventually, no more information. And then it was years before it
00:15:24 ◼ ► Yeah. Although that, I think Apple, I don't think Apple showed that out of weakness. I think Apple
00:15:29 ◼ ► showed that out of confidence that it was going to ship. So I think it's a different issue. They
00:15:32 ◼ ► just screwed it up. That was not, that was not a, like, Oh, we feel the pressure to put out an
00:15:37 ◼ ► AirPower. So we get better get out there now. I'm just saying I'm coming from this, from the
00:15:41 ◼ ► perspective of somebody who in the nineties, the magazine I worked for published a whole feature
00:15:46 ◼ ► article of prototypes of Macs that never existed. Some of them sort of parts of them got into other
00:15:54 ◼ ► products. Like there was a bunch of things that looked sort of like the 20th anniversary Macintosh,
00:15:58 ◼ ► but like Apple was just like, we're spending all this money on R and D and we're not doing
00:16:03 ◼ ► anything with it. What do we do? And the answer is show the world that we're spending the money.
00:16:07 ◼ ► And that, that was the vibe I got from Metta. I don't think that is troubled. Like Apple of the
00:16:12 ◼ ► nineties was troubled by far. Cause no, that bad. That was bad. That was a bad era. But I, again,
00:16:21 ◼ ► they're trying, they're showing something that doesn't ever gonna, isn't going to ship to
00:16:24 ◼ ► customers because they want to send a message that they're on it. And that's because they felt like
00:16:30 ◼ ► they were being misjudged. So that was the point. It is absolutely true. So I stand by my point,
00:16:40 ◼ ► that was like, this will never ship, but we'll see in three years for the argument of like,
00:16:46 ◼ ► why don't they show their own AR project right now? And but yes, as we said last episode,
00:16:58 ◼ ► getting out ahead and shipping and promoting features that don't even exist yet because they
00:17:04 ◼ ► haven't shipped like on top of the stuff that's about to come out, they're advertising features
00:17:08 ◼ ► that will not arrive until the end of the year or maybe early next year. And they're doing that
00:17:12 ◼ ► because they're behind in AI. That is a hundred percent true. And may not be good even when they
00:17:17 ◼ ► do ship. And may not be good in the further out they are, which is a point we made last week,
00:17:22 ◼ ► the further out they are, the more risk you take that the demo that you saw back in June,
00:17:26 ◼ ► that it does this by the time it ships, it's like, well, it doesn't quite do that cause we
00:17:30 ◼ ► couldn't get that to work. So it does something sort of like that, but not as good. And that is
00:17:34 ◼ ► always a danger. And I was, I still think some of the features that we saw will not make it
00:17:38 ◼ ► until 19. I don't know what, but I think this is such a long period of time, like they're
00:17:46 ◼ ► potentially going to be shipping this stuff. Something is not going to go exactly the way
00:17:51 ◼ ► they want. And they would like a little bit more time on it, sort of just put it into 19.
00:18:00 ◼ ► right? So they're like, Oh, well, you're going to be able to do a Siri control of apps,
00:18:05 ◼ ► but they're only Apple apps using app intense. And then it's going to be like, it's really only
00:18:10 ◼ ► these two apps, right? Like something like that where they're like, Oh, I thought it was all the
00:18:13 ◼ ► Apple apps. And I was like, no, it's just, it's just calendar. That's the only one we could do.
00:18:26 ◼ ► I don't want to ding too meta too much for it because we both agreed that it was a good move
00:18:31 ◼ ► on their part. It's just like for Apple to get over that. I think, I think Apple, Apple doesn't
00:18:37 ◼ ► need to prove that it's interested in this. Although something that struck me, which I don't
00:18:42 ◼ ► think we're going to talk about, but, uh, there was a wall street journal. It was like a little
00:18:45 ◼ ► profile of Tim Cook. There's not a whole lot in it other than the tidbit. I haven't read it yet.
00:18:50 ◼ ► Honestly, what struck me about that article is that's the kind of venue that you use an interview
00:18:56 ◼ ► with Tim Cook on good morning America or in the wall street journal or something like that,
00:19:00 ◼ ► where obviously prompted by Apple PR to do this. But you, that is a great environment for Tim Cook
00:19:07 ◼ ► to do a little disclosure that I think might solve some of this, which is you asked Tim Cook about
00:19:12 ◼ ► medicine announcement and Tim Cook says something like we've had stuff like that in our labs for a
00:19:18 ◼ ► couple of years too. And we agree with meta it's not ready yet. And at Apple, we don't ship stuff
00:19:24 ◼ ► until it's ready to ship. So, you know, I'm glad that they believe in this. We believe in it too.
00:19:30 ◼ ► We're here to compete, but we're not going to talk about products that aren't ready to ship.
00:19:36 ◼ ► And that would be a way for the CEO's voice to basically say, we got that too, but we're not
00:19:42 ◼ ► going to show it to you in a way in a, in a, in a interview or something where it's just like
00:19:51 ◼ ► look, we, we know we got it too. We're working like they are, but we're not going to show it to you.
00:20:02 ◼ ► if you want to counter them, the meta argument is you could just acknowledge that like, great,
00:20:11 ◼ ► we we've got prototypes too. We'll, you know, see on the playing field in a few years. And,
00:20:17 ◼ ► and that would be a way that you could handle it by the way, the tidbit and the Tim Cook article
00:20:21 ◼ ► that was the best is the interviewer asks him what he's named some of his iMessage chat groups.
00:20:28 ◼ ► And he said, he said, Oh, I've never done that. Maybe I should try that. And then in a subsequent
00:20:32 ◼ ► chat with a writer, he said, Oh, I did what you suggested. I, uh, I, I renamed my chat with my
00:20:39 ◼ ► roommates from college and what's it called roommates. I love him so much. You know, like
00:20:46 ◼ ► that is such great energy. I saw another one, which is this is, this is, this is Tim energy
00:20:51 ◼ ► right there. I think I saw another where he said his favorite drink was diet Mountain Dew, but he
00:20:56 ◼ ► doesn't get to drink it too much because they don't stock it in Apple. And it's like, okay,
00:21:00 ◼ ► you're the CEO. Okay. So, so I've got a couple. So first off, yes, I like Tim Cook. My favorite soda
00:21:08 ◼ ► is also diet Mountain Dew. So look at that. We got that Tim, but you're the CEO. So one,
00:21:15 ◼ ► you could have them stock it too. You could just have a person buy diet Mountain Dew and put it in
00:21:21 ◼ ► the, you know, your receptionist outer office for your office and have it available to you. You
00:21:27 ◼ ► could do it that way. Uh, but like, I mean, surely cafe max could, unless they've got some sort of
00:21:31 ◼ ► weird, like, did they sign a, a distribution deal with Coke? And so their Pepsi products are not
00:21:37 ◼ ► allowed. I don't know what's going on there, but I'll just, here's a tip for Tim Cook. You can get
00:21:42 ◼ ► diet Mountain Dew, uh, soda stream bottles and just get a little soda stream and make your own
00:21:48 ◼ ► diet Mountain Dew. I can do that now. I actually do that now. So, uh, lots of options out there
00:21:54 ◼ ► for Tim to, uh, and, and my condolences to Tim on how bad the Auburn Tigers are playing this year.
00:22:05 ◼ ► pertinent to the conversation where, uh, in regards to the vision pro saying that at $3,500,
00:22:10 ◼ ► it's not a mass market product right now. It's an early adopter product. People who want to have
00:22:15 ◼ ► tomorrow's technology today. It's like, yep, that's a great answer. And then also talking
00:22:20 ◼ ► about his innovation saying we're perfectly fine with not being first. Uh, it takes a long,
00:22:25 ◼ ► it takes a while to do it really great. It takes a lot of iteration, you know, so like he, he's
00:22:29 ◼ ► winking, right? Like we'd rather come out with the kind of product and the kind of contribution
00:22:34 ◼ ► of people versus running to get something out first. If we can do both, that's fantastic,
00:22:38 ◼ ► but if we can do one, there's no doubt around here. Right, right. So that, and that, that's
00:22:47 ◼ ► we've got prototype glasses too, and they aren't. And just as meta found out, they're not good
00:22:53 ◼ ► enough for people to buy now. And it'll probably be a few years. He could say that in an analyst
00:22:58 ◼ ► call. He could say that in a media interview and that's all they need to do, right? Like the people
00:23:05 ◼ ► are like, Oh, maybe Apple should show off. It's like all, literally all that Tim Cook needs to
00:23:09 ◼ ► do is say, yeah, it's great. And you know, we, we're working on it too. We'll see you in a few
00:23:14 ◼ ► years and that's it. So that's fine. Uh, couple more pieces of follow up. Uh, one is that,
00:23:21 ◼ ► according to Mark Gorman at Bloomberg, Apple's chief people officer, Carol surface is leaving
00:23:25 ◼ ► the company after just two years. Deidre O'Brien is taking the responsibility of people back into
00:23:31 ◼ ► her role. Again, this is follow up because last week when talking about Dan Riccio, you mentioned
00:23:36 ◼ ► about Apple's issues of hiring externally. Yeah. Yeah. That a lot of those people, not all of them.
00:23:42 ◼ ► And there are, there are examples of people who've stuck, but, um, actually, um, Gorman mentioned
00:23:47 ◼ ► this, uh, Luca Maestri was an external hire and he worked pretty well. And their legal counsel was an
00:23:51 ◼ ► external hire and by all accounts, she's doing great too. Their chief counsel. Um, but, but there
00:23:57 ◼ ► are a lot of high profile, especially in the customer facing parts where there are high profile
00:24:04 ◼ ► hires that don't go well. And this is essentially, you know, just like losing two retail chiefs. Now
00:24:10 ◼ ► we've lost the people officer was brought in to replace the person who was moving over to just
00:24:15 ◼ ► do retail chief. So, uh, and, and Gorman also pointed out, Deidre O'Brien is going to retire
00:24:21 ◼ ► here probably pretty soon. And then what are they going to do? And it's like, she's gonna,
00:24:26 ◼ ► she's gonna be worn down at some point. I mean, I heard from somebody, um, this week after we
00:24:32 ◼ ► had that conversation who basically said, yes, Apple knows this Apple makes every effort to
00:24:39 ◼ ► develop their own people on the inside because they know that this is the case. And of course
00:24:43 ◼ ► they do. That's, that's why we talked about Dan Riccio is like, that felt very much like part
00:24:48 ◼ ► of a concerted strategy to keep the brain trust around longer than they would otherwise be around
00:24:54 ◼ ► and bring on the new person and give them more of a role. Just as, uh, Greg Joswiak is now worldwide
00:25:01 ◼ ► marketing head, but Phil Schiller is still there, right? Because that gives Jaws his opportunity.
00:25:06 ◼ ► And presumably he is now having the people step up behind him. Oh, um, he mentioned the,
00:25:11 ◼ ► they brought in external, uh, PR person and they lasted like less than two years. And now
00:25:17 ◼ ► Kristen Huget, who's been there forever and who I used to work with when she was just a PR,
00:25:21 ◼ ► you know, person on a product basis is now running their PR. So she's been at Apple a long time. Like
00:25:26 ◼ ► there are so many stories of this. So Apple's not a impossible fit for an outside hire, but it's
00:25:31 ◼ ► very difficult for a high level outside hire to fit in there. So they're doing the right thing,
00:25:37 ◼ ► according to the people that I've heard from, which is they know it and they are trying very
00:25:47 ◼ ► because if you're an employee there, what you want to believe is that there's a ladder for you
00:25:51 ◼ ► to climb instead of them just bringing in a high profile person from the outside. And two, because
00:25:56 ◼ ► they got to do it that way. Cause there's nobody coming in from the outside. The ladder is the only
00:26:01 ◼ ► source of the next executive set. So, uh, yeah, really interesting to write on the follow of that
00:26:06 ◼ ► for this to break. Cause I was like, we just talked about that on an upgrade. Perfect timing.
00:26:10 ◼ ► Yep. Um, and as discovered by Sigmund Judge of the Magic Rays of Light podcast, we mentioned
00:26:15 ◼ ► about him. He had pointed something out about Ted Lasso season four shooting in London. Well,
00:26:22 ◼ ► the British Film and Television Alliance is now published at Ted Lasso season four is in production
00:26:27 ◼ ► with filming to occur above London and the USA. There you go. It's, it's not been announced yet.
00:26:33 ◼ ► Confirmed by anybody at Apple or Warner Brothers. And I would say, I would say I still,
00:26:42 ◼ ► one of the reports that we haven't gotten to is, is it Ted Lasso season four in terms of how they
00:26:48 ◼ ► market it or is it going to be like a follow on that's got a different name and maybe they
00:26:55 ◼ ► are spending so much money that they're just going to call it Ted Lasso season four. But I'll,
00:26:59 ◼ ► I was watching the last part of the last, I was trying to think of like, where did they leave it?
00:27:04 ◼ ► And one of the last shots, it's very telling of Ted Lasso season three is Ted's note on the
00:27:11 ◼ ► manuscript by Trent Crim. That's called the Lasso way. And his only note is my name. It
00:27:20 ◼ ► shouldn't be named after me. It's not about, it's not about me. It never was something like that.
00:27:24 ◼ ► And I thought at the time, this is how you hand off to a successor show is say it doesn't,
00:27:31 ◼ ► it shouldn't be called Ted Lasso. That said, if it's easier to market it as Ted Lasso season
00:27:37 ◼ ► four and they can get Jason Sudeikis to be in it a teeny tiny bit, then they'll probably do that.
00:27:46 ◼ ► Breakthrough hit. Yeah. Actually great. It's thought occurs to me, great time to be on Prime
00:27:52 ◼ ► Video when they, if they get Ted Lasso back for a season four, right? To drive subs in a new place
00:27:59 ◼ ► for people who are like, oh yeah, I've heard about that Ted Lasso show. And you can literally,
00:28:02 ◼ ► you know, sign up and watch the first three seasons and then season four is also there.
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00:30:31 ◼ ► So last week, in a press release in the Apple newsroom, Apple unveiled a new iPad Mini.
00:30:38 ◼ ► It features a bunch of small improvements, but the biggest feature and actually the way that
00:30:44 ◼ ► Apple is referring to this product on their website is the iPad Mini with A17 Pro. It's
00:30:50 ◼ ► really weird like when you go to compare them. It's like iPad Mini 6th generation and then
00:30:54 ◼ ► it's been replaced by iPad Mini A17 Pro. That's okay. The next one will be 8th generation and
00:31:00 ◼ ► we'll all just start calling it the 7th generation and no people care. Also, Mini, Mini, Mini, Mini,
00:31:06 ◼ ► who has all the Mini? Anyway, just get that in everybody's heads again. Thank you. That's coming
00:31:12 ◼ ► up, right? It is next Halloween. Halloween is Apple results, so I guess in a couple of weeks,
00:31:18 ◼ ► we're going to have to break out the jingle. We have to break it out. I feel like that's the
00:31:22 ◼ ► breakout hit. We're going to break that is the hit of the jingle episode. So we'll bring it back.
00:31:27 ◼ ► So yeah, this is A17 Pro. It's, you know, the chip is really anything to talk about. I think
00:31:34 ◼ ► there's a lot of little details. I'll put a link in the show notes to your post. You know, there's
00:31:39 ◼ ► a host of small things they added to this product, removed, i.e. all of the saturation from the
00:31:46 ◼ ► colors, but they put this chip in and this chip is weird. We've spoken about it a few times on
00:31:53 ◼ ► the show before because the A17 Pro was on a three nanometer processor TSMC that was a dead end,
00:32:00 ◼ ► but Apple kind of committed with them to produce it because they needed the chip for the iPhone,
00:32:05 ◼ ► so they did it. And that was also the, I think the M3 too, right? It is this, but they skipped
00:32:10 ◼ ► a bunch of devices on the M3 to go probably straight to M4 and it seems like... That's why
00:32:14 ◼ ► M4 happens so fast is that M4 is a new chip design on the new process. That is the process TSMC is
00:32:22 ◼ ► using going forward instead of being this dead end that is this first generation three nanometer
00:32:29 ◼ ► process. And so Apple has been clearing out the M3 and like, they're going to get it off of all
00:32:34 ◼ ► the Macs and they're going to get them all on M4. And then here's a new product that is using the
00:32:39 ◼ ► old process. And it seems weird, right? But what is it? Why? Well, first off, this entire product
00:32:44 ◼ ► exists for Apple intelligence. It feels very much... They made some other changes to it,
00:32:56 ◼ ► Really what's going on here is this is not what everybody who's an iPad mini fan wanted,
00:33:06 ◼ ► It's literally the old iPad mini, but compatible with Apple intelligence because that was the
00:33:13 ◼ ► priority was we need to get all of our devices on Apple intelligence. Now, it is weird that
00:33:19 ◼ ► this is a chip that we basically figure they have stopped making or are going to stop making. I have
00:33:25 ◼ ► a lot of theories about it. My best guess is that they've... Because it's got one fewer GPU than the
00:33:34 ◼ ► one in the iPhone last year, last year's iPhone Pro. So they've been saving up binned chips that
00:33:42 ◼ ► didn't pass the test for the iPhone because a GPU core didn't work. And maybe they've got excess
00:33:55 ◼ ► is there literally a big bin of 15 Pro chips somewhere that Apple has and how many are in
00:34:02 ◼ ► there? And is that the total number that Apple thinks that they're going to sell of the iPad
00:34:07 ◼ ► mini and the product's entire life cycle? Or is it possible that they're still making them
00:34:13 ◼ ► because they haven't shut down that production line yet and Apple has some sort of contractual
00:34:16 ◼ ► deal and it's going to make some more? But my guess is Apple is going to get a certain number
00:34:22 ◼ ► of these chips that Apple says, "This is enough for the iPad mini's lifetime." And then they're
00:34:26 ◼ ► going to turn off that production line. Which means... I mean, look, the future's promised to
00:34:33 ◼ ► know one and nothing lasts forever. So the iPad mini that just got announced will one day be
00:34:40 ◼ ► replaced, as all products are. But what's interesting is the ticking clock might be like,
00:34:47 ◼ ► really ticking. Like, literally, we know exactly how many of these we can possibly make before we
00:34:53 ◼ ► have to introduce a new model that uses a different chip. So I don't know how big the bin is and I
00:34:59 ◼ ► don't know whether they're planning to go three more years for the next iPad mini. My gut feeling
00:35:04 ◼ ► is they probably won't go three years. My gut feeling is this is probably a midstream thing
00:35:08 ◼ ► that they did for Apple intelligence and that there's probably a better iPad mini in the works
00:35:14 ◼ ► a couple years down the line, maybe. But it's possible that they got three years worth of chips
00:35:19 ◼ ► in a bin and they're gonna just grind them out. But it is wild to think that they put this product
00:35:27 ◼ ► on a chip that is basically done. But they are. - Yeah, it's a very peculiar thing to do. Very
00:35:35 ◼ ► peculiar. Like, the A18 is just sitting right there. Which, realistically, the A18, non-pro,
00:35:46 ◼ ► makes more sense for this product. - So here's what I've heard. Several people pointed this out
00:35:52 ◼ ► after I posted my story last week, which is if they were to use the A18, they would actually
00:35:58 ◼ ► have to do a feature regression on the iPad mini because the sixth generation iPad mini supports
00:36:03 ◼ ► USB 3 and the A16 on the iPhone does not. It only supports USB 2. - Okay. - And if that is the case,
00:36:17 ◼ ► is it possible? Because the other story that we've heard about these 3nm chips is that they're
00:36:22 ◼ ► expensive. They're expensive to make and they're expensive because they have a lot of failure on
00:36:26 ◼ ► them. So there are ones that Apple rejects. And I think their deal with TSMC, I forget whether this
00:36:30 ◼ ► was one where they had the ability to reject them at no cost to them and TSMC. Like, look,
00:36:36 ◼ ► it's bad business for Apple and TSMC to be on this line anymore. So I think it must have been
00:36:44 ◼ ► a little expediency thing, which is like, we're going to take all of the leftovers from this
00:36:50 ◼ ► failed project and use them somewhere. And this is a perfect place to use them because it allows
00:36:55 ◼ ► them to do it without spending the money and effort to upgrade lots of internals in order to
00:37:03 ◼ ► put an M chip in it, right? Because we heard from an anonymous source, a good anonymous source who
00:37:07 ◼ ► pointed out like, put an M chip in an iPad mini. There's a lot more that goes into it than an A chip
00:37:14 ◼ ► and it would have been a much more substantial upgrade. They're like, they don't want to do that.
00:37:17 ◼ ► So it has to be an A chip. And I don't know whether it was something that they came to and
00:37:22 ◼ ► they're like, aha, I've got the answer for the iPad mini and Apple intelligence or what. Or if
00:37:27 ◼ ► somebody was like made the vice president of A17 Pro bins, it was like, what do I do with these
00:37:34 ◼ ► things? And they found this, but whatever the reason, like it's very Tim Cook too, just almost
00:37:41 ◼ ► as Tim Cook as naming your texting thread with your roommates, roommates is taking a part that
00:37:48 ◼ ► you bought that isn't very good in terms of your flagship product in the future. I mean, I'm not,
00:37:55 ◼ ► it's not a bad chip, right? But it's like, it's, it's a, it's a broken process that you're turning
00:37:59 ◼ ► off, but you've got extra, extra parts and you're like, let's reuse them. It saves money. It saves
00:38:07 ◼ ► efficiency and it's probably better for the environment rather than just like, well, why
00:38:11 ◼ ► would you throw them away? They're perfectly functional. So, but you've got to find a place
00:38:15 ◼ ► to put them and here it is, right? You take a risk, right? Where like in theory, there is a
00:38:20 ◼ ► maximum amount of this product that can be sold unless they are continuing to produce for TSMC.
00:38:26 ◼ ► As you mentioned, you raised in your article, which would also be really weird, but I would
00:38:31 ◼ ► expect to at some level of degree, Apple do get to ask of TMS TSMC to do things that they would
00:38:37 ◼ ► otherwise not like to do, you know? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Also, I mean, I have a list in my article,
00:38:44 ◼ ► you can read it. Somebody, Dave Shop mentioned in our chat that another reason is they need to
00:38:50 ◼ ► the ACE, the 18 for iPhone 16, right? I mean, they, I don't know how much volume they've got
00:38:56 ◼ ► at that, but like if you're ramping up production of iPhones, the last thing you want to do is
00:38:58 ◼ ► divert production of iPhones for iPad minis. I'm sorry, fans of the iPad mini, but you, even you
00:39:03 ◼ ► must see that if you're, if you're Apple and it's summer and you're building iPhones for your big
00:39:08 ◼ ► fall splash, diverting the number of iPhone 16s you can sell because of the iPad mini is a bad idea.
00:39:13 ◼ ► It's a really bad idea. So here we are. It is, you're right. It is. It's not that the, like I
00:39:20 ◼ ► said, all products will be replaced. It's the ticking clock aspect of it, which is they know
00:39:25 ◼ ► exactly how many they need to make. But my guess is they also know how many they're going to sell.
00:39:34 ◼ ► the next iPad mini. But my guess is that they probably got, they're good for a couple of years.
00:39:41 ◼ ► That's my guess. Yep. Uh, so one of the issues of the 6th gen iPad mini was what was called
00:39:47 ◼ ► jelly scrolling. So I've mentioned this before in portrait, when you would scroll with the iPad mini,
00:39:53 ◼ ► it would sometimes look that like one half of the screen would move at a different speed
00:39:59 ◼ ► than the other. It was a small thing, but, but noticeable. Uh, well, well MacRumors is reporting
00:40:06 ◼ ► on a conversation from the 6th color secret podcast where cohost Jason Snell told Dan Morin
00:40:26 ◼ ► or whether there was a tip. Was there a hot tip? Or maybe, you know, you, you go to that feed and
00:40:31 ◼ ► you find out there's like six people listening to it and everyone at MacRumors. Anyway, look,
00:40:34 ◼ ► we have briefings that are, that are on background. And so, you know, I can't say Apple says, and I
00:40:40 ◼ ► can't quote anybody. I mean, I can't wait for the new story about this to break this conversation
00:40:44 ◼ ► here, but, uh, you know, my understanding is just totally separate from that. My understanding is
00:40:49 ◼ ► that they did make some changes to the display circuitry. And what's unclear is whether they
00:40:54 ◼ ► address this problem or not. But what I would say is if Apple knew that jelly scrolling was a thing,
00:40:59 ◼ ► but hadn't acknowledged it, the last thing they would do is acknowledge that they had a flaw
00:41:04 ◼ ► in an, in, in, in, in saying that they fixed it, they would do it in this way, which is to,
00:41:13 ◼ ► changes to the display circuitry. And then you're just left hanging of like, but did it
00:41:18 ◼ ► solve this? Was it meant to address this? But what they won't say is we fixed that horrible jelly
00:41:25 ◼ ► scrolling problem that we had, that we've never talked about and never admitted to because then
00:41:29 ◼ ► they're going to get sued and all these things. So they just said, oh, we changed the display
00:41:32 ◼ ► controller is probably what they might've said. That's my understanding. Anyway, I don't know.
00:41:36 ◼ ► Apple says here, it's probably my understanding. Anyway. Anyway, I would imagine that later this
00:41:42 ◼ ► week there will be embargo drops and there will be reviews and stuff, and we'll have a better idea
00:41:47 ◼ ► of whether jelly scrolling is still a thing, but they changed something. So maybe jelly scrolling
00:41:52 ◼ ► is not a thing anymore, but that's really all we know right now. And again, thank you for Mac to
00:41:56 ◼ ► Macrumors for reminding me that even in my members only podcast, which is an excellent secret podcast,
00:42:04 ◼ ► right? Like I think technically it's just the six colors podcast. I don't think it's secret anymore.
00:42:10 ◼ ► We don't swear anybody to secrecy. I don't think we do it anymore. I think when we started,
00:42:14 ◼ ► it was internalized. We realized that if we want to sell memberships, we should not keep it a
00:42:20 ◼ ► secret because people do like listening to that podcast. It's a very nice podcast. People can join
00:42:24 ◼ ► six colors and listen to it. And if you join at the higher levels, you get more of it because we do
00:42:30 ◼ ► more in a big Q and A every month and all this stuff. Anyway, I'll sell my other podcast here.
00:42:35 ◼ ► But now I need to just remind myself that if there's something that I don't want turned into
00:42:40 ◼ ► a story on Macrumors, I should probably not mention it even on a members only podcast. Just a lesson
00:42:46 ◼ ► for me and other podcasters that just because it's behind a paywall doesn't mean somebody won't go
00:42:51 ◼ ► find it and report on it. Sort of like what we do with Mark Gurman's Bloomberg stories, which are
00:42:56 ◼ ► behind a paywall, but we just talk about them. But I pay for it. I do pay for it too. That's true.
00:43:02 ◼ ► I'm sure somebody paid for whatever Julie Clover reported. Maybe Julie Clover herself. I don't know.
00:43:07 ◼ ► There are new Kindles led by my favorite Panos Panay, who was previously at Microsoft running
00:43:16 ◼ ► Surface, and he left and went to Amazon and now runs hardware at Amazon. And this was the first
00:43:22 ◼ ► Panos kind of product unveiling. And you can see the difference in that they decided to actually
00:43:28 ◼ ► have an event and they unveiled an entire range of Kindles, which is not usually how they do things.
00:43:32 ◼ ► They usually like do one here or there, but they're like, no, here is a lot of new Kindles.
00:43:38 ◼ ► Put a link in the show notes to the most recent episode of the Vergecast where they had Panos on.
00:43:44 ◼ ► And this is a great interviewer. I actually got to interview him once and it was a great time.
00:43:48 ◼ ► He's a very, very thoughtful person who really cares. He's a good salesman too, but you could
00:43:56 ◼ ► tell that he... I don't know. I like the guy. He's got a lot of heart. Anyway, so they have a bunch of
00:44:02 ◼ ► products. I'm going to just talk about them real quick and then you can touch on the things that
00:44:05 ◼ ► you care about because you're the guy. So we've got the Kindle Color Soft, which is the first
00:44:09 ◼ ► color ink Kindle. The new Kindle scribes that have redesigned it a little bit visually and
00:44:16 ◼ ► made some changes. They've put some new software features in there. So you can take your notes with
00:44:21 ◼ ► your Kindle scribes, like a pen on an ink screen, and they can give you some AI summaries of your
00:44:25 ◼ ► handwritten notes. And they've put some new ways to put notes on books. So you can write your
00:44:31 ◼ ► notes on a book and it will flow the text around your notes. That's really cool. They have a new
00:44:37 ◼ ► Kindle Paperwhite, which has faster page turns on a larger screen, and then a new entry-level Kindle.
00:44:42 ◼ ► And some of these Kindles have color options on the cases too. So the big Kindles. Yay! This is
00:44:52 ◼ ► the foremost e-reader podcast. So first thing is they also discontinued their 2018 Kindle Oasis is
00:45:01 ◼ ► finally officially dead, which was the last Kindle that had page turn buttons on it. And every time
00:45:06 ◼ ► this comes up, people say, well, I don't need buttons to turn. I just tap the screen. It's fine.
00:45:10 ◼ ► I'll just say, obviously, for most people, that is the case. I hate it because it makes the ergonomics
00:45:17 ◼ ► of holding it for me awkward and I have to shift my finger. So if I get a good grip, it doesn't
00:45:22 ◼ ► matter because when I need to turn the page, I need to either use the other hand or I need to
00:45:25 ◼ ► shift a finger or whatever to tap or swipe in order to move to the next page. Whereas I can rest my
00:45:30 ◼ ► hand, holding my e-reader with my thumb on the page turn button, and then just kind of sit there
00:45:36 ◼ ► and go click, click, click, click without moving my hand. So I prefer page turn buttons. I think
00:45:40 ◼ ► that they should be an option. Amazon first thought that they should only be on the very high end.
00:45:45 ◼ ► And then now they think that they shouldn't exist at all. So I'm disappointed by that. If you like
00:45:50 ◼ ► page turn buttons, I think the answer is you should probably buy the Kobo Sage or you could
00:45:57 ◼ ► get the Kobo Libra color, but it's not as good a screen as the old Libra 2 was or find a Kobo
00:46:04 ◼ ► Libra 2 on eBay or something and just get that. That's what I still use day to day is the last
00:46:09 ◼ ► generation. I even bought, Mike, I bought a Kobo Libra 2 case, which I already have one, but it's
00:46:15 ◼ ► kind of beat up over the years. And they were putting them on clearance at Kobo.com and I just
00:46:24 ◼ ► this is my e-reader I'm going to keep using for the most part is the Kobo Libra 2. So I might as
00:46:32 ◼ ► well, because I noticed on my last trip, it was really beat up and I was like, it's a shame that
00:46:37 ◼ ► they don't make this anymore, but it turns out they still had some cases left in the warehouse.
00:46:40 ◼ ► So I bought one. Anyway, so I'm a little despondent about the state of e-readers in the
00:46:45 ◼ ► sense that I think page turn buttons are important, but a couple of things. I'm really encouraged that
00:46:51 ◼ ► Panos Panay is involved in Kindles because it felt like for the longest time, Amazon wasn't really
00:46:55 ◼ ► paying attention to Kindles at all and that they didn't have a strategy and they would do stuff in
00:47:00 ◼ ► the background. They did a big software update that I think dramatically improved the usability
00:47:04 ◼ ► of a Kindle. I'm generally disappointed in the trend in e-readers. I'm not offended by the idea
00:47:12 ◼ ► that people who are reading text on a e-reader is a niche market, that a lot of people just think
00:47:18 ◼ ► phones are fine or iPads are fine, which I don't, but a lot of people do. So it's a very niche
00:47:23 ◼ ► product already. So I'm not offended by the idea that they're trying to find other ways to push
00:47:28 ◼ ► this technology, but it seems to be the thing that they found is using pens and taking notes.
00:47:34 ◼ ► And the problem I have with it is that's not a use case for me. So it's great for others
00:47:38 ◼ ► and all that. I had somebody ask me, are you going to review the Kindle scribe? And my answer is what
00:47:41 ◼ ► it always is, which is it's too big. It has a pen. That's sort of what it's about. I'm just not
00:47:46 ◼ ► interested in that category. It's just not a thing. Above a certain point for people who need to mark
00:47:52 ◼ ► up PDFs and stuff, I think it's kind of a brilliant idea, although you could also use an iPad, but I've
00:47:56 ◼ ► heard positive things about marking up documents on a Kindle. So I'm not interested in the scribe
00:48:01 ◼ ► at all, which leaves us with the Colorsoft and the Paperwhite really. Colorsoft isn't out yet.
00:48:06 ◼ ► It's coming out in a week, I think. It is their first color Kindle. They resisted this for a long
00:48:14 ◼ ► time. E Ink has been making color screens because E Ink is a company. E Ink has been making color
00:48:21 ◼ ► screens for a while. And like I said, Kobo just did a turnaround into the color screens. The
00:48:25 ◼ ► problem is... And the remarkable color one, too. I know it's not an e-reader, but like...
00:48:31 ◼ ► Right. But they're out there, right? And there are issues with them where the DPI is, I think,
00:48:36 ◼ ► half the points per inch is half of what it is for the black and white. So your black and white text
00:48:41 ◼ ► is crisp, but your color is not that crisp. But still, interesting. The problem is that it also
00:48:47 ◼ ► puts a gray cast on the back of the screen that actually reduces readability of text because now
00:48:53 ◼ ► it's black on, kind of, speckly gray instead of black on very light gray to white. Amazon made
00:49:00 ◼ ► some sort of claim about how they've got, like, their color is different, and they've got different
00:49:05 ◼ ► lighting, and they... It sounds like what they're implying is that they have somehow overcome some
00:49:11 ◼ ► of the limitations of the color screen. I'll believe it when I see it. But I think that's
00:49:17 ◼ ► interesting because Kobo just came out with these color versions and discontinued some of their
00:49:23 ◼ ► black and white readers. Like, it doesn't matter. It's okay. And I'm not sure I believe them.
00:49:28 ◼ ► So we'll see if that color is better than the color on these other devices, if Amazon is
00:49:36 ◼ ► beaten back somehow. I assume they're still using e-ink's technology, but if they've done some
00:49:43 ◼ ► things to modify it, like, we'll see. I will throw out there, though, that this is a seven-inch,
00:49:48 ◼ ► I think, reader. It's not huge because a lot of people are like, "Oh, you read comics on it."
00:49:53 ◼ ► It's like, I've tried to read comics on readers this size. I mean, also, the way I read comics
00:49:58 ◼ ► is not available, right? Like Marvel Unlimited is not on Kindle. That's true. That's true. You've
00:50:02 ◼ ► got to buy comics on Kindle. If you did Kindle Unlimited, I think you'd get some comics. Anyway,
00:50:07 ◼ ► it's not ideal. However, here's the thing, and I don't know the answer to this question,
00:50:13 ◼ ► so I'm just going to put it out there, and we'll find out the answer probably in a week, which is
00:50:17 ◼ ► Kindle is also Comixology. They sell comics. They merged it all into the Kindle store. You can buy
00:50:23 ◼ ► individual issues of comics. You can buy trade paperbacks. They use the Comixology technology.
00:50:28 ◼ ► It's in the Kindle app on the iPad and on the iPhone. It's called Guided View. I don't read
00:50:33 ◼ ► comics this way because I read on a big iPad, but the idea was that Comixology built this thing
00:50:39 ◼ ► to make comics readable on iPhones. You double tap, and it will take you. It's built into the
00:50:44 ◼ ► metadata of the comic. It'll take you page by page or panel by panel through a comic, which means you
00:50:52 ◼ ► don't have to see the whole comic. It will lead you through the individual panels, which are then
00:50:56 ◼ ► much larger, which makes it more readable without you having to pan and zoom, which is really bad on
00:51:02 ◼ ► an e-ink screen that doesn't have a high refresh rate. As far as I can tell, they didn't say
00:51:07 ◼ ► anything about it. My question is, does the Kindle ColorSoft do Guided View for comics? Because if it
00:51:12 ◼ ► does, it could be a decent comic reader. And if it doesn't, why doesn't it, right? Because it's
00:51:19 ◼ ► literally their technology. So either, either it's going to be better for comics than any e-reader
00:51:28 ◼ ► has ever been, or I don't know what Amazon is even thinking. - Or a missed opportunity, like a
00:51:34 ◼ ► severe missed opportunity. They specifically call out comics and graphic novels as a thing for this,
00:51:47 ◼ ► and the image that they show, it looks good. They have a panel from Ms. Marvel. - Sure, but am I
00:51:54 ◼ ► getting there through Guided View? Because I read an issue of Saga on the Kobo, and it's just panning
00:52:01 ◼ ► and zooming. Oh, it's so bad. So we'll see. We'll see. Jury's still out. I ordered one. I will review
00:52:07 ◼ ► it, but it's not here yet. I have the Paperwhite. It's reminded me of all the reasons why I like
00:52:14 ◼ ► physical page turn buttons, but it's good. It looks good. It frustrates me. It also doesn't have
00:52:19 ◼ ► a light sensor. So when I'm reading in the daytime, I have to swipe down and crank up the
00:52:24 ◼ ► brightness. And when I'm reading at nighttime, I turn it on. It's super bright, and I have to swipe
00:52:28 ◼ ► down and crank down the brightness. How expensive is that light sensor part? It's in older Kindles
00:52:35 ◼ ► that are, I guess, higher end. I don't know why they left that out. It's a real degradation of the
00:52:41 ◼ ► quality of the product, and Paperwhite is not the entry-level Kindle, so I don't know why it does
00:52:47 ◼ ► that. But it looks good. The software is good. I'll write a review of it. The use cases for people
00:52:53 ◼ ► who -- it used to be that Kindle was way worse for people who use libraries than Kobo, especially
00:52:59 ◼ ► since Kobo at one point was the same company that did OverDrive, which is libraries. However,
00:53:06 ◼ ► if you have more than one library that you're a member of, Kindle's way better because it uses
00:53:12 ◼ ► Amazon's infrastructure to fulfill the books, whereas Kobo, you log into your library and it
00:53:17 ◼ ► only lets you log into one. So that's kind of interesting, too. So my gut feeling now is,
00:53:25 ◼ ► despite all my frustrations, I think the best -- e-readers last forever. You don't need to
00:53:30 ◼ ► upgrade them very often. However, the best general-purpose e-reader right now is probably
00:53:37 ◼ ► this new Paperwhite. I will, you know, write my review and see. I also want to throw out one
00:53:42 ◼ ► suggestion to our dear friend Panos Panay, who is obviously listening to the world's greatest
00:53:48 ◼ ► e-reader podcast. You heard Mike say nice things about you. If we're not going to do page-turn
00:53:54 ◼ ► buttons, which, again, I think they're really good, how about alternate ways of turning a page
00:54:01 ◼ ► that don't require you to move your fingers? How about something like, at one point, they had a
00:54:07 ◼ ► pressure-sensitive side, where if you gave it a squeeze over a certain area, it advanced? Or how
00:54:14 ◼ ► about an accelerometer? You already have one, at least an accelerometer, because you can do portrait
00:54:21 ◼ ► to landscape. But like, the other way I was thinking you could do it is if you get it kind
00:54:27 ◼ ► of like in your hand and you've got a grip, what if you use a finger to like tap the back, like do
00:54:31 ◼ ► a double tap or something, and it advances the page? You could do that, maybe. And that wouldn't
00:54:35 ◼ ► require a moving part and a button that you have to protect against water ingress and all that.
00:54:39 ◼ ► Just please find something that isn't moving my finger and putting it on the screen, because I
00:54:44 ◼ ► would really like that. But anyway, so that is, I'll have more follow-up, Mike, as we go down this
00:54:49 ◼ ► path with the new Kindles. Very exciting. Who knows, maybe one of these days we'll bring back
00:54:54 ◼ ► Scott McNulty and we'll just do an e-reader blowout. No promises. I know we did that, though.
00:55:00 ◼ ► In a very early episode of Upgrade, we just did a whole thing with Scott where we talked about
00:55:03 ◼ ► Kindles and Mike got to make a sandwich. So there we are. Hey, I was there. I had a good time. I was
00:55:08 ◼ ► just listening, you know? Yeah, just listening to me and Scott talking about Kindles, as you do.
00:55:13 ◼ ► This episode is brought to you by Fitbod. If you're looking to change your fitness level,
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00:56:37 ◼ ► And when you find an exercise that's new to you, you can learn it the right way thanks to their
00:56:42 ◼ ► great instructions and videos. I love this. There's more than a thousand demonstration videos in the
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00:57:40 ◼ ► If you sign up for that annual plan, that's an incredible saving. Thanks to Fitbod for their
00:57:44 ◼ ► support of this show and Relay. Oh, I have one last Kindle point. Okay. Thank you to ZMK in the
00:57:52 ◼ ► chat for pointing this out. There is a Kindle Paperweight Signature Edition. For $40 more,
00:57:57 ◼ ► you do get the light sensor. Why? Why? And it's got more storage that you don't really need and
00:58:03 ◼ ► support for wireless charging. So I guess if you want to pay $200, you can get the one with the
00:58:09 ◼ ► auto. Twice as much as the cheap Kindle. $40 more than the Paperweight Standard. They have the
00:58:16 ◼ ► Signature Edition and the Signature, apparently, is a little cheap light sensor. So there you go.
00:58:20 ◼ ► Anyway, review to come. Whatever. Amazon, come on. Panos, get in there. Work it out. He's doing it.
00:58:28 ◼ ► He's making you pay $40 more for your light. Yeah, I guess so. For a light sensor. That's what he's
00:58:32 ◼ ► doing. Great. Yeah. Great. It's time for a draft. All right. These are the rules and the rules are
00:58:39 ◼ ► slightly different. So if you don't usually pay attention to the rules, these are the rules. Yeah.
00:58:43 ◼ ► We don't have a whole like rules process. We just kind of talk about it and plan it and then. But
00:58:48 ◼ ► these are our rules. Yes. Five rounds. No, I've already said it wrong. It was originally going to
00:58:53 ◼ ► be five. It's more. Seven rounds. Seven rounds. We changed it today. Seven rounds, 14 overall picks.
00:58:59 ◼ ► The winner of the previous draft gets to pick first. That is me as I am current draft champion.
00:59:06 ◼ ► Our items are chosen from a predetermined list of choices, which we have agreed could be verifiable
00:59:11 ◼ ► and not ridiculously obvious. For an item to count, it must either be clearly announced on
00:59:23 ◼ ► via a press release. That is the difference for this draft because we have no idea what's going
00:59:27 ◼ ► to happen if they don't have a pre pre announced live stream. We switch into press release mode.
00:59:35 ◼ ► Yeah. Or if they don't just publish a video. Right. Which is like an event video. I guess
00:59:39 ◼ ► it could be either or I suppose we've seen in the past, but that's rare that they would is
00:59:58 ◼ ► If Stephen is away, who should be our adjudicator? Zach, let's put Zach in it. We're gonna put Zach
01:00:03 ◼ ► in it. I don't know if Zach wants this, but Zach Knox, who makes our scorecards will adjudicate in
01:00:08 ◼ ► case of Stephen's unavailability of adjudication. No partial points are awarded. The points awarded
01:00:16 ◼ ► on the episode are final and they are finalized during the scoring segment. In the case of a tie,
01:00:22 ◼ ► there is a tiebreaker question. The loser gets pick of the tiebreaker question. The winner
01:00:28 ◼ ► becomes draft champion and displays the champion pennant. Loser becomes draft challenger and
01:00:33 ◼ ► displays the challenger pennant. I am currently displaying my champion pennant as champion.
01:00:38 ◼ ► I am currently displaying the challenger pennant as challenger. You watch our YouTube video to see
01:00:45 ◼ ► me displaying it right now. I'm holding it. Indeed. There will be an interactive scorecard,
01:00:50 ◼ ► upgrade.cards, which are maintained and managed by Zach Knox. You can buy a t-shirt at any time
01:00:57 ◼ ► at the draft, upgradeyourwardrobe.com if you want that. There's always, there is some t-shirts
01:01:01 ◼ ► available. There's a fun room around up t-shirt there too. A couple of upgrade logo t-shirts and
01:01:05 ◼ ► also a draft t-shirt, which you can buy whenever you want. If you would like to celebrate the draft,
01:01:12 ◼ ► you can go to our cotton bureau store and do that. There have been five previous drafts held
01:01:18 ◼ ► in October. Jason has won three of these. I have won two of them. And so far this year,
01:01:26 ◼ ► I am winning at two drafts to one. So you have the opportunity to tie up for the year because
01:01:33 ◼ ► I doubt there will be another draft. So yeah, of course, like, so the reason we made the tweak this
01:01:38 ◼ ► time is we wanted to do the draft because it's fun to draft and we expect there to be some Mac stuff
01:01:43 ◼ ► and we thought it was going to be Mac and iPad, but then obviously Apple just released the iPad
01:01:48 ◼ ► mini as a press release. So we're still drafting anyway because we wanted to, and we said we would,
01:01:53 ◼ ► so we're doing it. But for this one instance, and maybe if we ever do this specific kind of
01:01:59 ◼ ► thing before where we draft without an announcement, we'll see how this goes to try and judge it by the
01:02:05 ◼ ► newsroom post, which I think the newsroom post on whatever's on Apple's website by the time that we
01:02:10 ◼ ► get there. Which I honestly, realistically, provided that we pick, and so what we've done
01:02:15 ◼ ► today is like we've been very particular in the picks that we are making, and we spoke about this
01:02:19 ◼ ► in Upgrade Plus last week, the picks that we are making, they are product. They are not stagecraft,
01:02:24 ◼ ► like we are specifically doing product stuff. And so yeah, it has to be on Apple's website.
01:02:30 ◼ ► So I'll just point out, I thought about it maybe like a day too late. I thought about us doing this
01:02:37 ◼ ► last week, but a little too late for us to prep for it, which would have been great because we would
01:02:43 ◼ ► know some of the answers, but not all of them. And we would have to wait on judging. No, you know
01:02:48 ◼ ► what, I think it's better this way because that would have made it really complicated, because
01:02:52 ◼ ► it's like do we score the whole draft now? I don't like that. That's in the rules, no partial points.
01:02:59 ◼ ► So we have to score the entire draft. It would have been a nightmare. So I'm happy that it's
01:03:05 ◼ ► actually gone this way. We dodged a bullet there. All right, so we have seven rounds. I'm gonna go
01:03:12 ◼ ► first. The first pick that I'm gonna make is that the new Mac Mini has a new industrial design.
01:03:24 ◼ ► That's gonna be my first pick. Okay, that's good. Now we had before, just to let you in on it,
01:03:40 ◼ ► And we decided, you know what, part of the draft is actually talking about what's going to happen
01:03:46 ◼ ► and then what did happen. And so we just expanded our picks a couple so that we can make some picks
01:03:52 ◼ ► that are not guaranteed, not guaranteed. I think nothing here is a hundred percent, right? They
01:03:58 ◼ ► could throw us a curve ball, but we wanted to not just sort of like ignore the basic, like we're not
01:04:04 ◼ ► picking a new Mac Mini as announced. That's what I've decided is a hundred percent, but this is at
01:04:10 ◼ ► least a little detail. We've heard that it's smaller. What if it's not? What if it doesn't
01:04:14 ◼ ► have a new design? Then you get the pick wrong, but I'm just gonna like counter you here with my
01:04:20 ◼ ► pick, which is the new Mac Mini is smaller than ever. So here's why I think it's actually worthwhile.
01:04:26 ◼ ► So the Mac Mini has been around for, oh, how long? Let me Google this real quick. A very long time.
01:04:32 ◼ ► 2005? Okay. So 20 years, essentially. Something like that. There have been two industrial designs
01:04:39 ◼ ► for the Mac Mini in its entire 20-year history. And I know this because Steven stacked them up
01:04:44 ◼ ► and showed me them while I was in Memphis. He was like, look, this has not changed. There's the tall
01:04:49 ◼ ► one and then there's the flatter one, which as Steven pointed out, I have conflated with
01:04:55 ◼ ► getting rid of the optical drive, but it's not true. The flatter one had an optical drive option
01:05:04 ◼ ► time was built to fit an optical drive, which is bananas. So it doesn't need to be that big.
01:05:11 ◼ ► So the way I think of it, not even just the tall one, it's the one with the plastic top and then
01:05:15 ◼ ► one that was all aluminum. And so I do actually think that a new industrial design for the Mac
01:05:22 ◼ ► Mini, while we expect it to happen, could have happened many times in the past. We have probably
01:05:29 ◼ ► picked it many times. I know I've written many articles about they should make a smaller Mac Mini
01:05:33 ◼ ► and I think the answer is they finally, you're like, why make it smaller? We've heard that from
01:05:37 ◼ ► people, which is like, but why make it smaller? What's the point? It's a little desktop. Why
01:05:41 ◼ ► does it need to be smaller? I think the answer is they decided to refresh the enclosure. First off,
01:05:45 ◼ ► they're going to save money on like aluminum and stuff. They don't need it to be that big.
01:05:50 ◼ ► It's not just we need to make it smaller. So let's engineer it to be smaller. If you look at what's
01:05:54 ◼ ► inside a Mac Mini, it doesn't need to be that big. It's mostly air in there. So do you know what I
01:06:01 ◼ ► say? Have some fun in your life. You know, if you want a big desktop, a decade more, the Mac studio
01:06:09 ◼ ► exists. Get that. I want the exact opposite of the Mac studio. I want the Mac Mini to be as small as
01:06:16 ◼ ► they can make it because why not? I want to stick it to the back of a monitor with velcro. Like,
01:06:21 ◼ ► let me do it. You know, make a tiny little computer. I think it'd be amazing. Let's do it.
01:06:26 ◼ ► I'm excited about this, by the way. I think we'll talk about it, but like this is, I have my mind on
01:06:32 ◼ ► this computer being my next computer and I'm excited about this Mac Mini. It's great. Cool.
01:06:37 ◼ ► My second round pick is that the new Mac Mini comes with both an M4 and M4 Pro configuration.
01:06:46 ◼ ► Yeah, it currently does, right? It currently has a standard and a Pro. So I think that's a reasonable
01:06:56 ◼ ► imagine the power in such a little tiny device. Tiny little computer and it has an M4 Pro chip
01:07:04 ◼ ► in it. That'd be so great. I'd be really excited about that. The risks here are it doesn't happen
01:07:10 ◼ ► this time because they changed the configuration. They changed the enclosure and they can't fit the
01:07:14 ◼ ► Pro in there. Or they just don't have an M4 version. Like they could, they could get rid of it.
01:07:19 ◼ ► Or the Pro version could still be in the old size. That's the other possibility. There are some,
01:07:31 ◼ ► All right. Very excited about that, but I'm going to pick new MacBook Pros. Okay. I think
01:07:40 ◼ ► there will be new MacBook Pros. I think that is also up there. Again, not necessarily the case,
01:07:47 ◼ ► right? I think that we have all, you know, I think Mac Mini feels the most certain, MacBook Pro feels
01:07:52 ◼ ► the next most certain to me. And so I'm going to pick it. I'm excited about it. You know, they are,
01:07:58 ◼ ► this is not a prediction, but like, I don't think they're going to be very different. We,
01:08:01 ◼ ► I know we've got the Russian leak out there. Like they, they already redesigned these things.
01:08:07 ◼ ► All they're doing is bumping the processors up from M3 to M4. Nobody get too excited about it.
01:08:16 ◼ ► all Apple Silicon Macs have Apple intelligence. They will talk about something that is very
01:08:25 ◼ ► involving the Mac that, that the iPad didn't, the iPad Pro remember because M4 already exists,
01:08:31 ◼ ► but iPad Pro, they didn't talk about Mac features. And also we don't know about the M4 Pro and the
01:08:37 ◼ ► M4 Max, which presumably will also be introduced and available in MacBook Pros. So there will be
01:08:45 ◼ ► some details there that will probably be little chip details that they'll be able to boast on.
01:08:49 ◼ ► That will be an improvement from the M3 versions of these, but otherwise they're going to be just,
01:09:00 ◼ ► But that latest chip is, you know, they did it last time too, right? Like it was an important,
01:09:10 ◼ ► boast on their Silicon prowess. And again, the M4 came out, first off, they didn't get to talk
01:09:15 ◼ ► about it in the context of Macs. They only talked about it in the context of the iPads. And second,
01:09:23 ◼ ► because why would you launch the MacBook Pro without them? And that's where they can boast
01:09:27 ◼ ► about like all the stuff they poured into that higher end model of chip. And we learned last
01:09:32 ◼ ► time, last October, when they did this, we expected it to be boring and just like the M2.
01:09:38 ◼ ► And what we saw was that the Pro and the Max were diverging from each other and from the
01:09:43 ◼ ► the base model. That M4 Pro was turning into like, it was, I think, continuing on to being kind of
01:09:51 ◼ ► like M4 or M3 in that case, but more. But the Max was like, not just like M Pro bigger. It was like,
01:10:02 ◼ ► no, no, no, it's like high end, much higher end than the Pro. So that may happen again.
01:10:17 ◼ ► I'm going to diverge away from hardware and assume an Apple intelligence demonstration.
01:10:23 ◼ ► For me, I feel like if we're thinking about the potential, what could this event be? It would
01:10:36 ◼ ► newsroom post to specifically show features. So like, not the product pages, because that's
01:10:42 ◼ ► too easy, I think. But the newsroom post announcing this product to have like, here is the section
01:10:47 ◼ ► about Apple intelligence. Here's why I think this is risky. I think it's risky only in that
01:10:54 ◼ ► it is a new piece of Mac hardware and every Mac product supports Apple intelligence. However,
01:11:07 ◼ ► tales out of school here, but Apple gives reviewers materials to refer to about the tech
01:11:13 ◼ ► specs and all of that. And I will tell you that ever since Apple intelligence got announced,
01:11:18 ◼ ► every product that Apple has shipped has had a lengthy section in it about Apple intelligence.
01:11:29 ◼ ► we're pushing Apple intelligence, we're going to talk about it again. So I think you've got
01:11:33 ◼ ► a pretty good chance here. There's a huge chunk of the press release for the iPad mini that is
01:11:39 ◼ ► talking about Apple intelligence, including a bunch of things that aren't even in 18.1.
01:11:43 ◼ ► So like, I actually feel no matter what they ship, there's a part of me that I'm most confident
01:11:50 ◼ ► that the thing that they will do is show Apple intelligence. I think it is for them key right
01:11:56 ◼ ► now. Why I think this could actually be a video is just another opportunity to show these features.
01:12:13 ◼ ► Yes. Because we've heard it's shipping. That is indeed something somebody could pick in this draft.
01:12:25 ◼ ► All right, I am going to bring in the other product that is rumored to be announced here
01:12:29 ◼ ► and say new iMac. Okay. So yes, so they went from M1 to M3. So it's like, well, why would they go to
01:12:36 ◼ ► M4 when they just went from M1 to M3? And the answer is they don't want to make the M3 chips
01:12:40 ◼ ► anymore because they're on that process, that old three nanometer process that's expensive and TSMC
01:12:44 ◼ ► and Apple don't want to use it anymore. So I think the rumors point to this and I think it makes
01:12:50 ◼ ► sense. Mark Gurman has said they want to get all the Macs onto M4. So he says the iMac is coming,
01:12:56 ◼ ► I'm going to take him at his word and pick new iMac. Even though I think of the three products
01:13:01 ◼ ► rumored to be in this event or release, it feels to me like the least essential of the three.
01:13:09 ◼ ► I would not have picked this this early for that reason. I think I could imagine a scenario
01:13:18 ◼ ► where we got MacBook Pros and Mac Minis now and like the iMac next year. I see your point,
01:13:25 ◼ ► but I feel like the iMac to me is a product that I don't understand anymore. I can't fully see
01:13:34 ◼ ► where it sits for Apple anymore. So to use draft parlance, you think this is a reach whereas I
01:13:41 ◼ ► actually had it second on my board and I think it's a value at three because I think it's very
01:13:47 ◼ ► likely to happen, but we'll see. I believe it is very likely to happen. I'm not sure it is likely
01:13:53 ◼ ► to happen this month, but I don't know. It's possible. I don't know. We'll see. It's possible.
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01:15:14 ◼ ► I'm at the point where I have my list and the list is ranked and I'm moving things around on
01:15:20 ◼ ► the list, you know, like it's that, so like earlier today I felt so confident about my ordering and
01:15:25 ◼ ► now I'm moving it. And we want to be behind the scenes for a moment. I have three documents open
01:15:31 ◼ ► here at the same time. I have our master list, which I am strikethroughing as picks get picked.
01:15:39 ◼ ► I copy, then strikethrough, and then I paste it in our show document, which is also open. And then
01:15:44 ◼ ► I have a little text document off to the right in BBEdit that has my ranked groups of priority.
01:15:58 ◼ ► like him and ranked them. And I have those in an Apple note. And then as you take them away from
01:16:03 ◼ ► me, I remove them from my list. I'm going to go now. Ah, yeah. Okay. So my issue at the moment
01:16:12 ◼ ► is I have, I have significantly, uh, I have seeded the Mac mini picks more than anything else. And
01:16:20 ◼ ► like your concern with that kind of thing is if the product is announced, I think I feel confident
01:16:30 ◼ ► in getting the items correct, but what if they don't do it, you know, and then, then you're,
01:16:35 ◼ ► you're ruined, but I'm going to do it anyway. Okay. And I'm going to say that the new Mac
01:16:41 ◼ ► mini removes all USB ports. All right. I think this is a good pick. It could be weird. They're,
01:16:50 ◼ ► they're cheap to put back there, but I think they've run out of space for them. Yes. And I
01:16:55 ◼ ► just think it's over a time has to come and like they're gone from the laptops and have been for a
01:17:02 ◼ ► long time. Right. If they're going to, again, like they're, they're, they're redesigning the Mac mini
01:17:10 ◼ ► for the next 10 years or whatever, but it's time. The USB ports are not going to be there on over
01:17:16 ◼ ► that long, the long period of time. And I do think for the vast majority of Mac mini customers,
01:17:23 ◼ ► they will be perfectly fine without a USB port, I believe. Yeah. No, I think, I think you're right.
01:17:29 ◼ ► I think for me, first off it's cheap to put USB on because they don't take up a whole stream. Like
01:17:36 ◼ ► you can put like two on and it's like, it's really cheap for them to do it, but it adds complexity
01:17:41 ◼ ► anyway. And it adds size and you're, you're going to a tiny size. There's not room for USB A and you
01:17:49 ◼ ► wouldn't design it. As you said, you wouldn't design an enclosure with the size of a USB port
01:17:55 ◼ ► as a constraint. That would be like designing it for an optical drive, right? Like, Hmm. You don't
01:18:00 ◼ ► want to do that if it's going to go in the long haul. So I agree. I think it's time. I think maybe,
01:18:05 ◼ ► maybe, or maybe not. They stick around as a couple of extra ports on the back of a Mac studio,
01:18:10 ◼ ► but not on the Mac mini. It feels like it's over. I agree. I think that's a good pick. I also have
01:18:18 ◼ ► that same thought, which is I'm a little concerned that I've got a couple of iMac picks that I like,
01:18:25 ◼ ► but if I pick them and the iMac doesn't ship, that's bad for me. Right. So I'm going to pick,
01:18:36 ◼ ► Oh boy. Yeah. Everything's riskier. Now we're in the risky section now, basically. Yeah.
01:18:43 ◼ ► Um, I'm going to say, wow. Yeah. They all, they're, they're all tough. I'm going to say
01:19:09 ◼ ► for this because it's like, I do believe this, but like that price was set a while ago.
01:19:19 ◼ ► I don't know. I don't know. I think recently Apple have shown, I mean, I notice there's a
01:19:25 ◼ ► lot of conversation amongst the analysts about the iPhone that there was surprise that Apple
01:19:31 ◼ ► did not increase the starting price because of inflation. Yes. I think Apple are in a position
01:19:38 ◼ ► where just like, I think they just shouldn't care about inflation in the same way, just because of
01:19:42 ◼ ► how much money they make and like that there is a benefit on not improving the prices. Yes.
01:19:55 ◼ ► it said prices remain the same. I don't think that's necessarily true. Apple has shown an
01:20:00 ◼ ► interest in keeping their base price the same. Now upgrade prices can be big. Also, Apple has
01:20:05 ◼ ► big margins. The higher end models might be more expensive. It's possible or the bill to order
01:20:13 ◼ ► options will be more expensive, but the starting price, it's a good low starting price. I would
01:20:18 ◼ ► imagine that even though there's some initial cost in doing a case redesign and all of that,
01:20:23 ◼ ► that in the long run, this is probably going to be a cheaper product to make than the old one,
01:20:26 ◼ ► because it's smaller. They don't have to use as much aluminum, all those things about it. I feel
01:20:33 ◼ ► like in the end, they want that starting price for the low end model to be good and be the same
01:20:39 ◼ ► price that it is now, but maybe the other prices even go up, but that seems to be their strategy
01:20:47 ◼ ► is either keep them all the same or keep the base the same and raise the other ones. If you want a
01:20:52 ◼ ► fancy one, maybe you pay more, but the base one, you don't pay more. Also, I should say this is
01:20:57 ◼ ► unchanged. They could also be really aggressive and take it down, but I think they won't do that.
01:21:04 ◼ ► I think that in a world without as much inflation as we had in the last couple of years, maybe they
01:21:09 ◼ ► would consider something like that, but I think not. Cross my fingers, but I'm going to just say
01:21:15 ◼ ► status quo for the starting price of the Mac Mini. All right, round five. I'm going to request
01:21:32 ◼ ► Could we maybe just change this for release date given for first Apple intelligence features or
01:21:38 ◼ ► 0.1 or something? Because they might not specifically talk about 0.1 and that would be an
01:21:45 ◼ ► experience. And they're not going to talk about iOS, right? I have no idea. They might say along with iOS 18.1,
01:21:53 ◼ ► but I think that that might not be necessary. Apparently, the release candidate just came out,
01:21:59 ◼ ► Zach is telling us. So release date given for first Apple intelligence features, 0.1, but we know
01:22:06 ◼ ► what we mean here. And again, all sportsmen like release date given for first Apple intelligence
01:22:12 ◼ ► features. Yes, that can be your pick. You just think it's going to happen? They can't help
01:22:18 ◼ ► themselves. They're going to talk about Apple intelligence and they're going to talk about when
01:22:21 ◼ ► you're going to first be able to see that. So apparently, they have been said it's coming next
01:22:26 ◼ ► week, but I'm expecting a date. Like, I think that there will be like, yes, it's coming January 28th,
01:22:34 ◼ ► but I think they're going to say coming out tomorrow, coming out today. Okay, because I think
01:22:39 ◼ ► this event is happening next week. Yes. So, so if they, I think you get it. If they give a date, if
01:22:45 ◼ ► it's, if it's a specific date or it's tomorrow or it's Thursday or whatever, or it, it, even if they
01:22:53 ◼ ► say it came out today. Yeah. Like they must, they must reference a day in which Apple intelligence
01:23:00 ◼ ► first starts shipping in 0.1. All right. That would be interesting. Because if it's Tuesday
01:23:04 ◼ ► and it ships on Monday, they have to say it came out yesterday. Yeah, sure. We'll go with that.
01:23:30 ◼ ► I'm going to pick, I wrote this wrong in the doc. Okay. Uh, so I'm slightly revising it,
01:23:47 ◼ ► and it could be the MacBook Pro, it could be the Mac Mini, but some of the Pro or Max models will
01:23:56 ◼ ► ship later. We'll have later ship dates than the M4 models, which is not really a rumor,
01:24:03 ◼ ► but it's a thing that happens sometimes. And we, we definitely have heard like the M4, they've got
01:24:07 ◼ ► them, but they got to have the Pro and Max chips. And sometimes they'll say these will be available
01:24:11 ◼ ► Friday. And the ones with that max will be available in, you know, later, later next month
01:24:16 ◼ ► or something like that. It builds on the Russian MacBook Pro scenario, right? Where that was what
01:24:22 ◼ ► we were talking about of like, oh, is the M4 just ready to go? And the other ones aren't. We don't,
01:24:40 ◼ ► See, this is why I wanted us to do more rounds is that it puts a little more variability into
01:24:47 ◼ ► it than we were so certain with the first one. I'm so excited about the Mac Mini. I'm just
01:24:52 ◼ ► going to continue. So like I'm now, I'm now in the phase at the draft where I don't feel confident
01:24:58 ◼ ► anymore. So what I'm, what I'm deciding to do is to just continue talking about the computer
01:25:05 ◼ ► that I really want. All right. I'm going to continue talking about the Mac Mini and I'm
01:25:11 ◼ ► going to say a Mac Mini has some ports on the front. I love it. I love it. I hope this happens.
01:25:19 ◼ ► Yeah. It's phrased the way it is because it's possible that the pro Mac Mini will have ports
01:25:26 ◼ ► on the front and the regular Mac Mini won't. It's also possible that they'll both have ports on the
01:25:31 ◼ ► front. It's also possible that Apple will say, no, only the Mac studio is allowed to have ports
01:25:36 ◼ ► on the front. Although I hope they've gotten over it. So we'll see, like, I think where do all the
01:25:42 ◼ ► ports go? If you're making a tiny puck of a computer, maybe they can't all go on the back.
01:25:48 ◼ ► So I think I'm putting them on the side. That seems unlikely. On the front seems like a good
01:25:53 ◼ ► place for it. And this is like considering that potentially a difference between the M4 and the
01:25:59 ◼ ► M4 Pro could be the amount of ports that it has. I mean, Apple has shown that, right? That they will,
01:26:05 ◼ ► they will mix that stuff up. We see it with the MacBook Pro, for example, right? The MacBook Pro,
01:26:09 ◼ ► the, the Pro and Max models have more ports than the, than the regular M3 and same with the M2 and
01:26:16 ◼ ► I think the M1, so. Nice. Um, okay. So I'm, I'm going to pick, boy, it's amazing how the, uh, the
01:26:31 ◼ ► Russian leak has, has gotten in our heads. I think yours more, but if you're about to pick what I
01:26:38 ◼ ► think you're going to pick. Um, yeah, I know. This is like, this, is this, I can't believe I'm going
01:26:46 ◼ ► to do this right now, but I'm leaning into it. Is this like Russian interference in the draft?
01:26:50 ◼ ► Is that what's happening here? Oh, somebody's going to have to launch a special committee on this.
01:27:02 ◼ ► Um, oh boy. Yeah, then this is tough, but the, um, so currently the MacBook Pro models. Okay,
01:27:12 ◼ ► let's start there. Let's start there. Currently the MacBook Pro models come with a space gray
01:27:21 ◼ ► or a silver for the 14 inch in the M3, but the Pro or Max have space black, which always seemed
01:27:30 ◼ ► weird. Like we've got some extra space gray enclosures that we got to move because it's
01:27:35 ◼ ► just, it's literally like, it's a little darker if you get the other version, unless you get the
01:27:40 ◼ ► silver. So yeah, the, the Russian leak suggests that the base models will get space black instead
01:27:46 ◼ ► of space gray or in addition to, or who knows. So that's what I'm going to pick is space black
01:27:52 ◼ ► comes to the base model MacBook Pro. Yep. That's it. Oh buddy. Oh boy. Oh boy. All right. We're in
01:28:01 ◼ ► the final pick now. And it's rough. It's rough over here. It is. I was going to make that pick
01:28:11 ◼ ► by the way. Cause it's like, Oh, okay. You're, you're talking it down and you were totally
01:28:14 ◼ ► going to make it. All right. Yeah. Um, we'll call it the Putin pick. No, it's not. No, it's not do
01:28:25 ◼ ► that. Uh, there's just some that are just like, they're just not exciting or they're not good,
01:28:44 ◼ ► I know it's hard. I'm going to go boring. I've only got a couple here that I like. So yeah. Okay,
01:28:50 ◼ ► go for it. Go boring. At least one Mac mini doesn't have ethernet. Whoa. I don't think that's
01:28:57 ◼ ► boring at all. I think that's one of the great mysteries. I think that's one of the great
01:29:02 ◼ ► mysteries of this is are they going to do an Apple TV thing and just leave the ethernet off of like
01:29:07 ◼ ► the cheap one. I think they will. Yeah. And the iMac is like that too, right? The iMac, the base model,
01:29:14 ◼ ► they don't even have the brick with the, with the ethernet port in it. They just have a standard
01:29:18 ◼ ► brick with no port. So there's, I feel like there's a lot of evidence that suggests they
01:29:24 ◼ ► would do this, but I don't think we know genuinely like the pick that is there that I don't want to
01:29:29 ◼ ► pick, but I think they will do is they will put ethernet on the power adapter. Like they have to
01:29:36 ◼ ► do it, right? Like they did all this engineering. It can't have just been for the iMac. Like I can't
01:29:42 ◼ ► bring myself to believe. No, because it's not going to have a brick. It's going to have an
01:29:44 ◼ ► internal power supply. Well, you know, but I don't know. Okay. I mean, I think they did this with the
01:29:52 ◼ ► Apple TV, right? So that's the precedent here is, and that's why I put it on the list is they did
01:29:57 ◼ ► this with the Apple TV. The base model doesn't have ethernet. And I go, okay, I don't, I don't
01:30:02 ◼ ► want that one. That's what I genuinely, I think you put ethernet on the pro model because look,
01:30:08 ◼ ► we need to be realistic here. All right. Now listen to me, listeners. We're all a bunch of nerds.
01:30:13 ◼ ► All right. And we want our ethernet, but come on now the cheapest Mac, right? Which would be the
01:30:20 ◼ ► Mac mini people are using wifi. Like that's what they're doing, right? Like we need to be realistic
01:30:27 ◼ ► here. We don't need ethernet on the base Mac mini. We don't need that. Like it doesn't need to be
01:30:34 ◼ ► there. Like it really doesn't today. So the way it works on the iMac is the base model and it's
01:30:43 ◼ ► different because it's on the power brick, right? So that's a quick swap, but the base model doesn't
01:30:47 ◼ ► have it. And then you can upgrade the base model to get it or the higher end models get it. So the
01:30:54 ◼ ► argument here is what you're saying, which is you can save some money and not offering ethernet and
01:31:01 ◼ ► space, but, but you know, the ones, some of them have to have it, but you're, you're saving some
01:31:05 ◼ ► money and differentiating your low end, save a little bit of money and you price it a little bit
01:31:10 ◼ ► lower. I'm not sure ethernet itself costs so much that it allows you to differentiate from like
01:31:17 ◼ ► nerds. It's the opposite. It's like, Hey, you want ethernet in your Mac mini, give us $100 more.
01:31:23 ◼ ► Yeah. Right. Right. Which is so, so the nerds, so basically you're, you're saving costs for
01:31:28 ◼ ► the people who are not going to care because they don't use ethernet. Yeah. And you're making all
01:31:33 ◼ ► the nerds pay more. Like 95% of computer users in the world. And you know what, like we're all using
01:31:38 ◼ ► laptops. You plug it into your non-existent ethernet port on your laptop, you know, like
01:31:43 ◼ ► we realistic here. I don't know who I'm arguing with. I think all the discord, I think at the
01:31:49 ◼ ► moment is arguing with and potentially our entire listener base. I use ethernet, ethernet plugged
01:31:56 ◼ ► into my Cal digit dock that my Mac book pro is plugged into. Cause I, I want the fastest internet
01:32:01 ◼ ► when I'm working, but at home when I'm using my Mac book air, I'm just kind of to my internet,
01:32:06 ◼ ► like my wifi and I'm doing a great, I'm having a great time. And so yeah, I love it. Wi-Fi is
01:32:12 ◼ ► amazing. All right. I am going to pick something that is another iMac pick. So I am making a risk
01:32:18 ◼ ► here and it's a, it's a bummer pick, but I feel like I have to, I feel like I have to because
01:32:25 ◼ ► one of the things that I remember from when they finally updated the iMac from M1 to M3
01:32:32 ◼ ► was that they changed nothing else about it. And I'm not going to pick that they changed nothing
01:32:37 ◼ ► about it other than the chip. Although I feel that that's probably the most likely scenario.
01:32:42 ◼ ► I would love for them to do a pro version. I would love for them to upgrade the webcam,
01:32:45 ◼ ► which is really substandard. I would love them to have an adjustable base as an option.
01:32:49 ◼ ► I would love for it to come in a different size as an option. There's lots of things I would like,
01:33:01 ◼ ► I don't want to get my hopes up. I just don't think they're going to do it. I think they've
01:33:09 ◼ ► got like... Actually, no, it's not a bummer pick. I'm booing, but no, those colors are good.
01:33:19 ◼ ► Because Apple released the new iPad mini. No, you're right. You're right. The risk here is
01:33:23 ◼ ► that they're all desaturated and boring. The iPad mini, they had a purple one. They have a new
01:33:32 ◼ ► we have all the same colors. I'm a little worried about this because especially if they change the
01:33:37 ◼ ► input devices, they might say, yeah, we're color matching them to the new boring colors now,
01:33:42 ◼ ► or they're only available in silver or whatever. So I don't know, but I'm going to just go with
01:33:46 ◼ ► momentum here, which is that they don't want to change the case. They make these cases. They're
01:33:51 ◼ ► just going to leave the case the way it was and upgrade the internals because it's the iMac. They
01:33:55 ◼ ► don't want to upgrade the iMac with every chip generation. They have to do it this time. They're
01:34:00 ◼ ► just going to kick the can down the road. Let's leave it all the same. So I'm going to say same,
01:34:04 ◼ ► same for the colors. I like the colors. It's true. But also it says something when they're
01:34:14 ◼ ► We're going to end today with a tiebreaker, which is not the way that we usually do things,
01:34:19 ◼ ► but I think makes sense for this one. So you get to pick the tiebreaker question. Would you
01:34:24 ◼ ► like to let me know what it is? Oh, well, we, we, we agreed to this. The tiebreaker question is,
01:34:30 ◼ ► is it going to be an event or not? Is it going to be an event or a newsroom post? It's that simple,
01:34:35 ◼ ► which is like, literally, are they going to do a thing where there's either, you know, they will
01:34:40 ◼ ► give you a week's warning and say, come and watch our event at 9 AM Pacific or whatever. Or do they
01:34:46 ◼ ► do a thing where they just put a press releases? So I think that's what I want to pick is, and,
01:34:53 ◼ ► and you said, you said like, if they just drop it, but it's a big video that feels like an event,
01:34:59 ◼ ► that would probably count too, because that's a, that's basically what you were talking about
01:35:04 ◼ ► earlier with the Apple intelligence demo pick. So I'm going to pick that I'm going to pick that
01:35:10 ◼ ► there will be an event or a substantial video presentation, and it won't just be done by
01:35:14 ◼ ► newsroom. Now I think this is risky because I think they could vary. You're setting the question
01:35:18 ◼ ► and picking it. Yeah. Okay. To pick it. I thought we agreed it was a vendor newsroom, the way it
01:35:24 ◼ ► usually works, which is just fine. You could do this. It's not a problem. We're, we're all off
01:35:27 ◼ ► the wall this time. The loser, which is you gets to pick at a tiebreaker question, which you then
01:35:31 ◼ ► ask me. So you should do it. And then I would say like event runtime over or under, and then I would
01:35:37 ◼ ► say over or under, but I'm fine with this. This is no problem for me. Okay. All right. I think it's
01:35:42 ◼ ► an event. Okay. Yes, I do too. So, uh, okay. So I'm going to take that one. So you get to pick first
01:35:50 ◼ ► and I get to pick the tiebreaker. So that's what I pick is it's going to be an event. I think it's
01:35:54 ◼ ► risky. I do think it's risky because I can absolutely see a scenario where on next Monday
01:36:01 ◼ ► or Tuesday morning, there's just a raft of press releases about the new Macs and the new chips and
01:36:07 ◼ ► they don't even bother. But I don't know. They bothered last year. They, they brought everybody
01:36:12 ◼ ► to New York for a Halloween thing. This is more of a reason this year, like I think than last year.
01:36:17 ◼ ► New chips. I think MacBook Pro is important. A new Mac mini design is important and boasting on the
01:36:24 ◼ ► new chip performance is important and flogging Apple intelligence is important. Like as a
01:36:28 ◼ ► marketing person on the inside, I would strongly advocate to advocate to do this because you have
01:36:35 ◼ ► so many points to hit and you get to hit Apple intelligence again the day or the week that it's
01:36:42 ◼ ► launching. So do it. Right. So that's my, that's my, my take. Yep. I completely agree. My expectation,
01:36:57 ◼ ► but I changed it from that. My expectation is tomorrow. So Tuesday, uh, is when they'll send
01:37:04 ◼ ► out the thing and it will either be Tuesday or Wednesday of next week. I reckon as well,
01:37:13 ◼ ► No last upgrade this week because we're running long. Uh, but I'll be back next week. You can
01:37:18 ◼ ► send us in your questions@upgradefeedback.com. You can also send us in your feedback and your
01:37:22 ◼ ► follow-up there too. If you want to find Jason's work, go to sixcolors.com and you can hear him
01:37:28 ◼ ► here on relay and at the incomparable.com. You can listen to my podcast here on relay too,
01:37:33 ◼ ► and check out my work@cortexbrand.com. Jason is at Jason L J S N E double L I am @imike,
01:37:39 ◼ ► I M Y K E. You can find video of this show on Tik TOK, Instagram, and YouTube. We are @upgraderelay.
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