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532: I Am Foreign Exchange Headwinds

 

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:08 ◼   ► From Relay, this is Upgrade, episode 532. Today's show is brought to you by ExpressVPN,

00:00:16 ◼   ► Factor and Notion. It is October 7th, 2024. My name is Mike Hurley and I'm joined by Jason Snell. Hi, Jason.

00:00:24 ◼   ► From my garage, it's me. Hi, how are you? I'm good, happy birthday. I have a Snell Talk question

00:00:31 ◼   ► for you. You had a birthday this weekend. Jason, how did you celebrate it?

00:00:35 ◼   ► I took it easy, I guess I would say. I mean, we had a nice breakfast. Lauren made me breakfast.

00:00:44 ◼   ► It was hot. It was the hottest day of the year yesterday, Mike.

00:00:50 ◼   ► And so it basically got to 100 degrees. And so we stayed inside for the most part, although we did

00:00:55 ◼   ► go out to dinner, which was very nice. That was my request, is why don't we go out to dinner. And we

00:00:58 ◼   ► had a very nice dinner at a restaurant we actually went to for our anniversary. It was really good.

00:01:05 ◼   ► So we went back there and it was excellent. It was just really great. So nice treat because we don't

00:01:10 ◼   ► go out to eat that much. And otherwise, I just sort of, you know, sat inside with the air

00:01:18 ◼   ► conditioner running because we've got air conditioning now, which helps when it's over

00:01:22 ◼   ► 90 degrees every day for a week in October, which is how we roll here. That's how October works

00:01:29 ◼   ► in the Bay Area is it gets hot. Anyway, I've turned my birthday into a discussion of weather.

00:01:33 ◼   ► Anyway, I was just kind of chilling. We didn't have curling this week. And so I just said,

00:01:39 ◼   ► you know what? Literally Saturday, we had nothing on our calendar. I was like, what does it mean to

00:01:44 ◼   ► have nothing on your calendar on a weekend? So I think we really took the week off from

00:01:49 ◼   ► our curling calendar in my birthday and just kind of took it easy. And it was nice to have that.

00:01:56 ◼   ► Talk to my mom, talk to my kids. Yeah, nice day. Perfectly nice day. Would have been nice to spend

00:02:02 ◼   ► a little more of it outside, but at most of the day it was hovering about 98, 99 degrees. And I

00:02:09 ◼   ► did not want to do that. So it didn't do that. Gave the dog a bath, decided to hose her down.

00:02:15 ◼   ► We washed the cars on Saturday and then I thought, oh, it's a hot day and there's a hose. So we hosed

00:02:21 ◼   ► down the dog. And I think the dog did not appreciate the cold water. So she was sad

00:02:27 ◼   ► afterward, but then she was clean. So yeah, it was just a home weekend. It was good. It was good.

00:02:32 ◼   ► Well, I'm pleased that you're relaxed. If you would like to send in a question to help us

00:02:36 ◼   ► answer a future episode of the show, just go to upgradefeedback.com and send in your own

00:02:41 ◼   ► Snow Talk question. Thank you to me for asking that one. It's time for some follow up. I would

00:02:47 ◼   ► just like to give a final thank you for our St. Jude campaign this year. The final toll tool that

00:02:52 ◼   ► the relay community raised for St. Jude Children's Research Hospital was $1,078,348 for the kids of

00:03:01 ◼   ► St. Jude. Thank you so much. Amazing. Amazing. Thank you so much. How? An incredible achievement

00:03:08 ◼   ► that we pulled off together and I'm so, so proud of all of us. To everyone. Thank you.

00:03:11 ◼   ► Steve wrote in and said, one thing that you didn't mention in regards to AR glasses is the difficulty

00:03:20 ◼   ► Apple would face in the glasses market with Meta/Luxottica "owning" many classic styles,

00:03:27 ◼   ► having existing partnerships with essentially every glasses and sunglasses retailer. So

00:03:32 ◼   ► Meta with their Ray-Bans are working with a company with a very long name that is just

00:03:40 ◼   ► essentially known as Luxottica. Luxottica, they have an absolute monopoly on glasses. They own

00:03:46 ◼   ► so many brands, huge. I'll put their Wikipedia page in the show notes. And a lot of the styles

00:03:54 ◼   ► of sunglasses that you, or glasses that you may know, Luxottica owns that design. And it's one of

00:04:01 ◼   ► the reasons that Meta has partnered with them because they get to benefit from Luxottica's

00:04:06 ◼   ► design prowess and the IP that they own. So it could be complicated for Apple to design

00:04:14 ◼   ► what would be considered a quote unquote classic style or like any kind of like,

00:04:20 ◼   ► "Oh, I've seen this style before because Luxottica own it." I think that could be complicated from

00:04:26 ◼   ► them. Yeah, could be. I mean, Apple's got a lot of money, but you know, we also know that Apple

00:04:32 ◼   ► can be cheap and doesn't want to pay for like oxygen sensor patents and things like that.

00:04:36 ◼   ► I also, Luxottica, it's interesting, right? Their agreements with Meta maybe,

00:04:42 ◼   ► money might not actually be the thing. So like Meta just signed a deal with them that is exclusive.

00:04:49 ◼   ► Okay. I think that's not what I was saying. What I'm saying is there are other brands. There's a

00:04:56 ◼   ► giant number one, but there's money and there's other companies out there that are at least

00:05:01 ◼   ► scrapping by. Now I would also say, I hope Meta is paying Luxottica really well because if Luxottica

00:05:07 ◼   ► truly has an entirely exclusive arrangement with Meta, when there's another big fish out there that

00:05:13 ◼   ► might be interested in spending a lot of money, that exclusive deal, if it's exclusive to Luxottica

00:05:19 ◼   ► and not exclusive to specific brands, I hope it gets real expensive for Meta because Luxottica

00:05:27 ◼   ► could realize that there are other tech companies that want to give them lots of money too.

00:05:31 ◼   ► So there's complexity here. I mean, we'll see. I think we can. So thank you, Steve. Now we've

00:05:36 ◼   ► mentioned it. And now I will say, I don't think it's a barrier to entry. Like if Apple wants to

00:05:42 ◼   ► do this, they'll do it, but they will not be able to swoop in and say, "Oh, well, I mean like Meta.

00:05:48 ◼   ► Meta was like literally, "Hey Ray-Bans, what could be more well-known and iconic?" And they swooped

00:05:54 ◼   ► in and made that essentially an adjunct to their product. That is smart and it's a coup and it's

00:06:02 ◼   ► going to be hard. But again, Apple has a lot of money and a lot of interest and there's either

00:06:09 ◼   ► competitors who are hungry who think that the only way for them to get a leg up against Luxottica is

00:06:14 ◼   ► to partner with Apple. That kind of thing could happen. And also, I don't know the details, but

00:06:18 ◼   ► I would say that either Luxottica will rethink the exclusivity of their partnership with Meta if

00:06:26 ◼   ► other expensive deep-pocketed tech companies come calling or is the exclusivity more limited.

00:06:32 ◼   ► And I know that there's some people who are like, "Meta wants to buy Luxottica," which is interesting,

00:06:36 ◼   ► right? Because most of Meta's business is not eyeglasses. But even if that were the case,

00:06:43 ◼   ► I think if you're Luxottica, you look at that and say, "Is that the best way for us to run

00:06:49 ◼   ► our business?" If this is going to be a future category and there are going to be other deep

00:06:53 ◼   ► pocketed companies. It's something to watch. It's definitely something to watch, but Meta gets the

00:06:58 ◼   ► first mover advantage here. Yeah, I think that they would love to buy them, but just it's too

00:07:02 ◼   ► complicated now. I would be surprised if Meta is ever allowed to buy another company ever again.

00:07:07 ◼   ► I think that that time may have ended for Meta. I think they've bought all the companies they

00:07:14 ◼   ► could buy. It is so funny. There are all these really weird deals now, where a company doesn't

00:07:21 ◼   ► buy another company. It just hires everyone from said company and gives everybody stock.

00:07:27 ◼   ► I think Microsoft just did that recently with an AI company, where they hired everybody. They made

00:07:33 ◼   ► their CEO the CEO of Microsoft AI and was like, "Yeah, but we're not acquiring them." It's like,

00:07:38 ◼   ► "Okay, whatever you say." Jason, I want to know what happened to your Mac Mini.

00:07:44 ◼   ► Oh, yes. Mac Studio. Mac Studio. Sorry. Yes, it's not a Mac Mini. You're getting ahead of yourself.

00:07:50 ◼   ► You're so excited about that. I can't stop thinking about it every day. Everything looks

00:07:54 ◼   ► like a Mac Mini to now. I got a new Mac Mini in my pocket. I got a Mac Mini hanging on a wall.

00:08:02 ◼   ► Everywhere Mike looks, it's just another Mac Mini. I watch TV on my Mac Mini. Mac Studio M1 that I've

00:08:08 ◼   ► had since it came out. I really love it. I told the story when we were in Memphis of how I had a

00:08:16 ◼   ► cascading series of events, failed, could not personalize, was a software update. The

00:08:23 ◼   ► complication there was that I was having another issue where I had extensions that it wanted to

00:08:27 ◼   ► re-sign every time, but would never re-sign or re-approve or whatever. I was getting these alerts

00:08:33 ◼   ► every time I started at my Mac saying, "Oh, there are these things. You should restart," but the

00:08:37 ◼   ► restart never fixed it. The solution there is to do a software update, or at least that has helped

00:08:41 ◼   ► in the past. Software updates failed. All the different versions would not update. We got some

00:08:48 ◼   ► anonymous feedback that this might be a good time for it if you want to throw it in there.

00:08:51 ◼   ► Yep. So the personalization failure Jason experienced was the result of an issue Apple

00:08:58 ◼   ► identified for many enterprise customers. There was an odd scenario recently where if an update

00:09:04 ◼   ► had been installed between a specific date range, a device signature would not match when you went

00:09:09 ◼   ► to install the next update. Apple has addressed this by modifying a check server side, allowing

00:09:14 ◼   ► these unexpected signatures. Interesting. So a little tidbit there about what might've been

00:09:20 ◼   ► going on, but anyway, I ended up stuck. And so I decided to, when I looked this up, they said,

00:09:26 ◼   ► "Well, here's what you can do. First thing is you can put your, you reinstall." So I just went into

00:09:32 ◼   ► the recovery and tried to do reinstall from there. Failed. Wouldn't do it. Did some more search,

00:09:40 ◼   ► and it said, "Well, you could do a revive." So you put your Mac in DFU mode, which is like iPhone

00:09:44 ◼   ► recovery mode for a Mac. It's an Apple Silicon thing, and you have to attach another Mac to it

00:09:48 ◼   ► via USB. And then from that other Mac, you say, "Okay, let's revive this computer." That didn't

00:09:55 ◼   ► work. At which point, what was left to me was restore. Now, I clone my drive every day, so it's

00:10:00 ◼   ► not a problem. I didn't have any, and I do a lot of stuff in iCloud and Dropbox. So I didn't have

00:10:06 ◼   ► data on there that I needed to secure in any way. So I thought, "Okay, let's do a restore."

00:10:13 ◼   ► And I tried to restore from 15 and 15.1 beta and 15.01 beta or whatever. I tried many different

00:10:22 ◼   ► restores and from back on 14. No restore image would restore. They all failed. This is where

00:10:29 ◼   ► I left it when I came to Memphis is all the restores failed. What was I going to do? It

00:10:35 ◼   ► was in DFU mode where the light on the front of the Mac studio helpfully blinks SOS and Morse code.

00:10:42 ◼   ► You know, it's cute. It's cute, but also not great. So now experienced Mac tech people

00:10:54 ◼   ► might have an inkling to what the solution was because I skipped a step here. I did. I skipped

00:11:03 ◼   ► a step. So here's what I did. I went to a website called apple.com and did text support and said,

00:11:15 ◼   ► "I've tried all these things." And they're like, immediately, fortunately did not try to make me

00:11:20 ◼   ► go through many other steps. They're like, "Oh, you tried everything. How about an appointment in

00:11:27 ◼   ► an Apple store with a Mac genius?" I said, "Great." And then literally they said, "How about in two

00:11:33 ◼   ► hours at your local Apple store?" I'm like, "Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it." So I took my Mac studio

00:11:39 ◼   ► in a shopping bag to my local Apple store. And they, you know, set me at a table and the guy came

00:11:49 ◼   ► over and he said, "What seems to be the problem?" And he's like, "Oh, okay." And somebody brought

00:11:56 ◼   ► out a monitor and a keyboard and a track pad and a cable. And then he came over and said,

00:12:05 ◼   ► "What seems to be the problem? What have you done?" All of these things. What did you do?

00:12:10 ◼   ► What did you do to this poor computer? And so I told him and his response was something like,

00:12:23 ◼   ► "Oh, okay. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to put it in recovery."

00:12:30 ◼   ► And I said, "All right." I'm trying to look up his name because I got his name. He was great.

00:12:38 ◼   ► Whatever his name was. Now I'm not going to... They sent me afterward. They're like,

00:12:44 ◼   ► "How was your visit with Jim?" Or whatever his name was. And the answer was, "It was great."

00:12:51 ◼   ► And now I can't find his name. Anyway, he said, "We're going to go into recovery." And I said,

00:12:54 ◼   ► "Well, I tried recovery and it didn't work." He said, "Well, let's just go in there."

00:12:58 ◼   ► This is the moment where I thought to myself, "This guy has seen everything." This is like,

00:13:04 ◼   ► he's seen it all. He's seen it all. He works at an Apple store doing Mac genius. He's seen every

00:13:11 ◼   ► possible failure mode there is. And this is the thing that I kicked myself after he said it,

00:13:16 ◼   ► which is what I did was I went to recovery and tried to reinstall the OS and it failed.

00:13:23 ◼   ► So I went to DFU and I tried to refresh. These are the steps you do when you're trying to

00:13:29 ◼   ► save the contents of your hard drive. When refresh failed, I thought, "Well,

00:13:35 ◼   ► everything is ruined now." So the next step in the DFU process is restore,

00:13:41 ◼   ► which wipes the contents of your drive. And then you move on with your life.

00:13:45 ◼   ► And at least I think that's what it does. But here's the thing. What I didn't consider is

00:13:52 ◼   ► if you're giving up on the contents of your drive, what you should do is what Dave or whatever his

00:13:58 ◼   ► name was at the Apple store did. Brilliant. Which is you go back to recovery and you go

00:14:04 ◼   ► to disutility and you wipe the drive in recovery. And then you reinstall

00:14:14 ◼   ► Sonoma in this case, not even Sequoia. Just reinstall. And I was like, "I don't know, man.

00:14:21 ◼   ► This seems pretty wild. It's refused everything." He's like, "No, no, no, no, no." And he says,

00:14:27 ◼   ► "No, if we erase this, we should be able to install." And I was like, "Oh, you went back?"

00:14:31 ◼   ► I thought once you leave recovery and head to DFU mode, you never go back. You've blown past that

00:14:39 ◼   ► barrier. Now you're in the serious stuff here, the weeds. You've ruined your computer unless you can

00:14:44 ◼   ► get it back. And the answer is no. Recovery is still there. You go back to recovery. So what I

00:14:49 ◼   ► did is I leaped over this missing step, which is once I was moving into "It can't be salvaged. We

00:14:56 ◼   ► need to nuke it from orbit." I didn't think, "Oh, I should just go back to recovery and wipe the

00:15:04 ◼   ► drive and reinstall it from there." I instead was like, "I got to do an OS restore from a disk image

00:15:11 ◼   ► from DFU mode." And I wasn't even sure if you could get out of DFU mode at that point and have a

00:15:19 ◼   ► usable restore or recovery. And you can. So in the end, we rebooted into recovery and wiped it. And

00:15:26 ◼   ► then I stood there as he went off to help other people. And I stood there at the Apple store for

00:15:30 ◼   ► 20 minutes while I watched Sonoma install on my Mac studio, sitting at a table in the Apple store.

00:15:37 ◼   ► And then it installed, and I shut it down and thanked him profusely and walked right out and

00:15:42 ◼   ► came back home. And when I got back home, I updated to Sequoia, migrated from my clone,

00:15:49 ◼   ► and was up and running shortly thereafter with my complete system exactly as it was the day.

00:15:57 ◼   ► Amazing. Oh, that's fantastic. What a great story. Into the story. Love that. Thank you to Mystery

00:16:03 ◼   ► Apple Tech. Thank you to, uh, yes, to, to how was your experience with Jim or whatever it was,

00:16:10 ◼   ► uh, which I, I wish I could find it now. Oh, Jim. It was Jim. How did Jim do? That was the email I

00:16:17 ◼   ► got from the Apple store. How did Jim do from one to five? One being poor, five being excellent. Jim

00:16:24 ◼   ► is a five. You know, Jim is a six, but there's no six. So I had to do five. Well,

00:16:31 ◼   ► Jim is a five and a call out on the show. You know, like that's how you go the one extra.

00:16:35 ◼   ► Here's another little tip. I know there are people from my Apple store who listen to this podcast.

00:16:40 ◼   ► Somebody at the quarter Madera, California Apple store who listens to this podcast

00:16:46 ◼   ► tell Jim how awesome he is. So many people know. No, Jim, not only was I impressed because look,

00:16:54 ◼   ► I've seen a lot too. And he, he jumped right over all the stuff I'd seen. And he knew exactly what

00:16:58 ◼   ► it was. And I was kicking myself afterward, but like, I just got the sense with Jim. He's super

00:17:03 ◼   ► positive, but Jim has seen everything. I mean, he's, you know, he's one of those people who's

00:17:07 ◼   ► like, Oh boy. I mean, I was going to Mac it professionals and asking them about this. And

00:17:11 ◼   ► they're like, I don't know, man. Jim was just like, Oh, I know it. I know what step you skipped.

00:17:17 ◼   ► Let's just go. And, and it all worked. So thumbs up to Jim. I like to imagine this is how Stephen

00:17:21 ◼   ► Hackett was when he worked at the Apple store. Well, did Stephen fix this for you?

00:17:26 ◼   ► He was like, is, is there a part inside your thing that's broken? I can sense it from the outside. I,

00:17:32 ◼   ► and I know how to take it. I, and in the dark blindfolded with one hand, I could remove that

00:17:38 ◼   ► part, uh, disassemble your entire Mac, reassemble it. Uh, Jim is like that. Yeah. Well, I mean,

00:17:45 ◼   ► thumbs up to Jim. Stephen's no Jim today. Right. Cause he didn't fix this, but no,

00:17:51 ◼   ► I bet he was like it back when, back in the day, that old Mac Mac together again,

00:17:56 ◼   ► that Mac book that you painted, you did that back when Stephen Hackett was in his prime.

00:18:00 ◼   ► Yes. Yes. Yes. He did. I was very impressed. He put it, he put the, the Mac that Casey

00:18:05 ◼   ► listen, I painted black back together and it booted shocking, shocking. He knows what he's

00:18:11 ◼   ► doing. He does about with that, with stuff from when, from back in the day,

00:18:15 ◼   ► deadline is reporting that the Brad Pitt, George Clooney movie Wolf's is the quote most viewed

00:18:24 ◼   ► Apple TV plus movie so far. No idea what that means, but I guess the good thing is this movie

00:18:32 ◼   ► has been successful for them when it seemed like Apple maybe kind of given up on it a little bit.

00:18:38 ◼   ► Yeah. I don't know if they'd given up on it, but they did a little bit. Cause it was going

00:18:42 ◼   ► to be in cinemas. Right. And they, they changed that. Yeah. I think that their strategy changed

00:18:46 ◼   ► and they're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Let's not do that. Yeah. I wonder what that means.

00:18:51 ◼   ► I wonder if they view it as making the best of a bad situation or if they view that as

00:18:55 ◼   ► adding a lot of value, it is, um, it came from somebody inside. Yeah. Clearly. Cause it was,

00:19:03 ◼   ► it was, I'm told the film boosted viewership by 30%, which is the thing that Apple decided

00:19:08 ◼   ► to give them. Also said executives are thrilled or something like that. Yeah, exactly. So this

00:19:12 ◼   ► is an Apple leak saying positive things about Wolf's. So take it for what it is, but they did,

00:19:18 ◼   ► you know, it's good enough for them to leak it and do some positivity about it for what it's worth.

00:19:22 ◼   ► I believe it. Yeah. I mean, Oh, I do too. Big names. Yeah. Draw attention to your platform.

00:19:28 ◼   ► Sure. Sigmund Judge from Mac stories is reporting that Ted Lasso season four will begin pre-production

00:19:34 ◼   ► in January that he's seen some information shooting sometime early next year. Yeah. It's

00:19:41 ◼   ► pretty wild. I, I, you know, Sigmund is the one reporting this, which is interesting. There's

00:19:46 ◼   ► nobody else reporting this and all the reports about it that you find are quoting Sigmund.

00:19:51 ◼   ► So we will see Sigmund who does the magic rays of light podcast, which is about Apple TV plus

00:19:57 ◼   ► segment has shared the information with me that he received. And I will concur that the information

00:20:05 ◼   ► that he has seen certainly looks like this is the case, but I don't think he can share his

00:20:12 ◼   ► information. I think the big thing that we don't know is what form will this take in terms of the

00:20:19 ◼   ► story having ended with season three, what do they want to build a new season or set of seasons

00:20:25 ◼   ► around what story do they want to tell? Is it actually Ted Lasso, right? Like, is it actually,

00:20:30 ◼   ► maybe they're calling it that right now, but will it be called that who's going to be in it really?

00:20:36 ◼   ► Right. And how much like, these are the things we don't know. Right. And is Jason Sudeikis

00:20:40 ◼   ► appearing in a, in a really limited way? Is he not appearing? And he's just going to be in it.

00:20:48 ◼   ► Is Brett Goldstein going to be in it? Boy, here's the thing that I think is funny.

00:20:54 ◼   ► When I try to imagine another season of Ted Lasso, I think they could do it without Jason Sudeikis,

00:21:01 ◼   ► the title character. I don't think they could do it without Brett Goldstein. Given where the

00:21:07 ◼   ► story ends up in season three, unless, unless again, and I don't think this is the case,

00:21:13 ◼   ► because I don't think Jason Sudeikis wants to do this, unless Ted Lasso season four just follows

00:21:18 ◼   ► Ted Lasso, in which case, spoilers for Ted Lasso, I guess, in which case it's a completely different

00:21:24 ◼   ► setting and a completely different set of characters. And since the breaking news about

00:21:28 ◼   ► this was that they were picking up the options for the British actors who are under the British

00:21:32 ◼   ► contract system, which is different from the American contract system, that suggests strongly

00:21:37 ◼   ► that the UK is a major component, if not the whole thing for Ted Lasso season four, in which case,

00:21:44 ◼   ► I can't imagine, like, I mean, good. It's good to be Britt Goldstein. Cause I think not only was he

00:21:50 ◼   ► one of the writers and it feels to me like if they're going to do this, it's the money truck,

00:21:55 ◼   ► after the money truck backs up to Jason Sudeikis' house, it goes to Britt Goldstein's house.

00:21:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, I agree. - And also backs up there. And he's going to have, you know, he was a writer

00:22:04 ◼   ► before, he's probably going to have a more exalted producer credit and a, you know, a maybe higher

00:22:10 ◼   ► level co-starring credit, because I don't think you can do that show without him. - I'd be surprised

00:22:17 ◼   ► if he wasn't involved. Cause like he's now in the multiple projects at Apple TV family, right? Like

00:22:24 ◼   ► that Apple seemed to be doing. Like if something works well and you have another idea, they'll do

00:22:29 ◼   ► it, right? Like he's involved in Shrinking. And I think one more project maybe in development.

00:22:35 ◼   ► So, you know, it kind of feels like they would try. - Shrinking is his show. Shrinking is his,

00:22:40 ◼   ► and he's not, he's going to be in it this season, I guess, a little bit, but he and Bill Lawrence,

00:22:46 ◼   ► the co-showrunner of Ted Lasso, they run Shrinking. Like Shrinking is a Ted,

00:22:54 ◼   ► is a Bill Lawrence, no, I keep saying Ted Lasso. - You keep calling him Ted Lasso, which is funny.

00:23:00 ◼   ► - Bill Lawrence, Britt Goldstein thing. And so, yeah, he's got a strong tie with Apple TV and,

00:23:08 ◼   ► you know, but to say like, you're going to do more in season four. I just, I can't imagine that show

00:23:14 ◼   ► without Roy Kent, even more than I can. I literally can't imagine it without him more than with Ted

00:23:19 ◼   ► Lasso, which is just a funny place to be. - And this is technically follow out. Jason's going to

00:23:25 ◼   ► be joining me and Federico on Connected this week. So if you've never listened to Connected and you

00:23:30 ◼   ► enjoy this show, maybe you like that. What I expect is imagine this show, but with more jokes.

00:23:36 ◼   ► It's probably what you're going to get. - Yeah, maybe so. I would say also, you could say,

00:23:40 ◼   ► imagine this show, but with Federico. - But with an Italian, you know, imagine that. - Just as a

00:23:46 ◼   ► bonus on top. - Sprinkling. - Yeah, just a little, little extras. It's the me and Mike dynamic plus

00:23:54 ◼   ► Federico Vittucci. - Or me and Federico dynamic plus Jason. It depends on how you want it really.

00:24:01 ◼   ► I don't know if we could say, I don't know what it would be that like the Federico Jason dynamic

00:24:06 ◼   ► with me. I don't know if that, if people have that much of a, yeah, I know what that is, but

00:24:11 ◼   ► we'll find out. - Federico's been on upgrade, but this is different because now it's, it's me on,

00:24:16 ◼   ► I've been, I have actually been on Connected. - Many times. - Sitting in for one of you guys

00:24:20 ◼   ► before. It's been a little while. So anyway, I'm, I'm looking forward to it. I'm happy to

00:24:25 ◼   ► go in there because Steven's, Steven's taking October off. And so I'm gonna, I'm gonna fill in,

00:24:30 ◼   ► I'm gonna help out, pitch in a little bit. - This episode is brought to you by ExpressVPN.

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00:26:22 ◼   ► for the support of this show and all of Relay. Rumour round-up time, Jason Snell. Yee-haw! Let's

00:26:30 ◼   ► do it. Let's ride out there. This is one of the weirder rumour round-up stories that I think we've

00:26:37 ◼   ► had in a while. Russian YouTuber, I'm going to say Will Zecom, claims to have obtained a production

00:26:43 ◼   ► unit of the base M4 MacBook Pro and has unboxed it on his YouTube channel. Yeah, I just want to

00:26:50 ◼   ► point out it's bananas that apparently this escaped from the supply chain. It's extra bananas

00:26:58 ◼   ► that it's a Russian YouTuber. A place where Apple does not do business at present, but I wonder if

00:27:09 ◼   ► there is a, you know, from a Chinese distribution center to Russia. It's the only way, right? Like

00:27:16 ◼   ► a pathway, right? That kind of makes more sense. And then the thing that made me laugh about this

00:27:22 ◼   ► is, oh, they got one of the new Macs. This is going to be really exciting. Oh, it's the base

00:27:29 ◼   ► model MacBook Pro with the M4 processor. A processor that, although it's only on the iPad,

00:27:34 ◼   ► we've seen already, right? So it's not the M4 Pro. It's not the new dynamic Mac Mini. It's literally

00:27:46 ◼   ► the base model MacBook Pro updated to the M4. So it's still pretty cool that a product that

00:27:51 ◼   ► has not been announced yet is somehow it's box and computer are in the hands of a Russian YouTuber,

00:27:57 ◼   ► but it's like the most earth-shattering, least interesting thing ever. So it's like,

00:28:04 ◼   ► I don't even know what to think about it, but great. And of course, we have no idea of knowing

00:28:09 ◼   ► if this is real, but it is just interesting. If this person is faking it, that is interesting

00:28:16 ◼   ► in and of itself, because this is like a very elaborate thing to do. So according to this video,

00:28:21 ◼   ► and not that interesting, that's the other thing is this, it's an elaborate fake of something

00:28:25 ◼   ► pedestrian. Yeah, which is, hey, maybe that's why it works. According to this video, the M4

00:28:32 ◼   ► chip that's in this Mac is 25% faster due to the 10 core CPU up from eight cores measured

00:28:37 ◼   ► with a GeekBank test. And again, we knew this, we knew this. There is a minimum 16 gigabytes of RAM

00:28:44 ◼   ► because it's the base model and it starts at 16. It has three Thunderbolt 4 ports instead of

00:28:51 ◼   ► up from two. And there is an availability of space black. Right, which the base model did not have

00:29:00 ◼   ► in the last generation. The space black was reserved for more expensive MacBook Pros.

00:29:07 ◼   ► So weird, but maybe it's true, maybe it's not. If it is true, this is fascinating.

00:29:13 ◼   ► Because all this product is going to be is, what's going to be interesting about this product is how

00:29:18 ◼   ► is the M4 on the Mac? Like there are some details like Thunderbolt ports that we don't know how that

00:29:25 ◼   ► chip, that base model chip plays in the concept of a Mac versus a one port iPad, right? So that's

00:29:32 ◼   ► interesting. And yeah, we don't know like thermal characteristics are different and all of that like,

00:29:38 ◼   ► but we have an idea of what M4 performance is already. What's more interesting are going to be

00:29:43 ◼   ► sort of like the computers that change their shape like the Mac mini and what happens with a pro

00:29:49 ◼   ► version of the chip. But I would say that this is the, you know, there's some tidbits here maybe,

00:29:55 ◼   ► but like also maybe not. So sure feels like, I think Mark Gurman reported that like the M4

00:30:01 ◼   ► models were already being able to be made because obviously the M4 chip exists. Whereas the pro

00:30:08 ◼   ► models were going to be available a little bit later because they have to put the M4 pro chip

00:30:14 ◼   ► into production. And so it's probably true that there are M4 MacBook Pros and Mac minis and iMacs

00:30:22 ◼   ► sitting in boxes in a warehouse, right? Or on a boat going across the ocean, something like that.

00:30:29 ◼   ► And this is Mark Gurman reporting that Apple will be making a product announcement in late October

00:30:35 ◼   ► that is focused on this first set of M4 Macs and a new iPad mini. Mark reported that he expects

00:30:42 ◼   ► these products to begin shipping on November 1st. November 1st. So it feels very much like that last

00:30:48 ◼   ► week, just as it was last year when they did the Halloween event. The last week of October,

00:30:56 ◼   ► we're going to have a lot of news, including new Macs and iPad mini shipping on on November 1st,

00:31:02 ◼   ► right after that. I almost called it Thanksgiving. Halloween. Also, you know what's really spooky,

00:31:09 ◼   ► Mike? What's the scariest thing of all? Money! I really don't want them to do the evening event

00:31:19 ◼   ► again. Like if they're going to do this, please don't do the evening event. The financial results

00:31:25 ◼   ► are coming out on Halloween. The financial results are going to be announced at 5 p.m.

00:31:30 ◼   ► Eastern on Halloween. So trick or treat, I'm Apple and I'm a bag of money. That is apparently what's

00:31:37 ◼   ► going to happen. And then Apple intelligence, Mark Gurman says, is going to be released. The 18.1

00:31:44 ◼   ► release is going to happen on the 28th. It would seem to me that the 28th or the 29th will be the

00:31:53 ◼   ► day that Apple announces this hardware and has it shipping on the 1st. It could be the week before

00:31:58 ◼   ► or something, but it feels to me like they'll do a video and there'll be a press event or something

00:32:03 ◼   ► like that. And it's all going to happen that last week because it's literally Apple intelligence is

00:32:07 ◼   ► happening that week. Gurman says the products are shipping that week on Halloween as everybody is

00:32:12 ◼   ► eating candy and getting into their costumes. The results will come out because who doesn't like,

00:32:17 ◼   ► like what do you have in that bag? Well, I got Snickers, Skittles, Jolly Ranchers and

00:32:23 ◼   ► $20 billion in revenue. And economic headwinds. I got a cocktail of headwinds in here. Yeah,

00:32:31 ◼   ► that is what are you going at as for Halloween this year? I am foreign exchange headwinds.

00:32:41 ◼   ► That's who I am. They're just terrifying. Anyway, so it's got to be that week, right? Presumably

00:32:48 ◼   ► they'll make an announcement at some point in there, which is great. So that's three weeks away.

00:32:52 ◼   ► Yeah, I was wondering if they would do the event the week before, but I think if it's just max,

00:32:57 ◼   ► then they don't need to, right? They could just do it like, "Hey, you can buy them today. They'll

00:33:03 ◼   ► ship at the end of the week." I know I've done that in the past. Yeah, I think that's a good

00:33:06 ◼   ► call that either the 28th or the 29th for an Apple event product shipping on the Friday. Yeah. And

00:33:13 ◼   ► it'll literally just be a video and they'll give it a week's notice and say, "Spooky, whatever."

00:33:19 ◼   ► And then it'll be that. Yeah. Actually the 28th, if they're releasing Apple intelligence on the 28th,

00:33:24 ◼   ► I think the 28th actually makes sense for them to do a big thing because they can also kind of like

00:33:28 ◼   ► toot their horn about Apple intelligence while they also talk about new Macs and iPads,

00:33:34 ◼   ► especially if that iPad mini and those Macs all support Apple intelligence, then that's part of

00:33:38 ◼   ► the story, right? The question is that iPad mini, but I would imagine that iPad mini will either

00:33:42 ◼   ► have an M series chip in it or a phone chip that's capable of running Apple intelligence. I have to

00:33:52 ◼   ► imagine they will. I think it's either going to be the A18 or the A17 Pro. They'll put in the...

00:33:59 ◼   ► It's probably the A18 they'll put in the iPad mini. I don't think they'll put the M chip in there.

00:34:03 ◼   ► It could be the M1, but I think what we're saying is whatever is cheapest that gets them

00:34:09 ◼   ► Apple intelligence is what they will do. And also again, it's like M series iPads come with a

00:34:16 ◼   ► separate set of features, including stage manager. That's true. That would be so bad on the iPad mini.

00:34:23 ◼   ► So I could imagine them putting whatever is the most capable and available phone chip for them.

00:34:31 ◼   ► I think that's probably it. So the A18, which is in the base model iPhone 16, I think is a

00:34:37 ◼   ► perfectly reasonable idea that they would just use that again and put it in the iPad mini. Because I

00:34:43 ◼   ► am a believer that they're not going to release any computing devices, Mac, iPad, phone that are

00:34:49 ◼   ► not Apple intelligence capable now. I think that that chip has sailed. So if they're going to

00:34:54 ◼   ► launch Apple intelligence on the 28th, it's a great day to do an event and do all of it and

00:35:00 ◼   ► roll it all together and say, here are some new. And that allows them to tell the Apple intelligence

00:35:05 ◼   ► story yet again. Which we've seen that they're going to do that. Like the September event

00:35:10 ◼   ► proved it. They're going to tell that story in because they want to appear to be at the cutting

00:35:18 ◼   ► edge. Yes. Yes. They're going to keep reinforcing, you know, pay no attention because they feel this

00:35:25 ◼   ► is an area of weakness for them. So they're going to keep on asserting it and pointing it out.

00:35:29 ◼   ► And, and, uh, that's just, that's, we're in the era where Apple is just not going to shut up about

00:35:35 ◼   ► Apple intelligence and that's just how it's going to be. So, so yeah, that would be my bet is that,

00:35:41 ◼   ► is that they'll do a video on the 28th and it'll have all of that stuff in there.

00:35:45 ◼   ► Speaking of new products with Apple intelligence, couple of stories on the next iPhone se.

00:35:51 ◼   ► Mark Gorman is reporting that it will have an edge to edge screen design with no home button

00:35:56 ◼   ► and a notch, not a dynamic Island, but, um, in the report and the Bloomberg report,

00:36:01 ◼   ► he references the iPhone 14 as a good product to look at that it will support Apple intelligence

00:36:08 ◼   ► coming in the spring of 2025. And Felipe Esposito at nine to five Mac is reporting that this iPhone

00:36:15 ◼   ► se will be the first device to feature you guessed it. Apple's own 5g modem. Here we are again,

00:36:22 ◼   ► another product, another first product to take the modem. Uh, apparently though this, this product

00:36:28 ◼   ► will come with some benefits to the consumer if they can ship it, uh, as it, this modem would

00:36:33 ◼   ► reduce battery consumption, especially in low power mode. Nice. Cause it's Apple's own Silicon

00:36:39 ◼   ► that they're, that they've done to build this modem. I mean, we'll see. Um, in this report

00:36:44 ◼   ► also say that they're going to, it's going to have a notch instead of a, instead of a dynamic

00:36:49 ◼   ► not a dynamic Island. Yeah. Yeah. So that's, I love that. It's like, what makes it the se?

00:36:55 ◼   ► What features are, is it not good enough to get? And it's like, we're not going to do the little

00:36:59 ◼   ► tiny cutouts and dynamic. You're just going to get a notch at the top. Sorry. That's what is

00:37:03 ◼   ► cheapest, right? Everything's what exactly what it is. Cause that's the goal here is so, you know,

00:37:09 ◼   ► but face ID, right? So that's no, no home screen and face ID is a big step up. Yep. Interesting.

00:37:16 ◼   ► You know, they could have done, I, I wonder about the, whatever is cheapest philosophy

00:37:22 ◼   ► that they do face ID and not a touch ID button. There is nothing to say that having that notch

00:37:28 ◼   ► means it's face ID. Well, yeah, I guess not. I guess it could just be a front facing camera and

00:37:35 ◼   ► all of that. Although the reason that you have that are my guess is that it is my guess is that

00:37:39 ◼   ► that's, that is the old iPhone 10 level face ID stuff that is cheap enough now that they can put

00:37:45 ◼   ► it in the se. And maybe the answer is either they want it to remain. Well, I mean, the truth is that

00:37:51 ◼   ► that touch ID unlock button is for iPad and it would have to probably be re-engineered for the

00:37:57 ◼   ► iPhone and they don't want to do that. So, but in the end, whatever is cheapest and most expedient

00:38:01 ◼   ► is going to be what's in the iPhone se. I think it will be face ID, but it doesn't mean it has

00:38:07 ◼   ► to be just because there's a notch, right? Like it doesn't, if they wanted to do that, they can,

00:38:12 ◼   ► but I feel very confident that that would just be a face ID system. You know, maybe like the

00:38:18 ◼   ► first or second gen one that only works in portrait or whatever, you know, like it can be,

00:38:22 ◼   ► they have the ability to make this thing as cheap, but the thing that, you know, some people will

00:38:28 ◼   ► care about, some people won't, like this will be the last time that a home button is on a product.

00:38:33 ◼   ► So you don't, you don't actually need a notch if you're not doing face ID because the width of the

00:38:38 ◼   ► notch is because of all the other stuff that's up there, the dot projector and all of that.

00:38:42 ◼   ► I would say that if, if the report was that this was getting the dynamic Island, it would be a

00:38:48 ◼   ► question about like, is, is it face ID or is it touch ID? Because the dynamic Island would,

00:38:54 ◼   ► would suggest it was a little teeny tiny cutout. But, um, given that it's the notch,

00:38:59 ◼   ► I think it's almost certainly face ID because they need all that space for the hardware to do it. And

00:39:04 ◼   ► remember that's, that's old tech now. I mean, that's the funny thing is that as expensive and

00:39:08 ◼   ► as complex as that tech is that's iPhone 10 tech that, so like it's time, it's time to put that in

00:39:16 ◼   ► the iPhone se. So now, now it'll be there. Yeah. All of this stuff while it is still like,

00:39:21 ◼   ► quote unquote, like the, the new stuff, it's not new anymore. It like, it really doesn't

00:39:26 ◼   ► do anymore. I mean, it feels like the iPhone 10 was recent and it's, it's not, it was a long time

00:39:32 ◼   ► ago now. What year was it? Like six years ago now. Cause it's iPhone 16 now. Right. So yeah,

00:39:40 ◼   ► I just wanted to check the name. It launched in November, 2017. 17. Yeah. Yeah. I just wanted to

00:39:47 ◼   ► see it. Like I know I could do the math, but I just wanted to know like, what was the seven

00:39:51 ◼   ► years ago? So seven years ago, the iPhone 10 hardware was amazing and would blow you away.

00:39:57 ◼   ► And seven years later, seven plus years later, it'll get in the iPhone se like it's, it's not

00:40:04 ◼   ► new tech anymore. Not at all. This episode is brought to you by Factor. Sweater weather

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00:41:17 ◼   ► Yeah. You can, you microwave it in a couple of minutes and then it tastes good. It doesn't taste

00:41:20 ◼   ► like weird, kind of like, I don't know what magic they do. It must be the high quality ingredients,

00:41:25 ◼   ► but even out of the microwave when you're on your lunch hour, it tastes really good. It does not

00:41:31 ◼   ► taste kind of weird and engineered like some stuff does when it's microwaved or even like,

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00:41:45 ◼   ► eating. Oh, it's so good. Yeah. This came up. I think I read this new, this is like new air copy

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00:42:33 ◼   ► So today Apple debuted a trailer for Submerged, which is the first scripted short film fully shot

00:42:45 ◼   ► for immersive video on Vision Pro. The theme of the movie, it's a crew, you're following the crew

00:42:53 ◼   ► of a World War II submarine following a torpedo attack. You're in a submarine that's under attack

00:43:02 ◼   ► and is there some water in there? Yeah, there is some water in there. The last thing you want in

00:43:07 ◼   ► your submarine is water, but it's in there. So you're going to be immersed.

00:43:11 ◼   ► Of course you're going to be immersed in the submarine in the water. You're going to be

00:43:18 ◼   ► Submerged. Yeah, anyway, the trailer looks great. The trailer is more of like talking about the

00:43:30 ◼   ► technology and this is directed by Oscar winner Edward Berger who was previously known for All

00:43:37 ◼   ► Quiet on the Western Front. And so in it you'll see Edward and he's talking about the production

00:43:46 ◼   ► and you see him wearing his Vision Pro. You kind of see how they have these like two weird circular

00:43:52 ◼   ► screens like for cameras, which is probably what they're using. I would assume they're using the

00:43:58 ◼   ► black magic cameras that they showed off at WWDC. That is what I would assume they're using.

00:44:03 ◼   ► I know I love that in the trailer it shows presumably the director watching like dailies

00:44:10 ◼   ► looking at the monitors and the monitors are a Vision Pro. It's like using a Vision Pro to see

00:44:17 ◼   ► what they're capturing. It's wild. It's a short film I expect. I don't know how long it will be,

00:44:23 ◼   ► but I expect it's probably like a 10-15 minute thing, but we'll see. It's going to be available

00:44:28 ◼   ► on Thursday this week. It'll be interesting to see what storytelling is like on something like

00:44:37 ◼   ► this. Yeah exactly. How do you do storytelling in this format? Because remember our criticism of

00:44:46 ◼   ► some of the sports highlights is that the quick cut format that works so well when you've got

00:44:51 ◼   ► a screen in front of you does not work as well when you're in an immersive environment. So how

00:44:56 ◼   ► does this director approach kind of creating that immersive experience? And it'll be interesting to

00:45:04 ◼   ► see. All Quiet on the Western Front, which was I think a past picture nominee, a very good movie,

00:45:08 ◼   ► really well done. It's really interesting to see. I assume Apple came to him and said we want you

00:45:17 ◼   ► to do this and we'll pay you and your production company a lot of money. He might be a big tech

00:45:21 ◼   ► nerd. I think you kind of have to be to want to do something like this. I think you've got to at

00:45:31 ◼   ► least care about it. I'm intrigued because you would assume presumably it will be following

00:45:40 ◼   ► someone or a group of people, but if they're on the left and something else is on the right,

00:45:46 ◼   ► like you've got to consider all of that. That's right, how do you attract the viewer's attention?

00:45:52 ◼   ► Whereas if you cut, you can point the viewer's attention wherever you want. If you're in an

00:45:57 ◼   ► immersive space where it's more like you're there, how do you draw people's attention to it? And I

00:46:04 ◼   ► don't know, right? It's a different grammar. It is more akin in some ways to an amusement park

00:46:11 ◼   ► exhibit than it is to a film. And so how does that work? I'm not sure anybody has the answer

00:46:18 ◼   ► for that, but I'm sure a lot of smart filmmakers have thought about it and have looked at the

00:46:22 ◼   ► technology and have thought of things to try. And so we will get another try at it that's not

00:46:27 ◼   ► a nature documentary or sports highlights. And I'm looking forward to seeing how that goes.

00:46:34 ◼   ► Who is the director of Wicked? John M. Chu. I know that Apple featured him before. He does watch his

00:46:42 ◼   ► dailies on the Vision Pro and loves it. He was on The Town talking about it as well a while ago,

00:46:48 ◼   ► I think. So yeah, interesting. I wanted to just follow up on the Vision Pro a little bit because

00:46:55 ◼   ► we don't talk about it very much. At least I don't really think we talk about what we like about it

00:47:00 ◼   ► very much because I think I can speak for both of us that don't use them as much as I thought

00:47:05 ◼   ► I was going to be using it because there just isn't enough happening. Stuff like this is

00:47:10 ◼   ► exciting because this is something, right? Here's something. Give me reasons to go there, yeah.

00:47:16 ◼   ► But I wanted to just like, we touched on spatial personas a little bit and the spatial persona

00:47:22 ◼   ► calls. We have like a FaceTime call and you're talking to someone. I've done a few more of these

00:47:28 ◼   ► from a business perspective. Me and Grey have been using it to talk. And I think that the Vision Pro

00:47:36 ◼   ► is probably the best co-working telecommuting device that possibly has ever existed.

00:47:42 ◼   ► It's fantastic. So why is it better than a Zoom call? Because I think I can speak for everyone

00:47:50 ◼   ► and say that when you're on a Zoom call, I mean, I anyway, I feel like I spend too much time looking

00:47:56 ◼   ► at myself in the corner to like, how am I sitting, how am I posing, all that kind of stuff. Right,

00:48:01 ◼   ► make sure am I in frame, all of those things. And also that if you're having a call with someone,

00:48:06 ◼   ► you want to be at least somewhat presentable. Well, that doesn't matter for these, right?

00:48:10 ◼   ► Because it's a fixed in time 3D version of yourself, which the quality that they have

00:48:20 ◼   ► been able to get to at these spatial personas cannot be overstated how incredibly lifelike

00:48:25 ◼   ► they were. And I will say, I was incredibly wrong. Like, I remember in the first demos,

00:48:31 ◼   ► and even in the beginning, I was like, the spatial, like the personas as they just were then,

00:48:37 ◼   ► were gonna be a flop. And like, they would be the digital touch of this device. Like,

00:48:42 ◼   ► I mean, I don't think we were wrong in saying that they were creepy and didn't work right.

00:48:47 ◼   ► Yeah, I just didn't think it was gonna, I just, I thought that that was like,

00:48:51 ◼   ► just they were gonna drop that. What happened is that they got way better.

00:48:56 ◼   ► And then the spatial aspect where they, which, I mean, it feels like a very weird hedge, right?

00:49:00 ◼   ► Where that, well, it's in a box. Like, well, why is it in a box? It's because we can't get it out

00:49:04 ◼   ► of the box right now. Okay. And then finally they got it out of the box where you've, you're just

00:49:08 ◼   ► kind of like in a space with people's personas and the personas are also better. And it's really

00:49:14 ◼   ► good. I mean, it's like, it's really, I try to explain it to people and they kind of don't get

00:49:20 ◼   ► it and I, you kind of need to experience it, but like we, we do occasional calls and you've now

00:49:26 ◼   ► done some with Gray too, where it's like you and me and maybe like Casey or, and maybe James

00:49:32 ◼   ► Thompson and maybe Steven Hackett. Like there's a different set of people who will pop into that,

00:49:36 ◼   ► that group from time to time. And cause you got to set a time to do it cause people otherwise are

00:49:42 ◼   ► just on, who knows what device they're on, but if they're on the Vision Pro and then all of a

00:49:45 ◼   ► sudden, like all of the artifice, all the window Chrome and am I in the shot and, you know, and,

00:49:53 ◼   ► and even vanity of like, is my hair messed up and all of that just goes away. And it's, it's much

00:50:01 ◼   ► more like you're just in a physical space with people, you know, and when you're in a physical

00:50:05 ◼   ► space with people, you don't take a mirror out and look at yourself, right? You don't do probably,

00:50:09 ◼   ► I hope not. I hope you don't do that. And so it feels much more, um, just much more natural. It's

00:50:15 ◼   ► just, it's, it's really very good. And then yeah, if you want to do, this is where SharePlay comes

00:50:19 ◼   ► in too, is like, if you want to bring in content, you know, everybody kind of like gets put in a,

00:50:24 ◼   ► instead of facing each other, like they're around a campfire, they're, they're all, they, um, it

00:50:28 ◼   ► moves you so that you're all kind of like aligned looking at whatever is being shown, but you can

00:50:34 ◼   ► still look around and you're still hearing the people coming from where they're coming. It's

00:50:37 ◼   ► just, it's very, it is really well done. The pro the problems are all about like, nobody has them.

00:50:43 ◼   ► What is the content, all of those other things. But like when, if you can find things to share

00:50:49 ◼   ► and people who've got a vision pro and you can, and that you're remote from, and you want to talk

00:50:54 ◼   ► to them in that use case, it's pretty special. Are you talking about you and gray using this?

00:51:01 ◼   ► Is this going to be a cortex episode at some point? I assume, but like, I don't know. He was

00:51:05 ◼   ► real skeptical about it. And I'm excited to know that you guys actually tried it because I know

00:51:10 ◼   ► that Metta has had some success and you guys use the horizon work rooms a little bit, but like in

00:51:15 ◼   ► our calls with spatial persona, I can't, when I heard gray skepticism about this, I was like, he,

00:51:20 ◼   ► he really needs to try this. Cause he blew his mind. And so like when, if we do these calls now,

00:51:27 ◼   ► that's how we do them. Like they're one of the really important things is the spatialness of it.

00:51:33 ◼   ► Like Apple uses spatial mostly to talk about sound, but with the spatial persona calls,

00:51:38 ◼   ► you're all within relative space to each other. So like, for example, if, if I bring a window

00:51:44 ◼   ► into the environment, I can point at something and you can follow where I'm pointing or like,

00:51:50 ◼   ► there was a moment, um, when we were on our call, uh, last week, uh, I had just my Mac display and

00:51:57 ◼   ► it just for me, cause I was going through notes and like gray could see that I was reading it

00:52:01 ◼   ► and he said something and I pointed at him and said, yes, right? Like that's it. And like, but,

00:52:06 ◼   ► and he said it worked so much for him because he could see like, it was how I would do things.

00:52:10 ◼   ► Like that's the other thing, the technology, especially with the facial scanning is so good

00:52:15 ◼   ► that you see the facial expressions that you're used to seeing these people make in real life.

00:52:22 ◼   ► The technology that they have created here is incredible. And I wanted to mention it again,

00:52:28 ◼   ► because I just feel like understandably, there is a lot of negative about division pro, but this

00:52:35 ◼   ► is truly the best experience I have had with it is these calls. No, I will say there's a bunch of

00:52:42 ◼   ► people asking my mouth still doesn't move, but that's not my problem. That's everybody else's

00:52:46 ◼   ► problem. It's true. It's true. It's okay. It's better now. It's not great, but it's better than

00:52:50 ◼   ► it was. You were like stone face before and now sort of like your face moves and your mouth maybe

00:52:55 ◼   ► moves a little bit. It knows that you're moving your mouth, but it can't see through your beard

00:53:00 ◼   ► to do that. That's a thing that they're just going to need to keep working on. But, um, no,

00:53:04 ◼   ► it's, it's really, it's really, I just, again, it's hard to describe this. Like

00:53:09 ◼   ► the, the sound plus the, the hands plus the face and the facial gestures and the facial expressions.

00:53:20 ◼   ► If you roll it all together, it's enough to get it over the edge to being like, it feels like I'm in

00:53:28 ◼   ► the room with that person. You put all of that stuff together. It's not, it's good. It's good

00:53:33 ◼   ► enough to cross this line where it feels more real and it certainly feels more real than like a zoom

00:53:41 ◼   ► does, which we've all gotten used to zoom. Everybody's in a flat little box on your screen.

00:53:47 ◼   ► This doesn't feel like that. This feels like I'm in a room or on a beach or wherever with

00:53:52 ◼   ► the people that I'm talking to. And, and that it is a completely different kind of feeling. There's

00:53:58 ◼   ► a lot of, um, it's, it's can be very impressive. Yeah. It's, it sounds so, it almost feels like

00:54:06 ◼   ► embarrassing to say in a way, but like it, these, these calls, it's genuinely as good as spending

00:54:12 ◼   ► time with someone. Like the way it makes me feel like I feel like I've actually spent time with the

00:54:18 ◼   ► person. Yeah. Our, our little hour that we try to do every other week and sometimes it comes off and

00:54:23 ◼   ► sometimes it doesn't, but like I'm hanging out with my friends for an hour and I, I don't get

00:54:28 ◼   ► to do that a lot because I work in my garage and my friends are all over the world. Um, but that

00:54:34 ◼   ► hour feels like just in-person hangout time. Significantly better than a FaceTime, like

00:54:41 ◼   ► significantly vastly, like hugely better. I feel a lot of times I have long FaceTimes and I feel

00:54:48 ◼   ► tired when I'm done. If I have long FaceTime, like long spatial persona calls, I feel energized. Like

00:54:55 ◼   ► it's incredible. And this is one of the things where like, to me, it's a shame that it's locked

00:55:00 ◼   ► behind such an expensive device. And I know that this is something that they're able to bring

00:55:06 ◼   ► to different versions and the quality that they've done it. And because I, I genuinely,

00:55:10 ◼   ► they have built something incredibly good and yeah, it's just, this is like, so frustrating

00:55:20 ◼   ► with the vision pro, right? That like, this is just such a good part of it, but then there are

00:55:25 ◼   ► all these other bits that just have yet to come to much, but this is good. You linked to, uh,

00:55:34 ◼   ► something on six colors that I thought was, was interesting. And it was, you linked to an article

00:55:40 ◼   ► about an article. I want to give it a backstory so we can talk about it. So in iOS 18, Apple has

00:55:47 ◼   ► created a new privacy prompt for sharing contacts with an app. Um, so usually like in the past,

00:55:54 ◼   ► I should say you, you could, you know, an app could say, would you like to share your contacts?

00:55:57 ◼   ► You just say, okay, and it's done. So it used to be incredibly easy, but now this privacy prompt

00:56:04 ◼   ► is work similar to the photos permission where you get asked if you want to share contacts and then

00:56:09 ◼   ► you get asked for which, and you can either share everything or you can do that thing where you just

00:56:13 ◼   ► choose some specific contacts. So basically Apple has made it much harder for a developer to get

00:56:19 ◼   ► that like blanket forever permission that they can scan and use all of your contacts for whatever

00:56:25 ◼   ► they want. So this prompt will also, I'm sure make people consider how they're sharing their contacts,

00:56:32 ◼   ► or they'll just forget about it and not do it. Therefore it will control how developers get to

00:56:39 ◼   ► scrape contacts for bootstrapping apps, usually social apps. The New York times, I think Kevin

00:56:44 ◼   ► Russ at the New York times wrote an article claiming that this process would mean kind of the

00:56:49 ◼   ► end of new social apps because there have been many instances over the years of social apps being

00:56:55 ◼   ► able to get started by using or abusing the contacts that people had on their phones, which

00:57:00 ◼   ► I think the conceit of that I actually agree with, but it seemed like that the article was kind of

00:57:06 ◼   ► making these claims and trying to back them on information that they were not sharing. You know,

00:57:12 ◼   ► if that makes sense. It was like, oh, I spoke to such and such person and they said this,

00:57:16 ◼   ► but I feel like as an opinion piece, this maybe would have been better, but it wasn't really,

00:57:20 ◼   ► it doesn't really seem to have been positioned as such. This article prompted Nick here to write an

00:57:26 ◼   ► article of their own, basically defending users with this rather than the startups trying to

00:57:31 ◼   ► invade the privacy of those users, which the New York times piece seems to, for some reason, lean

00:57:37 ◼   ► more towards, which then made you link to this in six colors, talking about the idea of Apple being

00:57:43 ◼   ► like Godzilla, which I liked where Apple can kind of just in its way, stomp on a building

00:57:50 ◼   ► and change everything. Right. Everything. So yeah, there's, there's all these layers here. So I think

00:57:57 ◼   ► Kevin Russ' piece, I don't like it. I think that it is way too worried about a growth hacking startup

00:58:05 ◼   ► bro, who is sad that he can't quickly build a startup by strip mining everybody's contacts.

00:58:11 ◼   ► And there are still apps that do this too, where it's like, if you want to join our like,

00:58:17 ◼   ► remember Clubhouse? Clubhouse is like, if you want to join Clubhouse, you have to share all

00:58:20 ◼   ► of your contacts with us so that we can spam all your contacts and we can build a social graph.

00:58:24 ◼   ► And it's actually kind of amazing that Apple has taken this long to take its approach that it's

00:58:28 ◼   ► done elsewhere and do it to this, which is selectively sharing instead of it being like,

00:58:34 ◼   ► we empower you to not share anything. It's like, we empower you to share whatever you want to

00:58:39 ◼   ► and nothing more, not your entire contacts list. And I'm not, I'm even leaving out the other thing,

00:58:43 ◼   ► which is the consent of the people who gave you their contact information. I'm sure they

00:58:47 ◼   ► didn't give you, you personally, their contact information so that you could share it with

00:58:51 ◼   ► everybody else. Right. And yet that's what's going on here. I feel like users are not just protecting

00:58:57 ◼   ► their own information. They're protecting their contacts information by doing this.

00:59:01 ◼   ► So I think Kevin Roos's piece exacerbated by a really bad headline, but even the piece is bad

00:59:07 ◼   ► too, I think, which is, it seems very worried about, you know, who will speak for the startup

00:59:13 ◼   ► bros and not about the fact that they are building businesses and getting investments and making

00:59:21 ◼   ► profits and selling out and getting rich by selling people's information. Right. That they're,

00:59:29 ◼   ► that they're gleaning from this, from an app permission. So Nick Here's piece basically says,

00:59:36 ◼   ► you got it backward. Apple makes this, makes this decision. We should look at it and say, wow,

00:59:46 ◼   ► it's kind of crappy that the guys like this guy that's quoted in this article extensively

00:59:51 ◼   ► have made a living starting up companies based on asking everybody to empty their address books and

00:59:59 ◼   ► give all of their contacts away to this guy. And that it's, it really should be the other way

01:00:06 ◼   ► around. And so Nick Here's piece is headlined, I do not care about impediments to a creepy growth

01:00:12 ◼   ► hacking technique, which is like, I think he's right. It, they got it all backward and it shows

01:00:18 ◼   ► you just how broken, I think some writers on technology's minds are about the fact that they

01:00:25 ◼   ► seem to be covering startups and not technology that impacts people. And that perhaps you should

01:00:32 ◼   ► be more user centric and a little less startup centric. I mean, tech crunch, I kind of understand

01:00:37 ◼   ► it. It's kind of their business, but the New York times, maybe not so much. I don't know. Maybe,

01:00:41 ◼   ► maybe it is. But the point, and, and, uh, I was talking to Dan Morin last Friday, I guess on the

01:00:47 ◼   ► six colors podcast about this too. I think the thing that's most interesting to walk away from

01:00:52 ◼   ► this whole thing is take just the fact that Apple made this decision. Isn't it interesting

01:01:00 ◼   ► that Apple at this point is so big and so powerful and the iPhone is so important that

01:01:08 ◼   ► any decision Apple makes has the potential to close off whole lines of a potential new business.

01:01:19 ◼   ► And we talked about this with like the app store and apps or policy saying, you know,

01:01:22 ◼   ► there'll never be an app that does this because everybody knows it'll just get rejected and how

01:01:26 ◼   ► Apple has that sort of power. But I'm saying like, even if Apple is literally just thinking,

01:01:33 ◼   ► oh, we did, we did, uh, photos and we did files. And now we're going to do contacts with our new

01:01:42 ◼   ► system that has an API and the picker is separate from the app. So the app can't see your contacts

01:01:48 ◼   ► and then you can choose what to do just like you can with files and photos. This is a new

01:01:52 ◼   ► approach Apple's taking that allows apps to ask for stuff without needing to be granted license,

01:01:59 ◼   ► right? You pick, you share the app only sees the stuff you share. It never gets access to your

01:02:04 ◼   ► library. And, and this year they're like, we brought it to contacts and you know, they do it

01:02:09 ◼   ► at WWDC and you, and you think, great, of course you did. Like why wasn't it already there? Yeah,

01:02:15 ◼   ► exactly. But it's, and I'm not, I really am not making an argument here about this. I'm just

01:02:21 ◼   ► saying it. When Apple does something like that, there are enormous ramifications almost every

01:02:27 ◼   ► time. And that's the Godzilla metaphor, which is, you know, maybe Godzilla just wants a sandwich,

01:02:33 ◼   ► right? Godzilla is like, Hey, well, little famished gonna, gonna walk down to my favorite

01:02:39 ◼   ► sandwich shop because it was huge and Godzilla is going to step on your car on the way there. And,

01:02:44 ◼   ► and if you, if Godzilla stepped on your car and you're like, oh my God,

01:02:47 ◼   ► I hope I paid my insurance because I need a new car. Now Godzilla stepped on it. That is Apple.

01:02:54 ◼   ► Like Apple, Apple sometimes makes tactical decisions to change the world, right? Other

01:03:00 ◼   ► times though, and I think that they're aware, I think there's awareness there, but I think other

01:03:05 ◼   ► times Apple's like, well, no, we just did this because it makes sense technically. Or it's a

01:03:09 ◼   ► thing that we needed to do because we wanted to protect users against this thing. Or we're rolling

01:03:14 ◼   ► out our existing privacy framework to another part of the data store on the phone. It's not that big

01:03:19 ◼   ► a deal, but like every move they make on the iPhone has potentially enormous ramifications

01:03:28 ◼   ► to create markets, to destroy markets, to ruin people's companies, to make new companies. And

01:03:34 ◼   ► that, and in that, I think that the original Kevin Roos piece is interesting because the guy's

01:03:42 ◼   ► attitude is basically like, well, I mean, again, a little more sympathetic to this guy than,

01:03:47 ◼   ► than I would be. But his thought is like, well, I guess this one's run dry. I'll go on to the next

01:03:53 ◼   ► opportunity. And that is what Apple can do just at the drop of a hat, just set in foot on the street.

01:04:02 ◼   ► They will close something off and create something else. And I just think as somebody who covered

01:04:08 ◼   ► Apple back when it was irrelevant, it is interesting to think about that and think about

01:04:13 ◼   ► what Apple thinks about it. What does, does Apple, every Apple move, presumably they're like,

01:04:17 ◼   ► what will this do? What are the ramifications of this? But like everything they do is like this

01:04:23 ◼   ► now. Literally Apple cannot make a change without it having a substantial impact on people or

01:04:31 ◼   ► businesses or, you know, or some thing out there because of their sheer scale.

01:04:37 ◼   ► One that I always think of with this is tracking transparency where, you know, absolutely for

01:04:44 ◼   ► whatever reason, Apple decided that they would make it much harder for, uh, developers, companies,

01:04:54 ◼   ► advertisers, uh, ad marketplaces. I think to be able to track users and serve them ads.

01:05:01 ◼   ► And in doing that, I mean, for a lot of companies, a lot of companies in tech and social media and

01:05:08 ◼   ► that kind of stuff, there was the pre-ATT and the post-ATT. I was listening to something recently

01:05:15 ◼   ► where they were talking about Snapchat and it's like, well, Snapchat, they made money.

01:05:20 ◼   ► They made money in like one quarter and then it all, then never again, because that strategy came

01:05:26 ◼   ► in. Like they'd finally kind of nailed their advertising system and then gone away again.

01:05:32 ◼   ► And it's one of these things where it's like, I agree with the, the idea around trying to give

01:05:44 ◼   ► people a choice for their privacy, but it's just a peculiar thing where one company has the ability

01:05:54 ◼   ► to change the fortunes of so many other businesses. Because like, you know, it's easy to focus on the

01:06:01 ◼   ► Snapchats and Facebooks of the world, but there are lots of stories of like companies that were

01:06:05 ◼   ► building their businesses selling ads on different platforms and it's become much harder for them

01:06:09 ◼   ► now post this. The challenge, and yeah, there's a lot of complexity here, but the challenge is

01:06:14 ◼   ► Apple didn't make it so that you can't track people and Apple didn't make it so you can't

01:06:21 ◼   ► share contacts with apps. What Apple did is make them ask or give users more ability to choose

01:06:30 ◼   ► what the scope of their sharing is. And we can argue that, and I actually would argue that I

01:06:35 ◼   ► think Apple hasn't nailed that give user scope thing and that it gets in my way more than I

01:06:40 ◼   ► would like as a user. You know, and maybe some of this is the way that individual apps handle this,

01:06:46 ◼   ► but like when I try to share an image in Slack and it's like, oh, currently you're sharing the

01:06:51 ◼   ► last five images that you shared in Slack. Do you want to pick from those? It's like, well,

01:06:56 ◼   ► of course I don't. I want to pick from my library and it makes me go and add it to the list and then

01:07:01 ◼   ► add it through. And it's like, well, that's not how that should work. And I'm not quite sure who's

01:07:04 ◼   ► at fault there. But the bigger point is it's not like you can't build a business based on your

01:07:10 ◼   ► social graph, but you've got to convince the users that it's worth sharing your social graph or part

01:07:15 ◼   ► of your social graph with a random company and you have to make the case. And you have to make

01:07:20 ◼   ► the case in the case of ATT, you have to make the case that you want to be tracked and people don't.

01:07:27 ◼   ► And I know that that can be self-serving for Apple because Apple considers itself the first party,

01:07:33 ◼   ► so it can track you on its devices for its purposes. And that's fine because they're not

01:07:38 ◼   ► selling it to anybody else or using it themselves for anything other than their existing things,

01:07:43 ◼   ► which is you already agreed to. You're using an Apple phone. Your knowledge is their knowledge.

01:07:47 ◼   ► And it's like a whole thing. And arguably that's unfair. And I know it got brought up like, oh,

01:07:56 ◼   ► but what about messages? Messages uses your contacts and mail uses your contacts. And

01:08:00 ◼   ► are they going to ask about that? I guess what I would say is maybe they should. Maybe Apple the

01:08:06 ◼   ► first time and it's going to be annoying, but if you want to be fair about it, maybe Apple,

01:08:10 ◼   ► when you open messages for the first time, it should say, hey, do you want Apple,

01:08:15 ◼   ► all your contacts to be available in messages? And here's what will happen is people say yes to that.

01:08:21 ◼   ► People will say yes to that. I believe that they should ask because Apple is making assumptions

01:08:31 ◼   ► about the trust people have in them. Why does a user who, you know, why does someone who buys an

01:08:39 ◼   ► iPhone, why do they like, oh, they're inherently like, oh, I'll just give it to Apple and not

01:08:44 ◼   ► WhatsApp when like WhatsApp might be what they trust to use implicitly, you know? The difference

01:08:49 ◼   ► is you are putting that information into your phone, which means that it's in your Apple

01:08:53 ◼   ► kind of system. And when you add somebody to messages, it's not leaving your phone,

01:09:00 ◼   ► really. Whereas what these apps are doing is saying, we would like to read your contacts and

01:09:05 ◼   ► copy them off your device, arguably. And again, this is one of those cases where you could make

01:09:10 ◼   ► a differentiation here, which is there's access to the contact information and there's copying

01:09:16 ◼   ► your contacts list and putting it on someone's server, right? And those could arguably be

01:09:21 ◼   ► different, but once the app's got them, you know, anything goes. So I would say like there's

01:09:28 ◼   ► on-device and there's also off-device and there's implicit trust with Apple.

01:09:32 ◼   ► And yeah, I guess my argument would be if people like really trust Snap or something, then like,

01:09:38 ◼   ► should they have an address book in their app that's not the contacts and keep it there? I mean,

01:09:44 ◼   ► Google has its own contacts that are not Apple contacts and they do it that way. It's one of

01:09:52 ◼   ► those things where the problem is sometimes I think Apple does this in very self-serving ways

01:09:57 ◼   ► because they are damaging competitors while they still have an advantage. But also this is the

01:10:02 ◼   ► complexity of it. And this is why whenever anybody says, oh, Apple just says that they

01:10:05 ◼   ► care about user privacy, but they really just want them all to yourself. And I hate those arguments

01:10:12 ◼   ► because it is not true. The reverse is also not true, right? This is when we talked about

01:10:20 ◼   ► all the issues about Apple and its security and privacy stance and how the EU says that some of

01:10:25 ◼   ► it is bogus. It's like, look, it is part of Apple's corporate belief. It is also a place where Apple

01:10:32 ◼   ► has an advantage. And that's what makes it muddy is I don't believe Apple is limiting contacts

01:10:42 ◼   ► to destroy tech bro startups so that they can control your social graph for their own

01:10:49 ◼   ► nefarious purposes inside Apple. I don't think that's why. I think Apple literally is looking

01:10:55 ◼   ► at that and saying, it's kind of gross that right now people are asked one thing and they get

01:11:02 ◼   ► complete access to the contacts. That's too much. And so what you could argue is that the growth

01:11:07 ◼   ► hacker guy, his whole business was based on Apple making a naive technical decision a few years ago.

01:11:16 ◼   ► Because remember what it was, is they were siphoning all of the contacts out. And so Apple

01:11:19 ◼   ► put in a permission to stop it, but it was a yes/no permission. And now Apple saying, let's

01:11:25 ◼   ► be a little more granular about this permission. So it used to be that the way your business model

01:11:30 ◼   ► was to get people to say yes. So Clubhouse was like, you can't use Clubhouse unless you give us

01:11:36 ◼   ► everybody you know, and then we'll let you in the door, right? So you say yes, and then we got you.

01:11:41 ◼   ► Okay, now you can come in the door. And Apple said, well, that's not great. Maybe we need to

01:11:45 ◼   ► make it so that if you want to use Clubhouse, you can share like five people. Or you know,

01:11:50 ◼   ► Clubhouse is gone. But that idea. So you could argue that growth hacker bro, he was taking

01:11:56 ◼   ► advantage of an inefficiency and a sort of a naivety about Apple that has now gone away.

01:12:02 ◼   ► And so that's why his attitude I think is actually pretty good, which is, okay, they closed that

01:12:05 ◼   ► loophole onto the next thing. What will I exploit next in order to make my businesses go? And again,

01:12:11 ◼   ► I mean, I'm a little judgmental about that, but at the same time, that's business. That's just how

01:12:15 ◼   ► it goes. I don't think Apple is out to destroy him per se, especially for their own benefit.

01:12:21 ◼   ► I think Apple looks at that and says, yeah, that's gross. Users shouldn't be forced to make that

01:12:26 ◼   ► decision. We should give users more control of their data and choose where to use it. And I do

01:12:31 ◼   ► think that's where they're coming from, but the fact that they benefit from things like app

01:12:36 ◼   ► tracking transparency, because they have personalized data in the app store based on

01:12:41 ◼   ► what you do and they can use it because they're the first party, muddies the waters. It makes

01:12:47 ◼   ► you question every decision they make because are they doing this to gain an advantage or are they

01:12:54 ◼   ► doing this to protect us? And the answer sometimes is yes to both and sometimes it's not. But in this

01:12:59 ◼   ► case, it's funny, and this is why I think it's important. It's funny that it's gotten to the

01:13:04 ◼   ► point where even if Apple makes what I would say is a fairly straightforward judgment about user

01:13:09 ◼   ► control of their data and privacy, people are still going to say, I can't believe Apple is

01:13:15 ◼   ► doing this. And that's the Godzilla thing, right? Like through, you know, through no fault of their

01:13:20 ◼   ► own necessarily trying to do something positive, they can still do a lot of damage and they may

01:13:27 ◼   ► know that they're going to do it and not care. They may not know. This episode is brought to you

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01:15:51 ◼   ► when you use this link, you're supporting the show. Notion.com/upgrade. Thanks to Notion for

01:15:56 ◼   ► the support of this show and Relay. Let's finish out today with some Ask Upgrade questions.

01:16:02 ◼   ► First is from Kevin. If Apple releases an Apple TV sized Mac Mini, would you consider traveling

01:16:11 ◼   ► with one plus a vision pro as a transportable workstation with a much bigger monitor than a

01:16:16 ◼   ► laptop? No. It's an interesting idea though, right? Like, you'd have this tiny little box

01:16:25 ◼   ► and your vision pro, and then you would have a powerful machine, potentially, depending on what

01:16:32 ◼   ► you've got inside of the Mac Mini, and you can connect it to your vision pro. I think that is an

01:16:37 ◼   ► interesting idea. I don't know how you would, it might be difficult to do it without a monitor,

01:16:42 ◼   ► though, like completely. Right. So no battery, so you've got to have power that's consistent,

01:16:49 ◼   ► which means you're not going to be able to do it when you're traveling or something,

01:16:53 ◼   ► but you could do it in like a hotel room or a conference room, and you're going to need to be

01:16:58 ◼   ► able to hook it up to a monitor, presumably, to set it up, or unless they can do some sort of a

01:17:03 ◼   ► quick... There's a lot that would have to go on for this to be a transportable workstation. I feel

01:17:10 ◼   ► like at that point you probably should just bring a laptop. Yeah, as Zach points out in Discord,

01:17:15 ◼   ► Federico could make it work. I'm sure Federico could build, and John, they could build a thing

01:17:20 ◼   ► that's got a battery and an HDMI thingy on it, and it comes with its own Wi-Fi, and it's all just,

01:17:25 ◼   ► you know, you pull the chain and start up the generator that gives it power and whatever.

01:17:31 ◼   ► I'm sure there's a way there, but it seems too fiddly to me. It seems beyond what it would be.

01:17:37 ◼   ► Useful for, but I mean, I guess what I would say is I could see a very specific scenario where it

01:17:43 ◼   ► might be good, but probably more likely I would just have a laptop. But this is the kind of thing

01:17:52 ◼   ► that is interesting, like that Mac Mini being small is interesting, and you will, I believe,

01:17:57 ◼   ► people are going to see a lot of this kind of thing, like people using this tiny Mac in

01:18:02 ◼   ► new and interesting ways. Like, I look forward to that time. But keep in mind with the Vision Pro,

01:18:07 ◼   ► you're still going to need a keyboard and probably a trackpad at that point, and that's the thing.

01:18:12 ◼   ► If you bring a laptop, you can still do all of this, and it is your keyboard and trackpad. It

01:18:19 ◼   ► has all the things in one piece, and battery power, and if you're not wearing your Vision Pro, you can

01:18:27 ◼   ► still use it. Like, there's just too much that, like, get a MacBook Air, really. Yeah, yeah.

01:18:32 ◼   ► Really is the answer here. Florian writes in and says, "Jason recently mentioned that he listens

01:18:38 ◼   ► to music while reading. What kind of music? Is it the same music, similar music? Is it with lyrics,

01:18:43 ◼   ► about lyrics? What do you listen to when you read?" You know, this is one of those questions,

01:18:47 ◼   ► and I knew when I said this that somebody would probably ask this question. I have a bunch of

01:18:53 ◼   ► playlists and stuff that are on my phone that are downloaded to my phone for when I'm on a plane,

01:18:58 ◼   ► and it's just it's just music I like. It's mostly music that I know really well. I think that the

01:19:02 ◼   ► one thing that is distracting when I'm reading or writing is if it's not music that I kind of know

01:19:07 ◼   ► by heart. I have a specific playlist that I use a lot when I'm writing. When I'm reading, the music

01:19:12 ◼   ► can be more broad than that, but if it's brand new, I'm not focused on what I'm reading. I'm

01:19:19 ◼   ► listening to the music and all of that, so it needs to be something I'm familiar with,

01:19:22 ◼   ► but that's it, and really nothing in particular. It's just the stuff that I've downloaded to my

01:19:29 ◼   ► phone so it's on my phone when I'm on a plane. There's nothing really more than that. When I'm

01:19:35 ◼   ► on a plane, there's nothing happier for me than AirPods Pro, noise cancelling, and playing music

01:19:41 ◼   ► while I'm reading a book. That's it. But I think that is the interesting thing, right? I think

01:19:45 ◼   ► sometimes they have specific needs when doing something like reading or writing.

01:19:55 ◼   ► If I'm ever writing or reading anything, I can't have lyrics playing. Yeah, I know. For me,

01:20:04 ◼   ► the more I know music, the harder I find it to concentrate. It needs to be stuff that I know by

01:20:12 ◼   ► heart, and it needs to be in a very specific range of things that I feel like are good fits.

01:20:18 ◼   ► I have a couple of playlists that are my go-to. I don't always write with those playlists going,

01:20:23 ◼   ► but if I'm being distracted and I have a deadline and I need to write something right now,

01:20:28 ◼   ► I have a couple of go-to playlists. But it's music with lyrics, and I just shuffle through them,

01:20:34 ◼   ► but obviously I know them so well, and they give me whatever kind of focus that I need that I'll

01:20:42 ◼   ► use them. But generally, more generally than extreme circumstances like that, I know people

01:20:50 ◼   ► have a problem with lyrics. I don't have a problem with lyrics if it's something that I know by

01:20:54 ◼   ► heart, because then it's just all part of the background, and then it doesn't bother me at all.

01:20:58 ◼   ► If it's relatively new or it's a song that I haven't heard in a while and I really like,

01:21:04 ◼   ► I will get distracted by it. But if it's a song that I play all the time and I know it by heart,

01:21:09 ◼   ► from those playlists, it's not an issue. And sometimes I'll shop, too. Sometimes it'll

01:21:14 ◼   ► absolutely be, again, for writing, for reading, it doesn't really bother me. Sometimes I'll be like,

01:21:20 ◼   ► "Let's try this playlist," and I'll sit there and I'll try to write and I'll be like, "Nope,"

01:21:23 ◼   ► and I'll move on to another playlist and try that one and see if I can get one that gets me in the

01:21:29 ◼   ► mood. - Bronwyn has a question for the author of Take Control of Photos, which now is in its

01:21:36 ◼   ► fourth edition, available at takecontrolbooks.com. This question goes as following, "I'm asking a

01:21:46 ◼   ► question to you. I'm having issues of iCloud photo library. I find it deeply slow to download photos

01:21:51 ◼   ► for many. It doesn't even keep the thumbnails on my phone, even though I have plenty of space.

01:21:55 ◼   ► When I go to share a photo or insert it into an app, it hangs on downloading. I have fast internet.

01:22:00 ◼   ► It feels like there shouldn't be an excuse for this. Do you have any suggestions or similar issues

01:22:05 ◼   ► with iCloud?" - Well, what I will say is I've seen this before. It's not most people's experience,

01:22:14 ◼   ► so I would recommend that you restart your phone. Maybe you turn photo syncing off and then let it

01:22:23 ◼   ► sit for a few minutes and then turn it back on. You might even want to consider logging out and

01:22:29 ◼   ► logging back into your iCloud account. - Put the day aside. - Yeah, I know, but it's the steps. You

01:22:36 ◼   ► need to do the steps to do it, because what's happening is it's got something wrong with its

01:22:40 ◼   ► photo syncing. The implication here is there should be no excuse for this. The answer is that

01:22:48 ◼   ► it's a bug and it's not working right, but that is not the experience that everybody has with it.

01:22:54 ◼   ► It would be one thing if everybody agrees that it's slow to download photos and doesn't keep

01:22:59 ◼   ► thumbnails on the phone and it hangs on downloading, but that's not the case.

01:23:03 ◼   ► Your library is in a half-broken sync state. The other thing you can do in the new version of

01:23:10 ◼   ► photos is tap on your icon in the upper right corner, and that's where all of the iCloud stuff

01:23:18 ◼   ► is now. You also could look at the sync status and see if there are any issues there. As usual,

01:23:24 ◼   ► Apple doesn't really let you do a lot of troubleshooting, so my recommendation is

01:23:28 ◼   ► do the things. Turn it off and back on. Turn syncing off and on. Turn iCloud off and on.

01:23:35 ◼   ► Do the things to get it to get back to where it is, and also be sure that

01:23:43 ◼   ► it's on wi-fi at night and sleeping so that it can download a lot of data and do analysis then.

01:23:50 ◼   ► Sometimes this stuff just clears up over time. Other times you need to give it a kick,

01:23:54 ◼   ► but that's it. It's not the usual behavior. That's all I have.

01:23:58 ◼   ► Sasha asks, "Do you use any cameras other than your iPhone's camera?"

01:24:03 ◼   ► I don't really. I have a Sony A6400 that I use for streaming, and I also use for taking

01:24:13 ◼   ► pictures of products even though I'm not very good at it, but if I ever need to do something

01:24:17 ◼   ► like that, like photos or videos of a product, I'll use that just because it is just a much

01:24:22 ◼   ► higher quality lens than what my iPhone produces. I've had my eye on one of those Fuji cameras,

01:24:30 ◼   ► the Fujifilm X100V, because every time I see somebody take photos of one of these,

01:24:39 ◼   ► they're just the most beautiful photos for my taste, but it's a very expensive camera,

01:24:45 ◼   ► and so that's just the end of that, really. I also have an A6400. It's above me right now.

01:24:52 ◼   ► It's primarily for video. It's my overhead shot or whatever. When Julian graduated from high school,

01:24:58 ◼   ► I took it down and put the battery in it and put a card in it, and I shot pictures of his high

01:25:03 ◼   ► school graduation with it. I'm not sure if I took it to Oregon for Jamie's college graduation,

01:25:08 ◼   ► though, because again, it's a whole other camera. I have occasionally done that for special

01:25:13 ◼   ► occasions. I have to be honest. I used to take out my DSLR back in the day and shoot product photos

01:25:19 ◼   ► with it for the website, and now I just use the iPhone 99% of the time for that stuff because

01:25:26 ◼   ► it's good enough. There's some stuff I want to get detail. The iPhone doesn't have enough

01:25:33 ◼   ► flexibility, but I agree. I can imagine a situation like that one that you would describe in the

01:25:38 ◼   ► graduation if you have a camera with a big lens. Just take that, but it's not your everyday thing.

01:25:45 ◼   ► If you would like to send us in a question, go to upgradefeedback.com. You can also send in your

01:25:52 ◼   ► follow-up there as well. You can check out Jason over at sixcolors.com and hear him here on Relay

01:25:58 ◼   ► and at the incomparable.com. You can listen to my podcast here on Relay, too, and check out my work

01:26:03 ◼   ► at cortexbrand.com. You can find us online. Jason is @jsnewll. I am @imike. You can watch clips of

01:26:13 ◼   ► this show on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube where we're @upgraderelay. Thank you to our members who

01:26:18 ◼   ► supported us with Upgrade Plus. You can get a longer ad-free version of the show each and every

01:26:22 ◼   ► week. Just go to getupgradeplus.com to find out more. Thank you to Notion, Factor, and ExpressVPN

01:26:28 ◼   ► for their support of this show. But most of all, thank you for listening. Until next time,

01:26:33 ◼   ► say goodbye Jason Snow. Goodbye Mike Hurley.