00:00:21 ◼ ► name is Mike Hurley and I have the pleasure of not only being here but being joined by Jason Snow. Hello, Jason.
00:00:26 ◼ ► Hello, Mike Hurley. It's great to have you back on the Upgrade program. I'm happy to be back.
00:00:32 ◼ ► I, I, between the last episode, which was from our friend Stephen Hackett, sitting here, and this episode,
00:00:39 ◼ ► um, you know, we, uh, we, I got to see you, well, I guess it was before that, I guess, I guess it was a couple
00:00:46 ◼ ► days before that, but we got to see each other. That was really nice. So welcome back. Thank you.
00:00:50 ◼ ► You're back in London, firmly placed in the mega studio. Welcome back. I have a snow talk question
00:00:57 ◼ ► for you. It comes from Stephen, a different one, but V, who wants to know, when one of your favorite
00:01:02 ◼ ► movies gets released in 4k, do you buy it again? Um, I mean, not always, but yeah, it happens. I have a,
00:01:10 ◼ ► I have a 4k Blu-ray player, so I will buy, like, movies that I absolutely love, I will buy the 4k
00:01:17 ◼ ► Blu-ray of them even, because if I want to have a real experience, and I don't do this that often,
00:01:24 ◼ ► but like a full experience, I will pop in the disc, extra work required to do that and all, but then,
00:01:30 ◼ ► you know, it is the super high disc bitrate and stuff, and it's really nice, for the ones that are
00:01:34 ◼ ► very special to me, but mostly no. But yeah, like, uh, they did a 4k re-release of, of, uh,
00:01:41 ◼ ► Real Genius, and I bought that. Star Trek 2, I bought that one. Uh, the Abyss finally came out in 4k,
00:01:47 ◼ ► so I was very happy to get that disc. So for ones that are very much my, uh, my favorites and special
00:01:53 ◼ ► to me, or sometimes it's with animated movies, um, if they're beautiful and I love them, like, uh,
00:02:00 ◼ ► the Spider-verse movies, I bought those. So yeah, sure. I think for me, it's like, it is a
00:02:07 ◼ ► reactionary thing, like, I choose, I want to watch, I choose a movie to watch, and I'm like,
00:02:12 ◼ ► oh, there is a higher quality version of this, or I think to myself, is there a higher quality
00:02:16 ◼ ► version of this if I have a low quality version? You know what I mean? Like, I press play, I'm like,
00:02:20 ◼ ► oh, this isn't good. Is there a better version? And, uh, sometimes there is. That's why I donated
00:02:26 ◼ ► all my DVDs, because all my DVDs that were not of things that are not readily available somewhere,
00:02:32 ◼ ► um, because I realized like, oh, this movie is just available, or I might even already have it,
00:02:38 ◼ ► but if not, it's streaming somewhere, or I can just rent it or buy it in 4k or HD even. And I'm,
00:02:46 ◼ ► because, so here's the story is the library, uh, will let you borrow movies, but most of their
00:02:52 ◼ ► discs are DVDs. They're not even Bluerus, they're DVDs. And that has to do with like the people who
00:02:57 ◼ ► are getting movies from the library, they're the most compatible, even though they're not the
00:03:01 ◼ ► highest quality, and so they offer them that way. And so we were talking about some movie, and then,
00:03:06 ◼ ► and the next day, Lauren brought it home from the library, and she was like, oh, I got this movie.
00:03:10 ◼ ► And I said, I'm never going to watch this on DVD. Let's just, we will just rent it for, on HD or 4k,
00:03:16 ◼ ► because standard, standard def, I think one of them she brought home was even cropped. It was
00:03:21 ◼ ► like four by three. And I'm like, we're never, never going to watch this. Never, ever, ever.
00:03:26 ◼ ► And it's like, yeah, I, I, am I, am I a snob who is not going to watch anything in SD if I don't
00:03:32 ◼ ► have to? Yes. The answer is yes. I only have a few discs. Like I got rid of all of mine. And like,
00:03:38 ◼ ► for me, they're the only ones I have that like they're special for some reason. Like maybe
00:03:42 ◼ ► they're, it's a signed Blu-ray or something like that, you know? Sure, sure. Like I have a signed
00:03:47 ◼ ► copy of Scott Pilgrim vs the Wild, like a right signed it. I think that was part of an auction,
00:03:52 ◼ ► like a charity thing or something like that. But, you know, so things like that I have,
00:03:55 ◼ ► but I, these are, these are discs I never intend to watch. Yeah. I, I have more than that. I have
00:04:01 ◼ ► maybe 20, 30 discs and they're, they're mostly either out of print things that are special or
00:04:08 ◼ ► they're 4k UHD where I've spent the money on the like super high quality version. And, but, but
00:04:14 ◼ ► even then a lot of those 4k's I've all, they're in my Plex. I've already converted them and they're
00:04:19 ◼ ► on my Plex in 4k. So I don't actually need to go to the disc, even though again, if I want the
00:04:24 ◼ ► highest bit rate, I will go to the disc. I do have a VHS copy of the, the usual suspects that I have
00:04:34 ◼ ► only because it is signed by the Flophouse. Very good. When Elliot, when Elliot moved from New York
00:04:42 ◼ ► to LA, they did, they had a live event and they were giving away a lot of Elliot's old possessions
00:04:47 ◼ ► that he didn't want to bring with him. And Lister Meher, friend of the show, thought, thought of me
00:04:54 ◼ ► which is very sweet and got Elliot's copy of the usual suspects and had them sign it. So I've got
00:05:00 ◼ ► that. That's a, so that's one VHS tape I'll hold onto. That's very good. Even though do I have a,
00:05:06 ◼ ► I think I have a VHS VCR somewhere that I could haul out that's for like old home videos or
00:05:12 ◼ ► something, but I haven't, haven't used it in years. So old media dies slow. If you would like to send
00:05:19 ◼ ► in a question for us to open a future episode of the show, just go to upgradefeedback.com and you
00:05:25 ◼ ► can send that in. Time is running out on getting a 20% off a new annual membership. So it's just
00:05:33 ◼ ► now until December 18th, you can go to getupgradeplus.com and use the code 2024holiday on an
00:05:39 ◼ ► annual membership and you will get yourself 20% off of Upgrade Plus. There'll also be a link in
00:05:45 ◼ ► the show notes. If you want to do this for yourself, just click it and you go right there
00:05:48 ◼ ► and it will be prefilled. Or if you want to learn more or give a gift to somebody else, it's very
00:05:53 ◼ ► easy over at giverelay.com. But if you subscribe to Upgrade Plus, you'll get longer ad-free episodes
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00:06:03 ◼ ► where everybody is hanging out when we're recording live. But what you want to do is subscribe to
00:06:08 ◼ ► Upgrade Plus because you get longer ad-free shows. You help support this show, which we appreciate.
00:06:13 ◼ ► This week on Upgrade Plus, we're going to be talking about Jason's new video game hardware,
00:06:17 ◼ ► which I'm incredibly excited to talk about. - And also some outdoor cooking hardware. It's
00:06:23 ◼ ► a hardware two for this time. I just want to be, I'm going to be a little like friend of the show,
00:06:28 ◼ ► Casey Liss here and say, this is the last, so people listen throughout the week, right? We
00:06:32 ◼ ► record this on a Monday, release it later on the Monday. But you know, it's a podcast. It's on
00:06:38 ◼ ► demand. You listen Tuesday, maybe you listen Wednesday, maybe it's Thursday when you're
00:06:42 ◼ ► listening now, but probably sometime during the week, since it's a weekly podcast, you listen to
00:06:46 ◼ ► Upgrade. I know I'm explaining how podcasts work, but I just think sometimes people aren't clear
00:06:49 ◼ ► about this. What I'm saying is this is the last episode where this offer is going on for the whole
00:06:56 ◼ ► week. So whenever you listen, you could go to get upgradeplus.com and get this thing. If, next time
00:07:03 ◼ ► we'll mention it, but it will only be for like a couple of days after we record and you might listen
00:07:08 ◼ ► to next week's episode and it'll be too late. So don't let that happen to you is what I'm saying.
00:07:12 ◼ ► Don't be that person who goes to Casey afterward and says, but I wanted to buy a shirt or whatever,
00:07:19 ◼ ► and it's too late. And I have a fun visualization trick for people here. Like, you know, maybe right
00:07:25 ◼ ► now you're in your car or you're on the train or whatever, and you can't go to get upgradeplus.com
00:07:30 ◼ ► to sign up by using the code 2024 on an annual membership. I don't know if you knew about that,
00:07:36 ◼ ► but that's how you do it. Get upgradeplus.com using the code 2024 holiday on an annual membership.
00:07:42 ◼ ► Um, what you should do is imagine the place you're going to the place where you will sit down or the
00:07:48 ◼ ► place where you will be able to use your phone, like picture that place in your mind. Like,
00:07:53 ◼ ► you know, like you see a thing that sits on your desk or you see a thing at the train stop that
00:07:58 ◼ ► you've got to go to imagine that place and think about it and tie the thought of get upgradeplus.com
00:08:04 ◼ ► with the code 2024 holiday, tie that in your mind with that place. And then when you get there,
00:08:09 ◼ ► you'll have a secondary reminder to go and do it and support the show and get upgradeplus.
00:08:13 ◼ ► Follow up. Ooh, follow up. So on last week's episode, you and Steven spent a lot of time
00:08:24 ◼ ► you were wrapping yourself up in knots trying to decide if you wanted to be that person.
00:08:28 ◼ ► It's a topic that actually I delayed a week. We didn't, we had a lot of topics the week before you
00:08:34 ◼ ► left. And we, I decided to defer that topic to when Steven was here. Okay. Because, you know,
00:08:43 ◼ ► he's, he, he last year, remember he was my like, uh, auditor, my Mac auditor. So I thought that
00:09:14 ◼ ► a lot of people are really angry with me because I dared to have an opinion that for my own
00:09:27 ◼ ► which is not what the article is. While I'm finally ditching my desktop Mac for something
00:09:35 ◼ ► It was more, it was more successfully inflammatory and it made it, it did inflame people. And then
00:09:40 ◼ ► they wrote me angry. You know, I wrote that whole thing about the Mac as the model. I got way more
00:09:44 ◼ ► angry email about me buying a laptop. I did about the Mac as the model. People care about their
00:09:49 ◼ ► computer choices, you know, they do. They do. But this was me writing about my computer choice,
00:09:53 ◼ ► not about theirs. And I was pointing out some things about how it used to be really bad to be
00:09:57 ◼ ► a laptop. I was a laptop primary user, right? A laptop was my primary computer up until the 5K
00:10:03 ◼ ► iMac came out. And then I was working at home at my desk and I got a big retina display, which is
00:10:09 ◼ ► my first retina display for a Mac. And it was great. But, but before that I used a MacBook Air
00:10:15 ◼ ► and a MacBook before that and a PowerBook. Like there was a long period there where I was docking
00:10:20 ◼ ► a laptop at my desk every day and then taking it home every night. So, you know, but it was
00:10:28 ◼ ► weird back then is basically how my article went. It was weird back then. And now most Macs in use
00:10:34 ◼ ► are laptops. And even the act of docking a laptop and using it lid closed with an external display
00:10:41 ◼ ► is, I would say, a common use case. No longer a weird use case, but a very common use case. And
00:10:47 ◼ ► because Apple controls the platform entirely with Apple Silicon and all the work that I think
00:10:53 ◼ ► they've done in the hardware and software side to support laptops better over this last decade plus,
00:10:59 ◼ ► as more and more people become laptop users, the experience is vastly better. And, you know,
00:11:04 ◼ ► the fundamentally, especially in the winter, I am working in two different places. And like,
00:11:11 ◼ ► I'm at my Mac studio right now recording this and I haven't used this computer since last Tuesday.
00:11:22 ◼ ► that isn't an expensive, you know, electric space heater that I'm using right now that has to run
00:11:27 ◼ ► for hours before I get in here to bring this big garage up to even like usable temperature. So I
00:11:35 ◼ ► kind of want to be able to go back and forth. And it was that moment of realization of like,
00:11:39 ◼ ► I want to be able to go back and forth between these two different workspaces. And it also means
00:11:43 ◼ ► that if I travel, the computer I'm using then is also the computer that I use all the time and all
00:11:49 ◼ ► the settings are the same and everything's been updated. And if I make a change, it's a change
00:11:54 ◼ ► everywhere I go. Whereas right now, if I make a change in one place, unless it's to a document
00:11:58 ◼ ► that syncs via the cloud, I go to the other computer. I just did that this morning where
00:12:02 ◼ ► I made a change to how I had to log into my remote server. And then I got to this computer and it
00:12:10 ◼ ► didn't do it because I didn't make that change here last week. I made that change on the other
00:12:15 ◼ ► computer last week. So, so yeah, I got a 14 inch. I know people love specs. People have specs. 14
00:12:22 ◼ ► inch MacBook Pro space black, no nano texture option. I don't need it. No, no texture. No,
00:12:30 ◼ ► no texture indeed. 14 CPU, 32 GPU, basically the base model. Okay. Like I said to Steven that I had
00:12:37 ◼ ► that I was looking at on Amazon, except the one thing that the Amazon deal didn't offer, which is
00:12:41 ◼ ► two terabytes of SSD, because I'm not going to go down, back down to one. My, my max studio is two
00:12:49 ◼ ► and I'm using 1.5 of it. And I don't want to live like that, especially since with a laptop,
00:12:58 ◼ ► You went with the, it is the M4, oh, sorry. I didn't mention it. Max. That's why I bought it.
00:13:03 ◼ ► Okay. So you've gone with the base level of the M4 max, which is 14 CPU, 32 GPU, 36 gigabytes of
00:13:12 ◼ ► memory. Rather than, cause this all started because I realized that the M4 Pro was actually
00:13:24 ◼ ► but not GPU because this has more cores and it was only like 4% faster or something. And I thought,
00:13:30 ◼ ► I wait a bunch of years and then spend some money on a new computer and it's not really that much
00:13:34 ◼ ► faster. It's not a great leap. And so I realized the Pro chip is not going to be where I'm going
00:13:38 ◼ ► to go. I'm going to go to the max chip because I want that extra GPU speed, the extra GPU cores.
00:13:44 ◼ ► I use that for some stuff I do, including like the whisper transcripts. And the, once I realized,
00:13:53 ◼ ► the core of it is once I realized the max chip is what I wanted, I thought, well, I could wait
00:13:58 ◼ ► around and get a max studio with a max chip, but then what do I do? I, I roll down one of my max
00:14:05 ◼ ► studios to the other room, but they're still out of sync. Plus I've got a MacBook Air or I could
00:14:10 ◼ ► get a computer with a max chip today. Well, I mean, I could order it today and it'll come next
00:14:15 ◼ ► week. Now it'll be like, it'll be here on Thursday or something. And I thought, well, that actually
00:14:20 ◼ ► it makes a lot of sense. Like I'm going to miss traveling with a MacBook Air, but the fact is I
00:14:24 ◼ ► don't travel with a MacBook Air very much. I try to travel with an iPad. If I need to bring the
00:14:31 ◼ ► laptop, it's because I'm doing work and podcasts and other things that are more complex. And the
00:14:36 ◼ ► fact is the 14 inch MacBook Pro, while it's bigger than the MacBook Air, like it's not a, it's not a
00:14:41 ◼ ► monster like the big pro laptops used to be. It's, it's, it's pretty light, light enough that it's
00:14:48 ◼ ► already a burden bringing a laptop with me. So bringing a little bit heavier of a laptop is not
00:14:53 ◼ ► going to be a problem and it'll be my computer with all my stuff on it, which is great.
00:14:56 ◼ ► It's a noticeable difference, but I think there is enough benefit for you that it makes sense to
00:15:01 ◼ ► have that extra thickness and weight. Like I think you'll be fine with it because, you know,
00:15:14 ◼ ► I've tried one of my Mac world setups was a, uh, with the, uh, with, uh, I don't, I actually had a monitor stand that had a laptop stand on it.
00:15:26 ◼ ► So I could have my MacBook Air open and it was sort of at the same height and all of that. And the fact was, I don't like multiple monitors.
00:15:35 ◼ ► I like multiple monitors. I don't like monitor and laptop monitor. Like I don't, I don't like that.
00:15:42 ◼ ► I don't like the size difference that there is between them. And I really don't like having the
00:15:47 ◼ ► keyboard and trackpad just out because it becomes too tempting to use it. Like to like just re-go
00:15:54 ◼ ► and that's like very bad ergonomic clay. I never liked the level, the height level that you get them
00:16:01 ◼ ► No, it, if it works for you, then great. But like, I don't like it and that's not the goal of this
00:16:06 ◼ ► thing. So it will only work, uh, lid open when I'm traveling or if there's a very like extreme,
00:16:13 ◼ ► because somebody was like, oh, well now you'll be using it all the time on the couch and all that.
00:16:17 ◼ ► It's like, no, I use an iPad. I'm not going to change that. I prefer the iPad for all of that.
00:16:22 ◼ ► I had a MacBook Air. I didn't use that on the couch. I'm not going to use this thing on the
00:16:26 ◼ ► couch. However, we were just talking about my mom's going to visit and she's going to be in,
00:16:30 ◼ ► uh, Jamie's room when she's here and Jamie's going to also be here. So she's probably going to be
00:16:33 ◼ ► sleeping out in the living room on the couch. And I, and, and I thought, well, you know,
00:16:38 ◼ ► am I going to go out in the other room? Maybe, but it's going to be cold out there most of the time
00:16:43 ◼ ► and not heated. And I thought, well, that's a scenario where maybe I bring in my work computer
00:16:48 ◼ ► and work in the house, but mostly no, it'll be mostly for travel. And that's fine. Cause then
00:16:54 ◼ ► when I travel, I'll have my computer with me, which I know for people who are laptop users,
00:16:58 ◼ ► doesn't seem like a special thing, but it is actually special because it, the way it's been
00:17:03 ◼ ► working, I travel and then it's like, Oh, what's on this thing. Did I update this? Is, is Photoshop
00:17:10 ◼ ► active on this or do I have to reauthenticate it? And did I install that software on here? I guess
00:17:16 ◼ ► I didn't. And all of those things that even in a world where we sync all our documents in the cloud,
00:17:21 ◼ ► all of those Mac maintenance things are still there. So I'm going to, I bought a CalDigit
00:17:27 ◼ ► Thunderbolt dock because the goal here is one. Yeah. Because the goal is single. Cause I got a
00:17:34 ◼ ► lot of stuff plugged into my Mac studio. Right. And the goal here is single cable in and out on
00:17:40 ◼ ► both ends. And I've got it set up in the back. It's a single cable, but out here in the garage,
00:17:45 ◼ ► I have a bunch of stuff connected that I need to connect to something else. A hub that then
00:17:51 ◼ ► provides me a single cable that I can connect to, to charge and drive the monitor and drive all
00:17:57 ◼ ► those peripherals. So we'll see how it goes. They're going to be some quirks. I'm sure I'm
00:18:00 ◼ ► going to have some frustrations, but I'm, I'm ready. I'm ready. What's happening to the Mac
00:18:06 ◼ ► studio? I don't know. Okay. I honestly don't know. I've thought about, I thought about selling it
00:18:13 ◼ ► cause it's still pretty powerful. Yeah. I also, sometimes I just hold onto things because then
00:18:20 ◼ ► I've got them. Yep. In my little archive of old Macs. So I'm considering that, but it's still
00:18:28 ◼ ► pretty powerful. So I haven't decided if I had done a normal purchase, I probably would have
00:18:33 ◼ ► looked at what the trade in value was for it, but I actually had a, had a friend give me a,
00:18:39 ◼ ► an Apple discount, which is nice. And then it's just out of my hands. Like just magic happens and
00:18:46 ◼ ► the computer shows up and my credit card is charged and I move on. So I have, I'm not quite
00:18:51 ◼ ► sure what's going to happen to it yet. Um, I have my, my server is an M2 mini, so it's great. I
00:18:59 ◼ ► don't need to replace my server. So I don't really know what I'm going to do. Sure. Why not? Just
00:19:04 ◼ ► like really beefy. Not doing much. That's a good retirement option for it, but I think, I think
00:19:09 ◼ ► probably I'll find some where else to put it. Yeah. Or maybe this laptop life doesn't work for
00:19:14 ◼ ► you. Like at the moment you don't know. Like in theory, like in theory, this is like a great idea,
00:19:19 ◼ ► but we're unsure of the potential small pain points that you've not found yet. You're not sure.
00:19:25 ◼ ► That'll wait and find out. I'm excited to see how this goes for you. So when is it due to arrive
00:19:29 ◼ ► this week? This week. So do you reckon next week we'll be, you'll be recording from the MacBook Pro?
00:19:40 ◼ ► but possibly not. We'll see. Well, I look forward to further, um, uh, updates on this one. Yes.
00:19:46 ◼ ► Yes. Just a couple of bits of follow up before we move on. So this is a not really follow up
00:19:53 ◼ ► to anything specific other than there being a new iPhone. Um, being on vacation, I used camera
00:19:59 ◼ ► control a lot more than I even normally do, right? Because I'm taking a lot more photos than usual.
00:20:05 ◼ ► And I have just some thoughts about camera control. If you have not yet heard enough of
00:20:09 ◼ ► them over the last few months, um, I continue to really like it as being like a quick way to get
00:20:14 ◼ ► the camera open. Right? Like it's, I can already press the button before I even got into the place.
00:20:19 ◼ ► Like it's just easy. It's on the side of the phone. I understand it. I want, I think Apple
00:20:23 ◼ ► made a mistake that the button press is physical, like an actual physical switch. It's too hard to
00:20:34 ◼ ► depress and especially trying to take a picture with one hand, right? So like you just grab the
00:20:40 ◼ ► phone and you just want to press the button, right? That is, I think it can be too tricky to
00:20:50 ◼ ► that the button is hard to press and like you actually don't get the blurry frame. Like you get
00:20:55 ◼ ► the frame before. Yeah, they are, they are trying to mitigate it because it does, it shakes the
00:21:01 ◼ ► phone. I think they know that. I think the system itself knows that and as I expect the iPhone has
00:21:07 ◼ ► always tried to account for that. But the thing is, it's like it's not as easy to press as it,
00:21:12 ◼ ► as I would want it to be. And I found myself on multiple occasions accidentally switching the
00:21:17 ◼ ► camera because I was just like swiping the button when I didn't mean to. I really look in 18.2,
00:21:24 ◼ ► Apple's adding a bunch of settings to the camera control and there's a lot of stuff in there and
00:21:29 ◼ ► it's not necessarily what I want. What I want them to add is take a picture with the force sensitive
00:21:36 ◼ ► part. Like just let me take a picture of it. Don't even need to press the button. So I can take a
00:21:40 ◼ ► picture by either just pressing it. Maybe it clicks, maybe it doesn't. Let me take a picture
00:21:44 ◼ ► in both ways. That's my new feature request. Does that, I think this, I do believe this would have
00:21:50 ◼ ► been a better experience if this was just based on how hard you press it. Not there being an actual
00:21:56 ◼ ► physical switch, but maybe someone at Apple can disagree with me if they tried that out. I don't
00:22:00 ◼ ► know. - Yeah, I agree with you. I think that this is a challenge with camera control. I'm starting
00:22:07 ◼ ► to feel like if they want to keep doing camera control in future phones, that they're gonna
00:22:11 ◼ ► need to spend some time sort of reconceptualizing it a little bit. I think it's too complicated.
00:22:17 ◼ ► I think it's a good idea and doesn't need to be as complex as it is. And you're basically saying,
00:22:25 ◼ ► I want an easy mode. Where all it is is a shutter. - And I've been working with that. Because I really
00:22:29 ◼ ► like having that button there. I like having that button there a lot. And I like that even it's got
00:22:34 ◼ ► a physical button to open the camera. Physical to open, right? I click it to open, just tap it to
00:22:39 ◼ ► take the photo. That's what I want to do. Just a light tap, tap, tap, and I'll be happy. Two pieces
00:22:45 ◼ ► of follow up from people that wrote in about what we're calling the HomePod Touch, which is the...
00:22:50 ◼ ► - Sure. - Ableson wrote in and said, "Regarding the HomePod Touch and projecting interfaces from
00:22:55 ◼ ► the iPhone like widgets, I wanted to mention the parallels of CarPlay. A simple screen device in
00:23:01 ◼ ► the home that reuses something like the CarPlay protocol for projecting apps would be for at
00:23:06 ◼ ► least a single user an ideal method of getting iPhone apps onto a square screen." So yeah,
00:23:11 ◼ ► we were talking a lot about many of the things that Apple have done in bringing widgets to the
00:23:16 ◼ ► desktop, notification mirroring, all that kind of stuff. CarPlay is an even beefier version of that
00:23:22 ◼ ► in a way, right? Like it's pulling all of the UI and everything from the phone that is nearby.
00:23:27 ◼ ► - Right, the phone is projecting... The right way to think of it is the phone is projecting a second
00:23:32 ◼ ► screen and it's going on the CarPlay screen and that's how it's working. And that is, yes, I mean,
00:23:37 ◼ ► Apple has built this technology or versions of it multiple times because projecting widgets onto the
00:23:43 ◼ ► Mac desktop is a different version of the same idea, which is I'm projecting something out of
00:23:48 ◼ ► the iPhone onto another device. The challenge with thinking of CarPlay and thinking of this device is
00:24:02 ◼ ► CarPlay doesn't work unless a phone is projecting its interface. And I think this is just,
00:24:07 ◼ ► this is the challenge is what happens when you leave? If you leave and another family member is
00:24:14 ◼ ► there, is it useless or do your widgets just go away? If there are multiple people attached to
00:24:20 ◼ ► the family who are near or using that device, what gets connected or projected or whatever?
00:24:27 ◼ ► Who wins, right? Two adults are in that house and there's a screen, like who gets the notifications?
00:24:43 ◼ ► - Like there being multiple people or have their own lives and funds, right? Like it's going to be
00:24:48 ◼ ► an issue no matter what and it will be intriguing to see how they resolve this. 'Cause in essence,
00:24:54 ◼ ► the way Apple would like to tell you that the HomePod works, right, is like as personal requests,
00:24:58 ◼ ► it should be doing voice detection. Whether that works or not, I don't know. But like that is the
00:25:03 ◼ ► story that they tell with the HomePod. But that's not how this one will necessarily work because
00:25:09 ◼ ► you don't have to in theory ask it to do something. It should always be showing something.
00:25:19 ◼ ► - Yeah, that's why I'm a little skeptical of dreaming too much about how personalized this
00:25:25 ◼ ► is gonna be if it doesn't have an app store. Because I'm not sure it's going to rely on
00:25:30 ◼ ► projected widgets from my phone to do something that looks like standby, right? Because of this
00:25:36 ◼ ► issue that there may be widgets on it, but I'm gonna guess like the widgets I use in standby,
00:25:41 ◼ ► one of them is from an app. And I don't think this is gonna offer that, right? I think that
00:25:47 ◼ ► this will offer some view into the data on my phone, but just letting me project an app.
00:25:53 ◼ ► 'Cause again, what happens when I leave? Does that go away or is it more Apple watch like where it's
00:25:59 ◼ ► like loading code onto it that runs when I'm gone? And if I'm gone, is there a loss of trust there
00:26:08 ◼ ► that it shouldn't be showing data? Like it just gets way more complicated when you're projecting
00:26:14 ◼ ► things from other people's devices that could appear or disappear on a whim. So it just adds
00:26:20 ◼ ► complication to it. - And Harvey wrote in to say, "To add on to the family of HomePods," so we had
00:26:25 ◼ ► the HomePod, the HomePod mini, the HomePod touch. What about the HomePod Nano? Could be a small
00:26:30 ◼ ► Bluetooth speaker made by Apple. Picture something Google Home Mini size that can recharge and go
00:26:35 ◼ ► anywhere. Love it. They should make a battery-powered HomePod. - Yeah, this is a cat...
00:26:40 ◼ ► Okay, so I'm just gonna lay it out here. This is a category that I think is dumb, but obviously
00:26:46 ◼ ► people like it 'cause there are products about it. 'Cause here's the thing, it's just a Bluetooth
00:26:50 ◼ ► speaker. There are so many Bluetooth speakers. Why do we have to smarten up Bluetooth speakers?
00:26:54 ◼ ► It's just a Bluetooth speaker. If Apple wants to make a Bluetooth speaker and call it a HomePod
00:26:59 ◼ ► and make some money, fine, go ahead. - You know, it's like a little AirPlay guy, not just Bluetooth.
00:27:05 ◼ ► You can do anything. Let's go. - I guess. I guess. You can get a perfectly nice Bluetooth speaker,
00:27:11 ◼ ► waterproof, everything for like nothing. So why does Sonos need one? Why does Apple need one?
00:27:18 ◼ ► And I think the answer is money is why. 'Cause people wanna buy them. So why not sell them one?
00:27:24 ◼ ► Even if it's Bluetooth and doesn't really make sense 'cause it should be a Wi-Fi device and
00:27:30 ◼ ► whatever. If they wanna make money on it, go ahead and do it. But I don't know why this category
00:27:37 ◼ ► needs complex products in it. There are a bunch of perfectly fine little portable Bluetooth speakers
00:27:41 ◼ ► out there. - This is your final call for nominations for the upgradees. The form will close
00:28:03 ◼ ► - Some British time that you might not understand. - Yeah. I'm just gonna close it when I get to it
00:28:09 ◼ ► on my to-do list that day. So get your answers in before Friday, your nominations upgradees.vote.
00:28:17 ◼ ► Again, don't tell us, "Oh, I meant to..." Just do it now. Do it right now. Or similarly,
00:28:22 ◼ ► remember where you're going and when you get there upgradees.vote. - Visualize. - And as well,
00:28:26 ◼ ► people say, "Ah, it's too many categories." You don't have to put in all the categories.
00:28:29 ◼ ► Just put in the things that you care about. - That you care about. - Upgradees.vote and it
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00:30:58 ◼ ► So according to Mark Gurman, Apple and Sony have been discussing a partnership that could
00:31:07 ◼ ► see the Vision Pro becoming capable of using the controllers for PlayStation's PSVR2 headset.
00:31:16 ◼ ► Now Jason, I'm excited about this because I get to use all of the information that I keep in my brain
00:31:22 ◼ ► about video games that I don't really get to talk about very often. So I would like to give a little
00:31:28 ◼ ► bit of information and history about the PlayStation VR because I actually think it is important
00:31:33 ◼ ► context for this discussion if you wouldn't mind me taking you down this little history lesson.
00:31:47 ◼ ► Yeah, lots of people do because it was at the time quite, well one, everybody had a PlayStation 4.
00:31:55 ◼ ► PlayStation 4 was incredibly well selling device which helped a lot. There was a lot of PlayStation
00:32:00 ◼ ► 4s out there and Sony released this hardware and they had a bunch of interesting games for it,
00:32:07 ◼ ► but it was also pretty fairly priced and was the easiest way at that time for somebody to get into
00:32:14 ◼ ► VR. Like Oculus existed but it was like connected to a PC, like it was a much bigger deal at that
00:32:20 ◼ ► time and PlayStation offered an easy way. It could develop a support, by and large outperformed what
00:32:26 ◼ ► Sony expected of it. It's reported that they sold over 5 million units of PlayStation VR over its
00:32:32 ◼ ► lifetime and it was interesting for Sony because they were actually able to reuse some technology
00:32:37 ◼ ► and some devices that they had. So Sony had something called the Move, like the PlayStation
00:32:42 ◼ ► Move and they had these terrible controllers which were these like ones with these balls on the top
00:32:52 ◼ ► Yeah, and they were able to use those controllers for this. So there was these interesting
00:32:56 ◼ ► stories that people would get their PlayStation VRs and the batteries were dead and the controllers
00:33:00 ◼ ► because they've been sitting in a warehouse because they hadn't sold. So it's like a very
00:33:09 ◼ ► obviously led to Sony developing a second version of the hardware. So the PSVR 2 debuted in 2023
00:33:17 ◼ ► and it was a very capable system. It had new purpose-made, much better controllers that are
00:33:23 ◼ ► essentially like actually really high quality controllers. And you know, they're not wired,
00:33:29 ◼ ► you know, like the wireless, they have lots of buttons on them, triggers, and they have all of
00:33:33 ◼ ► the great features that are in the PlayStation 5 controller and they're in these like form factor
00:33:37 ◼ ► for VR. But the headset was also very high spec. It had very high resolution screens, eye tracking,
00:33:44 ◼ ► foveated rendering, all of that stuff, which led to a $549 selling price. And you also needed a
00:33:52 ◼ ► PlayStation 5 of similar price. So this is compared to $399 for the original PlayStation VR.
00:33:58 ◼ ► I think more importantly than the price was that developer adoption has not been stellar for PSVR 2
00:34:06 ◼ ► and that has been the big story with it. It kind of seemed like even when Sony announced it and
00:34:11 ◼ ► then they were leading up to putting it out there, it kind of felt like they'd already given up.
00:34:15 ◼ ► They only had one first party developed game and it seemed like they weren't able to encourage
00:34:22 ◼ ► a lot of new developers to come to the platform. And the issue here I think is actually Meta is
00:34:26 ◼ ► the problem because they have been acquiring studios and signing exclusives for Oculus.
00:34:31 ◼ ► Like in the last year or two, there's been a couple of games that have been very well reviewed.
00:34:43 ◼ ► like critical successes, but they are exclusive to Quest. So this was the thing Sony didn't have
00:34:49 ◼ ► to deal with the first time around. It has been reported that Sony have shipped, not sold, around
00:34:56 ◼ ► 1.6 million units of the PSVR 2 and it's also been reported that they have stopped production.
00:35:02 ◼ ► They're not making them. You mentioned Meta. One of the problems also is just Meta existing. So when
00:35:07 ◼ ► I got the PSVR, the original, that was my first VR experience really. And it was great, right?
00:35:14 ◼ ► Astrobot on the PSVR, great, so good. Yeah, so good. Immersive platformer, so good. But Meta with the
00:35:24 ◼ ► Quest got over the hump in terms of affordability for quality. Yep. With the Quest and the Quest 2.
00:35:30 ◼ ► It's also more convenient. Like you know, with the PlayStation VR you still got the PlayStation
00:35:35 ◼ ► involved. You've still got a cable involved. This is what I'm saying. So it was standalone,
00:35:41 ◼ ► but with enough power to make the games good for a reasonable price. And yes, compare to the PSVR
00:35:48 ◼ ► where you had to run a cable, you had a weird adapter that you would attach to your PlayStation.
00:35:54 ◼ ► You had to have the PlayStation. You had a weird adapter and then cables came out to your head
00:35:58 ◼ ► where the thing was, right? It was so ridiculous. And so that was my first VR experience, but
00:36:06 ◼ ► you know, whatever, a year later I bought a Quest 2. And even though so much of the Quest is not as
00:36:13 ◼ ► good as PlayStation is, the difference was it was affordable, it was standalone, it was easy to
00:36:21 ◼ ► take on, take off and put on. Just the time of that kind of tethered product that Sony made the
00:36:30 ◼ ► first time kind of ended. And this was their response. And you know, again, they're tying it
00:36:45 ◼ ► - Yeah, like in the overall kind of consumer media, like gaming media, like the PlayStation
00:36:51 ◼ ► VR 2 is considered a failure. And even Sony have made moves that would suggest it. Like,
00:36:57 ◼ ► well, one, they still have not had another Sony developed game that I'm aware of even announced.
00:37:03 ◼ ► And they have added a feature to allow the PSVR 2 to work with a PC so you can play non-PlayStation
00:37:09 ◼ ► VR games. Now, like that is a move of weakness, right? Like kind of admitting to the people that
00:37:16 ◼ ► spent that money, we don't have enough for you. How about we give you another way to benefit from
00:37:36 ◼ ► and how we think that this has led to them not being able to support as many games as they could
00:37:41 ◼ ► have. - I wrote a whole piece about this back in June about how I understood why and Mark
00:37:48 ◼ ► Erman's report talks about this a bit too. He has made it clear in some of his reports that there is
00:37:56 ◼ ► a sort of Johnny Ive led philosophy with Vision Pro, which we can all see and we've all speculated
00:38:01 ◼ ► about it. We can all see it to make this product a different kind of product. It's like, let's just
00:38:05 ◼ ► use hand tracking. Let's just use eye tracking. This is what we're going to do. And my piece in
00:38:10 ◼ ► June basically said, I played games on the Vision Pro. They're not precise enough. I played games on
00:38:15 ◼ ► the Quest. The hand controllers are perfectly precise and wonderful. And I don't deny that
00:38:24 ◼ ► the hand tracking on Apple's product is superior. And I wouldn't want to have a Vision Pro that had
00:38:37 ◼ ► the hand controller experience is so superior. And just some of these games that I played on the
00:38:43 ◼ ► Vision Pro, they're just bad compared to the equivalent games on the Quest because the Quest
00:38:50 ◼ ► has the precision of the hand controllers. And so my piece basically said, Apple doesn't need
00:38:56 ◼ ► to make them themselves necessarily, but they need to find a partner or do an open API or something
00:39:02 ◼ ► so that developers have some, you know, have the ability to say, this is a game you can play. You
00:39:11 ◼ ► need to buy the hand controllers, but you could actually make a game that is of the level of the
00:39:15 ◼ ► Quest, which seems silly because we're talking about a $300, $400 product versus a $3,500
00:39:20 ◼ ► product. But that's where we are, where the Quest can play games that the Vision Pro cannot. And it's,
00:39:30 ◼ ► So Mark Goeman's report states that Apple's kind of doing two things. He doesn't say this clearly,
00:39:38 ◼ ► I think, but I think you can kind of get it from the way that he writes, that Apple is working on
00:39:43 ◼ ► supporting VR hand controllers and is working with Sony to make the PSVR2's controllers not only work,
00:39:58 ◼ ► you could, the iOS devices support Bluetooth controllers, but they always mention Xbox and
00:40:04 ◼ ► PlayStation. This is controller support again, except on Vision OS, and then they have to find
00:40:10 ◼ ► partners who make these things. I know there's like somebody who did a Kickstarter or whatever
00:40:16 ◼ ► that's doing it, but like having Sony's controllers and also knowing that Sony probably has a bunch of
00:40:20 ◼ ► controllers in a warehouse somewhere as the flagship for this, where they can say, you know,
00:40:26 ◼ ► we're going to support Sony's state-of-the-art controllers that are amazing and do all this
00:40:30 ◼ ► incredible stuff. But theoretically, it's part of a trajectory that leads to Apple basically saying,
00:40:36 ◼ ► if there are hand controllers, third-party hand controllers out there, we will try to build
00:40:41 ◼ ► support for them. Apparently, Mark says that this partnership was actually expected to be announced
00:40:48 ◼ ► a few weeks ago, but has been postponed and that the problem actually may be on Sony's side because
00:40:53 ◼ ► they've yet to work out the logistical processes of unbundling the controllers from the headsets,
00:41:00 ◼ ► because they do not sell them separately. So if they do, as we believe they do, have this like
00:41:06 ◼ ► warehouse of PSVR2s, I guess the question is, are we going to render these things unsellable?
00:41:13 ◼ ► Because if you break these things apart, now the headsets can't be sold. And so like, there is an
00:41:20 ◼ ► issue here, it seems on Sony's side of exactly how they want to handle this. Now they could just make
00:41:25 ◼ ► the controllers, but is that going to be worth it? Because again, we come back to that thing we were
00:41:29 ◼ ► talking about a couple of weeks ago, anybody making something for the Vision Pro, you ain't
00:41:34 ◼ ► selling a lot because as Mark Gummer adds in this report, he believes that Apple have not yet sold
00:41:40 ◼ ► half a million units of the Vision Pro. It's a tiny market, although you're also placing a bet
00:41:45 ◼ ► that maybe if you do this, you will sell some more of them. And then from Sony's side, I mean,
00:41:50 ◼ ► what I would say is if Sony has a few million of these sitting in a warehouse, they could probably
00:41:55 ◼ ► say, look, let's pull out 100,000 and see what happens. Yeah. Right. Because I'm sure that they
00:42:00 ◼ ► have a sense of if they really feel like they're going to sell them or not. So it's a logistical
00:42:05 ◼ ► challenge. I want to read a couple of quotes from Mark Gummer's report and we can talk about it a
00:42:10 ◼ ► little bit more. Beyond gaming, these hand controllers could be used for productivity tasks
00:42:14 ◼ ► and media editing. And Apple doesn't have any imminent plans to launch its own controller. But
00:42:24 ◼ ► the Vision Pro. This could be more of an Apple pencil like tool for precise control, rather than
00:42:29 ◼ ► in gaming. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that sounds like their compromise, right? Of like, could we do a controller
00:42:35 ◼ ► for it? And it was, remember there were those rumors that it was going to be like Apple pencil
00:42:39 ◼ ► support on the Vision Pro? Because there are a lot of sensors in there. But this, a wand, magic wand
00:42:45 ◼ ► for Vision Pro. I don't know. I mean, I keep coming back to my excitement about the potential of
00:42:55 ◼ ► products like the Vision Pro, and my feeling that its initial conception was, I don't know,
00:43:05 ◼ ► too ambitious, was kind of mis, was misguided by people inside Apple who had some really
00:43:12 ◼ ► highfalutin ideals that conflicted with the reality of what was possible. And you end up with a product
00:43:19 ◼ ► that turns its back on some of the best things of VR. Like, I understand Apple saying, "Look,
00:43:27 ◼ ► we're really good at the App Store, at least on iOS, and we've got existing apps. So let's focus
00:43:32 ◼ ► on being more of a spatial computing productivity platform." It's like, okay, but up to now, most of
00:43:39 ◼ ► the stuff that has been on VR has been games. And to entirely turn your back on those games that
00:43:47 ◼ ► really require that level of precision of a hand controller entirely. Like, we're not gonna even
00:43:52 ◼ ► make one available as an option. It's just not there. Just really misguided. - Yeah, or potentially
00:43:59 ◼ ► they're misguided in thinking that people would re-architect their games to support the hand
00:44:03 ◼ ► tracking, right? Like, something's wrong here, but neither of it is what you should do. - They did,
00:44:08 ◼ ► though, like Fruit Ninja, right? They made the Fruit Ninja version. It's like, it's bad. It's real bad.
00:44:14 ◼ ► And there's a Beat Saber-esque game that I bought, and it's also really bad. It's not-- - Or the
00:44:22 ◼ ► Vacation Simulator and Job Simulator, which they actually aren't as good. They don't operate as
00:44:27 ◼ ► well. I mean, they're fine, and they're fun if you've never played them before. But if you've
00:44:31 ◼ ► played them before with a controller, it's not as accurate on the Vision Pro. - Right. So the way
00:44:43 ◼ ► because it's two companies that are kind of desperate and are willing to think outside the box.
00:44:48 ◼ ► It is a question about the software on the platform. I do think that's a question, but I do
00:44:56 ◼ ► also think that there are developers who have VR products who could be persuaded to bring them to
00:45:01 ◼ ► Vision Pro if they could port them to Vision Pro without having to worry about their control scheme
00:45:07 ◼ ► being broken, right? I mean, there is some potential there. And Meta has snapped up a bunch of these,
00:45:13 ◼ ► but not only are there some of these existing products, but there's also stuff out there that
00:45:16 ◼ ► could be ported. But they're not going to do it without hand controllers, because they really need
00:45:22 ◼ ► that control scheme, and they're not going to rebuild it for Vision Pro hand controlling.
00:45:27 ◼ ► I think it's interesting to imagine a scenario where Apple could try and convince them. I mean,
00:45:36 ◼ ► they could maybe try and convince PlayStation. It's not outside of the realm of possibility.
00:45:41 ◼ ► That's my idea is, "Hey, why don't we make it so that the PS5 can use a Vision Pro as a VR input,
00:45:50 ◼ ► VR controller?" That would be weird. I mean, it would be weird. Yeah. It's all weird. Yeah,
00:45:58 ◼ ► yeah, it's all weird. I'm just like, if this is a partnership, you could make it like, "Oh yeah,
00:46:02 ◼ ► you're going to be able to do PlayStation games on your Vision Pro now too, thanks for our deal
00:46:06 ◼ ► with Sony." I mean, I assume Belkin and Logitech are going to be making controls if they're not
00:46:09 ◼ ► already. One of the two of them is going to be making a controller for Apple. Sure, sure.
00:46:16 ◼ ► You already mentioned that you wouldn't like this, but I was wondering. There's a lot of suggesting
00:46:28 ◼ ► in Mark's report that you would be able to use these controllers to do anything in the Vision Pro.
00:46:33 ◼ ► That is a thing you could do. Because they have all of the sensors, it could work pretty well,
00:46:42 ◼ ► you could select things. And I wondered, if that was a good experience, is this another way to get
00:46:50 ◼ ► to a cheaper Vision Pro? Like if you removed a lot of the requirements, a lot of the sensors that
00:46:57 ◼ ► do the hand tracking on the outside, and still did eye tracking, which you could still do, but then
00:47:03 ◼ ► also had the controllers for other more precise movements, could that be a way to get to a $600,
00:47:16 ◼ ► already does a decent job with hand tracking. It's not Apple Vision Pro level, but they're already
00:47:33 ◼ ► not Vision Pro level, but OK level of that. I don't know where all the prices built into the
00:47:39 ◼ ► Vision Pro, right? I don't know how much of that is the processors versus the cameras versus the
00:47:45 ◼ ► cloth straps and the stainless steel. I don't know where all the pieces are. But maybe, I think
00:47:58 ◼ ► Apple would still want to have that hand gesture interface be there, but as Meta has demonstrated,
00:48:05 ◼ ► there is to a certain degree, you can still do it at a lower price point. I don't love the idea
00:48:11 ◼ ► of having to use hand controllers, but the hand controllers can be perfectly fine for driving an
00:48:16 ◼ ► interface because Meta has shown that. Now, Meta has tried to go the other way and say, well,
00:48:20 ◼ ► you can also just use your hands. And there was something really nice about putting on a headset
00:48:23 ◼ ► and not having to find your hand controllers, make sure they're connected, make sure that the
00:48:28 ◼ ► batteries are up to speed, all of that, and having to dock them and charge them and all of those
00:48:32 ◼ ► things, having them not be part of the equation is really nice, but it would be fine. Honestly,
00:48:43 ◼ ► I think the issue is precision, that there are some games that just need a precision placement.
00:48:49 ◼ ► I think it's less about the eye tracking than it is about the hand tracking, to be honest.
00:48:53 ◼ ► I think that Vision Pro's hand tracking is good, but it's just like I did, I used Simple Piano
00:49:00 ◼ ► last week for Vision Pro, which came out. And one of the features for Simple Piano for Vision Pro
00:49:06 ◼ ► is a virtual piano. So I have a piano and I was able to do that, but you can also just,
00:49:12 ◼ ► on my living room or my dining room table, I put down a piano, a virtual piano, and I started to
00:49:23 ◼ ► and it looks at it, and it assumes that that other finger is down and plays the note, but that finger
00:49:29 ◼ ► is not down, it's still up in the air. And I thought, here are the limits of hand tracking.
00:49:41 ◼ ► controller, but my point is, with the hand controllers, the hand controller's sensors mean
00:49:48 ◼ ► that they know exactly where your hands are in space, by fractions of a second. Exactly how
00:49:54 ◼ ► they're moving, exactly where they are. And as impressive as camera-based hand tracking is,
00:50:00 ◼ ► if something gets in the way of the camera in any way, including another part of your body,
00:50:14 ◼ ► wireless controllers, you know exactly where those hands are and what they're doing at all times.
00:50:19 ◼ ► And plus they have buttons on them, which for games is really useful, because then you've got
00:50:24 ◼ ► instantaneous triggers, as opposed to trying to, again, making gestures with your hands is
00:50:30 ◼ ► something that Vision Pro does a really good job of, but it's got to do a lot of processing,
00:50:34 ◼ ► it's got to make some guesses, and that means that it's laggy and it's less accurate. So,
00:50:41 ◼ ► I don't know, I mean, I have a hard time imagining Apple making a Vision Pro or a Vision of some sort
00:50:48 ◼ ► that didn't support hand tracking, but I think you're right that there's a way forward here
00:50:54 ◼ ► that says, "Well, we have two ways of interacting with this thing, and one of them is precise and
00:50:58 ◼ ► one of them is less precise, and that's fine." It's going to be interesting to see if this
00:51:03 ◼ ► comes to something. Yeah, just, I mean, even if this thing happens, right, because it's supposed
00:51:09 ◼ ► to have happened, it hasn't happened, but what I'm going to take away from this, I'm going to
00:51:14 ◼ ► choose to be positive about this. Yes, me too. Because I wrote about this in June, like I said,
00:51:19 ◼ ► and in June I said, "Come on, Apple, you got to--hand controllers need to be part of the mix. They
00:51:24 ◼ ► don't need to be mandatory, not everybody's going to need them, but there are a lot of games out
00:51:29 ◼ ► there that could probably be ported to Vision Pro and new games written for them, but they can't be
00:51:34 ◼ ► done. They just can't be done without controller support, and you don't have to build your own
00:51:38 ◼ ► controllers. You can do what you've done with game pads on every other Apple platform, including
00:51:43 ◼ ► Vision Pro, I think, right, which is just you pair a game pad and a game controller and it works.
00:51:48 ◼ ► It's like, "Yeah, my PlayStation controller will work on my Vision Pro, and it's fine, or my Mac."
00:51:59 ◼ ► agrees with that, and that's good because I think it's the right move, and I think it's a
00:52:03 ◼ ► sign of Apple stepping away from one of these assumptions that they made when they built the
00:52:09 ◼ ► Vision Pro originally that have proven, like with those Belkin accessories, right, have proven to be
00:52:15 ◼ ► wrong and misguided, and that this is a sign that Apple is learning that maybe those assumptions are
00:52:23 ◼ ► preventing the Vision Pro from being successful. So I hope that's true. I mean, I'm happy to see
00:52:30 ◼ ► them continue to change and adapt the Vision Pro in public. Like that kind of is what this device
00:52:35 ◼ ► should be considering what it is. Like it is essentially like this future platform. We should
00:52:40 ◼ ► see it adapting and changing in front of us. Because then you feel like you're benefiting
00:52:45 ◼ ► as an early adopter in that way because you adopted it early. That was the point of it,
00:52:49 ◼ ► and now you're on the train as it goes down the track. I don't know what the contractual status
00:52:55 ◼ ► of something like the Vader Unleashed or whatever the game for MetaQuest, but like ILM, we talked
00:53:03 ◼ ► to them, right, did the "What If?" immersive experience. They worked on that too. They're
00:53:10 ◼ ► on MetaQuest, and it's like, "Well, why isn't that on the Vision Pro?" And the answer is it can't be,
00:53:15 ◼ ► because it's a lightsaber duel, and you just can't do it. I can't explain this to people who
00:53:22 ◼ ► haven't experienced it, but if you spend any time with a quest versus a Vision Pro, like my stupid
00:53:28 ◼ ► ping pong game, Eleven Table Tennis on the MetaQuest, it's so good. Can't be done. Can't be done
00:53:36 ◼ ► on the Vision Pro, because you need a level of precision of hand tracking on the controller that
00:53:42 ◼ ► a Vision Pro can't do. - It doesn't feel right. It breaks the immersion. You should be holding
00:53:47 ◼ ► something. - Well, in that case, it's true, but it's also, it couldn't do it. It just can't do it,
00:53:54 ◼ ► because it can't get that level of precision. So I hope they go down this path, because it doesn't
00:54:00 ◼ ► have to be mandatory. And I can't believe after all of that time where they were doing weird
00:54:16 ◼ ► controllers can be paired with an Apple platform device and work, including the Vision Pro."
00:54:21 ◼ ► But then with the Vision Pro, they made the same problem with hand controllers. The fact that they,
00:54:27 ◼ ► at their unveiling of the Vision Pro, they're like, "It's great for games. Look at this game
00:54:31 ◼ ► that you play holding a PlayStation controller while looking at a screen." Like, no, what are
00:54:37 ◼ ► you doing? So maybe they've gotten over it, or at least some portion of them has been given enough
00:54:42 ◼ ► latitude to try this. Great. Bring it on, I say. - This episode is brought to you by Ooni Pizza
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00:57:00 ◼ ► pizza ovens for their support of this show. So it is expected that, oh, the details. Hi,
00:57:07 ◼ ► we're in the details now. It is expected that iOS 18.2 will ship this week, right? If I'm following
00:57:19 ◼ ► >> Yes. >> And the expectation was always early December anyway. So I wanted to run through some
00:57:27 ◼ ► of the key features, considering you've both been using this beta for as long as it's been available,
00:57:32 ◼ ► which has been quite a while now. And kind of just give some thoughts on them and how we're
00:57:37 ◼ ► feeling with them now. We'll start off with image playgrounds. How do you feel about image
00:57:51 ◼ ► I've either been disgusted by or I've sent because I thought it was so bad that it was funny.
00:57:59 ◼ ► >> I found that some people, and whether this is their faces or my photos of them, some people,
00:58:23 ◼ ► that I have a few people for whom the illustration generation makes something that's amazing. I have
00:58:29 ◼ ► a picture of John Siracusa wearing a hat with a horse behind him, which is just baffling,
00:58:34 ◼ ► subject-wise. >> I'm going to include a link in the show notes to a blog post that Alan Pike wrote.
00:58:44 ◼ ► every time any picture of the illustration was not good, and I sent to Alan in that blog post
00:58:53 ◼ ► >> It seems like there is a problem where for some people, and I think both me and Alan are in this
00:58:57 ◼ ► club, that the illustration just makes us look like rat men. No matter what image we feed it,
00:59:23 ◼ ► >> Yeah, that being said, the Casey Liss story. So anyway, I'm unhappy with the output,
00:59:31 ◼ ► and then I know that the other image generators do better jobs than this. Apple's behind the state of
00:59:38 ◼ ► the art, and I think it's ugly, and I think that the focus on making pictures of people you know
00:59:43 ◼ ► is questionable. I would rather they be more generic pictures of people, a generic person.
00:59:52 ◼ ► And yet every time I try to make a generic person in Apple's AI image tools, they're like,
00:59:58 ◼ ► "No, you must pick a person." It's like, I don't want to pick a person. I want this to be a picture
01:00:02 ◼ ► of a wizard, not a picture of Mike as a wizard. That's not what I'm trying to do here, and it's
01:00:18 ◼ ► >> Yes, yes. So this is what I would say about image playgrounds while we're on that subject is,
01:00:23 ◼ ► I know we've talked about our feelings about AI image generation from an ethical standpoint and
01:00:30 ◼ ► all of that, but I'm going to boil it down to my opinion as a user of this feature, which is,
01:00:45 ◼ ► I'm going to take something Stephen said on last week's episode slightly out of context,
01:00:53 ◼ ► I can imagine making this kind of argument for Apple. Stephen referenced something about the
01:00:59 ◼ ► cartoon style, which is better than deciding to try and make something realistic because that can
01:01:05 ◼ ► be more problematic. I think today, just before we recorded, OpenAI has released their Sora model,
01:01:10 ◼ ► and some of this video that's coming out from the Sora model now is horrific in how good it looks.
01:01:15 ◼ ► It's terrifying. And it's a good point, but I think Apple's actually not capable of doing it.
01:01:22 ◼ ► I don't believe that Apple have chosen -- have not chosen to do the realistic style purely because
01:01:31 ◼ ► they think it's the right thing to do. I think looking at the quality of their imagery now,
01:01:36 ◼ ► Apple could not do photorealistic in image playgrounds. They don't have the ability to do
01:01:42 ◼ ► that for whatever reason that might be. Because the quality of the imagery in image playgrounds
01:01:48 ◼ ► is so bad. There are jokes about AI as the long term can't do hands, right? Image playgrounds
01:01:54 ◼ ► can't do eyes. Every eye is like this color tornado. It's bad. It's not good. Contrast to Genmoji,
01:02:12 ◼ ► and weird emoji, which is usually what I want. And I use some of them frequently. It works very
01:02:17 ◼ ► good with tapbacks. Of course, it gets things wrong and weird in a bunch of ways. But you can
01:02:25 ◼ ► also get something -- more often than not, I get something that is close to what I wanted with
01:02:32 ◼ ► Genmoji. Because I have a framework for what I think they should look like. Because it's Apple's
01:02:37 ◼ ► emojis as the starting point. I think by and large, this is actually a good feature they should
01:02:43 ◼ ► have made. Yeah, I agree. I have -- so I commissioned some emoji a while ago, some custom
01:02:50 ◼ ► emoji from the artist who works on Emojipedia. And I tried to replicate those using Genmoji.
01:02:56 ◼ ► And they're not as good, but they're good. Like, they're good. And that's a little disturbing,
01:03:05 ◼ ► right? Because I paid an artist to follow my instructions to the letter, and then I just
01:03:09 ◼ ► threw a prompt into Genmoji. And kudos to Apple for making the image generation interface a
01:03:17 ◼ ► shopping interface, right? That they're like, "Don't like this one? Swipe to the next one."
01:03:23 ◼ ► And it keeps generating alternatives. That's so smart, because some of them just ain't it,
01:03:29 ◼ ► right? Some of them are bad, and you're like, "Nope." And it feels -- if you had to go through
01:03:34 ◼ ► the generation process time and again until you got one right, you'd be so frustrated. But instead
01:03:38 ◼ ► they're like, "Yeah, throw away the ones you don't like. Keep the ones you do like." And so I was able
01:03:42 ◼ ► to generate a pretty good cute Skeletor from Genmoji. I was able to generate a Tony Sindelar
01:03:52 ◼ ► pointing reference acknowledge that looks more like Tony. I mean, his emoji looks like a cartoon
01:04:01 ◼ ► version of him that's kind of -- again, the artist -- You can actually use a photo of Tony to make
01:04:05 ◼ ► that one. Yeah, and again, I think you could argue that the artist sort of making a cartoon version
01:04:11 ◼ ► of Tony might be better, but I can see that in that moment I generated an emoji that looks like
01:04:17 ◼ ► my friend making that symbol where I paid an artist to do it. And again, I don't love that
01:04:22 ◼ ► I'm paying artists, but most people are not going to pay an artist to do something like that. I did
01:04:25 ◼ ► that for kicks, basically. But like, I've got a pic -- okay, my favorite Genmoji so far is Tim Cool,
01:04:37 ◼ ► which is literally Tim Cook on a surfboard. Yeah, because of a spelling error. Because somebody
01:04:45 ◼ ► typed Tim Cool instead of Tim Cook and I said, "I love Tim Cool. I love this idea. Let's go with
01:04:50 ◼ ► it, Tim Cool." Tim Cook sunglasses, cool dude surfing was the prompt, and he's not wearing
01:04:56 ◼ ► sunglasses, but it's recognizably Tim Cook, and that's the most important part. ChatGPT in Siri.
01:05:03 ◼ ► Yeah, yeah. So I connected my ChatGPT account, because I pay for ChatGPT, to the OS, and what I
01:05:16 ◼ ► found is there are -- and I told it not to ask me. I said, "Just use ChatGPT if you want it." Oh,
01:05:22 ◼ ► if you're ever gonna -- I'll tell you right now, just always just turn that prompt on. Like,
01:05:27 ◼ ► you don't want to be dealing with the like, "Would you like me to --" No, it's annoying to get rid of
01:05:32 ◼ ► that. Yeah, do the thing. Yeah, no, no, no, no, no. So what I found actually is funny. I ask
01:05:40 ◼ ► things of Siri, and sometimes it tries to answer it itself, and I say, "Oh, honey, no. You can't
01:05:49 ◼ ► answer this question. You should have gone to ChatGPT." But what I do, I don't know if you've
01:05:53 ◼ ► done this, I will just say, because you're in the Siri, they're like, "No, ask ChatGPT that,"
01:05:57 ◼ ► and then it will go back and do it. Yeah, because that's the problem right now, is that Siri is
01:06:02 ◼ ► trying to answer some of these questions. It's like, "You do a bad job. Just ask ChatGPT to do
01:06:07 ◼ ► it now." And those answers are better, although again, I'll point out that although this is
01:06:13 ◼ ► somewhat unpopular in some circles to point out, I ask ChatGPT lots of things, and it just gets them
01:06:21 ◼ ► wrong, like straight up wrong. The other day, one of my tests was asking about something I don't
01:06:28 ◼ ► know the answer to, which is, "Did any of the other players at Florida State who played with
01:06:34 ◼ ► Buster Posey when he was at Florida State University make the major leagues?" Buster Posey,
01:06:41 ◼ ► future Hall of Fame Giants catcher, president of baseball operations for the Giants now,
01:06:46 ◼ ► played at Florida State. Did any other major leaguers play with him there? I was curious.
01:06:53 ◼ ► I didn't know the answer, and it came back. ChatGPT came back and said yes. He did. There's
01:06:58 ◼ ► this guy who was in the minor leagues and never made the majors, and there's this guy who was in
01:07:02 ◼ ► the minor leagues and never made the majors. So I said to ChatGPT, "So the answer was actually no?"
01:07:10 ◼ ► And it says, "Correct. None of them made the majors, and therefore the answer to the question
01:07:14 ◼ ► was no." But it answered yes. And I asked it another question, and I said, "Has an American
01:07:19 ◼ ► cabinet member ever been assassinated?" And it said, "Yes. This guy got shot, but he survived,
01:07:25 ◼ ► and this guy got shot, but he survived. So no." I'm like, "What are you doing?" So here's my
01:07:33 ◼ ► problem with all of this is fundamentally everybody raves about AI stuff, and I know that there's,
01:07:37 ◼ ► again, I think that there's lots of places where the AI stuff can be very helpful, but oh my god,
01:07:43 ◼ ► in the context of what we ask Siri in terms of world's knowledge, it's still, even the leading
01:07:49 ◼ ► models are still so very bad at it. So I don't love that about it, but you know, Mike, when I asked
01:07:57 ◼ ► Siri that initial Buster Posey question, you know what it told me? It said, "Oh, Buster Posey's
01:08:06 ◼ ► coach at Florida State was this guy." Had nothing to do with my actual question. It was literally a
01:08:12 ◼ ► random fact pulled from the ether by Siri, and you know, appreciably worse, even though, because it
01:08:20 ◼ ► didn't understand the question. ChatGPT understood the question and got it wrong, and then sort of
01:08:25 ◼ ► eventually came around to getting it right, but Siri didn't even get it. So I don't know. I'm not
01:08:33 ◼ ► happy about it, but I think one of the big problems with it is that Siri needs, essentially, if you've
01:08:39 ◼ ► got ChatGPT turned on, Siri kind of needs to get out of the way. It needs to be smarter about saying
01:08:43 ◼ ► like, "Oh, I'm bad at this. Let's ask ChatGPT this question instead." Yeah, and the other issue that
01:08:48 ◼ ► I have is that it's not, the ChatGPT in Siri is not as good as ChatGPT on its own because it
01:08:55 ◼ ► doesn't have any access to the internet, and so it can't give up-to-date information. And so,
01:09:00 ◼ ► you know, I've used it a few times, and on its own, Siri has given me some ChatGPT answers,
01:09:05 ◼ ► which is good, but by and large, if I want to ask a question that I think ChatGPT would be better at,
01:09:12 ◼ ► I don't ask Siri. I open the ChatGPT app because I know I'm more likely to get the response that
01:09:18 ◼ ► I want in the way that I want it by just starting the conversation there. Even then, I have issues,
01:09:25 ◼ ► but at least it's better than that. So yeah, it's not great. There's some potential, and again,
01:09:36 ◼ ► it'll do generation and writing tools, right? That's another place where you can tell it to
01:09:40 ◼ ► generate something using ChatGPT, and it will do that because Apple's models aren't going to do that.
01:09:46 ◼ ► >> Visual intelligence. Now, this is where you can have your camera look at the world and tell
01:09:57 ◼ ► you things. I will say visual intelligence, it's one of these classic features that I am not sure
01:10:05 ◼ ► when to use it because every time I've tested it, I don't get results that I find to be good. So,
01:10:10 ◼ ► I've only used it a few times. I have no habit formed. I never think about this feature because
01:10:15 ◼ ► at the moment, at least, it also feels really half-baked. Like, I don't really know what I'm
01:10:22 ◼ ► supposed to do with this thing and why it's more beneficial than me just taking a picture of
01:10:27 ◼ ► something and then uploading it to various apps and services to get answers. >> It's basically
01:10:33 ◼ ► just a shortcut for that, is what it is. >> And I just haven't found it to be really very
01:10:41 ◼ ► reliable or predictable, and so I don't really have much of an opinion on this feature, to be
01:10:46 ◼ ► honest. I don't use it very often. >> And the utility is a question. So, I just took a picture
01:10:50 ◼ ► of my dog as we were talking, and it says, "A white dog is sitting attentively in front of a washing
01:10:58 ◼ ► machine, likely watching or waiting for someone. This behavior is common in dogs, as they often
01:11:03 ◼ ► feel comforted by following human routines or are curious about household activities." Well,
01:11:08 ◼ ► yeah, somebody is vacuuming in the other room, and the dog is sitting on the carpet looking out,
01:11:14 ◼ ► and the washing machine is in front of her. This is all true. But why? Why? >> I just looked at
01:11:20 ◼ ► my desk and my AirPods there, and it says, "The image showcases a pair of wireless earbuds in
01:11:25 ◼ ► their charging case placed on a colorful mat featuring a cartoon design alongside a table
01:11:30 ◼ ► or laptop, tablet or laptop. Wireless earbuds are compact, portable, and offer the convenience of
01:11:36 ◼ ► listening to audio without the hassle of tangled wires." Look, this is all impressive stuff,
01:11:42 ◼ ► but what is the use? >> For like an alien coming down from another planet and being like,
01:11:46 ◼ ► "Tell me about what happens on Earth." >> I'm not sure what the use is of that, right? Because also,
01:11:51 ◼ ► as well, I guess you can then ask questions. You could do the thing in the ad, like, "What kind of
01:11:57 ◼ ► dog is that?" That's the thing. Because you can then ask questions of the image. You can kick off
01:12:03 ◼ ► a conversation that way. But yeah, I've just yet to find a compelling, reliable use of this feature.
01:12:11 ◼ ► >> Yeah. If I tap the "ask" button, or the Google button, basically, when I take a picture of my
01:12:20 ◼ ► ember mug, it says, "This is an ember mug." So that's something. But again, I kind of want another
01:12:25 ◼ ► layer here, right? I want a layer where it's trying to intuit right off the bat what it is,
01:12:30 ◼ ► and instead, it sort of just takes the picture and says, "Okay, tap something or ask a question."
01:12:34 ◼ ► And I don't know. It's like, I get the idea here, but I want it to be more proactive. I want it to
01:12:41 ◼ ► do a better job of interpreting what I might actually be asking, and I just don't -- yeah.
01:12:47 ◼ ► I have not had success with it. >> The writing tools, you mentioned those a little bit. Now,
01:12:53 ◼ ► I know that obviously you're very anti the writing tools for very good reasons. You are a writer.
01:12:57 ◼ ► Like, I wouldn't use podcasting tools. >> Not accurate. They're not for me, but I have been
01:13:03 ◼ ► very pro the writing tools because I think there are a lot of people who are not comfortable
01:13:06 ◼ ► writing. >> I'm sorry. I don't mean -- >> If the computer can help them -- >> I don't mean in concept.
01:13:10 ◼ ► I mean, as in you as a user is what I mean. >> Yes. >> You're not going to use them. >> For sure.
01:13:14 ◼ ► >> So like -- >> Never. >> Anti-use is more what I'm trying to say, but not like conceptually against.
01:13:21 ◼ ► >> I am a fan of having like a very competent and kind of complex system that is built into the
01:13:30 ◼ ► device to check my grammar and punctuation and also make suggestions for me. Like, I wrote a post
01:13:37 ◼ ► the other day that I was writing it in croissant and cross-posting it, and I wanted to just check
01:13:42 ◼ ► that my sentence structure was good, and I was able to use writing tools to just proofread that
01:13:47 ◼ ► for me. And it was like, yep, this is all good. And then I had the confidence to then post it
01:13:51 ◼ ► because it wasn't going to have mistakes in it. And it has other tools, right? Summarizing is good.
01:13:57 ◼ ► Taking text and turning it into a list is good. I'm not so interested in having it write for me
01:14:03 ◼ ► from scratch. Like, I just don't really need that. But the tools are good. >> Yeah. So some of this
01:14:11 ◼ ► is in 18.1, but in point two, you can actually tell it specifically to do something to the text
01:14:18 ◼ ► in a box instead of just tapping on the limited kind of pre-baked questions, which gives you more
01:14:26 ◼ ► freedom to say, you know, could this be a little funnier or whatever. >> This style, that style.
01:14:30 ◼ ► >> And it will take a crack at it. No, I think these are great. And again, I think my point is,
01:14:37 ◼ ► didn't work for me, but that's because I'm a writer. Most people aren't. And a lot of people
01:14:42 ◼ ► are not comfortable with language or comfortable with sharing their written language publicly,
01:14:46 ◼ ► whether they're, you know, at work writing an email or doing a social media post or whatever.
01:14:51 ◼ ► And I think that it's great for that. All these LLMs are generally pretty decent at doing things
01:14:57 ◼ ► like generating summaries or doing the whole like make bullet lists or make this into a table,
01:15:02 ◼ ► like all those features that are there. There are a lot of things like that that are good,
01:15:05 ◼ ► I think, fundamentally. >> And for a lot of people around the world, 18.2 is good because it brings
01:15:12 ◼ ► Apple intelligence. So it's currently been in US English, and you've been able to use it in
01:15:17 ◼ ► different parts of the world, but you have to make a bunch of changes to your device. So it now is in
01:15:28 ◼ ► notification and message summaries and stuff like that as part of 18.2. But I wanted to also touch
01:15:33 ◼ ► on two 18.2 features that aren't related to Apple intelligence. One of them is male categorization,
01:15:40 ◼ ► which works so good. It makes me so mad that it's iPhone only. I'm so mad about this because it
01:15:48 ◼ ► works great. It does a very good job of detecting where a message should live, whether it's like
01:16:00 ◼ ► you can re-categorize things if it got it wrong. Usually like Apple's like, "Ah, don't worry,
01:16:06 ◼ ► we got this." And then that's the end of it. But no, you can say like, "No, put this here or put
01:16:16 ◼ ► - So I use a different system that auto-categorizes my messages so this doesn't work for me,
01:16:30 ◼ ► - Just, I don't, why would you do this? I really can't understand why you would do this.
01:16:35 ◼ ► 'Cause it's like, "Hey, get used to using your email in a certain way, but only on one device."
01:16:47 ◼ ► - So here's my theory. My theory is that it's not consistent across devices. And so by limiting it
01:16:53 ◼ ► to the iPhone, 'cause most people don't have two iPhones, the mail organization is happening on the
01:17:01 ◼ ► device and you can see it and it's the same. Whereas if you've got an iPad 2, maybe those
01:17:09 ◼ ► messages are in different places on your different devices and they might've decided that that was
01:17:13 ◼ ► - The way in which you get it wrong could be so, is so minimal. It's like this thing goes in
01:17:19 ◼ ► like newsletters and not promotions. Like the point really is about keeping crap out of your
01:17:25 ◼ ► inbox. It doesn't really, I don't care where it goes, just don't put it in the inbox, right?
01:17:34 ◼ ► - Also 18.2, the AirPods Pro hearing test is available in more countries. And I did it this
01:17:39 ◼ ► morning. So I sat down while me and Adina were having coffee and started it and then realized,
01:17:46 ◼ ► "Oh no, I actually have to be in absolute silence." So then I had to go upstairs, close the
01:17:52 ◼ ► door. 'Cause it's playing these tones in your ears that you have to detect and you tap when you can
01:17:58 ◼ ► hear them. And some are so quiet. And I think they're doing some spatial audio kind of trickery
01:18:07 ◼ ► as well to kind of like put it in different places to maybe test like how good you hear in certain
01:18:10 ◼ ► areas. But this was a fascinating and very weird process. And I'm happy to report I have little to
01:18:16 ◼ ► no hearing loss, which doing the test I didn't think was gonna be the answer. 'Cause I was going
01:18:22 ◼ ► for some stretches where it was like, "I can't hear anything." Like I'm not tapping, nothing's
01:18:28 ◼ ► happening, but I guess they're a super quiet. It's like, I think it's like minus one or minus three
01:18:34 ◼ ► in one ear or the other. So it's not like no hearing loss, but it is an amount which is like
01:18:39 ◼ ► not a concern, I guess maybe especially for my age. But yeah, I was sitting down like, "Oh no,
01:18:45 ◼ ► I thought I had good hearing, but like I'm sitting there for like 20 seconds and like not hearing
01:18:50 ◼ ► a thing." But yeah, no, it was good. And this is a, again, it's like one of these things where
01:18:55 ◼ ► I'm just happy to have done that this morning. It made me feel good. It's like, "Great, I don't
01:18:59 ◼ ► have any hearing loss. Like good for me." And my AirPods told me that. Have you done this test?
01:19:18 ◼ ► And the answer is that in one ear, there's a little tiny notch, but it's not that big. And
01:19:23 ◼ ► what the hearing professional said is, "That's probably like at some point in your life,
01:19:39 ◼ ► But it's very small. And in Apple's context, it's little to no hearing loss. So that's great
01:19:46 ◼ ► 'cause I'm in my 50s. And so I'm starting out at least from this point with a pretty good hearing.
01:19:52 ◼ ► And our hearing gets worse when we get older, but it was pretty happy about it. So I was pretty
01:19:58 ◼ ► happy about it. But I was gonna make a joke about like, now that there's UK hearing tests,
01:20:04 ◼ ► do they have like British noises that you have to hear? But I don't even know what those are.
01:20:13 ◼ ► This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by the Data Citizens Dialogues Podcast. As a listener
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01:21:47 ◼ ► This one comes from Andrew who says, "For years and years, I've backed up my various iOS devices
01:21:55 ◼ ► to my Mac every month. This is useful when I move to the next model. However, should I use iCloud
01:22:02 ◼ ► Backup instead? How do you think about and manage your iOS backups?" Wow, I haven't backed up my iOS
01:22:09 ◼ ► devices to my Mac in years. I've got to say, Andrew, I respect your determination. I respect
01:22:15 ◼ ► your skills. Yeah, just use iCloud Backup. It's great. It's the answer. And it will do it at night
01:22:22 ◼ ► when you're charging. It's great. Yeah, and if you don't have enough storage, I mean, yeah, you can
01:22:27 ◼ ► just use your Mac, but I strongly recommend spending enough money on storage to get your
01:22:33 ◼ ► devices backed up. And it just makes it very easy. And then I don't think about and manage my iOS
01:22:39 ◼ ► backups. That's the truth is that when it comes time, like there's just my mom a few years ago
01:22:44 ◼ ► left her iPhone somewhere and had to get a new iPhone. It's like, she's iCloud Backed Up. It
01:22:49 ◼ ► didn't matter. She just restored and it was fine. Like there was nothing to it. It's great. So
01:22:55 ◼ ► that's what I recommend. And yeah, if you don't want to spend the money, like, okay, but you
01:23:01 ◼ ► probably should because it's just so easy and convenient to do it that way. Yeah, because like,
01:23:07 ◼ ► and it happens automatically. That's the other thing. It happens automatically where you may,
01:23:11 ◼ ► like every month you're going to miss maybe a month worth of data. iCloud, it's just there. I
01:23:16 ◼ ► rely on it and it works fine. And you can rest assured that if, you know, you don't have to worry
01:23:20 ◼ ► about it not working because Apple will tell you. Like if a device hasn't been backed up for, I
01:23:26 ◼ ► think it's like a month maybe, maybe less time, there's like an alert. It's like, hey, your device
01:23:33 ◼ ► has not been backed up. So they, you know, they even get, they take care of you there too. So I
01:23:38 ◼ ► think this is a great system. But if for some reason you can't afford it, then yeah, you're
01:23:43 ◼ ► going to have to keep doing what you're doing, which is these periodic backups to another device.
01:23:48 ◼ ► But I think by and large, you have some controls about what you can and can't back up. So like if
01:23:53 ◼ ► you do want to back up some things, but not others, and that helps you keep them in certain
01:23:57 ◼ ► limits and levels, you could do that too. Bobby asks, just curious, but why is upgrade usually
01:24:03 ◼ ► longer than connected? I don't know, you tell me Mike. Yeah, it's a good question. I mean,
01:24:08 ◼ ► that is the case. I mean, which is odd because there's two of us and there's three of us
01:24:12 ◼ ► and connected. I think this maybe comes down to two things. One is that this show is very like
01:24:22 ◼ ► segment focused. So like, I think we plan out the segments and we do the segments, right? And
01:24:29 ◼ ► in a way that connect, this is weird. This is just maybe my brain. Upgrade is segment focused
01:24:34 ◼ ► and connected is topic focused. And our segments do tend to be a little bit more like we talk about
01:24:40 ◼ ► them this week or we don't talk about them at all, right? Like if we don't do Room Around Up this
01:24:45 ◼ ► week and we have it prepped out, there's no point doing that Room Around Up next week because
01:24:50 ◼ ► probably most of the stuff is done. So if we've prepped out a topic, by and large, we either do
01:24:55 ◼ ► it or it goes away. And because of that comes to the second part where we start the recording of
01:25:03 ◼ ► this show earlier in the day. And I think for me and Federico, if we go too long on the show,
01:25:08 ◼ ► we're going very late into our evenings at that point. So I think we're maybe more of a bit more
01:25:13 ◼ ► like let's try and cut the whole thing at 90 minutes where this show is usually about an hour
01:25:19 ◼ ► 45. And so I think that's the reason. And I expect one of the reasons Bobby has asked this question
01:25:24 ◼ ► is because maybe they got their like overcast wrapped or something and could see, you know,
01:25:28 ◼ ► I listened to every episode, but there's more upgrade than there is connected. Maybe that's
01:25:33 ◼ ► the case. Yeah, that could be. Yeah. Jason said, I heard Mike, I don't know if this is you,
01:25:41 ◼ ► it probably wasn't. This is not me. I heard Mike talk about using ChatGPT for search. How do you
01:25:46 ◼ ► choose when to search there rather than Google? So I've been thinking about this a lot, Jason,
01:25:50 ◼ ► because people keep asking me questions like this because I've been talking about using ChatGPT for
01:25:54 ◼ ► search. And I think where I'm starting to come down to is I Google something when I know where
01:26:01 ◼ ► I want to end up. Like I am Googling something that I know exists, right? Or like I am confident
01:26:08 ◼ ► that I'm going to get to the place that I want to be at because I know how to use Google, right?
01:26:20 ◼ ► to get the result that you want, which is actually not too dissimilar from AI prompting, but I'm just
01:26:25 ◼ ► more familiar with like getting to a Google search. And for ChatGPT searching, it's more
01:26:30 ◼ ► for when I do not know anything about my query. Like I have a question or I want some information
01:26:36 ◼ ► about a subject area or like a product area and I do not know where I would get that information
01:26:49 ◼ ► and then I will maybe go onto the web via the links that they give me and find out some of the
01:26:54 ◼ ► stuff that I want. So that's kind of the two types of searches is like, I know this thing exists and
01:27:00 ◼ ► I want you to find it for me and I have no idea about this thing. Tell me more about it. That's
01:27:05 ◼ ► kind of how I split them up. All right. And then Matthew asks, this is a question for you, Jason.
01:27:10 ◼ ► So we've got like, you know, one, two for each of us, we'll have a sandwich. Love it. This one
01:27:15 ◼ ► comes from Matthew. I've wondered for a while about the discussion of off the record topics,
01:27:20 ◼ ► particularly when media have access to Apple employees at in-person events. Why would Apple,
01:27:28 ◼ ► particularly those in senior enough positions to be trusted as spokespeople, give any level of
01:27:33 ◼ ► off the record information? Is it just to provide additional color or is there an altogether different
01:27:38 ◼ ► motive? Yeah, it's a little bit, I want to say there's on background and off the record, those
01:27:43 ◼ ► are different. Off the record is you don't talk about this. Right? Which is of very little use.
01:27:48 ◼ ► But that's a good distinction because sometimes people say someone told me this off the record.
01:27:56 ◼ ► That still does happen. But yes, obviously a record was made because you're yes. Off the record is
01:28:01 ◼ ► supposed to mean I'm not going to report about this. Maybe it gives you some background
01:28:06 ◼ ► understanding, but you know, on background, the idea there is you're not making any direct quotes.
01:28:12 ◼ ► You're just saying, look, I know this, but you can't say Apple PR person XYZ told me, quote this,
01:28:20 ◼ ► right? You don't say that. It's on background. The idea there is we're going to give you this
01:28:24 ◼ ► information. You can share it, but you're not supposed to attribute it. Sometimes I'll even
01:28:29 ◼ ► say not for attribution. And then there's, this is where NELA and The Verge are like, we don't,
01:28:33 ◼ ► we're going to attribute information to a person. We're not, we don't want to do it. Like, there's
01:28:36 ◼ ► a lot of different ways to approach this. I find it, some of it is helpful. Some of it is silly.
01:28:42 ◼ ► Like I believe that the origination of this is that Apple was frustrated that people who were
01:28:50 ◼ ► doing, I don't know whether it was like damage control or product briefings or something were
01:28:55 ◼ ► being quoted by name when they thought they were just passing on information to a writer.
01:29:02 ◼ ► They ended up getting represented as the person who made a particular claim. And I think that
01:29:07 ◼ ► there was, I, it was so long ago now, but I think the people were upset because that person's name
01:29:12 ◼ ► just kept getting repeated. But this person said this thing and that Apple decided that they wanted
01:29:17 ◼ ► to approach it where in mo, in many cases, not even necessarily most cases, in many cases,
01:29:22 ◼ ► when product information was being handed out, that directly attributing it to a PR person when
01:29:30 ◼ ► there were numerous PR people and all that was not really accurate because they were just the
01:29:35 ◼ ► messenger, the conduit for information that was coming from Apple's product marketing group.
01:29:41 ◼ ► And so there was this feeling of like, let's make this less personal. Let's not make this personal.
01:29:47 ◼ ► Sometimes it is literally, we don't want you quoting us directly because we may say things
01:29:52 ◼ ► in the quote that aren't what we're actually trying to say. And there's two ways to view
01:29:58 ◼ ► that. You can view that as control. Oh, he used a phrase that isn't approved. We don't like that.
01:30:04 ◼ ► And now that's out there forever. And it's a phrase we didn't want to use. Okay, I understand
01:30:10 ◼ ► it. That's a control thing, whatever. So then there's this conspiracy theory part of this,
01:30:15 ◼ ► which is every time anybody from Apple says anything, the conspiracy theory starts. And
01:30:21 ◼ ► it's like, aha, aha. Did you notice what they said? Do you know what this means? This means
01:30:27 ◼ ► that Apple is doing this other thing. And it is, oh, it's all true now. And, you know, sometimes
01:30:32 ◼ ► it means that, but mostly it doesn't mean that. Mostly it's just somebody said a thing. This is
01:30:37 ◼ ► why Apple, one of the reasons why Apple exerts so much control over their message is because
01:30:44 ◼ ► unlike maybe any other company, I don't know, people are parsing their words and trying to find
01:30:51 ◼ ► secrets that are revealed. And one way you avoid that is by not allowing them to parse your words.
01:30:57 ◼ ► Is by having all the words that are out there either be in your press release or approved
01:31:02 ◼ ► verbiage. And if you're in an interaction with another human being and you're just talking off
01:31:06 ◼ ► the cuff, even if you're a very well-trained PR person who knows all the phrases you're supposed
01:31:16 ◼ ► We get these briefings sometimes where the words that are used by the people in the briefing,
01:31:20 ◼ ► the phrases that are used are literally the phrases in the press release. Like, everybody's
01:31:26 ◼ ► been trained. Like literally, this is how we refer to this. It's groundbreaking or it's earth shaking
01:31:33 ◼ ► or it's breakthrough or whatever it is. Like they'll use one of those and only the one that's
01:31:40 ◼ ► approved. That's just how it goes. So some of it's control and some of it is knowing that there are
01:31:46 ◼ ► people out there who will take any phrase that is not approved and run with it in directions that
01:31:52 ◼ ► are maybe true, but probably not true, misleading. And they're like, "Aha, but Anand Lalshimpy,
01:31:59 ◼ ► when talking to Jason in New York, said that the processing block on the M3 was actually this. And
01:32:05 ◼ ► that means..." So they're like, "Yeah, Jason, you can talk to Anand, but you can't quote him."
01:32:23 ◼ ► sometimes pieces of information that they don't mind being out there, but they're just too specific
01:32:29 ◼ ► or nerdy for Apple to be talking about. So it's like, we're fine if you say this, because it's
01:32:36 ◼ ► fine for that to be out there, but we don't have a way to tell people this little piece of
01:32:42 ◼ ► information in a way that is worth sparing the time. Yeah, they don't want people saying, "Aha,
01:32:48 ◼ ► Apple said this." Again, because it leads down that path of it's got this imprint and now what
01:32:52 ◼ ► does it mean? And they want that stuff to just kind of get out there or they'll answer my question,
01:32:58 ◼ ► but it ends up being a thing where I end up saying, "It's my understanding that this thing
01:33:03 ◼ ► is happening on the M3 chip or the M4 chip." And sometimes that does literally come from a briefing
01:33:09 ◼ ► where Anand is on the briefing and I know then there's a new chip and I'm like, "I'm gonna ask
01:33:14 ◼ ► a chip question because Anand is here and he looks real lonely. Nobody's asking him chip questions.
01:33:19 ◼ ► Do they not know who this is? Let's ask Anand a chip question." But then a lot of times it ends
01:33:24 ◼ ► up being like, "Here's the thing that I learned about the M4 and not Anand told me this thing."
01:33:29 ◼ ► And that's just how those are the ground rules and you just got to deal with them. But do they
01:33:35 ◼ ► go too far? Do they happen too often? I would say yes. I think it's become a reflex now. There was
01:33:41 ◼ ► also that John Gruber thing where he described the whole process of going to the briefing and where
01:33:46 ◼ ► it was and who the people were and the couches they sat on and stuff. And I feel like that was
01:33:50 ◼ ► one of those moments where Apple was like, "Okay, we need to set some ground rules because the story
01:33:54 ◼ ► should never be our briefing. The story should be our products." Right? And that's not about like,
01:33:59 ◼ ► we don't want to admit that there was a couch that people sat on and that they're in this place in
01:34:04 ◼ ► Tribeca and we went up to the fourth floor or whatever. It's more like we don't want people
01:34:10 ◼ ► talking about our place in Tribeca. We want them talking about the new MacBook Pro. That was the
01:34:14 ◼ ► surprise announcement of OS X Mountain Lion. Ah, classic. That's a good one. The one that dropped
01:34:22 ◼ ► out of nowhere. Right? And it becomes, yeah, that was a great moment. I love that moment too. That's
01:34:28 ◼ ► the one where MG Siegler and I walked out of Infinite Loop and we're both like, "Oh my God."
01:34:33 ◼ ► Right? Like it was a surprise. I remember exactly where I was when this news broke. Like I was
01:34:38 ◼ ► sitting at my desk in one of my terrible bank jobs like when I used to work in the branches.
01:34:44 ◼ ► I was a branch manager at the time. Hated it. And I remember being there and that made that day
01:34:51 ◼ ► better because it was interesting. And I just read a bunch of OS X reviews out in nowhere instead.
01:34:55 ◼ ► Yeah, people didn't believe us. Like we dropped on at embargo time and people were like,
01:35:05 ◼ ► and there had been no reports that there was going to be an update to Lion and then Mountain Lion
01:35:10 ◼ ► just dropped and that was it. It was great. And you can see why if you do all that work.
01:35:14 ◼ ► The last thing you want is one of your writers to focus on the mechanics of the presentation
01:35:20 ◼ ► instead of what you're trying to get out there. So I think that's part of what's going on. This
01:35:23 ◼ ► is a great question for Matthew. The ways of Apple PR are mysterious, but I think it is this
01:35:28 ◼ ► combination of wanting to completely control the message, which you can't do, right? Because there
01:35:32 ◼ ► are the press, when you give it to the press, the press is going to do what they're going to do with
01:35:36 ◼ ► it. Like that's why you deal with the press is that some people will just take it from the source
01:35:40 ◼ ► and take the marketing and go to Apple's website and that's all they'll ever do. And like, so be
01:35:46 ◼ ► it. But the press gets it to a broader audience, but you do have to take it with the press's
01:35:50 ◼ ► impressions and emphasis that is going to be different from your press release. And it's just
01:35:56 ◼ ► part of the way the game is played, but even in then they want to limit what they provide to the
01:36:01 ◼ ► press and stay on message. They're very disciplined about that. And that also includes obscuring
01:36:08 ◼ ► some aspects because, you know, and again, it's not like it used to be in the Steve Jobs,
01:36:13 ◼ ► Katie Cotton era. The goal was to make Apple a black box. Like you don't, you should never even
01:36:18 ◼ ► hear about other people who work at Apple. It should just be Apple. And Apple speaks in the
01:36:23 ◼ ► voice of Steve Jobs, by the way, but it's just Apple. And it's not like that anymore, but some
01:36:28 ◼ ► aspects of this remain. And I think part of that is the idea that there are no stars in Apple PR,
01:36:36 ◼ ► that the products are the stars and that, that, you know, they should, and it's nothing against
01:36:41 ◼ ► the people in Apple PR, but like Apple doesn't want some spokesperson to be famous for saying
01:36:52 ◼ ► If you would like to send in a question of your own for us to answer in a future episode of the
01:36:56 ◼ ► show, please go to upgradefeedback.com. You can also send in your feedback and follow up for us
01:37:01 ◼ ► there. You can check out Jason at sixcolors.com and you can hear him at the incomparable.com and
01:37:06 ◼ ► here on Relay, where you can listen to me too. You can also check out my work at cortexbrand.com.
01:37:11 ◼ ► You can find us both on Mastodon Threads and Blue Sky because of our sins. You can also watch the
01:37:17 ◼ ► clips of this show on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, where we are @upgraderelay. This show,
01:37:23 ◼ ► one it may be drawing to a close is not if you support us with Upgrade Plus. This week,
01:37:29 ◼ ► we're going to be talking about gaming hardware and barbecuing hardware, I think is the two for
01:37:36 ◼ ► in today's episode. But don't forget you get 20% off an annual plan. If you sign up now, go to