Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:08 ◼   ► From Relay, this is Upgrade, episode 539 for November 25th, 2024.

00:00:15 ◼   ► This episode is brought to you by Squarespace, FitPod, and Data Citizens Dialogues.

00:00:20 ◼   ► My name is Mike Hurley, and I'm joined by Jason Snow. Hi, Jason Snow.

00:00:24 ◼   ► Hi, Mike Hurley, how are you?

00:00:26 ◼   ► Oh, I'm fine and dandy, my friend. Fine and dandy, indeed.

00:00:29 ◼   ► It's Thanksgiving week, it's Thanksgiving week!

00:00:32 ◼   ► It sure is, I was just about to say I'm very thankful for you, very thankful for our listeners.

00:00:36 ◼   ► Thank you, yes, same.

00:00:39 ◼   ► But I have a Snow Talk question for you.

00:00:40 ◼   ► It comes from Yoni, who wants to know, "Jason, how did you celebrate Cal's win over Stanford,

00:00:46 ◼   ► and at what point in the game were you no longer nervous and knew they were gonna win?"

00:00:50 ◼   ► Huh. I'll take the last part first.

00:00:56 ◼   ► At the very end of the game, after Cal went 98 yards to score the go-ahead touchdown,

00:01:05 ◼   ► very dramatic, Stanford got the ball, as one does, and they got them out four tries and

00:01:14 ◼   ► out right away, and only then did I know that they were going to win.

00:01:20 ◼   ► And even then, they had to get a first down, but anyway, at that point, I felt pretty confident.

00:01:24 ◼   ► But before that, Cal fans have learned, Yoni, you may not know this, Cal fans have learned

00:01:33 ◼   ► that whatever is the worst possible thing to happen will happen.

00:01:36 ◼   ► So you've got to just keep it, like people are like, "Oh, you must have been devastated

00:01:40 ◼   ► by the four devastating losses that come from behind losses and all that this year."

00:01:48 ◼   ► I'm like, "Folks, that's what being a Cal fan is."

00:01:53 ◼   ► I'm not only not surprised by it, I kind of expect it.

00:01:57 ◼   ► It is that kind of a fandom, that kind of a relationship.

00:02:00 ◼   ► They let you down a lot.

00:02:01 ◼   ► We are long-suffering.

00:02:02 ◼   ► So anyway, it was a...

00:02:04 ◼   ► But here's the thing, another little trivia about the rivalry between Cal and Stanford

00:02:09 ◼   ► is it matters, like the coach of the Cal football team was saying that every win only counts

00:02:16 ◼   ► for one, but yet emotionally, it's just not true.

00:02:20 ◼   ► It means more, it just means more, as some college football people say, that it matters.

00:02:25 ◼   ► And the stadium was completely full.

00:02:28 ◼   ► This is a five and five team and a three and seven team or something, three and six team

00:02:33 ◼   ► playing each other, not great teams.

00:02:35 ◼   ► And the stadium was completely full and everybody lost their minds after it was over.

00:02:40 ◼   ► And it is an amazing moment.

00:02:44 ◼   ► It matters more than anything else.

00:02:46 ◼   ► There was one of Cal's most successful coaches of all time, having Cal's best season in 20

00:02:53 ◼   ► years lost the big game at the end of the season.

00:02:55 ◼   ► And the reaction to it was so negative that he basically quit and went somewhere else

00:03:00 ◼   ► because he didn't want to take it anymore, even though he had had an incredibly successful

00:03:04 ◼   ► year.

00:03:05 ◼   ► So it matters a lot.

00:03:06 ◼   ► How do we celebrate?

00:03:07 ◼   ► I mean, we just, you know, we stood there and did the cheers and we're really excited

00:03:12 ◼   ► and we didn't go down on the field because it was going to take forever to even get down

00:03:16 ◼   ► on the field.

00:03:17 ◼   ► The field was completely full.

00:03:18 ◼   ► Everybody went on the field after the game.

00:03:20 ◼   ► And I assume that's like mayhem.

00:03:21 ◼   ► It is.

00:03:22 ◼   ► Yeah, that's true.

00:03:24 ◼   ► It's amazing.

00:03:25 ◼   ► There is a clip.

00:03:27 ◼   ► People can find it.

00:03:28 ◼   ► The quarterback of Cal, a kid named Fernando Mendoza, was interviewed after the game.

00:03:35 ◼   ► And it is a wonderful interview.

00:03:38 ◼   ► This is why I text you, right?

00:03:40 ◼   ► I text you and was like, "Bears, tada," or whatever.

00:03:44 ◼   ► And it was because I had seen someone share this clip and was like, "Oh, he's so excited

00:03:50 ◼   ► right now."

00:03:51 ◼   ► And I realized they must have won.

00:03:53 ◼   ► And he's crying.

00:03:55 ◼   ► And he says, you know, "This is why we do it.

00:03:58 ◼   ► I went 98 yards with my boys," which is going to be a Cal thing for all eternity now.

00:04:03 ◼   ► "98 yards with my boys."

00:04:04 ◼   ► I think that's just going to be a thing thing.

00:04:06 ◼   ► Like I can just imagine Cal saying that to each other.

00:04:09 ◼   ► That's so great.

00:04:10 ◼   ► And he says, "Go Bears Forever," he says at one point, "This is why we did all this work."

00:04:13 ◼   ► But the other thing you can notice in that clip is people just keep running up to him

00:04:17 ◼   ► and taking pictures with him and patting him on the back and stuff because the students

00:04:21 ◼   ► and everybody else are just running onto the field.

00:04:24 ◼   ► And he's just shaking people's hands while he's talking.

00:04:26 ◼   ► It's really good.

00:04:27 ◼   ► This is a very heartwarming clip.

00:04:29 ◼   ► By the end of the interview, literally, they're completely surrounded by people.

00:04:31 ◼   ► They start and it's not quite that, but by the end, he's completely surrounded because

00:04:35 ◼   ► the whole field is surrounded.

00:04:36 ◼   ► And there's the axe, which is like the trophy that goes back and forth.

00:04:40 ◼   ► And that was paraded around.

00:04:43 ◼   ► Like there's a whole group of people that keeps their hands on it at all times and that

00:04:47 ◼   ► got paraded around.

00:04:48 ◼   ► It's just madness.

00:04:49 ◼   ► It's, again, it's a purity of joy that is rare.

00:04:55 ◼   ► And that interview is an all-time classic because he's just so overwhelmed with the

00:04:59 ◼   ► emotion.

00:05:00 ◼   ► So this is college football, right?

00:05:01 ◼   ► Like they're not professionals.

00:05:02 ◼   ► Yeah, this is what it's supposed to be.

00:05:04 ◼   ► I mean, they get money now a little bit.

00:05:07 ◼   ► Yeah, I know.

00:05:08 ◼   ► And there's all the name names like this stuff.

00:05:09 ◼   ► But they're not in the NFL, right?

00:05:12 ◼   ► Absolutely.

00:05:13 ◼   ► And this is, I think, the passion of college football in a nutshell is that interview encapsulates

00:05:19 ◼   ► it.

00:05:20 ◼   ► This is a game with two teams that are, you know, one team is going to not be over 500

00:05:24 ◼   ► and the other team is going to play in a very minor bowl game and that's it.

00:05:29 ◼   ► But it doesn't matter because it's rivalry and it's history and it's the fans and the

00:05:32 ◼   ► alumni and the players and it just, that's one of the magical things about college football.

00:05:37 ◼   ► You don't have to care about it at all.

00:05:40 ◼   ► I mean, I don't really because I don't understand it.

00:05:42 ◼   ► No, of course not.

00:05:43 ◼   ► But I recommend watching that interview because it's just nice to see someone care so much

00:05:47 ◼   ► about something.

00:05:48 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, that's really it.

00:05:50 ◼   ► There's no cynicism in it at all.

00:05:52 ◼   ► And this is in an era that coach talked about it after the game.

00:05:53 ◼   ► There was a great postgame press conference that I actually watched later on YouTube where

00:05:57 ◼   ► he said, you know, we got people who, today in college football there's free transfers.

00:06:01 ◼   ► So basically people just show up and they haven't been there for, you know, before and

00:06:04 ◼   ► they've never had it.

00:06:06 ◼   ► And some of those players played in this game and were like, whoa.

00:06:09 ◼   ► I had heard about it, but I didn't understand.

00:06:12 ◼   ► And you get there and everybody's intense and the stadium is full and loud and it's

00:06:17 ◼   ► very exciting.

00:06:18 ◼   ► So yeah, it was the pure emotion of it.

00:06:22 ◼   ► I do think that that's going to be an all time classic that 98 yards with my boys.

00:06:29 ◼   ► So anyway, we had a great time.

00:06:30 ◼   ► There is no better drug than coming home after your team won a nail biting rivalry football

00:06:39 ◼   ► game.

00:06:40 ◼   ► I have walked out of that stadium with a gut, this year with a gut punch of like, oh my

00:06:44 ◼   ► God, I can't believe we lost that game with a high, but this was in the category of the,

00:06:49 ◼   ► I can't believe we won that game, but it's just such a great feeling.

00:06:52 ◼   ► I want to go 98 yards with my boys, Jason, you know, we can go 98 yards together.

00:06:57 ◼   ► Let's set it up.

00:06:58 ◼   ► In the meantime, we go 98 yards with the boys.

00:07:01 ◼   ► With the boys.

00:07:03 ◼   ► If you would like to send in a question to help us open a future episode of Upgrade,

00:07:07 ◼   ► please go to upgradefeedback.com and thank you to friend of the show, Joni, for doing

00:07:11 ◼   ► that.

00:07:12 ◼   ► That was a great one.

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00:07:59 ◼   ► In Upgrade Plus this week, we're going to talk about the fact that Jason went to a live

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00:08:36 ◼   ► Thank you very much.

00:08:37 ◼   ► Some follow up.

00:08:40 ◼   ► I got the Belkin accessories.

00:08:41 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

00:08:42 ◼   ► For the Vision Pro accessories.

00:08:43 ◼   ► They both ended up arriving.

00:08:44 ◼   ► I bought the bag after your review last week and like, you know, just hearing you talk

00:08:49 ◼   ► so kindly about it.

00:08:51 ◼   ► But the strap was back ordered, but then it just arrived.

00:08:53 ◼   ► I don't know why.

00:08:54 ◼   ► Like it was meant to arrive like at the end of the month and it just like showed up.

00:08:57 ◼   ► It's like, great.

00:08:58 ◼   ► Thanks Apple.

00:08:59 ◼   ► Appreciate it.

00:09:00 ◼   ► Um, you weren't wrong.

00:09:01 ◼   ► Like they're both perfect.

00:09:04 ◼   ► Like why, why?

00:09:05 ◼   ► I mean, that was my, my reaction was very much like, Oh, right.

00:09:09 ◼   ► This is what they should have shipped.

00:09:11 ◼   ► Got it.

00:09:12 ◼   ► Yep.

00:09:13 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:09:14 ◼   ► I was surprised at how much I liked the bag because I was really skeptical about, Oh yeah,

00:09:16 ◼   ► great.

00:09:17 ◼   ► Another Vision Pro bag.

00:09:18 ◼   ► And it's like, it's good.

00:09:19 ◼   ► It's really well designed.

00:09:20 ◼   ► It's this bag is small enough that it fits in my tote pack.

00:09:24 ◼   ► Like the bag that I use every day.

00:09:25 ◼   ► I thought that was impossible, but I can get it in my daily bag now if I want to, which

00:09:30 ◼   ► is so much smaller than the Apple bag.

00:09:32 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:09:33 ◼   ► I would not have expected that at all.

00:09:34 ◼   ► And it's also just so well thought out of all the pockets.

00:09:38 ◼   ► There is an unbelievable amount of pockets on this bag.

00:09:41 ◼   ► It's like there's more pockets than I thought would be possible to put on this bag.

00:09:45 ◼   ► It is great.

00:09:46 ◼   ► They did a great job of that.

00:09:47 ◼   ► The strap is the exact amount of infinitely adjustable that I wanted where it's essentially

00:09:53 ◼   ► an Apple watch band, like one of the sport loop or whatever they're called, the Velcro

00:09:58 ◼   ► ones.

00:09:59 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:10:00 ◼   ► The little Velcros.

00:10:01 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:10:02 ◼   ► It's just one of those.

00:10:03 ◼   ► Choose it where you want.

00:10:04 ◼   ► And it's soft.

00:10:05 ◼   ► I think it's soft enough that it's not, it doesn't feel harsh, like digging into your

00:10:07 ◼   ► head, but it does provide enough suspension to keep.

00:10:10 ◼   ► Uh, and you know, I like the solo top, but like the knit band is not made for that.

00:10:14 ◼   ► And, and this is the right, this is the right thing.

00:10:17 ◼   ► It is.

00:10:18 ◼   ► It's, it's right.

00:10:19 ◼   ► The whoever built that up for the WWDC demos that we had last year, they knew what they

00:10:25 ◼   ► were doing and then they didn't ship it.

00:10:26 ◼   ► It's weird, but, uh, but good, good, uh, accessories for sure.

00:10:30 ◼   ► Yep.

00:10:31 ◼   ► Uh, we have a bunch of, uh, follow up related to the HomePod home with a screen device.

00:10:38 ◼   ► So I haven't come up with a name, but maybe we'll get one by the end of this.

00:10:41 ◼   ► We'll find out a lot of people are calling it like HomePad and I've seen some other things,

00:10:46 ◼   ► but I don't like any of them.

00:10:47 ◼   ► Uh, on your website of which you read the proprietary six colors, you linked to Jennifer

00:10:52 ◼   ► Patterson-Toohey's piece at the Verge about why Apple should get into the smart home,

00:10:57 ◼   ► which is a very good article.

00:10:58 ◼   ► I read a quote from it, but people should go check it out in full because it's really

00:11:01 ◼   ► good.

00:11:02 ◼   ► Uh, Patterson-Toohey knows what they're talking about.

00:11:04 ◼   ► When it comes to smart home, they do all of the stuff for the Verge.

00:11:08 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

00:11:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:11:10 ◼   ► This article is the one of those articles where I read it and I was like, okay, that

00:11:13 ◼   ► article I don't have to write because she literally covered everything that I would

00:11:18 ◼   ► have covered.

00:11:19 ◼   ► Yeah, it's really good.

00:11:20 ◼   ► So this is just a quote from it, which I think gives a flavor.

00:11:23 ◼   ► Apple needs to bring its signature simplicity to this space.

00:11:26 ◼   ► It needs to make it all just work.

00:11:28 ◼   ► To be successful, Apple needs to offer an intuitive user interface that effectively

00:11:31 ◼   ► combines voice and touch in a way no other smart display has to date, which I agree with.

00:11:37 ◼   ► Like they have the ability to do this.

00:11:38 ◼   ► And like another quote that you put on six colors was it's about damn time that Apple

00:11:42 ◼   ► took the smart home seriously.

00:11:44 ◼   ► Having let Apple home and home kit largely languish in its decades since its launch.

00:11:49 ◼   ► I mean, I agree so much with that.

00:11:52 ◼   ► And I know you noticed, I, so we talked last week briefly about that.

00:11:56 ◼   ► I did the annuals, right?

00:11:57 ◼   ► The annual Apple charts.

00:11:59 ◼   ► And I think that the one that was the most interesting to me of all of them and I reproduced

00:12:03 ◼   ► it.

00:12:04 ◼   ► In fact, I made a new version of it with just wearables, home and accessories because it's

00:12:07 ◼   ► this line that starts going up and then it just sort of like is now plateauing and going

00:12:11 ◼   ► back down.

00:12:13 ◼   ► And I think that's really telling that like Apple built a lot of growth on the AirPods

00:12:16 ◼   ► and the Apple watch and it stalled out.

00:12:20 ◼   ► And like we can debate value of growth.

00:12:24 ◼   ► You know, investors want growth.

00:12:26 ◼   ► Does Apple need it to grow like that and all that?

00:12:27 ◼   ► But I would say Apple wants it to grow.

00:12:29 ◼   ► Apple wants everything to grow and home is, I, it would be very hard to find somebody

00:12:37 ◼   ► to argue that Apple has nailed it perfectly with the home, right?

00:12:39 ◼   ► Like it feels like they've let a lot of opportunities go by and they've done tentative things.

00:12:43 ◼   ► How many years did they lose by miscalibrating the original HomePod?

00:12:46 ◼   ► And I'm not sure they've ever really gotten it back, but at least they've got it in a

00:12:50 ◼   ► more viable place now than it was originally.

00:12:53 ◼   ► And so if, you know, I don't do this a lot, but I'll just say like, if I were an Apple

00:12:57 ◼   ► executive right now, this would be one of my things that I would say, like, we have

00:13:01 ◼   ► to do a better job.

00:13:02 ◼   ► And it feels like maybe that's what's happened is that somebody has been told we actually

00:13:06 ◼   ► need to make an effort in the home because I would argue that what they've been doing

00:13:10 ◼   ► is avoiding most of the home stuff.

00:13:14 ◼   ► And their only place where they've been playing at all is in the speakers, which, you know,

00:13:19 ◼   ► I don't know, 10 years ago, I think it was pretty clear that this was an opportunity

00:13:22 ◼   ► for them and they missed the boat.

00:13:25 ◼   ► But it's broken enough and early enough that there are more opportunities for them.

00:13:29 ◼   ► It kind of feels like one of these things where it's like, oh, if we build it, they

00:13:32 ◼   ► will come kind of thing.

00:13:33 ◼   ► But that while that has happened, they have, it's not been good enough.

00:13:37 ◼   ► And I think this is one of those situations where, you know, I love things to be open.

00:13:43 ◼   ► We're going to talk about that later on in the show today quite a bit.

00:13:45 ◼   ► But like, I do feel like there is, they should have the open framework that they have.

00:13:50 ◼   ► But if Apple was able to create an Apple like experience for these devices talking together,

00:13:55 ◼   ► it would be superior than what we currently have because they don't have to design for

00:13:59 ◼   ► edge cases.

00:14:00 ◼   ► They don't have to make a set of APIs, like they are able to maybe make their own.

00:14:04 ◼   ► And then I would expect as these things usually happen, if they do build their own stuff,

00:14:08 ◼   ► they could actually take some of those learnings and put them back into HomeKit.

00:14:11 ◼   ► Like they're actually dogfooding it in a way, which is a phrase that I don't like, but I

00:14:15 ◼   ► said it anyway.

00:14:16 ◼   ► Or matter, right?

00:14:17 ◼   ► I feel like that's the trick here is that the emergence of matter, which is still kind

00:14:23 ◼   ► of like, you know, it exists, but it lets Apple build something on a framework that

00:14:29 ◼   ► will integrate with other stuff.

00:14:31 ◼   ► And they can just say, yeah, sure, we're integrated.

00:14:34 ◼   ► And it makes, I can make the argument that if Apple executes this right, that what currently,

00:14:42 ◼   ► it seems like they kind of have wasted five years or whatever, which I think they have,

00:14:47 ◼   ► but like you could maybe, if they succeed, you could maybe make the argument that maybe

00:14:51 ◼   ► it just, the whole smart home market wasn't good enough.

00:14:57 ◼   ► And if I were at Apple, again, I would probably make the argument that this is one of those

00:15:03 ◼   ► categories that is sort of like classic Apple entering a category late, but waiting to a

00:15:09 ◼   ► moment where there's actually an opportunity to drive more sales of this.

00:15:13 ◼   ► 'Cause that's gotta be their goal, right?

00:15:15 ◼   ► Is that the biggest opportunity in the smart home market is not selling to people who have

00:15:20 ◼   ► smart home devices.

00:15:21 ◼   ► It's to everybody else who has not bothered.

00:15:24 ◼   ► And a lot of nerds are like, oh, I've been doing this for 10 years or whatever.

00:15:29 ◼   ► But it's like, yeah, but most people like, no, like super repelled from a lot of this

00:15:34 ◼   ► stuff.

00:15:35 ◼   ► And so there's an opportunity there for Apple.

00:15:36 ◼   ► I'm not sure that they will succeed.

00:15:40 ◼   ► I'm skeptical.

00:15:41 ◼   ► I need to see it because they've been so lackluster in this category before, but I do think that

00:15:45 ◼   ► there are opportunities for them to succeed, especially if they pick their spots and make

00:15:49 ◼   ► really good products that will allow them to succeed, even if they're not the market

00:15:55 ◼   ► leader to succeed with a product that will sell into their ecosystem and be seen as one

00:16:01 ◼   ► of the better products in the category.

00:16:03 ◼   ► I think that's the challenge is they need to, they're gonna have high price tags 'cause

00:16:07 ◼   ► it's Apple.

00:16:08 ◼   ► So they also need to provide that.

00:16:09 ◼   ► But when there was rumors about the camera, cameras mostly aren't very good.

00:16:13 ◼   ► So there is an opportunity there.

00:16:15 ◼   ► Even this late in the game, I think there's an opportunity for Apple here.

00:16:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, as well.

00:16:21 ◼   ► And it will open different opportunities.

00:16:22 ◼   ► I can't imagine that Apple would create a home security system with monitoring.

00:16:28 ◼   ► But the more that Apple push into this field, then if it's all home kit, like the system

00:16:33 ◼   ► that I have made by a company called Abode, which I like a lot, I can add that into the

00:16:38 ◼   ► system and it would integrate with Apple's cameras and all that kind of stuff.

00:16:41 ◼   ► So you can bolt on these extra parts if you want a bit extra.

00:16:46 ◼   ► If you imagine that screen, that new screen accessory thing, one of the things it has

00:16:50 ◼   ► to presumably do or they're thinking of doing is security.

00:16:55 ◼   ► And the thing is with Matter and HomeKit, Apple doesn't need to make window sensors.

00:17:02 ◼   ► They don't.

00:17:03 ◼   ► They can make some cameras, maybe a doorbell, I don't know, up to them what they wanna do

00:17:11 ◼   ► there.

00:17:12 ◼   ► But there's lots of other products in that category.

00:17:13 ◼   ► And maybe what they say is, "Look, what we're gonna do is we're gonna make this screen be

00:17:16 ◼   ► the best place for you to do your home security settings and monitoring and notification at

00:17:22 ◼   ► the heart of the ecosystem and have all those pieces out there."

00:17:25 ◼   ► They could get there.

00:17:26 ◼   ► I mean, there's lots of opportunity here.

00:17:28 ◼   ► I feel like when I hear people talking about entrenched smart home companies, I'm like,

00:17:34 ◼   ► "Hmm, I don't think that trench is very deep."

00:17:37 ◼   ► I feel like there's a lot of space here, a lot of room to grow and redefine what these

00:17:43 ◼   ► categories are and popularize it.

00:17:45 ◼   ► Like, I mean, Amazon has been trying and Google has been trying to popularize this for ages.

00:17:49 ◼   ► It's still not that great.

00:17:52 ◼   ► There's opportunity here.

00:17:53 ◼   ► So we also got some listeners who wrote in with some thoughts and questions about this

00:17:58 ◼   ► kind of space for Apple.

00:17:59 ◼   ► Brian says, "Do you think the iPhone mirroring feature that was debuted at Mac OS this year

00:18:04 ◼   ► could be a software tell that similar features are under development or consideration for

00:18:08 ◼   ► the rumored home part of a screen product?

00:18:10 ◼   ► This could bring all the iOS apps while avoiding some of the platform adoption issues that

00:18:14 ◼   ► have plagued platforms less popular than the iPhone."

00:18:17 ◼   ► So we spoke about intents, we spoke about widgets, but just straight mirroring could

00:18:21 ◼   ► be another one.

00:18:22 ◼   ► Like, maybe it's not what's on the Mac, but maybe it's like, would you like to mirror

00:18:27 ◼   ► YouTube?

00:18:28 ◼   ► It feels to me like, this feels too far to me.

00:18:32 ◼   ► I think we talked about it last time.

00:18:34 ◼   ► The idea of, David Smith's idea that the iPhone mirroring on the Mac has suggest some things

00:18:41 ◼   ► about what they might have, how they might approach some of a device like this, I think

00:18:45 ◼   ► is right.

00:18:46 ◼   ► I think that he's clocked it, which is if you can show all your notifications from your

00:18:52 ◼   ► phone on your Mac, you would presumably automatically be able to do that with this device.

00:18:59 ◼   ► If you can display a widget that's running on your phone on your Mac, you absolutely

00:19:04 ◼   ► should be able to do that with this device.

00:19:05 ◼   ► And that solves part of that problem of like, how do you put widgets from Widget Smith on

00:19:10 ◼   ► it if Widget Smith doesn't run because there's no app store?

00:19:13 ◼   ► And the answer is, it runs from your iPhone.

00:19:15 ◼   ► So I don't know, based on the shape of this thing and the size of the screen, I'm a little

00:19:22 ◼   ► dubious about that, but who knows?

00:19:25 ◼   ► I mean, AirPlay is a good example though, where you could have it, I don't know.

00:19:31 ◼   ► A lot of this stuff it's going to be able to do itself, right?

00:19:34 ◼   ► YouTube playback and things like that.

00:19:35 ◼   ► So I think you could say that this goes too far, but I do like the idea that Apple's been

00:19:41 ◼   ► building technologies in plain sight that allow it to project things from your iPhone

00:19:45 ◼   ► onto other screens.

00:19:47 ◼   ► That I like because I think that that is a very clever way, right?

00:19:52 ◼   ► Because here's the problem.

00:19:54 ◼   ► We talk a lot about multiple devices and you get different notifications in different places.

00:19:59 ◼   ► And if you have two different Macs, not everything syncs and all of that.

00:20:02 ◼   ► Throwing this extra device into the mix when your life is on your iPhone is a problem because

00:20:09 ◼   ► your life's not on this thing.

00:20:12 ◼   ► So the more projection you can do from your iPhone and the more you can tie it into your

00:20:15 ◼   ► iPhone or iPhones, because remember Apple already in the HomePod has voice recognition

00:20:19 ◼   ► where they can actually detect who's speaking.

00:20:21 ◼   ► So if you have the idea that it knows who's speaking and it knows who's iPhone is who's.

00:20:27 ◼   ► Like show me my email.

00:20:29 ◼   ► That's great.

00:20:30 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:20:31 ◼   ► Right.

00:20:32 ◼   ► Because again, it's like, it's not necessarily about like iPhone mirroring isn't just mirroring

00:20:36 ◼   ► the iPhone.

00:20:37 ◼   ► We're assuming it's the same technology that they use to do the widget mirroring, right?

00:20:41 ◼   ► Or the notification mirroring.

00:20:43 ◼   ► Like it's all, I would assume much of the same kind of like making this secure connection.

00:20:49 ◼   ► And maybe there is a thing that we haven't seen yet that would make the same kind of

00:20:56 ◼   ► links together.

00:20:57 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:20:59 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:21:00 ◼   ► Brian, a different Brian.

00:21:02 ◼   ► We have a lot of Brian's who care about this.

00:21:03 ◼   ► A second Brian says, do you think that the HomePod with a screen could act as a bridge

00:21:09 ◼   ► to bring Apple intelligence to other devices like the HomePod mini that would probably

00:21:13 ◼   ► not get a powerful enough chip for a long time?

00:21:16 ◼   ► I wrote a whole Mac world column about this because this is the challenge is that you've

00:21:20 ◼   ► got a lot of devices that are not likely to get Apple intelligence.

00:21:24 ◼   ► Apple watch is one of them.

00:21:27 ◼   ► HomePod mini is a good example.

00:21:28 ◼   ► I don't think they would upgrade the HomePod mini to process on device Apple intelligence

00:21:33 ◼   ► maybe, but boy, I just, so I think that there is a lot of this, which is how do you get

00:21:39 ◼   ► Apple intelligence in other places?

00:21:41 ◼   ► So HomePod with a screen that acts as a home hub and also can run Apple intelligence routines

00:21:45 ◼   ► itself, would that be a great way to control HomePods and give them some intelligence without

00:21:52 ◼   ► them actually being intelligent?

00:21:54 ◼   ► Of course.

00:21:55 ◼   ► I mean, the iPhone is too, right?

00:21:56 ◼   ► It would be kind of nice if you didn't need to use the HomePod with the screen, you could

00:21:59 ◼   ► just also use your iPhone.

00:22:01 ◼   ► I think they need to come up with a way in probably presumably the next product cycle,

00:22:05 ◼   ► although maybe it's tied to this product, if this comes out sooner, to have that sort

00:22:09 ◼   ► of thing where like if I issue a command and one of the devices in my little personal cloud

00:22:14 ◼   ► in my house has Apple intelligence on it, maybe it should field it.

00:22:20 ◼   ► Maybe it should take that in and then choose the right thing to do.

00:22:24 ◼   ► And they're probably not there yet, but absolutely, this is a way to make those unintelligent

00:22:30 ◼   ► devices theoretically more intelligent.

00:22:33 ◼   ► And Kelvin came up with my favorite name so far.

00:22:37 ◼   ► You hold it for a second.

00:22:39 ◼   ► So Kelvin says, what about HomePod Touch because it continues the iPod naming scheme.

00:22:45 ◼   ► We have iPod, HomePod, iPod mini, HomePod mini, iPod touch, HomePod touch.

00:22:52 ◼   ► You can touch the HomePod already?

00:22:54 ◼   ► But it doesn't do anything.

00:22:55 ◼   ► I mean, you could touch an iPod before.

00:22:58 ◼   ► You did touch them, but they weren't called that.

00:23:00 ◼   ► A little sidebar.

00:23:01 ◼   ► I know I wrote about this years ago when they came out, but I just moved a pair of second

00:23:05 ◼   ► gen full-size HomePods into my living room and to replace, okay, so my last of my first

00:23:13 ◼   ► gen HomePods died in the classic way that they die, which is they just stop and that's

00:23:19 ◼   ► it.

00:23:20 ◼   ► I have two original gen HomePods that I'm still using.

00:23:22 ◼   ► I feel like I'm a unicorn here because I was listening to Mac Power users and they were

00:23:26 ◼   ► talking about that too.

00:23:27 ◼   ► I was using them as well in my living room and then one died and a friend said, oh, I

00:23:33 ◼   ► have one that we're not using.

00:23:34 ◼   ► I'll send it to you and she did and I used that for a while and that one still works,

00:23:39 ◼   ► but the other one that was my other one that I had had from the beginning, it died.

00:23:48 ◼   ► We had a good run, but it's over now.

00:23:50 ◼   ► So I moved, I also have a pair of second gen HomePods.

00:23:53 ◼   ► So I moved those into the living room and plugged them in and set them up.

00:23:58 ◼   ► I know I wrote about this when I reviewed them, but it's been ages and I haven't put

00:24:01 ◼   ► them in this context.

00:24:03 ◼   ► Those devices in the living room, I do adjust the volume by pressing the plus minus on them

00:24:10 ◼   ► and they don't light up anymore.

00:24:11 ◼   ► The second gen doesn't light up the plus minus buttons, so you can't see them to change the

00:24:16 ◼   ► volume.

00:24:17 ◼   ► I'm tapping all over and it's pausing it and playing it again and what are they, what are

00:24:23 ◼   ► you doing?

00:24:24 ◼   ► What are you doing?

00:24:25 ◼   ► Anyway, you could call it HomePod Touch.

00:24:26 ◼   ► I think that's a very clever name.

00:24:28 ◼   ► I don't know if they'll go that route or not, but I like it.

00:24:31 ◼   ► I like it as an idea so far.

00:24:34 ◼   ► That's my favorite of the potential name options.

00:24:37 ◼   ► Where at first I was like, would they?

00:24:38 ◼   ► And then I was like, oh, it does follow the iPod.

00:24:41 ◼   ► So we'll see.

00:24:42 ◼   ► I look forward to HomePod Shuffle.

00:24:44 ◼   ► I don't know what that's going to do though.

00:24:45 ◼   ► I'm not sure.

00:24:46 ◼   ► Kelvin, you are now an honorary HomeBrien.

00:24:48 ◼   ► Congratulations.

00:24:49 ◼   ► HomePod Nano.

00:24:51 ◼   ► Like it's just like, I don't know what that is.

00:24:54 ◼   ► We'll find out.

00:24:55 ◼   ► HomePod Brian.

00:24:56 ◼   ► In upgrade plus last week, we both spoke about blue sky, like in kind of our feelings about

00:25:01 ◼   ► blue sky.

00:25:02 ◼   ► So I wanted to mention here in case any upgradings want to follow us on blue sky, we're both

00:25:05 ◼   ► on blue sky.

00:25:06 ◼   ► You're a Snell.Zone.

00:25:08 ◼   ► I'm Mike.Social.

00:25:10 ◼   ► I'll put links in the show notes in case you want to find us there.

00:25:14 ◼   ► Do you like that I extended the Snell Zone branding even further?

00:25:17 ◼   ► I'm so happy.

00:25:18 ◼   ► I've got the domain, man.

00:25:20 ◼   ► I didn't want to be Snellworld.com, right?

00:25:23 ◼   ► There was a time where me and Steven decided that your nickname was going to be Snell Zone.

00:25:28 ◼   ► And I remember you didn't like it.

00:25:31 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:25:32 ◼   ► You know, I prefer the Snell Zone is a, I am not the Snell Zone.

00:25:35 ◼   ► The Snell Zone is a place.

00:25:36 ◼   ► The Snell Zone is a place, not a people, you know?

00:25:39 ◼   ► That's right.

00:25:40 ◼   ► It's a place when you're with me, you're in the Snell Zone.

00:25:42 ◼   ► And so when people come to blue sky and they go to your profile, they're in the Snell Zone.

00:25:48 ◼   ► They are.

00:25:49 ◼   ► And when they receive the emanations from my social media presence on blue sky, they

00:25:54 ◼   ► are receiving them straight from the Snell Zone.

00:25:56 ◼   ► That's absolutely true.

00:25:57 ◼   ► I love it.

00:25:58 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

00:25:59 ◼   ► You can follow us there.

00:26:00 ◼   ► Also, my family, did you know that my family chat with my wife and my kids is named Snell

00:26:03 ◼   ► Zone?

00:26:04 ◼   ► Yeah, I did not know that.

00:26:05 ◼   ► I love that.

00:26:06 ◼   ► Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:26:07 ◼   ► That makes me very excited.

00:26:08 ◼   ► That makes me very excited.

00:26:09 ◼   ► But yeah, I will say, look, maybe it's just like the new social media shine.

00:26:17 ◼   ► Kind of liking blue sky.

00:26:18 ◼   ► I kind of like it.

00:26:21 ◼   ► We'll see how long that lasts, but right now I do like it.

00:26:24 ◼   ► I have some notes.

00:26:25 ◼   ► I feel like they need a proper replies view.

00:26:28 ◼   ► I don't need to see people following me.

00:26:33 ◼   ► There is a settings icon on their notifications view.

00:26:37 ◼   ► And what it does is suppress all replies to you from people who aren't following you.

00:26:41 ◼   ► So I guess it's like a celebrity view or something, or people you're not following.

00:26:46 ◼   ► It's exactly the wrong setting.

00:26:48 ◼   ► So they have some work to do on that score.

00:26:52 ◼   ► And it's in the inflationary period of any social media.

00:26:54 ◼   ► It gets kind of old.

00:26:55 ◼   ► And we talked about it last week that as it settles down, we'll see how it goes.

00:26:59 ◼   ► But also, in general, I don't think I need more social media in my life.

00:27:05 ◼   ► But one of the approaches is use the different ones for different purposes.

00:27:09 ◼   ► And one thing that is slowly happening is, I said for a long time, the only thing I'm

00:27:14 ◼   ► using on Twitter anymore is my sports list.

00:27:17 ◼   ► Because the sports writers didn't move anywhere else.

00:27:21 ◼   ► They're still breaking news.

00:27:22 ◼   ► And that's still true.

00:27:23 ◼   ► The Calgarethom is there.

00:27:25 ◼   ► All those people are still on X.

00:27:26 ◼   ► Okay.

00:27:27 ◼   ► But in the last two weeks, a substantial number of the people on my sports list have moved

00:27:34 ◼   ► to Blue Sky.

00:27:35 ◼   ► So that I now have a Blue Sky sports list.

00:27:38 ◼   ► And that's exciting.

00:27:40 ◼   ► I also wrote about a thing called Cill, which is a social media app like Nuzzle, where you

00:27:45 ◼   ► can attach it to Blue Sky and Mastodon, and it will roll up all the links in your social

00:27:50 ◼   ► media.

00:27:51 ◼   ► It's early.

00:27:52 ◼   ► It's like public beta.

00:27:53 ◼   ► They need to add some stuff, including support for lists.

00:27:56 ◼   ► But somebody is remaking Nuzzle for these other social media outlets, too.

00:28:00 ◼   ► So that's cool.

00:28:01 ◼   ► Blue Sky even has an element of that, right?

00:28:03 ◼   ► But I know it's about posts, but it's like things that are popular with your friends.

00:28:06 ◼   ► With your friends, yeah.

00:28:07 ◼   ► I have not dug into a lot of the features that Blue Sky has.

00:28:12 ◼   ► But similar to you, there's just a lot of content creators in different fields, especially

00:28:18 ◼   ► in gaming.

00:28:19 ◼   ► They didn't move to Threads or Mastodon.

00:28:20 ◼   ► They tried Threads and didn't like it, but they seem to have moved to Blue Sky.

00:28:24 ◼   ► So I'm getting a lot of the stuff that is just the things that I enjoy on that service.

00:28:30 ◼   ► I feel like at the moment, I kind of have these three different services, and I'm kind

00:28:34 ◼   ► of trying to use them more differently, and we'll see how that goes.

00:28:38 ◼   ► And let's be honest, three of them are not going to win, right?

00:28:40 ◼   ► There's not going to be three.

00:28:42 ◼   ► There's maybe going to be two.

00:28:43 ◼   ► I don't know what two of that's going to be.

00:28:46 ◼   ► My first week with Blue Sky has been positive.

00:28:48 ◼   ► Sure.

00:28:49 ◼   ► Yeah, I would say so.

00:28:51 ◼   ► Yeah, we'll see how it shakes out.

00:28:58 ◼   ► It really depends on where it goes.

00:28:59 ◼   ► But I do hope that this sports writer exodus or cross post or whatever continues, because

00:29:08 ◼   ► I would love to be able to just visit my Blue Sky sports list and get enough.

00:29:15 ◼   ► We've already talked about college football, but I'll just throw in here.

00:29:18 ◼   ► There's a guy who does the Baseball Hall of Fame vote tracker, Ryan Thibodeau.

00:29:23 ◼   ► And so we're in the period where the baseball writers are turning in their ballots for who's

00:29:26 ◼   ► going to make the Hall of Fame.

00:29:28 ◼   ► And he used to track that all on Twitter, and he left Twitter and is on Blue Sky now.

00:29:32 ◼   ► And so every time I go to the Blue Sky sports list, at the very least, I'm getting some

00:29:37 ◼   ► of my baseball writers and the Hall of Fame tracker and all that kind of stuff is there.

00:29:41 ◼   ► It's a good start, right?

00:29:42 ◼   ► It's not -- I have been waiting for a while now for there to be any reason for me to create

00:29:50 ◼   ► a sports list on Blue Sky, and there wasn't any.

00:29:52 ◼   ► And now it's starting to happen.

00:29:54 ◼   ► And so I'm happy about that.

00:29:55 ◼   ► That's a start.

00:29:56 ◼   ► I hope that becomes functional.

00:29:58 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:29:59 ◼   ► I also just wanted to mention, still just a couple of weeks left to get your nominations

00:30:05 ◼   ► in for the 11th annual Upgradies.

00:30:08 ◼   ► They're coming in December.

00:30:09 ◼   ► Voting is open.

00:30:10 ◼   ► Go to Upgradies.vote.

00:30:12 ◼   ► Thank you to the many of you that have.

00:30:13 ◼   ► If you want to get your voice heard for the 11th annual Upgradies, which is being recorded

00:30:19 ◼   ► on December 30th, you've got to get your nominations in by December 13th at Upgradies.vote, and

00:30:26 ◼   ► there'll be a link in the show notes too.

00:30:28 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:30:29 ◼   ► You'll help us out a lot.

00:30:30 ◼   ► It's not just to make your voice heard and what your preferences are.

00:30:33 ◼   ► It's also to give us suggestions for things that we should look at that we maybe haven't

00:30:39 ◼   ► considered because that is very helpful to us.

00:30:41 ◼   ► Cause we're just two little brains in the world.

00:30:45 ◼   ► We need the power of the Upgradians.

00:30:47 ◼   ► We're just a couple of boys going 98 yards.

00:30:49 ◼   ► 98 yards, man.

00:30:51 ◼   ► That's it.

00:30:52 ◼   ► That's it.

00:30:53 ◼   ► Help us get across the goal line.

00:30:55 ◼   ► It's a long way down those 98 yards.

00:30:57 ◼   ► 98 yards to the Upgradies.

00:30:59 ◼   ► Come be one of the boys with us.

00:31:02 ◼   ► Let's go.

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00:33:22 ◼   ► It's time for the Rumour Roundup.

00:33:25 ◼   ► Yeehaw!

00:33:26 ◼   ► We've got a couple of stories today.

00:33:28 ◼   ► Mark Germin at Bloomberg is reporting on Apple's plans for a version of Siri that is more conversational

00:33:34 ◼   ► and powered by their own large language model.

00:33:37 ◼   ► This version of Siri would expect to be more human-like in conversation and be more capable

00:33:43 ◼   ► of handling complex queries more quickly.

00:33:47 ◼   ► So while this would be debuted as part of iOS 19 at WWDC most likely, but like how Apple

00:33:54 ◼   ► has been rolling out Apple Intelligence so far, this would be part of a point release

00:33:58 ◼   ► down the road.

00:34:00 ◼   ► Mark Germin believes that it would ship in 2026, probably in the spring.

00:34:05 ◼   ► So that's a long time from now.

00:34:09 ◼   ► 18 months, folks.

00:34:10 ◼   ► From now.

00:34:11 ◼   ► 18 months for maybe good Siri.

00:34:14 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:34:15 ◼   ► And separately, Mark Germin was talking on threads about how this is what we can expect

00:34:21 ◼   ► from Apple going forward is to be rolling out their features over a longer period of

00:34:25 ◼   ► time.

00:34:26 ◼   ► Which I think there is something good to that.

00:34:29 ◼   ► There is like merit to that.

00:34:31 ◼   ► But this to me is like, there's been so much to-ing and throwing.

00:34:36 ◼   ► Is Apple behind?

00:34:37 ◼   ► Is everybody else truly behind?

00:34:40 ◼   ► Did Apple get just the right features?

00:34:42 ◼   ► To me, this shows that they are behind.

00:34:47 ◼   ► An LLM powered Siri is what should have shipped now.

00:34:51 ◼   ► That should be shipping now.

00:34:52 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:34:53 ◼   ► I think that one of the advantages Apple has is that if it turns out that these gains in

00:35:00 ◼   ► AI models are becoming more limited, which is one story that's out there, that the AI

00:35:06 ◼   ► companies are struggling to make their models better now that they've hit a wall or maybe

00:35:11 ◼   ► at least it's harder.

00:35:13 ◼   ► Okay.

00:35:14 ◼   ► If that's true, then that's going to be great for Apple because Apple will be able to catch

00:35:18 ◼   ► up.

00:35:19 ◼   ► And also if there are places where everybody realizes, oh, you know, AI models aren't good

00:35:22 ◼   ► for this, Apple will be like, great, we're not just not going to even do that.

00:35:26 ◼   ► We never had to do that.

00:35:27 ◼   ► We never pretended to do that.

00:35:28 ◼   ► Great.

00:35:29 ◼   ► So that's fine.

00:35:30 ◼   ► But you're right in the sense that I think when everybody thought about Apple doing AI,

00:35:34 ◼   ► everybody not, I don't know about everybody.

00:35:36 ◼   ► Lots of us thought, oh, good, fix Siri.

00:35:38 ◼   ► This was the logical thing.

00:35:39 ◼   ► Like this was the obvious thing.

00:35:41 ◼   ► It's like we were talking about Siri as a chatbot from months before the WWDC this year.

00:35:47 ◼   ► Now it's possible that with App Intents and your personal data being queried, the semantic

00:35:59 ◼   ► index and all that, that Siri will get better this spring, but it won't be what we thought

00:36:09 ◼   ► Siri would be, which is more conversational.

00:36:14 ◼   ► And even if you use, I mean, I don't know, they may, they may make it so that like if

00:36:20 ◼   ► you query chat GPT automatically, it'll give you some things back that are better, but

00:36:25 ◼   ► like, what are, but, but I think you're right, which is this shows play a place where Apple

00:36:33 ◼   ► really does feel like it's way behind.

00:36:36 ◼   ► With the first thing that a lot of us think of as being the benefit of large language

00:36:40 ◼   ► models is you could make Siri more conversational and have knowledge of our history of our conversation

00:36:47 ◼   ► and be able to give it, give me answers in better ways.

00:36:50 ◼   ► And what we're sort of getting is things that aren't that things that feel like they come

00:36:57 ◼   ► from the earlier days of the AI craze.

00:37:01 ◼   ► And the thing that really seems the most obvious is not just shipping, you know, it's not just

00:37:06 ◼   ► going to be announced next June, but even then we're not going to actually see it until

00:37:12 ◼   ► more than a year from now.

00:37:14 ◼   ► That's that's tough.

00:37:15 ◼   ► That's rough.

00:37:16 ◼   ► So this LLM powered version of the Apple assistant should be able to build on the work that will

00:37:22 ◼   ► ship as part of iOS 18.

00:37:24 ◼   ► So the app Intents, but this should be able to do a better job with that.

00:37:28 ◼   ► Of course.

00:37:29 ◼   ► Great.

00:37:30 ◼   ► So the Apple will continue to have their partnership with open AI and probably Google too, and

00:37:35 ◼   ► maybe others.

00:37:36 ◼   ► The expectation is over time that they will need to rely on them less and less with this

00:37:39 ◼   ► LLM version of Siri.

00:37:44 ◼   ► This is what this is what it should be, but it isn't.

00:37:46 ◼   ► And it's like, wow, that's going to be a long time.

00:37:49 ◼   ► You know?

00:37:50 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:37:51 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:37:52 ◼   ► That's I do.

00:37:53 ◼   ► I do wonder if their term solution is to pipe these things through to the other LLMs.

00:37:56 ◼   ► Right.

00:37:57 ◼   ► Also, it's really funny.

00:37:58 ◼   ► We're still talking about maybe Google.

00:37:59 ◼   ► Like I don't even know what's going on there, but it's really interesting that it may just

00:38:03 ◼   ► be that Apple is, is, has decided they want to ship their integration with one partner

00:38:08 ◼   ► and make sure that it actually works.

00:38:09 ◼   ► And then it actually kind of a classic move, right?

00:38:11 ◼   ► Which is we're going to build our initial launch of how this works and then we'll open

00:38:15 ◼   ► it up to third parties thinking of open AI as it's weird.

00:38:18 ◼   ► It is a third party, but it's like a first party implementation.

00:38:21 ◼   ► It's an Apple implementation of how you work with an external chat bot in iOS or in Mac

00:38:25 ◼   ► OS, right?

00:38:26 ◼   ► Or either way.

00:38:28 ◼   ► And so they, maybe their approach is really like, look, we're just going to launch this

00:38:32 ◼   ► with open AI so that it makes sense and it works and then we can use it with other providers

00:38:37 ◼   ► and we'll get them in here.

00:38:39 ◼   ► Maybe that's it.

00:38:40 ◼   ► Maybe there are negotiations going on.

00:38:41 ◼   ► I don't know, but I find it really funny that they're still talking about maybe Google and

00:38:44 ◼   ► there's just nothing that has come out about that or any other potential partner other

00:38:48 ◼   ► than Apple's intent to have more partners than just open AI.

00:38:52 ◼   ► But maybe you use that to prop it up a little bit and say, you know, allow Siri to relay

00:38:57 ◼   ► my request to open AI, you know, and you log in and you say, don't ask me.

00:39:01 ◼   ► And then maybe you could get something that is at least a little bit better than the existing

00:39:06 ◼   ► Siri experience.

00:39:07 ◼   ► But I don't know.

00:39:09 ◼   ► I mean, it's not going to be based on your personal contacts.

00:39:11 ◼   ► That's the whole point, right?

00:39:12 ◼   ► Is that you want an intelligent Siri who knows all your personal contacts.

00:39:15 ◼   ► And it sounds like it's going to be the kind of dumb Siri with a smart personal contacts

00:39:19 ◼   ► backing instead for the next year.

00:39:23 ◼   ► So, Magrumas is reporting on an analyst note from Jeff Poo who says that he expects the

00:39:31 ◼   ► iPhone 17 Air would be the thinnest iPhone Apple has ever made.

00:39:36 ◼   ► So this is the thin version of the iPhone 17.

00:39:40 ◼   ► The iPhone 6 currently holds this title coming in at 6.9 millimeters.

00:39:45 ◼   ► This phone is expected to be just over six millimeters.

00:39:48 ◼   ► So it will be the thinnest phone ever and the current thinnest iPhone that you can buy

00:39:54 ◼   ► right now is the iPhone 16, which is 7.8 millimeters.

00:39:58 ◼   ► I can't wait for Bendgate 2025.

00:40:00 ◼   ► It's going to be awesome.

00:40:01 ◼   ► Bendgate.

00:40:02 ◼   ► Oh boy.

00:40:03 ◼   ► Yeah, baby.

00:40:04 ◼   ► Bring it back.

00:40:05 ◼   ► It's fine.

00:40:06 ◼   ► I think.

00:40:07 ◼   ► So, Mark Gurman had some color about this this week talking about how he put it firmly

00:40:20 ◼   ► in the context of Apple trying to find another iPhone that isn't the iPhone base model.

00:40:28 ◼   ► And there's the mini and then there was the plus.

00:40:31 ◼   ► His narrative is fascinating because he suggests first off, he suggests that loud Mac podcasters

00:40:36 ◼   ► bullied Apple into releasing the iPhone mini.

00:40:40 ◼   ► This loud Mac podcaster, if you call me that, said that they shouldn't.

00:40:44 ◼   ► So yeah, I was like, big fun.

00:40:46 ◼   ► Let's go.

00:40:47 ◼   ► Big fun.

00:40:48 ◼   ► And I, look, do things we say sometimes have an impact on what Apple does?

00:40:53 ◼   ► I guess.

00:40:54 ◼   ► Sure.

00:40:55 ◼   ► But for the iPhone at this scale of like, I'm skeptical of that.

00:41:00 ◼   ► But what I also think is funny is that he's like, oh, the podcasters said they would get

00:41:04 ◼   ► the mini, but that didn't work.

00:41:05 ◼   ► And then he's just like, and also then they tried the plus and that also didn't work.

00:41:09 ◼   ► It's like, yeah.

00:41:10 ◼   ► I mean, this is not a story about podcasters hoodwinking Apple into making a smaller phone.

00:41:15 ◼   ► It's that Apple has some specific sales goals for what that alternate iPhone product should

00:41:20 ◼   ► be.

00:41:21 ◼   ► Like if we're going to go to the trouble of making it, it should sell at this level.

00:41:24 ◼   ► And clearly making it smaller or bigger didn't satisfy.

00:41:27 ◼   ► So what are they going to do now?

00:41:28 ◼   ► Thinner.

00:41:29 ◼   ► They're trying a different dimension and they're going to see how this one works and we'll

00:41:32 ◼   ► see.

00:41:33 ◼   ► I also saw some skepticism, I mean, Gurman said, I don't think it's going to make a difference.

00:41:37 ◼   ► I mean, he's entering pundit territory there, right?

00:41:40 ◼   ► Which is very different.

00:41:41 ◼   ► He has the best sources.

00:41:42 ◼   ► His punditry is, it's just punditry.

00:41:44 ◼   ► It's fine.

00:41:45 ◼   ► But he's like, I don't think anything's going to move the needle here until the folding

00:41:48 ◼   ► phone.

00:41:49 ◼   ► I think he's probably right on a large scale, but I think that thin, I think thinness has

00:41:55 ◼   ► a different kind of appeal than bigger or smaller.

00:41:58 ◼   ► And I love that they're trying this because what they're trying is to redefine what table

00:42:04 ◼   ► stakes are in an iPhone.

00:42:06 ◼   ► And it's going to be like, I saw somebody on some social media network who even knows

00:42:10 ◼   ► anymore, which one, who can tell who was like, I'm really skeptical about this stupid thin

00:42:14 ◼   ► iPhone because you're going to lose multiple zoom levels.

00:42:19 ◼   ► And it's only going to, the one that made me laugh is it's only going to have one speaker.

00:42:22 ◼   ► It's not going to have stereo speakers.

00:42:23 ◼   ► And I'm like, if there's something I don't care about on my iPhone, it's the stereo speaker.

00:42:28 ◼   ► But okay.

00:42:29 ◼   ► Okay.

00:42:30 ◼   ► But this is the point is I love the idea that Apple's going to throw out a bunch of stuff

00:42:35 ◼   ► in order to get, it's the ultimate Johnny Ive impulse, right?

00:42:37 ◼   ► In order to get this thing to be as thin as possible.

00:42:40 ◼   ► But what they're not going to do is make it the main iPhone, at least not yet.

00:42:44 ◼   ► They're going to make it this thin alternative.

00:42:47 ◼   ► I like that idea because I wonder if some people will look at it and be like, Ooh, I

00:42:53 ◼   ► like that one in a way that, uh, that without, uh, another object for size reference, you

00:43:00 ◼   ► couldn't do with the other phones, right?

00:43:02 ◼   ► They're literally, Oh, it's an iPhone.

00:43:04 ◼   ► How is it different?

00:43:05 ◼   ► Well, this one's slightly bigger or slightly smaller.

00:43:07 ◼   ► This one should be much more visibly different.

00:43:10 ◼   ► I think that's interesting.

00:43:11 ◼   ► It's worth a try.

00:43:12 ◼   ► Is it going to create a huge spike in iPhone sales?

00:43:15 ◼   ► I don't think so.

00:43:17 ◼   ► It will move.

00:43:18 ◼   ► It will move people around.

00:43:19 ◼   ► I don't think this, and I think a folding phone could like a folding iPhone.

00:43:22 ◼   ► A folding phone could bring new people in.

00:43:24 ◼   ► I agree.

00:43:25 ◼   ► I think, I think what it might do is solve Apple's problem of how you have another phone

00:43:32 ◼   ► in the line, right?

00:43:33 ◼   ► That the mini and the plus didn't solve.

00:43:35 ◼   ► I think maybe having a phone that is different and has different, different trade-offs probably

00:43:42 ◼   ► more expensive than you'd think and different trade-offs is going to maybe entice some people

00:43:47 ◼   ► and also move people around.

00:43:48 ◼   ► But I also agree.

00:43:49 ◼   ► I mean, I think that we said here a few months ago is if you're making a folding phone, everything

00:43:55 ◼   ► in the individual planes of that phone has to get way thinner.

00:43:59 ◼   ► Making a thinner iPhone is a good way point on the way to making a folding iPhone.

00:44:06 ◼   ► And preparing people for what the trade-offs might be of a folding iPhone that we may not

00:44:10 ◼   ► be able to get that 5X camera in there on a folding phone, get used to it.

00:44:16 ◼   ► So I think this product, it's not going to change the world.

00:44:20 ◼   ► It's not going to generate a giant spike in iPhone sales.

00:44:23 ◼   ► This is all true, but I'm pretty positive about it being, I like that they're trying

00:44:29 ◼   ► it and I think it's got a better chance of success than the mini or the plus do, but

00:44:32 ◼   ► we'll see.

00:44:33 ◼   ► Jason, we're going to do some upstream.

00:44:37 ◼   ► Oh, that's nice.

00:44:39 ◼   ► That's nice.

00:44:41 ◼   ► People should tune into a downstream by the way, a podcast I do with a rotating group

00:44:45 ◼   ► of interesting people about the present and future of television.

00:44:50 ◼   ► There will be a link in the show notes, but you can also find downstream wherever you

00:44:54 ◼   ► get your podcasts.

00:44:56 ◼   ► Downstream is like a fun thing where I've never been part of a show that has had a spin-off,

00:45:00 ◼   ► right?

00:45:01 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:45:02 ◼   ► It was manifested by the ghost of Federico Future too, but yeah, we spun it right off.

00:45:08 ◼   ► But I think that's very fun and it's a great show.

00:45:11 ◼   ► But anyway, what I want to talk about here is there's two pieces of Apple TV news.

00:45:16 ◼   ► The first is in speaking to Deadline, writer and director of Wolfs, that's the George Clooney

00:45:23 ◼   ► and Brad Pitt movie, John Watts has shared that he does not want to continue working

00:45:29 ◼   ► with Apple for a potential sequel.

00:45:32 ◼   ► Watts was very unhappy that Apple decided to change course on a theatrical release.

00:45:36 ◼   ► They're originally going to make a theatrical release and then...

00:45:39 ◼   ► First minute, with one week's warning, they told the creative people involved that they

00:45:45 ◼   ► weren't going to bother.

00:45:47 ◼   ► And this was very upsetting to all of the people involved.

00:45:51 ◼   ► Because movie people want their movies in movie theaters, they do.

00:45:55 ◼   ► That's just, you got to deal with that.

00:45:57 ◼   ► Just in case, like, you know, if you don't know who John Watts is, like, he made the

00:46:02 ◼   ► Spider-Man movies.

00:46:03 ◼   ► He's a big deal director.

00:46:08 ◼   ► And he was going to do the Fantastic Four movie but didn't.

00:46:11 ◼   ► And then one of the things he did was this instead.

00:46:13 ◼   ► I think maybe he should have made that decision.

00:46:15 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:46:16 ◼   ► But anyway, so when this was going to be announced that they were going to be canceling the theatrical

00:46:21 ◼   ► release, Watts asked Apple to not mention that there was a sequel in development, which

00:46:27 ◼   ► was something that apparently during the development of Wolfs, Apple liked it so much that they

00:46:31 ◼   ► said, "We want to do another one."

00:46:33 ◼   ► And Watts was like, "Okay."

00:46:34 ◼   ► And they started work on that too.

00:46:36 ◼   ► But then when they were going to change course in this, it's like, "Please don't say about

00:46:39 ◼   ► this," but Apple did.

00:46:42 ◼   ► And I actually heard some reporting or some thoughts on this, like from Matt Bellamy,

00:46:46 ◼   ► who's the host of The Town and Wright's Oak Park, where he was saying when he heard about

00:46:50 ◼   ► the sequel, he didn't think that sequel was ever going to happen because the movie didn't

00:46:56 ◼   ► seem like it was going to perform very well, especially if they took it out of theaters.

00:47:00 ◼   ► And he believed that this was Apple trying to kind of like make Watts feel better.

00:47:05 ◼   ► But now Watts has this alternate story, which I'm more inclined to believe because this

00:47:10 ◼   ► is coming from him.

00:47:11 ◼   ► It's just like speculation from Bellamy's part.

00:47:13 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:47:14 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:47:15 ◼   ► It feels to me like Apple wanted to...

00:47:17 ◼   ► Apple changed direction, and we're going to get to the other story about this too, because

00:47:21 ◼   ► this is all about Apple TV+, but it's really about the film division, which is really interesting

00:47:28 ◼   ► because the TV division I think is doing a great job and the film division is completely

00:47:31 ◼   ► confused and lost.

00:47:33 ◼   ► And in this scenario, what they're trying to do is save face.

00:47:36 ◼   ► So they're like, "Yeah, we're not going to do a theatrical release, but we love the movie

00:47:41 ◼   ► and we've already commissioned work on a sequel."

00:47:44 ◼   ► And they're trying to do that to save face.

00:47:46 ◼   ► And I do believe they're actually trying to save face for the creative partners of the

00:47:52 ◼   ► movie, including the actors and the writer and director, saying we're not...

00:47:57 ◼   ► Even if they have no intent of actually funding the sequel, I think they mentioned the sequel

00:48:03 ◼   ► because they wanted to soften the blow and make it seem like they were still very confident

00:48:07 ◼   ► in these actors and the director.

00:48:08 ◼   ► The reason we're doing this is not because the movie's bad, right?

00:48:12 ◼   ► That's the message they're trying to get across.

00:48:14 ◼   ► But they also want to make it that people don't feel like the movie's going to be a

00:48:16 ◼   ► stinker, right?

00:48:17 ◼   ► So it's also self-serving.

00:48:19 ◼   ► But what it does do, if Watts asks you not to mention it, you got to not mention it if

00:48:26 ◼   ► you want to have good relationships with people in Hollywood, because this is the result.

00:48:30 ◼   ► Or you have a conversation saying, "John, we'd really like to mention it because it's

00:48:34 ◼   ► like a boost to the release of this."

00:48:36 ◼   ► But obviously he's so mad at this point.

00:48:38 ◼   ► And as we talked about this in the Upstream segment before, and certainly on Downstream,

00:48:43 ◼   ► that a lot of people who make movies in Hollywood, they want theatrical releases.

00:48:47 ◼   ► And they don't love the idea that the money that they're getting to make their movie,

00:48:50 ◼   ► which is great, they love the money, that those companies aren't that into theatrical.

00:48:56 ◼   ► Now we could actually make an argument that a lot of this stuff probably should get a

00:49:00 ◼   ► theatrical release, because it's marketing for when it comes on streaming.

00:49:04 ◼   ► But opinions vary.

00:49:07 ◼   ► Netflix doesn't want to do it.

00:49:10 ◼   ► And also the argument is, by the way, I think a strong argument that Wolfs was not going

00:49:14 ◼   ► to do well, and that Apple probably made the right business decision to do this.

00:49:18 ◼   ► But the problem is they treated it like a product launch and not like a creative endeavor,

00:49:22 ◼   ► where the fact is there are people who are very creative stars and writers and stuff,

00:49:28 ◼   ► and they don't hurt their feelings, because you do need to work with them and all of their

00:49:34 ◼   ► colleagues.

00:49:35 ◼   ► And it's a different dynamic than it is in the tech industry.

00:49:38 ◼   ► Maybe it shouldn't be.

00:49:39 ◼   ► Either way, maybe it should be nicer to your tech workers too.

00:49:44 ◼   ► But I think that the way that Hollywood works is the way that a lot of things work, where

00:49:48 ◼   ► like it is about personalities and relationships.

00:49:52 ◼   ► Personalities and relationships.

00:49:53 ◼   ► The problem is, when you kind of go against somebody's wishes, you end up with a quote

00:50:00 ◼   ► like this.

00:50:01 ◼   ► "Apple didn't cancel the Wolfs sequel.

00:50:03 ◼   ► I did, because I no longer trusted them as a creative partner."

00:50:07 ◼   ► Now that's bad news for new directors that Apple want to get on board.

00:50:12 ◼   ► There will always be people who will take your money.

00:50:15 ◼   ► And I think that there will be people who will take your money.

00:50:17 ◼   ► Also this is, I saw somebody who said this is just devastating for Apple and their reputation

00:50:23 ◼   ► is ruined.

00:50:24 ◼   ► And I'm like, every studio does stuff like this.

00:50:27 ◼   ► And then they have to mend fences.

00:50:29 ◼   ► Every studio does stuff like this.

00:50:31 ◼   ► Because there's definitely a director that they're currently trying to sign on who just

00:50:35 ◼   ► saw this headline and now is a bit like, and that's not what you want.

00:50:40 ◼   ► It's not what you want.

00:50:42 ◼   ► It's yeah, so part of this is Apple seems to have really not handled, I mean, they didn't

00:50:49 ◼   ► handle this situation well from a personal management standpoint, which in Hollywood

00:50:52 ◼   ► is important.

00:50:53 ◼   ► And it does smack a little bit of higher ups in the corporate structure saying, just do

00:50:58 ◼   ► it.

00:51:00 ◼   ► But at the same time, if you're the people in charge of Apple's films and John Watts

00:51:05 ◼   ► says, "Don't mention the sequel."

00:51:09 ◼   ► And he's the one who's working on the sequel.

00:51:13 ◼   ► You gotta not mention the sequel.

00:51:15 ◼   ► I'm sorry.

00:51:16 ◼   ► Like you gotta not mention it.

00:51:17 ◼   ► That is like, you've already angered him.

00:51:20 ◼   ► You've already betrayed him essentially, by unilaterally pulling the theatrical release

00:51:25 ◼   ► right before it's coming out, which is something that probably everybody working on the project

00:51:28 ◼   ► hung their hats on.

00:51:29 ◼   ► They're like, yeah, well, we're gonna get a theatrical release.

00:51:31 ◼   ► It's fine.

00:51:32 ◼   ► And we can debate separately about whether theatrical makes sense or not for a movie

00:51:36 ◼   ► like this.

00:51:37 ◼   ► That's fine.

00:51:38 ◼   ► Like you said you would.

00:51:39 ◼   ► People want it to be in the cinema because it's like it makes them feel good.

00:51:42 ◼   ► Absolutely.

00:51:43 ◼   ► And it's not a TV movie.

00:51:44 ◼   ► It's just it's a movie.

00:51:45 ◼   ► And then it's also on streaming, but they get that movie experience and they feel better

00:51:48 ◼   ► about it.

00:51:49 ◼   ► So we can debate the logic of that, but it doesn't matter.

00:51:51 ◼   ► Feelings matter.

00:51:52 ◼   ► Relationships matter.

00:51:53 ◼   ► They had this situation.

00:51:55 ◼   ► They made this decision where it basically feels like a betrayal.

00:51:59 ◼   ► And then on top of that, when one of the people who feels betrayed says, "Don't mention this

00:52:04 ◼   ► thing in your press release," and you just go ahead and mention it anyway, it's a double

00:52:10 ◼   ► betrayal.

00:52:11 ◼   ► It's very bad.

00:52:13 ◼   ► Don't do this.

00:52:14 ◼   ► So, I mean, maybe there'll be an explanation at some point where they're like, "Oh, it

00:52:17 ◼   ► didn't really kind of come down that way."

00:52:19 ◼   ► But I think from John Watts's perspective, it certainly did.

00:52:23 ◼   ► And if Apple, like Apple blew this.

00:52:24 ◼   ► I don't know whether they blew it because they miscommunicated or because they misunderstood.

00:52:28 ◼   ► They might have an excuse, but they blew it.

00:52:30 ◼   ► And it makes it harder for them to work with creative people in the future.

00:52:35 ◼   ► And ultimately, basically it means that either they're going to have to have more ironclad

00:52:40 ◼   ► promises about theatrical or they're going to have to pay more money to outbid their

00:52:45 ◼   ► competitors who are maybe viewed as more trustworthy until they betray their people too.

00:52:50 ◼   ► Because again, studios betray people.

00:52:52 ◼   ► And the whole point of this is they're spending too much money, right?

00:52:55 ◼   ► So like that doesn't even work.

00:52:58 ◼   ► Which brings us to our other story that we want to talk about here, because what's going

00:53:03 ◼   ► on at Apple in the film division is they have decided, and there was prior reporting about

00:53:09 ◼   ► basically like Tim Cook and Eddie Q sending the message down saying, "How we're doing

00:53:16 ◼   ► films is broken and doesn't make any sense from a business perspective.

00:53:20 ◼   ► We're spending way too much money."

00:53:23 ◼   ► All of which I'd say is true.

00:53:24 ◼   ► All of which is true, right?

00:53:26 ◼   ► They got Academy Awards and all that.

00:53:30 ◼   ► That's great.

00:53:31 ◼   ► But their movie strategy has never really made sense.

00:53:36 ◼   ► Other than viewing it as they want to work with famous people and get award nominations.

00:53:42 ◼   ► But from a business perspective, I don't think it's ever really made sense.

00:53:45 ◼   ► I don't think spending all the money that they've done on Napoleon and stuff like that.

00:53:50 ◼   ► I just don't think that it's made a lot of sense.

00:53:53 ◼   ► And they have started to pivot.

00:53:56 ◼   ► The challenge is, I think that pivot is what caused them to treat wolves the way they did.

00:54:01 ◼   ► The challenge is that the pipeline is so long for movies that you can change your whole

00:54:06 ◼   ► strategy, but you still got movies.

00:54:07 ◼   ► They still got that F1 movie.

00:54:09 ◼   ► That one's different.

00:54:10 ◼   ► I do think that one's different.

00:54:14 ◼   ► It's something that they can handle in their new strategy.

00:54:17 ◼   ► But the point is, they've changed and it doesn't matter that you've got these things going

00:54:20 ◼   ► on.

00:54:21 ◼   ► So I think the idea in the future that they need to do fewer movies and lower budget movies

00:54:26 ◼   ► and occasional tentpoles like the F1 movie is probably a better approach for them.

00:54:32 ◼   ► And then this piece from Lucas Shaw at Bloomberg, excellent reporter, great newsletter about

00:54:39 ◼   ► the entertainment business, talking about how Apple is now looking at licensing those

00:54:47 ◼   ► original films to other streamers.

00:54:52 ◼   ► The idea there is that right now the lifespan of a movie like Napoleon is it's in theaters

00:54:59 ◼   ► and then it's on Apple TV or it's in theaters and then there's a pay window where you can

00:55:03 ◼   ► rent it or buy it on iTunes and Amazon or wherever, but then it lives as a streamer

00:55:07 ◼   ► on Apple TV+.

00:55:11 ◼   ► What this report suggests is that they're going to take those movies that they have

00:55:15 ◼   ► endless eternal streaming rights to and they're going to do what honestly every other company

00:55:22 ◼   ► is doing, which is saying, "Yeah, this movie is now worth more to us if it's also on Netflix

00:55:33 ◼   ► than if it just stays on Apple TV+."

00:55:35 ◼   ► Because there comes a time where everybody who's on your service has seen it who's going

00:55:38 ◼   ► to watch it.

00:55:40 ◼   ► And there's a whole audience at Netflix or wherever who has not seen it and it has value

00:55:46 ◼   ► over there.

00:55:47 ◼   ► And so you end up having this idea that, "Well, early days of the streaming wars was I'm going

00:55:54 ◼   ► to take my ball and go home.

00:55:55 ◼   ► It's just going to be me.

00:55:56 ◼   ► You have to come to my service to get it."

00:55:58 ◼   ► And then in this next era of the streaming wars, it's like, "Oh yeah, that doesn't actually

00:56:04 ◼   ► -- I need money.

00:56:07 ◼   ► Let's license this out after all because our exclusive --" and it's leading to a new concept,

00:56:13 ◼   ► which is that they -- it's actually an old concept, but they brought it back -- which

00:56:16 ◼   ► is they pay the money for it.

00:56:18 ◼   ► They get it.

00:56:19 ◼   ► They get it to premiere it.

00:56:20 ◼   ► It's on their service.

00:56:21 ◼   ► It's got their logos on it and all that.

00:56:23 ◼   ► And then after some window of time, it goes other places and makes more money because

00:56:29 ◼   ► that's how you make money on TV shows and movies is continuing to sell them later.

00:56:36 ◼   ► And there have been many successes where shows that have been on one streamer -- TV shows,

00:56:40 ◼   ► but movies are probably the case too -- and then they go on Netflix and it's like it's

00:56:45 ◼   ► a new show.

00:56:46 ◼   ► And there's like -- it becomes a hit.

00:56:48 ◼   ► And it's because there's lots of people who have Netflix and they don't have your service.

00:56:52 ◼   ► And it's new to them.

00:56:54 ◼   ► Yeah, it's worth noting that at the moment, this licensing is for locations where Apple

00:57:02 ◼   ► isn't with Apple TV Plus.

00:57:04 ◼   ► But the expectation is from LucasShore and basically everybody else, that would just

00:57:10 ◼   ► be the start of this.

00:57:11 ◼   ► Like, if they can make money doing this, they should do this.

00:57:13 ◼   ► And like there -- it makes sense, right?

00:57:15 ◼   ► Like let's imagine you've got a new season of For All Mankind coming.

00:57:19 ◼   ► You could put the first three seasons on Netflix and then maybe people will come to Apple TV

00:57:24 ◼   ► Plus to watch the most recent one, right?

00:57:26 ◼   ► This is what other people do.

00:57:28 ◼   ► There's a reason you do it because Netflix is television.

00:57:30 ◼   ► Why aren't you not going to put your television show on television?

00:57:33 ◼   ► Like sometimes you kind of got to just deal with it.

00:57:36 ◼   ► I want to correct you on something there though.

00:57:39 ◼   ► This report does not say that Apple is planning on doing that with its TV shows.

00:57:43 ◼   ► This is for movies.

00:57:44 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, sorry.

00:57:45 ◼   ► But you got my point though.

00:57:47 ◼   ► In the long run, it'd be all of it, right?

00:57:49 ◼   ► In the long run -- or here's the other thing though.

00:57:52 ◼   ► In the long run, Apple could do that.

00:57:54 ◼   ► But Apple is, you know, its priorities are a little bit different.

00:57:58 ◼   ► It could take a season of For All Mankind or whatever.

00:58:01 ◼   ► Also those are -- at some point they have to pay -- it's like with Ted Lasso.

00:58:04 ◼   ► The stuff that they don't produce themselves, they do have a license for.

00:58:07 ◼   ► At some point -- that's why it goes on Blu-ray or DVD and stuff like that eventually is because

00:58:11 ◼   ► they don't have that.

00:58:12 ◼   ► At some point they have to say, "We don't want to keep paying to have C on Apple TV

00:58:16 ◼   ► Plus."

00:58:17 ◼   ► And then the studio that made C can go take it somewhere else.

00:58:21 ◼   ► Man, I forgot about C.

00:58:22 ◼   ► C. Jason Momoa.

00:58:23 ◼   ► Jason Momoa.

00:58:24 ◼   ► I watched the season of that.

00:58:25 ◼   ► It was okay.

00:58:26 ◼   ► I never went back to it though.

00:58:27 ◼   ► Didn't like it.

00:58:30 ◼   ► But they spent a fortune on it, right?

00:58:32 ◼   ► So they could do that.

00:58:36 ◼   ► But there definitely is a scenario where Apple looks at this stuff and says, "Let's just

00:58:42 ◼   ► put it on Netflix."

00:58:43 ◼   ► There's also a scenario where Apple says, "Our fast" -- so for people who don't listen

00:58:49 ◼   ► to downstream -- "free ad-supported television."

00:58:52 ◼   ► This is like Tubi and Pluto TV.

00:59:00 ◼   ► And Amazon had Freebie, but they're just converting it to -- there's a free tier of stuff at Prime

00:59:06 ◼   ► Video.

00:59:07 ◼   ► Apple could do that, right?

00:59:10 ◼   ► They've experimented with this a little bit, but it wouldn't be hard for Apple to just

00:59:13 ◼   ► say the entire first season of For All Mankind is free in the TV app, wherever you are.

00:59:20 ◼   ► They could do some of that, of granting of early seasons, and just say they're out there

00:59:24 ◼   ► for free, but you've got to watch them on Apple.

00:59:26 ◼   ► They could do that.

00:59:28 ◼   ► They could even do that with ads if they really wanted to, which might be an alternative to

00:59:33 ◼   ► building a paid ad tier, is to put a bunch of stuff up on a free tier with ads.

00:59:37 ◼   ► They could do that too.

00:59:38 ◼   ► We'll see what they do with that.

00:59:40 ◼   ► But the movies is the start of this, which is -- and again, I think this is just part

00:59:44 ◼   ► of a grander plan, which is, "Our movie strategy is totally broken.

00:59:48 ◼   ► Let's recast it."

00:59:49 ◼   ► And all of these things are feeding into that, which is -- and I agree.

00:59:53 ◼   ► I think the individual moves they made with Wolf's -- bad moves.

00:59:58 ◼   ► Bad moves from a relationship perspective could have been handled better.

01:00:02 ◼   ► Not saying that they weren't right business-wise could have been handled better, but I think

01:00:06 ◼   ► that they are coming from a place which is, they flailed and were like, "Quick, movies!

01:00:12 ◼   ► Ah!" and made some bad decisions.

01:00:15 ◼   ► And now that's the part of the business that the higher-ups are like, "This is not working.

01:00:19 ◼   ► We need to get better at this."

01:00:21 ◼   ► And we'll see.

01:00:22 ◼   ► I mean, we'll see.

01:00:24 ◼   ► We'll see if Apple really -- movies on streaming are a problem, right?

01:00:31 ◼   ► Movies on streaming are -- I don't think people have cracked it, like they have TV.

01:00:35 ◼   ► I think that there are successes and also lots and lots of failures.

01:00:40 ◼   ► And I think there's even an argument to be made that streaming is fundamentally better

01:00:44 ◼   ► at TV, and that making movie-quality TV is what the movies are, and that people like

01:00:52 ◼   ► novels better than short stories, and TV is novels, and people like those better than

01:00:57 ◼   ► short stories, so maybe more TV and fewer movies is really the future, and that's just

01:01:01 ◼   ► how it is.

01:01:03 ◼   ► That's an argument.

01:01:05 ◼   ► But whatever movies are, and whatever blockbusters are, and whatever small films are, and also

01:01:10 ◼   ► niche like your hallmarks of the world and horror movies and thrillers and stuff like

01:01:16 ◼   ► that, I feel like nobody's really cracked it with streaming.

01:01:21 ◼   ► So we'll see what they do.

01:01:23 ◼   ► But Apple's taken another crack at it, and we'll see.

01:01:25 ◼   ► We'll see if it works or not.

01:01:27 ◼   ► Certainly, I think their goal is for it to cost less than whatever they're doing now.

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01:03:33 ◼   ► So you wrote an article at Macworld as part of your column that you do for them every

01:03:37 ◼   ► week?

01:03:38 ◼   ► Every other week.

01:03:39 ◼   ► Every other week.

01:03:40 ◼   ► That's tough.

01:03:41 ◼   ► You wrote this column about essentially the App Store era must end is the line here, which

01:03:51 ◼   ► I love.

01:03:52 ◼   ► There I said it.

01:03:53 ◼   ► And you are in this article kind of outlying the fact that the way that the iPhone App

01:04:01 ◼   ► Store works and is controlled isn't and shouldn't have to be the only model.

01:04:05 ◼   ► We can also have the Mac model, right?

01:04:08 ◼   ► Like that's kind of what you're laying out.

01:04:10 ◼   ► Yep, that's it.

01:04:12 ◼   ► Why did you want to write this now?

01:04:16 ◼   ► It's funny because I had this.

01:04:18 ◼   ► So I have a reminders list of story ideas.

01:04:20 ◼   ► And it's funny because sometimes there are lots and sometimes there are none.

01:04:24 ◼   ► And when I'm reviewing, when I'm doing the OS updates and all of those things in the

01:04:29 ◼   ► fall, that list gets long of ideas I have.

01:04:32 ◼   ► Like literally this was me pressing the action button on my iPhone and saying the Mac is

01:04:39 ◼   ► the model into it at one point.

01:04:41 ◼   ► And then it sat there for weeks because I was busy with so many other things.

01:04:45 ◼   ► Also in that list, there's like, oh, here's a little blog post I could do.

01:04:48 ◼   ► And then some of them are like, that is a Mac world pundit column.

01:04:52 ◼   ► So some of those end up on six colors, but I always want to have those in reserve.

01:04:56 ◼   ► So I knew I had this one coming up and I was like, okay, now's the time to do this thing.

01:05:00 ◼   ► And what's funny about it is the thought I had, I was listening probably to some podcasts

01:05:07 ◼   ► like connected or ATP or something like that, where people were talking about the EU and

01:05:13 ◼   ► Apple's various things that they were doing and, or, you know, app getting rejected for

01:05:18 ◼   ► this, and they're going to try to do this and all of that.

01:05:21 ◼   ► And I just had a moment, I don't even remember what the conversation was, but I had a moment

01:05:25 ◼   ► where I just got kind of mad and I thought, what are we doing here?

01:05:31 ◼   ► Why is it that any of us accept that we spend a thousand dollars on a device that is basically

01:05:38 ◼   ► a computer that runs software?

01:05:40 ◼   ► That's what it is.

01:05:41 ◼   ► Let's not pretend that it's something else.

01:05:43 ◼   ► It's a computer that runs software, third party software written by other people, just

01:05:46 ◼   ► like a person on computer was in 1980.

01:05:49 ◼   ► It's literally somebody else wrote you a program and now you can run it.

01:05:53 ◼   ► It's not any different functionally.

01:05:54 ◼   ► We know people who write these programs, they write them, we run them on our devices.

01:05:59 ◼   ► And how have we gotten to a point where so many people just accept that if the maker

01:06:04 ◼   ► of the device doesn't want you to use that thing anymore, or doesn't want it to have

01:06:08 ◼   ► a particular feature or anything like that, there's no recourse and you just can't use

01:06:11 ◼   ► it.

01:06:13 ◼   ► And I just had that little flare of anger of sort of like, why are we, why do we talk

01:06:19 ◼   ► about this so much?

01:06:20 ◼   ► Why do we go through all of these intricate details of, well, it violated this rule and

01:06:27 ◼   ► but it's just, and then the press got hold of it.

01:06:29 ◼   ► And then they said it was okay because they didn't want the bad publicity, but it shows

01:06:34 ◼   ► you how much power that Apple has over its platform.

01:06:39 ◼   ► So that's where it started is just me feeling like, wait a second.

01:06:44 ◼   ► Look, I was a kid when the first person on computers came out.

01:06:47 ◼   ► And so I do remember that moment that most people younger than me don't have, which is

01:06:53 ◼   ► like the moment when computers became a thing.

01:06:56 ◼   ► I was young, but there was a moment where in my, I don't know, fourth grade classroom,

01:07:01 ◼   ► there was a computer and it was like, whoa.

01:07:04 ◼   ► Right.

01:07:05 ◼   ► I mean, my life was changed in that moment, but until the app store, like we all knew

01:07:10 ◼   ► how computers worked, which is you could put, you could get programs and run them for good

01:07:14 ◼   ► and for worse.

01:07:15 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:07:16 ◼   ► And Apple, one of the things I mentioned in the article is Apple was trying to solve some

01:07:23 ◼   ► very particular problems.

01:07:24 ◼   ► First off the iPhone happened so quickly that like they were still putting it together,

01:07:28 ◼   ► even after they announced it, they were still putting it together.

01:07:30 ◼   ► I, I, you know, when I use the original iPhone in the demo room on the day that they announced

01:07:34 ◼   ► it at Mac world expert the next day, I guess I had one in my hand and I tapped on the notes

01:07:38 ◼   ► app and it was a screenshot of the notes app.

01:07:40 ◼   ► It was like, Oh yeah, yeah, it's not done.

01:07:42 ◼   ► It's not even closed.

01:07:43 ◼   ► It was going to ship six months later.

01:07:45 ◼   ► Right.

01:07:46 ◼   ► And so at the time we all asked like, what about third party apps?

01:07:49 ◼   ► And they're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

01:07:51 ◼   ► That was the sweet solution, which is you use Safari.

01:07:53 ◼   ► But the real answer was like, they didn't even know how they were building their apps

01:07:56 ◼   ► yet.

01:07:57 ◼   ► They were still figuring it all out.

01:07:58 ◼   ► The last thing they could do is that made that available to third parties.

01:08:00 ◼   ► They did the app store the next year.

01:08:02 ◼   ► The app store for people who don't know or remember this, the app store is a hack.

01:08:06 ◼   ► It is based on iTunes.

01:08:08 ◼   ► Um, they, they literally, if you ever wondered, I mean, it's actually a decision that completely

01:08:12 ◼   ► distorted how the app market worked because it's a system designed to sell 99 cents singles.

01:08:21 ◼   ► And for expediency sake, they cloned that and turned it into the app store.

01:08:27 ◼   ► Um, it's why iTunes connect or app store connect was so bad for so long because they don't

01:08:35 ◼   ► really care about the uploads from record labels or developers.

01:08:39 ◼   ► Why the store looked and looks like it does to this day.

01:08:43 ◼   ► There are still elements of that.

01:08:45 ◼   ► Why was driven by sales charts for so long?

01:08:47 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:08:48 ◼   ► Like why would you even have charts?

01:08:50 ◼   ► Yeah, but hit singles is the answer.

01:08:53 ◼   ► So, so all, so a lot of Apple's early decisions were about expediency.

01:08:59 ◼   ► So fair enough.

01:09:00 ◼   ► But what happened is over time, Apple realized, I mean, even though the financial decisions

01:09:04 ◼   ► to say, look, we've, we've wired it so that you can just buy these apps right using your

01:09:09 ◼   ► credit card that we've got again, iTunes, it's the whole idea.

01:09:12 ◼   ► And they're like, well, okay, so there need to be an app purchases and subscriptions.

01:09:15 ◼   ► It all kind of evolved from there, but it was all coming out of that original idea of

01:09:17 ◼   ► like, we just want to make it easy.

01:09:20 ◼   ► But there was also this aspect, which is, which was, I think coming from a place of,

01:09:24 ◼   ► we barely started with this thing.

01:09:26 ◼   ► We don't even know what it's going to be.

01:09:27 ◼   ► We're going to make a vending machine for apps and that's what we're going to do.

01:09:31 ◼   ► But over time, Apple saw their control of the platform as a benefit and a, and their,

01:09:40 ◼   ► their control over the financial transactions in the platform as a benefit.

01:09:44 ◼   ► And that has led to a decade or more of rent seeking and rejections and deciding, you know,

01:09:51 ◼   ► creating arbitrary rules and say, we just don't want this kind of app in our platform.

01:09:56 ◼   ► And there being no recourse.

01:09:57 ◼   ► And one of the reasons that this makes me angry is, and we'll get to the Mac in a second,

01:10:03 ◼   ► but like on the Mac, if you have an idea for an app that will run on the Mac, you just

01:10:08 ◼   ► can make it.

01:10:10 ◼   ► And you might want to put it in the Mac app store.

01:10:12 ◼   ► But if Apple looks at it and goes like, yeah, actually you're doing this thing that we have

01:10:16 ◼   ► decided the Mac app store apps can't do.

01:10:19 ◼   ► So you can't be in the Mac app store.

01:10:21 ◼   ► You go, okay.

01:10:22 ◼   ► And you put it somewhere else.

01:10:24 ◼   ► You sell it yourself.

01:10:25 ◼   ► You do whatever.

01:10:26 ◼   ► It's not a problem.

01:10:27 ◼   ► It's like, it's literally not a problem.

01:10:30 ◼   ► On iOS, there's no step two.

01:10:32 ◼   ► Or like Apple changes a rule, right?

01:10:34 ◼   ► Which is the thing that they have done over the time of the Mac app store.

01:10:37 ◼   ► They have.

01:10:38 ◼   ► Or in some cases it turns out they changed a rule and then they changed it back so that

01:10:41 ◼   ► apps have to exit the app store.

01:10:43 ◼   ► That's happened recently, which is really interesting.

01:10:45 ◼   ► They're like, they greased the skids to get somebody in the app store.

01:10:48 ◼   ► And then later they were like, no, that time is over.

01:10:51 ◼   ► And you're like, okay, bye.

01:10:54 ◼   ► But on iOS, you can't do it.

01:10:55 ◼   ► On iOS, just think about this for a second.

01:10:59 ◼   ► On iOS, if you have an idea for an app, that's a great idea.

01:11:03 ◼   ► You can't just make it.

01:11:04 ◼   ► You have to stop and say, will this get approved?

01:11:11 ◼   ► And there's no pre-approval.

01:11:13 ◼   ► You have to decide if you're going to spend money or time in large amounts to make an

01:11:20 ◼   ► app that if Apple decides it doesn't want in the store, can't be distributed to anyone

01:11:29 ◼   ► forever.

01:11:31 ◼   ► And it's not like you can turn around and run it on Windows or run it on Android.

01:11:35 ◼   ► Like you built an iOS app.

01:11:37 ◼   ► It's gone.

01:11:39 ◼   ► As a result, it's not just the rejections.

01:11:41 ◼   ► The rejections that we hear about are from people who thought it was fine and they were

01:11:45 ◼   ► doing the right thing and they were following the rules.

01:11:48 ◼   ► Those are the rejections we hear about.

01:11:50 ◼   ► What we don't hear about are the thousands of app ideas that died because somebody said,

01:11:56 ◼   ► hmm, I don't trust that Apple will allow this.

01:11:59 ◼   ► So we'll just not bother.

01:12:01 ◼   ► And that makes the whole thing poor.

01:12:03 ◼   ► And all of this is solved if there's another option beyond the app store.

01:12:08 ◼   ► It's not killing the app store.

01:12:10 ◼   ► It's another option beyond the app store.

01:12:13 ◼   ► So the Mac is the answer.

01:12:16 ◼   ► And that's why I wrote the Mac is the model.

01:12:18 ◼   ► That's why I shouted it into my phone when I had this thought.

01:12:21 ◼   ► Mac is the model is because here's the thing.

01:12:23 ◼   ► A lot of the stuff we criticize Apple about, there are people who are like Apple's biggest

01:12:27 ◼   ► fans and think Apple is the greatest.

01:12:31 ◼   ► And yet there's this weird effect where if there's something Apple isn't doing, immediately

01:12:34 ◼   ► Apple becomes completely incapable of solving the problem, right?

01:12:37 ◼   ► They're the greatest company ever at everything they do, but the things they don't do it's

01:12:40 ◼   ► because they're completely just incapable of solving that problem.

01:12:44 ◼   ► It's a weird kind of fandom that I see from some people.

01:12:49 ◼   ► And with this one, though, Apple's already solved this problem.

01:12:55 ◼   ► Apple solved this problem in, I think it's like 2017, thereabouts, 2018.

01:13:02 ◼   ► Apple introduced notarization.

01:13:06 ◼   ► Apple wanted to bring app store level security to the Mac, which is an open platform.

01:13:10 ◼   ► So they can't close it off.

01:13:11 ◼   ► They could, but I don't think it would work.

01:13:15 ◼   ► I think people would revolt if they did that.

01:13:17 ◼   ► And there was an executive who stood on stage at WWDC in San Jose and said, we will never

01:13:21 ◼   ► prevent you from running software you want to run on your Mac.

01:13:24 ◼   ► So what they did was they built the notarization system, which is a whole thing, right?

01:13:28 ◼   ► It's a system where you are already a registered developer or you register as a developer and

01:13:32 ◼   ► you get your developer keychain and then you can sign your app and you send it into this

01:13:38 ◼   ► automated system and Apple scans it for malware and Apple signs it, which has the effect of

01:13:42 ◼   ► meaning that it can't be tampered with after the fact or the signature doesn't match and

01:13:46 ◼   ► it breaks.

01:13:47 ◼   ► So it adds a whole layer of security.

01:13:49 ◼   ► And then there's a setting on the Mac that says, do I want to run apps from just the

01:13:53 ◼   ► app store or by default, app store and authorized developers or authenticated developers, trusted

01:14:00 ◼   ► developers, something like that.

01:14:02 ◼   ► Well, I mean, first off there, you've got it.

01:14:06 ◼   ► You've got a solution that's outside the app store approved by Apple where Apple is checking

01:14:10 ◼   ► for the worst stuff, but it gives more flexibility beyond the app store policies.

01:14:16 ◼   ► It's right there.

01:14:17 ◼   ► And then on top of that, there is still the, if you say, yeah, but Apple still has to be

01:14:23 ◼   ► a part of the process, you can still run software that is notarized.

01:14:27 ◼   ► It's harder than it used to be for some good reasons, because if you view it as these are

01:14:33 ◼   ► the steps that a malware person, a phone scammer is going to talk your parent, you know, your

01:14:38 ◼   ► elderly parent or grandparent into doing in a scam call, you want as many barriers up

01:14:44 ◼   ► as possible.

01:14:45 ◼   ► But in the end, if I want to run make MKV on my Mac and it's not signed, it's not notarized,

01:14:52 ◼   ► I can do it.

01:14:53 ◼   ► It's just a bunch of steps.

01:14:56 ◼   ► Okay.

01:14:57 ◼   ► So that's where we are with the Mac.

01:15:00 ◼   ► There's the multiple circles of trust.

01:15:02 ◼   ► The inner circle is the app store.

01:15:04 ◼   ► The next circle out is notarization.

01:15:06 ◼   ► And then the furthest one out is good luck.

01:15:09 ◼   ► You know, God be with you.

01:15:11 ◼   ► Just under notarization thing, never not funny and awkward that it's Gatekeeper on the Mac

01:15:15 ◼   ► is the name of the system that can determine whether an app can run.

01:15:20 ◼   ► It's like part of it, but it's like always funny to me that it's called Gatekeeper.

01:15:23 ◼   ► And Gatekeeper originated earlier because Gatekeeper is the thing that was there from

01:15:28 ◼   ► an earlier point where the first launch, it tells you, you downloaded this thing from

01:15:32 ◼   ► this website at this time.

01:15:34 ◼   ► Do you want to launch this first time out of the box?

01:15:36 ◼   ► That's Gatekeeper.

01:15:37 ◼   ► But now it's also doing the no, it's not notarized, you can't run this at all kind of thing.

01:15:42 ◼   ► That's all in there.

01:15:43 ◼   ► And also is the kill switch, right?

01:15:45 ◼   ► Like there is the kill switch exists where like if Apple can kind of kill off an app.

01:15:50 ◼   ► Because the kill switch is after first launch, they can just kill it.

01:15:53 ◼   ► And there's X protect and all, there's a bunch of different stuff in there.

01:15:55 ◼   ► But it's the reason why if you can get through the security prompts and launch an app that's

01:16:00 ◼   ► not signed for the first time, it'll run every time after that because Gatekeeper is a first

01:16:04 ◼   ► launch kind of thing, but they have other things that they can do to scan stuff.

01:16:09 ◼   ► So this is my point is Apple, Apple's most recent model of app security is a multi-layered

01:16:19 ◼   ► approach that begins with a curated app store and then expands.

01:16:23 ◼   ► Yep.

01:16:24 ◼   ► So the app store model is not Apple's most recent take.

01:16:28 ◼   ► Apple's most recent take is the Mac, the Mac.

01:16:32 ◼   ► And that's why the Mac is the model.

01:16:33 ◼   ► The Mac is Apple's approach to how you have an open software platform that still has a

01:16:39 ◼   ► level of curation from the platform owner and levels of security that are available.

01:16:45 ◼   ► They built it because they had to figure out, well, they didn't have to, but they wanted

01:16:48 ◼   ► very badly to have some way to make the Mac have some of the positive effects of security

01:16:55 ◼   ► and control that the app store on iOS had.

01:16:58 ◼   ► And yet they knew that they couldn't stick everybody in the Mac app store for lots of

01:17:01 ◼   ► reasons.

01:17:02 ◼   ► So they built this other really clever thing.

01:17:04 ◼   ► What's interesting is as the DMA has come down on them in the EU, Apple has stolen pieces

01:17:12 ◼   ► of the Mac model as needed to backfill.

01:17:16 ◼   ► So there is a notarization system in the EU alternative app stores thing.

01:17:22 ◼   ► Now they had that one moment where they tried to deny somebody notarization because they

01:17:25 ◼   ► didn't like the policies, which I believe the EC immediately said, "No, that is not

01:17:30 ◼   ► allowed.

01:17:31 ◼   ► You cannot do that.

01:17:32 ◼   ► You can only use this for security reasons."

01:17:34 ◼   ► I find that deeply troubling because up till then notarization has had a complete clean

01:17:39 ◼   ► -- I mean, when they introduced it for the Mac, we're all like, "Is this de facto authorization

01:17:43 ◼   ► of apps on macOS?"

01:17:44 ◼   ► And it's turned out it isn't.

01:17:46 ◼   ► But they have at least once in the EU for iOS at least briefly tried to use notarization

01:17:52 ◼   ► as a way to reject things outside the app store.

01:17:55 ◼   ► But if we leave that aside, there is a model here that allows people freedom.

01:18:02 ◼   ► It allows developers something that is a fallback that gets them on the platform even if it's

01:18:08 ◼   ► outside of Apple's good graces.

01:18:10 ◼   ► And ultimately, if there's a user who really, really wants it, it lets them execute arbitrary

01:18:14 ◼   ► code that comes from wherever if they step through all the hoops.

01:18:19 ◼   ► And to me, this is a solved problem.

01:18:25 ◼   ► And when I look to the future, I feel like this is the future, that every device should

01:18:30 ◼   ► be like this, including the iPhone and the iPad.

01:18:34 ◼   ► Because if you just want to use apps from the app store, go ahead and use them.

01:18:37 ◼   ► But we are all poorer when app developers are unable to write software that they want

01:18:46 ◼   ► to write because it might not be approved.

01:18:50 ◼   ► And separately, when they don't have the option of linking out to their website, because the

01:18:55 ◼   ► web is a thing, and yet Apple is so terrified of linking to the web because they're afraid

01:19:02 ◼   ► that services will not give Apple a cut of that revenue.

01:19:08 ◼   ► And I think this is all part of the same thing, whereas Apple could compete.

01:19:13 ◼   ► And I think Apple should compete.

01:19:16 ◼   ► When I've talked about this, I've had a bunch of people ask, "Well, why wouldn't Apple want

01:19:20 ◼   ► to compete?"

01:19:21 ◼   ► And the answer is something that we said, I think it was a title even, which is if you're

01:19:25 ◼   ► the umpire and you own the field and the stadium and everything, right?

01:19:28 ◼   ► Why compete if you don't have to?

01:19:32 ◼   ► Like bottom line is it's better to have no competition.

01:19:35 ◼   ► It's, yeah, you don't have to work hard and all the money just keeps pouring in.

01:19:40 ◼   ► But Apple should have to compete and still has a great advantaged position because they're

01:19:46 ◼   ► the platform owner and they're Apple and they're trusted by the users.

01:19:51 ◼   ► And there's lots of reasons to think that Apple would do just fine in this model, but

01:19:55 ◼   ► the Mac is where they actually, it actually already works.

01:20:01 ◼   ► And I've heard people say, "Well, yeah, but the Mac App Store is so bad.

01:20:04 ◼   ► Would you want the iOS App Store to be like that?"

01:20:06 ◼   ► And my thought to that is Mac App Store is so bad because Apple doesn't put a lot of

01:20:11 ◼   ► effort into the Mac App Store.

01:20:14 ◼   ► And I think Apple would put effort into the iOS App Store and want to keep as many of

01:20:19 ◼   ► the apps in there as possible.

01:20:20 ◼   ► And so would developers.

01:20:22 ◼   ► There are a lot of developers that would not want to leave the iOS App Store.

01:20:26 ◼   ► Absolutely.

01:20:27 ◼   ► They just wouldn't.

01:20:28 ◼   ► If you had a free app, why would you be anywhere else?

01:20:32 ◼   ► No, and that's the model.

01:20:33 ◼   ► Again, the model is the best place to be is in the inner circle where everything works.

01:20:38 ◼   ► And even if your administrator locks down your phone and says like they do with Macs

01:20:43 ◼   ► and say only App Store apps, it's fine.

01:20:47 ◼   ► You can live that way and that's where you want to be.

01:20:50 ◼   ► But if you're that developer with that great idea or a business model that's very different,

01:20:56 ◼   ► to have the ability to say, "Okay, it turns out it didn't work with Apple, so we're just

01:21:01 ◼   ► going to release this on our own."

01:21:02 ◼   ► It doesn't necessarily have to be like, "You might want to be in the App Store, but it

01:21:07 ◼   ► doesn't work out."

01:21:08 ◼   ► Okay, right?

01:21:10 ◼   ► Plan B. It's fine.

01:21:12 ◼   ► It's fine.

01:21:13 ◼   ► But there has to be a plan B. And I would actually argue that in the EU, my problem

01:21:17 ◼   ► with the way the EU stuff is implemented right now is that it's through these app market

01:21:21 ◼   ► places where you're just replacing one curator with another.

01:21:25 ◼   ► And I hate that.

01:21:27 ◼   ► In the end, if I'm a developer of software and I want it to be available, I don't want

01:21:33 ◼   ► to have to work with a marketplace.

01:21:35 ◼   ► I want to make it available however I choose.

01:21:37 ◼   ► They're a piece of the puzzle, not the solution.

01:21:41 ◼   ► You can have other app marketplaces that exist on the Mac like SetApp, right?

01:21:44 ◼   ► It offers a completely different business model.

01:21:47 ◼   ► Or maybe you want that model or maybe you don't.

01:21:49 ◼   ► Or maybe you just want to offer your app on your website.

01:21:56 ◼   ► And that's the end of it.

01:21:57 ◼   ► And you should be able to.

01:21:59 ◼   ► So I mean, in the end, this is the thing that made me kind of like angry and then also made

01:22:02 ◼   ► me laugh is that Apple solved this.

01:22:07 ◼   ► Why have they not put that on iOS?

01:22:09 ◼   ► And the answer is people will be like, "Oh, it's because it would be madness and there

01:22:11 ◼   ► would be security and blah, blah, blah."

01:22:13 ◼   ► No, no.

01:22:15 ◼   ► The reason it's not on iOS is that nobody's forcing them, except in the EU, nobody's forcing

01:22:20 ◼   ► them to do any of this.

01:22:22 ◼   ► Why compete if you don't have to?

01:22:24 ◼   ► Why not just have complete control over your platform?

01:22:28 ◼   ► Because Apple built a system that does this, that lets them have their app store and a

01:22:33 ◼   ► notarization step and then an open step beyond that that's hard to get to.

01:22:37 ◼   ► They built the system for the Mac.

01:22:40 ◼   ► And I would say, I think it works pretty well.

01:22:43 ◼   ► So the only reason they're not doing it is because they don't have to.

01:22:47 ◼   ► And why would they bother?

01:22:49 ◼   ► Because they have complete control and huge financial leverage.

01:22:53 ◼   ► And so it makes them a lot of money and it allows them to completely dictate what goes

01:22:56 ◼   ► on their platform and treat, and this is an important point, and treat all third party

01:23:01 ◼   ► app developers as if they were Apple employees.

01:23:04 ◼   ► Because if you're an app developer, even our indie friends, okay, apologies for going on

01:23:12 ◼   ► a rant here, but our indie app developer friends aren't indie.

01:23:15 ◼   ► They aren't, they work for Apple.

01:23:16 ◼   ► They work for Apple because if Apple tells them to jump, they have to say how high.

01:23:21 ◼   ► They have to, or they can't be on the platform.

01:23:25 ◼   ► So essentially, Apple, they have to follow Apple's rules.

01:23:29 ◼   ► They get paid by Apple, right?

01:23:31 ◼   ► Because Apple takes the money.

01:23:32 ◼   ► They get paid by Apple, their customers aren't their customers.

01:23:35 ◼   ► The only thing is that they don't get to charge Apple an hourly rate.

01:23:38 ◼   ► Instead, Apple just takes their 15 or 30%.

01:23:41 ◼   ► But they're essentially working for Apple.

01:23:44 ◼   ► And that's how Apple wants it.

01:23:46 ◼   ► But that's not how it should be.

01:23:48 ◼   ► Bottom line is that's not how it should be.

01:23:51 ◼   ► And I've already seen some people push back on this line of thinking and say, "Well, just

01:23:56 ◼   ► go get Android."

01:23:57 ◼   ► And they're like, "First off, Google is not a saint here.

01:24:00 ◼   ► But yes, you could do that.

01:24:02 ◼   ► You could go to Android and there are some other options out there."

01:24:06 ◼   ► Okay, but that doesn't really solve this point, which is the iPhone is an influential and

01:24:14 ◼   ► important platform.

01:24:16 ◼   ► And Apple has just decided to keep it locked down in a way that I think is wrong.

01:24:21 ◼   ► Like bottom line, it's bad for everybody, except for some revenue and control at Apple.

01:24:28 ◼   ► And I think it needs to end.

01:24:29 ◼   ► I don't want the future to look like the iPhone.

01:24:32 ◼   ► That's the bottom line.

01:24:34 ◼   ► My entire thought process about this is where do I want computers, and the iPhone is a computer

01:24:38 ◼   ► and the iPad is a computer, where do I want them to go in the 21st century?

01:24:42 ◼   ► And where I don't want them to go is where the maker of the computer has complete control

01:24:47 ◼   ► over what you do with it.

01:24:49 ◼   ► I don't want that to be the future.

01:24:51 ◼   ► I want it to be balanced.

01:24:52 ◼   ► I don't want it to be like, man, desktop Linux, woo!

01:24:55 ◼   ► I don't want that.

01:24:56 ◼   ► I want it to be balanced.

01:24:57 ◼   ► I want it to be safe.

01:24:58 ◼   ► I want it to be secure.

01:24:59 ◼   ► I want it to be good.

01:25:01 ◼   ► But none of that requires the level of power and control that Apple exerts over iOS.

01:25:08 ◼   ► None of it is required.

01:25:09 ◼   ► It's just we look at it and we think it's required because that's the way it's always

01:25:13 ◼   ► been.

01:25:14 ◼   ► That's not the case.

01:25:15 ◼   ► And the Mac shows us why it's not.

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01:25:39 ◼   ► In every episode of Data Citizen's Dialogues, industry leaders unpack data's impact on

01:25:44 ◼   ► the world from big picture questions like AI governance and data sharing to more nuanced

01:25:49 ◼   ► questions like how do we balance offense and defense in data management?

01:25:54 ◼   ► You'll hear first hand insights about the data conversations affecting all kinds of industries.

01:25:59 ◼   ► You can expect guests sharing unique stories from some of the world's largest companies

01:26:03 ◼   ► like Adobe, Fidelity Investments, Deloitte, Hewlett Packard, McDonald's, and even the

01:26:08 ◼   ► US Coast Guard.

01:26:09 ◼   ► I listened to an episode yesterday about how using data effectively and efficiently is

01:26:15 ◼   ► improving healthcare at Memorial Care.

01:26:18 ◼   ► I really enjoyed how the episode featured the people that are actually implementing

01:26:21 ◼   ► the technologies they talk about because then they can bring practical examples of the work

01:26:25 ◼   ► that they've done and the challenges that they've faced, as well as keeping the focus,

01:26:29 ◼   ► I like to say about them specifically, keeping the focus on making sure that privacy is the

01:26:33 ◼   ► highest level possible for their patients.

01:26:36 ◼   ► The Data Citizen's Dialogues podcast is bringing the data conversation to you.

01:26:40 ◼   ► So go check it out now.

01:26:42 ◼   ► You can find and follow Data Citizen's Dialogues on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you

01:26:46 ◼   ► get your podcasts.

01:26:47 ◼   ► Our thanks to Data Citizen's Dialogues for their support of this show and all of Relay.

01:26:53 ◼   ► Let's finish out with some Ask Upgrade questions.

01:26:56 ◼   ► There was a little delay on the laser there today.

01:27:02 ◼   ► I had to unmute myself because I was sparing you from my keyboard clicks, but I got there.

01:27:06 ◼   ► I'm sure you needed a break because I wanted to say that I really enjoyed the segment on

01:27:12 ◼   ► the App Store thing and I appreciate you taking us on a little seminar there, I think I'll

01:27:16 ◼   ► call it.

01:27:17 ◼   ► I was just waiting for you to jump in and I left some pauses, but I don't know how you're

01:27:21 ◼   ► feeling about that.

01:27:22 ◼   ► How are you feeling about that before we get to Ask Upgrade?

01:27:25 ◼   ► That segment?

01:27:26 ◼   ► Okay, well now we're on a slight dive in.

01:27:27 ◼   ► I think you're completely right in what you're saying.

01:27:30 ◼   ► I think that we have, we've touched upon this stuff before in many ways over the Lawyer Up

01:27:37 ◼   ► segment and I am in complete agreement with you.

01:27:41 ◼   ► I am not one of the, I'm not of the say, John Gruber school of thought that the iPhone is

01:27:48 ◼   ► a console and Macs are computers, right?

01:27:52 ◼   ► Like iPhones and iPads are computers and I, as you say in one point that like you have

01:27:58 ◼   ► a, you know, you buy like a $1,000 computer and you're told what you can put on it.

01:28:03 ◼   ► No, it's a computer.

01:28:05 ◼   ► This is more capable than most computers out there, my iPhone or my iPad, but they're hamstrung

01:28:10 ◼   ► by the fact that people can't develop whatever software they want and we can't put whatever

01:28:15 ◼   ► software we want on them.

01:28:16 ◼   ► Like I completely agree with you.

01:28:18 ◼   ► I actually don't have any time for the console argument anyway.

01:28:20 ◼   ► No, I never did, but I believe that if you buy a Nintendo Switch or a PlayStation or

01:28:26 ◼   ► an Xbox and this is, I was a child of the Atari 2600 when Activision came out with their

01:28:32 ◼   ► cartridges for it and Atari sued and said, "You can't make software for a platform."

01:28:35 ◼   ► And they lost.

01:28:38 ◼   ► I don't like those gatekeepers either and I saw somebody who said, "Yeah, but you can't

01:28:41 ◼   ► do that because they sell their consoles at a loss and then make it up."

01:28:44 ◼   ► And I was like, "Their business model is not my problem."

01:28:47 ◼   ► Like if you're somebody who doesn't get authorization from Sony or Microsoft or Nintendo and writes

01:28:54 ◼   ► software for their platforms, if they allow third-party developers, I would say if they

01:29:00 ◼   ► write it all themselves, it's one thing, but like if they allow third-party developers,

01:29:04 ◼   ► I actually don't think that they should be able to stop it either.

01:29:08 ◼   ► I am a radical about computer software.

01:29:11 ◼   ► Like there should be a way to put software on those devices too.

01:29:16 ◼   ► But certainly the iPhone is not some kind of a cockamamie app console.

01:29:21 ◼   ► That's ludicrous.

01:29:22 ◼   ► Just ludicrous argument.

01:29:23 ◼   ► No, I understand what you're saying.

01:29:24 ◼   ► I don't disagree with it.

01:29:25 ◼   ► I do think that it's just different.

01:29:27 ◼   ► I just think video game consoles and smartphones, they are fundamentally different things.

01:29:34 ◼   ► Completely different.

01:29:35 ◼   ► Completely different.

01:29:36 ◼   ► And so like I don't think that, I mean, I just don't think that you can apply the rules

01:29:42 ◼   ► of PlayStation to Microsoft in gaming to Apple or Microsoft in computers.

01:29:48 ◼   ► I just don't think that they overlap because then it's like, "Well, what if I start talking

01:29:52 ◼   ► about like a kitchen supply company?

01:29:55 ◼   ► Can I overlay their business model over Apple's?"

01:29:57 ◼   ► It doesn't work like that.

01:30:00 ◼   ► Just because they're both technological things.

01:30:02 ◼   ► The iPhone is a computer.

01:30:04 ◼   ► It is a computer.

01:30:05 ◼   ► It is not a games console.

01:30:06 ◼   ► It is.

01:30:07 ◼   ► Computers can play games.

01:30:08 ◼   ► Right?

01:30:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:30:10 ◼   ► That should, but anyway, so like, yes, I completely agree with you.

01:30:12 ◼   ► I talked about this on the Six Colors podcast last week, but I'll just mention really quickly

01:30:16 ◼   ► here.

01:30:17 ◼   ► Like if people want an example, cause it's like, "Oh yeah, but what about the game emulators?

01:30:19 ◼   ► Is this all about game emulators?"

01:30:20 ◼   ► Well, I'll tell you what, you can run Mac OS on the iPad today if Apple didn't control

01:30:24 ◼   ► it.

01:30:25 ◼   ► You could.

01:30:26 ◼   ► Someone would have done it.

01:30:27 ◼   ► Because Apple doesn't allow emulators on iPad OS.

01:30:30 ◼   ► And if you, like computer emulators.

01:30:33 ◼   ► And the moment that, if that was, if Parallels or VMware could just sell it themselves, sell

01:30:38 ◼   ► a version of their emulator themselves for iPad OS, and you could install it.

01:30:42 ◼   ► Well, you get Linux up and running.

01:30:44 ◼   ► You'd probably get Windows for ARM up and running.

01:30:47 ◼   ► And at that point, like you might as well have Mac OS up and running on there.

01:30:51 ◼   ► And wouldn't that be great?

01:30:53 ◼   ► And that would put, wouldn't that put pressure on Apple to maybe make a Mac mode in iPad

01:30:56 ◼   ► OS a thing themselves?

01:30:58 ◼   ► Or would they be like, "No, actually this relieves the pressure cause you can just run

01:31:01 ◼   ► an emulated version of Mac OS."

01:31:02 ◼   ► But like the hardware is the same.

01:31:04 ◼   ► The hardware is literally the same at this point.

01:31:06 ◼   ► The only reason that you can't do that is because of policy.

01:31:09 ◼   ► Because Apple has decided they don't want to let you.

01:31:12 ◼   ► And I hate it.

01:31:13 ◼   ► I hate that.

01:31:14 ◼   ► Yep.

01:31:15 ◼   ► All right, give another go at those lasers.

01:31:17 ◼   ► There we go.

01:31:19 ◼   ► Some Ask upgrade questions.

01:31:21 ◼   ► Jonathan asks, "Does Jason know why John Cusack follows him on Blue Sky?

01:31:26 ◼   ► I was scrolling Cusack's follow list and did a double take."

01:31:29 ◼   ► Did you know this was the case?

01:31:31 ◼   ► I didn't even know that this was the case.

01:31:34 ◼   ► It's a mystery.

01:31:35 ◼   ► My guess is that he clicked the wrong thing.

01:31:37 ◼   ► No, he also follows Joanna Stern.

01:31:39 ◼   ► So like I went and looked.

01:31:40 ◼   ► So like he must like, he must like tech stuff.

01:31:43 ◼   ► I'm going to have to post something on Blue Sky about my love of Say Anything and Gross

01:31:48 ◼   ► Point Blank at some point.

01:31:51 ◼   ► You should just post, you should just post the mic at the movies, say anything and just

01:31:55 ◼   ► see if he has anything to say about that, you know?

01:31:58 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:31:59 ◼   ► See, ironically enough, if he has anything to say about Say Anything.

01:32:01 ◼   ► Sure.

01:32:02 ◼   ► I wouldn't object to it.

01:32:04 ◼   ► It's true.

01:32:05 ◼   ► It is.

01:32:06 ◼   ► It's him and he follows you.

01:32:08 ◼   ► So congratulations on that.

01:32:09 ◼   ► It's pretty sweet.

01:32:10 ◼   ► It's pretty cool.

01:32:11 ◼   ► Mr. Cusack, if you're out there, hello.

01:32:14 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:32:15 ◼   ► Love your stuff.

01:32:16 ◼   ► Love your work.

01:32:17 ◼   ► High Fidelity.

01:32:18 ◼   ► I didn't even mention High Fidelity.

01:32:19 ◼   ► It's one of my favorite movies too.

01:32:20 ◼   ► He's in a bunch of my favorite movies.

01:32:21 ◼   ► He really is.

01:32:22 ◼   ► He's an 80s icon.

01:32:24 ◼   ► And I mean that with, again, 80 out of 80 on the scale of 80s.

01:32:28 ◼   ► John Cusack's an 80 out of 80.

01:32:31 ◼   ► Evan asks, "How are you both feeling about MagSafe on Apple's notebooks now that it's

01:32:35 ◼   ► been around for a few years?

01:32:37 ◼   ► I find myself torn carrying only a MagSafe cable over a USB-C cable when I'm on the go.

01:32:42 ◼   ► While I prefer the magnetic connector, it's hard to pass up on USB-C since I can choose

01:32:47 ◼   ► to plug it in on either side.

01:32:49 ◼   ► I'm curious which option you guys are using when you're not at your desk."

01:32:52 ◼   ► When I read this question, I was like, "Oh, Evan, you have seen into my soul."

01:32:56 ◼   ► I think about this all the time.

01:32:59 ◼   ► I love MagSafe and I have a MagSafe cable in my charging bag, but I know I don't need

01:33:05 ◼   ► it because I could just use a USB-C cable instead.

01:33:09 ◼   ► It's definitely a thing where it's like, I love that we have MagSafe, but I don't need

01:33:14 ◼   ► it the same way that I used to, I feel like.

01:33:17 ◼   ► And that is a very funny thing.

01:33:19 ◼   ► I was like, "I'm so happy it's there, but it is also superfluous as much as I love it."

01:33:24 ◼   ► Well, back in the day, MagSafe was the only way to charge your computer and now you can

01:33:28 ◼   ► charge via USB-C, so it's a totally different scenario.

01:33:30 ◼   ► I totally get what Evan's saying.

01:33:32 ◼   ► My laptop use, at home, I have a Thunderbolt cable that has all of my stuff hanging off

01:33:39 ◼   ► of it in the back bedroom.

01:33:42 ◼   ► So I don't use MagSafe there because that's power and display and Ethernet and all of

01:33:49 ◼   ► it, just one plug, and it's great.

01:33:52 ◼   ► When I travel, it's interesting.

01:33:54 ◼   ► You're right, it is superfluous.

01:33:55 ◼   ► When I travel, what I've come to realize is that I will bring a MagSafe cable if I'm bringing

01:34:04 ◼   ► enough devices that I feel like I'm going to need to charge, that I will also charge

01:34:10 ◼   ► the Mac at the same time.

01:34:11 ◼   ► - The USB-C cable, right?

01:34:12 ◼   ► I'll have to use it.

01:34:13 ◼   ► - Exactly.

01:34:14 ◼   ► You kind of do the math and then I'll bring the MagSafe connector, but if I'm traveling

01:34:19 ◼   ► light and I only am going to bring a couple of USB-C cables, then I don't need to bother

01:34:24 ◼   ► with the MagSafe if I'm not, right?

01:34:26 ◼   ► Because I can use that and it's all very versatile and that's nice.

01:34:29 ◼   ► What's great about MagSafe is to put it someplace where you're unhooking and rehooking your

01:34:34 ◼   ► computer all the time.

01:34:35 ◼   ► So like Lauren right now is using my old M1 MacBook Air, no MagSafe.

01:34:40 ◼   ► And it's a whole thing where it's like, I mean, the advantage of it is we have a plug

01:34:44 ◼   ► there.

01:34:45 ◼   ► We can plug our iPads into it, we can plug her computer into it and it charges.

01:34:48 ◼   ► Great.

01:34:49 ◼   ► But we used to have her on a computer with MagSafe and what was great about it is she

01:34:54 ◼   ► had a little place she could put her computer and then put the MagSafe on and then you just

01:34:57 ◼   ► pop it off and go and that's nicer.

01:35:00 ◼   ► So MagSafe is not as essential as it used to be, but I'm very glad we have it.

01:35:04 ◼   ► And I'm also very glad because it means that you can, so here's a real world example.

01:35:09 ◼   ► One of the reasons I started traveling again with MagSafe to visit my mom is that I realized

01:35:14 ◼   ► I need all those ports on my MacBook Air.

01:35:18 ◼   ► I need all the ports.

01:35:19 ◼   ► I can't use a port for charging because I need the ports for peripherals when I'm doing

01:35:23 ◼   ► a podcast.

01:35:24 ◼   ► I need to have a camera on there, I need to have a microphone on there.

01:35:27 ◼   ► I could bring a hub, but like I don't need to bring a hub.

01:35:29 ◼   ► I just need to bring a MagSafe cable because then I can do power and have those ports open.

01:35:35 ◼   ► And so that's another reason to like MagSafe is that it keeps your USB ports open.

01:35:40 ◼   ► But the truth, Evan is absolutely right, MagSafe is never going to be as essential as it was

01:35:46 ◼   ► because it used to be the only way that you could charge your computer and now USB-C is

01:35:50 ◼   ► there too and it's great.

01:35:51 ◼   ► And I would never advocate for USB-C charging to go away because it's so great to have that

01:35:56 ◼   ► one Thunderbolt cable that attaches and powers my computer and also all of the stuff.

01:36:01 ◼   ► So yeah, that's where we are.

01:36:03 ◼   ► So I use MagSafe sometimes, but not as often as I expected because most of the contexts

01:36:10 ◼   ► that I'm using it, I've got a USB-C cable there and so I'll just use that.

01:36:15 ◼   ► And Jason asks, do you use iOS's send later feature in messages?

01:36:19 ◼   ► I have never used that outside of testing.

01:36:22 ◼   ► I don't use it either.

01:36:24 ◼   ► I did actually for the first time ever schedule an email to send last week.

01:36:30 ◼   ► I just had something that I knew would be good if it landed with somebody in the morning

01:36:34 ◼   ► and so I just, I had the thought and I was like, I don't want to send this late.

01:36:37 ◼   ► I'll send it and it will like 8.30 or whatever and it'll just go for me.

01:36:41 ◼   ► The reason I never use the send later for messages thing is one, I mean, I just message

01:36:47 ◼   ► people.

01:36:48 ◼   ► Like I just message them.

01:36:49 ◼   ► Like for one-on-one instant messaging, people in my life, they know my hours, like whatever.

01:36:56 ◼   ► But I always feel like it would feel weird if I shared a message to you and then you

01:37:02 ◼   ► sent me a message and then my one came in like and it was, you know, that's why I don't

01:37:08 ◼   ► like it.

01:37:09 ◼   ► It's like what happens if like, you know, I'm like, oh, hey Jason, lol or whatever.

01:37:17 ◼   ► I don't know why I sent you that, but like, you know, you messaged me like, oh Mike, something

01:37:20 ◼   ► terrible happened to me and you know, and then like next message is like, I'm like,

01:37:24 ◼   ► uh, lol.

01:37:26 ◼   ► Congratulations Cal won.

01:37:27 ◼   ► Yay.

01:37:28 ◼   ► And then the next morning, so did Cal win?

01:37:29 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

01:37:30 ◼   ► Or you know, like Jason, I only want to go 97 yards with my boys and you'd be like, no,

01:37:35 ◼   ► it's 98 yards with the boys.

01:37:36 ◼   ► One more yard.

01:37:37 ◼   ► We've got to get that extra yard in there or it doesn't work.

01:37:39 ◼   ► So yeah, I don't, I don't use this feature.

01:37:41 ◼   ► I yeah, I text you at times that, uh, that many people would be asleep.

01:37:47 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:37:48 ◼   ► Here's what I know.

01:37:49 ◼   ► I know.

01:37:50 ◼   ► First off, you got focus modes and whatever.

01:37:51 ◼   ► I'm not going to be ding dinging you in the middle of the night.

01:37:53 ◼   ► That's my responsibility, not yours.

01:37:55 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:37:56 ◼   ► And second, sometimes you're awake.

01:37:58 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:37:59 ◼   ► And you get a response back and I love that.

01:38:00 ◼   ► I send you a message.

01:38:02 ◼   ► This happens sometimes where I send you a message and I'm like, yeah, he'll get it in

01:38:05 ◼   ► the morning and then you respond and I'm like, oh, that's delightful.

01:38:07 ◼   ► It's 1230 or it's 1am or something like that.

01:38:10 ◼   ► You're still up and that's nice.

01:38:11 ◼   ► I mean, James Thompson, I do that and he responds and I know it's like 2am and I'm like, James,

01:38:17 ◼   ► go to bed.

01:38:18 ◼   ► We all have that conversation with James.

01:38:20 ◼   ► Oh, you actually just stumbled into a thing, which is one of my biggest pet peeves, which

01:38:24 ◼   ► is people telling me to go to bed.

01:38:28 ◼   ► I know when to go to bed.

01:38:29 ◼   ► You don't need to tell me when to go to bed.

01:38:31 ◼   ► People message me and it's like 12, midnight, 1am, 2am and I'm still awake and I'm sending

01:38:36 ◼   ► them and say, oh, I might go to bed.

01:38:37 ◼   ► No, I'm a grownup.

01:38:39 ◼   ► I'm nearly 40 years old.

01:38:42 ◼   ► It takes a village to take care of James and so sometimes when it's very, very, very late

01:38:46 ◼   ► and we're worried about him, we will tell him to go to bed, but mostly not.

01:38:50 ◼   ► But maybe James wants to be told.

01:38:52 ◼   ► I never want to be told to go to bed.

01:38:54 ◼   ► Okay, so noted.

01:38:56 ◼   ► I just enjoy it.

01:38:57 ◼   ► I just get a little, because you've got your focus modes in, so it'll say this is delivered

01:39:01 ◼   ► silently or whatever.

01:39:02 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:39:03 ◼   ► And I'll be like, that's fine.

01:39:04 ◼   ► Get it when you get it and then I'll get a response and I'll be like, oh, I might still

01:39:07 ◼   ► pay attention at 12.30.

01:39:08 ◼   ► Well, because my sleep focus just turns on at 12, but I'm not done.

01:39:13 ◼   ► I've got time to go yet.

01:39:15 ◼   ► I'm still rocking and rolling over here.

01:39:19 ◼   ► If you would like to send us, this is a pre pre pre-show joke, so I apologize.

01:39:26 ◼   ► I made it, you made it, but nobody can get it.

01:39:31 ◼   ► If you would like to send in your question for a future episode, go to upgradefeedback.com

01:39:35 ◼   ► and you can send us an upgrade question, a Snell Talk question or any feedback and follow

01:39:40 ◼   ► up.

01:39:41 ◼   ► If you want to find Jason's work, go to sixcolors.com.

01:39:43 ◼   ► You can hear him on the incomparable.com and here on Relay where you can also hear me too.

01:39:48 ◼   ► You can check out my work at cortexbrand.com.

01:39:50 ◼   ► You can follow us on Mastodon threads and blue sky.

01:39:53 ◼   ► Work it out yourself.

01:39:54 ◼   ► You can watch clips of the show on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.

01:39:59 ◼   ► We're at upgrade relay.

01:40:00 ◼   ► Thank you to our members who support us of upgrade plus.

01:40:02 ◼   ► Don't forget, go to give relay.com and you can get 20% off an annual membership.

01:40:07 ◼   ► Thank you to our sponsors, data citizens dialogues, fit pod and square space.

01:40:13 ◼   ► Thank you for listening.

01:40:14 ◼   ► Jason will be back next week.

01:40:15 ◼   ► I'm on vacation.

01:40:16 ◼   ► I'll see you in two weeks.

01:40:17 ◼   ► Say goodbye, Jason Snow.

01:40:19 ◼   ► Please enjoy special guest Steven Hackett next week.

01:40:22 ◼   ► We'll see you then.

01:40:23 ◼   ► Happy Thanksgiving to all those who celebrate Gobble Gobble.

01:40:25 ◼   ► Goodbye, Mike.

01:40:26 ◼   ► [Music]

01:40:32 ◼   ► you