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552: Table for Six

 

00:00:00 ◼   ► We'll see you next time.

00:00:30 ◼   ► I am joined by my first in a cavalcade of all-star co-hosts. It's Casey Liss. Hi, Casey.

00:00:37 ◼   ► Hello, Jason. I am so thankful to be here. I am so very lucky to be the first one. It's

00:00:43 ◼   ► a bold strategy for you going with me first because it's only downhill from here, but I

00:00:47 ◼   ► respect that.

00:00:47 ◼   ► Let's see if it works out for me. The truth is I was kicking off with Steven and then Mike

00:00:56 ◼   ► said, no, no, no, no, no. I'll be there that week. And that was last week. And so you're

00:01:00 ◼   ► going to be second track, which I would argue if you're making a mixtape or a mixed CD or

00:01:04 ◼   ► a playlist, as High Fidelity would tell you that number two, the second track, it's very

00:01:11 ◼   ► important. Like that's the key track.

00:01:13 ◼   ► See, I appreciate it. That's what I appreciate.

00:01:15 ◼   ► You end up being number one. And that's okay too. So we're going to start this episode with

00:01:20 ◼   ► a Snell Talk question. This question comes from me, Jason Snell, to all of us, including

00:01:29 ◼   ► you, Casey, because the question on everybody's mind is, did Mike and Adina have the baby yet?

00:01:34 ◼   ► And I am happy to reveal that they did. It was a question. Mike was like, I'm not sure if

00:01:40 ◼   ► that's going to be public by the time you do upgrade. But about an hour ago, he was like,

00:01:43 ◼   ► yeah, okay, you could do it. Yes. Please welcome to the world, baby Sophia. My understanding

00:01:48 ◼   ► is that everybody in the Hurley family is doing okay. There's an Instagram post. There's a picture

00:01:56 ◼   ► of a baby. People can check it out. Sophia was born on Saturday, the 22nd of February.

00:02:01 ◼   ► And Mike posted on Instagram, Feb 22, which made me laugh because that's how not English he is.

00:02:08 ◼   ► He didn't do 22 February. He did February 22. But congratulations to the Hurleys. That's so great.

00:02:15 ◼   ► It was unexpected and sudden, according to Mike. They were not due until later this week. This was

00:02:23 ◼   ► going to be his padding week. See, getting used to it already that nothing goes as planned with

00:02:30 ◼   ► children, both in the good and the bad ways. Getting used to it from the start. But no, incredible

00:02:35 ◼   ► congratulations from me as well to all three of the Hurleys. This is incredibly good news. I haven't had

00:02:40 ◼   ► the chance to ask him all the questions because all I know is, like you said, it was unexpected. And I

00:02:46 ◼   ► don't know, other than the obvious, I don't know what that means. So I'm very excited and curious to

00:02:51 ◼   ► hear what the birth story is to the degree that the two of them are willing to share, which may or may

00:02:55 ◼   ► not ever be public, to be clear. But I'm excited to hear it. And I'm very, very happy for them.

00:03:00 ◼   ► And like you said, to the best that I've been told, everyone's doing great. Obviously, everyone is

00:03:05 ◼   ► upside down and inside out, but everything is fine and proceeding as you would expect.

00:03:10 ◼   ► Yeah. No, it's great. It's great news. I'm really excited about it. I'm so happy for them. I do. I

00:03:14 ◼   ► will say, I always, when I have, I talked to a friend who's had a baby and they say that it went

00:03:19 ◼   ► really fast. They're saying it like, oh man, it went really fast. Like they're, they got the thousand

00:03:24 ◼   ► yard stare and they're like, it went so fast. I can't even. And I just, it makes me mad because

00:03:29 ◼   ► our children did not go fast. They went excruciatingly slow. We, we, you know, I think

00:03:36 ◼   ► Lauren was in labor with Jamie for more than a day, I think into a second day. And they were

00:03:42 ◼   ► like, you know, this isn't progressing. I mean, it was, it was, uh, and, and with Julian was

00:03:46 ◼   ► very similar. It went on and on and on and on. And so I do have a friend who like literally,

00:03:52 ◼   ► um, she, she took a, a taxi to the hospital and, um, they got her into her, her room and

00:04:00 ◼   ► she went into the bathroom of her room before she'd ever been in the bed. And she just had

00:04:04 ◼   ► the baby in the bathroom hospital room. And that's like, that's fast. Right. And I'm like,

00:04:10 ◼   ► that seems horrible for you, but also kind of good for you. Cause it just happened and then

00:04:15 ◼   ► it was over. Attracted is not good. Anyway. So yes, congratulations to Hurleys. The paternity

00:04:20 ◼   ► clock already had started, but now it starts for real, real. Uh, don't know when Mike will

00:04:25 ◼   ► be back, but he's going to take a couple of months off. At least we have, like I said,

00:04:28 ◼   ► I've got, I've lined up. I have one slot, I think, unless he comes back early cause the

00:04:31 ◼   ► baby was early, but probably not. Um, I think it's more likely he'll come back later rather

00:04:35 ◼   ► than earlier where he'll say, I'm not ready yet, but I've got a long list of people lined

00:04:41 ◼   ► up starting with Casey to fill in for Mike. So I hope everybody enjoys that. And then of

00:04:46 ◼   ► course, welcomes Mike back when he comes back. I will definitely welcome Mike back.

00:04:50 ◼   ► I already can tell you that because this is his way of reminding me all the work he does

00:04:55 ◼   ► on upgrade. Right. Thank you, Mike. Uh, now I would like to turn to a brand new segment on

00:05:00 ◼   ► upgrade. That's right. Does Mike know about it? No, he doesn't. Uh, it is a new segment that

00:05:05 ◼   ► we're inaugurating right now and it's called fatherly advice, where I turn to my co-host who

00:05:12 ◼   ► is a father himself. And, and we provide Mike with up here at the top of the show where Mike

00:05:18 ◼   ► might still might actually listen to it with a little story or a tidbit about being a parent

00:05:23 ◼   ► advice, uh, whatever you want. And Casey, it's your turn. Do you have some fatherly advice

00:05:29 ◼   ► or something similar to talk about where Mike can hear us, but not respond?

00:05:34 ◼   ► Even better. That's the best kind. Uh, yeah. So coincidentally, I'm going to, I'm going to plug,

00:05:39 ◼   ► uh, our show, Mike in my show. Uh, we are doing an episode of analog that Mike had mostly coordinated

00:05:45 ◼   ► on his side. Uh, that'll be out in the month of March where he's collecting fatherly advice from all

00:05:51 ◼   ► of his co-hosts, I presume, including you, Jason. Um, and so there's going to be a lot in there,

00:05:55 ◼   ► but I'm going to, I don't recall exactly what I had told him, uh, when we spoke about this and

00:05:59 ◼   ► collect, he collected my two cents, uh, a week or two back. But what I'm going to go with is

00:06:03 ◼   ► that it's important. So many things are important when being a parent, but it's important among many

00:06:10 ◼   ► other things to be incredibly flexible and understand when you need to pick your battles.

00:06:16 ◼   ► That's true of pretty much any relationship in life, but especially with parenting and you definitely

00:06:20 ◼   ► know, need to know which battles to pick and you'll learn over time. And as a silly anecdote

00:06:26 ◼   ► for this, which is kind of actually tangentially related. I remember before I was a dad that I would

00:06:32 ◼   ► look at new parents in, this is when I still went to an office and whatnot. I would look at new parents

00:06:36 ◼   ► that came in with like, uh, baby stuff all over their shirts. I don't want to be any more graphic

00:06:41 ◼   ► than that, but you know, typically on the shoulder area, there's baby stuff all over their shirts.

00:06:45 ◼   ► Who knows where it came from Casey? Honestly, nobody knows. That's the thing. Uh, they would come in

00:06:49 ◼   ► with this like stuff all over their shirt. And I'd be like, what are you doing? You couldn't

00:06:53 ◼   ► spend the time to just change before you got to work. And I think once I went back after Aaron had

00:06:58 ◼   ► Declan and Aaron had very long labor for both Declan and Michaela, uh, I think it was within a week or so

00:07:04 ◼   ► of going back to work that I looked down and I saw a stain on one of my shoulders and I realized,

00:07:10 ◼   ► Oh, yep. I get it now. I get it. The things that I thought mattered, they don't matter and new things

00:07:17 ◼   ► matter now and that's okay. And so you got to be flexible and you got to know when to choose your

00:07:21 ◼   ► battles somewhat within yourself. Do I, do I really need to change the shirt or not? But often and

00:07:27 ◼   ► usually with your children. And I don't mean that that sounds negative to say, pick your battles.

00:07:30 ◼   ► I don't mean it that way at all, but you have to figure out when to be flexible and when to not.

00:07:35 ◼   ► And, you know, I don't have any specific advice with regard to that. You know, obviously each

00:07:39 ◼   ► situation is different. Each parenting style is different. Um, but it's important to realize

00:07:44 ◼   ► that, Oh, you know what, even though this is not what I prefer, it'll be fine. It'll be fine.

00:07:49 ◼   ► You know? And, and I, I don't think that being a helicopter parent and, you know, steering the child

00:07:55 ◼   ► every second of every day and telling them exactly what to do when is not personally my, my approach

00:08:00 ◼   ► to parenting. And so that implies that you're going to have to let them do something that's maybe

00:08:05 ◼   ► a little bit more dangerous than you want, because that's part of learning is screwing up and getting

00:08:10 ◼   ► hurt and allowing them to pick themselves up and helping them pick themselves up. Uh, so be flexible

00:08:15 ◼   ► and pick your battles is I think what I'm going to go with for today. I mean, you're, you strike me as

00:08:18 ◼   ► somebody knowing you a little bit about who likes it the way he likes it, right? Like I like it a

00:08:23 ◼   ► certain, you have your opinion, like this is the way to do it. This is the way I like it. And boy,

00:08:27 ◼   ► does having kids disabuse you of that really rapidly because you just on the priority list,

00:08:33 ◼   ► do you realize that that you thought that was priority number one and it's actually priority

00:08:36 ◼   ► number 100 and that your kids have the top 99 priorities. So you just have to roll with the

00:08:41 ◼   ► punches and, and that's just the truth of it. I love what you said about letting them fail. Um,

00:08:47 ◼   ► I, and learn, right. Or, or make a mistake and learn. And, and there was a point where one of our

00:08:53 ◼   ► kids had, had gotten way behind. I don't even remember which one now, honestly, it's been so long.

00:08:57 ◼   ► I got behind on their homework and the teacher was like, they need to, they've not turned in

00:09:03 ◼   ► all this homework and it's going to be not, it's not going to count and they need to do it and all

00:09:07 ◼   ► these things. And Lauren got really kind of upset about it and said, they're going to get a bad grade

00:09:12 ◼   ► and all this stuff. And I said, okay, first off it's sixth grade or fifth grade, the grade they get

00:09:18 ◼   ► has no impact on their life at all, will not affect their life trajectory in any way. And I said,

00:09:23 ◼   ► we can, we, we can give them feedback, but maybe having a whole bunch of the work that they didn't

00:09:30 ◼   ► do get marked as a zero and they get a bad grade in the midterm report card in fifth grade when it

00:09:37 ◼   ► doesn't matter is a good learning experience for them. And it was one of those things that like,

00:09:42 ◼   ► oh yeah. And I don't think Lauren necessarily agreed with me because I think she's like, no,

00:09:46 ◼   ► it's a bad grade. You shouldn't get them. And I was like, I know you shouldn't get them.

00:09:50 ◼   ► I know, but maybe getting them is that little shock that that kid needs to go. Oh, oh no,

00:09:56 ◼   ► I can't let that slide. And better to do it now when the grades don't matter than for them to do it in

00:10:02 ◼   ► high school where it's going to kill their, you know, a list of colleges because they messed up when

00:10:08 ◼   ► it, uh, you know, when somebody is looking. No, I couldn't agree with you more. Just a very quick

00:10:13 ◼   ► anecdote about my own life. I was a relatively decent student and I like to think of myself as

00:10:18 ◼   ► reasonably bright. I was never, you know, a valedictorian or anything like that, but I was a

00:10:22 ◼   ► pretty good student. And this was all through elementary school, middle school, high school.

00:10:25 ◼   ► I went to a very small high school. Um, and I don't recall where I graduated within our like a hundred

00:10:30 ◼   ► person graduating class, but ultimately I didn't really have to try that hard growing up. And that

00:10:36 ◼   ► sounds like a flex, but it actually ended up being very much to my detriment because then I got to

00:10:41 ◼   ► college and suddenly not only did I need to try, I needed to try real freaking hard. And so it ended

00:10:48 ◼   ► up that I really had wished for failures in the past, as silly as that may sound, because that would

00:10:54 ◼   ► have better equipped me. This is exactly what you were saying. That would have better equipped me for

00:10:58 ◼   ► when I really needed it, you know, here at 18 years old, just arriving at Virginia Tech and realizing,

00:11:04 ◼   ► oh no, I don't know how to study. I thought I did, but I don't. Yeah. This is going to be a problem.

00:11:09 ◼   ► Yeah. And you're, and you're now you're surrounded with a bunch of people who were also the same

00:11:14 ◼   ► student that you were. And you used to be surrounded with people where you're like, you could get by

00:11:17 ◼   ► because everybody else, oh, those guys all have to work, but I don't. And now guess what? Those guys

00:11:21 ◼   ► aren't in your college with you. They're, it's, it's all people with better grades than you who are in

00:11:26 ◼   ► your college with you. Yep. Yep. So true. Uh, yeah, yeah. Well, that is fatherly advice. Thank you,

00:11:32 ◼   ► Casey. And, uh, and, uh, yeah, I'm going to try to do that with many of my, uh, there's a,

00:11:37 ◼   ► I might be inviting lots of fathers onto the podcast. I'm just saying it may happen that way.

00:11:43 ◼   ► And so, yeah, it, uh, it's a fun time for us to think about Mike and everything. Mike, uh,

00:11:49 ◼   ► thinks he's going to go through and then what he's actually going to go through,

00:11:52 ◼   ► but let's move on to a more familiar, uh, chapter marker, right? More familiar.

00:11:58 ◼   ► Yes, please.

00:11:59 ◼   ► Show art. Something, a segment I have art for. It's the rumor roundup.

00:12:03 ◼   ► Yeehaw.

00:12:04 ◼   ► Yeehaw. Thank you. Uh, a couple items in rumor roundup. Uh, by the way, it is actually, there's

00:12:11 ◼   ► only one item, Mark Gurman's, uh, newsletter, which very kindly generates itself on Sunday,

00:12:15 ◼   ► uh, for us to pick apart on Monday. Didn't really have any rumors in it this week, but there is a,

00:12:20 ◼   ► but yet Casey list came through and texted me this morning when I was having my tea in the morning

00:12:24 ◼   ► saying, here's a story. Uh, we'll link to the article on the verge reporting about these leaks

00:12:30 ◼   ► from a leaker named Majin Boo, who says, uh, this is what the iPhone 17 is going to look like.

00:12:37 ◼   ► And I would say if you're following along with upgrade and you're following along with iPhone 17

00:12:42 ◼   ► rumors, you will not be surprised at this. Uh, it is what we've been talking about, but this is just

00:12:48 ◼   ► saying again, reinforcing the idea that what Apple's doing with the industrial design of three of their

00:12:53 ◼   ► phones this fall is they're taking, uh, the, I guess, what is John Syracuse to call it on ATP,

00:12:59 ◼   ► the camera Mesa, uh, and extending it, uh, all the way across. So it's like the, the, the Mesa is now

00:13:08 ◼   ► just a full bar at the top of the iPhone, which is a very different look. Even if the, the, the camera

00:13:16 ◼   ► bump is so large now that you might as well just embrace that it's going all the way across. Um,

00:13:22 ◼   ► and, and of course Mesa Spanish for table. And I would say, if I had to describe this to people

00:13:26 ◼   ► who haven't seen it, uh, it used to be a table for four up there, but now it's going to be a table

00:13:30 ◼   ► for six. It's so true. And that's what's, that's what's going on here. I don't, I mean, we tend to

00:13:36 ◼   ► get used to everything, but I look at this and I'm like, Hmm, I don't, I mean, I know Google pixel does

00:13:41 ◼   ► this. I, I, I, I don't know how I feel about the, the industrial design of the bar going all the way

00:13:47 ◼   ► across. But honestly, I was, uh, on a zoom call with my, uh, with my family last night with Lauren's,

00:13:54 ◼   ► uh, mom and dad and siblings. And we do those in the living room on, um, on Apple TV. And I use

00:14:00 ◼   ► continuity camera and I was looking at the camera bump on my iPhone 16 and thinking, yeah, they're all

00:14:06 ◼   ► ugly. Like it's not, it's not like this is going to make it uglier. In fact, this might make it a little

00:14:10 ◼   ► more consistent in that it's, it's pretending, right. It's pretending that it's not going all

00:14:16 ◼   ► the way across the phone, but at this point it's going almost all the way across. Why not embrace

00:14:19 ◼   ► it? Yeah, I, I think you're right that a familiarity is what's making me familiarity with the current

00:14:26 ◼   ► Mesa, the table for four, the four top, um, the familiar familiarity with the four top, if you will,

00:14:32 ◼   ► is what makes this very distasteful to me at first glance. And visually it's not doing a lot for me.

00:14:38 ◼   ► And there's a lot of empty space in the span between the, the triangle O cameras and the dual,

00:14:45 ◼   ► um, what is it? Lens and a lidar on the other side of the phone.

00:14:49 ◼   ► And there's just a lot of the flash. I think it's the flash and the lidar on the, on the far side.

00:14:53 ◼   ► Sorry. Yes. Yes. That's what I meant to say. My apologies.

00:14:55 ◼   ► So the cluster is still clustered, which is interesting.

00:14:57 ◼   ► Right. Exactly. And, and I presume that's because they need the two cameras next to each other for,

00:15:03 ◼   ► um, spatial video, but I'm not entirely sure. I mean, maybe they could have made like a Cyclops

00:15:08 ◼   ► looking thing by putting the other camera dead center. I don't, maybe that would have been worse,

00:15:11 ◼   ► but that being said, even though visually this doesn't do a lot for me, the thought of having

00:15:18 ◼   ► a more consistent back, especially with which to set my phone down, that sounds very appealing.

00:15:24 ◼   ► And the other important thing about these renders is that for the pro max and the pro,

00:15:29 ◼   ► if I understand this, right, it looks like that the metal there's metal for the camera Mesa and the

00:15:37 ◼   ► surround around the edge of the phone. I'm having a hard time painting a word picture here, but

00:15:42 ◼   ► the surround around the edge of the phone is metal. And then there's a large glass section that is

00:15:47 ◼   ► within the metal that permits presumably not only cellular radio, wifi radio, but also, uh,

00:15:52 ◼   ► Qi charging and MagSafe charging. And so the key here is that if I'm understanding this, right,

00:15:57 ◼   ► that, and if you look at the photo, if you're looking at this show art or what have you,

00:16:01 ◼   ► if you look at the photo, it's like this maroony red section. Um, and if that is glass,

00:16:06 ◼   ► then that means there's a layer, if you will, of metal around it, which is incredibly important.

00:16:13 ◼   ► I presume for more robust drop survivability. You know, if you drop your phone that I've shattered

00:16:19 ◼   ► a couple of back glasses on iPhones and it's infuriating every time because you feel like,

00:16:24 ◼   ► why is this all glass? Why is this all glass? Couldn't we put something around this? And that's

00:16:30 ◼   ► what these renders seem to indicate is that they're putting a little sliver of metal around the whole

00:16:34 ◼   ► thing in order to presumably help with, um, you know, how the strength and robustness for lack of a

00:16:41 ◼   ► better word. I don't know. I don't know. It's, it's right. They, they only know, I think the truth

00:16:46 ◼   ► is that a lot of this is coming from case leak where they know, um, they, they, all they can do

00:16:50 ◼   ► is intuit what it looks like based on the dimensions of, and the shapes that they've been given. And so

00:16:55 ◼   ► there's a real question about, you know, what is in that cutout area? Is that raised? Is it just a

00:17:00 ◼   ► different material? Um, and, and then what happens when you drop it? And you would think that that big

00:17:06 ◼   ► table would capture many of the drops and the edges at that point, because it's raising it up.

00:17:11 ◼   ► And honestly, what is it like to use it on a table? Does that stabilize it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

00:17:16 ◼   ► Because that would be, I was, I was tapping on my iPhone, uh, on the, on the tabletop the other day

00:17:21 ◼   ► and being like, yep, that's right. Don't tap in the bottom right corner. Everything just wiggles.

00:17:24 ◼   ► Uh, maybe this would be better for that. I don't know, but I don't love the look, but I guess what I'm

00:17:30 ◼   ► saying is I don't love the look, but I don't really love the look. When I look at it and think about it,

00:17:34 ◼   ► the existing camera thing is not particularly attractive either. It's just necessary. And what

00:17:42 ◼   ► they're doing is they're, they're making it so that the phone is thinner, except for the part

00:17:47 ◼   ► that's not. Um, and this is, this is just like kind of embracing that and that, that, that reality of

00:17:52 ◼   ► it. And hopefully those cameras on it are not themselves sticking out, but that's what happens

00:17:58 ◼   ► currently. So maybe so. Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking about that too, that it would bum me out if the Mesa

00:18:04 ◼   ► continues to have even more depth. I mean, that's to your point on the peaks in the Mesa. Yeah. And

00:18:10 ◼   ► to your point, that is the way it is now. And it's like, it's not that big a deal, but I don't know

00:18:13 ◼   ► having it be completely flush would be such an improvement. I think both aesthetically and, you

00:18:18 ◼   ► know, in terms of sitting it down and so on and so forth. So I would love it if these were sitting

00:18:23 ◼   ► flush. It doesn't give me vibes that they are flush said differently. I think you're correct that

00:18:28 ◼   ► they do protrude a little bit more, which is too bad, but you know, I'll take what I can get.

00:18:33 ◼   ► And even though, again, aesthetically, this is doing very little for me, I think in terms of

00:18:38 ◼   ► behavior in real world, you know, toughness, I suspect that this will be a upgrade.

00:18:44 ◼   ► Oh, nice. I like what you did there. All right. We're going to move on to yet another segment.

00:18:50 ◼   ► That's right. All before the first ad break, no less. Yet another segment that I have art

00:18:54 ◼   ► for. This is the B-Tails.

00:18:56 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:18:58 ◼   ► Woo-hoo. Okay.

00:19:00 ◼   ► Sorry. I forgot which role I'm playing here. I'm not used to this.

00:19:03 ◼   ► I know. It's weird. Just a real quick one. Vision OS 2.4, developer beta one, was released

00:19:10 ◼   ► by Apple. This is the thing that basically Mark Gurman reported about a week ago because

00:19:17 ◼   ► somebody who got the Apple briefing obviously talked to him. I mean, just as somebody who

00:19:22 ◼   ► got the Apple briefing, I can just tell you now somebody who got that briefing talked to

00:19:26 ◼   ► him. I don't know why.

00:19:27 ◼   ► One hundred percent.

00:19:28 ◼   ► Presumably whoever got it had their own channel that they could have done a story for under

00:19:34 ◼   ► embargo and instead just decided to just what the heck, just give it to Mark Gurman and see

00:19:38 ◼   ► what he does with it. Anyway, so it's everything that was already reported. But anyway, Apple

00:19:41 ◼   ► intelligence is in there now. And then there's a bunch of stuff that's not in there now,

00:19:45 ◼   ► but will be there at some point that they told us about, which kind of frustrates me because I

00:19:49 ◼   ► installed the beta on my iPhone and on my Vision Pro in order to do this. So the Apple intelligence

00:19:54 ◼   ► stuff is what you'd expect, right? It's writing tools and image playground and all that stuff is

00:19:58 ◼   ► there now. And, you know, one of the things when they mentioned Apple intelligence and they

00:20:03 ◼   ► introduced it back last June is they didn't mention the Vision Pro. And we were told, I don't

00:20:08 ◼   ► know if you heard this, Casey, but I heard from sort of behind the scenes, somebody was like,

00:20:12 ◼   ► oh, it'll come to the Vision Pro. Don't worry about that. But it wasn't on the record. Wasn't

00:20:15 ◼   ► official and there was no timeframe. Well, here it is, right? So here it is. They say it's

00:20:19 ◼   ► going to ship in April. It's in beta now, but there are other things that I think are way

00:20:24 ◼   ► more interesting than, than Apple intelligence. So first off, spatial gallery app.

00:20:29 ◼   ► Yes, I am very interested in this. So I also got a briefing. I forget what day it was,

00:20:35 ◼   ► but we got a briefing, uh, the same, I think it was the same day. And, uh, they, they spoke

00:20:40 ◼   ► about a spatial gallery app, which they basically said, this is my interpretation anyway, that there's

00:20:46 ◼   ► going to be spatial content. And I don't believe it's immersive. Is that correct? To the best of

00:20:53 ◼   ► your knowledge, it's simply spatial content. It's not immersive, right? That's this is spatial

00:20:57 ◼   ► spatial means not immersive basically. So 3d, um, stuff, pictures, right? And also panoramas,

00:21:05 ◼   ► which aren't panoramas are in here and they're not 3d panoramas. I don't think, I think they're

00:21:10 ◼   ► just panoramas that wrap around you, but it's like, this is the other stuff. That's not immersive

00:21:14 ◼   ► video basically. Right. So again, and I have a lot of trouble describing this to people that don't have

00:21:20 ◼   ► a lot of time with the vision pro, but if you think about it, there's, you know, you're, you're

00:21:23 ◼   ► looking at a rectangle in space, but that rectangle is flat and that's like watching a

00:21:28 ◼   ► regular video. Then you're looking at a rectangle or a square in space and there's depth within

00:21:32 ◼   ► that rectangle or square and that's spatial. That's what we're talking about. And then immersive

00:21:37 ◼   ► is when you can actually tilt your head and look around and see different, you know, a different

00:21:42 ◼   ► perspective. It's a 480 degree filling your vision, uh, and 3d kind of thing. And that's the,

00:21:50 ◼   ► that's like the ultimate, but there's a lot of 3d content that you can do.

00:21:53 ◼   ► Like with your own pictures as well as the panorama stuff, which is not 3d, but it's

00:21:58 ◼   ► wrapping around you to give you that kind of full thing. These are the other, yeah, the

00:22:00 ◼   ► other things that vision pro does that are interesting. And so they built this app and

00:22:04 ◼   ► it's interesting because it's like in my story, I think I said, it's like the TV app

00:22:09 ◼   ► sort of in the sense that it's sort of like, here's some stuff we want to show you. It's

00:22:14 ◼   ► like a featured area in the TV app. It's, it's a, uh, curated by Apple. Apple does the

00:22:22 ◼   ► updating. It's not all Apple content, but it's all curated by Apple. And, uh, and in

00:22:29 ◼   ► the demo, they showed that there's some, um, there's some third party 3d content that they're

00:22:35 ◼   ► highlighting, which is nice. Um, but also there, um, there's Apple stuff. And my question is,

00:22:41 ◼   ► what is it exactly? Like they have, they have a shot of Jason Siegel that's in 3d with

00:22:49 ◼   ► the little clapboard in front of him from shrinking that, uh, so like, okay, but what I don't know

00:22:57 ◼   ► is, and they, and they say that they've got severance content too, although I don't think

00:23:00 ◼   ► I saw that, but what I don't know is, is this what that rumor was about Monarch where they

00:23:07 ◼   ► said Apple was, had a 3d camera on set for behind the scenes stuff, but we never saw it.

00:23:12 ◼   ► And because, because what I'm afraid is that this is like a picture of Jason Siegel behind

00:23:20 ◼   ► the scenes. And that's all it is that like, here's our extra content in the spatial gallery.

00:23:25 ◼   ► It's a photo that's in 3d that somebody took with an iPhone or whatever on the set. And it's

00:23:30 ◼   ► like, that's sort of interesting, but like I, what I'm hoping is that this will actually

00:23:36 ◼   ► contain some 3d video content as well, but that, that, that, that maybe, cause we've been

00:23:42 ◼   ► frustrated all of us who are kind of fans of this immersive stuff that there hasn't been

00:23:47 ◼   ► any immersive stuff. That's been like behind the scenes on an Apple show or something is,

00:23:52 ◼   ► is it maybe there's some 3d video of it instead. And that's where they're doing their,

00:23:56 ◼   ► their VAM, their value added media stuff for behind the scenes. I don't, I don't know.

00:24:01 ◼   ► My fear is that it's like, Hey, it's like looking through a view master or something that's a throwback

00:24:06 ◼   ► where it's like, Hey, here's Jason Siegel in 3d. Yep. Yep. And then you're like, okay. And then

00:24:11 ◼   ► you swipe to the next one. So we'll see what's in the spatial gallery, but, um, but it could be

00:24:16 ◼   ► interesting because that is the idea is they want to also highlight third-party apps that have

00:24:20 ◼   ► interesting content. So you could imagine the IMAX app might show up in here and the, the, the,

00:24:27 ◼   ► some other there, I have had, uh, some other people send me links to like other 3d content apps on

00:24:32 ◼   ► vision pro. And this is a way for Apple to sort of like float that stuff up. So if you're a vision pro

00:24:37 ◼   ► user, you can see that stuff. And then there are links off to like those apps and stuff, which is

00:24:42 ◼   ► it's, I don't, so I'm, I'm afraid the spatial gallery is not going to really kind of like be earth

00:24:47 ◼   ► shattering, but, um, but it is the answer to the question. Why is Apple not trying to push more of

00:24:52 ◼   ► this stuff to, to, and show off what the vision pro can do? I think this is them trying.

00:24:57 ◼   ► Yeah. Agreed. And what I like about the spatial gallery gallery is not only is it giving us more

00:25:04 ◼   ► unique content, you know, it's not immersive as we discussed, but at least it's stuff that's

00:25:09 ◼   ► if depending on how you classify it, you could argue is unique to the vision pro or certainly within

00:25:14 ◼   ► the Apple ecosystem anyway, is unique to the vision pro. And what I love is that the, the

00:25:19 ◼   ► implication here, if not the direct statement from Apple is that it will be updated regularly.

00:25:24 ◼   ► And I mean, to their credit, they're doing more immersive. There's Steve, it seems like they're

00:25:28 ◼   ► picking up a little steam on the immersive stuff, but still not as much as I would like. And I think

00:25:32 ◼   ► I speak for you in saying that. Um, and so here at least it's not immersive, but at least we're

00:25:37 ◼   ► getting more unique stuff for the vision pro. And the other thing that I really like about this,

00:25:41 ◼   ► and they did not say this to be clear, this is me now, uh, wish casting is if you have a mechanism

00:25:47 ◼   ► by which there, there is a place that people could, or that, that companies or, you know, uh, people that

00:25:53 ◼   ► Apple have a relationship with can send their content and then it can be shown to users.

00:25:59 ◼   ► I could imagine them opening this up to anyone and saying, Hey, if you just happen to be a very

00:26:04 ◼   ► skilled amateur photographer and you take, you know, a really great panorama of something,

00:26:09 ◼   ► submit it to Apple and maybe it'll get featured again. This was not stated. This is just me

00:26:13 ◼   ► guessing.

00:26:13 ◼   ► I would go further and say, I wouldn't be surprised if there is a shot spatially on iPhone contest or

00:26:20 ◼   ► something like that.

00:26:21 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

00:26:21 ◼   ► Right.

00:26:21 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:26:22 ◼   ► And that the winners get shown in the spatial gallery.

00:26:25 ◼   ► Um, that, that might be a way that they might structure all that. Um, there is also like there

00:26:30 ◼   ► is for the Apple watch. There is now going to be a vision pro app on the, on iOS, on iPhones and

00:26:35 ◼   ► iPads, uh, vision pro app. Um, not, you know, vision pro stands alone, unlike the watch, which

00:26:41 ◼   ► sort of doesn't stand alone and you need it for maintenance. But what they're trying to do here,

00:26:44 ◼   ► it actually reminded me a lot of, um, the app that meta makes for the quest, um, where you sort of

00:26:51 ◼   ► don't need it. Maybe you need it a little occasionally, but what it does let you do is

00:26:56 ◼   ► browse what's going on, browse what's in the app store. And my understanding is you can send,

00:27:02 ◼   ► you basically can get apps and they will be queued up and downloaded by your vision pro

00:27:07 ◼   ► when you're not, I think when you're not using it, as long as it's awake. Um, and that is,

00:27:12 ◼   ► and media as well, that you'd be able to like take media and say, put that on my vision pro

00:27:18 ◼   ► and it will be there when you put it on later, which is, again, I've done that on the quest

00:27:22 ◼   ► a lot where I have bought, I've heard, I've heard about apps and then I've, I've sent them

00:27:27 ◼   ► to the, the meta quest from the meta quest app. So, um, uh, it's just another like laying,

00:27:34 ◼   ► laying more foundational work. And I think this shows how, what a, uh, early stage product this

00:27:40 ◼   ► is, right. And to be, to be kind about it, like this is, this is something that they could

00:27:44 ◼   ► have shipped day one, but there was no way they, it was too early for them to do it, but they

00:27:48 ◼   ► are now putting in the work to get something like a vision pro app on iOS. Yeah. And I think the key

00:27:55 ◼   ► difference, if I understood correctly from the briefing, the key difference here though, is

00:27:58 ◼   ► at least the way it used to be when the Apple watch was new was that the Apple watch app only showed up.

00:28:04 ◼   ► If I recall correctly, once you, you made it an Apple watch, I think I have that right. I might be

00:28:09 ◼   ► lying to you. Um, where either way, even if I'm wrong, the vision pro app, my understanding is you

00:28:13 ◼   ► absolutely can get that as just a regular, you know, iPhone user. We don't know because it's not in

00:28:18 ◼   ► developer beta one of iOS, but, um, it is that the idea is if you have a vision pro on your account,

00:28:25 ◼   ► the app shows up. If you don't have a vision pro on your account, you can still go to the app store

00:28:30 ◼   ► and download it. And it's, you know, there's a lot of marketing stuff in that app too. So there's a lot

00:28:34 ◼   ► of, isn't this cool? You can dream on your future vision pro from the vision pro app if you want to.

00:28:41 ◼   ► Um, and then, you know, I, I, when, so I wrote a piece, um, a few weeks ago about the first

00:28:46 ◼   ► anniversary of vision pro. And I wanted to make the point that even though we complain about,

00:28:52 ◼   ► especially like how slow they've been to roll out immersive video stuff, and it's really been a

00:28:56 ◼   ► surprise. What's also been a surprise and a good surprise is Apple has not stopped updating and

00:29:03 ◼   ► improving the vision pro over this first year. You know, so many of those features,

00:29:08 ◼   ► spatial personas is a great example that Mac virtual display getting improved. These are major

00:29:14 ◼   ► things that make the vision pro much, much better at what it does. And they, they have been rolling

00:29:20 ◼   ► those out over the course of the last year. Well, here's one that was a complaint that we had from day

00:29:26 ◼   ► one about vision pro, which is that guest mode was bad, right? Yep. And they've already improved guest

00:29:32 ◼   ► mode a little bit because it'll remember your most recent guest settings, which is nice. But this new,

00:29:38 ◼   ► uh, 2.4 is going to have an improved guest mode where you can, uh, on your iPhone, you can approve

00:29:48 ◼   ► what your guest is doing, add apps for your guests to use. And it's got a workflow where you can tap

00:29:55 ◼   ► through and get your airplay automatically. So you can see what they're seeing in the vision pro.

00:30:01 ◼   ► So this is very clearly from feedback for people being frustrated who want to show this to other

00:30:06 ◼   ► people and they can't. Absolutely. And to back up just a half step, the way it works today is on 2.3

00:30:13 ◼   ► or whatever the current version shipping version is. What I would have to do is I would have to put

00:30:16 ◼   ► the vision pro on. Then I would have to go into control center and say, I would like to do guest

00:30:20 ◼   ► mode. And then it'll ask me, okay, well, what, what apps do you want to permit? Or do you want to

00:30:24 ◼   ► permit all of them? Do you want to turn on airplay, et cetera, et cetera. Then I say, okay, go. And then

00:30:28 ◼   ► I take the vision pro off. And then the next person has five minutes to put it on and start the, the,

00:30:34 ◼   ► start the, um, like, uh, eye tracking calibration process, which I get, I mean, there's nothing

00:30:38 ◼   ► inherently wrong with that, but, but what Jason just said, and it's important to see the difference

00:30:42 ◼   ► is that in this new world, you know, let's say Aaron wanted to try the vision pro on or do something

00:30:47 ◼   ► in the vision pro. She just puts it on her head. And then, and then the, my phone will say,

00:30:52 ◼   ► Oh, hold on somebody. That's not you. Just put the vision pro on. It's not even in the app. It's

00:30:56 ◼   ► actually like one of these things like continuity camera or something like that, where it, where it

00:30:59 ◼   ► like slides up and says, Hey, vision pro is in guest mode. What do you want to do? And then you go

00:31:05 ◼   ► through and give it, uh, you know, your authority, which is so much better than having to put the

00:31:10 ◼   ► thing on, put the helmet on yourself and then hand the helmet to a friend, right? Like much better,

00:31:14 ◼   ► so much better. Now we haven't tried this because again, correct. Although I installed betas on my

00:31:20 ◼   ► phone days before going on vacation, uh, it's none of it is there. I actually don't know if the guest

00:31:27 ◼   ► mode is there. I haven't tried that one yet, but the, uh, the other stuff isn't there yet, but,

00:31:30 ◼   ► but it will get there eventually. Um, and, and then also having it be any, I mean, you can get

00:31:37 ◼   ► a view into what they're watching, but like to have it be a kind of grease the skids for getting,

00:31:43 ◼   ► uh, air plate up and running so that you can just see what they're seeing on your iPhone is great as

00:31:48 ◼   ► well. So, uh, I think, or iPad, I think most of this stuff is iPhone or iPad. Yeah. I mean, I've,

00:31:54 ◼   ► I've done a guest mode like, you know, months ago I did guest mode where I had the vision pro,

00:32:00 ◼   ► um, mirroring to a TV in the living room and that, that, that worked. And it's nice to have

00:32:05 ◼   ► like a more group experience. This was like in February of last year when everyone was trying

00:32:08 ◼   ► it for the first time and everyone else wants to see what the person in the vision pro is doing,

00:32:11 ◼   ► et cetera, et cetera. So, um, and that is great. The one, the one crutch or crux or issue with this,

00:32:16 ◼   ► with the, which the chat room is talking about is that DRM stuff is, is hidden. And I have every

00:32:23 ◼   ► reason to believe it will remain because it's airplay. It strips anything that's protected content gets

00:32:28 ◼   ► pulled out of airplay. That's just in screenshots, which is, which is annoying to begin with, but I

00:32:33 ◼   ► get, but the real crummy thing is if you're trying to like talk a person through a demo, like, Hey,

00:32:39 ◼   ► I want you to go do the dinosaur experience. And then I want you to go watch a little something in

00:32:43 ◼   ► Disney plus. And then I want you to go do something else. The problem is not only is that blacked out

00:32:48 ◼   ► when you're looking at the airplay version, it's actually blacked out. If I recall correctly in

00:32:53 ◼   ► the vision pro itself, which is inferior. I'm pretty sure that's true. That's not great. And so,

00:32:59 ◼   ► and so this would be one thing if I just can't follow along watching somebody watch Avengers in

00:33:03 ◼   ► 3d fine. No, no worries, but it's, everything is black. And when it, with an immersive experience,

00:33:08 ◼   ► I think literally you're just staring into empty into the void because it's just all black.

00:33:12 ◼   ► Yeah. I, I sent you a screenshot cause I was actually using call sheet in vision pro last

00:33:16 ◼   ► week. And the moment that I took the screenshot, the movie I was watching with call sheet to the

00:33:21 ◼   ► side, turn black for a second, it took the screenshot and then it turned back into the

00:33:25 ◼   ► movie. And I thought, Oh no. And I sent you the screenshot. And I was like, look at me watching

00:33:29 ◼   ► a black rectangle with call sheet there. Which I mean, again, I get that 100%, particularly

00:33:36 ◼   ► from the airplay perspective, but I wish there could be some middle of the road where what's

00:33:41 ◼   ► reflected in airplay is black, you know, that that's fair, but whatever seen within the

00:33:45 ◼   ► goggles, within the vision pro them itself, that was still, you know, this regular full

00:33:49 ◼   ► fidelity, you know, exactly what you would always see.

00:33:52 ◼   ► Yeah. Well, uh, good to see more vision pro updates on the way, right. That by, by the time

00:33:57 ◼   ► we get to WWDC vision pro will already be up there with the iPhone, the iPad and the Mac in

00:34:04 ◼   ► terms of supporting Apple intelligence. And that's, that's good. Cause that was not a given.

00:34:09 ◼   ► Um, so definitely not. It's a nice, nice to see them. They are continuing to move ahead

00:34:13 ◼   ► and address some of the big issues. You know, I have a very quick question for you related

00:34:17 ◼   ► to this. Do you happen to know off the top of your head, how much Ram is in the vision

00:34:20 ◼   ► pro? Does it have eight gigs or whatever the magical minimum is for Apple intelligence?

00:34:23 ◼   ► I don't know. It obviously has enough to do Apple intelligence cause it does it, but I don't

00:34:29 ◼   ► know if they've disclosed that off the top of my head. I don't know. Uh, but it's a, it's

00:34:33 ◼   ► looks like, you know, according to Wikipedia are doing 10 seconds of Googling. It's 16

00:34:39 ◼   ► gigs. So that is definitely more than enough.

00:34:41 ◼   ► Powerful, powerful system. Powerful system.

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00:36:06 ◼   ► All right, Jason, would you like to lawyer up for a moment?

00:36:11 ◼   ► Let's lawyer up clunk clunk. Thank you. I appreciate that. Apple is turning off advanced data protection in

00:36:19 ◼   ► the UK. I would just say as foretold in a previous episode of upgrade. Um, we're not saying it's good,

00:36:26 ◼   ► but we're saying we saw it coming. This is of course due to changes in UK laws that demand access

00:36:33 ◼   ► to end-to-end encrypted data. And so they said, Apple, you got to give us a way to access it. And,

00:36:39 ◼   ► and what Apple did was not do what the UK government seemed to be asking, which is create a system with a

00:36:45 ◼   ► back door. Instead, they said, we're going to turn off ADP advanced data protection. We're going to

00:36:51 ◼   ► turn it off in the UK. And, and when they made that announcement, before they made that announcement,

00:36:56 ◼   ► they had actually changed the software configuration on Apple devices. So you couldn't turn it on if you

00:37:01 ◼   ► were in the UK. And, uh, so that's the case. Now you can't turn it on. If you're in the UK,

00:37:05 ◼   ► if you do have it on, they, Apple says they will have to disable it in the near future. Apple actually

00:37:11 ◼   ► can't remote disable it because that would completely invalidate the entire concept of

00:37:15 ◼   ► advanced data protection. But I've seen lots of speculation about this. It seems like the most

00:37:20 ◼   ► logical thing will be that at some point access to cloud services will probably get cut off if you

00:37:26 ◼   ► keep it on right. In order for Apple to remain within the letter of the law, they'll be like your

00:37:32 ◼   ► iCloud, um, will not update anymore. They haven't said any of this, but that's, I think, reasonable

00:37:38 ◼   ► speculation that that will be the stick. I thought they did. I thought they did say that. I don't

00:37:42 ◼   ► know if I'll be able to cite my source quickly while we're recording, but I could swear that they did say

00:37:46 ◼   ► at some point it will, you will lose iCloud access if you don't turn it off. I mean, what I've seen is

00:37:52 ◼   ► that you will have to disable it and we will provide future guidance, but it's logical that that's what

00:37:56 ◼   ► will happen is that the stuff that is covered by ADP will stop working until you turn it off if

00:38:02 ◼   ► you're in the UK. Right. Again, check my math on that. I can't cite a source off the top of my head,

00:38:08 ◼   ► but I'm pretty sure it's common sense is the source regardless of whether Apple said it or not. I think

00:38:12 ◼   ► it's clear. Now I want to, I want to be clear about what ADP does because Apple has a bunch of different

00:38:16 ◼   ► products that do sort of similar things here. There's ADP, um, there's lockdown mode, which is

00:38:21 ◼   ► different. ADP, the whole point of it is there was a, a selection of Apple services that Apple held

00:38:27 ◼   ► a key to, which meant that Apple could, uh, well, first off, Apple could respond to your help from

00:38:33 ◼   ► you where you're like, Oh no, I lost my password and now I'm locked out of all my stuff. And Apple's

00:38:38 ◼   ► like, ah, that's okay. We have a key for that. So we can go through a password reset system,

00:38:43 ◼   ► ID reset, you know, flow, and we can get you back into your account. Um, but also it allows Apple to

00:38:50 ◼   ► respond to legal requests from law enforcement to unlock the contents that you've got on their servers

00:38:57 ◼   ► and let law enforcement look at them. Um, so what ADP did was take a bunch of those services and create a

00:39:09 ◼   ► new version where Apple doesn't hold the key, which means that if you lose your access, if you lose your

00:39:17 ◼   ► login or one of the other, you know, a device that's got access to a key that will unlock it, which does

00:39:23 ◼   ► include, it's not just your devices and it's not just like your Apple ID. It can be a device password.

00:39:28 ◼   ► And actually, if you have a, uh, if you have a backup, uh, contact, I forget, is it the legacy

00:39:33 ◼   ► contact? I forget that you can, you can basically give a friend and say, you can unlock in an emergency.

00:39:39 ◼   ► You can unlock my Apple ID. Um, they can do that, but Apple doesn't have a key and those services are

00:39:45 ◼   ► free form wallet passes, voice memos, Siri shortcuts, Safari bookmarks, reminders that aren't

00:39:52 ◼   ► on a Cal dev server reminders to iCloud. Basically notes, photos, iCloud drive, and most importantly,

00:39:59 ◼   ► iCloud backup because iCloud backup includes device backup and messages backup. So this is the famous

00:40:08 ◼   ► San Bernardino example, for example, uh, for instance, and there are others like this where you're like,

00:40:14 ◼   ► Oh, it's all encrypted. All their messages are encrypted. Their devices are encrypted. But if you've got

00:40:20 ◼   ► Apple's key to iCloud backup, you've got their device backups and their messages backup and Apple can

00:40:27 ◼   ► decrypt the backups, even if the stuff that's on the, on the cloud server is end-to-end encrypted.

00:40:33 ◼   ► So it's this specific set that, um, that is covered by ADP and Apple introduced this while it was feeling

00:40:41 ◼   ► pressure, right? From governments about like snooping. I feel like they built this feature to basically say,

00:40:47 ◼   ► look, now we, now we don't even have the key. You just go away and don't come to us. And what the UK

00:40:52 ◼   ► government has done and said, actually legally now you can't not have the key and therefore they're

00:40:58 ◼   ► going to turn ADP off. Yeah. I mean, it makes sense. And it's a bummer that this is happening. Like I,

00:41:04 ◼   ► I find it very frustrating that the UK has decided that not only do they get the data of their citizens,

00:41:12 ◼   ► which in and of itself is kind of gross, but given Mike's not here to defend himself, uh, given that

00:41:18 ◼   ► the UK loves themselves a security camera and loves to watch on their citizens. Um, I'm not entirely

00:41:24 ◼   ► surprised that they wanted this, but the thing that really grinds my gears about it is that the way the

00:41:28 ◼   ► law is written. Well, two things. First of all, the way the law is written is that they can get

00:41:32 ◼   ► access to any user worldwide, which no, right. I don't love that. I don't love that at all.

00:41:38 ◼   ► And, um, and secondly, Apple isn't allowed to say anything about it, which is also really gross.

00:41:45 ◼   ► Like I kind of understand where they're coming from on that one, but I find that very, very gross.

00:41:49 ◼   ► And so yeah, country that loves to surveil their citizens wants to be able to surveil their citizens

00:41:56 ◼   ► news at 11, like in and of itself, this is not that surprising, but the fact that they try to reach

00:42:00 ◼   ► into other countries citizens, I find really an, a dramatic and gross overstepping of what is really

00:42:07 ◼   ► agreeable and acceptable. And that's one part of this story that we'll have to play out, right?

00:42:12 ◼   ► Because what Apple didn't do is turn off ADP for everyone in the world. And so there's a, there's

00:42:17 ◼   ► a scenario here where the UK government basically comes to Apple and says, you need to, I mean,

00:42:23 ◼   ► first of all, they could come to Apple and say, this isn't what we asked for. Um, which would,

00:42:27 ◼   ► even though it effectively is, it isn't exactly what they asked for, but they could also say,

00:42:31 ◼   ► no, I want to get that guy in Singapore. You know, I want to get that person in the, in Saudi Arabia.

00:42:40 ◼   ► I want their data and they're not in my country and they haven't been in my country, but it doesn't

00:42:46 ◼   ► matter. We have reasons to get their data, give us their data. And if they have ADP on and they go to

00:42:54 ◼   ► Apple, what happens then? Because Apple would be in violation of this law. And I think that, you know,

00:43:00 ◼   ► I don't know enough about, um, international treaties and, you know, but it is, and the

00:43:08 ◼   ► question is, would they push it that far? Or is this enough? Cause they're basically, Apple is

00:43:12 ◼   ► basically just reverting off of a feature. This is not new. I, there are a lot of, um, I would say

00:43:19 ◼   ► mostly from people who make a living making people upset and frightened. That's just my take on it. I think

00:43:24 ◼   ► there are a lot of people out there who really make a living frightening people. That's what they

00:43:28 ◼   ► do. Uh, who, who say, Oh, Apple has completely caved into the UK and this is terrible. Um, but the truth

00:43:35 ◼   ► is, um, this is actually Apple reverting to the previous system where this stuff is, you know, the key

00:43:45 ◼   ► is held and that's not great, but it's not Apple building a whole new system to hand all your data to

00:43:51 ◼   ► the UK. It's literally the, uh, if the metaphor is like the back, this is not the back door, it's the

00:43:56 ◼   ► front door, which is what I think Tim Sweeney said. It's like the, the house never had a door. And a

00:44:01 ◼   ► couple of years ago when people were sniffing around the front door, Apple built a door. And then one of

00:44:07 ◼   ► those people, this metaphor is getting out of hand said, no, actually, if this house is in the UK, you

00:44:12 ◼   ► need to leave that door open. But the door was, there was never a door before that. That's the point

00:44:17 ◼   ► here. So it's not great. I want to read Apple's part of Apple's statement that they released,

00:44:21 ◼   ► because I think this is an interesting choice that they made. They said, we are gravely disappointed

00:44:25 ◼   ► that the protections provided by ADP will not be available to our customers in the UK given the

00:44:30 ◼   ► continuing rise of data breaches and other threats to customer privacy. As we have said many times

00:44:34 ◼   ► before, we have never built a back door or master key to any of our products or services. And we never

00:44:40 ◼   ► will. Now they don't mention the UK law in particular because legally they're not allowed to.

00:44:46 ◼   ► That's not great. I don't love that. But I do. That last sentence is really interesting,

00:44:52 ◼   ► right? Because that's Apple putting a stake in the ground saying, no master keys. We're not going to

00:44:57 ◼   ► make a master key for you. And, you know, first off, great. And secondly, if they stop saying that,

00:45:04 ◼   ► pay attention, right? Like if they stop saying, oh no, no master keys, that means something very bad has

00:45:11 ◼   ► happened. Yep. It's a heck of a canary for sure. And what's also interesting about this is

00:45:16 ◼   ► the implication there, or at least the way I read it is that, okay, your move. And if the UK compels

00:45:24 ◼   ► them to build a back door or master key or what have you, this is Apple pretty much saying, we're going

00:45:30 ◼   ► to leave the UK, or at least that's how I read it, which I can, I find it hard to imagine that they

00:45:35 ◼   ► would actually get to that point. But this is one of the only things that I think Apple might

00:45:41 ◼   ► actually grow a backbone and put their heels in the sand and say, nope, I'm sorry. We're not going to do

00:45:46 ◼   ► it. I think this is an interesting game that the UK government is playing because obviously, and this

00:45:52 ◼   ► is the weird thing about talking about Apple these days, right? One of the weird things about it, I know

00:45:56 ◼   ► Mike and I have talked about it a lot. I know you've talked about it on ATP. Like Apple's the,

00:46:01 ◼   ► Apple's bigger than lots of countries at this point. And, and so the, the balance of power is

00:46:09 ◼   ► interesting. Like the UK government obviously has a culture, as you mentioned, it's a culture of

00:46:16 ◼   ► surveillance and we're protecting you by watching everywhere and all of that in some ways that some

00:46:21 ◼   ► of the laws in the US, as long as they're being enforced anyway, are, are, are opposed to.

00:46:26 ◼   ► Um, but this is one of those cases where I do wonder about the politics of it because it is

00:46:33 ◼   ► politics, right? The, if the UK government, if somebody in the UK law enforcement says, you know,

00:46:40 ◼   ► we're going to push Apple on this and we're going to demand something and we're going to hold them in

00:46:43 ◼   ► violation of this and all of that. At some point, if you're a politician who is in charge of those

00:46:50 ◼   ► people, if you're Keir Starmer or one of the people in his cabinet in the UK government,

00:46:54 ◼   ► and you consider the risk that what Apple's going to do is say, put out a press release that doesn't

00:47:02 ◼   ► explain why, but says Apple to cease operation in the United Kingdom, Apple to lay off all of the

00:47:08 ◼   ► thousands of people. This is similar to the inverse of a story we're going to talk about a little bit

00:47:11 ◼   ► later. Apple to remove billions of pounds of investment from the UK, relocate jobs out of the

00:47:17 ◼   ► UK, uh, and, and say, we can't tell you why, but we deeply regret and we'll miss the UK, but we can't be

00:47:24 ◼   ► there anymore. Like that's what Apple has over the UK government. And I got to say, like, we can't pretend that

00:47:32 ◼   ► that wouldn't matter, right? Like if you're Keir Starmer, do you want that? Because there's somebody

00:47:39 ◼   ► down in your law enforcement or intelligence group somewhere who has gravely overreached with their

00:47:46 ◼   ► demands of Apple. And personally, I don't think he can make that choice. I don't think a politician

00:47:54 ◼   ► is going to tell the people in this country that one of the major tech companies in the world is going to

00:48:01 ◼   ► pull all of its sales and all of its jobs out of your country because somebody says, well, it'd be

00:48:08 ◼   ► easier for us if we could tell them to unlock this guy's phone in Saudi Arabia, right? I don't, I don't

00:48:15 ◼   ► actually believe that that's a winning and that's bizarre, right? First, right. It's bizarre that Apple

00:48:19 ◼   ► could like overpower people inside the UK government, but I think that's where we are. Honestly, I do think

00:48:25 ◼   ► that that would be a really bad moment for the UK government if they pushed them that far.

00:48:31 ◼   ► I couldn't agree more. And, you know, we're not really in a position to throw stones given that we barely

00:48:36 ◼   ► have a government at this particular point in time, but

00:48:38 ◼   ► I like to talk about other governments, you know, Casey right now, I like to talk about them.

00:48:42 ◼   ► Anyone but us, good grief. But, um, but no, I think this feels to me like the UK vastly overplaying their

00:48:51 ◼   ► hand because I really do believe that for all of Apple's many faults these days, particularly in the

00:48:57 ◼   ► last several months, I really think, like I said a minute ago, that they will stick to their guns on

00:49:03 ◼   ► this. I really do believe it. And I think it would be ruinous for both, um, ruinous, maybe a

00:49:09 ◼   ► little bit dramatic for an entire government, but go with what I'm the vibe of what I'm trying to say

00:49:13 ◼   ► here, that it would be ruinous for the UK to actually compel them to do this. And I think that

00:49:18 ◼   ► Apple would at the very least, you know, start pulling out features or, or perhaps entire products

00:49:23 ◼   ► or stop selling products in the UK. And I think Apple is of the belief that if they really do play this

00:49:29 ◼   ► game of chicken and if the, if the UK really doesn't flinch first. And so Apple has to say,

00:49:34 ◼   ► okay, we're pulling out, you know, that beautiful thing at Battersea, which I haven't seen, but I've

00:49:38 ◼   ► understood to be just phenomenally pretty that office of Battersea and all of those jobs, as you mentioned,

00:49:43 ◼   ► I really do think Apple would start to say, okay, we're going to wind all this down unless you guys,

00:49:49 ◼   ► you know, find you folks find a solution that's, that's more agreeable. And I don't see the UK

00:49:55 ◼   ► winning that game of chicken. I really don't. And as a potentially former world leader, as a resident

00:50:01 ◼   ► of a potentially former world leader at this point, uh, I think that the UK is playing this hand as

00:50:06 ◼   ► though they still own half the planet and they don't. And so I don't think this is going to end

00:50:11 ◼   ► well for the UK. If they, if they decide to stick their heels in a very reasonable approach to this

00:50:16 ◼   ► is the UK says, okay, well, you've done the 80 ADP thing. We'll, we'll call it even.

00:50:21 ◼   ► That's the real politic here, right? Is declare victory. This is, this is the truth. As I, as I

00:50:26 ◼   ► get older, I realized that a lot of this is in politics is about the appearance of success

00:50:32 ◼   ► more than it is success. So with a hundred percent, with this, if they want to, the UK government can

00:50:39 ◼   ► declare victory. They made one of the tech giants change their policy because of them and move on

00:50:48 ◼   ► without pushing it because they know that if they push it much further, it could actually go

00:50:53 ◼   ► sour on them. Now, not to say they won't try it. They could try it, but, but I feel like there's a lot

00:50:58 ◼   ► of this, and this is actually, I think true for a lot of stuff happening in the U S right now that we'll

00:51:02 ◼   ► get to, uh, and, and stuff we will not get to, but there's a lot of that aspect, which is, you know,

00:51:07 ◼   ► sometimes it's not about doing the thing. It's about saying, you're going to do the thing,

00:51:12 ◼   ► declaring victory and then not talking about it ever again and moving on because you get to just

00:51:17 ◼   ► the, the, and I know that this is kind of cynical, but there is some truth to the fact that if you're

00:51:21 ◼   ► a politician and you can say, yep, check that box moving on, nobody goes back and says, wait,

00:51:27 ◼   ► that I, in fact, I'll get to this a little bit later too. There's a related story about this.

00:51:32 ◼   ► Nobody goes back and says, wait, you check that box, but then nothing happened. It's like,

00:51:35 ◼   ► I don't know. I checked the box. What do you mean? Let's move on. Uh, so there's some of that.

00:51:40 ◼   ► I have one more lawyer up item I want to get to really quickly and it's silly, but it's fun,

00:51:45 ◼   ► which is, um, remember Casey, you remember when, uh, they did that thing where, uh, the porn app went

00:51:53 ◼   ► on alt store pal, the alternative app store in the, the EU. And they said, it's the first porn app

00:51:58 ◼   ► approved by Apple. And Apple got very angry, very angry because Apple was so angry. I mean,

00:52:04 ◼   ► they were going to scold that porn app regardless, but like, uh, alt store just amped it up a little

00:52:09 ◼   ► bit by saying Apple approved, Apple approved. Apple's like, we do not approve of this app.

00:52:13 ◼   ► And he's like, I didn't say you approved of it. I said, you approved it. Well, good news,

00:52:19 ◼   ► everybody, because Riley tested of alt store has posted that Apple has changed their form email

00:52:27 ◼   ► for approval slash, uh, what is it? Uh, approval slash readiness for apps that have been notarized

00:52:35 ◼   ► for use in the EU. It used to say the following app has been approved for your distribution.

00:52:40 ◼   ► And it now says the following app is ready for distribution.

00:52:44 ◼   ► It's so petty. It's so petty. Honestly, it's petty on every side. And it makes me so happy because

00:52:53 ◼   ► ultimately it's such a silly thing. And it's one of those, like, you know, Michael Jackson eating

00:52:56 ◼   ► popcorn gifts, you know what I'm saying? It's just like, there's no real stakes here. Everyone will be

00:53:01 ◼   ► fine, but it's just so funny. And it's, you know, as Merlin says, a lot of times, you know,

00:53:05 ◼   ► words have meaning. And even though I think Riley took a little bit of creative license, like strictly

00:53:11 ◼   ► speaking, what, what was said was true that, you know, Apple approved it. Yes. But nevertheless,

00:53:16 ◼   ► it is funny to me how quickly a company as big as Apple can move when they have a little bit of egg on

00:53:22 ◼   ► their faces. I like, I like to think that somebody, it went down a large chain of managers to whoever is in

00:53:29 ◼   ► charge of the email templates for developers. Like, who's that person? And they're like,

00:53:35 ◼   ► which intern is that? Right. Yeah. Who's got to do the email templates. Anyway, that's okay. Now things

00:53:40 ◼   ► are not, they're no longer approved. Future porn apps in, in alternative app stores will merely be

00:53:47 ◼   ► ready. So didn't that solve a problem? Um, okay. I, I've, I've promoted this twice. So I'm going to

00:53:54 ◼   ► just jump to it now, which is, uh, uh, not we're leaving lawyer up sort of, but we're still in kind

00:54:00 ◼   ► of a political sphere, which is, um, on Monday as right before we record this, Apple put out a newsroom

00:54:06 ◼   ► post. Uh, so basically a press release, uh, saying that it's investing $500 billion in the USA,

00:54:13 ◼   ► USA, USA, USA. Oh God. I can't even say that. I know, I know, I know. Apple today announced its

00:54:20 ◼   ► largest ever spend commitment. That is a bad phrase and you should feel bad for writing it

00:54:25 ◼   ► with plans to spend and invest more than $500 billion in the U S over the next four years.

00:54:30 ◼   ► What an interesting increment of time. Yep. Um, Apple and partners will open a new advanced

00:54:36 ◼   ► manufacturing facility in Houston to build servers for private cloud compute and Apple will also double

00:54:41 ◼   ► its U S advanced manufacturing fund, create an academy in Michigan to train the next generation

00:54:46 ◼   ► of U S manufacturers and grow its research and development investments in the U S to support

00:54:50 ◼   ► cutting edge fields like Silicon engineering. It's really weird reading stuff like this in front

00:54:55 ◼   ► of you, Casey, cause you are the one who reads this stuff on ATP. It's strange. And, and it talks

00:55:02 ◼   ► about how it look, here's the thing about this. This isn't new. And a lot of people I predict,

00:55:07 ◼   ► cause it just came out, are going to point to this and they see, see, see what Apple's doing with, uh,

00:55:11 ◼   ► Trump administration. See Apple's been doing this for a while now, folks. Apple has been talking

00:55:15 ◼   ► about how many jobs it creates and listing a bunch of States where Apple has business prominently like,

00:55:20 ◼   ► Oh, we're in Texas and Oregon and, and, and, uh, and California and Utah and New York and North

00:55:26 ◼   ► Carolina and all these things. This is entirely precedented. Uh, it, it at least started in 2018,

00:55:33 ◼   ► which yes, was the first Trump administration and, and they announced the $5 billion advanced

00:55:40 ◼   ► manufacturing fund. It came right after they repatriated a bunch of money back from overseas

00:55:44 ◼   ► due to tax breaks that they got to bring it back into the U S if you remember back then they announced

00:55:49 ◼   ► what is now their Austin campus. But I will say this is, this is a political game. Apple has been

00:55:55 ◼   ► playing since then, including during the Biden administration, because in 2021, they did this

00:56:01 ◼   ► and put out a press release with a whole bunch of stuff, including $430 billion in U S investments

00:56:06 ◼   ► and another new campus in North Carolina. Now video editor of the show, Chip Sutterth has been sending me

00:56:13 ◼   ► these links for a while now that remember the thing about checking the box and then nobody checks what

00:56:19 ◼   ► happened to the box after it was checked that North Carolina hub three years later is basically

00:56:27 ◼   ► on hold. And Apple has not talked about whether they will actually build it or not. And they talked

00:56:32 ◼   ► about investment in, in Raleigh, Durham area schools and all this stuff. And it's like, it's unclear

00:56:37 ◼   ► what's going on there, but just to be just as a note, it's not something that I've really brought up

00:56:42 ◼   ► on the show, but I just want to point out, like sometimes these things get promised. And then there's a

00:56:46 ◼   ► question about if they ever get delivered, but they get promised. And, and so I I'm curious how

00:56:52 ◼   ► you feel about this Casey, but I look at this and I say, this is modern Apple doing what it feels is now

00:57:01 ◼   ► from, you know, in the last eight or 10 years, necessary relationship maintenance with the U S

00:57:08 ◼   ► government to point out how much it loves the United States, even though it does things in other

00:57:13 ◼   ► countries. It puts a lot of money into the United States. It's got campuses and it's, it's a little

00:57:18 ◼   ► bit like how they spread everything in the Apollo program over all 50 States. It's like, look how many

00:57:23 ◼   ► States we're in. We impact all of these jobs in all of these States. And it is in some ways, the inverse

00:57:29 ◼   ► of what I described about the UK stuff. It's, it's Apple saying, look how much money we put into the U S

00:57:35 ◼   ► and how many jobs we put into the U S and doesn't that mean that you American government, like, like us,

00:57:41 ◼   ► a great American company. And, uh, I, I could argue that investing in America for a big American company

00:57:48 ◼   ► is not, is not bad. In fact, it's good. Um, the fact that they have decided to make it a press release

00:57:55 ◼   ► item every few years does suggest that they feel they have to do this in order to please anybody

00:58:02 ◼   ► with power in Washington. Yeah. You know, for me, I'm just happy that at least this grift is happening

00:58:09 ◼   ► in the traditional way rather than in the slimy way of, you know, of the former Trump administration

00:58:16 ◼   ► and this Trump administration. Uh, no, I kid slightly, but I mean, I think I, you know, I'm going to have to

00:58:21 ◼   ► read all those letters now, Casey. So thank you for sending them. You're welcome. You're welcome.

00:58:25 ◼   ► Yeah. Uh, no, you can send them to me. It's fine. Um, but no, I, I think this, this feels particularly

00:58:32 ◼   ► gross to me right now because it's not my team. That's that's on the field, if you will. And so

00:58:38 ◼   ► I'm more sensitive because you know, when it, when, when it was my team, it was like, oh yeah, you know,

00:58:44 ◼   ► they're just go America. Right. Why, why not? But now it's like, oh, this feels gross for years.

00:58:48 ◼   ► That's awfully conspicuous as you said earlier. Um, but ultimately what I'm trying, what I've been

00:58:54 ◼   ► wrestling with a lot lately, and we've talked about this on ATP, you guys have talked about it quite a

00:58:57 ◼   ► bit here on upgrade. Um, I, I think my view, my mental model of Apple is very different than the

00:59:07 ◼   ► reality of Apple. And I think that's always been true, but it's been particularly stark to me anyway,

00:59:12 ◼   ► very recently as it seems like Apple in some or Apple as a whole. And sometimes Tim individually

00:59:18 ◼   ► is, you know, getting on one knee and kissing the ring and doing a lot of things that I find

00:59:24 ◼   ► in, in, in contrast to what I think Apple stands for. It would be like if Apple said to the UK,

00:59:31 ◼   ► oh yeah, you're right. Let's put that back door in. Totally. I would find that super gross in this.

00:59:36 ◼   ► it's not apples to apples, but it feels similarly gross. Now I'm glad that you, you went back and

00:59:42 ◼   ► looked at how this has been for the last almost 10 years, because that makes me feel a lot better

00:59:47 ◼   ► about it. And, and what I think this is, and I think you said this a moment ago is this is Apple

00:59:52 ◼   ► maintaining their relationship with the U S government. And I think it's a little grosser at sometimes than

00:59:58 ◼   ► others, both irrespective of what team you're on or whatever the case may be. But it seems that Apple

01:00:04 ◼   ► being as big as they are. And you mentioned earlier, you know, as big as bigger than a lot of countries,

01:00:09 ◼   ► they have to play politics and Tim has to play politics. And even though I find a lot of their

01:00:17 ◼   ► actions, particularly of late to be pretty gross, ultimately at the end of the day, it is Tim's job

01:00:25 ◼   ► and Apple's job to continue it to exist in whatever climate they happen to find themselves in and

01:00:30 ◼   ► hopefully push forward and push for what they think is right. And what they think is best for example,

01:00:36 ◼   ► you know, going carbon neutral and things in, in products where they can, but ultimately it's,

01:00:41 ◼   ► it's their, it's not their job to change governments. It's their job to do whatever they need

01:00:47 ◼   ► to, to work within the government of the day. And intellectually, I get that, but my heart that

01:00:53 ◼   ► kind of hurts at the moment. And I know that that's unfair, but that's just kind of how it feels.

01:00:57 ◼   ► Yeah. I think this is the truth. And the reason that I mentioned that it's happened multiple times

01:01:01 ◼   ► before is that I do think that this is more about, it's less about who is president and more about the

01:01:08 ◼   ► scrutiny that, that tech companies now undergo. Like there was an era where American tech companies

01:01:15 ◼   ► standing astride the world and being incredibly powerful was not considered particularly political.

01:01:20 ◼   ► in the U S it was just considered a win hooray U S companies are powerful. And then there was a turn

01:01:25 ◼   ► where it was like, Oh, now we're going to investigate these tech companies. And while Apple has missed a

01:01:30 ◼   ► lot of that drama, it hasn't missed all of it. And I, I keep saying this on this podcast, but it is just

01:01:37 ◼   ► like that dynamic with the, with Keir Starmer, you know, not wanting to tell the citizens of the UK

01:01:41 ◼   ► that Apple is going to pull all its jobs out and stop selling iPhones and all of that.

01:01:46 ◼   ► I think that the same is true here where it's, it's hard for an American president

01:01:49 ◼   ► to say the U S is the home of the number one, you know, tech company in the world,

01:01:55 ◼   ► but they're our enemy and we're going to destroy them. Right? Like it's not really what they would

01:02:00 ◼   ► really want to do is say, yay, USA number one. That's what they want to do. But there, there,

01:02:06 ◼   ► there are increasingly, if not quick, quick pro quotes. And sometimes there are the sense that

01:02:11 ◼   ► Apple needs to put out press releases talking about how many jobs it creates, talking about how much

01:02:16 ◼   ► money it's committing, even if it was already going to open that factory, even if it was already going

01:02:20 ◼   ► to build that campus or, and I think to a certain extent, they, they lean into doing a little more of

01:02:25 ◼   ► that because they know it looks good. And they, the, the cost of not doing it is going to be more

01:02:31 ◼   ► than the, you know, the savings that they would get by putting it in a different country. And so they,

01:02:37 ◼   ► they just, let's just do it. Let's build that, that thing at the, at the triangle in North Carolina.

01:02:42 ◼   ► There's a lot of great college graduates there. It's a great place to have a campus. Let's build

01:02:44 ◼   ► one there maybe eventually sometime. And so that's just sort of regardless of American politics right

01:02:52 ◼   ► now, I think that that is where tech companies are and where Apple and Tim Cook are trying to do this,

01:02:58 ◼   ► which is navigate a way to show their value to not just Donald Trump, but to America and all the

01:03:05 ◼   ► people in power to say, we are a good American company that does things in America for Americans,

01:03:10 ◼   ► even if they were doing most of it already. Uh, it changes the narrative a little bit about,

01:03:15 ◼   ► Oh, all Apple does is outsource everything to China and say, no, no, no, that's not true.

01:03:19 ◼   ► We do so much here in America. And I think a lot of that was true before, but in 2018, what Apple felt

01:03:25 ◼   ► they needed to do was say it out loud, right? To say, we get all our glass from Corning in Kentucky

01:03:30 ◼   ► or wherever. I think it's Kentucky. Um, like they need to, they feel they need to say that cause they

01:03:35 ◼   ► need to say, okay, we're going to show our work about how we're a good American company so that we don't

01:03:39 ◼   ► get regulated and we don't get treated badly. And part of that is cause I know, um, people out there who

01:03:45 ◼   ► have seen this will know that the president of the United States has already posted a thing in all caps on his

01:03:51 ◼   ► social media site, taking full credit while misspelling a word. Um, part of the quid pro quo,

01:03:57 ◼   ► part of the reason you do this is you are allowing whoever is in power to take credit for what you're

01:04:02 ◼   ► doing. And that's part of what this is. And that was true in 2018. It's true in 2021 and it's true

01:04:08 ◼   ► today. You don't have to like it, but I think that, I think that that's, that's what's going on here.

01:04:13 ◼   ► And it's sort of the, the bigger picture of, of we live in an era where Apple is so huge

01:04:18 ◼   ► that it, it, it, and it's under enough scrutiny because its category is under such scrutiny that

01:04:23 ◼   ► it needs to prove to provide enough cover to people in power that they can say, Oh, see, like,

01:04:32 ◼   ► like Donald Trump did today. See Apple is investing in the USA. Isn't that great? And that's like,

01:04:39 ◼   ► that is the game they're playing. Yep. I couldn't agree more. And you know,

01:04:43 ◼   ► a complimentary read of this is, and you, you implied this or kind of sort of said it a second

01:04:47 ◼   ► ago, and you definitely were talking about this a little while ago. A very complimentary read of this

01:04:52 ◼   ► is, well, you know what? This was already in the works anyway. And we didn't know that. And perhaps

01:04:57 ◼   ► they wouldn't have made such a stink about it, but it was already in the works anyway. Who cares?

01:05:01 ◼   ► Let's just get ourselves a win. Let's cozy up with the people in power and say, look at us and look at

01:05:06 ◼   ► all the great things we do for our country. And it, the complimentary read is that the, okay, yeah,

01:05:10 ◼   ► I guess they're making a big, you know, a big festoosh about it for arguably no true real reason,

01:05:16 ◼   ► but all this stuff was art maybe already in the works anyway. And either way, whether or not that's

01:05:22 ◼   ► true or not. Another thing I think that's worth noting is that Apple's under a lot of regulatory

01:05:28 ◼   ► scrutiny in a lot of countries around the world, but including America and granted the political

01:05:34 ◼   ► atmosphere now is a lot different than when this regulatory scrutiny really started to, you know,

01:05:38 ◼   ► take a monocle to them, if you will. But, um, but no, I think it to curry favor with the American

01:05:44 ◼   ► government broadly is a very good idea for Apple. And so if you take my emotions away from it for a

01:05:50 ◼   ► second, and if you take away the fact that I don't, I don't like this from an emotional standpoint,

01:05:54 ◼   ► if you look at the brass tacks from a business standpoint, it is very much an Apple's best interest

01:06:01 ◼   ► and Tim's best interest for the government to like Apple. And so by that metric, Tim and Apple

01:06:07 ◼   ► are doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing, even though I personally find it to be a

01:06:11 ◼   ► little bit gross. I will say, um, I believe this press release would exist even if Kamala Harris was

01:06:17 ◼   ► president because it existed when Joe Biden was president. And I think the reason is the atmosphere

01:06:22 ◼   ► wouldn't be that different in terms of tech under scrutiny. And if, uh, Harris was president and it

01:06:29 ◼   ► was a Republican Congress, maybe, I mean, first off, as we saw with Keir Starmer, who is a member of the

01:06:34 ◼   ► labor party in the UK and, and, and yet they are still pressing this, like the Democrats would also still

01:06:39 ◼   ► be saying, Oh, you know, big tech danger, et cetera, et cetera. They don't want to get, uh, beaten on that

01:06:45 ◼   ► on, on like national security by the Republicans. And then the Republicans in Congress would have their

01:06:49 ◼   ► committees where they're looking at big tech and what is Apple doing and all of that. Like it would be the

01:06:54 ◼   ► case regardless. It's the, it is not necessarily about the specific players. It's about where we

01:07:01 ◼   ► are with big tech and politics and how these big tech companies are reacting to it. But I'm going to

01:07:07 ◼   ► say this again and then we can move on, which is, I think that ultimately there is not enough credit

01:07:14 ◼   ► given to the idea that some of these dominant countries around the world or companies around the world

01:07:19 ◼   ► are American and that as an, and that the U S government is going to give them leeway because

01:07:26 ◼   ► you don't really want Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook to be enemies. You want them to be

01:07:33 ◼   ► examples of American reach in the world. Now that may have consequences for those companies elsewhere in

01:07:40 ◼   ► the world. And we've seen that, but I do think that, that it, it just feels unlikely to me that any American

01:07:45 ◼   ► government is going to attempt to destroy one of the great American companies, just like I think

01:07:52 ◼   ► Keir Starmer is going to have a hard time trying to call Apple's bluff about Apple potentially leaving

01:07:58 ◼   ► the UK. I think, and that says something about the power of tech companies, I guess, but you never

01:08:03 ◼   ► know. You never know what politicians might do. You never know. All right. We are going to take

01:08:08 ◼   ► a break right now for where a familiar voice is going to send you a message.

01:08:14 ◼   ► This episode of upgrade is brought to you by Google Gemini. I tried Gemini a couple of days ago,

01:08:22 ◼   ► the Gemini live where you can just talk to it. And it really is wild to have a full on conversation

01:08:28 ◼   ► with this thing. I was messing around and asked it to give me a few ideas for hosting during the

01:08:32 ◼   ► holidays. And when it starts giving you results, you can just stop it and say, okay,

01:08:36 ◼   ► but what about something low key for a smaller group? And then it will adjust to that. So you

01:08:40 ◼   ► could just keep going until you get an idea that you want. I think that's what I would use it for the

01:08:45 ◼   ► most brainstorming things. It's so good. If you don't know where to start or you hit a wall, you just go

01:08:50 ◼   ► to Gemini. It helps you get the ball rolling, but you can use it for all kinds of stuff. If you want to

01:08:55 ◼   ► learn something new, you can have it give you advice, ask it to explain Bitcoin in simple terms, or you

01:09:00 ◼   ► can have it quiz you on microbiology. Imagine being a student and you've got this personal

01:09:05 ◼   ► tutor on hand. It's hard to explain. You really have to play around a bit. See how it listens to

01:09:10 ◼   ► you, responds, adapts to your style of conversation. Just try it out. It's free. Our thanks to Google

01:09:16 ◼   ► Gemini for their support of this show and all of Relay.

01:09:19 ◼   ► Okay. Let's talk about phones now. Casey, how about that? Yes, please. Let's talk about computers and

01:09:26 ◼   ► computer phones. Uh, the, I, the iPhone 16e was announced last week. Um, and, uh, and I, I called

01:09:36 ◼   ► it that it wasn't the SE. I feel good about that. I feel in our, in our paternity draft. I, I got a

01:09:41 ◼   ► couple of points. That was, that makes me feel nice. It's a weird phone, right? I mean, it's got,

01:09:45 ◼   ► it's like both familiar and unfamiliar. I'm fascinated by the, the choices Apple made

01:09:50 ◼   ► about what they said. Likewise. Was worth putting in your SE successor, your low-end phone. What

01:09:57 ◼   ► features it's worth putting in and what features it's not. So like the hit list is it's got an

01:10:02 ◼   ► action button. It's got an OLED screen with face ID and the notch. So it's basically like the iPhone

01:10:06 ◼   ► 10 screen, which was seven years ago. It's got a ceramic shield on the glass, but they make a point

01:10:12 ◼   ► of saying it's not the new ceramic shield that's on the latest models. It's the previous generation

01:10:16 ◼   ► ceramic shield. So it's not as shieldy as it was. It's got USB-C instead of lightning. It's got Apple

01:10:22 ◼   ► intelligence and an A18 processor. That's all great. What it doesn't have is it doesn't have the new

01:10:26 ◼   ► photographic styles. It doesn't have MagSafe. It doesn't have colors. It comes in black and white.

01:10:30 ◼   ► Uh, it doesn't have millimeter wave, doesn't have ultra wide band. Um, curious, right? Like it's,

01:10:35 ◼   ► it's just fascinating to see. I'm sure there is a very specific manufacturing reason why all of these

01:10:42 ◼   ► choices were made, but I am fascinated about what gets left out and what gets put in a phone like

01:10:48 ◼   ► this. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. We spoke about this on ATP last week because in a very rare, uh,

01:10:53 ◼   ► lucky break for us, it was announced on a Wednesday before we recorded. And at the time I didn't have a

01:10:58 ◼   ► lot of, uh, I didn't have a lot that I'd read about it. I didn't have a lot of time to think about it.

01:11:02 ◼   ► And now that I've had a little bit of time to process, I, and, and hear some input from others,

01:11:08 ◼   ► the things that make the most sense to me are, I think a combination of two things. Um, a lot of

01:11:14 ◼   ► people have spoken about and written to ATP and potentially to upgrade as well to say, look,

01:11:20 ◼   ► this isn't the, yeah, on the surface, this is a consumer phone, but this isn't really a consumer

01:11:25 ◼   ► phone. What this is, is a bulk purchase phone. So as an example, uh, here in Richmond, Virginia,

01:11:32 ◼   ► a capital one is one of the largest employers. They're a large credit card company. Um, in fact,

01:11:37 ◼   ► they're merging with discover card as we speak, as far as I know, um, really big, really, really big

01:11:43 ◼   ► bank effectively. And most of their employer employees, excuse me, get issued phones. And I

01:11:49 ◼   ► think most of them get issued iPhones. And so I bring this up to say, I could imagine a place like

01:11:54 ◼   ► capital one buying hundreds, thousands of iPhone 16 ease or 16 E as, uh, connected, called it that

01:12:02 ◼   ► was 16. Uh, anyways, I could see them buying, you know, hundreds or thousands of these. And if you're

01:12:08 ◼   ► buying this as a corporate device, do you really care if there's MagSafe? Do you really, does the

01:12:13 ◼   ► colors are need to be, need to approve a corporate device? Do you care if you don't have millimeter

01:12:18 ◼   ► wave? Does anyone care other than me? If they don't have millimeter wave, I can make an argument

01:12:23 ◼   ► for ultra wide band perhaps, but Jen, the photographic styles, who cares? So like,

01:12:27 ◼   ► if you look at it through that lens, and I don't know if this is true or not, this is just a guess.

01:12:31 ◼   ► If you know, you could even say that it's a 16 enterprise edition. Um, again, that that's not

01:12:37 ◼   ► factual, but you could squint and you could see how that could be the case. And the other thing is you

01:12:42 ◼   ► got to remove a bunch of stuff in order to hit a particular price point. And, uh, as we record,

01:12:47 ◼   ► it was earlier today that Ben Thompson at Stratechery put up a post about the 16 E and what

01:12:53 ◼   ► his, and what his point was among other things was look, phones have effectively gotten cheaper

01:12:59 ◼   ► because they've stayed the same price. And I always forget that, that everything in life has so much

01:13:05 ◼   ► more expensive now, but except iPhones. Now this one is a, is like, well, what is it? 130 bucks or

01:13:10 ◼   ► 170 bucks more than the 40% more in actual dollars. Uh, like today's dollars from the one that was for

01:13:16 ◼   ► sale yesterday, but not right. Cause it's 599 instead of 429. But, um, but yes, Ben did the

01:13:23 ◼   ► calculations and it's true. Like if you look at the March over time of buying power and inflation and

01:13:29 ◼   ► all of that, right. It's still, I mean, this is the thing is I'm sure he went into it thinking it's

01:13:33 ◼   ► actually not more expensive. And what he found was, no, it's, it's still more expensive. This is that

01:13:38 ◼   ► thing, right? Casey, where you want the black and white clarity, like the iPhone 16 E, you want it in

01:13:42 ◼   ► black and white. Uh, but, but it's actually in shades of gray, like an iPhone 16 pro. So sorry,

01:13:49 ◼   ► I'm not that I'm bitter about it, but, um, it's, it's complicated, right? Like it's, it is more

01:13:56 ◼   ► expensive, but it's not hugely more expensive. And, and Ben says like, and also like, if the idea was

01:14:04 ◼   ► that the cheap phone really helped Apple in emerging markets, it's not really like that clear that it has

01:14:10 ◼   ► very much. So it is, it's complicated, right? But they did. I mean, you have to say they made a

01:14:17 ◼   ► decision. I feel like a lot of this ends up being, uh, about margins and about, I mean, they're probably

01:14:23 ◼   ► on the iPhone 14 production line. Uh, Dan Warren made that point last week on the six college podcast.

01:14:29 ◼   ► I think he's right. Like they, they took the iPhone 14 off sale. The iPhone 16 E seems really iPhone 14 E

01:14:36 ◼   ► in a lot of ways, uh, but it's not. Uh, and so like, you know, it's, it's Tim Cook's Apple. I'm sure some

01:14:43 ◼   ► degree of this is literally, they looked at the, they're going to a much more expensive, uh, product

01:14:48 ◼   ► line, right? They, the, those face ID sensors are not as expensive as they used to be when the iPhone

01:14:52 ◼   ► 10 came out, but they're still expensive. And the OLED screen is, it's not the new one with the dynamic

01:14:56 ◼   ► island, but it's still expensive. And they did the math and they said, well, you know, I, I took the

01:15:02 ◼   ► MagSafe and the colors away and it still needs to be five 99. And Tim Cook was like, fine, that's fine.

01:15:07 ◼   ► And that's, it's not very dramatic to say that somebody with a spreadsheet somewhere looked through

01:15:12 ◼   ► the parts bin and looked at the cost, but that's probably what happened. Yep. No, I think that's

01:15:18 ◼   ► exactly it is. It was a combination of what is the ultimate goal. If you take my theory as fact,

01:15:25 ◼   ► what in that, this was the 16 enterprise edition, you know, if, if we keep that lens, if we look at

01:15:31 ◼   ► everything through that lens, what are the things that we can drop? Because unquestionably

01:15:35 ◼   ► you can't have it all at this price point. It's not a cheap phone. I'm not trying to say it's a cheap

01:15:40 ◼   ► phone by any stretch, but you can't have it all. So what are you going to drop? And you're going to

01:15:42 ◼   ► drop the things that maybe a corporate or, you know, like educational customer won't care about.

01:15:48 ◼   ► And I'm not, again, I can't stress enough. This is not factual. I don't know. I have no birdies,

01:15:52 ◼   ► but this is the most logical interpretation I can find because otherwise some of these,

01:15:57 ◼   ► some of these removals or some of these things that have been left behind, if it really is a

01:16:02 ◼   ► consumer phone, like why not have the photographic styles? MagSafe is freaking great. I love MagSafe.

01:16:08 ◼   ► I would desperately miss MagSafe. I would probably miss MagSafe more than ultra wide band. And so,

01:16:13 ◼   ► you know, a lot of these, these things that are left behind look really weird if you look at it from

01:16:19 ◼   ► a consumer's perspective, but looking at it from a corporate perspective, they make at least some

01:16:23 ◼   ► modicum of sense. Right. And you end up with people who are just like, I just want an iPhone. I mean,

01:16:27 ◼   ► I might buy one of these for my mom because yeah, long story short, my, you know, her phone broke

01:16:31 ◼   ► while my sister was visiting her. And so she bought her an SE. And the problem is my mom has really

01:16:35 ◼   ► struggled in the desert with kind of wrinkly fingers. She can't get touch ID to work. And my sister bought

01:16:40 ◼   ► her another touch ID phone. I'm like so mad because like, no, she can't do touch ID. We need to get

01:16:46 ◼   ► her a face ID phone. So she still has to put in her password every time. It makes me so mad. I might

01:16:52 ◼   ► get her one of these. I told this to Mike, by the way, over the weekend. And he said, you're a good

01:16:56 ◼   ► son. That was very nice. Thank you, Mike. And there's, there's a marketing product line thing

01:17:01 ◼   ► too. I mean, it creates this $599, $699, $799, $899, $999, right? And then $1199 for the big one. But

01:17:09 ◼   ► like it, it, it does that where you can get an Apple intelligence model for $599. The $699

01:17:15 ◼   ► phone is not an Apple intelligence model. Um, there's, and then over time, I, I do think

01:17:21 ◼   ► that they'll probably update this phone every two or three years and that's good enough.

01:17:24 ◼   ► Right. And they'll, and they'll increment the number to whatever the latest is. I, you know,

01:17:29 ◼   ► it is not, look, it's probably not for anybody who listens to this podcast. Although I have been

01:17:34 ◼   ► surprised. There are a lot of people who just don't care about their iPhone and it's all,

01:17:38 ◼   ► there is an argument to be made that they're all so good at this point that it's, it's

01:17:43 ◼   ► fine. Like it's fine and you buy it and then you use it for seven years and it's fine. And

01:17:48 ◼   ► who cares? And I think that other than the people who want a small phone, and unfortunately the

01:17:52 ◼   ► truth is small phone era is just over Apple. If enough people bought it, Apple would make

01:17:57 ◼   ► one, not enough people buy it. It's sad. RIP iPhone mini, but that's just how it is. Uh,

01:18:03 ◼   ► but a lot of people don't really care about all these super powerful features. So I, I consider

01:18:10 ◼   ► MagSafe curious and I wonder if it, there was just simply an engineering decision where it's

01:18:14 ◼   ► like, we can't put that in and do this other thing that we need to do because you know, all

01:18:19 ◼   ► the accessories and now you've got this weird outlier that's a 16, but it's not compatible with

01:18:27 ◼   ► MagSafe accessories. It's not great. Not great. But you know, Apple, we've seen it with the Apple

01:18:32 ◼   ► pencil. We've seen it in a bunch of other areas. If it comes down to a little confusion in the

01:18:37 ◼   ► product line or money, Apple chooses money.

01:18:43 ◼   ► Every time, every time it's like, Oh, you got four Apple pencils there. And they're like, sorry,

01:18:46 ◼   ► I can't hear you. I'm counting my money right now. Because I do think that that's the, you know,

01:18:52 ◼   ► there's a lot of us on the outside are like, but Oh, but your product line could be much cleaner and

01:18:56 ◼   ► nicer. And then there's somebody with a spreadsheet inside of Apple. It was like, Nope. Right. Like

01:19:01 ◼   ► that simple. Um, always moving toward perfection, but never, ever, ever reaching it because reasons.

01:19:07 ◼   ► And, and that, that feels like that's part of the iPhone 16 e story. You know, the big story though,

01:19:11 ◼   ► is the C one, right? Like this is, we we've been talking to six years. We've been talking about

01:19:16 ◼   ► Apple building its own cellular chip, right? It bought Intel's modem business. Actually,

01:19:20 ◼   ► it's longer than that because I believe there were rumors that Apple was trying to build a cellular chip

01:19:24 ◼   ► themselves and they, and they were very frustrated. So it's probably more like eight years or 10 years

01:19:30 ◼   ► that this has been going on. But six, nearly six years ago, Apple bought Intel's modem business for a

01:19:36 ◼   ► billion dollars and then hired a bunch of people and it's taken them this long, but they've got

01:19:44 ◼   ► the C one, which is their first beachhead in not having to pay Qualcomm for chips, still had to pay them

01:19:50 ◼   ► for licensing patents probably for a long time, but not chips anymore in some of these products. Uh, I don't

01:20:00 ◼   ► know. We don't know enough about it. The product is not like we out yet. We don't have the details I have

01:20:05 ◼   ► predicted in the draft that there will be some scandal that comes out that Apple probably already

01:20:10 ◼   ► knows is true about the specs of this thing, but that they haven't talked about it. And then somebody

01:20:14 ◼   ► will find it and go, Oh no, the C one doesn't do this. And there'll be a, you know, tempest in a

01:20:19 ◼   ► teapot and then everybody will forget about it. But like, I feel like this is what this phone is going

01:20:22 ◼   ► to be remembered for. Cause this is the first step into a new world where I assume, you know, we are now

01:20:27 ◼   ► on the path where eventually every Apple product, please, please, please, including lap Mac laptops,

01:20:32 ◼   ► please, please, please, please, we'll have an Apple cellular chip in them.

01:20:36 ◼   ► Yep. No, it's obvious that this was coming at some point. I mean, you don't have to be a talking head

01:20:42 ◼   ► like the two of us to look at Apple and realize this is a fundamental technology in so many of their

01:20:47 ◼   ► products, please, including the Mac books, please. And so they're going to want to control this.

01:20:51 ◼   ► I forget the quote, you know, exactly what quote I'm thinking of, but you know, it's in our best

01:20:55 ◼   ► interest to, you know, control all the stuff that our products rely on. It was said much more eloquently

01:20:59 ◼   ► than that, but you get the point. And, um, and so it is clear that they've been working. I mean,

01:21:04 ◼   ► obviously we've known it, but even if we didn't know it, it would be clear that they've been working

01:21:07 ◼   ► toward this for a long time. And it makes a lot of sense to take a phone that's, I don't think a lot

01:21:13 ◼   ► of, a lot of consumers are going to buy. Some certainly will. I'm not trying to say no, but none of them

01:21:17 ◼   ► will, but some, some will, but I don't think a lot of consumers will buy it. It's not.

01:21:21 ◼   ► It's not the core. It is the most outlier of new iPhones ever.

01:21:25 ◼   ► Exactly. And so you take this, what presumably may not be in certainly in terms of like,

01:21:33 ◼   ► you know, your average consumer is not going to be the most popular phone and you experiment there

01:21:38 ◼   ► and it makes perfect sense. And one of the interesting things that this phone does have,

01:21:43 ◼   ► which we have not mentioned yet is of all the 16s I blur, no, it was all the 6.1 inch phones. I forget

01:21:48 ◼   ► the, the, the, um, asterisk they put on the statement, but it has better battery life than

01:21:54 ◼   ► most of its contemporaries. Yeah. If not all. Yeah. And there's 26 hours of constant video

01:22:01 ◼   ► playback. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. And the reason I bring this up in the,

01:22:06 ◼   ► in the context of the C1 is that they said during their presentation that this is the most power

01:22:12 ◼   ► efficient modem on the market. And so you can imagine, and you know, you can see how these two

01:22:17 ◼   ► are related. And we had at ATP, a handful of people that wrote in and said, look, the only thing I care

01:22:22 ◼   ► about in my phone is battery life. Everything else is secondary to that. So you know what I'm going to

01:22:26 ◼   ► be buying myself and iPhone 16 E and you know, I, I get that. And as a quick aside, another thing that

01:22:32 ◼   ► a handful of people said was that I guess MagSafe can interfere with pacemakers, um, which, which means

01:22:37 ◼   ► that if you have a phone without MagSafe, that's a great thing if you also have a pacemaker. So that's

01:22:41 ◼   ► another example. Um, but anyways, coming back to C1, this is extremely exciting and I am really happy and

01:22:49 ◼   ► curious to see how this rollout goes because I remember years ago, and I'm sure you do, you do too,

01:22:54 ◼   ► Jason. There was several years ago now, I don't recall which phone it was, but there was a lot

01:22:59 ◼   ► of brouhaha, some of which may have been invented. Some of which, some of which was probably real,

01:23:03 ◼   ► but Oh, if you have a Qualcomm modem, then your phone is faster or better. I forget the details,

01:23:09 ◼   ► but if you have one of the Intel modems, then yours is like, you know, hamstrung from the factory. And I

01:23:14 ◼   ► forget if it was speed or power, there was some issue. I don't recall what it was. I think it was top

01:23:19 ◼   ► data data rates. I think it was, and it was not a huge difference, but it was enough for nerds to notice

01:23:24 ◼   ► and say, Oh, you want the secret Qualcomm version, not the secret Intel. Exactly.

01:23:27 ◼   ► Exactly. And so I'm very curious to see, as you said a moment ago, what's going to be the drama

01:23:33 ◼   ► here. We already know some of the drama is no millimeter wave, but again, I think the only

01:23:36 ◼   ► person in the entire planet that cares about that is me because I happen to have a spot where,

01:23:41 ◼   ► which is millimeter wave. And I haven't been there in a long time, to be honest with you,

01:23:45 ◼   ► even though it's right around the corner from me, but it is incredibly cool. And sorry,

01:23:49 ◼   ► I should back up a half step. If you are, if you have service that supports millimeter wave,

01:23:54 ◼   ► which I think in America might only be Verizon, which I have.

01:23:58 ◼   ► I think AT&T does it too, but I'm not sure.

01:24:00 ◼   ► Oh, is that right? Okay. My mistake. Either way, if you happen to be within, I think it's literally

01:24:05 ◼   ► eye shot of a tower that supports millimeter wave, you can. And I personally, with my own

01:24:13 ◼   ► telephone have gotten two and a half gigabits per second over the freaking air. Like it's incredible

01:24:21 ◼   ► how fast this is.

01:24:22 ◼   ► It's got very, very low range and doesn't go through walls very well. So it's kind of like

01:24:28 ◼   ► wifi, but if you were in, so I did this over at the, um, at the palace of fine arts in San Francisco

01:24:36 ◼   ► at their, uh, their little duck pond and all of that. And the first Apple device that supported

01:24:41 ◼   ► millimeter wave, which I think was an iPad I took over there and it was the exact same thing,

01:24:46 ◼   ► which is like, Oh my goodness. It is incredibly fast, but it's not very popular because yeah,

01:24:51 ◼   ► the range is terrible on it. It's, it's fast, but the range is terrible on it. And it's essentially

01:24:55 ◼   ► like a hotspot from your wireless carrier. Uh, it really is just like a 5g tech demo, right? Like

01:25:02 ◼   ► it doesn't seem like it's very practical, but it's, it's cool, but it's not very practical. And it's

01:25:07 ◼   ► like, I totally see why Apple in building the scene one was like, Nope, but there'll be some other

01:25:14 ◼   ► quirk. I feel like it's almost certain. Maybe not, maybe not, but it feels like there'll be

01:25:18 ◼   ► some other quirk about it. Now Apple didn't talk about this a lot. And I know some people have said

01:25:22 ◼   ► like, aha, they didn't talk about it a lot. That means something. I was like, I don't know. I was

01:25:26 ◼   ► unsure if they were going to even mention that it's in there, but they did. Agreed. They, they mentioned

01:25:30 ◼   ► it and there's like a paragraph from Johnny Shroogey and somebody did a like brief interview with Johnny

01:25:35 ◼   ► Shroogey about this, the Apple chip chief, chief, chip, chief, uh, that guy, you know, uh, Mr. It's,

01:25:43 ◼   ► it's Johnny who y'all know, not that one, the other one. Uh, and that's it. So they did a little,

01:25:49 ◼   ► I would say part of the reason they did a little is because the goal is not for you to notice,

01:25:56 ◼   ► right? The goal is to ship it and have it just be fine. What they're not doing. And Mark Gurman has

01:26:03 ◼   ► talked about them building the C2 and the C3. Of course that like, we know that the, this group works

01:26:07 ◼   ► many generations ahead of reality, right? Like we know that. And, and I think Gurman's report said

01:26:14 ◼   ► they expect to match or exceed Qualcomm. You don't know what Qualcomm is going to do in the intervening

01:26:19 ◼   ► time with the C3 or something like that. So like, it's not like they can boast, ah, we've beaten Qualcomm.

01:26:25 ◼   ► It's really just like, look, we're in the game. Yes, we built this. Let's not make a big deal out of it.

01:26:31 ◼   ► I don't think that's because there's a scandal coming or something like that. I think there'll

01:26:34 ◼   ► be some dumb manufactured thing that people notice. I do think though, that it's just,

01:26:38 ◼   ► it's not something to boast about. And so they're both, they're, they're doing the minimum boast,

01:26:43 ◼   ► right? Which is like, yeah, we made it and that's it. No, I couldn't agree more. You know,

01:26:47 ◼   ► just to tug on that thread just a little bit, if the C3 is the one that just really sticks it to

01:26:54 ◼   ► Qualcomm, could you call it maybe like, I can imagine like C3 performance optimized. And then you

01:27:00 ◼   ► would have the Apple C3PO. I can just see it now. Oh no. See, I thought you were going to say it's

01:27:05 ◼   ► really going to happen with the C4, which offers explosive speeds. Even better. This is all going

01:27:11 ◼   ► to happen. Everybody get ready for all the Star Trek memes next year or later this year when the M5

01:27:16 ◼   ► comes out, because the M5 was the ultimate thinking AI computer in a Star Trek episode. And at least

01:27:22 ◼   ► John Maltz and I are going to be flooding the internet with the ultimate computer episode of TOS memes

01:27:26 ◼   ► next fall, in the fall.

01:27:29 ◼   ► One other quick thing to mention before we move on is that I saw a video from a YouTuber,

01:27:34 ◼   ► Andrew Edwards. And as far as I know, he was the only one that got invited into Apple's lab and

01:27:41 ◼   ► was with Johnny Sruji that we were speaking about earlier. And he didn't have any interviews on camera

01:27:46 ◼   ► or anything like that. But a little bit into the video, let me see if I can grab a timestamp here

01:27:52 ◼   ► after my YouTube ad. I'll vamp while that's going on. In the YouTube video, at about five minutes and

01:27:59 ◼   ► 15 seconds or thereabouts, he kind of casually mentions that the A18 and C1 working in concert

01:28:06 ◼   ► supports dynamic traffic management. And the example he used was, you have just sent a photo to somebody.

01:28:12 ◼   ► I just sent Jason a picture from the UVA football game or what have you. And even though I'm sitting

01:28:20 ◼   ► there and also trying to refresh scores on ESPN or something like that, it knows that my priority is

01:28:26 ◼   ► likely to get that photo to Jason as quickly as possible. So that if I understand this and what

01:28:31 ◼   ► Andrew was saying correctly, the A18 and C1 can work in concert to say, yes, the user, me, does want to

01:28:37 ◼   ► look at ESPN. But the very first thing you need to do is get that photo to Jason as quickly as

01:28:41 ◼   ► possible. And it can make that kind of quality of service determination behind the scenes. This is

01:28:46 ◼   ► not something that I'm doing personally. It's doing on my behalf, but that's really cool. And this is

01:28:50 ◼   ► when Apple is at its finest is doing these little tweaks and doing these little things in order to

01:28:55 ◼   ► make the whole, the whole experience that much better. And I'm really excited to see where this goes,

01:29:02 ◼   ► if this is the case. And certainly if indeed these chips are that much power friendly, which I have no

01:29:09 ◼   ► reason to believe they aren't, you know, think of any time that your phone is in a spot with crummy

01:29:14 ◼   ► service and there's not a whole ton Apple can do about this. I don't reckon, but what your phone does

01:29:18 ◼   ► is it tries even harder to reach the near cell phone tower. So it will power up those radios even more.

01:29:26 ◼   ► But what if those radios are inherently more power sufficient? And I'm talking well out of my comfort zone.

01:29:32 ◼   ► I don't know if that's even realistic, but I can see how if this thing, which is arguably one of the

01:29:38 ◼   ► most power hungry things in your, in your phone, especially when the screen is off, if we can make that more

01:29:45 ◼   ► power efficient, we could see tremendous battery gains across the entire, maybe iPhone 17 lineup. And let me tell

01:29:50 ◼   ► you, I am here for battery gains. First, I would like you to be hired as the colors are, but after that, I would

01:29:56 ◼   ► be here for power gains. I would love it. I'd like somebody who is not colorblind to be the colors

01:30:00 ◼   ► are. I just want there to be one. Yeah. So, so the thing about that, that I, I saw that video

01:30:06 ◼   ► and it's very interesting, but it is marketing, right? Like I don't know enough about cellular chips to

01:30:12 ◼   ► not to know, like for all I know, Qualcomm has a system that allows their customers who are building

01:30:20 ◼   ► phones to prioritize certain kinds of traffic. They, they may have their own, you know, uh, QoS,

01:30:26 ◼   ► uh, quality of service kind of plan where you're like, this is a priority. Now this is a priority.

01:30:31 ◼   ► So one way you do marketing is you claim, here's a great thing that we built. Your competitor also

01:30:36 ◼   ► does that, but you don't mention that. Another thing is though, and what strikes me about this is

01:30:41 ◼   ► I was thinking like, even if Qualcomm does offer this sort of thing, it may be that they don't

01:30:49 ◼   ► offer it in the way that Apple would like them to. Right. And this, this takes us back to the bigger

01:30:54 ◼   ► point. And it's sort of like, if you think back to the Intel Mac era, for example, is Qualcomm

01:31:01 ◼   ► cellular chips like Intel processors are made for a market, right? Like they talk to their customers,

01:31:10 ◼   ► they'll do things for special customers, but basically like Intel made a chip and like PC makers

01:31:18 ◼   ► could use it and Apple could use it. And maybe Apple talks to them and says, could you please do this?

01:31:21 ◼   ► And occasionally that like they did that MacBook air chip, but then they did turn around and start

01:31:26 ◼   ► selling it to everybody else as well. Right. Like, and I'm sure Qualcomm does that too. Again,

01:31:30 ◼   ► I don't know enough about the cellular chip market, cellular motive market to know, but I imagine it's

01:31:36 ◼   ► very similar where Qualcomm has got parts and they talk to their partners about what they need, but in

01:31:41 ◼   ► the end they make a part that is productized. It is for anybody to buy on their price list, more or less.

01:31:46 ◼   ► And that is not what Apple does with Apple Silicon. And I think it, that's why it has so much

01:31:53 ◼   ► interesting potential is that the look, I have over the last few years had a chance at some of these

01:31:59 ◼   ► product launches to talk at least briefly with people who are involved in the Apple Silicon

01:32:03 ◼   ► process and what they keep impressing on me. And again, this is also marketing, but I do believe

01:32:09 ◼   ► that this is how they think, which is every Apple Silicon chip, they know what products it goes in,

01:32:15 ◼   ► right? Like they, they build it for specific products. The M4, they're like, they know it's going in

01:32:23 ◼   ► the iPad Pro and the MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air. And like they, they could tick off every product

01:32:30 ◼   ► it's designed for. And that gives Apple some special powers to do what Apple wants for the products that

01:32:39 ◼   ► it's building. And so when I look at the C1, that's what I think is maybe they're talking a good game

01:32:44 ◼   ► about this stuff, but Qualcomm does something similar. But what it means is that Apple can now

01:32:50 ◼   ► control, especially going forward, when this is everywhere, it can, it can build in stuff that is

01:32:57 ◼   ► optimized only for them because they don't make that product for anyone else. It doesn't need to do

01:33:02 ◼   ► anything right. And therefore it's more efficient because they don't need to do anything that is

01:33:07 ◼   ► some other customer of Qualcomm's needs that Apple doesn't need, or a specific thing that Apple would

01:33:12 ◼   ► really, really, really like Qualcomm to have done five years ago and Qualcomm just won't do it.

01:33:16 ◼   ► Like they can just do all that stuff now. And that's, that's why the C1 is exciting to me

01:33:20 ◼   ► is because it suggests that Apple by taking complete control over it is going to get, is going to get

01:33:27 ◼   ► benefits in terms of functionality and in terms of optimization, because they're just making it for

01:33:31 ◼   ► themselves. Yep. I couldn't agree more. It's a very astute point. And, and again, like that's where

01:33:36 ◼   ► this gets really interesting is seeing Apple, you know, working on both sides of the table,

01:33:42 ◼   ► so to speak in that, you know, instead of asking Qualcomm, may we have it now it's just, okay,

01:33:49 ◼   ► we need go build it. You know, and it's hard to say no to your coworkers, you know? And, and so I think

01:33:57 ◼   ► this could be very interesting. And, and, and I, I think C1 that it's, it's interesting in of itself,

01:34:02 ◼   ► for sure. But it's that at this point, we're just trying to get to table stakes. And again,

01:34:06 ◼   ► we don't even have millimeter wave and whether or not you think that matters personally,

01:34:10 ◼   ► factually speaking, it's not table or it is table stakes, I guess I should say. And we don't have

01:34:15 ◼   ► it yet, but maybe the C2 does have millimeter wave. And maybe the C3 is where we start to get really

01:34:21 ◼   ► interesting and exciting stuff. And I am very, very excited to see how this goes. And you made a very

01:34:27 ◼   ► good point earlier that this is one of those like kind of flies under the radar sort of things that

01:34:32 ◼   ► we probably won't hear all that much about, but I think this is where a lot of the interesting stuff

01:34:39 ◼   ► with iPhones and hopefully max, God help us. I hope so. That's where a lot of the interesting stuff is

01:34:46 ◼   ► going to be happening in the near future. I think.

01:34:47 ◼   ► Yeah. I hope this is the thing that leads to cellular max because we're not going to get into it here.

01:34:53 ◼   ► You can listen to a recent episode of ATP where they, they went through it again about why

01:34:57 ◼   ► Marco and Casey want cellular max. And I co-signed the entire thing because I agree.

01:35:02 ◼   ► You know, very quickly, you can, you can tether, but it's not great. And we like it better if you

01:35:08 ◼   ► don't have to, but it'd be better if you don't have to just very, very quickly. Uh, I forget how this

01:35:12 ◼   ► came up, but we were talking, I think a friend of mine was over who was also an Apple nerd like me.

01:35:17 ◼   ► And we were talking about this briefly and, and he had made a joke that, Oh, I'm going to have to

01:35:22 ◼   ► upgrade my laptop recently or soon. And Aaron was like, I'm sorry, what? And he was like, no, no,

01:35:27 ◼   ► no, because he might have cellular MacBooks. And she was like, what are you talking about? And I said,

01:35:30 ◼   ► Oh, well, you know, we might be able to get an internet connection on my MacBook, blah, blah, blah.

01:35:32 ◼   ► And let me tell you, I have not, I have no interest in upgrading my M3 max MacBook pro. I genuinely

01:35:38 ◼   ► don't like it's great. Yeah. But if there is a cellular MacBook pro, I will insta buy it at any

01:35:44 ◼   ► cost. Like I don't care. It will be immediately purchased at any cost whatsoever. I am that excited

01:35:51 ◼   ► for it. Yeah. And it's fine if you don't get it. But, um, uh, my problem is when people don't get why

01:35:58 ◼   ► we want this and therefore say it shouldn't exist because you're basically saying, look, I know you

01:36:03 ◼   ► like it, but no, you can't have it. And like, we can, we can talk until we're blue about why we

01:36:08 ◼   ► think cellular in a Mac laptop would be great because I think cellular and iPads is great.

01:36:13 ◼   ► And I don't buy non-cellular iPads anymore because it's great, but we're not going to get into that

01:36:19 ◼   ► now. We're not, don't at me. Don't at me. This episode of upgrade is also brought to you by

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01:38:35 ◼   ► of relay Casey. It's gadget time. Oh, I'm excited. It's gadget time. I wanted to having you on, I wanted

01:38:46 ◼   ► to do a little home gadget check-in because I am a big believer in home gadgetry, especially I would say

01:38:55 ◼   ► ambient information. I know you recently, I don't know if you want to give people a little update. You did,

01:39:00 ◼   ► you recently did a project where you basically have this super stealthy thing in your light switch

01:39:07 ◼   ► that gives you ambient information with, which is like, I love, I tell, tell people what you did.

01:39:15 ◼   ► Cause if they don't listen to ATP, they don't know this and we should start there.

01:39:18 ◼   ► Sure. So I somehow, for some reason, I don't really know why I got it in my brain that I wanted to be

01:39:25 ◼   ► able to know a couple of things about the state of my like house and world. And I wanted to be able to

01:39:29 ◼   ► know that as you said, ambiently ambient is the perfect word for it. And we had in our kitchen,

01:39:35 ◼   ► a former telephone Jack that I took away because we haven't had a home phone in years. And I put just

01:39:41 ◼   ► a blank there and it occurred to me, wait a second, what if I got like programmable LEDs and I could

01:39:46 ◼   ► turn on LEDs or turn them off based on the state of certain things. And that did not pass. As I like

01:39:53 ◼   ► to joke, the historical commission, which is to say my beloved wife, Erin said, I don't know if I'm

01:39:57 ◼   ► really in love with that idea, but we were able to reach a compromise, which is there's a, like this

01:40:03 ◼   ► odd manufacturer of smart home stuff, which I'd never heard of previously called HomeSeer,

01:40:07 ◼   ► H-O-M-E-S-E-E-R. And they make light switches, which are the standard paddle light switches that

01:40:13 ◼   ► you'll see in most homes in America anyway. But what's interesting about them is that they're

01:40:18 ◼   ► dimmers. And on the side, there's a series of seven LEDs that by default indicate how powered the

01:40:25 ◼   ► fixture is, you know, is it very dim or very, or very bright, but you can tell it not to do that.

01:40:31 ◼   ► And instead give you full control over how those LEDs are lit, what color they are, which ones are lit,

01:40:37 ◼   ► et cetera. And we're probably going to talk about in a minute or, uh, or maybe we'll talk about it next.

01:40:42 ◼   ► Uh, I've become one of those home assistant, uh, zealots slash, uh, you know, people that won't stop

01:40:49 ◼   ► talking about home assistants. And now I'm talking to you about it rolling my eyes. Yep. Yeah, I know.

01:40:53 ◼   ► And it's fair because we are the worst. It's just like CrossFit, you know, as soon as you start

01:40:57 ◼   ► CrossFit or as soon as you start home assistant, all you can talk about is CrossFit or home assistant.

01:41:00 ◼   ► And so in any case, what I've done is I've set up with home assistants such that there's a, there,

01:41:07 ◼   ► again, there's seven lights. I'm only using three of them at the moment. One of them will turn red

01:41:11 ◼   ► when the garage door is open and it, when it will, it will turn itself off when the garage door closes.

01:41:16 ◼   ► One of them will turn white when the Volvo, Aaron has a plug-in hybrid Volvo. And when it's charging,

01:41:21 ◼   ► it'll turn white when it's charged, it'll turn off. And then, uh, John Syracuse and my cohost on ATP

01:41:26 ◼   ► turned me on to these, uh, long range, uh, but very low power, uh, smart home gadgets by a company

01:41:33 ◼   ► called Yolink Y O L I N K. And so I installed one of these, like a contact sensor. That's one of those

01:41:39 ◼   ► things where it knows if things are closed or open. And I installed one on my mailbox. So when the

01:41:43 ◼   ► mailbox is opened, it's a little more complicated than this, but the short of it is when the mailbox is

01:41:47 ◼   ► opened, then a blue light will appear on this light switch that is in the kitchen. And they're

01:41:52 ◼   ► very physically small LEDs. They're only a millimeter or two across. So if you're looking at it, you 100%

01:41:59 ◼   ► can see them very easily. But if you're just kind of passing by, you might not even notice. And this has

01:42:04 ◼   ► been such a delight for me, not because any of this is really useful, like in particular, whether or not

01:42:11 ◼   ► the car is charging, is that really actionable? No. Am I going to postpone a trip somewhere on account

01:42:17 ◼   ► of the car still being charging? No, but it's neat that I know that it's charging.

01:42:22 ◼   ► But the ambient thing, it makes you know, like, Oh, did I forget to plug in the car? Oh no, it's

01:42:26 ◼   ► charging. And, and, and that's it. Right. It's like you otherwise would have to go outside and look

01:42:30 ◼   ► or go in the garage and look and see whether the car is charging or not. But now, you know,

01:42:34 ◼   ► Oh yeah, no, I did it already. I don't need to worry about it, which is, is right. You know,

01:42:38 ◼   ► that's, that's what, that's, what's great about this ambient stuff is, you know, it lets you know

01:42:43 ◼   ► at a glance, whether something is going on that previously would have required you to either go

01:42:47 ◼   ► somewhere or bring up a computer to look right. Or a phone or whatever. And instead, you're just like

01:42:52 ◼   ► the lights on. And like, imagine, I think this is a real thing. Like the, the, a light in your house

01:42:59 ◼   ► lets you know if you left the garage door open, like that's great. That is, that should be a feature

01:43:04 ◼   ► of houses. Right. Exactly. And it's, it's just silly things like that. And more than anything else,

01:43:10 ◼   ► it was like, I, I nerd sniped myself and I just, I wanted to see if I could do this and I was able to,

01:43:16 ◼   ► and it, and I honestly believe that it looks pretty reasonable. This is a, a manufactured, uh, you know,

01:43:24 ◼   ► a smart light switch. It's not me drilling holes into like a blank outlet cover or anything like that,

01:43:31 ◼   ► which as, as hard I would, as I may have tried, it would have looked janky. And so the historical

01:43:35 ◼   ► commission was right to veto it, but, uh, I think it looks pretty good, but I got to tell you,

01:43:40 ◼   ► there's another ambient thing in my life that I'm really enjoying that I know is also entering your

01:43:45 ◼   ► world or has actually been in your world for a long time. So I, I, Marco brought, talked about this

01:43:50 ◼   ► thing called terminal. Now full disclosure, they are going to sponsor ATP in the future, but I had never

01:43:55 ◼   ► heard of this. Marco bought it of his own volition with his own money, et cetera, et cetera. Uh,

01:43:59 ◼   ► they did send me the one I'm about to hold up for free, but it's this little like, uh,

01:44:04 ◼   ► e-ink thing that you can put all sorts of interesting stuff on. So for me, I have it at the

01:44:11 ◼   ► moment split in half and the left-hand side shows the agenda, if you will, for the family for the next

01:44:18 ◼   ► few days. And then the right-hand side is split in half again. So there's, uh, there's the weather in

01:44:24 ◼   ► the upper right, as I look at this. And then speaking of ambient computing on the bottom,

01:44:29 ◼   ► right, um, we've been having some problems with both our indoor, our main refrigerator and our,

01:44:34 ◼   ► uh, garage refrigerator. And we got different yield link devices. I actually haven't spoken about this

01:44:39 ◼   ► on ATP. We got different yield link devices that'll tell you temperature. And we were trying to figure

01:44:45 ◼   ► out, are these fridges really broken or not? And so what I did was I used terminal. Now to be clear,

01:44:50 ◼   ► that's no vowels, T R M M L. Um, but I use terminal and their custom plugin system,

01:44:56 ◼   ► which we'll talk about more, I'm sure in a second. And I actually have now granted it doesn't update

01:45:00 ◼   ► very frequently, but I have the current temperature of both the indoor fridge, the indoor freezer,

01:45:05 ◼   ► the outdoor free fridge and the outdoor freezer on here, just because we were trying to keep an eye

01:45:09 ◼   ► on it. As it turns out, we're getting a new set of fridges on Friday. So that'll go away.

01:45:13 ◼   ► But the point is I can, because I'm a dork and because I can write a little bit of code and

01:45:19 ◼   ► because of home assistant, I can put something like that. The temperature of a refrigerator inside

01:45:25 ◼   ► my house, I can put that on this little e-ink thing that will probably live on our refrigerator

01:45:31 ◼   ► at some point, but currently it's just sitting on the windowsill in front of the kitchen sink,

01:45:34 ◼   ► which is also pretty central to the kitchen. It is so delightful. And I love this thing and

01:45:40 ◼   ► the battery life, especially if you get the extended battery, which is not very expensive. And that's

01:45:43 ◼   ► what I did. The battery life is preposterous. It's measured in months. It's really,

01:45:47 ◼   ► really good stuff. That's the beauty of e-ink. So this is actually shockingly similar to my existing

01:45:51 ◼   ► e-ink calendar that I wrote about a few years ago that I still use that's in my kitchen.

01:45:56 ◼   ► The big difference, it's the same, it's basically the same screen. I think mine has a second color,

01:46:00 ◼   ► but otherwise it's basically the same. Black and white screen, e-ink, doesn't use power except when

01:46:07 ◼   ► it's drawing. Otherwise there's no power. And my thing is a Raspberry Pi. So it's got power all the

01:46:12 ◼   ► time and no battery. This not only does it have a much better case because mine's a 3D printed case.

01:46:16 ◼   ► It's got the battery, which is great. And it's an ESP32, which is like this other thing. I've got

01:46:22 ◼   ► the ink plate six color, which I have been experimenting with lately. And it's battery life

01:46:27 ◼   ► is also bananas. And the reason is these ESP32s are super low power. They've got a sleep mode. You

01:46:32 ◼   ► basically tell it to wake up every so often and check a remote server via your wifi. And then they

01:46:39 ◼   ► check and then they write to the e-ink screen and then they go back down and use essentially no power

01:46:44 ◼   ► until they wake up again. And this is why you can have them last forever and ever and ever. Cause you

01:46:48 ◼   ► know, a phone screen, you've got to power it and backlight it and all those things. You don't do any

01:46:53 ◼   ► of that with e-ink. It doesn't have any backlights or anything. It's just natural light on it like

01:46:58 ◼   ► anything else, like a piece of paper, but, um, it's great. I'm exploring the terminal stuff because

01:47:03 ◼   ► again, um, I want to, I love the idea that somebody made a product of this and it's a nerdy product,

01:47:10 ◼   ► but it is a product. And, and that is in contrast to my thing where I bought a, a screen and a raspberry

01:47:17 ◼   ► pie and, and, and took a GitHub project that was written in Python. That was like a German guy who wrote a,

01:47:24 ◼   ► it was like a portal themed desk calendar. It was, and I, I, you know, I tore apart most of his code,

01:47:31 ◼   ► uh, and made what I wanted and I've used it for a few years now. This is like that, but turned into

01:47:37 ◼   ► a product. The case is so nice. It's so well done because it's not a 3d printed case. It's a mass

01:47:43 ◼   ► produced case. Um, you know, they're using injection molding or something to do it. It's got that battery in

01:47:49 ◼   ► it. And, and then they put a web interface on it. So basically you go to their website and there are

01:47:54 ◼   ► apps that you can get, and there are plugins that you can write yourself. It's basically using HTML

01:47:59 ◼   ► technology for the display and the way it works in order to keep it all sort of server side is it uses

01:48:06 ◼   ► all that. And then it renders it into an image. And the image is what gets downloaded by your terminal

01:48:11 ◼   ► at your house. Right? Like, so all the brains are on the server. They are not in the terminal. The

01:48:15 ◼   ► terminal knows enough to wake up and ask when it asks, what image do you have for me? And it asks,

01:48:21 ◼   ► when should I wake up next? And that's it. Right. Exactly. That's, that's all it does. So I love,

01:48:27 ◼   ► I love this. I have played with this. I have it, um, in my kitchen right now, right next to my other

01:48:31 ◼   ► thing. And what I've ended up with is I've got a couple of boxes that are generated by,

01:48:37 ◼   ► as a part of my weather station and as a part of building this other thing, I've got,

01:48:42 ◼   ► I've already got some JSON files on my web server. That's my server in my house. And so I can have a,

01:48:48 ◼   ► I can have a custom plugin for terminal that just looks at my JSON files on Snell zone. Uh,

01:48:53 ◼   ► because that's what it is. Snell zone. It's a real, it's a real web server in my house. So, um,

01:48:59 ◼   ► and displays those. So I've got, um, basically I'm caching Apple's weather kit data locally because

01:49:05 ◼   ► there's an API cost for it. Right. And as a developer, I've got a developer account.

01:49:09 ◼   ► I can, I can load it a lot, but if I had lots of devices loading it a lot, it might be a problem.

01:49:15 ◼   ► So I have my server every 10 minutes or 15 minutes or whatever. I don't even remember what it is.

01:49:20 ◼   ► 30 minutes. It, it goes and pulls weather kit data from Apple and just writes it on my server

01:49:25 ◼   ► so that all my other scripts just look at my server instead of making an API call. It's easier.

01:49:31 ◼   ► And it's just a JSON file. So I was able to get that up and running where I have a little thing

01:49:35 ◼   ► with, uh, with, uh, the high for the next six days or something. And a little graphic of what the,

01:49:41 ◼   ► you know, conditions are going to be a rain cloud or a sun or whatever. Um, and then on the left side,

01:49:47 ◼   ► what I ended up doing, I was using their, their calendar plugin. Um, but I found it hard to read.

01:49:51 ◼   ► And the thing is I solved this problem. I have a, I have a Python script that outputs an image

01:49:56 ◼   ► with my calendar and Lauren's calendar on it already. So I actually just have it loading that image.

01:50:03 ◼   ► That's super cool. That I love that. I genuinely love that. I'm not trying to be sarcastic. That is

01:50:08 ◼   ► really genuine. Yeah. I mean, cause I'm reusing. So here's the truth of it. I suspect that in the end,

01:50:12 ◼   ► I'm going to like the, uh, the case and battery of it so much. And, and the web stuff is okay. Although

01:50:21 ◼   ► you've got to learn somebody else's web framework in order to get the layout right. And the problem I

01:50:26 ◼   ► have with a terminal is that I already solved this problem myself. Yeah. But this is the thing is most

01:50:31 ◼   ► people haven't. And, and I love that they are making this. It's still a super nerdy product,

01:50:35 ◼   ► right. But it is a level, a level down from having your own raspberry PI and your own Python script

01:50:42 ◼   ► that you have hacked to connect to various APIs in order to get it to work. Right. Like I already did

01:50:48 ◼   ► that. If you gave me a terminal now, I wouldn't do that because yeah, exactly. Why, but I've already

01:50:54 ◼   ► done it. So I suspect that in the end, what my terminal is going to end up being is just displaying

01:51:00 ◼   ► images generated on my server by my scripts, because then I have like, we have, it's like your

01:51:05 ◼   ► ambient lights. I have, if it's going to, if Apple weather says it's going to rain today,

01:51:09 ◼   ► it puts a, an umbrella on the screen of my calendar. Nice. And this actually happened last

01:51:15 ◼   ► week where Lauren was going to walk out the door and she said, Oh, the umbrella is up. I

01:51:17 ◼   ► better bring an umbrella or a raincoat because it was, it wasn't raining, but it was going to

01:51:22 ◼   ► rain that day according to Apple weather. Um, if it's trash night and our trash night

01:51:27 ◼   ► alternates between, um, bottles and cans and a paper alternate weeks. So if you're

01:51:35 ◼   ► it puts up an icon on Thursday night, that's either an icon of bottles or it's an icon

01:51:41 ◼   ► of boxes. Right. And, and it's great. Cause I don't need to look it up. It's just right

01:51:47 ◼   ► there. It's like, Oh, it's paper tonight. And then I'll take out the right one. A little

01:51:50 ◼   ► ambient thing. It's fun to do that in terminal. Like then you're dealing with logic, which

01:51:56 ◼   ► it doesn't really want to do. And like, I was just like, I'm not like, this is why I probably

01:52:01 ◼   ► am just going to keep doing this myself because I've gone too far. Like I, some people said

01:52:06 ◼   ► he should have stopped before he went too far, but he went too far. Um, but for, for people

01:52:12 ◼   ► who listen to shows like this, I think this is a great sort of starter kit for doing ambient

01:52:17 ◼   ► devices to forgetting a great, what's great about having a low power e-ink display into your

01:52:23 ◼   ► life. Because while it's actually not great for stuff like your, your, uh, fridge temperatures,

01:52:28 ◼   ► because like I've got current, I've got a, uh, electric time that shows like the current time

01:52:33 ◼   ► and temperature. And it's a not an e-ink device. It's a different device. Like I can show, I can use

01:52:39 ◼   ► that feed and show current temperature on the e-ink thing, but it only updates every half hour or

01:52:43 ◼   ► whatever. So it's not actually the current temperature. And so it's not for that. It's not

01:52:48 ◼   ► going to, you could have it show whether your garage door is open or not, but it would actually

01:52:52 ◼   ► be telling you what your garage door was doing the last time it refreshed.

01:52:55 ◼   ► Exactly right. It's, and coincidentally, I did do that. I very briefly integrated like home

01:53:00 ◼   ► assistant terminal and whatnot, and it wasn't that terribly difficult to do. Uh, but then I realized,

01:53:05 ◼   ► cause I didn't realize how infrequently the terminal updates, which to your point is something

01:53:09 ◼   ► like half an hour by default. And they're working on bringing that down, but it'll kill the battery

01:53:14 ◼   ► is it'll kill the battery when it does it. That's the, that's the problem. Uh, and if

01:53:19 ◼   ► you want to put this on magnets on your, on your, uh, on your fridge, you really want it

01:53:22 ◼   ► to last three months or whatever, which it probably will. I've got, uh, I've got that little ink

01:53:28 ◼   ► plate six color. Um, and it's been running for a couple of weeks now. Um, checking my calendar

01:53:33 ◼   ► again, a version of my calendar image every three hours or something, uh, which is all I need

01:53:41 ◼   ► for my calendar really. And it's, it's two weeks and going strong. I don't know how long

01:53:45 ◼   ► it's going to last, but it's like one of those examples of it. Once you've got a device that

01:53:50 ◼   ► will go for weeks or months without a charge, you can just put it without a cord on your fridge

01:53:55 ◼   ► or wherever. Exactly. And you don't need a cord dangling. You don't need anything like that.

01:53:59 ◼   ► And then every so often you take it off and plug it in for a couple hours and then it's good

01:54:03 ◼   ► for another few months. It's awesome. That's why I do recommend, um, if people are interested

01:54:09 ◼   ► in this, that they try the terminal, um, not a sponsor here. I don't think it's even a future

01:54:15 ◼   ► sponsor here, but like it, what this is, this is, it is a lot of times I write about this stuff and

01:54:20 ◼   ► people are like, Oh, but raspberry pie and Python. And I have to write a script that is writing images

01:54:25 ◼   ► on onto a, an image file that then gets put on, you know, like it's too much. It's just too much.

01:54:30 ◼   ► And, and most people don't have Dr. Drang like I do, who, where I can say, Hey, Dr. Drang,

01:54:35 ◼   ► I need your help with some Python. Uh, true, true story. There's a, there's a couple of posts on Dr.

01:54:41 ◼   ► Drang's, uh, uh, site, which I guess I need to link to now, uh, where he helped me out with part of this

01:54:46 ◼   ► project. Um, and so most people don't have that. My point is that's okay. Terminal is an attempt to

01:54:53 ◼   ► make something that again is not, it's super nerdy, right? It's just not so super nerdy that

01:55:00 ◼   ► you need to be writing your own custom Python script. Um, and that's, I think that's good.

01:55:05 ◼   ► I also like the fact that they are open sourcing their firmware and there's a way to get it to not

01:55:10 ◼   ► use their servers. And they have a commitment that if they go out of business, they, you know,

01:55:14 ◼   ► you can basically make it run without using their servers at all. You can use their software on your

01:55:20 ◼   ► server. You can like, there's so many other ways to do it, but also they're trying to put a nice UI

01:55:27 ◼   ► on this so that more regular people can say, can I just add the Google calendar widget and put in my

01:55:32 ◼   ► calendar or, or the iCloud calendar widget and put in my calendar and then put a weather forecast in

01:55:38 ◼   ► with my zip code and get something that is nice and updates every three or six hours. And is, is all

01:55:45 ◼   ► the things that are good about using an e-ink display for this kind of ambient information where

01:55:50 ◼   ► like now you've got, imagine a piece of paper, except it's your Google calendar or your iCloud

01:55:55 ◼   ► calendar. That's awesome. That's kind of awesome. Yeah. And that's what this is. And the genesis of

01:56:00 ◼   ► this, part of the reason I was so excited about it was we, we literally at the end of the very last day

01:56:07 ◼   ► of the month, I will go into my Apple calendar on my Mac and are into the calendar app and I will print

01:56:12 ◼   ► the family calendar because at this point it's just Aaron and me for all intents and purposes.

01:56:17 ◼   ► You know, the kids aren't old enough to have their own real calendars and we'll, I'll print the Apple

01:56:22 ◼   ► calendar and I will, you know, put that on magnets on the fridge. And that's great because our, our lives

01:56:29 ◼   ► are not that busy that the calendar changes all the time, but you know, what's great than a calendar

01:56:33 ◼   ► that never changes is a calendar that will change and will update itself. And so this thing, even if to

01:56:39 ◼   ► your point earlier, even if it only updates every three or six or nine hours, it's still better than

01:56:44 ◼   ► one that only updates when you go upstairs and print a new copy and then bring that back down.

01:56:48 ◼   ► Like that is a much preferred version of, of all of this than, uh, than, than the piece of paper,

01:56:54 ◼   ► you know, that's just stuck on your fridge. So I am really enthusiastic about this. Uh, once we get our

01:56:58 ◼   ► new fridges, hopefully Friday, I will be able to re repurpose that corner of the terminal and I will

01:57:03 ◼   ► probably mount this on the, uh, incoming fridge, you know, at that point. And I'm, I'm really excited

01:57:08 ◼   ► about it. Very, very nice. Well, we're going to talk about home assistant and upgrade plus. So

01:57:15 ◼   ► yes, I love this. Hang on for that, but this is going to be the end of the regular episode. You

01:57:19 ◼   ► can send us your feedback, follow up on questions. I have to read it. So be nice. Upgradefeedback.com.

01:57:24 ◼   ► Just please, I beg you. Uh, but, uh, thank you to our members who support us with upgrade plus. We

01:57:32 ◼   ► will be talking about some other Casey stuff, home assistant. Maybe we'll talk about call sheet a

01:57:35 ◼   ► little bit, get upgrade plus.com. If you want to buy a gift for Mike and his baby, um, upgrade plus

01:57:41 ◼   ► is a great way to support Mike and his growing family. How about that? That is a, that is a thing

01:57:46 ◼   ► that Mike wrote, but I am just going to keep on saying it. Uh, you can obviously find us on YouTube

01:57:52 ◼   ► by searching for upgrade plus thanks to our sponsors vitally Google Gemini and express VPN. But most of all,

01:57:59 ◼   ► thank you all for listening. And most, most of all, thank you, Casey Liss for guesting for Mike,

01:58:04 ◼   ► the new dad. You're doing your friend a solid and you're doing me a solid too. Thank you so much for

01:58:09 ◼   ► being here. No, the pleasure is all mine. It is such a pleasure to, to be on the show with you. And

01:58:14 ◼   ► if you'll permit me to blow a little smoke here, upgrade is such an impossibly good program. And I

01:58:19 ◼   ► get more annoyed at upgrade than I think I do at any other show because you guys make such good points.

01:58:24 ◼   ► So often in every single episode, there's at least one of you that at least once I say,

01:58:28 ◼   ► Oh, I wish I thought of that. And so I know I'm preaching to the choir since you're listening to

01:58:32 ◼   ► me say this on upgrade, but for what it's worth, you can extract this and use it elsewhere. I love

01:58:37 ◼   ► this show so much. I love this show so much. And you two are so great together. And even though it's

01:58:41 ◼   ► fun to have a little diversion, nevertheless, uh, I am really excited for Mike, for Mike to come back

01:58:46 ◼   ► and to get more of upgrade in my ears. Cause it's one of my favorite podcasts.

01:58:49 ◼   ► Yeah. Bad news is you can't listen to this episode of upgrade cause you already.

01:58:52 ◼   ► I know. Right. I can. I can think about it, but that idiot Casey that never got anything

01:58:57 ◼   ► right. Yeah. What's wrong with upgradefeedback.com, I guess. Um, you can send your own feedback in

01:59:02 ◼   ► about yourself if you really want to. Uh, yeah, no, I, I really appreciate it. Thank you so much

01:59:06 ◼   ► for being here next week. Mike will be back because we prerecorded an episode because I'm on vacation

01:59:12 ◼   ► next week and Mike is on paternity leave. And like what happens to the podcast then? And the answer

01:59:16 ◼   ► is we prerecorded something that I think is really super fun and I hope you will all like, and I hope

01:59:21 ◼   ► nothing enormous happens in the news in the next week because we're not going to cover it next week.

01:59:27 ◼   ► Instead, we're going to have some fun. Uh, so anyway, thank you all again for listening. And thank you,

01:59:31 ◼   ► Casey, uh, Mike and I will be back next week. Thank you, Jason.