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Upgrade

586: An LLM in the Woods

 

00:00:00   BEEP!

00:00:00   From Relay, this is Upgrade, episode 586.

00:00:13   Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace, Claude, Ecamm, and Delete Me.

00:00:18   My name is Mike Hurley, and I'm joined by Jason Snell.

00:00:21   Hi, Jason Snell.

00:00:22   Hi, Mike Hurley. How are you?

00:00:24   I'm good. We've got a big episode today.

00:00:25   We've got a bunch of product reviews, all M5 product reviews to do.

00:00:29   Yeah, people might be wondering why the release is late, and the answer is it's an Apple embargo, that's why.

00:00:37   Sorry that we couldn't tell you, but that's just the way these things go.

00:00:40   Those are the rules.

00:00:41   I have a snow talk question for you that comes from Matcha, who wants to know,

00:00:45   Jason, what wallpaper backgrounds are you using for iMessage?

00:00:49   Do you have the Upgrade wallpaper for your conversations with Mike?

00:00:52   I've defaulted to using some of Stephen's 5K macOS wallpapers.

00:00:56   I also have the Cortex wallpaper from being a Relay member of my brother since he enjoys that show.

00:01:00   Are you using any backgrounds?

00:01:01   You may be in most of the chats that have backgrounds.

00:01:06   I have to admit it, mostly only ironically.

00:01:09   Yeah.

00:01:11   We have our chat with you and me and Stephen Hackett has a bubbly gray background that is animated.

00:01:20   I think it's meant to be waves.

00:01:22   Yeah, I had one on the one I have about college football with Casey and Stephen, but I think Stephen basically rolled in there and was like, nope, take it out.

00:01:33   Because I had pictures of college football or pictures of us doing college football or whatever, you know, going to a game, and that didn't work out.

00:01:42   My chat with my family has a picture of our front yard in it, and the icon for the family chat is the sign on the house number.

00:01:51   That's cute.

00:01:52   Sign.

00:01:52   And the Magnum PI podcast I do with David Lohr and Philip Michaels, we have a picture of Hawaii, as you might expect.

00:02:02   That's about it.

00:02:03   So nothing, I haven't been doing a lot of dressing up of my messages, mostly because I find them kind of distracting.

00:02:09   Yeah, I tend to not like it, so I haven't done it.

00:02:12   Although I am now going to download one of the upgrade wallpapers and set it as ours and just see what it looks like.

00:02:18   I've never considered wallpapers as a thing to use for this, but I guess this is exactly what they are, you know?

00:02:24   I guess so.

00:02:25   So maybe we could try that out, see what it's all about.

00:02:28   Yeah.

00:02:28   Phone wall, phone wallpapers, right?

00:02:30   Because they're vertical.

00:02:31   Mm-hmm.

00:02:33   Most people don't view their messages window like widescreen, right?

00:02:37   Right?

00:02:38   I don't know.

00:02:39   There are 16x9 messages windows out there?

00:02:42   It could be.

00:02:43   If you use a 16x9 messages window.

00:02:46   I don't want to hit.

00:02:46   No, don't write in.

00:02:47   Don't write in.

00:02:48   Specifically, don't write in.

00:02:50   But if you have a question to help us open a future episode of the show, just go to UpgradeFeedback.com and you can send in a Snell Talk question of your own.

00:02:59   We have some follow-up.

00:03:01   Jason, things are bad for me, the Spotlight.

00:03:04   Uh-oh.

00:03:05   It's getting worse.

00:03:06   What happened?

00:03:07   A few people have recommended, including you, this article on a website called Dr. Buho.

00:03:13   I don't know what that means.

00:03:15   Good old Dr. Buho.

00:03:15   But there's a how to rebuild Spotlight index on macOS Tahoe three ways.

00:03:21   And a few people recommended option two, which is a bunch of terminal commands.

00:03:28   I did the terminal commands and it actually made things worse for me because now Spotlight can't find most apps that I'm searching for.

00:03:38   Like, if I type PH for photos, it's like, hey, do you want to open PhotoCapture?

00:03:42   It's like, no, I don't want that.

00:03:44   And photos are just not in the list.

00:03:46   Or if I want to type in system settings, right?

00:03:48   If I type in settings or system, all it does is surface for me like deep links into settings rather than actually the settings app.

00:03:57   Our esteemed audio editor, Jim Metzendorf, recommended using Alfred to rebuild the index because they kind of have a custom, like a customized terminal command.

00:04:07   I did that and that also has not worked, although the indexing wasn't complete, but it still wasn't finding these like basic apps from Apple.

00:04:16   A listener sent in a Reddit thread.

00:04:19   This Reddit thread is the problem I'm having during the public beta and it has some additional terminal steps that I may need to try.

00:04:27   But I've also been hearing from tons of Upgradians.

00:04:30   They've been writing into me and sending me things on social media that are having the same problem.

00:04:34   I don't, I feel like I don't understand what's going on here for like what is essentially the premier feature of Tahoe, like outside of liquid glass is Spotlight.

00:04:44   And it is, for me, like demonstrably worse than the Spotlight it replaces because it can't even open apps reliably.

00:04:53   It's a bug.

00:04:53   It's a bug.

00:04:54   But it's a bug I can't seem to fix.

00:04:56   Like I don't know what I'm supposed to do.

00:04:57   I get how frustrating it is.

00:04:59   But saying demonstrably worse for the Spotlight feature or the Spotlight feature.

00:05:03   Ha ha.

00:05:03   Like I'm using it and we used it all summer and it works great.

00:05:07   So when it works, it works great.

00:05:09   There's a bug that is making your upgrade experience bad.

00:05:12   And that is not great.

00:05:14   So.

00:05:14   It's like, I don't know what I'm supposed to do about it.

00:05:17   I don't know.

00:05:17   Which is the problem with so much of Apple's stuff is like.

00:05:20   I have the same thing where sometimes the clipboard history just vanishes and will never come back until I restart.

00:05:26   Right.

00:05:26   I don't know what that is about.

00:05:28   A bunch of people have said like they just, the clipboard history has never worked for them too.

00:05:32   Like, because I'm also having that.

00:05:34   Clipboard history has never worked for me.

00:05:35   There's never anything on the clipboard history.

00:05:37   It's not good.

00:05:38   Not good.

00:05:39   So I'm going to keep trying.

00:05:40   I'll keep letting you know how it's going.

00:05:43   Do you have any more thoughts on the Apple TV name change?

00:05:47   So this happened while we were recording.

00:05:49   My biggest takeaway is all the jokes have been done and have been done way too many times.

00:05:55   If anything, I'm disappointed that it happened so close to our recording time because we also just made jokes that then I put Mastodon and Saw 50,000 times.

00:06:08   But in our defense, I had not opened Mastodon at that point before the episode.

00:06:12   Have you had any additional thoughts on Apple and Apple TV and maybe their strategies here?

00:06:18   No.

00:06:22   Well, you did say you wanted to rename the Apple TV 4K.

00:06:25   You wrote a whole article about it.

00:06:27   I'm teeing you up for this article.

00:06:28   I did suggest that maybe the one way out of this is simply to rename the Apple TV 4K.

00:06:35   If you're actually going to have a bunch of home products coming, could you rename it to whatever the name of that line is?

00:06:41   I suggested HomePod.

00:06:42   It's sitting right there.

00:06:43   I heard from somebody who said, but pod comes from iPod, which means audio.

00:06:46   And I was like, no, pod does not mean audio.

00:06:49   Pod means anything you want it to mean.

00:06:51   It means it's a container with something inside.

00:06:53   It is a meaningless term.

00:06:54   That's why they used it for the iPod.

00:06:56   And I know that they've got it in the HomePod too, but you could call all of those things HomePods if you really wanted to, and that would be fine.

00:07:04   Or they could call it something else.

00:07:05   I don't know.

00:07:06   But my thought was maybe you could create a brand for your home products and tuck this under there instead of calling it Apple TV.

00:07:13   But also, I think you could just keep calling it Apple TV 4K, and nobody cares.

00:07:18   Nobody cares.

00:07:19   I do think that the Apple TV box suffers the same problem as the service, right?

00:07:24   We might talk about this later on, but Eddie Q was on The Town, one of our favorite podcasts.

00:07:30   And one of the things that they were talking about was them doing this.

00:07:34   And Eddie was just like, ah, we just thought we'd do it.

00:07:38   Everyone inside the company says Apple TV anyway.

00:07:42   Everyone calls it Apple TV, so we're just like, ah, forget it.

00:07:45   Let's just call it Apple TV.

00:07:45   And so I agree with that.

00:07:47   I think that thinking makes sense.

00:07:49   Like, why not?

00:07:50   Like, yeah, it's confusing in places, but so much of Apple's naming is confusing in places.

00:07:54   This isn't any better or worse.

00:07:56   And it does just make sense to just call the service Apple TV.

00:07:59   But then the box is called the Apple TV 4K.

00:08:03   It's like it's the same problem as Apple TV+.

00:08:05   Like, the box should be called Apple TV, or it should be called something else.

00:08:10   Something else.

00:08:11   I really liked your suggestion of HomePod.

00:08:14   Like, even called, and like, I would say HomePod TV, right?

00:08:17   HomePod TV, you know, you said like HomePod display for the home thing.

00:08:21   You got like, you know, HomePod mini for the little speaker.

00:08:25   You give the, did they even sell the big speaker anymore?

00:08:28   I can't remember.

00:08:28   Yeah, yeah.

00:08:29   But you could call it HomePod studio or HomePod audio.

00:08:32   I just couldn't remember.

00:08:33   Didn't it go away and come back?

00:08:35   And came back, yeah.

00:08:36   Am I remembering this right?

00:08:36   Yeah.

00:08:37   Yeah, the second generation one is the one that's out there now.

00:08:39   But you could brand.

00:08:40   Again, this is one of those things where I get frustrated sometimes by a lack of imagination

00:08:45   in people who are like supporters of Apple, where they're like, oh, Apple couldn't do that.

00:08:50   Friends, Apple can do anything they want.

00:08:53   Apple can rebrand things.

00:08:55   They can do anything that they want.

00:08:58   So if they thought that it was in their best interests to create a brand name and a product

00:09:03   line for their home products and rebrand stuff and rebadge it to be HomePod this and HomePod

00:09:08   that or whatever, they could just do it.

00:09:10   There's nothing stopping them.

00:09:12   You might disagree and think it's not worth it and all of that, but I'm always surprised

00:09:17   when people are like, oh, you can't do that.

00:09:19   It's like Apple can do whatever it wants.

00:09:21   So it just would need to find value.

00:09:22   That was my suggestion anyway, was maybe if you really do have a whole bunch of home products

00:09:27   that you're going to launch here, the best thing to do is to tuck the TV product and the

00:09:32   speakers and that new screen all into this and that camera that's happening, right?

00:09:36   Like theoretically a doorbell camera or security cameras is coming as well, according to Mark

00:09:42   German, like give this product line a name, right?

00:09:45   I think that that's the right way to do that.

00:09:47   A name with the word home in it, whether you call it Apple home, you could call it Apple

00:09:51   home TV if you wanted to, but I like HomePod.

00:09:54   I think Apple, you know, the HomePod TV is not a bad, not a bad name.

00:09:59   There are probably other options too.

00:10:00   I just, I feel like something would be good and put it under the home brand, whatever that

00:10:08   home brand might be.

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00:11:50   So, last week, Apple announced via selection of press releases a plethora, a smorgasbord,

00:12:00   if you will, of M5 products.

00:12:02   A little cheese plate.

00:12:03   What would be the Premiere cheese?

00:12:06   Because I guess that's the MacBook Pro.

00:12:07   Like a good cheddar, maybe?

00:12:09   We'll go with that?

00:12:10   I don't know.

00:12:12   I'll tell you what, though, Jason.

00:12:13   The Vision Pro is the Manchego.

00:12:14   I know that much.

00:12:15   Oh, see, I was going to say the iPad was the Manchego.

00:12:18   We'll go with that.

00:12:19   We have, maybe the Vision Pro is like one of those cheeses that's got like fruit in it,

00:12:25   you know?

00:12:25   Well, it's, so it's, the point here is that they're all based on the M5.

00:12:30   So, they're all, I guess they're all cheeses.

00:12:31   This is a cheese plate without any meats or fruits on it.

00:12:35   Yeah.

00:12:35   They're all just M5 cheeses.

00:12:37   M5 cheeses, if you please.

00:12:39   The M5 itself is a, quote,

00:12:43   more advanced three nanometer process.

00:12:45   I'm quoting from your review of the MacBook Pro here.

00:12:48   With a new ultra fast CPU, performance cores, a re-architected GPU, memory bandwidth increases,

00:12:56   and faster SSD read-write speeds.

00:12:58   Yeah.

00:12:59   Can you talk a little bit about the performance of just the M5 itself?

00:13:03   And then we can talk about how it lives inside of this computer.

00:13:06   Well, it is the usual story, right?

00:13:11   Which is Apple has chosen places in the chip to make a difference.

00:13:16   And they don't change everything all the time.

00:13:18   They change it in bits.

00:13:20   So, you know, the performance cores got a boost this time.

00:13:27   But the efficiency cores, which got a boost, I think, last time, didn't get one this time.

00:13:33   The, what else?

00:13:36   The neural engine, I think, is a new neural engine this time on the M5.

00:13:42   And last time with the M4, they did neural accelerators on CPUs.

00:13:48   So the idea there is that, you know, Apple was like, hey, everybody, we built a neural processor.

00:13:52   You should use that for all your machine learning stuff on device.

00:13:56   And the world said, but we use CPU and GPU cores for that.

00:14:01   Like, basically, the things that they built somewhere else that focus on CPU or GPU for reasons involving the development.

00:14:08   And they don't want to customize them to use the neural engine.

00:14:11   So in the M4, they added the CPU neural accelerators, which the idea there is for machine learning tasks, they will now be faster on CPUs.

00:14:19   That was with the M4.

00:14:21   With the M5, they added those for the GPUs.

00:14:23   So the idea there is, again, if you've got tasks that run on graphics processors that are machine learning tasks, that was one of those areas where Apple felt that they were, I don't know if the right word is vulnerable, but it was like an area that they had not built specific machine learning stuff into the GPU cores.

00:14:41   They're like, just, it's a GPU core, just use it.

00:14:44   And it turns out everybody's using it for machine learning.

00:14:45   And they're like, all right, well, okay, we could do some work to make that better then.

00:14:49   And that's what they did.

00:14:51   So they kind of, again, you saw that like the M4 came through and then the M5 came through with the other part of it.

00:14:57   So they are, they take pieces of it and upgrade those pieces.

00:15:02   So in this case, the memory bandwidth on the base M4 to M5, that upgrade, the memory bandwidth is more on the M5.

00:15:10   So all the lower end chips, the M5 chips compared to the M4 generation have more memory bandwidth, which is also great for performance.

00:15:20   So it's that kind of constant rolling iteration that they do where, you know, you look back to the M1 and you realize, oh, the graphics are twice as fast.

00:15:31   But it doesn't happen overnight.

00:15:32   It happens over the course of five years.

00:15:34   So the kind of the year over year improvements are what you would have expected to see, at least of the CPU.

00:15:44   I said they're in line with the A19, right?

00:15:47   Which was the same kind of idea.

00:15:49   So, you know, the CPUs go up a bit, but not massively.

00:15:54   And the GPU goes up a lot more.

00:15:58   And that was the case on the A19 versus A18.

00:16:02   And that's the case for M4 to M5.

00:16:04   Remember, the M4 was introduced about 18 months ago.

00:16:08   It was introduced in the spring of 24 with the iPad Pro.

00:16:13   That was where that event happened.

00:16:15   I went to New York for that one.

00:16:17   And I was in London.

00:16:17   I went to Battersea and saw that one.

00:16:19   That's right.

00:16:20   That's right.

00:16:20   So this is the next, you know, chip family, chip group unveil.

00:16:25   So, you know, year and a half, more like.

00:16:29   Not a year.

00:16:30   And it's only this one.

00:16:32   The others shall come later, which was also true, actually.

00:16:34   Back in 24, they only unveiled the base model chip.

00:16:37   The difference is that in the M1 generation, they came out with the M1s and there was a low-end MacBook Pro.

00:16:46   But in M2 and M3, I believe all the MacBook Pros went together.

00:16:50   And the same was the case in the M4.

00:16:53   They released that iPad Pro, but not a Mac using the M4.

00:16:59   If my memory serves me right, at least one of the MacBook Pros, the Pro models came before the standard.

00:17:06   Like the M5, the M-whatever Pro chip.

00:17:10   That, yeah, I don't remember that.

00:17:12   That might be true.

00:17:12   But my point being that in the M4 generation, they seemed to hold the whole MacBook Pro line until they had the M4, M4 Pro, and M4 Max chips.

00:17:20   Yeah.

00:17:21   And with this generation, they didn't bother.

00:17:22   They're like, yep, okay, M5, it's out there, MacBook Pro.

00:17:25   And the MacBook Pro high-end models are still using M4 generation chips that are faster.

00:17:30   I mean, let's be clear here.

00:17:31   The M4 Pro and M4 Max are faster.

00:17:33   On everything except single core, where you're just testing a single core.

00:17:38   But they have 10, like, they're faster.

00:17:42   Computers.

00:17:43   But the new, faster, faster chips are not there yet.

00:17:47   And the GPU being 37% faster, that is an outlier, right?

00:17:53   Like, I remember this from when we were looking at the A chip.

00:17:56   Like, it's a bigger jump than the typical jump.

00:18:01   Yeah, I haven't done my March of the M1 analysis yet.

00:18:05   I should probably do that, but it feels like it's, this is a GPU year, is what it feels

00:18:09   like to me, that the GPU core got a lot better.

00:18:12   And imagine what it's going to be like when, you know, like, the Pro and Max chips are playing

00:18:15   20 cores.

00:18:16   It's like, whoa, I'm going to scream.

00:18:19   Presumably.

00:18:19   The only thing to watch there is that, you know, sometimes in the Pro and Max chips, they're

00:18:23   doing some different stuff that a lot of the bonus that comes in the base model is that

00:18:30   sometimes they're importing features from the high-end models, like the memory bandwidth.

00:18:34   And I'm pretty sure the memory bandwidth in the M4 Pro and Max is, you know, quite a bit

00:18:39   superior to the memory bandwidth in the M4.

00:18:42   So the M5 getting better memory bandwidth is good, but that was, I think, a feature that

00:18:47   was already in the higher-end chips.

00:18:48   So some of that is they're just sort of like rolling it down to the lower-end models of chip.

00:18:53   And so you mentioned that basically these neural accelerators going into the GPUs.

00:18:58   And in doing this, it's like, this is what people running AI tasks want, right?

00:19:04   The GPU is better for it.

00:19:05   You put the neural coil in it.

00:19:06   It's going to accelerate that.

00:19:08   This is what Apple is good at, right?

00:19:09   Is Apple's good at building this hardware.

00:19:11   Apple is struggling so much on the AI software side, but Apple is good at creating hardware

00:19:16   platforms.

00:19:17   And, like, Apple really, really wants more AI tasks to happen on device for a couple

00:19:24   reasons.

00:19:24   One of them is, yes, it means your data doesn't leave your device.

00:19:28   That's great.

00:19:28   It's privacy.

00:19:29   The other is that Apple's good at this.

00:19:32   And so they want people to do this on device because Apple devices are better for it because

00:19:38   Apple Silicon is so good.

00:19:40   So they really have a kind of a mission reason to do it and also a strategy reason to do it.

00:19:48   I was listening to you guys talk about this on Connected last week.

00:19:52   And I think you all made some really good points about this.

00:19:56   What I would say is, yeah, Federico is right, that Apple's like saying, oh, say you're a

00:20:05   college student and you've got all your notes and you're going to use an on-device LLM to

00:20:14   analyze all of your notes.

00:20:16   And his point was, well, no, you're just going to use ChatGPT or Claude for that.

00:20:20   You're not going to use Misty Studio.

00:20:22   That's true.

00:20:23   Misty Studio is a, it's a demo, you know, that Apple did for the M5.

00:20:28   Misty Studio runs an open source model locally.

00:20:31   It's a very, it's a very impressive.

00:20:32   I felt bad for them.

00:20:34   I mean, without getting into, I don't want to get into a lot of details, but like, what's

00:20:39   the scenario for that?

00:20:40   Like, they're like, you know, what's the scenario where you're on a college campus, you need to

00:20:46   analyze your notes, but your college doesn't have the internet or you're in a wooded grove

00:20:51   somewhere away from Wi-Fi.

00:20:53   And of course, Apple doesn't put cellular modems into their laptops.

00:20:56   So you're out of luck, but you've got your local large language model.

00:20:59   That all said, I think what Apple would like, and I do think that this will happen as the

00:21:06   devices become more capable, is that there are apps that have either, either the OS integrates

00:21:13   optional large language models of various kinds and the foundation models get better, right?

00:21:19   That there are various Apple foundation models.

00:21:21   Federico mentioned this on Connected.

00:21:23   So that like, it's not a least common, lowest common denominator kind of model.

00:21:28   If you're on a Mac Studio with enormous GPUs, or if you're on an M5, that's got all these

00:21:33   accelerators, that you're running a more powerful model than is running on an iPhone Air, right?

00:21:38   That's part of the idea here.

00:21:39   And then over time, you would ideally want all these apps to be more like that.

00:21:45   Like Misty Studio, if you run it, I actually think they did a pretty amazing job of making

00:21:49   it feel kind of like a consumer app, but it's not.

00:21:54   It's technical.

00:21:55   It's like me saying, oh, you know, Shortcuts does a pretty good job of being a consumer user

00:22:01   scripting utility.

00:22:02   It's like, well, yeah, but also really no, but in the long run, and there are other apps

00:22:07   that are not LLMs that are like this.

00:22:09   Now there are, there are lots of packaged apps on the Mac and the iPhone and the iPad where

00:22:15   there's machine learning models running under the surface and you as a user don't really

00:22:19   need to think about that.

00:22:20   It's just part of the job.

00:22:22   And if the, if the hardware has the ability to execute those models really well, that's

00:22:29   good.

00:22:29   But the challenge right now is that so much hardware is so bad that, and all the AI companies

00:22:37   are really motivated to build out these GPUs in the cloud.

00:22:40   So right now the, the core AI world is like more, more GPUs in the cloud and what Apple

00:22:47   would say, and I think some app developers would probably say is, I'd really rather not

00:22:52   pay for more GPUs in the cloud.

00:22:54   I'd really rather just have it run on device for so many reasons.

00:22:57   Yeah.

00:22:57   Um, even if it's a little slower because, uh, you know, so that would benefit Apple.

00:23:03   I think it would benefit app developers because they would not necessarily have to, you know,

00:23:06   I, I, there are already apps where, that I use that are like, if you would like

00:23:10   to do this feature, you can use AI credits.

00:23:12   And when you run out of AI credits, you must buy more, even though it's like, but I bought

00:23:15   your software and they're like, yeah, but AI features are expensive.

00:23:19   So you're going to have to pay for those, pay extra for those.

00:23:21   It's not great.

00:23:22   And if you could run them on device and, and, and just say, oh yeah, this just runs on my

00:23:25   device.

00:23:26   It's fine.

00:23:26   That's good.

00:23:27   So that's where Apple is headed here.

00:23:29   But I would agree with the idea that it's a little premature because, uh, or, or at least

00:23:34   what you think of as AI right now is not happening on your device.

00:23:37   So this is not going to help that.

00:23:40   So Apple is touting big numbers, right?

00:23:42   They say the 10 core GPU features a dedicated neural accelerator in each core, delivering

00:23:47   over four times peak GPU compute performance compared to the M4 and over six times peak GPU

00:23:53   performance for AI compared to the M1.

00:23:56   So we spoke about Federico a bunch and I'm going to mention him again.

00:23:58   So I was talking to him cause he has a review of the iPad pro and he has been, yeah, we're

00:24:05   going to get to yours in a minute.

00:24:06   Don't you worry.

00:24:07   I'm there too.

00:24:08   I did that too.

00:24:09   He and I saw that same briefing about Misty studio and a student lost out in the woods

00:24:13   with an LLM on their device.

00:24:16   But Federico has been trying to test some of the stuff based on MLX, which is Apple's like

00:24:23   on device, um, system for running AI models.

00:24:27   Machine learning platform.

00:24:28   Yep.

00:24:29   And the, he has like a custom app that he has been, that he's had built so he can run

00:24:37   these tools.

00:24:38   Sure.

00:24:38   And he was not seeing any improvement at all.

00:24:44   And the reason is the version of MLX that Apple will release.

00:24:52   And that's the key to actually take advantage of the, at least on the iPad pro, it doesn't

00:24:57   exist yet.

00:24:57   It's not out yet.

00:24:58   So there, there isn't even a way for him to test these claims right now.

00:25:05   And it's like, this is like the perfect encapsulation, I think of Apple and AI right now, which is

00:25:11   like, and it reminds me so much of like the years and years we spent talking about the iPad

00:25:16   pro of like they have incredible hardware that is super capable, but they have none of the

00:25:22   underpinning for it.

00:25:23   Yeah.

00:25:23   Yeah.

00:25:24   I would say that that, that is true, but also that this is an industry wide phenomenon.

00:25:28   I think that if I'm, if I'm a device maker, if I'm a chip maker, I'm really trying to extol

00:25:33   the virtues of on-device machine learning.

00:25:36   Because the Sam Altman's of the world want us to build as many data centers as possible and

00:25:42   the Jensen Wang's, right?

00:25:43   To buy as many GPUs as possible to put in those data centers.

00:25:46   And if you're Apple, you look at it and say, well, what we would like for privacy reasons

00:25:54   and for strategy reasons, like I said, is that you'd be able to run that stuff on device.

00:26:00   And here's, here's my optimism, which is, I think there are definitely scenarios where the processor

00:26:08   ability to run machine learning models ramps up so quickly that you end up in a, in a case

00:26:17   where the things that people want to do on their device can be done on their device.

00:26:22   And that the cloud infrastructure is overkill for all, but the most ambitious things.

00:26:27   And if the ambitions, because this is AI we're talking about, if the ambitions, uh, outstrip

00:26:33   reality, um, that's an opportunity for them to catch up.

00:26:37   And I think this, it fits perfectly with Apple's whole privacy thing, but it's not there now.

00:26:41   I mean, that's the, that's the bottom line is it's a great idea.

00:26:43   And I, and like I said about Misty studio, all things considered, it does a pretty good

00:26:47   job of, of being kind of a friendly face to building an AI model.

00:26:51   But in the end, it's like shortcuts in that it's not really that friendly and what you really

00:26:55   need, and this is where Apple I would say is the most behind, right?

00:26:59   Which is what's Apple's on device kind of like we provide it for you, or there's a plugin architecture

00:27:06   or something strategy for AI, because what they did with Xcode is really interesting with Xcode.

00:27:12   There are models.

00:27:14   You can choose your model and they, you can choose on device models or not.

00:27:19   So like you could see a scenario where apps can bring models, or there's a third party installer

00:27:24   that installs a model on your device, or you point it at a cloud model.

00:27:28   That's your favorite or whatever, but like they're just not there.

00:27:31   So they, they built this nice hardware and, and the other thing we know the travails of

00:27:36   Apple's AI strategy over the last few years, right?

00:27:38   Um, chip design takes a long time.

00:27:42   So Apple's chips are designed with the assumption that Apple software will have gotten its act

00:27:49   together and the reason you see that kind of weird disparity between Apple's chip prowess

00:27:58   and their kind of confusion about software is because, you know, they're the, the chip design

00:28:04   thing is just, they're, they're working years ahead and they're flying straight as an arrow

00:28:08   and it exposes when the, when the software loses its way, which it has.

00:28:12   So, uh, I think it's really interesting.

00:28:14   I think you're already seeing Johnny Scroogey and his people adapt to the idea that the

00:28:19   world doesn't just want the neural engine, even though on the PC side, people are talking

00:28:24   about NPUs a lot, right?

00:28:25   That's the neural engine.

00:28:27   They're trying to say, oh yeah, we've got a specialized neural processor, but with these

00:28:31   accelerators, I think they're also adapting to the fact that, you know, a lot of stuff is

00:28:36   not built for that.

00:28:37   It's just built to run on a GPU.

00:28:38   So let's make the GPU better.

00:28:39   And they have.

00:28:40   Why not both, right?

00:28:41   Like let's, let's do all of it.

00:28:42   In fact, why not all three of them?

00:28:44   They put neural accelerators on everything.

00:28:45   Yep.

00:28:46   Yep.

00:28:46   Yep.

00:28:47   Uh, something they have not accelerated is connectivity.

00:28:50   This, uh, this MacBook Pro is missing Wi-Fi 7 on Bluetooth 6 and obviously still has no

00:28:55   cellular.

00:28:56   All of this is so much more painful now that Apple literally make chips to solve all of these

00:29:02   problems themselves.

00:29:03   This is the moment where I decided, I was writing my review when I got to this section.

00:29:07   I was like, you know, I need to write this.

00:29:09   I need to write this now that Apple makes, uh, a chip that's in iPads and iPhones that connects

00:29:17   to Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth, whatever, 6 something or other.

00:29:23   It doesn't really matter.

00:29:23   It's the latest Bluetooth or a very forward Bluetooth.

00:29:30   And they didn't put it in the Mac Bluetooth 6.

00:29:32   So it's, it's Bluetooth 6 and Wi-Fi 7 versus Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3.

00:29:37   And I, I understand that this is a, a minor update and there's supposedly a major MacBook

00:29:45   Pro update coming at the end of next year.

00:29:47   Um, which makes me wonder if that's the case, if we will actually see MacBook Pros in the spring

00:29:55   or not, if they're coming in the fall, we'll, we'll have to see.

00:29:59   I think they're holding, they're holding off that like they're, they're, they're holding

00:30:02   this, these features off for that big refresh.

00:30:05   Cause it's just like another nice box.

00:30:07   They can tick on the spec sheet when they have the supposed touch screen.

00:30:11   Right.

00:30:12   Whether they're coming or not, whether there's a, an M5, uh, pro MacBook Pro in the spring

00:30:17   or not just a few months before the one in the fall.

00:30:20   Um, they've done that before.

00:30:22   That won't, again, Apple can do whatever it wants, but yeah, this is a case where they didn't

00:30:26   build it in here.

00:30:26   Probably they're holding it back, but you know what?

00:30:29   I, it's not a good enough excuse because Apple can do it at once.

00:30:33   Apple has built a chip that does Bluetooth six and, and wifi seven, and they didn't put it

00:30:38   in the MacBook Pro and it's an iPhones and it's an iPads.

00:30:41   So your Mac, your MacBook Pro, your professional Macintosh laptop can't connect to wifi as fast as

00:30:50   an iPad or an iPhone and the C one X is here now and that the, the, the iPhone air has it.

00:31:00   And the, um, M5 iPad pro that I reviewed has it cellular based on an Apple chip.

00:31:10   And I just need to point out that the Mac still doesn't do it.

00:31:13   Apple's built the chip.

00:31:15   There are a lot, I'm not going to get into the reasons.

00:31:18   I think I tried to, I tried to boil it down as much as possible to say in my review, tethering

00:31:24   to a phone is not a cure-all and Apple's been offering cellular iPads since the very beginning.

00:31:29   So like make the case for cellular being an option.

00:31:33   It just should be an option on laptops and it's still not.

00:31:37   Because also tethering is like, it doesn't, if your answer is tethering, then you're not

00:31:44   putting enough thought into how a Mac uses cellular data.

00:31:49   Yeah.

00:31:49   No, there's, there's a lot of, there's a lot of reasons.

00:31:51   I really don't want to get into the tethering argument again, because people are like, again,

00:31:55   it's that same thing, which is like, you don't need tethering because Apple doesn't offer

00:31:58   it.

00:31:58   They decide they need to defend Apple not offering, but it's like, well, if you don't need tethering,

00:32:01   why does the iPad have tethering?

00:32:02   There's no answer.

00:32:04   There's no good answer.

00:32:05   Cellular, like, well, I have cellular, the iPad has cellular because you said tethering.

00:32:09   Oh, well, I mean, yeah.

00:32:10   If the tethering is okay for the Mac, why isn't it okay for the iPad?

00:32:13   That's my point.

00:32:14   Yeah.

00:32:14   Like, well, you don't need cellular on an iPad, just tether to your phone.

00:32:17   I was like, well, no.

00:32:18   Like there are reasons, battery drain, funkiness and connection.

00:32:23   Like tethering is a great fallback, but like, why has Apple been offering cellular iPads

00:32:28   since 2010 if tethering is fine and cellular is unnecessary?

00:32:32   Why?

00:32:33   The answer is tethering is not fine.

00:32:35   It's a fallback.

00:32:36   It's okay, but it's better to just have it.

00:32:39   I pay $20 a month for my iPad cellular plan because I really, really, really am happy when

00:32:47   I'm using my iPad in a place without Wi-Fi out in the woods doing some ML models to have

00:32:52   the cellular connection there.

00:32:54   And that was, I mean, again, if you're using that laptop in Missy Studio out in the woods

00:33:00   to do your ML models, if you had a cellular Mac, you could just use the cloud, right?

00:33:06   Yeah.

00:33:06   Right?

00:33:06   But they don't make one.

00:33:08   And so, yeah.

00:33:09   Anyway, it's dumb.

00:33:10   They make the chips now.

00:33:12   They're officially on the clock.

00:33:13   I am all out of excuses.

00:33:16   Do you think that this was the right computer?

00:33:19   Like, why didn't they start with the M5 and the MacBook Air?

00:33:23   Why did they do just, I know we don't know, but like, do you think it makes sense to just,

00:33:28   hey, here's the lowest level 14-inch MacBook Pro.

00:33:31   We'll just put it in there.

00:33:33   It is probably about sales volume because the Air is the most popular Mac laptop.

00:33:40   Do they have enough M5 chips for the Air for the holidays?

00:33:44   Yeah.

00:33:45   So that's probably part of it.

00:33:47   It may be like how many M4 chips they've got and how many M4 Airs they're building and whatever

00:33:52   is looking at the end of that cycle.

00:33:54   Also, if they're doing anything other than just a straight up slap a new chip in it for

00:33:58   the MacBook Air a little more time, the MacBook Air came out in the spring.

00:34:02   So it's our, it's not as, you know, it's not old.

00:34:06   It's some combination of those.

00:34:08   Because they also could have done no Macs, right?

00:34:10   They could have just put this in the iPad and left it at that.

00:34:12   They chose to put it, I, you know, part of it is, I think that they, that this, this MacBook

00:34:18   Pro is not that important.

00:34:19   It sells fine.

00:34:20   It sells well.

00:34:21   They have the chip.

00:34:24   So why not put it in there?

00:34:25   They can, they can fulfill the volume.

00:34:28   I think it might be that simple.

00:34:29   Give this computer a little day in the sun, right?

00:34:32   Like that kind of thing.

00:34:33   Well, and, and also I could argue that if you're staging a rollout for your next chip and you're

00:34:39   very proud of how great your chips are, being able to show it off on Mac OS, unlike last

00:34:45   time where they didn't talk about Mac performance with the M4 and we had to wait until there was

00:34:51   finally an M4 Mac to talk about Mac performance.

00:34:54   And, um, this time they, they, they erased that, right?

00:34:57   Cause we do have a Mac.

00:34:58   So we can talk about now, ironically, performance is identical across these systems, but at least

00:35:03   we know that the, it's also on the Mac.

00:35:05   That is, that is something, but it's a, it's a curious little choice they made.

00:35:08   What a funny computer this is really like this base level MacBook Pro.

00:35:12   Like it was essentially an abandoned product, right?

00:35:15   Like after a period of time with the touch bar, it seemed like they, and you were touching

00:35:19   this in review, right?

00:35:20   Like it seemed like they kind of wanted to get rid of it, but couldn't because of commercial

00:35:24   buyers and stuff like business.

00:35:26   Gruber called it an odd duck, I think.

00:35:28   Yeah.

00:35:28   And he's right.

00:35:29   Like it was such a weird computer.

00:35:31   For a long time, it didn't make sense of why you'd even call it a MacBook Pro because it

00:35:36   wasn't a MacBook Pro.

00:35:37   The MacBook Pros were the higher end models and they're like, we also have this MacBook Pro

00:35:41   that is not like all the others.

00:35:43   And it was, yeah, and, and we, we speculated that one of the reasons they kept it around

00:35:47   was because businesses wouldn't buy a MacBook Air.

00:35:51   They would have, they wanted to buy a MacBook Pro because the MacBook Pro is a professional

00:35:55   product and the MacBook Air is just a little flimsy consumer laptop.

00:35:59   And I think there's some truth to that.

00:36:01   And they also didn't want to go to the cost of the M like the pro level MacBook Pro.

00:36:06   That's the other part of it is it's the classic having a starts at price.

00:36:12   that's a lot lower than $2,000 because that's where those higher end models were starting.

00:36:16   And they wanted a laptop that they could call MacBook Pro that was cheaper.

00:36:22   However, I do take some umbrage at the idea that this is still that because with the M3

00:36:32   generation, they added a bunch of functionality.

00:36:34   And with the M4 generation, the MacBook Pro was parallel to the MacBook Pro higher models in

00:36:44   everything except the chip.

00:36:45   Basically, they, they brought it all the way back.

00:36:48   It's a real MacBook Pro starting with the M4.

00:36:51   I even wrote in my review.

00:36:52   I'm like, this is a real MacBook Pro.

00:36:54   Now it just has the M4 chip.

00:36:55   That is still the case with the M5.

00:36:57   And the more powerful these base model chips get, the more I actually have to ask the question,

00:37:02   for whom is this not enough?

00:37:04   And there are going to be people up there at the high end who really, really have needs.

00:37:08   But like the more capable you make the base model chip, if you're Apple, the less necessary

00:37:14   your high end chips get.

00:37:16   Not that they aren't necessary for certain tasks, but I do think that the base models are

00:37:21   so powerful now that we've been asking these questions on the iPad for a long time.

00:37:25   But now I think we're asking them for the Mac too, which is like, I'm not sure how many people

00:37:30   who are MacBook Pro buyers even need more than an M5.

00:37:33   Like, it's pretty impressive.

00:37:34   I know there are reasons.

00:37:35   There are always going to be exceptions, but like, it's pretty great.

00:37:39   And it's got the display, you know, and maybe the answer is that with the M6 generation,

00:37:43   this thing's going to stick around like this and the M6 generation, which is going to be

00:37:48   way more expensive to build and it's going to have OLED and it's going to have a touch screen.

00:37:52   Like maybe what's happening here is that we've been in this product cycle long enough that

00:37:56   the low end product has finally joined its high end buddies because the margins are okay.

00:38:02   And then we're about to enter a new cycle where it loses the high end buddies again and they

00:38:07   move off into the distance and it stays behind.

00:38:09   That may very well be the case next year.

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00:40:28   So we have made reference to it.

00:40:31   You also have an M5 iPad Pro.

00:40:35   Sure.

00:40:35   And you've reviewed it.

00:40:36   Yep.

00:40:37   What does the power of the M5 do for the iPad Pro?

00:40:42   I don't know, man.

00:40:43   It is, like, theoretically with iPadOS 26, having more memory bandwidth, and I think even for

00:40:55   the M4, iOS 26 makes you take advantage of the power much better than in the past.

00:41:02   But in both of these cases, we're talking about, I mean, here's the truth.

00:41:07   The M5 power is only relevant in the sense that if you're coming from an old iPad, it will

00:41:15   be good.

00:41:16   That's what, that's its relevance.

00:41:18   It's relevance in going from M4 to M5.

00:41:21   You're like, okay, convince me that what M5 offers is more than what M4 offers so that

00:41:28   I can go from M4 to M5 and there's a reason for it.

00:41:31   There's no reason for it.

00:41:32   Everything cranks up a little bit.

00:41:34   But if you've got an M4 or M2 iPad Pro, like, I'd say you're fine.

00:41:40   Even an M1, you're probably fine.

00:41:42   Although I used the M1 a little bit and, you know, it's chunky and it's a little bit slow

00:41:47   for some of the stuff, especially iPad multitasking.

00:41:50   It's still pretty good, actually.

00:41:51   But that's, that's the reason for this is it's, it's not about people rushing in.

00:41:58   It's about that when it comes time for you to buy a new iPad Pro, if you choose that, if

00:42:04   you like that product line, you will find it better.

00:42:07   And it gives Apple the freedom to put the M4 in the iPad Air if they want to.

00:42:11   Yeah.

00:42:12   That's it, though.

00:42:13   I mean, it's not, that's all that's happening here.

00:42:17   This is, this is something that it means the next time you look, it'll be better than the

00:42:22   last time you looked.

00:42:23   That's it.

00:42:24   Because, you know, this iPad Pro, it was only introduced a year and a bit ago.

00:42:30   Yep.

00:42:31   And it was a huge upgrade.

00:42:33   Sure.

00:42:34   Making it super thin.

00:42:36   Super thin.

00:42:37   That light and that incredible OLED screen.

00:42:39   Absolutely.

00:42:40   Really was.

00:42:41   And it also, I think, changed the screen sizes a little bit, right?

00:42:44   So, they became the 11 and 13.

00:42:46   So, like, it kind of made the screen size a little bit bigger.

00:42:48   Yep.

00:42:49   Like, you get all of this.

00:42:51   Like, if you're upgrading to anything other than an M4, which is, like, probably most iPad

00:42:56   Pro owners, you get all of that plus this chip.

00:42:59   Like, that's what you're getting.

00:43:01   That's right.

00:43:01   That's right.

00:43:02   Coming from the M1, looking at that M1 that I have in my house and then comparing it to

00:43:06   the M4 or the M5, right?

00:43:08   Like, it's really nice.

00:43:09   So, that is, that's the thing, is that that was a great hardware upgrade, the M4.

00:43:16   And this is just that with the M5 in it.

00:43:17   There's not really anything appreciably different.

00:43:19   Like, I, the big things are actually not the M5 because, again, it is incrementally better.

00:43:28   It's the other stuff.

00:43:29   It's the, it's the C1X.

00:43:31   It's the N1.

00:43:33   So, you could do Wi-Fi 7.

00:43:34   I did some wireless testing, which is not something I usually do on iPads.

00:43:38   Not, not a lot, but, like, I, I, I spotted the Wi-Fi.

00:43:44   I have a Wi-Fi 7 router that I bought specifically when Apple started adding a Wi-Fi 7 to their products

00:43:49   with the iPhone.

00:43:52   And, uh, yeah, you know what?

00:43:53   Wi-Fi 7 is really fast.

00:43:55   And the Wi-Fi on the M5 was faster when it was around my Wi-Fi 7 router than the M4.

00:44:02   Um, the cellular was really interesting.

00:44:08   Now, I cannot make claims of being a comprehensive cellular tester.

00:44:13   I tested on one carrier, which was AT&T, and I tested in one location, which was the harsh

00:44:21   conditions of my backyard, where T-Mobile and Verizon fear to tread.

00:44:26   I am in a dead zone for T-Mobile and Verizon here, but we do have a couple of bars of AT&T.

00:44:31   Um, and it was really interesting because on AT&T in my backyard, all the caveats necessary,

00:44:40   what I found was that the download speeds on average on the M5, on the C1X, were a little

00:44:47   bit slower, not a lot, but just a little bit slower.

00:44:50   It was also like six times faster at upload.

00:44:53   So I guess what I've learned is that it's different.

00:44:58   Um, but, but I think in the end it was probably pretty good.

00:45:02   I also tried it on Verizon.

00:45:04   The, my review unit had Verizon on it.

00:45:07   I added AT&T onto it, onto my account, paid that extra money for you, the listener and the

00:45:15   reader, um, me and Verizon, which is in a dead zone in my house.

00:45:21   I got a bar and I got some decent download, not good, but decent.

00:45:27   And the upload speed was a joke.

00:45:30   The upload speed was like 0.2 megabits.

00:45:34   It was bad.

00:45:36   But, uh, the download speed, the fact that it got service at all just kind of blows me

00:45:40   away.

00:45:40   But I only tried it in my backyard.

00:45:41   There are other places I could try it, but I am not a wireless review site.

00:45:45   Uh, it was, it's an enough effort to review all these products without spending a day driving

00:45:51   around to different places and doing head to heads.

00:45:53   And I only have access to two device, two iPads with one, uh, carrier.

00:45:58   And I'm not trying other carriers either, um, on both devices.

00:46:01   So this is what you get.

00:46:03   Please do not use this conversation, uh, to start C1X gate.

00:46:07   We know the upgrade podcast does not endorse C1X gate.

00:46:11   And it's not worse.

00:46:12   It's just different.

00:46:12   Like again, the peak download speeds were a little bit less at the same.

00:46:16   And I tested them all identically at the same time in the same location, the whole thing

00:46:21   on two different days.

00:46:22   And it was consistently, I mean, again, the individual tests using UCLA speed test were

00:46:27   varied, but the differences between the two were pretty much consistent.

00:46:34   So, uh, it felt a little slower to download things, not a lot, just a tiny bit and way faster

00:46:41   at uploading for whatever reason in my backyard.

00:46:43   Um, certainly not an issue and maybe depending on what you want to do and improvement.

00:46:49   So, um, and I've heard positive things from people with the iPhone air as well, which uses

00:46:53   this chip that there are, there are circumstances where it's better.

00:46:56   And also it's more power efficient.

00:46:58   I think that that's one of the things I haven't had a chance to really test the battery life.

00:47:02   The battery on these things is so huge, especially the 13 inch, which is what I have.

00:47:05   But, um, uh, they do fast charging, which charges fast.

00:47:10   That's my report on fast charging as I plugged it in and I, I came, it was, it was perilously

00:47:14   close to being out and I was trying to review it and I plugged it into a pretty

00:47:19   powerful charger and I walked away.

00:47:20   And then I came back and I was like, Whoa, it's got, you know, it's almost full now.

00:47:23   And it, yeah, it, it, it charged, uh, it has the capability to charge real fast.

00:47:28   Uh, half, half of it in half an hour, something like that.

00:47:31   Apple says.

00:47:32   So, um, that's good.

00:47:34   But, uh, yeah, these are little things, but these are the changes this year.

00:47:38   So when Apple releases a new MacBook Pro and an iPad Pro on the same day, it has always

00:47:43   and continues to ask the inevitable questions of how these two devices compare to each other.

00:47:48   Um, do you mind if I quote your review for a moment?

00:47:51   Go ahead and quote me.

00:47:53   There was a time when it seemed like Apple viewed the iPad as the future of the computer

00:47:58   and the Mac was seemingly consigned to the past.

00:48:00   It's ironic that today at a moment when the Mac seems to have come back to the center of

00:48:05   Apple's computing universe, the iPad feels the closest it's ever been to fulfilling that

00:48:10   earlier desire.

00:48:11   It's better this way because the iPad can be as much of the Mac as it needs to be to fulfill

00:48:16   its own destiny without needing to carry the burden of replacing the Mac.

00:48:20   Beautiful pros, Jason Snell, some nice.

00:48:23   I just diced that out on an iPad in my backyard yesterday afternoon.

00:48:26   That's all.

00:48:27   Well, you need, that's, that's it.

00:48:28   Now the iPad is so good and powerful.

00:48:30   You have the ability to write such beautiful.

00:48:31   Oh man, the words just fly out.

00:48:32   You don't need the Mac for this kind of writing.

00:48:35   And this is basically, you know, look, the iPadOS 26 is so incredible.

00:48:40   It really is incredible.

00:48:42   Like I absolutely love iPadOS 26.

00:48:45   And so now there just isn't so much of an argument that the iPad just doesn't have the software

00:48:53   to power it because it absolutely does.

00:48:56   And you're able to take advantage of the software that's already been there in a way that just

00:49:01   feels more capable.

00:49:02   So it's fantastic that we're in that spot so that now we don't have to compare them to

00:49:09   each other so much or like say, look, this can do that and this can't and this can do

00:49:12   it because they're so much closer.

00:49:14   And it's, it's especially good at a time when they are essentially sharing so many of their

00:49:20   internals and they're on a path to continue sharing more, right?

00:49:24   With like these new cellular chips and stuff.

00:49:26   But they're also allowed to be their own thing.

00:49:27   I think that's the conundrum here, the weird ironic twist that I tried to get across in

00:49:33   that section of the review is the iPad finally feels like it is fulfilling what we've been

00:49:41   waiting for it to fulfill for a decade.

00:49:43   It's been 10 years almost to the day that the iPad Pro was announced, the first one.

00:49:50   It feels like we're closer than ever.

00:49:52   And iPadOS 26 is an enormous part of that.

00:49:55   The new multitasking, the background processing, all of these nice features that they've added.

00:50:00   And they've added a bunch over the last few years, but 26 really knocked it out of the park.

00:50:04   And yet there was a time when we all looked at the iPad Pro and thought Apple thinks this

00:50:10   is the future of computers and the Mac's going to fade away.

00:50:13   And today it doesn't feel like that at all.

00:50:15   Today it feels like the Mac is riding high.

00:50:17   Apple loves where the Mac is going.

00:50:19   Apple does not think that the iPad has to carry the burden of being the replacement for the Mac.

00:50:25   And in a strange way, I think when we look at the multitasking in 26,

00:50:28   it frees the iPad to be more Mac-like in some ways because it doesn't have to be...

00:50:37   Like if the iPad had to replace the Mac, the multitasking would be judged as

00:50:42   what does it not do that the Mac does?

00:50:44   And instead, I feel like what we judge in 26 and iPadOS 26 is

00:50:49   the way it makes multi-windows better.

00:50:52   Like it's got a menu bar.

00:50:53   It's not a Mac menu bar, but it is a menu bar that does some things the Mac menu bar does that are nice.

00:50:58   It's got the stoplight buttons.

00:50:59   They don't work quite the same, but they are familiar and they work and they help.

00:51:04   And it's got a dock and it's got stage manager being like the Mac stage manager

00:51:07   and you can move the windows around anywhere.

00:51:11   If this makes any sense, like it's able to pick up what it wants from the Mac

00:51:16   and apply it in an iPad context that makes sense without the burden of having to fulfill the needs

00:51:23   of everybody who is jumping onto the iPad as a life raft because the Mac is sinking

00:51:28   because that's not happening anymore.

00:51:29   And I think that frees the iPad to be itself, but also weirdly frees it to pick and choose what it takes from the Mac conceptually

00:51:40   without this overhead of like, we must rethink the Mac for the future because this is the future of the Mac.

00:51:47   Instead, it's just like, hey, those stoplight buttons work pretty well.

00:51:49   Let's just put those in there.

00:51:50   And the fact that I could write a review of an iPad now without having the obligatory paragraph of disappointment,

00:51:58   which I wrote about last time with the M4.

00:52:01   I actually quoted my original iPad Pro review in my M4 review.

00:52:05   And then I quoted myself quoting it in this review.

00:52:08   But it's this idea that there's always a paragraph in an iPad review that says,

00:52:16   oh, but Apple is making pro hardware, but they let themselves down because the software can't match it.

00:52:22   And there's no pro apps and there's no pro features.

00:52:24   And it doesn't do this basic video export and it doesn't do like, and it's not completely gone.

00:52:32   Just as it is not completely gone from any of Apple's devices,

00:52:35   because the hardware is so far ahead of the software in so many ways across the board.

00:52:39   But I will say this is, this is the first time because of iPad 20 OS 26.

00:52:47   This is the first time that I can look at an iPad Pro and reasonably not say, but what about?

00:52:56   And this is also great at a time when we may be getting touchscreens on the Mac, right?

00:53:03   Like to say that these devices are separate, they're on their own pathways, they're similar, they share from each other.

00:53:09   It's important at a time when we then just want to go, well, why don't you just put iPadOS in this thing?

00:53:13   You know, like, yeah.

00:53:14   And yeah, so the answer is going to be, I can almost predict when they do those touchscreen Macs in a year,

00:53:19   they're going to say exactly a version of what I just said about the iPad, which is the Mac's its own thing.

00:53:24   The Mac can learn things from the iPad, but what the Mac is not trying to be is an iPad.

00:53:28   It's trying to learn from the iPad lessons we've learned over 10 years or over 15 years on the iPad

00:53:34   and apply those in a different context to the Mac.

00:53:38   That is what they will say.

00:53:39   Because I think that's where we are, is that the iPad and the Mac are kind of facets of each other,

00:53:44   but they're not the same.

00:53:46   Do you want to say anything else about the iPad Pro?

00:53:49   I mean, I feel like we've kind of covered what it has.

00:53:52   It's, you know, this is what it is.

00:53:55   It is a bump.

00:53:57   The only thing I'll say remaining is what I said earlier about how Apple's chips make the,

00:54:07   make you wonder, like, who actually needs the high end.

00:54:10   It feels like the early, like, 15 years ago, 20 years ago,

00:54:14   power users, but, but Power Macs, which then became the Mac Pro.

00:54:21   Think about the idea of, like, what if most of our listeners owned a Mac Pro?

00:54:26   Yeah.

00:54:28   Right?

00:54:29   You're laughing.

00:54:30   It seems ludicrous today.

00:54:31   Shout out to those who do.

00:54:33   Hi, John.

00:54:33   Yep.

00:54:34   But, in the day, that was the case.

00:54:37   And what happened is the Mac Pro ended up being more and more of a niche product

00:54:41   because they could make other products that were more affordable,

00:54:43   that had enough power to do the job.

00:54:46   When the iMac was released, it was a joke for Mac users, for, for Power users,

00:54:51   for the people, kind of people who read Mac magazines, for example.

00:54:54   It was a joke.

00:54:56   It was not a professional computer.

00:54:58   And then they did the G3 Power Mac.

00:55:01   Like, it was a joke.

00:55:03   Over time, the iMac got more and more and more capable to the point where, like,

00:55:06   my last two Intel Macs were iMacs.

00:55:10   It went from joke to me, a power user, just went ahead and bought an iMac.

00:55:15   So, I say that because I feel that a little bit in all of Apple's products now,

00:55:22   but especially in the iPad line where the Mac, first off, the iPad Pro is so expensive.

00:55:28   It really is.

00:55:30   If you compare it to a MacBook Pro, it costs basically the same.

00:55:37   It's got a better screen, but no keyboard.

00:55:39   You have to buy that extra.

00:55:40   But, like, that's how it's priced.

00:55:42   You were talking on Connected about how, like, you get a really nicely dressed up,

00:55:47   full storage iPad Pro, and you're at two grand for an iPad.

00:55:53   And that's where you get in the most RAM, too.

00:55:55   I mean, you get it in both the highest storage configurations.

00:55:57   So, I want to say probably nobody needs an iPad Pro.

00:56:02   Honestly, at this point, I think there are very few people who need an iPad Pro.

00:56:06   The reason you get an iPad Pro is because it's the best, because it's nice, because it's thin,

00:56:12   and it's beautiful, and it's got the best chip, and it's got the best screen by far.

00:56:17   It's the best screen Apple has ever made in a product, probably.

00:56:19   Yep.

00:56:20   I would say so.

00:56:21   So, you pay the money because it's really nice, but I would argue you don't pay because

00:56:28   you need it for your work.

00:56:29   When there's an M3, probably soon to be M4, iPad Air out there.

00:56:33   And this is an interesting little thing, where the iPad Air is basically the iPad Pro experience

00:56:41   from three years ago, two years ago, and way cheaper.

00:56:47   So, that's an interesting feature as well, where Apple has decided, we're going to just

00:56:52   break the bank here.

00:56:53   We're going to build the ultimate expression of the iPad, where it's the best.

00:57:00   It's got the best screen and the best processor, and it is in the most dynamic case, super thin.

00:57:09   And if you don't want that, the iPad Air is fine.

00:57:13   And I just think that's an interesting dynamic.

00:57:15   Like, for the M4 and M5 generations of iPad Pro, I look at the prices and I think,

00:57:20   whew, the only, I think the only way to justify it is, you want the best.

00:57:25   I love the iPad, I want the best, and then I will use it for five years, or whatever.

00:57:30   Or I will hand it down, and then get another one.

00:57:33   I think that's why you buy the iPad Pro.

00:57:35   I don't think there's any, okay, somebody will come at me with an edge case, but I would

00:57:40   say, for the most part, the iPad Pro.

00:57:45   Air is the iPad that people who really love the iPad and want to use it should use, unless

00:57:51   you look at the price of the iPad Pro and you're like, yeah, I can pay that for something that's

00:57:55   nicer.

00:57:55   And I think there's nothing wrong with that.

00:57:57   I think that the world is full of products where if you pay more, you can get the nicer

00:58:01   one.

00:58:01   Um, I just don't think that the iPad Pro any longer has this sort of like, I need to pay

00:58:09   that extra because it does something that I need for my work.

00:58:13   I think that that is almost non-existent at this point.

00:58:16   I have an iPad Pro.

00:58:18   I love it.

00:58:19   I don't think I will buy an iPad Air.

00:58:21   I think I will buy an iPad Pro because I love the iPad Pro and I love the iPad enough that

00:58:25   paying more for niceness makes sense for me because I use it so much and I want it to be

00:58:31   the nicest one with that beautiful screen.

00:58:33   But just to put it in context, as a practical person who gives buying advice from time to

00:58:42   time, the iPad Air is the one you should buy because it does all the same stuff.

00:58:47   It's got, it uses the Pencil Pro.

00:58:50   It's Magic Keyboard isn't quite as nice as the one on the Pro, but it's perfectly nice.

00:58:54   Like it's there.

00:58:55   So that's the other thing I would say is that like, this is a product that the Pro is out

00:58:59   in the stratosphere and it's a product you buy.

00:59:01   I don't want to say it's like a luxury car, but it's a little like that.

00:59:04   It's a, it's a, it's, it's a, a luxury iPad in a lot of ways.

00:59:08   And there's nothing wrong with that.

00:59:09   I think they just updated the Magic Keyboard for the iPad Air.

00:59:13   If I remember right.

00:59:17   No, they just put a new color on it.

00:59:21   That's what they did.

00:59:22   They added a new color.

00:59:23   No, it's the, it's the old iPad Pro Magic Keyboard is what it is.

00:59:26   Because when they changed the size in the M4, they came out with this new one that's got

00:59:29   the aluminum on top and it's got the extra row.

00:59:31   And, and the bigger track pad and you're like, that's all nicer.

00:59:34   Right.

00:59:35   But in the end, what you're paying for is it's nicer and that's fine.

00:59:40   It's paid to make it nicer is not a bad thing to do.

00:59:43   But just to be clear in terms of pure functionality, if you're trying to save some money, the iPad

00:59:47   is, is, is, is great and continues to be great.

00:59:50   This episode is brought to you by Ecamm.

00:59:54   If you're a Mac user who creates video podcasts, you need Ecamm.

00:59:58   Ecamm Live is the all-in-one studio built exclusively for Mac.

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01:00:09   Whether you're live streaming, recording a podcast or producing training videos, Ecamm gives you

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01:00:16   You can switch cameras, share your screen, cue overlays and control audio all without ever

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01:00:23   Jason, I'm sure the Ecamm Live would run pretty great on that new MacBook Pro.

01:00:28   Yeah, for sure.

01:00:29   I, I actually just use Ecamm Live this weekend.

01:00:31   We did a total party kill.

01:00:33   We've got the Apple results coming in a couple of weeks.

01:00:36   I'm going to have, we'll do a, probably a post game of that with Dan Morin.

01:00:40   Um, the total party kill, like we're talking about six people on a zoom, but using the zoom

01:00:48   integration in Ecamm Live, I can get a zoom window inside of Ecamm Live.

01:00:53   I can assign all the people to cameras at which point my layouts that include like a screen

01:01:01   capture of the map that we're using and all the logos and everything else is going on.

01:01:05   And then I have little boxes for the players and they are all coming in as cameras from zoom.

01:01:11   So I can hide the zoom window once I get it all set up and I'm seeing the full production

01:01:17   on every layout.

01:01:18   Uh, you know, I've got one that is everybody pretty big.

01:01:21   I've got one that's everybody's a little smaller with a map, a couple different orientations

01:01:26   of the map, depending on where we go.

01:01:28   And, um, and I, it gives me complete command.

01:01:31   And the best thing about that actually is that when we come back and do our next session, uh,

01:01:36   because it knows who those people are on zoom, it will pop them all back into their cameras.

01:01:40   So I don't even, and I just want to be clear without this integration, I was, I was doing

01:01:45   a screen capture of a zoom window and carving it up manually into squares.

01:01:49   And I don't have to do that every time.

01:01:50   And, and it's just, it's so nice that they do that.

01:01:53   And then it picks up the zoom recordings and I get all the local recordings, uh, from, uh,

01:01:59   my system where I've recorded everybody's audio.

01:02:02   Like it just, it's really nice and it works like a Mac app should.

01:02:07   And, uh, and, and in fact, there's even a camera.

01:02:11   So when, in Ecamm live, you can adjust a camera, there's a camera adjustment view where I can

01:02:16   like pan and tilt my, uh, Insta360 camera, but you can also like zoom and crop.

01:02:21   So like I had somebody on over the weekend who was like down in the corner.

01:02:25   He was like on a laptop that was positioned high and he was kind of like down in the left

01:02:30   corner.

01:02:30   And then there was just space around him.

01:02:32   You know what?

01:02:33   I go into that camera and I go zoom it in a little bit, pan it here, crop it there.

01:02:37   And boom, now he's in the center of the square.

01:02:39   I can do all of that with Ecamm live.

01:02:41   It's amazing.

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01:03:22   The M5 also found its way to the Vision Pro.

01:03:28   Vision Pro got an update, Mike.

01:03:30   It did.

01:03:31   So, this is coming from the M2 Vision Pro, which if I remember rightly was released kind

01:03:38   of around M3 time, because that was just the way that that was going to go.

01:03:41   That's how that went.

01:03:42   Yep.

01:03:42   I want to read the ways that Apple are talking about what the M5 does for the Vision Pro,

01:03:48   and then maybe you can tell me if you have any experience with that.

01:03:54   Sure.

01:03:55   Faster and smoother.

01:03:56   Yeah, you know, it's hard to tell.

01:03:59   It's hard to equate.

01:04:00   I actually talked to Apple about this a bit.

01:04:02   There are cases where it ramps up the frame rate.

01:04:06   It turns out, okay, the displays didn't change.

01:04:08   Just the chip changed.

01:04:09   Here's what the difference is.

01:04:11   Apple, this reveals that there are places where Apple was reducing the capability of the Vision

01:04:18   Vision Pro to below what some of the hardware was capable of because the processor couldn't

01:04:26   keep up.

01:04:26   Right.

01:04:27   And they wouldn't have ever said it at the time, but now that there's a faster one, now

01:04:31   they say it.

01:04:32   So, they say that the pass-through is more responsive and that they can also increase the frame rate

01:04:41   on the pass-through.

01:04:42   Up to 120 hertz.

01:04:44   To 120 hertz, which the displays are capable of, but it wasn't doing.

01:04:48   A thing I did not know.

01:04:49   I just assumed.

01:04:51   If you would have told me or asked me what is the refresh rate on the Vision Pro, I would

01:04:56   have told you 120 hertz.

01:04:57   Yeah.

01:04:58   No, it was not doing that.

01:05:00   More like 90.

01:05:01   It's unclear to me when you see this, and they were cagey about it.

01:05:09   Basically, there are going to be cases.

01:05:11   I don't think what we can say is, oh, well, get ready for the 120 hertz or frames per second

01:05:18   video because that will all start rolling out.

01:05:20   I don't think that's quite what this is.

01:05:22   I think this is that in certain areas where they felt they had the power to go up more in

01:05:28   order to improve the experience.

01:05:29   But it's hard for me to tell just wandering around my house with the Vision Pro in my head

01:05:34   whether it's better or not.

01:05:35   I can't A-B test it, so I can take one off and put the other one on.

01:05:39   But they say that it's better, and I think I probably believe them because it was good,

01:05:45   but it's hard to quantify this.

01:05:48   And then the other thing that's really interesting is the resolution, which is the other thing

01:05:54   is that they weren't rendering at the full capability resolution of those displays, which if you

01:05:59   think about it, we already knew because foveated rendering, which is what's happening in the

01:06:02   vision pro.

01:06:02   The whole idea there is those Sony screens are capable of rendering or, you know, at full

01:06:09   clarity their entire expanse.

01:06:12   Yeah.

01:06:12   But the system doesn't do it.

01:06:14   Why doesn't it do it?

01:06:16   It's because it can't.

01:06:18   Even the M5, I think, is not powerful enough to do that.

01:06:22   The M2 definitely wasn't.

01:06:24   But what seems to have happened is that with the M5, all of that foveated rendering in the

01:06:32   area where you're looking, foveated rendering, the idea there is basically like your brain

01:06:36   and your eyes don't register your peripheral vision with a level of clarity as where you're

01:06:44   staring, where your attention is.

01:06:46   And so foveated rendering is like, great, if the brain doesn't want it, we won't give

01:06:50   it to them.

01:06:51   And so wherever your eyes are looking is rendered at full or not full, high quality.

01:06:57   And the rest of it is rendered at lower quality, which if you've ever taken a screenshot in

01:07:01   a vision pro, you'll see, you can see where you were looking because that part is clear

01:07:05   and the rest of the image is not clear because you weren't looking there.

01:07:08   And, and it's a frustration if you're taking screenshots, because you have to go into developer

01:07:12   mode and take full resolution and everything.

01:07:14   When you go into developer mode and it stops foveated rendering, everything gets choppy

01:07:18   because they just can't keep up.

01:07:20   So anyway, the M5 apparently renders the higher resolution foveated rendering portion higher

01:07:29   than it used to.

01:07:30   So, okay.

01:07:31   So this was a question that we had from looking at the press release.

01:07:34   My thought was that the kind of blurry part was pushed out.

01:07:38   But what you're saying is it's actually the part that you're looking at is now rendered

01:07:43   at a 10% higher resolution.

01:07:45   Is the way that Apple says 10% more pixels on the custom micro OLED displays, whatever.

01:07:51   My understanding is it's, it's around the foveated rendering area because that's where

01:07:57   you see it.

01:07:58   And, and it may have, I think, okay, there's a couple of things going on.

01:08:01   Again, this is all very vague and it's hard to measure.

01:08:04   I think part of it is probably that it's a higher resolution or that they've expanded the

01:08:09   area of high resolution.

01:08:11   So it's further out so that more of your peripheral vision right around that, that area of attention.

01:08:18   The other thing though, that I think they are definitely doing is Mac virtual display.

01:08:25   I think they are fully rendering or as much as possible, fully rendering the Mac virtual display.

01:08:31   Cause this is my next question.

01:08:33   Cause it says in the press release, smoother experience, whatever that means.

01:08:38   I think what they found is that the way people use the virtual display, they notice the foveated

01:08:44   rendering.

01:08:44   They notice unlike on my Mac where, you know, I'm looking right at the center of my, my studio

01:08:50   display, but I know that the thing off to the side is perfectly crystal clear, even if my

01:08:55   brain isn't processing it as well.

01:08:56   I think they found that with the Mac virtual display, it felt a little fuzzy and that some

01:09:05   of that was that it wasn't being rendered as crisply as it could be.

01:09:08   Now, some of that was probably what you're directly looking at.

01:09:11   Like if there were, this is the way I would put it.

01:09:14   The Sony displays are 8k or whatever.

01:09:18   They're going to max out.

01:09:19   If you have the power to max them out, they don't have the power on these chips to max them

01:09:25   out.

01:09:25   Cause that display is so huge.

01:09:27   So they're going to render it at a lower resolution.

01:09:29   The rest of it is playing a game of like, what can we get?

01:09:33   That's acceptable in terms of performance with all that's also like frame frame rate.

01:09:39   That's also acceptable in terms of clarity.

01:09:42   And I think with the virtual display, especially they're like, it needs to be clearer.

01:09:46   You know, a lot of the complaints about the virtual display are it's fine, but it's not

01:09:50   great.

01:09:50   It's like, it's okay, but it's not super clear.

01:09:53   So my guess is, and I haven't spent enough time with this to be a hundred percent.

01:09:57   My guess is the virtual display is clearer in where you're looking and it's probably clearer

01:10:03   further out from where you're looking so that as you move around, looking at your max

01:10:08   display, you see it more clearly.

01:10:11   So it's not like, it's just, it's fascinating cause it's, it's about a chip limitation, not

01:10:18   about a display limitation, which is actually answers one of the questions about why put

01:10:22   a faster chip in something if you're not upgrading anything else on the hardware.

01:10:25   The answer is, well, one, we can't use the, the display to its fullest.

01:10:32   We have to cut corners.

01:10:34   We have to do clever rendering techniques.

01:10:36   Okay.

01:10:36   Well, that's good.

01:10:37   And then the other one would be, I think the battery life is going to be a lot better.

01:10:40   They talk about that, that the M5 is so much more energy efficient that the battery life

01:10:44   on this thing will also get better.

01:10:46   So there's, there are wins here.

01:10:48   Now, Mike, I know the question everybody's asking is, should I upgrade from my M2 Vision

01:10:54   Pro to my M5?

01:10:55   And my answer is no, stop.

01:10:56   Don't.

01:10:57   Don't do that.

01:10:58   Don't do it.

01:11:01   But, but they wanted, they didn't want to keep, first off, I think they didn't want

01:11:06   to keep making the M2 and they don't want to keep selling an M2 product.

01:11:09   And so there was a fairly easy slip stream to just put this in here, but it does have benefits.

01:11:14   And I have seen some of them, but, you know, reviewing three products over a weekend, it

01:11:19   is very hard to spend a lot of time with, with all of them.

01:11:22   So I'm looking forward to spending more time with the Vision Pro.

01:11:25   I also have experience with some other Vision Pro items.

01:11:30   So that's very exciting.

01:11:31   We, should we talk about, you want to talk about the new headband, which is available to

01:11:35   all Vision Pro users now.

01:11:37   Yeah.

01:11:37   This is the thing I'm most interested about.

01:11:39   So this is essentially what looks like two of the solo knit band, which is the iconic band

01:11:48   for the Vision Pro, kind of stuck together.

01:11:51   One goes over the top of your head, one goes around the back of your head.

01:11:54   How does this feel?

01:11:59   So far feels pretty good.

01:12:00   Okay.

01:12:01   I have used, I look, I used the 3D printed thing with another knit band on top of my head.

01:12:06   I did that for a while.

01:12:09   That was okay.

01:12:09   I use the Belkin strap that was released this spring.

01:12:15   That was better.

01:12:15   That's the one I've been using.

01:12:16   This is better than that.

01:12:18   One of the reasons it's better than either of those is because it's a single piece, not

01:12:23   two pieces.

01:12:24   There's a single dial to adjust it.

01:12:26   You adjust it, the tightness on the back of your head, and then you pop it out a little

01:12:30   bit, and then it adjusts the top of your head.

01:12:33   So it's a really nice design.

01:12:35   I don't know how they did that.

01:12:36   I think that is just incredible design.

01:12:39   Like, so good.

01:12:41   They kept the 3D knitted material, which I thought would be the first thing that they'd

01:12:47   lose because it felt like such a fancy kind of thing, but they kept it.

01:12:50   And they put metal weights in the back headband.

01:12:55   Yep.

01:12:56   And look, if here's the argument, people don't feel like the vision pro is making them

01:13:04   tired because of the weight pulling down onto their body.

01:13:11   The idea is it's making you feel tired primarily because it's so heavy on the front of your head

01:13:19   and you're having to kind of hold it up.

01:13:22   And so what they've done is they put weights on the back to counterbalance it so that it's

01:13:27   pulling down on your body a little bit more, but it's not pulling forward where your body

01:13:33   is having to adjust.

01:13:34   I'd say I have not spent enough dedicated time with it to say, how does it feel after five

01:13:40   hours?

01:13:40   Uh, I'd like to do that at some point, but I could say it feels really good and the weight

01:13:46   doesn't bother me.

01:13:47   And I think that that's, it didn't, it doesn't feel heavy.

01:13:49   I don't go, Oh no, this is so heavy.

01:13:51   I think that's because partially it's doing its job, which is it's holding it.

01:13:56   It's holding the backside back.

01:13:57   So it's a little more balanced because this has been like the, the controversy over the

01:14:02   last couple of days is they made it heavier, right?

01:14:06   Cause like the technical specs just show that the weight is increased, but like they did give

01:14:12   Apple did give this information that I've got it here.

01:14:15   Flexible fabric ribs embedded with tungsten inserts that provide a counterweight for additional

01:14:21   comfort balance and stability.

01:14:22   That's in the Apple newsroom post.

01:14:24   Usually Apple likes to talk about metals that it uses that are lightweight and strong.

01:14:29   The tungsten is there cause it's heavy.

01:14:31   Yeah.

01:14:32   That's why it's there.

01:14:32   Cause it's heavy.

01:14:33   It's heavy in small sizes, right?

01:14:36   Little teeny tiny strips.

01:14:37   Tiny amounts.

01:14:38   Yep.

01:14:38   In the, in the ribbing so that everything is a little more balanced, which is actually a

01:14:44   good thing.

01:14:44   I'm intrigued to try this.

01:14:46   I have not ordered one yet.

01:14:48   Um, but I think I will do at some point.

01:14:50   Uh, cause it's nice.

01:14:51   It's real nice.

01:14:52   It sounds, it sounds like nice, a nicer adjustment experience, um, as well.

01:14:56   Cause like, I like the Belkin one a lot too, but the adjustment experience is, it's a little

01:15:01   clunky, right?

01:15:02   Like you've got to kind of unvelcro it.

01:15:03   Like if you want to do it often, but it's the best, it's absolutely the best strap that

01:15:08   I have used.

01:15:08   It is.

01:15:09   But I, I, I, I do miss the comfort that the knit band provided.

01:15:14   And this is, I guess the best way to do it.

01:15:16   This is really good.

01:15:16   And having the single control to tighten the two different dimensions of it, you can, you

01:15:21   can dial it in really quickly.

01:15:24   And the elasticity of it is really nice because part of the challenge with a vision pro, if

01:15:28   you have a non, a not really very elastic band is when it goes on, um, you then have to adjust

01:15:35   it.

01:15:35   And with this one, you can kind of set it and then kind of push it on and it just kind

01:15:39   of goes and fits on your head.

01:15:41   And there's less I'm finding so far, I don't have to do as much adjustment when I put it on

01:15:47   as I used to, because it's just kind of like elastic enough to let me slide it over my head.

01:15:53   Uh, PSVR two controllers are coming in November for $250, which is so much money.

01:16:01   It is.

01:16:01   Although for, for what is, what is a PSVR two costs?

01:16:04   $350 for something like that.

01:16:07   So you could just buy a PSVR two if you wanted, uh, especially if you have a PS five, I mean,

01:16:13   cause then you can just VR it up all the time.

01:16:15   I mean, I don't know who would do that.

01:16:17   Maybe me.

01:16:18   I bought a PSVR two this weekend.

01:16:20   No way.

01:16:21   And it looks, it works.

01:16:23   I played some ping pong.

01:16:27   I played some pickleball, um, on the vision pro using the PSVR controllers.

01:16:33   So wait, is the current shipping version, does it support, at least your one does the M five

01:16:38   supports these controllers?

01:16:40   Well, I think it's using a, I think it's using a standard version of, of vision OS 26.

01:16:44   Yeah.

01:16:45   Yeah.

01:16:46   So I pressed, you know, I charged them and paired them and, uh, and they were, yeah.

01:16:52   So they're not available standalone yet.

01:16:54   And if you have a PS five, I would recommend considering whether you want to just buy a PS

01:16:58   VR two, because if you have a PlayStation five, this is the upgrade official, uh, uh, recommendation.

01:17:03   If you have a PlayStation five, you should buy the PS VR two because $250 for these two

01:17:08   controllers and a charger stand is way too much money.

01:17:10   Like way too much money.

01:17:11   So you may as well paid a little bit of extra.

01:17:13   You could probably find a decent discount on one because they did not sell very well.

01:17:18   Oh yeah.

01:17:18   You can get, you can get refurbs.

01:17:20   Also, if you're a, uh, if you're a PC gamer, the PS VR two works as a VR headset for PC

01:17:27   games.

01:17:27   Yeah.

01:17:27   Works with steam VR.

01:17:28   Yeah.

01:17:29   So this is, it turns out Sony's found a way to sell the PlayStation VR two.

01:17:35   Finally, the PS VR.

01:17:36   Yeah.

01:17:38   So, so I have, I have, I have tried them and use them there.

01:17:42   They're very similar to the quest.

01:17:43   Yes.

01:17:44   Um, and then, and then it works very much.

01:17:46   Like if you, if you do eye tracking with the vision pro and then you're looking at something

01:17:49   and then you click the trigger, it's like you tapped your fingers together.

01:17:53   So you can navigate the whole interface while you've got them in your hands.

01:17:57   There are not a lot of games.

01:17:59   I think there are like four or five games out there.

01:18:01   I think the pickleball game is actually still in test flight, but it's going to come out.

01:18:04   Um, thing I've learned.

01:18:06   So they work really well.

01:18:07   The controllers themselves, the implementation seems pretty good on vision OS.

01:18:12   It is funny because I am using, uh, you know, several hundred dollar controllers.

01:18:19   I was going to say this about the, about the bands as well.

01:18:21   It's like the life of a vision pro owner, especially if you're a vision pro owner who covers this

01:18:25   for a living is you just keep buying more and more accessories.

01:18:28   3,500 is just the beginning friends.

01:18:30   It's just the start of the journey all over again.

01:18:34   So, so, but that said, once you get it all set up, like it is a very familiar experience to me

01:18:42   as someone who has a quest three and I had a quest two, um, of course the, the quest two and three experiences is just like $500 or whatever.

01:18:54   And this is $4,000.

01:18:57   So it's ridiculous that we're here.

01:18:59   That said, you know, the pickleball game that I played in test flight, that is a beta.

01:19:04   So it's not out yet, uh, was really good.

01:19:06   It was really well done.

01:19:07   And, um, it had some bugs.

01:19:09   It's a test flight.

01:19:09   I'll forgive it.

01:19:10   It, there were moments where it, it lost, it lost where my paddle was.

01:19:14   Um, but, uh, when it was all working, the idea that I'm swinging a hand controller around in actual space, it was able to be much more precise than if I'm just hanging around with my hand.

01:19:25   Cause I, there's a ping pong game, table tennis game for the vision pro, and you got to use your hand and it's got hand tracking.

01:19:32   Uh, and I, I try, I've tried and tried to play it and you can precisely position sort of like where you want the paddle.

01:19:38   Um, but then like I did, that's for the forehand and then I do the backhand and the paddle's not in the right place anymore.

01:19:43   And I would try to play it and it was really hard and I was very bad at it.

01:19:47   And I would start to hold my hand out because I think that sometimes I would swing my hand back and the cameras would lose track of where it was.

01:19:55   Um, so I'm kind of in unnatural positions and by the way, uh, 11 table tennis for the quest is so great.

01:20:04   It's great.

01:20:05   And it uses those hand hand controllers on the, on the quest and it is flawless.

01:20:10   It is a fantastic table tennis simulator.

01:20:13   So I get these controllers and I started using the table tennis app on the, um, on the vision pro.

01:20:18   And I think, oh no, it turns out, turns out Mike, it's not that the hand tracking was making that app bad.

01:20:29   I think it's that app is bad.

01:20:30   I think that's the answer.

01:20:31   Cause even with that, even with these, it was not close to being the quality of the game on the quest three.

01:20:38   So it leads me to believe that maybe that app is just not very good at, at, at tracking.

01:20:43   Okay.

01:20:44   Maybe I'm sorry to that app, but like even with a hand controller, the quests one is better.

01:20:51   And I thought, oh no.

01:20:52   So after all of this and all of this expensive hardware, where are we?

01:20:56   And then I tried the beta of the pickleball app and I will tell you when it was working and there were a couple of quirks when it was working, nailed it.

01:21:06   Like when it was working, it worked.

01:21:08   It was just as delightful as any of those quest ones with the graphics you would expect from the vision pro.

01:21:14   It opens like a portal through which the other player is playing the ball.

01:21:18   You can kind of hold the ball and drop the ball and the physics is really good.

01:21:22   And the graphics are really good, better than on the quest.

01:21:24   I would say, uh, I was very impressed with that.

01:21:27   So I think there's some potential here again, no one who wants hand controllers and games should buy a vision pro.

01:21:34   You should buy a quest, but if you have a vision pro maybe, and in the long run, if Apple thinks that this is a direction they might want to go, this is a good test case.

01:21:44   And that's where we are is it's a test case for this stuff.

01:21:47   This is all experimental and silly.

01:21:50   And if you want to play table tennis on, uh, against in a virtual world, you should get a quest three.

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01:23:58   So it happened.

01:24:01   It happened.

01:24:03   It happened.

01:24:04   It did.

01:24:06   Five-year partnership starting from the 2026 season Apple and Formula One.

01:24:12   Now we have spent a lot of time in the past kind of talking about what would Apple do?

01:24:19   Like how were they going to handle being the not only the broadcast partner essentially but also the streaming partner of F1?

01:24:29   Like how would that work and you know because F1 has its own streaming service and it has works with ESPN.

01:24:36   Turns out Apple took the secret third answer.

01:24:39   Those are the things we were talking about and not only will they have available on Apple TV the races and the whole the whole practice and everything the whole kind of content of the racing weekends.

01:24:51   They're also going to continue to offer with Formula One F1 TV premium which is all of this but also a ton of technical stuff which we can get into.

01:25:06   But the way it's going to work is you can only now subscribe to F1 TV premium by having an Apple TV subscription.

01:25:16   It's not a separate purchase.

01:25:18   It's not an add-on.

01:25:19   You are just a standard Apple TV subscriber and then you also if you're in the this is all in the US get access to F1 TV premium as well.

01:25:28   Assumedly you will log in with an Apple ID or something.

01:25:32   Yeah you'll log in with your Apple ID and verify and then that will be it.

01:25:35   And in fact people who are subscribers to F1 TV in the US received an email saying here's what's happening.

01:25:41   Your subscription will continue until it renews after this time which is whatever March or something of next year at which point your your subscription will no longer renew and you will need to sign up for Apple TV to watch.

01:25:55   So if you've got another year on your subscription you'll have it for the year you'll have F1 TV premium for the year.

01:26:00   But whenever it lapses it won't auto renew and instead you will be directed to go to Apple and subscribe to Apple TV.

01:26:10   And so yeah this is a premium streaming product that is being rolled in to what Apple is doing.

01:26:16   So they're essentially doing what ESPN is doing and probably more on Apple TV the app.

01:26:22   And they are providing the access to F1 TV premium for everybody in the United States who's a TV subscriber.

01:26:31   And what this does by continuing to allow and kind of encourage F1 TV premium it solves a lot of the hang-ups that I've had about how Apple are going to make this work.

01:26:42   Like for example on F1 TV premium you can choose from any of the 22 onboard driver cameras and watch them in like quad boxes and all this kind of stuff.

01:26:54   Like it just felt like a lot more technical lift than maybe Apple would want to do and that they may just on Apple TV just want to show what ESPN would have shown.

01:27:08   Which is just here is the race.

01:27:10   Here is a TV show of the race.

01:27:11   What I would say is why would Apple duplicate what the event the partner Formula One has built?

01:27:23   That's the question is why would you duplicate that?

01:27:25   Why would you say well we're going to rebuild that all in a different app and we're going to like why when you're when they're your partner just like MLS is Apple's partner.

01:27:34   Formula One is Apple's partner here.

01:27:37   So why rebuild that thing when the vent you know the vendor the partner already has it they built it.

01:27:42   So they basically said yep we're going to hand that to you as part of this deal and that's why and you're like well therefore they're foregoing revenue and they are foregoing revenue.

01:27:52   Formula One but Apple is paying 50% more for these rights than ESPN was.

01:27:56   So they're actually going to make more money.

01:27:57   Don't worry.

01:27:58   Don't cry for Formula One.

01:27:59   They're doing okay.

01:28:00   Yeah they're doing okay.

01:28:01   And Apple gets to say we have all access.

01:28:04   Also unlike MLS this is not an add-on package.

01:28:08   MLS you have to if you want to see all the MLS games you have to buy the MLS season pass.

01:28:14   In this case you just get it if you're an Apple TV subscriber you just get F1 and you get F1 premium you get it all so you can just watch the race or you can dive into the app and and do the super fan stuff with all the data and it's just all covered if you're an Apple TV subscriber.

01:28:30   And I want to just you know because in case people don't know there are a bunch of different plans for F1 TV right.

01:28:37   The only one that gives you races now is F1 TV premium there was something called F1 TV Pro actually no sorry F1 TV Pro and premium both exist.

01:28:47   They are the only ways to get races F1 TV Pro is going to go away because it was just HD it wasn't 4K.

01:28:54   Yeah the premium was the upsell for 4K and multi-view.

01:28:57   Yes F1 TV premium was $130 a year.

01:29:02   So if you were just signed up for this you're doing great because you could just get Apple TV now which I think would be cheaper for you over a year.

01:29:11   Now if you were watching on ESPN and you're you know you because you were signed up to ESPN anyway and you didn't have Apple TV well now you have an additional cost right you're going to have to sign up for Apple TV.

01:29:24   But like there is also another tier which I've seen a lot of people talk about which is F1 TV which is like $30 a year but that is just data like you don't get any feeds that I can sign up for F1 TV even though we have Sky and all I get is you get like live telemetry data and some like original documentaries and stuff but that there's no races in that.

01:29:45   It's the sidecar for a place that's already got a broadcast license.

01:29:51   Yeah you can it's like the digital add-on of bonus content it's not the live stuff so so yeah this is it's really interesting there are lots of questions out there.

01:30:03   Will Carroll on downstream last week said that he had heard now he said he didn't think the announcement would come Friday and then it did you know emailed me and he was like well got that wrong but he also had heard that they were already moving ahead and hiring people to like announcers.

01:30:19   So we we will see my guess is I feel strongly about this and we'll talk about why in a second when we talk about ADQ that what Apple will not do is what ESPN did which is just take the Sky feed and run it.

01:30:35   Yeah and that's because not to be mean but this matters to Apple and I don't think it mattered to ESPN ESPN cared so that's why they let it go content that they took somebody else's well and when it was on they they they did bid for it but a fraction of what Apple bid for it and like they cared so little about the content that they just took the Sky feed even though the Sky feed has all sorts of details about watch this on Sky and press the red button.

01:31:02   yeah like the Sky broadcasting team is great but the there was too much junk in the ESPN broadcast made for Sky yeah and it's irrelevant to ESPN so Apple's not going to do that Apple is going to make a broadcast that is for Apple you know and and and I would say also something we talked about last time that I want to I want to mention again here this is a test of Apple's relationship with F1.

01:31:32   because Apple has broad ambitions and the beauty of this is Apple on its own home territory of the United States is all in with Formula One the whole product is an Apple product they are the partners Apple and Formula One if it goes well if they experiment and try stuff if they if they like it as other international territories come available for rights.

01:32:00   this is one way for Apple to add territories over time if they want to and if F1 wants to and they want to pay the money to expand this because this is US only but like who's to say that the rights in Mexico or in Australia or something come up and Apple's like we'll bid for that because they will have at that point they will have built the infrastructure and the relationship and then they're just expanding to new territories.

01:32:28   you know if they go to Mexico they have to add a Spanish language fee but it's like they can do that they can hire they do that for most of MLS actually.

01:32:34   So I think it's really interesting because it's a five-year deal it's an experiment but it's also the flowering of the relationship that began with that movie and like we'll see where it takes them because you know maybe they won't expand the relationship or maybe this is the start of something bigger.

01:32:54   We'll just have to see but I think that that I think Apple's got that in the back of its mind is if this goes well why will we not just keep picking up territories and and expanding that we're the global you know maybe not everywhere.

01:33:09   I looked it up I think I think they reported about 1.3 billion dollars in media revenue last year Formula One did so like could Apple pay 1.5 billion dollars for all rights all over the world.

01:33:22   yeah but they they're right now those rights are all coming up one by one and they have to outbid local broadcasters and that may not happen and they may not have any desire to do that but it wouldn't surprise me if they do that going forward if this works out for them.

01:33:36   honestly I'll be flabbergasted if they don't take the UK rights like the works from sky like it would be very odd to me and they come up in 29 so it's you know it's kind of like halfway through their agreement or whatever.

01:33:48   I'll give you a couple of like pieces of information that I think you're interested in which are like going on to the stuff I was saying in past episodes.

01:33:55   So by keeping F1 TV around Apple can have their own commentary team and those commentary team can be seen good bad or whatever it doesn't matter because in F1 TV you can get F1 TV's commentary team.

01:34:09   exactly like but also in F1 TV you can choose the sky feed so if you love if you watch on ESPN and love Martin Brando and David Crofty like I do you can just go to F1 TV and switch to their audio so you can listen to them.

01:34:26   It's been interesting like on threads like the F1 TV commentary team are like we're not going anywhere like the people keep because like it seemed you know I guess for now I want to make a prediction.

01:34:39   to just put it on record here I think Apple will hire Will Buxton to do part of their commentary so if you have ever watched Drive to Survive Will Buxton is essentially the narrator he used to work at F1 TV he clearly wanted to be in commentary but F1 and F1 TV didn't put him on commentary permanently they have a different team.

01:35:02   Buxton left F1 and went to IndyCar and he is one of the commentary people for IndyCar and he obviously has always wanted to do F1 I reckon Apple are going to bring him in and he will be part of their broadcast team because he is known by the American audience now in sports racing and worldwide because of Drive to Survive.

01:35:22   I think he would be a very good person because if you've seen Drive to Survive which is most F1 fans you are familiar with Will Buxton you know him like even though he is in IndyCar now he's still in Drive to Survive as kind of like the the the face of the show like from a narrator from a narrator like he kind of like draws the lines between the stories during the documentary so he would be my bet as someone that they're gonna they're gonna bring him for the team.

01:35:51   I'm fascinated to see what that broadcasting looks like and just in general like Apple has said like production information is coming later.

01:36:00   If you look at what Apple did with Major League Baseball what they did is they took an off the shelf this is why EDQ called and we'll talk about this podcast in a minute but he called it an experiment with Major League Baseball what they did is they took an off the rack baseball broadcast they literally took MLB network broadcast.

01:36:20   They so their partner their league partner handled the production and then what they did is they tweaked it because they wanted to experiment.

01:36:27   I think this might be a an interesting model for F1 as well which is like we've got we're partners you've got a turnkey thing that you do for races you've got your international feed you've got your cameras the way this works is it's not like every every broadcaster has its own cameras right.

01:36:46   There are the camp it's like the Olympics there are the cameras at the track and then you may have some specific cameras if you think about whatever your country's Olympic coverage is you know how like there's the coverage of the sport and then there's like the shot of the announcers and there's the shot of the person down at the pool interviewing the swimmers.

01:37:02   There's like in America NBC's got the shot of the people down at the pool but like the swimming cameras are not NBC's cameras those are the Olympics pool cameras.

01:37:16   It's a pool of pool anyway.

01:37:19   So F1 is like that is my understanding right.

01:37:24   You don't you don't have 20 different sets of cameras you have one set of cameras and then you can have your extras.

01:37:30   So the question for me is going to be what does Apple push on because with Major League Baseball they changed the they reduced the compression of the video.

01:37:38   They were they were worried about you know they set their own you know they wanted the good color and they wanted it to it to look really nice and they did their graphics.

01:37:48   They had them in Apple style and they added stats that like Apple felt like were good for its audience to have this extra sort of dynamic stats package that they did and they pushed in some production areas.

01:37:59   Not only did they do the thing where they added iPhones to the broadcast the last couple weeks of the year but they added a more they were more aggressive with drone footage on Friday nights and they claim you know they were the first one to get the okay from MLB from their partner that they could take their drone onto the field not during play but like at the end of an inning the their drone could go over the stadium and show it from above and then leave.

01:38:28   And like that needed to be worked out with their partner but those were all ways where they were trying to experiment with enhancing so Friday Night Baseball felt a little bit different and a little bit better.

01:38:37   Yeah.

01:38:38   I think and I think they've been trying to do some of that in MLS it's harder because MLS is so many games at once Formula One is not so many games at once it's these events I so I would imagine they will be and are already talking to Formula One about how do we make the Apple broadcast of this.

01:38:56   Which includes Apple's own announcers and possibly some even interactive elements because they too can let you press the red you know press the button.

01:39:05   Yeah.

01:39:06   Like they how will they push that part forward not F1 TV they don't have to touch F1 TV it is what it is but they can take their their kind of mainstream broadcast and make it their own in a way that ESPN you know didn't bother with it wasn't worth it to them to just not take Sky.

01:39:24   Yeah so it will be interesting because some of this stuff as I said before like if they may if they are if they have F1 make some changes everybody will benefit from them even if it's not on Apple right.

01:39:35   I think that's also probably the case right if they're truly partners Apple may push F1 on some things that then everybody benefits from.

01:39:42   So like if they do like lower compression because I have like ultra HD I pay for but like the cameras on the track side they're not that high quality like when they go to like the pre and post race interviews and stuff like that with the Sky team.

01:39:58   It's way higher quality imagery so maybe they push them on that you know you're saying like F1 is very forward focused they we already have drones that follow the cars around.

01:40:06   Yeah yeah.

01:40:06   And like helicopters and little tiny cameras on the on the cars and stuff yeah.

01:40:10   And maybe they do push them on the graphics because I mentioned before the graphics like baked into the feed but maybe everybody just gets the because F1 just make the graphics.

01:40:18   But if Apple's like hey what if they look like this and look like this then everyone will get that right.

01:40:23   They're going to look better for every feed.

01:40:26   Maybe or there'll be a good partner and they'll provide Apple with a graphics light version of the feed that Apple puts its own graphics on and then that's the place where Apple can experiment with graphics.

01:40:35   Maybe.

01:40:35   And then F1 can learn lessons.

01:40:37   I mean this is the thing is if it's a partnership right.

01:40:39   So the question is like what's the push and pull of that because I would imagine this may not stay the case for five years.

01:40:46   But right now I would imagine this is how do we make this the best partnership everywhere everywhere.

01:40:50   And if you talk I know we this is an Apple focused podcast but like if you talk to people in the sports world about partnering with Apple they're like whoa it's Apple they make the iPhone they're one of the biggest companies in the world.

01:41:00   They're our partner now Apple brings a kind of a cache and and and they also have a global reach and lots of money.

01:41:06   So if you're Formula One you're like this is interesting like let's see where this partnership takes us which probably takes us to Eddie Q on the town.

01:41:16   And his money quote which is we'd like to own a sport end to end he talks about baseball was an experiment MLS is much closer.

01:41:25   This was before the F1 partnership was revealed MLS is everywhere end to end right it's globally F1 is US but it is end to end they own it.

01:41:35   If you want access to that starting next year you will need to be an Apple subscriber and we've been talking about this for years.

01:41:43   This is so clearly their strategy is they don't want pieces Matt Bellany asked them about asked him about do you want part of the NFL you're part of the NBA.

01:41:54   And he's like no I don't I want it all even when they were bidding for college rights because they bid for the Pac-12 football they wanted the whole conference right like they wanted it all of that little subset they wanted it all.

01:42:06   That's their strategy.

01:42:08   So here we see it in the US and that's why I bring up like their global ambitions.

01:42:14   I think they I think I think I think Apple ideally if everything goes well thinks that eventually they will buy all the global F1 media rights.

01:42:25   Yeah I think that that should be like I expect that that is what they're looking for but it's like well we can't right now so why don't we just start with the territory that matters most to us and see how it goes.

01:42:35   And see how it goes right and then and then it's easy.

01:42:38   That's the thing is if they say starting in 2027 Australia and New Zealand will be Apple and you know and you know pick and Japan.

01:42:47   Okay like that that may happen it may not be everywhere because everybody's rights are timing out at different times to this is not the case in some sports.

01:42:58   They've tried to time the right so that they all go at once but this is a legacy of kind of international media rights all the I believe all the F1 deals sort of like are all over the place.

01:43:07   It's also like based on the fact of like the interest in F1 has changed over time so like ESG never had a long window because it just wasn't of important to them.

01:43:16   Yeah.

01:43:16   But Sky have wanted to like take it a huge chunks at a time because it is important to them.

01:43:21   Right.

01:43:22   You know.

01:43:22   Right.

01:43:23   Right.

01:43:23   So we'll see but it is the beginning I mean unless you say F1 the movie was the beginning but now that with the sports rights is the beginning of a very interesting relationship that could potentially have global ambitions.

01:43:34   Because of the movie like they built a relationship I actually saw a quote I don't know if you spoke about it on this show or not.

01:43:44   Eddie was at a motorsport conference and he referenced that the CEO of F1 Stefano Dominicali him and Eddie Q are close personal friends which is hilarious.

01:44:00   By the way my theory on this like Eddie being on the town and then Eddie going to this motorsport conference they wanted to announce this before now and couldn't.

01:44:09   Like there was like a bunch of things that happened and then this happens like this doesn't make any sense in this order like why you would do this.

01:44:16   But I thought it was very funny.

01:44:18   My bet like I get what you're saying about like the graphics I really think that Apple will push F1 to improve stuff and then it will kind of work in the reverse to how it's worked with Sky for years.

01:44:29   Where now what Apple wants everyone else gets where it has always been what Sky wanted the rest of the world got because I think F1's preferred partner is going to become Apple and they're just going to make it as simple as they can which is like here are our graphics everybody gets them here's our feed everybody gets it because it's just how the sport works.

01:44:49   It's weird like that also I should say that I mentioned like you buy the rights in Mexico and you add a Spanish feed there are a bunch of broadcasters streaming broadcasters who already do multiple streams like I said MLS offers multiple language streams.

01:45:09   Amazon with Prime Video there's a Spanish stream in addition to an English stream so Apple may push on that too to broaden it out and then yeah if they add Canada rights they will add a French stream the French MLS teams have a French audio as well so I feel like Apple's ambitions are global and maybe or maybe not that may or may not work out here but I think the ambition is global.

01:45:33   I would be shocked if Apple didn't think that this was going to be a start of many countries having F1 rights be in Apple.

01:45:40   Yeah because to me owning a sport end-to-end doesn't mean just one geographical location.

01:45:45   Not for Apple it doesn't.

01:45:46   I'm sure it would show it right?

01:45:47   No.

01:45:48   No.

01:45:48   In there like if a network owned all of the NBA in the US they would feel like that was end-to-end but Apple doesn't think that way.

01:45:59   Apple plays globally.

01:46:00   Apple and Netflix and Amazon I think basically play globally.

01:46:05   Certainly Apple and Netflix are there are not that many streaming services that are available in almost every region in the world but Apple is and Netflix is.

01:46:15   So yeah.

01:46:17   Big episode today.

01:46:19   We're going to skip Ask Upgrade this week because there's been so much.

01:46:23   Send them in.

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01:47:17   Until then, say goodbye Jason Snell.

01:47:18   Goodbye Mike Hurley.