00:00:00 ◼ ► from relay this is upgrade episode 601 for february 2nd 2026 today's show is brought to
00:00:16 ◼ ► you by century fitbod and squarespace my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by jason snow hi jason
00:00:22 ◼ ► it's a perfectly normal number now 601 whatever you know it's fine also happy birthday mike
00:00:28 ◼ ► thank you due to the the the mysteries of podcasting we are recording this slightly before your birthday
00:00:33 ◼ ► and it will appear slightly after your birthday but either way happy birthday 38 years old i think
00:00:40 ◼ ► that sounds about your because you're a little trailer behind uh stephen hackett who turned
00:00:46 ◼ ► 40 this week the old age that's 40 the high age of 40 i'm not even near it so happy birthday to
00:00:55 ◼ ► everybody i actually don't know i think i'm 38 what year is it 2026 what year is it classic old
00:01:02 ◼ ► question 38 38 38 this is a this is a 1988 this is a mike hurley law story but there was an episode of
00:01:11 ◼ ► analog where i referenced how old i was and got feedback from friend of the show rob to say you
00:01:19 ◼ ► are not that age he corrected me about my age so nice it happens i have a snow talk question for you
00:01:26 ◼ ► comes from joey joey wants to know jason have you ever taken an overnight amtrak trip for example the
00:01:31 ◼ ► california zephyr is beautiful and begins in the bay area so american trains this is the part where
00:01:38 ◼ ► everybody in the rest of the world can laugh at american train stories but yes i have uh lauren and i
00:01:42 ◼ ► um fairly early on in our marriage uh we did a trip so in the 90s late 90s did a trip to denver
00:01:51 ◼ ► we only went to denver on the train and um it's really interesting you get on in emeryville which
00:01:58 ◼ ► is right by oakland and then you go up into the sierras and it's beautiful and you go over the sierras
00:02:02 ◼ ► and uh as and it's getting dark and you enter the nevada desert and having driven through the
00:02:08 ◼ ► nevada desert i will tell you there's nothing there so it's actually timed pretty well you there's
00:02:13 ◼ ► nothing to see there um and i think we stopped i think the train stopped at salt lake city at like
00:02:19 ◼ ► some ludicrous time like three in the morning um so we slept through that but um and then we got to
00:02:26 ◼ ► denver and it was uh kind of like mid to late morning which means we got to spend uh the morning
00:02:33 ◼ ► looking at the rocky mountains which was also beautiful so it was actually very beautiful and
00:02:36 ◼ ► scenic and then um and then we spent a few days in denver and then we flew home and nothing puts
00:02:42 ◼ ► the speed of airplanes in perspective like having taken the train one direction because we flew home
00:02:47 ◼ ► and it went from being this day and a half journey to being you know two and a half hours so yes i have
00:02:53 ◼ ► it was lovely i would do it again sometime uh if i had the time the challenge as with everything is
00:02:59 ◼ ► that my wife has a job that she has to be present in an office for and that limits our vacation time
00:03:05 ◼ ► so i have um been on a train called the caledonian sleeper which is the london to glasgow i think it
00:03:14 ◼ ► also goes to edinburgh train um the funny thing about that train is the the amount of time it takes to
00:03:19 ◼ ► get from london to glasgow is not enough time for a night's sleep no it's not i've done that train
00:03:24 ◼ ► ride many times during the day and it like we when we came down with james and sasuke for um
00:03:31 ◼ ► for uh relay 10 um lauren and i and james sasuke we all came down we had we had a nice time but you
00:03:38 ◼ ► know you're chatting with friends and you're in london like yeah it's about four and a half to five
00:03:43 ◼ ► hours i think it's the it's not a good time so it's the caledonian light sleeper well no no no it
00:03:49 ◼ ► stops for like an hour and then brings you in so like it waits before you arrive so you pulls off
00:03:57 ◼ ► so you stay have good sleep yeah because it would be terrible you'd get there at like half past four
00:04:03 ◼ ► in the morning which is way too early nobody wants that so they know that's that's that's bad leave
00:04:09 ◼ ► it leave it to european trains to um just pull over to the side for a while to let everybody sleep that
00:04:17 ◼ ► is that is class if you'd like to send in a snow talk question for us to open a future episode of
00:04:23 ◼ ► the show just go to upgradefeedback.com and send it in just like joey did we have some follow-up the
00:04:28 ◼ ► first imagery of ted lasso season four has been revealed yeah and it is going to be debuting in
00:04:35 ◼ ► the summer i don't i don't i'm sure we knew it was coming this year but in my mind that feels like
00:04:41 ◼ ► that's come around very quickly um from when we found out the show existed we've been going it from
00:04:46 ◼ ► you know it'll show up eventually to you know forever and it's gradually kind of come into focus
00:04:51 ◼ ► and now it's uh sometime this summer and the pictures are you know ted's coaching a women's team
00:04:56 ◼ ► and uh there's a picture of ted i think rebecca like picking up ted in kansas city probably yeah
00:05:02 ◼ ► and there's a shot of may the bartender which was nice nice to see her because that's uh oh what's
00:05:09 ◼ ► her uh she's she's she's she's in doctor who too um oh great great great annette badland
00:05:17 ◼ ► annette badland yeah she's she's great i like i like that she's still in the show too because she's
00:05:24 ◼ ► got that uh she's a very good actor and then that's a fun character and i think we're also seeing
00:05:29 ◼ ► a first the first shot of ted's recast son because if you remember the rumor was they recast him
00:05:36 ◼ ► because they needed him to be able to play football uh with some level of competency because that
00:05:41 ◼ ► apparently is also going to be a part of this season if i remember correctly that like ted's
00:05:46 ◼ ► son becomes interested in playing football and i think that's part of maybe part of the reason he
00:05:51 ◼ ► comes home we'll find out but that's grant feely the new new ted's son new ted's son had got a kid
00:05:57 ◼ ► got a he got a son replacement while he was gone that's what he had to do to get that's what happens
00:06:02 ◼ ► so there you go it's coming this summer uh speaking of apple tv uh they have apparently signed a deal
00:06:09 ◼ ► with brandon sanderson to produce tv and film projects based on his cosmere i assume that's how you
00:06:15 ◼ ► say it fantasy universe of books yeah you um i like how carefully you said his name because it's so
00:06:20 ◼ ► easily to call him sand and branderson and or just or just one sound brandon sanderson brandon
00:06:26 ◼ ► brandon branderson brandon sanderson uh-huh yeah um art vandalay so um he posted about this
00:06:34 ◼ ► sports berth harbinson and art vandalay um the decision he said on reddit was to pick apple was
00:06:41 ◼ ► due to two factors first the level of approvals and control apple wants to be a true partner with
00:06:45 ◼ ► me and they feel like they really get what i want to do second their track record apple does fewer
00:06:49 ◼ ► things but with higher quality than some other studios i find virtually everything of theirs i watch
00:06:54 ◼ ► is excellent and creator driven he has gotten a massive amount of creator control as a part of this
00:06:58 ◼ ► deal which is really interesting there are obviously other bidders um but apple has apparently given the
00:07:02 ◼ ► author a lot of creative control he's writing the screenplay i think the idea at least right now is
00:07:06 ◼ ► that there's going to be a feature adaptation of one of his books and then they're all set in the
00:07:11 ◼ ► same universe but they're in different parts of it um and then he he the hope is that they will
00:07:15 ◼ ► make a film and then also follow it up with an apple tv series uh interesting i think there's
00:07:21 ◼ ► something to be said and we see this a lot now in going in with creators um and making deals like this
00:07:26 ◼ ► in order to have uh somebody like because you're gonna have to have a visionary who understands what the
00:07:32 ◼ ► universe and the franchise is yeah and uh brandon sanderson basically wanted to be that for his
00:07:37 ◼ ► because he is for the books and he it's he's an amazing story i have literally not written uh
00:07:42 ◼ ► read a word that he's written but people rave about it people love shares an agent with dan morin which
00:07:47 ◼ ► i think is very fun um and uh but people love it and and you know you're looking for intellectual
00:07:53 ◼ ► property and i think that there's like very expensive franchises that you can be amazon and pay
00:07:57 ◼ ► huge amounts of money for lord of the rings another way to go is to identify um interesting
00:08:04 ◼ ► authors and make deals with them i i think it's also i want to draw a line between silo because i
00:08:10 ◼ ► know hugh howey had at least some conversation with the people who are making that and those are very
00:08:13 ◼ ► good producers as well but that was plucked from sort of uh not obscurity and sci-fi fantasy but
00:08:20 ◼ ► obscurity and wider world um because sci-fi fantasy stuff does better as tv shows and movies than it does
00:08:25 ◼ ► books that's a funny thing about culturally i guess books in general but these are great sources of
00:08:30 ◼ ► material and then um we we've i mean the foundation i you know isaac asimov's been dead for a long time
00:08:37 ◼ ► but that's an interesting sci-fi adaptation they made they're making a william gibson movie right
00:08:43 ◼ ► i think they're making neuromancer as i think it's a miniseries um they've got this with brandon
00:08:48 ◼ ► sanderson um they've had and and murder bot yeah which is which where which martha wells who wrote
00:08:55 ◼ ► the murder bot books which are very very popular in the genre and they adapted those really well
00:09:00 ◼ ► and uh she's really happy would you call severance science fiction i would for sure that's an
00:09:07 ◼ ► original though right that's not based on anything good point yeah other than the guy who worked at the
00:09:11 ◼ ► door factory but it is too yeah i mean apple that's definitely a vibe of apple tv a lot of apple tv
00:09:16 ◼ ► sci-fi content but then also making deals and kind of like working with i think i think the the the
00:09:22 ◼ ► secret is out that if you've got a really well-regarded um sci-fi or fantasy series apple
00:09:26 ◼ ► um apple might be interested in you because it's working for them right like it is actually working
00:09:31 ◼ ► for them i think maybe it aligns with um maybe decision makers at the company maybe they like this
00:09:37 ◼ ► kind of content zoe mentions that um blake crouch who's the the guy who wrote the book dark matter and
00:09:43 ◼ ► he was the showrunner for dark matter season one and they're making a season two i assume that he's
00:09:47 ◼ ► running that too so that's another great example where it's like literally these they're getting
00:09:51 ◼ ► these writers to be involved in making their adaptations and it's worked well for them i mean
00:09:56 ◼ ► especially with someone like sanderson because you you're not just getting a book right you he's very
00:10:04 ◼ ► prolific yeah he's got fans he's prolific a lot of fans and and he's got lots of different worlds
00:10:10 ◼ ► to choose from because it's a very large expanse of um of of story i am told by those who have read them
00:10:25 ◼ ► so i think it's q.ai so it is what i think well it's not the one it's not the type of company we
00:10:33 ◼ ► thought they would acquire right they didn't go buy a model maker uh acquisitions so qai is an israel
00:10:40 ◼ ► based company uh the apple has acquired them for two billion dollars which actually makes it apple's
00:10:47 ◼ ► second largest acquisition after beats which was i think three billion yeah so this company is notable
00:10:54 ◼ ► because it was co-founded by aviad meisels who also founded prime sense which is a company that apple
00:11:02 ◼ ► bought in 2013 which became part of the foundation for face id so yeah i would assume that that meisels
00:11:09 ◼ ► went to work at apple and then left and then started this company and now it's going back again
00:11:13 ◼ ► yeah this company's been in operation it's been in stealth it's been in operation for only i think
00:11:18 ◼ ► three ish years i read a story on an israeli um tech website called ctech about this or a couple
00:11:25 ◼ ► stories they're they're all over it because it's it's very much local company done good kind of kind
00:11:31 ◼ ► detail here there's a big uh picture of tim cook and uh and they they are leaning into the johnny
00:11:36 ◼ ► shroogey thing because johnny shroogey is also from israel and was part of a an apple purchase and
00:11:41 ◼ ► became a major apple executive um so they've been operating in secrecy but what they seem to have
00:11:46 ◼ ► created and it's really interesting it's technology that can quote decode silent speech by sensing small
00:11:54 ◼ ► movements in the face of the user detecting subtle muscle signals and even identifying an intention to
00:12:00 ◼ ► speak before speech occurs and this is all with sensors that presumably would be on a wearable
00:12:07 ◼ ► device that's what the idea has been using a lot of things in fact um according to the ctech report
00:12:13 ◼ ► that i read uh the co-founder another co-founder jonathan uh wexler described the company's work as
00:12:20 ◼ ► spanning machine learning physics engineering and human sciences and he this is a great quote he said
00:12:25 ◼ ► we sped research that should have taken 20 years that's what he wrote after they got bought well uh
00:12:31 ◼ ► it's one of the high fives that they're all doing but like really interesting like that they um the the
00:12:36 ◼ ► way that they tell this story is they decided to make a stealth startup um because they wanted to they
00:12:42 ◼ ► thought that there was uh something they could get to that would be super actionable but it was going
00:12:48 ◼ ► to require this dedicated several years long research project and um apple certainly thought that this
00:12:55 ◼ ► was worth buying so two billion dollars uh pretty impressive johnny sorucci provided this statement to
00:13:01 ◼ ► reuters qai is a remarkable company that is pioneering new and creative ways to use imaging and machine
00:13:06 ◼ ► learning we're thrilled to acquire the company with aviard at the helm and and are even more excited for
00:13:12 ◼ ► what's to come i mean so this seems like you would have airpods or a pair of apple glasses and you
00:13:23 ◼ ► would be able to control them or control some kinds of experiences without having to speak and you know
00:13:30 ◼ ► this is kind of funny because i've been having this thing recently where i have been thinking to myself
00:13:36 ◼ ► how nice it would be to be able to pause skip or talk to siri or whatever without having to say
00:13:45 ◼ ► things like i've been having this thought recently like in my life my hands are more occupied in certain
00:13:52 ◼ ► scenarios than they used to be and being able to control things in my world would be really nice
00:13:59 ◼ ► without having to physically interact with stuff i mean it's less socially disruptive if you're not
00:14:05 ◼ ► speaking out loud because we tend to think that you're talking to to me instead of like to your
00:14:10 ◼ ► computer and i mean i'm reminded there are sci-fi books that i i read over the years that talk about
00:14:18 ◼ ► having a kind of a neural ai kind of interface right i mean this is not what we're what we're dealing
00:14:24 ◼ ► with in the reality one of the reasons i love science fiction is what we're dealing with in society
00:14:28 ◼ ► today has entirely been discussed from every angle in science fiction over the years but one of the
00:14:33 ◼ ► things that always struck me as as a necessity in some of those books is this that the idea that you
00:14:39 ◼ ► are your interactions are sub vocal that you you are if not thinking if it's not reading your mind
00:14:46 ◼ ► you're sub vocalizing you're moving your mouth but not talking and that the computer knows what you're
00:14:53 ◼ ► saying so you're saying it in your inside voice basically yeah um and this could do that which is
00:15:00 ◼ ► very interesting even if it's i mean i also really like the intention to speak before speech occurs is
00:15:06 ◼ ► really interesting right because that's like that changes how you choose how to detect speech because
00:15:12 ◼ ► you know it's coming so that you you could as a as a device you are prepped in that moment to receive it
00:15:19 ◼ ► instead of having to kind of loop and wait for speech to occur you uh watch and then you leap in
00:15:24 ◼ ► and then the idea that you could decode silent speech that's really really interesting so i mean we'll
00:15:30 ◼ ► see where it goes this is one of those things that may take years to get in an actual apple product
00:15:35 ◼ ► well yeah i mean it was four years from when they acquired prime sense to face id becoming a thing
00:15:41 ◼ ► but i think apple apple definitely i i totally get why they'd be interested in this this idea that
00:15:53 ◼ ► of sub vocalizing of doing silent speech to control devices that's really really interesting i mean
00:15:58 ◼ ► because it would seem it would seem that we are moving towards a future where we will be dialoguing
00:16:04 ◼ ► with computers more naturally than we have been in the past right like we were just talking about
00:16:10 ◼ ► the rumors for the 27 set of operating systems that you would be able to give them an instruction
00:16:16 ◼ ► and they would be able to carry it out based on what it knows the computer can do so you could say like
00:16:21 ◼ ► resize this image and send it to json and it would do that so like having better systems for
00:16:27 ◼ ► dealing with and expecting speech would be one thing but also you know like i get the impression from
00:16:34 ◼ ► some of the stuff that met is doing where they're using their neural wristband and i also think about
00:16:39 ◼ ► the vision pro when you have these really high quality sensors and they're sensing what your body's doing
00:16:45 ◼ ► but these things are second nature to us that we don't even consider them it feels like the computer is
00:16:51 ◼ ► reading your mind which is a very powerful feeling like when you're really using a vision pro and like jamming on it
00:16:58 ◼ ► like you're like you're having some time in there and you're doing some stuff it really starts to feel
00:17:03 ◼ ► like the computer is understanding you and you're on that you're working together because you're being
00:17:09 ◼ ► so natural in your movements you know like that you would look at something and just tap your fingers
00:17:14 ◼ ► together when you when you're really kind of doing that especially in the first times you're using it
00:17:18 ◼ ► it kind of feels like your mind is being read and and right this this kind of stuff i think could be
00:17:23 ◼ ► very powerful um in making computers feel even more kind of like extensions of ourselves yeah absolutely
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00:19:01 ◼ ► it's that time again it's that time again and jason they actually do have all the money
00:19:26 ◼ ► this time like there's no more money left for anyone else they've got all of it um this is an
00:19:33 ◼ ► unbelievable so okay so as we're recording this and we recorded we recorded a couple of days early
00:19:38 ◼ ► apple's results were yesterday um yeah in our timeline that secretly reveals that we that day
00:19:44 ◼ ► was friday that we were indeed um and so this was apple's q1 results 2026 but this covers the end
00:19:52 ◼ ► of 2025 right is is the the actual sales holiday quarter 2025 yes so we're looking at a revenue
00:19:59 ◼ ► figure of 143.8 billion this is up 16 year over year obviously an all-time record quarter jason next year
00:20:12 ◼ ► we may pass 100 we may see them pass 150 billion dollars yes we will not pass it we will watch as
00:20:21 ◼ ► someone else passes and this is not a team sport yeah yeah in fact um not to jump ahead but one of
00:20:28 ◼ ► the things that they uh that they suggested is 13 to 16 percent growth year over year next quarter which
00:20:33 ◼ ► would mean that it would be apple's biggest non-holiday quarter of all time uh in the you know 108 to
00:20:40 ◼ ► 111 billion range and i just we are at that point now where apple is a company large enough that their
00:20:46 ◼ ► routine quarters are now just going to be over 100 billion in revenue and their peak quarter is now
00:20:51 ◼ ► peak you know headed toward maybe 150 billion in revenue but the idea of a dan and i were talking
00:20:58 ◼ ► about this at six colors the idea that you can have a boring 100 billion dollar quarter that that was q3
00:21:04 ◼ ► last year and then it's going to be q or that was q4 last year and it's going to be q2 of this year
00:21:11 ◼ ► it's going to be also a probably boring 100 billion dollar quarter so that's just it's a size thing
00:21:17 ◼ ► um uh it's it's uh it's just yeah apple apple makes a lot of money that that's the that's the truth
00:21:24 ◼ ► of it that's the base of it is they make a lot of money and the iphone is driving it yeah that's
00:21:27 ◼ ► what happened what happened is they sold a lot of iphones so like usually you know one of my favorite
00:21:32 ◼ ► charts that you do um is the apple quarterly revenue by category chart my pie chart your pie chart i have
00:21:39 ◼ ► one pie chart and usually like basically every other quarter of the year this hovers around 50
00:21:45 ◼ ► sometimes a little less than 50 is 59 so essentially 60 of apple's revenue for this quarter was iphones
00:21:54 ◼ ► and that came in at 85.3 billion dollars which is up i would say a staggering 23 year over year
00:22:03 ◼ ► yeah the the figure that really jumped out to me is they made more money this quarter on iphone sales
00:22:11 ◼ ► than many total quarters in the last five years like of different times of the year so like their
00:22:17 ◼ ► entire revenue in say q3 2024 yeah so just you know last year right a quarter last year they made less
00:22:27 ◼ ► money overall than they made from just iphones in this quarter which is i mean i know all of that
00:22:34 ◼ ► works out right of like there's obviously the most iphones are sold at this time but that is just
00:22:39 ◼ ► immense absolutely immense yeah yeah it's it's obviously it's the driver of the company but you've got the
00:22:47 ◼ ► holiday season and you've got new iphones and iphone 17 and it's hard not to just say this is obviously
00:22:55 ◼ ► a hit product right iphone 17 um and when asked by analysts to detail it um tim cook was very much
00:23:06 ◼ ► like i can't choose among my children it's like it's all over the place there's lots of different cohorts
00:23:17 ◼ ► it was unexpected i mean up 23 percent like he was surprised can you guys believe these shots i got
00:23:24 ◼ ► over here they were i mean the truth is they said that they weren't in supply demand balance they
00:23:28 ◼ ► couldn't make enough they couldn't make them fast enough and they said that the issue it's funny the
00:23:32 ◼ ► issue is is not um remember the legacy notes mike remember them legacy notes this is uh a phrase that
00:23:39 ◼ ► i had not even been familiar with but it's the idea that that in the sort of immediate pandemic and
00:23:45 ◼ ► aftermath uh they had trouble getting like wi-fi chips and bluetooth chips because those factories
00:23:51 ◼ ► had shut down and it was hard and everybody wanted them and this is the advanced nodes they basically
00:23:55 ◼ ► there aren't that many i mean really tsmc is making them three nanometer systems on the chip right
00:24:01 ◼ ► there's only only what tsmc can make them and they may they they had so much more demand for
00:24:09 ◼ ► iphone that apple was expecting that even if they increase what they are building there are only so
00:24:15 ◼ ► many chips that tsmc can make on the three nanometer process for apple um and you you know there's a lot
00:24:22 ◼ ► of talk about like tsmc and apple and how that relationship is evolving but like this is this is not
00:24:27 ◼ ► about that this is immediate this is literally um there's no you can't just like make a factory appear
00:24:35 ◼ ► like they're they're they're on a cutting edge process and this is how many it's just very
00:24:38 ◼ ► interesting that the iphone outstripped iphone demand outstripped their ability to make those
00:24:43 ◼ ► chips which is uh pretty wild well i think this is a problem so i'm going to put a link in the show
00:24:49 ◼ ► notes to an article that ben thompson wrote about tsmc ben's been very animated about tsmc at the moment
00:24:54 ◼ ► yes and and i i see this is it this is a significant issue for apple so one of the things that tim says
00:25:00 ◼ ► at this time we're seeing less flexibility in the supply chain than normal i mean i don't think
00:25:07 ◼ ► that's going to be changing in the next couple of years yes no that that was a warning sign that was
00:25:12 ◼ ► definitely a warning sign less less flexibility in the supply chain are we seeing the beginning of
00:25:18 ◼ ► nvidia open ai these other companies coming in and they're taking time away at tsmc from apple
00:25:25 ◼ ► so i don't think this is that moment this is about tsmc you know just kind of currently humming away
00:25:32 ◼ ► making these chips and they can't crank that dial up much more but the long run yes this is this is
00:25:39 ◼ ► one of apple's threats is that apple um it's not just that apple might have to pay more for ram or
00:25:46 ◼ ► chips or whatever but it's that apple might not have access to more because they're not the number one
00:25:50 ◼ ► customer at tsmc anymore and uh tsmc likes their business very much but tsmc has a bunch
00:25:57 ◼ ► of other companies pressing on them i will say that you could overstate it because i feel like
00:26:01 ◼ ► apple is a because it okay and ben thompson has covered this really well on stratechery
00:26:06 ◼ ► in his um articles he quotes the president of tsmc and i think it's really fascinating because
00:26:12 ◼ ► he's clearly conflicted right the tsmc guy is like yeah the ai companies come to me and they say they
00:26:20 ◼ ► want more capacity but like i have to build the capacity and if they don't end up needing the
00:26:24 ◼ ► capacity then i lose billions of dollars and i don't love that i will say he's got to be way more
00:26:32 ◼ ► confident about apple and that relationship so i think apple has an advantage there that although apple
00:26:36 ◼ ► is not the oh my god we could double our business kind of company rolling into tsmc i think he and
00:26:44 ◼ ► apple can collaborate together and he has a high confidence that it will work out whereas the ai stuff
00:26:52 ◼ ► is kind of scary and i'm sure he'll do it but but it's it's kind of scary because it's not a guaranteed
00:26:58 ◼ ► thing so um but yeah that and then you talk about the ram thing i mean apple's gonna do um fine in the
00:27:04 ◼ ► short term in terms of its margins and stuff but like in the long term they have to deal with
00:27:09 ◼ ► they're gonna have to deal with the memory issues too and and it could it could severely affect
00:27:14 ◼ ► either their margins or their prices or the or product availability and that that is a wild idea
00:27:19 ◼ ► right the idea that for the last few years apple's been pretty good at managing demand right um and in
00:27:26 ◼ ► the pandemic they had some issues but imagine having a product that is very much in demand and you can't
00:27:31 ◼ ► sell that product to people because you can't make them fast enough and that goes on for a while
00:27:38 ◼ ► that's i mean what do you do in that circumstance is probably you raise prices because that reduces
00:27:44 ◼ ► demand yep um while increasing your margins uh you may have to raise prices in order to get access to
00:27:50 ◼ ► the chips anyway so i would say the storm clouds are not gathering maybe yet but on the horizon
00:28:00 ◼ ► it you know because we love a storm clouds reference here on upgrade i mean i i just feel like it is
00:28:06 ◼ ► indicative of the fact that tsmc can be a blocker for them and i and that is when they still have
00:28:14 ◼ ► presumably as much supply as is possible to be given to them right this is the downside of being on a on a
00:28:23 ◼ ► an advanced node being on on the cutting edge is when you're on the cutting edge you presumably they
00:28:30 ◼ ► provided tsmc with estimates about how many products they were going to ship how many iphone 17s they
00:28:35 ◼ ► were going to need how many three nanometer chips they were going to need for this generation
00:28:39 ◼ ► and they obviously missed right like either that or tsmc said we can't make that many but my guess is
00:28:44 ◼ ► that they missed that well 23 they're legitimately surprised that it was up that much i think it's
00:28:50 ◼ ► clear that and they built in a little headroom but yeah they sold more than they expected which is the
00:28:55 ◼ ► problem yeah for sure they said they said so they had exceeded our expectations to to say the least
00:29:00 ◼ ► yes to say the least and so is i i don't doubt as well right that like the tsmc people know that apple
00:29:10 ◼ ► is looking at intel like that's not going to help right in like getting them what they need if then
00:29:15 ◼ ► there are these other companies who are like no no we'll only work with you like there's a lot of
00:29:20 ◼ ► like uh corporate politics at play here for who you know who got the shiny new child who's bringing
00:29:26 ◼ ► all this money compared to the old one who's kind of starting to look elsewhere not great
00:29:31 ◼ ► but but cash is king apple will still make the orders and they will make the orders forever
00:29:39 ◼ ► right that is like yeah for as long as forever could be considered if you're tsmc as you're saying
00:29:46 ◼ ► you cannot be guaranteed that the ai companies will even be here in five years like the ones you're
00:29:53 ◼ ► currently dealing with so if i'm tsmc's ceo i want to take advantage of access to the ai people yep
00:30:08 ◼ ► dependable reliable that's your baseline right like that one is gonna have though i you know that's a
00:30:17 ◼ ► guaranteed customer and i know yeah apple's doing some stuff with intel and all of that but like
00:30:22 ◼ ► it's gonna be a long time before intel if ever before intel is going to be able to rival tsmc
00:30:27 ◼ ► on the advanced nodes sure right on the cutting edge and so like if i'm tsmc ceo i'm like yeah
00:30:36 ◼ ► i love it i love them and that gives you more confidence maybe to make some bets with the with these
00:30:43 ◼ ► other with the ai companies because you've got apple and you know that that is a trustworthy relationship
00:30:49 ◼ ► so i don't think it's fair to say like oh apple's not going to be shut the shiny they're not going to be the
00:30:54 ◼ ► shiny new partner but um they're a reliable partner that the business depends on uh and i think that that
00:31:00 ◼ ► will probably continue but um but the the ram prices are going to be an issue and yeah this this is i think
00:31:08 ◼ ► more broadly leaving aside the pressure on tsmc from the the ai folks just when you have a single source
00:31:16 ◼ ► and they're on the cutting edge and you miss you i mean because at the end this is a failure by apple
00:31:23 ◼ ► right apple failed to correctly gauge or predict demand for the iphone 17 series that's what happened
00:31:29 ◼ ► um i mean unless i've seen those stories to suggest that it's actually that they the tsmc said we can't
00:31:36 ◼ ► make you anymore and that that apple wanted more it sounds like apple gave itself some headroom
00:31:43 ◼ ► but did not expect this level of sales and um that's on them because they could have probably
00:31:50 ◼ ► worked it out with tsmc to have a higher level that they didn't think was necessary because they're
00:31:55 ◼ ► trying to optimize for profit and then you know want to overbuild and then after the initial push
00:32:00 ◼ ► it just kind of like that's why apple rolls down these chips into other devices as you build
00:32:04 ◼ ► all of that volume for the early days when there's high demand and then the the peak goes down and you're
00:32:10 ◼ ► like what do we do with the volume and the answer is you roll them into ipads and max and wherever else
00:32:14 ◼ ► and you kind of like that that's how that monitors whatever it plays out over time so they they missed
00:32:21 ◼ ► on that and it's good news in a sense but it's also i i would argue maybe not as bad news for apple as you
00:32:27 ◼ ► might think because this happened during the pandemic and i i'm i'm skeptical that if somebody wants to buy an
00:32:34 ◼ ► iphone and it's not available for a few weeks that they're going to say well forget about it and buy
00:32:40 ◼ ► a competitor i think that's i think it's unlikely but you know if you're apple you really want that
00:32:46 ◼ ► money and you want that sale um and you want it now so going back to the earnings uh the mac is at 8.4
00:32:54 ◼ ► billion dollars down seven percent year over year yeah tough compare classic tough compare um i have a
00:33:01 ◼ ► little color here more color please give me more color adjacent six colors yeah more color so
00:33:07 ◼ ► mac is down and i i read you know some analysis that's like oh people are worried about the mac it's
00:33:14 ◼ ► like the mac is fine this was a tough compare apple released a bunch of products last fall 24 that they
00:33:20 ◼ ► didn't release in 25 and so the number is going to be down so it's not that big a deal um the mac
00:33:26 ◼ ► is selling more than ever it reached an all-time high in stall base um what i found funny and gold star
00:33:33 ◼ ► to the analyst who did this an analyst said i noticed you didn't say that this quarter would
00:33:38 ◼ ► be a tough compare for the mac um do you have any more information about that love it and and the cfo
00:33:45 ◼ ► kevin parrick was like no that's pretty much it you know we did not rise to the level where we would
00:33:50 ◼ ► give any warning and i thought this is the cleverest way i've seen yet of trying to get apple to admit
00:33:56 ◼ ► that they've got new macs coming now they didn't do it but i think i think it's quite reasonable to
00:34:02 ◼ ► assume that one of the reasons apple is not worried about the tough compare next quarter is because
00:34:08 ◼ ► they know that in a couple of weeks they're probably going to release a bunch of macbook pros and sell
00:34:12 ◼ ► even though it's only half the quarter at that point that they're still going to sell a lot and book a
00:34:16 ◼ ► lot of mac revenue and it's going to be okay um but we don't know that they just didn't give a warning
00:34:21 ◼ ► and this is that this is that canary thing right where they didn't say it was a tough compare
00:34:26 ◼ ► what does that mean um maybe it means nothing but i think it means that they're probably new
00:34:31 ◼ ► macs coming which we all expect so yeah that's not a big surprise is it apple's going to release new
00:34:35 ◼ ► computers you know um but there is something to be said about what what are these computers right like
00:34:42 ◼ ► and and how does that make the compare um sure apple may be creating a tough compare for themselves
00:34:49 ◼ ► this year if they actually do release two macbook pros which is a possibility every time this is this is
00:34:54 ◼ ► how silly the whole tough compare thing is is this year's this year's beat this year's success is next
00:35:02 ◼ ► year's tough compare and last year's tough compare is this year's success that's just how it goes right
00:35:08 ◼ ► if you have a really good quarter in q2 of one year the next year it's going to be tough to be up year
00:35:14 ◼ ► over year because that's just how it goes which is why it's very silly when i see these stories that are
00:35:19 ◼ ► like people are concerned because the mac was down it's like if you look at that business and show
00:35:25 ◼ ► concern about the mac i'm sorry there's no sign that the mac is struggling at all their debt they made
00:35:31 ◼ ► they they generated 8.4 billion in revenue on the mac the mac is at all-time highs and so many
00:35:37 ◼ ► different things but they released more new products in that same three month span a year ago that's it
00:35:43 ◼ ► that's all that that means so you you can get worked up about it but it just doesn't it it i think it's
00:35:50 ◼ ► overstating it a lot ipad is at 8.6 billion which is up six percent year over year yeah it's good to
00:35:58 ◼ ► release ipads they they said specifically the a16 ipad and the m5 ipad pro helped drive that you know
00:36:05 ◼ ► you release new ipads people buy them turns out yep remember that year where they didn't and then
00:36:10 ◼ ► nobody bought them it was bad yeah it was real bad but you know what it did it made a good compare for
00:36:15 ◼ ► the next year sure did uh services has crossed 30 billion dollars uh up 14 percent year over year
00:36:22 ◼ ► just the graph that just continues going up and it keeps going up uh in the teens every quarter it's
00:36:28 ◼ ► up sequentially too it's been it's been several years since they even had a down quarter sequentially
00:36:34 ◼ ► because it's not really it's subscription business right so it's there's churn and stuff but it's pretty
00:36:39 ◼ ► much just growing which is wild yeah i will say i mean they raise prices that helps it grow too
00:36:44 ◼ ► it's not just sure people although they they they talk about how they they have so many subscriptions
00:36:49 ◼ ► etc etc but like the number just keeps going up yes uh wearables home and accessories was at 11.5
00:36:56 ◼ ► billion which is down two percent uh i saw one detail um that apple apparently couldn't make airpods
00:37:03 ◼ ► pro 3 fast enough to meet demand yeah another another example of apple's it's good news bad news it's like
00:37:10 ◼ ► you you couldn't make airpods pro 3 fast enough because of demand the good news is demand the bad
00:37:16 ◼ ► news is those are missed sales or at least deferred sales they they actually said so they were down two
00:37:21 ◼ ► percent year over year they said if they had been able to ship all of the airpods pro 3 that could be
00:37:27 ◼ ► bought in the next um in the next you know in that quarter they would have grown instead of shrunk by
00:37:36 ◼ ► two year over year so um they basically said let's count it as a win even though it's not a win
00:37:41 ◼ ► because they couldn't do it it like the demand was there and if you're an analyst we don't count that
00:37:46 ◼ ► as a win you can't just make stuff up i know you know i know well they didn't make it up
00:37:49 ◼ ► yeah but they're just saying it right well legally they have to believe it when they say
00:37:54 ◼ ► sure they said we believe that if we had been able to fulfill the demand in the quarter we would
00:37:59 ◼ ► have been uh in growth instead of down two percent and i i they're close enough that i can see that
00:38:05 ◼ ► however the flip side of that is why did you not was it they and they didn't give us any additional
00:38:11 ◼ ► color on this one but like did you miss forecast the airpods pro 3 or did you have a production issue
00:38:17 ◼ ► and they didn't say um is it is it you know are there advanced nodes or legacy nodes are the sorts
00:38:21 ◼ ► of nodes airpod nodes i don't know um but what i will say about wearables home and accessories we
00:38:27 ◼ ► talk a lot in rumor roundup about all these stories that have been around for the last couple years
00:38:31 ◼ ► that apple's going to do a home controller apple's got a robot that sits on a table apple's got a
00:38:35 ◼ ► uh you know it's got a door lock it's got a smart camera it's got all of this stuff that it's
00:38:41 ◼ ► working on that you would put in the home category um if you look at the year over year chart for wearables
00:38:49 ◼ ► home and accessories it's been down all but one quarter since the end of 2022 and all but two
00:39:00 ◼ ► quarters since the middle of 2022 it has been down this is a category in retreat it is unlike after a lot
00:39:09 ◼ ► of growth early on it is unlike any other apple category and the fact that it was in retreat even
00:39:15 ◼ ► with airpods pro 3 releasing i think is saying something even if look if they had fulfilled all
00:39:20 ◼ ► demand for airpods pro 3 in this quarter what would that number have been up one percent up half a
00:39:25 ◼ ► percent it would not have been up ten percent right like that that's not the case so it they were
00:39:31 ◼ ► really leaning back and enjoying life when it was airpods and apple watch and there was a lot of
00:39:35 ◼ ► growth in this category but very clearly they they reached their their peak with those products in
00:39:41 ◼ ► terms of growth and they've run out of growth there's no more growth in this category and i've
00:39:46 ◼ ► got to think that everybody was like we should do home products in the days when they were getting
00:39:51 ◼ ► 20 30 percent growth every quarter they're like why why should we bother and then they had the hard
00:39:58 ◼ ► fall in 22 and onward and that's what got them to prioritize all those smart home products so that's
00:40:04 ◼ ► why we're going to see them probably multiple smart home products this year is that this this category
00:40:08 ◼ ► which is you know it is other it is miscellaneous there's other products that they could do that
00:40:13 ◼ ► would fit in here air tags are in here right like there's lots of things that are in here but i think
00:40:18 ◼ ► that i think that one of the reasons apple is going to be finally leaning into the smart home
00:40:22 ◼ ► is that their home category is not growing anymore they've run out of road it seems in a lot of this
00:40:29 ◼ ► for what it's worth yeah i it makes me think of like the ipad you know like the original you know
00:40:37 ◼ ► at first the ipad was like a rocket ship and then everybody bought them and then didn't replace them
00:40:43 ◼ ► and i figure airpods especially are like that where they had a real moment and lots of people bought
00:40:50 ◼ ► them and then they just used them for years and years and years it's it's not quite as extreme as
00:40:55 ◼ ► as ipad because ipad went up and then it went way down because like everybody bought one and then
00:41:02 ◼ ► nobody bought them after that for several years because they bought one wearables is more of a kind of a
00:41:07 ◼ ► gentle decline i would i would even characterize it as i mean i i feel like it's pretty natural that you
00:41:13 ◼ ► come off of a high right like you have that big you have that big year or big quarter and and you come
00:41:19 ◼ ► off of it a little i actually think it's more amazing when apple posts a high and then kind of
00:41:24 ◼ ► maintains but you usually come off of it a little bit and if you look at wearables you know in 22 they
00:41:29 ◼ ► were at 14.7 billion at the holiday quarter and if you look at every successive holiday quarter
00:41:36 ◼ ► goes from 14.7 to 13.5 to 12 to 11.7 to 11.5 so i think it's just sort of a gentle decline but
00:41:44 ◼ ► mostly you know they it's still a a big business but i think there was initial uptake and enthusiasm
00:41:52 ◼ ► about apple watch and airpods and that the airpods cycle is long they're not the apple watch buying
00:41:59 ◼ ► cycle is long i mean it really does you don't buy an apple watch every year or two you don't you buy
00:42:04 ◼ ► it every four years or something and it stretches it out what they need is more products in this
00:42:09 ◼ ► category if they want to show growth they need to find other areas which is why they're doing the you
00:42:14 ◼ ► know mark german likes to tell us the robots and things like that is is they're they're trying to
00:42:19 ◼ ► figure out what else they can do here so one of the interesting stats something that definitely helped
00:42:25 ◼ ► is that apple saw 38 percent year over year growth in revenue in china uh cook said the traffic in
00:42:32 ◼ ► chinese apple stores grew by strong double digits and you know we've spoken about it a bunch of times
00:42:39 ◼ ► you referenced it in your article too right that it's there has been a long-held belief that a
00:42:44 ◼ ► redesigned iphone sells very well in asia that there is there is something about that which which
00:42:51 ◼ ► you know if you look through in history you'll see that that has happened and i know this is a stupid
00:42:57 ◼ ► question but considering that yeah why don't they just do more like i know how hard it must be but
00:43:06 ◼ ► this company makes so much money like so much money i feel like you have to kind of say like could you
00:43:12 ◼ ► not redesign the phone more often because it seems like yeah we're going to be seeing that over the
00:43:20 ◼ ► next couple of years still like you know we're going to be seeing drastic iphone designs you know we had
00:43:27 ◼ ► 17 line then we're going to get the fold and then the year after that the iphone 20 you know i i wonder
00:43:36 ◼ ► this is going to be kind of out of the blue but i wonder if the pandemic is a part of this i wonder if
00:43:40 ◼ ► they really did did take a hit and we're seeing it now where we now we've got this big line of new
00:43:45 ◼ ► iphones coming out after like this quiet period i wonder if if maybe in other circumstances these
00:43:52 ◼ ► would have been spaced out a little bit differently but they got you know or maybe they just hit a
00:43:58 ◼ ► technological wall or a manufacturing wall where they're like they ran out of ideas maybe i mean
00:44:03 ◼ ► don't forget the iphone 6 line right that that that design stuck around for it wasn't that long but at the
00:44:10 ◼ ► time it felt like a long time yeah that's right but those that those spaces have widened right
00:44:15 ◼ ► between the major updates and i i take your point i think and i don't know if apple i'm sure they've
00:44:21 ◼ ► had these debates internally but i think there is that question of like is is our opinion that we only
00:44:27 ◼ ► redesign the iphone when it's when we have something to say or is it no actually even if the technology
00:44:34 ◼ ► inside only changes incrementally like it does outside you need to be pushing the design more and
00:44:42 ◼ ► and and i know there are a bunch of people in our audience who would say oh redesign for design sake
00:44:46 ◼ ► you know that's that's no good but if it sells way more phones in certain markets would you not
00:44:54 ◼ ► i i don't know i mean we'll we'll see i think they'll i'll tell you this apple is absolutely
00:45:01 ◼ ► looking at the iphone 17 and saying what are the lessons learned here and is it something about the
00:45:06 ◼ ► 17 pro design because they know the details that we don't know about the 17s finally getting way more
00:45:11 ◼ ► features or is it the 17 pro new design or is or in asian markets is it the air doing is it doing
00:45:18 ◼ ► better and driving sales there they know that and we don't but you got to be looking at this and saying
00:45:24 ◼ ► why did this happen and again maybe part of it is the feeling that the last few years have been pretty
00:45:27 ◼ ► sterile and minor and that there was pent-up demand for a new iphone that has come out here
00:45:33 ◼ ► um but certainly if you're in charge of iphone stuff you've got the business of iphone you've got to be
00:45:50 ◼ ► replicate it right so that these bumps come every couple of years instead of every four years
00:45:57 ◼ ► yeah iphones are fashion you know and maybe it is a physical change maybe it's big bold bright colors
00:46:05 ◼ ► i would love to know how much of this they pin on that orange color because i maybe i see it everywhere
00:46:12 ◼ ► yep a lot of orange phones out there yep got an ask upgrade question about that later on yeah
00:46:17 ◼ ► so yeah obviously massive quarter huge uh last thing i want to lead on is that even with what is clear
00:46:26 ◼ ► increasing prices in memory apple are remaining confident that they will be able to maintain their
00:46:31 ◼ ► margins in the next quarter uh apple say they have caught a range of options it's like i don't even
00:46:38 ◼ ► it's it's fascinating what does that mean are they going to increase prices do they have a big stockpile
00:46:43 ◼ ► like we don't know um but it is going to be really interesting to see how this year plays out for them
00:46:50 ◼ ► because the rest of the computer industry is struggling right now yeah and cook said i don't want to get
00:46:57 ◼ ► more specific than that it's a range of options there's different levers that we can push and who
00:47:03 ◼ ► knows how successful they'll they'll be so you know i i they don't want to reveal the secret sauce
00:47:09 ◼ ► um among the levers is eating margin is raising prices yeah but is that they're saying they will
00:47:19 ◼ ► maintain their margin so they in how much margin is there to eat in the near term what they have not
00:47:25 ◼ ► talked about is in the long term will they be able to maintain margin they're going to maintain margin
00:47:30 ◼ ► next quarter but what happens after that i will i will say that some of this is also negotiating in
00:47:35 ◼ ► public like apple it goes back to what we said about tsmc i think i think that right now there is a
00:47:43 ◼ ► uh huge need for ram right and among people building ai data centers and so that is distorted the market
00:47:51 ◼ ► and and that's going to be an issue for everybody else but also this is apple and apple has volume
00:48:08 ◼ ► um which is weird because i always think you should pull the levers but anyway among the levers they
00:48:13 ◼ ► push and pull uh i do wonder if some of it is you know big contracts that they haven't done recently
00:48:20 ◼ ► where they're like look we'll guarantee we're going to buy an enormous number of these over years
00:48:26 ◼ ► and years and if you're a ram manufacturer like what we said about tsmc i do wonder if there's a
00:48:35 ◼ ► negotiation to be had where apple is useful because apple you can count on them in a way that maybe
00:48:42 ◼ ► you don't you're not sure like is this if this is just a moment in time you want to make as much
00:48:49 ◼ ► money from these ai companies that are funded by dreams and have no profits and are spending enormous
00:48:56 ◼ ► amounts of money you want to make hay while the sun shines right i get it but if you but the tsmc
00:49:03 ◼ ► dilemma is also if you invest massively in capacity that then you can't use that's not great having a
00:49:13 ◼ ► partner like apple who's more reliable to be part of kind of your business plan mix that maybe even
00:49:19 ◼ ► gives you more openness to risk because you've got them and you know you can bank on them there that's
00:49:25 ◼ ► why i kept trying to come up with a financial example of this that they're like a they're like a bond or a
00:49:32 ◼ ► you know they're like a a t-bill they're like hard currency they're it's apple like they're gonna come
00:49:38 ◼ ► through and then you've got this risky gamble and that if you can mix your your portfolio maybe that
00:49:47 ◼ ► i i actually don't know as somebody who's not bought a norm negotiate enormous contracts for components i i just
00:49:53 ◼ ► have to to emulate it and and guess but like that may be a lever that apple could pull is um longer term uh even if it
00:50:02 ◼ ► costs more to give their partners some security um maybe we'll see we'll see um it's also possible that apple's just
00:50:10 ◼ ► going to have to deal with um limited opportunity limited availability and they're going to have to
00:50:17 ◼ ► raise prices like i said not just to increase margins or or retain margins but to reduce demand a little bit
00:50:26 ◼ ► if they if they literally can't make them as many as people want that's one of the things you do is you
00:50:33 ◼ ► just raise the prices apple hates raising prices right apple finds these price slots and they stay in them so
00:50:38 ◼ ► you will know that they're really hard against it if they raise prices especially in the u.s
00:50:43 ◼ ► other countries they raise prices all the time but uh in the u.s they they really don't like to change
00:50:49 ◼ ► their price economic that happens you know oh the head yes that's right so that storm storm's not
00:50:54 ◼ ► necessarily it's on the horizon like there's something going on over on the horizon um will it bring the
00:51:00 ◼ ► headwinds um and what will those headwinds be that is a you know boy do financial people think that
00:51:07 ◼ ► they're sailors there's got to be some kind of correlation there right i mean they will take
00:51:13 ◼ ► their boats out on the weekend or something it's like master and commander right like markets are
00:51:19 ◼ ► now battlefields and also oceans i don't know what it is sometimes there are bears and sometimes there
00:51:25 ◼ ► are bulls you know who could tell yeah i've got a uh our next call comes from uh captain bligh
00:51:32 ◼ ► please go ahead you are me matey hoist the mainsail my question is about the foreign exchange headwinds
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00:53:44 ◼ ► of this show and relay so you wrote a review uh of apple creator studio so you had the apps for a few
00:53:55 ◼ ► days or something like that kind of a week um i had them from basically when they were announced until
00:54:00 ◼ ► they they came out on uh last wednesday okay um i mean i kind of called it hands-on with the thing is
00:54:08 ◼ ► it's not like i don't use final cut and it's not like i don't use logic but what i'm not is making
00:54:15 ◼ ► you know documentaries and final cut and music and logic yeah so i'm familiar with the apps the new
00:54:22 ◼ ► stuff that they added is mostly stuff that i would not use or i would almost not use like i do use um
00:54:27 ◼ ► every so often i'm moved usually because a tune pops into my head to make a song it's it's always a
00:54:34 ◼ ► robot or not theme song that's where all my creative musical output goes is to robot or not theme songs
00:54:40 ◼ ► and i've used their um ai session players before and it's very impressive and they've got a new one
00:54:46 ◼ ► and that's great like those are kind of amazing um so they look like you know interesting good updates
00:54:53 ◼ ► um to final cut and and uh logic um and pixelmator i am a photoshop person because i've been a photoshop
00:55:02 ◼ ► person for like 30 years now so i mean more than 30 years now a long long time since college
00:55:10 ◼ ► um and i still pay adobe for photoshop but pixelmator is very impressive like pixelmator pro is really
00:55:17 ◼ ► good um enough that i should probably spend enough time with it so that if especially if i'm going to be
00:55:22 ◼ ► paying for this suite anyway which i may um one way to pay for it is to literally cancel my photoshop
00:55:29 ◼ ► subscription because that costs about the same for just photoshop although good luck doing that
00:55:34 ◼ ► i mean i'll have to call and put it in writing and and triplicate yeah yeah so um so it's all good
00:55:44 ◼ ► and they they add some features and and like and i like the idea i i i understand that people dislike
00:55:51 ◼ ► the idea that somebody else is asking them for a subscription i do like the idea that the mac
00:55:55 ◼ ► versions if you bought them you still have them and they still update and it's fine right yeah um that
00:56:02 ◼ ► that those people can just kind of keep doing it but if you want them on mac and ipad you do the
00:56:09 ◼ ► subscription um and and subscription fatigue is real but i'm sure i've said this before on this podcast
00:56:16 ◼ ► you always rented software because there was always a software but it's very like very few people are
00:56:23 ◼ ► i know george martin is still writing on word star right in emulation and there are very few people
00:56:29 ◼ ► out there writing in microsoft word 5.1 for example right like eventually you you spend money you can
00:56:35 ◼ ► you can choose when you spend the money but in the end like for software to work they have to have a
00:56:40 ◼ ► business which means they have to sell updates and i will tell you that upgrade the upgrade business
00:56:45 ◼ ► model not our business model our business model is great the software upgrade business model
00:56:49 ◼ ► was not great because it was it distorted the product because you every year or two you had to have a
00:56:56 ◼ ► big new update and so apps that were really good and streamlined got bloated and bad because they had
00:57:01 ◼ ► to make their money and i had a a developer i like a lot uh was really mad at me once because i reviewed
00:57:08 ◼ ► his software and did not give it i gave it a fine review it was not a bad review but he was really mad
00:57:14 ◼ ► because um he said we did so much work uh to make this work with apple's current os technologies and
00:57:22 ◼ ► build a platform for new features in the future and i said yeah but there aren't any new features now and
00:57:26 ◼ ► you're asking people for 100 bucks and i think that is i think that shows something right which is
00:57:31 ◼ ► when you when you're selling upgrades you you there's like a quid pro quo it's like i give you a hundred
00:57:36 ◼ ► dollars and you give me new features yeah um and it's i'm sorry that's unhealthy for software it's bad for
00:57:44 ◼ ► software development paying your what you're paying program x in that time a hundred dollars for is so
00:57:52 ◼ ► that their business stays and they built this foundation and so over the next few years they'll
00:57:56 ◼ ► roll out a bunch of new features you shouldn't view it as i'm buying i'll just skip this one and not give
00:58:02 ◼ ► the money and then in in two years i'll give them a hundred dollars for all the new features they finally
00:58:06 ◼ ► add on it's just it's it's it distorts the business um and the software gets weird and bloated and bad
00:58:14 ◼ ► because they have to keep shoving things into it and and then if you talk about compatibility if
00:58:21 ◼ ► you're a utility or something that's compatible with the os well you've got to do that work every
00:58:24 ◼ ► year which means that long before subscriptions were in vogue every time apple updated the operating
00:58:29 ◼ ► system you had to pay for a new version that upgrade fee for the new version of the program you bought
00:58:34 ◼ ► so that's how is that not a subscription it's a subscription in name only so i while i am
00:58:39 ◼ ► sympathetic to the idea that people don't like subscriptions the truth is they were the previous
00:58:45 ◼ ► error was not so great and there's something to be said for saying uh i use this tool all the time and
00:58:51 ◼ ► so i'm going to pay for it i also like the idea of like i need to use this tool a little so i'll pay
00:58:56 ◼ ► you know ten dollars for it or five dollars or whatever for this month and then i'll turn it back
00:59:01 ◼ ► off which is what we did with final cut for ipad when we shot our episodes of upgrade with it is i
00:59:07 ◼ ► just turn it on for a month and then turn it off because i didn't need it otherwise and that was
00:59:11 ◼ ► fine um so i i think it's a good deal if you use these apps um and if you use even like one of these
00:59:19 ◼ ► apps like the idea that you use final cut and now you get pixel mater with it i think that's really
00:59:24 ◼ ► actually kind of cool and that it's on the ipad pixel mater for the first time on the ipad
00:59:27 ◼ ► like i think when you look at what adobe charges these are very reasonable prices there are free
00:59:34 ◼ ► options and i think that's the other way to go there are free there's a free video editor there's
00:59:38 ◼ ► a free design tool um there's a free audio um digital audio workstation for music like i put links in
00:59:45 ◼ ► my article they're out there and you can do that too there's always open source stuff too that you can
00:59:50 ◼ ► use um so it depends on your needs but i think i think from apple given i like the fact that apple
00:59:58 ◼ ► is and i know we we said this a couple weeks ago i like apple is creating a revenue stream for these
01:00:04 ◼ ► apps because these apps are super important and should exist and they're professional apps and
01:00:09 ◼ ► creating a revenue stream for them makes apple and apple's managers more comfortable in continuing
01:00:14 ◼ ► to invest in development of them which is how it's supposed to work yeah so on that on that front
01:00:19 ◼ ► all good i think yeah i'm in a real funny spot with the creator studio so like i read your review and
01:00:27 ◼ ► by and large it's good right that like some of the things of honor cup really interesting to me that
01:00:33 ◼ ► like you can search transcripts search files in natural language it will find them beat detection
01:00:38 ◼ ► sounds very clever very clever yeah right like for matching up cuts with your music absolutely you
01:00:44 ◼ ► finally got your background export and final cut pro for ipad yeah pixel meter pro on ipad seems good
01:00:50 ◼ ► um there is like a weirdness of me like there is there was already a pixel meter on ipad and it did
01:00:56 ◼ ► already work with pixel meter pro for mac files but maybe there was like it wasn't fully compatible and
01:01:01 ◼ ► it definitely didn't have every feature so i'm excited to get that so like i can continue because i love
01:01:06 ◼ ► pixel meter i i use it all the time i spoke about that a couple of weeks ago you know and and what
01:01:11 ◼ ► you were saying in in i work right that well this is this is the thing well i mean some of the things
01:01:17 ◼ ► seem interesting right the content hub has got some some stuff going on yeah very nice very nice uh
01:01:22 ◼ ► clip art library yeah didn't seem thrilled about the templates that they just were not super exciting
01:01:27 ◼ ► well i mean they're they're more it's great like great more templates and they're professionally
01:01:31 ◼ ► designed templates i saw somebody comment like where the did amateurs design the old templates it was
01:01:35 ◼ ► like i mean somebody has to design them yeah um it's a larger issue right like the content hub is nice
01:01:41 ◼ ► the templates doing more keynote and pages templates and numbers i guess whatever is good i just think
01:01:52 ◼ ► it's funny that apple decided we'll just charge for those templates we'll make those templates
01:01:57 ◼ ► part of the equation because it throws more content in the bundle and it's like it's okay i guess that
01:02:02 ◼ ► means that there will never be more templates that aren't part of the bundle um even though templates
01:02:07 ◼ ► are nice but okay like they threw it in there they seem fine i very rarely use templates of any kind other
01:02:13 ◼ ► than like keynote templates where they give me you know they make a font and background choice and even
01:02:17 ◼ ► then i often override it yeah but having more templates is fine i i you know the content hub that's
01:02:23 ◼ ► licensed media and i understand that and that that is a price uh templates to me you know my argument might be
01:02:31 ◼ ► that that uh maybe that should just be part of the product and you should make more nice templates
01:02:37 ◼ ► if they want to sell them to me as premium i don't know how premium they feel they just feel like
01:02:47 ◼ ► um and then there are a bunch of open ai features in there too right which is interesting powered by
01:02:51 ◼ ► open ai which which again my argument is um that has an actual cost so okay you put that behind a
01:02:57 ◼ ► paywall so i'm a bit confused about this right because you you mentioned there's a token limit on the
01:03:03 ◼ ► image generation 100 images ish a month so are they using maybe that you don't know but are they using a
01:03:10 ◼ ► different model to what's in image playgrounds because i don't believe there's any limit in fact
01:03:15 ◼ ► there are two separate uis you can use image playgrounds or you can use this open ai image
01:03:22 ◼ ► generation so the open ai one you're probably getting the current well because the the image
01:03:27 ◼ ► playgrounds one is still quite limited right you can only do certain things with that so they clearly
01:03:32 ◼ ► have got quite a focused version and then i guess i mean i because i haven't used it yet i'll get to
01:03:38 ◼ ► why in a minute um the the you can ask for whatever you want in this image generation inside of iwork
01:03:45 ◼ ► is that how that works okay oh yeah that's the difference okay oh yeah and ask it to edit stuff
01:03:49 ◼ ► so i had to edit a uh a piece of clip media from the content hub i had a picture of a kid holding an
01:03:55 ◼ ► apple with a bite out of it and i said make it the rainbow color of the classic apple logo and it
01:04:00 ◼ ► it totally did it it also changed the kid's face to be creepy um however it just decides to do that
01:04:06 ◼ ► part on its own you didn't ask for that but then it also makes a change to the child's face like
01:04:11 ◼ ► okay thank you thank you image generation model thanks so much that was what i wanted but that's
01:04:16 ◼ ► what it yeah so there's a bunch of this and and the other stuff that's going on like um in keynote you
01:04:21 ◼ ► can make i made a presentation in keynote with uh notes i actually i had notes from a user group
01:04:27 ◼ ► meeting that i was going to do and i didn't do slides for it i just talked because i don't the
01:04:33 ◼ ► technical complexity of adding slides to a zoom presentation when all they are bold points it's
01:04:38 ◼ ► like i didn't need to do that but i'm like let's take my notes and make a presentation it made a very
01:04:42 ◼ ► generic presentation but it did explode it into slides and try its best it got some things wrong
01:04:47 ◼ ► um but that's that's also chat gpt it's using for that and uh but but it's still kind of cool right
01:04:54 ◼ ► that you give it text and then you watch as your keynote app just starts adding slides and stuff
01:05:01 ◼ ► i like the idea of the presenter notes being generated from my slides i think that's quite clever too
01:05:07 ◼ ► so i did that too um and and yeah the idea that you put a bullet points but you don't want to say the
01:05:14 ◼ ► bullet points having chat gpt basically say okay how about i will turn your bullet points into things
01:05:22 ◼ ► a person would say to describe the bullet points basically like i can see that there's value in that
01:05:27 ◼ ► i wouldn't do that but i can see that people would want to do that so it's stuff like that and there's
01:05:37 ◼ ► infrastructure i didn't get that to work so i don't know how that is but yeah um i i i get it
01:05:43 ◼ ► like there there's it i understand it i have lots of problems with this but none of them are about
01:05:50 ◼ ► that really yeah could can i can i give my little point and then we go into those because i assume
01:05:55 ◼ ► the problems are what you wrote your second post about yes yeah go ahead so i've read your article
01:06:00 ◼ ► and i was like some of this stuff sounds really interesting so i went to the app store and searched
01:06:06 ◼ ► for pixel meter and i was given two this is on my mac i was given two options i had pixel meter pro which
01:06:14 ◼ ► says update because i have that installed then i saw pixel meter pro edit images get and it was at that
01:06:22 ◼ ► moment where i thought i don't know if i can be bothered to do this like i would be a happy customer
01:06:30 ◼ ► of the creator studio i use most of the apps like the proper apps i'm not including the the small ones
01:06:37 ◼ ► right like the the the kind of final compressor add-ons main stage you're not using main stage on stage
01:06:42 ◼ ► to do essentially everything i use pages i use keynote i use numbers i use final cut i use logic and i use
01:06:49 ◼ ► pixel meter like i use them all and i am a happy customer of all of these products and would like some of the
01:06:54 ◼ ► features that are mentioned and that i expect will come in the future but when i see that there are
01:07:00 ◼ ► separate apps to download i'm like well this isn't going to be a fun experience for me like pulling the
01:07:07 ◼ ► trigger on doing this feels like it's something that's going to take work well what i want to happen
01:07:12 ◼ ► is the apps just update and then i can choose if i want to become a subscriber at that point
01:07:19 ◼ ► like it feels like because of choices apple has made for other developers and the way they want the
01:07:28 ◼ ► economics to be in the app store my experience is less in this scenario and it does almost feel like
01:07:35 ◼ ► the chickens are coming home to roost on them absolutely so so i i wrote this under embargo yeah so i was in a
01:07:42 ◼ ► test flight for all these apps so i didn't get that experience at all i got other apps but like it
01:07:47 ◼ ► wasn't the same so i post that story or set it to post at 6 a.m i'm asleep but it dropped it drops and
01:07:54 ◼ ► then that day i i keep hearing from people who are like you didn't write about this and you didn't
01:07:57 ◼ ► write about that and i i said i didn't get to see what the experience the rollout was going to be like
01:08:02 ◼ ► i only just saw the apps so i wrote another piece about this because it's a tough rollout and the answer
01:08:06 ◼ ► is i said something somewhere in the article i say uh it's a shame that apple couldn't convince apple to do a
01:08:11 ◼ ► better job with the app store back and but like this it is the chickens coming home to roost because
01:08:16 ◼ ► apple is now dealing with a very difficult confusing complicated upgrade and sales process for this
01:08:23 ◼ ► suite that is not it's because they're they're the app store is bad i mean basically it's because the
01:08:31 ◼ ► app store back end is bad and i will i will say just in passing when there's no competition there's
01:08:37 ◼ ► no motivation to make things better and if there was some other store that was amazing at doing
01:08:42 ◼ ► bundles and upgrades and things and very flexible for developers that could be put pitted against
01:08:48 ◼ ► apple then maybe apple would be motivated to make their system better but instead they're just like
01:08:52 ◼ ► we're going to add another ad spot yippee and i get like the people who work on the back end tools in
01:08:58 ◼ ► the app store probably are underfunded because i'm not saying that like the people are bad but the
01:09:03 ◼ ► organization at it doesn't care to a certain degree doesn't care about all of these issues that have
01:09:10 ◼ ► been raised by developers that we know and developers we don't know for years and it all comes home to
01:09:16 ◼ ► roost here so they have to add a tag on the name of every app in order to market it so it's pixelmator
01:09:22 ◼ ► pro colon edit images why is it that way that annoys because that's just that's what you do in the app store
01:09:28 ◼ ► now is you add things to the name to do seo basically because there you shouldn't have to do that there
01:09:34 ◼ ► should be a better way to do that but that is what we're stuck with with the app store um the skew thing
01:09:40 ◼ ► so these mac apps were mac apps and the ipad apps were under a different thing so what you can't do
01:09:48 ◼ ► is merge them together you should be able to do that right yes i got a mac app i got an ipad app
01:09:55 ◼ ► i want them to be the same thing so you get them once and then do a subscription all that like sorry
01:09:59 ◼ ► can't do it so what they have is they've got the old apps and the new apps as separate bundles and
01:10:06 ◼ ► they did an update on release day to the old apps that now every time you launch them it brings up a
01:10:11 ◼ ► thing that says this is old get the new one and you can say no but because it's off off version now i
01:10:19 ◼ ► think it doesn't do sharing features and and stuff because it's the old version um this is so annoying
01:10:27 ◼ ► you have to go to the app store and download it and if you already downloaded it it'll open it
01:10:30 ◼ ► but then until you delete the old version you'll have both versions i discovered that if you're scripting
01:10:36 ◼ ► it because i was doing the the apple results right and i use numbers and i had my my script failed
01:10:41 ◼ ► because it's it's a different app now it's not numbers it's actually numbers creator studio
01:10:47 ◼ ► it's got a it's got a long if you look in the finder this is a this is an amazing detail for all
01:10:54 ◼ ► of these if you look in the finder and get info on numbers it's numbers creator studio.app
01:10:59 ◼ ► it shows as numbers but it's a lie they're all tagged creator studio.app at the end of their name
01:11:08 ◼ ► so all of this so double versions app updates that tell you to download other app updates um i would
01:11:15 ◼ ► say one of my big problems with this overall again is the idea that iWork apps are not creator apps
01:11:25 ◼ ► they're not creators use them they're not creator apps they should be in a separate bundle or they
01:11:32 ◼ ► should be in two bundles if you want to do a premium ai feature package to somebody because like i was
01:11:39 ◼ ► talking to lauren about this yesterday lauren uses she had pages open i took some screenshots of what
01:11:43 ◼ ► it looks like and i opened her laptop and she had pages open to write a note that she's going to print
01:11:50 ◼ ► and i told her well this is this is how they're going to have to do this and they offer this as a
01:11:57 ◼ ► suite and all of that with logic and final cut and she's like i don't do any of those things i said i
01:12:03 ◼ ► know you just use the pages and numbers and stuff but i'm telling you i think one of the reasons that
01:12:09 ◼ ► they did this is because you the app store won't let them have the flexibility to offer different
01:12:13 ◼ ► bundles yep and different subscriptions for different apps and different bundles i think it's
01:12:17 ◼ ► all and if it's like well you can do it but this but that obviously they had a conversation where
01:12:22 ◼ ► they're like forget it and and yes that means that they're that on one level it is apple being hoist
01:12:29 ◼ ► by its own petard on another hand it is the chickens coming home to roost it is a group at apple
01:12:34 ◼ ► being completely let down by another group at apple and the result is that this bundle and this
01:12:41 ◼ ► upgrade experience is terrible it is a terrible customer experience and they know it right they're
01:12:47 ◼ ► not going to talk about they didn't certainly they didn't explain to anybody who was under embargo about
01:12:51 ◼ ► how this was going to work because it's embarrassing like the idea that you have to uh you know you get a
01:12:58 ◼ ► thing in your face that goes to another thing that brings up another thing that you download and then
01:13:03 ◼ ► you've got two but one of them has a hidden secret name and then you delete it and then uh you have
01:13:09 ◼ ► the new thing with a new icon um unless you had the the old mac apps because they kept those there and
01:13:14 ◼ ► but again there's a duplicate i guess there's still a duplicate business owners ourselves it is refreshing
01:13:20 ◼ ► that even if you make 140 billion dollars in a quarter you still can find yourself in scenarios
01:13:29 ◼ ► where you're like ah just to ship this i just can't do anything better right now you know like it's
01:13:36 ◼ ► refreshing because we i'm sure you i know i come to these things where you're like this could be done
01:13:43 ◼ ► better but to get it out i need to do it in a slightly janky way now they obviously had a year here but
01:13:49 ◼ ► whatever my guess is that the app store back end is so complicated yeah and and and one sweet release is
01:13:56 ◼ ► not enough either not enough to do it or it's going to take so long for them to do it that they that
01:14:00 ◼ ► they didn't do it or that work is still in process but for whatever reason like the people involved
01:14:05 ◼ ► with doing the creative apps are like we're going to do an apple software in general like we're going
01:14:09 ◼ ► to do a suite and the people over in the app store were like good luck with that and and i i'd actually
01:14:15 ◼ ► say not only is it dispiriting that the customer experience is so bad it's also dispiriting that not
01:14:34 ◼ ► could get the app store to work better that's incredibly dispiriting because i feel like not
01:14:42 ◼ ► the only way the only way that that like fundamental change like that would occur is if the company was
01:14:49 ◼ ► making more money themselves this is specifically the scenario where you would hope the classic move
01:14:55 ◼ ► with apple is apple's like no we can't do that no we can't do that and then they eat their own dog
01:14:59 ◼ ► food and they're like oh no yeah and then they do it they do it because they solve solving an apple
01:15:04 ◼ ► problem but here clearly they didn't they're like no we're just gonna i guess we'll put up a thing that
01:15:12 ◼ ► every time you launch the old numbers that says this is old get the new numbers instead use the new
01:15:18 ◼ ► version of numbers it says number 14.5 is out of date and can be deleted which is such a weird phrase
01:15:23 ◼ ► like everything can be deleted people everything can be deleted and then it's open new version or not now
01:15:31 ◼ ► and then you can actually continue to use it every time but what is also funny about that scenario too
01:15:36 ◼ ► is that like showing enough they can't delete it for you right like if i open new version the old
01:15:45 ◼ ► version remains right they're not like oh don't worry the power we're gonna delete that old version now
01:15:50 ◼ ► we'll get rid of it for you no you won't like i then have to deal with that yeah it can be deleted
01:15:55 ◼ ► it can be will it be if you no one knows no who among us could not be deleted um yeah it is so
01:16:11 ◼ ► um that developers have been complaining about for ages and it is super sad that not even apple could
01:16:17 ◼ ► get the app store to work better um i hope my only hope here is that this entire process revealed to
01:16:24 ◼ ► people at apple just how busted their back end system is and that maybe they actually do need
01:16:28 ◼ ► to fix it because apple would like to do this in a better way and they're kind of embarrassed by how
01:16:33 ◼ ► it rolled out but who knows maybe they're just like oh well you know you don't mess with the app store
01:16:37 ◼ ► guys they're they're like the mob they're like you don't mess with those guys they bring in all that
01:16:41 ◼ ► services revenue we just got to let them do what they're gonna do and you know please sir can we have
01:16:45 ◼ ► a bundle um i haven't even gotten to maybe the worst part about this which is if you're just because
01:16:53 ◼ ► again my argument is there needs to be another bundle i actually am not opposed to the idea i don't love
01:16:58 ◼ ► it but i'm not opposed to the idea that they're going to add a bunch of ai features and so they
01:17:02 ◼ ► need to have a bundle for all those ai features in i work so uh but right now you have to pay full price
01:17:10 ◼ ► for final cut and logic and pixel mater even though you're just using pages it's dumb there should be
01:17:14 ◼ ► another bundle that's just those apps so those four apps pages numbers keynote and later freeform
01:17:20 ◼ ► as apple keeps saying because freeform is in the bundle but not yet okay but they don't have that
01:17:26 ◼ ► either way though what happens when you launch when when you're told that you can delete your old app
01:17:32 ◼ ► and you need to open the new app and the answer is every time you do a new document and it brings up
01:17:39 ◼ ► the template interface there's an ad to subscribe to the apple creator studio the launch screen the
01:17:46 ◼ ► first time has a what's changed it's a list of things you can get if you subscribe to the apple
01:17:50 ◼ ► creator studio there's a splash screen that shows apple creator studio so um you are pummeled with upsell
01:17:58 ◼ ► and in fact in i think it's in pages if you've got the sidebar open there's a tile that is an ad for
01:18:07 ◼ ► creator studio that sits in the ui permanently or at least so far maybe it'll disappear maybe it'll
01:18:15 ◼ ► disappear someday maybe not um so ads attached to interface elements a first launch screen in the
01:18:20 ◼ ► application menu there are two prominent creator studio menu items so they're advertising in the menu bar
01:18:27 ◼ ► and the content hub interface appears whether you have the subscription or not so you've got a button
01:18:35 ◼ ► for content hub it does have some of the like clip media that was in there before that you had access
01:18:40 ◼ ► to but you also have access to the whole content hub interface and it shows up and if you place any of
01:18:45 ◼ ► those images it places them with a watermark on it saying creator studio because they're saying you
01:18:49 ◼ ► could use this image you know if you were a subscriber you'd be home by now because you would have this
01:18:55 ◼ ► image i'm trying it on on my iphone so i've just opened pages yeah i would say more than three
01:19:02 ◼ ► quarters of the first launch screen which opens the templates is just included to create a studio and
01:19:11 ◼ ► all the premium stuff and the recents are at the very very bottom it's like what are we what are we
01:19:15 ◼ ► doing yeah yeah it's it again i didn't see any of this when i was writing my review but my fear when
01:19:24 ◼ ► they announced it and my fear when i was writing the review was this kind of intangible fear of apple
01:19:29 ◼ ► taking a product that was freemium or was free and making it freemium and freemium is free with upsell
01:19:35 ◼ ► and one of the reasons these products are free is because they make apple's platforms better when you buy a mac
01:19:41 ◼ ► you don't need to buy microsoft office you don't need to use google docs you have a word processor
01:19:52 ◼ ► which i think the people who do freeform would be proud of yeah infinite canvas it's whatever you
01:20:03 ◼ ► it's fun it's whatever you want it to be so they junked it up i mean the fear was they would junk it
01:20:12 ◼ ► up that they would take these things that are really there to make the platform better and make them
01:20:16 ◼ ► into an ad for a subscription and like i don't again i understand like i don't love the idea of of of
01:20:26 ◼ ► adding features behind a paywall and i really don't love the idea of potentially adding features that
01:20:31 ◼ ► don't have any extra costs behind a paywall i don't think that the iwork apps should be a revenue
01:20:38 ◼ ► center in in this way but i also think that if they're going to build ai features in that have a
01:20:43 ◼ ► cost i can understand gating some of them i again i don't want to have that argument i don't love it
01:20:49 ◼ ► but i'm gonna i'm gonna set it aside but making these free apps this junkie with ads for this bundle
01:20:59 ◼ ► is terrible and it's worse because the bundle is a misaligned bundle i would bet money money money
01:21:09 ◼ ► money money money who has all the money i would bet money that the vast majority of people who use pages
01:21:18 ◼ ► numbers and keynote have not and will not ever have a need to use final cut pro or logic
01:21:26 ◼ ► but that's the bundle that's the way it's been priced yep and and i'm sorry for those people this is a bad
01:21:36 ◼ ► deal it's a bad bundle there's no value in it it is not worth paying 130 a year for some access to
01:21:44 ◼ ► some templates and and that creative hub because there are other subscription services that are cheaper
01:21:49 ◼ ► that will give you access to clip media like that and some ai features that are okay i guess like it's
01:21:57 ◼ ► it's a bad deal there's probably a better deal to be had and if they offered that i would still want
01:22:01 ◼ ► it to be less junky but the fact that it's junked up and it's a bad deal it's just it's just terrible
01:22:06 ◼ ► at the end of my piece what i say is the icon thing i did a little aside about the icon thing
01:22:11 ◼ ► because it's a conversation that we've had on podcasts before it's easy to complain about icons
01:22:15 ◼ ► it's fun um i think their design brief was just to differentiate them based on shape and color
01:22:21 ◼ ► because mostly you just see them in small spaces on on the dock or on the home screen and and you want
01:22:26 ◼ ► to know oh that one is that you know the green one is is numbers um fair enough but like
01:22:38 ◼ ► or a bunch of ads for a bad fit suite in your productivity apps that are there to make your
01:22:47 ◼ ► platform better just like it's very clear to me what the greater offense is so i it's very weird
01:22:54 ◼ ► because i don't dislike the suite at all i think it's not a bad idea i think the inclusion of
01:23:00 ◼ ► i work bottom line is i think the inclusion of i work in it was a mistake and it doesn't make sense
01:23:07 ◼ ► even if you're a a creator the to shoehorn i work in here just just have another suite for these apps
01:23:18 ◼ ► or or include i work in your premium creator studio bundle the back end i think precludes that but
01:23:29 ◼ ► you could do that but instead they've put them in this bundle they've renamed them in the background
01:23:35 ◼ ► they are creator studio apps now and i'm sorry numbers creator studio is the dumbest thing i've
01:23:41 ◼ ► seen in a long time as a as a name as a concept yeah right spreadsheet for creators i mean do some
01:23:50 ◼ ► creators need spreadsheets sure but do most spreadsheet users need logic or final cut no of course not and
01:24:01 ◼ ► they shouldn't those people shouldn't be upsold into a suite that's got a bad price and they shouldn't
01:24:06 ◼ ► have it in their face all the time there needs to be a way to make it go away and like i am not open
01:24:11 ◼ ► to the argument that well apple gives you these tools for free and what do you expect their ads
01:24:15 ◼ ► apple benefits from these tools being on their platform and then they make their money with those
01:24:18 ◼ ► enormous hardware margins that they have that's how this works yeah it's it's kind of like you get
01:24:25 ◼ ► the feeling it's like you just can't help yourselves can you right and it's a shame because i mean i i was
01:24:31 ◼ ► and i'm still interested i was excited still interested in the creator studio sure but i feel like i'm just
01:24:39 ◼ ► gonna have to sit down and dedicate an afternoon to it and that's not what you want people to be doing
01:24:44 ◼ ► if you want them to sign up for your subscription service you should make it easy for them and they
01:24:49 ◼ ► haven't and the reason they haven't is because they decided a long time ago not to make it easy for
01:24:54 ◼ ► anyone and here we are i'm very skeptical about everybody who's like oh apple's being distorted by
01:24:59 ◼ ► services revenue and everything they chase a service this is revenue and it makes everything terrible
01:25:03 ◼ ► because i think i think offering things via service uh by subscription is not entirely unreasonable i
01:25:09 ◼ ► think i think it's part of the mix and that's fine but boy if there was ever a way to convert me
01:25:17 ◼ ► to believe that apple is actually aggressively degrading its user experience in order to chase
01:25:23 ◼ ► incremental services revenue this is it and not the pro apps yep it's it's throwing eye work in the
01:25:29 ◼ ► mix like what are you what are you even doing who made this decision uh and and you degrade the fun i
01:25:35 ◼ ► mean i work in my opinion is part of the fundamental mac especially but really fundamental apple device
01:25:43 ◼ ► experience meaning that when you buy this thing it works it'll open a word doc somebody sent me a word
01:25:50 ◼ ► doc the other week i'm like what are you even doing they apologized but i opened it it wasn't a big deal
01:25:55 ◼ ► um it opens and with you know so to to do this you're degrading the base apple product experience
01:26:05 ◼ ► for what incremental revenue and then the to add insult to injury it is the incremental revenue in
01:26:12 ◼ ► a suite that is misaligned so like this is bad on so many different levels and it should never have
01:26:16 ◼ ► gotten here um i enjoy the fact that apple has uh run into the app store's limitations but it's
01:26:23 ◼ ► actually a crushing disappointment because they even they couldn't fix them so yeah it's very i just have
01:26:30 ◼ ► weird feelings because i also am enthusiastic about the idea of paying for this suite and having it on
01:26:36 ◼ ► my ipad and my mac and having access to some tools i don't have access to currently and yet the other part
01:26:43 ◼ ► is so bad and the rollout is so bad that they really have have botched it and taken my initial positive
01:26:53 ◼ ► feelings about the concept of a of a suite which we've been talking about for ever since they bought
01:26:58 ◼ ► pixelmator right we've been talking about they're going to do a suite and and then and then all the
01:27:04 ◼ ► details make me less and less enthusiastic about it it's really a shame this episode is brought to you by our
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01:28:59 ◼ ► first question comes from michael who wants to know is it me or did everyone who bought the iphone 17 pro
01:29:08 ◼ ► get the cosmic orange i see them everywhere or is it more likely that the only 17s i spot in the crowd
01:29:16 ◼ ► are when they are orange what are your feelings on this i think and hope that apple's colors are
01:29:21 ◼ ► at the apple color's bold choice has paid off okay as was foretold i it's a great question
01:29:28 ◼ ► you know and that that like you notice that orange right you notice it when you see it yes you don't
01:29:36 ◼ ► i i'm not looking at the camera bump in in silver or in a case and being like oh iphone 17 pro
01:29:43 ◼ ► um so i don't know it's a great question only apple knows yeah idina has the blue one and i feel like i
01:29:49 ◼ ► don't recognize it as often as i recognize the orange yeah you know like it's a nice looking phone but
01:29:57 ◼ ► it's not the orange they use the orange they seem to use the orange a lot in the marketing too of course
01:30:02 ◼ ► because it's the most interesting so my hope is that it has sold well enough and that it has gained
01:30:07 ◼ ► enough attention for apple to be convinced that every year they need to do a pro phone in a in a fun color
01:30:12 ◼ ► that is all i can ask for i don't imagine that we're going to be getting five different bright
01:30:17 ◼ ► color options and pro phones going forward my hope is and it feels to me like it's done enough but
01:30:23 ◼ ► the sales figures tell the tale um that they realize that maybe they should have a fun color and not
01:30:30 ◼ ► you know midnight lemon and various other kinds of beige you know you know dark rainforest
01:30:37 ◼ ► it's just like it's green sort of if they made a beige iphone i would be into that just for the
01:30:43 ◼ ► for your vibes um here's what i look i know we asked for color you gave us color and now we continue to
01:30:49 ◼ ► ask apple but i'm going to ask for something else i want every year too bright too boring
01:30:55 ◼ ► because my concern is i love my orange phone and then next year the bright color is going to be a
01:31:02 ◼ ► color i don't want and then it's like ah you know what i mean like i want too bright too boring
01:31:08 ◼ ► that's right as i said that jason's written in the discord like too fast too furious which is
01:31:14 ◼ ► brilliant i thought of it like that but yeah too bright too boring too boring for y'all yes i i so you
01:31:23 ◼ ► just want to you want four colors instead of three that's what you're saying yeah and i think that's
01:31:27 ◼ ► fine because the i like the regular iphone like the iphone 17 like in years past about like five
01:31:31 ◼ ► so why not yeah i know more colors i think more popular phone like let's do it so he points out
01:31:37 ◼ ► the too bright too boring boring is the sequel to the bright and the boring which was less successful
01:31:41 ◼ ► and then what the next one would just be bright boring like just take the numbers off and then it's
01:31:46 ◼ ► yeah it would be bright boring but the r's or threes oh i like that yeah or bright and boring san francisco
01:31:56 ◼ ► drift because uh zoe says tokyo drift but it wouldn't be that cupertino drift please cupertino drift
01:32:01 ◼ ► you know i think the threes would be the bees because that looks they look visually similar right so
01:32:07 ◼ ► three right through yoring okay great we'll workshop that we'll workshop it elliot says do you or have you
01:32:16 ◼ ► ever edited wikipedia additionally do you ever look at your own wikipedia pages p.s mike's page is very
01:32:24 ◼ ► sad now i'm going to start with the end my my wikipedia page is relatively empty however i do have a wikipedia
01:32:33 ◼ ► page which is i would say good i'm pleased to have one thank you for whoever set that up
01:32:39 ◼ ► i would say if listeners of this show went to that wikipedia page and felt like they had the opportunity
01:32:46 ◼ ► or desire to update it with any of the many things that have happened in my life since the year of 2016
01:32:52 ◼ ► which was in the last i think substantial update in my quote-unquote career and though 2018 i peaked in
01:32:58 ◼ ► 2018 that was the last thing anyone put in there i just saying i wouldn't mind it yeah if people
01:33:03 ◼ ► well no this is the beauty of wikipedia is uh if you are if you're if you've never edited wikipedia
01:33:08 ◼ ► you probably shouldn't edit it because it's a uh there are rules yeah but if you have if you have
01:33:14 ◼ ► edited wikipedia pages before this is how it works we're not allowed to edit our own pages right
01:33:18 ◼ ► yep so if you uh want to do that and make mike's chance mike's page better uh go right ahead
01:33:30 ◼ ► it's pretty good like it's it's well it's well maintained someone someone's doing a good the person
01:33:37 ◼ ► who's doing such a good job for you should do a job for me too i think that's what i think because
01:33:42 ◼ ► you have yours is a good page it's got lots of good information on it you know that's great have i
01:33:47 ◼ ► edited wikipedia page i absolutely have in fact i think there's probably a note somewhere on
01:33:53 ◼ ► um is there maybe there isn't um there used to be a note that said this person has a wikipedia account
01:34:00 ◼ ► but um but i i do have a wikipedia account and i have edited pages uh sometimes it's because pages
01:34:07 ◼ ► annoy me and i they're so bad or i see something that's so wrong that i just fix them um i i worked
01:34:14 ◼ ► on a couple of pages there was like a ucsd related page that i worked on for a while and there was a cal
01:34:19 ◼ ► football page that i worked on for a while because i was like this is bad and you know it's essentially
01:34:23 ◼ ► pro bono editorial work but i had those moments where i thought um the somebody should edit this
01:34:30 ◼ ► and that the beauty of it is i could do it so i have done that occasionally i know what the rules are
01:34:35 ◼ ► i don't spend a lot of time on it because it really is my job to do my own editorial work and not fix
01:34:39 ◼ ► wikipedia pages but um they're there if you know if if it happens i will i will pop in and i'll make
01:34:47 ◼ ► some changes i'm going to make an observation at this point because i have been meaning to write an
01:34:52 ◼ ► article about this and i haven't but i'll just throw this in here one of the greatest it's funny but it's
01:34:57 ◼ ► a scourge of wikipedia is because anyone can edit it and they edit it in real time you end up with
01:35:03 ◼ ► these articles that are like layers of sediment through time and they're terrible unreadable
01:35:09 ◼ ► articles so you'll you'll go to a page about a musical artist let's say or an athlete but especially
01:35:15 ◼ ► it's a musical artist and it's not an article anyone would ever write about them but because
01:35:21 ◼ ► it was on wikipedia they have constantly been updating and it's the super fans right and so
01:35:28 ◼ ► you'll you'll read about this band and it'll be like on august 18th 2018 they announced that their
01:35:36 ◼ ► new album would be released later this year on october 3rd 2018 they released a single from that album
01:35:46 ◼ ► on november 4th 2018 they released that album and it will go like this forever where it's like
01:35:52 ◼ ► every detail and you know that what was happening is the new single came out and they went and edited
01:35:57 ◼ ► the page and they're like oh man the new single came out and then it just stays there forever
01:36:01 ◼ ► and it's this the sedimentary wikipedia page and i'm sure there are wikipedians who are like yeah we
01:36:07 ◼ ► tagged those those are really bad but like those are the ones that i'm tempted to edit is like guys
01:36:24 ◼ ► of when little when singles or music videos or when somebody said there would be a new album someday
01:36:32 ◼ ► it's so irrelevant from the perspective of today wanting to understand who's in this band and what
01:36:39 ◼ ► have they done um i think that's one of actually the biggest problems wikipedia has is that is that
01:36:45 ◼ ► there's nobody there who has the perspective to say that it's not a litany of news items but is a
01:36:51 ◼ ► supposed to be an overview of of what the band is doing so or whatever so anyway that's that's the
01:36:58 ◼ ► part that bugs me about wikipedia is such it is a side effect of the fact that people can edit it
01:37:04 ◼ ► that they end up editing breathlessly in real time and then a couple years pass and you look at the
01:37:09 ◼ ► document and you're like this is a real-time log of things and not an article and those need to go
01:37:15 ◼ ► bye-bye so maybe i'll write a story about it but my my idea i had was i was going to take a wikipedia
01:37:20 ◼ ► article for a band that i like and i was going to edit it and i was going to have a snapshot of it before
01:37:25 ◼ ► and after and i was going to talk about why this is the problem with wikipedia and maybe i will do
01:37:29 ◼ ► that sometime um but not today but anyway that's my wikipedia take and yoni says now that apple has
01:37:36 ◼ ► released the creator studio with pixelmeter pro included what do you think is going to happen to
01:37:41 ◼ ► photometer do you think that it will remain a standalone app of updates or go away or go the
01:37:47 ◼ ► way of aperture and have its features folded into photos i currently have a creative cloud subscription
01:37:52 ◼ ► for lightroom and photoshop i would love to reduce the number of subscriptions i pay for since i don't
01:37:56 ◼ ► use everything in creative cloud yeah my hope is that photometer will become part of the suite
01:38:03 ◼ ► and um joe rosenstiel pointed this out that they they announced like some app was not going to be
01:38:08 ◼ ► updated um and then they didn't talk about photometer um suspiciously like that's almost like an apple
01:38:16 ◼ ► signal it's like something an analyst could ask about is this a tough compare um that maybe photometer
01:38:22 ◼ ► there is a plan there and they're not willing to say what it is yet um because i have definitely
01:38:27 ◼ ► heard from people who've said you know what this thing lacks is lightroom and ironically yes aperture
01:38:31 ◼ ► was lightroom's competitor and they killed aperture like a decade ago and they're not bringing back
01:38:36 ◼ ► aperture or at least they're not bringing back that code base i guess they could reuse that name if they
01:38:40 ◼ ► really wanted to um so i think what i would like to see happen is that apple make their equivalent of
01:38:45 ◼ ► lightroom for pro creators i don't think that's photos i don't think that's photos pro with a
01:38:50 ◼ ► freemium upsell i feel like that needs to be its own app and maybe it's photometer and maybe they will
01:38:56 ◼ ► do that um my my other gut feeling is that if they do that they will probably still add features to
01:39:02 ◼ ► photos from photometer and that that's okay my fear is that they will make photos part of the premium
01:39:11 ◼ ► bundle which would be terrible because for reasons already specified so that's my guess is that they
01:39:18 ◼ ► haven't announced that it's dying which means they have plans for it that they're not willing to talk
01:39:22 ◼ ► about yet and that's a very apple thing yeah interesting it'd be nice to continue having a product like this
01:39:30 ◼ ► that exists i suppose i i've never used photometer because it's just not the type of thing that i do to
01:39:37 ◼ ► photos on the ipad it was the best way to touch up photos for a long time before they did clean up
01:39:44 ◼ ► you know that was how you could like circle somebody you could you could wipe somebody out in the
01:39:49 ◼ ► background and photometer would let you do that and then you know apple did it like five years later
01:39:55 ◼ ► and required apple intelligence and had been working on photometer for years so uh it's it's good but
01:40:00 ◼ ► yeah that's that's the best example i can give and the best scenario is that they haven't talked about
01:40:04 ◼ ► killing it which probably means that it's part of a strategy because they should totally add a
01:40:09 ◼ ► photography element like this to the bundle on top photo management and batching and processing and
01:40:15 ◼ ► stuff that isn't you know that's above pixel meter to do that sort of thing and throw it in the
01:40:20 ◼ ► creative bundle that would be cool if you would like to send in a question for us to answer in a
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