00:00:00 ◼ ► from relay this is upgrade episode 612 for april 20th 2026 today's show is brought to you by delete me
00:00:16 ◼ ► squarespace steam clock and nerd wallet my name is mike hurley and i'm joined by jason snow hi jason
00:00:22 ◼ ► snow it's 420 mike you think people in cupertino are blazing it today i think they might be all right
00:00:30 ◼ ► so let's set some context uh it's 10 p.m on monday night i am at home this is the first home podcast
00:00:38 ◼ ► recording i've done because tim cook has just announced that he is stepping down the ceo of
00:00:44 ◼ ► apple yeah um so here's the thing we recorded an entire episode of upgrade that we will still play
00:00:50 ◼ ► for you today it's a really fun episode but there is no way we could let this moment happen
00:01:02 ◼ ► or 24 hours later yes because then i well yeah actually either of those would have been great
00:01:10 ◼ ► but here we are yep uh jason could you read from tim's community letter that he posted to apple.com
00:01:17 ◼ ► yeah so it's really interesting apple posted a community letter from tim and two items which
00:01:21 ◼ ► we'll get to that are in the newsroom um and and tim there's some very nice personal stuff in the
00:01:28 ◼ ► letter about how much he thinks this is the best job in the world and all those things but to get to the
00:01:33 ◼ ► the core of it here he says today we announced i'm taking the next step in my journey at apple
00:01:37 ◼ ► over the coming months i will be transitioning to a new role leaving the ceo job behind in september and
00:01:42 ◼ ► becoming apple's executive chairman a new person will be stepping into what i know in my heart is
00:01:47 ◼ ► the best job in the world that leader is john turnus a brilliant engineer and thinker who has spent the
00:01:52 ◼ ► last 25 years building the apple products our users love so much obsessed with every detail focused on
00:01:58 ◼ ► every possible way we can make something better bolder more beautiful and more meaningful he is the
00:02:02 ◼ ► perfect person for the job john cares so much about who we are at apple what we do at apple who we reach
00:02:08 ◼ ► at apple and he has the heart and character to lead with extraordinary integrity i am so proud to call
00:02:13 ◼ ► in next apple's next ceo the company will reach such incredible heights under his leadership and you will
00:02:18 ◼ ► feel his impact in every bit of delight and discovery that grows out of the products and services to come
00:02:23 ◼ ► i can't wait for you to get to know him like i do this is not goodbye but at this moment of transition
00:02:28 ◼ ► i wanted to take the opportunity to say thank you so before we talk about the details what a beautiful
00:02:36 ◼ ► way to introduce john turnus as the ceo like tim understood the assignment did the job yeah absolutely
00:02:44 ◼ ► did the job by saying how great the job is and how he appreciates hearing from people every day and his
00:02:49 ◼ ► email and all of that and then pivots to saying i can't wait you for you to get to know john like i do
00:02:55 ◼ ► absolutely yeah which is lovely i mean and this is exactly what we thought it was going to be um
00:03:02 ◼ ► um this is going back to the financial times so i have here i've been keeping some notes about this
00:03:09 ◼ ► uh because i've been preparing for this i guess a funny thing is a few months ago i received we received
00:03:15 ◼ ► some tips that something was going down and i thought it was going to be this but it ended up being an all
00:03:19 ◼ ► hands meeting for something completely different right so i started keeping some notes and so on the who
00:03:25 ◼ ► was right uh the financial times was right as soon as early 2026 uh mark german said he would be shocked
00:03:31 ◼ ► if cook left before mid 26 so i think in the who got this right in the end uh financial times i also
00:03:37 ◼ ► think uh that there is some other news today which is that johnny sruji is stepping up to a new role
00:03:44 ◼ ► called chief hard chief hardware officer which you know i'm sure that you would agree with me here
00:03:49 ◼ ► this feels like mark german being completely correct about sruji threatening to leave when
00:03:54 ◼ ► this information was probably shared of executives yeah there's so much to for us to talk about here
00:03:59 ◼ ► um sruji i yes i think that report that sruji was like is he leaving is he staying and we said so at
00:04:08 ◼ ► the time when you start having executives moving around it makes everybody say well wait a second i
00:04:13 ◼ ► might you mean i'm going to report to the guy who i consider my peer or maybe i more important than
00:04:18 ◼ ► him john turnus instead of tim what does that mean and they like they really want to keep johnny sruji
00:04:23 ◼ ► and i think at the time i even said this is where you say yeah he's going to be the new ceo but we'll
00:04:30 ◼ ► give you a new title too and we want to make sure you stay and of course he what he said was no no i love
00:04:35 ◼ ► it here and i'm going to stay but i think this is what was leading to that kind of report was this sort of
00:04:43 ◼ ► thing and if you um and so they made him they made a new title for him chief hardware officer which you
00:04:50 ◼ ► know john john turnus was the svp of hardware right so you can't have a chief hardware officer a ch o
00:04:58 ◼ ► if you've also got a an svp of hardware but you don't anymore because he's going to be the ceo
00:05:04 ◼ ► and it gets him in the c-suite which was probably part of the deal i think we even talked about it back
00:05:09 ◼ ► then uh shows how much they they care about him and i'm not saying this is like sure give him some
00:05:14 ◼ ► stuff give him some candy to make him happy no this is show your actual legitimate appreciation
00:05:20 ◼ ► for johnny sruji by moving him into the c-suite giving him a title because when tim is leaving
00:05:27 ◼ ► if you're johnny sruji or somebody at that level you might say well what does this mean for me and is
00:05:32 ◼ ► this a good fit or you know or should i go somewhere else i'm not if i'm not appropriately
00:05:37 ◼ ► um appreciated which is not to say he necessarily wanted to be ceo i don't think that's necessarily
00:05:44 ◼ ► true but he might have but that he wanted to like what does this mean for me if tim is leaving what does
00:05:52 ◼ ► this mean for me and you know am i going to be comfortable in my role in this new world at apple
00:05:59 ◼ ► and so that's that's what happened with johnny um i have some there's board shenanigans
00:06:05 ◼ ► to talk about as well i love them so let's do it um it's this tim cook's um leaving a ceo is
00:06:13 ◼ ► effective september 1st um so the discord is pointing out that technically means both the
00:06:19 ◼ ► financial times and german are correct but i still think the financial times had this more correct
00:06:23 ◼ ► in the end financial times said as early as which gives them infinity of time after the beginning of
00:06:29 ◼ ► the year i think they were they were not as right as they led people to believe because they suggested
00:06:36 ◼ ► it was more imminent than it is and i also think that mark german obviously said it wasn't going to
00:06:41 ◼ ► happen by mid-year and it did so i think they were both a little bit right and a little bit wrong which
00:06:46 ◼ ► is i know the most unsatisfying thing which is to say but to back it up further though mark has had
00:06:51 ◼ ► this right the whole way along who it was going to be and and getting the shrooji thing you know this
00:06:56 ◼ ► is you know mark mark german got this years ago and has known this was coming and and in fact it feels
00:07:03 ◼ ► very much like a like a an apple product launch where it's a big deal but also we knew all the details
00:07:10 ◼ ► already both of those things are true you know also i just want to touch on what you were saying
00:07:16 ◼ ► about the chief hardware officer role for turn for srooji i mean i've i said this at the time and i
00:07:22 ◼ ► stand by it now and i hope this is the change that apple should have more c-suite roles than it does
00:07:26 ◼ ► like there should be a chief hardware officer there should be a chief software officer and a chief design
00:07:31 ◼ ► officer i think that they should exist it doesn't make sense to me why you'd have people like
00:07:35 ◼ ► federigi not in a c-suite position at this point like i i hope that they start to shuffle
00:07:40 ◼ ► things around and i expect it's going to become a little more awkward now because why johnny why
00:07:45 ◼ ► not everybody else and like i don't yeah i don't know what the conversations are there and like maybe
00:07:51 ◼ ► this is a thing that will happen later and it you know it made sense to talk about srooji today because
00:07:57 ◼ ► obviously there is now a a vacuum left by turnus moving um and so yeah it's super interesting like the
00:08:06 ◼ ► way that they've chosen to do this uh before we we dig into some of the board shenanigans i did just
00:08:11 ◼ ► want to mention jason where were you when you found out that tim cook was stepping down as the ceo i was
00:08:17 ◼ ► sitting in uh studio b in the back room in my house working on some other projects for the afternoon just
00:08:24 ◼ ► taking a you know different change of pace go to a different place work on some other stuff and uh
00:08:30 ◼ ► and then i saw the uh you know the red alert from uh it was actually full full credit must credit
00:08:37 ◼ ► um our editor jim metzendorf posting the mark german tweet oh really yes is that word oh it was almost as
00:08:45 ◼ ► if jim was like do i need to re-edit upgrade today and the answer is yes hi jim yes yes sorry jim you do what
00:08:53 ◼ ► about you uh so sophia's a little bit under the weather and she was struggling to go to sleep
00:09:00 ◼ ► so you know it's like 9 30 and i'm just finally getting her down and so uh i took my phone out of
00:09:06 ◼ ► my pocket to mark that she'd finally fallen asleep and i had lots and lots and lots of text messages
00:09:10 ◼ ► and then i freaked out because it's like what am i gonna do so yeah i'm in our home like adina's home
00:09:16 ◼ ► office recording right now uh and i'm i may be a little quieter than normal because there is a
00:09:22 ◼ ► sleeping baby so i apologize for that but there was no way we weren't going to do this babies know
00:09:26 ◼ ► their their parents voices and they they don't mind i think um i hope so my my experience was that
00:09:33 ◼ ► like at a at a sporting event oh the opposite is also true a sporting event like the whole crowd
00:09:37 ◼ ► would scream and nobody would care and then i would scream and my kids would be like what what what and
00:09:41 ◼ ► it's like because they were tuned in to me but you're at home and anyway so uh so yeah the um
00:09:48 ◼ ► i do want to credit mark german i think he got he got the gist of this right way in advance which
00:09:54 ◼ ► means it is like an apple product launch where it's a big deal but also we already knew uh which i'm sure
00:09:59 ◼ ► they hate it in fact there is a line in the um in the press release that says this transition which
00:10:06 ◼ ► was approved unanimously by the board of directors follows a thoughtful long-term succession planning
00:10:11 ◼ ► process which pat yourself on the back on that sure but also yes we know it was long-term because
00:10:18 ◼ ► we've known about your process thanks to the mark german leaks especially for quite a while now
00:10:24 ◼ ► um but the board has to be involved this is this is a the board hires the ceo so this is obviously
00:10:31 ◼ ► cook and the board have been working on this for a long time probably about as long as we've known about
00:10:34 ◼ ► it and um it's effective september 1st what tim cook is doing is becoming executive chairman which
00:10:47 ◼ ► is i believe not a current job i believe there is a non-executive chairman which is arthur levinson who
00:10:53 ◼ ► was the guy who was aging out of the board and they changed the rules to say no no it's important
00:10:58 ◼ ► he can stay which they can do because it's just board rules um so arthur levinson is going to become
00:11:04 ◼ ► lead independent director so not working at apple um and he's going to take that role on john turnis
00:11:11 ◼ ► is going to join the board of directors as ceo and tim becomes executive chairman which is a different
00:11:19 ◼ ► interesting job that we we all suspected i think this wasn't reported as much as just everybody
00:11:25 ◼ ► kind of figured that might be a thing that he would do and there is a key phrase in the press release
00:11:31 ◼ ► about tim cook's role that fits with our expectation for what was going to happen and i'll read it to you
00:11:36 ◼ ► as executive chairman cook will assist with certain aspects of the company including engaging with
00:11:45 ◼ ► policymakers around the world there you go i mean so i was gonna ask why now i mean it's not a question
00:11:56 ◼ ► we can answer maybe this was just the time i my guess is that they pegged it 10 days before their
00:12:03 ◼ ► quarterly earnings so that they can get this out there before they go quiet and let everything
00:12:09 ◼ ► settle before they talk to the financial press next week i meant more in the broader context like why
00:12:23 ◼ ► the fact that tim is setting up another role would suggest that he's very fit and healthy to do so i think
00:12:30 ◼ ► i think that i think they had a plan for 26 i think this is what the financial times got right
00:12:34 ◼ ► which is they had a transition plan for 2026 i think we our speculation that it would come after they had
00:12:41 ◼ ► their blockbuster quarter it's actually you know it is uh it is further after that but before their next
00:12:49 ◼ ► quarter um we know like john turnus introducing the macbook neo at the event in new york was
00:12:58 ◼ ► part of this transition plan and we thought so at the time but it's very clear now that that was what
00:13:04 ◼ ► was going on is like let's get john out there high profile uh in advance of this and i would you know i i
00:13:11 ◼ ► would imagine that they had a plan you know of like we're gonna announce it here and then there's gonna be
00:13:16 ◼ ► this and then tim is gonna go and transition later and they're gonna spread it out a little and give
00:13:21 ◼ ► everybody on wall street plenty of warning and and time to communicate it and and perhaps even john
00:13:29 ◼ ► turnus will join the call on you know next week and this is all about that i mean he absolutely will
00:13:36 ◼ ► right and and then you get wwdc right where they'll probably do some stuff together and then i would
00:13:44 ◼ ► expect the iphone that's a turnus production now because it'll tip tim will be not he'll be out of
00:13:49 ◼ ► there he'll be in the boardroom there's something to say about timing if you're like well if this year
00:13:55 ◼ ► is going to be a really interesting iphone year with the folding iphone maybe that feels like a good
00:14:01 ◼ ► time to kind of have that transition and then before next year with the 20th anniversary iphone which is
00:14:09 ◼ ► what mark german is rumoring is has rumored will occur if they really do feel confident about their
00:14:16 ◼ ► product roadmap this is a very good time to have this happen right like if they feel like the next
00:14:22 ◼ ► few years from a pure product perspective will be financially good do it now like if you think you
00:14:30 ◼ ► have a very good pipeline which they keep talking about if you do it now you mitigate any unsettled
00:14:37 ◼ ► feelings that might occur over the next couple of years because as with any transition yeah there's
00:14:43 ◼ ► going to be change uh change is weird and and they i mean i keep coming back to this which is tim cook
00:14:49 ◼ ► didn't get to have a smooth ceo transition he did a bunch of acting while steve jobs was sick
00:14:56 ◼ ► and then when steve did the executive chairman transition he was dying and too ill and then he
00:15:03 ◼ ► died and tim didn't i am a hundred percent guaranteeing you that tim cook's goal in all of this
00:15:11 ◼ ► is to give john turnus every opportunity that tim cook didn't get because of what happened with steve
00:15:19 ◼ ► and that's what's going on here is give him the runway give him the um you know give him the the time
00:15:26 ◼ ► and the product pipeline and presumably multiple years of prep before this announcement even came out
00:15:34 ◼ ► and be around as executive chairman after the fact take some of the ugly stuff like the political stuff
00:15:41 ◼ ► off of his plate so that he doesn't have to deal with that right out of the gate and he focus on the
00:15:46 ◼ ► stuff that is is not going to attract that kind of attention i that was the plan all along and i do
00:15:53 ◼ ► think that that comes not just from the board although i'm sure it does but from tim cook wanting
00:15:58 ◼ ► it to be like this is how you do it in some ways maybe a last act by tim cook is i want to do a good
00:16:06 ◼ ► transition not i mean obviously steve jobs it was out of everybody's hands right it that is one of those
00:16:12 ◼ ► things like nobody had the control it just is how it happens sometimes but tim was like i don't have
00:16:16 ◼ ► to have that happen this time let's do this the right way and that's what they're executing right now
00:16:22 ◼ ► and i guess this actually reflects on apple as a company now that like you know i pulled some some
00:16:31 ◼ ► stats on this a while ago just preparing for this kind of thing to happen and something that i know is
00:16:37 ◼ ► the company's revenue doubled from 2011 to 2020 so kind of you know from cook taking over to
00:16:46 ◼ ► 2020 that's how much bigger apple became as a company during that time period if you're this big
00:16:53 ◼ ► you can't mess this up like you have to have this done properly with time and you want to settle
00:17:01 ◼ ► everything because apple's too big to just kind of like bounce around into a succession plan and it
00:17:08 ◼ ► just happen right like you say like this has to be considered thought out well executed down to every
00:17:15 ◼ ► last minute detail because they are too important now they're too big you can't just like and look
00:17:23 ◼ ► anything can happen right as we've said before tim cook could have been hit by a bus six months ago
00:17:28 ◼ ► but they would have had a plan for that sure now you've got everything settled in the exact way that
00:17:33 ◼ ► you want you do it properly and it's like this right like set it up so that tim can manage all of the
00:17:39 ◼ ► current government leaders he has to manage for a few more years and then maybe people start to turn over
00:17:46 ◼ ► and then turner starts to take those relationships because they're new relationships there is you know you
00:17:58 ◼ ► and in fact i think that'll be the message is don't worry just call me i'm i'm tim apple i'm in your
00:18:09 ◼ ► um it's the way it should be and like these things are relationship based why exactly you know it would
00:18:13 ◼ ► be wild to do it any other way no matter who the president is and let the uh let the new ceo
00:18:19 ◼ ► um have some time to to work on the other aspects of the job um yeah absolutely absolutely going back
00:18:29 ◼ ► to johnny scroogey for a minute yeah um i just he so he apple bought his company and it was the
00:18:38 ◼ ► foundation for what everything apple has done in their in their chip design and basically we would say now
00:18:44 ◼ ► he's the father of apple silicon basically yeah um i at the time when there was that rumor of like
00:18:52 ◼ ► is he shaky is he going what's going on like it became clear if it was not crystal clear before how
00:18:58 ◼ ► important johnny scroogey is to apple because their trip their chip strategy is such a huge part of their
00:19:03 ◼ ► hardware advantage and they've they've spread it out so now it's everything they make is apple silicon
00:19:10 ◼ ► right it used to be like well the iphone which is the most important product they make but now it's
00:19:14 ◼ ► everything so that we'll see what happens here but this to me looks really like apple's priorities are
00:19:24 ◼ ► in the right place they know they need to keep johnny scroogey they are they want to keep him happy
00:19:29 ◼ ► they want to give him whatever he wants essentially so that he stays because he's a huge asset for them
00:19:35 ◼ ► and they don't want him walking out the door i also have to wonder if another one of these things that
00:19:43 ◼ ► we didn't quite see but we could guess about is i this is my theory but i'm just going to throw it out
00:19:51 ◼ ► there again did alan die leave because they were not going to rush to protect him like they did johnny
00:20:00 ◼ ► this obviously shook every aspect of the senior leadership at apple but the idea that tim was
00:20:06 ◼ ► leaving and and my theory when when alan die left was not that he wasn't liked because all the reports
00:20:14 ◼ ► say he was liked but maybe he wasn't liked quite as much as he wished he was whereas johnny scroogey
00:20:22 ◼ ► clearly was like we got to keep this guy i said at the time and i still think it's i think even more
00:20:28 ◼ ► so it's the case now i think die asked to be chief design officer and i think he was told no and i
00:20:35 ◼ ► think that's was like well fine and then he's out the door yeah and because i expect as you're right
00:20:41 ◼ ► like everybody started to get told about us at the same time because those stories the alan die story
00:20:46 ◼ ► and the johnny scroogey story i think they're in the same week so that would suggest that there
00:20:51 ◼ ► were a lot of these conversations happening at the same time there was this whole thing going on
00:20:55 ◼ ► toward the end of the year right so um john turnus haven't talked a lot about him i'm i'm i've talked
00:21:02 ◼ ► to him a couple of times yep um so that's great i get to play it now like that john turnus at least
00:21:09 ◼ ► could see my face and and come up with a name so that's awesome because tim cook doesn't know who i
00:21:15 ◼ ► am um but john but john turnus does so that's great hi john i have a selfie with each of them yeah
00:21:21 ◼ ► taken in the same year i think very nice very nice not bad so bad um here's a cook um cook said john
00:21:30 ◼ ► turnus is the mind of an engineer the soul of an innovator and the heart to lead with integrity and
00:21:33 ◼ ► with honor he's a visionary his contributions to apple over 25 years are already too numerous to count
00:21:39 ◼ ► and he is without question the right person to lead apple into the future i could not be more
00:21:43 ◼ ► confident in his abilities and his character and i look forward to working closely with him on this
00:21:47 ◼ ► transition and in my new role as executive chairman now here's john turnus in the same press release
00:21:54 ◼ ► saying i'm profoundly grateful for this opportunity to carry his mission forward having spent almost my
00:21:59 ◼ ► entire career at apple i have been lucky to have worked under steve jobs get that imprint in there and
00:22:05 ◼ ► to have had tim cook as my mentor it has been a privilege to help shape the products and experiences
00:22:10 ◼ ► that have changed so much of how we interact with the world and with one another i am filled with
00:22:14 ◼ ► optimism about what we can achieve in the years to come and i'm so happy to know that the most talented
00:22:19 ◼ ► people on earth are here at apple determined to be part of something bigger than any one of us i am
00:22:24 ◼ ► humbled to step in this role and i promise to lead with the values and vision that have come to define
00:22:29 ◼ ► this special place for half a century um and as apple pr points out turnus joined apple's product design
00:22:35 ◼ ► team in 2001 became vp of hardware engineering in 2013 he joined the executive team in 2021 as svp of
00:22:43 ◼ ► hardware engineering and has overseen hardware engineering work on a variety of products at apple
00:22:49 ◼ ► across every category including ipad and airpods and many generations of iphone mac and apple watch so
00:22:56 ◼ ► basically here are his credentials but i think most importantly for those of us who watch apple
00:23:01 ◼ ► first off you don't get a new ceo at apple who hasn't been not just on the uh exec team for five years
00:23:09 ◼ ► but a vp for 13 years and an employee for 25 years this is how apple works it's why it had to be him
00:23:21 ◼ ► because there are not that many people who have risen he's risen to this point because of who he is
00:23:26 ◼ ► and they you don't bring in somebody from the outside no absolutely not i mean the history of them doing that
00:23:34 ◼ ► with other positions has not gone very well right like historically even under tim cook's tenure the
00:23:39 ◼ ► people that he brought in from outside to fill executive positions i don't know if any of them
00:23:46 ◼ ► remained or at least lasted for very long i don't know not not so much not so much to be i mean to be
00:23:54 ◼ ► john turnus in this moment must be a very surreal experience gotta be right what a mantle to be taking
00:24:05 ◼ ► i mean right yeah it's a mantle that has been held by many people but only remembered for a few
00:24:13 ◼ ► mike scott nobody remembers john scully no michael spindler gil emilio steve jobs tim cook
00:24:22 ◼ ► john turnus yeah i think that's it in september not yet yeah he's he's you know don't put new curtains
00:24:32 ◼ ► in the office yet tim's still in there um so what else i i noticed something in the press release that
00:24:41 ◼ ► i thought was interesting because it's it's apple pr apple newsroom apple marketing trying to place tim
00:24:49 ◼ ► cook in context and i think that says something and this is this is the part that i wanted to quote
00:24:56 ◼ ► apple services has been a major focus area of cooks and during his tenure the category has grown to
00:25:03 ◼ ► become a more than 100 billion dollar business the equivalent of a fortune 40 company cook was also
00:25:11 ◼ ► instrumental in creating the wearables category at apple which now includes the world's most popular
00:25:15 ◼ ► watch and headphones and which has served as the foundation for apple's remarkable impact on the
00:25:19 ◼ ► health and safety of users under cook's leadership apple also transitioned to apple design silicon
00:25:25 ◼ ► enabling the company to own more of its primary technology and deliver industry leading gains in
00:25:30 ◼ ► power efficiency and performance so you can see it's sort of like this is their version of the
00:25:36 ◼ ► the the quick bio of tim which is services growth wearables and really when you think about it health
00:25:46 ◼ ► and safety in especially the wearables category this is the you know your apple watch your iphone saved
00:25:52 ◼ ► your life kind of stuff and then apple silicon and and saying he was you know he helped enable that
00:25:58 ◼ ► with johnny serugy obviously um i i mean not a real surprise but it's it is interesting to see this is
00:26:06 ◼ ► the rare opportunity where apple is putting tim cook's era in its own context which is a weird thing to
00:26:12 ◼ ► think about but like up till now there was no reason to put tim in context but now we need to put tim in
00:26:18 ◼ ► context and this is how they've chosen to do it which is again we could all write that paragraph and it would
00:26:24 ◼ ► be very similar in terms of what his things are that we would focus on as being kind of legacy of tim
00:26:29 ◼ ► cook's era yeah i mean it's a good summary but i actually don't think it's completely fair like i think
00:26:36 ◼ ► that it's odd to me that they do not talk about continued continued stewardship and development of
00:26:43 ◼ ► their key platforms the iphone's not in here but it's not like just because he didn't create he wasn't
00:26:48 ◼ ► the ceo when they created the first one that that means he doesn't get credit for the all of the ones that
00:26:53 ◼ ► came after yeah and he's got i mean there's a there's a first paragraph there that talks about
00:26:58 ◼ ► new categories and products and services and expanding existing product lines and it mentions
00:27:04 ◼ ► vision pro and it mentions apple pay and all of that and i mean they tried to be comprehensive i just
00:27:10 ◼ ► thought it was really interesting that they specifically called out services here because
00:27:14 ◼ ► that absolutely i mean for those who don't remember this has been going on a while there was a there was a
00:27:19 ◼ ► moment in the mid to late 2010s when they basically said we're going to grow services a lot really soon
00:27:26 ◼ ► watch us grow it it's going to double in the next three years or whatever and and it doubled in less
00:27:32 ◼ ► than that and it's continued to grow since then and that was very clearly a major initiative under
00:27:38 ◼ ► cook and we can debate the the good or bad of it right like i would argue that apple's services focus
00:27:44 ◼ ► has overheated to the point where it's harming some of the product quality right i think it's sure i i think
00:27:51 ◼ ► i i would definitely say that i think that maybe they've they've gotten the mixture wrong there not
00:27:56 ◼ ► that it isn't wrong to generate um more money out of all your iphone customers but that maybe
00:28:01 ◼ ► they make some decisions that i wish that there was more thought put into what that meant for the user
00:28:08 ◼ ► experience but there's no denying like that was a huge aspect to the to the expansion here there's also
00:28:14 ◼ ► no denying a thing that we are going to talk about again later in this episode in the stuff we already
00:28:19 ◼ ► recorded that part of this is also like the iphone 6 coming out and with a larger phones and more options
00:28:29 ◼ ► that was a a rocket ship of iphone growth and like just the growth that started with the iphone 6 in
00:28:35 ◼ ► 2014 completely transformed what apple was going to be just because of the the money the size the scope
00:28:42 ◼ ► it completely changed the company in a very short amount of time in some ways because the iphone which
00:28:48 ◼ ► had been doing really well suddenly was just out of control uh growth it just enormous growth and that
00:28:55 ◼ ► changed everything about apple and how it operated and how it saw itself and the whole thing yeah it's
00:29:01 ◼ ► like you know as you say they they talk about instrumental and expanding existing product lines
00:29:06 ◼ ► etc etc i do feel like i've just finished reading apple in china at the exact correct time for me right
00:29:12 ◼ ► now if i wasn't going to read it read it immediately because i think the thing that cannot be denied is apple is
00:29:18 ◼ ► only able to be as big as it is because tim cook's operational skill and the way that he's crafted
00:29:25 ◼ ► this company to be this operational powerhouse enables them to sell the amount of products that
00:29:30 ◼ ► they do because without someone who of his skill who was able to put the right people in the right
00:29:36 ◼ ► places they just wouldn't be able to sell all the products like it it needed someone who was able to
00:29:42 ◼ ► manage the operations manage the political climate manage working with china to get to the point that
00:29:50 ◼ ► they could be as big as they are like services sure but most likely his actual long-lasting legacy
00:29:57 ◼ ► was the operations apparatus that cook put in place at apple oh yeah i mean yeah it was it was
00:30:05 ◼ ► tim cook's legacy goes back to when he was coo it goes back to all of the manufacturing stuff in china
00:30:12 ◼ ► and how so much of what apple's been able to do has been enabled by their ability to build systems to build
00:30:20 ◼ ► what they want instead of using that's the great i mean that's the great thing that i learned
00:30:25 ◼ ► from apple in china is i knew it like to a certain degree but i didn't realize it was so much that
00:30:31 ◼ ► literally apple would say we want to build this thing and any other company that said that they
00:30:37 ◼ ► would be told you can't that's not how it works apple would just say we're going to do this they're
00:30:41 ◼ ► like okay i guess we're going to figure out a way to manufacture what apple wants and then everybody
00:30:45 ◼ ► else in the world gets to use that technique to build their own smartphones or whatever and that that
00:30:50 ◼ ► is that is tim cook stuff like that is all tim cook stuff so that is a huge legacy of tim cook is just
00:30:59 ◼ ► apple also i remember when apple i mean apple used to have swollen inventory they would have thousands
00:31:07 ◼ ► of computers that they that were in the channel that they couldn't get rid of and that if they come out
00:31:12 ◼ ► with a new model they would have to write those off because nobody was ever going to buy them and like
00:31:18 ◼ ► tim cook the impression i get is that tim cook was one of those people who came in and was like
00:31:23 ◼ ► uh-uh we're not going to do it this way we're going to be ruthlessly efficient and in ways that has
00:31:30 ◼ ► benefited apple um you know there's a complex legacy there because they were also enabling uh chinese
00:31:36 ◼ ► manufacturing capability and you know you could argue that in some cases they made apple a lot more
00:31:42 ◼ ► prone to danger because they were reducing the um the diversity of their um of their supply chain and
00:31:50 ◼ ► all these other things it's complicated but like also there's no doubt about it that i get the sense
00:31:56 ◼ ► that apple's whole manufacturing thing was just really badly run and that tim cook uh was one of the
00:32:03 ◼ ► leaders who got it into shape it's like going into the very long term yeah maybe there are some
00:32:09 ◼ ► decisions that were made that end up not being the right ones to have been made right but in the
00:32:16 ◼ ► intervening time from cook to now i mean they're a company that has been able to grow to the scale and
00:32:22 ◼ ► size that they're at because they were able to produce and also innovate it's not just can we make
00:32:28 ◼ ► 100 million of these can we make them to the quality level that we're making them like that has been
00:32:35 ◼ ► incredibly important and has needed the investment and the setup and everything that they've had to
00:32:41 ◼ ► develop in china and elsewhere now yeah so to sum up tim cook's going to end up being ceo of apple for
00:32:50 ◼ ► about 15 years because he started in august of 2011 so it'll be 15 years and a handful of days
00:32:56 ◼ ► um and you know he's got he's going to be leaving apple kind of maybe kind of on top honestly after
00:33:06 ◼ ► especially their all-time you know record quarter that they just had and with the mac sales presumably
00:33:10 ◼ ► going to going to be interesting with macbook neo um and and john turnus you know knows they know what's
00:33:18 ◼ ► in the pipeline so he's he knows what he's going to be introducing and like yeah we will have plenty of
00:33:23 ◼ ► time to consider john turnus to consider the legacy of tim cook this is a first draft because literally
00:33:30 ◼ ► we just found out about it which is why mike is recording a podcast very near his child um but we
00:33:37 ◼ ► couldn't again if we had already dropped the episode what would we do but uh we didn't um so we had to put
00:33:44 ◼ ► something in yeah so we'll have much more about this uh next week we will next week and here's here's the
00:33:50 ◼ ► deal dear upgrade listeners not only did you get more than half an hour of us talking about this
00:33:55 ◼ ► breaking news right now but now you got a couple hours of evergreen fun with your friends past mike and
00:34:07 ◼ ► jason talking about 50 selected randomly somewhat products from apple's 50 years in the rest of this
00:34:16 ◼ ► episode and i think you will enjoy it you don't have to listen to it right now you can listen to
00:34:21 ◼ ► it whenever because it's not unlike this part it's not going to grow old but we hope you enjoy it as
00:34:26 ◼ ► much as we did recording it in a more innocent time when tim cook was the ceo of apple we are finishing
00:34:34 ◼ ► our apple at 50 programming on this week's show with a big old draft we are doing the apple at 50 draft
00:34:44 ◼ ► we are going to be picking 25 items each amounting to 50 total picks and we're picking a set of products
00:34:55 ◼ ► made yes by apple or apple computer inc these will be physical products only we're not picking software
00:35:03 ◼ ► we are not picking components or entire product lines this must be a specific model these rules we came to
00:35:12 ◼ ► an agreement on during upgrade plus last week last week there will be no concepts these must have
00:35:17 ◼ ► actually been released products so we will not be picking the knowledge navigator here or air power
00:35:22 ◼ ► or oh i forgot about air power well i mean is air power a concept i mean i think they thought it was a
00:35:28 ◼ ► thing yeah but it was never actually released so indeed it doesn't count we will be choosing these items
00:35:34 ◼ ► based on our own defined criteria there is not a defined criteria ranking like significance importance
00:35:45 ◼ ► this is not a pre-agreed list like many of our other drafts the picks that we will be making will
00:35:51 ◼ ► be a surprise to each other jason and i have both amassed our own individual lists and we will be
00:35:56 ◼ ► taking turns to pick them in the show notes don't do this until the end but in the show notes there is
00:36:03 ◼ ► a poll where you as the upgradians will get to decide who has the best list jason i have a snell talk
00:36:11 ◼ ► question for you okay what was your personal methodology for the list i chose products i like
00:36:20 ◼ ► products you like okay yeah with maybe one exception but but i what i didn't do is like
00:36:25 ◼ ► i didn't choose like bad products or or dumb products i chose some weird products but the weird products
00:36:34 ◼ ► tend to be products that are weird i like them because they're weird yeah i like them but i didn't make
00:36:39 ◼ ► this like an anti draft or or some eclectic like i good vibes i'm going for good vibes what about you
00:36:46 ◼ ► what was your methodology it is a combination of things that i think should be on this list
00:36:53 ◼ ► but mostly ranked with things that were important to me right so my list is of things i think should
00:37:01 ◼ ► be on here i have ranked them in such a way of personal importance with some exceptions
00:37:05 ◼ ► and also some stuff that's for the fun that like i think should be included in a list uh okay even if
00:37:13 ◼ ► maybe they don't deserve it i might not get to those though right because those some of those are
00:37:18 ◼ ► more towards the bottom and so in upgrade plus today we will most likely be dragging out some of
00:37:24 ◼ ► the things that we didn't pick i have 60 items on my list and i only get to pick 25 so that's going
00:37:29 ◼ ► to be a problem i have 44 um yeah so that's going to be well we'll see also i love the idea that you
00:37:36 ◼ ► have ranked them because i have not so i thought about not ranking so my i have an apple note my
00:37:42 ◼ ► apple note is at the top of this note is a table and i broke it down into the product categories and
00:37:49 ◼ ► then picked my favorites from the product product categories right and that was how i was going to go
00:37:54 ◼ ► into this episode and then it felt too complicated so then i i ranked them the rankings not going to
00:38:01 ◼ ► stick though but i'm like like in all of my drafts so whenever we draft i rank them and then i start
00:38:06 ◼ ► moving things around i just if i didn't do some level of ranking the the reason i had to because i knew i
00:38:12 ◼ ► was going to forget something if i didn't try and do some kind of ranking and then i'd feel bad
00:38:16 ◼ ► um oh by the way in upgrade plus as well we we gave a google form for upgradians to send in
00:38:22 ◼ ► their things that they didn't want us to forget uh did you choose literally any of the things i'll tell
00:38:29 ◼ ► you right now i didn't choose i think anything that was in that list you know i did okay i was i'll put
00:38:37 ◼ ► it this way i was reminded of products by that list i think in one case i smiled because i already had
00:38:48 ◼ ► and somebody mentioned it and i was like yes they see me they see that i've already got that
00:38:53 ◼ ► and then there was one where i thought oh that reminds me i'm going to put a different product
00:38:57 ◼ ► right which is pretty funny that's good i think that's what it did for me i think that list
00:39:03 ◼ ► reminded me of entire product categories that i could consider but there wasn't anything where i was
00:39:08 ◼ ► like oh i should add that one thing to my list um but it was a helpful thing to have and i'm happy
00:39:13 ◼ ► that we did that so i think considering so this is an exhibition game uh the pennant is not on the
00:39:21 ◼ ► line here um i think is what we decided this is just this is for fun but because you are the reigning
00:39:27 ◼ ► defending draft champion i think you should get first pick oh well that's very kind of you i didn't assume
00:39:33 ◼ ► that well in that case with the first pick in the apple of 50 draft i have to do it i thought about
00:39:41 ◼ ► this a lot i thought about like what does it mean and i'm going to go with what is absolutely the
00:39:46 ◼ ► most important product not the product that without without which the the app that apple wouldn't have
00:39:51 ◼ ► stayed in business right because you could you would you would have to dial that all the way back
00:39:54 ◼ ► to the apple too it's the original iphone okay this was my number one when you were teeing that up i was
00:40:01 ◼ ► wondering if you were going to say the mac no no in fact i have i have a john john syracuse should cover
00:40:09 ◼ ► his ears because i have the mac 128 as as groundbreaking as it was it was really not that good uh and then
00:40:16 ◼ ► they had to fix it later that year with a better version of it so i i'm i'm gonna say right now i'm not
00:40:21 ◼ ► going to pick the mac 128 okay there are better macs to pick than that one uh even though it was
00:40:26 ◼ ► historically vitally important um but uh the original iphone like it it it changed what apple is
00:40:34 ◼ ► completely and it changed what the world is and how people in the world use technology and live their
00:40:41 ◼ ► lives and you know it was only the first and it didn't sell as well as subsequent models because it
00:40:47 ◼ ► was the beginning i also think that it's got um some remarkable characteristics right like i my jeopardy
00:40:55 ◼ ► anecdote was about picking it up and holding it for the first time right and when i was expected to
00:40:58 ◼ ► have coherent thoughts and ask questions and i i couldn't because even though retina didn't come
00:41:05 ◼ ► until the iphone 4 the iphone screen was higher resolution than a mac it and it's in your hand and
00:41:10 ◼ ► you're touching you're putting your finger down and things are reacting like it was in that i i i
00:41:17 ◼ ► completely remember that moment it was transformative it was like oh oh yeah okay this is what this like
00:41:26 ◼ ► it was clear to me clear and uh and it's still a pretty cool design for all of the limitations that
00:41:32 ◼ ► they had to build into it um it because you know because of the limitations of building this thing
00:41:39 ◼ ► i i see what johnny ive is going for he he he couldn't get all the way there but i actually
00:41:45 ◼ ► think it looks pretty cool yeah um even still given all of that that was a first generation model but
00:41:51 ◼ ► certainly cooler than the next two where they're like ah whatever plastic yeah um and not until the
00:41:56 ◼ ► iphone 4 did they end up with a better um a better design but the first iphone um yeah for for many
00:42:02 ◼ ► reasons it's my number one yeah i think that there are and you've kind of already mentioned one and i
00:42:07 ◼ ► think there are many categories where the original is not the one you pick right from any category but
00:42:15 ◼ ► the original iphone is maybe as good as a product could ever be being the first it was incomparable
00:42:23 ◼ ► like nothing came close it was there was nothing like it and one of the things that at least the way
00:42:31 ◼ ► i've been approaching my list is if you're picking a later product you have to pick you know you're not
00:42:36 ◼ ► encompassing yes in my mind you're not encompassing the entire product line and picking a representative
00:42:41 ◼ ► product you need to say why that one and so i did seriously consider the iphone 4 i wrote a whole
00:42:46 ◼ ► thing last week on mac world about the iphone 4 the iphone 4 is amazing and and will be picked in
00:42:52 ◼ ► this draft oh absolutely it will be if not if not soon then eventually yeah because it's amazing in
00:42:57 ◼ ► so many ways but i i'm not going to sweep all of the greatness of the iphone into the iphone 4 because
00:43:03 ◼ ► uh that's not how this works i think so original iphone for this one but you're right um i'm not
00:43:09 ◼ ► pitching picking the original mac i'm not going to pick the original ipod i'm not going to pick the apple
00:43:14 ◼ ► one or the apple 2 like first versions are not always very good yeah but this one was i mean look
00:43:22 ◼ ► you know this this will age but i do i don't think there will ever be a more consequential consumer
00:43:30 ◼ ► type product than the iphone like for for what a product is released and then the world changes like i'm
00:43:37 ◼ ► not sure that's ever going to happen again because i don't think it ever happened before like personal
00:43:42 ◼ ► computers incredible but one singular product from one company made that much change as somebody who
00:43:49 ◼ ► spent his entire professional life um talking about technology it is a real uh head scratcher to realize
00:43:56 ◼ ► that um all of that time i spent in my career focusing on computers before the iphone came out
00:44:02 ◼ ► was just a prelude that the whole personal computer industry was really just a setup because we couldn't
00:44:07 ◼ ► get smartphones yet and that the smartphone was essentially the destination now maybe we will
00:44:11 ◼ ► go further and maybe there will be some kind of earth-shattering product in the next 20 years that
00:44:16 ◼ ► will completely transform society i wouldn't bet on it i think anything that comes along it will be like
00:44:23 ◼ ► oh yeah it's you know it's kind of like a phone or it's kind of like this the iphone was just like
00:44:28 ◼ ► when it's not like the other products it's not like the products it's competing against it just wasn't like
00:44:35 ◼ ► it was as much competing against them in that it could make phone calls and it went in your pocket
00:44:39 ◼ ► and that's basically where it ended like it was it just maybe the best thing ever like okay yeah
00:44:46 ◼ ► what do you have so that was my number one so now i'm gonna go with what is my number two but
00:44:53 ◼ ► well very happy to be number one the ipod mini all right the ipod mini you know like we spoke about
00:44:59 ◼ ► this in our origin stories uh is the ipod mini is like it's the most it is the apple product i have
00:45:07 ◼ ► such i'd like the highest emotion for because it's the one that brought me in and like brought me in this
00:45:13 ◼ ► journey and i think the ipod mini is a very significant product in the success that it brought apple
00:45:21 ◼ ► like you know i think to get to the iphone we needed the ipod mini because it was the product
00:45:27 ◼ ► that i think really exploded the ipod line and the explosion of the ipod line brought apple back to where
00:45:34 ◼ ► they are or where they were able to be to be able to get to the point that they could produce a product
00:45:39 ◼ ► like the iphone like i think the ipod mini is like that is why it's important to me but i just think
00:45:44 ◼ ► it was it was really emblematic of what was attractive about apple at that time in that it
00:45:52 ◼ ► was fun and cool right like the design was so weird it was like you know it was like a little rectangle but
00:45:59 ◼ ► it had really rounded sides and it came in a whole range of colors and it had the white click wheel and
00:46:06 ◼ ► the color like you know the the led colored screen not a color screen right but it was like blue right
00:46:12 ◼ ► and it just had this feel to it and it was young and fresh and all the advertising was so good like
00:46:18 ◼ ► to me it's just such an incredible product and i i love it and i still have my ipod mini to this day
00:46:31 ◼ ► i get it um and i get your personal connection to it yeah and i'm not running your pick down by saying this
00:46:37 ◼ ► but i didn't have it on my list i'm not surprised and and i know that there are lots of people that are
00:46:42 ◼ ► really upset that i picked this right but i think you're right i think i think you are making a perfectly
00:46:46 ◼ ► valid decision i know how much it means to you and i think there is a real strong argument to be made
00:46:50 ◼ ► that that's the ipod that really kind of like made the ipod explode yeah i mean this is the thing
00:47:04 ◼ ► thank you i appreciate that um i'm gonna go number two with uh the most influential computer
00:47:25 ◼ ► it's the second generation macbook air and this was mine oh wait hang on what are we talking about
00:47:34 ◼ ► here the the 11 inch and 13 inch macbook airs which generates were they the second or the third
00:47:38 ◼ ► not the not the bad one with the flip down door okay uh the 2011 i believe macbook air yeah
00:47:45 ◼ ► 2011 yeah that one that one because that was when they got it right the first macbook air we don't
00:47:53 ◼ ► want to really talk about i had it it was bad it shut down a core when in the afternoon when the sun
00:47:57 ◼ ► came in my window but the um with the 11 and 13 inch macbook airs that they released in 2011 they got it
00:48:04 ◼ ► right and like literally every laptop made since then is aping the macbook air that period like it
00:48:10 ◼ ► they created like ultra books as a category to so they didn't have to say windows laptops that are
00:48:15 ◼ ► kind of like the macbook air but like i mean and and the macbook pro even the macbook pro is like the
00:48:20 ◼ ► macbook air now it's not because the macbook air has evolved too but they're closer than they used to
00:48:25 ◼ ► be and like the everything has been informed by that macbook air design it was um it's the most
00:48:33 ◼ ► important it's the defining mac of you know from the 2010s to now it's the last 15 years and i i think
00:48:42 ◼ ► it's uh i think it's one of the most definitive macs of all time so this was actually my third pick and
00:48:47 ◼ ► specifically i was going to pick the 11 inch because i had the 11 inch macbook air and i i adored
00:48:55 ◼ ► that computer like it was so fantastic to have a computer that was as capable as it was in at that
00:49:05 ◼ ► time in that form factor i was probably the 11 inch macbook air i know you're a super fan of 11 inch
00:49:11 ◼ ► macbook air as well absolutely time that's absolutely so i guess it's late it's the late 2010 macbook air
00:49:25 ◼ ► everybody knows what i'm talking about anyway yeah that that was the date it was like i was there i
00:49:29 ◼ ► mean that's the funny thing is like what year was that but i remember going to that event and walking
00:49:33 ◼ ► away with macbook air because everybody got to walk away with one and that 11 inch model was i mean yes
00:49:38 ◼ ► when i think of it i think of the 11 inch model because that was my main computer for the next
00:49:44 ◼ ► you know six years or whatever was an 11 inch air but um just amazing and and definitive like change
00:49:52 ◼ ► change i mean talk about changing the game like how the ipad the iphone changed the world um in terms of
00:49:57 ◼ ► computers and laptops the macbook air changed everything uh i'm gonna stick on this vibe and i'm gonna pick
00:50:04 ◼ ► my favorite mac ever which is the m2 macbook air you know this is on my list good good job uh this this is
00:50:13 ◼ ► absolutely on my list this laptop it's i think is basically perfect and so like i love you know i'm
00:50:19 ◼ ► starting with the m2 because and that's the one that i have but obviously if you get the m3 the m4
00:50:24 ◼ ► is there an m5 of this there is an m5 yeah yeah they all have it they all have it yeah it's the new it's
00:50:31 ◼ ► the current uh design language where it's got the flat it's not the wedge it's got the the flat top and
00:50:36 ◼ ► the rounded sides yeah and um i remember again i remember getting this seeing it at the event and
00:50:45 ◼ ► then getting my review unit and just saying like oh boy this is so good like and i again as a macbook
00:50:51 ◼ ► air wedge partisan all the way back to as we've just determined late 2010 yep i i i get i get that your
00:51:00 ◼ ► wife has a great fondness for that wedge design and all of that i totally get it but for me as
00:51:06 ◼ ► somebody who also had great fondness for that when the m2 air came i thought oh this is the one yeah
00:51:11 ◼ ► because this is the this is the computer that apple silicon enables on that side right like apple silicon
00:51:21 ◼ ► kind of enables computers on both ends of the scale right you can have something incredibly powerful
00:51:26 ◼ ► because of how powerful these chips can be and how power efficient they are but you can also have
00:51:30 ◼ ► something incredibly thin and light with no fan that is plenty powerful and incredibly battery efficient
00:51:39 ◼ ► because of what these chips enable like you know we've all said that many times the m2 macbook air is what
00:51:46 ◼ ► they wanted to make when they made the 12 inch macbook right like that that is the product you would
00:51:51 ◼ ► want to make and it turns out they were able to make it many years later when they actually went to
00:51:55 ◼ ► apple silicon and it's like you know you look the m1 macbook air as great as it was you know it's like
00:52:00 ◼ ► oh we're gonna take this design and put this chip in it wonderful but what if we started from zero and the
00:52:06 ◼ ► zero we're starting is that we base it around the capabilities of apple silicon chips and you create
00:52:10 ◼ ► this computer and to me it's like it is the most awesome combination like i love my m2 macbook air and it
00:52:20 ◼ ► will be i will be very sad when i replace it with the touchscreen macbook pro because i really want a
00:52:26 ◼ ► touchscreen mac and so and but as soon as they put a touchscreen back on their macbook air i'm going
00:52:31 ◼ ► right for the reviews on that one i think i think that that is a conversation for another time but i
00:52:37 ◼ ► think that's a product that it's going to a lot a lot of it's going to be in the details of how they
00:52:42 ◼ ► do that oh i know all right um for my third pick i'm going to finally uh leave the 21st century i'm
00:52:48 ◼ ► going to go back in time and i'm going to make a pick here that is the product that i think you could
00:52:55 ◼ ► argue allowed the mac to flourish and succeed um it's also going to be our first accessory slash
00:53:06 ◼ ► peripheral in the draft but i feel so strongly about this that the macs of that era were
00:53:12 ◼ ► okay to good to great but what made the secret sauce that made the mac succeed in the 80s
00:53:20 ◼ ► and survive in the 90s is the laser writer wow wow okay come to school time for a history lesson
00:53:32 ◼ ► please please please the laser writer which integrated adobe's postscript technology and
00:53:37 ◼ ► allowed max to become desktop publishing engines and create content at printed quality right out of a
00:53:43 ◼ ► computer completely changed the game it's what made the publishing industry embrace the mac it led to
00:53:52 ◼ ► many other models but and you could upgrade it to a laser writer too by putting a different logic board
00:53:57 ◼ ► they improved it in a bunch of ways but the laser writer it really did change the fortunes of apple
00:54:04 ◼ ► the mac and adobe and the publishing industry completely this is how desktop publishing came to be
00:54:11 ◼ ► is this product it was kind of accidental in some ways it was part of the mac office which was this initiative
00:54:23 ◼ ► um parts of the mac office never shipped like the file server that they could never ship
00:54:28 ◼ ► but the laser writer didn't need the rest of the mac office it just needed itself it is an all-timer
00:54:36 ◼ ► um and so i'm gonna i'm gonna take a high pick on the laser writer because i think it is that important
00:54:42 ◼ ► i feel like you probably picked this one now because it's important to you not because you
00:54:47 ◼ ► thought you were going to lose it otherwise uh because i think it deserves to be this high
00:54:52 ◼ ► more but definitely not strategically yeah um because i know you're not going to pick it but
00:54:56 ◼ ► you know what i'm not i'm giving it to you because you know i wasn't going to pick the ipod mini
00:55:01 ◼ ► here we are there you go well congratulations laser writer laser writer uh i'm going to pick
00:55:08 ◼ ► now what i consider to be one of the most important iphones ever shipped and it's not the one you're
00:55:14 ◼ ► thinking of i'm going to pick the iphone 6 plus ah okay i see what you're doing here this was the first
00:55:22 ◼ ► big iphone mike it's iphone math it's iphone math makes the list iphone math that is an incredible deep
00:55:30 ◼ ► cut where it from a translation translated yeah of the plus and they translated because it was
00:55:36 ◼ ► presumably in china and in in a language that was not english and somebody interpreted that plus
00:55:42 ◼ ► as being math and so they said the new phone will the larger phone will be called the iphone math
00:55:47 ◼ ► and we will have to deal with that for a little while amazing i love it um the iphone 6 plus was the
00:55:54 ◼ ► first big iphone yes and while necessary you know i think while maybe big iphone was not super popular
00:56:00 ◼ ► at that point it obviously set trajectory to where we are now where all of the iphones are massive where
00:56:05 ◼ ► all all of the iphones now all phones are bigger than the iphone 6 plus right yeah this is this is the
00:56:12 ◼ ► response to samsung having success with the galaxy note yeah and and realizing because samsung just
00:56:18 ◼ ► released a bunch of stuff and was like well let's see what happens yeah um and everybody was like yes i want a
00:56:23 ◼ ► giant phone and apple which had been so skeptical and had built ios around these like fixed sizes that
00:56:28 ◼ ► they had to very rapidly say no uh make your apps be able to expand to different sizes uh because they
00:56:34 ◼ ► realized that they had left this opening and they had to fill it and and the truth is a lot of us out
00:56:41 ◼ ► there can grouse about like big phones versus small phones but the market spoke the market spoke people
00:56:45 ◼ ► want big phones that's just i know some people want small phones but almost everybody wants big a bigger
00:56:51 ◼ ► phone with more stuff on it so that iphone 6 plus you could also i mean you know i love my financial
00:56:57 ◼ ► charts and all of that this is when the the um this is when apple and the iphone exploded in terms of
00:57:04 ◼ ► revenue was this product and they never came down yeah this was a part of why i picked this it is also the
00:57:10 ◼ ► point when the iphone became serious like at this point like the reason that we are here where we
00:57:17 ◼ ► are now with the iphone was the iphone 6 line you know it's the thing that we spoke about on this show
00:57:22 ◼ ► many times this is also when we launched the show was the iphone 6 right um that was true episode one
00:57:28 ◼ ► of upgrade was the iphone 6 my review of the iphone 6 yeah um and it was at that point where all charts
00:57:34 ◼ ► became meaningless um and then apple was digging itself out of a hole for a few years because they
00:57:40 ◼ ► sold so many that there was this blip now it came down and then went back up and then you know it's
00:57:46 ◼ ► like yes you do have done many times which you kind of normalize those charts you see it's just a linear
00:57:50 ◼ ► progression i did just look it up the iphone 6 plus had a 5.5 inch display the iphone 17 e has a 6.1
00:57:59 ◼ ► yeah yeah yeah yeah and obviously it's the phone was physically larger because we were dealing with
00:58:05 ◼ ► bezels and a home button and all that kind of stuff then but it's a funny thing um i just think you know
00:58:11 ◼ ► and also the the iphone 6 design language i think over time it got we got very tired of it because apple did
00:58:18 ◼ ► not change anything for many years um but at the time it felt very new great in hand right very thin
00:58:26 ◼ ► and rounded like it had a very nice different feeling to the phones that had come before it so
00:58:31 ◼ ► yeah the iphone 6 plus for me great choice fantastic choice um not on my list but i i knew you would
00:58:39 ◼ ► pick it so it's fine i am going to go with another mac and it's tough because i want to kind of like
00:58:46 ◼ ► paint a picture here i want to pick some a good selection of macs um here's my we're going back in
00:58:53 ◼ ► time again here's a this is going to be a historic pick and i have a little story about why
00:58:58 ◼ ► it's the powerbook i'm going to say the 170 although we could really just say powerbook first generation
00:59:04 ◼ ► and it counts the 100 the 140 and the 170 all of which came out basically the same time
00:59:09 ◼ ► so they did the mac portable and it was a disaster um and this is the earliest days of laptops and there
00:59:15 ◼ ► weren't there weren't a lot of laptops out there and laptops were underpowered but the the power you
00:59:19 ◼ ► could get by bringing your computer with you and not by taking like a classic shaped mac and putting
00:59:25 ◼ ► it in a bag and lugging it around but like literally uh uh this was actually part of steve jobs's original
00:59:31 ◼ ► conception for the mac he was like he had a whole like phrase he was like mac in a book by 1986 like
00:59:38 ◼ ► he he really wanted them them to have this laptop essentially what we think of now as a laptop yeah
00:59:45 ◼ ► and that the short version of the story is all laptops at this time did not look like laptops do
00:59:51 ◼ ► today this is you want to talk about a change the world moment this is a change the world product
00:59:55 ◼ ► because there was an engineer who was messing around with like uh little drawings and cut up pieces of
01:00:02 ◼ ► paper and then eventually a foam core model that he brought to a meeting and he said what if we took
01:00:08 ◼ ► the keyboard and the keyboard at every laptop at that point was at the front of the of the of the the
01:00:14 ◼ ► control surface what if we pushed it back that gets us palm rest and a place for at that point a track
01:00:22 ◼ ► ball to move the mouse and the reason that they had to do this the reason apple is the one that came up
01:00:27 ◼ ► with this concept was because pc laptops are in dos they didn't need pointers yeah max you could
01:00:37 ◼ ► not operate without a pointer you had to have a mouse so how would you do that and so he had this
01:00:42 ◼ ► idea of like the keyboard doesn't come all the way up to the front you push it back you got a place to
01:00:46 ◼ ► put your palms your wrists and you've got a pointing spot and that after this every laptop looked like
01:00:56 ◼ ► that literally every laptop looked like that also for people who do not remember that far for people
01:01:00 ◼ ► who are not the olds i'll just say the power book was a sensation this was in many ways the first mac
01:01:08 ◼ ► to actually like get people talking and it was expensive these were expensive but like there was
01:01:15 ◼ ► the one i like to cite is that there's a new yorker article about how tech or not tech entertainment
01:01:20 ◼ ► mogul uh barry diller used to do his power lunches in hollywood with his power book on the table like
01:01:26 ◼ ► it was like a power move to have his computer with him at all times and like it it not only did it make
01:01:33 ◼ ► the laptop a key part of apple's entire mac product line going forward it never they never went back
01:01:41 ◼ ► uh but it redefined the entire market so power book first generation it's iconic the look of this thing
01:01:47 ◼ ► like i you know again i remember seeing these in my life um like my uncle had one and it was like
01:01:53 ◼ ► oh such a cool looking thing i had a power book 160 the second generation and i loved that thing
01:01:57 ◼ ► so much it was awesome yeah i was thinking now you know the pick that i'm gonna make now i feel like
01:02:03 ◼ ► oh i'm picking everything that's modern but the pick that i'm about to make was released 16 years ago
01:02:14 ◼ ► at the time you know it really did it felt like the next big thing from apple and for a while it was
01:02:21 ◼ ► you know like the ipad was an unbelievable success uh when it first shipped and you know things changed
01:02:29 ◼ ► over time with the ipad and its trajectory but it started something new you know like it
01:02:40 ◼ ► for it you know like there was a whole wave of apps that had hd in the name because they had a
01:02:45 ◼ ► different ui and people sold them separately and you know it was any i say extra points for the
01:02:52 ◼ ► presentation from steve jobs right like it was another classic in a very different way that the
01:02:57 ◼ ► the original iphone presentation was a classic you know this was much more relaxed and that actually
01:03:02 ◼ ► worked for the presentation but also like if you were around at the time or paying attention at the
01:03:06 ◼ ► time the 499 price tag was an absolute mic drop from apple everybody thought this thing was going
01:03:16 ◼ ► to be like a thousand dollars or whatever because we all knew a tablet was coming and it was just about
01:03:20 ◼ ► what it was going to be but 499 for this thing was incredible and yeah it was it was a real time
01:03:27 ◼ ► when the ipad came out and uh i hold that time special have on my list too um it's uh it's actually
01:03:34 ◼ ► if you've ever if you haven't held one recently it's actually kind of great like obviously the ipad
01:03:41 ◼ ► has evolved so much since then but that hardware design is amazing yeah it really was and at the time
01:03:48 ◼ ► just just it blew me away so clever like it had like the bump right in the back so they could make
01:03:54 ◼ ► it thin at the edges it was a very clever design so you could hold in your hand and it feels like a
01:03:58 ◼ ► magical you know future tablet thingy um and then obviously defined what these things were going to be
01:04:05 ◼ ► yeah at that point okay i have one more uh in my top in our top 10 our collective top 10
01:04:12 ◼ ► and i am going to go with a computer that i bought and love and uh you know how much i love it mike
01:04:23 ◼ ► because it took up a lot of time in the uh the podcast-a-thon last fall i'm going to pick the apple
01:04:30 ◼ ► 2e here um need to represent the apple 2 wrote a long article on the verge a few weeks ago about why
01:04:38 ◼ ► the apple 2 is the product that established apple as a company the apple 2e was the best iteration of
01:04:43 ◼ ► the apple 2 sorry fans of other apple 2s it was the best one it sort of solved all the problems of the
01:04:50 ◼ ► 2 and 2 plus line and then they iterated on it with the 2c and the 2gs but like i think the 2e was
01:04:55 ◼ ► like just straight down the middle the core great apple 2 and it uh they couldn't kill it they tried
01:05:02 ◼ ► they tried it with elisa they tried it with the apple 3 they tried it with the original mac the apple 2 was
01:05:07 ◼ ► apple's best-selling computer for a very long time and they were still in use in classrooms in the late
01:05:15 ◼ ► 80s and early 90s like they were still out there and had a bunch of great games and educational
01:05:22 ◼ ► software and all sorts of other things um expansion cards so you could do all sorts of different stuff
01:05:29 ◼ ► with it that was was saying we're going to have a bunch of expansion slots in this thing even though
01:05:33 ◼ ► steve jobs didn't want them um yeah just i think it's a a definitive apple product and they sold a huge
01:05:41 ◼ ► number of them and it's the thing that built apple as a corporation really is the apple 2 in general and
01:05:46 ◼ ► the apple 2e as the kind of like the the the final ultimate example of that product line so apple 2e
01:05:52 ◼ ► had upper and lower case mike upper and lower case big time yeah terrible you can always tell
01:05:59 ◼ ► back in the um back in the uh the days of the at the time the keyboard didn't seem so bad as i was
01:06:06 ◼ ► i mean when i in hindsight i hadn't touched one until last year and in hindsight it's not good no
01:06:12 ◼ ► no no no i i have fond memories of it and then i was typing on it uh steven's apple 2e and i was
01:06:17 ◼ ► like oh boy this is not so great but um but on a bullet on computer bulletin boards back in that day
01:06:23 ◼ ► because we didn't have the internet yet um you could always tell who had an apple 2 plus because they
01:06:27 ◼ ► they typed in all caps whoa yeah they're just shouting so apple 2e let's hear it for the it was a
01:06:36 ◼ ► as i'm going through my list i feel like i am building something that wasn't necessarily
01:06:42 ◼ ► intentional but i'm here anyway so now i'm just leaning into it uh my last pick in the top 10
01:06:49 ◼ ► is the ipod nano the first generation ipod nano um there's again like there is part product part
01:06:57 ◼ ► strategy that i find so interesting about this product um like one it looked stunning it's incredibly
01:07:03 ◼ ► thin you know like thin to the point that apple was only recently made a product thinner than it
01:07:07 ◼ ► uh it looked so good right where it was essentially a small version of the regular ipod rather than
01:07:16 ◼ ► the mini which was its own design right like it had the the black or white black like color with the
01:07:23 ◼ ► clear acrylic on top and then the stainless steel on the other side and it looked amazing it looked
01:07:30 ◼ ► even better when it got all banged up like that was one of the ipods that just looked fantastic
01:07:35 ◼ ► and it got banged up because that one got banged up in every direction it did yeah um the the you know
01:07:41 ◼ ► ever wonder what this pocket is for presentation moment right when joss pulls it out of the little
01:07:46 ◼ ► coin pocket in his jeans but also just the boldness of the strategy that the ipod mini was the best
01:07:54 ◼ ► selling ipod and instead of doing an ipod mini 2 they replaced it with the ipod nano and then the
01:08:00 ◼ ► ipod nano then got many revisions from my perspective none of them as good as the original um i i from
01:08:07 ◼ ► all of the things that i loved about the ipod nano i don't think there was ever an ipod nano that was
01:08:12 ◼ ► better than the first ipod nano i was not really an ipod nano person i think for this reason like as the
01:08:18 ◼ ► product went along and became more vibrant and colorful and took on various forms for me none of
01:08:25 ◼ ► them were ever as good as the original ipod nano i love the ipod nano also for the people of the
01:08:31 ◼ ► nitpickers out there there were two generations of ipod mini there was an ipod mini 2 yeah but was it
01:08:38 ◼ ► though yeah the next year they came out with an updated version of it with different colors
01:08:41 ◼ ► okay yeah but colors is not but it's basically the same yeah and then they killed it yeah and it was
01:08:45 ◼ ► their it was their best-selling product and then they killed it famously which is why the nano is so
01:08:49 ◼ ► interesting thank you for the clarification but from my perspective it's like you know they didn't do
01:08:53 ◼ ► for the ipod mini that they did for basically all of the other ipods where it's like we're gonna
01:08:57 ◼ ► keep iterating on this product and making it different um so yeah but for me the ipod nano was amazing
01:09:05 ◼ ► this episode is brought to you by delete me delete me makes it easy quick and safe to remove your
01:09:13 ◼ ► personal data online at a time when surveillance and data breaches are common enough to make everybody
01:09:17 ◼ ► vulnerable sadly it's easier than ever to find personal information about people online and nobody
01:09:23 ◼ ► wants their address phone number and family members names hanging out on the internet with delete me you
01:09:29 ◼ ► can protect your personal privacy or the privacy of your business from doxing attacks before sensitive
01:09:33 ◼ ► information can be exploited the new york times wire cutter has named delete me their top pick for data
01:09:39 ◼ ► removal services and i mike hurley am a very happy customer of delete me i was able to give them all of the
01:09:46 ◼ ► information that i wanted to be removed from the internet which is not everything about me i have
01:09:50 ◼ ► professional information i want there to be but not personal information and then i have delete me
01:09:54 ◼ ► sending me reports periodically and they go through hey look we've removed your information from this place
01:10:00 ◼ ► and this place and this place and we're monitoring this one and we're sending requests to this one i love
01:10:05 ◼ ► it it feels like they're in my corner working for me and removing the information that i want removed
01:10:10 ◼ ► take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for delete me now at a special
01:10:16 ◼ ► discount for listeners of this show you can get 20 off your delete me plan when you go to join delete
01:10:21 ◼ ► me dot com slash upgrade 20 and use the promo code upgrade 20 at checkout the only way to get that 20
01:10:27 ◼ ► off is to go to j-o-i-n-d-e-l-e-t-e-m-e dot com slash upgrade 20 and use the code upgrade 20 at checkout
01:10:59 ◼ ► soon um i am going you you've been doing a lot of ipods i love i'm gonna i'm gonna jump in
01:11:09 ◼ ► to the ipod uh and i'm gonna pick the question here is like i'm gonna do the classic ipod
01:11:23 ◼ ► so this is so the first generation first first two were firewire port on the top and then they moved
01:11:33 ◼ ► and then they had the third generation which was the one with the four horizontal touch buttons that
01:11:37 ◼ ► was the worst ipod of all time and then there was then they came back they brought it back to
01:11:51 ◼ ► next okay maybe okay this is the ipod fourth generation or the ipod click wheel where they
01:11:59 ◼ ► bought the click wheel back okay um and that is yeah it's it all gets messed up yeah the ipod photo
01:12:07 ◼ ► came a few months later but i'm not picking that i'm picking the fourth gen ipod because i want
01:12:14 ◼ ► the best kind of classic before it started getting a whole bunch of stuff added to it ipod and i think
01:12:19 ◼ ► the ipod fourth generation is that one because the third one was bad and the first two like i have a lot
01:12:25 ◼ ► of fondness for the first one i have one um it has a moving wheel the wheel actually moves
01:12:30 ◼ ► um and it's got the buttons around the ring and then they changed the wheel to be a to be like a
01:12:36 ◼ ► capacitive wheel but you still the buttons around it then they did the four touch buttons that are so bad
01:12:41 ◼ ► and then in this one it's a click wheel for the first time so you've got a non-moving wheel but
01:12:46 ◼ ► that you can move your your finger over it to rotate and if you click at the edges of the wheel
01:12:51 ◼ ► that's how you do your controls there isn't a ring of buttons around them i feel like this is kind of
01:12:56 ◼ ► like the home of like the definitive classic ipod is right here so that's why i want to pick it because
01:13:03 ◼ ► the ipod very important to apple's history i was a class i was a uh what we call ipod classic big ipod
01:13:09 ◼ ► user the whole time i never used an ipad mini or an ipad nano i always or ipod nano i always had the
01:13:14 ◼ ► big ipod yeah because i had lots and lots of music and i wanted all that music and then later
01:13:18 ◼ ► podcasts that i would sync to it and so i uh i got to go with the fourth generation ipod that's my
01:13:24 ◼ ► that's my ipod of choice yeah because this click wheel design it debuted on the mini first and then
01:13:30 ◼ ► a few months later came to the classic what's now i guess known as the classic yeah and they and and
01:13:36 ◼ ► replacing that that uh four horizontal button terrible mistake so really ugly like steven loves them and i
01:13:43 ◼ ► don't understand it i feel like there's just because he had nostalgia there for him yeah that's what it
01:13:47 ◼ ► is because that is that is i think the ugliest of all of the ipods um it's not not not a look of that
01:13:56 ◼ ► one don't i'm not and i'm not a fan of those buttons either anyway like the little touch buttons not not
01:14:00 ◼ ► great for that all right so okay yeah i'm looking at i mean this is the thing where i have this tearing
01:14:10 ◼ ► in my list and i'm like i just don't know but there's some stuff here i know i'm gonna get to it
01:14:28 ◼ ► i think somewhat similar to the original iphone and it was a product that felt like it was from
01:14:37 ◼ ► the future at the moment that it arrived yeah yeah and you know that was again similar to the
01:14:44 ◼ ► original iphone shown in the fact of how expensive it was compared to competition right but the original
01:14:50 ◼ ► iphone it wasn't a high value but it was a value you had to pay on top of a contract you know like it
01:14:56 ◼ ► was a it was an expensive phone compared to what was going on at the time and the iphone 10
01:15:00 ◼ ► was a thousand dollars i think was the was the starting price for the iphone impossible yeah which
01:15:06 ◼ ► and you know it was obvious that it was so expensive and considered to be a luxury item because they also
01:15:12 ◼ ► released another iphone alongside it right they released the 8 and that was the expectation of like
01:15:18 ◼ ► hey we're gonna put this out there because we know we're not gonna get everyone onto the 10
01:15:22 ◼ ► but again obviously the 10 did so well and then continued from there because people could see it
01:15:27 ◼ ► was like yeah i want that right and really what was the the two big things for the iphone 10 was a
01:15:34 ◼ ► full screen we're moving the button and we're doing face id like unbelievable technology at that point
01:15:40 ◼ ► and the things that they were doing to make all of that work the iphone 10 was incredible like and it was
01:15:55 ◼ ► first oled iphone too it was yes it was the first oled iphone yeah yeah i the iphone 10 to me is um
01:16:05 ◼ ► kind of an archetype it's it's apple doing what apple does which is they built a product
01:16:12 ◼ ► that feels like the future and and they did it by they pushed the technology it's a bunch of new
01:16:20 ◼ ► technology in there it was more expensive i think that was part of the strategy was to push the price
01:16:24 ◼ ► up i say this a lot but like the iphone 10 ushered in an era where apple has continued to explore
01:16:29 ◼ ► how much they can charge for an iphone before people say no and they haven't found that answer yet
01:16:33 ◼ ► yeah that was probably a very exciting time for them yeah like oh my god they bought the thousand
01:16:39 ◼ ► dollar phone well what if it was and now we hear thousand dollar phone we're like yeah okay so but
01:16:44 ◼ ► like at the time it was a it was a huge deal well this year we will probably pass 2000 right with default
01:16:49 ◼ ► it is the defining uh iphone of of this era of the last almost 10 years is um it it set us on the
01:16:59 ◼ ► course that we're still on in terms of iphone design super important phone uh had a high on my list
01:17:23 ◼ ► mac design of all time which is the imac g4 okay um that the float like there was a little period
01:17:37 ◼ ► where they could make a a computer with a floating flat screen yeah and actually take advantage of the
01:17:55 ◼ ► that where it was practical to have a giant screen on that little arm so they they moved to the imac g5
01:18:00 ◼ ► design which is essentially the design of every imac since then but in this little shining moment
01:18:06 ◼ ► they got to build this thing with an incredible chrome arm um it is the sunflower imac it is yeah i think
01:18:17 ◼ ► um and it is the best mac design of all time now as a computer it was fine like it was better than
01:18:24 ◼ ► the imac g3 but um but really what it what's amazing is that it it has that apple feels like the future
01:18:31 ◼ ► thing going on there and the fact that they put that ridiculous amount of engineering effort into not
01:18:46 ◼ ► up and then fit all the whole computer into that kind of half volleyball that was sitting at the base
01:18:52 ◼ ► just kind of an amazing bit of engineering all around but the best industrial design so imac g4
01:18:56 ◼ ► it was almost like the product was an advertisement for apple like i i remember there was a like a
01:19:04 ◼ ► department store close to where i was where i lived as a kid and uh they had the imac g4 they just had
01:19:12 ◼ ► it out there for years like way after it was sold and people were always playing with it because it was
01:19:17 ◼ ► just like what is this thing like it just it looked like the most expensive computer you could ever
01:19:23 ◼ ► imagine you know because of how beautiful it was i've moved up something in my list because i think
01:19:28 ◼ ► it feels right to pick it here and that's the imac g3 okay um i you know the story of the imac g3 is
01:19:36 ◼ ► well known you know like it it really it was the beginning of the one of the greatest partnerships in
01:19:43 ◼ ► computers in like in technology right of jobs and i've like this was their product that they started
01:19:48 ◼ ► on together um and really pushed into becoming something uh it was so beautiful there was nothing
01:19:55 ◼ ► like it like nothing existed like the imac g3 and kind of after it nothing has existed like it since
01:20:02 ◼ ► really um obviously with the other the exception of like the ibook right but like not technology has
01:20:09 ◼ ► never again looked like this uh and it's just an incredible computer i remember i did uh work
01:20:16 ◼ ► experience as a kid and it was a range from my school and i was working at like a an internet
01:20:23 ◼ ► learning facility for schools that didn't have computers so like schools could come and use
01:20:28 ◼ ► computers and it was all imac g3s and so i spent a week updating all of these imac g3s to a version of
01:20:37 ◼ ► mac os 10 like whatever it was at the time uh and it was just an incredible week i just got to use
01:20:42 ◼ ► all of these imac g3s and i just had a wonderful time with it just like playing around these computers
01:20:46 ◼ ► for a week that was the most time i spent on a g3 i didn't have one um and it was an absolute delight
01:20:53 ◼ ► because those computers were delightful they were huge and obviously all the stories about it saving
01:21:00 ◼ ► apple's bacon and allowing it to have its turnaround and they were so definitive and everybody knew it and
01:21:06 ◼ ► everybody talked about it and the look of them made a difference and it again was one of those
01:21:10 ◼ ► things where everybody all the other computer companies tried to ape it and they kind of
01:21:13 ◼ ► couldn't i mean they failed to do it it was it was a it was very much a message that only apple could do
01:21:19 ◼ ► this and the apple in china book um puts that into detail like in many ways nobody else could make it
01:21:26 ◼ ► because even apple couldn't make it they had to figure out how to make it apple in china is great for both the g3 and
01:21:32 ◼ ► the g4 like the story of those two computers and the details that uh mcgee got were really really really
01:21:38 ◼ ► good yeah yeah so i love the ipad and i haven't picked an ipad product yet which is a little bit
01:21:46 ◼ ► weird um i'm gonna get weirder though mike i'm gonna get weirder i'm gonna pick the second generation
01:22:02 ◼ ► now the ipad it is the apple device that is you can use to to draw and to take notes uh it makes the ipad
01:22:12 ◼ ► have more powers than other apple devices have and the second generation one is also brilliant i know we've
01:22:20 ◼ ► talked about it on this show before because if you're holding i'm holding one in my hand right
01:22:24 ◼ ► now you might as well be holding a block of wood like it doesn't feel like technology the tip screws
01:22:29 ◼ ► off but like yeah it doesn't have a little plat the first generation one has a little plastic cap that
01:22:33 ◼ ► you pop off and there's like a little lightning nubbin that you have to weirdly stick somewhere in order
01:22:37 ◼ ► to get no this one it's magnetic attach um inductive charge there's no interface to it it's a piece of
01:22:46 ◼ ► hardware that feels like nothing like a pencil and so that part of it is brilliant and then what you
01:22:53 ◼ ► can accomplish with it is amazing and as somebody who doesn't really draw or like to handwrite things
01:22:57 ◼ ► i fell in love with it too because i could use it to edit podcasts um using ferrite and and i had that
01:23:04 ◼ ► moment where i thought oh this input device is better at this than the other traditional input devices that i
01:23:12 ◼ ► might use including even just my fingers on an ipad and uh i think i think it is a transformative
01:23:17 ◼ ► i i really believe that the ipod ipad is in many ways defined by the accessories you attach to it
01:23:24 ◼ ► uh it is that kind of product it is it is this kind of core that you then choose how you want to use it and
01:23:31 ◼ ► i think the apple pencil is a uh fantastic accessory um that defines the product to this day
01:23:38 ◼ ► i've moved a product up my list because i consider justice justice is needed it's the first generation
01:23:46 ◼ ► apple pencil oh no yeah look okay i understand why people laughed at the design right that they're all
01:23:55 ◼ ► like oh it's got this little cap on it and there's a lightning port but i have always appreciated the
01:24:00 ◼ ► practicality of that charger because ultimately you needed to be able to charge this product with
01:24:07 ◼ ► the device that you used it on and apple ended up solving that in a very great way with the second
01:24:12 ◼ ► generation yes but the first generation did it did the job right like it did the job if they didn't
01:24:18 ◼ ► have another way to do it this was the way to do it there was absolutely a way to do this which it
01:24:25 ◼ ► did not look like that and they were going to make you plug in a cable into that thing or something like
01:24:29 ◼ ► that right like or they were going to make you use an inductive charger and it would have been really
01:24:34 ◼ ► annoying because you would have needed another cable with you but the product was and it was and
01:24:38 ◼ ► they engineered it in such a way that you could plug it in for a very short time and get use out of it i
01:24:43 ◼ ► don't remember the exact amount but it was like you could plug it in for a minute and use it for half an
01:24:48 ◼ ► hour or something like that like they were very focused on making that quick but all of that
01:24:53 ◼ ► people focus on so much but ultimately it was the apple pencil right like all of the things that you
01:25:01 ◼ ► love in the second generation was in the first generation right like in that it was it's the best
01:25:09 ◼ ► that we've ever had this kind of technology of a pencil input onto a screen you know the all of the work
01:25:15 ◼ ► apple did to make the latency so low that it felt natural um and it was for me at the time was such
01:25:23 ◼ ► a blessing because you could also use it for controlling the ipad pro and i was dealing with
01:25:29 ◼ ► some bad eventually well it worked and then they took it away and then they brought it back again
01:25:34 ◼ ► like but like it was it was really wonderful for being able to control the ipad interface as well
01:25:41 ◼ ► as drawing on it um and so perfect no but absolutely got the job done that's fair that's fair okay well
01:25:50 ◼ ► two apple pencils go here in quick succession a quick run on apple pencils i guess i'm gonna have to pick
01:25:57 ◼ ► the apple pencil pro now just nope i'm not gonna do that well people who've listened this far know
01:26:03 ◼ ► that we we are picking things in totally wacky ways and for wacky reasons i have been watching i've been
01:26:09 ◼ ► you know writing about the mac since 1993 i've been a mac user since 1990 uh i've been an apple user since
01:26:16 ◼ ► the 80s i have seen a lot and one of the frustrations i have with like the verge did their 50 list which was
01:26:24 ◼ ► after we had thought about doing this by the way we weren't inspired by the verge we we were like ah
01:26:29 ◼ ► they did it let's put ours off for a while so people aren't totally sick of it and then we'll still do
01:26:33 ◼ ► this um there you know people who've only been paying attention to apple for 10 or 15 years might
01:26:38 ◼ ► um kind of lose perspective about some of the history which is why i picked the apple 2e and it's
01:26:43 ◼ ► why i picked the laser writer um and and so when i say this i want people to take into account the fact
01:26:51 ◼ ► that i am considering the grand sweep of apple's 50 year history when i say if you can make a mac laptop
01:26:59 ◼ ► for 5.99 it's one of the top 50 products of all time for apple and that's why i pick the macbook
01:27:06 ◼ ► neo wow wow did i did i do it did i do a number on you there i when we start at this episode today
01:27:15 ◼ ► i was like i don't think we're gonna pick the macbook neo yeah baby wow wow uh yeah the macbook neo i mean
01:27:24 ◼ ► they made they made a full functional laptop for 5.99 yeah yeah it's selling well it works it's good
01:27:30 ◼ ► it's cute uh and you know i think personally and this may be a pick later that the moment when they
01:27:37 ◼ ► put out the mac mini for 4.99 was also an incredible moment for the mac to have that and then very the
01:27:42 ◼ ► next year they're like how about 5.99 uh but they had it there for a moment and i think steve jobs like
01:27:49 ◼ ► he had that little glint in his eyes like oh yeah we did it right like that that expensive mac now you
01:27:53 ◼ ► can get this thing and you know bring your own keyboard and display and mouse but you can get a
01:27:57 ◼ ► mac and a map of neo like it's the same thing people i was standing there at that warehouse in new york
01:28:04 ◼ ► city where they had this event surrounded by very smart knowledgeable people who watch apple and nobody
01:28:10 ◼ ► believed that it would be anywhere close to 5.99 or 6.99 nobody they're all like it's 7.99 right maybe
01:28:17 ◼ ► it's 700 but probably 7.99 no it's 5.99 and it's fully functional and it's the a triumph of apple silicon
01:28:25 ◼ ► and it's a perfectly good little laptop for that price and it potentially will upset the entire windows
01:28:31 ◼ ► laptop market yeah and i think it's a milestone so uh i here it is yeah it's reminiscent of the ipad right
01:28:38 ◼ ► what i was saying earlier like nobody thought it was going to be the price that it was and the fact
01:28:42 ◼ ► that it was all of that computer for that price is kind of unfathomable i love it all right my next
01:28:49 ◼ ► pick i feel like it has to be on the list and i feel like it has to be in the top 20 i'm picking the mac
01:28:54 ◼ ► the 128k i don't have a ton to say about this computer it is but it is iconic and it will always be
01:29:00 ◼ ► iconic and it for me it kind of doesn't matter what its capability was it doesn't matter how good it was
01:29:06 ◼ ► it doesn't matter how good other products that came after it were look at that thing you know
01:29:11 ◼ ► just look at it i know it changed it changed everything it it i was steering away from it
01:29:16 ◼ ► because it is i mean it's a it's a good pick it was underpowered they had to put out the fat mac the
01:29:23 ◼ ► you know the the 512 um later that year because the lack of memory the fact that it didn't have uh you
01:29:31 ◼ ► know a hard drive or a second internal floppy what made it very hard to use it was it it didn't sell
01:29:38 ◼ ► very well because of that they had a lot of problems with the mac product line but you cannot argue with
01:29:43 ◼ ► the fact that this is the product that changed what computers would be like this is the start of it this
01:29:49 ◼ ► is what happened and it was because of the steve jobs and that incredible creative team of people
01:29:54 ◼ ► um many of whom basically burned out after this and we're like we're done but um but this product is
01:30:00 ◼ ► a triumph yeah no doubt about it no doubt about it it's an all-timer all right what's your this would
01:30:06 ◼ ► be your 10th pick right so this will be pick 19 19 19 19 um i am gonna come back to the modern era
01:30:15 ◼ ► and i'm gonna say a product that i was deeply skeptical of because i like products the way i
01:30:23 ◼ ► like them and that this was doing something different um and it has proven to be one of my favorite apple
01:30:29 ◼ ► products of all time i'm gonna pick a very particular model of it which is the first generation airpods
01:30:36 ◼ ► pro okay but i want to break the seal on the airpods here okay because i think they're amazing and i want
01:30:44 ◼ ► to take you back to an era where a lot of people like me said oh apple's headphones are garbage they
01:30:50 ◼ ► used to include headphones with everything like little those little white earbuds they would include
01:30:54 ◼ ► those with the iphone and with the ipod and stuff and for me it was just not even unwrap it just like
01:31:02 ◼ ► straight in the drawer forget about it who cares because i i thought they were bad i didn't like
01:31:07 ◼ ► how they looked i didn't like how they fit my ears i didn't like how they sounded put in my snazzy
01:31:13 ◼ ► in-ear headphones that sound really good and so when the rumor came that apple was going to do wireless
01:31:18 ◼ ► headphones i'm like whatever and um they have replaced my in-ear headphones for almost everything i do
01:31:26 ◼ ► except for podcasts at this point they are so good so um i love the airpods in general and i think
01:31:32 ◼ ► the way that they've um like the way they executed on them the fact that lots of people love the airpods
01:31:37 ◼ ► now they really have become a hit product but um those first airpods pro um that that added the noise
01:31:45 ◼ ► cancellation it's like how could you even do that on things that aren't big i i had written it off like
01:31:51 ◼ ► the only way to do noise cancellation for me because i don't like the big cans on my ears would it would
01:31:56 ◼ ► be the in-ear where it cancels the noise it doesn't cancel it it just blocks it but these things actually
01:32:01 ◼ ► cancel it and they work and they work really well and they've only gotten better over time so
01:32:09 ◼ ► so you're a fast follower yeah fast follower yep um for all of the reasons you mentioned
01:32:17 ◼ ► but the adjustments that the second version got really to me made them sing you know so obviously
01:32:25 ◼ ► like all of them improvements to sound improvements to noise cancellation but the swiping to change
01:32:30 ◼ ► volume was amazing yeah yeah yeah because that was one of the things that was very frustrating about
01:32:36 ◼ ► airpods and airpods pro is you couldn't change volume with them that felt like a like a step back
01:32:40 ◼ ► from having like their little in line with the clicker uh it has u1 in the case so much easier
01:32:47 ◼ ► to find the airpods pro which is important and magsafe charging so you don't have to plug them in anymore
01:32:52 ◼ ► so the little magnetic will sit on the little check the case um i don't remember if the airpods
01:32:56 ◼ ► pro 2 could charge on the apple watch but i think so i think so right and so yeah that was very clever
01:33:06 ◼ ► this episode is brought to you by squarespace the all-in-one website platform that is designed to
01:33:14 ◼ ► help you stand out and succeed online whether you're just getting started or scaling a business
01:33:19 ◼ ► squarespace will give you everything you need to claim your domain showcase your offerings of a
01:33:23 ◼ ► professional website grow your brand and get paid all in one place with squarespace you can make
01:33:29 ◼ ► the most of their blueprint ai system which is their new website building platform which will
01:33:33 ◼ ► let you quickly and easily build a site bespoke to your business you just input some basic information
01:33:37 ◼ ► about your industry and the goals that you want for your site and they will make a set of
01:33:41 ◼ ► recommendations to you but i have always used and i've always loved squarespace for their
01:33:46 ◼ ► professionally designed award-winning templates so you can go in and just choose one based on what you
01:33:51 ◼ ► want it to your website to look like doesn't matter how you get started no matter what system you want
01:33:56 ◼ ► to use from squarespace you're always going to have beautiful design options with complete control with
01:34:01 ◼ ► no experience required so easy to go in and tweak things to your heart's content and you get to see
01:34:06 ◼ ► those changes happening live on your site also with squarespace you can manage content like videos
01:34:12 ◼ ► really easily you can upload content organize libraries to showcase your your videos your photos on
01:34:18 ◼ ► beautiful pages and you can even sell access to a video library by adding a paywall to that content which is
01:34:24 ◼ ► perfect for online courses tutorials and premium workshops go and build your own website today by
01:34:30 ◼ ► going to squarespace.com upgrade and sign up for a free trial when you're ready to launch you can use
01:34:35 ◼ ► the offer code upgrade and it will get you 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain that is
01:34:40 ◼ ► squarespace.com upgrade and the offer code upgrade for 10% off your first purchase and show your support
01:34:50 ◼ ► all right pick number 21 all right number 21 i'm gonna go with uh because i said i love the ipad and i
01:35:01 ◼ ► don't think i picked an ipad i just picked an apple pencil i'm gonna need an ipad to use with it
01:35:05 ◼ ► um there may be some compatibility issues we'll work it out the uh ipad i'm gonna pick so ipad is
01:35:12 ◼ ► tough i had the first ipad on my list then it gets weird there was the ipad 2 which is fine and then
01:35:18 ◼ ► they went retina but there was the bad retina and then they went retina with the good retina there's a
01:35:23 ◼ ► lot going on there um i'm gonna go the other direction i'm gonna i'm gonna pick uh what i think
01:35:29 ◼ ► is in some ways a pinnacle of ipad design despite the recency bias it might it answers the question
01:35:36 ◼ ► what happens if you took all creative pursuits and crushed them in a hydraulic press until they just
01:35:42 ◼ ► oozed out color it's the m4 yeah ipad pro yeah the ultra ultra thin ipad pro with the tandem oled
01:35:55 ◼ ► display oh yeah gorgeousness it is the ultimate ipad and i think in some ways when i hold it in
01:36:02 ◼ ► my hands with no case on it i am still baffled about how that product exists it's it's so great um and
01:36:11 ◼ ► this is the ipad that i use every day is is one of these i think i have an m5 now but like whatever
01:36:17 ◼ ► they're they're the same it is the it was introduced in the m4 ipad pro it is incredible so the display
01:36:24 ◼ ► the the processor love everything that goes along with it it's an amazing product yeah this is you
01:36:30 ◼ ► know i've probably said this at least two more times in today's episode uh this was the ipad that
01:36:35 ◼ ► brought me back to the ipad again in a big way um the m4 is just incredible uh i i love my the 11
01:36:43 ◼ ► inch especially but both of them are wonderful but it's just such a great display such a great form
01:36:49 ◼ ► factor it really is brilliant such a brilliant machine i'm also going to pick an ipad mini
01:36:55 ◼ ► i'm going to pick the ipad mini 2 so yeah this product was this is on my list mike this this is
01:37:06 ◼ ► the right ipad mini to pick and it was on my list what made this ipad mini so special so two things
01:37:12 ◼ ► one it had a written display yeah yeah that's oh boy that's number one is is i remember getting
01:37:18 ◼ ► this and being like oh here we go but the thing that was so striking was that it had essentially the
01:37:25 ◼ ► same internals as the ipad air and so the the conversation at the time was all you need to do
01:37:33 ◼ ► is just choose what size do you want do you want the big one or the little one and you're going to get
01:37:39 ◼ ► the same experience from like a power and performance perspective uh but the ipad mini 2
01:37:45 ◼ ► was unbelievably good such a great ipad um i it at that time it was the best ipad to pick um
01:37:59 ◼ ► great choice um so while we're on ipads you know i again i made the case that what is an ipad if
01:38:08 ◼ ► if it's not for its accessories and for what this represents i'm going to put it here which is the
01:38:13 ◼ ► magic keyboard yeah ipad pro yeah in a uh kind of a dark time uh this was a a shining beacon because
01:38:22 ◼ ► this is the moment where apple said yeah the ipad can have a pointer it's got a trackpad on it
01:38:26 ◼ ► and like i thought about picking and you know we we may get there the original ipad pro which came with
01:38:31 ◼ ► the with the keyboard but the keyboard was like didn't have a pointing device and it has sort of
01:38:36 ◼ ► double fold over and wasn't great whereas this one it's got the cantilever design it turns your ipad
01:38:42 ◼ ► into a laptop it's got a good keyboard not the kind of membrane keyboard of that previous smart keyboard
01:38:49 ◼ ► and it's got the trackpad uh and and that means you've got a pointer on screen and it really changes
01:39:03 ◼ ► i stopped taking my laptop outside like literally it was just the the ipad in the keyboard case if i wanted
01:39:13 ◼ ► to go somewhere and do some writing um that was it it was it was all over when they came out with the magic
01:39:19 ◼ ► now they've improved it since but i will stick with the original one you know it had limitations it
01:39:25 ◼ ► didn't have the the function row that is nice to have but still just for the transformational moment
01:39:31 ◼ ► and the fact that they backed it up with the software features inside to give you a full-on
01:39:36 ◼ ► pointer not the kind of weird accessibility pointer that you could kind of use but like a full-on
01:39:41 ◼ ► supported by apple pointer on ipad os i just loved it fantastic moment i'm putting a link in the show
01:39:47 ◼ ► notes to the video that you put on your youtube channel which was like it was the first video
01:39:54 ◼ ► apple made right in the covet era oh yeah at the time felt so weird but i was just watching it then
01:40:00 ◼ ► i mean like oh no i know what this is like it doesn't feel weird watching it now because it's like oh they
01:40:03 ◼ ► all look like this but at the time it felt very strange to just have craig fittericchi on his own
01:40:08 ◼ ► in the in an office yeah talking about the cursor i'm not i'm not surprised that we've gotten
01:40:17 ◼ ► into like into the 20s without picking an apple watch i'm not either i i struggled to pick an
01:40:24 ◼ ► apple watch yeah right so i have a couple on my list but i did struggle with this so did i but there
01:40:30 ◼ ► was i thought if i was going to pick one the one that i would pick is the apple watch series of four
01:40:36 ◼ ► oh okay this is i this was the first and i think maybe only significant redesign of the apple watch
01:40:43 ◼ ► um like where it actually started to look quite different and this is you know make they made the
01:40:47 ◼ ► case a little bigger and the screen much bigger um and so like this was like you know we finally got
01:40:53 ◼ ► what is essentially an edge to edge display on the apple watch it wasn't kind of like just stuck in
01:40:57 ◼ ► the like a little square a little rectangle inside of a bigger rectangle we got the corner complications
01:41:02 ◼ ► and all that stuff but the other thing for me is it had the gold stainless option which is in my
01:41:08 ◼ ► opinion the best looking apple watch apple's ever made uh the the gold stainless one so the apple
01:41:13 ◼ ► watch series 4 i think it was obviously always on display as well which was a big deal yeah yeah yeah
01:41:19 ◼ ► for the apple watch because it finally made the apple watch a watch that you could see the time on all the
01:41:24 ◼ ► time which is not a thing that you could do beforehand uh because if you were looking down at the desk and
01:41:29 ◼ ► you didn't raise your hand well that your your watch was black it didn't do anything uh so i think
01:41:35 ◼ ► the apple watch series 4 set up a lot of what the apple watch came always on with series 5 sorry it
01:41:40 ◼ ► wasn't series 4 uh thank you to the discord for correcting me but nevertheless still love the way
01:41:45 ◼ ► that the series 4 looked um okay it was a it was a good looking apple watch all right well i'll give you
01:41:51 ◼ ► always on even though that was the next model you can have it doesn't matter i struggle with this too
01:41:55 ◼ ► i i i think i decided that if i was going to pick an apple watch series i would pick the 10
01:41:59 ◼ ► um just because it got super thin then and i think that and and with the big screen but i struggle with
01:42:07 ◼ ► that too yeah i'm gonna go a completely different direction and pick the greatest of all classic
01:42:13 ◼ ► macs the mac se 30 um i had i didn't have one i had a mac se but if you talk to john syracuse
01:42:21 ◼ ► adam angst john gruber they'll all tell you that the se 30 is the best one of the reasons it's the
01:42:26 ◼ ► best is because it had expandability and it had a 68030 processor so it was as fast as a mac 2 but in
01:42:32 ◼ ► a compact case and although the internal display was black and white you could put in a color card and
01:42:37 ◼ ► stick a big external color monitor on it and do all sorts of other stuff with it it had internal hard
01:42:44 ◼ ► drive which was huge because you don't want to be using floppy drives uh and swapping discs and all
01:42:50 ◼ ► of that it was overpowered uh and lasted forever because it was so overpowered it was really a
01:42:57 ◼ ► standout mac uh and if you mistook it for a mac se i'll just say the difference between the 68 000
01:43:03 ◼ ► processor and the se and the 68030 and the se 30 uh you do like a couple of clicks on an se 30 and you
01:43:11 ◼ ► realized oh this isn't an se it's like not even close it was so fast and powerful and uh you know
01:43:18 ◼ ► talk to anybody who was a hardcore mac user around then and they will extol the virtues of it plus it
01:43:24 ◼ ► was still on the classic mac form factor and you can just pick it up and carry it around with you
01:43:27 ◼ ► so our list is having less overlap at this point than i thought it may so i'm starting to move some
01:43:35 ◼ ► things up that i'm i'm worried otherwise won't get picked okay and there's things that i just want to
01:43:41 ◼ ► include on this list we'll we'll see because if you pick them and i say i had it on my list then
01:43:45 ◼ ► you'll know that i know you but i still want to get underestimated me okay go ahead the macbook
01:43:51 ◼ ► the polycarbonate one for me the white one but it also came in white and black i had the black macbook
01:43:57 ◼ ► on my list yeah i loved this computer um now i am talking about the original uh in looking stuff up
01:44:06 ◼ ► today had forgotten that they brought it back um in 2009 uh they they brought it back again after the
01:44:14 ◼ ► again completely i had forgotten that they had one version of this the macbook that was a unibody
01:44:21 ◼ ► aluminium computer i completely 2008 had completely forgotten about that and then that became the
01:44:27 ◼ ► it is the 2006 polycarbonate macbook 2006 one for all of its faults the cracking the the the like
01:44:37 ◼ ► yellowing doesn't matter this computer was so cool i loved it it was the entry level mac for a long time
01:44:44 ◼ ► you know this was one of the the macs where like there were all these pictures of of like uh lectures
01:44:50 ◼ ► right and all of the students had apple logos on their computers and it was macbooks everybody had the
01:44:55 ◼ ► macbook uh the polycarbonate macbook was a great computer um it was my the second mac i ever owned
01:45:01 ◼ ► of my own um and was just it was great i loved it it had all of the io that i wanted the screen was
01:45:07 ◼ ► great for at the time uh i was a big fan of this computer it looked good it felt great the keyboard was
01:45:13 ◼ ► really fun and different um it's a great computer very nice i said earlier that it would get picked in
01:45:20 ◼ ► this draft and i'm going to pick it now it's the iphone 4 um the iphone 4 first off it's got the
01:45:27 ◼ ► design that uh i i think was definitive in the four and five generation and then came back
01:45:32 ◼ ► uh and the modern iphone still are using a variant of the same design it's that flat sides
01:45:37 ◼ ► design the gloss sandwich kind of i love it i think it looks so good i think it is the best iphone design
01:45:44 ◼ ► um i wrote a piece about this like i said at macworld last week um it's the one that was found
01:45:50 ◼ ► in a bar it's the one that had antenna gate it's the one where they announced that it came in black or
01:45:56 ◼ ► white and then the white one didn't ship for 10 months yeah it's the first retina iphone it's the
01:46:02 ◼ ► first verizon cdma iphone uh so it broke the at&t exclusivity in in in the u.s yeah it is not only a good
01:46:12 ◼ ► looking impressive phone on its own but it's also if an iphone were a person this iphone would be a
01:46:21 ◼ ► hot mess and i love that about it too that it's just all the scandals yeah all the disasters the
01:46:29 ◼ ► fact that they couldn't make a white iphone until it was almost out of date already like i just amazing
01:46:36 ◼ ► what an amazing product the iphone 4 is a problematic fave that's what the iphone 4 is the iphone 4 is
01:46:42 ◼ ► like the real housewives of cupertino kind of product it is a mess it is just like it's it's it's so
01:46:51 ◼ ► impressive and then and you're like oh this resume is very impressive and then you get the like background
01:46:56 ◼ ► check and you're like oh no but it's so beautiful it is yeah but it's oh my god but retina have you
01:47:04 ◼ ► seen the retina it's like oh i can change him i can change him i'll put a bumper on him i can change
01:47:10 ◼ ► him but you can have a bumper if you want whatever uh i'm gonna pick the ipod video there it is a video
01:47:19 ◼ ► ipod baby nobody needs a ipod ipod with video yeah steve jobs said you do because you can watch the
01:47:26 ◼ ► office on it uh yeah yep everything you love about the big white ipod of a wider screen and this was
01:47:32 ◼ ► the last one before it went aluminium and they killed the design in my opinion um this this was the last
01:47:38 ◼ ► good looking uh in my opinion ipod classic love love the ipod video yeah it's great it's great i i did
01:47:46 ◼ ► watch some stuff on it i have to admit in fact for years maybe i mean i don't know how many years but
01:47:52 ◼ ► i i mostly because i thought it was funny i synced citizen cane to my ipod video because i liked the
01:48:01 ◼ ► idea that i could watch citizen cane in the way that um that orson wells intended it on a very tiny screen
01:48:08 ◼ ► while i was riding the bus yeah it's a great choice it's a great choice i have one more ipod
01:48:16 ◼ ► and i'm gonna mention it now okay i think it's one of the another one of these great wacky
01:48:24 ◼ ► ideas that is it turns out to be an incredible bit of design collaboration and software collaboration
01:48:31 ◼ ► i'm gonna pick the second generation ipod shuffle oh it's one of my favorite ipod designs of all time
01:48:40 ◼ ► this is just the wheel right it's a clip yeah so it's a clip and you clip it to your clothing
01:48:46 ◼ ► and there's a little there's a little wheel with next and previous up and down and play pause
01:48:52 ◼ ► and it's super tiny and you just plug your headphones into it and for years this was my like lawnmower ipod
01:49:07 ◼ ► in later versions there were some ways to kind of like key off certain things and like kick in this
01:49:12 ◼ ► playlist or whatever but it had a little it had a little uh slider for like if you wanted to shuffle
01:49:17 ◼ ► or not and that was about it it was but it was so simple again like a little like the apple pencil it
01:49:24 ◼ ► felt like just like a solid object it was not like where where is the computer here and it's like yeah
01:49:30 ◼ ► it's an appliance it's a very simple appliance i think it's a brilliant thing and the clip
01:49:35 ◼ ► man what a breakthrough what what a great idea whoever in the design team had that idea of like
01:49:41 ◼ ► why don't we literally so they had made and it's on my list and i might pick it it may happen they
01:49:46 ◼ ► had made a remote for the ipod and this was a wired remote and i had a backpack that my ipod went in
01:49:53 ◼ ► and then the wired remote came out of the backpack and i clipped it to my backpack strap and you could
01:49:57 ◼ ► get the shorter headphones couldn't you too so your cable wasn't super long as well no yeah and that's
01:50:04 ◼ ► like if you want to carry your ipod in your backpack but you want to play pause next all of that how do
01:50:08 ◼ ► you do it and so they built this accessory that let you do that and i have to think that whoever
01:50:13 ◼ ► designed that accessory said you know what if we made that and it was the whole ipod and that's the
01:50:19 ◼ ► ipod shuffle yeah second gen they got they ended up replacing it with a one that had no buttons on
01:50:25 ◼ ► it and that was like whoops too far and they went and then they went back the last ipod shuffle actually
01:50:29 ◼ ► was again this design i just think it's a brilliant design a brilliant moment to think if we make this
01:50:35 ◼ ► thing a clip people could clip it to whatever because it's obviously a personal object clip clip it somewhere
01:50:40 ◼ ► on your body and you and and then that's it and then there's no ipod in your pocket hanging you know
01:50:48 ◼ ► pulling down your pocket or whatever like your bag it's just on you and it's just a piece a thing you
01:50:54 ◼ ► wear um i love it a product that has had a renaissance in recent years people people buying
01:51:01 ◼ ► these and using them as mp3 players but they're also like a little fashion accessory because you can get
01:51:06 ◼ ► them a little colors put them in your hair and stuff like that like they've they've kind of uh
01:51:09 ◼ ► like a little hair clip or they clip it to a hairband like we've seen a lot of that that's happening
01:51:13 ◼ ► again i wasn't going to do this but i'm going to pick another ipod now and this is not the last
01:51:17 ◼ ► ipod i even have on my list oh my okay i can't be stopped the first generation ipod touch
01:51:24 ◼ ► because okay if you were it's the first taste of ios outside of the us right you were not in america
01:51:32 ◼ ► this was how you got iphone os and because the ipod touch came out at the same time everywhere the
01:51:40 ◼ ► iphone didn't and we had to wait to the following year here in the uk with i think the second launch
01:51:45 ◼ ► market we had to wait to get the iphone but i was a i got the ipod touch as soon as it came out
01:51:50 ◼ ► i actually um i remember i was uh i was in london on a work training event the day before the ipod
01:51:57 ◼ ► touch came out and i was walking past the regent street store and they had them in the window which
01:52:01 ◼ ► went in and bought one the day before they went on sale i have no idea why that happened i got an
01:52:07 ◼ ► ipod touch one day before i guess i was supposed to i have no idea what it was like right at the end
01:52:12 ◼ ► of the day so maybe they were setting up for the next day but they sold me one um the ipod iron and
01:52:17 ◼ ► and the ipod touch was great for that because it was i mean it's also super thin right like way
01:52:22 ◼ ► thinner than the iphone uh because it didn't need to do so much um i'm sure it was less powerful in
01:52:28 ◼ ► certain ways but i i was in love with this thing because i got to play with a version of what i was
01:52:34 ◼ ► going to get later like i remember i went on a family trip uh we went to spain for a week and uh i have a
01:52:42 ◼ ► vivid memory of spending hours on this holiday updating my contacts list in the contacts app
01:52:55 ◼ ► this episode is brought to you by steam clock a lot of mobile apps are mediocre they're not broken
01:53:04 ◼ ► they're just okay but you notice the difference the moment that you use something good and steam
01:53:10 ◼ ► clock software builds mobile apps for companies that care about taste they're a design and development
01:53:15 ◼ ► studio based in vancouver calendar and they have been shipping ios and android apps over 15 years
01:53:21 ◼ ► their clients are growing tech companies that care about mobile but don't have that in-house team
01:53:27 ◼ ► that's going to build something great steam clock works with companies to level up their apps so they
01:53:32 ◼ ► can go from it's holding us back to it's pulling its weight some of their clients discovered the hard
01:53:37 ◼ ► way that vibe coding your way to the app store is not a viable product strategy what makes steam clock
01:53:44 ◼ ► worth calling isn't just that they execute well it's that they'll help you figure out the right
01:53:49 ◼ ► approach and give you an honest read on your situation before you commit to anything steam clocks clients
01:53:54 ◼ ► have been have had their apps downloaded over 10 million times and they've helped five of their
01:54:00 ◼ ► clients through acquisitions if you're building something and you need a mobile team that cares as much as you do
01:54:06 ◼ ► steam clock is where to start visit steam clock dot com slash upgrade to get in touch that is steam
01:54:13 ◼ ► clock dot com slash upgrade our thanks to steam clock for their support of this show and all of relay
01:54:18 ◼ ► so we are at draft pick 31 now we have passed halfway and it's down to you jason snell unbelievable okay
01:54:30 ◼ ► um you earlier on decided to stand up for the moment where apple realized that samsung was on to
01:54:41 ◼ ► something and the iphone 6 plus came out and we began walking down the path of large phones
01:54:50 ◼ ► oh i see where this is going i would like to salute the great beloved dearly departed iphone 12 mini
01:55:01 ◼ ► okay i love it i would say just departed you know dearly departed i love it i know lots of people out
01:55:08 ◼ ► there are clinging to them or just now replacing them um i love it it there is something about it now
01:55:15 ◼ ► do i love using it like i loved it in my pocket sure did i love it out of my pocket as much no
01:55:24 ◼ ► no because it was really cramped and and it was very clearly like nobody was even testing software it's
01:55:31 ◼ ► like there would be things that you couldn't really touch sometimes in apps because they oh it's not ideal
01:55:36 ◼ ► but like i loved how light it was and how small it was in my pocket that's the thing i loved about the
01:55:42 ◼ ► iphone 12 mini and the 13 mini um i wish i gotta be honest i wish they still made it but i understand
01:55:49 ◼ ► why they didn't they don't make it anymore and i had a moment of of real kind of self-clarity
01:56:02 ◼ ► screen better than the iphone 17 pro screen because it's bigger i don't know i betrayed
01:56:13 ◼ ► but the screen part was like yeah yeah i have big screen i actually do like the big screen better so
01:56:18 ◼ ► you know what they need is some sort of foldable um thing that's small and then gets bigger or
01:56:24 ◼ ► something i don't know but uh i want to pour one out for the iphone 12 mini uh great phone that a lot
01:56:33 ◼ ► the imac pro oh wow yeah wow wow talk pour one out again this is old friends ghosts of old friends
01:56:47 ◼ ► are visiting us now mike i said we'll say this is like the the matchup of the one and dones even
01:56:52 ◼ ► the i don't think the 12 mini there was a 13 there was a 13 mini but i was gonna just say i was gonna
01:56:58 ◼ ► say which generation of imac pro was it mike ah there was only ever one it is incredible that there was
01:57:06 ◼ ► only one like they never updated it but i think it was a testament to the fact that this machine was so
01:57:14 ◼ ► good and such a beast it didn't need to be updated during its entire lifetime i think anybody that
01:57:21 ◼ ► bought one and then eventually moved to an apple silicon computer or some description they never
01:57:28 ◼ ► left that imac pro feeling like oh this thing's done that machine was amazing and it was a sad day
01:57:36 ◼ ► to let it go like what a computer you know it again we spoke about it so many times on this show
01:57:43 ◼ ► it's from a different time right like it was on its it was on a path that we never saw where that path
01:57:48 ◼ ► was gonna go from a parallel universe that apple by the time it came out apple had already decided not
01:57:54 ◼ ► to go down that path but it was great it's just a great computer great computer it came in black
01:57:59 ◼ ► well essentially what was black yeah fantastic i've got one i've got one right here it still
01:58:04 ◼ ► works love mine love mine yeah all right i'm gonna go more modern now and i know that again just like
01:58:12 ◼ ► picking the macbook neo you're like recency bias and like is it really i think this one's gonna stand
01:58:17 ◼ ► the test of time because of the design and and you know i'm gonna pick it you can't really buy it but
01:58:26 ◼ ► i'm gonna pick it i'm gonna pick the m4 mac mini this is on my list tiny yeah teeny tiny mini
01:58:31 ◼ ► yeah i love the mac mini i almost picked the 499 original model here but like for years we kind of
01:58:40 ◼ ► looked at the mac mini and thought are they going to keep it around and are they ever going to design
01:58:44 ◼ ► it to be smaller because it doesn't need to be big and remember those early apple silicon mac minis
01:58:51 ◼ ► it's just nothing in there they were just using the aluminum uh tooling from the previous intel
01:58:57 ◼ ► models and they finally did make the teeny tiny mac mini and it's it's so small and so adorable
01:59:04 ◼ ► and yet with apple silicon so powerful i i think uh i think it's an all-timer i really do i think it's a
01:59:12 ◼ ► very special computer you can fit a whole pro chip in this bad boy right that's and that's what i have
01:59:18 ◼ ► and this machine i mean i honestly forget that i don't have a mac studio my mike is pointing at his
01:59:24 ◼ ► computer which uh you probably can't see because it's so small you couldn't see it anyway i have
01:59:29 ◼ ► mine in one of those little the speaking case that that makes it look like the tangerine imac g3
01:59:34 ◼ ► styling good nice good time cute cute yeah it's i just we waited so long but they did it you know
01:59:41 ◼ ► they made this incredibly tiny mac mini it's just so impressive i just i think it is the mac mini
01:59:46 ◼ ► after all that time um living up to its name in a way that it couldn't before yep and so powerful at
01:59:54 ◼ ► the same time just amazing if you have a mac mini you need something to operate the cursor with so i am
02:00:01 ◼ ► picking the magic trackpad oh you you sniped me good that time it's been sitting there and i'm like
02:00:10 ◼ ► when do i pick the magic are you picking the original uh i hadn't really thought about that if i'm being
02:00:16 ◼ ► honest do be be take my advice pick the magic trackpad too because that's the one with the rechargeable
02:00:21 ◼ ► uh battery instead of the triple a double a batteries that yeah they go in the diving board it's the full-on
02:00:27 ◼ ► modern one it to me this is the one you want with with the with the haptic right it's when they put
02:00:31 ◼ ► this is the one you want the magic trackpad too uh i love the magic trackpad it's huge which is
02:00:37 ◼ ► fantastic it's got gestures which i adore um the the the haptics and all of that stuff so you can click
02:00:43 ◼ ► it anywhere it's just it's the ultimate accessory for for using a pointer i you know and i think every
02:00:50 ◼ ► desk deserves one if you use a mouse i use a mouse i use the mx whatever it's called now i don't even
02:00:55 ◼ ► know where mx master 3s i've got on this desk i have the four and the other one but i still have
02:01:01 ◼ ► a magic trackpad because the gestures are so good you know the zooming the going between spaces mission
02:01:08 ◼ ► control all that kind of stuff like unbeatable the magic trackpad that's where it's at yeah plus
02:01:14 ◼ ► with most mac users using laptops at least some of the time having the continuity of gestures
02:01:20 ◼ ► is super important i always used um for many years i used a trackball yeah because i really liked and
02:01:27 ◼ ► it actually i felt like it was healthier for me to have these kind of like bigger gestures instead
02:01:31 ◼ ► of like gripping a mouse and and moving it around and and so the when the they came out with the magic
02:01:37 ◼ ► trackpad it just was um it was revolutionary for me because it allowed me to solve because the trackballs
02:01:45 ◼ ► were all kind of like fading away and i was stockpiling trackballs that were usable and then i
02:01:50 ◼ ► then i started using the magic trackpad and the modern version with the haptics and the rechargeable
02:01:56 ◼ ► battery and it'll run on a wired connection or wireless like it's the best i had told i mean i had one i
02:02:04 ◼ ► forgot about the one where you would like unscrew the little coin thing and put the double a's inside i
02:02:09 ◼ ► completely forgot about that yeah yeah and that was more diving board kind of thing no this is the one
02:02:14 ◼ ► and it's been we've had it so long now that it feels like forever but it's uh it's an all-timer
02:02:19 ◼ ► it really is if you put touch id on this thing i will make it number one the next time i do this
02:02:31 ◼ ► what am i gonna do here i've got i'm feeling like i'm running out right i only have eight choices left
02:02:47 ◼ ► in in 2015 after it was introduced in 2014 when and when it was introduced and we started having we
02:03:00 ◼ ► skepticism about the watch bands and one of the things that i find very funny is that we still
02:03:08 ◼ ► have them like we still have them all of the what you get a watch band from the original apple watch
02:03:13 ◼ ► and you could put it on a modern apple watch and it would it would work which is hilarious but the
02:03:18 ◼ ► number one eye roll i remember from 2014 was when apple and johnny i tried to sell us this cockamamie
02:03:41 ◼ ► uh fallback for people to to make the apple watch cheaper if you didn't want to opt for a metal or leather band
02:03:48 ◼ ► and it was the word mike the word was fluoro elastomer oh i i if you didn't say it i was gonna say it that word is committed to memory for me
02:03:57 ◼ ► fluoro elastomer band and we're all like oh boy apple's new watches coming by default with a cheap crappy band
02:04:30 ◼ ► it's got the little the the closure where you slide it and then and then pop in the little round nub
02:04:39 ◼ ► so like this is my i have been very critical of johnny ivan in a lot of ways but i'm gonna say johnny and his design team
02:04:57 ◼ ► i was so worried when they introduced the solo loop that they were going to get rid of the sport band
02:06:31 ◼ ► if you disconnect that from the fact that it doesn't really have any software or any content
02:06:52 ◼ ► is chock full of wonder but limited in all the wrong ways right as you said developer support
02:07:03 ◼ ► i use the vision pro which unfortunately is less and less these days i can't help but marvel
02:07:09 ◼ ► at the way that it works that it actually feels like it's reading your mind at a certain point
02:07:19 ◼ ► the problem is that i i very i struggle to find reasons to put it on or keep wearing it
02:07:33 ◼ ► when i'm using it it really is incredible and if you look at the hardware if you hold it
02:07:37 ◼ ► and look like it what a kind of incredible piece of hardware it is yeah it so yeah i hear you yeah
02:08:07 ◼ ► okay here's what i'm going to do i'm going to go we're going to go back to into the old school
02:08:12 ◼ ► there's a whole story about this okay one of the ways that that um the apple 2 was a failure
02:08:22 ◼ ► originally was because in order to put programs to save or load programs or data you had to have a
02:08:31 ◼ ► cassette tape and then press load or save and then press play or play and record on a cassette
02:08:38 ◼ ► audio cassette tape basically and it would save like onto the tape it was incredibly slow and linear right
02:08:45 ◼ ► so like there wasn't random access it was just a tape so it was linear and they knew they needed
02:08:52 ◼ ► like a floppy disk drive and they found a floppy disk drive from a company i think it was shugart
02:08:56 ◼ ► and it was too expensive and there's no way that they could do it and was looked at the board of the
02:09:01 ◼ ► shugart thing and said you know what because this is the most typical was thing ever he was like there's
02:09:06 ◼ ► 22 chips on here i could do this in two chips and steve jobs in the maybe the most steve jobs thing ever said
02:09:12 ◼ ► what if it's a shugart was like could i not buy the whole disk drive could i just buy like the mechanism
02:09:37 ◼ ► a game changer because now you could stick in a floppy disk and boot it up and load programs almost instantaneously and save data
02:09:52 ◼ ► it is waz's most impressive perhaps bit of electrical engineering the disk 2 and so i'm going to pick
02:09:59 ◼ ► the apple disk 2 waz's miracle product wow i don't really know what to say about this one
02:10:07 ◼ ► but it sounds like a good pick jason i love it and more storage picks in the future please thank you
02:10:28 ◼ ► you can you know i don't think it really matters which one which of the generations i mean there was a bad generation
02:10:37 ◼ ► yeah no more yanking your mac off the table when you kick the cable like it's a simple thing but it was so amazing
02:10:44 ◼ ► the little status light you got an extra port on your mac because it wasn't going to be a usbc port when
02:10:49 ◼ ► they brought it back again i like i like how you basically picked a feature by picking the accessory that
02:10:55 ◼ ► goes with the feature exactly sneaky i know the rules it's a good one i don't really have a lot to say about it
02:11:01 ◼ ► but it's a great piece of technology like it's it's such a good little thing to have and you know and i am so happy that it's back with us after its demise for a while
02:11:25 ◼ ► and then you can fold and then you've got a little flap that you open and close because i i this is what how i use my ipad most of the time
02:11:32 ◼ ► and i really love it you can trace its lineage back to the what the ipad 2 smart cover this was
02:11:39 ◼ ► in the list a couple of times from the metal gradients yeah and i was i was uh that was the
02:11:46 ◼ ► closest one for me adding because that was i mean it was the first smart folio right where it's like the
02:12:06 ◼ ► but you know i i had to pick one and like the modern one that's got the magnet uses the magnets on the back
02:12:18 ◼ ► but really i just want to recognize all of these like this is this is one of the sets of accessories
02:12:25 ◼ ► that i i will not use an ipad without one of these it's a game changer having the ability to prop it up
02:12:32 ◼ ► having the ability to have the screen be covered it auto sleeps it auto wakes so you know that that is
02:12:38 ◼ ► that's what i'm trying to get at here um the current one is very light and thin and and pleasant
02:12:45 ◼ ► um i never really loved those metal things on the sides but that's what you had to do if you wanted
02:12:51 ◼ ► to be single-sided finally they just decided to make it double-sided but either way i think it's just a
02:12:56 ◼ ► great accessory and it's a must-have for the ipad and that's how i use my ipad most of the time
02:13:00 ◼ ► do you remember the original case for the first one it was like impossible to get it out all the flaps it
02:13:05 ◼ ► was so hard to get it out like it was it was all the flaps and everything to get it in and out of
02:13:11 ◼ ► that thing yeah not the best uh for pick number 40 i'm going for the iphone 12 pro or pro max it
02:13:22 ◼ ► doesn't matter because okay the things that i'm picking it for this was the return to flat sides
02:13:28 ◼ ► which we were desperate for by this point this is the iphone 4 design coming back stainless steel gold
02:13:36 ◼ ► what it's so beautiful like there was a time when i had stainless steel gold apple watch and iphone
02:13:45 ◼ ► and i was so happy it was they matched so well it was such a good looking iphone 5g which i know was
02:13:53 ◼ ► a joke at the time but is good that they added it right like it is good to have the extra speed now
02:14:00 ◼ ► the millimeter wave jury's still out but the actual going from 4g to 5g great 5g 5g 5g 5g magsafe this
02:14:08 ◼ ► was where magsafe my favorite uh came to the iphone to me this made like wireless charging worth it
02:14:14 ◼ ► um i wasn't a big wireless charging fan before magsafe uh and also when i was looking this up on
02:14:19 ◼ ► wikipedia today i was reminded that this was the first iphone where the base storage went from 64 to 128
02:14:25 ◼ ► it's pretty nice nice little thing to know about pretty nice this episode is brought to you by
02:14:36 ◼ ► fundera powered by nerd wallet running a small business is tough and when it's time to get a loan
02:14:42 ◼ ► it can feel impossible to find a lender that you can actually trust big banks say no and then the
02:14:48 ◼ ► internet is full of sketchy offers with sky high rates and fine print that you can barely read it's
02:14:54 ◼ ► super confusing out there for small businesses whether you need help covering payroll managing cash flow or
02:14:59 ◼ ► investing in growth you deserve better and it should be simple you don't want this to take up a bunch of
02:15:05 ◼ ► your time when you're already so busy running your small business that's why you should check out the
02:15:10 ◼ ► small business marketplace fundera powered by nerd wallet it's a free easy to use platform that lets
02:15:16 ◼ ► you compare real financing offers from trusted lenders all in one place you just do one application
02:15:21 ◼ ► and they're realistic about small businesses you don't need perfect credit to get started there's
02:15:26 ◼ ► no spam no bait and switch just personalized options that fit your business needs and it's just a soft
02:15:32 ◼ ► credit check up front so it doesn't impact your credit score so you can check which loan is going to fit
02:15:37 ◼ ► your best without taking a hit it's free for you to use and remember they're not a lender so you can
02:15:43 ◼ ► trust them to help you get paired up with the right solution that's what fundera is all about i am
02:15:48 ◼ ► constantly thinking of ways to make ambitious projects at cortex brand here at relay as well and
02:15:53 ◼ ► often one of the hardest things to know is finding funding and you know you want the available cash flow
02:15:58 ◼ ► to begin a project to know that you've got it available to you and this is a great option for looking at
02:16:03 ◼ ► getting new projects off the ground and getting the lay of the land for what's available and here's the
02:16:08 ◼ ► best part for a limited time when you visit nerdwallet.com upgrade and fill out the no obligation form
02:16:14 ◼ ► you'll get the vip treatment you'll be talking with a real person who knows the ins and outs small and
02:16:20 ◼ ► ins and outs of small business lending so you can get that additional help don't risk your business on
02:16:25 ◼ ► unreliable lenders go to nerdwallet.com upgrade to find the funding you deserve fundera inc nmls id number
02:16:34 ◼ ► 1240038 our thanks to fundera powered by nerd wallet for their support of this show and all of relay
02:16:42 ◼ ► we're going to the final 10 of the upgrade at 50 draft jason pick number 41 is yours what do you got
02:16:55 ◼ ► um we talked earlier about how difficult it was to pick apple watches there's one apple watch that is
02:17:04 ◼ ► not that difficult to pick and so i'm going to pick it which is the apple watch ultra oh okay
02:17:08 ◼ ► uh i i just that they did this iteration it looks really interesting it appeals to people for whom the
02:17:16 ◼ ► apple watch standard does not appeal they allowed to it allowed the product outline to to grow which i think
02:17:22 ◼ ► is one of the hallmarks of tim cook's era is you don't need to replace product a with product b you could
02:17:29 ◼ ► just sell both and appeal to a broader selection of people which is i mean with the iphone that always
02:17:34 ◼ ► made sense because you know they've sold so many iphones to so many people the only people left who have
02:17:39 ◼ ► not bought an iphone you know what are the reasons and how do we reach those people i think the apple watch
02:17:44 ◼ ► ultra was a little bit like that as well i love how it looks i don't have one because i don't really want to
02:17:48 ◼ ► watch that big but i love how it looks um i think it's uh a nice addition to the product line and i i think in
02:17:57 ◼ ► many ways it is the most standout of all the apple watches because the you know the the series line is just
02:18:03 ◼ ► sort of doing its thing but it's not that different from all the way back in the beginning whereas the
02:18:09 ◼ ► ultra really stood out so i'm going to pick the apple watch ultra uh my pick is going to be the m1
02:18:15 ◼ ► macbook pro so this was one of the first to apple silicon computers right and as one of the three i mean
02:18:25 ◼ ► you can kind of you know there was what the air the mini and the pro um i'd forgotten that the m1
02:18:31 ◼ ► macbook pro still had the touch bar that's fun that i'd forgotten about that completely that's fun
02:18:36 ◼ ► yeah it's just like a fun addition you know if you try that out but as you think you know i could have
02:18:41 ◼ ► picked the air or the macbook pro here i wanted to pick the macbook pro it the battery life the
02:18:47 ◼ ► performance this machine showed us the possibility of the m chips you know like we i think we're so
02:18:55 ◼ ► everybody was surprised at just how capable these computers were um what you could get for the power
02:19:02 ◼ ► efficiency just unbelievable um and it converted a lot of people myself included uh back to the mac
02:19:08 ◼ ► full-time again because it was like well now i have all of the power efficiency of an ipad with all of
02:19:16 ◼ ► the software that i could ever want uh yeah m1 macbook pro great all right very nice um i'm gonna go
02:19:26 ◼ ► next uh with the we can't pick colors but i'm gonna pick the iphone 17 pro oh okay i i think that the
02:19:40 ◼ ► uh aluminum back shell design is very impressive um a a variant on the idea of the metal sides is
02:19:48 ◼ ► extending it all the way to the back in that new manufacturing technique i love the two-tone part
02:19:52 ◼ ► the little glass part in the middle i think it's two-tone yeah it's got the it's got the cosmic orange
02:19:57 ◼ ► if you choose to have it in orange it uh solves the heat issues that were in the previous model the
02:20:04 ◼ ► cameras are great like there's a lot to love about the iphone 17 pro i think it is going to be
02:20:09 ◼ ► my favorite of the this sort of like post iphone 10 uh iphones certainly to date it is my favorite i
02:20:17 ◼ ► think that they did a really great job with it i could have almost also picked the 17 here just
02:20:21 ◼ ► because they brought so many pro features down into the 17 that's impressive but you know the with the
02:20:27 ◼ ► orange and that and that uh the aluminum shell i think i gotta pick the 17 pro i'm gonna go with
02:20:33 ◼ ► the apple tv 4k second generation okay this was the one where it came with the good remote
02:20:40 ◼ ► it wasn't the the weird remote the the original siri remote yeah we got rid of that um just look the
02:20:47 ◼ ► apple tv is the best option right like if you for having any kind of box connected to your tv it just
02:20:53 ◼ ► absolutely is the best option the the remote is a good one i felt like the apple tv deserved to be on
02:20:59 ◼ ► here because it is an apple product that i use every day and don't really think about it um but i
02:21:05 ◼ ► appreciate it i appreciate the features that it has i like that it's got a thread radio in it so it can
02:21:10 ◼ ► act as like a hub for my uh smart home stuff um i appreciate that it's got e-arc and the hdmi 2.1 stuff
02:21:18 ◼ ► so i can very easily have my sonos uh system attached to it um i i really like the the apple tv 4k um
02:21:27 ◼ ► it does exactly what i need it to do it doesn't get in my way uh and the remote is good okay
02:21:41 ◼ ► the magic keyboard with touch id wow okay where apple brought touch id to the mac and it's a good
02:21:53 ◼ ► keyboard the magic keyboard um but the touch id i mean means you can also just tear it apart and
02:21:59 ◼ ► use that touch id sensor anywhere that you want yep but um but that they did it and that that i'm
02:22:05 ◼ ► especially thinking about the fact that they did it for the imax and they made all the the color match
02:22:09 ◼ ► keyboards which is totally unnecessary and i love that they did that yeah um but but good keyboard
02:22:15 ◼ ► with adding touch id on the mac which i think is a real big plus um i want to shout it out and and
02:22:22 ◼ ► there are it was either this or maybe like the extended keyboard too which i don't have as much
02:22:26 ◼ ► fondness for as a bunch of people i know do but like this is a this is a mac keyboard that um i think
02:22:32 ◼ ► is good and adds that important uh feature so the people who are not using a laptop can do the touch
02:22:38 ◼ ► id unlock so i like it and the colors on the imac didn't didn't hurt didn't hurt oh man i have a i
02:22:45 ◼ ► have a list of stuff yeah yeah i've got to pick three final things and i'm just not sure what's what
02:22:55 ◼ ► is the right stuff to pick from here i'm pleased that my list isn't as long as yours um yeah i'm gonna go
02:23:02 ◼ ► i mean we've spoken about this product line a lot but i i think that the the og deserves a shout out
02:23:07 ◼ ► and that is the airpods just the original airpods okay that design seemed so ridiculous at first
02:23:14 ◼ ► those stems are real long the real long stems it's like i'm not sure about these but very quickly
02:23:21 ◼ ► the convenience of no wires made you forget all about how ridiculous they looked and they eventually
02:23:28 ◼ ► ended up becoming iconic in their own way right they became incredibly popular um not immediately it
02:23:35 ◼ ► was like a i think it might have been towards the second gen or whatever and they just absolutely took
02:23:40 ◼ ► off as a product um but you know it did it didn't take very long for you to accept the downsides of
02:23:48 ◼ ► that product because the convenience level was so high i'm going with the airpods all right i we talked
02:23:57 ◼ ► about the i uh mac i mac pro being part of a parallel kind of a parallel universe yeah i have another product
02:24:05 ◼ ► a parallel universe now steve jobs came back to apple and he killed a lot of products and one of
02:24:11 ◼ ► the products that he killed was actually getting a little bit of traction and there's lots of reasons
02:24:17 ◼ ► that they needed to kill it and i get it it had a johnny ive design yep it was really potentially the
02:24:25 ◼ ► start of something interesting and you could even maybe see the genesis of something like the ipad and the
02:24:33 ◼ ► ipad in a keyboard in this product it's one of a kind and it's not its fault that it was part of a failing
02:24:43 ◼ ► product category that was championed by john scully and that steve jobs was more than happy to kill
02:24:51 ◼ ► and with all due honor to the newton message pad 2000 i'm going to pick the emate oh i absolutely thought you
02:25:01 ◼ ► were going to go for the newton were you set me up here no the emate which was the newton laptop yep
02:25:09 ◼ ► and amazing design weird plastic stuff it's johnny ive doing weird plastic design stuff it was designed
02:25:17 ◼ ► for education it had a pen so that you could do the newton stuff but it also had a keyboard
02:25:21 ◼ ► um really interesting product and again i think just wrong place wrong time um so yeah the the emate
02:25:35 ◼ ► 300 i guess technically but like it was it was a really interesting product like what could we do if
02:25:43 ◼ ► we built a laptop based on this super lightweight operating system instead of the mac and i don't know
02:25:50 ◼ ► there's a world where that leads places and i'm certain that it was you know even though it made
02:25:57 ◼ ► sense to kill all of those things ah boy what an interesting product that had to had to get uh
02:26:03 ◼ ► thrown out when they shut down the newton we had these in my school for any kids that broke their hand
02:26:09 ◼ ► or wrist and so they could continue to do their work without being able to write so they would type on
02:26:14 ◼ ► them there you go that was my experience with the emate the green translucent thing yeah yeah yeah
02:26:21 ◼ ► because it's johnny ive yeah my penultimate pick i don't think this is going to win me a lot of points
02:26:28 ◼ ► but it means something to me the iphone 3g oh for two things that it had gps and 3g made a massive
02:26:41 ◼ ► difference to the iphone experience so i mean the gps i got mine before i went on holiday to paris the
02:26:48 ◼ ► next day and it was like my first kind of like uh trip with a partner kind of as an adult which is the
02:26:54 ◼ ► two of us so being able to navigate around the city using gps was really helpful uh and i was very
02:27:02 ◼ ► grateful for that um but the 3g connectivity was a huge deal for just general usability of the iphone
02:27:09 ◼ ► that like it could load all the data you needed significantly faster than the connection that was
02:27:16 ◼ ► in the original um and while not unique to this device but important alongside was the app store
02:27:22 ◼ ► all right so i think the app store launched the day before the iphone 3g um and obviously it was a bit
02:27:27 ◼ ► more capable than the original and so you know gets a little gets a rub there but not bonus points as
02:27:34 ◼ ► such but yeah i'm going with the iphone 3g even though the design not so great um i at least
02:27:40 ◼ ► appreciated that they embraced the plastic and just went with it and it was nice to hold at least
02:27:47 ◼ ► all right all right i reached my last pick and how hard for this pick we're gonna we're gonna take
02:27:54 ◼ ► you back to 2004 back to an event that i attended and that you have picked the primary product for
02:28:07 ◼ ► bono and the edge were there to unveil the u2 special edition ipod what a weird ipod that's
02:28:16 ◼ ► just a weird product i mean it's just an ipod in red and black the colors of u2 i guess colors of
02:28:21 ◼ ► that album but it's like why didn't they do more of that you know why was it just u2 that got that
02:28:27 ◼ ► yeah yeah yeah yeah but so but there was another product introduced there mike another apple product
02:28:33 ◼ ► hardware product was introduced there one that doesn't get talked about enough especially for a
02:28:47 ◼ ► i'm picking ipod socks oh that's not what i thought you can't stop me are you getting it
02:28:53 ◼ ► are you getting it these are socks you put your ipod in them and they were real we thought he was
02:28:58 ◼ ► kidding but they were real and they sold them and you could put your ipod in a sock and so with my
02:29:03 ◼ ► final selection for apple at 50 i choose steve one of steve jobs is less uh beloved revolutionary new
02:29:10 ◼ ► products the ipod socks which did 100 of what they were promised to do which is be a sock around your
02:29:15 ◼ ► ipod i thought this was going to be the ipod hi-fi when was the ipod hi-fi because this was
02:29:20 ◼ ► that oh man that was a different event okay i did not have that on my list i had i decided to go with
02:29:25 ◼ ► ipod i had it on my list in honor of you because you had and used one for so long i don't know if you
02:29:30 ◼ ► still do i don't use it anymore i have a couple of sonos speakers but it's still around it's still
02:29:35 ◼ ► back it's right back behind me yeah i was considering the iphone pocket here as my final pick
02:29:41 ◼ ► uh yeah see you were we were thinking on the same lines i think uh but i'm gonna pick something that
02:29:46 ◼ ► is true to my heart i love this thing i have one behind me sitting next to my ipod mini yeah the
02:29:54 ◼ ► original ipod shuffle okay so the stick of gum stick of gum it had a lanyard yep amazing it did and like
02:30:05 ◼ ► the apple pencil had a usb port under the cap yep but what was so great for someone in school at this
02:30:11 ◼ ► time is you could kind of partition this thing and use it as a usb stick and so i had some music and
02:30:18 ◼ ► also my coursework for school on my ipod shuffle uh good times like you could put documents on it
02:30:26 ◼ ► it was great i loved it i'm so i have my original ipod shuffle and it's dead and like it's unrevivable
02:30:34 ◼ ► at this point which is so sad because i would love to see what files i had on that thing uh but and the
02:30:39 ◼ ► packaging was so great too it's like green packaging and it was like you opened it up and it was like
02:30:43 ◼ ► suspended in the plastic ipod shuffle first gen is the last product yeah it's a fun it's a fun product
02:30:50 ◼ ► like i said i like the second generation one better but uh it was a very fun little product
02:30:55 ◼ ► nice idea so upgradians there is a link in the show notes for called who had the best draft list and you
02:31:03 ◼ ► can go in and vote but i think for the ease of voting we're each going to list now our picks so jason
02:31:11 ◼ ► can you very quickly run down your list of 25 sure i picked the original iphone the late 2010
02:31:19 ◼ ► macbook air the laser writer the first generation power book the apple 2e the fourth generation ipod
02:31:25 ◼ ► the imac g4 a second generation apple pencil macbook neo airpods pro the ipad pro m4 magic keyboard for
02:31:34 ◼ ► macintosh se30 iphone 4 ipod shuffle second generation apple watch ultra iphone 17 pro magic keyboard for mac
02:31:45 ◼ ► with touch id emate 300 and ipod socks and i picked the ipod mini the m2 macbook air the iphone 6 plus
02:31:53 ◼ ► the original ipad the ipod the original ipod nano the iphone 10 the imac g3 the first generation
02:32:02 ◼ ► apple pencil the mac 128k airpods pro 2 ipad mini 2 the apple watch series 4 the polycarbonate macbook
02:32:12 ◼ ► from 2006 the ipod video the first generation ipod touch the imac pro the magic trackpad 2 vision pro
02:32:21 ◼ ► the magsafe charger for mac iphone 12 pro m1 macbook pro apple tv 4k second generation the first generation
02:32:31 ◼ ► ipod the iphone 3g and the ipod shuffle so you can find in the show notes a link to vote and we'll
02:32:39 ◼ ► reveal the results next week as to who had the best draft list of the two of us sure but they're both
02:32:46 ◼ ► good and it's all just in fun yeah they're all good they're all good they're all good lists you know
02:32:51 ◼ ► good lists yeah they're all good lists thank you so much for listening to this special episode of
02:32:56 ◼ ► upgrade if you would like to send us in your feedback which i'm sure you have some uh you
02:33:01 ◼ ► can go to upgrade feedback.com i can't believe we didn't list uh thank you to our members who
02:33:07 ◼ ► support us for upgrade plus this week we're gonna maybe touch on some things we didn't pick and have
02:33:12 ◼ ► some very important follow-up uh a discovery that i made by searching through some forensics happening in
02:33:20 ◼ ► mike's uh chat yeah uh you can find a video version of this show by going to youtube and searching for
02:33:25 ◼ ► the upgrade podcast i would like to thank our sponsors of this week's episode that is the fine people