Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:12 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, Episode 418.

00:00:16 ◼   ► Today's show is brought to you by Sourcegraph, Bombas, and Capital One.

00:00:21 ◼   ► My name is Myke Hurley, I'm joined by Jason Snow. Hi, Jason.

00:00:24 ◼   ► Hi, Myke.

00:00:25 ◼   ► Oh, hi, Jason.

00:00:26 ◼   ► How are you?

00:00:27 ◼   ► I'm good. That was very, like, mellow introduction.

00:00:30 ◼   ► I just, you know, you said hi-- I was ready for a "Hi Jason" Snell,

00:00:33 ◼   ► and I was gonna do my "Hi Myke" early, and then you're like, "Hi Jason."

00:00:36 ◼   ► I'm like, "Oh, hi Myke."

00:00:36 ◼   ► Keep you guessing.

00:00:37 ◼   ► How's it going?

00:00:38 ◼   ► Sure.

00:00:39 ◼   ► I have a #SnellTalk question for you. It comes from Savva, who wants to know,

00:00:42 ◼   ► "Jason, do you brew multiple pots of tea with the same tea leaves,

00:00:46 ◼   ► or do you replace the leaves after every pot of tea?"

00:00:50 ◼   ► I replace the leaves with every pot of tea.

00:00:52 ◼   ► You could-- you can do it. They don't taste as good.

00:00:55 ◼   ► They're weaker and sometimes they can be more bitter.

00:00:58 ◼   ► And I've decided that if I'm like,

00:01:02 ◼   ► I buy loose tea in bulk,

00:01:05 ◼   ► I can afford to just make another pot of tea

00:01:08 ◼   ► with fresh leaves.

00:01:09 ◼   ► So the old leaves go in the little compost can

00:01:12 ◼   ► and the new leaves go in the tea robot

00:01:14 ◼   ► and I make another pot of tea.

00:01:17 ◼   ► That's how we do it.

00:01:19 ◼   ► - La-di-da, look at you, you know?

00:01:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:01:23 ◼   ► I mean, in a pit, I used to not,

00:01:25 ◼   ► but then it's better this way, so I just do it. It's fine. Again, I buy it in bulk. Like,

00:01:30 ◼   ► it helps to buy it in bulk. I understand when you're in situations where you have limited

00:01:35 ◼   ► tea or you've got a tea bag and you just use it and like, "Can I use it again?" The answer

00:01:39 ◼   ► is you can use it again. It's not as good, but you can. I don't, though, anymore.

00:01:45 ◼   ► If you would like to help us open an episode of the show and learn more about Jason Snow,

00:01:49 ◼   ► you can always send in tweets.

00:01:51 ◼   ► Oh boy.

00:01:52 ◼   ► the hashtag snow talk or use question mark snow talk in the relay FM members

00:01:56 ◼   ► discord I mean ultimately it's just what this is right like this is people

00:02:00 ◼   ► trying to learn more about you yeah I mean it can really be it's it's AMA it's

00:02:05 ◼   ► a it's a world slowest low MA yeah I like that that's what it is

00:02:10 ◼   ► speaking of a maze it's something we started doing for relay FM members

00:02:14 ◼   ► there's a new show called spotlight we mentioned before you've been done an

00:02:18 ◼   ► episode and Christina Warren's done an episode. This is content which is given

00:02:22 ◼   ► out to all Relay FM members in the crossover feed but you can get access to

00:02:26 ◼   ► this and also Upgrade Plus if you go to getupgradeplus.com you will get

00:02:31 ◼   ► longer episodes of upgraded bonus content just $5 a month or $50 a year.

00:02:36 ◼   ► We have some, I don't know, this is interesting for me anyway and maybe it's

00:02:41 ◼   ► interesting for other people. We have some a change here on the upgrade

00:02:46 ◼   ► program, I am no longer editing the upgrade program.

00:02:49 ◼   ► Mm.

00:02:50 ◼   ► Uh, we are now handed over the brains to Jim Metzendorf.

00:02:55 ◼   ► Uh, Jim edits a ton of content at Relay FM, like Rocket with Simone, Brianna, and

00:03:02 ◼   ► Christina, Roboism with Alex and Kathy, Mac Power users David and Steven, and

00:03:06 ◼   ► Tanwa Ibracul- he does some of my shows, uh, Analog and Remaster for some of them.

00:03:11 ◼   ► I've edited Upgrade for 100 years, eight years,

00:03:16 ◼   ► seven years, seven, eight years.

00:03:19 ◼   ► - Since the beginning, since episode one.

00:03:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I need to make some changes in my schedule.

00:03:25 ◼   ► And I'm here until very late every Monday.

00:03:30 ◼   ► And so Jim is gonna be doing it.

00:03:33 ◼   ► If I sound weird today,

00:03:34 ◼   ► I'm a little emotional about this, Jason.

00:03:35 ◼   ► It's quite a complicated thing for me.

00:03:39 ◼   ► - I just went through this

00:03:40 ◼   ► because I edited The Incomparable for 11 years.

00:03:44 ◼   ► And earlier this year, I handed that off to Steven Schapansky

00:03:48 ◼   ► and it is great.

00:03:50 ◼   ► So when you came to me and said,

00:03:51 ◼   ► "I'm thinking of not editing the show anymore,"

00:03:53 ◼   ► I thought, "Well, it worked really well for me.

00:03:57 ◼   ► It's gonna work well for you."

00:03:58 ◼   ► It is one of those things.

00:04:00 ◼   ► I know I've told this on the show before,

00:04:02 ◼   ► but in January, I did my little offsite

00:04:04 ◼   ► in where I went to Sonoma for a couple of days

00:04:06 ◼   ► and I just thought about my business

00:04:07 ◼   ► and like big picture stuff instead of the nitty gritty.

00:04:10 ◼   ► And one of the things that I realized

00:04:11 ◼   ► is that after seven plus years of doing a small business,

00:04:16 ◼   ► there are things you do when you start a small business

00:04:17 ◼   ► because who else is there to do it?

00:04:19 ◼   ► So you do them all.

00:04:20 ◼   ► And then seven years pass and you think,

00:04:22 ◼   ► why am I still doing this?

00:04:23 ◼   ► I can do this, but should I be doing this?

00:04:27 ◼   ► And that led me to divest myself of a bunch of tasks

00:04:30 ◼   ► that I didn't need to be doing anymore,

00:04:32 ◼   ► including editing the incomparable every week.

00:04:35 ◼   ► and it is the best thing.

00:04:38 ◼   ► And so I think this is gonna be really good for you.

00:04:40 ◼   ► I think reclaiming that time,

00:04:41 ◼   ► it's hard because you're giving away your control

00:04:43 ◼   ► of the final product,

00:04:44 ◼   ► which was hard for me for the incomparable.

00:04:47 ◼   ► We talked about your note-taking apparatus that you have

00:04:50 ◼   ► to give yourself notes about what we say

00:04:52 ◼   ► and when we cross talk and all of those things

00:04:55 ◼   ► that you're gonna have to sort of adapt your process there.

00:04:57 ◼   ► But it also means that when we're done,

00:05:01 ◼   ► you're done with upgrade.

00:05:03 ◼   ► And I'll tell you, I see these incomparable episodes go out

00:05:06 ◼   ► on a Friday morning now, and I like think to myself,

00:05:10 ◼   ► oh yeah, right.

00:05:11 ◼   ► Because it's just, it's that one layer of remove

00:05:14 ◼   ► where I haven't spent five hours sweating over it.

00:05:17 ◼   ► Instead, it's just, it just happens and it's out there

00:05:20 ◼   ► and it's a great feeling.

00:05:21 ◼   ► So good for you for promoting

00:05:23 ◼   ► your work-life balance a little bit.

00:05:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's a weird thing.

00:05:28 ◼   ► I don't want to let it go, but I think I need to.

00:05:31 ◼   ► But it's just very strange.

00:05:33 ◼   ► "Yeah, well, that's how I felt about 'Incomparable'

00:05:36 ◼   ► is the same thing."

00:05:36 ◼   ► Which is, I really don't, I still don't like the fact

00:05:40 ◼   ► that I don't have very specific control

00:05:43 ◼   ► over exactly what the episode is.

00:05:45 ◼   ► And Steven and Erica, his wife, went on a road trip

00:05:49 ◼   ► and I had to edit the "Incomparable" the other week.

00:05:51 ◼   ► And it was one of those things where on the one hand,

00:05:54 ◼   ► it was really kind of delightful.

00:05:55 ◼   ► It was like, "Oh yes, I can take complete control

00:05:57 ◼   ► of this episode again."

00:05:58 ◼   ► And also every minute I did it, I thought,

00:06:00 ◼   ► "Wow, I don't need to do this anymore."

00:06:04 ◼   ► So it'll be good.

00:06:06 ◼   ► Also, as an aside, we did a verticals episode last week,

00:06:09 ◼   ► which was because we couldn't record on the Monday.

00:06:12 ◼   ► We prerecorded the verticals episode

00:06:15 ◼   ► where we interviewed people and that was a lot of fun.

00:06:18 ◼   ► And we got a lot of really positive feedback about it

00:06:20 ◼   ► from people who were very happy

00:06:21 ◼   ► that we talked to our three guests

00:06:22 ◼   ► and got a lot of feedback of like,

00:06:25 ◼   ► "Oh, that was great.

00:06:26 ◼   ► You guys should do more guests."

00:06:27 ◼   ► And more guests,

00:06:29 ◼   ► Guest is a lot of work, scheduling guest's work,

00:06:32 ◼   ► interviewing guest's work, it's a lot of extra work.

00:06:34 ◼   ► However, you know what, I feel like we might,

00:06:38 ◼   ► I'm not committing to anything now,

00:06:39 ◼   ► but I feel like we're more capable of doing something

00:06:41 ◼   ► like having more guests on from time to time,

00:06:44 ◼   ► now that you're not editing the show every week.

00:06:47 ◼   ► - One of the reasons we would so seldom have guests

00:06:50 ◼   ► on the show is 'cause I don't like to edit guest audio.

00:06:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, no simple answer, right, there it is.

00:06:56 ◼   ► - It's much more complicated, you know,

00:06:58 ◼   ► considering the time, because it was,

00:07:01 ◼   ► the issue for me has always been

00:07:03 ◼   ► that the edit starts really late.

00:07:05 ◼   ► The edit starts for me kind of maybe

00:07:07 ◼   ► around 8 p.m. on a Monday.

00:07:09 ◼   ► And if you added a guest in,

00:07:13 ◼   ► you've probably doubled the edit time.

00:07:16 ◼   ► Especially if you're waiting on audio

00:07:19 ◼   ► to come through with some people.

00:07:21 ◼   ► It can, yeah, so it's just like a whole thing.

00:07:23 ◼   ► And so to not have to have potential issues,

00:07:27 ◼   ► I would kind of discourage having guests

00:07:31 ◼   ► because I just couldn't add it in very often

00:07:34 ◼   ► unless it was all planned out well in advance.

00:07:37 ◼   ► But now that's not so much of a concern anymore

00:07:40 ◼   ► which is why we actually have another guest segment

00:07:43 ◼   ► later on in this episode

00:07:44 ◼   ► and then we have some more later on in a month.

00:07:47 ◼   ► And so, yeah.

00:07:49 ◼   ► So that's some of our fun though, but we will do more.

00:07:51 ◼   ► I think we'll be able to do more outside of that.

00:07:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think it has been something

00:07:55 ◼   ► that we've tried to really limit ourselves

00:07:57 ◼   ► to sort of those special Apple guest opportunities

00:07:59 ◼   ► and some Summer of Fun stuff.

00:08:00 ◼   ► And maybe we'll do some more of it.

00:08:04 ◼   ► We're definitely gonna do more of it this summer.

00:08:06 ◼   ► And then we'll just see how it goes and how it progresses.

00:08:09 ◼   ► But I know it's a big step

00:08:10 ◼   ► and I know that it probably is uncomfortable for you,

00:08:13 ◼   ► but I think it's gonna be good.

00:08:15 ◼   ► And if the show sounds different

00:08:18 ◼   ► and there are weird things about it,

00:08:19 ◼   ► we're working on it.

00:08:20 ◼   ► It's the beginning of a new era on the production side.

00:08:23 ◼   ► Hopefully it just doesn't matter and you don't notice

00:08:25 ◼   ► and it's all fine.

00:08:27 ◼   ► And thank you to Jim.

00:08:28 ◼   ► - Thanks, Jim.

00:08:29 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:08:30 ◼   ► - And also to finish follow up this week,

00:08:33 ◼   ► everyone here at the Outgrade Program

00:08:34 ◼   ► would like to congratulate the Morin family

00:08:36 ◼   ► on the birth of their son.

00:08:38 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:08:39 ◼   ► Dan and Kat had a baby

00:08:41 ◼   ► and Dan also published his book the same week.

00:08:44 ◼   ► So, what a week. - Because why not?

00:08:47 ◼   ► If you're gonna do both things,

00:08:48 ◼   ► why not do them at the same time?

00:08:50 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:08:51 ◼   ► It means I'm all alone over at Six Colors.

00:08:54 ◼   ► I'm like, this is the summer of solitude for me over there now.

00:08:57 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:08:58 ◼   ► You're the one really struggling right now.

00:09:00 ◼   ► Yeah, oh yeah, it's really about me.

00:09:02 ◼   ► Not about like a baby, whatever, you know, whatever.

00:09:06 ◼   ► But I am blogging alone.

00:09:09 ◼   ► The big problem is that Six Colors podcast that members get

00:09:13 ◼   ► because that's me and Dan.

00:09:14 ◼   ► And I've gotten guests the last two weeks.

00:09:18 ◼   ► I'm not planning that out as much as I should.

00:09:20 ◼   ► It's like, geez, what am I going to do this week?

00:09:22 ◼   ► Friends, I don't know what I'm gonna do this week. No idea, but we'll figure it out. I'll

00:09:27 ◼   ► figure it out.

00:09:28 ◼   ► I'm waiting for the call up. I know it's gonna come at some point.

00:09:31 ◼   ► Yeah. Oh, it undoubtedly will. Like, I mean, how many people do I even know? They're all

00:09:37 ◼   ► gonna get the call at some point.

00:09:38 ◼   ► Actually, you're gonna have to run out.

00:09:41 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:09:42 ◼   ► Rumor round up, Jason Snell.

00:09:44 ◼   ► Okay.

00:09:45 ◼   ► Got a couple of little things this week, all coming from the Sheriff himself across various

00:09:50 ◼   ► avenues. The first is an interview, some tidbits from an interview that Mark Gurman did with

00:09:57 ◼   ► YouTuber Max Tech, I think has become a bit more prominent recently in our circle, I think

00:10:04 ◼   ► is doing a lot of the thermal tests of various computers. But very successful YouTuber, but

00:10:10 ◼   ► sometimes these people just come into our like remit somehow and this is it. Anyway,

00:10:16 ◼   ► one of the some of the things Mark said Apple had an M1 Pro Mac Pro ready so

00:10:24 ◼   ► like that was something that they had set they were ready to go on it but

00:10:28 ◼   ► decided to hold off until M2 I don't know why they made that decision but I

00:10:32 ◼   ► think that was actually the right decision. Mark is now expecting the Mac

00:10:36 ◼   ► Pro with an M2 chip in it or M2 based chip in it not M2 can you imagine the

00:10:43 ◼   ► Mac Pro of an M2. It's like, how's your phone was now? But no, with an M2 based something.

00:10:50 ◼   ► M2 Extreme, M2 Max maybe. This is now expected to be announced later this year, shipping

00:10:57 ◼   ► sometime in 2023. Fine. Okay, sure. Mark Gurman doesn't expect there to be a redesign of the

00:11:05 ◼   ► Mac Mini. Just for there to be spec bumps in the future. I think that makes a lot of

00:11:10 ◼   ► sense considering the way the Mac Studio looks.

00:11:12 ◼   ► Yeah, the redesigned Mac Mini rumors were about the Mac Studio, so, and to Mark Gurman's

00:11:17 ◼   ► credit, I think he got that right, that when he said it was like a new thing that looks

00:11:20 ◼   ► like a tall mini Mac Pro.

00:11:22 ◼   ► Right, but there were people that were saying it was going to have like plexiglass on the

00:11:26 ◼   ► top and all that kind of stuff.

00:11:28 ◼   ► Yeah, those were the weird rumors, but I think Gurman did a pretty good job of zeroing in

00:11:32 ◼   ► on the Mac Studio, even though he, I think he described it as being a tall Mac Mini or

00:11:37 ◼   ► a mini Mac Pro and I think he was probably more right than wrong there. So yeah, sure,

00:11:43 ◼   ► Mac Mini is fine. It doesn't need to be reinvented.

00:11:49 ◼   ► And once again saying that an iMac Pro is currently in active development and he expects

00:11:54 ◼   ► it to be available next year sometime.

00:11:58 ◼   ► Sure sounds like the bigger iMac is going to be an iMac Pro, at least in his mind. I

00:12:03 ◼   ► think that there's marketing questions there, but I think it's interesting that that's

00:12:07 ◼   ► That's how he refers to it.

00:12:08 ◼   ► I mean, I wouldn't, I mean, we've had this conversation a million times and we'll have

00:12:12 ◼   ► a million times more.

00:12:13 ◼   ► I don't know why you would do a bigger Amek and not call it the Amek Pro.

00:12:17 ◼   ► Yeah, no, it makes sense.

00:12:18 ◼   ► Given what, how they name their products, it's going to be more expensive.

00:12:21 ◼   ► It's probably going to have more capability in terms of the chips that are available on

00:12:25 ◼   ► it.

00:12:26 ◼   ► And so sure, why wouldn't you?

00:12:29 ◼   ► Speaking of products that might get bigger and potentially called Pro, the rugged Apple

00:12:33 ◼   ► Apple Watch Extreme as we've called it around here but could be called Apple Watch Pro apparently

00:12:39 ◼   ► is one of the names being suggested.

00:12:41 ◼   ► In Mark's Power On newsletter he gave a few more details about this.

00:12:45 ◼   ► So we spoke some time ago whether it was last week or the week before I don't remember because

00:12:51 ◼   ► we prerecorded that the rugged Apple Watch would be made of metal which wasn't what we

00:12:57 ◼   ► were expecting.

00:12:58 ◼   ► We were thinking we had Casio G-Shock in our minds right?

00:13:01 ◼   ► Cover that thing in silicon.

00:13:03 ◼   ► but no, they will be made of metal,

00:13:05 ◼   ► and Mark is now expecting it to be some adjusted formulation

00:13:09 ◼   ► of titanium to make it even more durable.

00:13:12 ◼   ► -Yeah, see?

00:13:14 ◼   ► It's the pro-materials, pro-watch.

00:13:18 ◼   ► -I'm listening to "After Steve," the book about --

00:13:23 ◼   ► I thought it was about Johnny Ive,

00:13:25 ◼   ► but it's also about Tim Cook.

00:13:26 ◼   ► I don't know why my brain -- -It's 'cause of the marketing.

00:13:29 ◼   ► -I think you're right, right?

00:13:30 ◼   ► Like all of the excerpts seem to be about Johnny Ive.

00:13:33 ◼   ► And so it's about the both of them.

00:13:35 ◼   ► But one of the things they were,

00:13:37 ◼   ► I just heard a couple of days ago when listening to it,

00:13:39 ◼   ► they were talking about how they reformulated,

00:13:42 ◼   ► like formulated their own gold for the Apple Watch.

00:13:46 ◼   ► And I also remember, and I've heard over time,

00:13:50 ◼   ► that Apple, because of the Apple Watch,

00:13:52 ◼   ► kind of hired and then created their own like

00:13:55 ◼   ► metallurgy team.

00:13:56 ◼   ► And so like, this is a thing for them.

00:13:59 ◼   ► Like they create new formulations of metals

00:14:02 ◼   ► to do what they need them to do.

00:14:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, they were already, I mean,

00:14:06 ◼   ► I read something at some point that said that

00:14:08 ◼   ► Apple might have the best collection of people

00:14:11 ◼   ► who understand how to use aluminum in the world.

00:14:14 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:14:14 ◼   ► - That they had already, and it makes sense, right?

00:14:16 ◼   ► Like they've been basing their computers on aluminum

00:14:19 ◼   ► for 12, 13, I mean, it's been a long time now

00:14:24 ◼   ► and I've heard that that is one of the things

00:14:26 ◼   ► that they have gotten very good at

00:14:28 ◼   ► is exactly what kind of aluminum they want.

00:14:31 ◼   ► And then remember, they started boasting

00:14:33 ◼   ► about this specific kind of stainless steel they used

00:14:37 ◼   ► in the Apple Watch or in the ring around the iPhone Pro.

00:14:40 ◼   ► Like they have metallurgy opinions.

00:14:44 ◼   ► And so was it surprising that they might do

00:14:46 ◼   ► a reformulated titanium that they feel

00:14:48 ◼   ► they can boast about on stage

00:14:50 ◼   ► as being extra rugged and resilient?

00:14:52 ◼   ► I'm not surprised at all.

00:14:53 ◼   ► - Mark also said that this Apple Watch will be a quote,

00:14:57 ◼   ► good bit bigger so it might only appeal to a subset of customers. I wonder what the story

00:15:04 ◼   ► is going to be for the size change because like just as I think about it, I don't understand

00:15:08 ◼   ► why a watch for extreme sports needs to be bigger. So I'm intrigued what they're going

00:15:14 ◼   ► to say as to why that is.

00:15:17 ◼   ► I think it's not going to be that complicated. I really don't. I was having this chat with

00:15:20 ◼   ► somebody else the other day. I think that if we think of this as Apple Watch Pro and

00:15:26 ◼   ► we think of it as a bigger Apple Watch, everything else falls into place, which is why is it

00:15:31 ◼   ► bigger? Well, because we're giving you three different versions now. There's the two smaller

00:15:36 ◼   ► versions and then there's the Apple Watch Pro, which is bigger. It has more battery.

00:15:39 ◼   ► It has a bigger screen. You can see more stuff. Yay. Like, I really think that that's all

00:15:44 ◼   ► the explanation that there's going to be is now we have three sizes of watch. And the

00:15:48 ◼   ► most expensive one is this big fancy one with the great materials. And let me tell you the

00:15:53 ◼   ► story about, you know, why it's great, but I don't know if there'll be more of a size

00:15:59 ◼   ► change than that, then that it's a bigger screen and more battery and those are things

00:16:04 ◼   ► that people like.

00:16:05 ◼   ► I 100% think that you are right there, but I'm just intrigued if they're gonna have some

00:16:10 ◼   ► other like reason that they, you know, maybe there's something that they're gonna do in

00:16:16 ◼   ► software where you can see more of the workout or whatever, I don't know.

00:16:21 ◼   ► I don't know. I think the thing to keep your eye on,

00:16:24 ◼   ► I think as we're all watching this event,

00:16:26 ◼   ► when it unfolds in September, presumably like the sixth,

00:16:31 ◼   ► maybe the 13th, something like that.

00:16:34 ◼   ► I haven't heard a rumor about that yet,

00:16:37 ◼   ► but it's always about the same time.

00:16:39 ◼   ► The thing to watch is how they talk about

00:16:43 ◼   ► the sport component of it versus the just,

00:16:47 ◼   ► it's an Apple Watch component of it.

00:16:48 ◼   ► because if it's Apple Watch Pro,

00:16:51 ◼   ► I think it's still gonna have

00:16:53 ◼   ► a little bit of a sport narrative to it,

00:16:56 ◼   ► but not the only narrative to it.

00:16:58 ◼   ► That they're gonna boast about,

00:17:00 ◼   ► well, what can we do with this battery life?

00:17:02 ◼   ► Well, the answer is, and we made it more resilient,

00:17:05 ◼   ► which is great for people who use it in sports,

00:17:07 ◼   ► which they already use the Apple Watch in sports.

00:17:09 ◼   ► You could argue that all Apple Watches

00:17:10 ◼   ► are kind of sports watches, kind of,

00:17:13 ◼   ► and so this is also that.

00:17:14 ◼   ► But if they do something like is rumored,

00:17:16 ◼   ► where they do a wilderness mode or whatever,

00:17:20 ◼   ► where it goes into extreme battery saving,

00:17:22 ◼   ► but it's still doing logging and you can crank it up

00:17:26 ◼   ► and crank it down as needed.

00:17:28 ◼   ► And the extra battery life allows it to do that.

00:17:31 ◼   ► And maybe this is the one that does the wacky

00:17:34 ◼   ► kind of emergency signal to the satellite

00:17:37 ◼   ► and all of that stuff.

00:17:38 ◼   ► There's a story they can tell about that,

00:17:40 ◼   ► but I think they have to balance it

00:17:41 ◼   ► with not wanting to come across as this is a sports watch

00:17:45 ◼   ► because I don't think they want to do that because I think they probably envision that

00:17:50 ◼   ► a lot of people are going to buy it because they like the most expensive thing and bigger

00:17:55 ◼   ► is better and more battery life and they don't want to turn them away like, "Are you an extreme

00:18:01 ◼   ► sports enthusiast?" "No." "Well, then you can't buy our expensive watch."

00:18:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think you're right actually because also as I'm thinking, you know, for those

00:18:08 ◼   ► of us that have been around for long enough, the aluminium one used to be called sport.

00:18:14 ◼   ► did. Right and so like the reasoning there was like it's the cheapest,

00:18:19 ◼   ► the lightest, you can ding it the most, it's you know like it's for sports so

00:18:23 ◼   ► it'd be strange now to be like hey this one's for sports and it's the most

00:18:27 ◼   ► expensive one you know so I think I'm coming around now even though I

00:18:32 ◼   ► will always miss it if they don't call it extremes because I think that's funny

00:18:36 ◼   ► but calling it pro is like hey if you're an athlete you can use this if you are

00:18:43 ◼   ► work in 26 hour days you can use this and it's gonna protect you about you

00:18:48 ◼   ► know you and I have the battery life that you want like maybe just pro as in

00:18:52 ◼   ► biggest bestest is probably what they'll go with because that's what they do. I

00:18:56 ◼   ► think it's the most logical way to approach this especially if it's

00:19:00 ◼   ► titanium and is gonna look like a big Apple watch and not look kind of weird

00:19:04 ◼   ► and different then it's just an addition to the product line I think that's all

00:19:09 ◼   ► it is. Zach in the Discord says Apple Watch Max which could also fill the

00:19:13 ◼   ► fulfill the same thing especially if it's gonna be physically bigger because

00:19:17 ◼   ► then that matches what the iPhone will be because it's probably hmm I wonder

00:19:25 ◼   ► what they'll do you think they'll call the bigger regular one iPhone 14 Max? Yes.

00:19:32 ◼   ► So then that Apple Watch Max could work just as nicely. Could be, could be. I also

00:19:37 ◼   ► wonder how it's going to be positioned in relationship to the other Apple

00:19:41 ◼   ► watches, because you could also say we have three sizes of Apple Watch now and

00:19:45 ◼   ► just say that. Probably not. They'll probably differentiate in some way. So

00:19:50 ◼   ► yeah, Apple Watch Max could be. Could be. But I think Sport is, you know, Sport is

00:19:55 ◼   ► probably not on the agenda for this one. An evolution of the current rectangular

00:19:59 ◼   ► shape, no flat size. Yeah. This is, this is just gonna be a big Apple Watch with a

00:20:04 ◼   ► a big screen and a big battery,

00:20:07 ◼   ► and then maybe some features that are enabled.

00:20:10 ◼   ► Like I said, I keep coming back to David Smith

00:20:13 ◼   ► trying to take an Apple Watch out in the woods for a week

00:20:16 ◼   ► and thinking there's a story,

00:20:18 ◼   ► there's some software that you add

00:20:20 ◼   ► and you use the big battery,

00:20:22 ◼   ► and now you've got a story to tell about it

00:20:24 ◼   ► as a thing you can take hiking or whatever,

00:20:27 ◼   ► but it's just one part of the story of like,

00:20:30 ◼   ► it's also just an Apple Watch, that's nice.

00:20:32 ◼   ► and on a redesign, adding in a new watch this year

00:20:36 ◼   ► gives them another year until they need to do a redesign.

00:20:38 ◼   ► Right, like they can just be like,

00:20:40 ◼   ► hey, we added a new one

00:20:42 ◼   ► and they can just keep pushing that redesign off

00:20:44 ◼   ► into the distance, which makes me sad.

00:20:46 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:20:47 ◼   ► - This episode of Upgrade is brought to you

00:20:50 ◼   ► by our friends over at Sourcegraph.

00:20:52 ◼   ► So you've hired a brilliant developer,

00:20:55 ◼   ► someone new to your team.

00:20:56 ◼   ► It's awesome, but now you have to get them onboarded.

00:20:59 ◼   ► If your company's growing, onboarding new developers

00:21:01 ◼   ► be a common occurrence, but it's a big undertaking every time.

00:21:05 ◼   ► One of the biggest challenges for new hires is to get up to speed with their new projects

00:21:10 ◼   ► that they're going to be working on with their team.

00:21:12 ◼   ► This can be tricky if the codebases that your developers are working in are already large.

00:21:16 ◼   ► Well thankfully Sourcegraph makes it easy to move fast, even in those big codebases.

00:21:22 ◼   ► Developers know that knowledge is most useful when it's findable.

00:21:25 ◼   ► Centralisation can be helpful, but given the fact that most companies store knowledge in

00:21:30 ◼   ► in at least two different locations, how are you going to access what you need when you

00:21:34 ◼   ► need it?

00:21:35 ◼   ► As a code intelligence platform, Sourcegraph gives developers what they need to drive their

00:21:39 ◼   ► own learning over time and in different situations.

00:21:42 ◼   ► Teams without Sourcegraph need to rely on asking colleagues or reviewing out of date

00:21:46 ◼   ► documentation.

00:21:47 ◼   ► This is cumbersome, it's time consuming.

00:21:49 ◼   ► But with Sourcegraph, every developer can search across millions of repositories to

00:21:52 ◼   ► find specific code, saving time for themselves and everyone else.

00:21:56 ◼   ► So when questions do come up, you know it's the big stuff that's worthy of the extra

00:22:00 ◼   ► time.

00:22:01 ◼   ► Sourcegraph was created to make developers lives easier, and today they work with leading

00:22:05 ◼   ► companies across every industry including 3 out of the 5 top tech companies, plus PayPal,

00:22:10 ◼   ► Uber, Plaid, GE, Reddit and Atlassian.

00:22:14 ◼   ► Visit about.sourcegraph.com to learn more.

00:22:17 ◼   ► That's about.sourcegraph.com to find out why some of the biggest tech companies in

00:22:21 ◼   ► the world use Sourcegraph and to see what it can do for yours.

00:22:25 ◼   ► just click the link in the show notes to let them know that you heard about them from this

00:22:29 ◼   ► show. Thanks to Sourcegraph for their support of this show and Relay FM.

00:22:33 ◼   ► Apple earnings time Jason Snell charts day big charts day around here what what

00:22:42 ◼   ► they was this Thursday of last week I think yes yeah that's it so let me give

00:22:49 ◼   ► some top-line reporting and we can break into some of this 83 billion dollars in

00:22:56 ◼   ► revenue that is up 2% year-over-year 19.4 billion dollars in profit that's

00:23:02 ◼   ► It's down from $21.7 billion this time last year,

00:23:07 ◼   ► this quarter last year.

00:23:09 ◼   ► iPhone was up 3%, the Mac was down 10%,

00:23:12 ◼   ► the iPad was down 2%, services up 12%,

00:23:17 ◼   ► but for the first time, it is down $200 million in revenue

00:23:23 ◼   ► from the previous quarter.

00:23:26 ◼   ► I wanna dig into that in a little bit in a minute.

00:23:29 ◼   ► Wearables were also down 8% year over year.

00:23:32 ◼   ► It's not the first time, by the way.

00:23:33 ◼   ► Two years ago, they had a sequential drop

00:23:35 ◼   ► between Q2 and Q3.

00:23:37 ◼   ► So it hasn't gone down, but it is not the first time

00:23:42 ◼   ► that it's had a little bit of a sequential drop.

00:23:44 ◼   ► It hasn't done a year over year drop

00:23:46 ◼   ► since we've been watching it.

00:23:48 ◼   ► But it did do a sequential drop two years ago

00:23:50 ◼   ► at the same time.

00:23:51 ◼   ► So it seems to be a thing that happens

00:23:53 ◼   ► is that Q3 is just weaker than Q2 for services.

00:23:56 ◼   ► - Interesting.

00:23:57 ◼   ► It's just interesting to see now

00:23:58 ◼   ► because it's been multiple years

00:24:00 ◼   ► of this just like massive, just continual growth.

00:24:05 ◼   ► That was where it stuck out to me

00:24:08 ◼   ► and I didn't notice that one.

00:24:08 ◼   ► So thank you for the correction there, Jason Snow.

00:24:11 ◼   ► - It was a very similar one two years ago.

00:24:12 ◼   ► They were 13% year over year up,

00:24:15 ◼   ► but down sequentially just a little bit.

00:24:17 ◼   ► - I'll be keen to see if this continues

00:24:20 ◼   ► the way we would normally expect it to,

00:24:22 ◼   ► which is just to keep going up.

00:24:23 ◼   ► And it's just for some reason,

00:24:24 ◼   ► we just ignore this one that goes down.

00:24:26 ◼   ► But it stuck out to me as it's been multiple years then,

00:24:29 ◼   ► not never, but it's been multiple years

00:24:30 ◼   ► since we've had this.

00:24:32 ◼   ► And it's one of those things where I kind of can't

00:24:35 ◼   ► put my finger on why.

00:24:37 ◼   ► - So I think they said that part of services,

00:24:42 ◼   ► believe it or not, is ad revenue from search ads.

00:24:48 ◼   ► - Oh, I do believe it, yeah.

00:24:50 ◼   ► - So I think that they say that that is where

00:24:53 ◼   ► some of this came from,

00:24:56 ◼   ► is that there was weakness in the ad market.

00:24:58 ◼   ► - This makes me annoyed 'cause I hadn't considered this.

00:25:01 ◼   ► 'Cause did you see last week that they're adding ads?

00:25:06 ◼   ► - More ads.

00:25:06 ◼   ► - In the App Store in more places now?

00:25:09 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:25:10 ◼   ► - And now I'm expecting that this is in response to that.

00:25:13 ◼   ► - Could be.

00:25:14 ◼   ► - And that makes me just, just stop Apple, come on.

00:25:18 ◼   ► - I hate ads in the App Store, I hate it.

00:25:21 ◼   ► - I shouldn't do this.

00:25:22 ◼   ► - They spin it, somebody asked them on the call,

00:25:24 ◼   ► it was in my little Mac world piece,

00:25:25 ◼   ► I gave some awards out.

00:25:28 ◼   ► I like to occasionally give awards out to analysts

00:25:31 ◼   ► for the various attempts they do

00:25:32 ◼   ► to make Apple answer their questions,

00:25:36 ◼   ► which they don't answer.

00:25:37 ◼   ► But I wanted to give Richard Kramer of REACH Research

00:25:42 ◼   ► a little gold star.

00:25:46 ◼   ► He asked a very pointed question about app,

00:25:48 ◼   ► he may be not asked back after this,

00:25:52 ◼   ► about app tracking transparency

00:25:54 ◼   ► and how it was related directly

00:25:56 ◼   ► to Apple's own App Store search advertising, right?

00:26:00 ◼   ► 'Cause it's not a third party ad

00:26:02 ◼   ► if we serve it to you ourselves, right?

00:26:06 ◼   ► So, you know, that's the argument

00:26:07 ◼   ► about Apple's policy toward Facebook is that,

00:26:10 ◼   ► although they talk about privacy being a human right,

00:26:12 ◼   ► the other thing they're doing

00:26:13 ◼   ► is basically making the only place you can market apps

00:26:16 ◼   ► be in the App Store and Apple sells all the ads there.

00:26:19 ◼   ► And so this was a pointed question,

00:26:22 ◼   ► I think a good question.

00:26:24 ◼   ► And Tim Cook's response was, he read the boilerplate

00:26:26 ◼   ► about privacy being a fundamental human right.

00:26:28 ◼   ► And then he said, "Search ads are great for the developers

00:26:31 ◼   ► because they can reach people who are looking for apps."

00:26:35 ◼   ► That was it, that was all he said.

00:26:36 ◼   ► And I think search ads are awful

00:26:39 ◼   ► and they're only good for Apple.

00:26:41 ◼   ► And because the reason I think they're awful

00:26:44 ◼   ► is because it means that if you're a developer,

00:26:46 ◼   ► you can't just develop your app.

00:26:47 ◼   ► You actually have to take some of the money

00:26:49 ◼   ► that you make from your app

00:26:50 ◼   ► in order to advertise on the name of your app

00:26:55 ◼   ► in order to have your app come up

00:26:58 ◼   ► when people search for your app.

00:27:01 ◼   ► And I think it's offensive and stupid.

00:27:03 ◼   ► And it is, yeah, it's one of my least favorite things

00:27:07 ◼   ► that Apple does is App Store ad revenue.

00:27:09 ◼   ► And yes, they are doubling down.

00:27:10 ◼   ► They have now added, if you scroll down

00:27:12 ◼   ► in an app's description page, not on search,

00:27:15 ◼   ► and it's down toward the bottom,

00:27:17 ◼   ► but you literally, there are ads down there.

00:27:19 ◼   ► There's like other apps from this developer,

00:27:21 ◼   ► and then right below it is basically,

00:27:23 ◼   ► these are ads, probably for their competitors.

00:27:26 ◼   ► - But then I think the worst that they're adding

00:27:28 ◼   ► is they're going to be adding the ability

00:27:30 ◼   ► for somebody to have an ad in the Today page.

00:27:35 ◼   ► And you can kind of, and it kind of looks like

00:27:39 ◼   ► Apple's official content that they make.

00:27:42 ◼   ► Like it's got one of those big squares.

00:27:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, but it's an ad.

00:27:46 ◼   ► It annoys me because all advertising is advertising

00:27:50 ◼   ► and I really don't like these two things happening at once.

00:27:54 ◼   ► I don't like the way it looks, right?

00:27:56 ◼   ► Like I don't like Apple kind of kneecapping other companies

00:28:01 ◼   ► and then also increasing their own ad opportunities.

00:28:07 ◼   ► - No, it's quite a racket.

00:28:08 ◼   ► I mean, I'm sure I'm aware of the arguments

00:28:11 ◼   ► for doing App Store advertising,

00:28:14 ◼   ► but fundamentally, I think it is Apple applying

00:28:17 ◼   ► an additional tax to its own developers.

00:28:21 ◼   ► And as much as it boasts about,

00:28:23 ◼   ► Apple will boast about advertising revenue,

00:28:26 ◼   ► and it will boast about the money it gives to developers

00:28:29 ◼   ► as part of the, you know, and I phrase it that way,

00:28:31 ◼   ► I guess, on purpose,

00:28:32 ◼   ► 'cause Apple does sometimes view it as being

00:28:34 ◼   ► that they're giving it to developers.

00:28:35 ◼   ► The developers earned it, and then Apple took a percentage,

00:28:37 ◼   ► and then the rest of it goes to developers.

00:28:39 ◼   ► But my point here is, those two things are related,

00:28:42 ◼   ► 'cause all that money that they're getting in ad revenue

00:28:45 ◼   ► for app advertising, it's coming out of that pot.

00:28:48 ◼   ► It's deducted essentially

00:28:51 ◼   ► from what the app makers are making.

00:28:54 ◼   ► So it's a way for Apple to eat even more

00:28:57 ◼   ► into the business of app developers.

00:29:00 ◼   ► And it's because they've got

00:29:01 ◼   ► an increasingly captive audience, right?

00:29:05 ◼   ► Because marketing your app on Facebook

00:29:07 ◼   ► doesn't really work anymore

00:29:08 ◼   ► in the era of app tracking transparency.

00:29:10 ◼   ► You really have to go to the source, which is Apple.

00:29:12 ◼   ► And while that is more private,

00:29:14 ◼   ► it also is awfully good for Apple.

00:29:16 ◼   ► - But anyway, getting back to the topic at hand,

00:29:20 ◼   ► this is the Q3, for the Q3 2022 results.

00:29:25 ◼   ► 49% of the revenue was iPhone, 24% services,

00:29:30 ◼   ► 10% wearables, and a Mac and iPad, but 9% each.

00:29:34 ◼   ► So this was again, another record set in quarter for Apple,

00:29:38 ◼   ► but it doesn't really feel like one to celebrate.

00:29:42 ◼   ► - Right, it's a, I mean, the Wall Street response

00:29:46 ◼   ► seemed to be relief because there's been so much difficulty

00:29:49 ◼   ► in Wall Street, in the stock market,

00:29:53 ◼   ► in the tech sector of the stock market especially,

00:29:56 ◼   ► that Apple coming out with results that are fine

00:29:59 ◼   ► was a relief 'cause they were afraid

00:30:01 ◼   ► they were gonna be not fine.

00:30:02 ◼   ► And the fact that the iPhone posted a 2% year over year gain

00:30:06 ◼   ► that you could hear the size from Wall Street, right?

00:30:09 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:30:10 ◼   ► 'Cause it's the most important product

00:30:11 ◼   ► for the most valuable company, and it didn't take a dive,

00:30:15 ◼   ► and they were really relieved.

00:30:17 ◼   ► And if you listen on the call, what Tim Cook said was,

00:30:22 ◼   ► if you look at the iPhone and try to imagine

00:30:25 ◼   ► what are the macroeconomic conditions,

00:30:27 ◼   ► what are the headwinds, as they like to say,

00:30:28 ◼   ► what are all the problems,

00:30:30 ◼   ► do we see any evidence in the iPhone

00:30:33 ◼   ► that there are lots of troubles globally, economically?

00:30:37 ◼   ► And he said, there are none.

00:30:39 ◼   ► If you just look at the, he says,

00:30:41 ◼   ► I'm not saying there aren't.

00:30:42 ◼   ► I'm saying that if you were to look at the numbers,

00:30:45 ◼   ► you can't see it.

00:30:46 ◼   ► It was just a good iPhone quarter.

00:30:50 ◼   ► Other categories you could see it, but not,

00:30:52 ◼   ► wearables, he said specifically,

00:30:54 ◼   ► like if they feel like the macroeconomic conditions

00:30:56 ◼   ► really are what whacked wearables.

00:30:58 ◼   ► And wearables had its worst quarter in ages.

00:31:01 ◼   ► It's been up every quarter year over year for years now,

00:31:05 ◼   ► and it was down.

00:31:06 ◼   ► But the iPhone did okay.

00:31:08 ◼   ► And honestly, so much of how Wall Street views Apple

00:31:12 ◼   ► and Apple's business, rightfully so,

00:31:13 ◼   ► 'cause it's half or more of Apple's business, it's iPhone.

00:31:17 ◼   ► And so if iPhone did okay, they're like,

00:31:19 ◼   ► "Okay, all right, it's gonna be okay.

00:31:21 ◼   ► iPhone's okay, everybody, it's okay."

00:31:23 ◼   ► - So Apple had previously forecast

00:31:25 ◼   ► that they would lose somewhere

00:31:27 ◼   ► between four to $8 billion in sales this quarter

00:31:30 ◼   ► for just stuff they couldn't fulfill.

00:31:32 ◼   ► But it ended up being just shy of that 4 billion.

00:31:35 ◼   ► So it was even better.

00:31:37 ◼   ► as is typical for them, like they make a regent

00:31:41 ◼   ► and then they always perform slightly better.

00:31:43 ◼   ► - I mean, they do some sandbagging.

00:31:45 ◼   ► I think that this was legit though.

00:31:46 ◼   ► I think that they were surprised when they made their,

00:31:50 ◼   ► it's not really a forecast,

00:31:51 ◼   ► but when they made their statements three months ago,

00:31:53 ◼   ► they were in the midst of,

00:31:55 ◼   ► or just coming out of shutdowns in Shanghai.

00:31:58 ◼   ► There were COVID shutdowns in Shanghai

00:31:59 ◼   ► at the factories there.

00:32:00 ◼   ► And they were really concerned about supply.

00:32:04 ◼   ► Because again, this is a number,

00:32:05 ◼   ► four to eight billion is what they said.

00:32:06 ◼   ► It was literally, there's $4 to $8 billion

00:32:09 ◼   ► we're gonna leave on the table

00:32:10 ◼   ► where people wanna buy our products

00:32:11 ◼   ► and we can't sell them products

00:32:13 ◼   ► 'cause we don't have them in our hands to give them.

00:32:15 ◼   ► And what ends up happening,

00:32:19 ◼   ► I thought one of the other telling moments

00:32:21 ◼   ► in the analyst call afterward is,

00:32:25 ◼   ► so the Mac gets assembled there.

00:32:27 ◼   ► The bulk of Macs are assembled in Shanghai.

00:32:29 ◼   ► So unlike other Apple products that are put together

00:32:33 ◼   ► in other places in China, we think of China as a monolith,

00:32:36 ◼   ► but it's not, there are factories

00:32:37 ◼   ► in all sorts of different places.

00:32:38 ◼   ► Most Mac assemblies in Shanghai,

00:32:41 ◼   ► and the Shanghai shutdowns happen is really bad for Apple,

00:32:44 ◼   ► really kind of stopped Mac production.

00:32:46 ◼   ► We all know, you order a Mac the last few months,

00:32:49 ◼   ► it's been like, good luck,

00:32:50 ◼   ► you'll get it in two months or three months.

00:32:53 ◼   ► It sounds like what happened is that those things

00:32:56 ◼   ► have started to resolve and they resolve faster

00:32:58 ◼   ► maybe than Apple had anticipated

00:33:00 ◼   ► when they made the $4 to $8 billion prediction.

00:33:02 ◼   ► And this all comes out of a statement that Tim Cook made

00:33:04 ◼   ► when somebody said, "Geez, the Mac had a really good run

00:33:08 ◼   ► there, but now it's down 10% this quarter.

00:33:11 ◼   ► What's going on?"

00:33:13 ◼   ► And Tim Cook's response was something like,

00:33:15 ◼   ► "Ha ha, oh, you should have seen it before.

00:33:18 ◼   ► We were really happy to get it to 10%."

00:33:20 ◼   ► So apparently the Mac was really down.

00:33:23 ◼   ► And then at the very end, they kind of pulled it out.

00:33:25 ◼   ► And I think that's probably where the,

00:33:27 ◼   ► we ended up under 4 billion in terms of stuff

00:33:30 ◼   ► we left on the table.

00:33:31 ◼   ► I think that maybe is where it came from,

00:33:33 ◼   ► is that the Mac bounced back a little bit faster

00:33:36 ◼   ► than they had feared.

00:33:37 ◼   ► And so what a way to spin a 10% down year over year number

00:33:40 ◼   ► for the Mac is to basically say,

00:33:42 ◼   ► "Look, this is not about Mac demand.

00:33:44 ◼   ► This is entirely about Mac supply."

00:33:46 ◼   ► And somebody said, "Well, what's the demand like?"

00:33:48 ◼   ► And they're like, "Huh, can't measure demand

00:33:51 ◼   ► if you don't have any supply.

00:33:52 ◼   ► Like we literally couldn't even tell you.

00:33:55 ◼   ► We're just guessing."

00:33:56 ◼   ► So I wouldn't say it was a bad quarter from the Mac

00:33:59 ◼   ► in that way, because I think that people wanted to buy Macs

00:34:03 ◼   ► and they just couldn't.

00:34:04 ◼   ► And then the only question is, did they lose those people?

00:34:06 ◼   ► Did those people not buy a Mac

00:34:08 ◼   ► and buy something else instead?

00:34:09 ◼   ► Or are they just in the queue waiting for their Mac to ship?

00:34:13 ◼   ► - CFO Luca Maestri created a great band name,

00:34:16 ◼   ► Cocktail of Headwinds.

00:34:18 ◼   ► That was how Luca-- - Yep, the Cocktail

00:34:20 ◼   ► of Headwinds.

00:34:21 ◼   ► - Described the various issues.

00:34:25 ◼   ► - It's quite a mixed metaphor, Cocktail of Headwinds.

00:34:28 ◼   ► How do you put wind in a cocktail?

00:34:29 ◼   ► And the ingredients of the cocktail,

00:34:31 ◼   ► It's year over year sales in Russia,

00:34:34 ◼   ► because there's no sales in Russia anymore.

00:34:36 ◼   ► They kept referring to it as like the situation in Russia

00:34:38 ◼   ► or whatever, but it's like they shut down in Russia.

00:34:41 ◼   ► So that's one.

00:34:43 ◼   ► It is supply chain, but that's broken in two.

00:34:45 ◼   ► It's the factory assembly supply chain stuff

00:34:48 ◼   ► that they dealt with that we just talked about.

00:34:50 ◼   ► And also the ongoing Silicon shortage as they call it,

00:34:54 ◼   ► or as we like to call it here, the legacy nodes.

00:34:57 ◼   ► - Legacy nodes.

00:34:58 ◼   ► - Those legacy nodes,

00:34:59 ◼   ► They're just out there being legacy nodes

00:35:01 ◼   ► and it's sometimes hard to get that Bluetooth chip

00:35:04 ◼   ► that you want or that wifi chip that you want

00:35:08 ◼   ► or whatever it is that's just a not interesting piece

00:35:11 ◼   ► of silicon, but they're hard to come by right now.

00:35:14 ◼   ► So those are part of the headwinds.

00:35:16 ◼   ► Foreign exchange is a headwind.

00:35:18 ◼   ► The dollar is very strong right now.

00:35:20 ◼   ► You may have noticed this, Myke.

00:35:22 ◼   ► Dollar's very strong right now.

00:35:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, I got a pay bump.

00:35:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's nice, nice for you.

00:35:28 ◼   ► - It's good for me.

00:35:29 ◼   ► It's bad for Apple in the sense that it makes

00:35:31 ◼   ► Apple's products either more expensive elsewhere

00:35:34 ◼   ► or less profitable.

00:35:36 ◼   ► - I wouldn't say it's bad.

00:35:37 ◼   ► Like what I will say is yes,

00:35:39 ◼   ► I'm sure that's a thing for them.

00:35:41 ◼   ► I would argue that Apple way over adjusts sometimes.

00:35:44 ◼   ► Like some of the product prices when you do the dollar

00:35:47 ◼   ► to like the pound to dollar conversion,

00:35:49 ◼   ► they are making good money.

00:35:51 ◼   ► - I agree.

00:35:52 ◼   ► But the point is that when the dollar gets stronger,

00:35:54 ◼   ► that good money becomes less good.

00:35:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, but they just adjust it.

00:35:59 ◼   ► - They don't worry about that. - So this is what I'm saying.

00:36:01 ◼   ► This is exactly what I'm saying.

00:36:03 ◼   ► Either they adjust their prices in market,

00:36:04 ◼   ► which makes the product less attractive,

00:36:08 ◼   ► or they're eating profit, and those are their choices.

00:36:11 ◼   ► So what they do is they do stuff like they hedge,

00:36:14 ◼   ► they buy a bunch of foreign currency

00:36:15 ◼   ► so that if the bad stuff goes up,

00:36:18 ◼   ► their other stuff goes down,

00:36:19 ◼   ► or reverse, if the bad stuff goes down,

00:36:21 ◼   ► their stuff goes up, and they kind of level it out.

00:36:23 ◼   ► They're making a bet on foreign currency

00:36:26 ◼   ► basically to just counteract the effects.

00:36:28 ◼   ► But foreign exchange is a headwind, it's in the cocktail,

00:36:30 ◼   ► and they said it could be as much as like $5 billion

00:36:33 ◼   ► difference to their bottom line next quarter,

00:36:36 ◼   ► because the dollar is so strong right now.

00:36:38 ◼   ► And if you're an American company trying to sell products

00:36:40 ◼   ► overseas, a strong dollar is not the best for you.

00:36:43 ◼   ► So yes, they're doing okay, but it is a headwind, right?

00:36:47 ◼   ► Because it makes everything a little more difficult

00:36:49 ◼   ► 'cause your product is either more expensive

00:36:51 ◼   ► or less profitable.

00:36:53 ◼   ► And those aren't good, those aren't what companies want.

00:36:56 ◼   ► - And of course, you know, talking about the demand side,

00:37:00 ◼   ► they are not aware of the fact right now

00:37:03 ◼   ► as if inflation or what do we call it, economic downturn,

00:37:08 ◼   ► is potentially affecting the demand

00:37:10 ◼   ► of some of these products, right?

00:37:11 ◼   ► 'Cause they can't supply them anyway,

00:37:13 ◼   ► so they don't even know.

00:37:14 ◼   ► - They don't know, right?

00:37:15 ◼   ► If you saw flagging interest in a MacBook Air

00:37:17 ◼   ► or something like that,

00:37:18 ◼   ► you would have to have MacBook Airs to sell.

00:37:21 ◼   ► Otherwise you can't measure that.

00:37:23 ◼   ► and they're only coming back now to being able to do that.

00:37:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, like I just, I looked at it,

00:37:28 ◼   ► I priced out like a MacBook Air today,

00:37:30 ◼   ► or kind of middling spec, end of August,

00:37:33 ◼   ► what you, before you'd get it.

00:37:35 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:37:36 ◼   ► - Apple is expecting less supply constraints

00:37:38 ◼   ► in the coming quarter,

00:37:40 ◼   ► which would be Q4, and that won't include iPhones, will it?

00:37:47 ◼   ► - It will probably only include a very small amount,

00:37:52 ◼   ► it depends on when they ship, but a very small amount.

00:37:53 ◼   ► It could include the first orders, right?

00:37:57 ◼   ► It could.

00:37:58 ◼   ► Like the pre-orders?

00:37:59 ◼   ► Depends on when they ship, when that quarter closes,

00:38:02 ◼   ► 'cause that quarter will close in late September.

00:38:04 ◼   ► So probably not a lot, a little bit, but not a lot.

00:38:07 ◼   ► And then the rest of them go into the holiday quarter,

00:38:09 ◼   ► which is their age quarter.

00:38:10 ◼   ► Into the holidays, yeah.

00:38:12 ◼   ► Okay, so it could, but what it will include

00:38:15 ◼   ► is MacBook Airs, right?

00:38:17 ◼   ► 'Cause they're not in this.

00:38:18 ◼   ► They missed the Q3 quarter we're talking about.

00:38:22 ◼   ► - Okay, Tim Cook told Emily Chang of Bloomberg

00:38:26 ◼   ► that Apple is going to be deliberate with spending

00:38:30 ◼   ► with the threat of recession looming,

00:38:32 ◼   ► but Apple believes in investing through downturns,

00:38:36 ◼   ► which I guess you can do if you have all the money.

00:38:39 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:38:40 ◼   ► - Well, that is a classic Apple line.

00:38:42 ◼   ► And it's also, I mean, this is the good investment advice,

00:38:44 ◼   ► which is when the stocks go down,

00:38:47 ◼   ► if you've got the ability, buy more stock

00:38:49 ◼   ► because you're supposed to buy it when it's low, right?

00:38:52 ◼   ► And how do you beat your competitors?

00:38:54 ◼   ► As well, if they're all tightening their belts

00:38:56 ◼   ► during the downturn,

00:38:57 ◼   ► and you've got a lot of cash laying around,

00:39:00 ◼   ► you can hire those people

00:39:02 ◼   ► and get ahead on the next product cycle,

00:39:05 ◼   ► and all your competitors have slowed down

00:39:06 ◼   ► and you are not.

00:39:09 ◼   ► I feel like this is all an act.

00:39:11 ◼   ► I feel like this is Tim Cook wanting to seem

00:39:15 ◼   ► like he's responsible for Wall Street.

00:39:18 ◼   ► But what they're not saying is that

00:39:20 ◼   ► they're laying people off.

00:39:21 ◼   ► they're saying that they'll be deliberate with hiring and maybe they won't expand as

00:39:25 ◼   ► fast. I saw a story that said like Apple...

00:39:28 ◼   ► I didn't see layoffs but I've seen hiring freezes.

00:39:31 ◼   ► Yeah, Apple has been increasing headcount by a lot and maybe they won't do that. I still

00:39:36 ◼   ► don't entirely buy that because one, I think it's kind of dumb because Apple has lots of

00:39:41 ◼   ► money and it's not like Apple... I mean Apple should be investing through the downturn.

00:39:47 ◼   ► This is when you go for the jugular of your competitors. It's like, we got all the money,

00:39:51 ◼   ► we can just sail right through this.

00:39:53 ◼   ► So I think it's walking a line of like wanting

00:39:55 ◼   ► to be responsible and seem responsible,

00:39:58 ◼   ► but also not missing an opportunity.

00:40:00 ◼   ► So I'm sure in key areas,

00:40:01 ◼   ► they are gonna keep hiring as they need to,

00:40:04 ◼   ► but maybe in less key areas, they'll slow it down

00:40:07 ◼   ► and that's fine.

00:40:09 ◼   ► - There are a lot of just in tech right now,

00:40:12 ◼   ► there are a lot of company acquisitions happening.

00:40:14 ◼   ► So there could be some of that kind of stuff.

00:40:16 ◼   ► Apple makes lots of small acquisitions

00:40:18 ◼   ► and this is a time to do that. - From time to time,

00:40:20 ◼   ► as they say.

00:40:21 ◼   ► - Actually, that was another little tea leaf reading thing

00:40:23 ◼   ► that happened is they get asked the question

00:40:26 ◼   ► about acquisitions all the time.

00:40:28 ◼   ► And this time they got asked that question

00:40:30 ◼   ► and his response was a little different.

00:40:32 ◼   ► He was sort of like, well, you know,

00:40:35 ◼   ► we look at stuff big and little, and we continue to do that.

00:40:39 ◼   ► It was this weirdly like way more noncommittal

00:40:43 ◼   ► than we usually get.

00:40:45 ◼   ► And maybe, you know, Tim was just in a mood, maybe.

00:40:49 ◼   ► - He was mad to be there.

00:40:50 ◼   ► But I definitely saw, or maybe he was just feeling fine,

00:40:54 ◼   ► feeling calm.

00:40:55 ◼   ► And so he was like, yeah, whatever.

00:40:57 ◼   ► But I definitely saw several people on Twitter who were like,

00:40:59 ◼   ► wait a second, did other people hear what I heard?

00:41:02 ◼   ► And it's like, I heard the tone difference.

00:41:04 ◼   ► It might not mean anything,

00:41:05 ◼   ► but if you're reading the tea leaves,

00:41:06 ◼   ► you gotta at least consider the possibility

00:41:08 ◼   ► that maybe what he was saying is,

00:41:11 ◼   ► well, maybe what he's saying is,

00:41:12 ◼   ► yeah, we are or have seriously considered larger

00:41:15 ◼   ► and larger acquisitions.

00:41:17 ◼   ► 'Cause that's the other thing they could do, right?

00:41:18 ◼   ► is if there's a competitor who Apple can swallow

00:41:23 ◼   ► that normally would be too expensive

00:41:25 ◼   ► but their stock took a hit, like, I mean, Netflix,

00:41:29 ◼   ► they could do it.

00:41:31 ◼   ► - Please, can we not go back?

00:41:33 ◼   ► - I know, I don't wanna go back there,

00:41:35 ◼   ► but that's the thing.

00:41:37 ◼   ► And I think maybe this is the answer

00:41:38 ◼   ► is maybe Apple doesn't wanna go back there either,

00:41:40 ◼   ► but you're Apple, you got all the money,

00:41:43 ◼   ► Netflix takes a huge stock hit.

00:41:45 ◼   ► You gotta look, right?

00:41:47 ◼   ► You gotta kick the tires and say,

00:41:48 ◼   ► "Well, should we do this?"

00:41:49 ◼   ► And maybe that's what Tim Cook's tone was.

00:41:51 ◼   ► It's not like we don't consider it,

00:41:53 ◼   ► but we generally don't do it.

00:41:55 ◼   ► And they don't, Beets was their big acquisition, right?

00:41:58 ◼   ► So I don't know, I'm just saying,

00:42:01 ◼   ► I thought that was interesting that they talked about it.

00:42:03 ◼   ► And when you talk about investing through a downturn,

00:42:05 ◼   ► that is one thing you could potentially see Apple doing

00:42:08 ◼   ► is if there is a competitor or a good fit

00:42:12 ◼   ► that looked too expensive for Apple,

00:42:15 ◼   ► and then they get hammered in their stock,

00:42:17 ◼   ► Guess what?

00:42:18 ◼   ► That's a good time for Apple to come in

00:42:20 ◼   ► and swallow them whole,

00:42:22 ◼   ► which they could do if they wanted to.

00:42:24 ◼   ► - Outside of Netflix,

00:42:25 ◼   ► is there anyone that you would consider for them?

00:42:29 ◼   ► - I don't know.

00:42:30 ◼   ► I mean, I feel like their entertainment stuff,

00:42:35 ◼   ► it's possible that they could buy somebody

00:42:40 ◼   ► who's got a big catalog of content

00:42:42 ◼   ► and intellectual property.

00:42:44 ◼   ► They would have to divest of a lot of legacy stuff

00:42:46 ◼   ► like TV stations and stuff.

00:42:48 ◼   ► So that's out there.

00:42:50 ◼   ► Look at areas where they're interested,

00:42:51 ◼   ► where they think that they could add something.

00:42:53 ◼   ► I mean, Netflix is a place where they are playing,

00:42:55 ◼   ► so it's possible.

00:42:57 ◼   ► If you look at, somebody in the Discord mentioned Peloton,

00:43:01 ◼   ► like maybe, right?

00:43:06 ◼   ► If they're really kind of feeling crappy

00:43:09 ◼   ► and Apple thinks that there's value to sort of suck them in

00:43:11 ◼   ► and turn that into more Apple fitness,

00:43:14 ◼   ► Peloton already announced that they're gonna

00:43:15 ◼   ► outsource the making of the bikes too so you could literally turn it into a

00:43:18 ◼   ► service business and and work with partners and walk away. I'm not sure that

00:43:23 ◼   ► I'm not sure Peloton I don't think Apple Peloton makes a good fit I think Amazon

00:43:27 ◼   ► Peloton is a better fit or Google. Yeah oh for sure I I mean let me just put it

00:43:32 ◼   ► this way I don't think anything's a good fit for Apple I really don't I don't

00:43:37 ◼   ► think anything's a good fit for Apple because Apple is so specific somebody in

00:43:43 ◼   ► I mean, Joe Steele mentioned Paramount.

00:43:46 ◼   ► It's like, yes, I think that Paramount or NBC Universal

00:43:49 ◼   ► or something like that, where it's like,

00:43:51 ◼   ► somebody just wants to unload or sell

00:43:53 ◼   ► and Apple will write a big check.

00:43:54 ◼   ► Although I think Apple's right now content

00:43:56 ◼   ► to write big checks for sports rights

00:43:58 ◼   ► and other stuff like that.

00:43:58 ◼   ► - And just content in general.

00:44:00 ◼   ► I don't think they need to buy catalogs.

00:44:01 ◼   ► I think they're happy just bidding a lot of money

00:44:03 ◼   ► for movies and TV shows.

00:44:05 ◼   ► - Right, the only thing would come

00:44:07 ◼   ► if they wanted a franchise,

00:44:08 ◼   ► if they wanted to own some franchises and stuff like that.

00:44:10 ◼   ► But like, they don't want to own CBS, right?

00:44:12 ◼   ► They don't want that.

00:44:13 ◼   ► They don't want a TV network.

00:44:15 ◼   ► So I don't know about that.

00:44:17 ◼   ► And yeah, Peloton or Netflix,

00:44:20 ◼   ► like would they be good fits at Apple?

00:44:21 ◼   ► I don't think they would be.

00:44:23 ◼   ► I'll throw in another one that somebody mentioned

00:44:25 ◼   ► in the Discord that I think is actually

00:44:27 ◼   ► might be a better fit for Apple.

00:44:30 ◼   ► I don't think it'll ever happen, but it's Tesla.

00:44:33 ◼   ► Like if Apple really wants to be in cars, there's a--

00:44:35 ◼   ► - I was gonna say a car company, right?

00:44:37 ◼   ► Like-- - Yeah.

00:44:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, or Rivian. - Yeah.

00:44:40 ◼   ► - You know, especially if their stock is really down,

00:44:43 ◼   ► Because the advantage is, well, Polestar is owned by a traditional car company, though.

00:44:47 ◼   ► But Tesla and Rivian are kind of out there on their own.

00:44:50 ◼   ► And again, if the purchase price was right, because that stock got hammered for some reason,

00:44:57 ◼   ► and Apple wants to be in cars, well, guess what?

00:45:01 ◼   ► Like, there are already two, at least, tech startup, maybe three if you throw in Lucid,

00:45:08 ◼   ► Tech startup, Apple's former PR head,

00:45:12 ◼   ► is the PR head at Lucid by the way.

00:45:14 ◼   ► Natalie, wow, she changed her name back to her maiden name.

00:45:19 ◼   ► Anyway, she's there, so she knows all about it.

00:45:22 ◼   ► You could do something like that, right?

00:45:24 ◼   ► Where Project Titan's like, "Oh, I don't know."

00:45:25 ◼   ► It's like, well, there are other companies

00:45:26 ◼   ► that are actually selling cars today

00:45:28 ◼   ► that are kind of Apple-y, kind of,

00:45:30 ◼   ► but doing their own thing that you could bring in

00:45:32 ◼   ► if you really wanted to do that.

00:45:34 ◼   ► But I think this is the fallacy of Apple acquisition talk,

00:45:36 ◼   ► which is most of them are bad ideas.

00:45:38 ◼   ► I'm sure they all get thrown around in Tim Cook's office

00:45:41 ◼   ► and then they go, nah, and then they move on.

00:45:44 ◼   ► And then what Apple really prefers to do

00:45:45 ◼   ► is those strategic buyouts.

00:45:48 ◼   ► But never say never, right?

00:45:49 ◼   ► Like if there is, everything's got a price, right?

00:45:52 ◼   ► I am sure, I'm sure there's a stock price

00:45:57 ◼   ► at which Apple would say,

00:45:59 ◼   ► maybe we should buy Netflix or Tesla or whoever, right?

00:46:03 ◼   ► I'm sure there is,

00:46:04 ◼   ► but it's probably lower than you think it is.

00:46:07 ◼   ► Probably Apple is not willing to go as high as you think

00:46:09 ◼   ► because the cost of integration is really high.

00:46:12 ◼   ► Apple has a very specific culture.

00:46:14 ◼   ► Apple has very rarely played that kind of game

00:46:18 ◼   ► where they like to buy people in technology

00:46:22 ◼   ► that are smart and integrate them into the Apple machine,

00:46:24 ◼   ► not just take something off of a retail shelf

00:46:27 ◼   ► and say, "Oh, it's Apple now."

00:46:28 ◼   ► - I don't want to be that guy 'cause I'm reading a book,

00:46:30 ◼   ► but I just wanted to bring this up

00:46:32 ◼   ► because it came up in the book, the After Steve book,

00:46:34 ◼   ► where they are talking about the Beats acquisition, right?

00:46:37 ◼   ► And that one made a lot of sense

00:46:41 ◼   ► because what they wanted was Beats Music

00:46:43 ◼   ► because Apple was starting to fall behind

00:46:45 ◼   ► and they apparently were trying to build

00:46:47 ◼   ► their own streaming music service

00:46:49 ◼   ► and it wasn't really getting far enough

00:46:53 ◼   ► and Tim Cook liked Beats Music and they just wanted that

00:46:56 ◼   ► but Jimmy Iovine wanted Apple to take all of it

00:47:00 ◼   ► they could get a lot of money out of that. And so they just packaged the whole thing

00:47:04 ◼   ► up and bought it. And then they got Beats and it's just like they've been able to, I

00:47:08 ◼   ► think they've actually been able to benefit from that quite a lot. And then they also

00:47:12 ◼   ► got Beats Music, which they turned into Apple Music. And so for me, I could only ever really

00:47:18 ◼   ► imagine them making a very large, splashy acquisition with that idea in mind. That's

00:47:23 ◼   ► why I don't think Netflix, because I don't think Apple owning Netflix would really help

00:47:30 ◼   ► them in the ways that they want Apple TV to be.

00:47:33 ◼   ► Right. And then they would have to be, you know, then they would be running the Netflix

00:47:37 ◼   ► business.

00:47:38 ◼   ► Which I don't think they want to do.

00:47:39 ◼   ► They, I don't think is necessary. I agree. In fact, what you just described sounds much

00:47:43 ◼   ► more like an electric car company, right?

00:47:45 ◼   ► Yes. And that's why I was bringing it up.

00:47:46 ◼   ► Which I think they've been trying and trying and trying to do when they haven't succeeded.

00:47:49 ◼   ► By the way, it's a follow-up.

00:47:50 ◼   ► And they need to follow up. And they need technology. And they don't have it right now.

00:47:53 ◼   ► And you could just pick it up and suddenly you've got factories and cars.

00:47:57 ◼   ► Yep.

00:47:58 ◼   ► and a technology stack that you can keep or throw away

00:48:00 ◼   ► as you see fit.

00:48:02 ◼   ► So Polestar, by the way, was owned entirely by Volvo

00:48:06 ◼   ► and they took it public.

00:48:08 ◼   ► So I'm sure Volvo still has very close ties

00:48:10 ◼   ► and owns a lot of it, but okay,

00:48:11 ◼   ► we'll throw that on the list, that's fine.

00:48:13 ◼   ► But like that, something like that is, I don't know.

00:48:15 ◼   ► I mean, we're gonna, our next segment is all about CarPlay

00:48:20 ◼   ► and Apple's ambitions in the auto,

00:48:25 ◼   ► But I will throw that out there just as an aside

00:48:29 ◼   ► that if there's any place I could see Apple making

00:48:31 ◼   ► a big high profile acquisition, it is cars,

00:48:36 ◼   ► just because I think there are some car companies out there

00:48:39 ◼   ► that are kind of independent

00:48:41 ◼   ► and sort of what Apple's trying to do

00:48:45 ◼   ► and that Apple might use as a shortcut

00:48:47 ◼   ► to get where it wants to go.

00:48:48 ◼   ► I'm not saying it's likely,

00:48:49 ◼   ► I'm just saying that maybe that's a better fit

00:48:51 ◼   ► than something like Netflix,

00:48:52 ◼   ► which again, I feel like if Netflix is down in the dumps,

00:48:55 ◼   ► Apple looks at it just to say, "Well, should we?" but I don't see why they would.

00:49:00 ◼   ► This episode of Upgrade is brought to you by Bombas.

00:49:04 ◼   ► Bombas' mission is simple, to make the most comfortable clothes ever and match every item

00:49:09 ◼   ► sold of an equal item donated.

00:49:11 ◼   ► So when you buy Bombas, you are giving to someone in need.

00:49:15 ◼   ► Bombas designed their socks, shirts, and underwear to be the clothes you can't wait to put

00:49:19 ◼   ► on every day.

00:49:21 ◼   ► Everything here makes a soft, seamless tagless and has a cozy feel.

00:49:24 ◼   ► There is a pair of Bombas socks for everything you do. They come in tons of options, like

00:49:28 ◼   ► comfy performance styles made with sweat wicking yarns, which mean that your feet stay cool

00:49:33 ◼   ► while the rest of you works up a sweat, and their no-show socks are designed for comfort

00:49:37 ◼   ► while being specifically engineered to never fall down, so let your ankles be free to soak

00:49:42 ◼   ► up the sunlight. Bombas' t-shirts are made with thoughtful design features like invisible

00:49:47 ◼   ► seams, soft fabrics and the perfect weights that they hang just right. Bombas' underwear

00:49:51 ◼   ► is breathable, it fits well and has a barely there feel. You might even forget they're

00:49:55 ◼   ► there, but in a good way.

00:49:57 ◼   ► And did you know that socks, underwear and t-shirts are three of the most requested clothing

00:50:01 ◼   ► items at homeless shelters? That is why Bombas donates one for every item you buy. So far

00:50:06 ◼   ► Bombas customers like you have helped donate over 50 million items of essential clothing.

00:50:12 ◼   ► I adore my Bombas socks. I wear their no-show socks so much especially in the summer. They

00:50:18 ◼   ► They are the most comfortable socks I've ever worn.

00:50:21 ◼   ► They're really well made and I love that they have this kind of padding at the back on the

00:50:25 ◼   ► ankle.

00:50:26 ◼   ► It works really well as somewhere to pull your socks up when you're putting them on.

00:50:30 ◼   ► But then it also keeps things really comfortable throughout the day.

00:50:33 ◼   ► My shoes don't rub on my ankles.

00:50:35 ◼   ► I love it.

00:50:36 ◼   ► It's fantastic.

00:50:37 ◼   ► Go to bombas.com/upgrade and you will get 20% off your first purchase.

00:50:42 ◼   ► That's B-O-M-B-A-S.com/upgrade for 20% off.

00:50:46 ◼   ► B-O-M-B-A-S dot com slash upgrade. Our thanks to Bombas for the support of this show and

00:50:52 ◼   ► all of Relay FM.

00:50:53 ◼   ► All right, it is time for an upgrade, some fun vertical about CarPlay. And joining me

00:51:00 ◼   ► now is Sam Abouel-Samid, who is the host of the Wheel Bearings podcast and somebody who

00:51:06 ◼   ► knows a lot about the auto industry. Sam, welcome.

00:51:12 ◼   ► Thank you, Jason. It's a pleasure to be here with you today.

00:51:14 ◼   ► good you've been listening to my various podcasts and sending me emails and

00:51:18 ◼   ► we've talked about this stuff and I wanted to just get you on upgrade to

00:51:20 ◼   ► talk about all the carplay things that Apple dropped at WWDC which are almost

00:51:25 ◼   ► like science fiction right it's like eventually at the end of next year you

00:51:30 ◼   ► might start to see cars with whatever this thing is that they didn't really

00:51:34 ◼   ► even give a name other than to say it's next-generation carplay it's kind of

00:51:38 ◼   ► interesting I guess the timeframes when you're talking about the auto industry

00:51:41 ◼   ► are a little bit like that right there they're more out there than maybe

00:51:44 ◼   ► the tech industry is used to? Yeah, you know, a big, you know, one of the big issues with anything

00:51:50 ◼   ► automotive is safety concerns. You know, compared to, you know, a consumer electronics device like

00:51:56 ◼   ► a smartphone or a tablet, you have to factor in safety validation for a lot of things because

00:52:04 ◼   ► when things go wrong, the consequences of mistakes can be life or death. You know, rarely if you're,

00:52:10 ◼   ► if Instagram crashes on you, will it result in you dying?

00:52:14 ◼   ► Or at least hopefully.

00:52:16 ◼   ► But if things go wrong with software in a car,

00:52:19 ◼   ► the consequences can be very severe.

00:52:21 ◼   ► And so they do tend to spend more time on safety validation.

00:52:26 ◼   ► And especially when you're looking at something

00:52:28 ◼   ► like this new version of CarPlay,

00:52:30 ◼   ► there's also regulatory concerns,

00:52:33 ◼   ► particularly around the instrument cluster.

00:52:36 ◼   ► - That's one of the things that struck me about it

00:52:37 ◼   ► is that they are saying the new generation of CarPlay

00:52:41 ◼   ► is going to show,

00:52:42 ◼   ► it's gonna be able to basically control the car

00:52:44 ◼   ► and also show status live from the car,

00:52:48 ◼   ► which obviously modern CarPlay doesn't really do that.

00:52:52 ◼   ► Modern CarPlay is just sort of a phone interface,

00:52:56 ◼   ► not a car interface, if that makes sense.

00:52:59 ◼   ► And this is something very different.

00:53:02 ◼   ► We'll start with what was your first reaction

00:53:07 ◼   ► when you saw Apple doing this, were you thinking,

00:53:09 ◼   ► this is interesting?

00:53:10 ◼   ► Were you skeptical of it?

00:53:12 ◼   ► I mean, it's so far out there that we have lots of time

00:53:14 ◼   ► to form opinions about what they dropped in June.

00:53:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, both really interesting and some skepticism,

00:53:22 ◼   ► particularly as I read what little information

00:53:25 ◼   ► they actually provided and rewatch the video

00:53:28 ◼   ► because they haven't actually told us a whole lot,

00:53:30 ◼   ► but there are a couple of important details

00:53:32 ◼   ► in what they did say.

00:53:34 ◼   ► One is the focus that this is still running on your device.

00:53:39 ◼   ► And this is where the skepticism comes from.

00:53:41 ◼   ► The idea of redesigning the interface to enable it

00:53:46 ◼   ► to work across different display form factors in the car

00:53:51 ◼   ► is an important thing because what we're seeing now

00:53:53 ◼   ► as we get into new vehicles is a lot more variation

00:53:58 ◼   ► in the form factor.

00:53:59 ◼   ► It used to be that you would have an instrument cluster

00:54:02 ◼   ► directly in front of the driver

00:54:03 ◼   ► And then somewhere in the middle of the car,

00:54:05 ◼   ► you would have a display screen,

00:54:07 ◼   ► modern vehicles, it's usually a touchscreen, but not always.

00:54:11 ◼   ► And one rectangular, usually landscape display in the middle

00:54:16 ◼   ► that was used for your infotainment system.

00:54:19 ◼   ► And that's where CarPlay, and much of what I'm about to say

00:54:23 ◼   ► also applies to Android Auto.

00:54:25 ◼   ► They project information on there,

00:54:27 ◼   ► as well as whatever is built into the car

00:54:29 ◼   ► is also displayed on there.

00:54:32 ◼   ► And the thing to remember about both CarPlay and Android Auto, as opposed to Android Automotive,

00:54:37 ◼   ► which is something different, is that the way you can think about these two systems

00:54:44 ◼   ► is they act sort of like device driver layers.

00:54:50 ◼   ► Because different vehicles, you know, a lot of vehicles today have touch screens, but

00:54:54 ◼   ► not all of them.

00:54:55 ◼   ► Some of them have some sort of central control knob.

00:54:57 ◼   ► Some of them have gesture controls.

00:54:58 ◼   ► You know, you've got a variety of different interface systems.

00:55:04 ◼   ► And what CarPlay and Android Auto do is they translate whatever the control signals are

00:55:11 ◼   ► from the driver, whatever bit of hardware they have, whether it's a touch interface

00:55:16 ◼   ► or a touchpad or a mouse-like device, into a common set of signals that the phone understands.

00:55:24 ◼   ► And that interfaces with the apps on the phone.

00:55:26 ◼   ► And then the phone projects back what is going to be displayed on the screen.

00:55:31 ◼   ► So it acts as that intermediary.

00:55:35 ◼   ► And my understanding of what little they've said so far, and I don't know if you've

00:55:41 ◼   ► from any of the conversations you've had with Apple, they haven't responded to my

00:55:44 ◼   ► inquiries, but if they've told you anything different, is that this next generation is

00:55:50 ◼   ► still a smartphone projection system.

00:55:52 ◼   ► the same type of approach, but tailored to be able to reformat itself to different display

00:56:01 ◼   ► interfaces, so to project onto the instrument cluster, which is more and more often now

00:56:07 ◼   ► a digital, an LCD display, and to portrait displays and landscape displays, and even

00:56:15 ◼   ► one of the renders they showed that showed a pillar-to-pillar display across the entire

00:56:21 ◼   ► dashboard, which is funny, listening to a lot of different podcasts, I heard a lot of

00:56:25 ◼   ► people express skepticism about that one. You know, "Oh, that's, you know, something

00:56:29 ◼   ► like that's never going to happen." Well, actually, that's actually already in production

00:56:32 ◼   ► now in China on the new Lincoln Zephyr sedan, and it's coming to other vehicles as well.

00:56:38 ◼   ► So that type of display does exist today and will be coming to more vehicles.

00:56:43 ◼   ► Yeah. So one of the things about the—I had some theories, and I'm curious what your

00:56:49 ◼   ► your theories are, but I think we should at least touch

00:56:51 ◼   ► on Android Automotive for people who don't know about it

00:56:54 ◼   ► and the differences there.

00:56:56 ◼   ► And the way I got to thinking about Android Automotive

00:56:59 ◼   ► and whether Apple would ever consider doing something

00:57:02 ◼   ► like that is when I started to think about the fact

00:57:05 ◼   ► that you can't ship a car without a brain

00:57:09 ◼   ► and say, bring your own brain,

00:57:11 ◼   ► bring your own smartphone, right?

00:57:13 ◼   ► You can't do it. - Correct.

00:57:14 ◼   ► - And not just the low level stuff,

00:57:16 ◼   ► but like you can't say this car has no interface

00:57:19 ◼   ► unless you bring a smartphone, whether it's a rental car,

00:57:21 ◼   ► what like you need to be able to turn it on and use it.

00:57:24 ◼   ► And something needs to run that.

00:57:26 ◼   ► And if you've got a big touch screen on,

00:57:29 ◼   ► or even just a display that's not a touch interface,

00:57:32 ◼   ► all that stuff has to be driven from somewhere.

00:57:34 ◼   ► And what Google did is build Android Automotive,

00:57:38 ◼   ► which is this lower level operating system

00:57:42 ◼   ► that is integrated into the car.

00:57:44 ◼   ► It doesn't come with your phone, right?

00:57:46 ◼   ► it's in the car and that that is a different approach.

00:57:50 ◼   ► That's the bottom up, I guess, a little bit more

00:57:52 ◼   ► than top-down approach that Apple has done

00:57:54 ◼   ► and that Google has done with Android Auto.

00:57:57 ◼   ► Have I summarized it right?

00:57:58 ◼   ► Like what Android Automotive is?

00:58:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, so today, most cars on the road built

00:58:04 ◼   ► in the last decade use either BlackBerry's QNX

00:58:08 ◼   ► or some flavor of Linux to power their infotainment systems

00:58:13 ◼   ► and also instrument clusters.

00:58:15 ◼   ► And these are generally set up

00:58:18 ◼   ► as real-time operating systems,

00:58:19 ◼   ► especially for the cluster.

00:58:20 ◼   ► For the cluster, it has to be a real-time operating system.

00:58:23 ◼   ► So that means that everything is tied to time slices.

00:58:28 ◼   ► You don't need that necessarily for the infotainment.

00:58:31 ◼   ► If something happens a few milliseconds

00:58:34 ◼   ► or 100 milliseconds or a second later,

00:58:36 ◼   ► it doesn't matter so much for what's on that center screen.

00:58:39 ◼   ► But the stuff that's in front of you,

00:58:42 ◼   ► that stuff has to be real time.

00:58:44 ◼   ► And this is where the regulatory part comes in

00:58:46 ◼   ► because there are certain requirements

00:58:48 ◼   ► for things that have to be displayed.

00:58:52 ◼   ► Like for example, alert warning,

00:58:55 ◼   ► diagnostic warning lamps.

00:58:57 ◼   ► When you start up your car today,

00:59:00 ◼   ► you'll see a bunch of lamps that will flash on

00:59:02 ◼   ► for a couple of seconds.

00:59:03 ◼   ► That's part of the power on self test.

00:59:05 ◼   ► And then assuming everything's okay,

00:59:07 ◼   ► then most of those go out.

00:59:09 ◼   ► And then when a problem is detected

00:59:12 ◼   ► in some system in the vehicle,

00:59:13 ◼   ► then it'll turn on one or more of those lamps

00:59:16 ◼   ► and say, "Hey, here's what's going on."

00:59:19 ◼   ► That same sort of stuff, that stuff is mandated by law.

00:59:24 ◼   ► And so that has to be there.

00:59:25 ◼   ► So there has to be, as you said,

00:59:27 ◼   ► at least a minimal interface to begin with.

00:59:30 ◼   ► You cannot assume that there is going to be

00:59:33 ◼   ► any particular device that a driver's gonna bring along

00:59:35 ◼   ► and plug into the car.

00:59:37 ◼   ► - Right, and if I wanna turn on my windshield wipers,

00:59:40 ◼   ► I can't be like, "Sorry, that's a feature

00:59:41 ◼   ► "only available with a smartphone."

00:59:42 ◼   ► You can't do it. - Exactly, yes.

00:59:44 ◼   ► - So there has to be something there.

00:59:46 ◼   ► And so what Google did is say, "All right,

00:59:48 ◼   ► "can we get in there?"

00:59:51 ◼   ► I wanna mention, by the way, you mentioned QNX

00:59:53 ◼   ► and BlackBerry, and people may laugh a little bit

00:59:56 ◼   ► at BlackBerry, it's the old times.

00:59:57 ◼   ► QNX, yeah, it's absolutely used in this.

00:59:59 ◼   ► And I'll just point out, Apple set up a whole,

01:00:03 ◼   ► this is a story people may forget,

01:00:04 ◼   ► Apple set up a whole building next door to QNX,

01:00:08 ◼   ► and they didn't ever talk about why,

01:00:10 ◼   ► and everybody assumes it's Project Titan, the car project.

01:00:12 ◼   ► But Apple definitely at some point

01:00:16 ◼   ► was very much interested in people

01:00:19 ◼   ► who had experience building real-time operating systems.

01:00:22 ◼   ► Whether they still have those people,

01:00:24 ◼   ► who knows that Project Titan stuff

01:00:26 ◼   ► has gone through 80 different iterations,

01:00:29 ◼   ► but I'm just saying it's not impossible

01:00:32 ◼   ► that Apple has had a program to build its own version

01:00:36 ◼   ► of a real-time operating system for cars at some point,

01:00:40 ◼   ► whether they have it, whether they did it,

01:00:41 ◼   ► whether they gave up, I have no idea,

01:00:43 ◼   ► but they set up an office in Canada right next to QNX,

01:00:47 ◼   ► where they had the QNX people working.

01:00:49 ◼   ► So it's definitely been on their radar at least,

01:00:52 ◼   ► even if it's, I mean, who knows about today,

01:00:55 ◼   ► but it's definitely been out there.

01:00:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, absolutely.

01:00:58 ◼   ► And QNX, long before it was owned by BlackBerry,

01:01:00 ◼   ► or I think it was still called Research in Motion

01:01:03 ◼   ► when they purchased it, when they acquired it.

01:01:05 ◼   ► And QNX goes way back and it was designed

01:01:08 ◼   ► from the ground up as a super reliable

01:01:11 ◼   ► and secure operating, real-time operating system.

01:01:14 ◼   ► So it's used in all kinds of applications

01:01:17 ◼   ► that go well beyond consumer electronics devices or cars.

01:01:21 ◼   ► It's used in things like clear reactors

01:01:24 ◼   ► and all kinds of other stuff where reliability is paramount.

01:01:28 ◼   ► - Where you can't have a bad acting app

01:01:29 ◼   ► sort of prevent your speedometer from updating

01:01:32 ◼   ► or your nuclear reactor from working properly.

01:01:33 ◼   ► Yeah, it's important.

01:01:35 ◼   ► It's kind of important.

01:01:36 ◼   ► So what do you think?

01:01:38 ◼   ► Knowing what we know about Apple,

01:01:40 ◼   ► and we don't know everything, right?

01:01:42 ◼   ► 'Cause we don't know about Project Titan,

01:01:43 ◼   ► and we don't know what their ultimate goal is,

01:01:45 ◼   ► and we don't know what all they've tried

01:01:47 ◼   ► and what they've ruled out.

01:01:49 ◼   ► But I have to say, when I looked at this, I thought,

01:01:52 ◼   ► are they gonna do their own version of Android Auto?

01:01:55 ◼   ► And Android Auto is open source,

01:01:56 ◼   ► and you can just take it and walk away with it

01:01:58 ◼   ► and do stuff with it.

01:01:59 ◼   ► and it's a very Google-y kind of thing,

01:02:01 ◼   ► and I can't envision Apple ever doing that.

01:02:03 ◼   ► I don't know, can you envision Apple going to automakers

01:02:08 ◼   ► and saying, "Well, you know, we're not gonna let you

01:02:12 ◼   ► "take the code, you know, take all,"

01:02:14 ◼   ► or maybe some of the source code, but it's not open source,

01:02:16 ◼   ► but like, but we're gonna go and say,

01:02:18 ◼   ► "Why don't you use our thing instead,

01:02:20 ◼   ► "'cause our thing is nicer, and it still does

01:02:22 ◼   ► "all the things that Android Automotive does."

01:02:24 ◼   ► Is that even plausible?

01:02:27 ◼   ► I think it's plausible, but I think it's unlikely.

01:02:30 ◼   ► And I'll tell you why.

01:02:31 ◼   ► One of the things that they talked about

01:02:36 ◼   ► during the presentation was they brought up this statistic

01:02:40 ◼   ► that 79% of new car buyers insist on having

01:02:43 ◼   ► Apple CarPlay in their vehicles.

01:02:45 ◼   ► And that is true up to a point.

01:02:48 ◼   ► What it's implying is that new car,

01:02:52 ◼   ► yes, the reality is most of the people that buy new cars

01:02:57 ◼   ► probably do want carplay.

01:02:58 ◼   ► But you also have to consider the fact

01:03:01 ◼   ► that the vast majority of people

01:03:03 ◼   ► don't actually buy new cars.

01:03:04 ◼   ► Most people never buy a new car in their lifespan.

01:03:06 ◼   ► Most people only buy used cars.

01:03:08 ◼   ► And used car sales outnumber new car sales every year

01:03:11 ◼   ► by about three to four to one.

01:03:15 ◼   ► And when you look at the, you know,

01:03:18 ◼   ► downstream at the market, you know,

01:03:20 ◼   ► once you get past the new car buyers,

01:03:22 ◼   ► used car buyers are probably, you know,

01:03:26 ◼   ► more likely to use an Android device, you know, because they're, you know, they're more concerned

01:03:30 ◼   ► about how much they're spending. And, you know, let's be honest, you know, I'm an Android user,

01:03:34 ◼   ► but I know that, you know, cost is a factor and is one of the main factors in why a lot of people

01:03:40 ◼   ► use Android. It's, you know, it's not necessarily my main factor, but for a lot of people it is.

01:03:46 ◼   ► But, and they still want to be able to have this kind of capability. And for automakers,

01:03:52 ◼   ► Yes, they want to be able to sell those new cars to people that want to use iPhones, but

01:03:59 ◼   ► they also are concerned about the used car buyers because that impacts what we call the

01:04:05 ◼   ► residual value of the car, the resale value of the car.

01:04:09 ◼   ► Once the car gets sold, once the original owner trades it in or sells it, it's going

01:04:16 ◼   ► to be bought by somebody else.

01:04:18 ◼   ► person may very well want to use Android Auto. And so if they did a full-blown operating

01:04:28 ◼   ► system like Android Automotive, if Apple did this, it would really need to support Android

01:04:35 ◼   ► Auto as well. Because if it doesn't, then that's going to have an impact on residual

01:04:44 ◼   ► values, which impacts the automakers in terms of how they can do their lease pricing, for

01:04:50 ◼   ► example, because that's how they figure out your payments for a lease.

01:04:54 ◼   ► Because they're knowing the residual value they get back when they put that in a fleet,

01:04:59 ◼   ► sell it to CarMax or whatever they need to do after the lease is over.

01:05:02 ◼   ► Right. And I have a hard time believing that Apple would want to support Android Auto on

01:05:08 ◼   ► their fancy new operating system.

01:05:11 ◼   ► To be fair, Android Automotive does support CarPlay.

01:05:18 ◼   ► So I feel like that almost there's this universal player thing, which is attaching it to a brain,

01:05:24 ◼   ► and that maybe even – that's a great open question.

01:05:28 ◼   ► If Apple's going to do this and get carmakers to sign on, they've got to support Android

01:05:33 ◼   ► Auto.

01:05:34 ◼   ► I think they would.

01:05:35 ◼   ► If that was the only issue, I think they'd be like, "It's fine.

01:05:37 ◼   ► It's going to be…"

01:05:38 ◼   ► One of those typical Apple things where it's going to be like, "Well, it's better with

01:05:41 ◼   ► an iPhone, but sure, sure, you can use your Android phone, but it's better with an iPhone,

01:05:45 ◼   ► of course, and you should have that. All right, so possible, but not necessarily super plausible.

01:05:51 ◼   ► I had a thought, which is like another way where Apple could do this, which is theming,

01:05:58 ◼   ► which is like, okay, Apple's showing us a bunch of stuff, and they said, "Oh, you've

01:06:04 ◼   ► got all these different controls you can use." And I kept thinking, like, is it all carplay,

01:06:10 ◼   ► Or is there a scenario here where Apple basically is going to have its onboard iPhone brain,

01:06:17 ◼   ► and then also it works with car makers to have sort of compatible themes that will make

01:06:26 ◼   ► it seem like a seamless whole even though it's actually kind of not?

01:06:31 ◼   ► I was trying to think like, "How else could you do this?"

01:06:33 ◼   ► And that was one of the thoughts I had.

01:06:34 ◼   ► It's like, "Oh, I know that that looks--oh look, I change it here and it changes it there."

01:06:39 ◼   ► "Yeah, but is that still CarPlay or is it using the different CarPlay theme that the

01:06:45 ◼   ► car maker has installed on their real-time operating system?"

01:06:48 ◼   ► Yeah, no, the theming is absolutely a possibility and actually that's more plausible, I think,

01:06:55 ◼   ► than some of the other things. Because even today, a lot of automakers already provide

01:07:01 ◼   ► the ability to select different themes for your instrument cluster. And when you go through

01:07:07 ◼   ► the drive modes, for example, and you go through your eco mode or your normal or comfort mode

01:07:11 ◼   ► or your sport mode, you'll see the instrument cluster completely change the way it looks,

01:07:16 ◼   ► you know, with different color schemes and everything.

01:07:19 ◼   ► So I can definitely see a world where, you know, this next generation of CarPlay projects

01:07:27 ◼   ► different themes, you know, that would integrate with whatever OS the automaker is running.

01:07:33 ◼   ► So all the stuff that's in the cluster is still coming directly from the car.

01:07:38 ◼   ► It doesn't have to go back through the phone and then back into the car again, but it's

01:07:45 ◼   ► using the phone to figure out what is, for lack of a better term, what is the style sheet

01:07:51 ◼   ► we want to apply to this data?

01:07:53 ◼   ► And so that, I think, is a real plausible scenario.

01:07:58 ◼   ► Because obviously this is not the kind of thing where Apple is going to roll in and

01:08:04 ◼   ► say, "Oh, we've hacked into your system and replaced it."

01:08:08 ◼   ► These are all like, "We're working with the car makers.

01:08:11 ◼   ► We're going to have partners here."

01:08:13 ◼   ► So I'm glad that you think that this is a possibility because that was when I was getting

01:08:17 ◼   ► into my conspiracy theories about this.

01:08:19 ◼   ► That was kind of where I ended up is, sure, it could be Project Titan and it could be

01:08:23 ◼   ► a real-time operating system.

01:08:24 ◼   ► I mean, it's possible, but you could do this by making partnerships with automakers and

01:08:31 ◼   ► having something like theming or some, and maybe even a special kind of, depending on

01:08:37 ◼   ► what operating system they're using, and that this is a year out, year plus out, some kind

01:08:43 ◼   ► of a data channel or a back channel or something where there's special stuff that the iPhone

01:08:48 ◼   ► can pass on to whatever operating system it's running.

01:08:51 ◼   ► there's some sort of a, I don't know a lot about those RTOSs, but like a

01:08:54 ◼   ► plugin architecture or a version that has the ability to communicate with the

01:08:59 ◼   ► iPhone at a deeper level and give it more detail and have the iPhone

01:09:04 ◼   ► send things to it, including themes and all of that, where it's more like where

01:09:09 ◼   ► CarPlay 2.0 or whatever this is, CarPlay Advanced, is more tightly

01:09:16 ◼   ► integrated with the car's existing real-time operating system if it's a

01:09:20 ◼   ► partner that has worked with Apple on that. And the advantage of that for the

01:09:25 ◼   ► car maker is they look good working with Apple without having to give up that

01:09:31 ◼   ► part of their car to Apple because it opens up that can of worms of like well

01:09:36 ◼   ► then what does it look like when the Apple product isn't there? Is it super

01:09:39 ◼   ► generic? What about Android? Is that the most plausible scenario of what Apple is

01:09:45 ◼   ► not describing when they show this and don't tell us what's happening? Is that

01:09:48 ◼   ► the most plausible scenario? I think so and and you know to give you an example of how

01:09:53 ◼   ► that might work, last fall GM announced something that they call Altify, which is their new

01:10:00 ◼   ► application platform for vehicles and it's rolling out next year starting with the new

01:10:03 ◼   ► Chevy Blazer EV. And essentially what this is, you know, if you know how Android is structured,

01:10:10 ◼   ► it's running Linux underneath and there's this layer, this application, this API layer

01:10:17 ◼   ► But, and I think iOS is fairly similar.

01:10:22 ◼   ► You've got the kernel underneath, and then there's this layer of APIs that applications

01:10:27 ◼   ► can get data from and then send commands to.

01:10:32 ◼   ► And this is what GM is doing as they move to a more centralized computer architecture.

01:10:37 ◼   ► Today, vehicles, most vehicles have anywhere from 50 to 100 or more individual computers

01:10:44 ◼   ► scattered around the vehicles for all the different functions, because it's been kind

01:10:47 ◼   ► of put together piecemeal over the last 30 or 40 years.

01:10:51 ◼   ► And so they're transitioning to consolidating that into a few large compute clusters.

01:10:56 ◼   ► And running on this for Altify, it's going to be running on Red Hat Linux underneath

01:11:02 ◼   ► with this Altify layer that all the applications, all the stuff that used to run on all these

01:11:07 ◼   ► discrete ECUs is now going to be running on one computer and instead of those applications

01:11:15 ◼   ► directly accessing the sensor data or the actuators, it'll do it by an API call to

01:11:21 ◼   ► Altify, which will give the data back and then it'll send a command back for what

01:11:24 ◼   ► to do.

01:11:26 ◼   ► And this is, I think this is kind of the way that you might see this next generation CarPlay

01:11:32 ◼   ► implemented where it has direct access through APIs to vehicle data. It can send through

01:11:41 ◼   ► style sheets or themes. And this could also be how you might do things like,

01:11:47 ◼   ► one of the things they talked about was operating your climate control using Siri or doing other

01:11:56 ◼   ► functions, other vehicle functions through Siri, you would use your wake word and then

01:12:03 ◼   ► it would send that request into the Altify layer and execute it that way.

01:12:08 ◼   ► Right. It's something like sending your thermostat on the touchscreen, another thing

01:12:13 ◼   ► where it could be an overlay that is actually from the car or it could be that if it's

01:12:20 ◼   ► something that doesn't really require the real-time component, that it's just a…

01:12:25 ◼   ► In the end, it's talking to the car operating system and saying, "What's the current thermostat?"

01:12:30 ◼   ► and now, like, "Here's a new setting for you."

01:12:33 ◼   ► Which sounds, again, why you need partners, right?

01:12:35 ◼   ► Because unless there's a big standard, which there could be, but it sounds to me more like

01:12:40 ◼   ► the kind of thing where they shake hands and say, "Okay, we're going to follow your spec,"

01:12:44 ◼   ► or "You're going to follow our spec," or "We're going to find a place to do that in common."

01:12:48 ◼   ► That Ultify thing is really interesting because that's the idea of GM saying, "All right,

01:12:54 ◼   ► We need to have a tech strategy that doesn't integrate a bunch of OEM parts. Like for the

01:12:59 ◼   ► 21st century, what is our car base? So many of the reasons you know better than everyone

01:13:05 ◼   ► as somebody who is focused on the auto industry, the worst user experiences about cars, at

01:13:12 ◼   ► least in my – tell me if I'm right or wrong – I find the worst user experience

01:13:16 ◼   ► about cars is all because things aren't integrated properly. And you end up with the

01:13:20 ◼   ► proverbial dashboard with three on/off buttons on it?

01:13:24 ◼   ► Oh, it's only going to get better, Jason. Right now, there are cars you can get that

01:13:30 ◼   ► you can simultaneously run three different digital voice assistants.

01:13:34 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, right. That's right.

01:13:36 ◼   ► You know, driving a Ford vehicle right now, you can go out and you can use the built-in

01:13:44 ◼   ► voice recognition for a whole bunch of functions.

01:13:47 ◼   ► They also now have built in Alexa voice services.

01:13:52 ◼   ► So you can say, "Madame A, please raise the temperature,"

01:13:57 ◼   ► or "Madame A, please play your favorite band

01:14:01 ◼   ► from Amazon Music," or whatever.

01:14:04 ◼   ► Or at the same time, I can also just say,

01:14:08 ◼   ► "Hey G, do many of the same things."

01:14:12 ◼   ► and on GM cars that have Android automotive now,

01:14:16 ◼   ► I can jump back and forth

01:14:18 ◼   ► and use any of the three wake words to do this.

01:14:21 ◼   ► And then if you have an iPhone plugged in instead

01:14:26 ◼   ► into an Android automotive vehicle,

01:14:27 ◼   ► now you have a fourth with, hey, Schlomo.

01:14:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I guess the opposite extreme

01:14:34 ◼   ► would be something like Tesla,

01:14:36 ◼   ► where they've just decided, which on the one hand,

01:14:39 ◼   ► Tesla, what I appreciate about that

01:14:41 ◼   ► is the whole widget kind of approach that Tesla has taken

01:14:44 ◼   ► where it's like, no, no, no, we're doing this.

01:14:46 ◼   ► It's gonna be unified.

01:14:46 ◼   ► We're thinking about this from the top down

01:14:50 ◼   ► and it's gonna be what it is.

01:14:51 ◼   ► The downside of that is,

01:14:53 ◼   ► yeah, there aren't three voice assistants on the Tesla.

01:14:56 ◼   ► I don't think there are any, but they also refuse-

01:14:59 ◼   ► - There is some voice rack, but it doesn't work very well.

01:15:01 ◼   ► - Right, well, and they refuse to use Android Auto

01:15:06 ◼   ► or CarPlay, which I also find infuriating

01:15:09 ◼   ► because again, I think it's a user experience problem

01:15:13 ◼   ► on the other side, which is like, look, it's my phone.

01:15:15 ◼   ► Like having driven a Tesla for a couple of weeks last year,

01:15:19 ◼   ► I have my podcasts in Overcast

01:15:21 ◼   ► and I would like to play them with that interface.

01:15:24 ◼   ► And Tesla's like, no, use Bluetooth.

01:15:28 ◼   ► Or I have Apple music.

01:15:29 ◼   ► It's like, well, we got a Spotify app here.

01:15:31 ◼   ► You could switch to Spotify for your car.

01:15:33 ◼   ► No, I'm not gonna do that.

01:15:35 ◼   ► So that's a frustration,

01:15:36 ◼   ► But at least they have that kind of high level of,

01:15:39 ◼   ► we're taking care of everything.

01:15:41 ◼   ► Whereas a lot of the cars, it feels very much like,

01:15:43 ◼   ► for obvious reasons, it's been built up over years

01:15:46 ◼   ► and years and years.

01:15:47 ◼   ► And the whole idea of like, I take this part from over here

01:15:50 ◼   ► and I take this part from over there, and it's like,

01:15:51 ◼   ► oh, now we've got a computer in this part.

01:15:53 ◼   ► Well, we've got one in this part too,

01:15:55 ◼   ► but they don't really talk to each other.

01:15:57 ◼   ► And that gets back to the thing that I get in my mom's car.

01:16:00 ◼   ► And I try to turn off the radio

01:16:02 ◼   ► when I turn off the air conditioning,

01:16:03 ◼   ► because there's two identically sized power buttons

01:16:07 ◼   ► right next to each other.

01:16:09 ◼   ► But they run completely different systems.

01:16:11 ◼   ► - That integration is something that's starting to happen.

01:16:14 ◼   ► And approaches like Ultify

01:16:17 ◼   ► and some other manufacturers are doing

01:16:19 ◼   ► will help with that by bringing it all together

01:16:23 ◼   ► on a common computing platform.

01:16:25 ◼   ► And I think that's gonna be a key going forward

01:16:28 ◼   ► as we move into this era of electric vehicles.

01:16:32 ◼   ► in the past, product differentiation used to come through the way a car looked, the

01:16:37 ◼   ► way a car handled and rode, the way the engine performed and sounded.

01:16:42 ◼   ► And at least from a ride and handling and powertrain perspective, a lot of that falls

01:16:46 ◼   ► away with electrification because all electric motors basically feel the same.

01:16:52 ◼   ► And so now they want to find different ways to create some differentiation.

01:16:57 ◼   ► And part of that is allowing the user to personalize their experience in the vehicle and by giving

01:17:04 ◼   ► them options.

01:17:05 ◼   ► You know, the reality is that, yeah, you may have three or four assistants available to

01:17:09 ◼   ► you in the vehicle going forward, but you're probably going to pick one and go with that

01:17:14 ◼   ► one.

01:17:15 ◼   ► And that's fine.

01:17:16 ◼   ► And it works just fine.

01:17:18 ◼   ► Pick the one that you like and that works best for you.

01:17:21 ◼   ► And I think that's actually a good solution.

01:17:24 ◼   ► that extends to doing things like themes,

01:17:26 ◼   ► different graphics schemes and so on.

01:17:30 ◼   ► - Well, in the end, I mean, this is a tech analysis of it

01:17:35 ◼   ► but I think it works when you talk about user experience

01:17:38 ◼   ► in general, which is nobody cares.

01:17:42 ◼   ► I know there are people listening to this podcast

01:17:43 ◼   ► who do care, but for the most part,

01:17:47 ◼   ► nobody cares about how that happened.

01:17:50 ◼   ► They just care that it happened.

01:17:51 ◼   ► And so like if you step into a car in 2024,

01:17:56 ◼   ► and it's got CarPlay on the dash,

01:17:58 ◼   ► and it's got the Apple design theme that you chose,

01:18:01 ◼   ► and it lights up all the dashboard items,

01:18:04 ◼   ► and you're like, "Ah, yes, CarPlay is everywhere."

01:18:07 ◼   ► It doesn't really matter

01:18:08 ◼   ► what the underlying operating system is,

01:18:11 ◼   ► and whether it's that the map that's in that screen

01:18:14 ◼   ► that I grabbed from the keynote of like Apple Maps

01:18:17 ◼   ► is running right behind the steering wheel,

01:18:19 ◼   ► but there's the fact that it's in Drive,

01:18:21 ◼   ► and the miles per hour are on it.

01:18:23 ◼   ► And like, okay, well, those are actually coming

01:18:26 ◼   ► from the real-time operating system

01:18:28 ◼   ► and the map is being sent by Apple

01:18:31 ◼   ► and being composited by the operating system.

01:18:33 ◼   ► And like, nobody cares.

01:18:34 ◼   ► If it feels like when I step into my car,

01:18:38 ◼   ► oh, it's my car, it's the way I want it

01:18:40 ◼   ► and everything is being run based on my settings

01:18:43 ◼   ► on my iPhone, like that's, or your Android phone.

01:18:47 ◼   ► But like, that's, I think that's in the end what matters.

01:18:50 ◼   ► And I think it's better not to feel like

01:18:54 ◼   ► I'm running three different things

01:18:56 ◼   ► in three different screens, right?

01:18:57 ◼   ► Like that's awful.

01:18:58 ◼   ► So if Apple's initiative here ends up

01:19:01 ◼   ► having this kind of integrated feel, that's great.

01:19:04 ◼   ► It's just like, we need to be realistic

01:19:07 ◼   ► that there's not gonna be,

01:19:09 ◼   ► if you don't have a phone and you step into a car,

01:19:12 ◼   ► the valet is gonna park your car

01:19:14 ◼   ► and it's just like a gray screen.

01:19:15 ◼   ► Like you can't, it can't be that.

01:19:18 ◼   ► So it has to be something else.

01:19:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, absolutely right.

01:19:21 ◼   ► - What, give me some odds of how you think

01:19:26 ◼   ► this is gonna go.

01:19:27 ◼   ► What's the, is it gonna, is this gonna be a thing

01:19:29 ◼   ► that Apple makes a big fanfare about

01:19:31 ◼   ► and then it kind of quietly doesn't happen?

01:19:33 ◼   ► Or do you think that something more than like a handful

01:19:36 ◼   ► of car models is gonna happen with Apple and car makers?

01:19:40 ◼   ► - I think something's definitely gonna happen.

01:19:42 ◼   ► You know, I've been working in the auto industry

01:19:44 ◼   ► for over 30 years as an engineer and a writer

01:19:48 ◼   ► and podcaster and an analyst.

01:19:51 ◼   ► And this is the most interesting time of my career.

01:19:54 ◼   ► It's funny, I was recently doing a project for Motor Trend

01:19:59 ◼   ► on software-defined vehicles and talking to some people.

01:20:02 ◼   ► And this idea, we've moved from,

01:20:05 ◼   ► we've had software in cars since the 1970s.

01:20:07 ◼   ► I was working on software in the early '90s

01:20:10 ◼   ► for ABS and traction control.

01:20:14 ◼   ► We were writing code in Intel assembler for an ADC 196 microcontroller.

01:20:21 ◼   ► Boy was that fun.

01:20:22 ◼   ► And we've gone from software enabled to software defined.

01:20:26 ◼   ► This idea that I talked about with customizing the user experience and being able to do things,

01:20:33 ◼   ► having a base set of hardware and adding software to create new experiences or new functionality,

01:20:40 ◼   ► I think is really fascinating.

01:20:43 ◼   ► it's gonna be an interesting time. And it's gonna be a challenging time for a lot of people

01:20:48 ◼   ► too, especially as you've got companies that want to start charging you a monthly subscription

01:20:51 ◼   ► for heated seats. We don't need to go down that path right now.

01:20:56 ◼   ► Yeah, tech ruins everything, doesn't it? Well, thank you so much for being on Upgrade

01:21:02 ◼   ► as a vertical guest in the automotive vertical, a true vertical, not just a sarcastic upgrade

01:21:08 ◼   ► vertical but an actual vertical. I should say, so principal analyst for e-mobility research

01:21:13 ◼   ► with Guidehouse Insights, the Wheel Bearings podcast, wheelbearings.media, if you want

01:21:18 ◼   ► to check that out. Are those the best places for people to find you?

01:21:21 ◼   ► Yeah, and you know, just Google my name, you know, I'm on Twitter. I don't do Facebook.

01:21:26 ◼   ► I quit Facebook multiple years ago. But yeah, that's probably the best places to find me.

01:21:32 ◼   ► All right. Thank you so much for being here.

01:21:34 ◼   ► I'm happy to be here. Thanks, Jason.

01:21:37 ◼   ► This episode is brought to you by Capital One. Have you ever hit a technical snafu while

01:21:42 ◼   ► you're shopping online, if you're ever given a headache by having to fill out payment

01:21:46 ◼   ► fields has your mobile banking app ever been down when you needed to use it the most?

01:21:51 ◼   ► Capital One believes everyone deserves better banking. This means easier access to your

01:21:56 ◼   ► money and more security at the same time. That's why Capital One is investing in machine

01:22:01 ◼   ► learning.

01:22:02 ◼   ► Machine learning allows Capital One to do things like fight fraud with random forests.

01:22:06 ◼   ► They have models that quickly detect suspicious activity to make it faster to alert federal

01:22:11 ◼   ► investigators and identify how mobile app outages happen with causal models. This keeps

01:22:17 ◼   ► their mobile app up and running. They use this hard work to make it work for them. They

01:22:23 ◼   ► use anomaly detection and incident response to help determine why app outages are happening

01:22:28 ◼   ► so engineers can quickly remedy them.

01:22:31 ◼   ► Capital One speed up online shopping with machine learning at the edge. This makes shopping

01:22:35 ◼   ► with virtual card numbers smoother and more secure. This technology is based on logistic

01:22:40 ◼   ► regression models and running inference in the browser, this will identify payment fields

01:22:44 ◼   ► to help make it even easier to use virtual card numbers and faster at the same time.

01:22:49 ◼   ► The potential of machine learning is so big, see how Capital One is using machine learning

01:22:54 ◼   ► to create the future of banking. Search "machine learning at Capital One". Capital One, what's

01:22:59 ◼   ► in your wallet? Our thanks to Capital One for their support of this show and Relay FM.

01:23:05 ◼   ► It is time for #AskUpgrade.

01:23:07 ◼   ► I have a bunch of questions from Upgradients.

01:23:14 ◼   ► The first, John who asks, "With the added functionality for the lock screen in iOS 16,

01:23:21 ◼   ► do you expect that you'll be changing your background photo more often?"

01:23:26 ◼   ► I did change mine.

01:23:27 ◼   ► I have used the same image for like two years and it didn't look as good as I wanted and

01:23:34 ◼   ► And so I ended up changing to a really good photo I have of my wife, Adina, and I like

01:23:38 ◼   ► it way more.

01:23:39 ◼   ► It just fits way more with the overall aesthetics of what Apple's going for, I think.

01:23:44 ◼   ► I think that that's really people and buildings, I think, ideally what you want to be doing

01:23:54 ◼   ► and what I think Apple would like to promote you to do.

01:23:57 ◼   ► I think I'm going to change the picture on my lock screen more often.

01:24:03 ◼   ► I wish, and I know that this has changed in the betas,

01:24:06 ◼   ► but I don't consider the wallpaper behind my home screen

01:24:10 ◼   ► the same as my lock screen.

01:24:11 ◼   ► I think they're very different

01:24:13 ◼   ► and they have different purposes.

01:24:14 ◼   ► And I want like things to appear on the lock screen,

01:24:16 ◼   ► whereas I want the home screen to be pretty neutral.

01:24:19 ◼   ► And one of the things that really bothers me

01:24:21 ◼   ► about the beta implementation of this feature

01:24:23 ◼   ► is that it constantly wants you to override your wallpaper

01:24:27 ◼   ► when you change your lock screen.

01:24:29 ◼   ► And I just wanna be able to say no thanks

01:24:31 ◼   ► because I kinda like my wallpaper

01:24:34 ◼   ► and I don't need it to be changed.

01:24:35 ◼   ► - It's easier to do that now,

01:24:37 ◼   ► but still it makes you do it and I wish that it did.

01:24:40 ◼   ► - I hate it.

01:24:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't need to go through that

01:24:43 ◼   ► every time I change anything.

01:24:45 ◼   ► - I edit a widget and it says,

01:24:48 ◼   ► "Great, would you like to change your wallpaper?"

01:24:50 ◼   ► I was like, "No, I, no."

01:24:51 ◼   ► - If I'm changing my wallpaper, fine, you can ask me,

01:24:54 ◼   ► but if I'm editing a widget, leave me alone.

01:24:57 ◼   ► I don't need to change my background anymore.

01:24:59 ◼   ► - Make it stop.

01:25:01 ◼   ► So that's where I draw it all in.

01:25:02 ◼   ► But yes, I think on the having multiple lock screens

01:25:05 ◼   ► with different images on them, I think is a lot of fun too.

01:25:08 ◼   ► And so like Apple Watch Faces,

01:25:11 ◼   ► you have the ability to switch between them

01:25:12 ◼   ► and that fundamentally will mean

01:25:14 ◼   ► that the background pictures change more.

01:25:16 ◼   ► - And then Jay Young asks,

01:25:21 ◼   ► what widgets or complications are you currently using

01:25:24 ◼   ► on your iOS 16 lock screens?

01:25:27 ◼   ► - Oh, I have a scriptable widget

01:25:32 ◼   ► that shows my current temperature and conditions

01:25:34 ◼   ► at my house.

01:25:35 ◼   ► - I wanna talk, we're gonna talk about this

01:25:36 ◼   ► in more detail at some point in the next few weeks.

01:25:38 ◼   ► I wanna get into what you've been up to.

01:25:40 ◼   ► - It's early, but yeah, I do have that, which is great.

01:25:43 ◼   ► So that's the one right now.

01:25:44 ◼   ► I imagine I'll do more.

01:25:46 ◼   ► I haven't gotten back to that,

01:25:47 ◼   ► but that was the first one where I had a little,

01:25:50 ◼   ► there's a scriptable beta where I can actually do widgets

01:25:52 ◼   ► that are on the lock screen and that is fun.

01:25:55 ◼   ► 'cause I've been using them for the home screen

01:25:58 ◼   ► for a while now, but the lock screen is now supported

01:26:01 ◼   ► in the beta of Scriptable,

01:26:03 ◼   ► and I'm just getting started with that.

01:26:06 ◼   ► But having the live like temperature,

01:26:08 ◼   ► the same temperature that's in my menu bar of my Mac

01:26:10 ◼   ► is now on the lock screen of my iPhone, and that's awesome.

01:26:14 ◼   ► - So I'm using a bunch, obviously, you know me.

01:26:18 ◼   ► The one that goes on top of the time,

01:26:21 ◼   ► I think it's called Inline.

01:26:23 ◼   ► just text. I'm using Apple's calendar right now. I like it because it tells me to date

01:26:27 ◼   ► and my next appointment. Eventually I hope to change this to Fantastic Al. I hope that

01:26:34 ◼   ► they will also have this same configuration. I like it. I then have weather. I will eventually

01:26:41 ◼   ► change this to Carrot Weather. And that's in the one that's got a bunch of text. It's

01:26:44 ◼   ► like the long rectangle one. It's giving me the current conditions. And I expect that

01:26:51 ◼   ► But Cara Weather will let me choose everything that goes there, the same as they do with

01:26:55 ◼   ► widgets.

01:26:56 ◼   ► Then I'm using a Timery, current time tracker one.

01:27:01 ◼   ► And then a pedometer app thing.

01:27:06 ◼   ► I'm not saying where, because that's all in beta.

01:27:12 ◼   ► The Timery one's in beta, but they've spoken about it publicly.

01:27:15 ◼   ► But I also have my steps being counted as well, which I like.

01:27:18 ◼   ► That's what I have right now.

01:27:20 ◼   ► I don't know what it will look like when I actually get more of these from the apps that

01:27:24 ◼   ► I use.

01:27:25 ◼   ► I only have two apps right now that I'm on the beta for that have this included in them.

01:27:31 ◼   ► One is Tymerean and the other is the one that showed me my steps.

01:27:36 ◼   ► That's what I have right now.

01:27:37 ◼   ► And I don't know how much more I'll change except for where I've said like I'll swap

01:27:42 ◼   ► things out for the actual apps that I use.

01:27:45 ◼   ► That's what I'm waiting for is I'm waiting for the other apps that I used so that I can

01:27:48 ◼   ► and browse through those and see if there are ones there

01:27:50 ◼   ► that I wanna integrate too.

01:27:51 ◼   ► But I'm also okay, at this point, I'm also okay

01:27:54 ◼   ► with the fact that I can build my own if I need to,

01:27:56 ◼   ► which is kind of fun.

01:27:57 ◼   ► - But that kind of, the kind of information

01:28:00 ◼   ► I have there right now is the kind of information

01:28:03 ◼   ► that I would want on my lock screen.

01:28:06 ◼   ► That's the kind of stuff.

01:28:07 ◼   ► - A calendar thing for sure.

01:28:08 ◼   ► I'm just, I don't wanna use Apple's calendar stuff.

01:28:10 ◼   ► So I'm waiting for fantastic help in the fall.

01:28:14 ◼   ► And I will definitely add that somewhere.

01:28:17 ◼   ► A question of where, right?

01:28:18 ◼   ► 'Cause that up by the date is really powerful

01:28:21 ◼   ► and yet it's also really limited

01:28:23 ◼   ► 'cause it's just that little inline text snippet.

01:28:25 ◼   ► - I think that for me, that's perfect.

01:28:27 ◼   ► If, because I like that I can also get

01:28:30 ◼   ► that added piece of information on the lock screen,

01:28:32 ◼   ► which is the date.

01:28:34 ◼   ► I like that.

01:28:35 ◼   ► - Sure.

01:28:36 ◼   ► - I like that being there.

01:28:37 ◼   ► Eric asks, "I needed to get an M1 iMac for a family member

01:28:42 ◼   ► and they are way back ordered or unavailable.

01:28:45 ◼   ► Do you think this is supply chain related

01:28:47 ◼   ► or do you think there's a pending update?

01:28:50 ◼   ► - I think it's supply chain related.

01:28:51 ◼   ► Mark Gurman is to be believed.

01:28:54 ◼   ► They're not even worried about an M2 iMac right now.

01:28:57 ◼   ► And maybe I hope there is an M2 iMac,

01:29:00 ◼   ► but I feel like this is supply chain related

01:29:02 ◼   ► and factory shutdowns.

01:29:03 ◼   ► And they were probably prioritizing the laptops

01:29:05 ◼   ► and that's why.

01:29:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think like going back

01:29:08 ◼   ► to what we were talking about earlier,

01:29:10 ◼   ► clearly the Mac is most impacted right now.

01:29:12 ◼   ► And as you said, they're probably,

01:29:15 ◼   ► if it's legacy node related,

01:29:16 ◼   ► they're probably cannibalizing some chips

01:29:18 ◼   ► to go in other places, you know, like.

01:29:21 ◼   ► - I think, yeah, I think selling a lot of MacBook Airs

01:29:24 ◼   ► that are very, very popular

01:29:25 ◼   ► is gonna take more money off the table

01:29:28 ◼   ► than having a bunch of iMacs in inventory, right?

01:29:31 ◼   ► So I think that's it.

01:29:32 ◼   ► I mean, Apple loves all its computers equally,

01:29:35 ◼   ► but you know, if you have to choose

01:29:38 ◼   ► getting that new MacBook Air out there

01:29:40 ◼   ► or prioritizing the iMac, I know which one I would choose.

01:29:44 ◼   ► And Ramon asks, what do you think about replacing

01:29:48 ◼   ► the potential of Apple replacing the 13 inch MacBook Pro

01:29:52 ◼   ► with a 12 inch MacBook Pro that has a new design?

01:29:55 ◼   ► Perhaps there's some options to put faster chips in

01:29:59 ◼   ► or maybe a better screen, that kind of thing.

01:30:01 ◼   ► - Don't think Apple is gonna do a 12 inch Pro.

01:30:06 ◼   ► 12 inch Air, yes.

01:30:10 ◼   ► 12 inch Pro, I don't think so.

01:30:12 ◼   ► I think smaller, packing more heat into a smaller area,

01:30:15 ◼   ► it's just not a thing that they're gonna wanna do.

01:30:17 ◼   ► So I think, I just don't think that's likely.

01:30:21 ◼   ► I think that the 14 is the new 13

01:30:24 ◼   ► and the 13 is a weird outlier computer

01:30:26 ◼   ► that will go away at some point.

01:30:28 ◼   ► And then the MacBook Pro will be the 14 and the 16.

01:30:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm thinking we're more likely to see

01:30:34 ◼   ► the removal of that product completely

01:30:38 ◼   ► and replaced with more MacBook Air options

01:30:41 ◼   ► and bringing the prices down over all over time

01:30:46 ◼   ► and then that just reshuffles and that thing disappears.

01:30:49 ◼   ► I think that's it.

01:30:51 ◼   ► If you would like to send in a question of your own

01:30:54 ◼   ► for us to answer on the show, just send out a tweet with the hashtag #AskUpgrade

01:30:58 ◼   ► or use question mark #AskUpgrade in the Real FM members discord.

01:31:02 ◼   ► I would like to thank Capital One, Bombas and Sourcegraph for the support of this episode

01:31:06 ◼   ► and of course thank you for listening and a special thanks to our members

01:31:11 ◼   ► who subscribe to Upgrade Plus. If you want to find Jason online in the

01:31:15 ◼   ► meantime until next week's episode you can find him at sixcolors.com

01:31:19 ◼   ► the incomparable.com and Jason hosts many more shows here at Relay FM just

01:31:24 ◼   ► like I do you go to relay.fm/shows and find

01:31:27 ◼   ► a new podcast put in your queue. I am @imike and we'll be back

01:31:33 ◼   ► next week. Until then Jason Snow. Say goodbye.

01:31:38 ◼   ► Goodbye everybody.

01:31:39 ◼   ► [music]

01:31:45 ◼   ► [ Silence ]