0:00:00[Music]
0:00:08From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 352, and today's show is brought to you by Pingdom,
0:00:16ExpressVPN and Ooni Pizza Ovens. My name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined by Jason Snow. Hi Jason Snow.
0:00:22Hi Myke Hurley. How are you? I'm doing okay, how are you? I'm very good and I have a #snowtalk
0:00:28question for you coming from Zach and Zach wants to know, "Jason, do you use night shift on any of
0:00:33your devices and if so, at what intensity and do you, if you do use it, it's a secondary if you do
0:00:38use it question, do you feel like it helps you wind down in the evening?" Now I'm going to add a
0:00:43little bit of color to Zach's question here, which is that there were some stories this week about
0:00:48studies that suggest that the, I would say, already quite tenuous idea that not having
0:00:54blue wavelengths late in the evening helps people sleep, which when night shift came out,
0:01:00I was actually really careful about this because a lot of people were like, "Oh yeah, it'll help
0:01:06you sleep," and there's no, there was really no good solid evidence that that was true,
0:01:11and there's more solid evidence that it's not true now. So that's the background. That said,
0:01:19on my iPad and actually on my e-readers, on my Kindle and Kobo e-readers, I do have their
0:01:29orangey light feature turned on and so on my iPad at night after sunset it turns on a little bit,
0:01:39it's not super intense but a little bit. This is not because of any belief really that I have in
0:01:45blue light making it not as easy to go to sleep or anything like that. It's more that
0:01:51I kind of like warmer colored light. Most of the lights in my house are warmer. If you could see
0:02:00me now in my office, I have a wall that is painted orange and I have a wall that is painted white
0:02:07with an orange tint and I have a bunch of lights that are also warm orangey colors. It's like I'm
0:02:14living inside an orange and that's the way I like it. But what I'm saying is I actually kind of like
0:02:23it when things are kind of that warm color and also I feel like the warmer, the redder,
0:02:29oranger wavelengths don't light up a room as much. They don't do that and that is good if you're
0:02:35sharing a room with somebody who's trying to go to sleep. So I've got some reasons for it. I do it a
0:02:41little bit. I don't do it on my Mac. I don't do it on my iPhone but because the iPad and the
0:02:46Kindles are the things that I'm reading in bed with, those are the ones that I have it on just
0:02:51because I find it kind of more comfortable but it doesn't have anything to do with any expectation
0:02:56that it's helping me in any way medically because I'm pretty sure it is. I use night shift on all
0:03:02of my devices just because I find it more comfortable to have the orangey light than the
0:03:07blue light in the evening. I just like the way it looks more. I never really thought that it – I
0:03:16never really put much thought into the science of it. I kind of didn't really care honestly because
0:03:22I feel like it's probably better to use no devices late in the evening if we really want to go down
0:03:28that road. But I don't – I like the way that the orangey light looks. I have it do the sunset to
0:03:36sunrise thing automatically. I think it's really nice. I guess I have – I mean I have true tones.
0:03:42So in my living room for example or even in my bedroom with the lights on, I think the color
0:03:49would be more yellowy orangey. They work nicely together. The problem is that then you turn the
0:03:55light off and there's no light. And I did this as a test knowing that this question was coming. I
0:04:00actually turned off night shift briefly last night and I was like, "Ew, yuck." I turned it back on.
0:04:06So I just like it. It's purely aesthetic. I'm also not doing anything that requires
0:04:10serious color fidelity in any context where night shift is on. It's not about that. So I'm not
0:04:18worried about it. If you'd like to send in a question to help us answer – to open an episode
0:04:23of the show just like Zach did, just send in a tweet with the hashtag #snowtalk or use question
0:04:28marks #snowtalk in the Relay FM members Discord. We have some color-based follow-up. This is all
0:04:33color, this first section of the show. Let's talk about night shift and we're going to talk about
0:04:37colorful computers. So Jon Prosser, who previously was correct about the iMac being released in a
0:04:42variety of colors, has another report that a future MacBook will get the same treatment.
0:04:48This computer is expected to be a consumer laptop, probably an Air, but maybe a new MacBook. Now I'm
0:04:57actually going to put my flag in the ground here and say this is a MacBook, not a MacBook Air.
0:05:04That's just what I think is going to happen. There was a previous report from Ming-Chi Kuo and there
0:05:10have been some other reports that there would be a new MacBook of some kind released in late 2021,
0:05:15early 2022 for refresh design, maybe an M2 chip if that's where we are, and the mini LED XDR display.
0:05:25I think it would make a lot of sense to be like, "Hey, MacBook again," you know,
0:05:29the way it was supposed to be. Yeah, this is something that's been hovering out there. I know
0:05:34we've touched on it before. When they did the retina MacBook Air, it was kind of a surprise,
0:05:38right? Because the feeling, I think all of us sort of felt like Apple was really trying to get rid of
0:05:42the MacBook Air and they failed. And so they said, "Fine, we'll do an update to the retina MacBook
0:05:47Air." I'm not clear that, remember their idea was to do a MacBook and a MacBook Pro and it just
0:05:52didn't work. They were too expensive and people resisted and they kept buying the MacBook Air.
0:05:57And so now you have to ask yourself, is Apple really committed to MacBook Air as a product in
0:06:03the long run? Is Apple committed to that particular design of MacBook Air in the long run? I don't
0:06:10know. I honestly don't know. I think the scenario you describe where they're sort of like replacing
0:06:18the Air with something that's more like a MacBook and it's a thin light thing, kind of like the old
0:06:24MacBook. They kind of like playing the game they already played, playing that game again. I get it.
0:06:31However, it gives me some pause because that's what they tried the last time. It didn't work.
0:06:39Yeah, but there's a few things that I would expect they would learn in my scenario. So one is
0:06:46it's not overly expensive. It has to come in at the same kind of price that a MacBook Air comes out.
0:06:51Not if it's got a mini LED XDR display.
0:06:56Well, I mean, they've got it in the iPad. This is what I'm saying. As well, all of the devices
0:07:04are going to get these XDR displays. This is going to be eventually across the entire line.
0:07:09And again, who knows if it will actually have the XDR display? That's one report. But this is my
0:07:15kind of scenario that I'm painting here. You wouldn't bring in a new MacBook and price it
0:07:19more than the MacBook Air because you've learned that it didn't work last time. Make sure that it
0:07:24has enough IO on it. We're going to talk about that with another product in a minute. Make it
0:07:28look really cool, come in a bunch of colors and people will buy it. Like, I personally don't
0:07:33believe that there is a particular affinity for the Air part of the MacBook. It was just
0:07:38the MacBook you could afford and it had the ports that you wanted.
0:07:42Well, this is my problem with this. My problem with this idea, because I think it makes perfect
0:07:47sense to say, "Why don't we just make it the MacBook and we're going to retire the Air name,
0:07:53but it's going to fill that slot." The problem is, are they really going to do it that way?
0:07:58Because one way, yes, you're right. You're 100% right. The way to fix this problem is to say,
0:08:09MacBook Air is gone and in its place is the new MacBook and it costs the same,
0:08:13starts at the same price. However, Apple, in modern times, tends to do a lot of this stuff
0:08:23where they're like, "We're going to keep the old model around because it's a little bit cheaper
0:08:28and it's a little more affordable." And if they do that, they're back where they were before,
0:08:32where people are going to be like, "Yeah, but the MacBook Air is fine. I'll just get the MacBook
0:08:36Air for $999. I don't need to get this new MacBook." So, Myke, I think that's the real question is,
0:08:41is Apple going to attempt to do a switcheroo? Because you're talking about potentially a new
0:08:48Apple Silicon chip. I kind of assumed that the M1 MacBook Air would stick around for a while.
0:08:52Again, nicer screen, better processor, color options. Great. That's all great. I just keep
0:09:04thinking, but if they keep the old one around at a cheaper price, I feel like they may be stepping
0:09:09into the exact same situation they were in before, where by keeping that other one around, it's
0:09:17literally all people need. That's the great thing about the MacBook Air is the reason it's sold,
0:09:22not Retina, for so long and still sold well is because for a lot of people, it was like, "Look,
0:09:28this is the base price Mac laptop that I can buy new and that's all I want." And all these other
0:09:33fancy features that cost a few hundred dollars more, I'm not going to even worry about it.
0:09:36So that's my worry about this is that if you keep the MacBook Air around, people will still
0:09:43buy it. So is Apple prepared to wipe the M1 MacBook Air off the price list and replace it
0:09:51with a new, whether they call it an Air or just a MacBook, a new low price laptop? I don't know
0:09:59if they're capable of that, like mentally capable of it. Like can they manage to not do the Tim Cook
0:10:06doctrine, just keep the old one around at a lower price kind of thing? Yeah, my hope would be that
0:10:13they do what they did with the iMac, where to get the 21-inch iMac, which is still available
0:10:20on apple.com, you have to really, really hump for it. And I expect they're only really keeping it
0:10:27around at the moment because they're in a bit of a chip transition, so they want to just make sure
0:10:31that that's available in one configuration for people. So I'm kind of like, I'm putting my hopes
0:10:37on this because this is what I want them to do, right? Like I want them to get rid of the MacBook
0:10:42Air and replace it with a comparable in kind of all of the IO that you'd need, plus it's going to
0:10:49look cooler and it's going to be nicer and truly built around the M1, the same way that they did
0:10:54that with the iMac and it's treated with the iMac. You go to the iMac page, the only iMacs you can
0:10:59find are the 24-inch iMacs. And if you go all the way to the bottom of one page, you can see a tiny
0:11:06link, which lets you find the old one. That's what I hope that they do. I could see them doing it,
0:11:11but I understand where you're coming from because history has shown that they really do struggle.
0:11:18But my hope will be that Apple will continue to be so proud of the machines that they're making
0:11:23right now, like more than they have been maybe in years, that they will be willing to do the shift
0:11:30that should have happened a long time ago. Every other product has product and pro, right? Like
0:11:35product and pro, this is where they're going. But then when it gets to the Mac laptops, where it
0:11:40should be the simplest because they have a MacBook Pro, but there's no MacBook, right? It's like,
0:11:45that line doesn't really make logical sense anymore. And I think the MacBook Air is stuck
0:11:51around for so long just because when they tried it, they tried it wrong. They did it wrong,
0:11:56right? Like the MacBook was the wrong product for that time. And it wasn't just that it was more
0:12:00expensive. It was also less capable. It had a retina screen, but it was a slower processor,
0:12:04essentially. And that was the killer. That thing, I mean, I had one for a bit. It was very easy to
0:12:11get it into a situation where it was draining battery when plugged in, fasted, and charging,
0:12:15which is a thing that I used to have with that machine. Like if I was, you know, like if you're
0:12:19doing anything intensive, like exploring audio, exploring video, not only did it take a long time,
0:12:24it also would burn through battery faster than you could charge the thing up. Like that machine was
0:12:29just beautiful and really cool. And one of my favorite Mac designs, like visually, but when it
0:12:37came down to using it, it just couldn't go the distance. But that really is that product, that
0:12:42kind of physical size and weight. That's what the consumer laptop should be. It should be thin and
0:12:48light and incredibly portable, more so than the current MacBook Air is. I think the current
0:12:54MacBook Air is too big. I think 13 inches is too big for that product, personally.
0:12:58- Let me throw out a scenario here, which is what if Apple has a new laptop design that is a little
0:13:06more like that MacBook, a little less like the MacBook Air? It's a little smaller. Maybe it's
0:13:10a 12-inch display instead of a 13-inch display. And we've had some rumors that that might exist,
0:13:16but there's also a lot of wish casting from people who remember the old MacBook.
0:13:19I could see a scenario where maybe what Apple does is replace the MacBook Air with a MacBook,
0:13:25but what they're really doing is kind of having an old MacBook Air and a new MacBook Air.
0:13:31And follow me here. Imagine a scenario where introducing the new MacBook. Oh, isn't it
0:13:39amazing? It's got the new M2 processor. It comes in all of these colors. It's got this beautiful
0:13:44retina, mini-LED, XDR 12-inch screen. It's state-of-the-art. It's amazing. And it starts
0:13:52at the old MacBook Air price of $999. And then we go to the product page and we find that, well,
0:13:57the $999 model only comes in silver and it has the M1 in it. And you're like, "Oh, you just took the
0:14:04guts of the old MacBook Air and put it in the $999 MacBook." And then the fancy stuff with colors and
0:14:12a new processor and maybe even the better display, but maybe not, that's in the more expensive models.
0:14:18That's in the $1299. That they might do. - As long as it has the new design, maybe not the colors,
0:14:25but it has like new design and some of the new features, again, not all of them. - Maybe it has
0:14:30the display and the new design and an M1, but instead of an M2 and doesn't come in other colors,
0:14:36or maybe it's got two colors or something like that, like they do with these iMacs that are
0:14:40coming out, that the base model doesn't get all the great stuff, even though they're all M1s.
0:14:44So that would be a scenario where they could maintain the MacBook Air price point
0:14:49without giving away all of the... 'Cause that's what my stumbling block here is. They're like,
0:14:53"XDR display and an M2 chip." And all these colors. And I think, okay, but now it sounds
0:15:01more expensive than the MacBook Air and people are still just gonna buy the MacBook Air, but they
0:15:05could do a little switcheroo kind of thing, deprecate the MacBook Air, but replace it with
0:15:10something that is the MacBook Air-esque at the base of the... And then you don't have two models,
0:15:18even though you really do, you just have different configurations of MacBook. And that is a very
0:15:25modern Apple thing to do. - So I've been talking about the new laptops. On today's episode,
0:15:30actually, there's a bunch of stuff that I wanna catch up on that's been happening over the last
0:15:35few weeks, but we've been completely in new product territory. So some stuff is about the
0:15:43other laptops in Apple's lineup. So there are supply chain reports coming from Taiwan that
0:15:47suggest that the upcoming MacBook Pro would also feature the same XDR display that we've seen in
0:15:53the new iPad Pro line. So, I mean, that was something I guess we kind of assumed, but now
0:15:57we know more about it. I think when we were talking about mini-LED before, I kind of didn't
0:16:02really know much about it. And I'm really keen to see the displays, 'cause I remember, I think it was
0:16:07the Pro, or the iPhone 12, or maybe it was the 11, one of the things was like, "Oh, and the display
0:16:14is so much better." And it was kind of, I didn't really see it. So I'm really keen to see what the
0:16:19XDR display looks like on the new iPad Pros, but that should be coming to the new laptops.
0:16:25And there was a really weird story where some schematics were stolen from a supplier that
0:16:30Apple uses called Quanta Computing. And this, I think Reevil, Reevil is this group, and they were
0:16:38kind of putting these schematics to ransom and Apple didn't do anything about them, so they
0:16:42started releasing them. And it confirmed some of the previous reports about what the ports are
0:16:48going to be like on the upcoming MacBook Pros. So these schematics seem to suggest that the new
0:16:54MacBook Pro line, the 14 and 16 inch, will have on the right hand side, a HDMI port and an SD card
0:17:03reader and one Thunderbolt USB-C port on the right side, and two more Thunderbolt ports and a MagSafe
0:17:09charger on the left hand side. The current 16 inch, so the newest design, has four Thunderbolt
0:17:18ports. So on the new models, you'll lose one Thunderbolt port, but you gain HDMI, SD card,
0:17:26and MagSafe. So really, if you're charging, you're at the same amount of ports, right,
0:17:33with the additional ones. Because if you had to charge on the current ones, where you just lost
0:17:37a USB port, right, the schematics also seem to confirm that the touch bar is going to be removed
0:17:45from the new laptops. - Not too much of a surprise, right? And again, I feel like we need to say this
0:17:55about a lot of these things. Sometimes we condemn something, we're not condemning you liking it.
0:18:02I know there are fans of the touch bar out there. - I like it. - I think the problem here is that
0:18:06Apple never, essentially never updated the software. - No, they didn't do enough of it.
0:18:10- No, you could hack it with better touch tool and stuff like that, but like really,
0:18:14they, if Apple wanted it to succeed and for a lot of people to love it, they needed to really
0:18:20support it properly. And they never really did, which I find mystifying. I think that they,
0:18:24this is one of those cases where you, if you're going to do that, you need to do it right.
0:18:27Otherwise, why did you bother? And obviously somebody made a call that they thought they were
0:18:33going to be able to make this work. And they either thought it was perfect as is and never
0:18:37needed to be updated, which it wasn't, or they thought they had sway over software choices that
0:18:43they didn't have sway over, but it's not surprising to have it be gone, I think. - And my personal bet
0:18:50is that I bet you get ethernet on the power brick. I bet they do that. It wouldn't surprise me if they
0:18:57did that. - That's an interesting idea, right? You dock and well, okay, so MagSafe is the rumor,
0:19:05right? And I think that's the question is, I've said this before, I'm just going to throw it out
0:19:11there again. What else is on the MagSafe connector? Because it could just be power,
0:19:16but MagSafe to just do power is a very Apple of a decade ago product, right? Apple introduced it
0:19:25that way, but I still don't think we should think of it that way. If I'm going to have a magnetic
0:19:29connector, I want more stuff on it, right? I want at least, yes, you said we have this with the IMAX
0:19:35now. You can put networking on the brick because the ethernet adapter, otherwise you've got to
0:19:40have an ethernet dongle because the ethernet plug is way too big for a laptop, but you could put it
0:19:44on the brick. You could also put USB, you can make the brick a USB-C hub. You could put ports on the
0:19:52brick. That would be great, especially if you're losing ports on the device because you're adding
0:19:58MagSafe. What if you're losing ports on the laptop when you're plugged in, but when you're plugged
0:20:04in, you're gaining ports on the plug. - I would love that. - That is actually pretty nice, right?
0:20:09So I'm going to hold out hope that they do something like that. And the fact that they did
0:20:15it on the iMac is a good sign. - I don't think that they would have gone through the amount of
0:20:22work that surely they had to go through to make that work just so they could put ethernet on the
0:20:27iMac power brick, right? Because I feel like you would want to do it for more than one product,
0:20:34right? But we'll see. So yeah, there's a lot of intriguing stuff. I'm personally really looking
0:20:43forward to these new MacBook Pros. They sound super cool. - As excited as we all were about
0:20:50Apple Silicon, which was the right thing to do, right? Chip transition, what does it mean? Apple's
0:20:54prowess in making chips on iOS devices coming to the Mac, that's all great. But the 2020 Apple
0:21:03Silicon Macs are reruns with new chips in them, right? Like the whole point was like, we're not
0:21:08going to change the computer. What's exciting about 2021 Macs is I'm getting the feeling that
0:21:132021 is the year where we see redesigned hardware. That it's not, you know, this is the great
0:21:20opportunity. It's always been something that we've talked about regarding Apple Silicon, you know,
0:21:25transition to Apples on processors is they can revisit fundamentally what it means to be a Mac.
0:21:30Like they don't have any Intel constraints. They can build their hardware and guide the chip design
0:21:36to the place they want it to go. And I also get the sense like the iMac is a good example where
0:21:42they held off on making changes. Cause I'm like, look, we're going to do that after the chip
0:21:46transition. If we do it now, we have to make it work with Intel. Let's not bother. We'll wait.
0:21:50It'll make our chip running on Macs look better because it'll also be on a bunch of snazzy new
0:21:56models. And won't that be great. And so this year we seem to be getting a whole bunch of new
0:22:01Mac designs. Um, the IMAX were one, but these laptops are another and that's great because
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0:26:06Ooni Pizza Ovens for their support of this show. So we referenced this a little bit last week.
0:26:11We're through to week one of Apple versus Epic. I'll put some links in the show notes. There was
0:26:17a really good kind of breakdown of each day on 9to5Mac. They kind of just pulled out some of the
0:26:23more interesting things that happen on each day. Were you keeping up with this story actively at
0:26:29all during the last week? - Actively, no. Passively, yes. I'm not interested in covering this story.
0:26:38- Honestly, I feel bad for people that have to listen to the whole thing. - Yeah, well,
0:26:42apparently it actually sounds terrible. The audio quality is terrible. I think one person said that
0:26:48it sounds like these people are testifying while a pillow is over their face, basically. But I did,
0:26:56you know, again, this is a good use of Twitter because people who are paying attention will say,
0:27:03"Oh, well, this is an interesting thing that somebody said," or, "Here's a document that
0:27:06came up," or something like that. And that stuff is fine. But yeah, I have no interest in investing
0:27:13time in listening to the live trial stuff. No, thank you. Recaps are good. People who
0:27:22it is their job to listen to the whole thing and report back, that's great. But I've decided it's
0:27:27not my job. Yes, exactly. - Yeah, because it was like one of the things where I was thinking,
0:27:31"Do I want to?" And then I tuned in at one point and heard how bad it sounded. And then kind of,
0:27:36I was like, "I don't want to do this right now." And then, honestly, as the week was going on,
0:27:41I was kind of realizing that it wasn't really important to listen right now. I mean,
0:27:46that might change throughout the time. I believe Tim Cook is testifying at some point,
0:27:52and that might be intriguing. But the thing about when they're on the stand and they're being
0:27:59questioned, they speak like we hear them speak all the time, right? They speak like executives,
0:28:07and everything is polished. And not only are they speaking like it's a marketing exercise,
0:28:13it's also a legal exercise, right? It's like buttoned up, you know, that kind of thing.
0:28:18But the things that have been really interesting for me, the stuff that I've actually enjoyed,
0:28:22is seeing a lot of the emails that are being shown that are in evidence. So I saw, I think,
0:28:30both Ben Thompson and Eli Patel say this in different ways, and I really liked the thought
0:28:35that one of the biggest risks to Apple through this process with Epic is that their dirty
0:28:40laundry is being aired in public. We are seeing how the executives talk to each other and about
0:28:47things and other people. And I feel like with this kind of thing, the veil slips a little bit,
0:28:53and we see that Apple are a regular company staffed by regular people doing regular business things.
0:29:00But they like to pretend or show the world that they're not that. It's not the picture
0:29:04that they paint. Like my favorite thing so far has been the Phil Schiller emails. Like Phil Schiller
0:29:09sends angry emails about scam apps with a ton of exclamation marks, and there's loads of them,
0:29:13and they're all fantastic. I love reading them. It's like, "Is nobody approving this stuff?" It's
0:29:18so good. Some of these things are so good. Well, and this is something that I've found,
0:29:24you know, over the years talking to people who work at Apple. But yeah, first off,
0:29:27it's a big company, and they don't, I think for good reason, they don't want to have that stuff
0:29:35into the public. Right? They're like, "Oh, no, we have our policy." And really the truth is that
0:29:40Apple is more disciplined than almost any other company or government in terms of messaging.
0:29:45That's the trick. This, however, is the problem. I liked the fact, right, that it's not just us
0:29:55on the outside and people writing stories about Apple needing a bunco squad and all that,
0:30:03like Grouper has been doing it a long time, and there's that guy on Twitter who
0:30:05has done such a great job of finding all these scam apps. I really like seeing Phil Schiller
0:30:13send angry emails too about like, "Why is this thing in the App Store? It's a rip-off."
0:30:17Of course, then he would go out publicly and say, "Oh, no, we're very carefully curating."
0:30:22But behind the scenes, he's yelling at people because they allowed this stuff to slip through.
0:30:30And I think the broader question is why after more than a decade and with all of this money
0:30:35at your disposal, does this stuff still get through? I think that's an ongoing question
0:30:41that we all should be asking, especially when Apple talks about the benefits of its
0:30:46curation of the App Store, that it's not doing a good enough job even now. But yes, it is nice to
0:30:52see executives and PR people, like there was that moment of like, "Well, should we communicate this?"
0:30:59One of their PR guys is like, "Should we communicate this?" And it's like, "Well, no,
0:31:02we shouldn't." And it's like, "But we're doing this." And they're like, "Yeah, but we shouldn't
0:31:06communicate that we're doing it." It's like, "Okay, yeah, that makes sense." But it was also
0:31:12a question of like, "Well, why not? Why not communicate this? It would solve this problem."
0:31:15It's like, "Yeah, but we're not going to talk about it." Michael Gartenberg, who used to work
0:31:18at Apple and is on Twitter @Gartenberg, and I would say friend of the show, Michael Gartenberg,
0:31:24he tweeted, he worked for Phil Schiller. And at one point this week, or last week,
0:31:30he tweeted something to the effect of, "This is why they told all of us not to ever put anything
0:31:34in writing. Don't ever put anything like this down in email." So he was kind of amazed that people
0:31:41put this stuff in email, which that's the other part of this, right? It's like,
0:31:44these are the outliers. These are the ones that got in email. Presumably, this is a teeny tiny amount,
0:31:53a little bit of a view into what happens inside Apple.
0:31:57And this is the stuff that isn't redacted.
0:31:59Yeah, exactly. So think of it that way too, which is this is the stuff that somehow got in email by
0:32:06people who were not as disciplined as they should have been about it. Because as Michael Gartenberg
0:32:09pointed out, everybody at Apple knew the kind of stuff that gets subpoenaed, you never put it in
0:32:16an email. They can't subpoena your voice in a meeting or on a phone call. So that's what you
0:32:25need to do to talk about this stuff. Because otherwise it gets down in email records,
0:32:29and then the public sees it. And that's not so great because it does eliminate some of the...
0:32:35We talk about Apple's product magic and the black box approach to this stuff, and it's just magic
0:32:42stuff comes out of the black box. How do they do it? We don't know. It's a mystery.
0:32:46But this also punctures Apple's whole... The way that they're viewed by the public,
0:32:55it punctures some of the little fibs, little lies that they can tell about...
0:33:01Even that is a little bit too mean. The story they tell about a particular product or policy
0:33:09or something, they create a narrative that is a PR narrative and it's not always based entirely
0:33:14in truth. It's also not usually entirely a lie, although some PR narratives are just generally.
0:33:19But you do this and it's like, "Oh, well, the jig is up to a certain extent." And it's not
0:33:27an existential crisis or anything, but these are wounds. These are wounds to the way Apple
0:33:33refers to itself and the way Apple portrays itself. And when we talked last week about Apple
0:33:39winning the battle but losing the war or that both sides were going to probably come out wounded,
0:33:45this is the kind of stuff we're talking about. Is this stuff going to matter in terms of Epic
0:33:51winning this court case? All the observers I've seen looking at it seem to think that it's still
0:33:57a very difficult case. You never know what might happen, but it seems unlikely to them that Epic
0:34:02is going to triumph here. But Apple is not going to walk away unscathed, which I think is kind of
0:34:09Epic's point. Friday, the 3rd of February, 2012. "Privileged and confidential." From Philip Schiller.
0:34:18"Subject. Urgent. Temple jump. Exclamation mark, exclamation mark, exclamation mark, exclamation
0:34:23mark." What the hell is this? Remember our talking about finding bad apps with low ratings? Remember
0:34:29our talk about becoming the Nordstrom of stores in quality of service? Clearly Schiller loves
0:34:35Nordstrom. How does an obvious ripoff of the super popular Temple run with no screenshots,
0:34:40garbage marketing tax, and almost all one-star ratings become the number one free app on the
0:34:45store? Can anyone see a ripoff of a top-selling game? Anyone see an app that is cheating the
0:34:52system? Is no one reviewing these apps? Is no one minding the store? This is insane. Seven exclamation
0:34:59marks afterwards. I love it so much. Phil loves Nordstrom but doesn't know that it's not called
0:35:07Nordstroms, by the way. So I wanted to make... I guess my kind of point on this is like, this stuff
0:35:15still happens. Like if there's a big popular game that's out on a console, you know, something like
0:35:20Among Us or whatever, or Fall Guys was a good example, you give it a week or so and you go to
0:35:27the app store and there's a bunch of ripoffs in the top charts. It's still happening. So the other
0:35:32one that is good is from 2015 and it from Phil Schiller and it is... Tim received a complaint, I
0:35:40love that, right? It goes from the person to Tim to Phil. Tim's like, "Forward, Phil." Well also
0:35:47that is the evoking the boss thing in a corporate environment, right? But like, if the boss got this
0:35:53complaint, you have to deal with it. Yeah, Tim's asking why this is so, so we need to deal with
0:35:58this. Tim received a complaint about this app being a scam. Doesn't do what it says, promises
0:36:04bonus features for five-star reviews, creates fake marketing videos, etc. It is a great example of the
0:36:09stuff we should have automatic tools to find and kick out of the store. I can't believe we still
0:36:14don't. It's been three years at this point. Many one-star reviews, many mentioned scam and fake.
0:36:20Then I look at the developers other apps and see the same issue repeated. Please look into this.
0:36:25I expect we need to remove the developer from our program and please, all capital letters,
0:36:30develop a system to automatically find low-rated apps and purge them to exclamation points.
0:36:35I just want to say for the record, Phil Schiller later went on to take over the app store and they
0:36:41didn't develop a tool then either, it seems like. So, you know, can't be as easy as you think.
0:36:45The fact is with Apple's growth, it's possible that they did develop a tool and then the scammers
0:36:50just moved to a different, moved to a different approach. But yes, I look at this email that is
0:36:55to among other people at EQ and Greg Joswiak, but also Philip Shoemaker who ran the app store,
0:37:01Ron Okamoto who recently left Apple, a bunch of people. I look at this and I also think,
0:37:07"All right, Phil, why don't you run it?" Somebody said that at some point, maybe Tim.
0:37:12All right, Phil. That's why he got the job, because he wouldn't shut up.
0:37:17You care so much about this, it's yours. Because keeping in mind, although he runs the app store
0:37:23now and make no mistake, even though he's on the roof, he runs the app store now. Phil didn't go
0:37:28anywhere, people. He's still around. Keep in mind though, he didn't back when these emails were sent,
0:37:33which I like thinking that too, because it's somebody who's thinking, he's thinking big
0:37:38picture about how this affects Apple, but it's not what he's directly in charge of. And knowing
0:37:43that he was later put in charge of it, like either that's a, "Phil, nobody else is doing it and we
0:37:51know you care about it, you fix it." Or it's a, "Okay, Phil, stop talking about it. Do something
0:37:56about it. You're in charge of it now." The third is that he said, "I'm sick of this.
0:38:00I want this part of the business now." I'm just going to take it over.
0:38:03Yeah, it's like they're not doing a good enough job. Someone needs to go.
0:38:07Who are these clowns running this stuff? I'm going to clean it up.
0:38:09Honestly, seeing how much he seemed to care about it, I wouldn't be surprised if that was
0:38:13what happened. Him and Tim had a conversation one day. It's like, I think the only way to make the
0:38:18change I want to see is to go do it myself. So Phil Schiller, okay, Phil Schiller is like
0:38:23a character in the Apple story now, right? And we all have seen him at events and he's been
0:38:28interviewed by like Grouper and we've seen Phil around. So there's that Phil and then there's the
0:38:34Phil and he's a spokesperson, right? He was the head of communications for the longest time product
0:38:39marketing. So- The most polished.
0:38:41Of course, he is somebody that everybody knows from his public appearances and public statements
0:38:45and all of that. However, he's been at Apple for more than 20 years. He once gave a demo of a
0:38:51version of OS X to us in the conference room at Macworld, right? He goes back a long time.
0:38:58And one of my colleagues made him really angry at that meeting. He never came back to our offices
0:39:03after that. Anyway, so this is what I want to say about Phil Schiller. There's Phil Schiller,
0:39:11the character who appears and makes public pronouncements and that's his outward facing job.
0:39:15But in these emails you see, yeah, he's a, I would say opinionated marketing executive and there's
0:39:24stuff that is in these emails that you're like, "Oh wow, he's really mad here and all that."
0:39:28My perception of Phil Schiller over the years is that he really cares. He really cares. He really
0:39:35cares about Apple. He gets really mad when there's bad stuff. And depending on if you're the person
0:39:41reporting the bad stuff, sometimes you get a little bit of a, "Oh boy, somebody inside Apple
0:39:45is really mad about this now or that I wrote this or that I said this." You get that sometimes,
0:39:51and it's an adversarial relationship sometimes and that's fair. But what I've always liked about
0:39:56Phil Schiller is that he's a passionate guy who cares about the products. He cares about the
0:40:01company and he gets mad when bad stuff happens to the company, especially if it happens because we,
0:40:10and I'll tell, somebody did something dumb on the inside. And I only say this because not every
0:40:17executive at every company really cares like this. They care more about their own standing or ego or
0:40:25their golden parachute or their stock price. He may care about all those things too, I can't say.
0:40:34- We can sympathize because we cared for this degree too.
0:40:37- And this is the thing is there are, and I'm not saying that every Apple executive doesn't
0:40:42care about this stuff. I don't know. I haven't interacted with enough of them to tell,
0:40:46but there are a few of them who are, they are lifers. They legitimately care about this stuff.
0:40:53It is not just their job to communicate or to run these departments, but I know for a fact that they
0:41:00obsessively care about it. And Phil Schiller is one of those people. And so separate from his role
0:41:09as a person who's going to extol the virtues of the various products that he's marketing,
0:41:13these emails are fun because they show that, yeah, Phil Schiller thinks the app store sucks too,
0:41:19or at least in 2015, and that Apple should do a better job, which is what we were all saying at
0:41:23the time. And Apple is of course like, no, no, it's all fine. But internally, it's like, this
0:41:28is not good enough. And I like that. I like to see somebody actually concerned that their company is
0:41:35not doing a good enough job. That's, yeah. I mean, I think we could have all expected that this kind
0:41:40of thing was happening, but here we get to see it. - Couple of, just a little handful of details
0:41:46that came out that were of interest, I think, over the week. Apple's app review team consists
0:41:52of 500 people. I think that feels small, maybe. I'm not sure if I feel like that's a lot of people.
0:41:59It's a lot of people, but they review a lot of apps. - Not when you consider the volume of apps
0:42:04in the store. - Yeah. When asked, Tim Sweeney said he would have accepted a special deal with Apple
0:42:10if they offered it. This got a lot of, saw a lot of people talking about this as if to try and
0:42:16undermine the whole argument, but I don't see what it does. - I know the point they're making here,
0:42:20which is that Epic has wrapped themselves in this kind of cloak of being a freedom fighter and that
0:42:24they've gotten other people to join their coalition for app fairness. And they're like, oh, this is,
0:42:30we're fighting the good fight because Apple is doing this and it's wrong. But I mean, really,
0:42:34seriously, he's the CEO of a company. And if Apple cut him a deal to get him more money,
0:42:39he would take it. Of course he would. So they made him say it. - I mean, because I see both
0:42:42could be true, right? They could take the deal and still feel it's wrong. I'm not saying that
0:42:46that is the way they are, but you know. - Sure, sure. But you know, they're just trying to puncture
0:42:51Epic's PR blitz here a little bit because one of the points in this trial is that this was
0:42:55a calculated PR move by Epic. Epic could have gone through this in a different way, but they decided
0:43:02to have their video ready to go and their lawsuit ready to file and then performatively release
0:43:10a thing that violated the rules so that they would get pulled out of the store so that they
0:43:14could release their video and file their lawsuit. And so this is just another little puncture of
0:43:18that of like this, you know, you say you're a freedom fighter, but if Apple would just give you
0:43:23more money, you'd stop fighting. And the answer is, well, yeah. I mean, he is the CEO of the
0:43:27company. Ultimately the thing that his job is, is to make Epic Games as successful as possible.
0:43:36That's it. - Because I think one of the things for me that is intriguing in this is there are also
0:43:42like a lot of emails between that Tim Sweeney sent to various people, including Tim Cook, and he's
0:43:47asking for Apple to be more open. So it's not like it's a new thing for him to feel this way,
0:43:51but as you say, he's still the CEO. They would have offered him a special deal. They would have
0:43:54taken the special deal because this is his job. Sweeney also confirmed that 30% is a similar deal
0:44:00to what Epic have with the games consoles, which again is like another thing that people keep
0:44:05pointing out of like, oh, well look, it's, you know, why aren't they taking the games consoles
0:44:10to court too? My kind of feelings, it's a very different relationship. I wish I could remember
0:44:16what episode of ATP it was, but I don't remember, but John Siracusa went into it in a really great
0:44:20detail once of basically just saying like, these are corporate relationships. Like you can, if you
0:44:25get something in return from the business that you're working with, you might be more happy to
0:44:30take the 30%. And it seems like Apple give nothing in return, right? Where like games consoles,
0:44:36they will pay for marketing for your game if you have that kind of relationship with them.
0:44:41Apple's not doing that. So Apple's argument would be that Apple does a lot of App Store marketing
0:44:48in the App Store app and highlights apps and those drive sales and that therefore Apple's control of
0:44:55the App Store front end, which in a different story, they talked about how like, if you pull
0:45:00all your in-app purchase like Netflix or something out of the system, we're just going to not feature
0:45:03you on the App Store anymore. And the fact is there's an argument to be made that at least for
0:45:08some apps, maybe not for apps at the scale of something like Netflix, having promotion in the
0:45:14App Store matters. And then we know that that's true for smaller apps, but even for large apps,
0:45:20it may matter. Even if a lot of us don't use the App Store that way, people do and it does actually
0:45:26make a difference. So that would be the counter argument. I think the argument about what the
0:45:30business model is of the hardware being sold is ridiculous on its face because I don't think there
0:45:37are any laws about how you should only make a certain percentage of profit from your total
0:45:42environment. And that if you make a certain percentage of profit from your hardware sales,
0:45:46it means you can't make a certain percentage off of the sales of the software sold on the device.
0:45:51Like I just think it's a bogus argument to say, oh no, consoles are different. And because consoles
0:45:57are sold without a big profit margin, they have to do it this way. I just, I don't think that there's
0:46:04any show, show me the law that says, well, if you don't make money on hardware, then you can do this.
0:46:12But if you do make money on hardware, you can't. It doesn't exist. It doesn't exist. There isn't
0:46:16like a law that should say that just because you take one percentage from one company,
0:46:22that you should have to take the same percentage from another. Right? Like there's no law about
0:46:28like, oh, because they have a 70/30 split with Sony, Apple were allowed to do a 70/30 split with
0:46:33them. Right? No, it's, it's a, this is true, but I think, I think the point of, of saying let's, if
0:46:41your argument is 70 is too much or 30 is too much, 70 is too little. And then you point out to all
0:46:47these other places where you participate, where it's 70/30 and your response is, well, yeah,
0:46:51but that's different because I have sympathy for them because their business model is executed on
0:46:57the premise that that's the only money they get. So they have to take it from me. Like,
0:47:03I just don't buy it. I just think that that's a dumb argument. Like it's Sony because of the
0:47:09competitive nature of the hardware, it's Sony's choice and Microsoft's choice to, if it is even
0:47:15true and Nintendo's choice to sell the razors at cost and make it up on blades. But I don't see the
0:47:24law somewhere that says razors must be sold at cost and blades can be marked up. So, but if you
0:47:30reverse it though, like, so I'm a little bit more sympathetic to it, I think, than you. It was just
0:47:36fine. Everyone, we're operating on a spectrum of our opinions here. Like, I think if you reverse it,
0:47:40so the business model of 70/30 set, say on PlayStation, because Sony don't make any money
0:47:46from the hardware, because Apple make so much money from the hardware, should they also make
0:47:52all of the money that they want from the software? When arguably the apps drive the sales there too.
0:47:58I just don't think it's like one business model means that all business models should be the same.
0:48:03- Well, I agree with that, but I would say back to you, who says? Who says it needs to be this way?
0:48:12Like who measures this? And that's the absurdity of this argument is there's this absurd argument
0:48:17that, and I'm not talking about what business models companies should do. I think companies
0:48:21should be free to do whatever business model they can do in terms of competition. Competition
0:48:26is the reason why there are apparently very low margins on consoles is because there is brutal
0:48:33competition there. So competition should be the thing that controls this. And people will say,
0:48:39well, you can define competition how you want. I would say that the competition is that Apple
0:48:43is in a very competitive smartphone market. And other people would say, yes, but there's
0:48:48no competition on the iOS app store. It's like, okay, you're defining the world of competition
0:48:54very narrowly there. It's literally Apple's own platform. - I don't think that competition in
0:49:00smartphones is even nearly as strong as competitions in consoles. - Maybe not, but my point here is
0:49:06I don't see where there's any legal standing of any kind here. I just don't. I just don't see that
0:49:12the margins on different parts of your business is somehow, I mean, correct me if somebody out there,
0:49:19if there's a law that specifies this, but it seems like in America anyway, you don't get to tell
0:49:23companies where they put their profit margin, how they make their money. It doesn't really happen
0:49:28that way. And so, if I'm a company that has decided that selling razors at a huge profit and
0:49:35making the blades cheap is a better business model for me, I don't think anybody's gonna step in.
0:49:40Or if somebody's like, wait, wait, like let's say that Sony very carefully over time has increased
0:49:46the margins on the PlayStation. Can somebody sue them and say, well, now you're making,
0:49:52open your books, show us your margins. Oh, you need to reduce your cut now, because now that
0:49:57you're making a little more money on your hardware, we need you to make a little less money on your
0:50:01software. It doesn't make any sense to me. So I think it's a really stupid argument and that
0:50:07there are much better arguments to be made here about Apple's total control over its platform
0:50:12than the fact that consoles do it or don't do it and that's different. It's like, I don't think
0:50:18it's different. - I actually, but see, for me, I just don't think that we should be talking about
0:50:23any other platforms. The argument here is whether what Apple is doing is right. I don't think that
0:50:29we should start talking about Sony or Microsoft in comparison to this. It's not the same.
0:50:34- I think the reason it's relevant is because Epic is making the argument that 30% is an out-of-bounds
0:50:48amount when there are lots of places that do 30%. I think the percentage is not the argument. The
0:50:55argument is there's no alternative, right? That it's 70/30, but if you're gonna say,
0:51:00"But 30 is unfair," I think it's fair to say all these other stores do 30.
0:51:04Because I don't think you should be making the argument that 30 is unfair. I think you
0:51:09should be making the argument that there is no alternative to them taking 30. They could take 50,
0:51:15they could take 70, they could take 90, and we couldn't do anything but just not be on their
0:51:21platform because they control the whole thing. That's the argument to make. - Yes, yeah, I agree.
0:51:27So I don't know how much we're gonna come back to this. We will come back to this
0:51:31because other stuff's gonna happen. I mean, I don't know how interesting any of it's gonna be.
0:51:37I mean, obviously, the main thing will be coming back to how it ends. I feel pretty confident,
0:51:42just listening to people that are smarter than me and talk about this stuff, like,
0:51:47"Apple's gonna win this," but it's about how they win it, and it's about how Epic come out
0:51:52on the other side. And, you know, as we were, I still pretty, honestly, I still feel pretty
0:51:59confident about what we were talking about, even last week or the week before, about Apple basically
0:52:04just, their way of getting out of this whole mess, which will just keep continuing, is just to make
0:52:09some big changes to the App Store this year. - Yeah, the question is, how bloody do they feel?
0:52:14How in danger do they feel? And what changes do they make? - How much do you wanna keep going
0:52:21through this, right? - Right, and make no mistake, they will make changes to seem benevolent,
0:52:25right? That will be, look at how they rolled out the small business program, right? It's like,
0:52:31"Oh, it's Apple's largess here," but, you know, it's not. It's Apple moving with the times because
0:52:37the pressure is on. - What was it Tim Cook said? That nothing's in concrete? - Nothing is cast in
0:52:43concrete. We have to move with the times. You know, sometimes there's just this trend where we
0:52:48have to take less money or we get regulated. It's just a trend, you know, it's a zeitgeist.
0:52:53So we'll take a little less money now 'cause that's trendy to not be sued out of existence.
0:52:58So we'll do that. - This episode is brought to you by Pingdom from SolarWinds. While you've been
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0:54:16Winds for their support of this show and Relay FM. So we are now, Jason, four weeks from WWDC,
0:54:23so we are really turning that corner now. I'm very excited. It's happening very fast. I'm so excited.
0:54:29Like, I wasn't that excited for last year's WWDC for obvious reasons. Like, we didn't really know
0:54:36what was going to happen. Everything was just very upsetting around that time. Things are
0:54:41in some areas of the world less upsetting now, or at least we've gotten used to things.
0:54:46And we didn't really know how good or not WWDC was going to be. I think we all had pretty
0:54:53calm expectations, like lowered expectations of what they would actually be able to have shipped.
0:54:58But it ended up being great. So I'm now really excited. I'm really looking forward to WWDC.
0:55:04And so far, I think the most notable rumors have come from Mark Gurman. He published a report a
0:55:11few weeks ago. Not very detailed. I'm expecting now maybe over the next couple of weeks, we'll
0:55:16start seeing more. That tends to be how it usually goes, but we'll see. Yeah. Presumably the software
0:55:21that's being worked on will roll out in a few more places where more people will see it. And then
0:55:25those are where the leaks happen. Yeah. Cause I feel like usually, you know, within the week,
0:55:30the weeks leading up, we start getting like the multi-release 9 to 5 max stuff. You know,
0:55:36like it starts coming out, but this is the earliest that I've seen what I would have considered to be
0:55:41from a credible source is from Mark Gurman. And there's really just a couple of things that Mark
0:55:46was able to touch on. Uh, so one of the big things coming to iOS 15 and iPadOS 15 is notive,
0:55:52more notification preferences. So users will be able to create profiles. So you could create like
0:55:59different profiles with different characteristics and notifications, like how much noise they make,
0:56:06what the prominence is, or maybe you have certain apps on and everything else off and you could
0:56:11maybe set them up for driving, sleeping, working, and you'll be able to choose between them
0:56:16apparently from either the lock screen or control center. So I kind of like this, right? Like I
0:56:20could imagine setting up like a, uh, working, um, notifications and weekend notifications,
0:56:27you know, and I get different apps allowed to notify me during different times. This is
0:56:31kind of cool. I hope that this comes along with way more customization around notifications in
0:56:38general. I hope that they're not just, which is what I probably aren't going to do, bolt this on
0:56:42top of the existing system. I would like more. Does this excite you all, this notification
0:56:50preference thing? I, uh, no, I mean, it's good. It is good. They need more of this. What gives
0:56:59me pause is that the notification system is already so complicated and my, I need to see this.
0:57:06I need to see this and see how they implement it and how they make this so that it's not
0:57:10a slog to, cause like every, you got a lot of apps on your phone and then every app is going to,
0:57:16if you have to go through every single one of them and turn them like which, which place do I
0:57:20want them to be? That would be annoying. So the idea of profiles, I like the idea of profiles is
0:57:27good because then what you're doing is you're saying, I want this app to behave in this way.
0:57:32And presumably it's going to add that notification preference or variations on it to the different
0:57:38profiles. Um, also, you know, a more global kind of like this time of day, don't do this and this
0:57:45time of day. Like I want those features because notification is kind of a mess on iOS and it
0:57:51frustrates me and I want it to be better. But what I don't want is like, um, some of the stuff that
0:57:59I've seen over the years on Android where you, you know, that's always the great thing about
0:58:02Android is like, you can set every setting. It's like, Oh my God, there's too many settings. Like
0:58:06there's already too many settings on iOS notification. It's too much. So I hope that
0:58:11this is a way, uh, to make it easier for us to, to set these preferences and to get the notifications
0:58:18we want to see. Because the other thing is we know that apps want to just notify you all the time.
0:58:24Like there's no real reason for apps to stop being as obnoxious as possible. So it really is kind of
0:58:32on the platform and the user, uh, to control what the, what the apps do. So more control is great.
0:58:39I'm just a little worried about how fiddly this is going to end up being. I'm going to read a quote
0:58:44for the iMessage section cause I frankly have no idea what this means. I think this is just one of
0:58:51those things that Mark was told and he wrote about it, but I don't get it. The company is also working
0:58:56on upgrades to iMessage with the eventual goal of acting as more of a social network and better
0:59:01competing with Facebook's WhatsApp. Those changes are still in early development and could come
0:59:06later. The people said, WhatsApp is not a social network. It's a messaging platform. So I don't
0:59:13really know, understand how these things go together. Like there are lots of things that
0:59:21Apple could do to iMessage to make it more like WhatsApp, like WhatsApp has way more features
0:59:27and maybe it's easier to find people, especially like who are on Apple platforms. You just find
0:59:32them by their phone number or whatever and you can kind of be found anywhere. But these two things
0:59:38are not the same and they're very different products. I don't really understand what this
0:59:46could mean honestly. Well, I will prepare to be surprised, but it's not wrong for Apple to be
0:59:53investigating more things for it to do with iMessage. iMessage is a powerful tool. I want
0:59:57iMessage to always, or messages to always get better cause it's probably my most used app in
1:00:03general. I'm messaging people all the time. I always want it to get better. I like the replies
1:00:10feature, but it's clunky. There's a bunch of stuff, Federico always has good lists cause he uses
1:00:17more of these apps than me. He uses WhatsApp a lot. And I honestly, I only use messages
1:00:23much to the annoyance of my friends and family here in the UK because people always tell me that
1:00:30the only person that they talk to through messages is me in their lives cause everybody else uses
1:00:35WhatsApp. I have family groups and stuff in messages and that would otherwise be in WhatsApp.
1:00:41It frustrates people. I am in some WhatsApp groups with larger extended family, but everybody here
1:00:50and in lots of places in Europe and I think in India as well, a lot as well, WhatsApp is the tool
1:00:56and it's got a lot more stuff that you can do in it. And maybe Apple just wants to continue
1:01:02down that line. I still think that there is a potential one day for them to have
1:01:07messages for Android. I don't think that it's outside of the realm of possibility. I think
1:01:11it's a card they keep in their back pocket. They are continuing to creep outside of the iPhone with
1:01:17their services and make people pay a small amount of money for it. Like go wild, right? Like,
1:01:22I don't know. iPad home screen is apparently going to get the most significant changes since
1:01:29its original debut. The only thing that Mark spoke about was widgets.
1:01:32Well, I think we heard that they were probably working on this for last year alongside the iPhone
1:01:41updates and then decided that they couldn't do both and they said, "We'll just finish this job
1:01:47next year." So this is one of the least surprising things to be in the next version of iPadOS is
1:01:54adding, you know, updating the home screen to be more than it is currently and allowing you to
1:01:59place widgets arbitrarily on home screens and presumably add app library in some form and all
1:02:04of that kind of thing. I'm curious about how they implement it because with the iPad, you really
1:02:08have orientation issues that you don't have on the iPhone. There's horizontal and vertical and how
1:02:14does that work and how do they move around and that's something that they have to figure out,
1:02:18although there have been a bunch of like mock-ups on the internet that have said you could do it
1:02:21like this and I'm sure they've worked through all of those things. It's just maybe a little more
1:02:25complex than they have on the iPhone. And I'm looking forward to that because I do use widgets
1:02:30on my home screen and right now I've just got my little sidebar widget thing that they can live.
1:02:35- Yeah, I wish, you know, for me, like more over time, only more widgets have found their way onto
1:02:41my iPhone home screen, like over the last year. Like I keep at, I'm like, "Hmm, you know what,
1:02:46this might be kind of cool." And I add another one, right? Like, and I feel like I would love
1:02:50to have that flexibility just on the iPad. Honestly, I think we said it at the time,
1:02:55the iPad screen, it's kind of better for this than the iPhone screen, honestly. Like you could have
1:03:00your like status board, like that app that Panic used to make, right? Like you could just make that.
1:03:05I was talking to a friend of the show, Mr. Widget himself, underscore David Smith,
1:03:10and he was saying that he kind of expect they would do different sizes, maybe larger,
1:03:15there'd be a larger size maybe for the iPad, which would be intriguing or just maybe different sizes
1:03:21in general. But yeah, I'm super into this, but I am still hoping much more for iPadOS than what
1:03:28Gorman is suggesting. And I'm hoping that one of the reasons that they took a year for widgets
1:03:34is because they're changing the way that multitasking works and stuff like that. Like,
1:03:37they wanted to make a much bigger change to the way that like Apple calls springboard,
1:03:43which is the way that you look at the home screen and everything kind of works and you launch apps
1:03:48and manage apps. I hope that there's been some bigger changes there because I would like to see
1:03:52that. And then finally, the last part that Mark mentioned was privacy. So quote is more privacy
1:03:58protections are coming too. One new feature in the works is a new menu that will show users which apps
1:04:04are silently collecting data about them. I'm not surprised that Apple is going to continue down
1:04:09this train. It seems like app tracking transparency has really worked the way they wanted so far.
1:04:15There's been lots of reports over the last week or so that everyone is turning off tracking.
1:04:20And this is what Apple wanted. And I wouldn't be surprised to see them continue going down this
1:04:26route because this was a thing that could have been quite contentious for them. And there were
1:04:33a lot of companies that tried to make it so, and it seems to have so far worked completely the way
1:04:38that Apple wanted it to. So I wouldn't be surprised to see them continue going down this route.
1:04:42- It's awfully consistent of them to do this, right? To just keep pushing on this point
1:04:47and adding more features. And I do wonder what those privacy protections are.
1:04:51You know, I've theorized for a long time now, whether Apple might add a VPN
1:04:55service on their own, which would be very bad for other VPN services, including ones
1:05:02that sponsor upgrade, but I could see them doing it or other network related service kind of things.
1:05:08And then adopting obscure but emerging standards for privacy in various areas in the internet and
1:05:16like saying, well, we're going to adopt this and use that to sort of drive the uptake of those
1:05:22things. Like that all sounds like something that Apple is going to just continue trying to do,
1:05:26that they're going to keep pushing forward on this because they know that it's an advantage
1:05:30and they use it in their marketing, but they know that it's a product advantage and that people buy
1:05:34their devices in part because of this perception that they're more secure and more private than
1:05:39other devices. So I'm not surprised by that. That all said, this is a very limited number of things
1:05:45to start as you pointed out at the beginning. And so I look forward there to there being more,
1:05:52because this isn't a lot. So there's gotta be other stuff going on. I did see somebody reported,
1:05:57was it Steve Tratton Smith? It was somebody who reported a sighting of some sort of virtualization,
1:06:02something that is suspicious. Like there is something going on here. I feel like,
1:06:09and we'll draft these at some point, but I feel like virtualization, I've heard enough rumblings
1:06:15about that, that there's going to be something there, but I wonder if it will not be something
1:06:19as exciting as people think it'll be. Because there's definitely, there's an undercurrent of,
1:06:23oh, well now that the iPad Pro has an M1, it could run like a Mac virtual machine. You could run M1
1:06:29on or a Mac OS on iPad Pro and maybe, but more likely it's going to be something like, you can do
1:06:37Linux, you can run Docker, you can do like it's pro for developers and stuff and not something
1:06:46bigger than that, but it's all just kind of speculation at this point. So I look forward
1:06:50to more leaks, although if there aren't more leaks, then our draft is going to be amazing.
1:06:54The fewer leaks there are, the better the draft is because then we're just making wild choices.
1:06:58Yeah. It's like, I look forward to it to talk about it, but if there isn't none,
1:07:02I'm not going to be upset about it. I'll be excited about the fact that I know nothing
1:07:04going in. Right. Like for me personally, I'm cool with either, right. I either feel like I know a
1:07:10lot of stuff and then wait to see if it comes true and I still always delight in the details,
1:07:16or I know nothing and I look forward to the surprise. Like for me personally, they both
1:07:20come with their own positives and negatives. Like, so I'm, I'm just, uh, now we're like on
1:07:25that train. We're like on the road now. I started today, like moving shows around, right. To make
1:07:31sure that I was as free as can be that week. Cause I made a terrible mistake last year and didn't do
1:07:36that. So I'm now just recording the things I need to record. Like I'm starting to get into the mode
1:07:41now. Like, all right, like we're in WWDC preparation time. I'm excited. This episode is
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1:09:53and all of Real AFM. Let's do some #AskUpgradeQuestions.
1:09:58Brant wants to know, is Jason still using the 12 mini? If so, what has been the biggest pro
1:10:04and biggest con of using it a few months in? Brant, yes, I'm still using the 12 mini.
1:10:10The biggest pro is that it's small. And the biggest con is that they might not make it down the road.
1:10:20And I'll be super sad because I love it. That's it. I love it. I pick up other iPhones and I think
1:10:26this is ridiculous because they're all larger than the 12 mini. I love it. It's all I need in a phone.
1:10:33I have nothing bad to say about it. Do you think that this could change if you're traveling?
1:10:39Do you notice the battery? I always hear people say that the battery just isn't as good as you
1:10:43would want it to be. You know, if I'm in one of those times where I'm out and about and not having
1:10:51any opportunity to charge for a long period of time, which is really rare, then possibly. But
1:10:58I don't know. That doesn't happen very often. I always think back to like XOXO back in the day,
1:11:04where there'd be like a day where I would literally not be able to charge from 8 a.m. until
1:11:091 a.m. And that's bad, right? Then you got to bring a battery pack or something like that anyway.
1:11:16But most cases I'm in and out of a car or whatever. I have someplace where I have to charge. So for me,
1:11:22it's not something that I've noticed or cared about. But I'll leave myself open to that
1:11:31possibility, but I just like the size of it too much. It's great. All right. Next up comes from
1:11:36John and John wants to know, going forward, do you think that AirTags or U1 devices could work
1:11:42with home kit or shortcuts for more precise geofencing? So like when I entered a living room,
1:11:47do this. So like I was thinking about this is kind of interesting to me. Like imagine if
1:11:51you have your HomePod mini in one room and you've got your iPhone with you and if you walk into the
1:11:55room, the lights come on. Yeah, I think the idea behind ultra wide band is that that sort of thing
1:12:02should be possible. The problem is in order to do it, because ultra wide band's range is not enormous,
1:12:09what you really need is a constellation of ultra wide band sensors or something. And this is the
1:12:16challenge, right? This is the issue. I think in the future, that is the idea, right? Like if you've
1:12:21got an Apple TV that's got an ultra wide band chip in it or a HomePod that's got an ultra wide band
1:12:27chip in it or something like that, you will be able to say when I'm close to this object,
1:12:34when I'm within this range of this object, or maybe even like build a map, like how the Roomba
1:12:40builds a map. The Roomba goes around and it builds a little map and there's even a beta feature where
1:12:45it looks for Bluetooth LE devices and it puts them on the map too. So you can sort of like map out
1:12:50your house. That's the thing is you need to have the ability to build kind of a map in order to do
1:12:56this kind of automation. But that would be the nice thing about it is if you're carrying your phone
1:13:00and you go into a room and it knows you're in that room, so turn on the light or whatever. Yes,
1:13:05that would be, I think that's the end stage of this, but it's going to take a lot because it
1:13:10takes multiple devices to get to that point. You can't just like a phone with a U1 chip in it
1:13:15doesn't know where it is. It knows its relationship to other objects that have ultra wide band chips
1:13:20in them. And so you need to know what that object is and where it is in order to do anything. But
1:13:26that said, yeah, I think this is one of the futures of home automation is going to be having your
1:13:30devices know precisely where they are in your home. One of the things I'm looking forward to
1:13:35is smart locks because I have a smart lock that's based on Bluetooth LE. And so it has this whole
1:13:41thing that it goes through where it has to see me leave and know that I'm gone. And then it says,
1:13:48okay, now Jason's gone. Next time I see that phone again, I'm going to unlock because that means he's
1:13:53back. But that's the only way it can work. Whereas with ultra wide band, a smart lock would say,
1:13:59oh, you're at the front door unlock, right? Like that's like with precision, I you're at the front
1:14:05door unlock. And even with precision, oh, you're leaving the area of the front door now. I'll lock,
1:14:12right? And that will be great when it finally happens, but we're not there yet.
1:14:18Scott Walker asks, since the release of app clips, have either of you naturally come across any of
1:14:23them? I forgot about this feature because I've never seen them. I don't go outside very much.
1:14:29And I think that's true for a lot of people. So no, I could have slowed the down, the kind
1:14:34of adoption of them in general. I think app clips was always intended to be a long term thing. I
1:14:40think when I wrote about it originally last summer, I said, this is something that'll be
1:14:44a big deal in your life when you're trying to pay for parking at a meter in 2025. Like that's the
1:14:50kind of approach that's happening here. So I haven't seen them, but I'm not surprised by that
1:14:55because I literally, I could probably, if you gave me a piece of paper, I could probably write down
1:15:00the number of places that I've been outside my house in the last year. Right? Like I could
1:15:05probably write it down and it would fit on a piece of paper and it's just not a good nut. So I haven't
1:15:09seen it. It just maybe has been the worst possible like such like world for it to be launched into,
1:15:15you know? Right. I mean, the idea, some of the demo stuff is really great, right? The idea that
1:15:20you could order from a table at a restaurant by tapping on an app clip and then it knows what
1:15:26table you're at and it loads the app clip and you can place your order and then it'll get delivered
1:15:30to you. Like I think that sort of stuff is going to happen, but you know, restaurants have been
1:15:35broken by the pandemic and you know, like all of this stuff and updating like parking meters is a
1:15:41great example, but that is going to require infrastructure updates and those happen over
1:15:46the course of years. So I don't think we can judge app clips as a success or a failure based on not
1:15:52seeing them around because I think this is a long-term thing. Like this is Apple saying,
1:15:58if you want to build parking meters with a tap to pay, we have a function to let you do that now
1:16:06or a tap to log in or whatever it is. We let you do that now, but it's going to take time for those
1:16:12things to get adopted. And Jamie asks, now that we've seen a new consumer iMac, have reports of
1:16:21the death of the iMac Pro being greatly exaggerated? This is a weird question because a new consumer
1:16:28iMac, and it is in quotes, but like the iMac has always been a consumer product. I think what Jamie
1:16:35is saying, and I didn't do a good job of reading that question, I should have put a better emphasis
1:16:39on it, is basically saying like, it seems like we have the iMac and then there's going to be the iMac
1:16:44Pro, which is the bigger one, right? Like it's kind of the way that it would seem to be telling
1:16:48the story of itself. I mean, that's a scenario, but every, like literally every iMac has been
1:16:54a consumer iMac, except for any iMac Pro is the one outlier. And we still have the 27-inch iMac
1:17:00being sold with Intel. That is a consumer in quotes iMac. So I see no evidence to say that
1:17:09this is the consumer iMac and the larger one will be a Pro iMac. It doesn't mean it couldn't happen.
1:17:14It means I see no evidence for it. The fact that they introduced a smaller iMac and that there's
1:17:20also this larger iMac is not evidence of anything because those are the two iMacs that were there.
1:17:24There's totally a scenario where they could call the larger one iMac Pro. It goes back to what you
1:17:29were saying earlier, Myke, the idea that you've got product and product Pro throughout Apple's
1:17:32lineup. They could totally do that and say, well, Pro iMac is the big iMac and the 24 is already
1:17:37pretty big. So really what we're saying is that this new 27 or 30 or whatever iMac is more of a
1:17:43Pro model and they could do that. Or they could say, let's not call it Pro because some people
1:17:49will buy it and they would be turned off if it was Pro. Or let's do two versions of it. We'll do
1:17:54a regular version and then we'll do a Pro version that's got extra features. They have lots of
1:17:58choices. Who knows what choices they've made? We'll know when they announce it. But iMac Pro,
1:18:03as currently defined, is defined by the fact that it used a totally different cooling system
1:18:08because it was using Intel Xeon processors. The existence of the Xeons is why the Intel iMac Pro
1:18:14existed. And those processors are gone. So that premise for the iMac Pro is gone. The name remains
1:18:20available, right? So the question is all marketing. It's marketing. Does Apple want to make that larger
1:18:26iMac marketed as a Pro model or not? I don't think it really changes what it is other than it might
1:18:33give them some freedom to raise the price and pour a few more high-end features into it. But I think
1:18:38they would do that anyway. So it's a coin flip to me because it really is just in the hands of the
1:18:44marketers, what they want to call that product. Yeah, for me, I think at the company that is from
1:18:51very similar, but slightly different perspective of like, you know, we were saying that the iMac Pro
1:18:55was one and done, right? Like they released it and they never updated it and then it went away.
1:19:01And that that's the end of the iMac Pro. We're not saying it's the end of the name is the end of what
1:19:07that product was supposed to be. Like that product was supposed to be the only Pro Mac. Like the top
1:19:14of the line Mac was supposed to be the iMac Pro. Right. There was no Mac Pro in that scenario when
1:19:19it was designed. And it was designed for an Intel era that has also passed. So it's doubly
1:19:24out of date. But if they release an iMac called the iMac Pro, which I do think they will,
1:19:31it's not going to be like the iMac Pro that it quote unquote replaces. It replaces the largest
1:19:38iMac, right? But it's not going to be fulfilling the same place in the lineup that the iMac Pro was
1:19:46supposed to. Honestly, the only way that an iMac Pro, a new iMac Pro would fill that same ecological
1:19:52niche is if they announced we're doing a new iMac. And also there's this iMac Pro variant that's got
1:19:59a different color scheme and it's got a more powerful processor and it's got more RAM. They
1:20:03would need to like do a loaded version that's very different. And even then it would be a stretch
1:20:08because it's basically going to be the same as the other. So yeah, that's why I've been saying that
1:20:12it's a marketing decision because that's essentially all it is. How do you define your bigger
1:20:16iMac? Do you call it Pro or do you not? You can choose, but it's not going to be the same
1:20:21differentiator as the iMac Pro original was. If you'd like to send in a question for us to answer
1:20:28on the show, just send out a tweet with the hashtag #askupgrade or use question mark #askupgrade in the
1:20:32Relay FM members Discord, which you get access to if you're a member and you sign up for Upgrade Plus.
1:20:37Go to getupgradeplus.com and you can sign up and you will get longer ad-free episodes of every
1:20:43single upgrade every week. Even if we do two in a week, which we do sometimes, you'll get longer
1:20:48ad-free versions of those ones too. That's at getupgradeplus.com. I would like to thank Express
1:20:54VPN, Pingdom, and Ooni Pizza Ovens for their support of this episode. If you want to find
1:20:59Jason online, you can go to sixcolors.com. You can also go to Twitter. Jason is @jasnell. I'm @imike.
1:21:08I-M-Y-K-E. And we both host shows here at Relay FM. Jason also hosts many shows at The Incomparable.
1:21:15Jason, would you be able to tell me a little bit about another Relay FM show called Rocket?
1:21:20Jason: Sure. Rocket is not a podcast about space and related subjects. That's liftoff. No, Rocket
1:21:26covers all the hard tech news of the week in a fun, some would say wacky way from the latest
1:21:31Apple news to scams with fake blood testing companies, stuff like that. Rocket is there
1:21:38and you could be there too. Ride the Rocket. That's what I've decided their slogan is now.
1:21:42Really.fm/rocket or search for rocket wherever you get your podcasts. It's not about space,
1:21:47people. It's not literally about rockets. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode
1:21:52of Upgrade and we'll be back next week. Until then, say goodbye to Jason Snell.
1:21:56Goodbye, Myke Hurley.