00:00:08 ◼ ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 343. And today's show is brought to you by ExpressVPN,
00:00:15 ◼ ► Dev and Think, and Spokes. My name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined by Jason Snow. Hi Jason Snow.
00:00:20 ◼ ► Hi Myke Hurley. It is Daylight Savings Time Day today in America, which is exactly why we have
00:00:26 ◼ ► #snowtalk, so we don't talk about things like that. And Corey wants to know, Jason, have you ever
00:00:31 ◼ ► attended San Diego Comic Con? Corey has apparently not been following my work long enough. Yeah,
00:00:40 ◼ ► in fact, the story is that I, first of all, I went to college in San Diego, I had a lot of friends in
00:00:44 ◼ ► San Diego, so any opportunity to go back to San Diego is great. When the iPad was announced and
00:00:52 ◼ ► people started talking about how maybe the iPad would be the perfect digital comic book reader,
00:00:57 ◼ ► I registered for a press badge for Comic Con. I was like, "I have a reason to go to Comic Con now."
00:01:05 ◼ ► Excuse. For my work. Excuse. Yeah. And so, you know, we can put some links in the show notes,
00:01:12 ◼ ► but like I wrote a piece in 2010 about how people in the comics industry were viewing the coming of
00:01:18 ◼ ► digital comics, because digital comics had existed before, but you had to like read them on your
00:01:22 ◼ ► on your laptop or read them on a phone screen and it was not that great. And then the iPad came out
00:01:28 ◼ ► and I was like, "Oh, this is potentially something much more interesting." I went back to 2011.
00:01:32 ◼ ► It's kind of like eBooks before the Kindle, right? There are things you can read them on,
00:01:41 ◼ ► I read a bunch of digital comics on my laptop and let me tell you, it was terrible. I would take a
00:01:45 ◼ ► MacBook Air and like lay it on its side on my lap and read it because you have to get the shape of
00:01:50 ◼ ► the comic, which is sideways. It's not. Anyway, it was not great. I went back the next year.
00:01:56 ◼ ► I went back in 2014. One thing I learned about Comic Con is the best way to go to Comic Con is
00:02:04 ◼ ► when you can register for a media badge and not have to try and get an actual badge. That's really
00:02:09 ◼ ► great. And let's see, what else did I learn? The crowds are terrible and I don't particularly like
00:02:19 ◼ ► crowds and the crowds just kept getting worse. And even on the light days early in the convention,
00:02:26 ◼ ► like a Thursday, it was still ridiculous. And if anybody has ever been in downtown San Diego,
00:02:32 ◼ ► sort of like by the ballpark, like literally the whole Gaslamp District there is wall-to-wall
00:02:38 ◼ ► people, just entirely full of people. It's not just in the convention center. It spills out.
00:02:44 ◼ ► There are like weird storefronts. One year I went and there was like an anti-mutant demonstration
00:02:51 ◼ ► fake promoting an X-Men movie in front of a fake storefront. Like they spend money to rent out like
00:02:59 ◼ ► storefronts and stuff. It's cool, but there's so many people there. So after 2014, I haven't been
00:03:08 ◼ ► back since then, but the next couple of years, what Lauren and I would do is we would go down to San
00:03:14 ◼ ► Diego either right before or right after Comic Con and stay by the convention center. And you can
00:03:24 ◼ ► watch them putting up all the stuff or tearing down all the stuff, but there's nobody there.
00:03:29 ◼ ► And I would walk around like both the times we did that, I would walk around and we stayed right down
00:03:35 ◼ ► there and I'd be like, "Where are all the people?" Once you're used to it being completely packed
00:03:40 ◼ ► with the Comic Con crowd, it's so strange to not have them there. But I do love San Diego and I
00:03:47 ◼ ► love that neighborhood. I had that experience when Adina and I went to San Francisco on our honeymoon
00:03:54 ◼ ► and I was kind of walking through the kind of the area around Moscone. So there's nobody here.
00:04:02 ◼ ► I've only ever seen this place when it's absolutely teeming with nerds and there's just no one around.
00:04:07 ◼ ► So yes, funny kind of thing. - Yeah, Ian of Earth in the Discord says it's like downtown San Jose
00:04:13 ◼ ► during WWDC. And I'd say it's not because although that was, it is in the sense that it takes over
00:04:18 ◼ ► the downtown. That is true. The difference is for every person you saw in San Jose at WWDC, imagine
00:04:26 ◼ ► there are 10 people or 20 people. I'm not kidding. - And there are mutants. - I'm not kidding. And
00:04:32 ◼ ► they may be mutants. It's true. They may be. Anyway, Corey, yes, I have been. It was awesome.
00:04:38 ◼ ► I don't think I'll ever go back because the crowds are too much. And I don't know what it'll be like
00:04:43 ◼ ► in the future really post-pandemic because of the crowds and how severe the crowds were. I'm not
00:04:49 ◼ ► quite sure how they can make an event like that happen until we are back to zero spread essentially
00:04:56 ◼ ► of COVID because it was, yeah, if you didn't like crowds before, boy. But I'm looking forward to
00:05:04 ◼ ► going back to San Diego at some point because I love San Diego. - If you'd like to send in a
00:05:08 ◼ ► question to help us open an episode of Upgrade, just send in a tweet with the hashtag Snail Talk
00:05:12 ◼ ► or use question mark Snail Talk in the Relay FM members Discord and you can be cool like Corey is.
00:05:18 ◼ ► Some follow up for you, Jason. Photoshop and DaVinci Resolve have both gotten M1 updates.
00:05:28 ◼ ► but now it's official. And somebody at Adobe, spokesperson at Adobe said that Photoshop
00:05:42 ◼ ► which is not surprising. But this was something I saw it. I was like, okay, I wanted to just
00:05:45 ◼ ► mention it because that's cool. But it did make me think that I never consider Rosetta on my M1.
00:05:58 ◼ ► I really never have to feel like I never have to think about it. Like it wasn't like the first time
00:06:04 ◼ ► around, you know, and I remember when I would download software, I would check like, oh, make
00:06:08 ◼ ► sure to check all am I going to get the universal version because it's going to be that much better.
00:06:18 ◼ ► - Yeah, I had several updates this week on my MacBook Air and I was like, well, that's great,
00:06:24 ◼ ► I guess. But like the only thing that I wish was running native on Apple Silicon right now is my,
00:06:42 ◼ ► generally it's just fine. They've released a Photoshop beta the day that the M1 Macs shipped
00:06:48 ◼ ► basically. So it's been in beta, but they've gone final. And so like, if you do an update and you're
00:06:55 ◼ ► not on the beta, you can get the update and it just works natively. There are like a couple new,
00:07:01 ◼ ► it's funny, there are a couple new features that they added that are not on Apple Silicon yet,
00:07:07 ◼ ► because it's like it was running in parallel. So they're like, for those, you just need to
00:07:11 ◼ ► run it in Rosetta instead. But I doubt anybody's really built those into their workflow because
00:07:15 ◼ ► they're new features. And, you know, I wanted to highlight DaVinci Resolve just because that's a
00:07:21 ◼ ► great, you know, it's like a free high-end audio or video editing app. It's actually quite impressive
00:07:26 ◼ ► and they've updated that as well. And you're just seeing, you know, everybody is getting on the
00:07:31 ◼ ► M1 train, which is good because this is the future, but also there's gonna be more Macs.
00:07:49 ◼ ► This is contrary to some other rumors that are suggesting they're ready to ship now. I have
00:07:54 ◼ ► also seen, 'cause we spent some time a few weeks ago talking about what AirPods, the regular AirPods
00:08:00 ◼ ► version might look like, this new version. And it seems like from other rumors and leaks or what
00:08:06 ◼ ► have you, that it would appear that the new AirPods will be shaped like AirPods Pro mostly,
00:08:12 ◼ ► but without the rubber in the EarPod. So the part that you put in your ear is going to change shape
00:08:18 ◼ ► a little bit from the way that the AirPods are currently, but it's not gonna have the part that
00:08:23 ◼ ► goes inside of your ear. So we'll see how that ends up. - Still hanging out on the outside of your ear.
00:08:29 ◼ ► So if Min-Chi Kuo is correct, and I would assume that he is here because this is a pure supply
00:08:36 ◼ ► chain thing, right? And that is where the strength of these sources are. I guess what he's saying is
00:08:43 ◼ ► if there is going to be an Apple event this month, which I think the expectation is that there still
00:08:55 ◼ ► Which is fun. - Yeah, I mean, it would seem weird if they aren't gonna be out for a long time and
00:09:00 ◼ ► yet they're going to announce it. - In this report as well, there was a kind of like a throwaway line
00:09:09 ◼ ► where Kuo states that Apple is expecting to sell just a million AirPods Max in its first year.
00:09:14 ◼ ► Now a million of anything is great, but not for Apple. I don't know how many I would have assumed,
00:09:21 ◼ ► but what this immediately reminded me of was the sales expectations of the headset that we
00:09:27 ◼ ► were talking about a couple of weeks ago. - Yeah, I was also thinking about the idea that,
00:09:41 ◼ ► units as the other iPhone models. So there's a real question here about what Apple's expectations
00:09:48 ◼ ► are, right? Because lots of products can be not expected to appeal to everybody, right? Like,
00:09:54 ◼ ► for the price of the AirPods Max, did they really think they were going to sell an enormous volume
00:10:02 ◼ ► of them? I mean, we speculated, I think even at the time, that pricing it the way they did might
00:10:08 ◼ ► have been a way for them to get this product out when they couldn't make the volume that would be
00:10:14 ◼ ► required for it if it sold, you know, more to more people. And like they reduced the appeal of it.
00:10:22 ◼ ► Was that on purpose? Because that is one way you deal with a constraint in supply and your ability
00:10:28 ◼ ► to make them is just price it higher and then fewer people will buy it and then you're good.
00:10:36 ◼ ► - I'm just looking on the US site right now and practically all of the models are two to three
00:10:41 ◼ ► weeks shipping time. So this product is selling well based on how many can be made at least,
00:10:50 ◼ ► right? So this could have been one of those things which we were talking about that like,
00:10:54 ◼ ► sometimes they maybe just want to do a thing or they want to do a thing, but they can't do it the
00:10:58 ◼ ► way they expected. And this it's still selling as many as can be made. And that isn't necessarily
00:11:05 ◼ ► a bad thing. And it is that idea like with the iPhone mini, maybe it isn't selling as many models
00:11:11 ◼ ► as a Barclays analyst thought it would, but what did Apple want to sell? That's the important
00:11:17 ◼ ► number. - And they look at the supply chain sometimes and say, oh, well, they cut back on
00:11:21 ◼ ► their order of this and you can read the tea leaves and like, they actually thought there would be
00:11:24 ◼ ► more, but we don't know for sure. I would say though, that the other possibility here is that
00:11:30 ◼ ► Apple went out with these and said, oh, these are going to be big hits. And then even despite
00:11:36 ◼ ► everything, or they weren't thinking about that and close, like it's only going to be about a million.
00:11:41 ◼ ► That's their expectation now, are they happy with it or not? It's not being reported here, but
00:11:46 ◼ ► I think it would be the other side of this is what if Apple thought that despite the price,
00:11:51 ◼ ► they'd sell a lot of these. And that would be interesting because they would have to rethink
00:11:57 ◼ ► the product and it's not unusual. We have some recent history about Apple coming out with a
00:12:03 ◼ ► product that everybody thought was priced too high and it never really sold well and Apple eventually
00:12:08 ◼ ► just killed it. It just happened. We'll probably talk about it in a little bit. So that's for me,
00:12:12 ◼ ► is like the big question is, do they look at the AirPod Max and say, yep, that's about right.
00:12:16 ◼ ► That's what we thought. Or do they look at it and go, hmm, what do we do wrong? Why aren't people
00:12:23 ◼ ► buying this? I don't know. All right. We do have a little bit more follow-up to do, but I think it
00:12:30 ◼ ► could be long discussion follow-ups. So why don't we take our first break now and we'll thank Spokes
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00:13:55 ◼ ► may want to leak information to the media, right? Because we know that there are some rumors,
00:14:00 ◼ ► we're talking about Ming-Chi Kuo, we would believe that Ming-Chi Kuo is getting the majority of his
00:14:05 ◼ ► source information from the supply chain and that's I think much much harder for Apple to
00:14:11 ◼ ► stop. But it seems like people say like Mark Gurman, they must have some kind of sources
00:14:19 ◼ ► inside of Apple because they find out things really soon. You know, even like sites like
00:14:23 ◼ ► 9to5Mac would be a similar thing. And we've spent a bunch of time wondering like why maybe someone
00:14:29 ◼ ► would want to do that. Well, there has been a bit of a, there has been a story in the past couple of
00:14:36 ◼ ► days about somebody called Simon Lancaster, who was a former product design architect at Apple.
00:14:43 ◼ ► They have been accused of selling trade secrets and details about unreleased products to the media
00:14:49 ◼ ► and Apple has filed a lawsuit with them. And I just thought it was really interesting because
00:14:53 ◼ ► this is very public, right? Like this is like a very public thing and I can't recall something
00:15:00 ◼ ► like this in recent history like that. There have been some similar things, but this is a very
00:15:14 ◼ ► interesting one. And also, right, we always talk about consider the source, why do they want to do
00:15:20 ◼ ► the leak? And this, according to this story and these allegations, it's the strangest. This guy
00:15:28 ◼ ► seems like he was deluded into thinking that he could barter favorable coverage of his startup
00:15:35 ◼ ► that he was doing for leaks about Apple. That seems to be the allegation here is that he was sort of
00:15:44 ◼ ► talking to a media member and hoping that they would get positive coverage of their thing if they
00:15:52 ◼ ► leaked this stuff to them. So strange. And was bragging about it. Because we could talk about
00:15:58 ◼ ► the ethics of... I mean, there's a question about whether you're trying to induce somebody to break
00:16:03 ◼ ► the law or break their contracts in order to give you information. Inducement is sort of a line
00:16:08 ◼ ► you're not supposed to cross. You're not supposed to go up to somebody and say, "Hey, you work at
00:16:13 ◼ ► Apple. Give me what you know." You're supposed to sort of... You need to be a little bit more
00:16:18 ◼ ► on the receiving end of something they want to give because you don't, as a journalist,
00:16:21 ◼ ► want to be basically convincing them to break their contract and to get themselves in danger.
00:16:29 ◼ ► You sort of just want to be there for them if they want to disclose. I know that that's
00:16:35 ◼ ► a weird distinction, but it is a distinction that a lot of journalists make. But let me tell you,
00:16:54 ◼ ► beyond the pale. And I think there's no evidence that that happened, but it is a weird motivation.
00:17:02 ◼ ► - It seems like that there are some stories in the reports that have come out about this effect.
00:17:08 ◼ ► Lancaster saying it to people. And he may have been under that impression, or at least thought
00:17:15 ◼ ► that he would get a favor back. Like down the line could be like, "Hey, remember I gave you
00:17:21 ◼ ► all that information. You do me a solid." This is just a very strange story, but it shows one of
00:17:29 ◼ ► those reasons. This guy was leaving. It seems like he may have been wanting to start his own
00:17:35 ◼ ► project in the future and hope that he would make connections in the media because of his influence
00:17:47 ◼ ► which would no longer be useful the moment he left Apple. And then the way he goes about it,
00:17:52 ◼ ► where he's like, "I'm just gonna download all this stuff. Oh, I am giving my notice." And then
00:17:59 ◼ ► like an hour before he's getting his, or a couple hours before he gets his access shut off, "Just
00:18:09 ◼ ► - And apparently go to some meeting that he didn't need to be at about some project known as Project
00:18:29 ◼ ► is this one of those things where maybe they weren't sure about him so they planted some
00:18:39 ◼ ► was doing and maybe that he was giving stuff away. But it's super, super strange stuff. So
00:18:47 ◼ ► this is all going into court right now. Apple is making all these accusations. But you know,
00:19:00 ◼ ► yeah, we will see. If this continues on, then maybe we'll get some more details about this.
00:19:25 ◼ ► kind of reminder to people who work at Apple that, and on one level, I would say as an employee,
00:19:36 ◼ ► On another level though, your employer entrusts you with secrets and you agree to keep them. And
00:19:43 ◼ ► that's kind of the terms of employment. And you don't have to be employed there. You could leave.
00:19:49 ◼ ► And what he did here is kind of beyond the pale, right? Like it is, this is an extreme, okay,
00:19:55 ◼ ► alleged to have done. The allegations are really extreme and weird. So I'm not sure that this is,
00:20:03 ◼ ► I'm reminded of that line about, I'm gonna get it wrong now, but about Watergate and the idea is
00:20:09 ◼ ► that these are, they're not very bright guys. Like sometimes the objects lessons you get are
00:20:17 ◼ ► not very clever people doing a very subtle thing. It's somebody bumbling and stumbling and doing
00:20:27 ◼ ► - Especially downloading stuff because, I mean, my assumption is that's all tracked. Like if you're
00:20:36 ◼ ► downloading files, like if it's a confidential files, it will be trackable, traceable. At least
00:20:43 ◼ ► like when I worked in a bank, it was. If something was marked as confidential, everyone that
00:20:49 ◼ ► downloaded it or printed it, it could be traced as to who did that. - Exactly. And they do that
00:20:54 ◼ ► with like screenplays, all have like watermarks on them. And in fact, I get a chuckle about this.
00:21:00 ◼ ► I've been watching "For All Mankind" season two, which I've got, Steven and I got screeners of,
00:21:06 ◼ ► and Dan Morin has screeners of, so we're in advance. And we're recording all of our podcast
00:21:11 ◼ ► episodes about episode by episode through "For All Mankind" season two in advance. We're recording
00:21:17 ◼ ► them sort of two at a time, which means I'm using Apple's screener process. And again, you could
00:21:25 ◼ ► theoretically capture the video of season two of "For All Mankind" and release it on the internet
00:21:30 ◼ ► for all to see, except it's watermarked. And where I noticed this is sometimes there'll be a very
00:21:35 ◼ ► dramatic scene and somebody will walk into a room and they're about to say something and suddenly
00:21:39 ◼ ► right next to their face, the word J period Snell appears. And I'm like, "Hey, that's me." My brain
00:21:46 ◼ ► is like, "Oh, it's me." "Oh, right. It's the watermark." But for a moment I'm like, "Ooh,
00:21:50 ◼ ► how do they know?" And they're like, "Well, they know 'cause it's the screener." But that's their-
00:21:53 ◼ ► - I hope at some point they put up like a signup sheet, you know, like to who's getting on a
00:21:57 ◼ ► certain mission and it's just your name. - Yep. Yep. How do they know? It's like, "It's just for me."
00:22:07 ◼ ► - Apple is amending the wording in Apple podcasts in iOS 14.5 to say, "Follow" rather than "Subscribe"
00:22:19 ◼ ► for when you add a new show to your library. Apparently 47% of people think that subscribing
00:22:26 ◼ ► to a podcast means that you have to pay. This is being used a lot. I keep seeing this in reports to
00:22:32 ◼ ► suggest why Apple might wanna do this. I don't think that this will do any... So here's the thing,
00:22:38 ◼ ► I don't think changing the word from "Subscribe" to "Follow" is going to make any meaningful change
00:22:43 ◼ ► in people signing up to like getting a podcast. Like I just don't think that there is a real cause
00:22:49 ◼ ► and effect here that in meaningful numbers. I don't know. - I think meaningful, I don't know.
00:22:54 ◼ ► I think it's an interesting example, I mean, if we back up for a minute, of nerd tool builder culture
00:23:04 ◼ ► 'cause the nerds who build the tools name the tools, right? And sometimes what that means,
00:23:10 ◼ ► for big stuff, there's like Apple has marketing department and they come up with names and even
00:23:13 ◼ ► those names are occasionally, you know, pro max. So they don't always do a very good job either.
00:23:18 ◼ ► But a lot of times it's the nerds building the tools and it's the nerds naming the tools. And
00:23:24 ◼ ► sometimes the user experience, the labels are not the best because the people who are building them
00:23:30 ◼ ► are really good at building the tools, but they aren't necessarily good at coming up with the
00:23:33 ◼ ► names. And this is an example where we have RSS feed culture, dating all the way back to Dave
00:23:38 ◼ ► Weiner presumably. And the idea of subscribing to an RSS feed, the subscription model, it's not a
00:23:46 ◼ ► bad example. It's not a bad word to use necessarily. It sort of explains what you're doing, but
00:23:53 ◼ ► from that you end up with it being repurposed into the podcast model. Again, not a bad choice
00:24:01 ◼ ► at the time I would even argue 'cause I think it really describes, it is a subscription model.
00:24:15 ◼ ► audience is very similar to if you're a magazine or a newspaper because there's an expectation
00:24:19 ◼ ► that you're gonna be getting new installments every so often. It's very different than if
00:24:23 ◼ ► you're just putting articles up on the web and hoping people come to your webpage. It's a
00:24:34 ◼ ► different context now. So I don't mean to blame the nerds who build the tools. I kind of get
00:24:39 ◼ ► where they were coming from. It depends where you're coming from though, 'cause as Kate pointed
00:24:41 ◼ ► out in the Discord, YouTube has subscription and it's free. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Which is arguably
00:24:48 ◼ ► a bigger market than the old newspaper market. But they also have follows, right? So now you've
00:24:54 ◼ ► got a button and a bell that you have to ring in order to- Well, one's notifications. Notifications.
00:24:59 ◼ ► Here's the thing, the other part to my point of why I don't think this is gonna help, 'cause I
00:25:03 ◼ ► actually think step two harms it more because probably the reason Apple's done this is not
00:25:09 ◼ ► because 47% of people think you have to pay for podcasts. It's to set the points in place
00:25:16 ◼ ► so you can actually have paid podcasts and Apple podcasts. And if you introduce paid podcasts to
00:25:22 ◼ ► Apple podcasts, more people will think you have to pay for podcasts than the amount of people
00:25:27 ◼ ► that thought it before. So I don't really think that this is helping anything. I think you make
00:25:32 ◼ ► a valid point. I don't know if I'm entirely convinced, but I think you make an important
00:25:38 ◼ ► point, which is even if they're not doing like paid podcasts per se, but maybe there's some other
00:25:43 ◼ ► kind of... There's things that you get with your subscription or whatever, and they don't call it
00:25:47 ◼ ► like, "There's no button that says buy this podcast." You still want to separate the concept
00:25:54 ◼ ► of connecting to a podcast to a term that is often perceived as being a payment relationship.
00:26:02 ◼ ► As a podcaster, I think this is great because I think it makes a point I'd never really considered
00:26:07 ◼ ► before, which is that people may not be wanting to subscribe to my podcast because they're afraid
00:26:14 ◼ ► that it causes some sort of liability on their part. And follow is a social media term. It's
00:26:30 ◼ ► like so many people are listening to podcasts and they're streaming them. They're not even
00:26:34 ◼ ► downloading them in advance. There are a lot of podcast apps that don't even download in advance
00:26:39 ◼ ► anymore. They just stream the podcast. And so you tap and then what you're really doing is
00:26:45 ◼ ► subscribing. You might be downloading it. You might just be having it appear in a list of new
00:26:49 ◼ ► podcasts for you to listen to, which is actually pretty close to a social media follow. So I'm okay
00:26:55 ◼ ► with it. And I think that maybe there is a little bit of a benefit and I'm tickled by it because I
00:27:01 ◼ ► think it's a great example of looking at terminology that makes perfect sense from one angle,
00:27:05 ◼ ► from a different angle and realizing that all of us who have been working with RSS feeds for a
00:27:12 ◼ ► long time and understand the subscription relationship and call it a subscription, then
00:27:17 ◼ ► you look at a poll or a survey that says almost half of the people misinterpret the word. And I
00:27:24 ◼ ► love that because I had no idea. And yet when prompted, when given that piece of information,
00:27:30 ◼ ► I think to myself, oh, actually that makes sense. Yeah. Like, oh, oh yes, this has been
00:27:36 ◼ ► miscommunicated or at least it's less clear than we might've thought. So I'm fascinated by this.
00:27:46 ◼ ► Finally, people are going to get podcasting now that there's one word different on a button.
00:27:50 ◼ ► I had to one follow a vast amount of people, like more than three people who were reporting
00:27:57 ◼ ► on this news of that. It's just like, I'm done with these bad takes. Like I follow a lot of
00:28:01 ◼ ► journalists. Do you reply to them and say unsubscribe? No, I was just done. I guess it's
00:28:06 ◼ ► just like, I'm kind of fed up now of the, finally, this is the thing that's going to mean that
00:28:13 ◼ ► everybody gets into podcasts. Like this is what I mean about like this 47% survey. It's like,
00:28:20 ◼ ► I don't know if these, if these are the people that would have even been listening to podcasts
00:28:24 ◼ ► anyway. And I don't mean that in a bad way. It's just like, these are people that clearly
00:28:28 ◼ ► had never really looked into it. It was like, Hey, do you pay for podcasts? Uh, yeah. And then
00:28:34 ◼ ► move on. I don't know what the intent of these people is. Neither do I really think that changing
00:28:39 ◼ ► this wording is now going to make people go like, finally, I didn't think I could get this content.
00:28:45 ◼ ► I find this stuff frustrating a lot of the time of like, I've made a point and here is the survey
00:28:52 ◼ ► to back up my point. Like, okay, but what is, what was this survey? Nevertheless, I don't like follow
00:28:59 ◼ ► as a phrase for podcasting. I just don't like it. It doesn't feel right to me. I don't like,
00:29:04 ◼ ► Hey, follow upgrade. In your podcast app of choice. I don't like it. Cause also, I mean,
00:29:10 ◼ ► it's not going to work unless everyone now adopts it. So. Which we'll, we'll see. We'll see what
00:29:16 ◼ ► happens. I think they'll have to, because like, I think Spotify call it following, I believe.
00:29:21 ◼ ► If Apple do it too, all of the other apps are going to have to start to do it and I'll just
00:29:25 ◼ ► get used to it. Whatever. Like I'm not that stuck up on it. Uh, I'm not going to do like the net
00:29:29 ◼ ► casts model here. Um, but I just, personally, I just prefer the word subscribe to the show,
00:29:35 ◼ ► then follow the show because follow. I don't know. Like I like to think that there is a personal
00:29:41 ◼ ► element to the shows that I make and it's a choice that people make to want to listen to the content
00:29:46 ◼ ► and follow just seems too passive to me, to the, to the way that I think about podcasts.
00:29:51 ◼ ► Well, anyway, um, follow us on iTunes. Subscribe to us on iTunes would be the better one, right?
00:30:02 ◼ ► Talking about podcasts, you, uh, put something in our document that just says, Jason in capital
00:30:09 ◼ ► letters loves this feature. And you're talking about the new overcast watch app, uh, as somebody
00:30:14 ◼ ► who doesn't use an Apple watch. Can you explain to me what's so great about this feature?
00:30:18 ◼ ► So a new version of overcast came out and it has a brand new watch app and Marco did a really good
00:30:25 ◼ ► job. I, I am somebody who runs several times a week and I run with the AirPods in my ears and
00:30:32 ◼ ► the watch on my wrist. And I leave my phone at home and cause I don't want it like wiggling
00:30:38 ◼ ► around in my pocket, right? Like there's no, it's freeing to not have stuff weighing down my pockets
00:30:44 ◼ ► when I go for a run. Um, and on ATP, Marco always talks about how nobody uses that feature.
00:30:49 ◼ ► Like it's so depressing. He's like, oh, it's just, it's a tiny fraction. Like more people use this
00:30:55 ◼ ► other obscure feature in overcast more than they use the watch app. But I do think, so I despair
00:31:00 ◼ ► about him updating it and he didn't update it for awhile. And it does feel like this is like the
00:31:04 ◼ ► third time I've heard like there's a new overcast watch app. Like I feel like it's something he
00:31:09 ◼ ► struggled with. Well, the first time it was really just like a remote for the phone. And then the
00:31:13 ◼ ► second one, it can do standalone, but it's limited. And the third one really is a standalone app and
00:31:18 ◼ ► it kind of parallels the evolution of what an Apple watch app is supposed to be. Cause they
00:31:22 ◼ ► were originally just phone apps that ran that's displayed on your watch. And, and then there was
00:31:27 ◼ ► this weird middle point where they were supposed to be independent, but they kind of weren't and
00:31:32 ◼ ► now they're much more independent. So Marco finally built this. And I think it's interesting
00:31:38 ◼ ► because he must feel like there is a competitive advantage to do this because like he keeps saying,
00:31:44 ◼ ► not that many people use it, but it is important to have a podcast app with this feature because
00:31:48 ◼ ► people think they want it or they're shopping for an app and you need to be able to say, yes,
00:31:53 ◼ ► we have an Apple watch app, but he did a great job. It is truly independent. You it's got a
00:31:57 ◼ ► reload button on it. Myke, like literally you can be somewhere without an iPhone with just a cellular
00:32:04 ◼ ► Apple watch and tap the reload button and it will talk directly to the overcast servers,
00:32:13 ◼ ► it will play them. Now, some of that the old app did, but what I always found was the old app
00:32:20 ◼ ► really wanted to talk to the overcast app on the iPhone. And that was the definitive source of what
00:32:26 ◼ ► podcasts existed in the world. Right? Like, so it could, once it knew a new episode of a podcast
00:32:32 ◼ ► came out, but it didn't have it locally and I was out running, it would stream it, right? Because
00:32:36 ◼ ► it knows what the URL is of that podcast file. So it would stream it and I could listen to it.
00:32:40 ◼ ► But if a new episode came out and I hadn't synced up my iPhone and my Apple watch overcast together,
00:32:57 ◼ ► wouldn't be listed. And there's literally nothing I could do at that point because if it
00:33:02 ◼ ► is not in the universe of what's on the Apple watch, it can't play it. The new version doesn't
00:33:07 ◼ ► talk to the phone. Like it doesn't talk to the phone. It talks to overcast web service.
00:33:11 ◼ ► And so now it will, you know, I still, I built up this thing where I would launch before I go
00:33:19 ◼ ► for a run, I launch overcast on my watch and on my phone and I let them sort of talk to each other a
00:33:24 ◼ ► little bit. And now really what I need to do is just launch overcast and tap the reload button
00:33:29 ◼ ► before I go out the door. So I'm on my wifi and all of that. But anyway, it's much more stable.
00:33:33 ◼ ► It's much more freestanding, which is important for me because I'm using a cellular watch and I'm
00:33:39 ◼ ► leaving my phone behind. It's got chapter skip now. It's got variable speed now, a bunch of
00:33:46 ◼ ► other really nice stuff. He did a great job. It's a really good app. So for me, when the Apple watch
00:33:54 ◼ ► was announced, I had this idea that, Oh, wow. I could, I could go out with just the watch
00:33:59 ◼ ► and go for a run with just the watch and some headphones and leave my phone behind. And the
00:34:06 ◼ ► truth was in those early days, that was not a possibility, but it's gradually become that.
00:34:11 ◼ ► And this software update just pushes it forward that much more. So I'm, I'm grateful. I'm glad
00:34:16 ◼ ► that he did it. I use this feature so much that I actually stayed off the overcast beta for quite a
00:34:22 ◼ ► while because I was afraid it was just going to break my thing and, and my thing was working
00:34:28 ◼ ► pretty well, but, uh, I finally dove in and, uh, it's, it's a lot better. So I'm, I'm glad he did
00:34:34 ◼ ► it. And it's a, it's an app. Like I said, I use several times a week when I'm running and, uh,
00:34:40 ◼ ► I'm very happy that it, uh, it is, uh, it's a real app now. So I love it. I do. It sounds cool. I
00:34:48 ◼ ► mean, I remember when I, I only ever had one, um, LTE watch, which is the series three. Uh, I think
00:35:04 ◼ ► needle connection, but I've been struggling with my carrier to move over from one to another.
00:35:08 ◼ ► And I just gave up in the end. Um, but I remember when I was trying to really, you know, use the
00:35:16 ◼ ► series three, it always felt like, even though it has a connection, the watch desperately, every app
00:35:22 ◼ ► I used wanted to find the phone. Just like, even when they were not connected, you know, you'd get
00:35:28 ◼ ► the little phone with the line through it or whatever. And all the watch wanted to do was find
00:35:33 ◼ ► the phone and it, you know, that was the real growing pain. Part of the Apple watch is a
00:35:36 ◼ ► platform, right? It is. So it starts out and the only way they can get it to work is to make every
00:35:42 ◼ ► watch app essentially subservient to the phone. It's the phone. It's just a little sidekick to
00:35:56 ◼ ► realize that was a problem, but they had, that's where they had to start. They felt they had to
00:35:59 ◼ ► start right there. And then you end up in this period in the middle where they're like, well,
00:36:03 ◼ ► kind of, you know, it's kind of standalone. It can do some stuff when it's away from the phone.
00:36:11 ◼ ► And the overcast app is a perfect example, right? Which is it won't sync to the web service,
00:36:15 ◼ ► but if it syncs the data, it'll stream it over the internet. Like that was the compromise and
00:36:19 ◼ ► every app was different. And some of the apps didn't do that. And some of the apps did do that.
00:36:23 ◼ ► It's very frustrating. And I feel like the Apple watch is now creeping forward into a world where
00:36:30 ◼ ► it's really expected that your app is going to work without the iPhone around and that you should
00:36:35 ◼ ► build the app. Like if you've got a calendar app, it should talk to your calendar servers,
00:36:39 ◼ ► not check with the iPhone, whatever your app is. It should go out to the internet itself on wifi or
00:36:47 ◼ ► cellular if it has it to do that rather than go back to mommy and say, please give me the
00:36:55 ◼ ► internet now. And so we're getting there, but I understand why they didn't make that decision
00:37:02 ◼ ► at the beginning. They just couldn't in order to do it. And it is given that they made that
00:37:06 ◼ ► decision. It's not surprising that they had those growing pains, but it was very painful,
00:37:09 ◼ ► right? Like there was nothing. It was a really bad experience. They're going to the right place,
00:37:18 ◼ ► if this app will work or just cease to function because the iPhone is not around. It's better now.
00:37:29 ◼ ► - And those kinds of feelings that sets a bad long-term precedent in the user, right? Like if
00:37:36 ◼ ► it doesn't work, you like, and you, you have a big failure point, uh, you might not use it again for
00:37:46 ◼ ► - Yeah, exactly. And, and that was a, that was a tough time, but now, you know, obviously this has
00:37:50 ◼ ► been a real push at Apple like last year, or I guess two years ago, they did the app store
00:37:56 ◼ ► on the watch. Right. And like the app store on the watch is kind of silly, but it is part of a
00:38:02 ◼ ► message that the watch is its own platform and that it can do stuff itself because the end goal
00:38:09 ◼ ► is that you should be able to buy an Apple watch without an iPhone. Right? Like that's the end goal
00:38:13 ◼ ► is that it should stand on its own at least. Yeah. Better with iPhone for sure. But that you should
00:38:19 ◼ ► be able to just do everything on the device. And I don't know if they'll really get there. It would
00:38:24 ◼ ► be a weird experience. A lot of it seems unnecessary because most people are going to have a phone that
00:38:28 ◼ ► they can use to manage it. But, um, I, I appreciate the drive for that because we don't, you know,
00:38:36 ◼ ► you don't want to leave the house with just the Apple watch and realize that some key piece of
00:38:40 ◼ ► information is, you know, it's probably in the cloud, but the stuff on your watch doesn't
00:38:47 ◼ ► understand that. And we'll only look back at its phone and it can't talk to that phone because the
00:38:51 ◼ ► phone's not nearby. So that, that, that has to end. But the good news is it does seem like
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00:41:32 ◼ ► HomePod Mini has been a hit since its debut last fall, offering customers amazing sound,
00:41:42 ◼ ► "Oh, this sounds great. They just love the HomePod Mini." We are focusing our efforts on HomePod
00:41:47 ◼ ► Mini. We are discontinuing the original HomePod. It will continue to be available while supplies
00:41:53 ◼ ► last blah, blah, blah, blah. Apple will provide HomePod customers with software updates and
00:42:06 ◼ ► - So two weeks, two products going away. I think it's pretty fair to say that the difference
00:42:15 ◼ ► between the iMac Pro and the HomePod, it is like the Grand Canyon in between these two things.
00:42:27 ◼ ► - This is the going to the mattresses. They're like, "All right, you're out. You're out too,
00:42:30 ◼ ► HomePod. Get out. Get out." I find it fascinating that they said we are focusing our efforts on
00:42:35 ◼ ► HomePod Mini because that is such a strange little phrase that I think probably is only intended to
00:42:49 ◼ ► all of... They add this two sentences about HomePod Mini before mentioning they're discontinuing
00:42:54 ◼ ► the HomePod. I don't know if I will take it as evidence that there will only ever be a HomePod
00:43:00 ◼ ► Mini and there won't be any other HomePod-like products from Apple. I think that's debatable,
00:43:21 ◼ ► it's going away, but the iMac Pro wasn't a failure and it's going away. Is the HomePod a failure?
00:43:41 ◼ ► in when they released it. At WWDC, it was a blitz. That was where they put me in the room where I
00:43:57 ◼ ► - Yeah. I could talk about how it sounded, but not any of the details of how it was used because it
00:44:02 ◼ ► was so early. And they were obviously really pushing it hard and it's so brilliant. And
00:44:11 ◼ ► everybody immediately said, "Woof, that price is too high," given the competitive market there.
00:44:18 ◼ ► And Apple's response was something like, "But it sounds good," which it does. I actually think the
00:44:24 ◼ ► HomePod sounds great. I have a stereo pair and I think they sound great, but it did cost a lot.
00:44:32 ◼ ► And when they cut the price, it still cost a lot. - The price never got cut to a level that it was
00:44:38 ◼ ► sensible for most people. - Yeah. And I think for a good reason, which is it was over-engineered.
00:44:42 ◼ ► They made this thing and it was almost like money was no object. They over-engineered the product.
00:44:47 ◼ ► They created essentially like a Sonos kind of product, except more expensive even than Sonos.
00:44:53 ◼ ► And it was a mistake. And you can't cut the price beyond a certain point. You're losing money on
00:45:01 ◼ ► every one. And the HomePod mini is the answer. The HomePod mini is Apple going back and saying,
00:45:06 ◼ ► "What if we make one that we can sell for a low price?" And people generally seem to like the
00:45:11 ◼ ► HomePod mini. It sounds like... I don't have one, but it sounds like people generally like them.
00:45:16 ◼ ► They're not a HomePod, but the key is that they are priced very differently than the HomePod,
00:45:26 ◼ ► I don't know either, but it certainly seems to be a case where Apple realized that they just
00:45:31 ◼ ► they overshot. They made this over-engineered, super high quality, all of these speakers and
00:45:51 ◼ ► the HomePod mini is obviously a product that they believe in and seems to be doing fine.
00:46:11 ◼ ► Yeah, I think it's a great question. I think HomePod mini... That's the part. We're focusing
00:46:18 ◼ ► on HomePod mini, which itself conjures up the HomePod, right? Like, it's like the ghost of the
00:46:23 ◼ ► HomePod hovers over it. This is the small one of the one we don't talk about, right? Like, you can't...
00:46:31 ◼ ► Exactly. Exactly. So it's like, don't think about him. Think about me. And it's a little bit like
00:46:38 ◼ ► that. I feel like there's probably room here, although I wonder if Apple is wary that they are
00:46:45 ◼ ► continuing to make products in this category and haven't seen a hit because their hits are
00:46:50 ◼ ► headphones, their hits aren't speakers. Like, is the problem that Apple's competition is too
00:46:56 ◼ ► strong here, that Siri is too weak? I think seeding the home speaker space on one level seems like a
00:47:03 ◼ ► mistake for Apple because the competition is fierce and their competition in terms of voice
00:47:10 ◼ ► assistants and all of that, they're all in here and they're all playing and playing hard. So Apple
00:47:14 ◼ ► needs to be there too. On the other hand, if you think about Apple's home strategy and their
00:47:20 ◼ ► complete lack of participation in huge swaths of the smart home world, you look at the HomePod mini
00:47:26 ◼ ► and you think, "Really? That's your product? It's a little speaker? You're not doing mesh Wi-Fi?
00:47:34 ◼ ► You're not doing all these other things, but you're doing a little speaker that looks like
00:47:38 ◼ ► a candle? That's an interesting choice." So it comes back to something that I know we've
00:47:43 ◼ ► talked about before, which is what is Apple's home strategy? And I don't know. Not knowing what their
00:47:51 ◼ ► home strategy is, I can't answer the question, is this the only HomePod that we're ever going to see?
00:47:56 ◼ ► I would like for them to make maybe a better sounding, more capable HomePod that was a little
00:48:02 ◼ ► more expensive than the HomePod mini, but not the HomePod. Or like a soundbar version that's
00:48:08 ◼ ► sort of an Apple TV HomePod Fusion, which I've written about a few times now. It's like, "That
00:48:13 ◼ ► would be an interesting product." There are a bunch of ways that they could go, but I'm not entirely
00:48:18 ◼ ► convinced that Apple is convinced that this is a market that they can excel in, right? That's my
00:48:23 ◼ ► concern is that with the AirPods, they got immediate feedback that it was a hit, and they
00:48:30 ◼ ► leaned into it. With HomePod, it was a flop, and they had to re-envision it. So how is that going?
00:48:40 ◼ ► I don't know if we really know whether HomePod mini is a footnote, or if it's showing signs of
00:48:48 ◼ ► being, if not a hit like the AirPods, at least a strong product. Because until I know how Apple
00:48:56 ◼ ► thinks about this category, it's very hard to predict what they're going to do here. And I'm
00:49:00 ◼ ► kind of baffled. I don't really understand. Either they need to say, "Nope, we're just out. Other
00:49:06 ◼ ► people will play here. We're going to focus on the stuff that we're good at." Or they should probably
00:49:11 ◼ ► commit to doing more stuff in the home, and instead they're just in this weird space where they've got
00:49:15 ◼ ► an Apple TV that's kind of mystifying, and you've got the HomePod mini. Don't call it HomePod.
00:49:27 ◼ ► focusing on what they're good at. This should be something Apple's good at. Like, they have
00:49:34 ◼ ► the pedigree in other areas to create. Now I know Apple have now had two failed, large-scale,
00:49:43 ◼ ► amazing audio products. It's kind of hilarious that when the HomePod came around, we all made
00:49:48 ◼ ► the iPod HiFi joke, and it has fulfilled the same fate as the iPod HiFi, that it was over-engineered,
00:49:57 ◼ ► too expensive, and people didn't want it. All right, I guess we can assume that's what's happened
00:50:01 ◼ ► with the HomePod here. But Apple make great audio products. They make devices that should go in your
00:50:08 ◼ ► home. They should be able to produce something here which is good. And not good's not the right
00:50:17 ◼ ► phrase. Works is a better phrase, because the HomePod in some areas is a great product,
00:50:24 ◼ ► but they seem to have not been able to deliver what their customers were looking for, I suppose,
00:50:32 ◼ ► because people have these products. Clearly, there are competing products that are vastly more
00:50:39 ◼ ► successful. Apple wasn't able to make this one one of those things for whatever reason.
00:50:44 ◼ ► - Yeah, and some of it, I think, is the challenge that Apple... I think the people inside Apple
00:50:50 ◼ ► misread the audience for these things. And the reason that the HomePod is so over-engineered,
00:51:04 ◼ ► most people who buy these things don't judge the quality of audio like the people who made the
00:51:12 ◼ ► product do. And that Apple made the mistake, maybe out of the pride of like, "Everything from Apple
00:51:18 ◼ ► is better, it's of a higher quality," of making like an audiophile home speaker, which was never
00:51:24 ◼ ► gonna sell in volume, even if it was labeled from Apple, when they should have made something that
00:51:29 ◼ ► just didn't sound as good. Like, I've played music on my Echo Show, sounds pretty good. It's not as
00:51:36 ◼ ► good as the HomePods, but the HomePods are sort of halfway across the room, and the Echo Show is
00:51:42 ◼ ► right in the kitchen, and sometimes I'll just play music on the Echo Show, it sounds pretty good.
00:51:46 ◼ ► And the pretty good, what strikes me about that experience is that pretty good is good enough
00:51:53 ◼ ► for lots of people. And Apple misjudged it and tried for great, and it turns out that people
00:52:01 ◼ ► didn't really see a lot of value difference between pretty good and great. Plus, you throw in
00:52:06 ◼ ► the assistance, like, "Siri's not that good. It's still not that good." And there were lots of issues
00:52:11 ◼ ► where Siri would misunderstand things and play the wrong thing. And even if that gets better,
00:52:20 ◼ ► you've got to throw that in the mix too. But I think ultimately they miscalculated what this
00:52:25 ◼ ► market is because, unlike Amazon, which tried a bunch of different stuff, Apple waited a long time
00:52:32 ◼ ► and then probably rushed this thing in that was their one shot and they missed, and then they
00:52:39 ◼ ► spent two years before they took another shot. So they were late and they miscalculated and they
00:52:49 ◼ ► finally came out. So it's a mess. But you're right, they should be able to make a product
00:52:58 ◼ ► what is Apple's home strategy? What is Apple's in-home strategy? For a long time, it seemed like
00:53:04 ◼ ► Apple's in-home strategy was, "We don't need one. Everybody's got an iPhone and an iPad and a Mac,
00:53:09 ◼ ► and we don't really need a strategy because those devices are what's important in the home."
00:53:16 ◼ ► And, you know, okay, but your competitors are on the TV and they've got speakers that are listening
00:53:24 ◼ ► in your house and they have mesh Wi-Fi networks. And you have a TV box that hasn't been updated in
00:53:32 ◼ ► a few years and the HomePod. So are you in or are you out of the home? And it feels to me like
00:53:43 ◼ ► Apple's home strategy is, we've got this spinoff product, the Apple TV that we've kept around,
00:53:49 ◼ ► and we had this misguided HomePod that sort of led to a recalibration. But I don't see a strategy
00:53:53 ◼ ► there. I just see a couple of products they dropped. - Do you think there is any realistic
00:53:58 ◼ ► thought of some kind of Apple TV pseudo HomePod combo hardware? - Is there a possibility? Sure.
00:54:06 ◼ ► I think there's a possibility that Apple, who like a year ago hired a new person to be in charge of
00:54:14 ◼ ► their home stuff. I can't decide if that person is, you know, the least lucky person in the world
00:54:20 ◼ ► or not. But the idea that Apple could say, "Now that the whole home thing has, the home
00:54:31 ◼ ► kit wars have been settled and we're all using this chop platform." - Which any more news on this
00:54:41 ◼ ► would be fantastic. - Would be nice, right? - Is it actually a going concern for these companies?
00:54:47 ◼ ► - Are we still chopping? Is that still happening? I don't know. So maybe they're waiting for
00:54:52 ◼ ► something like that. But like, I think Apple could say, "We have a home strategy now. Here's
00:54:58 ◼ ► our vision for the home." As somebody said in the Discord, they built that big home set where they
00:55:04 ◼ ► have a set of like a home cut in half that they did that video of. It's like, "Well, you built
00:55:08 ◼ ► that. Why? What are you putting in there?" So I would love for Apple to be like, "Apple Home is
00:55:14 ◼ ► here and here's what you got. We got a new Apple TV. We got HomePod mini. We're gonna do Apple TV
00:55:21 ◼ ► that's also a soundbar." So you literally just plug it in once. I think they got the tech for it.
00:55:25 ◼ ► They could do that if they wanted to. "We are gonna do mesh networking. All of our other home stuff
00:55:32 ◼ ► also is mesh network. So you add this mesh networking to your router and Apple can secure
00:55:37 ◼ ► your internet and it's super easy to use and all your other Apple devices join and spread the mesh
00:55:44 ◼ ► network and isn't that great?" Like, they could go all into this if they wanted to. Do I think
00:55:50 ◼ ► they're going to? You know, it's possible but I see no evidence that there's any impetus at Apple
00:55:58 ◼ ► to actually press in this category other than, honestly, other than that they built that set.
00:56:02 ◼ ► So I have a problem. I'll say. It's time for me to replace my HomePod pair with my Apple TV
00:56:12 ◼ ► because it continues to be a horrific experience for me and I am at breaking point with how bad
00:56:20 ◼ ► this feature is. Like, it's in the past couple of days. I'm trying to watch a 45-minute show
00:56:25 ◼ ► and it pauses four times and one of those times I get an error telling me it can't connect and
00:56:32 ◼ ► I should change back to my TV speakers. So I hate how bad this feature is. I now have absolutely
00:56:55 ◼ ► I do not want to run a speaker cable literally anywhere, right? I'm not up for a wired home
00:57:02 ◼ ► cinema system. Neither do I want seven speakers. You know, I want something simple. We have a small
00:57:08 ◼ ► living room. I know sound bars are things that people like. I don't know if it will be ideal
00:57:15 ◼ ► for how we have our arrangement because our kind of TV cabinet is more to the left of our living
00:57:23 ◼ ► room than where we sit on our sofa. So we kind of tilt the TV a little bit. So I feel like potentially
00:57:35 ◼ ► If we set it up right in front of the TV, it would probably hang off the cabinet a little bit,
00:57:40 ◼ ► less than ideal. So I mean, and we could rearrange things if I really found the right product. I just
00:57:45 ◼ ► don't know what to go for. Just very cursory googling led me to the warm embrace of Sonos
00:58:00 ◼ ► beam systems and then you can put two of their little other systems behind you and that could
00:58:05 ◼ ► work pretty nicely for us. But really what I'm looking for from the upgrade ions is suggestions.
00:58:12 ◼ ► Do any upgrade ions use some kind of home cinema system or home audio system that they really like?
00:58:20 ◼ ► And I would like to have features like Dolby Atmos support because especially with stuff that I watch
00:58:26 ◼ ► on my Apple TV, I get a lot of that. And I know Sonos has Airplay too. I do think I'm probably
00:58:31 ◼ ► just walking straight into the arms of Sonos here, right? Like already the Discord is exploding with
00:58:35 ◼ ► Sonos suggestions. But I just want to hear from people if they have any other suggestions.
00:58:47 ◼ ► Yeah, I won't do that. I'm not going to do it. So like, don't tell me how good it is to use
00:58:52 ◼ ► wires because it's just not happening. I would tell you that right now that I want a wireless system.
00:58:59 ◼ ► And I guess the benefit that I would get here though is if I use something like a Sonos to
00:59:04 ◼ ► my understanding, it would work with everything connected to my TV, right? I wouldn't just be,
00:59:10 ◼ ► you know, because that's always been a thing for me. Like when I play games, I have to use the TV
00:59:13 ◼ ► speakers, which are fine, but I would love to be able to use whatever system is the best system for
00:59:19 ◼ ► me. So I reckon it will be Sonos, but I would, you know, I'm talking about this now because I want to
00:59:24 ◼ ► hear from people who like it, but I will also, I assume if there's big problems inevitably hear
00:59:29 ◼ ► those as well, which is always important. But I feel like now for me to get what I want,
00:59:35 ◼ ► it's not the HomePod because the HomePod's barely doing what I want now. So it's definitely not
00:59:42 ◼ ► going to do it into the future considering it is now a product in the lineup. So frustrating.
00:59:50 ◼ ► Look, I think you're going to end up with probably having a bar thing in front of your TV. I think
01:00:00 ◼ ► it would work. I just need to do some, I need to just have some measurements done. I should like,
01:00:04 ◼ ► you know, so like once I work out a good product, then I just need to find a way to make it fit. And
01:00:10 ◼ ► I'm sure that we could find a way to make anything fit, but I just have to make some little adjustments.
01:00:15 ◼ ► It's not the worst thing in the world, but like, you know, the sitting in front of the TV thing is
01:00:21 ◼ ► not a deal breaker. I expect that there is a way around that. Like if we could move the TV further
01:00:26 ◼ ► back on the cabinet, you know, and that would give us the space like whatever. But yeah, RIP HomePod,
01:00:32 ◼ ► I really wish I wouldn't have spent a lot of money on you now. I haven't felt this feeling in a while
01:00:39 ◼ ► from Apple of being annoyed that I made an investment in something that they've abandoned.
01:00:45 ◼ ► But I definitely feel that way with these products because they are expensive. And I did buy my pair
01:00:51 ◼ ► when there wasn't deals. And I feel like that they've moved away from this one much quicker
01:00:58 ◼ ► than I would have expected them to without ever really, I feel, realizing what the product was
01:01:06 ◼ ► could have or should have done. Right. I feel like that there were potentially a lot of areas
01:01:11 ◼ ► that we were hoping to see Apple expand into with the HomePod that they kind of didn't with this one.
01:01:17 ◼ ► And maybe now they will with the smaller one. But I just do not by any stretch of the imagination,
01:01:24 ◼ ► imagine this software support is going to be more than just making sure the thing still turns on
01:01:29 ◼ ► every day. Like, I don't imagine a lot of features coming to the HomePod. And yeah, I just feel kind
01:01:36 ◼ ► of frustrated about this one. I feel like that they've abandoned it too soon, probably. Yeah.
01:01:43 ◼ ► Unless they can show me otherwise. This episode is brought to you by ExpressVPN. You know about
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01:04:03 ◼ ► I write... so AP style is screenshot two words, but writing for a technical audience and not being
01:04:13 ◼ ► a newspaper, I prefer screenshot as one word, I think, because "screen space shot" sounds very much
01:04:24 ◼ ► like you're trying to explain a screenshot to somebody who doesn't understand what it is,
01:04:54 ◼ ► I think though that I have been progressing to one word with "screen shot". I think my,
01:05:18 ◼ ► a screen, unlock screen, home screen, you know, that's what kind of... what screen is that?
01:05:26 ◼ ► I would say also, here's my funny thing, is when I was at MacUser in the 90s, we didn't call them
01:05:34 ◼ ► screenshots. We called them screen dumps, which is funny because people would say things like,
01:05:46 ◼ ► So then I went over to Macworld and I said, the first time I said screen dump at Macworld,
01:06:50 ◼ ► Amazon needs to do with the Kindle hardware, other than that they should put physical turn buttons on
01:07:06 ◼ ► But, um, I, so I don't have a lot. I would say always making the screen nicer is better.
01:07:30 ◼ ► So I don't know whether this is just, you know, I think they're using the same kind of screen.
01:07:35 ◼ ► So I think this is a, an Amazon rendering problem, but I would say always improve the screen.
01:07:52 ◼ ► Like, I feel like the Kindle is already pretty great. So I would hope that, especially the Oasis,
01:07:57 ◼ ► which is the high end one, I would hope that they would just keep bringing those features down
01:08:08 ◼ ► Amazon would essentially be giving away Kindles to Prime members because they want to sell books.
01:08:19 ◼ ► books that I don't want to read to Prime members as a way to sell Kindles. It's not right, Amazon,
01:08:26 ◼ ► that you do, you went the wrong way there, but, um, that's what I want is I want, and they've done
01:08:30 ◼ ► a pretty good job. Like the base Kindle is way better than it, than it ever used to be. Um,
01:08:37 ◼ ► so keep it up. But, um, the Oasis, I honestly, I don't know what they could do with the Oasis.
01:08:42 ◼ ► I look forward to seeing it. Um, the last thing they did was like add kind of the color temperature
01:08:48 ◼ ► adjustment, which is just such a minor feature. Like it's already waterproof. It's already got
01:08:51 ◼ ► page turn buttons. I'm very happy with my Kindle. I'm not sure what Amazon could do to get me to
01:09:04 ◼ ► >> Color E Ink kind of isn't there. Like color E Ink is a thing, but it kind of isn't there. And
01:09:10 ◼ ► I just read text. I actually want them to avoid color as much as possible because I don't, I'm
01:09:16 ◼ ► not really interested in degrading my reading experience in order to get some color. Cause
01:09:20 ◼ ► I'm not really in it for the color and the size of Amazon's Kindles, like the, the color you like,
01:09:27 ◼ ► it's not good enough for comics or something like that. So I guess you could have, like,
01:09:36 ◼ ► >> You know, I think the way color E Ink works is that you can do it, but it's at a lower
01:09:40 ◼ ► resolution. So you'd, you'd, you'd click through from text to a picture page and the picture would
01:09:46 ◼ ► be color, but kind of crappy. And then you'd go back to the high resolution text the next time.
01:09:51 ◼ ► I'm not sure it's worth it, but I'm open to it. I love, I love the e-reader, you know, format.
01:09:57 ◼ ► I love it. It's not, um, the problems that the e-readers have is mostly the software and not the,
01:10:15 ◼ ► >> Ryan wants to know, do we think the AirPods Max are destined to have the same fate as the HomePod?
01:10:40 ◼ ► >> I think the AirPods Max, they may survive, they may become something else, they may get cheaper.
01:10:46 ◼ ► But my concern is that they're over-engineered and overpriced. And then when Apple wants to lower the
01:10:50 ◼ ► price, they're not going to be able to, and they're going to end up saying, well, we're going to do a
01:10:55 ◼ ► new AirPods Max or a new something that's, that's, uh, more, uh, cheaper over ear headphones. Yeah.
01:11:08 ◼ ► >> I think they made a series of mistakes with this product that they would have to change. Like
01:11:15 ◼ ► the case, you know, everyone hates the case and it is a bad design. They are on the heavy side
01:11:20 ◼ ► and maybe that isn't the best. Um, I was having a lot of battery drain issues. They did just
01:11:27 ◼ ► release a firmware update. I think it has improved it for me, which I'm really pleased about because,
01:11:35 ◼ ► my home pods were driving me mad with the TV thing and my AirPods Max driving me mad because
01:11:40 ◼ ► the battery kept dying. Uh, and I think they fixed the home pods Max thing, uh, the AirPods Max thing.
01:11:46 ◼ ► But ultimately for everything we said about the home pod, I think the AirPods Max will suffer
01:11:51 ◼ ► the same fate purely because as well, the other AirPods are so good and so popular. And they,
01:11:56 ◼ ► like that's, that's even a thing they don't have on the HomePod Mini. HomePod Mini has been doing
01:12:00 ◼ ► well, but it is not the level of success that the AirPods have. And I could imagine very quickly
01:12:10 ◼ ► Ioki asks, with regards to your criticism of the Paramount Plus app, do you think Apple made a
01:12:18 ◼ ► mistake by pushing streaming video services to create their own apps for Apple TV instead of
01:12:23 ◼ ► making them go through an Apple controlled interface? Uh, no. And the reason is that they
01:12:31 ◼ ► don't want to. All you would have on the Apple TV is Apple TV Plus if that was the route that
01:12:37 ◼ ► they took. Cause none of these companies would have wanted to do it. There are companies who
01:12:42 ◼ ► would rather be in the warm embrace of Apple. And I feel like Apple essentially has provided them a
01:12:48 ◼ ► template. I mean, you could, my understanding is you can build an Apple TV app fairly straightforwardly
01:12:52 ◼ ► if you use the base stuff, it's all about modifying it. The old Apple TV was like that though, right?
01:13:03 ◼ ► And like, if they want to do anything that Apple hasn't foreseen, they just can't do it because it
01:13:08 ◼ ► doesn't fit in what Apple wants to do. So I think that in a perfect world where Apple's presence on
01:13:17 ◼ ► and the Apple TV was so important and so dominant that Apple could bend everybody to their wills,
01:13:24 ◼ ► maybe, but that's not the case. This could only have been the case if the iPod never existed,
01:13:29 ◼ ► because it was, this was the whole thing at the time and Apple have continued to suffer this
01:13:35 ◼ ► issue in certain areas today. Apple so controlled the music industry for a period of time
01:13:42 ◼ ► that none of these large companies like media companies would trust Apple, right? Like,
01:13:48 ◼ ► it's the same as the news plus type stuff, like irrespective of the deals and the cuts,
01:13:54 ◼ ► you don't want to lose your entire business to somebody else because they end up just controlling
01:14:01 ◼ ► the entire market, right? Like it's like a newsstand. Newsstand never took off for this
01:14:06 ◼ ► reason. iBooks never took off for this reason. Like none of these companies wanted to become
01:14:11 ◼ ► what the music industry became and companies, like we talk about this all the time, companies like
01:14:17 ◼ ► their own experiences. Yeah, that's the truth of it. Even if they're bad, yeah, even if they're bad,
01:14:25 ◼ ► they want to control them. Yeah, they want to control all of that and so Apple created this
01:14:31 ◼ ► idea where they share data with them so you can have the TV app and it launches those apps,
01:14:35 ◼ ► but also giving them the kind of power to do their own thing. So my realistic answer is I don't think
01:14:43 ◼ ► it's a mistake because I don't think it would have worked out for them. What Apple should have done,
01:14:48 ◼ ► and I don't know how they would have done this, is to try and make the TV app more appealing.
01:14:53 ◼ ► That's what they should have done. Found some way to do something, some kind of data sharing
01:14:59 ◼ ► thing or whatever, to make the TV app more appealing to more people, like to more companies.
01:15:06 ◼ ► I don't know how they could have done that, but I think they didn't do that. But ultimately, Netflix
01:15:12 ◼ ► needs to have a Netflix app, YouTube needs to have a YouTube app and they need to make them and they
01:15:16 ◼ ► need to look the way that they want because, again, irrespective of what Apple believes or irrespective
01:15:21 ◼ ► of what we believe, these companies think that the best UIs are the ones that they make. Yeah,
01:15:25 ◼ ► that's why they make them. And finally today, Andy asks, "Can you recommend a keyboard similar to
01:15:31 ◼ ► Apple's USB keyboard that was before the Magic Keyboard?" Andy, there is a company for you and
01:15:36 ◼ ► it's called Matias. Matias' whole thing is making keyboards that look like the various stages of
01:15:46 ◼ ► Apple's keyboard design and function similarly. So I think this is the closest you're going to get to
01:15:54 ◼ ► that style, right? The thin aluminium keyboard with the white keycaps is what I assume they're
01:15:59 ◼ ► referencing. Matias' keyboards, these are the ones, this is the keyboard company that makes these
01:16:07 ◼ ► types of products. Yep, they've got a whole aluminium keyboard line that is very much inspired
01:16:13 ◼ ► by that last generation Apple keyboard. Yep, and if you want something that is like, what are the
01:16:19 ◼ ► the root, like that big one that everybody loves, the popular one that everybody loves. Tactile Pro.
01:16:24 ◼ ► Yeah, they have all of those. They've got these keycaps that are like Alp's clicky keyboard
01:16:29 ◼ ► caps like the original Apple Extended and all of that. And they make those in various shapes and
01:16:36 ◼ ► sizes. I mean, they're all really big, which is why I don't use, I have one, but it's enormous.
01:16:42 ◼ ► And I don't like how enormous it was. They need to really change their design, but I guess it works
01:16:48 ◼ ► for them. If you are interested in hearing Jason and I talk about keyboards in more depth, if
01:16:55 ◼ ► that's your bag, that is what we spoke about in our Upgrade Plus segment today. That's what we have
01:17:01 ◼ ► for you. Would you say we discussed that with more travel? Unbelievable. Yes, okay, we can say that.
01:17:09 ◼ ► If that's how you want to try and sell this to people, yes, we can say it's that. You can go to
01:17:14 ◼ ► getupgradeplus.com and you can sign up. And not only do you get additional content for every episode
01:17:20 ◼ ► of Upgrade every week, the episodes are also ad-free and you get lots of other wonderful
01:17:25 ◼ ► benefits for being a Relay FM member, including, which is my favorite, the Relay FM members Discord
01:17:30 ◼ ► you have access to that. It's a wonderful place to spend so much time there every day. It's just full
01:17:33 ◼ ► of great people talking about all some stuff. So go to getupgradeplus.com and you can sign up.
01:17:43 ◼ ► I would also like to thank ExpressVPN, Dev and Think, and Spokes for their support of this
01:17:48 ◼ ► episode. And of course, thank you for listening. If you'd like to find Jason online, you can go to
01:17:52 ◼ ► sixcolors.com, the incomparable.com. Jason also hosts many shows here on Relay FM as do I.
01:17:59 ◼ ► And talking about shows here on Relay FM, let me take a moment to tell you about another one
01:18:04 ◼ ► that you might want to check out. And that is Material. It is hosted by Andy Anatko and
01:18:07 ◼ ► Flores Ayon, who are both veteran technology journalists who have plenty to say about what's
01:18:12 ◼ ► going on at Google. If you want to follow Google's journey, find out the latest in Chrome OS,
01:18:23 ◼ ► I guess, and follow Material wherever you get your podcasts. I host many shows here at Relay
01:18:29 ◼ ► FM as well. You go to relay.fm/shows to find something new from your list. Start with Material,
01:18:35 ◼ ► maybe there's some more. I think that's it for this week's episode. Oh, we're also on Twitter.
01:18:41 ◼ ► Jason's Jason L. I'm iMyke, I am YKE. Are we on Clubhouse, Jason? Is that a thing? No. No.
01:18:48 ◼ ► No, I have, you know, I've never, I joined one room once and I opened the app, but I never find
01:18:54 ◼ ► anything that I want to listen to. Maybe that's my fault. I don't know. Get a lot of notifications,
01:18:58 ◼ ► though, for things I'm not interested in. There you go. You got to turn those off. You can turn
01:19:02 ◼ ► those right off. I think that was one of the first things I did. Maybe that's my problem, though.